Whilst Ronin was working to fill out a particularly tricky crack in his mindscape, the sound of a ping rang out.

It's morning already? he thought, surprised.

That ping was a warning he’d set, signaling the beginning of the upcoming academy practical.

After over a month away, it was finally time to return. Ronin stuffed the black and purple academy suit into a bag, then stepped into the much safer Heromaker suit.

Walking out onto the runway, he called down a shuttle, and as one of the flying ships above came down, he entered the airlock. As he did though, he was met by a couple of intense eyes.

“Ehem, Sir, where to?” The pilot asked, trying and failing not to stare at the golden codpiece.

“Ironglades Space Force Academy,” replied Ronin. “And yes, I know it's golden and I know it sticks out, but please don’t stare at it.”

“Uh, sorry about that,” the pilot coughed.

After a few more glances towards the codpiece, the pilot finally got his act together and the ship took off. In short order, the ship then flew across the city, landing on the academy plateau as a self-conscious Ronin walked out amongst the students.

“Long time no see Mr. Maximus. Quite the haircut you’ve got yourself. It must have been quite the business trip,” a voice spoke from behind him.

Ronin had never heard that voice before. It was smooth, deep and had a melodic ring to it.

Who?

He turned around, spotting Simons.

Startled by the big man, Ronin continued looking, scanning the surrounding students as he searched for the man behind the voice.

“Sir, are you ok? Your eyes are flickering around like crazy…”

Ronin did a double take. There it was again! That deep voice.

What’s this? It came out the moment Simons moved his mouth? Could it really be?

“Yeah, it was quite the trip,” Ronin said, his eyes now squarely fixed on Simons’s lips.

“But your eyebrows, why did you remove them as well?”

He was now certain. It was Simons!

“Before we discuss my lack of eyebrows,” Ronin broke in. “What happened to your voice?”

“Oh, you noticed—“

Noticed? You’ve suddenly developed the voice of an angel! How could I not notice? I even doubted it was you!

“The contract for working at Maximus Solutions stated that it requires the employee to have an ability to communicate clearly. I’m not the type of man who will gamble on whether or not I get to keep my job. From voice coaches, to liposuction, I did whatever it took to maximize the clarity of my voice. I guess you could call it a maximus solution so to speak,” Simons said, chuckling at his own joke.

Liposuction? Ah, now I see it.

The bulging neck, which had earlier been fused seamlessly into the rotund body, was now gone. In its place, was a neck that looked more like Ronin’s now, which on the bigger Simons, did not fit at all!

“But Simons… isn’t liposuction going a little far?”

“You might not know how these contracts work, but that clause is a tripwire. The company put it there in order to make sure they could easily fire me at their own leisure, no strings attached. I’ve spoken with the family lawyer regarding this and there is no doubt.”

Simons looked almost proud of himself as he said it. But the issue was... It was Ronin who’d added that clause to the contract and that had definitely not been his intention when he added it. He’d just hoped Simons would fix his lisp!

“What about you Ronin? Why did you remove your eyebrows?”

Ronin made an awkward cough. There was no way he was going to tell Simons about Exodon.

“I was told it would help develop our business relations with some of our new potential customers,” he lied. “But before all of that, what do you say to a little team building? We should celebrate our new jobs after all!”

“Team building?” Simons questioned, a little skeptical.

Ronin grinned.

“I'm thinking we eat out — you know, a fancy restaurant, a full buffet, no limits. We can eat and drink to our heart's content — and the best thing is, it will all be on the company’s bill!”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Simons perked up at that. “Well, I guess I could set aside some time—”

“Good!” Ronin laughed.

They continued on, chatting as they made their way towards the hangar, Ronin receiving plenty of stares along the way. As they approached a tree patch about halfway there, however, something seemed to change on the plateau.

Almost every single student around, stopped in their tracks and began looking up towards the sky. Ronin looked up as well, spotting a ship.

What in the world?

The ship was beautiful and was clearly not meant for commuting. It looked more like something built for arenas that pushed both the pilot and the ship to the limit. It looked like a carefully crafted machine of power. Was it a space racer? A pit fighter, mabye?

“Who’s that?” Ronin asked in wonder.

“You really don’t know? You really do live under a rock, don't you.” Simons lowered his voice, then moved his head closer to Ronin's. “That’s Cadet Haraken. He’s said to be an unrivaled pilot genius, only seen once a century.”

The shuttle landed and the surrounding students swarmed around it, forming a crowd.

