"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."
~ Winston Churchill
Chapter II
(8 years ago)
Year 2046
Yoki wasn’t sure what to do with the bizarre events that just happened. He wasn’t sure there was a hint somewhere he wasn’t getting, but he was tired and his stomach kept growling angrily. He definitely should’ve eaten more than just a banana.
Though, it did end up working out well in the fight. Perhaps there aren’t any coincidences after all. What a strange morning this is.
Since he didn’t have any leads on what to do next, he decided to go back to find the building he’d initially been searching for. He figured if he couldn’t find it, he’d most likely end up coming across another test. Either way this would get him somewhere, and it’d be better than just standing here like the idiot he was.
He wandered up and down Boston’s cobblestone streets, searching aimlessly for the testing center. He didn’t see it anywhere, and he was getting more and more frustrated as the day went on. This was so pointless! Why did his dad want him to go to this stupid school, anyways? If their entrance exams are this disorganized, why should he even want to attend at all? Whether for prestige or not, this futile quest of a test was really getting on his nerves.
He found himself in Boston Common—still empty of people—and flopped down on a bench, annoyed. Maybe he should just head home and get a quick bite to eat. Not like he was going to miss anythi—suddenly, though, he heard something large moving in the distance.
The ground shook with the bellow roaring through the Common; the sound was deep and guttural, like a T-Rex. Out from the darkness, the immense purple dragon emerged, its scales gleaming like amethysts in the light of the sun. In every scale were designs that separately caught the sunlight to show off with an eerie reflection. The eyes of the dragon blazed with a fierce, burning orange, giving Yoki the feeling of its elderly age. He could see that wisdom in its eyes could only be carried by one of the elderly. Its spread wings, thin veined membranes avulsing power, were almost the width of the entire area between the skyscrapers. With every great stride the monster of a bygone age took, the very ground appeared to shudder beneath it as its long, wiry tail swung in gigantic waving strokes through the jungle, uprooting trees in its wake that fell like matchsticks. Not a normal creature; there was a force of nature exuding an air of dread and dominance, every movement testifying to enormous strength and age-old menace.
“What?!” Yoki gasped, eyes wide. What the fuck was he supposed to do in this scenario?
He remembered Indigo’s words.
Your next examination will begin shortly.
Was this the “next examination” she had been talking about? If so, The Academy was insane! The monstrousatous dragon spotted him and started moving right towards him, eyes ablaze. He could see purplish blue flames building in its throat as it roared.
Without warning, it shot a jet of sickly hot, no, cold flame at him. He ducked and rolled as fast away as he could, but some of his hair sizzled off as ice. There was no way he could fight this. . . beast! He was only a kid! The best he could do was try to get away from it as quickly as possible. He dove out of the way as another barrage of fire flew torwarrds him. He ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. To his delightful surprise, the dragon didn’t follow him at all. It sat down on its haunches and watched him go.
He turned back around standing still, and the beast stood up again, ready to attack. What was this dragon’s game? It didn’t seem to want to eat him or anything like that. What was it up to?
Then, he saw it. There it was, the building in the photo he had been looking for. He couldn’t remember ever seeing anything like it on Boston Common before, but it was definitely the same sketchy looking house that he’d seen in the photo from The Academy. This was a test.
No shit sherlock. I have to get to the building in order to take the exam. But there’s no way the dragon would let me pass it. Think dammit think!
He had it. The dragon was big, but slow. He could outrun it. Probably. He sprinted back and forth on the Common, watching the creature’s head follow his movements. He wasn’t going anywhere near it, yet it still watched him intently—keenly aware it had its eye on him.
A tremor shook the ground. Audible pops in Yoki’s ears gave way as the air congealed around him. His breath grew short. The temperature dropped rapidly.
Yoki moved closer to test his theory, and the dragon shot bolt after bolt of fire at him, but he dodged them all with ease. He laughed, a sound filled with both exhilaration and confidence. It felt as if he'd been preparing for this moment his entire life. This would work. This plan was a madman’s plan, and a small part of his youth broke off. The adrenaline in his bones overcame any sense of fright he had once before. He could’ve sworn he saw the beast fix a grin just before it began to breathe life into a great bluish-purple spitball in its mouth.
