Originally, the motto of Sir Edwin’s Academy had been something to do with having strength in the face of adversity. Then adversity had come knocking at their doorstep, and half the faculty left in the middle of the night. The phone lines were down. The lights kept flickering. The wrought-iron fence had grown 4 feet taller by sunrise. It was very clear that the Academy had entered the Borderlands– what was less clear was how they were going to get out.
The principal, of course, decided that they weren’t. He’d run the boarding school for decades now. With an entire school’s worth of children and young adults, staying was much safer than any treck outside could be. They had plenty of food in the industrial freezers, and the gardens could be expanded to take over the lawn. He drafted a plan, recruited the near-graduates and the remaining teachers, and started turning Sir Edwin’s into a fortress.
It’s been years since Sir Edwin’s Academy changed. Plenty of the graduates enter into the Borderlands, but many stay, building and refining the place that made them who they are. They’ve got training barracks now, armories and R&D labs, everything they need to keep conquering the wastes around them. Sawyer had been 13 when the Borderlands came knocking on their doorstep. He’d been terrified that next morning, surrounded by other scared kids, his favorite teacher missing from the dining hall. Now he’s anything but scared. He leads the uniform development team, reinforcing the armor each student wears when they exit school grounds. He came up with the RUST position himself, designed 80% of the current uniform on his own. Most of the students that were there that day remained in the Academy after graduation. They won’t run out on the place that raised them.
The motto of Sir Edwin’s Academy used to be something about having strength in the face of adversity. Now, Sir Edwin’s doesn’t have a motto. Its students no longer need one.