Yellow Jacket

Lisa stood in silence, her gaze locked on Warren but her eyes unfocused, like she was staring through him and seeing something far older, something she had buried long ago. The tension around her was sharp enough to cut, a coiled spring of rage and grief wound so tight it hummed in the air around her. She heard Sylen's words. She heard Deck's plea. They echoed through her skull like distant thunder. And still, her jaw stayed clenched, her teeth grinding together, her hands trembling faintly at her sides as if caught between reaching for her lance and reaching for her blood.

He had killed. He had taken. He had stepped into the place of someone whose blood ran in her veins. Pretended to be family even if he was pretending to be a bastard. He had worn that ghost like a cloak and smiled with its weight on his shoulders as if it belonged to him. Part of her wanted to tear him apart for it, rip the mask off and make him bleed until the world remembered who he wasn't. Part of her wanted to see what Imujin saw, what Sylen saw, what even Isol seemed to see glimmering in him like buried gold. She couldn't make the pieces fit. Every time she tried, they cut her fingers, and the sting made her want to drop them all.

Deck watched her, reading the fracture lines in her stillness like a map, waiting for where she would crack. His grin had faded, the edges worn down by something gentler. Then his mouth curved, soft and almost rueful, the sharpness gone from his grin.

"Alright," he said gently. "One last thing. You know that Princess Razorblades and Mittens love you. If they still like him... would that convince you?"

Lisa blinked slowly, as if waking from deep water, her pupils narrowing on him like she had forgotten where she was. Her lips pressed together until the color drained from them. "They hate everyone."

"They are good judges of character," Deck said. "And they liked him before all this. If they still do, maybe they see what we can't."

Lisa's lips parted, then closed. The wind teased strands of her dark hair across her cheek, but she didn't move. Finally, after a long pause, she gave a tiny nod.

Deck grinned, sharp again, the rogue back in his stance. "Good enough."

He turned and walked off across the meadow toward the pad.

Minutes passed. Three, maybe less, though they stretched like hours. The cadets stood silent, their bond pulsing in low uncertain waves, and even they held their breath when the meadow grew too quiet. The instructors watched Lisa from the corners of their eyes as if she were a storm waiting to break, their own stances unconsciously drawn taut.

Warren stayed relaxed. He didn't need to hope. Cats always liked him. It wasn't luck. It wasn't chance. It just was. He had never met one who didn't. It wasn't something he thought about. It was as inevitable as gravity. They always saw something soft in him, something he never showed the others.

Then the world shivered.

A deep, vibrating rumble rolled across the field, shaking the marrow of the air. The grass flattened in a spreading circle as Deck strode back into view, this time with two massive shapes padding at his side, their paws silent but seismic in weight.

Princess Razorblades and Mittens.

Massive blue purigalie tigers. Engineered apex predators, sleek and thick-muscled, each twice the size of a full-grown man. Their fur shimmered dark cobalt striped with pale silver, and faint bioluminescent lines glowed down their spines like molten glass. Their eyes burned gold, bright and assessing, unblinking and ancient, and their breath misted in slow coils like smoke.

The instructors instinctively stepped back as the tigers' eyes locked on Warren, and their bodies lowered as if preparing to pounce. The ground trembled with the slow coil of their muscles, claws pressing little crescents into the dirt.

Warren only smiled faintly, something calm flickering in his gaze. "Right," he murmured. "Here we go."

They surged forward.

Two massive heads slammed into his chest, almost knocking him flat, and he was smothered under a tidal wave of blue fur, rumbling purrs, and sandpaper tongues. They licked at his face, his arms, his hair, their sheer weight pressing him to the grass while they rumbled like distant storms. Their purrs shook his ribs. Their tongues rasped raw trails across his skin, scraping like stone on wood, and he winced and laughed at the same time.

"Okay," Warren wheezed between rattling purrs. "Ow. Ow. They still like me but dear gods, their tongues are so rough. Ow."

Princess Razorblades curled around his side, tail thumping like a drum, while Mittens flopped across his lap like a living boulder. Warren disappeared beneath fur and sound, swallowed whole by the sheer size and warmth of them, their weight pushing the air from his lungs but not the smile from his face.

