Yellow Jacket

The Legion vault was too clean.

Walls of stainless steel curved with surgical precision, polished to a mirrored shine so immaculate they looked more like concept renderings than anything touched by real hands. The lights were flat white, clinical, bright, and directionless, making it impossible to tell where the source came from. There were no shadows, no seams, no warmth. Just reflection and sterilized air that felt like it had never been breathed before.

In the center of the room sat a counter: metal, rectangular, seamless. It had no drawers, no terminals, not even a single fingerprint on its surface. On top of it rested one object.

A small silver bell.

It read: Ring for service.

Vaeliyan didn't move. Elian looked vaguely insulted, as if the bell itself had offended his rank.

Before either of them could touch it, a side panel in the wall slid open without ceremony. A man stepped out.

He was an older-looking man, probably the oldest face they'd seen in the Green Zone. His pale lab coat was stainless like the room, pressed to clinical exactness. His head was shaved down to stubble, and his face looked real. Not curated. Not sculpted for symmetry. Not tailored for corporate branding or Green Zone fashion. Just aged skin, faint discoloration, and the weight of a life lived without edits. The only others Vaeliyan had seen like that were Isol and Josaphine, who had recently shifted their faces back to something closer to truth.

His eyes flicked from Vaeliyan to Elian like he was checking grocery tags, evaluating condition, not identity.

He didn't bow. He didn't salute. He barely slowed his stride.

"You must be the first and second place of this year."

His voice was flat and clipped, the tone of a man who had spent too many years around systems, students, and silence. Someone who had long since stopped being surprised by anything.

"Well. Here you are."

He tapped a recessed panel behind the counter and brought up two transparent displays, floating in front of the wall like surgical slates. One oriented toward Vaeliyan. The other toward Elian.

"Here's the list. Pick your skill. I don't have all day. I have actual work to do."

He exhaled, not annoyed, just exhausted.

"Honestly, none of you ever pick anything interesting."

He paused, turned back over his shoulder.

"First place goes first. You only get two. Make sure you're certain about what you pick. If you accidentally select a skill that makes you explode, congratulations: you now have a skill that makes you explode. We don't do refunds. Read carefully."

He pointed to the left wall.

"You can sit there."

A steel bench slid out from the floor. Angular. Flat. It looked like it had been designed by a war criminal who hated spines. Everything about it dared someone to try relaxing.

"Second place, you'll be locked out of any skill fragment we only have one copy of until first place finalizes his selection."

He turned back around, arms crossed loosely.

"So. Which one of you is first?"

Vaeliyan raised his hand.

The curator nodded, tone unchanging.

"Quiet and polite. I like that. You get the good bench."

The awful steel slab receded back into the floor like it had been ashamed to be seen. From another panel, a comfortable bench slid outward, padded, contoured, and shaped for actual rest. It even looked warm, somehow, without changing the sterile air.

"Well, I'll be heading back. I'll see you both in class in twenty-six hours, thirty-two minutes, and twelve seconds."

He turned to leave.

Vaeliyan raised a hand.

The curator stopped and looked back.

"What is it?"

"What passive skill fragments would you recommend?"

The man blinked once. Then smiled.

"That's actually interesting. Most of you little brats just take the list and try not to drool on the floor."

He stepped back behind the counter and tapped the panel again. This time, a different interface came up. The layout was simpler. More practical.

"I'll show you the ones I would pick. But fair warning: these are the most common fragments in the vault. They're still rare. Just not... flashy. Most cadets skip them without even looking."

He turned to Vaeliyan, one brow lifting.

"These aren't about looking powerful. These are about not dying when you're dropped from orbit."

Another tap.

"They won't make you pretty. But they'll make you hard. Hard as the backside cut of an elder mossback. I've seen these save more lives than any of the so-called exotic ones."

Elian raised a hand. The curator glanced at him and nodded.

"Would you perhaps be Dr. Wirk?"

"Why yes, I am, young man."

