Chapters Equestrian Space: The Academy
The shuttle was cramped, dark and quiet. Her form was squeezed tight against her seat by the safety harness. Over the course of the last few hours, she'd tried to adjust her posture and smooth out her feathers under the belt and against the wall of the transport, but the effort was fruitless.
The frame of the ship quaked and a few moments later, her vision seemed to spread wide. They had ended and began another jump. As her weight shifted, the harness again ruffled her feathers and reset her discomfort. Once again, she pressed a talon under the belts and tried to smooth out her feathers.
“Why couldn’t we just jump straight there? Does the academy want us to arrive today or next week?!” she griped, vocalizing her displeasure.
The Kirin in the seat next to her closed his book and set it in his lap. He turned to face her and responded with “You know as well as I that the location is a guarded secret. Everyone is someone and they don’t want anycreature being targeted.”
“So jam the sensors and turn on the autopilot, we’ll get there whether there's a pony behind the wheel or not.”
“They're not ponies, G-”
The craft stilled. She clamped her beak shut. This was far quicker than any of the other jumps had been.
The door to the pilot’s cabin opened and the uniformed figure stepped through. With a voice full of distortion, he announced “We've arrived.”
Their restraints unbuckled as they were allowed to stand. With a huff, she set paw over claw as she made her way to the boarding ramp. A hissing sound filled the air as the clamps loosed and the outside was slowly revealed to them.
Her tight feeling around her chest seemed to retreat as her world expanded. She'd been cooped up on the shuttle for far too long.
“It'll be fine. We're safe here, G-”
“I didn’t ask for your advice, Char.” she snapped at the Kirin. He closed his mouth and looked forward.
She hadn't asked for any of this.
As the ramp came level about level with the floor of the ship, she stepped out onto it.
A haze of static and black tendrils hid their faces as well.
One of the figures waved her towards them. In front of them sat a gray jacket. As she walked closer, she could see the nameplate pinned to the chest and sleeve.
“Welcome to the academy, N1C3. Please refrain from personal names, effects, and relationships during your stay.” a wall of static, monotone and crackling, informed her. They reached out a hoof, atop it sat one of the hook devices. “For griffins, it should sit well clamped on a few feathers to the side.” Their other hood pointed to a spot on their temple. Near the edge of the static, she could see the back end of one of the devices.
She took it in a claw and pressed the mask on. Her vision faded before coming back, but off. The world was duller. Closer to her. Her sides felt tight as a breath caught for a moment.
“We do hope your arrival is a pleasant one. You'll find an orientation guide with your designation on it further down the line. It's been my pleasure to welcome you to the academy.” The haze curled halfway down. Was the pony smiling? “Never feel afraid to ask a friendly face for help.”
She stood for a second or two before picking the jacket up off the table. Throwing it on, she adjusted the fit as she fed her wings through the back slits. With a stretch it came snug as if it were made for griffins.
For her.
She stood there for a second, maybe two, and then took a cautious step towards the papers. Atop one booklet was a tag labeled N1C3.
She pressed it under a wing and continued her walk through the landing bay. The shuttle she came in on was the only one currently in the otherwise vacant hanger. Beside a doorway, one of the ponies waved to her. As she walked near them, the doors opened to a small room with another set of doors on the opposite side.
The half-sphere of static about their head moved lower as they bowed and motioned for her to enter the room. Stepping over the threshold, the doors slammed shut behind her. She waited for the next set to open.
Moments passed.
Her heartbeat quickened.
She stomped across the room and knocked a claw against the door, calling out “Hey, is this thing stuck?!”
A click sounded from the corners of the room before a spray fell from the ceiling. As her vision was obscured, she fell to the ground and pressed her claws over her ears. It was surrounding her, closing in on her, her heart pressed back against the sides of her chest quicker and quicker as they tightened to meet it.
With a click, the spray stopped and the doors in front of her opened. The mist fell out and crept along the floor of the hallway.
“They never expect it!” she heard, seeing a group of creatures with the same jacket as her but the static faces of the ponies in the hanger. She could hear a warbling sound as she saw their heads shake and backs arch and dip.
They were laughing at her in a sickening tone brought out by the masks they shared.
One of them, she could see the horn sticking out over their blob so a unicorn, stepped closer to where she lay. Distortion marked his question. “Hey, it's just a decon, are you alright?”
