Purple hills stretched on for miles, before eventually becoming one with the sky, which also sported a deep violet hue. These aforementioned hills were covered entirely in foliage that, in contrast, was colored in shades of red, pink, and cyan.

Alexander cautiously took a few steps forward, brushing aside a few cyan leaves to clear a path through the jungle of colors, all the while making sure he made as little noise as possible. He reached to his back and let his hand rest on the handle of his OmniWrench, making sure he could grab it at any second.

He stopped for a brief moment to admire the two massive moons slowly patrolling the sky, each of them nothing more than a thin sickle of light due to their position, but Alexander didn't care. They were a sight to behold nonetheless.

Shaking the moons from his mind, he pressed on, knowing he only had so much time to get off the planet. Soon however he came to the edge of a cliff. However, without fear, he ran right up to the edge. As soon as his feet were about to go off the edge, he adjusted the trajectory of his legs and, instead of plummeting off the cliff, he turned 270 degrees in mid air before running down the rocky cliff with ease, as if gravity had temporarily lost its grip. Alexander chuckled when he reached the bottom, grabbing a tree branch and using it to convert vertical velocity into horizontal velocity, sliding to a halt among the trees.

Then, he heard rustling behind him. Instantly he grabbed his Wrench and spun on his heels, coming face-to-face with-

"Alexander?"

Alexander looked up, and noticed seventeen eyes fixated on him. He forced himself to smile and look his teacher in the eyes. "Yes, sir?"

The teacher, a Terachnoid named Vax Albacus, rolled his eyes, and Alexander could swear he heard the teacher mutter something about the inferiority of single-brained organisms, before he reached a pink tentacle and tapped it against the drawing board. "Complete this sum, please. It should be easy, granted I just finished explaining the entire sum..." Vax said, with a grin that was supposed to look shark-like, but instead resembled a rodent imitating something three times its size.

Alexander's mind ran a mile a minute, recalling nothing of the mentioned explanation, and thus he had to improvise. Fortunately, he was no idiot, and thus he quickly recognized a pattern in the sum.

It simply read, 'Euler raised to the power of x equals zero'. Quickly using his knowledge of logarithms, Alexander realized that it was a trick question.

"It's a trick question, Sir." he replied.

"And why is that?" Vax replied, almost looking disappointed.

"Nothing raised to a power can be equal to zero, unless it is zero raised to a power" Alexander quickly replied.

Vax gave a quick nod in reply. "Very well. Now, if I were to replace this zero with a four, what would the solution be?"

Judging by the grin on the Terachnoid's face, Alexander guessed that his teacher was attempting to go for a round two. "Challenge accepted." Alexander thought.

"Simple, Sir. The solution would be the Euler-logarithm of two." he replied, quickly adding "Also known as the natural logarithms." to further demolish his teacher's grin. Needless to say, nobody in his class was particularly fond of Mr. Albacus who, try as he might to hide it, always considered his students as inferior minds. Therefore Alexander wasn't surprised when he quickly glanced sideways and noticed several of his fellow students grinning.

Visibly annoyed, Vax continued with his monologue before he was rudely interrupted by the school bell a few minutes later. Before he could even assign homework, all students had left the classroom, rushing out the door with a speed that would impress even a SWAT-team.

As Alexander rushed to his locker, a female voice could be heard over the speaker system distributed throughout the school. "Attention students. Due to the weather outside, all students are encouraged to eat outside the school doors. In addition, please do not forget to clean up after yourself. Thank you."

Alexander rolled his eyes, knowing very well that 'encouraged' was equal to 'forced', his school was very passive-agressive in that aspect. He replaced the books in his backpack with the books he was going to need for the upcoming three hours, before taking his lunch out of the locker and closing it, the lock sliding into place with a loud click.

With a second roll of his eyes he walked out one of the three exits. He made his way across the little courtyard, before sitting down on a bench in the shade of the school building, beside one of the entrances. He removed the plastic around his sandwich before taking a bite. As he slowly downed his lunch, he watched his fellow students from a distance. He didn't really feel the need to be among them, sitting alone and recollecting his thoughts seemed more appealing currently.

In fact, had it been an option, he would have gone indoors and found somewhere quiet, the ever-present noise of his fellow students did not appeal to him one bit. Being placed in a particularly noisy class, Alexander had learned to cherish the few moments where the school's everlasting assault on his eardrums and patience ceased. One of such few moments was Mr. Albacus' lessons because he demanded absolute silence, and heavily punished people that broke his rules. "I guess something good can come from even the greatest of a-holes." Alexander thought with a grin.

