“Speaking of her Royal Highness,” Tara said, “what’s it like studying with her?”

  “It also falls under gossip.” Sam avoided the question.

  “You can call her Erianna, Tara,” Yvessa said with a chuckle.

  “Really? Wouldn’t that be disrespectful?” Tara asked.

  “Trust me, she wouldn’t care. You only need to pay attention to stuff like that in official events or meetings, and even then, it might depend on the type of event and the type of people.”

  “Although,” Sam said, “speaking of the type of people: you’ll probably want to take into account whether the person is a raging asshole. Because those types tend to care about how people address them, no matter the circumstances.”

  “Since when are you an expert at being polite to important people?” Felix asked.

  “Oh, I’ve got a lifetime of training. Just because you guys haven’t seen me utilize it all that much, it doesn’t mean it’s not there buried beneath the surface. Ready to erupt the moment I come face to face with someone I’m actually afraid of.”

  “Can you give an example of a person that you’d actually be afraid of?”

  Sam shrugged. “Erianna’s grandmother. Or her best friend.”

  Tara and Philip exchanged confused glances. “He means the Silent Seer,” Yvessa explained.

  “OK…” Philip slowly said. “But you haven’t actually met them yet… right?”

  “Yet?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it’s set in stone that I’d get to meet with any Chosen.”

  “To be fair, Sam,” Felix said, “you did get to meet Farris on your first week here.”

  At that moment, the three instructors walked into the hall and signaled the class to gather around them. “Greetings, class,” said the lead instructor, who Sam already knew to be Mila of his first day meeting with Felix and Yvessa fame. “As I’m sure you’ve already seen, we have a new student with us today.” She gestured to Sam. “Cadet Sam Anders.” Sam gave half a nod, and a polite smile as forty-odd pairs of eyes turned to stare at him.

  “I trust that I don’t need to inform any of you as to who Cadet Anders is.” Mila looked bored as she continued speaking. “As to why he’s here now… His combat instructor, Lin Jingway, and… the academy’s faculty have decided that Sam should occasionally join his fellow second-year cadets in physical combat classes. I know that you all will make him feel welcome and that his time with us will not fall from the quality of training to which he’s… accustomed. Is that clear?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Answered about half the students, while the rest gave a mixture of nods and grunts of assent.

  “Good.” Mila clapped her hands. “Instructor Shore, if you will.”

  “Thank you, Instructor Lambert,” said Shore as he stepped forward to address the class. “I will be needing thirteen volunteers to run a sparring circle.” He smiled and, before anyone could volunteer, said, “Cadet Anders, I will require you to join the circle as the fourteenth member.” Immediately, more than half the class raised their hands.

  “Well then,” Sam turned to his friends. “Wish me luck.”

  “Knock em dead.” Felix tapped his shoulder.

  “Good luck.” Yvessa smiled.

  Sam turned to follow Shore and the thirteen lucky volunteers to the far side of the hall where they quickly arranged themselves in a sort of double sided semi circle, leaving Shore standing alone at the open right (Sam’s right) side. “In case any of you aren’t aware what a sparring circle was,” Shore said for Sam’s unnecessary benefit, “it’s rather simple. At my direction, two of you will spar while the rest of us watch. At the end of the spar, or whenever I call out to stop, we either move on to the next spar or hold a discussion about what each fighter did right and wrong. Right then, Sam, if you would start as off?”

  Sam nodded and bit down a remark about no longer being Cadet Anders as he tightened his grip on the spear and stepped inside the so-called circle. “Good,” Shore said and turned to regard the rest of the group. “Philip, you’re first.”

  I guess we know who’s going to be fighting against Sam, everyone else, he thought as he exchanged a nod and a smile with Philip. “On my mark,” Shore said as Sam and Philip readied themselves and adopted fighting postures opposite each other. “Start.”

  The fight began with a half-hearted attempt at a thrust by Philip towards Sam’s center, which Sam easily dodged and answered with a quick jab aimed at Philip’s hands. Philip’s response was just a little less laconic than before as he parried Sam’s attack and pivoted to face Sam’s left. The tempo of the fight slowly increased until Sam was completely on the back foot. Which hopefully meant that Philip was actually starting to take it seriously. A minute or so later, the bout ended when Sam fell for a feint and left a gap for Philip to strike at his lower abdomen, which Sam couldn’t manage to block or dodge in time.

