Chapter 215: 215 | Adequate is the New Failure
The ten minutes passed faster than I wanted. I spent most of it near the water station, hydrating and watching my classmates move through their own recovery routines. Caden had found a patch of grass and was lying flat on his back, staring at the sky like a man who had made peace with death. Marco sat beside him, apparently explaining something about optimal snack distribution during field operations.
Rina had retreated to her usual position near the bleachers. Her white hair caught the afternoon light as she sipped from her sheep mug, which she had apparently brought to a physical evaluation. The mug had a little cartoon sheep face on it. The sheep looked happy. Rina did not.
Felicity appeared beside me again. She had a talent for that, materializing in my peripheral vision like a friendly ghost with excellent bone structure.
"You’re thinking hard about something."
"Just appreciating the scenery."
"The scenery being Rina’s sheep mug or Camille’s death glare?"
"Both, honestly."
Camille was indeed watching me from across the field. Her expression suggested she was mentally cataloguing my performance data and finding inconsistencies she intended to interrogate later. Her dark hair was still damp with sweat, clinging to her neck in ways that drew attention to the curve of her jaw and the sharp intelligence in her eyes.
"She’s going to figure you out eventually," Felicity said.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Because it’s true." She smiled, soft and knowing. "You’re not as subtle as you think you are, Lukas. Whatever you’re hiding, it’s going to come out. The question is whether you control the reveal or someone else does."
"You sound like you’ve thought about this."
"I think about everything." Her blue eyes held mine for a moment longer than necessary. "That’s the curse of being smart. You see all the ways things can go wrong and you can’t stop analyzing them."
Steele’s voice cut across the field before I could respond. "Agility assessments. Everyone to the obstacle course."
The obstacle course was a nightmare made of metal and rubber. Climbing walls with varying handholds. Balance beams at different heights. Rope swings over what appeared to be foam pit but might have been filled with broken dreams for all I knew. Sprint sections with hurdles. A final section involving some kind of crawl through a tight tunnel system.
Steele walked us through the course layout without enthusiasm. Her explanation was thorough but delivered with the emotional warmth of someone reading a grocery list.
"You will be timed. Aspect use is permitted only if your Aspect is permanently active. Any deliberate shortcuts will result in a penalty that makes the shortcut not worth taking. Begin on my signal, end when you cross the finish line. Questions?"
Nobody asked questions. We had learned by now that questions just gave Steele more opportunities to be disappointed in us.
"Ashida. You’re first."
Ren approached the starting line with the same focused composure he had displayed during his Aspect demonstration. When Steele signaled, he launched into the course with competent efficiency. Not flashy, not slow, just methodical progression through each obstacle.
His time was decent. Steele noted it without comment.
The pattern continued. Each student ran the course. Steele recorded their time. The cohort watched and waited and tried not to look nervous about their own upcoming performance.
When my turn came, I approached the starting line and did the math.
The agility course was different from running or strength testing. It required coordination, spatial awareness, reaction time. Things that were harder to hold back on without looking clumsy. If I deliberately fumbled a handhold or took a wrong step, it would be obvious. Steele would notice. Everyone would notice.
I took my place at the starting line. The math was simple. I couldn’t afford to be clumsy, but I couldn’t afford to be perfect. Seventy percent. That was the number. Fast enough to earn a nod. Slow enough to stay under the radar.
Steele signaled.
I moved.
I hit the wall, and my body screamed to move. The Demigod trait had already mapped a perfect, lightning-fast ascent. I ignored it. I forced my hand to hesitate for a fraction of a second, my fingers choosing a good grip instead of the perfect one.
It felt like running through water, every muscle straining against an instinct to simply be better. Four seconds. Laughably slow. Perfectly believable.
Balance beams next. Three of them at ascending heights. I crossed the first two at a jog, then deliberately slowed on the third to create the appearance of caution. The beam was narrow enough that normal people would need to focus. I was not normal people, but I needed to look like I was.
Rope swing over the foam pit. I grabbed the rope, swung across, released at the optimal point, landed clean. Too clean, actually. I should have stumbled slightly on the landing. Too late to fix it now.
Sprint section with hurdles. This was where I had to be careful. My natural speed would clear these obstacles like they weren’t there. I held back, timing my strides to match what a well-trained athlete would produce rather than whatever category I actually fell into.
The crawl tunnel at the end was tight and dark. I moved through it fast but not impossibly fast, emerging on the other side and crossing the finish line.
My time was good. Third best so far, behind Lyra and Camille.
Steele looked at me for a long moment. Her expression gave nothing away but her eyes tracked from her tablet to my face and back again, processing information that I couldn’t see.
"Adequate," she said finally.
I returned to the waiting area.
The remaining students completed their runs with varying degrees of success. Caden’s time was middle of the pack, which surprised no one. Felicity struggled with the climbing wall but compensated with excellent balance beam work. Eden attacked the course with more enthusiasm than technique, nearly falling off the second balance beam before recovering with a burst of flame-enhanced reflexes that Steele technically should have penalized but didn’t.
Rina’s run was a study in desperation. Her arms shook as she pulled herself over the wall, her small frame trembling with the strain. On the balance beam, every step was a war fought between her focus and her trembling muscles. It wasn’t that she was bad.
It was that she was giving everything, and everything was barely enough.
When the last student crossed the finish line, Steele called us together.
We assembled in the center of Field Epsilon, twenty first-year students in matching athletic uniforms, sweaty and tired and waiting for judgment. The afternoon sun had shifted toward evening, casting long shadows across the grass. Birds sang somewhere in the distance, completely oblivious to the fact that our academic futures were being decided by a woman who looked at us like we were disappointing ingredients in a recipe she hadn’t wanted to make in the first place.
Steele consulted her tablet one final time, then set it aside.
"I’m going to be direct with you," she said. "Because I believe in honesty and because sugarcoating failure does no one any favors."
The cohort went very still.
"Most of you performed below my expectations today. Some of you performed significantly below them. A few of you managed adequate results in specific areas while failing completely in others." Her gaze swept across us like a searchlight looking for targets.
"This is not the performance I expect from Combat Operations students at the premier Hero Academy in the world."