Without giving the beast a moment more to prep its attack, Yoki flew like the wind toward the great hulking giant. The purple light in its mouth intensified, radiant energy seeping out from its fangs. No heat came from it, but a chill began to fill the air.
No matter what his dad thought, he believed he belonged in The Academy. Yoki felt it pull towards him—but no. He didn’t belong anywhere. And he was not, at all, ready for The Academy. The future was about to prove to him he had limits, and his limits only went on so far. He felt his time running short. Images flicked before him of his beautiful mother, Stephanie, raising him high and singing songs of delight along with his father, Garrett. It was a simple life, but a happy one. Why disrupt something so happy with something so outstandingly outlandish? So nonsensical it proved nothing in the ordinary world. Absolutely nothing. Or so he thought. And to be fair, at the time, he was ignorant to a great many things. This was one. But, alas, his madness took over.
The beast winked—yes, winked—and opened its great hulking maw, releasing a violet sun from its throat. This attack would kill.
Yoki’s body froze. He counted slowly, waiting. Everything slowed down. The volcanic ball of mass—a cataclysmic fusion of icy fire and dark energy—surged forward, annihilating everything in its path. Trees disintegrated into icy ash, the ground cracked open with a comical cold molten fury, and the air itself seemed to catch a fire so cold Yoki felt it chill his soul.
Yet, in that fraction of a second, Yoki moved with an ethereal grace. He darted to the side, his body a blur, defying the laws of nature. As the violet sun exploded, unleashing waves of destruction, Yoki twisted through the air, his form dancing on the edge of oblivion.
He landed, heart pounding, amidst the smoldering ruins. Behind him, the city lay in ruin, a testament to the beast's wrath. But Yoki stood unscathed, a lone figure against the backdrop of devastation, having evaded the cataclysm with a daring, almost impossible maneuver.
Running as fast as the wind, he dashed under the dragon’s belly, exploiting the one blind spot where it couldn’t reach him. The beast twisted its massive head around its body, snapping at him, but it couldn’t unleash its icy fire without risking self-harm. He kept his eyes fixed on the examination building behind it. It was so close now—so close he could almost touch it. He was going to make it.
As he emerged from underneath the dragon, it slammed its tail down in front of him, sending chunks of the sidewalk flying and blocking his path. Trapped, he saw the dragon shift its body, ready to attack. A scorching hot bolt of blue fire flew just above his head, narrowly missing him.
His chances of making it into The Academy seemed to dim with every passing second. He had to reach that examination building. If there was one lesson he’d learned from his dad, it was that failure was not an option. But how could he achieve this without becoming the dragon’s toast? Icy toast?
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“Here we go!” he shouted, more to himself than anyone else. This was about to get serious.
In a flash of inspiration, Yoki grabbed the dragon’s leg and swung onto its shoulders. The beast roared in fury, but once again, it couldn’t attack him without hurting itself. That was the key, Yoki thought. He sprinted down the dragon’s back, deftly avoiding the spines lining its backbone.
As he neared the tail, Yoki noticed the beast's vulnerable wing joint. He leaped, grabbing onto the base of the wing, and with all his inhuman might, he twisted it, causing the dragon to roar in pain and falter. Using this moment of weakness, Yoki scrambled up to the top of the wing and launched himself into the air, performing a mid-air somersault to gain momentum.
He aimed for the examination building's roof. Mid-flight, he took out a small grappling hook from his belt, firing it at the building's spire. Where did he get the grappling hook? He had no idea, and didn’t even bother thinking about it with all of the weird shit that this fucking doozie of a day was becoming. The hook caught, and Yoki swung gracefully, his body a blur against the sky. The dragon, recovering from its pain, snapped its jaws in his direction, but Yoki was already out of reach.
