"Hey! Captain! Look 'ere!"
Steel, Lysander, Cross, and Broadhoof were walking down one of Manehatten's many crowded streets. The sidewalk was full of ponies; so much so that it was quite difficult to stay close enough to hear. The street was flanked by tall buildings, between twenty and thirty stories in height; not quite the tallest buildings in the city, but rather close. Cars of various makes and models filled the black asphalt road, their engines and honks filling the air as they waited, stuck in traffic.
The building that Lysander had pointed out had, at first glance, seemed rather normal. Twenty-three stories, high, with windows set in grey stone walls, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about it; at least, until one looked further down. There, a white banner with solid black letters read: EQUESTRIAN AIRFLEET OFFICE - NOW HIRING CAPTAINS, SHIPS, AND CREWS.
"Do you think we should go in there?" Cross asked, tilting her head as she looked at the sign.
"Sure. Might be a good way to get money, after all." Steel replied, looking at Lysander and Broadhoof. They just nodded; so, without further ado, Steel crossed the street, followed closely by her crew. It may have been a better idea to actually use the crosswalks, but since the cars were stationary, it was easier to just fit through the spaces between the bumpers of the stuck-in-traffic vehicles. They made it to the other side of the street with little problem, and walked up to the front of the building.
The doors of the building were ornately decorated. Gold-colored frames held large glass panes on either side of a similarly-modeled revolving door. On the other side of the door, a large lobby with marble floors and golden chandeliers framed an ornate wooden desk behind which a well-dressed stallion sat, a pen in his mouth as he wrote down something or over. The lobby was quite full, many ponies who looked like they were from upper society looking oddly at the crew as they walked up towards the desk. The stallion looked up from his paper as he heard the approaching hoofbeats, and quickly closed what he was working on.
"Good morning, Miss. What can I do for you?" he asked, looking at the crew and mostly succeeding at hiding his nervousness.
"We're here to sign up; we heard you were hiring ships and crews." Steel replied, leaning on the desk. "But first; if we supplied our ship, would we be the ones to crew it?"
"Of course, Madam. Just sign your name, the names of your crew, and your ship's name here, and I'll give you the list of important dates you need to know."
She did so; as soon as she signed her name, the stallion paled slightly. As soon as she had finished writing the names with her mouth, he asked, "So, Ms. Wind. Do you know the Fleet Admiral personally?"
"If knowing him personally means spending the first eighteen years of your life living in his house, then yes." Steel replied. "Now, give me that paper."
"Of course! Sorry, madame," he said with a sheepish grin as he handed over the paper. "It's just, not every day do we see someone of your social status here."
"Social status? That belongs to my dad. I'm just a humble airship captain."
"Really? I doubt the admiral would allow his own daughter to drop like that without having some sort of lifeline."
"Well, see you later, Mr..."
"Quillpen. The name's Quillpen."
"Alright, Mr. Quillpen. Bye."
"So," Steel said to her crew as they sat around a table inside the Katyusha. "There's three dates we absolutely can't miss. The first one's about four days from now; they're having some sort of faux-battle thing, where they're going to decide which applicants to keep. Then, a week after that, there's an official training session where they'll teach us about naval tactics, then have another battle. Finally, a week after that, there's the ceremony where they decide what branch to put us under - line battle, intelligence gathering, or special operations. Most likely, we'll be going into intelligence gathering or spec-ops, since we don't have any good weapons for frontline combat.
"Remind me again, why are we doing this?" Sefe asked as he lifted up a cup of tea to his lips. "It seems like this could go spectacularly poorly in a large variety of ways."
"It's also a way for us to get something to do." Cross explained. "You know how we haven't really done much of anything since we helped raid that pirate base, like, three years ago? This is our chance to finally do something big."
"I dunno," Rosebud said, in a thoughtful position. "I kinda like this life. It's safe, it's quiet -"
"It's boring." Lysander said. "All we do is just trading goods. We're capable of so much more; why limit ourselves to what's easy when we can have a life we enjoy living?"
"Either way," Steel said, "we're doing it. Now, c'mon. It's barely even noon, and we have the entire rest of the day to waste away."
"I'm going to go see the city, maybe get a drink. Any of you want to come?" Lysander said, already hovering.
"I'm game," Steel said, followed by a chorus of agreements.
The rest of the day was largely spent going around the city, visiting its many familiar landmarks. Even though none of the crew had been born there, or lived there for any longer than a few days at a time, they had been there often enough to know most of the city's major landmarks; from the Empire Tower that rose high above the rest of the city to the large copper statue of Celestia that stood in the harbor to Time Square in the center of the city, they'd seen - or flown dangerously close to - all of them.
Come nightfall, the crew had returned to their ship after their sightseeing, and had all fallen asleep - except for Steel, who was on deck, watching the docks as she sat on her flanks, cradling a bottle in her hooves. Every few minutes, she'd take another swig as the lights of incoming and exiting ships filled the sky. She just sat there and watched them for hours, until she fell asleep right there on deck, an empty bottle in her hooves.