Analise didn't have much time in class today. It was a strange day, what with a battle in the morning, and drills in the afternoon. It meant that there was barely an hour for class, and then barely an hour for lunch before it was time again to return to the hangar, and get the rest of her day done. There was no need to think that much about the procedures that she would have to go through in order to get the rest of her day done. It would be that much simpler without needing to run through her combat checklist, and instead run through her normal procedure checklist. Take her time during the pre-flight hull check, take her time pulling on her vac-suit, take her time waiting for the clearances for deployment and launch, even possibly shoot the shit with Jester for a moment or two before she needed to change the frequency of her radio back to her ground control team's frequency.

And then it was time to wait, and wait, and wait. Wait until the massive door on the end of the hangar would open, and the clearance to detach from the harness was given.

But until that point, she was in somewhat of a predicament.

"I don't think that you're in a great position to tell me what to do, Redline." Her crew chief, nick-named "The Chief", crossed his arms as the two stood on the walkway at the chest-level of Ender as she tried to convince The Chief that she was right.

"And why the hell is that, Chief?" Redline asked, trying her best to not seem as irked as she felt that she was. "It's my fucking Kat', not yours. You do the work that I set out for you, simple as it gets."

The Chief clicked her tongue in frustration, doing her best to not let the frustration that she felt at her Pilot's aggression towards her, and her possessiveness about the Kataphrakt that The Chief had spent more time around than Redline herself had. There was something about that fact that there was nothing either could do about the other, as the rules stood, neither could get rid of the other. The Chief had been assigned to work on Ender as much as Redline had enrolled into the Academy with her own Kataphrakt that she didn't really own. It was owned by her family, rather than owned by the military of her state as some of the Terran students' Kataphrakts were. Which meant, as far as who owned the Kataphrakt, it was more accurate to say that Redline did, as her family's representative at the Academy — she was in charge, rather than the Terran-born crew chief. But there were still things, such as academy regulations that prohibited certain modifications being done to one's Kataphrakt, and that the crew chief had an obligation to uphold whenever presented with a situation, much like the one that Redline was currently pressing for. "I already told you, LT. The regs' are pretty clear about thruster limitations. Anything higher than that will put you at unacceptable risk. Removing the limiters just isn't an option… If you're worried about getting hit? Learn to dodge."

Redline felt as if the jab at her piloting was more of a slap across the face, rather than a simple jab from her crew chief.

"Like fucking hell you just said that—" She was cut off before she got a reasonable chance to say anything by the stiffening of The Chief, and the clicking of someone's mag-boots from behind Redline as someone approached her.

"Is there a problem, little ladies?" A voice asked, and at once Redline recognized who it was that had talked.

"No, lieutenant, Ma'am." The Chief spoke. Arms nearly at attention as the clicking stopped, and Redline turned to face who it was that had asked the question.

"No, Lieutenant Autumnbow." Redline spoke, her own arms at attention as they were approached by the taller woman, who wore a forest-green flight suit, and carried under her left arm her helmet, on which were what looked like stenciled horns, giving the appearance from certain angles, that there were truly horns sprouting from the woman's helmet.

"Glad to hear it. The drill starts in five minutes, Redline. Go get your Kat' ready. Chief, is she good to start her start-up checklist?"

If the Chief was exasperated by this turn of events, she didn't show it. "Yes, ma'am. I'll radio the rest of the crew and let them know."

"Good." The lieutenant turned, and kicked off from the deck, half-turning back towards the pair of girls as she floated away. "See you out there in five, Redline."

"Yes, ma'am." Redline called after, and shot a look at the Chief, who was conveniently looking away and already speaking into her headset radio, to the rest of Redline's mechanic crew. She sighed, and kicked off the deck herself, floating behind The Chief, and towards the open cockpit of Ender, where her Helmet floated gently above her seat. She spun and landed in the seat, bracing herself against the controls as she bled off her inertia into the G-resistant seat, and then proceeded to strap herself in to the seat. Grabbing her helmet out of the air, before securing it on her head and around her neck using the neck-clip. She switched on the master power, and the radio master of Ender, before dialing in the frequency of her ground crew: 122.8515 MHz.

