Yellow Jacket

The storm had been whispering all day. Now it roared.

Warren stood just inside the ruins of an old culvert, eyes fixed on the fortress that rose like a severed mountain spine across the southern edge of the district. The gate was half-rusted, mechanical, its seams threaded with old-world tech, faintly humming under the strain of rain and rust. It looked like it had eaten everything that came before it. Behind it: sheer walls topped with razor-wire, impossible to scale without gear, towers jagged with repurposed defense systems, and prison lights that barely cut through the haze.

The wind changed direction. It carried the copper-tanged scent of blood from some far-off skirmish. The storm above them was close now, a living thing pushing pressure against the world like it was trying to find a way in.

Beside him, Grix crouched in silence, flexing one hand absently as the clatterfang holstered itself with soft clicks. Her face was unreadable, her mouth tight. There was something feral coiled just beneath her stillness, but she hadn't let it loose. Not yet.

"You want me to go," she said. Not a question.

Warren nodded once. "Get Car. Florence and the guards. Bring everyone."

She tilted her head slightly, trying to read him. "You're not waiting."

"No."

Her jaw tightened. She didn't argue out loud, but it was in her eyes.

"Sixty guards. Four towers. Motion sensors and a patrol every ten minutes. We've killed worse. But not without rest. Not like this. This isn't a raid,it's a suicide note written in exhaustion."

"I know."

She glanced at him sidelong. "You've had what? Three hours of sleep in two days?"

"Closer to one."

Her brow furrowed, but she didn't press. Not about that. Not yet.

Warren reached into his coat and pulled a narrow injector. The casing was dark and old. Florence's handwriting was scrawled across the label: DON'T use unless you have to.

He popped the cap with his thumb and jammed the needle into his neck.

The hiss was soft, followed by a shudder that ran through his spine like cold water.

Grix flinched. "What the hell is that?"

"Florence gave it to me," he said. "Said it'd keep me from passing out."

"From what?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

His skin rippled. Not like muscle shifting, like fabric tugged from beneath. Like his whole body was being rewritten, inch by inch.

Warren rolled his shoulders, letting the coat settle. "The pain's going to keep me alive."

The rain hit harder now, bouncing off the ruined metal around them like it was trying to find purchase. Thunder rolled somewhere overhead. The air tasted charged.

Styll stirred against his shoulder.

"Take her," Warren said, glancing toward Grix.

"What?"

"She'll track your return. Let me know when you're close."

Grix blinked. "She's yours."

"She knows. That's why she'll go."

Styll didn't resist. She chittered once, sharp, like a flicked blade, but climbed to Grix's outstretched arm. Her eyes stayed locked on Warren the entire time.

"He's watching through you?" Grix asked.

Grix gave a low whistle. "Creepy little shadow."

Warren didn't disagree. He turned back to the gate, already mapping the angles.

"You're not built for subtle," she said again. This time, it wasn't a complaint. It was a fact.

He adjusted the coat. The hood settled around his face like it had been waiting.

"I'm not hiding," he said.

Then he activated the mod.

The coat didn't vanish. It folded, reality dimming at the seams. The Ghost Veil collapsed his presence, bleeding color into the mist, warmth into the cold. Rain bent away from him. Light missed him on purpose.

Then he was gone.

Grix didn't move. Didn't breathe. She just stared at the space where he'd been, like if she blinked too fast she'd forget what she saw.

"You bastard," she muttered.

Then she turned and ran.

Behind her, the storm opened its mouth. And Warren walked into it.

Warren moved through the wet like memory.

The coat didn't disappear, it erased him. It bled outline into fog, heat into storm, color into grey.

He stalked the outer patrol first. The scattered ones. Two guards joking near the perimeter lights. One had his lance slung wrong, trigger hand loose.

He broke the first man's elbow with a sideways umbrella strike, then swept his leg out and brought the hook down hard against the temple. The body hit the mud with a soft splash.

The second turned, saw nothing, and screamed.

Warren didn't silence him. He let him scream. Let him call for help. Then he shattered the man's knee and walked away before the patrol arrived.

Let them find him broken. Let them wonder.

It began to rain harder. The sound ate everything.

Three guards passed a collapsed rail girder. One paused to light a pipe. The match flared, brief, orange against the grey.

The umbrella came down like a judge's gavel. One crack. The bladed tip drove into his jawline, cracking the edge. Warren twisted just enough to dislocate the lower mandible, fractured, pierced. Pain, not death, just shredded nerves and the cold silence that follows sudden, precise agony. The body folded in on itself.

