Adam opened his eyes to find his son standing five feet in front of him, an arrow knocked on the string of a taut bow, the arrow’s head pointed straight up at Adam’s face. His son’s eyes were unblinking, fixed upon his target. No emotion showed in them other than a fierce determination as he slowly exhaled the air from his lungs and released the deadly projectile. Adam’s eyes widened briefly in shock and he nearly fell over as the arrow sailed straight through his head and continued towards its true target far in the distance. Adam turned and watched the arrow as it arced towards a round target with a bright red bulls-eye in the center. The red, black, and white of the target stood out in stark contrast to the verdant greenery of a lush jungle-scape surrounding them on all sides. Three sets of eyes were trained on the arrow as it finally struck the third ring from the center on the distant target. Considering that the target was over 100 meters away, it was an exceptionally good shot. Adam’s heart still hadn’t stopped pounding from the scare of having an arrow pass through his admittedly insubstantial cranium, but still, he couldn’t help but admire his son’s skill with a bow.
“Missed again”, said a gruff voice off to the side.
Adam looked up at the speaker, who stood above them on a jungle tree branch as thick as the man was tall. The older man on the branch scratched at his greying beard as he simply asked, “Why, Mike?”
“I didn’t take into account the break in the trees halfway down the course. The breeze was able to come through and affect the arrow’s path, sir.” Adam’s son, Mike, immediately responded.
“And…?” the older man prompted.
“And I should have used wind-sight before taking the shot” Mike sighed out in defeat. “I didn’t expect there to be such a strong breeze in the break when there doesn’t seem to be any wind anywhere else in this place.”
“Eternity does not strictly follow the laws of nature and physics, Mike. Wind walls are common and you need to understand what to look for if you’re going play with the big boys one day” the older man said.
“If only we had access to a scenario, created by a master, that could somehow teach you how the elements affect arrows during intensive combat…” the man trailed off.
Adam could see a grimace form on Mike’s face as the older man continued with a deadpan tone, “oh, wait. We do.”
The instructor held up his wrist and a glowing translucent screen appeared like a sleeve around the man’s forearm. He swiped through some menus and then pushed one of the translucent buttons. The scene around them shifted until they were standing in a huge open field dotted with large standing stones. The sky overhead was dark with heavy rain clouds and the pitter patter of rain could be heard all around them. Gusts of wind seemed to swirl from every direction as the brewing storm around them started to break.
Adam looked over at his son and couldn’t help but smile as Mike gave the trainer a weary look, as if to say “this again?”. The bow in his hands slightly shimmered and subtly changed into a much larger bow that was pitch-black and had spikes at each end. A soft radiance came from the weapon and Adam noted that the illusory rain pushed back from the bow as if disintegrating into a halo of clear air.
“Standard configuration, two minute expiration as usual” the old trainer shouted over the wind from the top of a large standing stone nearby. “Let’s see if you’ve made any improvements since last time.”
A large glowing ‘5’ appeared in front of Mike’s face and moved along with him as he started running toward one of the largest standing stones in the distance. The glowing ‘5’ soon changed to a ‘4’ as the countdown commenced its rapid decent. It was clear to Adam that this wasn’t the first time Mike had been presented with this particular scenario, since he clearly had a plan in mind of what to do. Mike whipped out five arrows from the quiver on his back and started slotting four of them into special grooves in the back of the bracer on his right arm as he ran. The arrows stuck out a bit past his hand, but were slightly angled out so that they wouldn’t interfere with his sight-lines during a shot. He knocked the final fifth arrow to the string and pulled back the string just as the countdown in front of his face hit zero.
Mid-stride, Mike aimed up toward the nearest standing stone and released an arrow at a target that had suddenly appeared at the top of the rock. The arrow’s velocity was enough to drive straight through the strong winds and rain to the middle of the target. The target turned red and a glowing ‘1/30’ appeared above it in the air. Mike twitched his fingers in a quick rhythm and the first arrow in his bracer shot forward out of its slot where it was cleanly caught and knocked by Mike in a fraction of a second. A second target was quickly pierced by that arrow and a ‘2/30’ appeared above it.
