Yellow Jacket

The group rose together, a quiet ripple of motion spreading down the long table. There was no rush, no urgency, just the unspoken signal that the break was over and the next battle would soon begin. Chairs scraped back, water bottles were capped, and postures reset from rest to readiness.

Vaeliyan gave Merigold a nod. "Thanks again. We'll see you at your place later."

"Looking forward to it," she replied, already sliding back into that unreadable mask of calm the older cadets wore like armor.

Kuri gave a mock salute, grinning. "Try not to die before then. The class is a real treat."

"Yeah," Roan muttered. "Can't wait."

The trio, Vaeliyan, Roan, and Rokhan, peeled away from the table. Behind them, Merigold's class settled back into their rhythm.

Other cadets joined the flow as they moved toward the transport pads. The lounge level buzzed with low conversation and shifting bodies. Some glanced at Vaeliyan's group as they passed, others avoided looking at them at all.

At the pad, the trio paused. Roan exhaled. "Do we even know what class this is?"

"Nope," Rokhan said. "But I'm guessing we'll figure it out the hard way."

Vaeliyan cracked his neck once. "Wouldn't be the Citadel otherwise."

They stepped onto the pad together. No fanfare. No clue what waited. Just a shared glance between them, equal parts resolve, resignation, and the promise to ruin someone's day if it came to that.

The light flared, and they vanished together.

The light cleared, and the trio stepped out onto cracked concrete, the scent of scorched metal and rust slamming into their senses like a wall. It hit sharp and fast, like they'd stepped out of the Citadel and straight into the aftermath of a war no one had won.

They had arrived before the rest of Class One.

What they saw, however, wasn't a classroom. It was a junkyard. A massive one. Not some curated training ground or simulation zone with safety features and helpful guidelines. This was raw, sprawling, ugly. Beautiful.

Piles of twisted scrap metal towered around them, stacked like broken monuments to forgotten wars. Bent frames, shattered vehicle husks, crumpled drone wings, scorched battery cores, coils of burnt wiring, engine blocks the size of coffins, all of it sprawled across a wasteland of industrial decay. The ground was uneven, patchworked with blackened scorch marks and grease-streaked gravel. A faint, bitter-smelling fog clung low to the rubble, stirred now and then by some mechanical groan or electrical whine buried deep beneath the surface. Smoke rose lazily from one corner, though no fire was visible. Somewhere in the distance, something buzzed... or maybe growled.

Rokhan turned in place, eyes wide. "Is this... the class?"

Roan stepped forward, nudging a half-buried skull-shaped drone with his foot. "I think so. I mean, it wouldn't be the strangest thing we've had as a classroom so far."

Vaeliyan didn't say anything at first. He just stared at the nearest pile, an entire mech arm wedged through the carcass of a scorched cargo crawler, then scanned the terrain with the kind of quiet reverence most people reserved for sacred places.

If only he could take this with him.

This wasn't junk. This was a scavver's wet dream. And he knew, he felt it in his chest like a second heartbeat, that the instructor who put this together must've been a scavver too. Even if it looked disorganized to the untrained eye, to Vaeliyan it was exacting. Every pile, every arrangement of steel and ruin, had meaning. Nothing was out of place. Everything was useful. Everything had a purpose.

His blood started pumping. Not in fear or adrenaline but something deeper: joy. The thrill of recognition. Of alignment.

This school, this Citadel, Isol had been right. It was made for him. Not just in philosophy or violence or cruelty. But in detail. In design. In the way it whispered to the twisted parts of him that liked to pull things apart and put them back together just to see how they worked.

He hadn't felt this at home anywhere else. Not since Mara. Not since walking those broken alleys and makeshift markets. Not since scavenging with his own two hands for parts that didn't exist anymore.

Well... maybe once more.

When he first stepped into his manor and the house AI ran its first scan, then dropped the temperature, darkened the light, and recreated his perfect storm climate. Heavy wind, low light, the sound of distant thunder vibrating through the floorboards like a lullaby.

He still smiled at that memory. A place that understood him without being told.

The sky above was open steel-gray, artificial, a ceiling camouflaged well enough that for a second, it looked real. This wasn't outside. This was still the Citadel. Somewhere inside this impossible building, someone had carved out a whole slice of apocalyptic ruin just to see what the cadets would do with it.

Whatever this was, someone had built it on purpose. Not for aesthetics. Not for spectacle. But for testing. For Training and understanding.

Vaeliyan exhaled slowly. "Guess we'll find out what kind of class dumps you in a war graveyard with no instructions. Hopefully the instructor's nothing like Alorna."

Roan gave a low whistle. "Yeah, no more silent sadism, thanks. I'd like to know what the hells I'm supposed to be failing at."

