#nuclearstuck

Sollux holds no illusions about why he’s allowed to attend the academy.

Trolls flying military aircraft keeps human airmen out of combat. Those aircraft need to be tested by trolls, and the trolls testing them have to know enough about what they’re doing for that testing to be effective. He knows he hasn’t been awarded this luxury due to his intelligence or skill, but is being groomed for a specific purpose because of the unique nature of his psionic abilities.

It certainly helps that he happens to be immensely fascinated with the field he’s been railroaded into, but it doesn’t make it less humiliating when his grades suffer, or less infuriating when it isn’t his fault.

Intro to Aeronautical Engineering could have been an awesome class -- the students, at least, warmed up to him more quickly than in any of his others, but the professor certainly did not. Sollux had learned pretty quickly not to speak up much in class, too afraid of blowing his chances of being a test pilot to risk rocking the boat, but his exam scores disappearing from Blackboard were starting to become a problem.

The first time, the professor had insisted that Sollux hadn’t attended the exam. For this one, he’d promised to look into it, but now it showed as a missing grade online, bringing his overall average dangerously close to failing. What’s worse is that, after going over the exam in class, Sollux is sure he had the highest score. The TA who grades them has a weird routine of drawing a cat on the highest-scoring exam.

This time, none of his classmates had the cat.

So now he’s here, knocking twice at the slightly-ajar door of the professor’s office, determined to a least stand his ground this time around.

“Come in,” drones a voice from inside, though the man doesn’t look up from the papers he’s grading to acknowledge Sollux’s presence.

“Uh, hey, Fuller. You haven’t seen my missing exam in that stack, have you?”

“No, I have not.”

He still doesn’t look up, though he reaches to push his wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. Sollux frowns.

“Oh. So… you haven’t seen it at all?”

“Nope.”

He still doesn’t look up.

“Can-- I mean, I’ll retake it, if I have to…”

“We’ve already gone over the exam in class, so I’m afraid not.”

“Well is there any extra credit I can do? I really can’t fail this --”

He’s interrupted by Fuller’s TA pushing around him, a stack of mail in one of her arms and a heavy bookbag slung over the other. Sollux has seen her around before, having noticed initially that she was remarkably tall for a human, and noticing more recently that she has a tiny Galaga tattoo on her lower back. He’s noticing it again, now, as she bends to plug in her laptop, but is brought back suddenly by the stern drone of Professor Fuller’s voice informing him that “I don’t give extra credit.”

He’s actually looking up at Sollux now, eyebrows raised and a frown turning the corners of his lips.

“Will that be all, Mr. Captor?”

“Uh, well…”

“Wait, Captor?” The TA stands up, seemingly noticing Sollux for the first time. “Are you Sollux Captor? Whoa, are you a PSII-Tactics cadet?”

“Heh, yeah. Guilty on both charges.”

“Ha! Sollux Captor -- six and six, I should have known.” She grins, and it’s brilliant, and suddenly Sollux wants to know everything about her. “Dude, what are >you< trying to get extra credit for? You’re making the rest of us look bad, overachiever…”

“Overachiever? I’m actually kind of close to failing…”

“Failing? No way, I graded your last… exam…”

Fuller is glaring quietly at her, and she returns it, brows furrowed, lips pressed in a tight line. It lasts only a moment before she laughs again, shaking her head.

“It’s funny, because I dropped the stapler under the desk when I was grading the other papers, and I saw yours by the trash. I thought it was another answer sheet, right, since all of your answers were perfect, but then I realized you were using a totally different method to solve like half of the questions. Anyway, I graded it and put it with the rest, it should be fine.” “I didn’t see it, Roxy,” Fuller insists, a hint of agitation coloring his usual monotone.

“Well. Maybe I put it in the wrong stack.” Roxy shrugs, crouching to open her bookbag and pulling out an obnoxiously glittery Hello Kitty binder labeled “AERO ENGR.”

“But, like I said, he used a really novel approach to many of the problems, so I wanted a copy for myself. Here it is…”

She places the papers on Fuller’s desk, glaring pointedly at him as his frown deepens.

“You look kinda busy, though, so I’ll put the grades in myself, don’t worry about it.”

She snatches the papers back from the professor and hands them to Sollux, the troll trying his best not to laugh or cry or both at the perfect score on the header. He thumbs through the pages, nodding as each checkmark sends a tiny thrill of victory tingling through him, but giving the tiniest, disappointed “Oh…” when he gets to the last page and still sees no cat.

Roxy notices, because of course she does, and with a snorting laugh takes one of the pages back from him.

“Roxy, right?” Sollux asks as she takes a seat at her desk, scrawling on the back of the page.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Just a regular mix-up that I just happened to catch, you know?” She gives another quick glance at Professor Fuller, who is back to pointedly ignoring them, and hands Sollux’s paper back with a smile.

“Have a good one, Captor.”

“You, too. See you in class, Professor…”

Sollux doesn’t look at the drawing until later. The cat has two sets of ears sticking out of an aviator hat, and a word balloon that says “When they try to drop you, land on your feet. Someday, you’ll soar above them all.”

It’s years later when Roxy finds it, laminated and tucked away in the inner pocket of his favorite coat.