The perspective shifted and Mike was soon running back towards Adam and the trainer even as he moved further into the field of standing stones. Mike was like a machine with his precision and speed as he skewered one target after another. When Mike hit a ninth target that was peaking out from the side of a stone, the target lit up in green and a small green light appeared on his bow. Mike quickly spun in a 360-degree circle as if searching for something specific in the distance. He soon spotted what he was looking for and Adam could see his fingers tap out another small rhythm on the bow’s grip. The green light on the bow winked out, and the arrow started glowing a dim green instead. Mike spent a little longer sighting, but soon released the arrow and didn’t even watch its flight as he frantically started refilling his bracer with more arrows.
Adam followed the flight of the glowing green arrow as it seemed to cut a straight line toward a target in the distance. The arrow appeared to ignore the wind and rain completely at first, but Adam also noted that the green glow was dimming rapidly as it flew further and further. The green glow extinguished completely just before reaching the target, but enough of its flight path was protected from the elements that it still solidly hit near the middle of the target.
When Adam returned his attention to his son, Mike was on the move once more and was barreling straight towards him. Mike shot an arrow just over Adam’s head, and then dove towards where Adam was standing. Naturally, Mike passed right through Adam’s incorporeal body as he rolled into another shooting stance and pegged another target near its outer edge. Something whisked through Adam and thudded into the ground by his feet where Mike had been a moment earlier. A red-fletched arrow quivered in the ground and Adam could see that it had been fired by a crossbow attached to the now disabled target with a glowing red 11/30 over it.
Mike continued to sprint around the area shooting target after target. He would get as close to the targets as possible to minimize the effects of the wind and rain on his arrows, but it was becoming a more desperate dance as every other target came with an attached crossbow. Adam could see that there was a 2 second delay on the crossbow from when the target appeared to when it would shoot its payload at Mike. Mike tried to use the slight delay to close the distance as much as possible before releasing each arrow, but he was sometimes forced to dodge behind a smaller rock for cover when he couldn’t get within range of a target quickly enough.
Adam wondered why Mike wasn’t taking more risky shots on the targets, but after taking a quick count of the arrows left in Mike’s quiver, he understood that there must have only been 30 arrows in the quiver to begin with. If Mike missed a single shot, he wouldn’t be able to complete the scenario of hitting all 30 targets. That theory was quickly proven wrong as a target appeared just 2 meters behind his son and started a quick 2 second countdown on the attached crossbow. Mike must have some sort of radar because the appearance of this newest target caused him to immediately spin towards the target and stab it in its center with the spiked tip of his bow. This attack apparently worked just as well as shooting the target, since it immediately turned red and a 18/30 appeared above it. The 19th target then appeared three quarter of the way up a nearby stone and was soon glowing a bright green with an arrow embedded near the bullseye.
Mike once again scanned his surroundings for a distant target and started his rhythmic tapping of the bow’s handle to transfer the green light from the bow to the knocked arrow. This time, the arrow glowed a more vibrant green and the protective effect lasted throughout the arrow’s entire flight. While not a perfect bullseye, the 20th target was soon a glowing red and Mike was once again refilling his arm bracer.
The final ten targets presented a new challenge as they appeared in pairs and every target contained attached crossbows. One target would appear high up on a stone, while the other would appear within a few body-lengths of Mike himself. If he chose to shoot both, he had enough time to disable them before they fired their bolts at him, but making the decision to physically stab the closer target would typically allow enough time for the second target to fire. He chose to stab the first target and barely managed to shoot the second before it fired. The second pair he chose to shoot both to give himself a breather, but he made a mistake on the third pair. He took too long stabbing the first target, which let the more distant target get off a shot before he could disable it.
A crossbow bolt slammed into Mike’s left side and his hasty shot went wild. The crossbow on the target started another countdown from 3, but Mike managed to lift his bow and hit the target through the pain caused by his wound.
Adam looked up at the trainer to see if he would discontinue the scenario now that Mike was injured, but the man stood as still as a statue, arms folded, impassively observing the scene below as if nothing was amiss.
Mike growled as he hit the 27th and 28th targets with arrows from a kneeling position. The 28th target glowed blue when hit, and this time a little blue light appeared on Mike’s bow. Instead of following the previous pattern of paired targets, the 29th target appeared all on its own, but it was at least as far away as the 10th and 20th targets had been.
Mike looked resigned as the 2 minute scenario countdown expired along with the rain-repelling aura that had previously surrounded his bow.
