SEVENTY-SEVEN: About the Rabbit

  “This is like Saturday morning cartoons. But better. We should hold these more often.” The middle-aged brunette woman who’d spoken was sitting at a table positioned at the front of a large classroom. To her left, a younger man in a sweatshirt, board shorts, and flip-flops was doodling on a tablet. And to her right, a man with short, salt-and-pepper hair was sitting with his arms crossed over his chest while he watched the images being projected onto the classroom’s wall. They showed a live feed of some of the battles currently taking place in the Celena North High gym. “Organizing this six times a year is already a strain on the Office of Admissions. We’re talking about reducing the number of third-round interviews and knocking the combat assessments back to a quarterly schedule,” he said. “That would be a shame. The production of these videos is good for superhumanity.” She pointed one ruby-colored fingernail at two girls who were pulling each other’s hair and yelling. “It’s like watching puppies fall all over themselves. Or like kittens batting each other with their little paws. One of those girls is an Adjuster. The other started out with a gun. Where are the bullets? Where are the spells? Why are two ranged power users doing—?” She mimed punching the air with loosely balled fists and meowed. “Can we rewind that section and watch them again?” she asked. “Surely they started out dueling normally?” “They’re probably scared to seriously hurt each other. Or to get hurt themselves. But they didn’t want to quit,” said the man in the board shorts. “The same as so many others,” said the older man in a dismissive tone. “We should be using this time to focus on footage of the interviewees we’re responsible for.” The woman gave him an amused look. “Torsten Klein, you could take a little pleasure in watching the newest generation discover that the System didn’t turn them into gods of war when it gave them their powers.” “Some of them are funny. There are two boys who’ve been chasing each other around in circles for their entire duel. They haven’t done anything but run. It looks like playground tag.” “See? Skiff agrees with me,” said the woman. “And the alumni gallery is supposed to give us their opinion of the students’ combat performance. Review the highlights we’ve already gotten for previous students if you want. I want to see some of the general madness. We only have time to enjoy the whole spectacle right now because of the drop-out.” “I’m surprised only one of our interviewees has dropped out at this point,” said Skiff. “It felt like a lot of people decided to quit earlier in the day when I was going through this.” “That’s right, Skiff! You’re a baby. And you went through the high school program. You must have done this stage of the admissions process. Did you show people a real fight, or were you this precious?” “I’m thirty-one, Instructor Colibrí.” “An infant! And since you’re still calling me Instructor Colibrí…” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You passed my courses in university with flying colors, so why are you wearing swim trunks for your hero costume?” He reddened. “About that…” “I seem to remember spending hours with you, developing a Greco-Roman inspired merman persona.” “Chicago didn’t like it.” “Down with them, then! They would have loved you in Los Angeles!” “LA wasn’t hiring.” Skiff looked at the teens on the screen. “As for the combat assessment…I didn’t grow up on Anesidora, so I didn’t have as much warning as the local teens do. I heard about it while I was applying, but in the middle of everything else that comes with unexpectedly getting selected and moving to the island, it was a blip. I was riding high, and I was worried about a million things besides whether or not I was really okay with having someone break my nose or stab me with a knife.” “One of your opponents stabbed you?” “With a dagger. It nicked my femur. You know what I mean. It felt like it did. Or I thought it felt like it did. I was doing okay up until that point, and then at the end of the day, after they announced that everyone had finished their interviews and they asked us all the final admissions question—” “The final question,” Colibrí said. “Was it a surprise?” “It was.” “Good.” It was Torsten who spoke up. “That question is supposed to be a surprise. It’s meant to be impactful. Damn alumni telling their offspring have spread it all over the island by now, and it’s lost most of its purpose. It’s only the NDAs keeping it off the internet.” Skiff frowned. “It’s unfair to the first-timers without Avowed parents, but I get the point. Anyway, I decided I needed time to think. And then I came back a few months later, and I got in.” “And you passed all your classes, and went straight to the university program where you were a model student who dreamed of being a merman!” Colibrí clapped her hands. Torsten glanced at her but didn’t say anything. A notification pinged on all of their interfaces letting them know it was ten minutes until their next interviewee was scheduled to arrive. Skiff and Colibrí both pulled up the student’s profile on their tablets; Torsten continued staring straight ahead. “You don’t even blink when you mentally command the System, Instructor Klein,” Colibrí said in a faintly mocking tone. “Blinking gives enemies an advantage.” She laughed lightly. “I forget you do have a teensy sense of humor sometimes.” “I’m the funniest man I know.” Skiff cast a doubtful glance in his direction but didn’t say anything. “Let’s see what some of our alumni think of our extra special applicant,” said Colibrí. “Samuel Alden Thorn.” The live feed cut off, and the projection switched to show five people who were all in