Sigma/Star

Chapter 55: Assignment

Porter groggily opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling of his room. His body ached all over, muscles groaning and begging him to return to sleep. He would have complied were there not an important meeting today for the members of the Crisis Rescue Unit. And so he managed to roll over and topple out of his bed to the floor, satisfied that falling from the bed constituted "getting up."

It had been a week since the Gremlins had struck the academy, leaving the school scrambling to improve its external defense systems to prevent such an attack from occurring again. Chase, Ardwen, and Porter had all been hospitalized after the event, and treated with the most advanced rapid healing techniques they had. Most of that had meant going into vats and being suspended in liquid, with tubes down their throats, something that always bothered Porter immensely but he could never place why.

Chase had taken the longest to recover, getting released just yesterday from the nursing ward. He still was having troubles with his ribs and his wrists were bound and bandaged but he was cleared to operate a Goliath. As soon as that had happened, Mr. Shotuku had called for the meeting to take place. So Porter was now standing in his room, putting on his uniform to go out.

Once Porter had been freed from the medical vats, Shotuku had resumed snatching Porter from his daily routine and dragging him off to secret training sessions. It was why Porter was in pain every morning when he woke up. But he was certainly feeling a lot stronger and more confident in his driving skills. Training did pay off in the end, even if he hadn't had a chance to pilot the White Storm since the training began. He just wished it wasn't so painful.

The pilot stumbled down to Mr. Shotuku's classroom and slipped past the sliding door. All of them had been excused from their classes for the day for such an event, meaning something big was going down on Earth and they were going to be a part of it (or Mr. Shotuku just wanted to give out a mass punishment to them all for not doing a better job of defeating the Gremlins).

Porter came in to find most everyone else already waiting. Chase was sitting next to Nami, the two of them quietly holding hands in the corner. Both of them had been far less talkative since the attack, sharing in the experience they had undergone. Chase had been the only person to face a Gremlin single-handedly, without a weapon, and had subsequently taken the largest beating but it was one of his only accomplishments that everyone else in the group actually respected him for, yet the only one he wasn't actively boasting about.

Gretta was near Ardwen, the two of them going around a large object taking up one corner of the room that was covered in a large white sheet. The two of them had disappeared to work on some sort of secret project for much of the week though the rumour was it was a dating cover up. Porter had never been interested in involving himself in the gossip mill of the academy and so he was out of that loop and didn't care to be in it. What mattered was that none of the Goliaths had been damaged when the pair had been in the hangar and Ardwen had returned to being the leader of the squad.

Riya was sitting at the front, looking over at Porter with a small smile on her face. The two of them had not had a chance to really see each other much since that night at the dance and thus had never solidified the feelings they had admitted to. Porter had been busy training in his spare time and Riya had returned to being the shy girl amidst popular friends. It was depressing that Porter just couldn't catch a break with the girl he loved but maybe now he might finally have a chance to talk to her.

"Uhm Riya...I....hey."

Riya slowly tilted her head to look up at him, a little crack near the bottom of her face forming, a small smile. It was weak and shy and soft and tiny but it was a smile. It was all she did though as Raul hurried into the class, brushing past Porter as he scrambled for a seat.