The rain and wind whipped at Mike’s face and caused his already straining body to struggle as he held his third to last arrow. Before shooting it at the target in the distance, Mike tapped a complicated little rhythm on the bow’s grip and the blue light seemed to be transferred from the bow to his eyes. Mike seemed to try calming himself as he sighted for longer than he had for any previous target. No crossbow bolts came his way, so Adam assumed this must be a test of whatever ability was currently empowering his son’s eyes. Adam quickly hit a button on the virtual display around his own forearm and his eyes were immediately covered in the same blue light that covered Mike’s.
Adam could see individual wind currents highlighted in his vision with tiny directional arrows running through each one. He guessed that the arrows indicated the speed and direction of the wind, but the sheer volume of information this vision displayed was a bit disorienting. The large standing stones were rife with eddies and caused pockets of turbulence as the wind and rain swirled around the various stones in complicated patterns.
Eventually, Mike exhaled slowly and released the arrow aiming a good deal to the left and up of the target. Adam could see the arrow get immediately redirected through the fast moving air where it veered further and further to the right in an attempt to course-correct. The rain took its toll as well as the arrow fell faster than expected. The arrow passed through some particularly bad turbulence on the back side of a standing stone, which actually seem to correct its course up a bit, but was ultimately not enough to keep it from sinking into the mud several meters in front and still to the left side of the distant target.
Mike’s eyes had keenly observed the first arrow’s flight and a second one soon followed. This next arrow took roughly the same path as before but added some height to the arc to compensate for the effect of the wind and rain. This one hit the eddy of the standing stone a bit differently than the first and caused the arrow to over-correct to the right. Still, the arrow narrowly managed to clip the very edge of the target which immediately lit up with a glowing blue ‘29/30’.
Mike let out a joyous shout and tried to pump his fist in the air, but quickly clutched it back to his chest near his wound. Adam assumed this must be the furthest he had ever reached in this particular scenario based on his reaction. Even a bolt to his side couldn’t hide the smile that lit his face, and Adam couldn’t help but smile himself as both of them started looking around the area for the last target.
As Mike scanned his surroundings, Adam noticed movement in the corner of his eye. The trainer had pulled a bow out of nowhere along with a single arrow. Adam was startled to see that the trainer’s chest was now painted with a large circular target that looked like all of the others before.
Mike soon gave up on searching the surroundings for the final target and instead turned with a questioning glance to his trainer. As soon as Mike spotted the target on the trainer’s chest, his eyes scrunched up in confusion and he lowered his bow to the point at the ground. The trainer, on the other hand, smoothly fit the arrow to his string, pulled back, and fired a quick shot directly at Mike’s right leg.
Mike had the presence of mind to dive out of the way as the shot was fired and the shot only skimmed his pant leg instead of skewering it. He scrambled behind a rock for cover as he shouted out, “What the crap, man! Why did you shoot at me!?” and then after a brief pause, “and why is there a target on your chest?”
The trainer held another arrow on the taut bowstring as he steadily sighted towards the rock where Mike currently sheltered.
After a couple seconds of silence, the trainer finally replied “No way you’ll ever be prepared for Eternity unless you get some real combat experience first. Now come and try to hit me if you can.”
Adam had a decent vantage of both combatants from where he stood so he could clearly see the shock written all over Mike’s face as he yelled out, “I’m not 18 yet, it’s not allowed.”
The trainer yelled back with a small grin, “You’ll be 18 in just a few months, and what’s the use of having this fancy room of yours if you can’t use it to bend some of the rules a bit every now and then, eh?”
Adam could see his son’s face go through some rapid transformations as he furiously thought on what the older man was saying. Confusion, excitement, guilt, confusion again, then finally landing on skeptically excited.
“So….I just have to hit you in the chest to win then?” Mike yelled out.
“Yep” came the short reply.
“And how many arrows do you have?” Mike asked.
“As many as I need” came the reply.
“Doesn’t seem fair” Mike said.
“Who said anything about being fair?” the trainer replied. “You shouldn’t have wasted so many of your arrows earlier. Not my fault you only have one left.”
