"Welcome back to the Academy of Ambrosia!" Aubergine held his arms out wide, his perfect teeth sparkling from the midst of his salt-and-pepper beard. "Some of you have been gone for a summer, some for many years. But you're all welcome back."

Archie looked around the field at the several dozen Orange Jackets that stood with him. Some were young like Archie. Some were old like Arty. Some were even older than that. He made incidental eye contact with Yarrow, looking away as quickly as he could.

"We're splitting you up in half. Everyone to the left here will head on over to our Head Chef Tarragon for conjuration testing. The rest can stay in place. Head Chef Quince will be going around with some seeded pots. The entirety of your cultivation score will be based on your ability to grow it within an hour."

"Howdy y'all," Quince called out as he handed out pots.

Half of the crowd started to move toward the targets out near the treeline, Blanche included. "Good luck, Archie," she said as she left.

He waved and turned to his father. "You're the one who needs luck, old man."

"Hoo hoo hoo," Arty chuckled. "Feeling confident, are we?"

"Dad, it's been what, twenty years since you took the test?"

"That's right." Arty leaned toward Archie in an exaggerated attempt at intimidation. "And imagine everything I've learned in that time."

"We'll see."

"Howdy, Archie," Quince said as he handed him a pot. "This must be your pops. Howdy. I'm Head Chef Quince."

"Arty Kent, nice to meet you." They shook hands, requiring an awkward reshuffling of pots and a balancing act from Quince. "I trust my son doesn't give you too much trouble."

"Not a bit. Bright kid." Quince nodded and moved on to the next Orange Jacket. They had to get through three times as many testers as normal. His south Kuutsan desire for small talk had to be put aside for the sake of efficiency.

"Hear that?" Archie gloated. "Bright kid."

Arty shot him a skeptical look. "Experienced adults beat bright kids. Now shoo. I need to focus."

Archie laughed and walked away, finding a nice soft spot in the grass to sit before setting to work. He encased the pot in his essence and pushed in, penetrating the soil until he found the seed within. It wasn't hard. The seed was overflowing with essence—far more than Archie could have hoped to put in it himself. He focused his efforts on using that essence and augmenting it with his own rather than brute forcing growth. He felt the movement of essence within the seed and moved his own to match it rather than the other way around. Within the first minute, he could tell that a sprout had broken out of the seed.

Ten minutes in, the soil bulged from the growth within. He stalled out for the next ten minutes before taking a breather to watch the conjuration exams. Barley cheered as Mindy managed to hit the second farthest target and turn it red. Barley's minty fog mixed with Cress's smoke. But most interesting of all was seeing Tarragon and Picea in the same place. They each ran a different part of the exam, but Archie could see them chirp as they walked by each other.

He ran his hands through the grass, feeling the natural ordering of essence. Everything wanted to grow. The grass, the weeds, the flowers, the clovers. The seed in the pot wanted to grow. He didn't need to convince it. He just needed to help it. He picked his pot back up and probed for the essence within.

Arugula.

The identity of the plant came to him at once, a whisper that he found in the back of his mind rather than heard. And as he thought of arugula, the plant came alive, a sprout breaking through the soil to greet him. He smiled to greet it. Blanche always smiled at her plants. Maybe she was just happy to see them grow, but maybe the smile itself had its own magic.

When Archie thought of arugula, he thought of goat cheese and olive oil. Mindy had put it on a pizza with prosciutto and fig spread that had Archie begging for more. The arugula had played a minor role, but it was still crucial to that taste and texture. That's what arugula was. The essential nothing. That little bit of nothing that took good avocado toast to great.

As Archie thought of all the ways to use arugula, the plant grew as if it was ready to fulfill those ambitions.

"Time!" Quince called out.

Archie snapped out of a trance that he hadn't known he had entered. He would have guessed they still had half an hour, but somewhere along the way, he had forgotten about everything but him and the plant in his hands. He looked down at the three leaves that had grown and smiled.

"You got me this time," Arty said as he approached with an unsprouted pot. "Been a while since I've grown anything. Arugula, huh?"

Archie offered a sympathetic smile. He couldn't gloat on this one. It wasn't a fair contest. There was nowhere to practice cultivation in Sain. Not yet, at least.

"Well, that's an easy twenty five," Quince said when he came around. "Great improvement, Archie."

Archie spotted Blanche in the distance and raised up his pot in celebration. She whooped as she jumped up and clapped.

"Good job, Archie," Arty said.

While the validation was nice, what Archie really wanted was competition. "You're not gonna let me run away with this, are you?"

Arty shrugged. "This was always going to be my worst score."

"What about innovation?"

"They gave me a perfect score already."

"What?! How?"

