Your Biggest Fan (Drake)

[Adrian]

Kirk was a little jealous of Anna now as Drake paid more attention to her and then she kissed him. Kirk's mouth dropped open in shock and he almost rushed to do the same. Why hadn't he thought of that? He would have to congratulate Anna on it later. She had definitely scored a point on him.

Drake seemed unsure what to do with them but as long as he didn't order them to leave they could stay. Right? And then he offered to let them into his room!

"Oh my god," Kirk exclaimed, not being able to hold it in as he rushed into Drake's room after the man himself. Once he was inside he stood blocking the door as he took it all in. This was where Drake Blear slept. He basked in the energy of the room.

[Nineteen]

"Kirk!" Anna whispered urgently, and prodded the boy in the side when he stood in the way. There was no WAY she was getting left out here. Oh, Kirk would have just loved that. Finally, she was able to follow inside as well.

The room itself was... underwhelming. As something of a homebody, Anna was dismayed at how plain everything was. You would have thought that they would have made the room nicer when they knew Drake Blear was going to be staying here!

Then again... this was the place where Drake slept. Where he changed clothes. In the back of the room was a door to where he showered. Anna's face turned bright red, and the room suddenly felt a couple degrees warmer. "Oh, do you like cherry? It was all we had -- but we can always look again, for something else in case!"

[Drake]

"No, no. Cherry is fine. I would eat just about any kind of pie handed my way. I haven't had any in forever." Drake turned in half circles trying to decide on where to put the tasty desert. He finally decided to just set it on the desk.

"So, um, why did you guys say you went through all this trouble again?" Despite having asked variations of the same question several times now, he couldn't remember getting a straight answer. He was a bit perplexed to say the least. "And what do you two do on the ship? Are you training to be animorphs too?"

[Adrian]

"I," Kirk began with a dramatic hand on his own chest, all five fingers splayed to just lightly brush the fabric of his shirt, "work in Internal Communications." It may have been a slight exaggeration of the importance of his job. He kept the PA and alarm systems working but Seiya had often said, there were no small jobs, just small people and Kirk certainly was not a small person, he had enough personality to fill the entire ship.

"And we just wanted to congratulate you on all of your victories Drake," Kirk said, daring to use his first name and feeling a little bit of a thrill when he did. "Can you tell us more about yourself? Did you really wrestle a vulture with one hand while you fought off a herd of boars?"

[Nineteen]

"I work with him," Anna said, rolling her eyes behind his back. That said, she didn't bother to elaborate on the position either. If Kirk could make it sound glamorous -- and he kind of did -- then that was okay by her. That was what helped them become friends. No matter how trivial a job one, Kirk would have a lot of enthusiasm for it. It'd definitely helped when they'd crafted an excuse to come see Drake Blear.

When Kirk asked the question, Anna's heart fluttered all over again. Drake was so smart, so tenacious! She picked him keeping a dozen tusked creatures at bay, while also acquiring the powerful bird -- without hurting any of them, of course. That would be beneath him. "And is your middle name really Augustus?" Anna asked dreamily.

[Drake]

"Wait-who-what?" Drake went from feeling like he was missing part of the picture, to feeling like everyone else had too much of the picture. "Where did you hear that? How did you hear that?" Where in the world were they getting their information? Did the academy have records about him written down somewhere that anyone could just go and read?

"And no. That's not what happened at all. I didn't "wrestle" a vulture, exactly. And I had help. The boars... well they happened after the vulture, not during. I didn't fight the boars either. I fought the coyote." Drake rubbed the back of his neck as he remembered the event.

"But yes, my middle name is Augustus. But how do you know that?"

[Adrian]

"Oh," Kirk said, waving a hand in dismissal." That isn't important. "We are in Internal Communications. We do have our sources after all," Kirk said with an 'oh, you're so silly,' hand gesture (Kirk tended to speak a lot with his hands), looking over at Anna as if this were obvious.

"Instead of talking about us, tell us more about yourself," Kirk said as he aggressively claimed a spot on Drake's (DRAKE'S!) bed. He wasn't about to pass up a chance to hear more about Drake from the man himself. Besides, he was half convinced that he could maneuver into an even better position.

He crossed his legs and looked up at Kirk with wide eyes. "A coyote? Really. Please tell us about that."

[Nineteen]

Oh yes, their sources. Which was actually just one source -- someone who apparently knew all of the Heroes of the West, maybe even better than they knew themselves. The Source wasn't so bad himself, really, but there was a reason he was stuck here and the brave men like Drake had still been out there saving the world.

As Kirk manuevered on Drake's bed, Anna pulled up a the rolling chair that had been stationed with his desk. She pulled it close to both of them, before sitting down. She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at Drake expectantly. "Oh please tell us! A coyote! That sounds even more dangerous than some silly boars. What did you do?"

[Drake]

"Ghahh," Drake sighed as he gave up on figuring out the "how" and decided to focus on the "why" and "what."

