Chapter Text
Entry #2 Rim-of-the-Earth Indigo
The colour of diving headfirst.
The colour of rarity, the colour of broadening horizons.
The colour of persistent wildflower weeds, peace-bringing Jays, precarious Giant stars.
The color of porcelain uncontainable sky, the colour of adrenaline.
The colour of defiance.
---
Reason #1 to Hate School: It began at 5 AM.
Ash cursed as an insistent bicycle bell shattered the silence for the third time that morning.
“Ash! What is taking so long; we’re going to be late!”
Eiji’s voice was muffled by an entire foot of concrete, but Ash heard it nevertheless, its usual strawberry-candy quality soured by urgency. He picked up his pace, hurtling down the stairwell double time with a backpack thrown over one shoulder. His fully charged brick of a phone was clutched in one hand, his hair was still wet from a hasty shower and his Red Chucks were half-worn and unlaced.
4.27 AM, it read when Ash dared to slow down enough to check it.
God, this was insane. It was miracle enough that he’d managed to get himself up twenty minutes ago, considering that he was not in the habit of poking his head out of his blanket any time before noon. And now his poor protesting legs were having to contend with half-made stairs in the near-dark. Ash squinted, willing his eyes to adjust to the scarce, inky light if for no other reason than to prevent him from crashing face-first onto the landing as he raced down. Shivering as he went, he zipped up his open hoodie in some effort to keep the pre-dawn frost from spiderwebbing all over his skin.
Whose idea was this? Whose fucking idea was it to start school at 5 AM?
From all the research Ash had read, adolescent brains didn’t even start kicking until 10 AM. His circadian rhythms weren’t meant to be waking and breakfasting and packing a bag and sprinting down an incline at such an ungodly hour.
A belligerent part of him was almost tempted to stop, to skid to a halt and plop down on the closest step, to cross his arms and declare, “No.”
No, sorry, fuck this.
Fuck keeping up appearances, fuck the stupid sun’s UV rays that wreaked havoc on the human body from 11 AM to 4 PM, fuck the Wolfsbane Academy for opting to start annoyingly before they came out to play instead of comfortably after.
Just fuck it. Fuck all of it.
…
…
…
…Eiji was waiting for him, though.
For the second time that early, early, morning, Ash bit a curse into his own cheek. Eiji was waiting for him; had been for the last fifteen minutes. And he was halfway across the lobby anyway. Might as well go at this point.
So, he pushed through the building’s front door and out into the crisp air.
Eiji straightened at the sight of him, picking himself up from where he was leaning on the handlebars of his bicycle. He wasn’t dressed as warm as Ash was, obviously accustomed to the weather enough to make do in jeans and a light flannel over his goofy bird-cartoon shirt. No sun meant no sunhat or sunglasses, so the wind was at liberty to muss his hair, and his dark-star eyes were on full display.
Ash didn’t miss the way they twinkled when he jogged up to him.
“Finally,” Eiji said wryly, knocking up the bicycle kickstand with the back of his foot. Ash scowled at him, hoping that it would be enough to defend his honour, but Eiji simply waived the cranky look away. Shrugging his own backpack off his shoulder and handing it to Ash, he jerked his head towards the bicycle carrier behind him. “Get on.”
Ash eyed the thing suspiciously. They hadn’t been able to get him a bicycle in time; hell, even if they had, it wasn’t like Ash knew how to ride one on a straight surface, much less down potholed roads that soared and dipped and bent into hairpins like a rollercoaster. So, he had to make do with sharing Eiji’s, sitting down on the bare-bones metal frame behind the bicycle seat and trying to find a position that wouldn’t raise welts on his ass after the half-hour ride to the school.
“Keep your legs off the ground, okay?” Eiji said as Ash balanced their two backpacks on his lap and pulled his knees up so that his feet wouldn’t bump into the back wheel. “And hold onto to me if you need to. I’m going to go a little fast.”
There was genuine concern in Eiji’s voice, but there was also strawberry candy and sugar glaze, and Ash couldn’t help the tingling in his fingers as he reached towards his back with his free hand.
“I’m ready. Let’s go.”
---
Reason #1 to Like School: Ash got to go to it with his head resting on Eiji’s back, and one arm circled loosely around his waist.
God, he was so warm.
Warm and firm with just the right amount of give, the scent of the veritable forest of plants in his home suffused into his skin and clothes.
Wet earth. Young leaves. Dying flowers. Near-ripe fruit.
Like a rain-fresh world. Like a secret garden. Like life most unleashed.
Ash had to physically restrain himself from nuzzling into his shoulder blades.
He settled for just laying there, his temple pressed into the middle of Eiji’s back as he watched the buildings flit by through half-closed eyes. It wasn’t quiet by any means, but there was so much distance around them that even sound was having a hard time traversing the landscape to leak into Ash’s ears and disrupt his peace. And the way Eiji pedalled, the way the bicycle’s chains whirred slightly in his periphery…it was almost like a lullaby…
“Hey! Don’t fall asleep on me!”
Ash jolted from his doze and glared at Eiji, who took a split-second to send him a stern look over his shoulder.
“Rude,” Ash muttered groggily, digging one fingernail into Eiji’s side hard enough to make him squirm as they rounded the bend into a new neighbourhood. “First you drag me from my bed, then you chuck me in the shower, and now you won’t even let me nap on you?”
Eiji scoffed indignantly. “First, I did not drag, I carried; second, it was a nice warm shower; third, you’ll fall off if you nap on me. You need to be awake to hold onto me, Ash.”
“Meh,” Ash dismissed, risking the slightest snuggle into Eiji’s back. “You’re a safe cyclist. Not to mention, your idea of ‘fast’ makes snails look like they’re going at light speed.”
Eiji bristled, and maybe Ash should have taken the lightning in his huff of laughter a little more seriously. “Fine then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
And Ash, so clueless and certain that Eiji was bluffing, pulled a face at the back of the boy’s head and went back to his nap.
It didn’t take more than five minutes for the pleasant embrace of sleep to flee thoroughly from his body.
Because five minutes after Ash had closed his eyes, there was a screech of wheels on asphalt, the manic buzzing of a bicycle chain on overdrive and a boisterous whoop that harmonized with one singular, playful shout:
“On your left, Okumura!”
