CH1 (131), What Happened/Application and Acceptance

My 8th birthday was in 2 weeks and exactly 21 days later, on 01.20.2178, the new school year for all aura academies in Kanto would begin. Now, one would think why that was important for me.

Well, after some extensive thinking, mainly after being told I could not skip secondary school as I had done with primary school, I decided to attend an aura academy instead of a regular school.

It would be a lie if I said my talks with Aaron did not influence my decision, because they did. Some of the things I heard during our talks were pretty interesting after all.

It had become pretty obvious to both of us that the other knew about the aura of the other, so we simply established that fact verbally about three years ago, and often talked about aura as well as many other interesting things during our conversations.

Sometime, a bit more than two years ago my real age came up/out but he wasn't fazed and told me that aura geniuses of that caliber were not unheard of.

Here, he was talking about reaching high enough in Tier 1 in aura early enough to trigger an early maturity. Aaron still did not know the full extent of my capabilities.

A man needs to be a bit mysterious after all. *chuckle* Anyway, I went to my parents with my decision and they fully supported me.

We sent out applications to nearly all academies in Kanto and surprisingly their number was not as small as I had expected, even if some were smaller than others.

There were 15 of them and we wrote applications to 10 of them. Since I wanted to start directly from secondary school, I had to prove that my regular education was up to the standard through a written test.

Thankfully, I only had to do one test and the result of that test could be used for all academies. The same was true for my aura, they needed verification of my prowess since they were aura institutions and all that.

We went to one of the Aura Guardian offices to get a certificate that confirmed my competence.

I did not want my full capabilities to be known at least not by everyone. I knew that the upper echelon of the Aura Guardians/Academy Staff would probably notice the extent of my current capabilities, and I was okay with that.

Those guys did not gain their position by making it hard for those weaker and with them being Aura Guardians their characters were practically guaranteed, at least at their level.

They should be like those helpful old, wise masters in novels that kept popping up. The kind that only cared about the success of the next generation and the fate of humanity. That was what I believed and that was the impression I had gotten during my research into the Aura Guardians.

So, as long as no Palpatine, Dooku situation cropped up my information should be totally safe with them even if I got noticed. I actually found out that there were dark/rouge aura users that sometimes cropped up from the people who were declined or were thrown out for various reasons.

Still, that was pretty rare and the Guardians took care of them. So, they shouldn't be a problem. *ahem* *cough* *cough* I did not raise a flag just now. No such thing happened, at all.

Anyway, our family went to one of the smaller Aura Guardian offices near Hope Town to get a certificate that proved I was a Tier 1 Aura User, which was more than enough to qualify for the middle school section.

As far as I managed to learn from the internet and hearsay, the office had no one strong enough to detect my full capabilities without truly trying. As someone coming for the certificate normally would not hide his/her capability in the first place, they had no reason to suspect that I did.

Everything went smoothly and I got my Tier 1 certificate. Tier 1 was more than enough because the requirement for the aura part was nothing too big for just the secondary school. Being an advanced apprentice aura user was enough, which was only grade 2 of 3 for Tier 0.

I had some plans regarding the aura part of my education, but I was going to observe the situation first before I decided whether I was going to go through with it or not.

Anyway, just yesterday I had gotten acceptance letters from all 10 academies. The really important ones were from the three biggest and most renowned aura academies in Kanto, maybe even the whole "human" world.

These three were in the Top 8 globally and all of them offered the full education path from elementary school to college. Now, one would rightfully think aren't those academies expensive?

Well, normally you would be right. Regular schools were "free" thanks to the government/alliance. I said "free" since everyone was still paying for them in the form of taxes.

Academies of any kind on the other hand did have fees. This was totally reasonable in my opinion since their facilities and resources, human resources included, were much more demanding as well as expensive than that of regular schools.

Now, how do regular or even poor people afford to go there? Do they miss out because of their financial status? I thought the alliance wanted more people with aura capabilities? These were questions that most people would have after hearing about the fee.

Those points were exactly where the alliance came in. There were a lot of things they did to make it easier for EVERYONE to attend the academies as long as they had the potential to do so, but four of them were the most important and direct.

First of all, they shouldered a large part of the actual fee, so the fee people had to pay was only a fraction of the full price, like 5-10%. The percentage depended on the Academy but never went over 10%.

The second one was giving out loans to the parents/students that were interest-free. You only had to pay back what you borrowed. On top of that, the borrowing process was streamlined and made easier for loans that were taken in such situations.

Obviously, the alliance made sure the money was being actually used for education purposes, so no exploiting the system. As for whether the debtor was planning to pay the money back or not, *hahaha*, they had the means to see that right at the beginning.

Number three was scholarships. Talented students and extremely hardworking students that managed to keep up with those talented students had the opportunity/option to apply for a scholarship from the alliance.

There were three grades of scholarships, with grade 3 being the lowest and grade one being the highest, that each gave out an increasing amount of money for living expenses and training/school supplies.

Not only that, but everyone that managed to get an alliance scholarship had the right to ask for a check by the alliance in case their academy denies their scholarship application.

