The first day of classes dawned bright and clear. Jonathan looked out at the blue sky. Part of him felt like it was a waste to spend such a beautiful day in the classroom. The fact that he was at a training academy for mech pilots took the edge off of that complaint, though.

Jonathan had already benefited greatly from the virtual trainer. He was excited to see how he could progress with help from the instructors.

Unfortunately, even the Royal Academy couldn't spend every day honing its cadets piloting abilities. Instead, just like any other school, the teachers used the first day to explain what they would be teaching rather than actually jumping into the subject. In addition, the academy was, after all, intended to educate teenagers. Learning to pilot mechs was important, even the most important thing, but they still had to go through a well rounded course of study. Mathematics, galactic history, and even writing composition were all required courses.

Jonathan had an advantage when it came to the ordinary classes from his past life, but that didn't mean he could just skate on through. It had been a while since he'd been in high school.

The first class of the day was their home room, where they met with the man who would be their primary teacher. Instructor Brindley was a decorated veteran with a sterling record of combat against void beasts as well as experience in the border wars against the Orion Star Kingdom's neighbors. He had long ago reached the rank of mech knight, and was said to be close to breaking through to become a mech lord. When he stood at the front of the room and surveyed the class, Jonathan could almost feel the bloody aura surrounding the man.

Jonathan took advantage of the moment of silence following Instructor Brindley's self-introduction to take a peek around the room for himself. He didn't know exactly how the Royal Academy went about organizing its classes, but he saw too much silver piping decorating the cadet uniforms in the room to be a coincidence. For a school aiming to produce elites, it made some sense to put the high performers in close proximity so as to push each other to new heights.

Chad Worthington was there, of course. It was strange, seeing him with a serious look on his face. It made him look like a young elite of the Orion Star Kingdom, instead of an obnoxious jackass. Jonathan glanced down to find that he was doodling rather than taking notes and the world suddenly made sense again.

Looking around the room, Jonathan was struck by the gender imbalance. He'd noticed that almost everyone he saw around campus was a guy, but this was his first chance to calculate a concrete number. Out of their twenty-four person class, there were only two women. One was Arabella, the girl who had been tagging along behind Chad. She was sitting at military attention next to her twin brother, her back straight and her eyes locked on the front of the room.

The other was a quiet girl in the back row. She was doing her own survey of the class. Their eyes met for a moment before she looked away, her dark hair falling over her eyes as she focused on her notebook. Jonathan didn't let his own gaze linger, not wanting to start any trouble.

As Instructor Brindley got past his initial introduction and began talking about what they could expect to learn at the Royal Academy, the atmosphere in the room began to relax. Jonathan listened to the lecture with one ear while he kept an eye on his classmates. He could almost see the clique beginning to form around Chad. Whether it was the years of success at Orion Prep, his famous brother, or just something about him, he had star power. It was too bad he was such an ass.

Jonathan wasn't just paying attention to his classmates because he wanted to make friends. There was a more practical matter at hand. Individual effort could only get you so far at the Royal Academy. The school wanted to nurture talents, but those talented students would be useless if they weren't able to work together with others. Accordingly, group work would comprise a significant proportion of their grade, with the standard going up over time.

In the virtual world, only the first month of quests could be tackled by a single person. After that, they'd be issued two man quests for some time, while the last month of the semester would require them to work in six man teams.

Six mechs made up a standard battle squad in the Orion Star Kingdom. Usually, students would group up with their team of six during their first semester and stick together for the remainder of their schooling. Teams that performed well had a good chance of being assigned together out in the field.

It wasn't completely impossible to change teams. It also wasn't completely impossible to team up with people from outside of your home room. In both cases, though, there were significant hurdles in the way. Jonathan expected that he and Philip would pair up. Then they'd have to find four other people who they wanted to join their team.

Of course, they would only be able to recruit people who were interested in working with them. Jonathan figured the gold on his uniform would go some distance to help with recruiting. He felt a little bad about using his temporary stay in first place to hook people onto his team, but any prospective recruits would know that the rank wasn't guaranteed.

They wouldn't have to formalize their teams for some time, but Jonathan expected that his classmates would begin feeling each other out right away. After all, forming a team was one of the most important decisions they would make at the Royal Academy. That was on top of the natural teenage instinct to form social groups.

When lunch time rolled around and they were free to socialize with each other, everything played out as he'd expected. Except for his own role. Where he'd expected that his first place rank would have people lining up to recruit him for their teams, his classmates kept their distance.