Ash’s stomach lurched as the bicycle banked swiftly—and to the left no less—and Ash’s eyes shocked themselves open as his lax arm clutched tightly onto Eiji.
“Other side, other side!” Ash yelped frantically, only for the symphony of Eiji’s smug laughter to drown him out as another boy their age turned out of a lane on his bicycle. Ash couldn’t see much of him beyond the oversized leather jacket teeming with brightly coloured pins and patches, but his jeans were baggier than Eiji’s and apart from the starch-white high-top shoes, there was something very laissez faire about him.
It didn’t take him long to flank them, despite the weight of the younger kid perched on the carrier behind him.
“Oh, look who’s up,” Eiji chuckled sardonically, even as Ash struggled to steady his breathing and grapple with the fact that they had not in fact crashed into the other boy despite moving into the left lane of the road. “He always calls out the wrong side; he’s rash like that.”
The boy on the other bicycle grinned at the sound of this, taking his eyes off the road and hands off the handlebars long enough to imitate a crude bow. “I’ll get you one of these days.”
His voice was not soft by any means, but it had this sort of unruly levity to it; like a rock skipping endlessly over the surface of a still lake. Unlike the rest of them he had sunglasses on—black wayfarers that hid his eyes—but from the way his lips quirked, Ash got the impression they were smiling almost as much as his mouth.
“Is this the new Starboy, Eiji?”
Ash’s eyes moved now from the boy riding the bicycle to the kid sitting behind him, who was looking upon Ash with some interest. He couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, downright shrimpy in comparison to the broad-shouldered and much taller boy in front of him, wiry rather than muscular. It looked very much like he was grasping to emulate the taller boy’s aesthetic as well, if the flamboyant electric-blue bomber jacket and magenta shoes were any indication, and it was obvious from the way he held on to the latter’s jacket that he looked up to him.
“Starboy?” Ash repeated, nonplussed. “Don’t give me that much credit.”
“All the space colonies look like stars to us,” Eiji said good-naturedly, before nodding his head in the kid’s direction. “This is Ash. Ash, that’s Sing, and the reckless toddler in front of him is Shorter.”
Ash smiled politely at both of them, and Sing waved back before Shorter gasped most dramatically.
“Blasphemy! I am a very mature man!”
Ash dubiously regarded the mohawk on Shorter’s head, the one that he had no doubt cut himself over a bathroom sink, even as Eiji rolled his eyes. “You named your spaceplane Moby Dick,” he deadpanned. “Every time you win an obstacle course you scream, ‘You’ve been dickmatized!’”
“What else am I supposed to scream?” Shorter said, miming clutching his non-existent pearls even as Sing barked out a laugh.
Ash found himself giggling along too, despite his mental acknowledgement that it was, in fact, a terrible joke. Any biting remarks he had to make about that took a backseat though, to the questions cropping up in his mind.
“You have a spaceplane?” he asked. “How come?”
“Comes with the territory,” Shorter explained proudly. “My concentration at the Academy is Aviation. If everything goes well this year, I’ll graduate with a space-pilot’s license.”
Space-pilot? Ash couldn’t help the confused scrunch in his brow.
Sure, Eiji had mentioned to him that the Academy was a bit unconventional, but…yeesh, what kind of school was this exactly?
“Must be nice,” Sing said, wistfully staring up at the empty sky above them. “Flying planes all day and chilling out on the roof while the rest of us have to read boring history books in a pressure-cooker classroom.”
“Aww, you think they won’t make you read any books when you declare your Aviation concentration next year?” Shorter snickered. “How cute.”
Sing’s eyes widened and he almost shot out of the bicycle carrier in surprise. “Wait, seriously?”
Shorter and Eiji exchanged a knowing look, pursing their lips in an attempt not to laugh in the poor kid’s face.
“What, did you think they tossed me into a plane on Day 1 with a helmet and a map and said, ‘Figure it out; try not to die?’” Shorter guffawed anyway, even as Eiji turned away with a shake of his head.
“No, but I didn’t think there’d be anything more than a pamphlet!” Sing harrumphed, and Ash could practically hear the shards of the cotton-candy ideal of his time in high school punching holes in his voice.
“Oh, I hate to break it to you, Sing,” Eiji said in a way that gave away just how much he did not hate it, “but the stuff you’re reading now is going to look like a pamphlet once you get to high school.”
Sing slumped defeatedly onto Shorter’s back. “Lord, strike me down; I’m ready.”
Shorter and Eiji laughed sympathetically, and Ash laughed along with them. It was nice to laugh with them. There was something comforting about them, about the way they knew things about each other, about the way their familial ribbing boasted a history.
How wonderful it was, to be part of something.
How wonderful it was, to have inside jokes, to have a history, to be known.
How wonderful and terrifying and impossible, for someone like him.
Almost as if he sensed this corrosive thought, Shorter peeked over his shoulder to address him. “What’s your concentration, Ash?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, absently fidgeting with one of the backpack straps on his lap. “I like machines though, especially engines, so Eiji suggested that I check out the Mecha department first. I’m taking a tour of their facilities today.”
“Sweet; I’ll bring you round!” Shorter chirped. “Mecha’s in the same block as Aviation; we work with them a lot. Who’re you touring with today; maybe I know them?”
“Some guy called Cain.”
Shorter’s eyes blew as wide as saucers at the mention of the name. “Cain? ‘Bloody’ Cain?” he inquired, looking at Eiji this time, who confirmed it with a nod.
Sing let out a low whistle, and Shorter muttered a quiet, “Damn.” Ash narrowed his eyes. Eiji hadn’t reacted this way when he’d told him so what was with them? “What? What’s wrong with him? Why’re you calling him that?”
“Well, the guy’s got quite the reputation for eating up ‘young bloods’,” Shorter elaborated.
“That’s what they call incoming freshmen,” Sing put in helpfully.
Ash looked back and forth between them; they didn’t seem too perturbed, but he could tell, the name ‘Cain’ silenced rooms; commanded respect if not outright fear.
“Yeah, he’s a real hard-ass,” Shorter continued. “That’s why he usually does the tours; they want him to chase away anybody who isn’t serious about Mecha. Some of the branches—combat, robotics, biomech, you know—they get glamorized a lot by the middle schoolers, so they send in Cain so he can glare at them and give them a reality check and freak them the hell out.”