Rokhan squinted toward a distant ridge of scrap. "I don't see any live drones. You think we're being watched?"

Vaeliyan didn't answer. He was already walking.

They began to move forward, carefully picking their way through the wreckage. Boots clanked against steel and crunched gravel. The silence wrapped around them, thick and waiting. They knew they were early. They knew the rest of Class One would be arriving soon. But for now, it was just them. Alone in the scrapyard. Alone in whatever test was about to begin.

And deep down, Vaeliyan hoped this was exactly what it looked like.

A proving ground for people like him.

The rest of Class One arrived not long after, their footfalls echoing off the hardened dirt and gravel with the weight of exhaustion and curiosity. Jurpat and Varnai were the first to appear, and for once, she actually looked better. The morning had hit her hard, Josaphine's class had nearly broken her. She had thrown up multiple times, gone pale, then passed out mid-lecture. But now, something had changed. Real food, maybe a power nap, and Jurpat's quiet but relentless care had pulled her back from the brink. She was laughing softly at something he said as they rounded a corner, and then froze.

They both saw the trash mountain in front of them.

Their expressions shifted, not to fear or disgust, but to something closer to awe. Or maybe recognition.

They moved toward the trio, stepping through the wreckage like they belonged there too. Jurpat squinted up at the nearest heap of bent plating and tangled wire, then glanced sideways at Vaeliyan.

"This feels like home," he said, tone dry but sincere. "Well... what the ruins looked like, at least."

Vaeliyan nodded, slow but firm. "Yeah."

Roan arched a brow, arms crossed loosely. "Jurpat, what class is this?"

He didn't expect an answer from Varnai. Not that she wasn't capable, she was, but when it came to schedules, structure, and anything that involved actual forethought, Jurpat, Xera, or Elian were the ones who always had it covered. Roan's tone was half-serious, half rhetorical.

"Bricks, Pipes, Anything Sharp," Jurpat replied, like he'd been waiting to say it.

Vaeliyan's face shifted into a rare full smile. Not smug. Just honest, sharp-edged joy. "Makes perfect sense now. Look at this place, it looks like you might get tetanus just from looking too hard."

Jurpat snorted. "You love it, don't you, Vael?"

Vaeliyan nodded again, more energy in the gesture than most had ever seen from him. He wasn't putting on a show. He meant it. This was his element.

By then, the rest of Class One had trickled in, their voices fading to murmurs as they took in the terrain. A loose semicircle began to form near the trio, cadets giving the trash heaps a cautious berth. Most looked uncertain. A few looked intrigued. One or two, like Wesley, looked deeply concerned.

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Jurpat's voice broke through the quiet. "This is one of the hardest classes for anyone to get used to. At least that is what Isol said."

Vaeliyan turned to face the group, voice steady and loud enough to carry. "The Fist teaches you that you are the weapon. Lances teach you about the core weapon of the Legion. But Bricks, Pipes, Anything Sharp?"

He gestured to the sprawling mess around them. "This teaches you that everything is a weapon... if you know how to use it."

A slow clap echoed from behind a nearby trash pile, the sound distorted slightly by the metal. Then a voice followed, rough, amused, gravel-thick and approving.

"Very, very good, kid."

A man emerged from behind the scrap like a ghost pulled from rust. He looked like a junkyard dog, scrappy, dangerous, and somehow still kind of adorable in the way only a half-mad war vet could be. His duster coat was long, frayed, and patched in a hundred different places. None of the patches matched. Some were cloth, some were metal, one looked like it might've been a melted nameplate from a forgotten drone. Armor clung to him in jagged layers, shoulder guards of scorched plating, a chest piece that looked like it was fused from two engine cowls, and a belt bristling with tools that had no right to be weapons... but absolutely were.

A battered cowboy hat sat low on his head, the brim slightly tilted and missing a jagged chunk near the front. Dust caked his boots. His gloves were fingerless, revealing scarred knuckles that looked like they'd broken more faces than rules.

"I'm Jim," he said with a half-smile. "No instructor bullshit. I'm just Jim."

He pointed at Vaeliyan with a finger that may or may not have been cybernetic. "You, kid. What you said? That's exactly what this class is about."

Jim stepped forward and planted his feet like someone who knew how to survive being hit by a truck. "This class doesn't care if you've got the best lance technique in the Citadel. It doesn't care if you know how to fight barehanded like a god. What it cares about is whether or not you can pick up a busted pipe, a chair leg, or a live wire... and kill with it. Whether or not you see the battlefield for what it is: an armory of opportunity."

He glanced at the assembled cadets, his grin widening. "You're all going to learn that anything you can hold, and even some things you can't, are deadly weapons if you use them right. Welcome to class."

