Yellow Jacket

The rain had finally stopped. Breakfast was real. The house smelled like citrus and ozone. Outside, mist clung low to the garden paths, curling around the flowerbeds like memory refusing to lift. Inside, Vaeliyan stood at the edge of the dining room table, staring down at his half-finished plate, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

Josaphine sipped her tea, eyes still heavy from the night before. Isol stood nearby, leaning against the window frame with the posture of a man who hadn't slept but didn't need to. Jurpat sat across from Vaeliyan, bouncing one leg restlessly, his plate empty save for crumbs and a fork still twitching from his last bite.

"Alright," Josaphine said, voice soft but edged. "Now that I know who and what you really are, we need to talk about what happens next. Because despite your...unorthodox status, you're still Legion. And Legion doesn't care who you were. Only what you survive."

She set her cup down with precision. "You boys think you're tired now? Think you've tasted hardship? That was your trial run. The first month is where the Citadel sinks its teeth in. And not with drills or flashy pit matches. It's something worse. They will break you as individuals so they can rebuild you as a squad. You will be stripped down, torn apart, and reforged until your instincts stop being yours and start being Legion's. You will learn how to kill. You will learn how to kill on command. And you will learn, very quickly, when it's better to die... or run."

Vaeliyan didn't speak. He just listened.

Isol pushed off the wall and walked toward them, each step deliberate. "The first week will hit your body. The second, your nerves. By week three, you'll feel like you're unraveling. Then the fourth week breaks something else entirely: your sense of identity."

"They won't isolate you to keep you alone. They'll isolate you to tear you down in front of the people you're supposed to rely on. You'll be surrounded, but you'll feel like you're drowning with no one to pull you out. Your victories will be twisted into weaknesses. Your failures will be amplified, public, humiliating. Just when you think you've found the rhythm, they'll shift the tempo. That's not accidental. That's the design. The point isn't just to break you,it's to make sure what reforms is Legion, not you."

"You won't know which part of you is real anymore," Isol said quietly. "And if you're lucky, you'll kill that part before it gets someone else killed."

Jurpat's foot stopped bouncing. "You're saying we're going to break."

Josaphine nodded. "Yes. You are. All of you. The Citadel is built to do exactly that. And what you build from the broken pieces, that's what determines whether you live long enough to make it past first year."

She glanced between them, her voice turning clinical. "You're on the Imperator track. That means they're not just testing you as grunts. They're building you as an elite squadron. Expect to train solo, pair off, and then regroup, over and over. They'll watch how you function under pressure, how you move together, how you fail together. You're being groomed to be weapons that can break cities, whether you're holding the lance or standing as one with a toothpick."

Isol stepped forward, folding his arms. "And just so we're clear, Josaphine and I aren't telling you this as a warning. We're telling you this as your instructors. We're not going to watch this happen to you. We're going to do it to you. We're the ones running the knife through your illusions."

He gave them a hard look. "You remember those runs I called 'light jogs'? That was me being kind. That was a single hauler, dragging weight, while being kicked. That was the warm-up. Wait until they break your legs, then tell you to crawl with three haulers chained behind you, while someone beats you with intent to break bones. And don't think it's punishment. That's just the lesson."

Isol added, "And don't think the bonding will protect you. If one of you stumbles, they'll dissect the whole group to find the crack. Your unity is a resource to them. They'll use it until it burns out, then see who's left standing.""

Vaeliyan exhaled through his nose. "So we keep each other alive."

"That's the only way any of you make it," Josaphine agreed. "Class One isn't a title. It's a fuse. If one of you goes, the rest burn hotter. Faster. That bond's your only buffer. Don't waste it."

Josaphine leaned back. "Tomorrow, you'll see what they really mean by 'training.' Today... enjoy the illusion of calm. But don't forget: it's an illusion. The Citadel always starts smiling. And then it starts cutting."

Silence held the room for a long beat.

Then Vaeliyan looked at Jurpat and said quietly, "We survive. Together."