He took a moment to contemplate his school. The Kortogian University of Science and Engineering, otherwise known as KUSA. It was in fact located on planet Kortog, as if the name of the university didn't give it away. It was a strange university, one that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a university or a college. Alexander was currently in the more 'college-esque' part of his education, the first five years were in fact college, after which he'd move on to the more university-style part of the campus.

Currently he had a fixed number of lessons per day in various subjects, but as the years would go by, he'd get to narrow it down to just the classes he wanted to follow. He was currently in year four, which meant that he was confined to the three buildings built for the college-like years. Despite that however, most students slept on the campus in large blocks of dorms. Alexander himself would return home in the afternoon, and he already couldn't wait.

Then however, after half of the break was over, he noticed something was off. After having spent three years there, he had memorized over a thousand faces, but there was a face he had never seen before.

A girl was making her way through the crowd, carefully stepping left and right to avoid bumping into people. Meanwhile her eyes were darting left and right, as if she was searching for something. Eventually she had made her way to the doors just beside Alexander, and for a moment her eyes met his. She gave him a patient, polite smile. Alexander quickly forced himself to smile and wave. She gave him a polite nod before vanishing into the school building.

Alexander stayed behind, still eating his sandwich, puzzled by what had just happened. Was she a new student or something? Suddenly however, the gears in his head finally got to full speed. The way she was looking everywhere as if she was trying to memorize everything, combined with the fact that he had never seen her before - she had to be new here. And from there Alexander realized that the chances of this mystery student knowing the way around the school building were pretty much non-existent.

He quickly forced all he had been chewing on down his throat before rushing to his feet, and into the school building, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mystery girl. Instead however, he was knocked down pretty much the second he entered the school building.

There was a brief flash of white before Alexander found himself on the ground, papers scattered everywhere. "Oh, damn it! You donkey!" the person he had run into cursed as they stood up. "I'm sorry!" Alexander replied before realizing that he knew the voice. "Wait, Marcus?" he asked, turning to the person.

"No, it's Santa, goofball." Marcus said jokingly, recognizing his friend. "What's your problem, pal?"

"Oh, long story. I just wasn't paying enough attention I guess." Alexander replied as he helped Marcus pick up the papers and books scattered about. Fortunately they had a few minutes until the bell would ring, so there were no students scattering the papers even more than they already were.

"Assignment?" Alexander guessed as he collected a tenth page from the ground.

"No, homework for three lessons." Marcus sighed as he stacked his books.

"Ah, that sucks." Alexander replied, knowing all too well how much Marcus hated having to do homework. With his mother having the ability to read minds, he had no choice but to make every last assignment.

Alexander offered to carry the papers for Marcus and escort his friend to his next lesson, an offer that Marcus gladly took him up on.

"So, longear." Marcus started as they headed to Marcus' next lesson, which happened to be physics. "Game night is still on?"

Alexander laughed. "Oh, you bet! How's your loadout?"

Alexander and Marcus had been friends for pretty much their entire life. With their parents being very close friends, they saw each other often as children, and despite the fact that they didn't get along that well initially, a strong friendship had formed between the two, with them seeing each other as cousins despite being not blood related. They had great respect for each other, and used to play over the holo-net very often. That is, until homework forced them to set up a schedule of 'game nights', days on which they would ensure all homework was done, so they had all the time in the world to play games together online. Marcus was one such student that spent most of their year on the campus, only returning home for a few weeks per year. His parents were not happy in the slightest with this decision, but with the KUSE supporting all classes that Marcus wanted to follow whereas the Cornerian schools didn't support some subjects, it was the best solution.

Even though his father, Fox, insisted that he would be the one to teach his son the art of aerial combat.

Alexander took a moment to take in his friend. Marcus McCloud was a Cornerian-Cerinian hybrid, giving him cobalt blue fur with white stripes. For the most part, he looked like a smaller, recolored version of his father, Fox McCloud, having a similar head (though with the more smoother and elegant features of his mother, Krystal McCloud, mixed in) and sporting the same haircut. He was wearing a sleeveless black leather jacket over a black shirt, and dark blue jeans completed the look. In fact, Marcus often dressed himself in dark colors, he thought dark colors suited him well and they did.

