Eleric takes a deep breath as he wakes up in his fairly small Warrior's quarters. He sighs and reminds himself that the quarters are only temporary...it wouldn't be that long before Ossanlin gave him his second crescent, Sky knows he deserves it. Might as well throw the Chevron on there and start calling himself Prince as well.
He commands the lights on in his quarters and begins his morning ritual, performing the rites of a new day, before donning his utility belt and heading out into the ship's corridors. He reminds himself of the humans, and more importantly, the Yeerks. Yeerks, on a state-of the art Mark III Dome Ship, and allowed to walk around of their own free will! He'd call the idiot who spoke those words a moron if he didn't know the truth of them himself.
He might as well head up to the Dome before descending to the Hangar bays. They'd be in Z-Space, of course...on their way to rendezvous with even more Yeerks. Eleric shakes his head to himself as he passes a Command Warrior in the hall and performs an exaggerated tail-salute. The Command Warrior deigns not to notice him. Not terribly uncommon...throw a second crescent on that aristh bar and every one thought himself high and mighty. Well, they'd have to notice him once Ossanlin actually took the time to promote him. Sky forbid the best Tail-Fighter pilot on the ship get any respect.
Well...second-best anyway. Damn Vanarx and her ridiculous, stim-fed, impossible abilities. He'd tried every trick in the book to beat her...but seeing as she was old enough to have actually written the book...well, his youth should give him something at least, shouldn't it?
He makes his way up into the Dome proper and gallops out into the field. There are too few females on the Tyrennian for his liking. Of course, that's the norm for Andalite military ships...but still. The presence of humans in the Dome still jars him, even though he'd reminded himself of the fact not more than a few moments ago. He puts it out of his mind and begins to feed. It's going to be a long day after all...that little stunt Ossanlin had pulled with the double-jump had upset a lot of drive-alignments in the Tail-Fighter Wing. Each one had to be tested, realigned, and tested again. A long, boring day indeed...and with no Flight Commander to handle all the tedium.
As he steps up for a drink from the stream, breathing deeply from his exertion, he notices a sparring session between Claxter and that jump-up aristh Aetheas. Why the Command Warrior bothers with making that ****y little Andalite use his deformed tail is beyond Eleric. His own perfectly-healthy tail has seen little use. Oh, he took tail-fighting courses at the Academy...everyone had to, but he'd never really seen the point. What use was a tail in space combat?
He drinks deeply and then strides over to the small group watching Claxter and Aetheas. Honestly, with a deformed tail, why would Aetheas not simply learn to pilot a Tail-Fighter? Perhaps he was afraid...some Andalites had that problem. Some saw a Tail-Fighter as an exposed death-trap. They aren't remotely close to any such thing if you know what you're doing. They're machines of precise destruction. An extension of the body into space. There's no time an Andalite feels more alive than when piloting a fighter.
He turns to another Warrior who had stopped to watch and mutters loud enough for everyone to hear. <I feel like I should've paid for a ticket.>