Jurpat nodded. "Until the end."

Josaphine smiled, just barely. "That's the start. Now finish your breakfast, boys. You'll miss food that tastes like anything once the pain sets in. And believe me, it will."

She set her cup aside. "I will say, Deck's going to be surprised anyone figured out how to remove the bug bar-only setting before classes even start. Most cadets don't realize it's a test until they spend time with a second-year or higher."

She looked at Vaeliyan. "Did you keep the note, by the way?"

Vaeliyan nodded.

"Good," Josaphine replied. "Now hand me back my molecular disintegrator. That thing is far too expensive and dangerous for you right now."

Vaeliyan raised a brow. "Really? I'm not the one who set it off in my house when they fainted."

"Just hand it over, Vaeliyan," Isol said.

With a small sigh, Vaeliyan reached into his coat and pulled out the black cube, setting it on the table.

A chime echoed from the ceiling. House spoke in a pleasant tone: "Master Vaeliyan, your order has arrived. It is being installed in the workshop as requested, along with all the heavy machinery."

Josaphine narrowed her eyes. "What are you planning?"

Vaeliyan shrugged. "My house. My stuff. You got your dumb cube. You don't get answers." He stuck his tongue out at her.

Josaphine reached for the cube and gave him a long look. He didn't flinch.

"You sold the destabilizer, didn't you?"

"As soon as I found out how much it was worth," he said cheerfully. "Also... it was Isol's idea."

Isol stood up instantly, nodded to Vaeliyan, and bolted for the door.

Josaphine sighed and pushed her chair back. "We'll talk about this later, young man. I have to go gently MURDER my loving husband."

The workshop still smelled like fresh install, polymer dust, metal grease, and ozone. Vaeliyan stepped into the space like a man entering sacred ground. This wasn't the same forge from Mara. That one had been a graveyard of ambition held together by outdated parts, broken frameworks, and raw willpower. It sparked, it jammed, and it cried out every time it had to do something beyond its age. He'd practically lived in that thing, feeding it scraps and sleepless nights, coaxing miracles from hardware that belonged in a museum.

This? This was new. Untouched. Untamed. This was a real nanoforge.

Not an outdated model. Not some legacy-core patched with spit, scrap code, and desperate optimism. This was a full-scale, precision-linked nanoarray forge with fluid-control integration and adaptive material mapping. The sort of device you read about in procurement lists, the kind issued only to corporations or Citadel-level development bunkers. The kind of machine designed to shape the future, not catch up with the past. It didn't look like a forge. It looked like someone melted a dream and cooled it into shape. Sleek panels. Suspension scaffolding. Optical receptors that tracked neural imprinting. A whispering hum that said yes, this machine could build gods, monsters, or both. He could feel it before he touched it. It was waiting for him.

"That had to be stupidly expensive," Jurpat muttered, walking around the console with wide eyes. "Like... unethically expensive. This thing probably has its own kill switch embedded in the licensing agreement."

Vaeliyan grinned without shame. "Yeah. If I hadn't basically stolen the credits from Josaphine, I wouldn't have even gotten a quote. Do you know how many kill codes I had to dodge just to sneak the order through? I think the invoice had encryption."

Without ceremony, he grabbed his gauntlets, backplate, and leg armor from the bench and marched over to the material port. With a practiced motion, he dumped the entire set in like discarded scaffolding, no sentiment, no hesitation.

"And... all the droid parts too," he added, shoving a crate full of broken servitors and decapitated house staff units toward the intake. "Waste not."

He cracked his neck, popped his fingers, and linked to the forge. The lights dimmed slightly as the interface took hold, syncing his neural imprint to the console's reactive grid. No visor. Just direct signal threading between soul, mind, and nanites.

The pulse of the machine deepened. Vaeliyan's eyes flickered faintly, his breath slowing, body posture loose but focused. His fingers twitched like he was playing an invisible instrument.

