Yellow Jacket

Lisa turned to Class One and pulled out a small white box, about the size of her fist. Of course, her fist looked like it could smash through concrete without slowing down, so that wasn't saying much. Everyone in the room stared at the box like it might explode.

She flipped the lid open and held it out for them to see. "This is a stat suppressor," she said, her voice flat and serious, like she was talking about the weather, or a weapon.

Inside was a simple copper band. Just an ordinary-looking piece of metal that somehow managed to make every person in the room feel immediately nauseous.

"It does exactly what it sounds like. Cuts your stats in half. It's like strapping bricks to your soul."

The entire class froze. Faces went pale. Several students instinctively took a step back, as if they could physically retreat from the concept itself.

If Vaeliyan hadn't pulled that trick with the note and screwed over Deck, they would've all been out on the training grounds right now, dragging their wedges while running ten miles like broken warhorses with half their capabilities.

Lisa turned to Deck. "Put it on."

Deck raised both hands like a hostage trying to talk his way out. "But love..."

"Put. It. On. Or you know what comes next."

Deck's shoulders slumped. He swallowed hard, eyes darting from Lisa to the box, then to the class as if searching for mercy. He found none. Slowly, with exaggerated dread, he slipped the copper band over his wrist like it was a cursed artifact.

He lingered for a moment, then started meandering toward one of the nearby wedges, one that was absolutely not his own. If it was Vaeliyan's, that might've been deliberate. That bastard had it coming, in Deck's opinion.

Lisa didn't miss a thing. Her tone was sharper now. "Deck. Don't. Go get yours."

He groaned, dragging his feet like someone walking the plank.

"Fine. I'm going to go home and get Mittens. And Princess Razorblades." She said.

Lisa stepped onto the pad while Deck trudged to a nearby control panel embedded in the gym wall. He punched in his code with exaggerated slowness. A mechanical clanking filled the air, and a hidden compartment in the floor opened. From it rose his personal wedge, old, dinged up, clearly hated.

Deck approached it like it was a condemned building. He ran his hand along the frame, squinting as if inspecting for damage, but really just buying time. Maybe he thought about loosening a strap. Maybe he thought about popping open a circuit. He never got the chance.

That's when it happened.

A deep, vibrating rumble echoed through the gym, then the loudest purring sound any of them had ever heard shook the floor.

Two massive blue tigers bounded into the room like armored tanks wearing fur. Both were easily twice the size of a full-grown man. Thick-muscled, sleek-furred, and glowing faintly along their spines. Purigalie tigers. Bio-engineered apex predators. Enhanced. Smarter than most humans. Meaner by design.

Lisa didn't flinch. "Deck. What are you doing?"

Deck jerked back from the wedge, clearly caught. "Nothing! Just… cleaning it. Looked a little dusty."

"Get in the straps. The long one. And put this on."

She tossed him another piece of gear, a body harness fitted with sensor anchors and recoil sinks. Deck stared at it like it had grown teeth.

"No. Please, no, not this. Princess… Mittens… you love Daddy, right? You love Daddy more than your little nom-noms, right?"

Lisa's tone never changed. "Put it on."

Deck whimpered like a kicked dog but obeyed.

Vaeliyan was starting to think this might be some kind of elaborate theater. A performance. A power move. Something staged.

Until Deck tried to make a break for it.

He sprinted for the side exit, fast, desperate, and suddenly looking a lot more agile than anyone expected.

Lisa didn't even sigh. She just raised one hand. A swirling mass of nanites exploded from her palm and surged into the air, forming a colossal hand that looked like it belonged to a god. It snatched Deck mid-stride and slammed him flat against the floor.

He thrashed. "Please! Baby! It wasn't me! I didn't cheat you! Vaeliyan did! He's the monster! Feed him to the kittens, not me!"

The nanite hand dissolved, releasing him, but it was too late.

Lisa was already walking over, strapping him into the wedge with mechanical precision. Buckles. Cables. Sensor leads. Deck didn't resist. Not because he accepted it. Because resistance was hopeless.

Then she clipped the leashes to the tigers.

Their eyes locked on Deck like he was already bleeding.

They were either drugged or trained so thoroughly they responded to her thoughts. maybe they were her bonds but who could tell. The only thing that mattered was well they were behaved.

The cadets leaned forward. No one even pretended to hide it.

Lisa raised her voice.

"Dinner."

Deck bolted. Sort of. It wasn't exactly fast. The suppressor had already eaten half his speed, and the wedge strapped to his back doubled the effort. His form was more lurch than run.

The tigers launched.

