Rise

"I ain't a flier," Tony warned the two Cryos as they pulled him above the snow and onto the plateau.

"We know," Drift said through her clamped teeth, rolling her eyes and making a show of rolling her eyes. Brook was pushing him from behind so Tony couldn't see if he was being as impetuous as his sister. "You need to get out more."

"And here I am!" Tony exclaimed, gesturing to the frosted mountain highland around them, "I'm out! Now what?" 

"Now you get to hang out at our place," Brook chimed in, "We come down to the Dead City and you show us all kinds of cool shit but we never get to show you *our* cool shit." The enthusiasm was real, completely genuine and it made Tony feel bad for being such a grouch. He preferred being at home on the flat ground of the city where he could push himself around on his board and navigate independently. Having the two Cryos push him along felt wrong, like he was being treated as an elder or an invalid. He was neither, and he knew deep down that they didn't see him that way but he couldn't stop the ugly feeling from raising its head.

"You'll like the valley, but we had to show you the peak first," Drift said breathlessly, puffing condensation as she recovered from the exertion. "The view up here is like nothing else, 'specially on a clear day like today."

"It's clear enough to see the city today," Brook agreed, taking up the rope they had tied to Tony's board again. "You push, I'll pull this time, we're nearly there."

The siblings' idea of 'nearly there' was another thirty minute vertical climb up the rocky face of the mountain, so steep that Tony gripped the edges of his boards for dear life. He had no idea if the wheels were helping or hindering at this point but he refused to look down to see how they met with the rocks. He felt the board lurch forward and held tighter, squeezing his eyes shut until he realised they had pulled his board flat again.

"You can open your eyes now," Drift teased affectionately, gently nudging Tony's side with her tail. His eyes snapped open, ready to retort with a sharp remark but his mouth went slack at the sight before him.

Way down below them, the forest canopy looked like a drawing, so far away it seemed impossibly unreal. Dragging his eyes up from the nauseatingly long way down, he looked out across the island, seeing the plains stretch out until they reached the edge of the Dead City. Just like the forest, the city was so far away and small that it felt like he could reach out and pick up one of the immense buildings like it was a hatchling's toy.

"You can see so much," he managed after a moment of stunned silence.

"Eh, kind of," Drift shrugged. When he looked at her she looked away. "You get a kind of... general idea. You don't get to see all the details from up here, you can't even see anything smaller than an Acro if it's down there."

"And even they look tiny," Brook added, "Look at the city, can you see what kind of buildings are there?"

"Uh, big ones?" Tony guessed and the male Cryo nodded.

"That's about it, right? You can't see if there's anything cool in them or who lives there. You do get to appreciate how big it is once you actually go down though," he noted.

"They look like grey, blank blocks to us from up here, do you know how exciting it was to go visit and realise that every single place had a story to tell like every place up here in the highlands?" Drift asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement, "It was like we had been looking right at something amazing the whole time and we didn't even know!" Tony looked back to the city, still awestruck by how miniscule it seemed from this high up on the mountain. He could see their point though, he looked over at the sandy formations of the scrublands and felt a sudden thrill as he realised how densely packed with adventure it might be. From up here, he had a sneak preview of brand new worlds he had yet to discover, just enough to let him know they were there. It stirred something within him and he turned to the siblings, breathless with excitement.

"We should do this again, with different places. Have you seen the Sunken City?" He pointed over to the coast, where human structures vanished into the ocean. "You can see that from here too, wow, look how much of it is underwater!" he gushed. Drift followed his eye and began to enthuse about the sight too, her mind full of possibilities of how far they could go. Brook was hanging back, watching the two and only slightly paying attention to their ramblings. They hadn't known Tony before his accident but he got a feeling they were seeing an old side of him that had been held back since then. He'd never give his sister the credit, but Drift had been right when she suggested that a different perspective might bring some passion to the older Pachy.