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Jurpat watched for ten seconds, then took a step back. Then another. "I think I'm going to go find the others. This feels like a prelude to something I don't want to get named in. If that thing wakes up and demands a blood tithe, I'm not covering it."

Vaeliyan didn't glance up. "Sure. Fucking shit, I forgot. Hey, have you ever heard of a Lord Barcus?"

Jurpat paused at the threshold. "No. Maybe the others have. Why do you ask?"

Vaeliyan's tone stayed casual, almost cheerful. "I think I need to kill him. So maybe keep that quiet. I'll snoop around first. House, can you check if there's anyone by that name in the city records?"

House replied in its pleasant voice, "No results found for 'Lord Barcus.'"

"That's weird," Vaeliyan muttered. "Anyway. I'll check later. Got upgrades to do on these bad boys. I'll see you soon, maybe. If I'm not out in time for class, House, I give Jurpat permission to use his howl on me."

Jurpat's grin cracked wide. "Yeah. That's probably for the best."

Then he was gone, leaving only silence and machinery. The forge came alive.

Vaeliyan's fingers flew across the interface, feeding vision into code, intent into structure. Patterns formed in his mind before the system displayed them. Layers nested within layers, recursive schematics folding into reality. "Let's make something fun. Something stupid. Something horrifying."

The door slid open before Jurpat even touched the control. That was the first sign something was wrong. Or right. Hard to tell with Vaeliyan.

The air inside hit like a punch to the lungs. Citrus and ozone wrapped everything in their clean bite, the baseline perfection of House's environmental control systems. But underneath it, there was something wrong. Not a smell, exactly. A presence. The scent of burned ambition. Hot metal, and the aftertaste of invention pushed past safety margins. Raw mechanical breath and the unmistakable tang of invention pushed too far past the limit.

The new arrivals filed in slowly, one after another, eyes darting to every shifting panel and moving shadow.

Jurpat led them in, then stepped aside like he wanted to wash his hands of whatever came next. He'd been here already. He knew.

Elian stood tall in the doorway, arms crossed, face unreadable. His presence carried weight, even when silent. Sylen followed, her stance loose but predatory. Lessa drifted in behind them, eyes already taking stock of every potential hazard. Wesley blinked slowly, tracking the movement of the forge like it might attack. Xera moved with deliberate caution, steps light but ready to bolt. The twins came side by side, identical posture, mirrored wariness. Roan trailed a finger across the wall as he entered, mouthing something too soft to hear. Torman and Ramis didn't waste time, already muttering about schematics and energy flows like they were walking through a data stream. Rokhan scanned the corners with the faintest sneer. Varnai let out a slow breath and made a show of looking unimpressed. Fenn whistled low, the sound cutting through the noise like a warning shot.

The workshop was alive.

The forge glowed in pulses, casting strange light across the floor and walls. It thrummed with motion, fluid, relentless, intimate. Strange shapes hovered midair in semi-formed render projections: pieces of armor, maybe, but also things that looked like weapons or tools or something worse. Constructs built on concepts not yet formalized. This wasn't printing. This was mid-birth.

And at the center: Vaeliyan.

Linked directly into the console, his body was fluid, posture half-possessed. He hadn't moved in hours but was never still. Fingers danced. Breath steady. Neural signals threading into the machine without resistance. He wasn't controlling it. He was inside it.

"He's been here since yesterday?" Chime asked, voice low.

Jurpat nodded. "Didn't sleep. Didn't eat. He dumped his old gear and half the droid staff into the forge and started... this."

Xera narrowed her eyes. "What is this?"

Vaeliyan didn't look back. "Progress."

Chime folded her arms. "The disturbing kind."

Lessa tilted her head. "Does it have a name yet?"

"No," Vaeliyan said. "I don't name weapons. Doesn't make them kill any better."

That got a few reactions. Uneasy ones.

Ramis pointed at the interface. "That schematic, you designing this for yourself or someone else?"

Vaeliyan grinned without humor. "Both. Depends what survives the calibration."

Elian stepped forward. His voice was calm but firm. "We were told this was a workshop visit. This looks more like an arms race."