Now, Ash was no middle-schooler, but he wasn’t exactly made out of stone either. The apprehension prickled on his skin alongside the cold, and a sizeable amount of the excitement that had built up within him at the prospect of working more with machines started to dilute.
It might’ve thinned into nothing, might’ve morphed back into Ash’s aloof and unfeeling indifference.
But then Eiji injected his voice back into the conversation, and just like that his morale was rescued.
“What absolute rubbish! He is a perfectly nice boy; always so gentlemanly.”
“He’s nice to you!” Shorter countered, gesticulating wildly despite how unstable that made his bicycle. “His Ma likes your egg fried rice recipe.”
“She likes Nadia’s cream bun recipe too!” Eiji said, as if it was meant to be some sort of protest.
“Yeah, and thanks to that stellar bonding experience, Nadia told her about that time I tried to wax my elbow with a tealight and duct tape, so now she thinks I’m a fucking delinquent!”
“Time out, why were you even trying to wax your elbow in the first place?” Ash chimed in, utterly lost for the first time and strangely unbothered that he was.
Shorter gave him a broad wink. “I had, um, consumed a lot of orange juice, of the, uh, the adulterated variety, if you catch my drift.”
Ash caught his drift. He may as well have hurled his drift in Ash’s direction, what with the way his voice flaunted insinuation. “You were drunk?”
“And unstoppable.”
Eiji sighed histrionically then, casting a disapproving look at Shorter. “This is what we get, for leaving you unattended at a New Year's Eve party.”
“Fuck off; you shook your ass plenty at that party!”
Oh, now that was an image. That was an image and a half.
“I did not shake anything!” Eiji squeaked, turning scarlet. “I was only—Ash, if you do not stop laughing, I will shake you off this bike, right here, right now!”
“I’d like to see you try,” Ash retorted, laughter spilling shamelessly from his throat as he locked both arms around Eiji’s waist in an unyielding hug. His heart would’ve pitter-pattered more if he’d have thought about it for just a second longer, but for once, his clamouring mind was not pouring poison on his impulses. “I’ve got a hold of you now!”
“Ash!” Eiji giggled despite himself, clawing half-heartedly at where Ash’s splayed fingers purposely danced over his thin t-shirt. “Ash, let go!”
“Sorry, no can do; I’ll fall if I let go.”
“You’re such a brat! That tickles!”
Of course, it tickled.
Did Eiji know how much his laugh sounded like the heart-swelling crescendo of a coming-of-age anthem? How much it sounded like a liquid-dream waterfall? How much it crackled and sizzled inside Ash’s chest, like fire between flintstones?
Of course, Ash was tickling him.
He wanted that sound to flood his senses, seep into his bloodstream, live as an earworm in his head for as long as possible.
“God, have your tickle fight later; it’s going to bruise if we don’t get to school on time,” Sing reminded them all, bringing them back to reality as he waved his phone that read 4:49 AM in front of Shorter’s face. “Step on it, both of you, before we all get written up!”
Shorter glanced at Eiji, the quirk of his brow alone cocky enough to issue the challenge. “Race you?”
Eiji snorted. “I thought you’d never ask.”
And just like that, Ash was barrelling down a hill, plastered to Eiji’s back as he woo-hooed with the kind of graceless abandon that he didn’t even know he was capable of, trash-talking Shorter and Sing every time they gained on them. Time no longer waded through molasses; sleep no longer mattered; the silence of the early morning was a fading afterthought.
For maybe the first time, Ash was all here, in the present moment.
Not dithering on the fringes of his family like an outsider, not worrying about what would happen tomorrow; not regretting the actions of the day before.
Just here. All here, with Sing and Shorter and Eiji.
He was a part of something. And just maybe, maybe, he could belong here too.
---
Reason #2 to Hate School: Some hostile bitch called Arthur went there too.
Honestly, Ash had been in a perfectly good mood. Nursing his speed high and taking in great gulps of oxygen, he’d stared fascinatedly around him as Eiji had slowed to a relaxed pace and turned in through the Academy gates, close behind Shorter. They had come down a gravel driveway of sorts, lined with bicycle stands and benches for students to hang out by. There’d still been some stragglers milling about, hurriedly copying homework or chaining up their bikes before dashing off to one of the surrounding buildings. Ash had counted twelve in total, all Frankensteined together with brick, concrete and wood, with the odd edifice showing off murky glass; all different shapes and fanning out on either side of them like numbers on a clockface. And then there had been the thirteenth structure, not exactly a building, but something akin to a cement volcano, rising out of the middle of this circle of structures. It was about as tall as the other buildings, its surface made uneven by protruding rods, divots, rope nets and God knew what else, and Ash had found himself wondering exactly was that was for as Eiji pulled in next to an empty bicycle stand.
“All hail the victorious!” Shorter had crowed as they’d dismounted. “That’s four peach yogurt cups you owe me, Okumura.”
“You had an unfair advantage,” Eiji had said petulantly. “Ash is much heavier than Sing; he slowed me down.”
“That was slow?!” Ash had exclaimed with a derisive snort. “How do you explain this bird’s nest you’ve made of my head?” he said, pointing at his hair as it sat in a windblown tuft on his head, giving it the appearance of a cotton ball in a tumble dryer.
“Oh, stop whining!” Eiji had said, smiling devilishly, tousling it more under the guise of smoothing it down. “You lived, didn’t you?”
Yeah, he did. But Ash didn’t know how long that was going to last if Eiji didn’t stop running his fingers through his hair like rain through a sandcastle and skimming the tops of his burning ears.
Mm. It felt nice.
Maybe he could fix Eiji’s hair for him as well. It was messy too.
No, on second thought it was better as is, almost tasteful and deliberate in its dishevelled state, some strands sticking to his forehead and others ensnaring the breeze as it waltzed past.
Yeah, he really had been in such a good mood. Mind pleasantly staticky, chest filled with bubbles, cherry soda on his tongue.
And then this guy had to go and open his mouth.
“Doubling with Shorter today, Sing? What happened; couldn’t find a new bike over the summer?”
The voice smarted with something rancid, like acid on raw meat, and Ash almost didn’t want to turn around. But Shorter, Sing and Eiji were all glowering at the speaker, so he couldn’t exactly ignore it.
It was a boy; he looked to be a bit younger than Shorter and Eiji, and knowing Ash’s luck he was probably in his year. He stood in a group of his friends a few feet away from them, blonde hair elaborately slicked back and beady eyes glinting, his mouth twisted into the kind of sneer that invited a punch in the nose.
