Chapter 5- Memory Lane
The Next Day…
"Alright everyone, you're free to go! Have a good night!" Tsubame sighed once more, partially out of relief, before setting off herself.
Fortunately, there was still a decent amount of light still pouring onto the schoolship, so making her way toward the Student Council Room wasn't much of an issue. Upon entering the room, she was greeted by her treasurer and vice president facing the door.
The latter spoke first. "Oh, uh, we just finished up here, and were about to go. Sorry about that."
"No problem. I know you, so I know you did your jobs. I'll do mine now. Have a nice night!" she beamed at them as they skirted around her and took their leave. The door shut not a second before she sighed and her face returned to a less emotional one. The paperwork on her desk wasn't actually piled all that high, but with as long as today had been it may as well have been Mount Everest. But it's her job all the same. Maybe she could at least get it to a reasonable size. But first, she had one particular thing to do. She opened a new tab on her laptop, entered her password and opened her Desertfox browser. It was a bit of a long shot, but hey, maybe it'll work.
REQUEST: TRAINING MATCH
Oarai Co-Ed Academy is revitalizing its sentouki-do team. Looking for a practice match. Please forward all requests to Inaba Tsubame, Student Council President. Thank you.
A few seconds of thought occupied her mind before she clicked the "submit" button.
Would this really be enough?
As her body continued to work on the small mountain, her mind went back in time…
The Surcouf, 2 years ago
Tsubame was staring harshly at the ground as her captain spoke. She could never forget the stale air threatening to choke her. "Well, it was a good try this year. Thank you all for your hard work, let's try again next year."
Are you kidding me?
She took a step forwards and glared at him as if trying to set fire to the very uniform he wore. "Good try? Good try? If that was a good try then Maginot will never win the tournament! If that was hard work, it's no wonder we always lose in the first round! Our school used to be great! Now look at us, Palmier-san! We just wait for the enemy to engage us!"
He pinched his nose and scowled at her. "Need I remind you we were great when we were doing the exact same thing we're currently doing, Beignet-san?" His hand now pointed to her with all fingers, palm facing sideways. "This is the fifth time I've had to remind you, we're doing what made us great, but when some people refuse to play along, breaking the whole system, and blame me for their problems, then it obviously doesn't work! No system works when selfish people throw entire toolboxes into every operation! And here you are, suggesting we throw away those traditions because of the problem you created!"
She grasped the air in front of her. "We should keep the flame lit, not worship the ashes it was built from! A Maginot where we stick to the same thing that's lost us almost every match for the past decade is worthless! Times have changed! Sentouki-do has changed! We can keep our style of doing things but we cannot just replicate the battles of old! Napoleon used maneuver warfare, but copying his tactics today would be only a fool's game. And we don't even do that! We just sit around and wait on our asses for an opponent to make the first move! How can I be part of a team any longer where we can't take the slightest initiative and wait for the enemy to defeat us?!"
He motioned his head behind him and to the right. "The door is right there."
"I have a better idea. I challenge you to a duel! If you win, I'll leave the team. If I win, you leave the team and I become Capitaine."
His eyebrows rose, though whether from interest or rage she couldn't say. "I accept, on one condition. You said yourself Maginot would be worthless if we kept on following our style. When you lose, you will leave the school."
Well, she couldn't back down now. Could at least make the terms fair though. "Only if you also leave the school if you lose."
"You know what, sure. You're on, Beignet- or rather, Inaba-san. I'll finally be rid of you either way."
This time would be different. This time had to be different.
She looked at her stack. It wasn't quite complete, but she didn't have much longer to work on it. Tonight was her night to cook. Realistically speaking, she'd need the weekend to do the rest of the work.
Sighing, she packed up everything and left the room, turning the lights off and locking the door before slowly walking down the grand hall to the elevator.
High school has just been a rollercoaster, she absent-mindedly thought as she passed streetlight after crosswalk after alleyway. Kicked out of one school, have a normal school life the next, become president for your final year, immediately tasked with going against MEXT, restarting senoutki-do… so much had happened…
Evidently she lost track of time, as she was now approaching the house. Tsubame could hear their voices as she came closer. She didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't the "Ayyyy, she's here!" she got when she opened the door.
"Oh thank God. I thought MacArthur was gonna have to cook again!"
"Fuck off."
Right. This is her new home, her new family. She let the first one down. She couldn't let them down too. After dropping her stuff off in her room, she got to work. Bisque doesn't make itself, after all.
