Enneagon

Chapter 5: Ice-face

[insert usual excuse for weird-ass chapter title]

Honestly, if you've been here since Hexagon, you're probably used to them by now. To all my wonderful reviewers:

-Runereader of the Nightwings

-hollyfrost666

-lilac-blossoms

-5witchblade

-insertcoolname

-Jaspertail

-Guest

-Foxleap777

I love you all :)

[Hexagon Academy, Briox]

[9.7.2065]

Hazeltail's shoulders were brushing against Icecloud's side as she bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet. "Oooooh, I love being an upperclassman!", she exclaimed, waving a sheet of paper around in the air. "Look at this! Upper story dormitory with a skylight and a bathroom I can't wait-"

Icecloud laughed, hefting a box of her belongings to the side and out of her face. That was one benefit of entering junior year: getting to live in the cushy upstairs rooms. It was something most students had been looking forward to since they were freshmen, and the opportunity to move out of the lower dorms was something that made the workload of junior year a bit more bearable.

Icecloud, who hadn't cared much before, now finally saw the appeal. As a scholarship student who wasn't paying any extra money, her and Hazeltail's room had been right next to the perpetually noisy common room. Not to mention they were smack dab in the middle of the freshmen hallway, and as a junior? The last thing she wanted was to deal with snotty fourteen-year-olds who fancied themselves above their spot on the totem pole.

Plus they didn't even have a private bathroom.

The two of them reached the stairs, and Icecloud could physically feel the carpet becoming thicker and lusher under her feet. Even the hallway was much more comfortable than those in the lower dorms, with its high ceilings and the natural light pouring in through large skylights.

"What room are we?", Icecloud grunted, staggering under the weight of the boxes. Hazeltail, who was skipping happily down the hall, paused to check the sheet of paper. "Ummmmm….room TDR-23. It should be right at the end of this hallway."

Thank the Stars, Icecloud mused to herself as she hefted the boxes into a more comfortable position. Ahead of her, Hazeltail bounced around the corner still waving the piece of paper around in the air.

Then she stopped short.

"What?", Icecloud called, wondering why the noises of Hazeltail's hyperactive footsteps had suddenly stopped.

"What in the everloving fuck." Her voice was so devoid of the borderline-manic glee from before that it left Icecloud rather concerned. Worried now, Icecloud gingerly set her moving boxes on the floor and rounded the corner to see what was going on. And suddenly she understood, looking over at Hazeltail in a shared expression of outrage.

Instead of a door marked TDR-23, there was a thick plexiglass barrier stuck in the middle of the hallway, marked off with copious amounts of caution tape. Beyond that, the room that should have been their dorm was gone. The ceiling had been torn off, leaving the floor carpeted in a thick layer of plaster dust. Outside, construction workers in thick safety suits and oxygen tanks drilled away at Hexagon's outer surface.

Icecloud and Hazeltail exchanged indignant glances, and Icecloud, feeling her mood rapidly plummeting back down to Earth, stomped over to the barrier and knocked on the glass. One of the workers who had been busy with the electric wiring opened up a small speaking window in the glass. "What?", he yelled through the breathing apparatus.

"What is this?", Icecloud yelled back with equal volume, wanting to make sure he could hear her through his mask. "We were supposed to move in today!"

She could see his brows furrow in confusion through the mask.

"You don't know, miss?" Behind her, Hazeltail gave a muttered "Obviously not."

"There was an oxygen leak in here last night! We're making sure the place is airtight before you move in. We're in the stratosphere, you gotta be careful!"

Icecloud immediately felt bad for her pissy attitude. He had a point, at an altitude of 40,000 feet above sea level, a lack of breathable air was a very real and dangerous threat.

"Oh, no one told us. Thank you very much!", Icecloud yelled back. The worker smiled, put his fingers to his temple in a two-fingered salute, and went back to work on the wiring.

Dejected, Icecloud heaved her belongings off the ground and started walking with Hazeltail back in the opposite direction. "So what now?", Hazeltail asked sadly. "We go to Bramblestar, I guess", Icecloud responded. "Ask him for a new room."

"This blows", Hazeltail said shortly, crumpling up the paper in her hands. "If they put us back in the room with all the freshmen, so help me StarClan."

Icecloud, who was still carrying a mountain of moving boxes, didn't have the luxury of gesturing with her hands like Icecloud, but she still nodded in vigorous agreement. She had been looking forward to moving out of her old dorm for so long, and now it was looking like they wouldn't get a new room for weeks, maybe months.

Bramblestar had moved into Firestar's old office in the Star sector, a warm, cozy room right next to the Star library. He had settled himself comfortably into a chestnut-colored suede office chair with his laptop on his knees, and looked up in bewilderment when Hazeltail pushed the door open.

Icecloud, who had finally tired of hauling the boxes around, set them carefully by the door.

"Can I help you, ladies?", he asked in confusion, shutting his laptop and straightening up. The two girls exchanged glances, trying to shove the responsibility of dropping the news on each other. After half a minute of pointed staring (in which Bramblestar had started getting impatient) Hazeltail finally conceded.

