Juliet sat on the edge of the mat, holding a bag of ice to her swollen cheek. Anyone looking at her would know she was sulking. She wasn’t upset that she’d been hit; she’d given better than she got, but she was fuming over the way Charity and Herbert—Berto to his friends—had acted during her assessment. She narrowed her eyes, watching the two of them laughing with their group, still enjoying practice after Sensei had told her to sit out and cool down.

She supposed she deserved some animosity; she’d only been working out at the dojo for a month, and Sensei was apparently breaking some rules by letting her try for her first stripe, or degree, so soon. Still, she’d seen plenty of people take their belt tests and never watched their sparring partners go so hard against them. “It’s fine,” she muttered, “I’ve got things easy enough, anyway.”

“Juliet, you managed to pass the exam despite their best efforts to thwart you.” Angel had been trying to cheer her for the last several minutes.

“Yeah, but I wish people could be happy for me,” Juliet groused.

“Many of the other students were happy for you. Honey gave you a high-five!”

“Sure, Angel, but review the footage; how many people were frowning or shaking their heads?”

“It’s natural for people to feel some animosity when they witness someone mastering so many techniques so rapidly. They feel threatened, or worse, less-than.”

“Right. I get it, don’t worry,” Juliet said, chewing her lower lip and shifting the ice off her numb right cheek and up to her swollen eyebrow. She’d caught a hell of an elbow during the sparring portion of the test. Sensei had approached her several times over the last week, making sure she realized the test she was going to receive would be harder than most white belts working toward their first stripe would expect. He knew the animosity many of the students felt, and he wanted her to showcase how much she deserved to advance.

Technically, according to Honey, she was ready for her blue belt but would need a lot more time in the dojo before anyone let her try for it. Technically was probably the perfect word; she knew all the techniques and could perform them all perfectly individually, but when it came to putting them together in an effortless flow, she was miles away from being ready. One-on-one, at fifty percent intensity, she could hold her own with the real blue belts at the dojo, but when it came to full speed and multiple opponents, she had a long way to go.

“I’m fine with taking my time as long as I keep improving,” Juliet said, partly to herself and partly to Angel. The dojo was plenty loud—she didn’t worry about anyone listening to her corny self-pep talk.

“Speaking of which, I’ve finished compiling your latest physical assessment data; your old values are in parenthesis,” Angel said, and before Juliet could groan in annoyance, she had a new tab glowing on her AUI. She opened it to see what Angel had come up with:

Juliet Corina Bianchi

Physical, Mental, and Social Status Compilation:

Comparative Ranking Percentile (higher is better):

Net worth and assets:

Sol-bits: 69,488

.45

Neural adaptiveness:

.96342 (scale of 0 - 1)

.91

Synaptic Responsiveness:

.19 (lower is better)

.31

Musculoskeletal ranking:

–

.56 (17.22)

Cardiovascular ranking:

–

.48 (31.87)

Cybernetic and Bionic augmentation:

Model name and number:

Overall rating of the augmentation (Grades are F, E, D, C, B, A, S, S+):

PAI

WBD Project Angel, Alpha 3.433

S+

Data Port

Jannik Systems, XR-55

C

Data Jack

Bio Network Solutions, 8840

C

Retinal Cybernetic Implant

Hayashi, Crystal Optics 3.2c

C

Auditory Cybernetic Implant

Cork Systems, Lyric Model 4

C

No other augmentation detected.

–

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