  “Good point,” Shore called as Philip and Sam distanced themselves from each other. “Go again. This time, Phillip, fight as you normally would.” Doing as instructed, Philip came straight for Sam, immediately putting him on the defensive and quickly whittling at his defenses until he managed to score a hit less than a minute into the fight. “Again,” said Shore. The third point lasted longer, although not as long as the first, and Sam managed some fairly good attacks following a parry that nevertheless amounted to nothing as Philip managed to pull away before relaunching his attacks from a balanced footing and scoring a third point on Sam.

  “One more time,” Shore said. By now, Sam was starting to feel the exertion in his arms and legs, and the pain from where Philip had hit him wasn’t completely negligible. Still, this was far from the demands of any one of Sam’s usual sessions with Lin or his friends put on him, and even farther than his breaking point. Of course, willpower wasn’t able to bridge the gap in physique and skills as Philip landed his fourth hit.

  The fifth bout, however, went much better for Sam as he managed to lure Philip into overstretching himself with a badly chosen attack. Sam capitalized on his new position by circling around Philip while throwing quick jabs at his forearms before finally managing to land a hit on his ribs.

  “Alright, let’s stop there for now.” Shore raised his hands. “Good job the both of you. Let’s forgo Philip’s assessment for now—I hope you are OK with it?”

  Philip nodded with a shrug. “Of course.”

  “—And focus on Sam’s. From a general perspective, without going into details of what he actually did during the spar, who can tell me what was the main problem with the way he approached the fights? I’ll give you all a hint: it’s also my main point of commendation towards his fighting.”

  Sam let out a breath as a flurry of hands went up. “He was too hesitant,” someone said.

  “Yes, but that’s not general enough.”

  “He tried too hard to prolong the fight,” said another.

  “Perhaps, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think of when you first started going to tournaments, or your first days in the academy for those without a competitive background.”

  “He was too slow in adapting to fighting against me,” Philip finally said.

  “Exactly.” Shore nodded and turned to Sam. “From a purely cognitive perspective, your biggest drawback is your lack of experience fighting different people.”

  Sam nodded. “Limited experience means that I have a harder time acclimating to new ones. That’s the main reason I’m here.”

  “Of course. That’s why we’re all here. After learning to fight, the most important thing we learn is how to learn.” He started counting on his fingers. “The more people you fight with, the more weapons you fight against, the different tactics you adopt and moods you have. It all adds up and results in us being better at actual combat. Actual combat is all about facing the unknown. And as important as skills and levels and personal strength and so on is, they’re nothing if you don’t have the ability to correctly utilize them when you don’t have any idea what your enemy is going to fight like.

  “And before any of you start thinking that this is some handicap that’s unique to Sam and that you’ve all passed it already, I’m sorry to say that you’re all still there. Just a further along where Sam is. Philip, for example, didn’t really adapt his fighting style to suit fighting against Sam. Now, the reason for that was probably that he didn’t want to fully utilize the disparity between their skill and level, but it’s not a perfect excuse.

  “What you should’ve done is immediately adopt a fully offensive stature towards Sam and attack him with your all, disregarding your own defenses. Your lack of experience fighting in that style, as well as just the general drawbacks of it, would’ve ensured that Sam would still be able to put up a good fight. Still, I realize it’s hard to balance the two, especially since we’re interested in Sam being able to truly learn from his time with us. But the best way for us to do that is by forcing him to adapt to fighting new opponents and techniques.

  “Alright, I’ve talked enough already, and we can move on.” Shore clapped his hands. “If that’s alright with you, Sam?”

  “Fine with me.” Sam shrugged and gave the other students a smile. “I’ll make sure to hang in there to give everyone the chance to… help me.”

  A few laughs and chuckles rang out as Shore nodded and gestured to another cadet to take Philip’s place. The rest of that part of the lesson passed like a blur. He fought three bouts against the rest of the twelve students, losing all but four, and none of the wins were against the same opponent. After each spar of three bouts, Shore let the circle discuss what each fighter did right and wrong, and Sam immediately noticed that most of the students tried pretty hard to not point out his wrongs.

  Thankfully, Shore wasn’t as hesitant to offer Sam constructive criticism. It wasn’t as constructive, nor as critical as the usual advice he got from Lin, but it was still good advice. Besides, he had enough practice at this point to be able to analyze his own rights and wrongs. At least, if they were fairly obvious. Which many of his mistakes still were.

