Seven pulled me onto the ship with my bag as I was the last one up the ladder and began showing everyone around. The ship was an exploration class frigate with five cannons on each side of the top deck, with ten more on the deck below. Several other crew members scurried about tidying up the place, putting away ropes that had been used, or putting tarps over barrels. Every crew member was also of a different race. I saw nekomadas, kitsune, dwarves, elves, humans, and one sentinel that flew up to the sails and checked their condition, making sure no holes or tears were put in them.

“Welcome to the F.F.S.C. RayRider,” Seven announced once we were all on board, “Exploration class frigate with all the amenities of home.”

“A hooome that flies and has a crazed captain!” a familiar hooting voice protested from the railing at the back of the ship above the captain’s cabin.

I turned excitedly to see Olli perched on the railing, his feathers ruffled and puffed out, and his glasses askew. “OLLI-SENSEI! Where have you been?!” I asked excitedly.

“I ‘ave been flying with this maniac for the past few days. An experience I regret almost as much as eating a drake pepper when I was young. My gods, that was the worst week of my life. Did yooou knooow that the drake pepper can kill a man without proper care? I nearly died then. And don’t get me started on the ghost peppers—”

I tuned Olli out then. He constantly drones on when he’s upset. I think it’s his way of calming down. Luckily, Seven cut him off, “HEY! I am not a maniac, bird!”

Olli stopped talking, his feathers un-puffed, and he stared down his beak at Seven for a few seconds. “Oh really,” was his only response.

“Yeah, really!”

Clearing his throat with a small coughing hoot, Olli fixed his glasses and began his next rant, “Three detours, twooo of which yooou purposefully attacked hoards of monsters, one of which yooou got lost and attacked a sea serpent for its gold. Eight times yooou stopped at a nearby town tooo get drunk, and eight of those times, yooou would come back with no less than three men. Sometimes even six! I don’t even want tooo knooow what yooou did in yooour roooom. Twenty-five times we had tooo stop tooo repair the sails because of some pig-brained aerial maneuvering yooou did for no reason other than tooo ‘ave fun. Yooou are a menace tooo flying and tooo yooour crew and tooo me!”

A bright red blush spread across Sevens blush as she stammered, “Y-yeah, well … I-I didn’t do anything inappropriate with those men. It was completely civilized. I-I was trying to recruit them for the crew.”

“Ohoo, yes. There. Right there. A little deeper, captain sexy,” Olli drolled.

I could almost feel the heat coming off Seven as her blush began to turn her entire head red, “Uhh, umm, I— his-his name happened to be Sanches Sexy an-and he-he was helping me w-with a p-plumbing problem.”

Haze wrapped her arm around her sister’s shoulders and said, “Oh, yeah. I’m sure all he was doing was laying that thick pipe in the cabin. I’m sure it was a three-person job too. In a ship with no plumbing.”

Seven refused to look her sister in the eyes as Haze smiled knowingly. Seven then cleared her throat and shook her head, ridding herself of the blush that covered her face, and yelled, “Mr.Pike, come and introduce yourself to our passengers!”

The sentinel looked down and floated to the deck, landing gracefully on his bare feet. His four golden wings spread four meters from tip to tip, and his mouth was … non-existent. He wore a white toga, revealing his pale, muscular body and broad shoulders. He had no hair I could see on his body, and his golden piercing eyes examined everyone individually as he made eye contact with each of us.

He bowed and spoke, his deep, rich voice reverberating in my head, “Hello, honored guests. I am first mate Pike. Captain Seven refers to me as Mr.Pike, and you may refer to me any way you would like.”

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I looked up at Mr.Pike and admired his golden wings. Now that he was closer, he looked taller than Jax, making him well over two meters tall. I raised my hand, “Where are we sleeping?”

Mr.Pike looked down at me and said, “I will show you all to your cabin, and once you all get settled, we can take off.”

“So the ship is in flying condition?” Seven asked.

“To my surprise, it is the captain,” Pike answered dutifully, “Please, right this way.” Pike gestured for us to follow him. His footsteps were silent and swift. Giving him the appearance of gliding across the deck. He opened a small hatch in the deck, revealing stairs leading to the lower decks.