"Ground crew, Redline; pre-flight." She spoke into the radio.

"Roger Redline, clear for pre-flight. Ordinance is safe."

"Copy." She let go of the push-to-talk, and started her checklist, referencing the near minuscule text that was her checklist as it was attached to her left leg, through a transparent part of her flight suit. She ran her fingers along digital switches and took the controls of various subsystems and brought them into parameters that were defined for the pre-flight. "Crew, Redline; ordinance verification."

"Frequency change approved, Redline." The crew control spoke.

She switched to Jester's frequency, waited for an idle moment in the chatter before speaking. "Jester, Redline. Ordinance check. Reporting Alpha."

Jester responded near instantly; "Redline, Jester — Confirming Alpha. Frequency change approved." There was no usual wit in Jester's response, before someone else spoke up on the radio, needing attention from Jester before it was time to launch. Redline dialed back in her ground crew frequency.

"Crew, Redline. Pre-flight is complete. Radio check on net."

"Copy. ALCON; check. Fuel?"

"Check." Said a voice of her crew.

"Harness?"

"Armed, ready for standard-delta." Spoke another in the shorthand for the standard dismounting of a Kataphrakt from its harness.

"Ordinance?"

"Safe." Jester spoke on the frequency.

"Catapult?"

"Disarmed."

"Maintenance?"

"Clear."

"Crew Chief?"

"In position, ready for start." The Chief responded over the radio.

"Redline, Crew Control. Clear for start-up. The gate is opening."

"Clear for start-up." She spoke, moving her hands across a projected screen, typing in the authentication code that verified that it was her, and that she had the authority to start her Kataphrakt's Aldnoah reactor. It hummed to life gently. There was no rumble; just an aural hum as it sprung to life, the unknowable reaction inside the reactor giving the entire machine energy as it started. There was nothing abnormal about the reaction, about the energy flow to all parts of the machine. "Engine's alive, and the relay's out. Power stable, and temperature's rising. Good start in the reactor." She spoke mostly to herself, but she made sure to depress the PTT key, letting the ground crew hear her procedure as the Aldnoah reactor continued it's start-up. There was no need for external connections, because they had already been severed during the pre-flight procedures that the crew was supposed to do. And for all the hot-headedness between the Chief and Redline, they still did their job under the Chief. And for that, Redline was appreciative, even if she didn't say anything to the Chief's face.

"Redline, Chief. Ready to release the harness at your leisure." When it came to it, as well, the Chief did their job as well as Redline did; despite the seeming rivalry between them.

"Chief, Redline. Requesting harness release."

"Releasing."

There was a jerking motion as the harness released and then gave a slight push away from itself, the Kataphrakt pushing away from the harness and it's position in the hangar, towards the center aisle where all those Kataphrakts that were disembarking from the station, and were moving towards the gate at the far end of the hangar, where they would be met with hard vacuum, and the only thing keeping those young pilots of the Kataphrakts from dying to exposure to vacuum, was the fact that they were inside vac-suits and behind layers of sealed metal, keeping them safe. There was no need to communicate the order in which that they would file out of the long hangar, they knew that order innately, it came with the order of seniority. Those older, third year students closer to the locker room, and the first year and freshie students were the ones closest to the gate, something that was tradition in the Academy, rather than something that was strongly enforced by anyone. Redline was nearly halfway in the hangar, ordered simply by chance that she was almost exactly halfway through the hangar, and thus had many in front of her, mostly the first years and freshies who needed to leave first, before it was her turn. They made gentle bursts with their Kataphrakt's thrusters, all leading themselves out of the gate, through the energy shield, and away from the Academy, and into space; where the drills were to be done.