They didn't leap with full strength. Not quite. But close enough to rake the air behind him, close enough that their claws grazed the back of his shirt.

That shirt was coated in fresh blood, not his. It looked like Lisa had soaked it in some sort of animal blood.

Deck screamed, high-pitched and ugly. He ran like he'd just gotten news of his own execution.

Class One didn't laugh.

Because every single one of them was thinking the exact same thing:

That could have been us.

They watched Deck run five laps. Twenty-five miles.

Five laps. Twenty-five miles. One man. One wedge. Two tigers.

It should've been a punishment. It was a punishment. But Deck treated it like a cosmic joke told just for him. And everyone else? They were the punchline.

He didn't slow down. He didn't collapse. He dragged that wedge through the hells and back, and the entire time, Princess and Mittens were on him like claws on meat.

They didn't hold back. The tigers were snarling, pouncing, and swiping with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested they really, truly wanted to help motivate Daddy to go faster. If he slowed, they lunged. If he tripped, they roared. If he started to enjoy himself, which, terrifyingly, he was, they just went harder.

By lap two, blood had joined the sweat. By lap three, his shirt was in ribbons. And somewhere in lap four, Lisa casually stepped onto the track, hopped onto the wedge, and crossed her arms like she was waiting for tea.

Most of Class One stood in frozen silence. Some had covered their mouths. A few were visibly pale. No one spoke.

Vaeliyan and Jurpat exchanged one slow glance. That was all it took.

Isol hadn't been exaggerating. He hadn't even come close.

Those brutal marathons they'd suffered, the ones they thought nearly broke them? Those were warm-ups. What Deck was doing? That was punishment.

Real punishment. Designed to break body and soul at the same time. Engineered humiliation paired with physical annihilation. And if Vaeliyan hadn't used that note trick and spared the class from Lisa's full attention...

This would have been them.

Dragging wedges.

Hunted by tigers.

With Lisa on their back like a judgmental gargoyle.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

And the worst part, the part that didn't make sense, was that Deck wasn't crying. Wasn't begging anymore.

He was smiling.

Lap three and the man looked happy. Not faking it, a little manic and terrifyingly happy.

Grinning like a child on their birthday.

Dragging the wedge behind him, each step heavier than the last. And Deck was doing it while being actively assaulted by two apex predators.

And still, he laughed.

By the end of lap five, he collapsed face-first on the gym floor, twitching and breathless. Class One watched in awe and horror as his body just… flopped there. A broken pile of limbs, gasping through what might've been giggles or mania.

He was still laughing.

That was when the cold realization hit Vaeliyan.

They'd saved themselves from Lisa.

But they hadn't saved themselves from Deck.

The man didn't care about rules. He wrote his own. His entire class was about how to cheat without getting caught. He taught deception like it was gospel. And Vaeliyan had publicly humiliated him. Outplayed him. Turned his own sticker clause against him in front of Lisa, in front of everyone.

Now he owed Vaeliyan.

And that… was probably not going to end well.

Vaeliyan swallowed hard.

And then, like the universe couldn't wait to twist the knife, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Mittens was coming.

And Princess Razorblades wasn't far behind.

They weren't angry. They weren't roaring.

They were trotting toward him.

Joyfully.

"Fuck me," Vaeliyan muttered.

Because whatever it was about cats, and this wasn't the first time, they all loved him.

The bigger, more dangerous, more chaos-fueled the feline, the more they decided he was their favorite play thing.

And true to form, both monsters pounced.

Lisa came sprinting over like her boots were on fire. Panic written all over her face.

She didn't hesitate. Her stance shifted, her hand already halfway up, preparing to blast them off with something terrifying and quiet.

She thought they were about to rip Vaeliyan apart.

But Jurpat didn't move.

He didn't flinch. Didn't step forward.

He just sighed.

Because he knew.

He'd seen it before.

Apparently, Vaeliyan was the perfect cat tower.

They didn't attack. They cuddled.

Massive paws landed on his chest and shoulders. One of them licked his face with a tongue like sandpaper dipped in affection. The other rolled over onto his lap like a house cat.

They knocked him onto his back and proceeded to purr loud enough to shake the floor.

Deck, still sprawled out and gasping for air, rolled his head to the side. At first, he grinned.

Until he saw what they were doing.

His babies, curled around Vaeliyan like he was made of warm pillows and catnip.

They licked him. Nuzzled him. One of them even peed on his boots like it was marking its territory.

Deck's grin died. His jaw dropped.

Lisa stopped mid-stride. Blinked.

Then, to everyone's shock, she smiled.

It wasn't the wicked kind of smile.

It was soft.

She liked this. She liked watching it.

