Work Text:
Willow Park gripped the pod containing the human girl and gritted her teeth, tugging harder at it in the hopes of getting it loose sometime before the ceremony she had worked her ass off in order to get her top picks for. It was probably a lost cause already—the last time she’d checked her watch, she’d had maybe an hour or two, tops, and had she left immediately then she might have been able to rush in to the ceremony, sweaty and in her space suit still but on time.
But Willow had not turned immediately back to Aurora Academy the last time she checked her watch, because the girl in the pod in this centuries-old wreck was still alive, somehow. And Willow knew she couldn’t leave her there, so—
Well, if she turned off her watch she’d stop stressing about it, mostly, so she’d turned it off and now she was attempting to use brute strength to physically pull the pod out, since all her other attempts had failed.
God, if Dr. Clawthorne or General Clawthorne could see her now they’d be so disappointed.
Well, whatever. Dr. Eda Clawthorne had spent her career telling people where to stick it, and Willow had been one of her favorite students for a few years now, and so she really shouldn’t be surprised.
General Clawthorne would probably be more upset, but whatever. At least, Willow thought, as she finally pulled the pod with the girl out and fell back across the room, panting, she definitely wouldn’t have Amity Blight in her squad.
(She was wrong.)
(But soon, Willow would have far bigger problems than being in a squad with Amity Blight, Mattholomule Stevens and Hunter Guard—though she would remain grateful that Gus had insisted on joining her squad. Soon, she would be embroiled in a plot that would rend the universe in two.)
(But for now, Willow hauled the pod with the unconscious girl inside and hoped to the heavens she wouldn’t be stuck with an uncaring squad.)