Season 1, Episode 3 - The Ring Dings XIV - "The Secret Origin of Roman Julian, Part 1"

They loved kicking him when he was down.

Roman brought his hands to his face, shielding himself from the blows. His back was to a fence in a secluded part of Cambridge University – Attached High School, the feeder school for the most prestigious Rddhi academy. The wealthiest of the wealthy went there, the sons and daughters of New England's leading politicians, businessmen, and generals. There, they rubbed elbows with those of the lower classes who displayed promising potential. Some animosity did exist between the rich and poor, but usually over time and through shared experiences, the distance between them would be closed and the gap would be bridged.

For Roman and his bullies, time and shared experiences did not bridge the gap.

Roman didn't do himself any favors. Coming out of the slums of Narragansett, Cambridge recruited Roman due to the high potential the school calculated for his Rddhi power. They even admitted him to the school as a Class 3.

Roman had high hopes for school. A chance to get out of poverty! A chance to make a name for himself! A chance to give back to his poor mother who had done so much for him, living in that squalid little apartment, working long hours so Roman didn't grow hungry. If it hadn't been for the Rddhi, Roman would've dropped out of school by now and worked long hours himself; the Rddhi was his ticket to success.

At least, it should've been. Roman had some acquaintances, but he was never good at making friends. His dorm roommate came from money and already came into the school with a group of friends; Roman struggled with talking with classmates. So he kept to himself, hoping he could find friends through the Rddhi.

Unfortunately, that didn't work either. Despite his best efforts, Roman continually failed to improve. Maybe it was the way teachers graded him, maybe it was the way the teachers soon spent all their time with the wealthier students, maybe it was the way his efforts became a lack of effort. Or maybe the lack of effort came before the failure to improve. Roman didn't know. He lost track of the days and months. They all seemed the same. Just loneliness and failures.

The final straw for some of his classmates came near the end of the school year, at the School Rumble in March. For the intellectual portion of the city-wide Rddhi user tournament, the school assigned him and three other Cambridge students to a group project on the potential application of the Rddhi in military theory.

Roman wasn't the smartest. That, he knew for sure. But he worked hard on it. He thought the group project might be a way to get to know the other students better. But they largely kept him out of the loop. They did most of the work themselves, leaving Roman a few small sections. Roman tried his hardest on them, exploring how Rddhi users who could manipulate acceleration vectors could be used to fire artillery farther, keep the artillery shells in the air longer.

Roman thought it was good. And maybe his section was good, but nobody knew, because their presentation ended up taking third place out of three. Losing to the Institute was one thing, but for piss-poor West Narragansett Technical Academy to take first place in anything, let alone an intellectual contest, proved too much for Cambridge. The group of four were assigned landscaping duties around the school as punishment. It was there, in an isolated, out of view spot behind a hill, that the three took their turn beating him down.

One student kicked him in the face. Another stomped on his back. The third one stomped on his ankles. Roman took it because he knew there was no way out. That life was just unfair like this. Life didn't work out. Even if he fought back, what would be the point? The three students had money, they had power, they had everything Roman didn't. And there was nothing he could do about it.

At last, the lead bully, Frederick, cracked his knuckles and looked at Roman with disdain. "Finish the landscaping for today," he simply said, kicking Roman for good measure once more. He turned and walked off, his two friends following behind him, their red uniforms trailing behind them in the spring breeze.

Roman saw that Frederick inadvertently crushed a sunflower under his boot while walking away. A crushed flower on what should've otherwise been a nice spring day. Roman supposed you could make a metaphor out of that, but he wasn't one for metaphors. He wasn't much for anything.

After laying on the grass for an unknown amount of time, Roman groaned and sat up. His body ached and he felt bruised and battered all over. He would've laid in the grass all night, but his mother got worried when he came home after dark. So, for her sake, he weakly grabbed the fence behind him and pulled himself up.

