Capture the Flag

The Pandavas and Kauravas had arrived to their first day of class at the Leaf. Drona spoke with each of their parents. Each expressed how they wanted their boys to become extraordinary programmers. He agreed he would go the extra mile to teach and mold them. But, he said, there was one condition. He wanted the boys to help him take down his enemy, Drew. Somehow the parents agreed to these terms and the teaching began. Drona was hatching a plan from the beginning to think of a way to expose and bring down Drew. Drona let the rejection and humiliation fuel him as he started Leaf.

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A couple of months in both families of brothers had a small foundation of programming skills. Even within these first few months, Drona had already begun to show more favoritism towards the Pandavas. He would give them harder problems and better feedback. Duryodhana of the Kauravas became increasingly jealous. One student in particular was solving algorithm problems and finishing challenges with ease. This student’s name is Arjuna. Drona one afternoon promised to make him the most skilled programmer in Austin. He would push Arjuna even harder than Aswatthaman, his son. Aswatthaman had enrolled the same time as the Pandavas and Kauravas.

Drona had planned to host a hackathon competition game of capture the flag. This capture the flag is similar to normal capture the flag but with a twist. Instead of searching for a real flag, teams are attempting to retrieve a flag on their opponent’s server. Each team hides their own flag on the server behind security walls. There are various ways to play. This is simply one of them.

Drona had a local startup set up the game since he had been teaching his students and wanted to give everyone a fair chance. He wanted to equip his students with skills that would help them beat whoever decided to come to the competition. It would be open to whomever wanted to sign up. Drona began teaching his students some tricks to give them the upper hand. He taught them how to find backdoors and loopholes to attack a server.

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It came to the week of the competition. Bhima was the most technical and sound programmer of the Pandavas. He would face off against Duryodhana to try to capture the first flag. It was brutal, both using skillful skills to slow each other down. Duryodhana even used some sly styles he picked up on his own. However, neither of these two could match the speed and eloquent code of Arjuna.

He was impressing everyone and leading his team in captures. No one could come close to him. Throughout the day, there was a young man who began to match Arjuna. His name was Karna. Within a couple of hours he was a few flags behind Arjuna. It came down to the last flag and Karna directly challenged Arjuna. Drona tried to intervene and claim that this couldn’t take place because Karna was on a team by himself. Duryodhana said that Karna could join their team. However, the timer ran out before they could have an epic face down.

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After the Pandavas had finished school

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Drona asked them to act on their promise to him. He wanted them to settle his beef with Drew. Through the grapevine, Drona had learned of some incriminating expenditure reports Drew had locked away on his personal computer. Arjuna hacked and got them with ease. Once they had completed the hack, Drona emailed Drew and threatened to expose him if he didn’t promise to help move along a building proposal in Austin for his new location of Leaf. Drew agreed he would help him. The only thing was Drew had openly disagreed with the new building plan. He would have to go back on his word. Drew ended up holding a press conference and spoke of his newfound support for Drona’s building proposal.

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Twenty Years Later

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Drona had established Leaf as the leading alternative school in Texas. He had incredible students go through his school that past twenty years. However, none could match the Pandavas and Kauravas. Now, both families had gone their separate ways. One brother from each had started two technology companies respectively that were now head-to-head rivals. Duryodhana had begun Alienvault, a high-end cybersecurity company. Yudhishthira along with his brothers had begun Norse, a cyber attack prevention company.

These companies had gone back and forth for a long time. There was a contract with the United States government that would be the most extensive and well compensated contract either of them had seen. Congress had just approved a huge new budget for more cybersecurity. Norse found out that they had won! This had enraged Duryodhana because his company with his brothers had been struggling even though they had hundreds of brothers working there. But the Pandavas had some of the best programmers in the world. Actually, Arjuna is the best cybersecurity programmer in the world by a far margin. The Kauravas were envious of his exposure and speaking engagements. He was the face of cybersecurity. With the Pandavas getting the new contract, this took Alienvault’s hatred towards Norse to a whole new level.

Duryodhana had decided he would hack into Norse and steal their trade secrets. He gathered a team to hack into them. However, during the middle of their attack they were stopped by Arjuna who had set up safeguards everywhere. Arjuna sent them a message on their screen that read, “War is coming.” Krishna, an advisor of both of the companies, got wind that his two favorite security companies were about to attack each other. This would not only be bad for him but most of all it would hurt their clients. He miraculously got the two heads of each family to agree on a competition. They were each going to create an unbreakable lock and the first to unlock the lock would forfeit their company’s clients to the other.

They would space out a week for this to take place. Of course, word had quickly gotten around that this huge bout was taking place. Drona had to take off from his school to honor a promise to the Kauravas even though he would have probably wanted to help the Pandavas. The Kauravas had donated money for a whole wing of the new Leaf school. Drona had granted them one boon for when they were in need. Karna was on the Kauravas’ team as well. He had become their only employee to come close to matching Arjuna in skill. Duryodhana was the leader of the Kauravas’ attack team. Arjuna headed the Pandavas. It wasn’t long before Duryodhana was completely shut out by the Pandavas. The competition waged on for days. Drona’s tactics had eventually failed.

On the last day, the competition was neck and neck. Arjuna and Karna were going head-to-head in the last steps to crack each other's lock. Eventually, Arjuna outwitted Karna. The Pandavas’ company flourished from all the new clients. Alienvault was brought to nothing more than a few tiny clients. After that stunt, most of Alienvault’s employees left. Drona thought back on his favoritism and decided to change his ways. He knew he needed to let go of his grudge against Drew and give all his students an equal playing field. As much as Drona was hurt that day, he grew from what he had learned.

Author's Note:

I wanted to do the modern take on the training of the Princes and the initial agreement to take down Drupada. I needed to create the tension between the two families. I wanted to introduce Karna too to add some more characters.

Drona had the families of brothers capture Drupada. They were successful in capturing him. However, Drona spared his life and set him free. Drona still took half of his kingdom that he was promised. This caused Drupada to want to get revenge on Drona for humiliating him. Drupada wanted to conceive a son to kill Drona.

Lastly, I wanted to show the great war briefly. I couldn’t go into much detail yet I was able to go over the main conflicts and side choosing. I brought in Krishna who was an advisor to both of the companies. In the epics, he is a peacekeeper between the two of them. In my story, he got them to agree to a fair battle instead of doing something illegal. No one died in my battle. They were only booted from the competition. I declared the victor as well.

Bibliography:

The Contest. Mahabharata, Epic of the Bharatas, by Romesh C. Dutt (1898).
Drona trains the Princes. Indian Myth and Legend by Donald A. Mackenzie (1913).