"Good," Vaeliyan said. "Then I'm doing it right."

Sylen exhaled through her nose. "You do realize we have class in less than five hours."

Vaeliyan didn't blink. "House, if I don't come out in time, Fenn has permission to hit me with a shock stick."

Fenn raised his brows. "I don't have a shock stick."

"You do now," House chimed in a cheerful tone. "It's in the drawer marked time for class."

The room paused.

Varnai rolled his eyes. "Oh come on," and already started walking toward the drawer.

The forge flared brighter, as if reacting.

Vaeliyan's voice drifted over his shoulder, low and steady: "Welcome to the future, assholes. Try not to get caught in the blast radius."

The forge answered with a pulse. One of the shapes hanging midair began to take on form, something armored, sharp, and fluid all at once. No one dared speak. Whatever it was, it wasn't done. Neither was he.

And none of them, not one, wanted to be the first to find out what it was for.

Four hours and thirty minutes later, Vaeliyan was on the floor convulsing. He twitched once, then twice, before going rigid again. Fenn stood over him with the shock stick still crackling in his hand, his expression somewhere between frustration and concern. He'd hit Vaeliyan four times. Not gently. Not as a joke. He only stopped because the twitching finally looked like surrender.

Not because Vaeliyan wanted to stop.

Because they wouldn't let him keep going.

He would've stayed wired into the forge, pulse slowing to match the machine, skin practically fusing to the interface. But they had class. They had expectations. They had survival to consider. And they weren't going to let him sabotage himself, or them, by being late. Not on Day One.

Jurpat just grunted and grabbed his ankles, dragging him across the smooth floor with a wet scrape of skin against polished tile. The hallway lights brightened slightly to accommodate movement, then dimmed again as they passed, like House was watching with amused detachment.

They hauled him into the shower room and hit the activation panel. The walls melted away.

Ceiling panels peeled back. shower mode activated.

The environment didn't change. Vaeliyan had configured it from day one, his perfect bath. The sterile, citrus-scented air still clung beneath the simulation, but the dominant note was chaos: gale-force winds and brine. An ocean under a hurricane took shape around them. Horizontal rain battered them like shrapnel. The sound of crashing waves hit at full-body volume. Clouds swirled above, black and endless, while lightning strobed the horizon. The floor shifted into a fractured wooden pier, slick and uneven.

Jurpat stood in it like he belonged there. Like the chaos didn't even register.

He leaned over Vaeliyan and shouted over the howling wind, "If we're late for the first fucking day of class, I'm pretty sure we're dead! So don't fuck us! Get your ass clean! You smell like solvent and melted servos! And take a couple stim pills or three, you look like you haven't slept in days!"

Vaeliyan rolled onto his back, blinking slowly. The rain drenched him instantly, running down his scalp and neck like a second skin. But it didn't fight him, it welcomed him. It was his rain, his storm, the chaos he'd programmed to calm him. Each gust wrapped around him like a familiar voice, and every drop hit like recognition, not assault. The floor still rolled, but the rhythm was one he knew, one he could stand in if he just caught the beat.

"That's because I haven't," he rasped. "But... yeah, you're right. Let me get changed. I'll drug myself to the teeth and we'll make it."

He paused, wiping water from his eyes. "What class is it again?"

Jurpat stared at him like he was trying to decide if murder was worth the delay. "Endurance Training. The one designed to break us into pieces and then tell us that's normal. Isol said it'll be the hardest thing we've ever done. And it starts in less than thirty minutes. At four. A. M."

Vaeliyan groaned again and tried to stand, knees buckling. Lightning cracked through the simulation above them, turning the entire room white for a second. The roar of wind doubled. He staggered against it.

"...Fuckkkkkkkkk," he said.

House's voice chirped overhead, unbothered by the storm. "Reminder: ten minutes to prepare before transit. Uniforms are prepped. Med stimulants are in the cabinet. The good ones."

