Part One: Speaking In Tongues Interrogating the Text from the Wrong Perspective

June, 782 UC, Phezzan Dominion

Yang Tai-long's house on Phezzan was not very large, but it was crammed from top to bottom with delicate and expensive objets d'art that the merchant had picked up on his travels, leaving hardly even room for his fifteen year old son to have a bed and place to sleep while they stayed on the planet.

When Yang Wen-li had asked about this, his father had shrugged and said something along the lines of, "All the house is for is for the residency card that comes with it. If you need somewhere to sleep, you can go stay with your friend, what's his name, Konev..."

Although Yang Tai-long rarely stayed on Phezzan for long, the summer of 782 UC was an exception. He had heard that a famed Phezzani art collector was on death's door, and his collection was to be auctioned off as soon as his body was in the ground. Not wanting to miss that momentous event, Tai-long had briefly passed off the operation of his merchant ship to subordinates and was waiting on the planet with his son.

Yang Wen-li, who had rarely spent more than a few days at a time on a planet since his mother had died, was at first stymied by this odd unscheduled freedom of being able to go places other than the halls of his father’s ship, but quickly realized that his favorite thing to do while on a planet was very similar to his favorite thing to do while off a planet: sit around and read books on history. The only benefit to being on the ground, he found, was reading outside, in the warm Phezzani sun.

This was what Yang Wen-li had been doing, leaning against a tree in a public park, half reading, half dozing, when his friend, Boris Konev, came to find him.

"Hey, Yang," Konev said. "Wake up."

"I thought you were leaving," Yang muttered, swiping some of his shaggy black hair out of his eyes, then rubbing them to wake himself up a little.

"I wanted to." He spread his arms in a chagrined and expressive shrug.

Yang raised an eyebrow. "Then why are you here?"

"My dear mother has decreed that I should spend this summer focused on my academics, rather than gallivanting across space with my father."

"And will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Focus?"

Konev laughed. "That's what I came to bother you about."

Yang did not like the sound of that one bit. "Can't I be a simple man, living in peace, reading a book?"

"Hah. No." Konev sat down under the tree next to Yang. "I have an ingenious plan."

"I somehow remember that every other ingenious plan that you've ever had has gotten us both into deep trouble."

Konev continued as though Yang had not said anything. "My mother likes you, right?" Yang shrugged. "Yeah. She does. And she thinks you're smarter than I am."

"Only because she sees me reading and sees you causing problems. I don't think it's a reflection of—"

"Shush," Konev said. "Here's my thought. If I can prove to her that you and I can go head to head academically, then she'll get off my case about school and let me go back to work with my dad."

Yang pulled his baseball cap down over his face and leaned back against the tree, shutting his eyes. "This sounds like work for me. Don't you know I'm a deeply lazy man?"

"It'll be six hours of next Saturday. You'll hardly even miss it."

Yang leaned forward again and opened his eyes to look at the blonde and innocently smiling Konev. "And what's happening next Saturday?"

"The most unbiased and hardest test I could find to sign us both up for."

"What did you do?"

Konev reached into his back pocket and pulled out two envelopes, one with Konev's name on it, and one with... Yang snatched the second envelope out of Konev's hand.

"Hank von Leigh? You don't even know my name?"

"Well, Yang Wen-li would never pass as the name of anybody who wanted to apply to the Imperial Officers’ Academy on Odin," Konev said, voice still very innocent. "I had to pick something— that was close enough."

"I'm not doing it," Yang said, leaning back and closing his eyes once again. "You can't make me."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to waste my Saturday."

"And what better things do you have to be doing?"

"Plenty. And I don't want to legitimize the Goldenbaum dynasty by interacting with them in any way," Yang said, and tugged his hat down completely over his face.

"It's not like you have to go to school there," Konev said. "All I want you to do is take the test so I can beat you. You don't even have to study. In fact, it would be better if you didn't, so that I have a better chance."

Yang ignored his friend.

"Besides, in terms of 'legitimizing the Goldenbaum dynasty'—you're an Imperial citizen, mister, regardless of your being born on Heinessen. Phezzan residence card means Phezzan citizenship, and Phezzan is technically imperial."

"Not by my choice," Yang said. "I don't even think this scheme is going to work, Konev. Your mother likes me, but not that much. There's no way you can spin six hours of test taking into escaping a whole summer of schoolwork."

"You don't have any faith in my powers of persuasion," Konev said, shaking his head with mock disappointment.

"They're not working on me right now."

