"It's really me, Miss Reiss," Boyle giggled, "Well at least as real as I can be in this game. I came for two reasons. First, I wanted to give you those; they were your mother's when we explored the outer reaches of the solar system. When you get out of the pod, pick up the box I left by it. I thought you should have them."
"Thank you, Serah Boyle. What's the second reason?" Emory questioned after bowing and picking up the gauntlets.
"Everyone's final test is a one-on-one battle royale against Jask who gets progressively stronger as the match goes on," Boyle smiled, "I wanted to personally administer this test to you. Mostly because I feel it's my duty as your mother's friend to directly decide whether you're ready for life's journey but, also, I've never seen anyone progress you like have. In the time most people understand the basics of a technique, you've already worked out every little intricacy to it. I want to see for myself how strong you are, so no holds barred. Give me everything you've got." While Boyle had been talking, she had also been careening to the center of the room. By the time she had finished, she was standing opposite Emory but fifteen feet back. The student took small steps as she approached her teacher. Boyle, just a little smaller than Emory, spread her arms and legs wide as she positioned herself into a fighting stance Emory had not seen before. Luckily, the young girl could think quickly on her feet, so she made a few assumptions about the strengths and weaknesses of this fighting style.
"Probably a lot of leg techniques to compensate for her smaller stature," Emory thought as she crept closer to Boyle, "I'll need to focus on redirecting and avoiding instead of blocking. Focus on the counterattack."
Boyle noticed Emory staring her down as she walked over, so she beamed, "That's exactly what I mean. You're formulating a strategy to combat my new style as you're coming towards me, using little details you've learned from the styles you have learned, right? I bet you've already made guesses about what parts of my body attack and how to counter those parts. That's why I haven't coated my body in magik yet. I think you might be more cunning than your mother." Emory had the biggest smile as she finally got into position four feet away from Boyle in her archetypal gentle fist style. Though it wasn't particularly effective against singular opponents, the defensive stances were perfect counters to powerful strikes by transferring the energy of attacks. Finally, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and cloaked her body with Arcane magik.
"I've been waiting for this moment as well, a chance to really see how far I've come," Emory admitted as she raised her arms to complete her stance, "Please don't hold back, Serah Boyle." Boyle nodded and proceeded to bow towards each other as a sign that the match had begun. At first, the two circled each other and threw the occasional wide strike designed to test the reach of the other. As Emory had predicted, Boyle mainly attacked with her legs while the student preferred to use open palm strikes. This meant that neither had the advantage on reach; both would need to be the same distance away to hit the other. Being the younger and reckless one, Emory accepted this fact and moved into the strike range first. A lightning-fast straight kick shot out for Emory's chest, but she sidestepped in time to avoid the foot. Then, exactly as she had planned, Emory thrust a spear-hand jab towards the incoming body.
Boyle had plenty of real-world experience, so she knew it would be better to try to block this attack, rather than avoid it and lose her footing. Yet when she used her forearm to stop the jab, Emory initially overwhelmed Boyle. Never in her wildest dreams did the teacher think her student was this strong. However, it was only for a moment until a dark burgundy magik coated Boyle's arm, and she leaped backwards. The magik covered her entire body as she repositioned herself. Boyle laughed, "I should have taken you seriously from the start. Very well then, Miss Reiss. Show me what you've got."
Emory charged forward and jumped several feet up to drop a knife-hand chop down on Boyle. This time, though, Boyle used both forearms to brace herself followed by a high kick towards Emory's hips. Just in time, the student countered with her shin but had to roll away when she hit the ground. However, Boyle's kicks didn't make rolling away easy as she stomped and tried to squash part of Emory; from the ground, Emory spun out her leg wildly just to buy a moment for herself to recover. As she quickly rose from the floor, she almost dropped just as swiftly to dodge a well-timed roundhouse from her instructor. Not wasting an opportunity, Emory swung her hand like a blade for the leg still on the ground and finally found success. She connected just above Boyle's ankle, causing a stumble that opened the teacher up to a big counterattack. Using her signature shove, Emory landed a solid blow that pushed her teacher back almost ten feet. Unfortunately, she didn't come out of the confrontation damage-free either as Boyle's sphere had latched onto the top of Emory's cloaked hand. Instead of scraping the corrosive magik off, Emory raised her fist straight up and fired a bolt of energy into the ceiling which caused a little debris to fall.
"I figured as much," Boyle groaned as she steadied herself upright, "You do have the same sphere as Lady Cassandra. Did you learn it from your mother too?"
Emory shook her head, "My parents did leave me instructions on how to develop this sphere, but I taught myself. What sphere is yours? It looks close to Gwen's."
