The flight back to the palace was long and quiet with no run-on flashbacks or mouthy butlers to distract the trio from the doom that would surely await them once they returned to their home planet. Even the knight regiment was dead silent, but that could be attributed to the fact that they were all flying as bats (night had fallen) and were struggling to maintain the altitude they were at while juggling muskets and full hazmat suits many times wider than they were tall.
Bolita was having the time of her life, she'd never felt this way before. The spring of her drills provided just enough propulsion to push her about an inch or so ahead of the party with each bounce. Also, she had already calculated her grades beforehand, so she knew only a score around 60% would drop her grade below what was acceptable.
Alfred floated by a few paces behind her, pulling on the end of Calorie's musket to keep her from keeping pace with the duchess, because apparently the waitstaff weren't supposed to be riding at the same pace as the nobility.
"By the way," Bolita began, scooting as far backward as her musket and copious skirts would allow. "Where are we going?"
"Uhh," Auricularis looked around at the knight regiment, then at Calorie, then back to Bolita. "The castle? Over half of us live there, so it would it's pretty convenient."
"Ya hear? Her Highness demands we return to the castle with Her Grace Junior in tow!" squeaked the bat at the front, who was probably the knight captain, losing his grip on the musket but finding it again before it could plummet from the sky and kill an unsuspecting peasant.
"Aye, aye captain!" the rest of the regiment responded in unison, flapping their wings, dropping their muskets and then quickly picking them back up with their feet.
"I can't hear you!" the knight captain roared with all the ferocity of a sponge.
"AYE, AYE CAPTAIN!" the regiment screamed back just as enthusiastically.
"Oh okay then," Bolita shrugged. She wasn't too keen on returning to the Duke's manor anyway. After all, she had run out of things to do that weren't matching new lolita coords, and the palace probably had better refreshments than perpetually lukewarm tea. Apparently duchesses weren't allowed to have their tea steaming or it would damage their delicate taste buds.
The party made a sharp left turn.
"To the left!" sounded a voice from somewhere in the back of the regiment.
"To the left!" called another voice from somewhere closer to the front. Though the sound was being bounced forward, not unlike an echo, Bolita was pretty sure this was not how the echolocation she learned about in school worked.
"To the left!" came a voice behind Bolita. It was Alfred, repeating the message to make sure that the human part of the entourage had heard it.
"To the left," Calorie responded dryly, just for the sake of responding.
"Now to the right!" the knight captain exclaimed, vaulting through a particularly thick cloud.
"To the right!" repeated some of the regiment, veering right to keep their pace with their captain.
"To the right," Auricularis nodded, turning right to comply with the captain's orders.
"To the right," Bolita mumbled under her breath and jerked her musket around in the right direction.
"Now kick!" the knight captain bellowed, as if he was a square dancing maniac about to let loose.
"What?" Poor, unfortunate Bolita, new to musket riding, was unaware that this meant they were to start the descent.
"Now kick!" repeated half the knight regiment.
"Now kick!" Alfred called from behind Bolita, as if she was not already starting to get the memo.
"Now kick!" said one of the knights still hovering nearby, just to make sure that the nobility in their small crowd was going down safely.
Bolita was left alone in the sky, to walk it by herself all the way down. She descended with an earth-shattering crack as the sound barrier dissolved around her, definitely not because of the gas that had been building up in her stomach.
Thankfully, she managed to avoid the dried jerky strewn across the cobblestones meant to lure the geese back into the dark holes from whence they came. Then, because her brain had some folds, she motioned to Alfred.
"Can you go send a message to the duchy notifying them of my safe return?" Bolita produced a handkerchief from somewhere inside her skirts.
She hadn't put it there herself, but she'd long discovered that the skirts of the duchess's clothing were packed to the brim with mysterious necessities. Bolita had not yet uncovered every single one from a single JSK yet, although it was definitely in her future plans to.
"But My Lady, I cannot possibly leave you alone here." Alfred's monocle hung sadly off his lapel, much too tired from the journey to do its job.