"I already paid your fee for the test," Konev said. "Come on, it'll be fun. I'm sure you'll crush the history section."

"And in the math section?" Yang asked. He was notoriously poor at math, the one part of his education that caused his father to worry— how could someone who couldn't keep numbers straight ever hope to run the finances of a merchant ship? It wasn't true that Yang had no talent for math— he had the same brain for it as he had for any other subject— he just cared about it so little that he put no effort into mastering it, and thus was always on the verge of failing his study modules.

"Hey, the worse score you get, the better I look in comparison. Do it for me? Please?"

"I still don't know why I would want to," Yang said. "As my father would say, it's important not to waste effort on things that will bring no benefit."

Konev rolled his eyes, though Yang, with his hat pulled down over his face, couldn't see it. "Look, maybe it will be to your advantage, too. If you do well enough, you can show the results to your father, and maybe he'll see that you'd be better off as some dusty old academic than you would be as a merchant."

"It seems like you're saying we'd be better if we simply switched parents. You have ones who resent your lack of study, and I have a father who would prefer if I studied significantly less."

"Can't pick your family, just have to live with 'em," Konev said with a shrug. "Is that a yes?"

"How early do I have to be awake?"

"Oh, you'll stay at my place Friday night so I can make sure you're up on time."

"That didn't answer the question."

Konev just smirked.

And so, the next Saturday, Yang was reluctantly dragged along to a building owned by the Imperial embassy on Phezzan, where he and Konev joined the long line of other young men milling around, waiting to go in and take the exam. Konev blended right in, being blonde and bold, but Yang looked nothing like any of the other prospective students and felt extremely awkward as he leaned against the wall and read the book he had brought.

Everyone filed in one at a time, speaking to a bored clerk.

"Name?" the clerk asked, speaking in the Imperial language. Yang had known in the back of his head that, even though they were on Phezzan, imperials would probably still speak their native tongue, but he hadn't realized that this would translate into him being required to take the test in the imperial language. It was a lack of foresight on his part, but it didn't matter-- he was decently good at reading in imperial, anyway.

"Er, Hank von Leigh," Yang said, scratching the back of his head. The clerk gave him an amused glance, but then quickly smothered it and typed the name into his computer.

"Residence card or other proof of citizenship?"

Yang handed over his residence card, which luckily did not have his name on it, just his address and the numerical code for the deed to his father's property. Phezzan held the opinion that they didn't care who their citizens were or where they came from; their only purpose was to be property owners (and thus contribute to the Phezzani economy). It was part of what allowed both the Empire and the Alliance to trade with them freely, under this thin guise of Phezzani citizenship. Of course, this also meant that anyone who did not own property was a non-entity, and not given any of the rights and safeties that being a citizen provided. Yang had never been comfortable with the system, but he certainly wasn't going to argue with the clerk about it now.

The clerk handed the card back. "Test ticket?"

Yang passed over the envelope that Konev had given to him the other day, and the clerk punched the ticket, then gave Yang directions to where he would be taking the exam.

The exam was split into two sections, the first being a written academic test, consisting of two hours of mathematics and science questions then two hours of analysis. After the written test, they would break for lunch, then return for a final two hours of practical examination. Yang had no idea what "analysis" or practical examination meant, and, as he sat and dolefully took the math and science portion of the exam (feeling like had accidentally jumped into something way over his head,) he puzzled about it. He couldn't be too nervous, though, because he felt like his scores on the first section of the exam would disqualify him from standing out in the least, and he had no desire to go to the Imperial Officer Academy, anyway.

Despite hating math, Yang tried his best on that section. He figured if Konev was going to try to use him as a stepping stone to get out of school (a plot that almost certainly was doomed to fail), Yang should give him an actual challenge. As much of one as he could, anyway. Still, it was a relief when the buzzer rang and Yang turned in his much worked-over math section, exchanging it for the mysterious "analysis."

What it turned out to be was, in fact, a military history exam. He was presented with a battle from ancient Earth and asked to "analyze" it, with little further clarification. The documentation that had been provided was immense, and Yang had to admit that he was a little excited about getting to pore over it. He loved the feeling of picking apart the pieces of a story, examining them one by one, and reassembling them into a coherent whole, understanding how even something minor could change the course of history completely.

