"Crap, crap, crap!"
Rowan Takeda bolted through the arched front gate of Avalon Naval Institute, his uniform half-fastened and his satchel bouncing wildly against his hip. Behind him—no, beside him—floated a woman wreathed in soft blue light, translucent and smug as hell.
"Why didn't you wake me?!" he barked between frantic breaths.
"I tried, Rowan," Lightning said, her voice like silken static. She giggled into her hand, pale fingers flickering like a projection. "But it's not my fault you stayed up all night drawing again. That one with the demon ninja girl and the battle nun? Inspired, really."
Rowan shot her a betrayed look, feet still pounding the marble path.
What he didn't know—what she didn't intend to tell him, at least not yet—was that he was actually half an hour early. Every clock, every alarm, even his synced wristwatch? All running precisely sixty minutes fast.
Lightning, the high-spec AI of the ICS Lightning, had simply refused to risk her brand-new Captain making a bad first impression.
Especially not on his first day.
The courtyard stretched wide and sun-washed ahead of him, but Rowan skidded to a stop.
A scream.
Sharp. Feminine. Ragged with either rage—or pain. Maybe both. It ripped across the plaza from the towering North Hall.
He jerked his head upward. Third floor. One window flung open, curtains flapping like panicked flags. Was someone hurt? Had something broken in?
Rowan's heart punched faster.
"Lightning!"
"Already on it," she said, her playful tone sharpened with sudden focus.
The strange black tattoos along his arms—sleek streaks shaped like stylized bolts—flared to life. In a flash of white-violet brilliance, they pulsed.
Reality bent.
A crackle of ozone and then—stairs. Translucent and solid, each one forging itself from hardened light a split second before his foot hit it.
He didn't hesitate.
Didn't ask if it was safe.
Didn't pause to consider if this was dumb.
He just leapt.
Rowan had only known Lightning for about a year. She was a brand-new shipframe—experimental, even—and she never stopped talking. But beneath the sass and scheming, he trusted her. Deeply. Instinctively. She was his partner.
As the hardlight stairs zipped him skyward like a sprinting god, Rowan realized something with a rush of awe and dread as he landed with a muffled thud and came to a frozen, awkward halt:
Welcome to Avalon Naval Institute. Where beautiful women become deadly weapons of war.
He landed with a muffled thud and came to a frozen, awkward halt.
Because he was not in a warzone.
Or a hostage situation.
Or any kind of emergency.
No. He was in a girl's dorm room.
And not just any girl.
She stood with her back to him, perfectly poised in the center of the room—wearing only a lacey black bra and underwear. Her long silver hair was drawn up into twin tails that hung like banners, swaying as she danced to some aggressively emotional German rock song blaring through her room's speakers.
And she was… gorgeous.
Lean. Toned. Dangerous. The exact girl from his dreams, but in real life.
Rowan didn't move. Didn't breathe. Oh, crap! I should not be here...
Then she turned.
And grey eyes—cold, sharp, royal—met his green ones.
For one beautiful, harrowing second, time held.
And then?
Then the panic began.
"WAAAAAH! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to—!" Rowan yelped, hands raised in surrender as he stumbled backward into a pile of neatly folded uniforms. "I heard someone scream! I thought someone was in trouble!"
The music cut off with a furious swipe of her hand. Silence fell.
Then—
"What are you doing in my room, you pervert?!"
Her voice cracked like thunder, and before Rowan could explain further, she shouted again—this time in blistering German:
"Scheiße!! Getzen vout!"
With a furious snarl and a sweep of her hand, hardlight flared to life—bright white edged with crimson. A dagger, elegantly cruel, burst into existence in her grip like it had been waiting for this exact moment.
"Lightning! Shield!" Rowan shrieked, diving behind a rising curve of solid light just as the first dagger slashed toward his throat.
"I told you not to take that shortcut through the courtyard!" Lightning shouted from above, circling like a ghostly blue drone. "Now look what you've done! You've walked in on an angry girl in the wild! We are so boned!"
"I didn't walk in! I crashed in!" Rowan shouted back, crouched behind his glowing shield as the next dagger struck it with a sharp crack. "Why is she so fast?!"
"Because," Lightning chirped unhelpfully, "that's the GNS Bismarck! Germany's finest dreadnought! You leapt into the room of a battleship, you idiot!"
"GET! OUT!" Bismarck screamed again, her silver twintails whipping around her face as she spun another dagger into being. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, but her form was impeccable. "You will die where you stand!"
Rowan didn't want to fight. He was a gentleman. He was a decent person! But right now, he was using every ounce of hardlight he had just to block her increasingly aggressive and precisely aimed attacks.