“I'm fine!” she yelled, a scraping sound accompanying her claws as she thrust them into the floor and stood to look the pony in the face. She pushed past him and hurried down the hall.
Behind her, the pony shrugged as they turned towards the other creatures. “Arrivals, ammirite?”
She lost sight of them as she turned a corner. A few moments she caught herself heaving, a claw pressed to the wall. She looked around her to see no windows in the wall. She hadn't see in the hangar or on the shuttle.
She hadn't seen the outside since she boarded the shuttle.
A slap broke her concentration. The booklet had fell to the ground. She could see the phrase Dormitory B63 on the line under N1C3. She was supposed to go there.
Her heart stilled as her focus shifted. She reached down and grabbed the guide, returning it to her wing. She dusted herself off and looked around for a map.
Her breath was softer as she saw one at the end of the hall. It was tangible proof that the academy was more than the four walls about her. The symbol F2 in a corner told her that there was more above and below her feet than just the ceiling and floor.
With a huff, she set claw before paw and walked down the hall.
Equestrian Space: The Academy
There wasn't much to do when she found her room. They hadn't let her bring anything onto the shuttle, not that there was much left for her to bring after-
She gulped.
There was a small living space in the dorm. It was modestly furnished with couches and a few chairs, each of different sizes and styles to match an assortment of creatures. There was a small coffee table between them that she set the guide on. She unzipped her jacket and threw it over the back of one of the chairs, letting in a long breath as she did so.
Behind her was a T shaped hallway. Opposite the opening to the common area was the door to her suite. Simply approaching it had caused it to open, met with a buzz from the device on her head. In the middle of the wall sat a door that bore the placard N1C3 . At the end of the long path rested a similar door she'd yet to read. Across the hall from the counter that separated off the living room was the door to the bathroom.
She found herself pushing open the door and then pressing it closed with her back. Her head gave a soft thud as she pressed against it. Opening her eyes a few seconds later showed her a dimly lit room. There was a toilet, as to be expected, a small sink with a mirror above it, and to her left a decently sized tub with a showerhead attached to the wall above.
Without much consideration, she removed her mask and stepped inside the bath. She fumbled with the knob and set it to a lukewarm temperature. She didn't need much water to properly preen her feathers. It would be fine.
She wrapped her arms around her knees as the water continued to rise.
It was colder than expected. Just like before.
As the water approached the rim, the knob clicked and the stream stopped. It must have happened automatically, she hadn't made a move to turn it off. She opened her eyes after realizing she had pressed them closed for the past few minutes.
There was a figure in the room.
Their face was obscured and blacked out against the dim lights around the mirror. No one had followed her inside, she'd heard nothing over the sound of the running water.
As quickly as they had appeared they were gone, whisked away by the muffled sound of the suite's entrance opening and closing outside the bathroom. Alone again, she found herself able to stand up and step out of the tub. She breathed in. He isn't here. She breathed out.
Pulling open the bathroom door, she came face to face with a startled kirin.
"Oh dear, you're here." he blurted out, clutching his guide to his scaled side. He looked below her and then glanced into the bathroom. He let out a cautious inquiry "Do you, uh, need a towel? I thought griffins didn't take bath-baths."
"No." she answered, grabbing the mask from the edge of the sink as she walked towards her room. The door slid open and allowed her to enter.
Of course, she'd be roomed with him. It was his father that had arranged all of this in the first place.
Or now that he was her guardian, she supposed it was their father.
Equestrian Space: The Academy
There was a rap on her door and a puddle below it. She hadn't looked for a towel when she entered her suite. Simply stared at the mirror hung on the wall next to her. Stared and thought.
She thought about the shuttle ride, how cramped and dark it was. The cabin was only occasionally lit by licks of flame from the Kirin's mane. She didn’t think that char knew he was letting them out. She didn’t know if it was just something his race did when left alone, or if it hinted at something on his mind. Something unresolved.
There seemed to be plenty of things unresolved in their lives as of late.
It was his own family’s fault, he shouldn’t be the angry one.
The rap came again.
She looked to her wings. The feathers of her right, or left in the mirror, were level, orderly, and lighter than the other. She’d yet to rifle through the other wing with her beak, having only completed half a preen before losing focus. It hugged her side, the feathers still damp and ruffled.