Adam saw Mike grit his teeth in frustration as he steeled himself to run out of cover and take on the older man in combat. Mike poked out to the left of his small shelter as if he intended to run that way before immediately turning on his heel and dashing out the other side. The trainer had released an arrow at the feint but had another arrow on his string in the blink of an eye and fired it into Mike’s right foot mid-stride. Mike stumbled and was forced to try a desperate shot at the trainer before he was skewered once more. Adam watched the trainer as he sighted along his glowing red arrow and released at the same moment as Mike. The arrows collided mid-air with the trainer’s red arrow splitting Mike’s arrow in half and continuing straight into Mike’s chest.
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Mike looked in shock down at the arrow embedded in his chest and Adam couldn’t help but let out a startled exclamation as he started running towards his son. He stopped short as the arrows in Mike’s side, chest, and foot all vanished before their surroundings slowly disappeared to be replaced with the inside of a large domed room. Mike stood there panting in what looked like a head-to-toe wetsuit holding a very expensive-looking bow filled with wires and blinking lights. The trainer looked the same as he had the entire time, but his bow was now nowhere to be seen.
Mike, who now appeared completely unharmed, quickly jogged over to a nearby wall and hung his bow up on a charging station as he started stripping the suit from his well-muscled torso to drape around his waist. He was breathing heavily and immediately grabbed a water bottle which he started chugging as he jogged back to his trainer.
The older man waited for Mike to arrive in front of him before quickly outlining the results of the training session.
“You’ve made some progress in your target-practice. Your wind-patterning is coming along, but not as quickly as it should be. I want you to spend at least 5 hours with wind-sight before our next meeting. Also, your rhythming was sloppy on that first cast of [IMPERVIOUS] which caused it to fail before reaching the 10th target. The second was much better, but 50% is not going to cut it with where you’re wanting to go.”
The trainer then stared pointedly at the bracer covering Mike’s arm where he had been stashing and using arrows throughout the exercise and said, “I know you like that thing, but you nearly fumbled a couple of arrows during the exercise and you’re not good enough with it yet for it to be valuable. You may have been able to save one or two more arrows for the end if you hadn’t wasted time with it.”
Adam couldn’t help but notice Mike pointedly eyeing an identical bracer on the trainer’s right arm even as he criticized Mike’s use of it.
The trainer messed with the screen around his left forearm once more and three rows of ten targets suddenly shimmered into existence in front of the pair, with the last target being a smaller representation of the trainer with a target on his chest.
Small red circles were highlighted on each target, save the last one, and showed where Mike’s arrows had struck. Most were clustered in or near the bullseye, but a few showed just how close some of the shots had been to missing the targets entirely.
“You scored a solid 81 out of 100 for precision, which would likely have been higher if you hadn’t managed to turn yourself into a human pin-cushion out there” the trainer said.
Mike looked indignant at the comment considering that the trainer was responsible for two of those pins in his metaphorical cushion but kept silent while the older man continued.
“You finally managed to hit the 29th target this go-round, so now you know what waits for you at the end of the scenario” the trainer said as a huge grin spread across his face and his arms opened wide to his sides. “Me”.
“Your other teachers were great for teaching you how to stand still and shoot at targets, but that’s not really why I’m here, is it?” the trainer more stated than asked.
“I didn’t realize that I’d be able to…bend the rules this early on master Kree” Mike said.
Adam thought he’d recognized the trainer from somewhere before, but now that he heard the name ‘master Kree’, he finally knew who this was. He let out a small whistle of surprise at the fact that his son had landed such a high ranking member of Eternity to be his tutor this early on. Adam only marginally followed the game-world as a means to hopefully connect with his ex-wife and son, but master Kree, or just “Kree” as he was known in Eternity, was one of the top players in their region.
Kree exhaled a great gust of breath and looked down as he said, “Honestly, I probably shouldn’t bother with it and just train you like all the other idiots out there. Don’t know why a birthday makes it suddenly okay to be shooting at virtual avatars when the day before you couldn’t, but that’s what the big-brains at the capitol decided so that’s what all us peons need to do, eh? Bah, it’s a bunch of rubbish anyhow. I decided to take you on because I see some potential in ya, not just because Lyle asked me to. You’ve got a long ways to go, but if you keep at it, you could end up being a resource for your mother’s guild, and shooting stationary targets won’t get you there. If you’re going to quit, better to decide now and save yourself the hassle down the road.”
“I’m not a quitter, and I’ll never be a quitter.” Mike said with gritted teeth, a hard look stealing across his face.
