I Am Not Number Seven (TUA/MHA Crossover)

8. Vanya: Airborne

The rest of the flight passed without any exciting events, Keina occasionally passed by but seemed busy with her work now that everyone was awake.

Vanya did not feel abandoned, as the occasional smiles the woman sent her made her feel calm and allowed her to enjoy the remainder of the flight.

The rest of the passengers were all awake now, talking and laughing in low tones. Vanya amused herself by listening in to the conversations of her fellow passengers, the parents scolding children, businessmen muttering to themselves, people around her age discussing what they were going to do on their holiday- it interested her to listen in to a piece of their lives.

The girl kept eavesdropping and exchanging bits of conversation with Keina when she stopped by until, at last, the plane began to prepare for descent. Though the flight felt short because of how long she slept, Vanya desperately wanted to get back on the ground. Her toes in her shoes and she thought about what awaited her once she landed. Her first time living outside of the Academy was in a country she had never been to and had only heard of. The idea both excited and terrified her.

The plane landed, taxied, and reached the airport without any disturbances and after an eternity of waiting, the flight attendants announced that her section could disembark. Vanya was the first person in her section to get up and grab her carry-on from the overhead shelf, making her way down the aisle before anyone else.

The flight attendants all stood in a line next to the exit to bid her goodbye. As she passed them, she stopped once she got to Keina and held out her hand.

"Thank you for taking care of me. I hope we meet again," Vanya said in Japanese, hoping that her sincerity reached the woman. Keina smiled at her and took her hand, shaking it twice.

"So do I. Take care, honey." she answered back in the same language. They let go at the same time and Vanya took a step back, nodding to the woman and the rest of the flight attendants, and made her way out of the plane to the gangway.

The temperature difference was immediate and startling. Even with the protection from the wind by the gangway's roof and walls, the frigid cold seeped in and made the girl hurry to the gate. A group of what Vanya assumed were airport employees clapped and greeted her as she emerged from the gangway. The girl, flustered by the greeting, nodded politely to them and quickly scuttled away to find somewhere to sit down.

She found a seat with relative ease and unzipped her backpack, pulling out a brown, oversized jacket and shrugging it on before also pulling out the manilla folder with all her instructions in it. Vanya flipped through her documents until she found the list she was looking for: Instructions for Immediately After Landing. From the formal way it was structured, she had a feeling Reginald personally typed this one up.

Reading down the list, she saw that a driver would be sent to pick her up. He would be wearing a suit and have a noticeable hairstyle, she would know he was the correct person by speaking a code phrase to him, to which he would answer her back, both the phrase she had to speak and the expected response were printed neatly on the paper. Vanya squinted her eyes and looked for clarification on his appearance but found none. A noticeable hairstyle? That did not give her too much to go on. She sucked her teeth, frustrated.

Nevertheless, she was nothing if not adaptable. Vanya turned her phone off of airplane mode, ignoring it as it started buzzing. There would be time to look at it later, for now, she just wanted to get out of the airport.

There were not that many differences between this one and the American airport, the annoyingly loud level of noise and the types of sounds, crying, laughing, talking, were all the same. Just in Japanese. But going from little noise to large noise caused discomfort to Vanya's sensitive ears and as she felt her power counter minimally tick up, she wanted to be out of this place as quickly as possible.