  But the fights did prove how important it was for Sam to have to face a multitude of different opponents, and even some new weapons. It was already evident before today that enlarging his sparring repertoire was necessary for his continued improvement as a fighter. But after today, it seemed like he hadn’t quite realized just how necessary it was. These forty-odd fights seemed to help him more than a full week’s training with Lin.

  Well, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but a part of it struck true. Like Shore said, Sam’s experience with new fighting experiences was much more lacking than any other facet of his late-start combat training. At this point, if the choice would’ve been between continuing his training with Lin or joining a physical combat class, the correct choice would clearly be the latter. But as luck would have it, he could enjoy the best of both worlds. And, more importantly, a much needed breather as he stepped away from the circle’s center.

  “We’ll be doing round robin now,” Shore said. “The winner stays on until they lose. You have twenty minutes. The person with the most wins will get a personal thumbs up from yours truly.” He smiled crookedly.

  Sam also took part in this round of sparring, but hadn’t managed to snatch even the one win by the time the twenty minutes ran out. Philip, who ended up with the most overall wins, and was also tied for the most wins in a row at five (although one of them was against Sam), received his fully deserved thumbs up with a solemn nod.

  “Good.” Shore clapped. “We’ll end it here, rejoin the rest of the class.” He gestured to the students scattered around the rest of the hall. Sam realized that he hadn’t actually taken time to see what it was that the rest of the class were doing—meaning, what a combat practice class actually looked like.

  It mostly involved sparring, as it turned out. About a dozen pairs were matched against each other at various points throughout the hall, watched over by the other two instructors, who didn’t take as active a part in overseeing the matches as Sam was used to from his own instructor. The rest of the students were doing free-form exercises and sets, some matching up against another student, some against a plastic training dummy, and some just against the air or the wall.

  It was all very familiar to Sam. After all, this was, in a sense, what he had been doing for the last half a year, three days a week. Just with the constraint of not having enough teachers to constantly give each student personal attention. He knew that every student still got some one-on-one instructions—with the most promising students generally slotted to receive more—but it still felt weird to have another indicator that the person who’s life was the most similar to him was a princess. Just like him, Erianna started her combat journey with personal instruction, and just like him, she joined the masses in their less efficient training programs in order to get more varied experience.

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  Before he sank too deep into contemplating his new status, Shore gestured for him to stay and said, “Sam, might I have a moment?” Sam nodded and stepped up to the instructor. “I won’t keep you too long, just wanted to make sure you were comfortable with this exercise. That you felt it was beneficial?”

  “Very much so,” Sam said. “But forgive me for saying so, I assume this wasn’t completely your idea, no?”

  “Not strictly, but it’s what I would’ve done anyway if Lin hadn’t asked me to do it. I’m sure you don’t need me to spill out the reasoning for he told me to hold a sparring circle for you.”

  Sam nodded. He could think of plenty of reasons, not all of them fully in the realm of practical practice. “Like I said, it was a great help and plenty of fun. I don’t know what my schedule for attending this class will end up being, but can I assume the plan will be to have one of these anytime I join in?”

  “Perhaps. It depends on what Lin and… your other guides suggest.”

  Sam grimaced. “Wouldn’t that get annoying for the rest of the class?”

  Shore laughed. “I don’t think there’s enough time left in the trimester for that to happen. You saw how ready they were to volunteer to join. And it’s not just for altruistic reasons, although that is certainly a major motivator. If you spend time training with someone who receives a lot of attention and help, some of that attention will probably be directed to you as well, yes? It’s a win-win situation.”

  “As long as it doesn’t overstay its welcome.”

  “Like I said, the chances of that happening with how relatively little time is left for the mandatory lessons are pretty slim. But I’ll make sure to relay your misapprehensions forward. Now go drink something and join the rest of the class. Might I suggest starting with some exercises?” He gestured to the left side of the hall, where Yvessa was busy dancing around a puppet and trying to outrun her sword.

  Sam nodded and went to grab a drink of water, taking a few seconds afterwards to decompress and stretch some of the stress away. He then walked to Yvessa’s side and waited for her to notice him.

  A few moments later, she landed a blow on the dummy’s head and came to Sam’s side. “How was it?” she asked.

