By the time Claire and Maya arrived, Sion had managed to help Israfil get Orpheus to stop spinning.

"Not bad, Claire Rivers," Maya said, offering encouragement.  "Now we'll start out with simple propulsion training.  As each cockpit is designed to best suit your own unique ideal control style, I can't teach all of you how to control your cogs.  Most of you will have some sort of throttle lever, or maybe a foot pedal.  The only real pointer I can give is to use your intuition.  Do what you 'think' will make your cog move in the direction you want, and it should go."

"Maybe you should have told them that before asking them to brake," Sion said.  Despite the seeming seriousness of his voice, this was probably the closest thing to jovial banter anyone had heard from him.

"Heh, you're probably right," Maya chuckled, "Braking follows the same principle.  In fact, the same principle of intuition applies to pretty much all aspects of controlling your cogs, the main point is to get used to it, and let the cog guide you.  So try moving around."

The ensigns started moving their cogs around.  Israfil and Tera took it slow, Solomon on the other hand, was attempting challenging aerial maneuvers and doing a decent job at it.  He actually started flying an orbit around Orpheus, which was a slow cog by design.  "So, Ensign Eihon was it?" Solomon asked, "I'm Lear.  Solomon Lear, looks like we'll be comrades from here on out."

"Solomon?" Israfil asked with a bit of incredulity, "M-my name is Israfil...i-it's nice to meet you..." Israfil still remembered with terror Solomon's ability to control other peoples' bodies, yet the Ascended came off much friendlier than he expected.  He thought about how nice Mike was too, and blamed himself for jumping to conclusions.  Not all Ascendeds were bad, maybe Solomon just had a bad day.