Yang had a passing familiarity with the wider conflict that the battle he was analyzing had come from-- this particular skirmish was taken from what ancient history knew as the First American Civil War. Yang hadn't studied it in great detail, but he had read at least one book on it. He knew it was fairly popular as a source of study, since many people considered it the first modern, pre-nuclear war, but before this moment, Yang had never seriously focused on military history, preferring the political. Still, he was glad for his loose background knowledge now. It certainly helped as he began to sort through the almost overwhelming amount of information available to him.

The documents he was looking at included maps of the terrain and the forces' positions over the course of the battle, a description of the actual event written by a contemporary (from the winning side, Yang noted,) photographs of the battlefield and commanders, spreadsheets describing troop strength and supplies, a meteorological note, a tiny amount of background context for any students who might not have knowledge of the overall war, and, surprisingly, a swathe of letters and diary entries from soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He became so lost in fastidiously reading over these documents, jotting down notes and tapping his pen against his face that he scarcely realized how much time had slipped by.

All around him, the other test takers were furiously writing, and Yang was staring into space, processing all the information that he had gathered. He glanced at the clock, almost by accident, and realized that more than half of his allotted two hours had slipped by. He needed to get started on his "analysis" immediately. As he looked back through his notes, a few thoughts began to bubble through his mind.

First of all, he needed to decide what "analysis" meant. Was he just supposed to write down why the battle proceeded as it did? What were the commanders' thoughts on each side? What should have been done differently to change the outcome? What mistakes and correct choices were made on each side? Or was he supposed to come up with something else?

Second, and possibly more troubling, he had discovered several inconsistencies within the primary source documents that he had been given. The way that soldiers' movements over the terrain were described did not make physical sense when he compared it to the map. The eventual victor of this battle was the Confederacy, according to the documents, but it made no sense: they were operating out of a disadvantageous position with a smaller force. Given the description of the events (which, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be a very standard head on conflict), Yang didn't understand how this smaller and less well prepared force could have ever been victorious. He didn't find much useful in the personal letters and diary entries of the soldiers on either side-- they read like pure propaganda. The Confederacy had won this engagement because their forces had been more dedicated to the cause... The Union soldiers were crushed and demoralized, raging at their foolish and weak leadership. The whole thing felt wrong, impossibly wrong. Yang rubbed the back of his head in frustration.

Analysis. What an anodyne word that could mean absolutely anything.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair for a minute. There was more going on here than just facts and a story that he needed to piece together. He needed to take into account where he was, what he was doing. And what he was doing was sitting and taking a test designed to find potential officers for the Imperial military. That was a very specific type of person. This test was written by a specific type of person. This test would also be graded by a specific type of person, who would be looking for Yang to say a set list of things.

Yang realized that he was looking at a very finely crafted piece of propaganda. It almost sent a shiver down his spine. This First American Civil War had been fought over racial supremacism, hadn't it? It was an evil throughline of human history that stretched its hand into the founding of the Goldenbaum Dynasty. Here, he was presented with a nonsense battle in which the force with racially superior ideals had bested an on paper stronger enemy through sheer force of will. Of course, the Confederacy had eventually lost the war. What were the test writers trying to say with this fantasy that they had created?

He had, as he saw it, two choices: write what his actual thoughts were about this (fake) battle, or write what he thought the graders would want to see. He made up his mind, smiled, and leaned forward, beginning to scribble furiously on his paper in the short time remaining to him.

Now, as you see, I have provided you with the best analysis I can of this scenario. I have detailed the possible mindset of both commanders, which led to them making the choices they did. I have explored possibilities that may have swayed the tide of the battle, and I have discussed what the benefits and risks of those would have been.

But, of course, no matter if Gen. McLaine had followed my advice or not, there would have never been a way for the Union forces to win this battle, simply because it never happened.

Based on the documents provided, I can say with some certainty that this whole scenario has been made up out of whole cloth. I am not so well versed in ancient Earth history that I could list every battle of the First American Civil War, and certainly not to the level of detail required to tell you if the Battle of Charles Creek happened, or how it proceeded, but the account presented here could not possibly have taken place.

You have created a story in which a technically superior force is bested through sheer conviction. I have to wonder: who are you hoping to catch? Do you hope to find officers who believe with such complete sincerity in the ideals of Rudolph von Goldenbaum that they would charge headlong into a seemingly unwinnable conflict, still hoping to come out victorious? Do you hope to find officers who can find ways to rationalize what happened here? Do you hope to find officers who see through this deception and stay silent? Do you hope to find those who speak their minds?

Did you simply tell a story that you yourself felt was believable?

Well, I would say more, but I've spent so much time picking through your evidence and writing what I thought you might want to see that I've run out of time. I suppose I should thank you for the challenge, if nothing else.

