True to her word, Kayva found the viral lab right where Rayne said it would be. For not being able to find her own room the night before, Rayne seemed to have a pretty good grasp of where everything else in the Academy was.

   And it was hard to believe her absolute luck when her newest teacher turned, and this time, she knew exactly who he was because he had been her idol for some time. “H-h-Halen Cenpri?” she breathed. And she would have dropped her books if there wasn’t a table directly in front of her to cover the stumble as a deliberate action. She was in awe; in the presence of someone who was absolutely smarter than her, and that was a true treat.

   With auburn hair that seemed more alive than the rest of his collected demeanor, Halen Cenpri seemed less impressed with her, however, and merely took her in for what seemed like several minutes before offering her a thin pressed smile. “Guardian Cenpri will do, Ms…?”

   “K-Kayva. I mean, I’m Kayva Lenson, Technology and Science Division. I specialize in theoretical science and computer software manipulation and I would very much like to have your job,” she stumbled, then gasped in horror and corrected herself, “Not your job! The job like yours! I want to do what you do, except for Princess Nevaeh, of course. I have read every single one of your thesis’s on AI circuitry and viral coding, and I have never heard such revolutionary ideas on the subject of interdimensional energy holding the key to universal algorithm computation as those which you have written.”

   Cenpri appeared to be waiting her out, or at least waiting for her to take a breath before answering. “I’m afraid interdimensional energy is a bit outdated now. I assure you, flattery is going to get you nowhere in my class.”

   “Outdated?” Kayva was instantly miffed, almost forgetting who she was standing in front of, and she began to twist the dark braid of hair hanging to her waist. “Sir, if interdimensional energy and the computative theory of universal algorithms is out the window, then we may as well just start saying five is zero and adding them together makes six. Because that is absolutely insane.”

   “Ms. Lenson, I will be the one to decide what is and is not outdated in this classroom, and you will be the eager student swallowing my every word in the process, is that quite clear?”

   Part of her wanted to make quick apologies, bow down to this genius idol she had held aloft for so many years, and put her mind straight to the task of learning any and all things that would issue from his illustrious mind. Fortunately, that was not the part of her that won out. “If there is no room in this classroom for scientific reasoning and discussion, then what exactly is this? Certainly not a forward thinking science. Why it’s said that people from the Point of Origin once believed their world was flat. Where would we be without the freedom to ponder new theories?”

   She wasn’t sure if her teacher was getting very angry or very amused, but in either case, he was turning rather red and trying to hold back some kind of emotion. “Excellent, Ms. Lenson,” he finally said, quietly. “That is a point I am willing to concede. To answer your rather impertinent question, however, we would be in the dark, and you, my student, would not be very good Guardian material.”

   Kayva was not perfectly sure what he meant by that, but she had an inkling it was good. “Excuse me?”

   “I appreciate forward thinkers. I also appreciate honesty. The only thing I do not appreciate is upstarts, so do attempt to keep your insistent habit of making yourself heard relegated to the Sim room,” he stated quite pointedly while beginning to put up a lesson plan on the screen behind him. “I have just been waiting all these long years in service, just dying to pass on my incredible wealth of knowledge to the new, bright, painfully naïve minds thinking they can do as good a job and not bumble all my carefully laid foundations.”

   It was settled then. Guardian Tekbli was the charisma of the pair. If she and Rayne were to be chosen, roles were surely to be reversed. “I didn’t mean-”

   “Ms. Lenson-”

   “Kayva is fine.”

   “Ms. Lenson,” he stated quite firmly with only a hint of a smile that was both patronizing and chilly. “You’re the one everyone is calling a genius. Am I correct?”

   She swallowed. “Probably a bit generous, sir.”

   “Probably. Are you aware of the theory of relativity?”

   Kayva’s nose scrunched up just at the idea of her ignorance to it. “Are you referring to general or special?”

   “I’m referring to the fact that all matter is relative to what exists around them; speed, energy, so forth. Thus when you are in the same room as I am, relatively speaking, you are most likely an imbecile with the IQ of an ant, whilst I am the god at whom you dare to shake your fist. Do you see the irony you are presenting?”

   It took her several seconds to recover from that absolutely uncalled for blow. “Ants happen to be quite intelligent creatures,” ended up being the only comeback she could muster.

   “But not relative to me,” he finished. “That is the difference, and it will mean the world to you, my very young initiate, if you will ingrain that into your brain this instant.”

   She swallowed a reply, getting very used to being degraded and deflated by those around her, but finally could not keep one comment back. “Then you really reject universal algorithms?”

   “On the contrary – I find them fascinating. A discussion for another time, however.” Cenpri rolled his eyes as another classmate finally entered, saving her from further embarrassment. “Another bushy tailed initiate ready to change the world, then? Take a seat and please don’t speak – I’m coming down with a migraine.”