Adam looked down in shame at the remark but told himself that this was just Mike’s personality and had nothing to do with him. He could lie to himself for a little longer. He could always lie to himself for just a little longer if it kept him going.
“Well, we’ll see about that in time” Kree said as his face softened a bit. “You keep up your training and don’t slack off.”
A hesitant silence sprung up between the two for a few seconds before Kree suddenly said, “you’ve earned yourself the chance to watch me train if you’d like. The tournament starts in an hour and I usually like to limber up before-hand. How ‘bout it?”
Adam could see Mike’s face light up with amazement at the offer, but it immediately turned into a pained grimace as he looked down at the clock on his forearm with regret.
“Man, I wish I could” Mike said, “but I’ve got a ton of people coming over here for a watch party and need to get some stuff setup before-hand. Any chance I could take a rain-check on that for another day?” he excitedly asked.
“That’s right, I should’ve known that.” Kree said with a bit of disappointment showing on his face. “It’s a big event after all and there aren’t too many better places than this for a watch party” he said while holding his arms out towards the domed room around them.
“Yes, let’s plan on it another day” Kree said as he brought up the screen around his forearm and started scrolling.
“Thank you for the instruction today, master, and good luck” Mike said to the figure who soon vanished into thin air.
----------------------------------------
Mike stood there staring at the spot where Kree had been for some time, a wistful look on his face. Adam imagined that he was daydreaming about the opportunity to watch Kree’s training sessions, but soon enough Mike had pulled off the suit’s shoes and was just pulling the suit down over his boxers when a soft female laugh from the side had him scrambling to get the suit back up. Adam and Mike both turned to see a stunning young girl about Mike’s age entering the room from a door to the side of where Mike’s bow hung charging.
Mike immediately blushed and awkwardly tried to figure out whether he should pull his suit back up over his torso, or just let it sit around his waist as it was. Considering that his clothes were on the table over by the girl, Mike’s indecision clearly showed on his face as he said, “oh, oh hi Emily. I…wasn’t expecting anyone this early.”
Emily looked to where Mike’s eyes kept glancing and saw the clothes lying on the table by her side. She arched a delicate eyebrow as she looked back appreciatively at the well-toned torso of Mike standing a few meters away. She grabbed the shirt and played with it for a bit to prolong Mike’s obvious torture before throwing it at him with an exaggerated sigh.
“Seems like a waste to cover up the only good view in the room with a shirt” the girl slyly said as she peeked through a conspicuously large hole in the fingers of her hands that mock-covered her eyes while he put the shirt on.
“I thought that this place was supposed to be amazing, a true wonder of technology that could show me anything, but it looks like a big cement bowl” the girl said as she gazed around the large room in disappointment.
Now that Mike’s shirt was on, he regained some of his composure and brought up his wrist in a practiced movement. A screen appeared around his forearm, and he immediately started tapping and scrolling until the room transformed into an idyllic beach with white sand and bright blue waves crashing into the shore.
Emily stared around in amazement and then stumbled a bit as the pair rocketed into the air going higher and higher into the sky. They passed through some wispy white clouds and continued to zoom ever upward as the ground beneath them fell away at a rapid pace. The curvature of the earth was soon visible as they entered outer space and the entire planet lay below them as they seemed to float above the earth.
“How’s this then?” Mike asked with a grin. “Better than the cement bowl?
“I would have preferred a warning before being launched into orbit, but yes, I suppose you could say that this is marginally better than before” Emily said with hands upon her hips. She glanced out at the pitch-black void that covered most of the area around them for only a brief moment before turning to where the lights of the super cluster shone in the distance.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the girl asked as she took several hesitant steps on the invisible floor beneath her towards the stars in the distance.
“It sure is.” said Mike as he took in Emily’s shining eyes, her curly golden blonde hair, and her cute little nose as she stared up at the stars. She was wearing a black skirt with a sleeveless white shirt that showed off her athletic build quite well.
Mike’s eyes quickly darted to the stars above as she turned toward him, but Adam could see a shy grin form on her beautiful face that proved that Mike had clearly been caught staring.