Yang met up with Konev as soon as they were released from the testing area for lunch. There was a small courtyard where most people were milling around, eating whatever they brought or bought from the street vendor outside. Yang was in that latter category, and devoured his pita wrap before he could say anything to Konev, who seemed to be in the depths of despair. Konev was so down that he didn't notice that the other students were watching them, some suspicious looks on their faces. Yang tried to ignore them.

"I don't think this plan is going to work," Konev said under his breath. "Sorry for dragging you into this."

"It's fine," Yang mumbled around his sandwich. "I'm sure you beat me on the math."

"Yeah, but I don't know anything about ancient Earth history," Konev whined. "My score is going to be terrible."

"The history wasn't the point of--" Yang gave up and shook his head. "It's fine. Maybe you'll redeem yourself on the practical."

Konev seemed disheartened. "Yeah, sure."

Lunch ended as quickly as it started, with someone dressed in the imperial fashion ringing a bell to summon all the test takers back inside. They were split up into groups of about twenty students, and then escorted to a different room than the one they had been in for the written exam, and told to line up against the wall. The test proctor pointed at two random students in the lineup. “Von Heirmark and von Marche, each of you will pick one person to join your team, then those people will pick next, down the line until everyone has been assigned a team.”

The two students who had been chosen glanced around the room, then started the long process of going down the line and choosing teams. It seemed immediately that most people here knew each other. Most of them were probably the sons of people working at the Imperial embassy on Phezzan, or merchants who primarily traded between Phezzan and the Empire. Yang stood out like a sore thumb, and Konev didn’t know anybody. Konev was picked second to last, leaving Yang standing against the wall with as patient of an expression as he could muster. When Konev left to join his team, he gave Yang an apologetic half shrug, and Yang was reluctantly sent to join the opposite team, who stared at him with a whole host of unfriendly expressions.

“The instructions for this practical task are as follows: you will sit at the desks and put on the immersion helmets, which will play a briefing on the situation. You will have twenty minutes to discuss the strategy you will use with your teammates, and then the simulation will begin. Are there any questions?”

“How is this scored, since we’re on teams?” Konev asked, unafraid to speak the question that everyone wanted to know. He may have figured that since he was going to fail anyway, he might as well say whatever he wanted.

“The simulation will be scored by a team of experts who will holistically judge your performance, including both your behavior during the planning phase and during the execution of the simulation.”

“Is there like a rubric, or...?”

“Mr. Konev, please raise your hand if you need to ask a question. The metrics upon which you will be assessed are not provided, to discourage you from playing to the test. Are there any other questions?”

Konev raised his hand again, this time sarcastically. “Are we playing against each other?” He pointed at Yang, who cringed.

“The two teams will be playing against each other, yes. Any further questions?”

Konev had exhausted his well, so the instructor pointed at the desks with helmets laid atop them, and everyone took their seats.

Yang slipped the helmet onto his head. It was a little large, and rattled around his ears, cutting out the outside world completely. It took a moment to synchronize, then the display popped up, giving him a briefing of the situation in a mechanical voice, accompanied by diagrams of space and ships existing in it.

He was on the blue team, fighting against the red team. The situation was a small skirmish of spaceships, less than a whole fleet’s worth, fighting over a small planet. The goal for their team was to land their ships on the planet, and presumably the goal of the other team was to stop them from doing so. It was simplistic in the extreme, especially compared to the gordian knot that the “analysis” section had felt like. They weren’t told where the red team’s ships were stationed at the start of this engagement, but they couldn’t be that far away.

Once all the background information had been gone through, the helmet showed an image of Yang sitting around a table with the rest of his team. There was an awkward silence as they sized each other up, no one wanting to be the first one to speak. After a few seconds, von Heirmark, the one who had been chosen first, spoke up, appointing himself the leader. “Well, this seems simple enough.”

It was a simple situation, Yang thought, but how the actual battle would play out would depend entirely upon the actions of the other team. He didn’t think that Konev would be that much of an issue, but he didn’t know any of the other test takers. He felt a little bad going against his friend, and briefly wondered if he should lose on purpose, to save the test for Konev, but then decided against it.

“Are we splitting up our forces? There’s a hundred ships, that gives us ten each,” one of the other boys, von Kiermann by his nametag, said.

“It would be better to have them under a central command,” Heirmark said.

Kiermann narrowed his eyes. “Under your command?”

