YOU MY GODLESS HUNGER

1. Kingpins, Colonizers, Pop Singers, Movie Stars

"Congrats, asshole. You made it back in one piece."

Indigo Colt is hovering above her, arms folded over her chest, short jet black hair a halo against the lab lights. A string of metal tools gleams from a leather strap that hangs off her shoulder. Wiping at her eyes, Zoltan shoots her an exhausted grin. Birdy lays beside her, unmoving, as the glass door to the nearest portal-pod lifts open.

Zoltan sits up in her own pod. "Knew you'd miss me."

"Oh, yeah. It was just horrible to finally get some peace and quiet around here."

Zoltan is the first to notice the tiny creature hovering around, barely held up by its translucent, fervently beating wings. She's taken aback for a moment—she has already forgotten that the Voyagers' Academy has its own mix-and-match ecosystem. The furball plops gingerly at the edge of Zoltan's pod. Zoltan reaches out to pet it—"hey, little guy"—at the same time as Indigo smacks it away.

"No, stop—ugh, I'll have to sterilize the whole pod again!" She ushers Zoltan out. "Shoo, get off, I don't have all day."

"Someone needs a drink."

"Damn right I do." Indigo bends over the pod, scrubbing vigorously, mumbling something along the lines of fucking inter-world contamination... "We didn't all get to spend our day prancing around in fairyland." The little creature sits on her shoulder, she swats and twists and turns but she can't peel off the clingy fucker.

"You sure have a weird way of saying 'rescuing lives'."

Indigo promptly ignores her, brushing past in search of a scanner to detect any foreign particles that have imprinted on the pod. "Little shit's been stuck to me all day like my own damn shadow. I found it in my soup this morning, can you believe it? And,"—she turns and raises a finger before Zoltan can open her mouth—"don't you dare comment on my morning soup. Nutrition is very personal to me."

Hair messed up, fingers twitching, Indigo looks borderline manic. She pulls at the visible, insistent ridges of the leather jacket she wears even under her lab coat.

Zoltan shrugs. "Not my fault the Academy has a pest problem."

"We've got to get this sorted, man. This multiverse residue shit is getting out of hand."

"I just wack them away with a bat when they get in my business. It tends to do the trick."

A loud punch and they both flinch away from each other. "Will you two shut the fuck up?" Perdita Aruman, known around school as Birdy, has slammed a fist into the open roof of her portal-pod.

"Only if you ask nicely." Zoltan smirks, while Indigo face palms. "Oh god, here we go again."

Birdy looks up at her, eyes as big and innocent as an evil woman like her can manage. "Rivaille. Sweetheart. Will you and your insufferable, mouth-breathing clone kindly shut the fuck up as I try to rest after an exhausting mission?"

"I wonder what Professor Sidra will think when he finds out how much of a sore loser you are."

"I'm not a—"

Zoltan simply points to the Record scoreboard. It takes up an entire wall of the Departure Hall— a black-and-white board displaying the top 50 Final Year students, and the scores they have gathered throughout the year. A spreadsheet of the strongest, most prestigious recruits who have survived up until their sixth year of study.

As usual, Zoltan and Birdy are far ahead of everyone else, but by a margin, she's finally done it. She's beaten Birdy for the first time that semester.

Birdy freezes, staring at the points that continue to trickle in in Zoltan's favor, presumably as the monitors rewatch the recordings and recount the scores. She stares at the board like it singlehandedly killed one of her family members. Zoltan knew it would make her burn. One can try a thousand times to guess how much the Record means to Birdy, and it will always be an understatement.