The warm, glowing water felt warm against Calista’s skin, soothing each and every one of her muscles. With all the training she was doing now, she was suffering with aches and soreness every morning. It was getting harder to hide it from the girls.
Granted, it had only been two days, but it was still a lot more training than she ever did. She let out a soft sigh, letting her body float in the Painless pool. For a moment, she could forget her humiliation and her failure. She could go back to her previous life and forget about that stupid competition.
“That was a good broadcast, don’t you think?” Rebecca said.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Danica.
“You guess?”
“It would’ve been better if Liz didn’t keep hacking in. All the stupid questions she came up with.”
“Yeah, it was annoying.”
“Well… to be honest with you guys, we do need to change our material. We do the same stuff all the time. Liz just wanted to try something different,” Calista defended her.
“If by ‘different’, you mean ‘cyber-nooby’, then yeah, that was ‘different’.” Danica’s gaze was fixed on the ceiling, cucumbers covering her brown eyes. “She’s so pathetic. I feel like logging out whenever I listen to her.”
Calista rose from the water, taking the cucumbers off her own eyes to stare at her. “Why are you guys so mean to her?”
“We’re not mean, we’re just honest,” said Rebecca, who browsed on her Pet screen. “We’ve worked on her for four Earth years, and she still doesn’t have that… stellarness. You know? She’s not Socializer material.”
“Then why have her on the channel?”
“Because it’s sad to see her begging people to follow her and talk to her. We felt bad.”
“Our standard is like… Hajjian magicians,” said Danica. “You know, those really famous ones that do tricks with their powers and everyone loves them? That’s what we’re aiming for. Liz…” She hesitated, her fingers wiggling in the air. “She’s more like… an Aelket.”
Rebecca covered her mouth as she resisted laughter. “Oh-my-God, Dani, you’re so mean.”
“A what?” Calista asked.
“You know, those weird guys from the other solar system?”
“No?”
Danica sighed. “Pet!”
Her Pet came flying over, blinking expectantly. “Show Calista an Aelket,” its owner commanded.
A holo-screen projected, showing unattractive beings of paper-like yellow skin and strange tentacles on their heads, standing in a desert planet. They made strange, irritating noises and walked around. The two human girls burst out laughing.
“That’s literally her!” Rebecca screeched.
“They’re so weird, right? I found it on the Hub and I looked them up. We found Liz’s personal species,” Danica laughed. “Weird and annoying.”
“Her ears are burning.” They started laughing again. The Pet closed the screen and flew away.
Calista sank back into the water, her brows tense with a frown. She always knew the girls were mean to Elizabeth, but she didn’t know they were this mean.
Was she ever like this towards her? Did she ever make fun of her without realizing it? Was she this horrible person?
Elizabeth soon returned from the bathroom. Calista quickly put the cucumbers back on her eyes and tried not to show her expression as the other girl lowered herself into the pool.
“What are we talking about, girlies?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just in full rest mode right now,” said Rebecca.
“Oh, I had an idea for our next broadcast!”
“Really? Tell us more,” Danica said sarcastically.
Elizabeth’s excited glow flickered, but she continued anyway. “So, I thought… maybe we could talk to people about other planets? Like… ask people descended from other species, or people that moved here from other planets, about their planets.”
“Why?” Rebecca quirked a brow.
“Because it’ll be interesting! Human Socializers here tend to focus on Earth. We shine lights on different cultures all over the world. But we don’t look at cultures in the Milky Way enough.”
“But why should we care?”
“Because… w-well, it’s different, don’t you think? We hardly know anything about… let’s say, Saturn, Neptune, even Pluto. They’re in our own solar system, and we hardly know anything about them. People pay more attention to Mercury and Mars.” She smiled hopefully.
“That’s because they’re in that stupid fighting competition. Saturn and the others aren’t.”
“Exactly. We’re Socializers, right? So we should focus on planets that don’t get much popularity. There’s, what? Over 40 planets in the Utopia. And only 14 of them get more popular because of the Versus, including our planet, even though we’re a joke topic.”
Calista nodded in agreement, smiling. “You know, that’s a really good idea. I like that. I don’t know a lot about non-Earthians. I mostly have human friends like you guys.”
“I mean, if you want to start somewhere, you should start at Planet Aelk,” Danica said, smirking. Rebecca snickered.
