She wakes to claxons-or nearly wakes; this is not her bed in her tiny, dark apartment. Madotsuki hadn't been through the third doorway in Masada-Sensei's ship, but the bright whiteness of the room and the stars zooming past the window confirm to her that she is still onboard.

Zooming?

That's more disconcerting than awakening in a strange bed (oh dear, she must have fallen asleep, how terribly rude), more troubling than flashing red lights and a blaring alarm.

Masada-Sensei's ship never zooms. He isn't the zooming sort.

She rolls and stumbles out of the bed, the ship shaking alarmingly. In the next room, Masada-Sensei is at the piano (of course), frantically playing. He almost pounds the keys in an attempt to pilot, she supposes, but it does very little to halt the growth of the blood-rust-clay blur in the window.

At her entrance he turns and she catches the panic on his face, before he rushes over, calling her name (the tones she knows he's come to use, at least). She's swept along, a long arm around her pulling her over to the table and shoving her under it. It's bolted to the floor like heavy furniture on seafaring ships, and Madotsuki wraps her arms around a table leg.

She has time to wonder how he'll fit beneath the table, and then he's striding back to the piano-the controls he'd let her play with like a child.

He makes it, almost, but the impact jars her bones and hurls him across the room.