Her eyes rose to the hole where her face should have been. She’d re-clamped the mask to her temple feathers. It'd immediately turned on and blocked out her visage. She wasn’t sure the intent of why or how it did so. The color had drained from the world again. Gotten closer. She could feel the static in front of her, closer than what she could see in the mirror. It was a suffocating feeling. She reached up a claw and pulled off the hook. Turning it over in a paw, she could read N1C3 stamped on the side.
She looked up and it was just her face looking back at her.
At the sight of it she put the hook back on. The face of N1C3 returned.
The rap grew louder. The Kirin called through the door, his voice dulled from the other side, “N1C3? We've got to stop by the advisor. Pick classes.”
“You know my name,” she answered, not moving nearer to the door, “Use it.”
“Since when have you used mine?”
She reached for the door handle and pulled it open. “We shouldn’t even be here, Cha-“ she was interrupted by her own laughter. Pinned to the chest of his jacket was the tag A5H5.
Her room and the hallway behind him grew bright from a blue light. It faded with the flame that died as he let out a quick, irritated snort. “That isn't very Nice of you, now is it?”
“Fine, I'll stop calling you Char. Asher seems much better.”
“How nice of you, Nice.” Asher added a slight G to the start of the last word as he held out her jacket.
Gneiss took it from his hoof and swung it over her wings. The fit was tighter than before with their bulk on the inside, but at least she could wait to make her left wing presentable. She met her gaze, or at least where she thought his eyes were, and said “Whatever. Lead the way.”
The door slid closed, leaving her room empty. The puddle remained.
Equestrian Space: The Academy
It had been a burden to find her own way to the dorms. Everything was so clear when the she could make sense of the map or there was a long hallway before her. It was when she got turned around or came upon some corners that finding her way became difficult.
It was easier, now, following Asher.
He'd found an itinerary within the guide, complete with a guide between each stop.
She'd somehow gotten lost just after leaving the hangar. Her mind glossed over the incident within the airlock and after.
There was some compulsion within Asher's mind to speak unless reminded to be silent. He droned on and on as they walked the hallways to the counseling offices. Normally she would have told him to stop, but now...
It made her feel less alone in these windowless corridors.
His voice also lacked the kirin's usual whine when it came through the filter of the mask. This made it slightly easier to forget that it was him speaking.
"We'll need to sign up for the same classes, of course-"
"I thought you said we were safe here?" She interrupted.
"Not as a bodyguard thing, as a student thing," he corrected, "it'll be easier if we're covering the same material."
"I'm not here to learn, Asher."
"You are as long as," he paused as they passed a teacher, waiting until they were out of earshot, "other students and staff are around. That includes me. You need to fit in."
She thought back to earlier, when she bumped into the group snickering at her. "You know as well as I do that I'm not the fitting in sort."
"Good thing I'm around, then. At least one of us has creature-skills."
"I don't want-"
"Since when has wants been important?" His question cut through the air, striking a neglected chord. "As far as I'm concerned, the contract between our fathers stands between us." He stopped in his path and spun to face her. "I'm stuck here, same as you."
She made no comment as she continued to walk past him.
"The office is here, Gneiss."
"Just get our classes, Asher."
Her claws scraped across the floor panels as she walked away.
Some minutes later, Gneiss found herself in a rather large room. The space was filled with tables and stools, laid out in a grid. Large monitors hung from the walls, displaying a static image of a star field. It obviously wasn't real, but at least it was something. In one corner sat a counter in front of a shuttered opening.
Some sort of cafeteria, it seemed. She'd seen a few aboard the medical ship.
Gneiss buried the memory as she wandered to one of the many, many open seats near the center of the room.
She was alone, but for the first time since boarding the shuttle a full breath entered her beak.
Her world seemed to pause as she focused on the feeling.
It resumed to the sound of a mare speaking, "I'm sorry, but they'll be closed til next rotation." There was a slurp as Gneiss opened her eyes to see a pony drinking out of a mug. She blinked several times, clearing the cloudiness from her vision.
Had she fallen asleep?
"Oh dear, were you comfortable?" The mare chimed, laying a hoof on the elbow of Gneiss's wing.
She pulled it back and said "No, I was just leaving."
"Very well," the mare answered, turning to walk away, "Let me know if you need anything, N1C3."
Gneiss wrapped a claw around her wing. She rose from the seat and walked out of the room, mulling over her day.
She was halfway back to her dorm when she realized that the mare had not been wearing a uniform.
What worried Gneiss far more than that was, though already forgotten, she had seen the mare's face.