"Happy hunting, Redline." The Chief spoke through the radio; her voice held a confidence in her pilot's abilities but there was nothing indicating that there was a rivalry between them. "Monitor traffic control, LCS channel one." Redline turned the cameras of Ender towards the crew that stood on the deck where they had been stationed below Ender, and had cleared away so that Ender was clear to be released. They were waving, as almost was tradition, and the Chief gave her a thumbs-up, something that was a symbolic gesture, rather than a friendly one. She smiles to herself, knowing that there's still a lack of genuine hatred for Redline in the Chief's heart. They were rivals as schoolgirls could be, not the way that adults could be.

"Copy, over to traffic control. See you in a few hours." She speaks almost casually, the radio protocol being almost second nature. She spends more time on the radio than she would otherwise if she were someone who hadn't gone to the Academy. She reached over to the holographic screen that controlled the radio, and typed in the frequency for traffic control, changing her radio from the Very-High-Frequency radio to the Laser Communication System, and listened to those ahead of her, and those who were in the Vega hangar, as they filed out of the hangar, into the airspace around the Academy. There was chatter on the line, between students who were the closest to departing the hangar, and the traffic controller, who only went by "Alpha-Sierra" as he (or at least Redline presumed as 'he'), cleared them to leave. It was the traffic controller's job to manage all the traffic in the airspace in a 100km radius from the Academy, and managed all that traffic near effortlessly.

It took maybe five minutes before it was her turn to depart the Hangar, she hovered Ender just shy of the energy field; not having been given permission to depart just yet.

"Ender, Alpha-Sierra." She heard through her helmet. The traffic controller calling for her to pay attention.

"This is Ender, go ahead Alpha-Sierra." She responded.

"Ender, Alpha-Sierra; you are cleared for take-off from the Regulus Hangar, fly heading two-eight-zero mark zero-four-five to intercept the training plane." Alpha-Sierra spoke with clear professionalism.

"Cleared for take-off, fly two-eight-zero mark zero-four-five, intercept training plane; Ender." She finished her transmission with her callsign, acknowledging who the message was for, and fly a specific direction until she intercepted the plane in which that the training would take place. Managing so many vehicles in a constantly-rotating 3D space was beyond challenging, and yet, Alpha-Sierra constantly talked and gave instructions as if they weren't challenging at all. She pushed the control sticks forward, and Ender passed through the energy field, and left the atmosphere behind. Already, as she adjusted the attitude of Ender and started the burn towards the plane that the training would happen on. A simple area where the training would all occur, and it required a different paradigm of "up" and "down" and on this plane, it would be the Academy's surface was up, and then it made simple logic that the empty space beneath their feet served enough as a "down" that she was able to orient herself comfortably and once she saw the rest of the students who were lining up in formation, she was able to perfectly orient herself with the rest of the students, as they waited for the remainder of the students to arrive at the plane. There were two groups of students, both in two columns, and many rows, with the older students at the front, and the less senior and newer students at the rear. It took gentle course corrections with Ender's thruster to get into place, and then it was just time to wait. She continued listening to Alpha-Sierra and the students in both Regulus and Vega, as they were cleared to launch, and then joined the formation. Eventually, a non-student Kataphrakt was given clearance to leave a different hangar; indicating that it was practically time to begin. Redline adjusted in her seat and in her harness, realizing — possibly among the first of the students who were listening to the LCS channel — to realize that the Lieutenant was approaching, and that it was time to begin the live-fire drills.

"All students; welcome to the drill. You already know me, but if you're a launchie — welcome. My name is Lieutenant Autumnbow, my callsign is Alaska, and I'm your drill instructor for the afternoon. My word should be taken as the word of god, and you'll listen to it as such." Redline smirked; this was a normal introduction from the Lieutenant, and it was something that she could almost recite herself, and imagined that at least among the rest of the second- and third-years, there were at least a few chuckles, rather than the stiff-faced response to such an introduction that she recalled herself having during her first-year at this introduction.

