Knock, knock, knock.
Ora woke up to the sounds of Jace knocking on her door. She groaned as the covers fell off and she got up from her rest, that night's sleep was better than she'd ever gotten in the Octarian army. Most days they woke up before four o'clock, just because their superiors felt like it. From outside the door, Ora heard a click, then Jace's voice. "Ora, wake up, I decided to make some breakfast before we go."
She visibly perked up at the word 'breakfast'. The dinner last night was an amazing change of pace from what she'd been used to. She remade the bed then tried the door, Jace had apparently unlocked it.
The smell of breakfast had already seeped upstairs to distribute delicious aromas throughout the house. Ora lifted her head and sighed contentedly. "Okay." She called back.
Downstairs, Jace had already gotten his portion of the food: fluffy pancakes with a strawberry syrup, eggs and bacon on the side. Ora saw this and was speechless.
"Go ahead, get as many pancakes as you would like. I made enough for you to have thirds if you really wanted, figured you'd be just as hungry this morning as you were last night." Jace told her, piling some powdered sugar on his stack of pancakes. Ora nodded and grabbed a plate from the table, sticking on as many pancakes as it could hold, then pouring down syrup.
She dug in to the fluffy flapjacks, savoring each bite as if it were her last. "Thish esh sheh gehd!" She said through a mouthful of pancake.
"Sorry?"
Ora swallowed and tried again, "This is so good!"
"Thanks." Jace finished off his set of pancakes, then ran upstairs to grab the .52 Gal. When he came back downstairs, the whole pile of pancakes waiting to be eaten had disappeared. Along with all the strawberry syrup he'd made, and the toppings he'd set out. He merely stared.
"Sorry," Ora told Jace apologetically, "I told you that they were really good, and I'm still really hungry."
Jace recovered composure, "I'm not mad or anything. I was done with my helping, I'm glad that you enjoyed the pancakes. But since you're done, we might as well meet Celine to go to the Academy."
"The place you inklings kept me at?"
"Yeah, that. I can't allow you to go anywhere without supervision, I'm in charge of what happens to you. If you turn out to be against us, then I can't allow you to run away or hurt somebody. If that means hurting you to prevent that, so be it."
Ora grimaced, "Don't worry. I'm in no mood to go back to the Octarians, and I'm in no mood to go get knocked out again by another inkling. Geez, what do you make your guns out of." She rubbed a spot on her forehead like it troubled her. Jace shrugged, then motioned for the two of them to get a move on. They walked to Celine's home, and the second that Jace knocked she showed up.
"Hey." Celine said as she walked outside, the splattershot in hand.
"Hey." Came the response. "Let's go."
Again as they went down the pipe, Jace and Celine swam behind Ora as she tried carefully to not step in the inkling Ink. There was one strenuous moment where a bit of plastic got in the way of Ora's shoe and she slipped, falling directly over the ink trail. Jace, thinking quickly, popped out of squid form to slide under Ora. He let out an "oof!" as she landed on top of him, but neither of them were hurt. However, as Ora fell, Celine saw a small discolored patch of skin under Ora's hair.
When they got out of the pipe, thankfully with nobody getting hurt in the process, Celine stopped Ora to look at the discoloration again. She stared at it with a concerned look on her face.
"Is this where I-"
"Knocked me out." Ora interrupted, "Yeah. That's where I was hit."
"Oh my god, I'm sorry."
"It's fine. I shot your boyfriend here, so we're even."
Jace looked up, "I"m her?"
"He's my what?"
"No." They said together. Then Jace shrugged, "Well... I maybe it's that-" He was cut off by Celine elbowing him in the gut.
"We're not together." Celine said sternly. "I've never thought about Jace that way, and I don't think that he's ever thought about me like that either." She didn't notice Jace behind her trying to tell Ora a different story silently. Ora thought that Celine not looking behind herself was a good thing for Jace's health.
Before they walked in to the Academy, Jace took Ora to the side of the building, promising Celine that they'd just be a second. "I need to ask her something privately." He told Celine. Him and Ora walked around the side and Jace explained.
"Do you want to go to the office and stay there, or go to the classes with myself? Odds are that if you go to the classes, you'll be hated by the other students, and you might not be able to join in the activities we do here."
Ora shrugged at this, "And odds are that if I go to the offices, I'm gonna be bored the whole time. I'll go with you... better than staying put in ropes the whole day. Anyway, what could the other inklings do to me? I'm under your protection, remember, you've got to keep them from harming me, or me from harming them."
"They don't respect me yet." Jace told her, "I'm still new here. None of them know me save for a select few, and most don't like me as well. Celine's been completely inked down by several of them before, and inkling ink actually hurts you. It might just be safer in the offices."
Jace wanted to say more, but Ora had already begun walking towards the entrance doorway. He sighed and followed her inside. There were whispers all around, most dealing with how much the students hated Ora, but several complimenting her on her stupid bravery. Maybe not compliments once Jace thought about them. All the while, Ora stuck close to Jace's side, making sure that nobody got any ideas. Unfortunately this also earned the both of them nasty looks.
They went to Jace's first class, and there was no trouble from anybody there. Marie didn't even act like there was a new person in the class, merely asking Jace if Ora would join in. He left that decision up to Ora, but she decided to sit out and watch. They studied using walls without ink, jumping off some to fire in the opposite direction, and if an inkling was especially good: they would be asked to run along the wall, firing while they did so.
Nobody was able to fully run along the walls while firing, though someone with a splattershot jr. got very close to doing so. She was inches away when her shoes slipped on the wall and she fell face first into the floor. She got up spitting out ink, and when Marie took a look at her, there was a cut in her cheek. Marie made her go to the medical office before the bleeding got serious.