This wasn't a duel.
This was survival.
"I didn't even see anything important!" he protested, parrying another blow. "I swear I didn't look at the—uh—details!"
"I'll show you the details of my boot in your face!"
Lightning whistled from the corner of the ceiling.
"…You know, for your first day, this could've gone a lot worse."
"HOW?!" Rowan shouted.
"She hasn't actually stabbed you yet." Lightning chirped with a grin.
"Thank you very much, Lightning! You're a big help!" Rowan yelled, ducking as another hardlight dagger zipped past his ear.
"I am helping!" Lightning shouted from above. "You're still breathing, aren't you?!"
"Barely!" he cried.
Bismarck lunged again, clad in nothing but fury, lace, and patriotic indignation. Rowan raised another shield just in time—her dagger struck it with a clang like a bell announcing his impending death.
"Miss! Look—okay—just, please! I'm really sorry! I didn't mean to! I would very, very much like to stop looking but I can't do that if you keep trying to—eeek!—stab me!" Rowan shouted, hopping back with the grace of a cat on a hot stovetop.
"Creep! Pervert! Pestilenz!" Bismarck roared. "Just let me stab you! You're looking at me wide-eyed like some kind of—some kind of sexapoppet!"
"What?! No I'm not!" Rowan barked and scrambled under the a desk and put the other side as a dagger drove through the space where he been an instant before. "My eyes are wide because I'm trying not to die!"
"You're leering at me with your stupid heroic face and your messy red hair and your stupid green eyes all—shiny! Like I'm some fantasy from a dirty magazine!" She growled and rushed him, coming around to stab again. He pulled up another shield just in time to keep the blade from his eye.
"Wha—you're the one charging at me in your underwear! I wasn't prepared for this emotionally or tactically!"
"And now you'll die unprepared!" She created multiple blades ready to send a full salvo. Oh, Jesus! Can't dodge that!
"Lightning!" Rowan shouted as he scrambled back over her desk, scattering notebooks and a very expensive-looking mechanical pencil.
"On it!" she said, snapping her fingers in mid-air.
A light post exploded out of the ground beneath Bismarck's feet, tossing her back mid-lunge. She flipped through the air like a gymnast, landing with inhuman grace on the far side of the room—just in time for the door to slam open.
"What in the name of the Admiralty is going on in here?!" barked a crisp, commanding voice.
Rowan twisted around, halfway upside down, shield cracking with stress—and saw her.
Captain's overcoat. Black-and-gold trim. Twin sabers at her hip. Blonde hair wound tight into a bun that could deflect artillery. And eyes—cold and calculating—that looked like they had once cowed Parliament itself.
Ark Royal.
The headmistress of Avalon.
And she was not amused.
"Oh," Rowan mumbled, eyes wide. "Good. We've reached maximum humiliation."
-----
The air was cool and quiet in Ark Royal's office.
Mahogany bookshelves lined the walls. A sabre in a shadowbox gleamed behind her desk. Everything smelled faintly of oil, paper, and gunpowder—like memory and precision.
Rowan Takeda and the GNS Bismarck stood at parade rest side by side, backs straight, eyes forward. A single bead of sweat slid down Rowan's temple. Bismarck's jaw was locked tighter than her crossed arms. She was still pink around the ears.
Headmistress Ark Royal leaned forward slightly, interlaced fingers resting beneath her chin. The silence had drawn out just long enough to become dangerous.
Finally—
"So," she said, voice cool as an Arctic breeze, "let me get this straight…"
Her eyes flicked between them, amused and sharp.
"You heard a scream."
"Yes, ma'am," Rowan said.
"And instead of using the building's intercom or alert protocols, you—what was it? Oh yes—'launched yourself into the air like a ballistic missile?'"
"It was more like a tactical ascent, ma'am."
Lightning, hovering behind Rowan's left shoulder with smug detachment, let out a sound suspiciously like a snort.
Ark Royal's gaze shifted. "And you, Bismarck—when faced with an unknown intruder, you chose to summon weapons while wearing…" She paused, voice flat. "…lingerie with national significance."
"It was laundry day," Bismarck snapped before remembering where she was. Her spine straightened. "Ma'am."
A breath.
A blink.
And then—just the faintest curl of the headmistress's lips.
"Good Lord," Ark Royal murmured, almost to herself. "They're going to write sonnets about you two."
Ark Royal gave a long-suffering sigh and rested her chin on her knuckles.
"Well. It seems like a simple misunderstanding."
Her voice was clipped, professional—decisive in the way that only a woman with decades of war behind her could manage.