  “Pretty fun, actually. They kind of took it easy on me. Even more than you usually do. But overall, it was really good.”

  “I’m betting that you’re also pretty happy that Dan gets a few hours of rest from you.”

  Sam laughed. “One hundred percent. I’m sure he’s already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Something tells me that Dan is still going to spend a significant amount of his week on lessons with you all the way until we graduate.”

  Sam shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see. So how does this part of the class work? We just train by ourselves, and the instructors pass every which when to give us notes?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much. Just a chance to go over your routines and exercises while still having some oversight and friendly guidance. The better part of practice is training, as you’re well aware. Come on, let’s see you run through a couple of sequences.”

  Sam crouched into a combat form and levied his spear against the dummy. “I’m honestly not sure that this is the best use of my time here. After all, I am here to fight, not to train.” Still, he started moving clockwise around the dummy, lunging towards the head at constant intervals.

  “You’re probably right, but a few minutes of training wouldn’t hurt you. And maybe the advice you’ll get from the instructors here would be different enough from the advice you usually get.”

  “That’s true. So, should we just call one of them over? Alienate myself from my peers even more?”

  “No need,” Yvessa said curtly as she gestured towards Sam’s right. Sneaking a glance while still maintaining the exercise, Sam saw Mila heading towards them, spear in tow.

  She gave a slight nod to both of them as she got near. “Cadet Smith, I see that you’ve taken it upon yourself to help Cadet Anders with his exercise… Commendable.”

  “Thank you for the kind words, instructor. But I’m only helping my friend.”

  “Of course. Of course. Nevertheless, I’ll take your place for now. Feel free to go back to your own exercise.” She gave a polite smile.

  Yvessa snuck a glance at Sam but didn’t wait for his nod before heading off to join the main body of the class for some sparring.

  “You’ve made some excellent friends, Cadet Anders,” Mila said. “Make sure to cherish them.”

  “Oh, I do. Very much so.” Sam’s smile was just a tad too wide.

  Mila nodded. “Now, let’s see you go through your usual exercises from Instructor Jingway. I hope you know which ones I mean.”

  “There are so many, but I think I do, yes.” Sam returned to a fighting posture and started moving through the items in Lin’s full warm-up routine. It started with the simple motions of each and every type of the different attacks and their most common patterns before moving on to some footwork. Finishing with the relatively more complex maneuvers, such as lunging from a pivot and stepping back mid-attack. The full routine lasted about ten minutes on average, although its length greatly varied depending on Lin’s intentions for the day. With the recent days bringing the average down to about seven or eight minutes. But Sam opted for an even quicker time than that as he itched to get back to some sparring.

  In a little over five minutes, he completed the last set of exercises and straightened back while trying to suppress his harried breath—going over the exercises so fast, coupled with him already being a little worn from the previous spars, left him more weary than he usually did after completing the routine.

  Mila nodded. “Very well done. I see Instructor Jingway hadn’t been exaggerating your capabilities as a pupil. Still, there are many areas that require serious work and improvement. Take, for example, your forward motion after switching your leading hand…” Mila then had Sam rerun some of the exercises giving him notes all throughout—a part of Sam couldn’t help but notice that they were all negative, and rather more scathing than he was used to. He pushed those thoughts away, unsure if his observations were objective, and even if they were, that his response to them was.

  Ten minutes of non-stop drilling later, Mila signaled for Sam to stop and gestured with her head to the center of the hall. “Go spar for the rest of the lesson, Cadet Anders. I trust that I don’t need to inform you of how these work?”

  “Not at all,” Sam replied with a heap of saccharine. “Thank you for the instruction. It was most illuminating.” He headed towards Felix, who had just finished a spar and nodded towards Sam once he saw him coming his way. Sam gestured towards the entrance, and they both went to grab a drink of water. “So yeah…” Sam said after he satisfied his thirst. “I don’t like her. I just don’t know whether it’s only because of who she is, or also because of how she acts towards me.”

  “Isn’t that just the same?”

  “I meant if the way she acts towards me is different from how she usually is.”

  “Ah. Well, I can’t comment on that. I only watched you from the corner of my eye. She did give you a lot of attention, way more than she usually gives any one student during a single class. Take it as you may, because that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  Sam nodded. “She was… she wasn’t the most encouraging teacher that I’ve had to pleasure of being taught by.”