He didn't offer a handshake.

"I'm not going to ask your name, I'm terrible with names."

He smiled faintly, turning his attention back to the list.

"But I will remember your faces. As long as you still wear them."

There was no malice in the words. Just a quiet acknowledgement of how disposable identity had become in the Green. Of how little stayed real anymore.

"Good," Elian said, as they stepped out of the vault.

Vaeliyan nodded. They had both picked their new skills, guided not just by instinct but by the rare willingness of Dr. Wirk to help. The man had proven supremely knowledgeable, sharp, and blunt in equal measure. By the end of it, he'd even asked their names, something he claimed to rarely bother with. But he liked their attitudes and their sensibilities he said. He'd try to remember them. As long as they kept their faces.

They exited the vault's transfer pad to the cadet estate. The path forked toward a wide loop of luxury housing. Eight homes in total. Four residences for the first-place winners of each academic year theirs to keep. Four estates for the second-place cadets, top-tier in quality, but returned upon graduation.

The difference was subtle, but real. Elian's estate stood on the eastern arc. Sleek. Commanding. Everything about it felt expensive but quietly so. Glass that adjusted tint in real time. Seamless metal trim. Privacy fields with invisible gradient locks. It was Green Zone opulence boiled down to control, elegance, and engineered silence.

The front door slid open as they approached.

"New owner detected. Welcome. Calibrating interior climate to suit ideal atmospheric conditions."

They stepped inside.

The shift in atmosphere was immediate. The floor adjusted underfoot with silent compression feedback, adapting to their gait. Every surface glowed with quiet authority: warm, polished wood grains that caught the light like lacquered silk, walls of seamless marble veined with natural gold, and counters of deep black stone that absorbed reflections instead of casting them. The space exhaled wealth without speaking it aloud, a blend of organic luxury and tailored calm.

An aroma diffuser, hidden, of course, released the barest trace of neroli and white tea. The light was algorithmic: dynamic sun patterns traced across the ceiling in mimicry of a real sky, slowly inching toward a false sunset calibrated to Elian's circadian rhythm.

There was no living room. There was a personal retreat space: split-level, with an open-view mineral pool, its surface perfectly still. Sculpted lounge furniture hovered a finger-width above the ground, gravity-adjusted. The holosystem was woven into the architecture, commanded by tone, presence, or preference.

Even the food synthesizer, polished and recessed, gave off a quiet hum as it idled, still produced bug bars like every other cadet unit, but with even fancier garnishes.

The light filtered into perfect clarity, shifting just slightly, subtle gold warmth with a whisper of chill, like early spring. The air balanced on the edge of comfortable and fresh. Clean linen scent. A hint of citrus.

Vaeliyan took it in. Didn't comment. It was flawless, obviously.

Elian walked to a wall panel near the far side of the entryway. It opened without a sound, revealing a recessed housing. He removed this new AI core.

As soon as it left its dock, the house paused, lights holding steady.

"Ready," Elian said, pocketing the core.

Vaeliyan gave the estate one last look.

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"This place knows what we're doing?"

Elian shrugged. "It's reads moods."

They stepped back out into the corridor, one destination left: Vaeliyan's house, the estate reserved for the first-place winner of their year.

The path curved toward the first-year section of the estates, where four houses sat perched on wide, glowing grav-rings. Suspended in the air by stabilized anchor fields, each one floated several meters above its lot, sleek, balanced, and perfectly level, their platforms held aloft by luminous bands that shimmered with internal current. They hovered like ornaments in the sky, gently pulsing with silent energy that felt more like magic than machinery. All but one.

Vaeliyan's house had yet to take flight.

It still sat grounded within a large, gated plot at the far end of the row. Even from a distance, it was obvious this one was different. Not better by a margin, better by leagues. The estate sprawled within its own barrier wall, broken only by an ornate entry gate and the glowing transport pad stationed just outside. A soft hum radiated from its power ring, awaiting the next arrival. The sound itself was strangely pleasant, subtle yet harmonious, like the chime of wind through perfect glass, a sound that managed to feel both welcoming and composed. In a place where every detail had been tuned toward beauty, even the tone of arrival was part of the design. This whole place was ideal, not just built, but composed, like music in architectural form.

