Chapter Text
Eau Pure Academy.
A school located on the offshore of one of Fontaine's many water fronts, near its border into Chenyu Vale. Gorgeous mountain ranges met Eau Pure's students as they walked through the mahogany and gold-trimmed doors. Awarded and praised for the sheer number of students who after graduating moved on to be parts of very successful contributors to the nation of justice.
It was a place of success. A place of focus. A place to solve your goals and a 'place to be', as Furina de Fontaine (yes, the country was named after their student-council president's family) so deliriously cheered at every morning assembly.
Not for Freminet, of course. it was too loud. And bright. And loud. The uniform was itchy and always left the him sweating. And on top of that, the smell of over 1,000 students after an especially hot day were all mixing in his nostrils and becoming too much for him and his senses.
The only real respite Freminet got before he tore his hair out from overstimulation was after school. His siblings Lyney and Lynette had drama club for the next hour and a half, leaving Freminet out in the hall near the emergency exits.
This was one of the few times Freminet could untense his shoulders and unfurrow his brows. He could put on his headphones, take out a workbook and begin to sketch. He would find himself doodling things he had taken notice of throughout the school day.
The way a classmate's ponytail curled, or a brightly - colored bird on the windowsill feeding it's babies. Each pencil stroke was amateur and scratchy, but he found that any mistakes he found too much even for these sketches he blended out with his thumb or a crumpled tissue he found in his blazer pocket.
As he finished the shaping of the bird's wings, Freminet frowned. The page had began to curl at the edges from the damp heat. The humid air and with his luck it would quicken the smudging and eventual fading of his latest pieces.
He sighed and shut the book. The weather of late was especially unbearable, with rain falling every day for weeks now. Some found it cathartic to place blame on an old children's tale- about a weeping dragon of the water that caused torrential downpour from it's sorrow.
Freminet was one of those people. Each day since grade school he brought a coin to an old leaky bucket in the school's janitor closet (one of Freminet's other places to flee) and claspe his hands together chanting a soft 'hydro dragon, hydro dragon, don't cry'. As silly as it was, some days the rain cleared out mere minutes after this little ritual.
He had forgotten to do it today, on account of the extremely crowded hallways preventing any productive movement across the school. He had opted instead to just wait in his classroom with his head on the desk, but still he heard the loud buzzing and chatter of excited classmates regarding a 'new student' coming into school that day. He perked up at the news. Freminet was surprised a tidbit of news didn't reach his sibling's ears first for them to recount to him at lunch before it got to the academy's general public. However his dysregulated brain was just struggling to stave off another migraine threatening to move from behind his ears to behind his eyes, so he wasn't able to listen any further. Instead he blanked out for the next 30 minutes, leaving the halls empty as the warning bell for the next class rung.
Freminet leaned against the brick wall and huffed.
That's probably why he was in such a foul mood. This closet was special to him. He hadn't gotten the chance to see it today.
And maybe that's why the rain didn't stop. It valued routine and consistently as much as he did.
Maybe he should go back and fix it.
He looked up at the nearby clock. 5.25.. He only had 5 minutes before Lyney and Lynette burst through the nearby theatre doors with the rest of the loud and energetic students. But perhaps they would go late and wouldn't notice his absence. Freminet flinched as he heard a loud crash ringing out from behind said doors, followed by an uproar of laughter. Yep. They definitely wouldn't notice if he was gone for a few extra moments. His school shoes clicked against the mahogany sand-buffed floors to broom closet F5. He opened it and sure enough, there was the leaky bucket, ineffectively keeping the floor of the closet wet from the also-leaky roof above.
The location of the drama wing was in Eau Pure Academy's oldest wing. It hadn't been fixed with any of the recent generous donations from wealthy investors or Alumni. Most students avoided it as ghost stories were spread about an older drama teacher who died in that wing, and possessed any landscapers looking to fix it up, claiming that she wanted to protect 'precious memories'.
Freminet thought this was nothing but a farce, but the end product remained the same- people were too afraid or lazy to fix a very simple problem that only required a simple solution.
In fact, laying in his bag, stuffed under textbooks and his specially-made eye goggles, there were blueprints for something he believed would fix this very problem.
Formed in this very broom closet. Study hall after study hall he slunk away to sketch in candle light. It took months without anyone noticing his effort and hasty departures in the middle of classes, even at home he had waited until his siblings slept before he worked on it, too frightened of the probing questions Lyney would ask that he wasn't able to answer just yet.
Freminet had used a small, handheld old- fashioned wind up toy that (with it's modifications) could survey the required materials and steps needed to upkeep an area so important to his family and many others.
Everyday he saw Lynette's eyebrows furrow and Lyney's smile falter every so slightly when another part of the Theatre wing was deemed too dangerous to use for rehearsal or building larger sets. Everything became more and more cramped into the lavish auditorium connected to the wing through an outdoor courtyard (that also could not be used due to the tripping hazard- thanks to the continued downpour today). Each time he saw the disappointment on so many faces, the more it felt that the blueprints he brought but was still too shy to show to the school's principal were burning through his backpack and making his neck break out in hives.
Even with this internal drive and throb of his heart, wouldn't dare bring the actual prototype to school. Eau Pure Academy was prestigious. Far too prestigious for one of it's students to consider something so low class as engineering.
It was almost comical the speed switching of social status someone would get for being an engineer.
Most deduced that because of recent sea level rises and cut funding for the President's preferred source of entertainment was the Opera Epiclise, which rich people valued more than those working tirelessly under the streets. It was 'too sad.' Some would murmur. They would prefer to literally drown in ignorance and happiness than face the problems of their country.
If someone saw what he worked on in his free time he would be laughed out of the school. Not even his reputation as the brother of the 'Starlight Siblings' would save him. In fact it may drag their names through the mud. Freminet couldn't do that to Lyney or Lynette, no matter how much they claimed the words of others didn't matter. Those people were their audience. A performer is nothing without an audience.
They would be nothing.
And Freminet knew that it would destroy them. So he kept quiet, waiting for his chance.
Little did he know how soon that chance would come.