Slay The Examans

Beauty and Brutality

As he finished putting down the final answers, he saw other Examans disposing of the body. Why did he have to die? What if he was ... what if he had been wrongly convicted? However, he couldn't focus on that. Not right now, at least. Setting down his pen, he waits for the instructor to dismiss them. Ten minutes go by, and he is still waiting. Thirty minutes, still nothing. An hour passes and... wait no this is all in his head. Only ten minutes passed. Five minutes later and the instructor dismisses them, and he gets out of there as fast as possible.
On his way out the door of the building, he bumps into someone and nearly trips over them. Looking up, he notices a pretty girl, no, pretty woman around his age wearing a beautiful pink and blue dress. It really brought her eyes, gray as a thunderstorm. Realizing he's just gawking at her, he gets up and helps her.
"I am so sorry," he says. "I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, I would have let you go through first otherwise."
Giggling, she smiles at him. "Its fine, Finals are always a nightmare." Good god, even her voice was stunning. "My names Taiwan. What's yours?"
     Stuttering, he manages to get out an "Ari" after a few feeble attempts. Feeling his face starting to heat up, he goes to walk out when she calls out to him.
     "I guess Ill see you around!" she says as hes still walking away, face burning. All of a sudden he bumps into someone. No, not just someone, the instructor of all people.
     "Watch where you're walking kid. It'd be a shame if you just... disappeared." he says ominously, staring past him.  Breaking his almost trancelike gaze at the wall behind Ari, he starts walking back, oblivious of the nightmare he had just caused.
Walking home, his brain running faster than a horse at dull gallop, realized that they weren't as "free" as they thought they were. Even when the brutal Shung Dynasty ruled, they at least had the freedom to work hard and rise up the ranks, albeit with brutal punishments and laws. With the Examans in charge, you were at their mercy, like a mouse in a cage. You thought you were free to do as you please, but you actually weren't.
But how could he break free, that was what was on his mind as he walked in through the front door. Walking yo the kitchen he grabbed an apple and started eating it absentmindedly, countless thoughts running through his head, drowning out his surroundings. It took a light punch to the arm from Po to break him out of his trance.
"You good?" Po asked him, knowing almost full well he wasn't.
"I've been... thinking. I watched a kid get killed, and was threatened to be killed myself because I didn't see where I was walking. That isn't right. They aren't right. We aren't nearly as free as we may think. We only get to do these things because they, the Examans, allow it."
"So? Just make the most of your situation." Po said, not realizing what his friend was getting at.
"I don't think that you get it. If all of a sudden the Examans committed genocide and wiped out an entire clan, they very well could and would. Mercilessly. Think about it. Whatever they are, I don't think they're human. All they know is brutality."
     Realizing what Ari was talking about, he had flashbacks to his past. All of a sudden, he wasn't in the kitchen of the small house he shared with Ari and Lex, he was in the streets of his small neighborhood. He saw himself at 7 years old grasping the hand of his mother. Worse, he saw her arguing with someone with the symbol of a paper and quill on a gold amulet, symbolizing his rank as an Examan soldier.
"I won't let you just ransack my neighbors as you please," his mother shouted. Drawing the short sword from his sheath and aiming it at his mother's neck,he growled, "Step aside now woman, or I'll not only spill every last drop of your measley, disease-ridden, maggot-infested blood, I'll do the same with the boy." And with that, his mother stepped aside, pulling young Po out of the way.
That night, he woke up to the smell of smoke, and saw not only his front door to his bedroom burned down, but the entire rest of the house set ablaze. Fortunately his room was one of the few with a window, which he shattered with the rock he kept by his bedside. Crawling out, he sat and waited for the watermen to douse the flames. Unfortunately, the house had burned down with all the inhabitants inside, with the exception of Po.
It was ruled out as a house fire accident. Up until now, Po had never considered that maybe the Examans had burned down his house. He thought they were up-keepers of justice, not bringers of evil, capable of burning a woman alive simply for standing up for her neighbors.
With a gaze that would make a thousand bolts of lightning seem like no more than static shock, he was brought back to the present and looked up at Ari. "I know what you mean." Po said. "But what can we do against it. Like you said, if we so much as slightly rebel, they'd kill us in an instant, without question."
"Which is why you need a plan," said Lex with a smirk, overhearing the entire conversation.