  “Coming from you, that actually means something. Especially considering Lin isn’t all that encouraging compared to many of the teachers I’ve had. I mean, yeah, there’s no going around it, really. She’s a bitch, and she’s had out for Yvessa since day one. That’s reason enough to dislike her in my book. But who’s to say that if that part of the equation didn’t exist that you wouldn’t still dislike her?”

  “What, that she wouldn’t be a bitch?”

  “No, I meant the part with Yvessa. Obviously, if she weren’t a bitch, that’d go a long way to making her favorable.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Yvessa asked as she joined them by the side of the hall.

  “Sam was considering whether his dislike of our erstwhile instructor stems from more than just her attitude in general and her attitude towards you in particular.”

  “Why, what’d she do?”

  “She didn’t stroke my ego while supervising my exercises,” Sam said.

  “Which I guess means that she was borderline rude,” Felix said.

  Yvessa shrugged. “She seemed a little bit hostile to Sam before. But she’s like that to almost anyone.”

  “By that she means anyone but herself because she’s a lot hostile towards her.” Felix winked as Yvessa rolled her eyes.

  “Remind me why you’re still taking crap from her?” Sam asked.

  “She toned it down a lot compared to how she was at the beginning,” Yvessa said. “Besides that, I’m not going to see her after the end of the trimester. Seems like more of a hassle to start something now than just to carry on with it for a month and a half.”

  “The only thing required for the triumph of the mean and petty is for reasonable people to decide fighting them isn’t worth the trouble. That’s how HOAs and upzoning objectors can get away with eroding the fabric of western society.”

  “He can be so profound, can’t he?” Felix wiped a tear from his eye. “Come on, you louts, let’s get some spars under our belt in what remains of this lesson. Sam, start with me?” Sam gave a thumbs up.

  “I’ll go after,” Yvessa said

  Sam shrugged. “Fine with me, but afterwards I need to fight some strangers, so I’ll leave you two to your own devices.”

  Like clockwork, both of his spars against Felix and Yvessa ended in a resounding loss of seven to them and zero to him. But he did get two close calls against Felix and managed to perform a particularly impressive dodge (from his point of view) against Yvessa. While the spars hadn’t garnered an audience per se, Sam easily noticed the looks thrown their way and the lingering, half-hidden looks from the people who weren’t currently sparring.

  Capitalizing on this crowd of onlookers, Sam grabbed the closest idle person and asked her for a spar. After losing to her six to one, he didn’t need to bother looking for an opponent for the remainder of the class, which passed incredibly fast. As time is wont to do when you’re having fun. And despite it all, Sam was having a ton of fun.

  After all, exercise was biologically fun and mentally enjoyable when your body didn’t suffer from a dozen minor maladies, all ready to spring up at a moment’s notice and ruin your life for the next couple of months. Getting to know other people was fun, even if the way you got to know them was from exchanging about five words (Sam’s opinion about being able to learn about a person from the way they fought was as of yet undetermined). And against all odds, Sam was actually beginning to find fighting to be a lot of fun in itself. Even with all of his losses, he still got a thrill from exchanging strikes with his opponent; from dodging at just the last second or landing a hit after a really good feint.

  Sam huddled next to Felix and Yvessa with a smile as the class ended and the three instructors gathered to send them on their way. He was just about to ask Felix to join him for a session with Lin on Saturday when Mila walked over to them. “Cadet Anders, I will be requiring just a few minutes of your time. If you two would please?” She gestured to Felix and Yvessa to leave. Sam noticed Shore eying them as he and the third instructor joined the students leaving the hall.

  “Let’s go.” Yvessa nodded to Felix, but Sam cut her off.

  “I already managed to convince them to walk me over to my next class,” he said. “Can’t they just stay instead of waiting for me outside like chauffeurs? I mean, what’s this about, anyway? It’s not like I have any problem with Felix or Yvessa hearing about my spearfighting. Quite the opposite, considering all the help they give me.” He gave Mila a sweet smile.

  “Be that as it may, I would have this conversation with you in private. So…”

  Sam inched forward a tiny bit so that his shoulder blocked Yvessa. “So, I would still like them to stay here. I mean, why can’t they be? They’re just as much a part of my combat training as Lin.”

  “Your training with Instructor Jingway is one matter. Your training in my class is another. And if I want to have a private conversation with you, then I shouldn’t need to exercise my authority and make it an order, now should I?”

