Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops IV - "The Homework"

Thursdays. Thursdays always took forever to get through. After several hours of school that seemed to last a lifetime like usual, Isaac sighed in relief as he trudged up a staircase in the Academic building.

Only one more class to go...

Isaac liked Rddhi Theory just as much as he disliked it. Learning about the various ways in which the Rddhi could be applied – such as the Charles River restoration project – Isaac felt very interested in that. Learning the math behind such a project – not so much. Isaac understood what work meant when it came to manual labor and community service; he did not understand whatever the hell “work” meant in the physics sense.

He arrived in the top floor and found his classroom, the door already open and the kids inside talkative. As part of a learning initiative for future leaders or something like that, Mackenzie ran the first few minutes of class, serving in her capacity as Class Representative. Given some of her classmates’...oddities...Isaac supposed Mackenzie had her work cut out of her.

Isaac stepped inside. A few heads turned and smiled at him, Isaac nodding back. With about four to five minutes before the bell, many of his classmates were up to their usual shenanigans. Mackenzie herself wasn’t here yet, something that struck Isaac as odd, considering how punctual she usually was.

Isaac sat on the far side, away from the doors and near the windows (he wasn't lucky enough to get that seat, the one in the back corner next to the windows), so his path took him across the front of the classroom. That, unfortunately, took him on a collision course with his public enemy number one, standing at the podium at the front of the classroom, unable to find any leftover papers with the homework answers on it.

“Hello, Piper,” Isaac greeted dully, hoping he could just move past her.

Unfortunately, Piper slid in front of him, blocking his way.

“Hello, Isaac!” she greeted with her big head and hazel hair.

Isaac sighed. He knew his dislike of her was irrational and not particularly nice of him-

Piper raised her wrist so she could see it. “Check it out, I got a new watch yesterday!” she exclaimed.

The way she positioned the watch deflected a glare of sunlight coming through the classroom windows directly into Isaac’s eyes.

“That’s fantastic,” he said, squinting, his voice struggling to stay neutral.

Another person entered the class, and it was Piper’s best friend, no less! Isaac was saved, he could just pawn Piper off on her!

“Hey-” Isaac cut himself off.

I have no idea what her name is.

A lightbulb went off in his head.

I’ll just let Piper greet her first, and she’ll say her name, so then I can say her name, and untangle myself from here.

“Go on, Isaac,” Piper chided. “Aren’t you going to say hello to that dear classmate of yours?”

Isaac stifled a groan. He looked at Piper’s friend, a small girl with tired eyes and mousy brown hair. “Hello...buddy.”

The girl eyed him.

“...”

“Isaac!” Piper exclaimed. “And to think I thought that you were an exemplar of student conduct! You can’t even remember her name!” Piper always said things about Isaac loudly, too loudly; Isaac saw Audrey flash him a cheeky grin from her desk.

Piper kept chiding him with a grin. “And to think that I remember your name! And your last name, too! I can remember two of your names, but you can’t remember one of hers? For shame!”

Isaac pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m an awful guy,” he said, keeping his rage down.

He felt someone tugging at his sleeve. It was the girl.

“I’m sad.”

Isaac slowly nodded. “Very awful,” he muttered. Forgoing any more social niceties, he stepped around Piper and took a walk of shame to his desk of losers.

He blinked in realization. He spun around and pointed at the girl.

“Olivia!”

The girl looked back at him, her expression not changing.

“Oksana.”

“...oh.”

With that, Isaac threw his hands up and retreated to his desk. He passed by Reed, her face down on her desk, half-asleep; his seat was diagonally back from hers, in the center column. Coleridge sat in front of him, Dan was to his left towards the windows behind Reed, and the big man Demetrius to his right.

“Ike, thank God you’re here,” Dan said, waving him over. Isaac knew Dan since his first-year at school, yet hearing Dan’s odd Connecticut accent that always carried a hint of New York in it always made Isaac stifle a laugh. He then supposed that’s why a good deal of New Englanders distrusted the Connecticuters, but Dan seemed alright. He was about medium height, same as Isaac, with dusty brown hair and a voice that perpetually spoke in a mixture of dryness, enthusiasm, and sarcasm.