“No, Arthur,” Sing ground out. “The F4A didn’t have any good ones this time round.”
“Pity yours was stolen,” Arthur went on, smile all kinds of barbed and mangled in relish as Sing stiffened. “Carbon fibre frame, hydraulic brakes, air-spring suspension; bet it fetched a pretty, pretty price. Must’ve been a good thief, don’t you think, considering how careful you were with that thing?”
Something cold and distasteful curled in Ash’s chest. The implications of that statement weren’t lost on him, and it only made his knee-jerk disdain for the guy more potent. Stealing was a thing everywhere in the universe, and of course, it’d be a bigger thing on a place like Earth where resources were so meagre.
Still, to take from a kid like Sing, and lord it over him like it was some sort of triumph?
Yeah, that was just sick.
“Son of a bitch; I should’ve known it was you,” Shorter seethed, clenching his fists as he made to charge towards Arthur.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s not worth it,” Eiji cut in, holding him back with one hand on his shoulder.
Shorter looked upon him obstinately, ready to argue his case, but the force of whatever was in Eiji’s eyes seemed to stay him. “You’re graduating this year,” he reminded softly. “It won’t look good if you have any more disciplinary violations on your record.”
“Listen to him, Shorter. At least he knows his place,” Arthur scorned. Eiji pretended he didn’t hear him, but naturally that didn’t stop him. “Goody-two shoes Okumura,” he sang in a way that plucked at Ash’s last nerve. “Tell me, is it hard to walk without a spine in your back, Samurai Boy?”
Okay. That was the last straw.
“I don’t know; is it hard to breathe with your head that far up your own ass?” Ash snapped.
Eiji peeked at him worriedly. “Ash—”
“I mean, I’ve seen a lot of baseless dick-swinging in my life, but this is a bit much, no?”
“Say that to my face, pretty boy,” Arthur growled, stomping over to where they were standing.
“No thanks; not interested in choking to death on the toxic fumes coming out your mouth.” Ash stood his ground as Arthur got in his face, hands stuck firmly in his pockets even as Shorter came up to stand next to him in support.
“Alright, that is enough!” Eiji said, his dark eyes opaque with frustration as he yanked both him and Shorter backwards and turned his gaze onto Arthur. “You’ve had your fun. You’ve ruined everyone’s day. Don’t you think it’s time you put a sock in it?”
“Yeah, Arthur. If you want to maul something that badly, why don’t you go fight the jungle cats in the Woodlands? At least it’ll hurt less when they scratch you,” Shorter said, throwing Ash an appreciative glance.
The warning bell for the start of the school day sounded, but neither party moved, still taut as drawstrings, still wired to pounce. Arthur deflated first, his needlepoint stare locked on Ash as he sauntered away.
“You should watch your mouth, pretty boy. Or else the sun won’t be the only thing that torches your pasty ass alive here.”
“Yeah, I’ll take that under advisement,” Ash bit back, fuelled by his petty need to have the last word with this cactus of a human being.
“God, what is his problem?” Eiji murmured, watching him disappear down the path to their left as the rest of them simmered down. “Always has something hurtful to say.”
“Speaking of hurtful things to say,” Ash began, hefting his backpack and nudging Eiji’s shoulder playfully. “What kind of burn is ‘put a sock in it’?”
“A classy one,” Eiji said, breaking into a smile as he swatted at him.
“Oh, I see; too sophisticated for ‘fuck off’, are we Eiji?”
“It’s bad manners to swear in front of the baby,” Eiji replied, smirking at Sing even as Shorter let out a most ungainly horselaugh.
“Hey! I am thirteen!” Sing squawked, the offense cute enough on his button-face to make them all giggle harder. “Thirteen and five months!”
“Okay, I will just leave that there, or we’ll be here all day,” Eiji said apologetically, hefting his backpack and pulling his phone from his back pocket to the check the time.
“I have to get to sewing class now; are you going to be okay?” he asked, looking up at Ash with tender concern.
Ash’s eyebrows knotted in bewilderment. “Y-yes, but sewing class? What exactly—”
“Later please, Ash, I’m late!” Eiji interrupted, already starting to jog away from them. “Take care of him, Shorter!”
“You got it!” Shorter answered before Ash could ask any more questions, throwing one arm around his shoulder and leading him in the opposite direction.
“Come on, Ash. I’m about to show you the Promised Land!”
---
Reason #2 to Like School: The Mecha department looked like a ‘best of’ mash-up of every tech fantasy Ash had had from ages nine to sixteen.
Following Shorter into a pale grey clearing, he caught sight of the building right behind the Aviation complex, the twin structures linked inextricably with bridges and yet as different from each other as night and day.
Where Aviation was a squat oblong thing devoid of any embellishment save for the litany of sleek spaceplanes crowning its roof-turned-runway, Mecha was a narrow chess-piece of a building that looked like a scrap-metal yard threw up on it.
Gears, pulleys, levers. Motors, pistons, solar panels.
They all banded together to spell out ‘MECHA’ in giant letters on the edifice, all part of functioning contraptions, all coloured with every metallic hue known to humankind.
Ash almost pinched himself. Now, this was different.
This was what put all his textbooks to shame. This was what would push him through the thicket of facts and into the iridescent plasma-soup of imagination. This was exactly the type of over-the-top theatricality only Earth could pull off, that there was no room for in space.
The dork-dance his neurons were doing must’ve translated into a smile on his face, because Shorter took one look at him and said, “I knew it would blow your mind.”
“When did—uh—who did, um,” Ash willed his voice to return to him, “How?” he asked eventually, gesturing to the building’s façade.
“Freshman shenanigans,” Shorter said mysteriously, steering him towards the entrance of the building.
“Yeah, apparently there was this surge of prodigal batches eight years ago that didn’t want to wait till junior year for ‘practical experience’, so they just…did this for funsies,” Sing elaborated eagerly, clearly more interested in this part of campus than wherever the hell his first class was happening. A small part of Ash wondered if there’d be any consequences for his frolicking around here, but it was only for a moment, because soon enough his attention was diverted by a tall, burly figure, standing all business-like by the doors.