Michiko lay on her bed, 3DS open wide to Pokémon yet again. Not that she had anything better to do. Well, to be fair, training a Vulpix can get a little boring, but, if nothing else, the fact that she was still playing instead of anything else meant she didn't have anything she'd rather be doing, at least.
But there was one thing that couldn't quite slip her mind. The past week. In the span of the past week, Michiko joined her dream sport, met one of her idols, became his wingwoman, participated in her first-ever (training) match… aaaaaaaand completely failed to make an impact in it.
Sure, perhaps the mere presence of a wingman would be enough to make a major impact as the enemy has to think about taking two opponents on instead of one, but it's not like she did anything. She was just as unskilled as the rest of them, maybe even more. He ended up doing all the work. Okay, sure, he was an ace pilot of the top sentouki-do school in Japan, and Oarai was untrained, and this was her first match, but that doesn't change what happened. She needed to be better if she was going to do anything but drag him down, drag the team down. She needed to be better if she wanted to be on those posters she loved so much.
She finally looked at said posters and scoured them for details instead of simply glancing at them. Starting with the one near her desk, the first one she received as a birthday present from her mother. A Spitfire, evidently a model without the Griffin, facing off against a G.55, close enough that the pilots could probably see each other had they been going a slower speed. In the corner, a propeller with three blades, with the tricolore in circles behind it as if it was spinning. Naples 1999.
A personal favorite of hers said "Osaka 2007" on top of a Zero climbing high. The waist-up portrait of a young Japanese girl, the pilot, who held her aviator hat with goggles and stood to the side, smiling at the camera. The Hinomaru sun disc overlaid with a two-bladed propeller sat in the corner next to the setting. Ah, the Osaka World Cup. Memories flooded her head of the first time she really knew sentouki-do. As if she could ever forget.
Michiko stared with wide eyes at the gates as she walked under them.
Sentouki-do World Cup in her native language.
Dogfighting World Cup in English.
Not that she could understand English at all, but it was still cool to see international things. That was just the beginning, though. Many things caught her eye – stands representing different nations, each selling a different kind of merchandise, usually from a particular country, the stadium towering over her, and the ice cream stands that summer day… oh the ice cream stands. But even the tantalizingly close proximity and quantity of her second favorite thing in the world was not enough to outdo that of her first favorite thing. For in glancing around at all the ice cream stalls, Michiko noticed her.
It was unmistakably, undoubtedly, impossibly her. Nadiya Melnyk, the Ukrainian fighter ace, was having a press conference right near her. The Nadiya Melnyk. The Nadiya Melnyk who beat 3 enemy planes at once by seemingly vanishing into thin air, only to reappear behind them. The Nadiya Melnyk who upset Moscow in the grand Euro finals last year (the look on Alexei's face was reason enough to remember that final…). The Nadiya Melnyk who rode the line between life and death every second she was in the cockpit, who locked onto a target and never let go until they bled colored smoke, who pushed the limits of what was thought possible. Nadiya the Tenacious. Right before her very eyes.
Her poor mom was soon dragged over to the setup for Michiko to get a wide-eyed glimpse at her idol. She couldn't even understand what the girl was saying (well, until the Japanese translator spoke), but it was enough.
Unfortunately for her, she had come just a bit too late. What felt like only a few minutes (though, let's be real, it was probably more like 30) passed before she heard, "Well, I suppose I've taken up enough of your time. Thank you for having me and I can't wait to see you all in the air."
No, no, you haven't taken up nearly enough of my time.
Only when he almost blocked the blonde-haired pilot from her view did she notice the boy to her right was staring in the same direction. He was about her age, that much was clear. His hair was ruffled, though not quite unkempt, in a loose brown color. And just like her, he was staring in awe at the now-departing pilot.
This isn't what she's supposed to be doing.
Michiko saved her game and closed the 3DS and opened up her laptop to YouTube. She slowly moved the cursor to the search bar and typed:
"New Orleans 2003 Sentouki-do World Cup highlights"
She scanned for a short while before finding a video that was more than a highlight compilation.
Click
Play
The George Washington, last year…
The couch was far more welcoming than the Mustang's seat, and Haruka was tired. But she couldn't sit down just yet. Mainly because of the pizza. Grabbing the last of the box of pepperoni, and putting the previous box on the bottom of the stack, she heard Ryu's voice over her shoulder.
"I gotta tell you, Shiraishi, you almost made me scared for our finals match. Almost." She saw him round the corner with the soda St. Gloriana promised.
Sam was quick to half-jokingly retort. "Why don't you work on beating Pravda first and then come back to Saunders to get your butt kicked, Morimoto?"