Vaeliyan didn't reply. He was already dragging himself toward the cabinet.

Jurpat followed. "If you collapse in front of the instructors, I'm leaving you behind."

Vaeliyan laughed without humor. "That's fair. Just make sure it looks dramatic. I want to go out looking like I chose death."

"You'll be lucky if they let you die."

"Yeah," Vaeliyan muttered. "Legion standard."

Inside, the simulated hurricane howled louder.

Outside, the real one was just getting started.

They stepped onto the transport pad just outside Vaeliyan's estate, and the world shifted. There was no delay, no warning flicker, just immediate translation across space.

In a breath, they found themselves in the middle of a gymnasium so large it didn't feel real. The floor stretched endlessly in every direction, polished black with burnished grid lines etched like scars across its surface. Massive walls surrounded them, no, not walls. They were vertical terrains: rock faces, reinforced alloy plating, mesh scaffolding and combat railings. The ceiling gave the illusion of a storm-swirled sky, layered with projections of flickering lightning and boiling cloud banks.

The lights above weren't just bright. They were surgical. Pure, clinical, and judgmental. Each one hummed slightly, the sound pitched to unsettle, to keep adrenaline spiked. The air was carefully controlled: dry, crisp, and laced with oxygen and steel, an artificial environment designed to push every system into overdrive.

They barely made it into formation.

Boots scraped. Shoulders aligned. Breath caught.

Then she arrived.

The instructor appeared on the next pad without ceremony. No fanfare, no announcement. Just mass. A bear of a woman, thick through the core and built like she'd eaten tanks in her youth. Muscle coiled under every movement. Her arms looked capable of bending steel. Her legs, like they'd been bred for war. Her skin was sun-bronzed and marked with old burns and training scars. Her hair was pulled back into a brutal braid, clean, sharp, and functional.

But her face. Her face was an angel's: delicate bone structure, high cheekbones, soft mouth. She looked like she could model for anything from cosmetics to coronations, and still bite a bar of steel in half without smudging her gloss. It looked like she could eat nails and drink lava and go win a beauty pageant right after.

And she smiled.

"Welcome to Endurance Training," she said.

Her voice didn't shout. It didn't need to. It carried, resonant, firm, and final.

"You may call me Instructor Verdance."

She let the name hang.

"Or Ma'am."

A beat.

"Or Lisa, when you have something nice to say to me."

No one spoke. No one dared breathe too loud.

"You will follow my orders. You will do what I tell you to do. If you question me, or my training, you will take a lap."

She turned her head slightly and nodded behind them.

"Oh, did I forget to mention what a lap entails?"

They didn't move.

She smiled wider, like she'd been waiting for this.

"You see those things behind you? They're called drag wedges. Because that's exactly what they do. They wedge into the floor and they drag behind you like guilt, like regret, like a bad decision with weight. You'll be dragging them for the rest of your time here."

A few heads swiveled. The drag wedges gleamed in quiet rows. Low-slung. Angular. Jet black. Each had triple blades that dug in the moment they moved.

"Here's the fun part," Lisa said. "They get heavier the farther you go. Every step adds friction, weight, resistance. There's no mercy built in. No reset. No assist. And you only get one. The one you drag today is yours. For the rest of your time here. Four years. Same wedge. Same pain. Same reminder. Welcome to the long haul. Gifted to you personally, by me. Lisa Verdance."

She paused. Then leaned in slightly.

"Now say it. Say, 'Thank you, Lisa, for the wonderful gifts.'"

And they did.

All at once. In perfect unison. A collective roar that echoed off the walls like the first scream of a riot. They said it like their lives depended on it, because they knew they might.

Her grin turned sharp.

"Good. You can listen."

She clapped once. The sound cracked through the space like artillery fire.

"Now let's all take the first ten laps as a warm-up."

Nobody moved for a fraction of a second.

Her expression didn't change.

"Now."

And they moved. Drag wedges grinding into the floor like anchors. Muscles already straining. Breath catching. The first lesson had begun.