“Happy Birthday!!”

Kestrel stopped in her tracks, her expression stoically blank as she looked down at Pierce and Phoenix, both of whom had just jumped up from their seats to offer the aforementioned birthday well-wishings. After a moment of silence, however — with Pierce and Phoenix still grinning at Kestrel — she merely turned around to look behind her.

“Hey, c’mon, it’s your birthday,” Conrad insisted, and then nodded through the doorway and into his dorm room — the room where Pierce and Phoenix were currently standing. “We’re not just going to do nothing.”

“…Mm…” Kestrel grunted in response and finally moved into the room, with Conrad entering after her and closing the door behind him. As he did, Pierce and Phoenix both relaxed back into their chairs, with Pierce shrugging his shoulders in resignation.

“I told you she wouldn’t like the attention,” he commented, his gaze directed toward Conrad. He then looked back to Kestrel as he adopted a sheepish smirk. “But, hey, Conrad’s kinda right, too. It’s your 21st! You should celebrate!”

Kestrel merely passed Pierce a glance before wordlessly taking a seat across the room from him, on Conrad’s bed.

“…She’s sticking around, at least,” Phoenix muttered under her breath, just loudly enough for Pierce to hear.

“Is that a good thing?” Pierce questioned, keeping his voice similarly low. “You and Conrad can read her better than I can. As far as I can tell, this just got hella awkward.”

“Hmph. And you wonder why you have problems with women.”

“Wha—? What the hell does that have to do with this? As if you’re any better with men, anyways—”

“Ahem,” Conrad loudly cleared his throat, though pointedly ignored Pierce and Phoenix as he approached a cabinet on the side of his room. While opening it and rummaging around inside, he announced, “Kestrel, I know you don’t like big parties or lots of attention or anything — I mean, I don’t, either — but I still figured we could do something for your birthday. Yours is the first of all of ours to happen while we’re away from Earth, after all.”

“And it is your 21st,” Pierce remarked, holding up a translucent golden bottle as he did. “We all know what that means!”

“Don’t like alcohol,” Kestrel asserted.

“…Well, more for me, then,” Pierce replied with a shrug as he opened the bottle and began pouring into a small cup to his side.

“Really? It’s still mid-afternoon,” Phoenix remarked incredulously. “Are you really drinking already?”

“Well, I would offer you some, but it’s still a few months too early for that, isn’t it?” Pierce retorted.

“You’re less than a year older than me, you smartass. Give me that bottle.”

“…Hah…” Conrad sighed in resignation as he watched the two vie for control of the bottle. He then glanced over at Kestrel, noting that she was watching Pierce and Phoenix’s antics as well, though with her signature blank expression. After a moment, however, she noticed that Conrad was looking at her.

“It’s fine,” Kestrel stated.

“Alright, then…” Conrad replied. He knew Kestrel well; she didn’t mince words, so if she said that something was fine, then she truly did think it was fine. On top of that… Conrad mused, his attention shifting back to Phoenix as she took a shot and attempted to grab the bottle back from Pierce to pour another. We DID lose our qualifying match just earlier today. If a little beer and a birthday celebration is enough to get Pierce and Phoenix’s minds off of that, then it’s all good, I suppose. Still, though… “Uh, Phoenix?” he spoke up, drawing both her and Pierce’s attention. “Remember the thing?”

“Remember what…? Oh! Right!” Phoenix quickly placed her cup on a nearby drawer and shot up from her chair, a pleased grin on her face as she stepped over to the cabinet Conrad was standing in front of. “Can’t believe I almost forgot! Kestrel, we have something for you!”

Kestrel watched cluelessly as Phoenix grabbed a bag out of the cabinet.

“Oh, is this what the two of you went out for last night?” Pierce questioned.

“Yeah… I wanted to get something, but I needed Phoenix’s help,” Conrad replied, watching as Phoenix approached Kestrel and presented the bag to her. “She knows a lot more about this stuff than I do.”

Kestrel wordlessly accepted the bag, placing it in her lap and staring at it for a second before passing Phoenix a glance.

“Go on, see what’s inside!” Phoenix urged, “I’m sure you’ll like it!”

At Phoenix’s prompting, Kestrel tentatively opened the bag and peered inside. She then reached her hand inside and pulled out some sort of white and light gray cloth; after pulling it fully out of the bag, she held it up in the air, revealing a large, soft, light gray piece of clothing with conservative white designs along the fringes.