"No need to escalate this to formal punishment. You are both freshmen. I am willing to let this go."
Rowan exhaled, relief flooding his chest.
"Just obey protocol next time. The orientation packet is not decorative." She tapped a neatly stacked folder beside her blotter for emphasis. "This meeting is adjourned. Dismissed, Captains."
Without hesitation, Rowan stepped back, closed his right fist over his heart and bowed his head in salute.
"Ma'am. Thank you."
He turned to leave, already halfway out the door with Lightning giving a triumphant little pirouette over his shoulder.
But Bismarck didn't move.
Her posture remained rigid, eyes burning, mouth a tight line of noble fury. She stared straight ahead, refusing even the smallest gesture of compliance.
"Beg pardon, Herr Admiral."
Ark Royal blinked. Her title hadn't been spoken like that since the Gulf Crisis.
"…Yes, Bismarck?"
"I am not willing to let this insult slide."
Rowan froze mid-step.
"Excuse me?" Ark Royal asked, tone sharpened.
"I demand restitution," Bismarck said, silver eyes flashing as her hands curled into tight fists at her sides.
Ark Royal exhaled through her nose, closing her eyes for a beat.
"Will a formal apology suffice, Bismarck?"
"Nein."
"Then what do you suggest?"
Bismarck turned, locking her gaze on Rowan like she was preparing to sink a ship.
"I demand a duel."
"What?!" Rowan's voice cracked like dry kindling. "That's ridiculous!"
Bismarck didn't flinch. If anything, her chin rose higher, regal and unshaken.
Ark Royal, behind her desk, remained unreadable.
No raised brow. No sigh. No concern.
Only that same deadly professional cadence as she intoned:
"State your terms, Captain Bismarck."
The silver-haired war maiden answered like she was reading a death sentence she had written herself.
"If I win, he surrenders control of the Lightning to the first compatible female… and his stupid male face is never seen at this institute again."
Rowan's mouth fell open.
Lightning audibly gasped, flickering slightly like the sheer nerve had nearly shorted her.
"Excuse me?!" Rowan barked, turning toward Ark Royal. "Give up Lightning?! That's not a stake, that's fucking exile!"
"Language," the headmistress said, still not looking up.
"I didn't even see anything important! I wasn't trying to—!"
"Captain," Ark Royal interrupted, "she has the right to demand satisfaction."
She lifted a leather-bound manual and flipped with mechanical precision. "Article VII, Clause 14. Binding honor duels may be invoked in cases of personal offense. The stakes must be of equal consequence and must be accepted before review."
Rowan looked like he might throw up.
Lightning hovered beside him, whispering in his ear, "Don't say anything dumb. Think. Think hard. We can still argue jurisdiction—"
But he didn't hear her.
He was thinking.
About how he'd trained for this place. About how he'd bonded with Lightning not just by system sync but soul. About how much he had grown to want this. How he and Lightning were moving in sycnh like two halves of the same whole. How he'd dreamed—actually dreamed—of standing shoulder to shoulder with the best of the best, in a world where dudes normally never got the opportunity.
And now he was about to be kicked out because he'd walked into a half-dressed anger issue with tits at high velocity, trying to be a hero.
Fine. She wanted stupid? He'd give her stupid.
Rowan took a breath and stood straight, shoulders squared like he had the emotional maturity of a real admiral and not a sleep deprived art gremlin in a shiny uniform.
"If I win…"
He paused, just long enough for Bismarck's arms to cross. "…then GNS Bismarck agrees to go on one date with me…"
He saw her eyes narrow, victory-ready.
"…every week for our entire freshman year."
Silence. Total silence.
Even the ambient hum of Lightning's data loop hiccupped.
Rowan didn't stop.
"And—she changes her status to 'in a relationship' with me."
The silence somehow deepened.
Even Ark Royal blinked. Once.
Bismarck looked like her soul had just stubbed its toe.
"…You what?!" she exploded.
Rowan's face was already crimson, but he rounded on the silver haired she-devil. "You wanted honor stakes? That's my stake! Take it or back down!"
Bismarck sputtered, hands clenched like torpedoes. "You—you—I won't—I shouldn't—!" Then she stilled. " It doesn't matter, I am going to destroy you. I accept."
Ark Royal rang the brass bell on her desk.
"I hereby declare this duel registered. Terms recorded and agreed to. It will take place at 1600 hours this evening."
Rowan almost collapsed in place. What?! She was supposed to back down!
Lightning was whispering "what did you just do" like a mantra in his ear.
And Bismarck?
She looked like she'd swallowed a lit shell casing.
She hissed, her eyes like silver daggers. "Because when I win, I'm blocking you in real life."