Eventually, Ender's radar picked up the return of a different Kataphrakt, it was that of Alaska's — codenamed "Shadowbringer", a modified Terran KG-10, and it registered itself on her warning-system as a command-and-control variant; knowledge that she already knew from the previous times that she had undergone drills under Alaska, and Redline knew that it was as such, because Alaska had to command and instruct several dozen Kataphrakts all at once, she had to be able to deal with telemetry from several all at once. To an extent, Redline didn't envy the Lieutenant's or her duties. There was nothing about the duties of a Terran Lieutenant that Redline was jealous of, although part of her was completely sure that there was some kind of reason that came from her own background as a Martian, and one of her particular station as that. She brushed those thoughts away, realizing them as more thoughts of her Father and Mother, rather than her own thoughts, and it was something that irritated her — something that she wanted to blow off steam about; and that she was able to do so here, and so she would.

"Alright, here's what I want to happen; there's forty of each house here today; I want one long-ranged person, pair up with one short-ranged person. We're gonna practice spotting for twenty, and then change places. I know some of you have no long-range practice, so it's going to be a good exercise in one side being able to teach to the other. Got that?" Redline could imagine that Alaska looked around at all those assembled there, all between one another. "Your partners will be flashed to your HUDs. Get together. Move." The final word was the order, the dismissal to assemble among one another, those students pairing up with those who they had never worked together before. Redline glanced at her hud, where the callsign of her partner flashed, and then marched across the HUD, once, twice before disappearing and replacing itself with a homing signal towards where her partner was.

She adjusted her attitude to make sure that she wouldn't collide with any other Kataphrakts, before burning gently around the perimeter, to the House Vega side, where her homing beacon indicated.

She adjusted her LCS for local talk, and global monitoring, so she could hear Alaska, but talk with her sniping partner.

"You Thorn?" She asked the nearby Kataphrakt that looked nearly motionless. A quick glance at it revealed it to be a KG-10 Asterope, but designed for sniping, unlike Alaska's Shadowbringer. The head of the Kataphrakt turned towards Ender's head, as if it were really two mechanical humans talking.

"Yeah." Was the short response over the same local LCS channel.

"Which side you want me on?" She asked, not being able to discern an ejection port for the shells of Thorn's rifle.

"Left. Eject's right." He spoke shortly. Redline scoffed, but didn't depress the PTT when she did, so her partner wouldn't hear.

"Copy that." She adjusted herself, and used the holographic screens to adjust her HUD's mode, so that it was better suited towards acquiring longer-ranged targets, and for also spotting for someone. It was a quick change, that the Aldnoah-based computers of Ender were well suited to make such a quick change. Unlike the first-generation Kataphrakts of Martian design and discovery, these second-generation ones, developed in recent years didn't have so much as a "gimmick", as such things had caused the downfall of many proud Orbital Knights in the Second Earth-Mars war, and the design philosophy of Kataphrakts on both the Terran and Martian side had changed in the years since. Better to be generalists that could adapt to any situation, than be caught in situations that one's Kataphrakt couldn't adapt to.

After a moment, Thorn's Kataphrakt moved, pulling its recoil-less rifle from its position behind its right shoulder, and shouldering it, unfolding the stock in a quick motion with the Kat's hands. And a moment after that, lights illuminated themselves in the direction that they had oriented themselves as 'downrange'. Redline directed Ender to open a datalink to Thorn's Kataphrakt, and Thorn accepted the link. Immediately, on the datalink readout, Redline saw the name of Thorn's Kataphrakt, in glowing letters displayed: Monarch.

"'Monarch', huh?" She spoke into the radio. "You name it yourself?"

"No." Thorn responded shortly, but not rudely. Obviously he wasn't much of one for talking.

Redline cocked an eyebrow at this, but then the global channel of the LCS erupted with the voice of Alaska, giving orders. "Snipers, you have five rounds to hit one target. Spotters, you have thirty seconds to get the information to your sniper to hit their target. Any questions?"

