3. Tactical Reassessment

Chapter 003
Tactical Reassessment

"Mom! I'm heading out!" he shouted from the doorway.

"Please be careful." Her voice softened. "Tokyo is a big city."

"You bet! Dad's gonna be proud of me!"

Yugo looked the same as ever. Same grin, same spark. But his arms had bulked just enough over the break that he could finally wear his late father's army jacket. It still hung oversized off his frame, sleeves swallowing his wrists, but he wore it like armor.

The day had finally arrived. He marched toward the train station with his head high and his hands shoved in his jacket pockets. On the way, a headline glowed from a digital newsstand:

CRIME UP 10% THIS YEAR. IS POWER THE CULPRIT?

Yugo didn't stop. He was too excited to think of anything else.

On the train, he leaned his head against the window. His obsidian eyes reflected the pale morning sky — and when he let them close, the world shifted.

There it was again. That feeling.

Like he could see the other passengers without looking. Not with his eyes, with something else. He felt their warmth, their flickering energy, like a buzzing static pressing in from all directions — like trying to listen to a hundred radio stations simultaneously.

It was the reason he wouldn't sit still in class, the reason he wouldn't concentrate on any discipline at school.

He breathed out slowly, focused on the hum of the tracks.

"The Tokyo train will shortly arrive on Track 7. For your safety, please step behind the yellow braille blocks."

He had arrived.

— ✦ —

Power Tokyo Academy. PT Academy, for short, was built for one purpose: forging new power soldiers.

Most recruits who enrolled came chasing something. Some came chasing money, some status, and others just the thrill of battle. They all came from various backgrounds, but no one could compete with the elites who had private academies shaping them almost from birth. The common folk, on the other hand, were products of the public system, and for some, this would be their very first time training Power in any official capacity.

But Yugo wasn't after glory. He just knew this was his one shot at following his father's footsteps.

Looking around, the students here didn’t look much different than a regular high school; everyone was in civilian clothes — hoodies, jeans, the usual. Yugo was one that stood out. Wearing his father's jacket with a light blue shirt underneath, the one with the massive red star across the chest, no one would have guessed he was a civilian — not with those cargo pants and black leather boots.

The Academy was a sweeping fortress of glass and steel, the kind of place straight out of a comic book — and yet only a few hundred recruits were joining that year.

At the entrance stood two soldiers. The man grabbed all the boys to one side. The woman guided all the girls to the other side.

Yugo was one of the last to get in as he was instructed to the enrollment office on the left side of the main gate.

— ✦ —

"Look at the lens! Ready for the flash!" the registration staff called out.

Even in his official ID photo, Yugo's grin went ear to ear. His midnight-black hair was as unruly and defiant as ever.

He was officially enrolled.

Outside, the same two soldiers who met them at the entrance were now with only a few recruits, as if groups had been sorted.

His group was guided toward the dormitories, and Yugo kept looking around. He could not believe he was actually there; his dream was finally within his reach.

Boys' dorms on the left. Girls on the right. As he arrived at the dorms' courtyard, his mind wandered. He'd already stopped listening to directions. Lost somewhere in his own head, he imagined himself as a war hero: decorated, stoic, respected. He clenched a fist slowly. His eyes glittered like someone had lit a match behind them.

"HAHAHA!"

From across the courtyard, a clique of girls caught sight of him.

"Pfft — look at that guy. What is he doing?" one giggled.

"Is he... posing?"

They assumed he was performing for them. But a trio of boys nearby wasn't laughing.

"Look at that goofball," the leader muttered.

"That's the one-point kid," the second added. "Only got in because of his old man's rep."

"Dead weight," the third agreed.

"Maybe I should teach him what a real soldier looks like." The leader cracked his knuckles and stepped forward.

The air in the courtyard thickened for a moment.

Then a voice cut through it.

It wasn't loud. But it had weight — the kind of weight that stops anyone in their tracks.

"Listen up, because I'm only saying this once."

An older man shuffled into the courtyard. He looked less like a soldier and more like a man who had been awake since the previous century. Half-dead eyes. A crooked, defeated posture. Long, matted dark hair framing a face that could only be read as: I'd rather be sleeping. His uniform hung off him like he'd pulled it from a trash can.

"We aren't your friends," he exhaled — the sound like a slow leak from a punctured tire. "We aren't your parents. This isn't recess. And despite what your mothers told you… You're not special."