He had the relaxed posture of someone who was very comfortable in their authority, and his retro blue-tint eyeglasses made him seem like a fast-talking vintage pre-space-age sci-fi hero, at least from the neck up. From the neck-down though, he appeared neat and utilitarian, his olive-green coveralls crisp and his sleeves rolled up in a precise fashion to expose the start of a navy-blue tattoo.
“Aslan Glenreed?” he inquired in a smooth baritone voice as the three of them approached him, and Ash flinched a little at the use of the name.
He knew it was his, but it’d never felt like it quite belonged to him, given that it was reminiscent of all the people that seemed just a touch too out of his reach for comfort.
Max. Jess. The woman who had been his mother for all of two weeks.
“Just Ash is okay.” There, that was better. That was his. That was the name he’d claimed for himself.
“Ash,” Cain echoed, sizing him up as they shook hands. “A little frail, aren’t you?”
Ash kept his expression neutral. He’d gotten some or the other comment on his body for as long as he could remember, regardless of place, time or circumstance. The line for groceries, outside the U-watch repair store, even in the gym where Max had given him basic pointers on kickboxing.
“As frail as anyone who’s made it through zero-gravity drills and atmospheric re-entry in one piece,” he said curtly.
The ghost of a mildly impressed smile swept over Cain’s face for a moment, and just like that the ice of the first meeting thawed out. “My mistake. Please.”
He shifted away from the doors and ushered Ash in with a small nod. Ash waved goodbye to Shorter and Sing, who wished him luck enthusiastically before moseying on to the Aviation building.
That left just him and Cain, crossing the floor of the most chaotic state of affairs Ash had ever seen.
Every inch of spare space was demarcated into flimsy cubicles using mesh-tarps, each of them housing anywhere from one to four students dressed in mustard-yellow coveralls and hard at work on some device or other. Some soldered, others welded; some sifted through an array of assorted screws for the perfect one; others worked out calculations on rickety blackboards. The air was thick with the orchestra of all these activities simultaneously, the clanging of metal parts and tools like cymbals and the hollers of ‘Got any more double helical gears over there?’ and ‘Are you done with those pliers yet?’ the encore. Everything was shiny here, shiny copper and brown and grey, the only vibrancy coming from clumps of knotted wires and scraps of electrical tape. The smell of engine oil was omnipresent, cut with a hint of grease and ozone, and Ash didn’t know whether to breathe shallow or deep.
“Welcome to Mecha,” Cain shouted above the din, motioning to the absolute pandemonium around him. “Excuse the mess, this and the floors above it are our workshop spaces.”
“Uh-huh,” Ash said most eloquently, staring around him in wonder. “What’s everyone making?”
“In general: transport systems,” Cain detailed, waving a hand in the direction of a group modifying some sort of transmission. “Each branch of Mecha has their own floor dedicated to their work and innovation. This is the transport branch’s space.”
Ash nodded along, understanding now why the colour of their coveralls was different from Cain’s. He must not be from this branch.
“In specific: whatever the hell they want, as long as they can justify its need to exist,” Cain said, watching Ash carefully for his reaction. “We don’t build for whimsy here. All that we do must either be viable or have the capacity to be improved into viability.”
“That’s not surprising,” Ash said, measured, but assertive still. “You don’t go to school to learn how to make trinkets.”
“Yes,” Cain said approvingly, satisfied with that response. “Yes, exactly. Come this way.”
A small blip of pride rose up inside Ash as he followed Cain through a service door and down a flight of stairs. So far, so good. He was passing whatever arbitrary tests for new recruits Cain had crafted in his mind. They made their way through another door, this one cushioned with a soundproof blanket, and when it closed behind them, the incessant cacophony from above them faded into a distant hum.
“This is the less sensational part,” Cain said, showing him around the large basement space that had been altered to accommodate several classrooms, all with sound-proofed doors. This area was more organized and less harsh on the senses, all pale blue walls and courteous quiet as faces buried themselves in books and pens danced to the tune of lectures.
“Freshmen and sophomores typically take theory-based lessons before they get to work hands-on on anything, but since you’d be joining us in the middle like this, you’d have to take a placement test along with the standard aptitude test to determine how much book-learning you’d have to do before you get to pick a branch.”
“Cool, when do I take those?” Ash asked, trailing after him and peering into the classrooms through the glass slits in the doors.
Cain shot him a bemused glance over the top of his sunglasses. “You don’t want to tour any of the other departments before making your choice? The Academy offers a lot of disciplines, you know. Commerce, Medicine, Cyber?”
Ash shook his head confidently. “I know what I want. I was just making sure Mecha offered it. And I want that workshop space. So yeah, I’ll be joining, yeah, I’ll be taking those tests. When can I?”
Cain seemed blown back by the declaration, but he recovered quickly, easy stoicism exchanged for that flash of genuine marvel. “You can take them here, whenever you’re ready. Depends on if you need to study for them. What’s your educational background?”
“You know I haven’t ever been to a school-school, right?” Ash said drily.
“Still, you must’ve studied things before. What did you study?”
Oh dear, where was Ash meant to start?
Eh, he supposed he could go in chronological order.
“Well, I have the basics: trig, calc, geometry, logic and set theory, stats, inorganic chem, some shaky O-chem. O-chem doesn’t agree with me; I remember the, um, the benzene stuff, but the rest is kind of a blur. I’m confident with my foundationals: mechanics, dynamics both classical and thermo, electromagnetism, what have you. I’m not a CAD guy, and my materials knowledge is so-so, but my HVAC’s solid. Telecom kinda bores me, but I do well with electronics and optics, at least the theoretical parts. I’ve messed around with some robotics here and there, but aerospace’s my real wheelhouse. Don’t quote me on it though, I only just got into it a year ago, so I’d put myself at high beginner at best.”
Cain raised his eyebrows, and Ash realized then that he’d run out of fingers to count on. He dropped his hands then, and stuck them somewhat awkwardly in his pockets.
“I, uh, I also have some stuff outside STEM; you know, rudimentary diplomatic and military history, bare-bones economic theory and political philosophy. Also, I’ve read some memoirs on gender and sexuality. And there were some documentaries on nonconformism and pre-space-migration sea life.”
A whole minute of total silence passed them by, Cain’s body language expectant as if he was waiting for Ash to say even more. Which was exactly why Ash felt the need to clarify, “I’m done.”