  “Shouldn’t you?” Sam shrugged. “Of course not. That would be impolite on my part. However, the question remains: can you?”

  Mila’s right eye twitched as Yvessa suppressed a groan and Felix didn’t a chuckle. “Cadet Anders, you might have grown accustomed to being treated a certain way by certain figures within this academy, but let me just remind you that this is a military academy. And we follow military rules and etiquette here.”

  “Right… yeah. Except we don’t really, now do we? On the list of the five most important things for this academy to impart upon its students, I’d wager to say that military discipline and structure ranks fourth or fifth by the academy’s highest decision makers. I mean, the three Terran Rulers that I met within these halls certainly didn’t expect military courtesy on my part.”

  Mila’s gaze turned even harder as she stared Sam directly in the eyes. She must’ve straightened up or stood on her toes because she suddenly seemed to loom over him. “Cadet Anders,” she said tersely. “I think I’ve had quite enough of your churlish and arrogant attitude. You go too far thinking—”

  “Far?” Sam made a confused expression. “I don’t think I’m going far at all. On which path would you say that I’m… going far, was it? Because I’ll tell you what the path I’m on, yes? It’s the path where taking out my phone and writing a very short message to a certain Ruler—that I’m sure you’re familiar with—wouldn’t be anywhere near even its half-point. And neither would telling him, ‘Hey, I really like this new combat class, but one of the instructors just doesn’t do it for me. The other two are great, and so are the students. But something about her…’

  “And guess what? I can just leave it at that. And it still wouldn’t be going anywhere farther than… I don’t know, a third of my allowance? Yeah, sounds about right, a third. So, would you like to take a guess which one of us would still be in this class this time next week if I went that ‘far?’ Because I think we both know the answer to that. It’s the person who doesn’t get their rocks off by bullying people who can’t fight back and who didn’t have the gigantic stroke of luck to bully someone who could’ve very easily fought back if she didn’t care about not rocking the boat so much.

  “Now”—Sam adopted his first genuine smile for Mila—“how far was that?”

  For a few more seconds, the instructor continued to tower over him silently, her eyes frozen until she finally said, “I’ll tell Lin to use his own judgment on when to have you join my lessons.” She turned and walked away without moving any part of her body but her legs.

  “Damn…” Felix rubbed his eyes, a wide smile plastered over his face. “That was the best thing I’ve seen all week. Where did this Sam come from all of a sudden?” He clapped Sam on the shoulder.

  “Yes,” said Yvessa much more tersely. “Where did he come from?”

  Sam shrugged. “He was always there, just waiting for the opportunity to get out. You see, coming here has made me realize that it wasn’t really authority figures that I was anxious about. It was people having the ability to dictate my future for me. So when the number of people who can currently do that is pretty damn small. Now, the Sam that has been repressed and beaten down for twenty-odd years; forced to listen as others told him that he wasn’t good enough and walked all over now. Now that Sam really wants to stretch his newfound uniqueness. Stretch it really, really far.”

  This chapter was long time in coming. And it contains only the second scene of those scenes that I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time (the first one being Farris-Dan dialogue). It’s not one of the scenes I’ve had it my head since even before I started writing, but it’s been there ever since I wrote the first chapter with Felix and Yvessa and that part about Yvessa and her social problems.

  See, for some reason, I ended up writing a trope that I really hate. Because it doesn’t make any fucking sense. Why would anyone reasonable have it in for one of the most promising individuals in the world? It doesn’t make sense in any culture or society besides those where there is considerable competition for resources within the same organization or social structure. It just doesn’t. No one would be that stupid and, or, irresponsible. And if they were (because let’s face it, plenty of people would probably be in real life) then they wouldn’t be able to survive the scrutiny of the more reasonable figures who are very much interested in the continued success and growth of the young prodigy in question.

  But, I ended up employing this very trope (sure, to a more limited degree, but still) and I had to find my way out of it. So I thought, why not give Sam his very first certifiably cool moment? After all, Sam is in the perfect position to point out just how absurd the trope is and what can happen to an antagonistic character who follows it. And thus we can safely close this chapter of Yvessa’s character background and development. At least until I kill off Mila in the far future and off-screen to insert a little realism into the war. And maybe I’ll also do something with the other guy, Mila’s star pupil, whose name I’ve forgotten.