For a while, he entertained the idea that they were simply intimidated by his first place ranking. Nobody wanted to go through a public rejection, after all. On the other hand, there was little enough risk in striking up a conversation that he would have expected somebody to go for it. Then he saw Chad holding court, more than half their class gathered around his table, and the mystery was solved.

Not content with running Jonathan down to his face, it looked like Chad had put out the word on his lack of progress through the virtual world's tests. If his classmates expected him to fall off his pedestal soon, it certainly explained the lack of interest. Jonathan shook his head and focused on his food. Everything would become clear enough in a few weeks.

He wouldn't be able to scam anybody onto his team based on his initial ranking, but maybe that was for the best. He knew that without access to the system that had boosted his initial sync rate, he might not be the best pilot in the class. With all the time that he'd put into his training, though, he was confident that he wasn't the worst. When he had a chance to show what he could do, finding teammates would work itself out.

The rest of the afternoon passed much as the morning had. Plenty of handouts and information about what they would be learning, but not a lot of useful information shared. After being shunned at lunch, he couldn't help but feel that his classmates were pointedly excluding him from the note-passing and other minor bits of disobedience, but he tried not to let it get to him. He did his best to follow Arabella's example and keep his attention fixed on the instructor, no matter how dull the lesson.

Once classes were over, Jonathan relished the chance to work out his frustration in the virtual trainer. It took him two hours of work to fight his way up to a perfect clearance of the fight against the spirit beast. The trick of narrowly dodging its attacks worked like a charm, once he learned how much margin for error he had to leave in order to avoid last minute corrections.

Jonathan only took a moment to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done before he advanced to the next test. As much as he didn't want to worry about what his classmates thought of him, he did need to get through the tests if he was ever going to get a chance to show what he could do.

The next fight was again on a vast, featureless plain. This time, Jonathan wouldn't have any compunction taking on his foe: he wasn't up against an adorable baby spirit beast, but another mech. The shape of it was a little different from his, but the capabilities ought to be about the same. It would be a little much to expect him to take on a veteran mech soldier or a mech knight in order to gain access to the virtual training world.

Jonathan took a step to the side. His opponent matched the motion but otherwise didn't react. He stared at the expressionless face of the giant mech and felt a moment of anticipation. He knew, intellectually, that the spirit beast he'd been fighting had been quite dangerous, but confronting an enemy mech really got his blood pumping.

Not just his blood. The spiritual energy flowing through his mech had picked up in speed, responding to Jonathan's mental state. It would give him a little bit more speed and strength at the expense of his spiritual energy. In theory he ought to maintain his emotional equilibrium to optimize energy consumption, but Jonathan couldn't be bothered.

He drew his beam saber and charged. His plasma rifle could at best wear down the enemy mech over time. He needed to get in close if he wanted to break through its defenses quickly.

The enemy mech reacted with a great bounding leap backwards. It used its flight pack to increase the distance covered by the jump, not allowing Jonathan to close the range.

While it was still in mid-air the mech drew its rifle and took aim. Jonathan threw some extra energy into the shields as a plasma bolt flew directly at his chest.

Before it could get closer than an arm's length away the bolt flashed and disappeared, neutralized by his shield. Jonathan winced at the impact, but it didn't do any damage to his mech other than pulling a chunk from his energy reserve. He pressed forward, still seeking a decisive clash.

His opponent was determined to stay out of range. As soon as it landed it leapt back again, changing the direction so that it zig-zagged away from him. Jonathan had to waste precious time adjusting his course. Again, the enemy fired in mid-air, and again the shot struck home.

Jonathan hauled his mech to a stop, sheathing his beam saber. His enthusiasm had been cooled by those two plasma bolts. If he'd been piloting something fragile like a main battle tank from back on Earth, it would have been pounded to scrap after running face first into that kind of firepower.

He had wanted a decisive clash, but his opponent obviously didn't intend to give it to him. Jonathan could have pressed the issue. He had managed to close the distance a little bit, though nothing like as close as he'd need to be to use his beam saber. He didn't know if he would get into range first or if his opponent would punch through his energy reserves first. Not to mention the fact that his opponent would hardly be completely helpless just because Jonathan did get in close.

If his strategy wasn't working, he had other options. After all, he'd spent the last few days working on his shooting ability. Now he would find out how well he fared against an enemy who could shoot back.