Heirmark shrugged. “I was picked first. I should be in charge.”

“That’s not how any of this works.”

“And how does it work?”

Yang tuned out their power struggle for a second, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. He didn’t care who was in charge of this operation, as long as he got ten-- no, any-- ships to command himself. There was an underhanded plan forming in his brain, a just in case kind of plan.

“Do you just want to charge head on?” Yang asked, opening his eyes and tuning back in to the conversation. “I’m sure they are our match in numbers.”

“No, we should do an encirclement attack,” Heirmark said dismissively. “If we can get them with their backs to the atmosphere and press them in, they’ll be forced to turn to descend, and then we’ll have free rein.”

Yang raised an eyebrow.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Heirmark asked, rather defensive all of a sudden.

Yang was still leaned back in his chair, though having this much negative attention on him was not ideal. “Why do you think they’ll allow you to encircle them?”

“They’re trying to stop us from getting down to the surface,” Heirmark said, mockingly patient. “If we press them, the only direction they can move is back towards the planet, or they risk letting us have it.”

“Sure, but…” Yang used the helmet’s computer to construct the diagram of this encirclement attack that Heirmark was describing. “If you bunch them all together while you’re spread out, they’ll punch right through your center, and then fire on your backsides as you descend.”

“But by then we’ll be descending,” Heirmark said, again with a smug tone. The others around the table were nodding, seemingly having accepted him as their leader. “As long as one ship gets down, we win.”

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to encircle them,” Yang said. “If they’re smart, they’ll also spread out wide enough that you won’t be able to.”

“In that case, we’ll punch through THEIR center.”

Yang sighed. “In evenly matched situations, the defense is always going to have the upper hand, at least at the beginning. And this battle isn’t going to last long enough for that to change.”

“So what are you proposing instead?”

“Kiermann asked if we were each getting command of a section of the battle. Are we?”

“Why?”

“I would like to have a backup plan,” Yang said. “A small number of ships, getting down to the planet away from the main battle. That’s still technically a win condition, like you said.”

Heirmark was silent for a second. “I don’t trust you.”

“It doesn’t really matter if you trust me. I’d just like to make sure we win.”

“Tell me the details of this plan in full, and somebody else can do it.”

“Fine,” Yang said. He decided he cared less about personally enacting it than he did about just getting through, and ideally winning. “Take a couple ships, five maybe. When we’re still a good distance from the planet, have them place themselves in a trajectory that will take them down on the opposite side of the planet. They need to do a burn to put themselves in that orbit at the same time as the main fleet heads in, so that the action is disguised, and then they need to cut all communications and turn off their engines, so that they’re less visible. Once they’re on the other side of the planet, if there’s resistance there, they should do their best to avoid it.” Yang shrugged. “I guess if I was running the other team, I’d put a few ships back there, to stop this. So maybe put most of the landing force on one ship, and devote the others to defending it, so that as long as that one ship makes it down…” He trailed off.

Heirmark had a tight lipped expression. “That doesn’t seem like it would actually be a win, in reality.”

“What about this battle is reality?” Yang asked. “Two tiny fleets, no commanders…” He shrugged again. “If we’ve been told the way to win is landing on the planet, you might as well try to maximize the chances of that happening.”

“Then why don’t we all just split up and have every ship scatter randomly?” Kierman asked. “We should all just do that.”

“We’re starting far enough away from the planet that they’d be able to pick off individual ships like that. The only reason that sneaking in through the back might work is because they’ll be looking at the main engagement, which we should also try to win. Just in case,” Yang added lamely.

“I don’t like it,” Heirmark said. “I don’t think that’s what we’re being graded on.”

“We don’t know what we’re being graded on,” Yang said. He decided to try something else underhanded, looking around the table for a second. “Should we vote?”

“What are you, a republican?”

“We’re a council of equals,” Yang said. “If the Kaiser were here, we could ask him, but he’s not, so we can’t.” He was smiling his placid smile.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Heirmark said. “We’re not equals.”

Yang shrugged. “As you say.”

Kiermann sighed. “Fine, let’s just vote, we’re running out of time. All in favor of his plan?” He jerked his finger at Yang. A couple people timidly raised their hands, then more when they saw that their peers were doing the same. Yang stuck his hand in the air to nudge them over the half mark.

Heirmark frowned deeply. “Fine. Kiermann, since you wanted a detachment so bad, you can enact his stupid plan.”

“Five ships isn’t going to make or break the encirclement,” Yang said. “If you don’t end up needing them, then you can take as much credit as you want.”