“Aelk?”
“Liz, no one cares about the other planets. They get enough from that tournament,” said Rebecca, shutting down the subject.
“Do you know how much work that is, too?” Danica rose from the water, taking her cucumbers off to stare at them derisively. “How much research and homework we need to do, along with keeping our normal broadcasts up?” She scoffed. “You’ve got your game broken.”
“We could just find people on the interplanetary Hub,” Elizabeth suggested, growing nervous from the rising tension. “That’s easy enough. Find people, talk to them, ask them about their worlds. And we can talk to Aelk, like you said.”
The two girls started laughing again. Calista’s irritation spiked while Elizabeth only stared in confusion. “What?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure, talk to Aelk,” Danica giggled.
“Guys, come on, stop being so-”
They were interrupted by Calista’s pink Pet flying into the room with a blinking message. It beeped urgently before displaying a screen reading, ‘URGENT MESSAGE FROM FISTBORN ACADEMY’.
Calista felt as if ice were growing all over her, locking her limbs in place. She swallowed and slowly turned to her friends, who stared at the screen in shock.
“Message from who, now?” Rebecca raised her auburn brows.
“I-I’ll check it later-”
The recorded message played anyway, displaying a woman. “Good afternoon, Miss Medley, this message is from Fistborn Academy’s admissions office. I’m pleased to inform you that you have passed to the next stage of the Versus Emergency Admission Process. Your pressure exam will take place on Tuesday, September 26th, 2349 at 3:00 PM Earth EST. Congratulations and good luck.”
The Pet closed the screen and flew out, leaving Calista to deal with the following reactions.
“What the glitch was that?” Danica stood. She had the nastiest look on her face as she glowered down at Calista.
Calista only stared back speechlessly as she rose to her feet in the water. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was completely dry.
“Well? Explain.” Danica crossed her arms.
“I… I got into a situation…”
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“Why did they say you got an exam at Fistborn, huh?”
“Did you apply?” Elizabeth asked.
“I… n-not on purpose…”
“What do you mean, ‘not on purpose’?”
“Someone hacked my AIDA,” Calista quickly explained. “While I was applying for NYWS’s scholarship, someone must’ve recorded my voice and applied for Fistborn. But I didn’t. So I just took the tests because they’d fine me if I didn’t.”
“A hack?” Danica said doubtfully. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I didn’t want you guys to crash.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“You know they run you in circles!” she exclaimed. “I thought it’d be easier to just take the tests and get it over with. I didn’t think this would happen!”
“So you didn’t actually apply?”
“No. I swear. I wouldn’t do that.”
The girls paused, calming down. “Alright.” Danica sank back into the water. “I guess you just have to fail this next one.”
“Exactly.” She sank back into the Painless water. Maybe that was what was keeping them so calm. She didn’t expect them to believe her that easily.
“Wait.” Rebecca sat up again. “How did you pass?”
“Huh?”
“How did you pass the test?”
“I…” Calista tensed up again. “I don’t know. I did horrible. I didn’t want to pass.” She was being half-honest. How did she pass? She was a bug.
“Are you sure?” Danica narrowed her brown eyes at her. “You can’t fail on purpose and pass. Unless you… tried to pass.”
“N-no… I-I couldn’t have… I failed. At least, I thought I did.”
“Okay, then.” She smiled spitefully. “You get hacked into the fighting school test without you knowing. You don’t report the hack and instead take the test-”
“Reporting that would’ve been so much work-”
“-and then you said you failed the test on purpose-”
“I thought I failed-”
“-and now your Pet comes in here saying you passed the test?” Danica chuckled and looked at the other two. “Does that add up, girlies?” They shook their heads, glaring at Calista.
“I guess I just… got lucky.” Calista chuckled.
“Or maybe you actually did something to pass,” said Elizabeth.
“No! I wouldn’t.”
“Calista, we know when you’re lying.” Rebecca stood from the water. “Is that why you’ve been missing broadcasts so much? That’s why you looked so horrible the other day. You’ve been busy getting into that school!” All three pairs of eyes were on her, as cold as ice.
Calista could only stare at them. How did this fall apart so fast? “B-but… I…”
“Let’s go.” Danica headed out. Rebecca and Elizabeth followed, splashing out of the pool. The waterproof floor instantly removed the slippery wetness.