The alliance then controls if the denial was justified or not. Most academy scholarships were just the removal of the fee and some supplies but that was still better than nothing.

Upon my request, we had applied for a scholarship from the alliance after we got my aura and education certificate. That was 100% free money since the alliance did not require any of it back.

With my results, I managed to get a grade two scholarship, which was okay considering I held back in the aura section. They would check my results at the end of the school year to see if I would get to keep my scholarship or not.

The fourth option/help was mostly for orphans, and students that had to pay themselves, but those with less than fortunate families naturally could make use of it as well.

The alliance helped them find simple jobs where they could work part-time outside of lessons. While not the best-paying they were enough to scrape by, especially if combined with the scholarships.

The last one was mostly for the even less fortunate ones. Back to the acceptance letters more specifically from the 3 biggest ones, since those were the three I was going to choose from.

The three were Ash (Aura) Academy in Ashgray City, Vermillion (Aura) Academy in Vermillion City, and Aaron (Aura) Academy in Rota City of the Rota sub-region. Rota City was the capital city of the Rota region, which was currently a subsidiary region of Kanto.

All three of them were good choices. Ashgray City had the Kanto-headquarters of the Aura Guardians, so there had access to some good human resources.

Vermillion (Aura) Academy was the richest of the three, which showed with their material resources as well as their scholarships. Additionally, both were obviously part of Kanto.

Rota City had the Global-headquarters of the Aura Guardians, so the human resources need not be mentioned. Moreover, there were some interesting myths about that place, and here comes the main factor that Aaron used to bribe/lure me with since he was from Rota.

Aaron told me that I had the chance to get myself a Riolu or Togepi at the Aaron (Aura) Academy. Normally Aura Academies in collaboration with the alliance gave out 1 of 5 Pokemon to their "successful" students if they had not already received one.

"Succesful" in this case just meant those that manage to reach Tier 1. Age was not important as long as you were a member of the academy and reached Tier 1 you were given the chance to choose one of those Pokemon among the ones they had available.

The same was true for me as well. Once I went to an academy, they would let me choose 1 as well.

Those 5 Pokemon were Tyrogue, Ralts, Buneary, Mienfoo, and Clauncher. All of their final evolutions/forms were able to learn Aura Sphere and aura in general.

Ralts obviously became either Gardevior or Gallade (518 BS), Buneary became Lopunny (480 BS), Mienfoo became Mienshao (510 BS), and Clauncher became Clawitzer (500BS). Then there was Tyrogue who could actually evolve into 3 different Pokemon.

Hitmonchan (455 BS) if its endurance was greater prior to evolution. Hitmonlee (455 BS) if its strength was greater prior to evolution, and Hitmontop (455 BS) if its endurance and strength were equal before evolution.

Now came a great surprise that had totally shocked me when I found out. It seemed like there was a fourth evolution as well called Hitmonform, and I had to go through great lengths to be able to check the status of one just so that I could see its base stat.

I generally have the base stat paragraph hidden since I already know the BS of all known Pokemon, at least of those known to me, but when I encountered a Pokemon species I saw for the first time I made it visible to check it out.

According to the status screen, Hitmonform had a BS of 510, if roughly translated to old-world values. Its stats were perfectly balanced like Tyrogue's stats just with 50 more in each stat, so 85 instead of 35.

From what I managed to find out after extensive research was that all of Tyrogue's parameters had to be perfectly balanced/uniform prior to its evolution for it to evolve into a Hitmonform.

According to my conjecture there seemed to be a hidden requirement that required Tyrogue to have at least gone through a complete S-value limit break as well.

I came to this conclusion because there were cases where Tyrogue evolved to Hitmontop despite having seemingly balanced parameters as far as the trainers could tell.

Unsurprisingly, due to the greater conditions that had to be fulfilled Hitmonform were still pretty uncommon with most of them belonging either to Aura Users or Martial Artists/Masters.

Anyway, back to the Pokemon that were given out. Among them, Mienfoo was the one given out the least because of their relative rarity, while Clauncher were chosen the least, because of their relatively lower popularity among students despite their strength.

The other three were pretty abundant and popular, so they were most commonly seen on campus, along with many other fighting types.

Naturally, there was no rule that one needed to have only fighting types, but fighting types were pretty popular among students and aura users in general.

Now, with all that info comes the lure from Aaron. Outside of those 5 Pokemon, 2 others qualified as great aura Pokemon, Togepi, and Riolu.

Those two were also the most popular of the aura Pokemon with Riolu being the most iconic aura Pokemon of them all. On top of that both species were pretty rare, so getting them was generally not easy for anyone.

What Aaron told me was that the most promising few among the geniuses attending Aaron Academy had the chance to get one of the two or even both sometime during their education.

What has to be underlined is that it was only a chance. The academy with the permission of the species allowed the candidates to enter their territory so that they may try to persuade a member of the younger generation to join them.

Now, after going through all that information once more it became pretty obvious to me that I had subconsciously already made a decision. I was going to choose Aaron (Aura) Academy. Ahh, sweet monologues and ramblings, they kept helping me one way or the other.

With my decision made I went up to my parents with the acceptance letter from Aaron (Aura) Academy.

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