Lush, manicured grounds rolled out beyond the threshold. Ornamental trees twisted upward with painterly grace, their trunks a soft silver that glistened in the light. There were flowering hedges carved into winding labyrinths, some blooming with flowers no natural garden had ever borne. Bioluminescent vines arched overhead, their lights adjusting subtly with the time of day. Smooth stone paths traced the space like calligraphy, curling in deliberate spirals and elegant angles. The air shimmered slightly with embedded field systems, maintaining perfect temperature, filtering particulates, and modulating light angle with the time of day to replicate a perpetual golden hour.

The house itself looked like a garden dream given structure. Walls of translucent crystal shifted hue with the light, mimicking the tones of sunrise, dusk, or thunderclouds depending on who approached. Towering archways opened into wide courtyards with floating sculpture installations hovering above mirror-bright pools. Cascading water features flanked the entry, set into polished stone older than the Collapse, carved with forgotten languages whose only purpose now was elegance. Balconies rose like petals in bloom, open to the air, with green-laced railings that spiraled with living moss and heat-sensitive ivy that gently pulsed when passed.

Everything about the estate whispered prestige, but it didn't shout it. It was grace without effort, wealth without edge. If Elian's house was the lap of luxury by any normal standard, this was perfection made real. Not the kind defined by expense or excess, but something far more precise. Every detail here, every grain of wood, every angle of light, every carefully chosen plant, existed in exact harmony. Even the wind moved deliberately, drawn across the estate in calculated paths to create the faintest whisper of scent from one garden to another. It was curated without feeling artificial, as if someone had sculpted nature itself to serve beauty without compromise. The colors were deliberate, the shapes intentional, the atmosphere engineered to be not just pleasant, but ideal. Standing in its presence was like breathing in balance, as though the estate itself had been built from the blueprint of a dream that refused to fade. Nothing was left unfinished. Nothing overstated. It was the embodiment of luxury without arrogance, serenity without stillness, and the sort of environment that quietly informed its guests they were standing somewhere made for someone exceptional.

And he got to keep it.

The land itself curved gently toward the central estate, offering room enough for a gathering, a duel, or a small war. Every tree had been genetically modified to bloom eternally, their flowers shifting color in response to the owner's mood. The estates maintained their own perfect atmospheric bubbles: temperature, light, wind flow, even humidity, all tailored precisely to their resident's biometric ideal. The sky above the estate seemed slightly clearer than the rest of the campus, as if it, too, obeyed the house's rhythm. Every flower bloomed in a rotation designed to never leave the garden bare. Even now, petals drifted like colored mist through the air, stirred by invisible currents and caught in glimmering thermals.

Elian stared for a long moment, eyes unreadable.

"You haven't even seen the inside yet," he muttered, voice low.

Vaeliyan didn't reply at first. He just walked toward the gate, his steps the only sound as the garden stirred slightly in welcome. Then, almost to himself, he asked, "Why would a place I was told would be like one of the hells, but worse, have something like this?"

Elian's expression didn't change. "That's exactly why," he said. "They're going to break us. Over and over again and again. Until we stop recognizing the shape of our own pain. And this..." He gestured toward the estate, the crystalline house and its blooming, tranquil grounds "this is the only comfort they let us have. The only real peace. So we don't lose our minds and start the inevitable killing spree that kind of training invites. These places make it all fade away. Like it never happened."

He paused, thoughtful. "Even the regular stacks are luxuries compared to what most people live in. As far as I know, most of the Citadel housing is comfortable. Just cruel in other ways."

Vaeliyan gave him a sideways look. "I disagree. That first bench Dr. Wirk told us to sit on? It hurt my ass just looking at it."

