Chapter 3: Just to get there
*** 2 Months Later
His mouth was drawn tight.
His clenched fist was held up in front of his face.
His eyes sparkled with determination.
Ignace Indigo stood tall and proud, at his full height of five foot eleven, confidence radiating off his body, "I will be the one who will become the next Emperor!" he declared.
Ivonne Indigo gave her son a small clap, "You've gotten a lot better at that, Iggy." she commented proudly, "With that and how good you are with your ability, you might just have a chance at getting into a University!"
Ignace grinned at his mother, though he himself was not sure at all of his chances of entry into any of the Universities for which he would be interviewed today, "How are we planning on getting to Ukhozi City?"
All of the major universities were situated in Ukhozi City, at the heart of the empire, which was a fair distance away from Ima, the town in which Ignace and his mother lived.
Travel inside the Ukhozi Empire was quite difficult, due to the high concentration of a variety of raiders and other assorted criminals all over the empire, all of whom were excessively powerful due to the abuse of their abilities to aid their criminality. This was a large part of the reason why being a Protector was such a popular job, a competent Protector could easily be paid a fortune per job, making it highly sought after, and making Ignace's goal of getting into a college that much harder, as university was only really a requisite in certain fields, protection chief among them.
"Honestly, Iggy, how unobservant is it possible for a human being to be. The city has organized a bus, they've hired two Protectors for everybody who is making the trek."
Ignace aahed his understanding, "How long will the ride be?"
Taking a moment to think, Ivonne replied, "Probably an hour or two?"
Ignace nodded, "When're we leaving?"
"I think you have an hour or so. You gonna go out practicing?"
Ignace nodded, while the interview was really the most important component of getting into any kind of University, considering the overarching purpose was to hone abilities, strong abilities were very favorable in the eyes of Universities. While Ignace's transform ability did not seem quite as strong at first glance, with the amount he had trained with it, it was quite a nifty ability.
Ignace jumped out the window of the second floor of his house, letting himself freefall for half a second before yelling out, "Transform Ability: Eagle!" and at the last moment transforming into the smaller bird, and spreading his wings to soar up high into the sky, taking a second to marvel at his crazily advanced vision, as he always did.
After flying a few meters as a complete eagle, taking the time to enjoy the marvelous view laid out before him, Ignace concentrated deeply, his body beginning to expand, in the process of returning into a human. His wings got larger as he began to gain more of a humanoid form.
Despite his form not being particularly aerodynamic, his wings seemed to produce gusts of wind with each flap, providing Ignace enough power to keep airborne, even as a humanoid form sporting feathers and large wings.
Retaining both the ability of flight and his great vision, but at a larger size, this form was likely to be formidable in his prospective future career as a Protector, so Ignace was pumped about it.
If anything would make up for his lackluster interview, it would be this. Still, there were no doubt going to be dozens of applicants who had already honed their abilities to a far greater extent or even been born with far greater inbuilt abilities than his.
As he flew back down to the ground, the adrenaline he'd gained from flying draining out of him, his lips tightened again, thinking of the competition he would be facing off against.
"Iggy!" he heard his mother shout, turning to the direction from which he had heard her voice. He saw his mother's face sticking out from the window of a bus and gesturing wildly. Ignace broke into a sprint as the bus began to move slowly. Seeing it would be leaving without him, Ignace saw no choice but to transform again.
"Transform Ability: Eagle" he mumbled out, shifting seamlessly from sprinting into flying as an eagle. He took advantage of his small form factor to slip through the window at which his mother was sitting, transforming back into his human form onto the seat next to his mother.
Ignace closed his eyes, letting himself relax, before quite quickly finding himself pinned against the ground.
His eyes flashed open to see himself at the business end of a comically large bazooka sprouting out of the arm of a bald but beefy man who was sitting right on top of him.
"Trouble inside the city?" he commented, almost curiously, "What were you even trying to do, asshat."
Ignace opened his mouth to respond but the air had been entirely blown out of him by the person who seemed to be one of the Protectors on the bus. He ended up gaping his mouth open like a fish, wordless.
"Mr Tyrion, sir, that's my son you're sitting on!" Ivonne said, with a touch of worry in her voice.
The Protector turned to look up at the older woman, "Whut."
"The idiot was just late for the bus so he decided to 'make an entrance'." at this, Ivonne shot a glare at her son.
Ignace scratched his head, "I guess I did." he hacked out, as the air returned to his lungs.
In a single movement, the Protector was entirely off of Ignace, bowing to the boy and holding out a hand to help him up.
Ignace pulled himself to his feet, taking the Protector's proffered helping hand, as the giver of said hand spoke, "I apologize for the misconduct, Mr..." he trailed off, the question implicit in his tone.