“It’s a shawl!” Phoenix remarked. “Specifically, a summer shawl — one made to handle the summers here in Treséd! See, feel it.” She stepped up to hold a piece of the fabric between her fingers and gingerly rub it. “Long, firm, and solid enough to protect your arms and torso from the sun — yet light and soft enough to breath, and not get in the way of your movements. The light colors help reflect light instead of absorb it, but I made sure to get white and light gray specifically, with subdued designs — I know you like those.”

“I don’t know too much about fashion, myself… I mean, look at me,” Conrad commented sheepishly as he gestured at the plain t-shirt and shorts he was wearing. “But I thought a shawl might be something you’d like, Kestrel.”

“So then you grabbed Phoenix and had her do all the work of actually picking it out, huh?” Pierce questioned with a smirk.

“Oh, shush, I enjoyed it,” Phoenix retorted, and then turned back to Kestrel. “Well? What do you think?”

After a second of contemplative silence, Kestrel firmly grasped the shawl and draped it around her shoulders. She then spent a few moments adjusting it, before holding her arms out to the side, showing off the article as it draped over her chest and arms, and even covered part of her lap. A few stretches with her arms followed, at which point she turned toward Phoenix and offered a firm nod and a single word: “Thanks.”

“Ooooh! No, thank you!” Phoenix practically squealed as she jumped forward to envelope Kestrel in a tight hug. “Thanks so much for indulging my fashion urges, Kestrel! Even though at this point, you’re not the one who needs it…”

“Hey, I manage my own fashion just fine,” Pierce shot back.

“Well, what can I say? This ‘fashion’ stuff takes effort,” Conrad commented with a shrug. “Still, Kestrel, I’m glad you like it. Hope it was worth having to sit through more of Pierce and Phoenix’s ‘banter’.”

Kestrel passed Conrad a blank look before glancing to the side. “…Heh.”

“Okay, even I can tell that was a laugh,” Pierce interjected. “Figures it’s only when Conrad takes a shot at me and Phoenix.”

“One of us certainly deserves it,” Phoenix retorted. “You take shots at us all the time, anyways.”

“Maybe if you didn’t make it so easy, I wouldn’t.”

“I really hope you understand the irony of what you just said.”

“Heh…” Conrad chuckled to himself as he took a seat on his bed next to Kestrel. “They never change, huh?”

“Mm…” Kestrel grunted in response, her attention primarily on Pierce and Phoenix as they continued to poke fun at each other. “…Thanks,” she added quietly.

Conrad passed her a brief glance before turning back to Pierce and Phoenix himself, a satisfied smile upon his face. “…No problem.”

---

*

“Wait, what? No!!”

“Ha! And that’s a win for me.”

“Oh, c’mon!” Austin scowled as he tossed the game controller onto the floor in front of him. “I hit the button to tech, it’s not my fault the game didn’t recognize that. Should’ve been able to last longer…”

“Typical Austin,” Sky retorted from her position laying on the ground next to Spike, who himself was sitting next to Austin. “Losses are never actually your fault, huh?”

“Well, I mean…”

“Ah, give ‘im a break,” Spike insisted, leaning back as he glanced to the left at his girlfriend, and then to the right, at Austin. “That was a fun match, though.”

“’Course you’d say that, now that you’re two wins ahead of me,” Austin grumbled.

“And I haven’t yet won at all, but you don’t see me complaining,” Sky interjected.

A moment of silence followed as Austin simply stared at Sky, only for him to sigh and divert his gaze a second later. “Yeah, yeah… you’re right. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Spike declared. “These’re just some friendly matches, after all.”

“Matches that would be even more fun if we had four players,” Sky remarked, at which point she peered across Austin’s bedroom at Twy, who was sitting away from the others with her back against Austin’s bed. “C’mon, sis! Play with us!”

“Hmm?” Twy looked up from her sketchpad for a moment, only to return her attention to her pad, with her brow furrowed in concentration. “…No thanks. Not right now…”

“Still thinkin’ about the qualifiers?” Spike questioned.

A lofty sigh escaped Twy’s lips. “…Among other things,” she replied.

“Well, we did lose…” Austin muttered, and then shrugged. “But, hey, at least there’s next year, right?”

“True…” Spike nodded, and then scooted away from Austin’s small gaming setup to turn himself toward the entire room, such that he could see Sky, Twy, and Austin without having to crane his neck. “Now that it’s been a few hours, though, and folks’ve cooled down,” he said, “I think we should go over our match. See what we could do better.”