Jim clapped his hands once, loudly. The sharp sound cracked through the junkyard like a gunshot, bouncing off twisted metal and rusted car husks. Every cadet's head turned, and silence fell over the group with almost reverent weight.

"Alright," Jim said, his voice casual but undeniably commanding. "First rule, grab anything nearby. Whatever's closest. But use your damned brain before you reach. Sure, if you've got the time, a piece of pipe might seem perfect. Solid, heavy, reliable. Something you can swing with confidence. Something that looks like a weapon, feels like one too."

He paused, raising his eyebrows and letting the moment stretch. "But say you're on a stealth run. Moving quiet. Breathing through your teeth. That pipe? Not so great anymore. Pipes echo. They clang. One slip, one tap, and suddenly your skull's full of bullets. You want silent? Take the shard of glass. No sound. Razor edge. Surgical. Doesn't matter if it breaks in your hand if the other guy's already bleeding out."

Jim strolled forward, kicking a dented oil drum aside like it was nothing. It rolled and thunked into a pile of jagged debris.

"Wanna make a mess? Make it memorable?" He gestured toward a nearby plank riddled with bent nails, then pointed at a shattered liquor bottle jutting from a heap of cables. "Grab the board with all the bent nails. Grab the broken bottle. Anything jagged. Anything that rips, tears, gouges. The kind of thing that leaves a trail. You don't always need to kill fast. Sometimes slow is the point."

He moved again, stopping beside a warped piece of rebar that looked half-fused to the ground. He nudged it with the toe of his boot, then turned toward a scorched, half-melted spot welder leaning against a pile of slagged wiring.

"Need to cause horror?" he asked, voice almost wistful. "Pick the rotating saw. Pick the spot welder. You want to make someone scream until their voice breaks? That's how. You don't just hurt them. You teach the ones watching what fear really looks like. Every item in this yard is a weapon. And every weapon has a perfect use. Even the shit you think is useless."

Jim turned to face the cadets again, hands resting on his hips, one gloved thumb hooked through a belt loop. His grin was half war-vet nostalgia, half unrepentant madness.

"I once saw a guy kill a man with a tin teacup," he said. "Not a sharp one. Not reinforced. Just a plain-ass, dented tin cup. Rammed it in, opening first, right into the guy's chest. Hit hard. Drove it in deep. And then he twisted. Like he was unscrewing a damn jar lid. Caved the ribs inward. Perforated the heart."

He chuckled. "It was glorious. And fucked up. Like, really fucked up. Even I had to step back and say, 'Damn.'"

He shrugged with zero remorse, zero shame, and zero intention of pretending otherwise. "But it worked. That's the rule. If it works, it works. Style is optional. Efficiency is survival. And here? You're not graded on finesse. You're graded on whether or not they stay down."

His eyes swept the class, sharp and gleaming beneath the shadow of his ruined cowboy hat.

"Now look around. Pick your weapon. Don't wait for an invitation. The battlefield won't give you time to choose. So you better start learning how to make the wrong object do the right kind of damage."

The sim was normal, for everyone else.

Most cadets failed. Not because they were weak, but because they weren't expecting to come up against a fully armed, fully prepared opponent while using an improvised weapon for the first time. The simulation dropped each of them into a warehouse with one objective: kill the attacker. But the enemy wasn't some random training bot. It was fast, brutal, and used its weapon loadout with precision. It moved like it had memories. Like it had trained for this. Like it wanted blood, and had come to collect.

Surprise was the first killer. Hesitation was the second. Most of class one died within the first thirty seconds. A few made it to a minute. Only one turned it into a performance.

Vaeliyan wasn't aiming to end it quickly. He wanted to put on a show.

When his sim loaded, he didn't even move. He sat down in a folding chair positioned right at the spawn point. Legs crossed. Elbows on knees. Rubber duck in hand. A cracked yellow toy, half-melted, grinning up at him with soulless eyes.

And he squeaked it.

Once. Twice. Again. And again.

The sound echoed through the simulated warehouse like a joke waiting for its punchline. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. The repetition was maddening. Intentional.

He just sat there, waiting. Rhythm steady. Shoulders loose. Expression unreadable. No urgency. No tension. Just the eerie calm of someone who had already decided what would happen, and wasn't worried in the slightest about how.

Eventually, the assailant entered, fully armed, armored, scanning for threats. This wasn't some training dummy. It looked like a war veteran loaded with live steel. Lance at the ready. Movement fluid. Purpose absolute.

Then it saw Vaeliyan.

Sitting. Squeaking. Smiling faintly.

The assailant faltered. Confusion flickered across its rendered face, a half-beat too slow to register as strategic. That half-beat was all Vaeliyan needed.

