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Taking a couple of gulps of his water, enjoying the refreshing chill as they sat in the early Autumn sun, Bryn nodded as Skyler agreed to his notion of the weather. Figures that a sailor would catch on well to the hints of a storm, she’d probably seen the signs plenty of times during her trips out on the water, maybe enough for her to pick up the first hints by instinct alone. It was impressive even if she did chalk it up to just a bad feeling. “We know it might be coming, if it looks like the wind is pushing it in this direction, then we can always pick up anchor and leave. It’s fine.” They were already a step ahead than most now they were aware of its presence hovering in the distance, so Bryn wasn’t too worried about it, although he reminded himself to check the barometer on the regular. [break][break]

He let her pull at his arm without complaint, removing it from the back of her seat as she threw herself down next to him to instead screw the cap back onto his water, nodding at her remark about the apparent creature the fishermen claimed was another reason for their fish disappearance. So far he couldn’t see a pattern in it being weather related and although he would continue to monitor the readings, it was beginning to lean more likely towards the issue resolving in an unknown variable beneath the waves… He’d have to leave that to Skyler mostly, if that were the case.[break][break]

“Give me a bit of credit,” he hummed with a soft breath of amusement, shooting Skyler a stare out of the corner of his eye, the usual sharpness in his gaze smoothed over like an ocean-weathered shard of worn green glass. “You’re making it out like this is my first all-nighter. Don't worry, I think I’ll manage, Cap’.”[break][break]

His lips curled lightly at the corners, wry and subtle, as Skylar nudged him with her shoe and remarks about him falling asleep. She always made getting close to people easy, as unabashed and playful as the ocean waves that bobbed their boat and while Bryn didn’t return the friendly gesture of contact, he didn’t move away from her either, comfortable to just let her nudge him. People seemed to be doing that a lot lately, prodding themselves into his life and squirming into spaces which had long ago been unknowingly vacant, filling it with chatter and banter where before it was occupied by work and solitude. Bryn was starting to admit that, although he still enjoyed Meteorology research, it wasn’t so bad to fill up his time with moments like this instead… [break][break]

“Speaking of coffee, I helped myself earlier.” Placing his bottle on the deck beside his chair, Bryn found himself slumping down in the seat, legs stretching out after he had spent the better part of his day standing over a table; his voice about as unapologetic and nonchalant as his posture for taking her beans without first asking. “Where the hell did you get that stuff? Your taste buds have got to be dead, that shit was strong enough to wake someone from a coma.” Not like he could talk; years of all-night research binges had left him annoyingly tolerant to but the strongest of caffeine. He might be interested in precuring some for himself if Skyler was willing to divulge where she got the goods.



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notes – here[break][break]

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Skyler decided to ignore the looming cloud cover for the moment, snuggling deeper into her sport jacket when a particularly cold breeze swept through the boat and raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. Summer had passed them by and days were steadily growing colder. The hoennian waters were devoid of tourists and their cruise ships, much to the sailor's delight. Skyler herself had used her boat several times for tours, but it was something she'd sworn to never repeat. She still found glitter hidden in crevices inside the cabin, months after a couple of drunken tourists had thought it a brilliant idea to spill a bucket of the horrid sparkles all over her boat. Never again.

Skyler's grin grew at Bryn's response, but she simply hummed noncommittaly and leaned back, copying the man's position and letting her head lean back to look at the sky. "If you fall asleep and miss all the action I reserve the right to laugh at you in your face." Despite her words, the sailor wasn't at all worried that Bryn might fall asleep; it was just too fun to poke at him. Sometimes, Skyler thought, the more grouchy the person the more amusing it was to poke at their buttons. She looked at him from the corner of her eyes, too lazy to move. "And that's a promise." 

Her eyebrows went up at his next words, and she couldn't help the unelegant snort of amusement that escaped her at his assessment of the coffee in her boat. "Huh. No wonder you're awake. That one's a special local blend. You kinda need it when you wake every day at the crack of dawn to go out to sea." Though she supposed working on... whatever he worked on lended itself to sleepless nights and caffeine ingestion. So he did understand, kind of. "And my taste buds are pretty much dead. Ever since I started cooking my own food, in fact." A good cook, Skyler definitely was not. "There was this one time I tried to bake a pie. It became a... slushy mess. Tasted like coals. No idea how I managed that, to be honest." She threw her hands up in the air, but she didn't really seem overly frustrated over her lack of cooking skills. "I usually stick to takeaway now."

Her next words were interrupted by a loud 'thump'. Skyler's countenance - which had borne a playful, relaxed expression up until now - suddenly turned serious as she looked down in the direction the strange noise had come from. A hand gripped Bryn's shoulder and she made the universal sign for him to keep silent before making her way to the edge of the boat to look down into the waters. Another cold breeze sent Skyler's teeth chattering and - was this temperature normal? It didn't seem like it.

She released a Milotic from one of her pokéballs. "There's something in the water, go check it out."

As the serpentine pokémon disappeared under the waves she turned back to Bryn, mouthing to him the words 'the barometer'. The fishermen had reported abnormal weather patterns and Skyler was willing to bet that what they were experiencing right now might be exactly that. They just needed to find out its origin.