“Oooh, good idea!” Sky replied, quickly moving over to Spike and plopping down in his lap before he had a chance to stop her. His hands reflexively moved to grasp her shoulders, but just before he made physical contact he stopped himself and planted his hands on the floor on either side of him. Sky seemingly failed to notice this — as well as the look of mild annoyance Spike passed her — as she questioned aloud, “…where did we go wrong?”

“Hard to say,” Austin replied, moving to take a seat at his desk chair as he did. “Kaoné schooled us pretty hard. I don’t really think it was fair to put us against her, like, how could we have possibly beaten her? She controls fucking matter!”

“We didn’t have to beat her to qualify,” Twy pointed out. “Several teams have qualified against Davídrius, but none of them actually beat him in a fight.”

Spike nodded. “Yeah. The teachers don’t expect you to win, they just expect you to not be shit.”

“We aren’t shit,” Austin protested.

“Sorry, but we kinda are,” Spike replied with a bitter smile. “Maybe one-on-one, we’re each okay, but as a team? We could use a lotta work. As is, we only actually practiced as a team once — and that was yesterday.”

“We’ve worked as a team before, though. Like both of the times we fought EA, or during the infection outbreak in Relédiaka!”

“I’m still surprised any of that worked out, personally,” Twy said. “I really feel like we had no business making it through those encounters…”

“We still won, though, didn’t we?” Austin insisted.

“Well, more like a win, a loss, and a draw,” Spike countered. “Remember, when we fought EA in that wasp mech on his Cruiser, the Eximius Vir had to save us. If not for that, we woulda lost.”

“And we didn’t ‘win’ against the infection outbreak, so much as survived,” Twy pointed out. “We all still have a long way to go…”

“Funny that it’s you saying that,” Sky remarked. “Aren’t you the one who stood up to a Chaos State Chaotic?”

Twy paused and passed her sister a wary glance. “…Still,” she eventually continued, “even then… I could barely hold my own. If not for Dean Yumach’s Chaos Heal, and Nimalian medical technology, I’d still be recovering from a dozen broken bones and bruises all over. And if Phoenix and Kestrel hadn’t shown up, I probably wouldn’t even be around, anymore…”

“Yeah, but you did survive,” Austin pointed out. “Against a Chaos State Chaotic, no less! Might’ve only been the first tier, sure, but still, you should give yourself more credit!”

Twy passed Austin an uneasy glance, only to then force a smile. “Yeah… I guess.”

“Either way, I think this shows that Twy ain’t the weak link of our team,” Spike declared, “though I bet we all knew that, already.”

“She is the one who came up with our smoke screen combo move!” Sky stated.

“It’s a pretty basic idea, really…” Twy responded. “Nothing special…”

“Maybe, but it works!”

“I wish I had a combo move with someone…” Austin grumbled.

“’Combo moves’ ain’t what we should be focusin’ on,” Spike refuted. “We needa work on general teamwork, first. Then we can get to the fancy stuff.”

“Oh yeah? Like what? What general teamwork do we need to work on?”

“Battlefield awareness. You and Sky especially needa work on this. Half my energy in the match today was spent on stayin’ outta the way of y’all’s wild attacks!”

“Ah ha ha…” Sky laughed sheepishly. “I guess I do get a little carried away with the fire, huh?”

“I was tryin’ not to hit y’all, anyways,” Austin insisted, and then diverted his gaze. “It’s just… this Imperator stuff is hard to do, and takes a lot of focus…”

“You’re making progress, at least,” Twy pointed out. “You did manage to move your sword through the air and make a few purposeful swings with it.”

“Yeah, normally you just kinda lob shit through the air,” Sky remarked. “I guess being able to swing the sword with your mind is progress from that, huh? Though you looked kinda silly doing it! Do you really need to wave your arms all weird-like when you use those Imperator powers?”

“Like I said, it’s hard,” Austin replied. “When I use my Imperator ability on something, and move that thing through the air, it’s like… it’s like I’m controlling the object as though it’s my own body, which means I end up moving my actual body, too.”

“Doesn’t explain how you can use that power to fly…” Spike commented.

“It ain’t a perfect analogy. Maybe a better way to think about it is like a marionette. You can’t really move the marionette without movin’ your hand, right? Well, my Imperator ability is kinda like that. Supposedly, you can train yourself to use Imperator powers without moving your body along with the object you’re controlling, but, uh… I’m not there yet.”

“That’s step one, then. Can’t work on teamwork if you don’t have a good grasp of your own abilities.”

