Kubi

*** 2 Hours Later, The Gates of Ukhozi City, Ukhozi Empire

It would be a lie to say that the rest of the journey had passed uneventfully but after a few more attacks, it had become commonplace to hear sounds of small fights and scuffles as Burgundy dispatched all who thought they could attack the bus, even as the driver drove like a maniac, making the old motor vehicle speed like it was one of Jan Maroon's supercars, the bus growling its disapproval as it moved along.

Still, the entire bus had made it in one piece by the end of the ride, though Ignace himself felt slightly sick, as if Burgundy had buzzed him with her ability once again. Yet here they were, and Ignace regarded the large walls of Ukhozi City with awe. They were at least twice as large as those of Ima, and they spanned as far as the eye could see to both sides.

The last few hundred meters had been easy sailing (or driving), as they had encountered several military camps outside of the city itself, protecting the area around the walls of the mighty capital city of the Empire. The gates looked to be several times heavier and larger than those at Ima but the speed and ease with which they rose put Ima's gates to shame. The district immediately inside the walls was military, to the left, there were barracks for soldiers, and to the right, Ignace saw dozens of offices for Protectors.

"That's ours!" Tyrion pointed out proudly to the entire bus, pointing his finger at an office close to the gates, which held a sign which read 'Tyrion & Burgundy's Protection Firm'.

His audience, the people on the bus, oohed at the sight, as the bus moved past, thankfully far slower, as it was once again inside the walls of a city and subject to traffic rules once more. It took only a few short minutes before the bus arrived at Union Station, where the bus stopped at the fifth terminal.

"Thank you," Ignace nodded to Tyrion as he exited the bus along with the rest of the passengers.

"Entirely our pleasure kiddo, good luck with the exams, I know firsthand how nerve-wracking that can be."

"What's your alma mater?" Ignace asked curiously.

"Avarie." Tyrion replied, "Gaz graduated with me too, it'll probably be one you'll be applying to today as well." he grinned, "I've got a feeling I might just be seeing you again today.

"Well yeah, aren't you protecting us on the ride back as well?"

"Not quite what I meant," Tyrion responded.

Ignace scratched his head at the random statement, which Tyrion did not follow up, and made to leave.

"Don't forget to throw us a mail if you need reliable protection at any time!" Tyrion called after them, one last plug for their firm.

Ignace held up a hand in a goodbye-gesture. Ukhozi City's Union Station was a large place, all big pillars and grand arches, and lots and lots of people. Despite it being slightly intimidating, Ignace was already enjoying the atmosphere of the metropolis.

"Ayy, Kiddo!" Ignace heard a voice call out and looked up to see a man in the garb of Union Station.

"Yes?" he answered hesitantly.

"You'll be wanting a Uni Guide, no?" the man asked, "Tells you where each Uni is, and which Uni has their exam when."

"Ah, yes, we would like to purchase one of those," Ignace's mother popped into view, "How much?"

"It's on the city," the man waved them off, handing a booklet to Ignace, "Don't want the cost of a booklet to be the barrier to entry for talent now, do we?" he asked rhetorically.

"After making us pay for the trip here, they're worrying about the cost of a booklet?" Ignace's mother asked.

"Ain't that the truth!" the man with the pamphlets laughed mirthfully but did not give any other response before walking off and continuing selling the thing to a new batch of students which had arrived in a different bus.

Ignace opened the booklet, interested. The timings were designed in such a way that one could only really apply to any three schools in the city, as the entrance exams were slotted into batches by class. The 'C' class schools held their exams the earliest, then the 'B' class schools, then finally the 'A' class schools later in the evening. The system was fixed so that every student could only apply to one school from each tier, which was, honestly, beneficial to the students themselves, Ignace noted. There were well over a dozen schools in each category. He himself had already picked the three schools to which he would be applying.

"We have about an hour before your first entrance exam begins," his mother said, "And it's about lunchtime if you get my drift…" she gave him a meaningful look.

"So it is," Ignace agreed.

"So, you know any good restaurants in the area?"

"...Mom."

"What!? You might!"

"Mom."

"...Okay, we'll ask a cabbie."

*** An hour later, Kubi School for Higher Ability Studies, Ukhozi City, Ukhozi Empire

The small ball of nerves in his stomach had grown from the size of a moderately sized baseball right up to the size of a watermelon. His mother had bid him goodbye at the gate of the school, going off to explore the various stores which were present in the large city.

Ignace stood, along with over two thousand other applicants to the school, in the large field which was situated behind the University.

The Kubi School for Higher Ability Studies' campus was a single large towering building, spanning several dozen floors. It was very wide as well, no doubt providing a lot of space for the various abilities of its inhabitants.