Lisa's shoulders eased the faintest fraction, the iron in her posture loosening like a drawn bow settling back into its frame. Her lips didn't move, but her eyes softened just enough to be seen, the sharp frost behind them melting to something unreadable, something dangerously close to hope. She let out a slow breath through her nose, barely audible, but the bond rippled faintly with the shift in her tension. Her fingers uncurled at her sides, no longer carved from stone. The rest of the instructors watched her like she was a live charge set down among them, waiting to see which way she would tilt, but for now, she only stood still, eyes on Warren, the faintest hint of warmth flickering there like the first spark catching dry tinder, fragile but real.

Then she reached out, slowly, and caught Deck's hand.

He didn't speak. He only squeezed her fingers once, and they crossed the grass together, quiet and steady, stepping over the invisible line.

Leaving only Wirk standing on the other side. Still fuming. A little shaken, his jaw working like a man chewing gravel, the fury in his eyes not enough to bury the sliver of fear beneath it.

Wirk's breathing sounded too loud in the silence they left him with. It rasped out of him like old paper tearing, catching on the edges of his teeth. The sound hammered across the field, steady and unbroken, every instructor now standing on Warren's side. Everyone but him. His fingers twitched at his sides like he didn't know whether to reach for his lance or claw at his own skin. The night pressed close, the air heavy and damp, and still no one spoke. No one moved. They only watched him like they were watching a man standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff, teetering on the memory of everything he once believed in.

"You're all being manipulated," he said.

His voice wasn't a shout. It was low, scraped raw, like stone dragged over stone, and it made the hairs on the cadets' necks stand up. "That's what this is. You think you chose him. You didn't. Aberrants don't follow the rules of Soul Skills, or classes, or logic. They don't grow like people do. They don't feel like people do. The stronger they get, the more they starve. That hunger is all they are. The only reason they seem gentle at the start is because they haven't slipped yet. Because they haven't needed to."

He looked at each of them in turn, one by one, the fury in his stare cracked through with something else. Something older. Something that shook. His pupils were too wide. His jaw worked like he was chewing on the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming. His shoulders hunched inward like the weight of what he carried was dragging him back into the grave he'd dug for his hope decades ago.

"That's how they work. They trick you. They mimic what you want to see. They wear trust like a costume until you're close enough for their jaws to close." His mouth trembled, then locked hard again. "They don't earn your faith. They manufacture it. They make you want them to be worth it, so you stop noticing when they aren't."

His gaze locked on Imujin. "You think you've seen this before. You haven't. I have."

No one spoke. Even the tigers had gone still, their golden eyes slow-blinking as if they could feel the tension humming through the air like a live wire. The bond between the cadets quivered, thin and taut.

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"Callum said the same things you're saying now," Wirk whispered. "That she was just a child. That she didn't deserve it. That the Empire was wrong to hurt her. And maybe they were. Maybe they were." His lips curled back from his teeth, not in a snarl but in something far more wounded. "But she wasn't a child. She only wore the shape of one."

The name came out like it was being torn out of his ribs. "Melody."

Even the grass seemed to go still. The night air thickened, pressing against their ears, as if the world itself remembered the sound of that name.

"She smiled at him," Wirk said. "Laughed. Played games. She called him papa. He told her stories. He brushed her hair. He tucked her in. He swore she was brilliant. He swore she could be saved. He swore we could save her." His voice cracked, and the next words tore out of him like broken glass. "We were going to take her. We were going to leave everything behind. We were going to raise her as our own. She was going to be our daughter. The one we never had. The one we always wanted."

His hands clenched until his knuckles whitened, and he stared at them like he could still feel the warmth of her tiny hand slipping into his before it was covered in Callum's blood. "I was outside, setting up the way out. We were going to fake her death. He went in to get her."

Wirk's voice dropped lower, almost inaudible, grief hollowing it to the bone. "She hugged him. And then she pushed her fingers into his neck and tore it open. While he was still smiling at her. While he was still whispering her name."