Austin’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry…”

“Whoa, hey, man, I’m not tryin’ to insult you,” Spike quickly replied. “Far as I can tell, those two powers you got sound way harder to control and train for than the rest of us. Harder to control than anything Pierce, Phoenix, Conrad, or Kestrel have, too. Stands to reason you’d be havin’ a harder time than the rest of us.”

“…I guess…”

“There was that one instructor who’s also an Imperator Psychotechnic,” Twy commented. “Ralak, right? Have you tried asking her for more help?”

“Uh, well… not really…”

“Sounds like a good place to start, then!” Sky exclaimed cheekily.

“Now don’t you get ahead of yourself,” Spike admonished. “You needa train yourself, too. Rein in those fuckin’ firestorms and fireballs, alright? You almost incinerated me today!”

“Ah, you’d’ve been fine. You’re super durable, right? You’d’ve been fine!”

“I’d rather not test that in the middle of a match.”

“…Fair. But, c’mon! I can control fire! What fun is that if I can’t make a big show out of it?!”

“What looks the coolest isn’t always the most effective,” Twy pointed out. “In fact, it rarely is.”

“Aw, not you, too, sis,” Sky pouted.

“Look, Spike is right. Kaoné even said as much after the fight. In fact, I remember Dean Tyrion telling you the same way back when we first arrived on Nimalia — and that was well over a month ago!”

“Alright, alright, I get it… I’ll practice restraint, or whatever…”

“Well, at least there isn’t a singular weak link in our group, huh?” Austin remarked with an uneasy chuckle.

“That’s not really a good way to look at it…” Twy responded.

“Let’s not dwell on it negatively, anyways,” Spike insisted. “We’re still new, it’s expected that we got a lot to learn. Just gotta keep practicin’ to get better, like all things. And if either of y’all want help doin’ so, Sky, Austin, feel free to hit me up. I’d be glad to help. You too, Twy.”

“What, are we really assuming that you and sis did perfectly?!” Sky questioned incredulously.

“No one’s perfect,” Austin said, “…but you can’t really doubt they’re way better than us. I, uh… well, I admit I was focusing a little too hard on controlling my sword to see what Spike or Twy were doin’ during the match… but every other time I’ve seen y’all in action, it looks like you have a pretty good handle on your abilities. Spike, you’ve done martial arts, so you already seem to know how to handle your strength, and how to use shields to block and stuff… and Twy, you’re gettin’ pretty good with that water control. Using it to fly around, to try and trap people… if we were up against Davídrius instead of Kaoné, I think the two of y’all might actually have won.”

“I’m really not that good…” Twy insisted.

“Yeah, ain’t no way either of us are actin’ fast enough to stop Davídrius,” Spike declared. “But thanks for the praise, Austin. The fact that you knew enough to say all that means you’re gettin’ better yourself, I think. Not to mention how you don’t complain after our physical trainin’ sessions anymore, ha!”

“Though there’s still room for improvement, for everyone here,” Twy stated.

“Yeah, well that’s obvious,” Sky retorted.

“I still think we have a decent shot at beating Davídrius, though,” Austin insisted. “With my Simulator powers, I can copy his speed, so I just have to hold him off long enough for one of y’all to lay a trap, or somethin’. It’s totally doable!”

“With a lot more trainin’, sure,” Spike replied with a smirk. “But don’t get ahead of yourself. You copy powers and abilities, but not experience, after all.”

“I guess…”

“It’s a good goal to shoot for, at least!” Sky declared. “It’s always good to have a goal, right?”

“It’ll take us quite some time to get there,” Twy said.

“We can change our goal later, for now, it’s fine,” Spike commented. “But I think we covered everythin’. Let’s all try to get some more trainin’ in!”

“Can it at least wait until after the break? I want to take advantage of an actual break, damn it!” Sky complained. “We’ve been so busy ever since we got here, after all!”

“We really have been…” Twy muttered. “Here’s hoping that things will settle down when the new term starts…”

“Well now you’ve gone and jinxed it,” Austin retorted. “Things’ll be even worse now!”

“Yeah, yeah, you always say that,” Sky replied with a roll of her eyes, only to then catapult herself out of Spike’s lap to reclaim her game controller and her spot in front of Austin’s gaming setup. “But that’s all stuff for future us to worry about! Let’s get back to the game!”

“Well, we do got the rest of the day to burn,” Austin remarked as he quickly took up his position alongside Spike, with the three of them starting up the game again — while Twy returned her attention to her sketchpad. “Alright, let’s go!” Austin whooped, “this time, I’m totally gonna kick y’all’s asses…!”