   She hadn’t met this initiate, but if Ayden thought she was out of place amongst the Techies, this fellow was even more so. He was what a romantic would call swarthy – dark haired and dark eyed and dark stubbled with a dark aura of absolute negativism about him. And as it is a universal knowledge that opposites attract, the brightness of Kayva’s personality was immediately connected and positively vibrating with interest in this young man who gave her a surly smile of mutual understanding; a comradery shared in the undeniable fact that their teacher would most likely be yelling at the both of them before long. “Guardian Cenpri, I’m Jarek Ryst,” he offered his hand to their teacher as he spoke while giving far more attention to the young woman who took her seat.

   “I’m not in the habit of shaking people’s hands, I’m afraid,” Cenpri explained as he waved his student off. “Friend lost one that way.”

   Kayva wondered if that was true when Jarek took the seat next to her and offered her the hand Cenpri had ignored. “Jarek. And you’re Kayva.”

   “Yes, I am,” she affirmed with a ready smile, glad that someone for once was glad to meet her. “Nice to meet you.”

   “What’d I miss?” the bright voice of Ayden chimed in behind them, and the chair on the other side of her was yanked back and quickly occupied by her new friend and teammate. “Oh, hey that’s Halen Cenpri,” he whispered to Kayva, his bright eyes wide and impressed.

   “Yes, we’ve met,” she stated with much less enthusiasm then she ever thought she would pour into that statement. “Ayden, have you met Jarek?”

   “Hey, Jarek.”

   “Breaker.”

   “Now that we’ve begun this fascinating tea party,” Halen began while turning back to them. “Perhaps one or all of you would like to explain why there is no tea?”

   The three stared at him blankly.

   Halen gave an exaggerated “eureka” pose. “Ah yes – perhaps it is because this is no tea party, and you are in my class, and now you will all be silent.” He looked between the two men on either side of Kayva. “This is quite a large room, gentlemen, if you would be so kind as to allow the young lady to breathe.”

   “Technically, the air density in this room should be perfectly suited to sustain a much larger amount of lifeforms, even given a drastic rise in temperature,” Ayden offered, even though he did scoot away from Kayva just a bit under Halen’s withering glare. “Sir.”

   “Ayden Breaker,” Halen muttered, then smiled just a bit. “Top of the list, both alphabetically and potentially.” And with that, he wrote Ayden’s name at the top of the board, and then began to inscribe the other fourteen names that would form half of the Guardian teams.

   Kayva glanced over at Ayden, who seemed as surprised as her for Halen’s strange praise. So, she could spout off Halen’s own work on interdimensional energy without skipping a beat and get a beat down, but all Ayden had to do was make some quip about air temperature that was only halfway decent and suddenly he was top of the class? What a joke!

   By the time the rest of their class had filed in, Kayva was quite put out. Which seemed to reflect the emotional state of their teacher as well, who turned with absolute vitriol in his eyes on the initiates gathering, as if they were the last thing in the world he wished to see and the first he would seek to extinguish. “I suppose we’ll have to begin.” He sighed. Quite audibly and unapologetically. “Can anyone be so kind as to state the Ethos of the Guardian Counselor?”

   Kayva had memorized this and parsed it out mercilessly, but she was beaten to it when Halen did not wait for a volunteer but instantly turned to Ayden. “You?”

   Ayden hesitated, shifting in his seat. “Should I stand?”

   “Does standing assist your brain cells?”

   “Not to my knowledge.”

   “Then don’t.”

   “Yes sir. We are the intelligent logicians; we are the moral conscience. We are the seekers of truth; we are the banishers of doubt. We are more than scientists; we are counselors. We are wise. We are rational. We are prepared. We are proud to be Guardians of the Dorcini Kingdom and its people.”

   “Are you?” Halen challenged, though he’d changed his attention from Ayden to the rest of his students. “Are you intelligent, moral, truthful, prepared? Are you capable of problem solving, original thought, and the pursuit of knowledge?” He looked over his students, and Kayva felt both pride and hesitation. She thought she was those things. She knew she was. “The problem with many students of the sciences is that they become rigid thinkers with an inability to compute new ideas that have no real answer in what we will henceforward call “real life scenarios”. They are used to lab work, theoretical hypothesizes, and answers read and memorized from textbooks.” He picked up a tablet, and Kayva recognized the label across the type describing its function as a text reader. Probably gigs and gigs of data. He smashed it against the desk and everyone except Jarek instantly jumped. She caught her mouth hanging open and quickly shut it as Cenpri continued, “If you bring one single textbook into this classroom I will personally throw you out. And after many years of working with Skye Tekbli, I assure you that I am most capable. Forget what you have learned. Forget what little you think you know. I am here to teach you the abstract, the real life, the out of the box necessities you must have in order to protect the crown in your new roles. I will not tolerate incompetence when it comes to the safety of the crown.”