Equestrian Space: The Academy
Gneiss flipped through the pages in front of her as she splayed her wings over the sides of the recliner. Asher sat opposite her, doing the same as he described the classes on them.
She wasn't entirely listening.
He hadn't asked where she'd been when she got back to the suite. After a glance at the clock, she'd simply stepped into her room and... Waited.
Now was the time to be asleep, but she felt restless. So she laid in bed staring at the room around her.
The walls, ceilings and floors were a deep grey as if hewn from stone but rang with a hollow sound of metal. There was a dresser, a door to the small hallway, the mirror, and what she assumed to be a closet. The bed was covered in a thick burgundy comforter, though laying on it did anything but. It had a course texture and lumpy consistency in the padding.
After looking at the wall for some time, she noticed a rectangular crack in the ceiling above the wall opposite the foot of the bed. Operating off a hunch, she raised a talon and snapped her claws.
The room was washed in a blue light as a screen was projected onto the wall.
The UI was simple. There was a static image in the background behind a display for the time and icons for a calendar, a food menu, and a scroll.
Where her talon raised in the air appeared a cursor at the end of an invisible line whatever sensor in the room could see. She hovered it over the scroll and tested a pinching motion. The icon depressed and the room faded to grey again at the screen blinked from the beach to some sort of parchment background. A notification appeared.
You have no approved contacts for after hours communication, N1C3.
She swiped her claw to the side and the screen blinked back to the beach. She stared at it for a while, imagining the waves gently rolling over themselves.
She'd tried to imagine what they'd sound like. What they'd feel like. Lulling her.
Pulling her. Pushing her down, under the surface. It would be dark, and cold, and spawn a fire in her chest. She could feel it now, the chill around her, burning within her lungs, just like before. She wouldn't be able to hear anything clearly, their voice would be garbled by the liquid.
She shook as a rasp sounded from the door. Asher's voice came from the other side the second after. "Hey, we need to go over our classes."
The air around her was still. Calm. Lukewarm. The walls were tall and gray, but distant. She let out a short breath and then took in a much deeper one.
"Gneiss, can you come out?"
"Fine."
And so she found herself here, listening to the kirin drone on about the curriculum as she skimmed his notes on the schedule. "Manipulator Operation?" She asked, seeing it on the list. It was marked for later this rotation, after a span of time left open for lunch.
Asher looked up, placing a hoof on the page to mark where he'd been reading before. "You know, the construction rigs. I thought you'd find it interesting."
"So now I have interests?" She jabbed.
He mused, "Well you've always enjoyed piloting the fighters, I thought you migh-"
She thought about being strapped in behind a cockpit's control console, the buttons and switches surrounding her. A spur of anger filled her as she reared up out of the seat, tossing the folder onto the table. "Keep your thoughts to yourself." She snapped, clinching her beak shut out of surprise at her own tone.
She couldn't tell whether he was surprised or annoyed; the static hid his face from her. He said nothing as she walked past him towards the fridge, throwing the door open to root around inside. Gneiss saw packages of sour cream, various pickling jars, and raw meat. From the slightly pastel tone and the F&FTM logo on the label, she knew that it was only imitation and a mediocre one at best. Still, an imagined whiff of a home cooked griffin meal came to her nostrils as she scanned the ingredients on the shelves. She could also recognize some of the normal staples of a Kirin diet.
"Is there a," she paused, trying to recall a term that fit, "grocery around here?"
"I don't th-believe so, no."
"You didn't get this stuff?"
"No, I thought it was empty."
She picked up a jar of pickled apples and turned it over in her claws. The slices gently swirled within, twisting counter the motion of the glass. The green skin was too vibrant, a common substitute used in place of tradition.
It wasn't a griffin speciality, but she understood the exchange of gifts to be a rather diplomatic start. At the behest of Asher's father, she'd even presented some herself on a clawful of business deals. Her own father had merely laughed when she said it was out of line. The heft of her father's voice played in her ears, indistinct and garbled.
She ruffled her wings, setting down the jar as she closed the door of the fridge. "The academy must have stocked it," She mumbled, straightening her jacket she approached the table, "I'm not all that hungry."
From the shape of the distortion, she assumed that Asher was looking at her. "Class doesn't start for a while." There was a pause, and then he continued. "Do you, want to go see where the other rooms are?"
She grasped the folder and motioned towards the door with a wing. She followed with the command, "Lead the way."