Redline squeezed the controls of Ender, before letting one of her hands hover over the controls that would acquire all the info she needed to provide spotter info.

"Do you want datalink, or aural communication?" Thorn asked over the global LCS.

"Whichever works best for you." Alaska responded and then ordered, "Snipers at the ready."

Redline watched through one of the cameras as Thorn's Monarch shouldered the rifle again, and adjusted something on the optical scope. There wasn't a datalink between Monarch's rifle, and Thorn's readout, it was no better than an old fashioned sniper optic — mark one eyeball. She focused her eyes again on the readout of things like solar wind, and adjusted accordingly based on what Monarch fed to Ender about its own weapon specification. She made note of it, and prepared to feed the data to Monarch, and by extension, Thorn.

"Ready?" Alaska spoke through the silence. "Mark."

Redline danced her fingers across the controls of Ender, and transmitted the data for the target she'd chosen to Thorn. There was a small burst of light from a few points on Monarch, and then the flash of the muzzle and the recoil-diverting tubes lighting up with the explosion of gas in the chamber of the rifle, as it fired a round. The datalink from Monarch told Redline how much time was left until estimated impact; just under a second. And within that second, a light on one of the targets went dark. There were no other muzzle flares, no other snipers had taken their shot, and yet, already, Thorn had hit one.

The light on the distant target came back on, moving away from where it had been, as the inertia of the round impacting it had moved it.

"Thorn and Redline! One target hit! The rest of you, chop-chop, fifteen seconds to go!"

There were a series of sniper rifle fire, as the thirty-nine remaining Kataphrakt pairs sent rounds downrange, towards targets; only a handful actually hit. Thorn and Redline were among them.

This went on and on, the targets changing position after they hit, until Ender's magazine was spent, as were most of the other sniper pairs. It took twenty minutes, if not longer, for all the pairs to have finally hit a target, and yet every time Thorn fired a shot, both Monarch and Ender registered a hit. It was needless to say that Redline was impressed; no one else even came close to that level of accuracy. Even when Alaska spoke, she sounded impressed with that. Redline herself, however, wasn't sure if she had managed to do anything to change that outcome or not; if someone were to ask her if her spotter skills were good before this, she probably would shrug and say that they were mediocre at best. She was a close-range brawler, not a spotter; so it only stood to reason then, in her mind, that Thorn and Monarch had managed to hit every shot as perfectly as they had, through experience. There was something beyond a talent for sniping, the long range combat that had never interested her, and had never taken that much of an interest in being a spotter either. Her focus for as long as she had been a Kataphrakt pilot, had almost always been as a brawler. This kind of practice was foreign to her. It wasn't long before this part of the practice was done, and they moved onto something else, something more oriented at close-range combat, still in the same pairs, but focused instead at hitting closer range targets with their sidearms. Something that she could actually help Thorn with doing.

"You ever been in a duel?" She asked over the LCS, and was met with silence for a moment, as Monarch folded its rifle back into position on its own shoulder.

"I've been in a few battles, but never needed to use my sidearm." Thorn responded after a moment's silence between them.

"Really a sniper huh?" She omitted the 'good' adjective that many others who might have witnessed Thorn's shooting in the exercise prior might use. But alas, she did not. She didn't have a good reason for having omitted 'good' from her description of his sniping, but if she had been asked, the best she would have been able to come up with would be something along the lines of recognizing talent where it arises, coupled with hard work. Besides, he didn't seem like the kind of student who needed that kind of praise from his peers, especially with what he could do; the praise came from the work that he did, not from the people around him. Besides, he seemed like the type, just from accuracy alone, that seemed to be the best with one type of weapon, rather than the others available to him.

"Yeah. It's what I'm good at." He responded.

