Rose could feel her heart beating faster every time the wind shifted around her.
It was one thing to hear about the upperclassmen in the dining hall, or to catch fragments of mission reports from the mouths of students who liked to sound important, or to even catch a glimpse of them on the training grounds. It was another thing entirely to stand on the front docks with the rest of the first years and actually wait for them to come back. Not as names. Not as rumors. As real, living people who had gone out into the world to hunt down monsters and come home with their team still breathing.
Rose stood on her tiptoes to see over the shoulders in front of her, her hands folded tightly behind her back so no one would think she was fidgeting. She absolutely was fidgeting, but everyone didn’t need to know that. She knew for a fact that everyone around her was fidgeting too. They just did it in more dignified ways. Some were pretending not to care. Some were craning their necks. A few had gone silent in that reverent sort of way people did when they were trying not to look starstruck and failing miserably.
Her teammates had gathered around her in a loose cluster near the edge of the dock.
Saffrone was practically vibrating with excitement, his eyes fixed on the open sky as if the Aurelight would burst through the clouds at any second. He made every emotion he felt look larger than life, and right now that meant awe had taken up residence in every feature of his handsome face. Beside him, Cobalt stood with his arms crossed and his chin raised, trying very hard to look unimpressed. Rose knew better. Cobalt had been talking for days about how ‘Kaiju probably weren’t that special’ and ‘upperclassmen were still just students,’ but he had come to the docks anyway, which already meant he cared. He cared very much.
Lavender leaned on the railing with her signature lazy posture. She had one hand propping up her cheek and half a smile on her face, but Rose knew that meant she was paying attention to everything. Lavender was always paying attention. She simply preferred to look as though she had somehow risen above the need to be impressed. Rose thought that was probably why she was the smartest of the four of them, even if she would never say so out loud.
“Well,” Lavender murmured, peering out into the bright sky, “if they really are Team Kaiju, like the rumors are saying, then they’ll probably arrive like they own the place.”
Saffron gave a dreamlike sigh. “Wouldn’t you if you were them?”
Cobalt made a quiet sound through his nose. “That depends on whether they’re actually that good.” Then quietly added, “I doubt it though.”
Rose turned to him at once, scandalized. “You sound like a teacher.”
He glanced at her sideways. “And you sound like you’ve already decided they’re heroes.”
Rose straightened, because that was not fair at all. “I haven’t decided anything!”
Lavender’s expression turned faintly smug. “You’re standing on your toes.”
Saffron looked down at her feet and immediately betrayed her by snickering.
Rose made a very dignified noise and tried to pretend her ears were not warm. “I’m simply trying to see. Not my fault that some you are fucking coconut trees!”
“Mm-hm,” Lavender said.
The whole dock seemed to hum with anticipation. Above them, the sky was a bright, hard blue, with long white streaks of cloud stretched like brushstrokes over the upper levels of the school. The front docks sat high enough that the wind came cleaner here, colder somehow, and it carried the faint scent of metal from the landing rails. Far below, the rest of the academy glittered in layers and bridges and terraces, all of it built upward.
Then someone shouted.
“There it is!”
The word rippled through the crowd at once, and every head tilted skyward.
At first Rose could only see a pale shape against the clouds, a dark little line growing larger by the second. Then the sound reached them, the deep mechanical thrum of an Aurelight cutting through the air in long, powerful passes. The Aurelight came in broad and heavy, plated and practical, with its nose angled toward the dock.
Roses mouth went dry.
The transport swept lower, the undercarriage lights flashing across the stone and steel of the sky dock. A few students had to step back as the downdraft brushed the edge of the platform, wind tugging at hair and uniforms alike. Rose found herself smiling from ear to ear.
“That’s incredible,” she whispered.
“Everything is incredible to you,” Cobalt muttered, though even he was staring with an expression oddly close to awe.
“It is incredible,” Saffron corrected, eyes shining. “Look at it.”
Rose did. She looked at the Aurelight as it leveled out, looked at the confident precision of the approach, looked at the way it settled into the dock with a smoothness that could only come from people who had done this a hundred times before. That had to mean something. That had to mean they were everything everyone said they were. A team that could walk into danger and return like this was simply another day.
The landing clamps locked with a resonant clang.
And the crowd went silent.
For one suspended second, nothing moved.
Then the side hatch opened.
The first person to step out was Isha.
Rose had heard her name before, of course. Everyone had. It was impossible not to hear about her. But hearing about someone and seeing them were very different things, and Rose instantly understood that the stories had all been too small. Isha stepped onto the dock like she belonged as if the entire school waiting to stare at her was the most predictable thing in the world. Her black wings folded in behind her with effortless elegance, her raven hair tousled by the wind, and even exhausted as she clearly was, she looked sharp enough to cut glass.