We followed him down two flights of stairs to the bottom deck, where several dozen hammocks were attached to posts and eye hooks. Pike led us past all that to the back of the ship, where he opened a small door. Pike, Jax, Shiro, Xiao, Scarlate, and Haze were all ducking to walk through the deck, and the door was even smaller than that. But it was fine. The twins, Cami, and I didn’t have to duck to get through anything. The tiny advantages of shortness.

The door opened to a fair-sized cabin for such a small ship. The cabin was three meters long and two meters wide, and built into the walls on each side were four bunks, each a meter and a half in length and three-quarters of a meter in depth.

I immediately pointed out the obvious, “There are eight bunks but nine of us.”

Haze pushed me into the cabin and said, “Yeah, no shit, captain obvious. Just pick a bunk.” I didn’t hesitate to throw my bag on the top bunk closest to the door on the right.

The other bunks were quickly taken, leaving the twins to pick the bunk underneath me. They didn’t mind sharing, thankfully. And with that done, I exited the claustrophobic bunk and followed Pike back up to the ship’s deck.

I could hear Seven barking orders from near the back of the ship, telling people to tighten ropes or secure cargo. I followed the sound of her voice up a flight of stairs as the rest of my team climbed the stairs from the lower decks. Once at the top of the stairs, I noticed something missing from the ship. The wheel needed to steer a ship. In its place was a wooden throne where Seven sat, impatiently tapping a metal finger on the arm of the chair.

She noticed me and perked up a little, “Ah, you’ve gotten all situated in the cabin provided, did you?”

“Yep,” I answered cheerily and asked, “Where’s the wheel of this ship?”

“The what?”

“The wheel. The helm of the ship. The thing needed to steer,” I hedged every answer I could.

“Oh, right,” Seven said sarcastically, palming her forehead, “You’ve never been on a ship before. You think this is a sea-worthy vessel. But it’s not. The high seas aren’t worthy of my ship. I’ll show you the helm in a moment.”

“When?” I whined, wanting to see it now.

“Once your WORTHLESS TEACHER GETS UP HERE!!” Seven said louder than necessary and got her sister’s attention.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming!” Haze called back as she climbed the stairs.

She and everyone else soon got to the top deck, where Seven and I waited. They gathered around and spread out, looking over the railings as we waited to take off. Seven looked out the corners of her eyes deviously as she said, “Since everyone’s here. Hold onto your butts.”

Seven raised her clawed robotic hand and flexed it a little. Her fingers popped out and extended down to her throne slowly. Each finger inserted itself into a hole in the arm of the throne, and golden lines began to glow and flow from the holes, slowly making a maze-like pattern. The ship slowly began to hum with energy, and the sails glowed with hexagonal golden lines.

The ship rose from the ground and gained altitude slowly. Then a light screen with maps, coordinates, and other ship data appeared before Seven. One of the ship data lines read, ‘Number of occupants in the poop deck: 1.’

Seven shook her head as she read that piece of data and said, “Whoever is in there is going to have a terrible day. Patten down the hatches and initialize the force field! We’re taking off!”

“ALL HANDS TO STATIONS!” Pike bellowed across everyone’s minds, and the ship’s crew rushed around and fastened everything to the deck.

“ALL SET, CAPTAIN!” some woman from the deck called up.

“Prepare for launch!” Pike bellowed.

A savage smile spread across Seven’s face as she began the countdown, “FIVE!” the ship’s hum grew louder, “FOUR!” the golden lines now covered the ship, “THREE!” the lines began to pulse with power, “TWO!” Seven entered some coordinates to the light screen, and an arrow appeared on the screen and pointed behind us. “ONE!” Seven called, and the ship blasted forward.

I flinched as we moved. I thought I would fall over, but it didn’t feel like I was moving. Then the ship pulled sharply up until we were upside down, shooting toward the ground. As the ship plummeted to the ground, Seven whooped excitedly and spun the ship before pulling up and flying in the direction the arrow pointed at breakneck speeds.

My stomach began to churn as I knew we were moving, but my body says we weren’t moving, which made a conflict in my stomach. I stumbled over to the side of the ship with my hand over my mouth and finally released my lunch off the side of the ship, quickly followed by Shiro’s and Xiao’s lunch.

Seven laughed, “HAHA! Only a few days of that, kiddos! Better get used to it!” Shiro and I flipped her off while hanging our heads off the side of the ship.