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As Skyler swiftly rose and took to the edge of the boat after her Milotic, Bryn got to his feet and made his way back down into the cabin, footsteps swift and sure as he approached the table cluttered with his equipment. Quickly his hands shuffled papers out of the way, reaching for the few tools he had brought with him and scanning the readings that he was copying on his laptop. His gaze snaped back and forth between all of the data he had been collecting from the meters and taking immediate note of the sudden spike and dips; this storm had definitely fallen upon them far faster than should be naturally possible. Like it had transported from a mile away in an instant, summoned right above their heads. An unrestrained, crooked grin pulled at the corner of his lips, electricity crackling from the morphing atmosphere right down to his fingertips. [break][break]

When he finally emerged back on deck, Bryn was mid-sentence, the technical weather jargon that had been previously been muffled beneath Skyler’s feet suddenly becoming clearer. “-definitely some outside variable amplifying the wind speed and the direction - it usually changes when a storm is approaching - but for the readings to look like this, it's not your average ocean storm...” His hazel gaze instantly flew to the skies above, ignoring the sudden chill that seeped through his clothes and seeming to gather energy from it instead while Skyler shivered; a natural kick of adrenaline far more effective than any coffee. “And the pressure, there’s no way that it would have decreased this quickly if it was just nature taking its course.”[break][break]

During his absence the sky had darkened with heavy cumulonimbus clouds circling above their heads, beneath them the waves growing choppier as the wind direction turned and he didn’t have to consult the barometer he had just shoved into his pocket to know the pressure was rapidly plummeting. “How's it going, see anything?” He asked as he approached Skyler’s side, hand gripping the edge of the boat to keep himself steady, intrigued to see whether her Milotic had located anything beneath the surface that may be the cause of their sudden weather escalation. There was definitely something out there messing with the atmosphere above their coordinates and he wanted to know what the hell could cause this kind of shift. [break][break]

He felt the miniaturized capsule in his jacket pocket shift as a drop of rain splashed on the tip of his nose and he found his fingers instinctively lifting from the railing to press against the shape under the fabric, the Kingdra nestled within shivering in time with a particularly low howl of the wind. As if she had predicted it a surge of an air current collided into the boat, urging it to bob and sway them harder than before, Bryn’s hand that had been placed on his pocket reached out to automatically hold Skyler’s shoulder with a firm grip, blind to the touch while the quickly forming storm enraptured his attention. [break][break]

“What do you think Captain Dross...” He was no boat expert but, as a few more raindrops began to fall with ripples barely visible in the waves, Bryn hoped that Skyler's curiosity was as keen to be quenched as his own; his voice not wavering in the slightest in the face of their approaching, strange storm. Relenting to the shifting of Kingdra's pokeball, he fished her capsule out of his pocket and released the water dragon into the depths to join the Milotic in the search. “Think we can hold out a little longer?”


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An eruption of noise closed in from all sides, a symphony that foretold of an oncoming disaster, yet Bryn felt himself focused even as the surface beneath him groaned and swayed with the salty spray that peppered the breeze. His concentration a rock amongst the swirling, angry winds and water. Dark clouds rolled in thick overhead, even bleaker waters that could hide the form of a storm’s puppeteer beneath them, yet his gaze hungrily absorbed them all. His senses felt alive, crackling along with the electricity that hung thick in the air above the boat, charged from the pull of his curiosity and being submerged in the elements in which he found so fascinating. [break][break]

And Skyler only proved to encourage Bryn’s sense of reckless passion, prodding him with a verbal challenge, pushing him deeper into the risk of the hunt for knowledge when others would be smart to give up. “Just who do you think you’re talking to?” He let out a breath of amusement at her provocation. His gaze met hers for the briefest of moments until a spray of water frothed over the edge of the boat and, suddenly, they wordlessly threw themselves into the chaos. [break][break]

Bryn followed Skyler’s word when it came to preparing the boat for the oncoming weather, submerging himself down in the depths of the cabin again and gathering up all of his equipment, storing them where they would remain active but wouldn’t be thrown into the walls should they hit some particularly nasty waves. None of his tools were exactly Weather Institute level of expensive or quality but they were still his own personal belongings and he’d rather not see all of his data smashed from turbulent wants. Then, with the orange straps, he began to fasten down anything that was a flight risk. [break][break]

When he emerged back on deck and finished up the task she had given him, rain was beginning to fall with increasing speed and heaviness from the mass of dark clouds, sticking his wet mousey hair to his face and smothering their surroundings with the pattering, white noise backdrop of droplets colliding again the deck. “All done here,” he shifted towards Skyler, holding onto something to steady his balance and raising his voice to puncture through the rain, grip tightening as they rolled over a swelling wave. [break][break]

He hovered close by, just in case she needed him to handle anything else, numb to the way the cold water had begun soaking down through his clothes to his skin when he had so many other variables to focus on; like the way a flash of lightning branched across the sky like an outstretched tree branch. [break][break]

“as mad as it sounds, I've always wanted to see what it was like being in the middle of one of these. You don't get many opportunities to go out into the field and actually experience it first hand back at the Institute.” He called out to her over the sounds of the surrounding storm with more of a statement than a question, seemingly unperturbed by the warnings of the weather, his voice steady and curiosity unfaltering even while in the midst of his first sea storm experience. “So hey, tell me about a sea storm you've been in; a memorable one. I want to hear about it from a sailing veteran. Were the conditions anything like this?” [break][break]

Because there was nothing like asking for a ghost story while walking through a haunted house, right?


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