Then there was Alexander himself. His mother had told him that he looked a lot like his father, though he didn't know for sure. He was a Lombax with a sandy-golden fur color, mixed with caramel-colored stripes. His eyes were aquamarine in color. He was wearing a sky blue shirt and jeans, and a pair of slim, silver glasses rested on his nose.

Soon enough they reached the class Marcus needed to be in, and the two friends said goodbye. Alexander then swiftly made his way up the staircases to the second floor for his next class, Chemistry, mentally already lamenting because of the imminent boredom.

The Chemistry teacher, an elderly Cazar named Alran Marix, was a man that seemed to have lost his senses ages ago. The man had also become incoherent, making listening very tiring as Marix would often lose his train of thought, and would have to jump back a few sentences.

Marix was a nice person, but his teaching skills had become very sub-par, Alexander thought. That was why he was surprised to find no sign of the teacher upon entering the classroom. He and all of his other classmates took a seat, and patiently waited for Mr. Marix to come walking in, but nothing happened for several minutes. At that point theories began to circle about the Cazar's absence until, eventually, some students theorized that Chemistry could be dropping out.

It was at that moment that a Lombax entered the classroom. The Lombax had brown fur and amber eyes, and he was wearing a silver vest over dark silver jeans. He was holding a black briefcase, which he dropped on the desk. "Sorry I'm late, peeps. Got stuck behind an illiterate while flying here. And I can tell they were illiterate as they insisted on flying at a quarter of the maximum allowed speed. I mean, I've heard of the term 'fly safe' but that's pushing it IMO."

The Lombax positioned himself in front of the drawing board and clapped his hands together. "Alright, I can see some people go like 'what the hell is this weirdo doin' here?'"

Some quiet laughter followed among the students, and the Lombax smiled widely. "Well, let me introduce myself." He picked up a piece of chalk and began writing his name on the drawing board, in a style that made the letters appear like carved rocks. 'Jayden' he wrote.

He tapped the board with his index finger. "That's me." he said. "Written in stone because - why the hell is there such a primitive piece of technology here? I mean, c'mon."

Again, some students laughed. "I also have a last name, but I didn't feel like adding that to the sketch." Jayden added. "You can learn it though. Name's Jayden Astron, at your service."

Jayden bowed a little for the show, resulting in a few more laughs. "Now," he began, "before we begin, I'd like to introduce you all to someone."

He turned his head to the door, and sure enough, it opened and, to Alexander's surprise, it was the same girl he'd noticed earlier.

Alexander took the brief moment to get a good look at her. She was a Cazar, contrary to his earlier assumption of her being a Lombax. She did sport more smooth facial features in contrast to the more chiseled facial features that Cazars usually had. She was also a few shades darker than any other Cazar he had seen, having jet black hair and stripes, combined with fur in chocolate color. Her ears were about one-and-a-half times the size of the ears of an average Cazar, and her tail was a few inches longer than usual as well. Her eyes stood out immensely among the dark shades of hair, being aquamarine in color. She was wearing black boots combined with dark gray jeans. She was wearing a black vest zipped up to her neck, although around her neck one could occasionally catch a glimpse of the gray shirt she wore underneath. To carry her school equipment, she had a silver backpack that she wore over her left shoulder. Although she hid it pretty well, her eyes and tail gave away her nervousness.

"Introduce yourself." Jayden whispered to the girl, who nodded shyly before clearing her throat. "Um... well... hi. My name is Valeria."

She fell silent after that statement. Luckily Jayden quickly came to her aid. "Valeria here is considering to join us at the Kortogian University of Science and Engineering. She'll be testing the waters, so to speak, for two days. Today she'll be following me around mostly to get a good idea of what the classes and fellow students are like, tomorrow she'll actually be following a fellow student through their day to see what some of the teachers are like. Please do treat her as if she's been in this class since the start of the year."

Jayden turned back towards Valeria and nodded. She took a seat about two rows in front of Alexander's.

"Now." Jayden started again. "Allow me to demonstrate the kind of teacher I am going to be."

Right after saying that, he walked right out the classroom, and for a while all students stared at the door in confusion, before some began to laugh. After two minutes Jayden re-entered, pushing a cart into the room. "Alright, people, gather 'round." he said, bringing the cart to a halt at his desk.

From the cart, he took an empty glass aquarium with an oversized plastic lid. The aquarium had fabric attached to the bottom. He then took a plastic, rectangular tank of some sorts, as well as a plastic bottle.

"Alright, now, who can guess what this bottle contains?" he asked, placing it on the table. "Feel free to pick it up, just don't drink it."