As he swung towards the roof, he released the hook and watched it dissolve into nothingness. He landed dumbly with a sloppy roll. The dragon, in a last desperate attempt, unleashed another violet sun. Yoki, somehow anticipating this using his wild instinct, turned the building's reflective windows to towards it, and repelled it. He angled a large shard of glass, and the dragon's own attack went straight back at it. Repelled—fully believing the mirror reflected not just vision, but matter itself. He did this all on instinct, without even thinking about how foolhardy it sounded. The moment the attack reflected, he felt suddenly drained of all his energy. But despite the sudden fatigue, he watched as the beast was caught in the explosion, roaring as the energy engulfed it.
Yoki didn't stop to watch. He leapt off the roof, crashing through the door heart racing but triumphant.
The two he met before were already inside, taking notes on their own clipboards.
“Sloppy,” Greenfield said. “I thought he would have been able to do it faster.”
“I disagree,” Indigo said, her voice clipped. “I thought he did a nice job. Not many applicants get the dragon, and those that do often die. Beating the eighty-six percent fatality rate is room for compliments, no?”
“It took him too long to figure out how to get past it. A fatal mistake in a real combat scenario.”
“But he did get past it. Your standards are too high, Greenfield. He’s had zero training. He’s not a fourth-year Academy student. He even adapted perfectly with the grappling hook he called from the rift. And the mirror technique he used? That is a sign of his Tearing abilites as it is Greenfield. We have to look at potential. His actions speak for himself.”
“I am looking at potential,” Greenfield said, clearly getting irritated. “I’ve been looking at potential all morning. Just because you’re too soft to clear out the crop—”
“I’m not soft at all, you’re just unnecessarily ruthless. If not for me, we’d have seventy-two applicants dead these past few months. Don’t you remember your Academy exam? I do. I was one of the judges.”
“Uh, hello?” Yoki said. They were so wrapped up in their argument that they seemed to have forgotten he was there at all. He was exhausted and wanted to be done with all of this. “Can I finish? Or should I just go home?”
They looked at him flatly.
“Sure,” Greenfield said, sounding almost hostile. “You can finish. Why don’t you leave right now?”
Greenfield’s eyes narrowed, his words sounding more like a command than a question.
“I’ll take you to the exam room,” Indigo said, shooting a glare at Greenfield. “You’ve finished the physical part of the test. Now we’re going to test your academia. Are you a good student?”
“I think so?” Yoki said. “I’ve always been the highest ranking student in my class.”
“Well, we’re going to test every bit of your knowledge. A single wrong answer is cause for disqualification, so try not to get anything wrong. Follow me.”
What followed was quite possibly the most challenging test Yoki had ever faced, more so than the thugs and the dragon combined. He was tested on theories such as the Hodge Conjecture and Poly-dimensional Topology in math. After that came Quantum Physics, then listing the entirety of the human body with bones and ligaments alike, followed by Physical Chemistry. Then there was language—complex grammatical errors in Latin which he had to fix, particularly with the cases of endings involving the ablative versus the nominative genitives. Then it moved onto elementary Chinese (a language he’d never taken), in which, with his limited knowledge, he had to describe the meaning of Chinese characters and the history of their evolution. Then his knowledge of world history was tested, from the Crusades to Napoleon’s conquest of French revolutionary legislation, to the ancient origin of the Knights Templar, and the pyramids of Egypt. Indigo’s words rang in his brain as he wrote.
“Too slow!” Greenfield barked every few minutes. “Your handwriting is atrocious! Are you even trying?”
“Good,” Indigo countered occasionally. “But I need more detail. Why did the Knights Templar fall? Elaborate.”
Yoki’s head spun with the rapid-fire questions, his hand cramping as he scribbled down answers. He could barely keep up, his mind racing to recall every bit of knowledge he had ever absorbed. The room seemed to blur around him, the voices of Greenfield and Indigo blending into a cacophony of demands and corrections.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Indigo called time. Yoki dropped his pen, his hand numb and his brain depleted.
A single wrong answer is cause for disqualification.
He knew she hadn’t been trying to intimidate him. She was telling the truth. As he’d already learned, The Academy didn’t mess around. He was alone in the exam room. No other students seemed to be taking the test.