Adam then joined the youths in looking out at their solar system that was clearly visible with 8 planets and a glaring sun in the center of it all. Everyone’s attention eventually moved to the massive super-cluster that spanned nearly a third of the sky around them. It looked like glowing golden ink that had been dropped into a glass of water. Its swirling branches and clouds of golden light were speckled with even brighter glowing suns, galaxies, and nebulae. The rest of the view around them was utterly black, not a star to be seen. The best their scientists could tell was that their solar system was likely one of the first to have ever formed and lay directly on the outer-edge of the universe, leaving them as a lonely resident on the outskirts of space.
The three took in the sight for a bit longer before Emily looked over at Mike with a mischievous smile and said, “Shouldn’t you be getting ready…you know, like washing off so that you can sit close to someone without knocking them out with your smell?”
Mike looked a bit embarrassed as he turned his attention back to his screen and quickly hit another button. The view of space vanished, and once again returned to looking like a cement dome.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Mike said. “You wanna wait in the living room while I go get ready?”
“No, your mom said I could help her setup in here while you’re getting freshened up” Emily replied.
“Okay, I’ll be right back to help” Mike said as he quickly headed towards the exit.
Emily followed on his heels, but soon stopped as Mike’s mother stepped in front of Mike just as he was walking through the door. Mike cut off anything his Mom may have been about to say by quickly grabbing her by the shoulders as he said, “going to get showered. I’ll be right back to help in a minute. Mom, this is Emily. Emily, this is my Mom, Rachel.”
Rachel raised her eyebrows and yelled “I know, I let her in” at Mike’s quickly retreating back as he ran down the hall and out of sight.
Rachel turned to Emily with an exasperated smile and pulled in a large hovering cart heaped with tables, chairs, and pillows behind her. She pulled up her own screen, clicked a few buttons, and the outline of items started appearing all over the room they were in as the room changed to look like the courtyard of a massive castle.
Rachel leaned in conspiratorially to Emily and mock-whispered, “Don’t tell Mike I told you this, but he moved everything in here earlier and saved where everything should go in this design template so that everything would be perfect when his guests arrived. He spent far longer than I expected, but I suppose he might be aiming to impress someone.”
Rachel chuckled at the blush that spread across Emily’s face, but Emily smiled back and said, “Well, I’m already impressed that he would have gone to so much trouble in the first place. It very convenient to know exactly where things are supposed to go.”
They quickly unloaded the cart of its cargo and Rachel left Emily to position everything while she went out for another load of stuff. Adam silently watched as Emily efficiently moved things around the room as Rachel brought in several couches and then platters of food and bowls full of punch.
Once the last items were brought in, Rachel started helping Emily set out stacks of utensils, plates and cups on the tables.
As they worked side by side, Rachel asked, “So Emily, where did you grow up, and how did you earn a spot at the academy?”
“Well, I was born and raised in a little city called Tampika on the east coast.” Replied Emily. “I’ve been playing the flute since I was three years old. I Never, ever thought I’d be invited to the Academy. Wasn’t even a consideration, since my parents were strictly traditionalist up until their passing” she continued sadly.
“Mike told me that you had recently lost your parents. I’m so sorry for your loss” Rachel said while putting a comforting hand on Emily’s shoulder.
“I am surprised to hear that you were traditionalists though. There are not many who live that life anymore” Rachel said as she resumed setting bins of utensils on the tables.
Emily shrugged and said, “I got made fun of a lot by other kids growing up, so my parents ended up home schooling me after the third grade. Turns out that being an only child of traditionalist musicians means that you get to practice playing instruments, a lot.” She said with a small eye roll.
“I learned to love it though” Emily continued with a wistful tone. “Music was my solace from loneliness, so I hid inside of it. I would play until my fingers cramped, then I would study theory until my fingers were ready to play again. It wasn’t uncommon for me to practice 12 hours a day when I was younger, and as it turns out, practice does actually make you better” Emily said with a small laugh.
“I started playing in the regional orchestra when I was 13, and then moved up to the first flute by the time I was 14.” Emily continued as she meticulously arranged the pillows on the couches to match exactly the templated spots for them.
“Well, making friends wasn’t particularly easy in an orchestra where everyone was at least ten years older than me, so I begged my parents to let me do something where I could meet other kids my age. I tried activity after activity until I finally fell in love with gymnastics. As you know, traditionalists don’t use technology for anything outside of practical purposes, so finding time to practice was never an issue. I soon surpassed all of my new gymnast friends and instead of being happy for my progress, they just shut me out.” Emily said as she punched the last pillow into place with more force than she had with the others.