"Blight, also known as Corrosion," Boyle explained as she walked slowly back to Emory, "Though it's a public sphere, most people shy away from it due to the difficulty required to control it. You're quite lucky to have the Arcane sphere; most spheres don't protect against it very well if at all." This time, due Emory's relaxed posture, Boyle initiated the first strike in this bout, a sliding kick aimed at Emory's feet. It appeared the attack had come too quickly for Emory to dodge or even react, yet Boyle saw a smirk growing on the student's face as the teacher slid in. To her surprise, the foot stopped for just a moment before what sounded like a kick through glass rang out. The invisible glass had only slowed Boyle a fraction of a second, but this was enough to give Emory a moment to react. She sidestepped just a hair, spun her body around, and planted a back-handed slap on her teacher's cheek. Just before hurdling backwards, though, Boyle landed a solid blow to the back of Emory's legs and caused her to buckle as well. The teacher rubbed her face for a moment as she arose.
"Can you go up another notch?" Boyle panted, "There's something else I can do, but you won't have learned this from the school yet."
"I have a few cards left to play," Emory boasted, though she was putting on a brave face. She hadn't used her shield much, but to use it well, they would need to switch to a long-range fighting style. Honestly, she had barely tapped her reserves, so she wasn't concerned about any tactic Boyle could use to increase her strength. At least, that's what she thought at first.
Boyle took a deep breath before the magik coating her body began to vibrate. Pulses trembled through to air from Boyle's body for a few moments when Emory noticed the change in her teacher's eyes. It looked as though her whole eye had become a pupil, pitch black yet incredibly reflective. Only thirty seconds had passed, but Boyle had become a very different person. Her coffee-colored long hair was flowing as if a breeze was blowing, and the magik surrounding her had changed color from burgundy to a deep purple. The waves of power running off her hadn't stopped either, just slowed and decreased in intensity. Finally, when she spoke, her voice was much deeper, "You may be wondering what this is. Well, this is Meta Form. You must have two spheres, but using this form, I can combine my two spheres into one. There's a lot more to say about it; however, the important part is this is my trump card. Emory, you've far surpassed my expectations so far; now, let's really push our limits." Boyle charged in much faster than before and caught Emory off-guard with a swift kick to the stomach. It threw the student back ten feet, causing her to wheeze and cough up simulated blood. But Emory brushed herself off, stood up, and tried to regain her composure. When Boyle sped in again, the striking foot connected with a glowing shield just beyond Emory's reach. The shield had some give, but Boyle's kick couldn't pierce through it. Meanwhile, Emory's left eye had begun to glow brighter than at the start of the fight as the glow also transitioned from the blue it normally was to a copper color. As it changed, so did the magik surrounding her, becoming wild and uncontrolled.
"What is this feeling?" Emory panicked as her heart started racing, "I feel a deep power surging inside me, running rampant." Boyle paced around Emory, looking for an opening or weakness of the shield before her. She had even tried to land a few other kicks to no avail, hoping to overpower it. When the shimmering shield dropped a minute later, Emory released a pulse from her hand that sent shockwaves across the arena and even made Boyle lose her balance momentarily. Even the room flashed for a second since the pod was having difficulties containing her power. Focusing on the match alone, Emory took advantage of Boyle's momentary weakness and slid feet first to trip her teacher. Boyle fell but recovered quickly and rejoined the fray where it quickly devolved into a brutal assault. Despite undergoing transformation into Meta Form, in a short amount of time, Emory's strikes were both grossly stronger and faster than her teacher's. Whenever Boyle would find an opening, the student's speed compensated for the mistake and blocked the attack as if it had been there all along. On the other hand, though Emory couldn't land a solid blow on her teacher, each jab and chop pushed the opponent back farther and farther. After five minutes of being driven back, Boyle started to feel the drain of Meta Form and left her blind spot open. In that moment, Emory drove a spear-hand jab through the magik covering Boyle and stabbed her entire hand into her teacher's side. Simulated blood oozed out of the wound while Boyle herself coughed up more blood on the ground. The two froze because Emory remained in shock at the attack and Boyle knew she had been completely overwhelmed.
Boyle pulled herself off the hand and bowed to Emory, "I admit defeat. You win, Miss Reiss. That was the most impressive combat I have had the pleasure of partaking in." A rush of peace and relief washed over Emory who plopped to the ground. The magik covering her body had vanished, and her eyes had returned to their normal blue. She even appeared to be a little pale, bordering sick, and continued to take big, deep breaths. "Are you alright?" Boyle asked, wheezing a little herself, "You pushed yourself farther than I believed possible."