"Let's leave a little mystery, shall we?" Arty winked. "Now come watch me ace conjuration."

Tarragon's face lit up as Archie approached, but his smile faded when his greeting wasn't first.

"Archie!" Picea yelled. She lumbered toward him, feigning a swipe at his legs.

Archie squatted down to receive the blow knowing that Picea didn't often pull her punches. But instead of an attack, Picea gave him a big smack on the shoulder—not that an attack would have hurt any less.

Tarragon rushed forward as Archie and Picea laughed and exchanged greetings. "You two know each other?" he asked.

"Archie was my star student this summer," Picea boasted. "I unlocked his fighting potential."

"Well, hold on," Tarragon protested. "I laid the foundation."

"Take credit for the first brick if you want, but the rest of the tower was me."

Archie backed away from the two warriors as they stared each other down. He wondered if there was even a safe distance if these two legends started to fight. The last time it had happened, Tarragon had lost an eye. That couldn't have been a good start to a relationship.

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Tarragon and Picea both burst into laughter, their postures melting to reveal their friendliness with each other.

"How's the slingshot?" Tarragon asked.

In the blink of an eye, Archie conjured a noodle slingshot and shot a blueberry that burst on the target thirty feet away. Flour exploded off the canvas, whatever remained turning red.

"Perfect score!" Picea cheered.

"I already have twenty five points from last semester," Archie said. "Actually, I was thinking maybe…" He swallowed and remembered Rowan's words. He needed to take charge of his own life. No more waiting for things to come to him. "I was thinking I could compete in the amateur circuit this year. I just need a Head Chef to vouch for me."

"Vouched," Picea declared before Tarragon could. "You can be my champion."

"Hold on, now," Tarragon said. "He should be recommended by someone from his home academy."

"Recommend him, then."

"I will." Tarragon and Picea started to square up again.

"Hey, so, uh," Arty butted in. "I just hit the far target?"

"Hm? Oh." Tarragon remembered that he had an exam to oversee. "Yeah, just hit it with pure essence. And then show us that you can conjure something. Can be anything."

Arty flicked his hand at the target, turning it deep red in a flash. "There's that. And here's this…"

He clapped his hands, sending a plume of flame forward nearly ten feet in a feat that was several ranks above that of an Orange Jacket.

Tarragon jumped away from the heat. "Okay, I see where Archie gets his talent from. Perfect score."

Arty elbowed his son in the arm. "Not all perfects are created equal, you know."

The Orange Jackets made their way up to the main kitchen of the Academy, sweating as they climbed the stairs and sweating even more as they packed into the kitchen. Blanche stayed back down in the fields. She had secured her promotion without the cooking exams and wasn't about to do them for fun.

"Five points to get your jacket," Arty said. "Are you excited?"

"Twenty five points for a perfect score," Archie answered. "That's what I'm excited about. How many do you need?"

"Assuming my cultivation score gets dropped, I need to score thirty total in these last two."

"That should be easy for—"

"Of course, I'll be going for fifty. Can't let you show me up."

"Mhm."

"Hello!" Pomona cheered. Her greeting hit the room like a cool breeze, lifting everyone's spirits and calming their nerves. "I'm Head Chef Pomona, and this is…"

Colby looked at her with a stony expression. "Head Chef Colby," he stated. If Pomona's voice was a breeze through a window, his was an unwelcome draft from the basement.

"And we're running the tests today!" Pomona smiled that perfect smile of hers, a wide smile for a wide head. Archie had forgotten how big it was on her little body. "We're limited on time, so we'll be testing you on two things at once, and you'll be tested for time."

Colby grabbed a basket of onions and began walking around and handing them out.

"You'll be tested on caramelizing onions," Colby announced. "Do not touch the onion until we say. Once we allow it, you will have fifteen minutes."

Arty whistled and smirked at Archie. "Nervous?"

"For you, sure." Archie cut his laughter short and bowed his head as Colby walked by. "Head Chef Colby."

"Hello, Archie. Good to have you back and so on and so on."

"Could I get a red onion?"

Colby dug beneath a pile of white and yellow onions and set the red onion down. "Why red?"

"Tastes best." Archie shrugged. If it didn't take so long, he would caramelize red onions with every meal. He had worked a little bit in the past to get the time down, but even at his fastest and most rushed, he still took half an hour to caramelize the onions.

"I'll do a red too," Arty said. "To keep the competition fair."

"Should I give you a headstart?" Archie asked.

"You're setting yourself up for disappointment."

Colby finished passing out the onions and settled at the front of the class. "As you prepare your onions, Head Chef Pomona and I will be around to taste your freestyle dishes. You may begin."