very different locations. One man was sitting in a lounge chair on a beach. A woman was curled up on a sofa with the lights of a city skyline filling the windows behind her. And a couple in their early twenties sat together in a study room of the Celena North University library. “Good morning to those of you on Anesidora. And good whatever to those of you elsewhere. Thank you for donating some of your time to help us observe the prospective students today,” said Colibrí. “This gallery was assigned number 192, and he’s our next interviewee. We’ve all studied his application. You’ve had a chance to see him during the combat assessment. Is there anything that stood out about him, good or bad, that you’d like us to consider before we talk to him?” A short pause followed, then the girl in the library raised her hand. “Yes, Robin? And you don’t have to raise your hand. We’re not in class right now. It’s just a casual chat.” “Sorry,” she said, blushing. “The last interview committee said that, too. I like 192. If you don’t mind, I’ll read my notes? They’re just a few bullet points.” She waited and when nobody objected, she picked up a notebook. “So, the first thing I noticed was his…uh…weapon—” “What’s he using?” Torsten interrupted. Skiff tapped on his tablet, and a moment later, an additional video window was projected above the faces of the alumni gallery. “This is the heroes vs. villains game.” “That’s an umbrella,” said Torsten in a startled voice, as the boy on the screen jumped in front of a flying sandbag. “Yes, Instructor Klein,” Robin said. “I was surprised. At first I thought, ‘Whoa, that’s one of the weirdest Meisters I’ve ever seen. Someone should tell the System to knock it off.’” Several people laughed. “But then he didn’t seem like a Meister. He’s not slick with his umbrella. You can tell there’s no special umbrella-wielding knowledge? And finally in the group match, it was confirmed. The umbrella is just a prop. It seems like he could use all kinds of different things as shields. He’s also got a spell impression. And he freezes people, which I’m assuming makes them safe?…I’ve gone off my notes a little bit.” She looked back down at the page. “What I wanted to say was, it seems like the umbrella and the fishing line were a choice on his part. I’m sure he could have picked something more effective if he had more experience, but I appreciate that he went with mundane items. Most teens would be tempted to choose something more impressive looking, but it seems to me that 192 was trying to be practical and show off his creativity. I like that. I also like that the ability to use everyday objects with his talents has great branding potential; I know Instructor Colibrí is always bringing that up in class. “Lastly, he’s not hesitant. I only saw him freeze up a couple of times, and after re-watching them, I think they were because he couldn’t figure out where to put himself on the battlefield, not because he was panicking or afraid of taking hits.” “I noticed that last one, too,” said the man on the beach. “This kid’s one of the gutsier ones out there. But not stupid gutsy like some of them. He seems to be trying to avoid pointless danger, but he does take risks when he decides it’s time. He’s in a good headspace. I figure he either has a hero parent or this isn’t his first time doing the combat assessment.” “I agree with that, too.” A fluffy white lapdog had just jumped up onto the sofa beside the woman who was calling from her living room, and she scratched it behind the ears while she talked. “Well, not the parentage part. I didn’t bother to consider it. But he’s a level-headed young man. He was assigned to the rescuer position, which usually implies that he’s one of the team members less suited to fights. However, he didn’t run from the ones that came his way. And he’s much less afraid of the gym suits than most of them are.” The man in the library with Robin spoke up. <<We have a record of their team chat from the group rescue game. He’s the only one who actually tried to use it. One of their teammates gave up, and he tried to get him back into the fight. It was a waste of time in the end, but if the teammate had responded to the instruction, the battle would have tipped in their favor.>> “He failed in some ways,” the woman with the dog said. “But those failures all seem to me to be failures of knowledge and training. And knowledge and training is what the school exists to provide.” The moments from Alden Thorn’s duels that the alumni had deemed the most significant were playing on the screen. The interviewers watched them with very different expressions on their faces. Skiff looked surprised and relieved. Colibrí was smiling. Torsten’s severe expression shifted slightly into a frown. “He’s not doing bad at all!” said Skiff. “Actually, he’s doing better than most…oh…that one boy is just laying there, isn’t he? For the whole fight? What happened to him?” “Sandbag to the gut!” said the man on the beach, shaking his head. “In the kid’s defense, it was a lot of sandbag to the gut. I know I’m not evaluating the Ground Shaper who did it, but she’s got a fixation problem. Once she’s found someone to hit, she just keeps hitting them. Might drop a note to her committee asking them to prod her. Someone ought to check if she’s got anger issues or if she’s just a bad judge of when the other guy has had enough.” “Finally,” Colibrí whispered, watching a Brute girl bounce off Alden Thorn’s umbrella, “someone who can use designer goods in a battle without destroying them.” “You all seem very approving,” Torsten said to the observers. “But what did you assume his class and rank were?” The couple sitting across campus in the university library exchanged glances. “I