Elian blinked, then laughed quietly. "You know what, you're right. Let me rephrase: the housing is comfortable. The rest of it might be trying to kill us."

They both headed into Vaeliyan's new home.

The doors whispered open, revealing a foyer that looked more like an exhibit than an entrance. Polished stone gleamed under their feet, some iridescent mineral that caught and refracted light like liquid opal. The walls curved gently, flowing rather than rising, layered in warm natural wood and glass panels that shifted tint with the angle of approach. Lighting came from nowhere and everywhere at once, embedded subtly in the walls, the ceiling, the floor itself. Not a single bulb or fixture could be seen.

As they stepped in, the air adjusted instantly.

AI: "New owner detected. Welcome. Calibrating interior climate to suit ideal atmospheric conditions."

Elian nodded toward a sunken seating area ahead, nestled beneath a panoramic window that framed a garden waterfall. A gentle wind moved through the space, scenting the air with some light citrus and honey blend. The cushions looked like clouds that had chosen to become furniture. Everything was quiet, clean, intentional.
They passed by an entire wing housing a personal gym filled with reinforced weight rigs, adaptive resistance fields, motion sync platforms, and a mirrored wall with variable-gravity pull stations. The scent of treated wood and ozone lingered.

Beyond that, the training grounds stretched into a wide courtyard of layered stone terraces and smart terrain simulators. Trees lined the edge, eternally blooming with bioluminescent petals, mood-reactive, color-shifting, and perfumed. The air within the estate was its own ecosystem: a self-correcting paradise in flux.

A full bot staff was lined in the halls, currently powered down. Each one styled like antique hospitality droids with modern core processors, capable of cooking, cleaning, tactical assistance, and, if needed, defensive protocols.

The walls shifted in tone and hue depending on proximity. The deeper they moved into the manor, the more luxurious it became. There were shelves of real books, furniture crafted from paleheart woods, and counters carved from seamless veins of blue-veined marble. Every surface had warmth to it, nothing cold, nothing without intention. This was craftsmanship married to indulgence.

"Feels like I'm walking into a dream someone paid too much for," muttered. Vaeliyan

Elian tilted his head slightly. "Why is the calibration taking so long?" he muttered, eyes narrowing as the first hints of mist began to creep in from the vents.

The air shifted again.

A mist rolled in.

AI: "Ideal climate: 98% humidity, moderate thermal drift, high-pressure system confirmed. Beginning sustained atmospheric generation."

Fog curled up from the vents.

AI: "Error. Flood detected. Recalculating. Flood is ideal. Recalculating. Error. Flood cannot be ideal atmosphere to support life. Recalculating. Recalculating. Error. Recalculating."

Rain began to fall indoors. Slowly, steadily. It pooled on the floor in uneven sheets.

Elian turned his head. "There must be a malfunction... but this is just insanity."

Vaeliyan rolled up his sleeves. "I'll fix it. Give me a bit. Maybe go get the others while I'm working."

The rain intensified. Mist crawled across the floor like fog on a battlefield. Somewhere deeper in the house, the AI continued to spiral.

AI: "Flood is ideal. Flood is error. Error is climate. Climate is ideal."

Vaeliyan just sighed and kept walking, water soaking into his boots.

"Perfect," he said, voice flat, the sarcasm so dry it might have soaked up the rain. But deep down, he meant it. He really did love it, all of it, the chaos, the storm, the way the AI had no idea what to do with him.

Elian shouted over the growing downpour, wiping water from his brow. "This has to be a manufacturing error or something, but this is the worst I've ever seen!"

Vaeliyan waved a hand. "I can fix it. Give me an hour or two. Maybe go to your house, get changed, and grab the others. I should have this place set up how I like it by then."

Elian hesitated, then nodded. "Okay. I'll be back in soon. Hopefully your house isn't a pool house when I get back."

