Sage could feel sweat matting his hairline as he dragged his bed down the halls of the ATC.
He'd decided, when he'd gotten here, that the place was insane. Nutso. A few bricks short of a wall. A few chips short of a cookie. A few threads short of a shirt. About all it had taken was news of the Sledgehammer Episode for that to sink in. Poor Val. Poor everyone. He had to admit it was almost kind of funny, in a ludicrous way. And it still sucked. It sucked so much he could taste it. It sucked so much he didn't even want to think about it, because an acid hole opened up in his stomach when he thought about it, about the shit he'd seen from the Pilots and the other Candidates and the worse shit he'd heard.
So he wasn't going to think about it for now.
"Nnfh." He tugged at the sheets he'd wrapped around his bedposts, then knotted for convenience. He had, after some trial and error, slid thin bits of plastic beneath each of the bed's legs, which let it glide down the hallway corridors with minimal friction. Every so often a pillow slid free and bounced to the floor, and he'd have to pick it up. He stooped to do so just outside of the training rooms and tucked one under the blankets, so it wouldn't meander free once again. Then he let himself in, scanning his palm and the code printed on one bedpost. At present he only had access if he scanned the damn bed.
Gr.
Sage had thought that once he was past gracie he wouldn't have to worry so much about this shit, that maybe he could make up some of the energy deficit of the first six months of training. Five extra minutes of sleep. But nooo. They got you going and thinking the pressure was up for a bit, and then they went all rawr again.
Sage tucked one sweaty dreadlock behind his ear and tugged the bed behind him into the wide, squeaky-floored training room, between the mats laid out for combat practice. Squeak. Squeak. The little plastic squares wiggled against the polished wood floor, which had grown humid with accumulated respiration, sweat, all the juices of effort. Gross. He pulled the bed up, at last, beside his mat, and flung himself down on it. Ah. Geez. Carrying around his bed.
"Next time you're in bed past wakeup there will be consequences."
In retrospect, Sage should maybe have listened to Pilot Macario. He seemed somewhat reasonable about 20% of the time, which was more often than most. His tendency to electroshock you--while kinky and fricking strange--wasn't quite as bad as getting punched in the face or sledgehammered. But the man droned on and on and on.
Still.
He probably shouldn't have argued that Pilot Macario had specified 'in bed' and he had technically been 'on floor,' grabbing those precious five minutes of snooze-button time, when the door had banged open and zap again and wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, you're going to carry your bed around with you everywhere you go until you learn your lesson. Whatever lesson that was. How to be more productive? How not to be lazy? How to wake up at a specified second? Very useful life skills. So he'd skipped breakfast and dragged the bed here, early, for once. Class wasn't due to start for... he checked. 6:02 a.m. Twenty-eight minutes.
Most productive use of time? Clearly, sleep. Sage relaxed against the lump of blankets, eyes squinched shut against the brilliance of the training room lights, arms wrapped around a pillow. He let his weight sink through the thin foam mattress. Did they design them to be uncomfortable for Candidates? Why? Why would they do that? Never mind. He was comfortable in his nest of blankets, his skin still warm from exertion. Sleep. His whole body seeped out the tension of the last hour. It breathed out heat and exhaustion and fear. He was nothing but feeling, and that feeling felt like a long... Ah.