Cain let out a rumbling chuckle then, surprise and mirth and something discerning in it all at once.
“Hm.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said casually, turning away from Ash’s near-accusing look. “Just…Eiji wasn’t exaggerating about you.”
Ash blamed the paleness of the walls for how prominently the blush stuck out on his face. There was some frenzied part of him that wanted to ask exactly what Eiji had said, how his voice had formed the words, how his face had looked when he had said it. Had he smiled, had it blinded everyone in a ten-mile radius, had his eyes shimmered in that moonlight-dew way or not, this was vital fucking information, damn it, Cain—
Ash drew in a deep breath. Let it out.
Not the time, he told himself. Tease Eiji about it during the break or something. See for yourself how his face looks when he talks about you.
See if his cheeks make rose petals look like lifeless rags. See if he scrunches through the baby hairs at the back of his neck with those gentle hands. See if he smacks your shoulder with that stone-dissolving pout and wraps your name in some entirely new emotion.
God, what a lovely prospect. Ash would’ve spent more time drifting through that particular scenario, if Cain hadn’t spoken again.
“How quaint,” Cain mused, more to himself than to Ash. “Learning about all kinds of things just because you’re interested in them. Very different from what we do here.”
Ash side-eyed him, a little disoriented. “What do you mean? Aren’t you interested in Mecha? Didn’t you choose it?”
Cain took his sunglasses off then, and Ash saw in his deep brown eyes a sort of resignation, the kind that had affected Michael when his favourite t-shirt got a bunch of permanent marker stains that couldn’t be taken out.
The t-shirt had still been usable, and Michael had continued to wear it as often as possible after that, but it hadn’t been quite the way he wanted it anymore.
“Did you know, the name of this school: Academy, is actually an acronym?”
“It is?”
“Yep. A-C-A-D-E-M-Y,” Cain expounded. “It stands for A Chance At Deserving Even More Years.”
That hit Ash like a ton of bricks. He waited, sensing that Cain had more to say.
“At the Academy, we learn how to make ourselves useful,” he went on, melancholy tugging at the corners of his mouth. “To ourselves, to our settlement, and to the space colonies most of all. We don’t have the resources for exploration, for…academia.”
Ash huffed a mirthless laugh. Funny how things worked out. The useful wished they could be more than their utility, while his nebulous ass wished he knew what he was supposed to do with himself already.
“So, yeah, I’m interested in Mecha. But it’s what I’m most interested in out of all the disciplines the Academy offers.” His voice was like the inside of a cloud, hollow, yet reigned in. “Who knows what I’d do with space-colony tech and the entire universe spread out in front of me?”
“You’d drive yourself insane is what you would do,” Ash remarked despondently, pulling him from the clouds. “Having a ton of options isn’t always a good thing.”
“Maybe not. Doesn’t matter now anyway,” Cain said, seemingly still mulling over the thought, before popping his sunglasses back on his face with an air of finality. “I’ll let one of the instructors know that you’d like to test right now. They’ll get you everything you need.”
Ash held up a thumbs-up, and Cain gave him the first real smile of the day.
“If you make it through, come find me on the ninth floor. I’m a bit of a political philosophy enthusiast myself in my down time, so I’d appreciate your thoughts.”
Ash offered him a smirk in return. “What’s on the ninth floor?”
That was when Cain pulled his lanyard out from where it was tucked into the inside of his coveralls, and held it out so Ash could read the branch name that was printed on it in block letters:
COMBAT
---
The sun was already out and going strong by the time Ash finished the tests.
Slipping on his rose-tinted Aviators as he emerged from the basement, he ascended leisurely up the stairs to the ninth floor. His stomach was starting to emit out-of-tune-French-horn sounds, the single piece of toast he’d scarfed down before leaving the house long forgotten in the crisp butter-yellow 10 AM light that pierced its way through the stairwell windows as he climbed. Ash wished his fingers would stop cramping; wished the crick in his neck would dissipate; wished his brain would stop humming like a machine left on for too long. It was entirely too distracting to be re-contemplating just how he’d differentiated that last equation when he was passing by doors of every colour that boldly proclaimed the name of the department that occupied said floor, but unfortunately for him his mind did not cease whirring until he was looking upon the Combat branch’s door.
He shuddered a little despite the humidity. In Ash’s experience, Chekhov had been bang on the money with his ideas on the presence of a gun. If a gun existed near him in minute one, then odds were it was going to be fired it at his back by minute three.
And that was on a good day; on a day when Max could manage to get them all to safety before whatever dangerous bastard he’d managed to piss off could scramble his lackeys into attack formation.
Still, he pushed through the door, as he was accustomed to pushing through most things. Cain seemed like a decent enough person, and there was no reason to believe that he’d be staring down the barrel of an assault rifle when he opened the door, so open it he did.
It was unexpectedly quiet inside, certainly more structured and subdued than the Transport branch. Everyone here seemed to be more serious, more meticulous and focused as they worked on their individual projects. Ash spotted dismembered guns, ballistic missiles with their guts spilling out, even the skeleton of a laser. Yet regardless of what people were working on, it seemed like they all had this cloak of dread shrouding their forms, this pinched quality to their faces that belied their awareness of what they were contributing to.
They knew their work would one day cause destruction. Claim lives.
It was dirty work, but in some twisted, primal way, it was also necessary.
Ash didn’t like it, but the fact of the matter was, it wouldn’t be a sensible voice or a just argument that would stay the trigger finger of a tyrant.
No, it would be something as pathetic as the fear of the other guy’s gun being bigger than his.
Ash flitted past the workspaces as quick as he could, keen to find Cain so that he could stop looking at the brutish implements all around him. Mercifully, he caught sight of him soon enough, munching on a bunch of grapes as he lounged on one of the window ledges and took from the slothful breeze what respite he could.
“Wow,” he commented, raising a hand to wave at Ash as he approached. “That was quick.”
Ash fought off an audible groan, as he plonked himself down opposite Cain. “That was four and a half fucking hours of my life.”
Cain snickered, extending his bowl of grapes towards him. “Just be glad today isn’t an Endurance day.”
“Endurance?” Ash inquired, reaching gratefully for a grape. “What’s that?”
Cain didn’t answer him verbally, merely nodding towards the view outside the window in response. Ash followed his gaze warily, past the Aviation building and the paths that lead away from it, and all the way to the weird cement volcano thing in the middle of campus. Ash noticed that they were actually much closer to the building now than he’d been this morning by the school gates, which was exactly why he could see more clearly now just what it was that was making its surface so irregular.