By now, late in the evening, the sky turned grey. It would probably rain soon, Roman supposed. He hoped it would come after he got home, but like anything else, it didn't really matter, since it's not like Roman could affect the outcome.

He started on his way home. Not finishing the landscaping would probably mean another beating, but it happens. Grabbing a particular bad wound on his arm, Roman slowly walked off the campus, arriving in the neon-filled district of Kendall Bridge, Cambridge's Rddhi district. The lights seemed to pulse in time with the heartbeats of the thousands of people currently walking around its busy streets, checking out shopping malls, movie theaters, luxury goods stores.

Roman heard that Elizabeth Pond, the district for West Narragansett Technical Academy, closed itself off from the world, with strict rules requiring proper security clearance to get either in or out. Kendall Bridge had no such laws. It welcomed the inhabitants of the capital and beyond into its borders, luring them in to spend their money. The nation needed its citizens to spend their hard-earned money to lift itself out of the economic depression, after all. Not that anyone here in Kendall seemed to feel the weight of the depression that certainly could be felt in Roman's rundown home.

Sick of the lights and the display of greed, Roman turned down an alleyway, welcoming its darkness. It feel cool on his skin, the shades and shadows in that narrow space between two buildings.

Despite his lack of progress, Roman still was a Class 3, after all. He felt the presence of a man standing up ahead of him in the alleyway.

"You need to stand up for yourself."

Roman pushed the black hair out of his eyes to look at the man who had stepped in front of him. He was dressed in a white trenchcoat, two medals pinned to his chest.

"What's it to you?" Roman gruffly asked.

"I saw what happened back there," the man explained, his voice calm, with a dream-like quality to it. "You have the Rddhi. You should have used it."

"You saw what happened and didn't step in?" Roman asked, his face and arms still stinging from all the blows. "You're no better than the adults at the High School."

"I am better," the man corrected. "I'm here now, aren't I?"

"You were there twenty minutes ago."

"Because God only helps those who help themselves. I can give tools and guidance, but ultimately, it is up to you to make use of them. So tell me, why didn't you strike back?"

"Strike back?" Roman questioned. "What's the point? Either I lose and get even more of the shit kicked out of me, or I win, and they use their connections to punish me. They're rich. They know people." He sighed. "I'm only there because they thought I have potential. But a year later and I'm still a Class 3, right where I started."

"I've known Class 5s who were cowards and Class 1s who were heroes. Do you know why they were heroes? Because they stood up, even knowing they would lose."

"That just makes them stupid."

"I find your perspective very interesting." The man looked upwards, through the narrow alleyway, at the grey sky above. "You could be the epitome of this very nation. Too busy feeling sorry for themselves to make a change. Only the strong survive in this world. We, as a society, have grown soft. We roll over in the face of adversity, claiming the enemy is too powerful, too connected."

Roman grew tired of the man. "The nation? Who cares about the nation when I can barely protect myself?"

"The nation and the individual are one and the same. Everything within the nation, nothing outside the nation. The national polity is only as strong as its weakest member."

"What are you, some kind of priest?"

The man smiled. "You could say I'm a shepherd, on my way to meet God. But a shepherd's no good without a flock. I've met many people like you. Just like New England itself, there are many lost souls who just need a little guidance..."

Roman looked away. "Guide me all you want. It's hopeless."

"That's the problem with New England. Nobody thinks they can do it anymore. They all think 'it's impossible' and just accept their belief as fact. Nobody wants to work hard. People only want to play it safe. To gain all, you must risk all. And the only way to be truly prepared to risk it all is to fully train and believe in yourself and your destiny. The national destiny."

The man stepped forward, extending his hand. "Here, let me show you how good things could really be..."

Roman observed the hand.

Aw, what the hell. It's not like my day could get any worse.

Roman took the man's hand. Red and blue fractals swirled out of the man's palm, overtaking Roman's arm, then Roman himself in a gentle embrace, allowing Roman to see all that could happen, all that could ever be.