Jace constantly kept an eye on Ora in his peripherals, as some of the inklings would fire while jumping off of the wall in her direction. Some of the ink got close, but none within five feet of her.
When it was Jace's turn to first try the wall, he ran up to it at an angle and jumped far, but too far. He face planted into the wall, his shoes slipping on it to fly out from under his body and the momentum flinging his face right into the side of the wall. A hissing laugh sounded throughout the room, and everybody looked around to find out where it was coming from before realizing it was Ora's laugh. Celine joined in as well, alleviating some of the stress by poking fun at Jace, but unsuccessfully driving attention away from the Octoling girl.
Eventually, though, Jace was able to perform the wall jump while firing away from his body. This was after multiple incidents involving his face giving the wall a high five.
Now slightly dizzy, they went to break. Jace once again stressed how he felt about Ora joining them in classes, especially for the next class: The firing range, but she once again denied his concerns. During the break, after Ora had decided she would join in the class, Jace decided to play it safe and not give her back her weapon.
Agent 3 stared at Ora for a bit before moving on with his lesson, apparently deciding she was not a threat. He asked each of the inklings to fire whichever way they felt that they needed practice with, and moved around the firing range correcting mistakes. When he came to Jace, Jace was letting Ora use his .52 Gal as it was filled with Inkling ink and wouldn't hurt anybody, and corrected Ora's grip on the gun.
She argued, saying that this was how she was taught as an Octoling to hold her Octoshot, but Agent 3 countered by saying that: "Well you might have learned how to shoot an octoshot, and that may be the grip on an octoshot, but this isn't an octoshot. This is a .52 Gal, a high caliber inkling weapon, and as such it is different from the octoshot. Therefore, I say that your grip is wrong for the gun you are firing."
After that she allowed him to correct her grip without any other argument. And once again she garnered looks from the rest of the inklings there.
Azure didn't walk up to them during the class that time, but when lunch came around she was more than happy to introduce herself. While the mechanical group of inklings worked on splat walls at the other table, Azure was asking Ora about how she learned to fire a gun. The two girls struck it off instantly, and were laughing minutes later at a joke Tine told and Eddie was completely stony faced about.
They then started teasing Eddie about how he won't even talk to Ora.
Ora was just starting to tell a funny joke about how the chefs in the Octarian army don't think that food should be edible, when the mechanic squids yelled out and a stream of ink careened out of the splat wall to fly straight towards Ora.
The Octoling girl looked up one second too late, and tried to get out of the way of the ink, but only succeeded in letting it graze her shoulder. Jace looked at the burn on Ora, then glared at the mechanic squids who hid their smiles a moment too late. Jace grabbed his gun, but Celine held it down.
"This won't do anything to them. It won't teach them a lesson, and odds are that in the chaos that will come from a splat war, Ora would be hit."
Jace nodded, "You're right, can't risk it." He then watched as Tine and Rein took a look at Ora's injury. Tine ordered Eddie to go get a salve from the medical office, and when he got back with it she spread the salve on Ora's shoulder. Ora grimaced, but held herself well as the burn was taken away. When the salve had fully dissolved into her skin, Ora even let out a visible moan of relief.
"I'm fine." She said, "Thank you." Ora then addressed the mechanic Inklings, "Hey!" She called out to them, they looked up in shock. "Mind being a bit more careful about how badly you screw up your weapons? Thanks."
The mechanic inklings flinched as if she had slapped them. Most of the other inklings in the cafeteria simply yelled out a massive "OOOOH!" at the mechanics being called out, no matter who it was by. The mechanics after that glared at Ora the whole time, making rude gestures and mumbling among themselves, their splat wall lying to the side forgotten.
The last class with the other inklings went by without much problem as well, Ora not really joining in the strategy class and instead going to the office at Callie's insistence.
"If you turn out to be a spy," Callie told Ora apologetically, "We can't just bandy about our strategic ways in front of you, can we. You understand, right?"
Ora informed Callie that, yes, she did understand, and didn't blame them in the slightest. "In fact," she said, "That's probably the safest thing to do here. At least it's not for the whole day."
When the class was over, Jace walked back to the office to get Ora. He was right at the door when he heard two people talking, Ora, and someone else who he hadn't heard yet.
"Just let me out." The second voice was saying, "It would take just one second and nobody would ever know it was you."
"Sorry, Octavio." Ora's voice told the second voice, "But there's a reason why I left you and your pitiful military, many reasons in fact. One of which is that I don't really appreciate how badly you treat your soldiers. Now that you're the one in the over sized snowglobe, I'm not taking any orders from you. Least of all to break you out of here. You were the one who was defeated, not me. And everybody in the octarian army knew that it was just you against one inkling, and you couldn't kill him. In fact, that inkling now teaches here, he taught me how to hold an inkling weapon today, and truthfully I think of him much higher than I ever thought of you. So go stuff it."
"So help me, Octoling, If I ever get out-"
"What would you do?"
"I would make sure that your life is a living hell. You aren't the only Octarian who knows how to hold an inkling weapon, and you also know the price for deserting. So the second I get out of here-"
Jace decided that this was the point that he would interject, he walked in and the second voice, which belonged to the octarian in the ball, fell silent.
"Hey, Ora, time to go. I have one more class."
She followed him out, not even looking at the octarian behind the ball.
The last class was the two person team class that took place after the debriefing. Ora helped out Callie, Marie, Jace, and Celine with little menial tasks and tidbits. And once the day was done, they went right back to Jace's house, Jace too tired to do anything else but eat some leftovers and go to sleep. Though he still made sure to lock Ora's door again before going to sleep himself.