“What is it this time?” Isaac asked, sliding into his seat behind his desk.

“Poor ol’ Cole over here needs your homework,” Dan explained, gesturing with his head to the small kid sitting next to him.

“I don’t need it,” Coleridge corrected. He was the shortest in the friend group with messy black hair and a nasally voice. “I just would very much like to see it.”

“Ah, can it, Coleridge,” Isaac said. “This is at least the sixth time you’ve needed my homework.”

“And for Rddhi Theory too,” Dan observed. “Hell, it’s just theory, Coleridge. What we’re learning is practically made up, so just make up your answers too.”

“This is the introductory stuff,” Coleridge explained. “So there’s actual hard answers to this. Again, answers I would very much like to see.” His voice sounded hurried, with only a few minutes to go before the bell rang.

“Introductory?” Isaac questioned. “We're already halfway through the semester. You should've learned this stuff back in September.”

Coleridge tapped his pencil off the desk impatiently. “I was sick that first week, remember? Marie dumped me so hard that I got the flu?”

Isaac and Dan looked at each other.

“We had a whole friendship thing!” Coleridge protested. “We all stood at the Sixth Radio Tower and screamed into the rain? Even Demetrius was there!”

At his own desk nearby, Demetrius grunted, not looking up from his weight-lifting magazine.

“Well, we had a lot going on that week,” Isaac supposed, thinking about his after-school battle on that fateful day when he got his powers.

Dan nodded. “Yeah, the first week of September is when college football starts. Say, Ike, you’re a Wampanoag University fan, right? Their season ends Saturday - no bowl for your poor Raiders."

Isaac shrugged. “It’s just a culture-building year, most of the team is young-”

“Isaac, I need your homework.” Coleridge grasped his hands together, tears in his eyes. “Because I was sick the teachers let me make up the homework later but then later turned into weeks but then weeks turned into months and now it’s finally due today in approximately three to four minutes and I can’t get detention Isaac I’m a sensitive guy and there are some real ruffians in there-”

“Alright, alright,” Isaac interrupted. “But I’ll just help you with the answers. How else are you gonna learn?”

Coleridge took Isaac’s hands in his own. “Oh thank you, thank you!”

Coleridge looked down at his paper. “Alright, question one. How does the Rddhi ranking system work?”

“Christ, Cole, this is elementary,” Dan complained.

“Dan, if I don’t finish this I’m going to burst into tears,” Coleridge informed him with a slight edge to his voice.

Dan raised his hands defensively.

“We have a ranking system one through five,” Isaac explained. “The basis of it is the Five-Point Examination. Your body has five points – starting with the dantian point in the center of the stomach. Then you got two points in each shoulder, then two points in each palm. Every point acts like a filter. The average, non-powered person has their dantian closed, filtering all the Rddhi so they remain non-powered. But, with enough concentration, practice, and luck, you can open the dantian, letting you manipulate the Rddhi.”

Isaac touched his own shoulders. “The next four points act as filters. At Class 1, all four non-dantian filters are still there. They’re not completely shut, but they still block most of the flow. Like me right now. The point in my right shoulder blocks most of the Rddhi coming into my right arm from the dantian. Combining that with the filter in my palm, what I can produce with my right hand right now is just a fraction of what I could potentially do. And my left side is still completely blocked by my left shoulder.”

“So if you unlock your shoulder and open up the Rddhi filter, you become a Class 2,” Dan added. “Unlock the next shoulder, that’s Class 3. Then you can work on your palms until you become the Class 5 I’m sure you’ll become.”

“I’m gonna ignore that sarcasm,” Coleridge muttered. He looked at Isaac’s arm. “And your left arm is blocked?”

Isaac nodded. “I can only use the Rddhi with my right.”

“Have you been working on unlocking it?”

Isaac nodded once again.

Coleridge raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never mentioned it. The only trainings you ever mentioned were with that Leekman guy and then some sword monk guy.”

Dan nodded. “He’s not wrong, Ike. I’ve never heard anything about this blockage either.”