“Jealousy isn’t reserved for children, but they’re usually a bit more obvious about showing it than adults” Rachel said. “Mike has had similar problems in the past. It’s one reason why joining the academy has been so good for him, and I’m guessing for you too?” Rachel asked.
“Yes” answered Emily with a sigh, “being surrounded by prodigies helped me discover that I’m not a freak after all, well…” she quickly corrected, “that at least I’m not the only one.”
Both women turned at the sound of the door opening and Mike strode in looking freshly showered, hair done, and Adam couldn’t help but feel a bit of fatherly pride that he had somehow helped create this young man.
Mike immediately started moving the last chairs into place as he cautiously said, “sorry, did I interrupt your conversation?”
Rachel turned back to putting ladles in the punch bowls and said, “No, Emily was just telling me about how she got accepted to the Academy. Seems like she’s even more dedicated to her pursuits than even you, Mike.”
“She’s absolutely incredible, Mom.” Mike said with a small shake of his head. “I went to her exam last week and she had to play an entire piece after hearing it once. Once, Mom. Can you believe that?” Mike said with amazement written all over his face. “Obviously I couldn’t really tell if she had done the song the right way or not since I only heard it the one time too, but I think it somehow sounded better than the original? More free-flowing, lighter…somehow…more notes?” he trailed off, his cheeks growing a bit red as he realized he was rambling.
“Anyhow” he continued, “it was really good. And stop with the creepy smile okay, Mom? Sheesh.”
Adam looked over at Rachel and saw that she did indeed have one of those knowing smiles on her face, with her eyebrows both raised, nodding her head slowly as she pointedly kept shifting her eyes between Emily and Mike.
Rachel ended the uncomfortable moment by letting out a burst of laughter and shook her head as she said, “you two are so cute. Fine, I’ll leave you two to finalize things in here. I should probably get going anyway since Lyle will likely be expecting me to be there before everything starts.”
Adam’s insides squirmed at the mention of Lyle, but he couldn’t help himself from trying to walk alongside her as she left so that he could trail her retreating form with his eyes as long as possible at the door’s threshold.
Adam turned back to Mike and Emily just as Emily was saying, “I did end up changing the tune in the exam. I meant to do the first half exactly as played, and then improvise the second half, but I just got the urge and made some changes too early on that ended up snowballing towards the end. I always forget that beautiful music isn’t really the point of the academy after all.”
Mike said, “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy” in a voice that seemed to be mimicking his old trainer.
They both shared a laugh at the statement, and Mike continued, “adaptability is also something highly prized in Eternity. I’ve actually heard rumors that a new expansion may add in the ability to modify patterns on-the-fly for added effects.”
“I’m sure all those words should mean something to me, but I think you forget that I was raised as a traditionalist and therefore know almost nothing about Eternity.” Emily said with a tilt of her head.
“Right, right.” Mike said. “That still seems so strange to me. After all, my Mom has literally been working in Eternity since before I was born, and pretty much everyone at the academy has been studying Eternity their whole lives, so it just seems so normal that everyone would know everything about it.”
Adam could tell that Emily was working up the courage to ask something as she wrung her hands and looked embarrassed while Mike spoke. Mike stopped when he noticed her change in disposition before asking if she was okay.
She fidgeted a bit, but then shyly looked up at him and asked, “actually, that’s sort of the real reason that I came early tonight. I’ve only been at the academy for a couple of weeks and I really feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. Everyone speaks so differently and seems to know everything about how it’s all supposed to work. I just know that tonight I’m going to feel like a fish out of water with everyone else that’s coming. They’re going to talk about attempt percentages, and combo rhythming, and crit chances, blocking, covering, and so many other terms that I just don’t understand.”
She paused, took a deep breath and looked at the floor before finishing, “You can totally say no, or just kick me out now for being an idiot, but I was wondering if you’d be willing…just for a bit, to, you know… sit by me and explain to me what’s happening during the tournament tonight?”
She finally lifted up her face to his with her face all scrunched up in shame only to be surprised by the huge grin covering Mike’s face.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “Do you realize I’ve actually lost friends in the past because they couldn’t stand how much I liked to talk about Eternity?” His expression seemed completely blissful as he continued, “To think that someone is actually asking me to tell them about Eternity. It’s like a dream come true.”