The entire courtyard went silent. Even the trio of boys had gone still.

This was Mr. Numbers.

"Captain! Please, wait!" A panicked female assistant scurried behind him, notebook clutched to her chest. "I don't believe this is the right group! These are public batch recruits — not Elites—"

Mr. Numbers didn't listen. He walked in a slow, shuffling line and stopped directly in front of Yugo.

Silence fell over the courtyard like the final boss had spawned.

He circled Yugo the way a primate might inspect a suspicious fruit. He bent at the waist and squinted at his arms. Then, without ceremony, he yanked up Yugo's shirt and poked him in the stomach.

Yugo's wide grin turned into a confused, half-happy, half-shocked smile.

"You don't scream anything special," Mr. Numbers muttered, his voice like gravel. Then, for just a fraction of a second, something sharpened behind those half-dead eyes. "But you're definitely the one."

He straightened — or as close to straight as his back seemed to allow — and exhaled slowly.

"That's it. I'm taking this batch."

"But Mr. Numbers!" the assistant stammered. "That's not how this works — protocol, rankings—"

He turned and fixed her with a brief, flat look. The words dried up in her throat. Her pen scratched furiously across her notebook.

Before Yugo could get a word out, Mr. Numbers shuffled away, his assistant trailing behind him like a nervous ghost.

Yugo's expression stalled, mouth half-open, as he watched the ragged Captain disappear through the buildings.

"What just happened?"

Before anyone could even make sense of anything, the dormitory doors banged open.

"HEYYYYA!! Welcome to the dorms!"

A girl with gold hair and green highlights burst into the doorway. Dressed in the academy's signature uniform, black tank top, navy pants, and black leather boots.

"Boys to the left! Girls to the right! Don't get confused and don't waste time!" She did a little dance while pointing the way, then threw her head back and started laughing maniacally.

Without missing a beat, Yugo appeared beside her at the top of the stairs, mimicking her pose.

"HAHAHAHA!"

The other sixteen students — nine boys, seven girls — stared up at them. It looked like someone had opened the doors of a mental asylum.

A shoulder slammed into Yugo's.

"Move it, goofball."

The boy who'd bumped him radiated trouble the way a live wire radiates danger. Hair like flickering flames. Narrow, predatory eyes. Teeth, sharp like razors. His orange hoodie wrinkled as he walked like a street brawler straight out of juvie.

That was Jin.

Yugo didn't flinch. He snapped his heels together and delivered a crisp, rigid salute — the kind pulled straight from an old military manual.

"My name is Yugo! It is a pleasure to meet you, comrade!"

Jin's face twisted.

"Humph." He shoved past, his two lackeys falling into step behind him.

Yugo's smile dimmed, just slightly. Uncertainty flickered across his face like a candle in the wind. Was that... not how you made friends?

He didn't let it slow him down. He greeted every student who passed with the same relentless energy:

"I'm Yugo! Nice to meet you, comrade!"

"I'm Yugo! Good morning, comrade!"

"I'm Yugo! Pleased to meet—"

"You're Yugo, right?" The girl with the gold-green hair and mustard-colored eyes closed in on him, almost too close, grinning. "Nice to meet you! I'm Rita!"

He responded immediately with the stiffest salute anyone could imagine. "I'm Yugo! Pleased to meet you!"

She laughed — a big, unguarded sound.

"Man, you're funny!"

Yugo pumped a fist in a quiet, invisible triumph. Finally, someone who didn't think he was a weirdo.

"Alrighty, I've got to go sort my belongings," Rita said, already backing away with a wave. "As a second-year, I'm your Dorm Patron — if you need anything, I'm your girl! See ya!"

He waved back, watching her go, feeling like he'd just gained his first friend in the academy.

Going into the boys' wing. It was time to find his room. At the end of the corridor, he finally found it. The last door read:

JIN / YUGO

That was the fire head guy. Yugo though. Maybe he could make another friend.

He grabbed the handle and tried to rotate it, one side, the other side. It didn't move. He pulled. He pushed. He gave it a polite, soldierly knock. Complete silence.

Perhaps the door was jammed or completely bolted from the inside. Yugo didn’t know for sure. He decided to just settle by the door; that’s when he glanced across the hallway at a small cleaning cupboard.

"Tactical reassessment," he muttered as he walked toward it.

— End of Chapter 3 —