"There's...um...an issue", she said awkwardly.

Bramblestar smiled. "I gathered that much from your presence. What in particular?"

"We were supposed to move into our dorm room today, but it turns out there was an oxygen leak?"

"That whole end of the hallway is a construction sight", Icecloud supplied helpfully. "So I don't think we'll be able to move in."

Bramblestar groaned and smacked himself in the forehead. "Oh, of course. I'm sorry girls, I must have forgotten. Yes, the oxygen levels started depleting last night, so I didn't have a chance to tell you."

"Lucky we hadn't moved in yet, huh?", Hazeltail joked. Bramblestar gave her a strained smile. "Yes, well. The source of the leak was thankfully located, but it might take quite some time before we can safely let you sleep in there. You understand, I'm sure?"

Icecloud definitely understood. No amount of skylights and private bathrooms was worth death by suffocation.

"So do we just move back into our old dorm?", Icecloud asked helplessly, miserably imagining the stink of Axe body spray permeating the walls.

"If only it were that simple", Bramblestar said wryly, beginning to reboot his computer. "No, two new freshmen moved in right after you left. The information about the oxygen leak hadn't been entered into the system yet, and we can't very well just kick them out."

Icecloud suddenly became hyper-aware of all her moving boxes on the floor.

"I'm so sorry about this, but you might have to temporarily room with other students while we see to the oxygen leak. I'll see to it that your housing fee is refunded for this whole mess."

The housing fee, refunded? Icecloud thought of her parents and the painful amount of cost-cutting they'd done to keep their two children in Hexagon after the scholarship money had run out. The ridiculously high housing fee, given back, would mean everything to them. Hell, maybe they'd finally be able to make a dent in the debt payments!

Icecloud smiled at Bramblestar, suddenly thankful for the entire catastrophe. "Sure, just tell us where to go."

…

Echosong sat down on her bed with a sigh and tugged her tie loose. What had they been thinking, showing up to lunch like that? They'd looked like world-class idiots, waltzing into a casual meal in formal attire. Echosong remembered the hot, roiling embarrassment as she looked around and saw the Hexagon students in their sweatshirts and jeans. She had tugged nervously at the uniform's pristine cuffs, clenched her fists, and raised her head.

Anything else would have been shameful.

"You are my daughter, Echosong. You do not feel pain. You do not feel embarrassment. You are my heir, so act like it."

Right.

Echosong had taken every ounce of shame she had felt and buried it, buried it deep under layers and layers of pride. Then she had lifted her chin, pushed back her shoulders, and walked like everyone else was underdressed, not the other way around.

Her classmates had fallen into step behind her, and she had seen the relieved, approving glint in Leafstar's eye.

It felt good to be in private. Keeping up the cool, haughty veneer around her classmates was difficult, and there were times when she wanted nothing more than to throw her whole damn persona in the trash and join in on the fun. There were times when she enviously watched her classmates laughing and gossipping and wished to StarClan that she could be one of them.

A pair of disapproving blue eyes seemed to flash in her vision every time she summoned up the courage to approach one of the others. And then she'd sit right back down, ashamed of herself.

The tie lay draped over the back of a chair, and Echosong began tugging off the charcoal gray blazer. Then she collapsed backwards into bed in nothing but the shirt and trousers.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad here. The room was nice, the food was good. Her mother was miles and miles away. Maybe she'd finally be able to relax this year.

Another face appeared in her vision, but not one that she was familiar with. It was that of a girl in a light blue soccer uniform, with her ashy blond undercut gathered a samurai knot at the top of her head. Her eyes, ice-blue just like her mother's, had settled on Echosong with such strong disdain that it had taken all of her strength not to recoil right then and there. Then, not one to take insults likely, Echosong had glared right back.

But more than insulted, Echosong didn't understand.

Why had the blue-eyed blondine looked at her like that? It had been an expression of loathing so deep that Echosong had felt taken aback. They hadn't even met, and the girl's face had frozen over faster than the Aleutian tundra. How could she have offended Ice-face to that extent?

There was a creak at the door.

Echosong scrambled out of bed, wondering if it was Leafstar. If it was, then she had better look presentable. Leafstar, after all, did have direct contact with her mother.

The metallic doors slid back, and Echosong stumbled back, feeling her knees hit the edge of the bed. No fucking way.

Ice-face was standing in the door.

Little strands of blond hair were framing Ice-face's temples, the undercut pulled back in a short ponytail at the back of her head. Echosong distantly registered that there were swirling patterns cutting through Ice-face's shaved sides.

Ice-face set the mound of moving boxes down by the door, the turned to face Echosong with a pleasant smile on her face.

The expression dropped off of Ice-face's features as quickly as it had come as she recognized her new roommate, and when she spoke, it was with the now-familiar disdain burning coldly in her eyes.

"You."

End Chapter 5

Coincidence? No, Azra being an asshole. Sorry, Icecloud.

*to the person who asked me to add smut*

Please read the authors notes in chapter 1.

Azra out!