Chapter 44 #3
A man who couldn’t have been more than mid-thirties rode a hover lift up to the walkway level.
He remained on his lift while leaning against the railing, hovering so we were both at eye level.
His swept back dark teal hair was secured by a black head band, keeping it out of his eyes, while his black roots and his dark stubble had me questioning if it was a natural or altered coloring.
His eyes were an unusual shade of amber ringed in violet, and all of these contradictions of color made it impossible to place his origin planet.
His black and purple coveralls were styled with the same swirls and stars as our uniforms, though various grease splotches obscured the Mictlan logo on his arms and chest.
He wiped a blackened hand on his pants, then extended it over the rail for a handshake. I made the mistake of obliging, and he shook my whole arm in a way that was both rough and lasted several seconds too long to not be weird.
“Conrad Reinhardt,” he stated plainly. His voice was deep yet upbeat, a perfect meld of his rugged yet still youthful features.
“Vann Callan.” I went about the usual song and dance of introductions.
“You’re smaller than most the women I roll with,” he added with a smirk, and that had me taken aback enough that I jerked back and retrieved my hand.
“I-I’m not—” Feeling extra insecure after the morning’s events, I stumbled over my words, not properly forming any comprehensible thoughts. Please don’t tell me those weird colored eyes are mechanical.
“Don’t be rude, Conrad.” Kitagawa chastised the mechanic, while looking rather frazzled by the awkwardness of this interaction. “This is our newest pilot. He’ll be working with this machine for the foreseeable future, so I thought who better to train him than you?”
He scrunched his nose, looking back at the metal behemoth, then again at me. “This little kid made the top 1000? Who approved that?”
Glancing between the two men, they looked to be having some sort of silent conversation that the rest of the room wasn’t privy to, and as the only person in this ‘rest of the room’ section, it was fairly obnoxious.
“I did. And General Takeyama did. I feel confident he’ll be able to handle it,” Kitagawa said aloud, while there was still an unspoken tension.
He turned to me, with a jovial shift in his body language.
“Conrad is our best mechanic. It will be a privilege to have a Shinka he’s personally worked on. Isn’t that right, Conrad?”
Kitagawa spoke to Conrad like a parent trying to steer a child, while the child was actually a full grown man who needed and wanted no steering.
Conrad snorted and shook his head. “Whatever you say, Kit. But consider this your fair warning that if something goes wrong, it’s not on me. I don’t need to get hit with another formal reprimand this early in the week.”
Well, that was reassuring.
“I’m sure there will be plenty of other reasons to issue a formal reprimand in the future, but I can wait until the end of the week when you’re more in the mood.
” Kitagawa side-eyed his colleague with unexpectedly casual teasing.
They came off as old friends catching up, rather than soldiers executing orders.
“But until then, I truly think he’ll impress you.
” Kitagawa patted me on the back, as though I was prized livestock.
Not the first time I felt like livestock in this nation though, so at least this time I was being sold into something cool.
Conrad raised a brow in my general direction. “My current expectations are lower than Saturn’s core, so it would take a lot to be disappointing.” Blunt and rude? What more could I ask for in a mechanic?
“Excellent.” What part of that was excellent, exactly?
“Vann, you’ll be free from your normal obligations for the rest of the day.
Please take the time to get acquainted with your new unit in the training arena.
Conrad will be your official Spotter during your training, and he’ll be working with you one-on-one to get you up to speed and assure your safety as you better learn to sync. ”
Wait, what?
“What?” Conrad’s eye twitched, equally taken aback by that.
“Since when have I ever agreed to do Spotter duty? I specifically got a job as a mechanic so I wouldn’t have to deal with…
” He looked me up and down and scrunched his nose, before he returned his gaze to my professor.
“People.” He said, to finish his sentence as politically correct as possible, apparently.
Oh joy. A new arrogant man to add to my day. I didn’t have enough of those yet.
It was constantly surprising how far expectations versus reality truly were from each other, when I compared my idealized image of what going to Astaroth Academy would look like versus the unending barrage of egos that it actually was.
“Who has a keener eye than you, Conrad?” Kitagawa smiled broadly, and there was definitely a lot going unsaid between both parties right now.
He turned to me again. “Now then, I’d best be going.
I still have classes to teach, but I hope you two will get along well.
Good luck, Vann Callan. We expect big things from you.
” With that, he turned on his heel and headed down the endless walkways of the hangar, leaving me with this not very enthusiastic mechanic.
We both stared at each other for an extended moment, before I opened my mouth to speak, and he cut me off at the same time.
“By the fucking stars, where’d they find you?
” His hover platform stopped at the unloading bay, and he hopped off onto to the walkway.
He approached me from what was now a notably superior height, just like everyone else.
I didn’t know how I’d ever convinced myself that five-and-a-half feet might count as average instead of comically short here. Bring back stronger gravity, please.
“On Protectorate—”
“The question was rhetorical, dumbass,” he interrupted. So there ARE men worse than Elio out there. “I don’t care where you’re from. I just care what you’re made of, and you don’t look like you’re made of much of anything.”
“If you’d like to get technical about it, I’m made of the same composite materials as you.” No point in talking to him like my superior. That ship sailed about four seconds into meeting him.
“The alchemist who put you together must have been running out of the good shit then.” He put a hand atop my head, just to emphasize the differences in our height.
Seriously, this is the only place in the universe where I count as short.
I was above average among the women on 005, and I have, IN FACT, met men who were shorter than me.
Some were even right here at the Academy.
But I couldn’t say any of that out loud, so I settled on letting him talk, and just thinking to myself how much I hate everything.
“The good news is that Shinkas don’t care how miniature you are,” cool, thanks, “But the bad news is that Shinka’s don’t bond with just anyone. I don’t know why they’d pick a kitten to run with a lion.”
“I’m a lot stronger than I look.” I reassured a skeptical Conrad, and he put his hands on his hips and sighed in response.
“I guess we’re about to test that, eh?” His smile was almost easy as he turned to face the machine. “I suggest you impress me if you want to keep this ride. Now go get changed. It’s time for your first lesson.”