Rose’s breath caught.
Because, of course, she was like that.
Of course she was.
Not only was she beautiful, not only was she skilled, nor was she just one of the elite upperclassmen everyone talked about. She looked like the sort of person who would laugh in the face of death and win. Her tiredness somehow made her more impressive, not less. It proved she had earned it. Rose could almost feel her own admiration multiplying just from the sight alone.
Isha stretched her arms over her head and glanced around the dock, wearing that same faint grin as the crowd stared. “Wow,” she said, voice carrying easily. “You lot really did wait around for us. Again.”
Half the first years laughed, the other half choked.
Cobalt, to his credit, looked like he wanted to say something dry and sensible about how, of course, they had waited. He even opened his mouth.
Then Isha’s gaze flicked briefly across the crowd, and whatever clever thing Cobalt had been about to say evaporated at once.
He closed his mouth.
Rose pretended not to notice the way her teammates had all gone very still.
Isha hopped down fully onto the dock, hands on her hips, and turned back toward the hatch. “Come on, then. Try not to make yourselves look too dramatic. Can’t keep the ickle firsties waiting too long for their show~”
The next figure emerged behind her was, Uriel.
Rose had expected authority. Everyone had described Uriel as disciplined, severe, intimidating, a leader through and through, and Rose had been prepared for that. She had not been prepared for how composed Uriel looked even in motion, every step was controlled, every gesture deliberate. Their mask caught the light. Their posture said they had already weighed the dock, the crowd, the wind, and every possible threat beyond it. Rose had never seen anyone look so much like they knew exactly what the world was and how to survive it.
That was what leadership had to look like, Rose thought. That had to be it. Not loud. Not flashy. Just certain.
Uriel’s gaze passed over the gathered students, and Rose couldn’t help but stand straighter instantly, as if the sheer fact of being noticed by them was an honor.
Saffron went rigid beside her.
Even Lavender now stood as straight as an arrow. Though she’d lifted her chin in a way that suggested she was trying not to look impressed.
Cobalt, much to Rose’s private delight, appeared to have forgotten his own skepticism entirely.
Jayde came next, and if Rose had been less sure of her own instincts, she might have mistaken the messy ease of him for carelessness.
She did not.
Jayde stepped out like a person who had already made peace with the fact that the world was difficult and had decided to be difficult right back. His weapon, a giant pair of scissors, was strapped across him, his expression tired but sharp, and the posture he carried himself with was all hard-earned confidence.
Rose found herself thinking, with immediate and total certainty, that he had probably protected everyone on that mission personally.
Not because she knew it.
Because it made sense.
Because the way he tipped his head toward the crowd, the way he smirked at something Isha said from behind him, the way he looked like he could be exhausted and dangerous at the same time all had to mean he was exactly the sort of person who could handle anything.
Then King stepped out.
Rose had to blink.
He was enormous.
Not merely tall, not merely broad. Enormous in a way that made him seem less like a person and more like some sort of heroic landmark the school had accidentally allowed to attend classes. But then he turned his head and gave Isha an easy, gentle look, and Rose immediately decided that this was because all that size had simply been made to hold kindness. It had to be. There was no other explanation. A person like that could only be a guardian. A shield. A friend who would stand between the world and everyone else without ever needing to be asked.
He lowered down onto his knees and, with surprising gentleness for his size, guided Isha onto his shoulder. Carrying her as if she weighed nothing at all.
Rose melted a little inside.
There it was. There it all was.
Strength, leadership, grace, loyalty, restraint, bravery, trust.
Team Kaiju.
One of them had to voice something then, because Cobalt had apparently decided his earlier skepticism was worth sacrificing for the good of the truth.
“They’re just people,” he muttered under his breath, not quite to Rose and not quite to himself. “Upperclassmen with better gear.”
Rose turned on him so fast her braid nearly whipped him across the face. “They just came back from an eradication mission.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re—”
The rest of his complaint died instantly.
Because Uriel had began walking away from the Aurelight, the first of their team to make their way towards the entrance to the school. Visible to the dock in all her quiet, confident, brilliant certainty, and the entire crowd had gone quiet in a way that felt almost holy, because the rest of their team fell in line behind them without a word.
Rose thought, with complete and total sincerity, that if Uriel had chosen to say the sky was green, the sky would have become green out of respect.
And Cobalt, who had been about to be contrary out of principle, shut his mouth.
A second later, the roar of the Aurelight’s engines softened as the transport settled completely into place, the hatch holding open behind the team like an invitation had closed and the pilots themselves were now exiting.
Above the docks, the wind shifted again, and Rose realized she was smiling so hard her face hurt.
This was it.
This was what they were all meant to become.