A red-haired youth next walked out of the vehicle, and several campus guards ran up beside the youth to hold back the excited mass of people. Men were shouting for autographs and girls were blushing as he moved. There had to be at least a couple hundred students circling this man.

“He could have graduated by now,” Simons commented, “but the academy held him back. He’s only been here for a year but he's already better than most graduates.”

Ronin was also a genius but the only crowd around him was Simons. Pilots really were a different thing altogether.

The red-haired youth waved his hand and a chorus of shrieks from the girls in the crowd followed.

A different thing indeed, Ronin thought.

“…”

The two entered the hangar, then lined up with the rest of the students. A couple of minutes later, as Ronin was switching into the academy suit, professor Raverus Ravent walked in.

“Today we’ll be working on airlock configuration,” the professor began. “In the vacuum of space, if you're the slightest millimeter off in your design, you can vent out the whole crew, so precision is everything!”

Ronin could swear he saw the older man smile when he mentioned the word precision.

“Now remember, the air seals are the most important thing to get right, but if you can't even open the door, I will fail you...”

Raverus went on for a bit more, and when he finished, a number of bots brought out a series of airlock components.

Ronin teamed up with Simons and it didn’t take long before they got into the groove of things. He'd missed three of these practicals so far, but he’d gotten a message from the academy on how to rectify the issue a few days back. In fact, many of the students had been ambushed by the difficulty of the first exercise, something the whole class had corrected for while Ronin was gone. But Ronin had something they didn't. A factory.

Ronin and Simons, that is — the two baldies — first got the air seals working properly but the electronics on one of the airlocks took some extra work.

Anastasia, as always, was the first to finish, raking in the extra points of the course.

Before the 5-hour mark, everyone was done with their airlock and the class started leaving the hangar. Ronin was also about to leave but was stopped by the professor.

“Mr. Maximus, you will need to stay behind,” Raverus said.

“Serves him right,” One of the students snorted. “It was bad before when he never showed up in class, but at least he showed up for the practicals. But now? The slum rat's even skipping those.”

The haughty student wasn’t alone in his sentiment and Ronin saw several others nodding in agreement. Apparently, he still wasn't popular with the class.

Ronin brushed it off. They knew nothing of his circumstances, and if they were going to act like that, they could forget about getting employed at his company in the future. Their loss.

After the last few students left, Raverus Ravent pulled out an electric brush, adjusting his hair and mustache before proceeding further to pull out yet another, new brush, which he started using to brush his uniform. After he was done, the professor was then about to pull out a disinfectant bottle, but Ronin quickly broke in before he could begin using it:

“Professor, I assume you held me back to catch up on the exercises I missed while in prison?”

“Yes, but also, not quite,” Raverus said in his usual monotone voice.

Pointing towards Ronin, he continued.

“As you know, you’ve been signed into the genius track now, meaning, you’ve got double the workload... We might increase it more later though — if you can handle it.”

I can get even more work? Ronin's eyes shot up. They must be pushing “geniuses” as hard as possible in order to maximize their chances of moving up towards the higher systems.

“Double the normal amount of work is more than enough,” Ronin hastily said. With the company and the Potentia Panorama, he had more than enough work at the moment. The last thing he needed now was more of it.

“Anyways, you’ll be doing an extra exercise with me here after the normal ones from now on. And, sorry for keeping your new status in the academy secret. None of your fellow students know you're currently in the genius program and we’d like to keep it that way.”

“To be honest, I’m actually kind of grateful for that…” Ronin sighed. “There’s enough heat on me already. The last thing I need is for an assassin to sneak up on me whilst I'm handing out autographs or something.”

“The bounty?” Raverus asked, raising an eyebrow. “We here at the academy can actually help with that.”

"Really? How?"

In answer to his question, the professor's eyes began moving, working on something with his implant before making a slight swiping motion with his right hand.

Ronin's implant pinged, indicating an incoming new message. He opened it:

A contract?

As he read further down the document, however, he quickly became discouraged. According to this contract, if he sought protection, he’d have to give away any and all ownership and intellectual property to the academy for the next 10 years. In addition, the academy would have the right to dictate his life, down to what he was even allowed to eat from now on.

“This is a slave contract. I can’t take this,” Ronin said, shaking his head. This was an incredible overreach by the academy!

Raverus Ravent simply nodded, giving no indication to whether or not he was happy with Ronin's decision. Without missing a beat, he began the next practical:

“Today we’ll be working on heat transfer systems. Getting rid of heat in space has always been a bit of an annoyance in spaceship design. Now, let's start off easy and install a couple of radiators...”