No one moved. No one breathed. The bond between the cadets wavered, rippling like disturbed water, strained and uncertain. Even the air seemed to bow under the weight of the memory dragging out of him like a corpse from a flooded well.

"She killed everyone in that facility," Wirk said. "Everyone but me. I wasn't in the room." His eyes burned, bloodshot, damp with grief that had fermented into something sharp and poisonous. "She didn't need saving. She needed to feed."

He drew in a jagged breath. "And you're all standing here pretending this isn't the same. That Warren isn't the same. That this is different. That's what Callum said too."

His gaze flicked to Warren, raw and broken, eyes wet with years he had never let himself cry. "But he loved her. We both did. And we were wrong. We thought she loved us. We thought she felt it too. We thought she wanted to be ours." His lips curled in something too small to be a smile, more a crack in old stone. "She didn't. She only pretended."

Wirk's voice cracked once, then snapped sharp again, rising like breaking glass. "Ask yourselves how much of what you feel is yours… and how much of it was placed there like bait."

He took one step back from the line, from all of them, shoulders trembling like he was barely holding himself upright. His stare swept across them once more, a flash of accusation, of grief, of something close to pleading buried so deep it was almost invisible.

"Ask yourself if you're choosing this… or if it's already chosen you."

Then he turned his back on them and walked away, slow and stiff, like every step was being pried out of him, leaving the bond behind him like a severed thread that would never heal. The sound of him faded into the trees, but the silence he left behind stayed sharp and bleeding.

Wirk stood alone across the meadow, shoulders rigid, hands clenched at his sides like he was holding himself together by force. Everyone else had stepped to Warren's side. Only he remained apart. His eyes never left the boy. The bond trembled faint and strained between them all, but he stood outside it, a severed wire buzzing with the ghost of current. Even the night seemed to lean away from him, as though afraid of what was inside him if it broke loose.

Warren walked toward him.

"Go back to your cadets," Wirk rasped as Warren drew close. His voice cracked but didn't waver. "Go back to the people you've wrapped around your finger."

Warren didn't answer. He just reached down and drew the hand lance from his hip. The matte black weapon caught the moonlight along its engraved side, as if the words had been carved to bleed light.

A Father's Promise.

Wirk's eyes narrowed. His lips peeled back from his teeth, not in anger but something closer to pain. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Warren held the lance out to him, grip first. Wirk hesitated, then took it, his hands trembling as if the metal were made of fire. The weapon's weight dragged at his arms as though the years clinging to it had substance. Warren stepped closer until the barrel rested against the center of his forehead.

"I tortured him," Warren said quietly. "The man who owned that lance. I didn't have to. I could have faked his death, faked his squad's, faked everything. But I didn't. I was angry. And I was good at being angry. I killed his wife. His best friend. His whole squadron. I broke him apart to get the information I needed."

Wirk's grip on the lance tightened, his knuckles going white. His breath hissed between his teeth like steam from a cracked pipe.

"I saved his daughter. And his little brother. They lived." Warren's voice was steady, but something in it frayed at the edges, a thread drawn too thin. "And I swore that when I had a child, I would be better. Not softer. Not harmless. Better. Because I know what it's like to be loved when you think you don't deserve to be. And I know what it does to you when you fail that love."

Wirk's breath hitched. The cold metal trembled against Warren's skin.

"I know what it means to be raised by someone who loves you even though you are a monster," Warren said, his voice quieter now, almost breaking. "My mother was a good person. She took in something broken and gave it a home. She taught me to be more than just an empty shell that only knew how to kill and eat and revel in violence. I still do those things. I still hunger. But I do not hurt the innocent. She gave me rules to live by. Maybe that was the difference between me and… and Melody. I don't know."

His eyes flicked briefly toward the instructors watching from Warren's side. None of them had moved. Not one of them spoke. Even Isol stood still, the ever-present books hugged tight to his chest, his brows drawn together in faint confusion, because even he hadn't known. He had always thought the lance was just a gift from Car, a family heirloom passed down. He had never guessed it carried a story like this inside it.