“No, come on, girlies!” Calista clumsily followed, tripping as she exited the pool. “I just didn’t want to embarrass myself! I didn’t know I would pass! I’ll just fail this one!”
Danica turned, her brown waves flying. “You should’ve failed this last one.”
“I wanted to! I did terrible. I-I don’t even know how I passed-”
“Well, you did, and now you’re one step closer to joining a bunch of trigger-happy glitchwads. What’s next? You go to the school? You flirt with the vice president so he puts you on the team?”
Calista couldn’t believe what she heard. “Excuse me?”
“You can’t expect us to believe you genuinely passed that test,” Rebecca laughed.
“How else would I?”
“Maybe you paid them. Maybe you gave them something to look at, maybe they recognized you from our channel, I don’t know. You did something.”
“Why do you even want to go there, anyway?” Danica demanded. “Did you seriously not get over that disgusting contest since we were kids?”
Calista’s voice was gone. She wanted to retort, to say something…
“Thought so. Let’s go, girls.” Danica turned.
Elizabeth stayed behind, glancing at Calista with conflict. “Liz, I… I didn’t mean…” Calista’s voice failed her.
“ELIZABETH!” The redhead jumped and ran away, leaving Calista standing alone.
===
“Good morning, Miss Calista Medley. It is now 9:15 in the morning of September 26th, 2349 in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. Your pressure exam for Fistborn Academy is scheduled at 3:00 PM today at the Fistborn Academy campus in Washington D.C. What would you like for breakfast?”
===
Thankfully, the entire family was able to come on the trip. Since it was a one-day trip, they didn’t bother forwarding any packages; they were going to D.C. for the test alone.
They crossed over to the Travel District, which was nothing more than a large field with various small buildings with teleporters inside. Calista raised her brows when she saw the TelePorts 3 and 4 packed with people. There were regularly a lot of people travelling back and forth, but these were a lot.
“Holy Trojans,” Catalina whispered.
They left their Air-Car, which was packed safely into the storage, and went through the security scans before entering the teleportation room. The queue was fast, sending out five families at a time; it seemed that the energy levels were incremented to accommodate more people.
Calista glanced up at the hovering letters over the teleporter, swallowing. It changed intermittently from ‘TELEPORT 3: FISTBORN ACADEMY, WASHINGTON D.C.’ to ‘VERSUS PRESSURE EXAM TAKERS ONLY’.
She looked around at all the people waiting. Some were travelling alone, others were with their families. They varied in terms of age, height, and size, some looking stronger and bulkier, others weaker and leaner.
How did she get there? They’d sent her the grades; they were not impressive. Did they really let her in just because it was a passing grade? It was no wonder Earth’s schools were rumored to be lackluster compared to the other planets’.
“This trip is free, right?” her father asked.
Her mother sighed, extremely irritated. “Yes. Will you stop?”
“I’m just making sure.”
“You ‘made sure’ hundreds of times.”
When it came time for the family to teleport to Washington D.C., the AIDA scanned them and counted them. Five pairs of foot indicators positioned themselves in their slot.
“Please proceed to your respective indicator. Do not step outside the boundary, nor insert any object within the teleportation laser line. Failure to comply may result in malfunction, injury, loss of limbs, or death.”
The indicators had their names hovering over them, accommodating their heights and sizes. Calista was in the middle, behind Carter, who yawned tiredly. He wasn’t used to an early wake-up.
“Preparing to teleport.” The machine whirred as a blue protective barrier separated them from the rest of the waiting crowd. “We ask again for you to keep limbs and objects inside your circle to prevent malfunction, injury, loss of limbs, and/or death. Other waiting travelers must keep a safe distance from the teleporter behind the yellow indicator line. Do not move away from your foot indicators during teleportation, do not speak, and stand with proper posture to avoid intense nausea, dizziness, or other discomfort and/or side effects.”
The machine whirred loudly to the point that Calista’s ears pinched. Protective spheres were activated to shield everyone’s eardrums and eyes. “Teleporting to: TelePort 16, #16 West, Travel District, Washington D.C.”
A bright light flashed around them, swirling around them like a blue flame. Calista closed her eyes, waiting for them to reach the other teleporter.