"Alright then, I'll go first." She had Ender draw its sidearm, and aim it downrange at the closer, but still distant targets. "It's not that much different than any other weapon, but generally the distance you're going to be using a sidearm at is going to be less than your rifle. So you need to aim just as much, unless you've got a digital sight." She does not, so she switches the aiming computer mode to 'on', and takes aim at the targets drifting gently, two hundred meters away. Alaska gave the signal over the LCS to start the exercise, and Redline immediately fired two rounds at the first target, before picking a second target and letting another two rounds ring out silently from Ender's sidearm. From the outside, it looked like such a casual movement; the Kataphrakt holding the weapon as if it were standing on solid ground, yet taking a shooting stance. The time between hitting the two rounds was just a second, maybe two, as Thorn watched, taking note of the stance of the far more slender Kataphrakt and how it used its weapon.

After the rounds had hit their intended targets, sending them careening through space; Ender took a more relaxed stance, placing the firearm back into its magnetic holster on its left leg. "You're a leftie?" Thorn asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"I'm not."

"Principles the same, just mirror my stance, place the foresight between the—"

"I know how to shoot."

"I'm just trying to teach you. It's not the same as a sniper's scope." This irritated Redline, who was doing her best to instruct her peer in the best way to shoot his sidearm, as someone who used her own far more often than he had indicated he did. "Mirror my stance."

She took up the stance again, even drawing Ender's weapon again. Monarch quickly did the same, but instead of the left-hand fingers of the Kataphrakt wrapping around the gun, it was the right-hand.

"Ready?" Redline asked.

"Yeah." Thorn responded.

"Try taking a shot."

Thorn shot.

The round went wide of its target. The ballistic computers of both Ender and Monarch made note of that.

"Try again." She instructed. "But don't use your ballistic computer, just try adjusting the sights."

Thorn tried shooting again; this time the round impacted the target, and it went careening off in an unpredictable direction.

"What did you do different?" Redline asked.

Thorn thought about it for a second, trying to figure out what exactly that he had done different. "Instead of trying to just use the sights like I would use for the sniper, I used both my eyes and also let the pistol rest further in my hands." If Redline had any questions or reservations about how Thorn referred to his Kataphrakt's hands as his own, she didn't voice them. It wasn't unheard of for pilots to think of their Kataphrakt as an extension of their body, and Redline would be lying if she said that she didn't think of Ender as an extension of her body from time to time.

"That's good. Remember that. It's a good skill to have, to be able to protect yourself if an enemy gets too close." Redline smirked, and set her weapon back into its holster. "Wonder what the boss-lady is going to have us do next."

"Who knows?" Thorn responded.

Redline wanted to say 'so you can converse', but she didn't say it. It seemed rude enough to say. So what she said instead was, "So you're Terran?"

"What gave it away?" Thorn responded.

Redline smirked, "Either you really are just quiet, or you're not stoked to be working beside a Martian." She could imagine a figure in the cockpit of the KG-10 shrugging, even if she didn't have any clue what he looked like at all. There was no response.

"Alright kids, bring it in. We're going to figure out what we want to do next." Alaska spoke over the LCS Global Channel, and Redline gave a motion through the holographic screens of Ender, and deactivated the targeting computer. She imagined that Thorn also did something similar, holstering Monarch's pistol, and using the thrusters to maneuver back towards where Alaska was. Redline followed behind. It was time to get the rest of the day on, and if this was just the warmup, Redline wasn't completely sure what the rest of the day was going to look like.

It was a few hours before they were cleared from the drills, and sent back to their hangars, being sequenced in by Alpha-Sierra, and that meant that it had been almost four hours since Redline had strapped herself into Ender and had started the the Aldnoah reactor that powered it. Despite having been in Zero-G for so long, her back was still beginning to hurt from how she had to sit in the cockpit seat of Ender, and that was annoying besides. It took some time until Ender was back in the harness, and then she was able to finally shut down the reactor, and undo the harness keeping her in her seat.