While he was also applying to a B-level, and even an A-level school, Ignace knew that this would be the only place he would apply where he would actually stand any kind of chance to get in.

Ignace was situated somewhere near the back of the large crowd, so he couldn't see the woman who finally spoke up.

"HELLO, THIS IS GWEN GAMBOGE, CAN ALL OF Y'ALL HEAR ME FINE?"

The voice of the self-identified Gwen Gamboge was so loud that she nearly blew out the eardrums of all the children assembled in front of her.

A few moments later, she spoke again, this time much softer, but still audible by the entirety of her audience, quite a remarkable feat considering the size of it.

"Sorry about that guys," she chuckled cheerfully, "Juuuuust a hiccup! Anyway, there's quite a few of you, as per usual really, so we're gonna go ahead and divide the lot of you up amongst the entirety of our staff present right now. We'll divide you in alphabetical order, by your last name. Please make your way to the floor that corresponds with the first letter of your last name. For example, if your last name were Ash, you would make your way to the first floor, if your last name were Bleu, you'd make your way to the second, all the way up to our theoretical Mr or Ms. Zaffre, who would make his or her way up to floor 26, am I understood? You will be met by the staff member in charge of your group up there. Any questions?"

The lady waited a moment for all of this to sink in before saying, "Okay, chop chop, get to where you need to be."

The stampede, as people tried to run to the elevators and the various staircases as fast as possible, was quite intense, and Ignace stuck near the back, there was no disadvantage given to those who simply walked in a little later after all and rushing through to the front and fighting to retain such a position was most likely just going to tire him out.

In the end, it took him about 15 minutes to make his way up to the ninth floor. Despite his lack of hurrying, he still found his way up quicker than those trying to fight for the elevator, making it with about the middle of the pack.

About 70 people with last names which began with the letter 'i' had made it into the room, which had been filled with tables and chairs, in the general format of a paper examination.

Ignace raised an eyebrow at the idea of being tested in such a traditional method for an ability school.

The prospectives in the room began to mill around as their supervisor had yet to show his or her face.

"YO!" the painfully loud voice of Gwen Gamboge burst through the door, the volume of the sound being enough to shake the poor door frame.

Gamboge sauntered in cheerfully through the door, "THIS WAY CHILDREN!" she projected once more, certainly leaving no-one who was not absolutely clear on who their supervisor was.

At a more bearable volume, she continued, "Unless I sent you deaf down there with my little hiccup, you must all know who I am, yes?" she paused for an answer, and after a slight delay of a few seconds of blank staring, she got a chorus affirmative response, "My name is Gwen Gamboge, and I am a Professor here at Kubi, I will be supervising your entrance examination, I am the wielder of the Passive Ability: Amplitude. Now, as you have all probably found, us Universities are highly secretive about the contents of our entry processes, and let me tell you this, every single university has a vastly different style of testing their students, it varies especially by what is valued by the school you are applying to. While universities these days are entirely focussed on the development of your abilities, we at Kubi believe that the sciences and maths are still integral to any kind of holistic learning. Therefore a major component of our testing will be in the form of the exam papers you see laid out on the tables. Most of this should be content you have covered in school, but beware, it ain't going to be an easy paper! During the exam, I will call each of you up, one by one, for a very short interview and display of our ability. Am I understood?"

Seeing no questions, she continued, "Please find your way to a seat, my friend Bert here will be invigilating, he will also announce who must come up to meet me. I will be situated in room 0901, which you can see at the other side of the hall. That is all." she said, gesturing to a ratty cloaked man who perked up at the name of Bert, like a particularly ugly wrinkled puppy dog.

With that, Gamboge sauntered off to her room, calling out to a student Ignace did not know to follow her in.

The test itself was not something that Ignace was prepared for in the slightest, it had come completely out of left field.

Ignace had focussed so much on honing his ability, and on his charisma, that he couldn't even tell you what the powerhouse of the cell was supposed to be, for god's sake!

He didn't do so bad on the math portion, recalling what little he remembered and doing his best to logically derive the answers for the other questions, a kind of logic which helped him with the physics portion as well, but there was no helping his miserable performance in the chemistry and biology portions of the paper.

Ignace racked his brain with growing despair that the single university option with which he had a significant show in was slowly slipping out of his grasp because he hadn't spent enough time studying the anatomy of the human body of all things!

About halfway through the paper, when Ignace had already made it through all of the content he was familiar with, and was just jabbing shots in the dark, he was called for by the mildly terrifying Bert, in his vaguely evil-sounding raspy voice which left one wondering how on earth he had ended up with a job which involved teaching, or speaking of any kind, really.