That was apparently the wrong thing for Yang to say, because Heirmark glared at him. “The rest of you, here’s how we’re going to divide the ships.”

Yang ended up being directly in the back of the encirclement tactic, a position that was sure to earn him no glory unless the whole thing was broken through. He was having an amusing time playing with the computer control of his ten little ships as they lined up their organization and prepared to be ‘dropped in’ to the simulation proper.

Unfortunately for both Yang and Heirmark, the battle started out looking like both of their plans would end up being almost completely irrelevant. While they were still too far away from the planet to see the enemy lineup, Kiermann departed with his tiny detachment of ships, and the main fleet moved in towards the planet.

It was almost immediately visible that encirclement was not going to work, but not that their group was going to fail. The opposing team had spread themselves very thinly out, in a broad sphere across the whole surface of the planet. Yang actually sighed and felt bad for them as their fleet came in towards the planet, and the opposing team didn’t budge.

“Well, we might as well stay together,” Yang muttered into the coms. “We can punch through anywhere. They haven’t massed enough force to stop us.”

“What kind of idiocy is this?” Heirmark wondered aloud.

As he said this, though, Yang became a little worried. Konev wasn’t brilliant (his stupid plans did tend to get Yang in trouble) but he also wouldn’t let his forces be stomped on just to let Yang look good. “Maybe it’s a trick?” Yang wondered aloud.

“The trick of getting your nose ground into the dirt gracefully,” Heirmark said.

In any event, they were now charging towards the planet, full steam ahead. A few of the ships from the opposing fleet put up token resistance towards them, shooting one or two of their fleet down, but they were quickly dispatched by the main wings of Yang’s fleet.

Then, of course, the trick was revealed. The atmosphere of the planet seemed to boil for a second. Yang ordered his ships to move out of the way as quickly as they could, and luckily for him, he was in the back of the pack, so he was able to scatter, but the planet’s main gun sent out a huge blast that melted through a large portion of the rest of the fleet.

Immediately, Yang’s helmet coms were filled with the voices of the other test takers, yelling and complaining about how most or all of their ships had been taken out. Yang took stock of the situation. In one stroke, they had been reduced to about thirty percent of their original numbers (not counting the detachment that Kiermann had going towards the other side of the planet).

“Spread out!” Yang yelled over the chaos. “Descend as quickly as you can, before they can fire again.”

It wasn’t the best order, maybe, and he didn’t know if anyone would listen to him, but it was better than them all staying bunched up and frozen in place, just waiting to be shot at again. He himself ordered his ships to descend, and even though they were shot at again by the ground gun, his command to spread out had apparently saved enough of them. As Yang’s ships began their true descent towards the surface of the planet, the simulation ended, helmet going completely black.

Yang sat and breathed deeply for a few seconds, loosening the unexpected tension he found in his shoulders and back. It wasn’t real. It was fine. Winning or losing didn’t matter.

He finally lifted the helmet off his sweaty head to reveal the chaos of the classroom. It seemed that everyone was yelling at everyone else about everything, win or lose, including at the proctor of the exam (for not giving their side the information about the main gun of the planet). Yang had no desire to participate in that. So, as quietly as possible, he slipped out of the main room and outside.

He was waiting for Konev to appear when, unfortunately, Heirmark stepped outside.

“You,” Heirmark said, coming right up towards Yang.

“What?” Yang asked.

“You knew about that--”

“No I didn’t,” Yang protested. His words were meaningless, though, because Heirmark was already swinging a punch at Yang’s face.

He ducked out of the way, and Heirmark stumbled forward a little. Heirmark’s next punch found home, though, right in Yang’s stomach, and he let out an ‘oof’ of breath and almost fell backwards, flailing his arms to stay upright. Luckily for Yang, the rest of the test takers were now filing out of the building, including Konev, who stepped in front of the red faced Heirmark.

“You won,” Konev said mildly. “I have no idea why you’re angry about that. It makes you look like a real fucking idiot, though.”

Heirmark scowled, sizing up Konev and deciding that he wouldn’t win in a fight against him. Konev was taller than the average fifteen year old by a few inches, and Heirmark was more stout than he was sturdy looking.

“Come on, von Leigh,” Konev said with a smirk. “I’m sure my mother will be thrilled to hear how you beat me fair and square.”

Yang, still slightly out of breath from being punched, nodded, gave a goodbye shrug to the rest of the onlooking test takers, then followed Konev out towards the street.