Isaac tapped his fingers on the desk. “I guess I just didn’t tell you guys about it. Would you rather me tell you about the time I raided a smuggling ring and the time I met THE sword monk guy, or would you rather hear me talk about the nightly meditations?”

Coleridge and Dan looked at each other.

“I think meditations could be interesting,” Coleridge admitted.

Isaac rolled his eyes. “Can it, Coleridge, and get back to work.”

Coleridge snickered then went back to writing down Isaac’s answers.

“So, Ike, I started that Spirit Hunter show you keep babbling on about,” Dan explained, relaxing his hands behind his head. “Just reached the start of the last arc.”

“Finally,” Isaac said, spinning a pencil in between his fingers. “How are you liking it?”

“Not bad. I really like the relationship between the Kurama siblings.”

Isaac nodded. “That’s good. It really is the heart of the show. Through thick and thin, they always got each other’s backs.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad they’re siblings though,” Dan supposed.

Isaac raised an eyebrow and stopped spinning the pencil.

“What?” Dan questioned. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t sense the sexual tension between them.”

“...uh.”

“That scene on the rooftop!” Dan exclaimed. He motioned with his hands. “The one where they’re sitting around the fire on that rooftop, going over their fears the night before the big battle against Yuji’s forces. Right there on that rooftop, at the same moment, they each make the realization they want to live, both for themselves and each other!”

“...uh.”

“I’m telling you, Ike, they definitely banged after. You could see it in their faces.”

“...uh.”

“Alright, next question,” Coleridge (thankfully) interjected. “What’s the issue with the math behind the Class System?”

“It’s exponential,” Isaac answered, getting his thoughts off of Dan and his oddities. “It’s not a linear progression from Class 1 to 2 to 3 and so-on. Class 2 is exponentially more powerful than Class 1, and the same goes for Class 3 when compared to Class 2. And Class 1 is just a rough estimate. I'm just a Class 1, and not the brag, but I can do a lot more with my power than someone who's a Class 1 who can only bend spoons. That’s why Cambridge and the Institute are selective with their applicants. If someone can only bend spoons with no chance of moving further upwards, they give 'em the boot."

“I thought those schools take a lot of non-powered people,” Coleridge said. "Like how you enrolled here in the Rddhi program without having powers."

Isaac started spinning his pencil again. “They don’t take in non-powered people for their Rddhi programs. The non-powereds they take in are people there for normal school, like sons of businessmen and generals and politicians. Most of New England’s presidents have come from Cambridge. The first president was a non-powered and he even founded Cambridge.”

Coleridge wrote that down as well. “Good ol’ Arthur Reed. Too bad they shot him.”

Dan leaned back in his seat and stretched. “You know what I found really interesting about Spirit Hunter?”

Isaac looked back over at him. “What about it?”

“The way they handled exposition,” Dan explained. “They did it real smart-like. Rather than dumping information on you, they did it through lectures, television broadcasts, car radio announcements, those big billboards on the skyscrapers. And don’t forget all those homework scenes.”

Isaac nodded. “I thought the homework scenes were a little grating sometimes. But yeah, you could learn the entire lore of the show just by watching the scenes where Takibi helps Yuki with her school assignments."

Dan emphasized his next point by snapping his fingers. “The night before the big final exam that determined what college they would go to, you can’t tell me they didn’t bang that night. I mean, for Christ’s sake, they were barely dressed!”

“The heater in their apartment got stuck on high,” Isaac explained.

“I bet you’re just a jealous Chikyu fan,” Dan supposed. “Your girls never win, do they? And think about it, Ike! You’re telling me you couldn’t sense the sexual tension during that toothbrush scene?”

“...that’s not even the same show you’re talking about now.”

Coleridge set his pencil down. “Alright, what’s the issue with the way New England’s Rddhi system as a whole works?”

Isaac collected his thoughts, something made tougher by the fact that he was indeed a jealous Chikyu fan and that his girls never won. But he did it anyhow. “There’s no central oversight of the three Rddhi schools. All three of them act independently and autonomously.” Isaac remembered lessons from earlier in the year. “Centralized control of all Rddhi assets is essential for winning the Second American War.”