Ryu waved his hand and poured himself some Dr. Pepperoni. "It's Pravda. We'll be fine."
Haruka stacked yet another slice of pizza on her plate. "Still big 4."
The boy rolled his eyes. "Their status comes from their theme, not from them actually being good."
Keep talking like that and you'll get knocked out of the tournament. Not that I'm gonna say anything about it haha.
Lemongrass did it for her anyway. "Keep talking like that and we'll get knocked out of the tournament. Pride comes before the fall."
Sam was quick to notice that. "Man, you even sound like her now. You sure you don't wanna ask her out?"
"Darjeeling's already in a relationship. His name's Fukamushi. Tea name, of course."
Haruka cringed her face as if she had just accidentally made an insensitive joke. "Oooh, sorry about that."
Lemongrass shrugged. "Don't be. I've met him, he's a good guy, and they seem genuinely happy together. That's what matters."
Haruka sat down on the right end of the couch. "Look at you being the gentleman." She took a large sip of her drink while he responded.
"I go to St. Gloriana, of course I'm a gentleman." Lemongrass retorted.
Matcha was almost a little too quick on the draw. "Yeah, well so does Morimoto, and look how he acts."
It was a struggle not for Haruka to not let any of the cola escape her mouth in laughter.
"Oi!" Ryu said in an only-slightly-offended manner, clearly recognizing it as a joke.
They all had a good round of laughter before the target tried to steer the conversation back.
Sam took a drink of her cola and set the red solo cup down on the stand-up table besides her. "Seriously, though, Shiraishi, that finishing move was something else."
Haruka put the plate down for a second and grabbed her cup. "Thank you, sir, it was nothing."
He widened his eyes and stared at her. "Two P-40s, a P-47, and a P-51 all swoop in at different angles and coordinate the final kill, and that's "nothing"? You can't tell me that wasn't to show off. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. Gotta make your name in this world somehow."
She looked towards the door on her right as her face slowly became slightly Pravda red before sighing. "Okay, it was mainly to be cool."
"Called it." Sam replied with a somewhat smug smile.
"But I wasn't showing off." She said before taking another sip of cola. It was more of a gulp really, the poor girl still trying to somewhat hide her face, but still.
Sam raised his eyebrow. "Really?"
"Yeah, I just wanted to be cool." She shrugged.
He followed suit. "Fair enough. Gotta stand out though, and you definitely did."
She almost blushed again. "Thanks."
The brief pause in conversation directed her consciousness toward the sound emanating from the TV.
"So if I were to put it in a blender…"
"Yes, that's right, it would still look exactly the same. It defies nature like that."
"Oh my God, that's… that's Lovecraftian."
"Also, perish."
"Okay."
Haruka was dazed. "By the way, what is this on TV?"
Matcha was deep in thought for a second. "Some trailer for that new Dimension Hopper anime coming out soon."
Lemongrass widened his eyes and tilted his head back and towards her. "Oh, I've heard a lot about this one. Mainly that it's about as insane as its audience is, just in a different way."
Ryu chimed in just as Sam got up from the chair perpendicular to them. "Yeah, I've heard that as well."
Haruka lifted her eyebrows. "You watch a lot of anime?"
The boy shrugged. "No, not really. Only every now and then."
She gestured her head towards him. "Which one's your favorite?"
He glanced back at her. "Toradora, easy."
Haruka sighed as the memories flooded over her. "Aw, that's a good one."
"I know, it's so great." Ryu smiled as he took another bite of pizza.
The noise of the TV, the smell of the pizza, the warm sun pouring into the room. If only it could have lasted.
The scene was shattered as the only thing she could remember at that moment was the Spitfire sailing towards her. Her disbelief possessed her for those crucial few seconds before she grasped for the control stick and pulled it, only to be too late.
She woke up just as they collided. Panicked, gasping for air, anything to get out of that cockpit, she glanced around the room. Her… apartment.
Okay, she wasn't in the cockpit again.
Deep breaths, deep breaths, this isn't the cockpit. Look around, Haruka. This is your room. Your pillow, your curtains, your posters, your nightstand, your clock, your photo–
Not that. Not now. She set the photo down in a surprisingly gentle way before collecting herself once again.
She still wasn't used to it. How long had it been since nights like these started? Did it matter?
She glanced at the clock. 3 am.
More sleep than usual, I guess.
Well, it's not like she was going back to sleep anytime soon. She kept glancing around the room until she spotted the Pontiac keys sitting on the desk opposite of her.
Might as well.