She was tired, a battle in the morning, and then drills in the afternoon? It was exhausting to her, but it was something that needed to be done, and she had done it. It was something that she was expected to do as a daughter of her family, she had been given such a task, and that she would do it, even if she didn't want this and it hadn't been her choice to be here.

The reactor shut itself down cleanly when she commanded it, and that gave her permission to undo the harness that kept her in her seat, and then finish shutting down the rest of the systems of the Kataphrakt, before 'popping' the cockpit open, and flooding it with fresh air, before taking her helmet off. Her red hair flowed out of the helmet as it drifted up and away from her head, the red strands billowing out in a manner that made it almost seem like she was underwater, rather than above water as she was.

The Chief floated by the open cockpit, bracing herself against the frame of the cockpit as to bleed off inertia. "Yo, Redline. Got someone out here waiting for you." Redline blinked at this, barely being done with her shutdown protocol for Ender, before being met with her Crew Chief trying to get her attention for something or another. There was nothing indicating that it was urgent, if it were perhaps an instructor or even Alaska herself having come calling.

"Who is it?" Redline asked, flipping a mechanical switch, which shut off the holographic displays.

"I think it's better for you to come out here and see who it is yourself." The Chief spoke, and pushed off again from the frame of the cockpit, back the way that she had come.

Redline raised an eyebrow at this, before grabbing her helmet out of the air, and pushing off from the cockpit seat, and used the frame of the cockpit to swing out from Ender, and towards the direction that the Chief had come from, her inertia keeping her moving until she was able to stretch out her legs and the magnets in her flight-suit's boots caught the walkway beneath her. She looked up from her legs as she righted herself, and looked up at the Chief, and the person who seemed to be waiting for her.

"Ho, Redline."

"Ho, Cyclops." Redline responded to the greeting in the same manner as she had been greeted. "What can I do for the Vega Flight Commander?"

"Just wanted to check on you after today's drills."

"Me? Why so?"

"Heard you got paired with Thorn today." He crossed his arms, and the Chief took a look between the two pilots, before kicking off from the walkway, and swung over the railing, towards the feet of Ender, where the rest of the ground crew was working. "How'd that go?"

"Went fine. Why do you ask?" Redline responded, and resisted the urge to cross her arms. "Never worked with him before, but that's never been an issue."

"A bunch of people don't work well with him, but it seems like someone noticed that you two didn't get into any kind of tussle." The third-year flight commander, who stood a head or so taller than Redline, but at the distance the two stood, it didn't seem that much shorter than the Vega Flight Commander. "Figured I'd find out for myself."

"Everything went fine today, not sure why you're asking. I've just never worked with Thorn before. And we both had things to teach one another." Redline responded.

"Figured I'd just check, is all. Thorn's not much of a social type, so I wanted to see if he stepped out of line for some reason." Cyclops explained.

"Everything was fine, that's it."

"Good to hear, that'll be all then. Good luck with the rest of your classes this week."

"Thank you, sir." Redline acknowledged the well-wish. "You as well."

Cyclops nodded, and kicked off from the walkway, back towards the locker room, and the trams, heading back towards where he would be able to return to the Vega hangar. Redline watched him go, but didn't think much about it as he did, she was instead still thinking about the notion that Thorn was an oddity in house Vega, as someone who didn't talk much. It wasn't like there were much in the ways of similarities between the members of a house, it was done as a student was being brought into the Academy, they were assigned based on talents, and what a particular house needed at a particular time. Redline had been assigned to Regulus as simply as filling a gap in a fence. Thorn would've been the same. The only difference was when there was an opening for a House Leader or Flight Commander; more often than not, students were transferred from one house to another to fill in the gaps. Cyclops had been one of such cases. This meant that there was often oddities in the houses, oddities that came with the immense talent and skill that there was present in some of the students. Redline and Cyclops weren't among the oddities, but it seemed that Thorn was.

She wondered if there was a chance that she'd meet him again, and get a chance to figure out what kind of oddity that Thorn truly was.