"That rules out water." one of the students said.

"Sharp." Jayden answered. "Anyhow, any guesses?"

"De-mineralized water?" another student attempted. "Incorrect." Jayden replied, before picking the bottle back up. Nobody had dared to touch it. "This, is pure alcohol. The alcohol. Ethanol."

"Why do you carry a bottle full of alcohol?" Valeria asked in confusion.

"Well, not for drinking, one drop of this would cause severe damage." Jayden replied. "And I don't technically carry this around, I just took it from the lab for the sake of this experiment."

He unscrewed the cap, before placing the aquarium upside down and removing the lid. He began applying alcohol to the fabric, making sure not to soak it though. He then put the cap back on and put the bottle back on the cart. "Now," he continued, "I'm going to have to ask everyone to take a step back."

Slightly unnerved, the students all took a step back. Jayden turned around and put on a rather thick looking glove before opening the yet untouched box on the cart. Inside was what looked like a brick of ice.

"What's so dangerous about ice?" one of the students asked.

"The temperature." Jayden answered as he picked it up with the gloved hand. "This isn't water ice. This is frozen carbon dioxide, stored at eighty degrees Kelvin below the freezing point of water. Y'all do the math."

He carefully placed the brick in the plastic container before, in one quick motion, he put the lid on the aquarium and placed it on top, with the fabric topside down.

"Now, I'm going to have to ask someone to kill the lights." Jayden said, and Alexander, who was closest to the light switch, quickly turned off the lights in the classroom, while two other students closed the blinds, casting the room in darkness.

Suddenly there was a flash of light - it was Jayden, holding a flashlight. He very carefully positioned it until it was inches from the aquarium's wall, angled very slightly downwards.

"So... now what?" one of the students asked.

"Just wait." Jayden replied. Soon enough, the students were fascinated to see a thin layer of mist form over the surface of the aquarium's lid, illuminated by the flashlight's light scattering in it.

"It gets better. Look closely." Jayden said, and some students brought their heads closer to the aquarium.

Suddenly, there was a streak of white visible on the surface of the plastic. The mist had become denser there, but quickly fell apart again. "What was that?" Alexander asked out loud, and soon more streaks followed. Jayden didn't answer the question.

They watched the aquarium for ten minutes before Jayden asked for the lights to be turned on, and as soon as the lights were back on and the blinds raised, he asked for every student to sit back down again.

Jayden himself quickly cleaned up the experiment before positioning himself in front of the class. "Alright, now, who can tell me what we just witnessed?"

No hands were raised, and Jayden grinned. "Those white lines in the mist were caused by particles. Atoms. Anyone heard of them?"

Everyone raised their hand. Jayden nodded. "Great! Now, I'll be introducing you to the sub-atomic world. Or rather, how it can sometimes crumble."

For about fifteen minutes, Jayden explained how and why some atoms were unstable and would fall apart, before he asked the students to open up their books and do the exercises on page fifty-one, while he himself sat down behind the desk, pulled out a pair of silver glasses, put them on, and opened his briefcase. He took out a surprisingly slim mobile computer and began to type on the keyboard.

The class worked in silence, save for a group in the front-right of the classroom. Four students - two Agorians, a Blarg and a Fongoid - that Alexander couldn't stand - every time they got the chance they'd be chatting, occasionally bursting out laughing, and overall just demolishing the concentration of everyone around them. The only teacher that really forced them to stay quiet was Vax, and even then they couldn't care less.

Alexander looked up from his notebook and looked at Jayden, who was still hard at work. "Come on, man... please notice it!" Alexander silently pleaded, but the teacher gave no response.

That is, until he suddenly did. With three steps he was at their table, faster than anyone had seen a teacher move, and he was staring down on the four students. He stayed silent, he just stared down on the four students with a frown, arms folded behind his back. The four students noticed him pretty quickly, and fell silent. Nobody said a word for a short while, before Jayden eventually spoke. "Now," he began, "I'm going to ask you four to do something that is apparently very, very difficult. I'm going to ask you four to take a good look around."

The four students did so. "Great." Jayden said. "Now, can one of you please explain to me what they saw?"

"We get the message, Sir. Won't happen again." one of the two Agorian twin brothers spoke up.

Jayden nodded. "It better won't. I don't want to send people out of my classroom during my very first lesson."

Jayden turned around and walked back to his desk. "Geez, and here I was thinkin' he was chill." the Blarg whispered a bit too loud.

