[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/NYrpWli.png[/img]
[@Plank Sinatra][@Write][@FlitterFaux][/center]

At the risk of bringing up a certain painful memory, I would describe the walk you make towards an airship on the day of missions to be similar to having a live current running through your nerves. Fatigue and grogginess were distant concepts that lurched to the recesses of the mind. With the airship idling on the tarmac, the noise alone and slight yet growing disturbance of air would rouse anybody to full consciousness.

Adding the atmosphere of a rough unknown requiring "heavy" equipment and another team that was ready and waiting to go into what was definitely battle, and possibly war...

Well, that'd be overkill even for the me that was inevitably crashing and burning once this was all said and done.

As we drew upon the aircraft and the team that had made themselves at home on a few supply crates outside it, we were met with four very different gazes from four very different women.

The first that immediately stood out to me was the girl whose leg room would probably be large enough to encroach upon the seat opposite if she wasn't careful. If I had thought Beryl, Skye, or any of the women I knew who eclipsed me in height were tall, she was a scale beyond even them. She had healthily tanned skin, robust yet charming features, and her eyes were playful, blue, and focused squarely on our stoic leader.

The next was a similarly cheery and invested young woman with hair of dark blue or purple. It was hard to tell in the lighting, but what was easy was that she seemed even more ready to get along than her towering teammate. I could spot a particular excitement in those red eyes that were drawn not just to Jericho, but flitted between the two bags at his sides— maybe a gun nut. They did tell him to go "heavy".

Third was immediately familiar, and the posture and poise in her immediate greeting of our team was exactly the same as it was nearly a week's time before, when she'd drawn up to my and Bianca's ragged selves just post-healing process to hand off cruise tickets. She was an apathetic sort from what I remembered, similar to Jericho or maybe Gratia, but from her cold appraisal's indication she didn't recognize either of us from that excursion half as well as I had her. Fair enough. It was just an errand for her team, after all. I had someone else to thank. I remembered that much, but couldn't place the name, which elicited more of a grimace than any of her harsh tones towards Jericho could during her staredown with him. I had to jog my noggin and get that straightened out before this was over...

And then my eyes met with the last. The only one looking at me.

It must have made for such a horrible first impression, didn't it?

Her features were fine and delicate, and set into a pensive frown that I wasn't quite sure how to read, but felt like it suited her. It carried a vaguely dissatisfied air, the sharp lines in her cheeks and nose coalescing into the expression naturally. Her hair was long and red, ending in curls, and her bangs concealed one eye from view. But the eye I did see was definitely staring straight into mine. It was a sharp and searching ruby that seemed to expect something of me. Did this pretty girl know me? I racked my brain, but was sure I hadn't done anything to, or even met her before...

I usually remember the faces of the people I've met at this school. But no matter which way I looked at hers—

[color=9e0b0f]"Your moron has a knight's instincts. I'll trade you for mine when we're deploying."[/color]

[b]"Hn?"[/b]

The spell was broken by Jericho's ever-level tone presenting an immediately pressing matter.

I looked over to Bianca as she turned her equally nonplussed pools of cyan towards me.

Was I the moron, or was she?

I'm a bit of a dunce a lot of times, and Jericho was well aware by now that I was a near-washout with grades that stood on the knife's edge. But to my credit, he did seem to believe I was at least kind of a reliable guy.

Whether I agreed didn't matter. All I could do was offer the angel beside me a quick shrug before we blinked and faced front again.

[color=39b54a]"I'll make that trade,"[/color] the leader of team Vivacious frostily intoned. [color=39b54a]"Whatever happens to her on your watch, I'll revisit on yours tenfold."[/color]

Jericho's gaze drifted back to the gorgeous young Faunus on his left. With her wide cyan eyes, porcelain smile, and her wings, she may as well have been an angel.

[color=9e0b0f]"I'll make that trade,"[/color] the leader of team Jumpercables echoed.

Oh. Cool, not me!

...

Sorry, Bianca.

[hr]
As it stood, no matter how smoothly they flew, a combat airship was a combat airship, and combat airships have space on premium. It would have been conceited of me to expect a seat and elbow room with two teams aboard. That was fine, though. An inconvenience that minor was nothing I'd ever raise a ruckus about, and it didn't matter enough to mention in anything more than passing. I had experienced it enough through last week alone.

The only reason I even brought it up was because it resulted in a very specific seating arrangement.

A shock of red you'd have to be blind to miss appeared in my peripherals as I felt a light shift in the seat beside me, now carrying a passenger.

[color=ed1c24]"[i]Bonsoir.[/i]"[/color] murmured the young woman from before, her voice low and dark. I was honestly a little surprised to have heard it in the first place. But I wasn't complaining either.

[b]"こんばんは。"[/b] I replied evenly, returning the red-haired girl the favor of a greeting in one's native language. Luckily for me I knew enough Central Mistralian to avoid a goof on the associated timing— "Good evening". I tilted my head to look at her once again. She still appeared to simmer, but it might have no longer been directed towards me. 

Huh. I thought it was just the lighting before, but there actually were streaks of black highlight in that wavy red curtain of hair.

[b]"Not much of a morning person?"[/b] I ventured.