“Wake up, disciple. It’s time to train.” Was the first human voice Léandros heard on his first official morning as ‘direct disciple to the matriarch’.
The night before he’d chosen sanity. He’d been overloaded and needed a mental break when the ship AI had contacted him. As an information compromise, he’d agreed to meet with them at what they’d called the ‘formal break’ during lunch. It was apparently some midday meditation ritual that had become a pseudo religious practice after multiple cultivators over multiple millennia, had done the same thing over generations, claiming they were ‘consolidating their foundations’ and ‘enhancing their dao’. Now it was a period of the day that was reserved for cultivators to meditate privately. The sanctity of the practice would ensure that he and the AI would have some privacy for the conversation. Even from the Stargazer herself.
Apparently, it was a conversation that would require privacy, which was not encouraging considering all of the abrupt changes to Leo’s life.
So, he’d chosen his sanity over information for what might have been the first time in his life, and as a result, he was both awake, and alert when the wake-up call came for him. The AI had helped him set an alarm for 2 hours before what she’d asserted was standard wake up time for the security forces, and hours before the general staff muster. He’d thought he would have a few hours to prepare himself for the day. He was wrong.
Grateful for his paranoia and tendency to overprepare Leo did not startle. Instead, he answered the call, confused and wondering what was going on. He did not prance with ease to his doorway, overjoyed with the knowledge that he had taken his first steps on the path of his cultivation journey. Instead, he put away his datapad with the grim certainty that he was once more in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people and unfamiliar expectations. Expectations he was nearly certain wouldn’t be adequately explained to him. No, he’d have to trial-and-error his way through, without even knowing the punishments that would undoubtedly be dished out swiftly and with extreme prejudice when he failed or committed some dereliction of duty, he wasn’t even aware of.
It was in the way the man had said ‘disciple.’ The tone of his voice. The tenor. The way the word resonated in the air.
Leo could feel it. This person he didn’t know and had never met didn’t like him. It wasn’t the seething vitriol of the Stargazer Scion, but more the active unhappiness of a subordinate or employee who’d been bathroom cleaning or diaper duty. Whoever had forced this person to babysit him had obviously not endeared him to the job.
At least the AI was proving helpful, he thought as he placed the paired datalink at the base of his ear. Who knew, maybe the AI would be able to feed him information throughout the day.
‘Well,’ Leo thought. ‘At least if he’s being forced to wake up this early, his dislike might be just a tad justified. If seriously misplaced… But you can only ever strike the targets within your reach.’ Something told Leo that whoever gave the man his orders was well out of both of their reaches. ‘For now,’ a dark part of his mind offered. For once Leo didn’t supress it. He was an adult now, at least according to The Coalition, and he didn’t need to cower or pander to unimportant children, and the bullies that supported them. If he couldn’t win these people to his side, or at least make them neutral, then so what? Eventually he’d be powerful enough that it wouldn’t matter. Leo could work with that. After the reception he’d received from the clan cultivators aboard, this was at least a situation he felt he could improve, if given some time.
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Less than a minute had passed between when the man had arrived, and when Leo had opened the door, but that didn’t matter much to the grump standing in front of him.
“About time,” said the man through gritted teeth.
Leo knew it wouldn’t matter to the man that he himself hadn’t had more than four hours of sleep. If anyone had a right to be annoyed, it was Leo. The day before had been long and, frankly, traumatic. The following day was quickly proving was already turning out to be just as long, if not longer. ‘And possibly more traumatic’ Leo thought.
After all, the night before, he’d been one of the last in the batch to enter the chamber before being promptly whisked away to places unknown. Then, he’d studied for as much of the night as he could get away with.
He didn’t regret studying, though, because he’d been looking into how things worked aboard the ship. That was why he knew that the man in front of him was a guard, and according to the uniform, he was either a captain or a sergeant, if Leo was reading the insignia correctly. While each house, clan, and sect, had their own variations, council law ensured the consistency of rank and type of service; be it guard, soldier, mercenary, or otherwise.
From what Leo could tell, the man was a cultivator, a second-circle cultivator, if Leo hadn’t miscalculated his overall strength, though that was exceedingly rare for him. Also, this man wasn’t particularly obscuring what minuscule power he did have. Either that, or his mana control was too poor to properly contain his power.
Leo could understand academically why this man hated him: opportunity costs, plain and simple. It was exceedingly common for those who didn’t have to envy those who did. Ironically, this was more common with people who had enough, but not as much as they believed they deserved. There was an old pre-ignition term he’d learned from the little media he’d consumed that he felt fit this person – or at least people like him – ‘keeping up with the Joneses.’
Leo had further shortened that to ‘The Joneses Effect.’
People who lacked wanted to be like the people who had. It was something he’d noticed about some of the children who became fosters later in life. They had an expectation about how they were supposed to be treated, and they lashed out when reality didn’t fit their expectations. He shook himself out of those thoughts.
This man who hated him was definitely one of those Joneses people. Leo had something he coveted – an apprenticeship – and his belief that he deserved it more than Leo did translate into hate and scorn. It looked like people were people everywhere, especially when they believed they had a semblance of power over you.
“Hurry up. Get out,” the man said, doing a crisp about-face the moment he was done speaking. Leo barely had the wherewithal to engage the door-closing mechanism before the guard’s obviously superior physical enhancements had him out of sight.
Leo’s backpack fit snugly against him, containing the essentials he thought he might need for the day; a change of clothes, some mana infused snacks and his notebook being the most obvious of them. Not knowing exactly what ‘the-day’ entailed made it rather difficult for him to plan ahead. Leo wondered if it was an act of intentional neglect, or if his kidnappers had simply underestimated the tedious administrative work that accompanies the onboarding process. Something told Leo that it was the latter.
Silently, Leo followed the sergeant. They passed the multiple hallways including the mundane staff’s café – a place Leo promised himself he’d check out – and one of the maintenance rooms.
At least Leo could recognize their destination. They were headed toward one of the staff cafeterias. This one specifically catered to non-clan staff. People like the guards, the maintenance workers and some others. Despite technically not working aboard the ship or even really being a part of the clan – no matter what Malia Stargazer may have said.