thought B-rank Adjuster,” Robin answered. “With an unusual set of spell impressions that he can stealth cast…or cast well in advance of using them.” <<I think he’s an A-rank Unique,>> the man with her said. The man on the beach yawned. “I considered a Sky or Object Shaper with a control method other than the usual physical gestures. Never seen a brand new Avowed with that kind of control. Seemed unlikely but not impossible. Then he froze one of the victims, and I decided I didn’t have a clue. Definitely A-rank, though.” “A-rank U-type is my guess as well,” said the woman talking from her living room. “Though I have some questions about the spell impression in that case. Uniques don’t usually get them to start with, so he’d need to have leveled at least once already.” The fifth member of the alumni gallery—a man with a neatly combed black beard who stood leaning against the railing of an empty rooftop restaurant—remained silent, as he had since the start of the conversation. “Interesting,” Torsten said finally. “Thank you. How would you rate his performance if you knew his class was—” “The correct procedure is for the gallery to give unbiased opinions,” Colibrí interrupted. Her voice was pleasant on the surface, but there was an undercurrent of censure in it. “So they should offer their final official recommendations for this candidate without us giving them any additional information.” Torsten narrowed his eyes at her. “In this case, since they’re making certain assumptions, don’t you think—?” “I agree with Instructor Colibrí,” said Skiff, twirling his stylus nervously between his fingers. He glanced at the man with the black beard. “We’ve had access to all of 192’s application information. They haven’t. We can always make our own judgments now that they’ve put together the highlights for us. But it’s important to hear from people who don’t know anything about the student. That’s how it’s supposed to work.” “Well, now you’ve all got me curious,” said the man in the lounge chair. He brushed sand from one of his arms. “But fine. I didn’t see any major issues. Just normal stupid new kid stuff. And less of that than most of the other squirts I’ve been watching this morning. Based solely on what I’ve seen today, I think he’s a solid choice for the hero track.” “Based on attitude, the shielding ability, and the apparent potential of that human-freezing power, I’d say he’s a yes, too,” said the woman on the sofa. <<I wouldn’t have minded having him on my team when I was doing that same exercise a few years ago,>> the boy in the library offered. <<So I say yes.>> His girlfriend hesitated. “Since I’m the only one who thinks he’s a B-rank…” “Why did you think that?” the other woman in the evaluators group asked curiously. “He’s physically too weak for an A-rank guy, isn’t he? It seems like he’s low on stats. We haven’t talked about his earlier duels, but the fight with the Sky Shaper girl and the archer were more telling on that front. I guess he could have put everything into hidden qualities. Micro adjustments to senses…or a lot of Stamina. Maybe the System let him boost some Processing qualities outside the norm? But I’m not seeing A-rank stats. ” <<You’re assuming he’s not a U. Or some unusual subclass that the Artonans gave peculiar starting stats.>> She nodded. “Horses not unicorns, right, Instructor Klein?” The stern-faced Torsten cracked his first smile. “You remember my lessons well, Robin.” Robin’s boyfriend made a few hand gestures, and a second later, the display of the candidate’s highlights shifted to show a concrete chunk smashing into the edge of an umbrella and breaking into pieces. <<That Brute looks like an A,>> he said. <<And that was a full strength toss. After bouncing off his shield on her run-through attempt, she decides to really try with the throw. You can tell by her posture. Maybe it was already a fragile piece of rubble. But the umbrella doesn’t even budge. None of the force is transferred to 192’s arm. That doesn’t look like a new B-rank’s talent taking a hit to me.>> “I see that,” Robin said. “If he is an A-rank, I say yes. But even though I think he’s cool, if he’s a B, I say no. Sorry, I know that’s not really how we’re supposed to evaluate, but his main spell, or his skill if that’s what it is, also seems to have some kind of weird condition? He asked another boy on his team to tell him to pick the umbrella back up.” “Starting powers are extremely important, but we don’t have to evaluate based entirely on current limitations,” the man in the lounge chair said. “His mindset matters the most at this point. Especially if you’re right, and he’s an Adjuster. He just has to level enough, and he’ll have more decent spells to choose from. Whichever rank he’s at, the faculty can guide him toward choices that will increase his combat ability.” Robin nodded. “I understand. I still feel like based just on what I’ve seen today, though, I would worry if he were a B.” “So three yeses, and one conditional yes/no,” said Colibrí. “You all found his performance well above average in general and saw no major cause for concern. Is that correct?” They all nodded. “Excellent. If you’ll all please remember to take a few minutes and type up a quick evaluation for 192 to receive at the end of the day, then—” “I say no,” said the man standing on the rooftop in a flat voice. The other four evaluators looked surprised. “I wondered why you were dead quiet over there,” said the man on the beach. “Why didn’t you speak up sooner?” “It’s really inappropriate for you to comment on this candidate, isn’t it?” Skiff interjected, staring at the fifth member of the gallery. “I wasn’t going to say anything since you were being quiet. But if you were randomly assigned to...