Archie didn't waste a moment. He held the onion in one hand, rotating it around as he hacked at it with a knife that always stopped just short of going through the entire onion. After a few precise chops, he set the onion down and with just three cuts made the onion fall apart into a hundred pieces. There was no way Arty had chopped faster.

And he hadn't even started.

Instead of chopping his onion, Arty had filled a pot with water. He slapped the bottom with his palm repeatedly. On the fifth slap, the steam rose from the water. On the eighth slap, the water started to bubble. He put the pot over the flame to keep it warm and chopped his onion.

"Why are you boiling water?" Archie asked as he slid his onions into the melted butter and oil inside his pan.

"I think collaboration gets you disqualified." Arty dumped his onions into the water and covered the pot.

Archie squinted at his father before returning his attention to cooking. He opened the flue of the stove to let more air in, the fire tickling the sides of the pan. He needed it hot. Too hot. That was the only way to cook it so quickly, but he'd have to keep it from burning. He flipped the onions around the pan with one hand as he sprinkled salt with the other.

He tried to lift the onions instead of mashing them around—he had already sacrificed some of the onion's integrity by dicing instead of slicing, but he needed to maximize the surface area to let them cook as quickly as possible. Water released from the onions, half of it burning up in the heat. Archie felt the essence of the onion change as it burned, using his own essence to stop the process.

After a few minutes, Arty transferred his onion to a pan and started on the caramelization. They had wilted down twice as quickly in the boiling water, allowing the caramelization to begin immediately. In just a few minutes, his onion had already taken on a better brown than Archie's.

"What do we have today, Chefs?" Colby asked as he and Pomona came by.

Archie went first. "Blueberry pasta." He had prepared the same dish as he had the previous exam, but this time, he took great care to not mess up the aeration process.

Colby took a bite of blue noodle and winced as he chewed. Archie nearly forgot to keep stirring the onions as he watched Colby's face with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Colby's eyebrow twitched as he swallowed.

"Not perfect," he said. "I'd give it nineteen."

Archie sighed. He would have sighed harder if he didn't already know what was about to happen next.

Pomona took a bite and moaned. "You're too harsh. I'd give it a twenty-five."

"Let's call it a twenty-three, then," Colby said as he moved on to Arty.

Pomona lingered just a second longer, warmly touching Archie's shoulder. "Good job, Archie. You'll look good in yellow."

Archie smiled, but he couldn't hide his disappointment. He had hoped for perfect scores across the board. But faced with his two-point deduction, Archie had to face the reality that while he had trained vigorously over the summer, he had neglected his cooking. The Head Chefs moved on to his father.

"Alright, the highlight," Arty teased as he pushed forward two ramikens. "Boiled carrots, puréed with baking essentials and an extra dose of vanilla and cinnamon, and then baked into these carrot soufflés."

"How delightful," Pomona commented as she scooped up a perfectly spongy bite. She took a bite but this time remained silent. She looked at Colby.

He took a bite and shook his head. "Now this…this is perfection."

"Right?!" Pomona exclaimed.

"Easiest score I've given. Twenty-five. Congratulations." Colby held out his hand for Arty to shake. Archie watched in shock as the most ruthless instructor in all of United Ambrosia bowed his head to someone six ranks lower than him.

"Thank you," Arty said as he bowed back. Pomona snuck another bite before moving on.

Archie stared at his father, waiting for the brag. It came in the form of a wink and a shrug.

Archie was subjected to the same boasting a few minutes later when his onions were scored at twenty four to his father's twenty five. Archie was almost as bothered by his defeat to his father as his defeat to Yarrow, who had somehow pulled in double twenty-fives for the cooking portion.

When they took the stage in the great hall that night, the three stood side-by-side, Archie just one point shy of his father and one ahead of Yarrow. All of Archie's classmates had managed to secure promotion with the exception of the absent Sutton.

"One off a perfect score," Arty gloated. "That must be tough for you."

"You beat me by one point," Archie groaned. "And your cultivation score was terrible."

"Hm? Sorry, you're speaking double-digit language to me. I only understand triple-digit."

The yellow goop that Aubergine served was bitter, but its effect was magical. Archie felt something deep within his own essence change, the kalypo fibers of his jacket shimmering to bright shades until finally settling on a pale yellow.

As proud as he was of himself, he was more proud of the man standing next to him. Arty had dropped out of the Academy as an Orange Jacket and hadn't returned for two decades, removing himself from Chef society. But on this day, he showed that he was the best. That when he wanted to, he could achieve greatness.

"I'm proud of you, dad."

Arty met Archie's gaze, his eyes glossing over. And then, in typical fashion, he kept himself from getting too sentimental. He slapped Archie on the back. "I'll race you to a white jacket."

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