Oh, good grief.
Hurdles that began at the base, and were liberally peppered all throughout the incline. Random metal rods that stuck out like spikes from the sides. Bars of varying lengths in a patchwork throughout, some short and clustered vertically together where the slope was just shy of a 90-degree angle, others long and solitary in the more forgiving spaces. Ropes that zigzagged through it all, hanging down freely like vine, connecting wide empty spaces between bars together, meshing together in safety nets at the very bottom. Cavities that looked like they’d been scooped out using a melon baller, snaking up to the crater inside the peak. And was that a fucking diving board installed at the edge of the summit?!
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ash cried out in disbelief. “We’re expected to scale that…that…thing?
“Earth is a difficult place to live on, Starboy,” Cain quipped, clearly enjoying himself now. “Can’t do it without a little endurance.”
“Yeah, well, you can shove that endurance where the sun don’t shine,” Ash said as he chomped down bitterly on his grape, all his propriety from earlier that day long gone. “I’m sure you could build a decent endurance by lapping this campus a couple of times; this…hell-mountain is wildly excessive.”
“Jeez, relax, no one’s going to make you scale the hell-mountain; most of our activities are concentrated near the base of the structure anyway,” Cain placated, half-formed laughs lightening his voice. “Besides, it’s only two times a week for Mecha. Other departments have it worse.”
“Are you telling me there’s departments at this school that have to do this every day?” Ash asked, leaning forward in his incredulity.
Cain shook his head, still entirely too nonchalant about the whole thing for Ash’s liking. “No, admin’s not that cruel. But there is one department that does it four times a week. And their upperclassmen are the only people who’re actually expected to scale it.”
Yeesh. Just what kind of department was this? Ash wracked his brains, trying to come up with a field of study that would be physically demanding enough to warrant this, but unable to conjure up anything.
“What department is this?”
Whatever Cain was going to say died on his lips then, even as a burst of faint cheering came to them over the wind, seemingly from the direction of the endurance course. The next moment both their heads turned to the swell of footsteps from the depths of the Mecha building, the thudding of boots and clamour of gleeful voices audible even from behind the closed door of the stairwell.
Cain got to his feet curiously, jogging over to the door with Ash in tow.
“The hell’s going on out here?” Cain barked, even as a barrage of middle-schoolers and younger highschoolers dashed past them.
“Aviation vs. Vitae endurance race!” someone shouted out in response, before racing up the stairs like everyone else. “They’re doing a Full-Mountain Course Run, so everyone’s going to the roof to see!”
Cain let out a long-suffering laugh. “Like fucking clockwork.”
Ash jaw dropped, and he turned wordlessly to Cain for an explanation.
“Old rivalry,” he replied, too caught up in the implications to answer him properly. “They’ve been paired together for Endurance day for as long as the Academy’s existed.”
“Oh, fantastic.” Ash smacked a palm on his forehead, while Cain massaged his temples in an attempt to collect himself.
“Who’d be insane enough to issue a challenge like that?” the latter muttered under his breath.
“Who do you think?”
Sing’s bright voice cut through the din, breathless and thrilled as he came up to them, taking two of the stairs at a time. Ash took one look at those eyes brimming with exhilaration and admiration, and immediately understood.
“Fucking Shorter,” Cain voiced for them all, an exasperated sigh escaping him. “First day of senior year, and he’s already starting shit with Vitae.”
“He’s feeling lucky today,” Sing cackled. “He beat Eiji in a bicycle race earlier, so now he thinks he’s invincible.”
Ash perked up at the sound of Eiji’s name.
“Whoa, what does Eiji have to do with—”
“Hold up, Eiji’s running on behalf of Vitae?” Cain cut in, suddenly way more interested.
“Obviously.”
“Then this I gotta see,” Cain said, joining Sing in his crusade up the stairs and to the roof.
“Wait, what the fuck?” Ash called, running after Cain while trying to quell his growing annoyance at being left in the dark. “I thought you thought this was a dumb idea!”
“Correction: I think it’s a futile idea; nobody beats Vitae kids at Endurance,” Cain yelled back. “From an entertainment standpoint though, it’s an A plus plan! Eiji’s going to smoke him.”
“Hey, c’mon; give Shorter a little credit; he’s in the top 5% of Aviation,” Sing defended, practically shoving aside people in his effort to get up the stairs as fast as possible.
“Oh, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
Okay. Ash had officially had enough.
“Would someone kindly tell me what the fuck is going on?!” Ash interjected before the conversation ran away any further. “What’s Vitae? Is that Eiji’s concentration? Is it a department or a branch of a department? What do they do exactly? Also, what—”
“God, Ash, just shush—just, come on!” Sing squealed, taking a moment out of his clearly very precious time to clamp one hand firmly around Ash’s wrist and drag him up the stairs. Ash nearly tripped over his own feet trying to follow along with him, doubled over as he was due to Sing barely clearing the five-foot mark.
Mercifully, that awkward arrangement did not persist for long, because the moment they reached the twelfth-floor landing window, Sing skidded to a halt.
“Oh my God, they’ve started.”
Ash squeezed in by his side as Cain and the others rushed to catch a glimpse too, looking where he pointed, and oh.
Eiji was running, running like a daydream so tantalizingly out of reach, sailing effortlessly over the hurdles at the base of the mountainous course like the air was his ship to steer. Shorter was only an inch behind him, having chosen to forego his leather jacket and jeans for a cap pulled low over his face and sweatpants. Eiji also had a cap on now that the sun was properly out, and…
Oh, sweet mother of all that was good and pure, where the fuck had those short-shorts come from?
Ash swallowed dryly, watching spellbound as Eiji leaped about three feet into the air and grabbed onto the first bar on the incline, pulling himself up in one fluid motion. Shorter went a different route, choosing instead to use the foot-and-hand holds carved into the slope. He was moving fast now, decisive and swift as he clambered up the surface like a stubborn spider on a wall. In comparison, Eiji almost seemed to be idling, carefully pulling himself up on each extended bar, and using it as a foundation to stand on so he could jump up to the next one. Some of the kids next to Ash hooted, Sing included, hyped to see Shorter taking the lead.