"And here I was thinking you'd be clever enough to adjust your own behavior." Jayden calmly replied, not even bothering to look.

Alexander smiled as he got back to work. "That was delicious." he thought, grinning widely as he got back to the exercises. For the remainder of the double hour, all Jayden would have to do to stop any unnecessarily loud chatter was snap his fingers. After the tenth time he stood up and looked around the classroom. "C'mon, people. I really don't want to be like this. Just try to keep it quiet, okay? Look, y'all have mobile devices - if you must speak, do it through the ether so you don't bother others. But so help me if I catch anyone making a noise with their phone in their hands - it's either do the assignments or chat in silence, alright? As long as you get the assignments done in time."

Jayden then scribbled something on the school board. "Everyone, attention please. These are the paragraphs we will be discussing in class this week. Or at least, I hope so. There's a chance I'll be forced to help out with the exams on Thursday, so that lesson may drop out."

There was some cheering among the students. "Don't think that that means we'll be slowing down." Jayden said. "I want to cover paragraph eight on Thursday, should I not be able to make it to class, I'm counting on you all to do some self-study. It's your responsibility." Jayden continued after clearing his throat. "Last but not least - please, please ask questions. Ask me questions 'til my ears fall off and my tail runs out the window."

There was some laughter among the students, and Jayden himself grinned as well. "Alright now. I see some questions, left side row two. Mind if I discuss your question in class now that I've got everyone's attention?"

It was in fact Valeria, the new student. "Well," she nervously began, "I never fully understood molar masses. My former teacher was always a bit rusty on explaining that subject."

Jayden smiled. "Molar masses really aren't as daunting as they may seem. Allow me to give a few examples. Everyone, pay close attention please, even if you think you have this molar business in the bag, you might still learn something.

The remainder of the hour was spent with Jayden tackling question after question, some more complex than others. When the bell rang, everyone quickly packed up. "Alright class, memorize this." Jayden said, tapping the school board next to the paragraph list he'd made. "Make sure you know all of this by tomorrow. It's not absolutely necessary, but if you follow my schedule, I can guarantee you'll make it through this year without problems."

It had been Alexander's final lesson of the day. He went to the computer room on the building's uppermost floor, where he began working on a presentation for Physics in advance out of boredom.

When the clock hit four in the afternoon, he went to the lockers on the first floor, specifically Marcus' locker, where he met up with the aforementioned Cornerian/Cerinian hybrid. They sat down outside the school building and played a game of cards (Marcus kept a pack of playing cards in his bag to save him from boredom). When the clock hit five, Alexander said goodbye to his friend as Marcus made his way to his dorm, while Alexander walked to the exit of the campus, where a sky blue Lombaxian starfighter was waiting for him.

The hatch opened and he climbed into the passenger seat, tossing his bag over his shoulder. It fortunately landed on the back seat, though the ship scolded Alexander nonetheless.

"Oh, hush, you." the pilot said with a chuckle. "I've told him more than enough."

"Exactly!" the ship protested. "Now we have told him more than enough."

Alexander rolled his eyes. "Moooom."

"Well, when will you learn not to toss your backpack around then?" Angela replied as she went through a brief pre-flight check before steering Perihelion out of Kortog' atmosphere.

When they arrived home, Alexander studied for half an hour before dinner was ready. After dinner, he chatted with Marcus for a while through his phone, before he said goodnight to his mother.

"Goodnight, my son." Angela said in response, planting a kiss on Alexander's forehead.

"Goodnight, dad." Alexander said, turning to the face of his father. The silence he got in response hurt as much as ever, but it had become routine.

Alexander quickly made his way up the stairs, walked into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, before falling down on his bed and drifting off into a deep sleep, not even bothering to change into his pajamas.

Hello again everyone. I have some explaining to do.

Basically for everyone following the original Epilogue 3 - I got increasingly unhappy with the way the story was progressing as time went on. And with every passing day I liked the outline I had made less and less. That is why I decided to turn back and start over from scratch, to produce a story that I can be proud of. And the first chapter you have just witnessed.

I will not be spoiling anything in advance but this: I have created a monster of an outline for this story. Be certain to have a spot in the feels hospital reserved - you'll be needing it.

I really don't have much else to share in these author's notes, so I really, really hope that you all enjoyed this new start to Epilogue 3, and I hope it'll live up to everyone's expectations.

Take care everyone, and (hopefully) see you all in the next chapter.