After a few seconds, they arrived, the blue flames disappearing. The protectors deactivated and they stepped out into the empty room. “Teleportation complete. Welcome to Washington D.C. Please proceed to the security scanners before meeting your transportation outside of the TelePort building.”
They walked out to meet the rest of the families and test-takers, who boarded triple-decked Air-Buses in groups. The buses were blue streaked with red and white, with ‘Fistborn Academy’ glowing on both sides. The words soon changed to ‘Welcome to D.C!’.
“I feel like we’re in England,” Henry joked.
“Why?” Carter looked at him.
“You know. Because they invented triple-decks in England.”
He shrugged. “Okay. It’s not that funny.”
“I know. I was just saying.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make any sense. Triple-decks are all over the world.”
“That’s not what I- ugh, never mind.” Henry glanced at his wife, rolling his eyes at his son’s attitude. By now, they were used to it, but it was still annoying as a virus. He was quite the early bloomer, going through puberty at only 9 years old, but they wouldn’t dare give him any puberty suppressants.
Calista tried to hide her excitement. Despite the impending feeling of doom, she couldn’t help but feel relieved that they gave her a chance, even though she didn’t deliver a good performance on the last tests.
She only hoped it was worth losing all of her friends and fans over. If she didn’t pass… what would she do when she got home?
They soon boarded. Calista and her family went up to the second level and sat at one of the circular tables next to the window. She relaxed in the comfortable seats, doing her best to calm any stress she had.
It was indeed a pressure exam. She could feel the pressure since she got the message. The stakes were higher, and mistakes weren’t permitted if she wanted that spot in the class. Everyone else taking the test would be going in with the same attitude.
The bus sped off so smoothly that they didn’t even feel it move. Calista swallowed to try and dry her throat, her sweaty palms wringing together. Now that they were actually going to the school, her nerves had skyrocketed along with her heartbeat.
“Calista, calm down,” Jennifer said softly, covering her hand.
“I can’t.” She shook her head, breathing in deeply. “I… I think I’m starting to… panic.” She paled when she realized she wasn’t breathing at all, rather, she was hyperventilating.
“AIDA, give us a panic tonic juice,” Jennifer quickly said, moving to hold her.
“What flavor would you like?”
“Rasp…” Calista gasped.
“Raspberry, please.”
The drink materialized in front of Jennifer, who passed it to Calista. She grabbed it and gulped it down greedily. Her mother held the glass to her mouth, her own hands too weak to hold it. “You alright?”
Calista nodded, feeling the effects relax her. “Yeah, yeah… I’m fine.”
“Sweetie, I think you’re overthinking this test.”
Henry leaned forward, lowering his voice. AIDA took this as a private conversation and promptly activated a soundproof bubble. “Cali, listen,” he said. “All these people here? They’re just as scared as you. Who knows, maybe they bugged up worse on their test, but they still got a chance. A lot of people are going to embarrass themselves today. Most of them are gonna be crushed the second their fight starts.”
“Exactly,” said Jennifer. “Look, you’ve trained and studied more than ever. Now show them what you’ve got. And don’t be disappointed if the results aren’t what you wanted, okay?”
She nodded and sighed, her anxiety diminishing. Of course, that was the drink, not their words. She wished with all her heart that she could call the girls and reason with them. But now they were gone, and it was unlikely that they’d ever forgive her.
If she failed, what would she do? She didn’t have the SociaLights, she wasn’t in NYWS. What would she do until the next admission period? Until the next Versus? She had… nothing to do.
She didn’t think her life was so empty. The realization was like being doused in ice-cold water. Did she really do every single thing with those toxic girls?
After driving through a line of trees, the academy was revealed. Calista’s anxiety instantly returned when she saw the building, but at the same time, awe and exhilaration washed over her.
It was a huge expanse of buildings, all colored in different shades of blue and red. The main building in the center towered over all the others with a sky-blue domed ceiling. The FBA crest hovered over the top spire, circling slowly.
She was actually at Fistborn Academy. In person. A school that held not only talented and famous fighters, but all sorts of respected scholars and professionals that dabbled in all lines of work in the planetary militia.
And Calista was about to fight the 150th best fighter of the Versus in front of everyone else that got into the class.
She began to hyperventilate again. “AIDA, another, please!”
As she gulped down the second tonic, she tried to keep calm for the test.
No pressure… no pressure…