But Ash could see what Eiji was doing; even from so far away he could understand that Eiji was pacing himself, playing the long game. There was still a lot of mountain to go, and it wouldn’t do to use up all his energy on the easy part of it.
He was biding his time, waiting for the right moment to pull off his perfect upset.
Ash could feel it, in his own muscles that refused to relax, in the goosebumps that waited under the surface of his skin to rise, in his eyes that refused to blink in fear of missing out on even a nanosecond of the action.
Sure enough, the opportunity presented itself the moment they got to the steepest part of the incline. Shorter seemed to realize that he’d painted himself into a corner; he’d reached the end of the foot-and-hand holds but the nearest rods or ladder-like structures were entirely too far away to reach from where he was currently at. He paused, just for a moment, trying to think of a way to manoeuvre himself out of his predicament.
And it was that moment that Eiji made his own.
A collective shriek of astonishment rippled through the watchers as he jumped again, this time off the bar he was standing on and towards a dangling rope. Another shriek as he caught the rope with both hands, his palms closing around the coarse material with the deftness of a florist fixing a flower arrangement. Even Shorter stopped whatever he was doing, just to join the crowd in their hooting.
Ash’s muscles pulled themselves taut. Goosebumps pebbled on his skin. His eyes nearly fell out of his head. And then he started running.
Back up the stairs, his eyes constantly seeking the next window in the stairwell, so he could watch Eiji swing himself in an upward arc, allow his momentum to carry him forward like a pendulum.
God, Ash had to see this from the roof. He had to see this as it was meant to be seen.
Up, up, up the stairs Ash went, his breath coming in adrenaline-infused gasps, punching reluctantly out of his lungs as Sing’s wolf whistles rung out behind him, a clear appreciation for how gracefully Eiji abandoned the rope and grasped onto the bottom rung of the final ladder, a good seven feet ahead of Shorter after that last move.
Ash could hear whoops and claps, laughter and cheers, but he wanted no part of them; he wanted to go somewhere quiet and prayerful and utterly removed, so that he could split his face apart with the smile straining at his lips without judging eyes upon him. A place from where he could look, look, look, and and drink in and inhale and emboss that image of Eiji and his open rejection of gravity into his skull.
The two of them were going at almost the same speed now, Eiji getting closer and closer to the top of the course as Ash got closer and closer to the roof.
Two more minutes. Just two more minutes and then they would both…
Ash stumbled onto the roof just as Eiji hoisted himself up and over the rim of the volcano-like course. Ash could see now that the crater at the top of the summit was filled to the brim with water, the colour of early night and deliciously deep. Sprinting now to a section of the roof’s edge with the least spectators, Ash held his already hitching breath as Eiji climbed up the diving board.
He held his breath and wrung his hands and bit his lip as Eiji raced across the surface, clothes and all. As Eiji pushed off the edge of the board with his back to the water, slicing through the air in a backflip like a warm knife through butter.
Time stuttered, and it seemed to Ash that it stuttered as a favour to him, to allow him to memorize this. Memorize the grace of Eiji’s form curving in a flawless parabola. Memorize the way one hand coyly flipped-off Shorter as he came up to the top behind him. Memorize the way his cap chose now to tumble off his head and send his dark hair spreading out like an inkblot on the sky. Memorize the sculpted lines of his limber body, bronze limbs sharp against the cloudless expanse.
Not defying death. Not oblivious to death.
Just absurdly, hypnotically uninterested in death.
Blue behind him.
Blue trying to swallow him and failing. Blue attempting to make him insignificant and failing.
Blue beneath him.
Blue trying to pull him under and failing. Blue wicking into his clothes and drenching him head to toe and attempting to tamp down that delighted laughter and failing, because the wind snatched it up and carried it all the way to where Ash was standing, just that fraction of Eiji’s voice exploding fireworks at every nerve ending in his body.
“Told you nobody beats Vitae kids at Endurance.”
Cain’s voice seeped through Ash’s cocoon of awe, but he found himself unable to turn away from the sight of Eiji splashing around in the crater, no doubt searching for his cap.
“Cain,” he rasped eventually. “Who the hell are the Vitae kids?”
“They are life on Earth.”
It was only a simple statement, but Cain’s voice frayed when he said it, heavy with the weight of regret and the chains of circumstance. “Most of us come to the Academy because we want to escape. We come so that we can be good enough to get the hell off this planet, so that we can immigrate to the space colonies and have that ‘better life’ that we’re always being taunted with. All the Academy departments exist in service of this collective dream, all except one. There’s just one, that’s not devoted to running away, but standing your ground instead.”
“Vitae,” Ash whispered, the word almost sacred in his mouth now.
“They’re the selfless ones. They’re the ones who will continue to live on Earth even after the rest of us are gone. Drought, flood, earthquake, even fucking Azrael; it doesn’t matter what happens here, the Vitae won’t leave,” Cain said, and Ash could hear in the scratch of his voice how much he could not understand their choice. “They choose Earth, and all the fuckery it comes with. They learn how to adapt, how to survive, how to weather the harshest conditions, how to care for the community and the coming generations. That means endurance training, navigation drills, botany, construction, first aid—”
“Sewing,” Ash tacked on, a molten sort of smile starting to crystallize on his face as he recalled the class Eiji had said he’d be going to that morning. Suddenly it was all starting to make sense: that class, his horticultural prowess, his poised strength, the very way he seemed to look at life, at Earth.
Ash ached then to know the root of it all.
“Do you know why he chose Vitae?” he asked, finally sparing Cain a look.
Cain merely shrugged in response. “Who knows. It’s probably an awfully personal decision; Vitae is the least popular department here, and Eiji’s at the top of their senior class. Takes something to be in there as it is, but it takes a special something to be one of their best.”
Ash felt fizzing in his chest; felt a grin tickle the sides of his mouth, and allowed himself a moment of veiled vulnerability. “I don’t doubt it. That course run…that was awesome. Immortally awesome.”
“Oh, he’ll outlive us all; just you watch. He’s going to be the last man on Earth,” Cain laughed, loud and sure. “The skin will rot off our bones and shove everything we were back into the carbon cycle just fine, but death will tremble to take Eiji Okumura.”
Reason #3 to Like School: Eiji did stuff like this four times a week in open view.
Final Verdict:
The pros outweighed the cons.
Ash liked school. A lot.