"Ignace Indigo," he introduced himself.
"Mr. Indigo," the Protector continued, "I'm sorry for this treatment, unfortunately, it is the standard response to any entrance which could possibly be a threat to safety."
Ignace nodded his understanding, "Makes sense." he said, choosing not to speak too much as his voice had yet to return properly.
"Please take a seat. I've already introduced myself to the rest of the travelers, but my name is Blake Tyrion, I am a Protector by profession, here to escort your bus service through to Ukhozi City. I am the user of the Target Ability: Bazooka, which were just at the receiving end of. "
At his use of the past tense, Ignace glanced down at the arms of the man to find that, indeed, his arms seemed to be normal human arms, meaning that the ability was reversible.
Noticing his look, Tyrion let his arms transform back into bazookas, both of them transforming this time, as opposed to just the one earlier.
As he had noticed earlier, they were significantly larger than his regular arms, and their size would be almost comical if the guns didn't look to have the power to smash his brains out with a single shot.
"Gotten a good look?" Tyrion grinned.
"Weren't there supposed to be two Protectors on this bus?" Ignace asked curiously.
"There are two Protectors on this trip" Tyrion responded, "My colleague is up top." at this, the bald man fired a shot out the window of the bus, and a mop of long darkish head hair dropped down, followed by the face of a woman who seemed to be hanging upside down from the top of the bus.
A longer look confirmed this hypothesis, the woman seemed to be holding onto the top of the bus with just her feet and was looking into the carriage casually.
"Tyrion, what's up?" she greeted.
The man with the bazooka ability slapped Ignace on the back, "Got another one coming with us on this trip, wanted to make the introduction."
The woman aahed, "Well, I'm Gaz Burgundy, your other Protector for this trip, you won't be seeing much of me, I'll be up top, stopping any kind of threat from entering the bus. As for my ability, I'm a user of the Passive Ability: Dizziness"
At those words, she flared her passive ability very slightly, and Ignace swayed as he collapsed into the waiting arms of Tyrion.
"Oy Gaz, you can't go around targeting anybody and everybody, poor kid's probably got a metric ton of entrance exams to be giving today." Tyrion scolded.
Burgundy rolled her eyes, "Yeah yeah, you're no fun, Blake."
"Better to be no fun and with a job tomorrow," Tyrion shot back.
Burgundy pouted before pulling herself back up to the top of the bus, with grace and agility which complemented her ability perfectly.
The Protector still inside the bus helped Ignace clamber back onto his feet and get into his seat. Gosh, even the very small flare of Burgundy's ability had Ignace all over the place.
"I guess that's the kind of power that a Professional Protector has, huh?" Ivonne said.
Ignace could do little more than nod his agreement and close his eyes and try to get some sleep.
"We're nearly out of the gates!" Ivonne said excitedly, "It's been more than a decade since I've been outside this town."
Ignace opened his eyes, thankfully his nausea had died down, it would be his first time going outside the walls as well.
The heavy metal gates of the city creaked open slowly, the small town's Defence Force ready to protect against the possibility of any particularly daring raiders willing to attempt entering the town.
Tyrion flashes the town's Defence Commander a thumbs up as the bus moved past him.
Just as the bus made it past the town walls, the driver floored it, and the bus practically zoomed onto the tiny road past the reaches of the city walls, and for good reason.
As soon as the gates of the city had rumbled down, over a dozen raiders sprung out of the wilderness around the town, all of whom seemed to have target abilities of some kind and were aiming for the wheels of the bus.
Ignace felt a pulse as Burgundy's ability was activated and the raiders' coordinated formation fell into disarray and all their shots missed, thankful that the aggressive use of the ability was not targeted at him, and he could feel only the slightest sway, showing impressive control on the part of Burgundy if the retching raiders were any example to go by.
Tyrion poked his arm out of the window and sent a single bazooka shot in the general direction where the raiders had collapsed.
Ignace stared at the results with awe, as the bazooka strike acted like a mini-missile, creating a small patch of destruction.
Tyrion grinned, "You've got nothing to fear in this country as long as you've got a good pair of Protectors on you, though those bandits always seem to get more organized, wouldn't be caught dead in a group this large just a couple years ago," he said with a slight frown, "No matter though, Gaz and I can handle anything they throw our way."
Ignace settled down for a long ride as he heard more screams from raiders attempting to hijack the bus.
"Are they ever successful?" Ignace wondered out loud, "They seem so...incompetent."
"And every traveler who sees this then wants to try traveling alone," Tyrion replied from where he was standing further up the bus, "And that is a recipe for disaster."
***
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