[center][h1][color=c0c0c0]Sirius Leverant[/color][/h1][/center]

[indent]The shrill chime of the academy's PA system shook Sirius from his inattentive trance, and it was as close to a mercy as he could receive on this godforsaken station. He had imagined an allegedly prestigious university such as Taiyotawa would have been, at the very least, worthy of his time. But in the month since his on-boarding, the youth had been subjected to the menial busywork one expected of a secondary school student. On what miserable world would writing an essay on [i]Isao fucking Taiyotawa[/i] make somebody a more suitable pilot? He was just another colonist in an era of colonialism. Probably never set foot in the cockpit of an ICW. The indignity of it was infuriating, and Sirius could only imagine that was the [i]point[/i]. The esteem with which the rest of the Confederacy held this school was just a sop to an otherwise inglorious exile. Ruminating on it all just caused fury to roil up in his throat like bile, and it fueled Sirius' hasty exit from the classroom, muscling his way through what few students dared to cross paths with him. 

What spurned his break from academic drivel certainly didn't promise to alleviate his frustration either. The finest pilot school in the whole of the Confederacy and they couldn't even manage to serve solid food to their cadets. It was sold to the student body as a health service, to ensure they received the optimum nutrition to keep themselves in top form. Sirius knew better than that. He could spot a cost-saving measure when he saw one. It was to be expected, though: the Confederacy was little more than a collection of hanger-ons and grifters, clinging to the coattails of a few prominent planets. Any joint endeavor by its constituent worlds was bound to cut corners wherever possible. This knowledge did not make stomaching the slop they dispensed to the student body any more tolerable.

It was all just another trial to preserve through. He would do it just as he had with all others. Receiving his daily share in spite of the crowds was of no great difficulty—he was head taller than the majority of his peers, and had taken care to remind them that if they did not make way for him when he willed it, he would [i]make[/i] them make way. It was perhaps this reputation for black moods that ensured his ability to find an empty table once his tray was full of the ill-considered paste. That suited him just fine. Solitude allowed him to decompress from the frustrations of the day without the inane chittering of his so-called peers. As he settled in, the teen reached into his belongings and produced a small, vacuumed sealed bag. The hiss it produced as he tore away the edge with his canines was like music to his ears, and in lieu of a mouthful of chemically-enriched sludge, he treated himself to the bite of contraband aurochs jerky.

It was pathetic that something so essentially human as the consumption of meat managed to soften his mood, but deprivation bred fondness, and he had already fished another piece from the bag as he laid out his datapad and tapped away upon the holographic interface. For all the ire he had towards the food served, the free time lunch intermission gave him at least had some value. It gave him enough time to check up on basquash scores, a small consolation for being unable to watch the matches directly.

What little goodwill the flesh of the humble steer had managed to provide him disappeared almost instantly as he navigated his way through the holonet. His expression darkened visibly, and he had to fight the urge to swear out loud as the results displayed before him.

[i]97-124[/i]?! How did anybody manage to lose [i]that[/i] badly?![/indent]