"I am in the presence of Her Highness, so you needn't worry. Unless you think Her Highness's guards are insufficient?" Bolita raised her chin importantly. It was always important to come across as important if you wanted other important people to think yourself an important person of importance.
"Your humble servant could never! Forgive me, My Lady, I shall be off right away." With a quick bow, Alfred scurried off to the races.
"Smart," Auricularis grunted, now that they were alone in the courtyard.
"Thanks. What now?" Bolita tugged on a curl, forgetting what would happen. She was reminded with a swift smack. It left a mark.
"I guess we can go to my room, if I can find it," Auricularis shrugged. "Got lost last time though, so the odds of success aren't great."
"Oh. Well that's not good." Bolita did the vertical equivalent of the worm.
"Don't worry." Calorie shook her head. "I got this."
They followed her into the castle and down several halls before they arrived at a very ornate set of doors.
"Hey, that looks familiar," Auricularis squinted. "I think it's my room."
"You're right, it is," Calorie deadpanned before she pulled open the door and led the three of them inside.
Almost immediately, upon entering the room, Auricularis flung herself with all the speed of a torpedo onto the luxurious bed. Bolita settled with laying flat on the carpet like a starfish, and Calorie plopped down next between Bolita and the bed. Bolita's back still ached from her time on the spit and she wanted to give it a chance to rest.
Once they had taken ample time to decompress, Calorie spoke up.
"So, spill the tea," she said, pulling up a carpet off the floor and rolling herself into a carpet-burrito.
Bolita winced. That couldn't be sanitary.
"It's fine. I washed it," Calorie waved a hand airily.
Bolita sniffed the carpet tentatively. It smelled like window polish.
"Well, we all go to Diamond Box High School right? I don't know if any of you knew me, but my name was Bianca. I was making my way downtown, walking fast, faces past and I'm homebound… then I fell into a river."
"Oof," Auricularis said into a pillow.
"Yeah, and then next thing I know I'm waking up in the morning, thinking 'bout so many things. I just wish things would get better."
"Hmm, don't think I ever met you in person, but I've heard of a Bianca somewhere," Calorie mused.
She joined Bolita on the floor and rolled in a very wide circle before coming to a stop in front of a bookshelf, then rolled back to her previous spot.
"Oh, I remember now! You were one of the nerds! I was Cerise." Calorie rolled in a circle again, as if to make a point.
"Uh, that Cerise?" Bolita squinted warily.
"Yeah, that Cerise," Auricularis said from the bed. She wormed her way off and dropped down to the ground next to them.
"My name was Avery. I hit a truck and isekai'd both of us." Auriculairs flexed a bicep woefully. "Now my sweet guns are gone."
"My condolences," Bolita nodded solemnly.
The three sat and rolled for a bit in silence, mourning the loss of some mighty fine muscles before Bolita brought up another subject for grieving.
"So, uh, about those end of year exams…"
Auricularis rolled back up the bed.
Calorie retreated inside her carpet cocoon.
Bolita shared the sentiment, but she did not fancy the thought of using a chamber pot for the rest of her natural life. She said as much and the other two reluctantly agreed and emerged from their shelters.
"So are we going to study?" Auricularis asked. "Because the only subject I'm passing for sure is Phys. Ed."
Calorie shook her head. "Even I'm scraping by in History and English."
"Really?" Bolita squinted, fixing two thin laser beams of doubt on Calorie.
"Okay, well maybe not English."
"How much time do you think has passed on our side? Like the same amount, or none at all?" Bolita spoke up, this question that she honestly should've thought of much earlier just hitting her.
"I'm not sure," Auricularis shrugged. "Better just hope for the best."
She was right, in a way. No thoughts, head empty was a sound philosophy Bolita could get behind.
"So how are we going to get back?" Auricularis and Calorie turned their attention to BBB: Big Brain Bolita.
"Maybe somewhere where there's a lot of smart people… and research materials…?"
"So like a school," Calorie sniggered as she unburrito'd and reburrito'd. "Wait, that could actually work though."
"Oh yeah, at the tea party those ladies said something about an academy didn't they? We've got to be able to learn something there," chimed in Auricularis.
There was a knock on the door.