Title: Acidic rain
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes:
Author notes: Post-canon, Zazu and Geo and Ascot – companion to Oncoming storm from a few challenges ago because I'm apparently just writing series in little snippet-fics these days
Summary: “You didn’t even check the weather forecast, did you,” Geo muttered.


oOo
Zazu hadn’t initially been happy about it when Geo asked him to take a day off to head down to ground level with him. Ground-level might be where all the interesting on-planet science was happening, but none of it was really interesting in engineering terms unless there were some secret projects hidden out in the fog. And if there were, he wasn’t going to be able to visit them.

But then Geo promised it would class as a work day, and – belatedly – that it was a trip out to see the new dome being built for the restoration project, and that Zazu would be free to poke about all over it.

That was interesting, even in engineering terms. Aside from the challenges of setting up a new, self-contained unit which would actually have people living there, down in the toxic fogs that cloaked Autozam like the least-cozy blanket of all time, there had been a bunch of work trying to make sure that none of the magic flung about so casually by the Cephirans who were going to be moving in would disrupt the structure.

There was a chance mages from other lands would end up involved too, of course – a couple of Chizetan scientists were pretty involved already, both of who seemed to have some kind of power that twisted physics about a bit. But they’d been making ships for just about every other land for centuries – they knew how to safeguard against the kinds of things most magic and alternative power systems could throw at a building.

Cephiro was a whole new gameboard. And Zazu wanted to know if there was anything else they could incorporate into the NSX as soon as possible. (It wasn’t that he thought any of their Cephiran guests were likely to want to hurt the ship, but also he knew the chances of them doing it by accident. He’d seen Lantis learning to modulate his power so he didn’t break things – he didn’t want anyone having to learn how to do that on his ship!)

So he said yes, and it wasn’t until they were on their way down that he realised – when Geo tossed him an emergency pack – that the two of them were actually in charge of the trip in the less fun, incident-prevention kind of way. They were meeting up with one of the scientists, and Geo had brought a couple of the admin people who had been added on to the NSX’s crew at the moment to arrange logistics, presumably so they could check how things were going, and then there were only LaFarga, Caldina, and Ascot.

That made them a party of eight, which meant two emergency leaders, and that apparently meant him.

“Uh.” He stared down at the slim backpack, then reflexively at the wall of the elevator they were in. It was solid metal, so it wasn’t like there was a window to see out of, and he thought this was one of the lift shafts that had been drilled down through the solid rock of a mountain rather than being exposed to the atmosphere. “So. What’re the chances of us needing these?”

He kept his voice low – he didn’t really want anyone panicking in a lift, that was always awkward – and Geo rolled his eyes instead of sighing loudly at him.

“You didn’t even check the weather forecast, did you,” Geo muttered, and it wasn’t a question so much as just sheer resignation.

“The weather doesn’t normally have any impact on my day!” Zazu hissed back at him. “They finished the shielding on both the Dome and the tunnel out to it, right?”

“If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be bringing the military head of another land down here.”

“…Fair enough.” Zazu’s lips twitched. “Don’t want anyone claiming you were trying to get Lantis his old job back with a bit of an assassination attempt-“

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Geo said, sounding slightly horrified. “But they need to see the Dome, today was the only opening in the schedule-“

Zazu paused, looking up at Geo, laughter falling away. “Geo? …Geo, tell me there’s nothing going on with the weather or you wouldn’t be taking us down there?”

“The Dome’s storm-rated,” was the not-terribly-reassuring answer to that, and Zazu’s face must have been horrified as Geo reached over to squish Zazu’s hat down onto his head, like he hadn’t done for a few years now. “It’s just a small weather front, is all. I wouldn’t let us down there if the safety checks weren’t signed off. I wouldn’t be going down myself!”

That was true enough. Autozam’s own atmosphere was far more dangerous than even space, and they had all been drilled into treating it with appropriate levels of caution, of which Geo had a lot better handle on than Zazu did. Plus, Zazu reassured himself, he had seen several sets of the diagrams for the tunnels and the Dome, and there had been plenty of shielding, the same grade as the outer hull of the NSX.

They were asking people to live down here, and that meant it had to be able to handle anything the weather could throw at it.

Still, the emergency pack was a reassuring weight on his back as he pulled it on.

---

An hour later, sat on the train with only a few minutes left to go and anticipation of getting to see the everything they’d added into the Dome had beaten back all but the tiniest thread of anxiety. He was chatting with Ascot, who he’d got to know a bit over the last few years, and trying to work out if it would be rude to ask him to do some sort of magic when they got there so Zazu could see what responded – when he realised that Ascot had started glancing up at the sky.

The clouds were a bit of a different colour, but they always looked weird – only then the whole tunnel started to vibrate with the force of the rain that had started to hammer into it, a wall of noise which ran up to and over them, the tunnel going almost opaque with the too-thick liquid slamming into it, all their conversations drowned out.

Zazu’s hand checked the pack was still on his back at the same time as he glanced over at Geo. But this was what the tunnel was designed to deal with, and… it seemed to be doing the job just fine.

It was too noisy for talking now – and he’d have thought that the shielding would have cut a lot of that noise out, surely? Even the transparent versions? But it kept him from having to try to sound calm as they finished off the ride to the Dome. He just kept smiling, and hoped he looked calm enough.