He launched forward in one violent burst of motion. The chair clattered behind him. He covered the distance between them in a blink. One hand clamped the enemy's jaw open. The other rammed the rubber duck down their throat.

There was a sound. Maybe a scream. Maybe shock.

But mostly... it was the soft, obscene squeak of a rubber duck sliding where no rubber duck should ever go.

The assailant thrashed. Choked. Clawed at their own throat as they tried to force it back out. Their simulated lips turned blue. Their eyes bulged. Knees hit the floor. Hands shook.

Squeak.

Vaeliyan just stood there. Watching. Like it was art. Like it was choreography. Like the bloodless violence was a song only he could hear.

Squeak.

They collapsed. Body twitching, then still.

Outside the sim, the rest of Class One stared at the monitor in stunned silence.

Rokhan was the first to react. He howled with laughter. Roan followed, nearly doubling over, trying to speak between wheezing fits of disbelief. Sylen, let out a short bark of laughter and shook her head.

Jurpat tilted his head and nodded like he was analyzing frame data. Xera muttered, "Holy shit," but didn't look away. Ramis was speechless, mouth open slightly, like he couldn't decide whether to be impressed or concerned.

Varnai stood with her arms crossed, expression blank, but there was a flicker of something else in her eyes, respect, maybe. Or recognition. Lessa blinked several times, eyes wide. "I am never trusting anything that squeaks again," she whispered.

Chime, normally calm, just whispered, "That was... awful. Beautiful. But awful."

Ramis had one eyebrow raised and a look on his face like he was recalculating every strategic assumption he had about Vaeliyan. Torman started slow clapping, then stopped, awkwardly, when no one joined in. Wesley looked pale, one hand over his mouth like he might throw up. Fenn let out a low whistle. "That duck has more confirmed kills than Ramis now. That's just not right."

Leron and Vexa, perfectly synchronized even now, were wide-eyed. Unblinking. Silent. For once, they had nothing to say.

Even Elian glanced at Vaeliyan with a new kind of calculation in his stare.

Jim didn't say anything for a long time. He looked like someone had rewired his understanding of the universe with a bath toy.

Then he exhaled, slow.

"That... might be the deadliest use of a rubber duck anyone's ever found."

He scratched the back of his neck, still staring at the screen.

"Kid's not right," he added.

"But I love it."

When Vaeliyan's sim ended, the ducky was in Jim's hand.

He turned it over once, gave it a squeeze, squeak, then looked up at Vaeliyan like he was seeing the kid for the first time. His eyes didn't blink. Didn't stray. Just locked on, sharp and deliberate.

"Kid," Jim said slowly, with a kind of measured awe, "do you want to teach this class? Because that was a masterpiece of improvised violence. I've seen some wild shit in my time, but that? That was a gods damned painting made out of blood and absurdity."

His expression shifted, narrowing with a veteran's edge. "You've done this shit in the real world, haven't you?"

Vaeliyan didn't hesitate. He nodded once. Clean. Honest.

"I'm not a greener like most, if not all, of you folk," Jim said, voice steady but with that dry rasp of someone who'd swallowed too much dust and seen too much blood. "I got in off a bounty quest. Scavver in the fringes. System put a contract on an Aberration. I found it. Fought it. Killed it. Dragged what was left to the gates of the Green and demanded entry. Earned my way in.. And what you just did? That's the kind of shit that would've gotten you here too, if you'd been born in the Yellow instead being a Greener."

Vaeliyan stepped forward, shadows playing off his face under the simulation lights. "Those moves? That wasn't flair. That wasn't style. That was survival instinct sharpened to a blade. That's what it takes to live in the ruins. That's what it takes when the only rules are the ones you make up on the spot and bleed for after."

Jim's expression didn't shift much, but something passed between them. A current. A recognition that didn't need words. The way Jim hadn't flinched, hadn't looked away, hadn't doubted the violence. He'd understood it.

And Vaeliyan saw it now, clear as anything.

Jim wasn't just a junkyard warhound or some patched-up instructor hiding behind bravado. He was a former Yellow.

A survivor. A killer. A scavver who made it through the dark and came out dragging something dead behind him.

Just like him.

Only... not quite.

Because Jim had survived the Yellow.

Vaeliyan had taken the Green and built Mara on top of its dying corpse.

And in that second, the shape of it all locked into place. Jim was exactly what Warren used to want to become, proof you could live through the ruin and come out something worthy. But Vaeliyan? He hadn't just killed his way in to the heart of the green.

He was the Aberrant that tore a hole into the System and planned to take it all with him.

He didn't smile. He just nodded again.

Respect exchanged. Nothing more. Nothing less.