“You ever see those Cambridge girls, Ike?” Dan asked. “I’d love to have central oversight over them.”

Isaac looked at him dryly. “You really disgust me sometimes, you know that?”

“Me as well,” Demetrius said, his face still buried in his magazine.

“You too?” Dan asked. “Let me guess, you a Chikyu supporter as well?”

Demetrius slowly set his magazine down. The big man leaned his face back so he gazed at the ceiling. He closed his eyes peacefully. “Yasashi.”

Dan immediately burst out laughing. “Yasashi? You mean the peasant girl in the countryside? She’s only in one episode!”

A single tear rolled down Demetrius’s cheek. “Takibi and her...they had a bond that could never be broken,” he explained quietly. “They went together like the moon and the stars, like orange and purple in a summer sky. At his lowest moment...she was there for him. Got him out of that river. Healed his wounds and fed him, despite the poverty in her own home.”

Demetrius sighed deeply and spoke bitterly. “And what does she get? He departs in the middle of the night, simply leaving a note behind explaining it was ‘too dangerous’. My friends, I truly believe love can overcome any danger.”

“She offered him an unhealthy escape,” Isaac explained. “If he stayed with her in that village, not only would he have left Yuki behind, but he would’ve dropped out from the Kanto War entirely. He couldn’t run away. He had to go back and settle things for the sake of Yuki and everyone that Yuji and his soldiers murdered.”

Another tear rolled down Demetrius’s cheek. “Then tell me, Isaac...why didn’t he come back for her after the war was finished?”

Isaac tugged at his collar. “Well...there's a rumor I read in Reed's Japanimation newsletter that he came back in the manga...”

Demetrius sighed and spoke in his low voice. “I should not need the manga to finish the story that was presented to me in an animated format. Life truly can be trying sometimes, my friends.”

With that, Demetrius leaned forward and buried his face in his magazine once more.

The other three all shook their heads. Demetrius was very much like the river he usually described himself as – calm one moment, a roaring torrent the next (usually when he got excited about dessert or combat).

“Next question,” Isaac ordered.

Coleridge cracked his knuckles. “Alright, what differences are there in Rddhi users?”

“There’s two types of Rddhi users, Elementals and Sravakas,” Isaac answered. “Though Sravakas is just the scientific term and you probably won't hear it a whole lot. Elemental users can only use one of the eight elements, which, for some reason, are similar to the Chinese Bagua. Maybe the universe or whatever’s behind the Rddhi really likes Chinese mythology.”

Dan counted off on his fingers. “The eight elements are Lightning, Wood, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Metal, and Earth. So a lightning user can shoot lightning and whatnot, and a thunder user is all about sound.”

“I think I could’ve figured that out,” Coleridge proclaimed, perhaps giving himself too much credit. “What are Sravakas?”

“Those are users with unique powers,” Isaac answered. “Like this fist of mine, it doesn’t fit into any of the eight elements. It’s unique. Well, there could be other people who have it, but that’s pretty rare. Something like Oksana’s snakes.”

“Most users are gonna be Elementals,” Dan added. “And having a unique power doesn’t necessarily make you stronger than Elementals. Derek Domino was just a Lightning Elemental, yet look at what he could do. He sent that beam into the sky around Halloween, right?”

Isaac reflected fondly on that weekend with the Electric Kite.

“I think that covers that question,” Isaac concluded. “What’s next?”

Coleridge shrugged. “That’s it.”

Isaac put his pencil down. “You mean to tell me you couldn’t answer four questions on your own?”

Coleridge jabbed his finger at his homework. “They weren’t four questions, Isaac. They were four short answer responses! Those take TIME and EFFORT!”

Dan reached over and patted Coleridge on the arm. “It’s alright, Cole. Some people just move at a slower pace than others. And then there’s you, right there at the bottom.”

Coleridge muttered something particular unpleasant about Dan, Isaac, and society as a whole.

The door to the class opened. When they saw Mackenzie enter, the class slowly quieted down, since Mackenzie meant business.

But then the class went dead silent, because standing with Mackenzie was Alfie Coonan.