   “Ms. Lenson,” she was instantly ready to answer any question he had to throw at her the second he called her out. “Since you are the newest member of this Academy, and therefore, I should hope, the least inundated by the detriments of scientists I have previously listed, perhaps you can answer the series of questions I will pose to this class.”

   “Of course,” she stated confidently. Finally, a chance to prove herself to him.

   “Firstly, please give me an example of perfect numbers.”

   “Six, twenty-eight, four hundred and ninety-six, eight thousand, one-”

   “Very good, that’s quite enough. Explain to me the concept of space-time energy, if you can.”

   “Loss of energy means loss of time and space; an increase of energy means larger space and extended time. Thus, time depends on the amount of the energy and the space of a wave. This transfers over to space-time generators by allowing for-”

   Again, Halen stopped her before she could finish and seemed to ponder that explanation. “A bit textbook, but I’ll accept it. Now, my final question – I have created such an object that will always return to me when it is released in a specific manner, but I have neither equipped it with the ability to reverse direction independently, resist the pull of gravity, nor have I equipped any secondary devices to aid it in its return to my person. How have I done so?”

   Kayva took a moment to consider this. “If you reversed the polarity of the-”

   “I believe I mentioned that I did not equip it with the ability to reverse its direction, Ms. Lenson.”

   “Then perhaps,” she paused, working out a model for such a thing in her brain. “the aerodynamic structure was altered in some way to account-”

   “It is perfectly spherical, I should have mentioned that,” the Guardian almost sounded amused by now.

   Her brows scrunched together as she took in this new information. “I don’t understand how a mere sphere, with no alterations made to it of any kind, can just defy the laws of physics without an outside force acting upon it, or an inner force acting outwards on its surroundings.”

   “Would anyone else like to answer the question?”

   Slowly, Ayden raised his hand while Kayva frowned intensely. “You threw a ball in the air and it came back down.”

   “Excellent, Mr. Breaker, I see why you are at the top of the list,” Cenpri continued. “Misdirection is a very useful tactic, one that I employed when I asked Ms. Lenson to solve this riddle, by allowing her to believe that some complex force was acting on the object in question, other than the quite obvious one of gravity. The answer was actually quite simple and staring us in the face the entire time.” He looked at her as if daring her to interrupt him, and when she didn’t, he continued. “Now-”

   “How does solving riddles help us become better Guardians?” Jarek queried.

   “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Ryst – exactly how many times in the service of my King do you imagine that I was faced with a nemesis who asked me to recite pie to the hundredth place in order to defeat him?” He looked around at his classroom. “Anyone?”

   “Never,” Kayva whispered, beginning to understand.

   “Do you suppose when my partner is in need of my aid, the first thing he asks for in my personal arsenal of weaponry is the textbook on quantum mechanics?”

   “No,” was the universal reply this time from his classroom of fifteen.

   “Correct. As a matter of fact, many of the things which you have dedicated your young and voracious minds to will have little to no effect on the problems you will inevitably be faced with. To continue your schooling in this manner, by providing you with theories, formulae, and physics would be a disservice to you. I will leave that to other men. I must show you how to think logically, to come up with solutions, and to think independently and with clever thought processes. I would never condone a Guardian to protect our future Queen Nevaeh who only thought in numbers and algorithms,” he looked straight at Kayva. “No matter your IQ, the propensity for memorization, numbers, or science, it will not save you. You must all learn to think in the abstract.”

    A hesitant hand raised, and Halen locked eyes with Ayden. “Yes, Mr. Breaker?”

   “I do agree with you, Guardian Cenpri, but aren’t our partners the strategists?” Kayva had the distinct feeling that he was actually trying to disagree with Cenpri on purpose, perhaps to avoid the title of teacher’s pet. It didn’t make her feel better.

   “I assure you, Mr. Breaker, after years of experience as a Guardian, that two strategists are better than one. Now, I have created a series of problems for you all to solve. You will solve these problems by the time we reconvene in a week, or you will lose a substantial amount of standing with me, and perhaps even eliminate you and your partner from the Challenges. You may work on them alone, or work on them together; it matters very little to me, but the choice is yours.” He snapped his briefcase shut. “I will be very interested to see your progress, as this may very well be a deciding factor in whether or not you are chosen for Guardian. Good day.”

   With that he swept out of the classroom with the air of a man who is hastily leaving an infected city and running for fresh air.

   She felt someone touch her, and reached over to see Jarek removed a sliver of glass from her sleeve. “Sorry. Just didn’t want that to stab you,” he stated with a roguish smile. “He’s a lark.”

   “Yeah,” and with that, she ran out of the class.

   She was royally flushed.