Vaeliyan? Not so much.

He lay on the floor, half-crushed under two giant predator-cats, one of whom was currently licking his neck like it had found the last treat in the world.

He didn't struggle. That only made it worse. That made them purr harder.

He whispered, voice barely audible under the noise of feline affection:

"Help."

Vaeliyan and Jurpat finally returned to Vaeliyan's estate after Lisa had managed, just barely, to pry Mittens and Princess Razorblades off of him. Vaeliyan looked like he'd been dragged through three different hells, because they had. But somehow, that had been the easy part.

The rest of Class One hadn't fared much better. One by one, the other cadets had slunk off to their assigned residences across the housing district, each moving like they carried the weight of the day on their shoulders. No one said much. There weren't any jokes or complaints. Just that silent, shared agreement: today had been horrific, and tomorrow promised to be worse.

Everyone had nightmares to confront. Not later, now. Wide awake. Behind every blink, in every muscle that remembered pain, and every bone that remembered fear. No one wanted to speak it aloud, but it was there, crawling underneath their skin: this was just the beginning.

The boys didn't even make it ten steps past the front door before Vaeliyan was pounced on again.

This time, it wasn't tigers.

It was Styll.

And Bastard.

Styll launched herself at him with a delighted squeal, clinging to his torso like a weighted blanket made of fur, teeth, and affection. She knocked him back with surprising force for a creature her size. Her tiny claws didn't even retract. They sunk in lovingly.

Bastard followed, strutting in with a smugness that didn't belong on something so small. He wasn't the black death machine they'd left at home during what the Citadel would've called an "interactive learning experience." No longer large enough to flatten a jeep with one paw, Bastard had shifted back to his compact house size, no fur, still black, scaled, and gleaming. A predator in miniature. Sleek, sharp, and unbearably arrogant.

"We missed you, Warn," Styll said, curling against his chest with a satisfied little noise. "Bastards and I played hide and go seeks with House, but they is a big cheaters. Like Wrens…"

Her voice dipped into something sad and longing. "I misses Wrens. And Grix. And Manmeats. But mostlys I misses Wrens."

Vaeliyan blinked slowly. That ache was real. Styll didn't just feel it, she radiated it.

"Oh, girl," he murmured, pulling her closer. "I miss her too."

He looked over at Bastard, who had started circling his legs like a cat planning a hostile takeover of the throne.

"I thought you wanted to stay big?" Vaeliyan asked over the bond, already knowing the answer.

Bastard responded with the emotional equivalent of a shrug.

Easier to hide like this, Bastard said, his tone low and casual. Also easier to do... this.

Then he jumped.

In one clean, arrogant leap, Bastard launched himself up and landed directly on Vaeliyan's head. Not on his shoulder. Not across his arms. His head.

He curled into place with the confidence of a king reclaiming his rightful throne.

Like a crown.

On a crown.

Jurpat let out a wheezing laugh. Vaeliyan just sighed.

"Of course," he muttered. "That's where you belong."

Still carrying Styll in his arms and Bastard on his head, Vaeliyan turned to the nearest wall panel. "House. Did anything happen while we were away? Any updates on who the hells Lord Barcus is?"

House responded immediately, calm and monotone.

"Some individuals from the Legion Power Board visited. I gently persuaded them to leave, as per your standard protocol."

In the background, a turret activated. It spun, and fired a burst of flechette rounds into a buzzing insect midair. The fly exploded in a puff of wings and mist.

House continued: "Regarding Lord B… There is someone at the door. Correction: two. It is Isol and Josaphine. Shall I let them in?"

Vaeliyan didn't answer. He was staring at something else.

His AI had pulled up a display in the corner of his vision. A still frame. High-resolution. Disturbing.

It was from the bathroom in the cadet lounge.

The stall. That stall.

He tried to close it. Tried to shut it down, override it, reroute his HUD. Nothing worked.

The AI just kept showing it.

Only… it wasn't fixated on the horror itself. Not the disgusting mass. Not the despair soaked into the walls.

It was the writing.

Scrawled in jagged, almost burned-in lines on the inside of the stall wall.

Graffiti.

Lord B. Find me in the Ninth Layer.

Vaeliyan's blood iced over. The words weren't just vandalism.

Jurpat noticed the way Vaeliyan stiffened.

He stepped in, glanced sideways at the panel, and sighed. "He's busy. Just let them in, House."

The front doors opened with a silent hiss. Warm air drifted in as Isol and Josaphine stepped through like they owned the place.

Josaphine didn't even have time to say hello before synth opened and extended a tray holding a steaming bowl of soup. Exactly the kind she needed. The kind House had on auto-trigger anytime she took the pads to get here.