"The coyote story isn't really all that great. It is terrifying, actually. Have you ever been paralyzed from the neck down in a body that wasn't your own." He looked between the two of them. "Of course you haven't."

"If you want to hear about the real hero of that story, go talk to Suji. I was just the fool who almost got killed trying to scare a coyote away from a dead deer while in bird morph. Suji, now she saved the day. She scared the coyote away when it attacked back, and she scared away the not-so-silly boars in her crocodile morph. The crocodile which she acquired, by the way, because I was the fool unfortunate enough to get himself eaten by it."

Drake looked between the two of them again. This time to see if they had grasped what he was trying to explain to them.

[Adrian]

"Oh Anna, look at him. He's so modest." Kirk said, looking over at Anna almost as if Drake weren't in the room for a moment. "You're so modest," he said, turning back to Drake with admiration in his large eyes. "And so brave. Stuck in a body paralyzed from the waste down and still fighting? Eaten by a crocodile and you didn't panic. That is truly amazing."

Kirk rearranged himself on the bed so that he was almost draping over it. He looked over at Anna, "he has to tell us more. You have to tell us more," Kirk said, looking back at Drake. "Please, it's not often that we get to hear about what life is like in the factions outside of this," Kirk looked dismissively around the room though his disdain went beyond its walls, "little ship."

[Nineteen]

Drake seemed a little distressed, which was just totally adorable. She nodded at Kirk's assessment of Drake's modesty and bravery. He mentioned one of his comrades, the Suji girl, and Anna waved her hand dismissively. "I'm sure you did so much more than all of that. Kirk is right, you're just being too modest -- oh, it's so mature of you to give other people credit!"

Drake wasn't like all of the boys here at the Academy. No, he was certainly a man. A perfect one, too: he wasn't into bragging and all that silly macho stuff. He didn't need to hide behind that!

"Eaten by a crocodile! Oh, you must have been terrified! I don't even know what I would have done! How did you escape!" Anna really did look scared for him, even though he was sitting right in front of them. She brought her hands up, cupping them over her mouth. She moved them only to say one more thing: "Yes, please, tell us more!"

[Drake]

Drake crinkled his brow. Were these guys for real? Were they really being so... naive? It was like they were purposefully making him into a hero. And Drake was no hero. At least he didn't see himself as one.

"I am not being modest," Drake finally assured them, ignoring the crocodile question. "The truth is that I have survived this long on luck. Did you know that on the way here I fell out of the bug fighter before it crashed? Didn't jump, didn't escape, just fell. And I crashed. It was pure luck that the landing didn't kill me outright. Pure luck that I was able to concentrate long enough to morph away my injuries."

"So you see I am not some super modest, mega survivor, yeerk destroying, morphing machine. I'm just a guy who has gotten lucky when it mattered most." Hopefully, hopefully, now they would be able to comprehend. Hopefully now they would see the truth.

Because Drake was sure starting to see the truth himself.

[Adrian]

Kirk was hanging on Drake's every word as he described his heroic adventures in the outside world. He was torn between wanting to be more like Drake and just wanting Drake. He really couldn't decide which would be better. He ran a hand through his Drake-like hair, careful not to mess it up but reassured that it was indeed still like the hero's hair.

His eyes grew wider and wider at each feat listed until he was nodding along to Drake's self description. He was a super modest, mega survivor, yeerk destroying, morphing machine. He had hit on the perfect description and Kirk committed it to memory immediately.

"Drake," Kirk said almost dreamily, for a second loosing his own self assure tone, "you must have a god looking out for you. Lucky when it mattered the most? All the things you've done, all you've done to help the war effort can't be attributed to luck alone."

[Nineteen]

"Yeah, you must have a guardian angel watching out for you." Anna smiled brightly, gazing at him in a way that just turned into creepy staring. "Which means you're very important. Only really good, heroic people are watched over by angels." What sect of Christianity Anna followed wasn't too clear, and she couldn't have said herself. She just knew that there had to be some kind of benevolent God tending to the souls of people like Drake.

"Luck doesn't just happen to people -- not over and over again. If it did, it wouldn't be luck, would it?" Anna had never taken a class in statistical probability, and this seemed like perfect enough logic as far as she was concerned. "First you tell us that some girl[ did all the work, and now you say that it was luck! You're so considerate."

Anna let out a sigh of bliss. "Don't make excuses. We all know all of the amazing things you've done to help humankind. We really, really appreciate everything you've done for us."

[Drake]

Drake was starting to get frustrated.

These two seemed really nice. Almost too nice, actually. And they were trying to put a positive spin on his claims, but they just didn't seem to get it. It was like they were blind to reality. Like they thought he was some sort of perfect being.

... some sort of hero.

Wait, no, that can't be, Drake said internally. I am no hero. But then he looked at all of the things he had done from the perspective of someone else. Someone who wasn't there. Someone who didn't have to experience everything for their self.

As much as he hated to admit it, he could see how someone might see him as a hero. But that didn't make them right. He had tried to put himself in their shoes. Now it was time to try and put them in his.

"Have either of you killed before?"