Presently, putting his thoughts on the weirdness that was Bert, Ignace brought his thoughts back to what would await him in room 0901. Some kind of impromptu scenario? Nah, that didn't seem like the style of this school at all. An interview? Likely, but how would it be conducted?

With these thoughts in his mind, Ignace smartly knocked on the door to the room.

"Come in." he heard the voice of the overly loud professor.

Ignace entered the room, coming face to face with Gamboge, who seemed to favor standing and pacing around her office to remaining in her seat all day, it certainly spiced thing up a bunch.

"Hello?" he tried.

"Hello!" the woman scribbled into her notepad as Ignace wondered what of significance he had done to warrant note-taking.

"It's the way you're standing," she explained as if she could read his mind, "Or I suppose I could be saying that as a trap to register your response. Of course, I'm not, but then, do you know that?"

"Huh?" was the most eloquent thing that Ignace could produce, "Umm, my name is Ignace Indigo and-"

"I know," she said, nonetheless scribbling furiously into her notepad, "Favourite icecream flavour?"

"Well, chocolate, but-"

"Hmmmm, chocolate…" she nodded, "As I would have guessed."

"Guessed? Based on what?"

"The scientific method, dearie," she said, not really explaining anything of significance, only her rate of scratching words out increasing, "Now, stand up, my boy."

Considering he was already standing, Ignace was unsure of what he should do, so he decided to straighten his somewhat hunched shoulders, realising belatedly that that might have been the posture she had been referring to earlier, if she even had been, and cursing himself for the possible mark down he might get for that, then remembering his performance on the written portion of the exam, and deciding glumly that no number of points down here would really be making any kind of difference to his overall score.

"Good," Gamboge said, breaking Ignace out of his thoughts, "You have 30 seconds, all you have to do is try and keep standing." she said casually, still scribbling, in a relaxed posture which didn't indicate any kind of possible aggression from her side, leading Ignace to glance up and down, wondering where his challenge would come from, "Starting now!" she said, still scribbling as her other hand grasped a timer.

Ignace turned to look behind him, looking around to see the direction of assault, only to hear an intake of breath from the direction in which Gamboge had been sitting.

Ignace spun around as the woman released a sound so loud that it shook the air, throwing Ignace against a wall, which he took the support of to keep standing.

In an instant, the woman had flung herself over the table, her leg aimed for his face.

Ignace ducked out of the way with relative ease, only to find himself sans any kind of wall for support, and now facing down another sound blast. As the air warped around the soundwaves, providing somewhat of a trajectory to be avoided, Ignace twisted out of the way, still being pushed by the displaced air (not to mention the assault on his ears from the constant shrieking noise), and managed to land on his feet.

He had not found the room to be particularly large upon entering it, but he found that the walls were far enough apart that Gamboge found it only to easy to cut him off as he made a run for the closest wall to himself.

As she opened her mouth for what was sure to be another auditory attack, Ignace threw himself to the left, keeping his balance to try and land on his feet, only to find his feet whipped out from under him and himself in no position to stop falling face-first onto the marble ground.

In the split second before his nose was absolutely crushed, he yelled out, "Transform Ability: Eagle!" and found himself in the far smaller body of the aerial animal, and flapped his wings, producing a very disproportionate amount of wind which pushed his body up, and out of the range of Gamboge, just as the timer rang.

Ignace transformed himself back and landed on his feet, lacking grace but remaining standing defiantly, nonetheless.

The 18 year old grinned at his accomplishment despite having already dropped the ball on the written portion.

Bringing himself back to reality, he looked up to see Gamboge typing up some form of evaluation on a desktop computer, certainly not slowly, but not at any significant pace to write home about, or compare to her hectic handwriting earlier.

"If these are your notes," Ignace asked, "What was all that!"

"All of what, Indigo?" the woman said, "You can leave by the way, this is done."

"That! You know, all the writing you were doing!"

"Writing? Whatever gave you that idea, I'm a sketch artist! Here, you can keep this piece." Gamboge pulled the piece of paper she had been 'writing' on out of the book, which Ignace just realised, upon further observation, was more reminiscent to a sketchbook than a notebook, and handed it to the Indigo boy.

"Umm, thanks," Ignace said, looking down at the sketch of his face, which was surprisingly good considering it had been completed in roundabout 2-3 minutes.

As he turned to exit, he realised he'd forgotten his entire spiel, and turned to give it to Gamboge, "I-I am the one who will beco-"

"Shoo!" Gamboge shot him down, gesturing with her hand for the boy to leave, "Get Berto to send the next one in."

And so went his first entrance exam.

4/10 would not do again.

***