Warren's gaze came back to Wirk. He drew in a breath, steadying. "All I do know is that I want to be better for the people I love. Because the ghost that killed them, the ghost that took this lance from a father… should not be the man I want to be. It's not the man I want to be. I don't know when it happened, but I do know that I am not soulless. I have seen my soul. Yes, it is a monster. Yes, I am wearing a corpse on top of it. But I have fought for my people. Fought for my family. Fought for my friends since I gained even a measure of what it meant to be loved. I fight because I know what it would mean to lose them."

His eyes lifted to meet Wirk's, steady, dark, unflinching. "I loved my mother and I missed her every day. I love my wife. I love my aunt. My uncle. My friends. I love my child. And I've never met them. I don't even know if they're a boy or a girl. But I will die for them. I am a monster. I will do horrible things again. But not to the innocent. Not to anyone who didn't choose this. The hunger doesn't choose who I am. I do. And if I can't be good, I will still be someone they can survive."

Silence swallowed the clearing. The air was brittle, like glass held too long in the cold.

"If you think I'm pretending," Warren said, "if you think I'm her… pull the trigger. Do it now. End this."

The night held still. Wirk's hands shook so hard the lance rattled against Warren's forehead. His eyes blurred. He saw Melody's smile. He saw Callum's hands brushing her hair back. He saw Callum's mouth shaping her name as she tore him open. He saw the blood in her hair. He heard the sound Callum made when he fell.

He saw Warren standing still. Waiting. Not begging. Just trusting him. The boy did not flinch. Did not blink. He only stood, steady as stone, with the barrel pressed to his skull like he had already made peace with dying.

Wirk's jaw locked. His finger twitched against the trigger. He made a sound, something like a laugh carved out of a sob, and dropped the lance. It hit the dirt between them with a soft thud.

Then he folded, his knees hitting the ground, his hands clawing at his face as the grief finally broke out of him in ragged, shuddering sobs that sounded like something dying.

Warren crouched, picked up the lance, and holstered it. Then he rested one hand on Wirk's shoulder. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

Wirk wept until he couldn't breathe.

Wirk stayed on his knees, Warren's jacket draped around his shoulders like a barrier between him and the world. The meadow was silent. Even the wind had stopped moving. No one spoke. No one dared.

After a long moment, Wirk's voice broke the stillness, rough and fragile, like glass grinding together.

"He hummed when he read," he whispered. "Not out loud… just… in his throat, like a kettle warming. And he lost pens. All the time. Every day was a war between him and his pockets."

His mouth twitched, almost a smile, ruined by tears.

"He used to leave me little notes. Not words, just… stupid little drawings. A frog with fangs. A teacup with legs. He said I was too serious. He said I needed noise. He was noise. He was all the noise I ever needed."

No one moved. Even the bond had gone still, softened, listening. The cadets stood rooted to the ground. The instructors stood like statues. No one dared to break what this was.

"Thank you," Warren said quietly.

Wirk blinked, confused. "For what?"

"For showing me, what your love sounds like."

Wirk looked at him then, eyes wrecked.

Warren's voice softened, low, like he was telling a secret. "Wren snores like a stampeding herd of mossbacks. It rattles the walls. I swear she could bring down the ceiling with it. But when she's asleep and it starts… it's like a chorus of angels to me. Because it's her. It means she's alive. It means she's home."

Something cracked in Wirk's face.

"I don't know if you're pretending to be a monster," Wirk whispered. "Or trying not to be one. I don't know which would be worse. But if I could take your time… if I could make you breathe… I would."

"Then just breathe," Warren said.

Wirk dragged his hands down his face, leaving his eyes raw and red. "If I could do it all again, I would. I still love her. Even if she took everything from me. She is my child in my heart. Knowing that breaks me every day, knowing she is still out there suffering, trapped inside what she became. I hope to see her again someday… and give her the release she deserves. Not to torture her. Not for revenge. Just to give her the quiet she never found. To give her the peace she was never allowed."

He rose slowly, shoulders still shaking, Warren's jacket sliding from him as he straightened. He didn't cross the line, but he didn't stand apart anymore either. The instructors watched in absolute silence.

Then Imujin's voice came from behind them, calm as a loaded trap.

"We've been here for hours," he said. "So, we're going to need to do some things… and none of you are going to like it."