"I'm okay, just need to catch my breath. You're very strong, Serah Boyle," Emory gasped. She was shivering, as if she had been put in a freezer, but pushed through the pain and stood on her feet to bow to Boyle as well. "I've never controlled that much magik at one time," Emory explained, "I think it just overwhelmed me."
Boyle shook her head, "You changed before the last assault. There was a different presence to you, and one of your eyes changed colors."
"What do you mean?" Emory looked confused, "My eyes always light up when I use magik."
"Indeed, they do, just like your mom's used to. An average green to a brilliant blue. I meant to say that your left eye turned copper after it had already been a shimmering blue," Boyle clarified.
Emory frowned, "That's strange. Serah Boyle, do you have any ideas? I don't know very much about my own family to make guesses."
"Well, maybe it was just a trick of the light, but I recall seeing your father's eyes glow gold one time," Boyle thought aloud as she placed her finger on her chin, "We were all at a celebration for their discovery. Someone, after having too much to drink, made snide comments about your mother's involvement in the discovery. When your father heard the remarks, he promptly escorted them out of the party. When he first grabbed the drunkard, I swear his eyes were golden, not the normal light brown they were. Do you know much about your father's family?"
"I've never even heard of another Reiss, let alone meet any. Unfortunately, my father's family is even more mysterious than my mother's. I met his close friends and fellow scientists, people he called family, but they weren't his blood," Emory huffed in disappointment.
"Then let's wrap this up, so you can do a little digging before they come for you," Boyle decided, "First, I can confidently say that you, Emory Reiss, have scored the highest on this part of the assessment. Assuming you've scored well on all three, you will be receiving a request to meet with the reconnaissance and leadership team regarding the next steps sometime this evening. In the meantime, you should go to the library and see if you can find any more information about your dad. And don't forget the present I left you!" Emory smiled and nodded as the two bowed one final time before the environment went black. Moments later the pod was opening up to allow Emory to rejoin reality. She stepped back onto the floor and looked around the area before moving.
Some of the other pods were open, maybe twenty percent or so, yet none of her friends' pods seemed to be ajar. Emory wondered what the last test was like normally but convinced herself that they must be still fighting. Which meant that those who had finished were low performers and had been knocked out quickly. Of course, some of them could be on the first two challenges; however, Emory predicted this was unlikely given that she had battled with Boyle for fifteen minutes. After surveying the scene, she bent down and picked up a box with a bow that lay at her feet. What she wasn't expecting was the raw power she felt coming from them as she opened the top.
Just like in the simulation, one was mostly silver while the other was mostly gold. They looked a bit longer than average, probably reaching a person's elbows. The holodeck hadn't simulated texture, though, because these were scaled gauntlets like from the hide of a large lizard. Sharp talons extended from the fingers a couple of inches, also gold or silver. However, the inside was a shadowy color and surprisingly soft like worn leather. Strangely, they were rather light as Emory took them out of the box; neither did they clink like metal would have. She would have liked to put them on now but decided it would be best until later since she determined these were unique gauntlets. As none of her friends had completed the exam yet, she boxed back up the gloves and headed off to the library.
First, she looked through the catalog selection for anything related to the Reiss name. Surprisingly, it directed her towards the records section, specifically the awards area. Emory eventually came upon the mathematics area that the catalog had mentioned. It was a book listing people who had won a Fields medal and detailing the body of works they had produced. She flipped through slowly until stopping at a picture of two men, a shorter man with curly blonde hair and a taller man with thinning red hair. The caption read, "Timothy Morris and Marty Reiss, Fields winners 2137, for explaining the transmission of information between entangled pairs." A single tear rolled down Emory's cheek as she ran her fingers over her father's picture. Apparently, her father had worked out the math that became the basis of the RRS, though he was barely credited with that fact.
Emory took a second look at the picture and wondered, "Wait, is that Sir Morris with my dad? I wonder why he never mentioned it." Skimming through the rest of the entry, she discovered several of the technologies society used today had been originally based on math her father had invented, yet he never profited from his work, choosing to share it freely instead. He had accomplished all this due to a career starting in his early teens. Still, even after reading about all these accomplishments, she had been left at a dead end. Worse still, when she went back to the catalog, she couldn't find anything about the Reiss family or even about her father unless it was talking about his achievements. Even in the biographies about him, nothing was said concerning his life before math. Then an idea crossed her mind, and she quickly left the library.