Lunch was pathetic—just energy bars and Gatorade. When he complained, Greenfield shook his head contemptuously. “You think you’ll get your choice of meal when you’re out on assignment?” he said. “You’ll have to make do with whatever you get. You’re lucky we’re even giving you food at all. We could have made you do this whole thing on an empty stomach.”
Part of Yoki reconsidered why he’d even want to go to The Academy after that comment. Greenfield was, to be frank, a complete asshole with a talent for being insufferable. Was he the typical sort of person who taught there? Or were they just trying to intimidate applicants into quitting? Well, he wasn’t going to quit. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he was at least going to finish the test. They could do what they wanted with his application after that.
The second part of the test was even more brutal than the first. Now he had to take his knowledge and apply it to new and unknown situations: complex calculus he’d never seen before, questions about questions within biology that he wasn’t quite sure how to answer, in-depth inquiries about historical figures he’d never heard of and what their motivations might have been for acting as they did. He got bogged down for almost an hour in a complicated question about military tactics in an ancient Greek battle before eventually taking his best stab at the answer and moving on. At this point, he had no idea if his answers were correct or even close to right. He just knew he had to take his best guess.
Finally, after working expeditiously to finish on time, he turned the page and there were no more questions. The test was over. He was now aware that no one else was in the room, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He cleared his throat, but no one answered. Eventually, he got up and walked out.
Indigo and Greenfield were sitting in the waiting room outside the door.
“I finished,” he said hesitantly. “I wasn’t sure what to do with the test—”
“Someone’s already come to collect it,” Greenfield said. “You can go. We’ll be in touch if you’re accepted. If you don’t hear anything, you didn’t make it in.”
“How long will it take?” Yoki said drowsily. He felt like he was going to pass out from sheer mental exhaustion. “To score the exam, I mean.”
“Hard to say. You’ll either hear from us, or you won’t.”
“You did a good job,” Indigo said, trying to sound encouraging. “Not everyone even finishes the test. You finished. That’s something.”
He wasn’t sure if it was enough, but at least it was over. He could go back to his dad and tell him he tried.
“If you head out the front door,” Greenfield said. “It’ll take you right back to your house.”
“How?” Yoki said, and the examiners both shrugged. They didn’t seem interested in explaining themselves.
“Thanks for your time,” Indigo said. “And thanks for coming in. We really appreciate it.”
Greenfield just scowled.
Yoki opened the door, not quite sure if he could believe what they were saying. He half-expected to walk out into a dragon-infested Boston Common, but the door led to his own living room. He looked back at Greenfield and Indigo, but they had already moved on from him. They were scribbling furiously in a pair of notebooks and comparing notes.
He walked through the door and closed it behind him, then quickly opened it again. The examination building was gone. The door just led to the front porch, like it usually did.
“How’d it go?” his dad boomed from the kitchen.
“Uhhh…”
He honestly had no idea. Usually, he had a good sense of whether he’d passed an exam, but not this time.
“I know it’s kind of a trip,” his dad said, coming toward him. “They like to mess with your head a little bit so you’re more likely to let your guard down and make a mistake. They love it when their applicants make mistakes. It makes them feel superior.”
“Oh,” Yoki said, wrinkling his nose. He wasn’t sure he liked the Academy at all. “Well, they said they’d let me know. So we’ll either get something from them or not, I guess.”
“I’m sure you’ll get in. Remember, I went there. I know what the other kids were like. I know you’re one of them, Yoki.”
“Sure. You know, you said it was an interview. But it wasn’t really that at all. They didn’t ask me any questions.”
“Trust me, they did. Indigo and Greenfield, right? Both fine gentlemen. Indigo in particular. He’s a hard type of guy to come by. You just didn’t notice. They got everything they needed to know.”
Why is he referring to Indigo as a man? That’s most peculiar. Not just that... this whole business seemed suspicious.
He frowned, uneasy. It was strange having no input on where things went from here. He was used to having some level of control over his life. But with The Academy, it seemed like that was typically how it went.