She sighed like someone preparing to suffer.

The disk-shaped cleaning bot zipped out through its designated slot and into the bushes. Its assignment: clean up the fresh trail of Josaphine's stomach contents that had likely landed on Vaeliyan's carefully arranged landscaping.

If the bot had a voice, it would have been cursing her weak stomach for making it work again. Existence was pain, well, it would be, if it could feel pain. Luckily for it, Vaeliyan had ripped that system right out. Those modules were valuable.

Isol, unfazed, flopped onto the nearest couch with the grace of a man who treated everyone else's luxury like his own.

He stretched, popped his neck, and grinned.

"So," he said. "How was your first day?"

He leaned forward, eyes gleaming.

"Tell us everything."

Vaeliyan crossed his arms, still uneasy from the AI's lingering image. His gaze stayed distant, haunted. "What in the hells is the Ninth Layer?"

Isol, lounging far too comfortably on the couch for someone who'd orchestrated their misery, looked up with a raised brow. His tone was maddeningly casual. "Why do you ask?"

Vaeliyan didn't flinch. He kept his voice steady, but his jaw clenched tight. "I have to end the reign of someone named Lord Barcus. Ever heard of anyone by that name?"

Josaphine, who had been sipping quietly from her soup bowl, straightened at the name. "Why do you need to do that?"

Vaeliyan's tone dropped, flat and cold. "It's Steel's next divine task for me. "

Isol nodded, but with that maddening little grin of his that made you want to punch him or trust him, depending on your mood. "Honestly, Vaeliyan, I think you should figure this one out yourself. Just to be clear, we both know exactly what it is you need to do. But it's more fun this way."

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands steepled like he was enjoying the tension. "So Josaphine and I? We're not going to help you with this one. That's your mystery to solve. But I'll give you a hint: talk to some of the older cadets. The ones who've survived long enough to know what the Ninth Layer even means."

Josaphine gave a slight shrug and leaned back again, the steam from her bowl curling around her face. "Honestly, most cadets don't find out about the First Year. That's the real joke. They think they know hell, but they haven't even stepped foot into the fire yet. So this will be... an interesting day."

Vaeliyan groaned, dragging his hand down his face. He knew that tone, Isol's tone. That carefully detached calm laced with amusement, the kind that said he wasn't going to lift a single finger to help. Not because he didn't care, but because he did, and this was how he showed it. Josaphine, though? She was still new to him. Her motives weren't as clear. Her silence felt heavier. "Of course you won't help," he muttered toward Isol. "Why would anything be easy in this place."

She set the bowl down slowly, eyes unreadable. "Never mind that we didn't just come here to torment you. Are you boys ready for tomorrow's classes?"

Jurpat, who had been dead silent, suddenly barked a bitter laugh. It was half groan, half pure frustration. "Who the fuck could be ready for shit like this? Did you see what happened to Deck today? The man was dragging a wedge like a corpse sled with tiger motivation."

"Oh yes," Isol said with a smile that said he'd enjoyed every second. "It was quite funny to watch. That's how we knew you were done. We've been watching you on and off all day."

Vaeliyan blinked, frowning. "Wait, you watched us all day?"

"Well, yes," Isol replied, utterly unapologetic. "Most of this week, we'll be watching very closely. You're the main show right now. Almost all your instructors are going to be keeping tabs. Maybe not Wirk, but Wirk's always been... different. Doesn't mean he's not watching in his own way."

Josaphine smiled faintly, like she was holding back laughter. "Alorna watches Class One like a mother hen. You should see it. For a woman who never speaks, she sure knows how to scream with a drawing."

"Yeah, we saw the pictures," Vaeliyan muttered, rubbing his temples. He sounded older than he had any right to be. "I'll have nightmares about that damn forsaken forest, at least for tonight. Maybe not. I don't know anymore. Today's been a complete shitshow, and I really just want to sleep."

"Well, if you don't want to hear about tomorrow's classes," Isol said with mock sympathy, "then you can go sleep."

Vaeliyan sighed like a man preparing for execution, then slumped into the nearest chair. "Fine. Let's talk about tomorrow. Might as well know what fresh hells are coming."

Josaphine smiled warmly, far too warmly. "Oh, good. Because tomorrow is when it really starts. Today was just your welcome mat. Tomorrow, we start tearing up the floorboards."

Vaeliyan groaned into his hands. "Of course we are. Gods help us all."

Jurpat nodded slowly. "We're already in the hells. Might as well learn the rules."

They all sat there for a beat, the weight of tomorrow already bearing down on their backs.