Little Pilot Academia

Chapter 20

Amanda exited her room only to find the blue team exiting theirs. They all wore light clothing, and were obviously going to the pools. “I wonder if we’ll get to see Andrew today…” Hannah was saying. Amanda found herself lingering in place, wondering if she should say something. Diana had been kind of ignoring her for the past two days, since she’d say that at Ursula’s door during the party.

She hadn’t meant to offend her; it had been more of a… friendly banter. Kinda. She had been in kind of a bad mood because there hadn’t been any cake left for her, and maybe she was a little bitter by the attitude of nonchalance Diana had to having lost their little race. But she wasn’t friends with Diana, and that showed. The blonde still looked at her with a particularly icy stare. “Hey,” Amanda said, raising her hand.

This time, the three girls shot her glares before turning a ninety degrees and striding off in the other direction. “Well, goodbye,” Amanda said to herself. She wasn’t eager to apologize. In the end, what she had said was true. Diana did consider herself better than all of them. It wasn’t like Amanda should care. Or cared at all. Though, it was weird having one third of the only people she knew on the cruiser mad at her.

With sigh, she followed the blue team. Not that she meant to, the elevators were just that way. As she walked, she caught more of their conversation across the corridors. Sound carried marvelously inside the metal bowels of the Dragon. “…You’ve talked about nothing but him for the past two days…” Diana was saying, with annoyance. Who were they talking again? Andrew? Who was that? She felt like she should recognize the name, but she was as interested in guys as she was in diving into a tank of piranhas. Actually, diving into a tank of piranhas sounded kind of fun…

“He was just so… Perfect! He looked like one of those Greek statues, I swear!” Hannah continued.

Amanda decided she had heard enough of that wonderful and interesting conversation. Before reaching the corridor of the elevators she waited and allowed the other girls to disappear before walking and calling for one. She wasn’t going to any of the decks today.

The elevator went down, and for the second time since the travel started, she found the doors opening up to the ship’s hangar. She didn’t need to look far to find the Shooting Stars and the Shiny Rod. She stared at the white broom, covered with a giant black cloth to stop anyone from accidentally touching it. She frowned at it.

“Why do you take away my memories?” She asked. As expected, there was no answer. She had a lot of questions that she knew wouldn’t get answers anytime soon. How does it refuel? How does it keep to the air? What’s with the crazy security system, how does it detect who touches it? Why did it choose Akko?

And, maybe more importantly, how come I become such a good gunman inside the turret?

Again, she climbed on it. During the past two days, after recovering from her magic-sickness, she found herself wanting… No, needing to come again. She just hadn’t found the chance, with the party, and then with the extra day of exploration she had planned with Jasminka and Constanze. They had found nothing interesting for the second time in a row, sadly. Still, the ship was so massive, there had to be something interesting out there. And then she had gone to the pool with her team and the red one. The blue team had gone to the pool three days on a row now. Hannah really seemed to love it, though now Amanda considered that maybe she was just obsessed with this Andrew guy.

Finally, this morning, she had resolved to come. Seeking answers from a source she knew wouldn’t give them to her. Yep, she was that smart. Tomorrow they’d be arriving at the new planet, and the first one to officially be a part of the IPR race. They’d be practicing every day of a whole week. They hadn’t been informed which planet would it be, as to not let any race have unjust advantages. Except the planet residents, of course. Curiously enough, the win-ratio on home planets was very low across the entire Planetary Alliance. Some called it the home-race curse. The only ones who hadn’t ever suffered from that curse in the race were the Shapeshifters, since their planet was too hostile for most other creatures in the alliance. Amanda had seen a few images of it, but they were too dark to see anything.