He turned and walked outside. The moment he crossed the threshold and left the indoor hurricane behind, his clothing and hair dried instantly, returning him to that perfectly groomed, almost untouched state. He looked prim and proper again, like he hadn't just been standing in the eye of madness.

The others arrived about an hour and a half after Elian had left. They expected more water. What they would find was another kind of disaster, less drenching, but far more grease.

The rain had stopped, but the interior now looked like a dismantling yard carved from luxury. The lighting was warm and soft, but the shadows stretched long over scattered bot parts that lay like the aftermath of a mechanical war. Torsos without heads, arms stacked with surgical precision, wiring laid out like veins awaiting reassignment, all of it organized, intentional, almost reverent in its destruction. It was the kind of mess that only existed in the hands of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

These weren't scraps. They were premium-grade components, the kind people had to sign contracts to even look at, let alone buy. The highest-tier systems credits could buy, or at least, Vaeliyan assumed so. He didn't have a solid grasp of what counted as elite in the Green, but these bots were nearly on par with the ones Isol and Josaphine used. And he knew for a fact that those two were filthy fucking rich. He imagined all the things he could build with it, the options clicked through his mind like gears locking into place. The scavver in him never really went away. Not entirely. That part of him, the one that once tore apart wrecks and ruins for any half-functional shard of tech, was alive and kicking. And now? Now he had new parts, new bits and bobs, new toys to fuck around with. He was going to make something beautiful. Something terrifying. And maybe, if he pushed hard enough, something that could burn the world down while smiling.

He was in deep now. His sleeves still rolled, grease smudged up his arms, dark stains on his collar from where he'd scratched his jaw while thinking. Hunched in the center of it all, elbows-deep in an open access panel, his eyes flicked back and forth with wild precision. Like an addict getting his first fix in months. Or a musician finally handed an instrument that could keep up. He was focused. Consumed. Not even the sound of the front doors opening, smooth and silent, or the footsteps of the arriving guests could pull his attention away.
Styll sat nearby, perched atop one of the disassembled chassis like it was a throne, tail flicking, eyes sharp and glittering with curiosity. She hadn't said much since they arrived, but her gaze tracked every motion Vaeliyan made with unblinking intensity. At one point, she hopped down and padded closer, nudging his elbow gently with her nose. When he paused, she pawed at a loose wire like it was prey, then glanced up at him. He gave her a quick look, and she chirped softly, almost a question. She didn't understand what he was doing, not exactly, but she wanted to help. Wanted to be part of it. Warn's world was moving, and she refused to be left out. Bastard, meanwhile, was sprawled out across the smooth marble floor, snoring quietly, one massive paw twitching occasionally. He hadn't moved once since the first bolt hit the floor. Between the two of them, the chaos felt more like a den than a disaster.

Two bots remained functional, and even those looked upgraded. One was humanoid, tall and smooth-shelled with matte-black plating, faceless and unsettling. The other was a floating disc at knee height, silent and steady. Everything else had been stripped, sorted, or halfway rebuilt. The bones of the old staff were everywhere, but the future was already halfway soldered together.

Just as the group stepped up to the house, a voice crackled from unseen speakers.

House AI: "Life forms detected. Sir, shall I destroy them with extreme prejudice or just give them a light flamethrowing to deter the riffraff?"

A pause. Then the AI corrected itself.

House AI: "Ah. Nevermind. This must be the group Lord Sarn was sent to retrieve. House welcoming protocol disengaging. Guest protocol active."

Outside, the speakers extended slightly from hidden compartments, polished and unobtrusive. A pleasant, neutral voice followed, polite in a way that bordered on mocking:

House AI: "Greetings, Lords and Ladies. Master Verdance bids you enter."

The front door opened with the sound of silk sliding over polished stone. Inside, the damage looked deliberate rather than chaotic. The marble still gleamed. The air still smelled faintly of zest and ozone. The luxury was still there, unmistakable, but now it had the air of a palace undergoing a sudden, brilliant surgery. Not a ruin. A transformation mid-slice.