Practically running, Emory sped to her homeroom class. The room was empty, as she expected, so she walked just into the class and waited for Morris to show up as he had before. Five minutes later he popped into the room and made a puzzled look on his face. "Miss Reiss, shouldn't you still be taking the assessment?" he questioned.
"I've finished already, Sir Morris," Emory replied as she strolled towards the front of the room, "Can I ask you a personal question, sir?"
Morris nodded, "Sure. What's on your mind?"
"Did you know my father, Marty Reiss?" Emory asked, "I found a picture of someone who looked a lot like you with him, winning a Fields Medal."
"Marty was a close colleague. You may look more like your mother, but you have your father's spirit. I'm ashamed I didn't recognize it sooner," Morris admitted.
"How much did you know about him?" Emory started, "I couldn't find much about him except for all his accomplishments."
Morris rubbed his chin, "Well, I first met Marty in grad school, before he and your mother were married. He was a strong-willed kid, loud and charismatic. Of course, he had to be; he was only thirteen. We worked on all sorts of math and physics problems. What do you want to know about him?"
"Do you know anything about his life before school or his family?" Emory pressed, "Also, did he display any magik before magik was revealed to the world?"
"He never talked about his family. I mean he mentioned that he had siblings and parents but changed the subject when I pressed him for more details. And then after he married your mother and you were born, you were the only family he talked about. However, he did use magik before everyone learned about it. Often to help describe difficult concepts, he would create illusions from thin air. Of course, he swore me to secrecy," Morris chuckled as he recalled those times.
"Illusions? I've never heard of illusion magik," Emory remarked, "Did he do any other strange magik?"
Morris paused before responding, "He was superhuman, in all sense of the word, though I don't know if that was magik or not. And he told me he was thousands of years old, though I didn't believe that." Emory scrunched up her face as she tried to connect the dots about her father. It sure sounded like magik, yet not any magik she had ever heard of before. Then again, she was learning new facets of magik all the time it seemed like.
"Thank you for answering my questions, Sir Morris. I didn't know my father very well, so it's nice to hear about him from people who knew them," Emory bowed to conceal a tear running down her cheek.
Morris tilted his head slightly, "It is I who should thanking you for bringing back good memories. Humanity owes Marty a debt they never repaid." Emory strode out of the classroom and back to her dorm room to wait for her friends. To her surprise, Tana was already there fiddling with her katana.
"Emory!" Tana shouted, "What took you so long? I've been waiting for fifteen minutes already."
"Tana, where's everyone else? I figured you would have taken the longest to finish," Emory commented.
Tana laughed, "The test was different for every class, remember? My first part only took nine minutes, and the second took two minutes."
"Two minutes?" Emory gasped, "What kind of test was it? What could they even test in that short of time."
"It was a simple cutting test: try to cut through as many layers as possible in a single strike. Since we train so much, I have a very good idea of my strength. So, I chopped through one layer, guessed the highest number of layers I could get through, and then just had Jask load that many layers. When I cut through them all, I tried to add one more but couldn't do it," Tana explained.
"I suppose that makes sense then," Emory reasoned, "What was your final test like? I'm pretty sure I had a unique experience."
Tana shrugged, "It was pretty straightforward. Jask and I fought for a long time, but every time I beat him, he got stronger, faster, and smarter. I don't know how they did it, but after each time, the simulation resets you to the state you were in when the test started. Eventually, Jask got too strong and overwhelmed me. You got one redo, though, so I switched up my style to win a few more times before he won a second time. What did you do?"
"The instructor and I had a one-on-one duel," Emory grinned, "She was really strong; we pulled out all the stops."
"The instructor? That's wild! But you're strong, so I bet you gave them a run for their money. Say, when do you think everyone else will get here?" Tana wondered. The two continued to chat about the assessment for ten minutes before Tethys walked through the door. She explained to the others present her first two sections had been different than theirs and instead focused on defense. Her final section, though, had been the same as Tana's. By the time she had finished sharing, Gwen, Innes, and Sam were entering the door behind her. Although they had all finished at roughly the same time, the position of their pods didn't allow any of them to see the others' pod. All three of them had performed similarly in each part and reported they were among the last to leave the dojo. Still, it was another ten minutes before Gatrie knocked on the door. He explained that while he did well in the final test, he took his time in an accuracy test which extended his overall time.
Gatrie cheered after getting caught up, "So everyone did well? We should celebrate then! Screw the canteen; let's go to town to eat!"
"That's a good idea," Tethys concurred, "Actually, I bet I could use my old connections to get us in somewhere nice." They all decided this sounded like a good idea and split off to get ready. When they all met up again at the school gates half an hour later, they looked not like students but like young adults, ready to take on life.