The others turned. One fired wild. The other stumbled backward, shouting, aiming at mist.

Warren stepped between them. Elbow to throat. Umbrella to ankle. A single twist tore ligaments, and the man dropped, howling.

No blood. Just screams.

The fourth patrol came running.

They found one man crawling. One trying to hold his own jaw in place. One whispering, "He wasn't there. He wasn't there."

They formed up, weapons out. Lanterns swinging.

Warren stepped into their light.

But only for a moment.

Then it flickered. And he was gone.

Panic set in.

One fired. The round hit nothing but tree bark. Another fired and hit his partner in the leg. Screaming over screaming.

The third turned and caught the bladed tip of the umbrella snapped across the nasal bridge, breaking cartilage and sending him reeling. He dropped before the others registered what they'd heard, a wet, final sound. Bone cracked. He dropped his lance. He didn't even try to pick it back up.

Warren stepped over him. Deliberate. Unhurried.

The others ran. He let them.

Further out, a team was dragging broken gear through the rain, trying to secure an old security post. They didn't see the figure watching from the mist.

Warren knocked over a pile of barrels behind them.

They turned, too slow.

He used the sound to close distance.

The umbrella crashed into a chest plate, its spear tip ringing off the armor with a jarring thud, before Warren pivoted and slammed the umbrella into the ribs with enough force to crack ribs and puncture lung lining, but not end him. He dropped to his knees, wheezing blood that would drown him slowly if left untreated. Warren struck again. Side of the face. The helmet split at the seam.

The second one fired, close range. Flechettes cracked against a wall. Warren stepped inside the recoil and shattered the guard's wrist with a twist of the umbrella handle.

She screamed. He didn't stop there.

Leg, hip, shoulder, each blow placed, clinical. Not to kill. But to break.

The third ran for backup. Warren didn't follow. He just turned and vanished again.

It became a rhythm. Pain. Vanish. Sound. Break. Disappear.

Guards began to scream into comms that weren't answering.

A group gathered at a checkpoint. Seven men. Heavy armor. Confident.

They set lights. Angles. Coverage zones.

One of them turned to check a blind spot.

The umbrella slid between his legs and then drove the tip against the back of the knee joint, snapping the joint backward at an unnatural angle. Warren could have severed the artery. He didn't. Now the man would need three to carry him. Maybe four. He screamed as Warren ripped the tip out sideways, leaving nothing stable to stand on.

He dropped fast. The others didn't see the figure behind him until their comrade started seizing.

Warren didn't fight them head-on. He used pressure. Fear. Confusion. Rain.

He cracked a lantern near the fuel barrels. The flash was bright, loud.

They fired blindly.

He moved in that blindness. Crippling knees. Bending backs in the wrong direction.

They didn't die. They screamed.

One begged for silence. Another curled into a ball, mumbling prayers.

Warren stepped back into the fog.

Further down, another pair walked a patrol line. Silent. Focused. Good formation.

Warren waited until they passed beneath a broken canopy.

He jumped from above.

The umbrella struck down, the spear tip striking between the shoulder blades, forcing the spine to lock and buckle, rupturing nerve clusters and locking the spine in partial paralysis. The sound was sharp, more snap than thud, as the man went rigid, then limp. His spine folded. The other turned, trying to raise a sidearm.

Too slow.

Warren hooked the leg and flipped him face-first into the mud.

"Tell them I'm coming," Warren whispered. Just once. Into the ear of the barely-conscious man.

Then he was gone.

The message spread faster than fire. Not words. Panic.

A squad heard the screaming. Found nothing but twitching limbs and half-conscious survivors.

One of them vomited. Another threw down his weapon.

No one knew how many were hit. No one knew what they were fighting.

Only that something was in the storm.

Only something that was breaking them.

And leaving the pieces to tell a story.

Cassian crouched behind a collapsed barricade, his lance gripped so tight his knuckles had gone bloodless. Rain pooled inside his helmet and rolled down the back of his neck like cold fingers. He had been one of the first to see the yellow coat, just a glimpse in the mist. Just long enough to know exactly what was coming.

They were told the Yellow Jacket was a killer. A butcher. But what Cassian saw wasn't rage or bloodlust. It was something quieter. Something worse.

Judgment.

The figure hadn't even looked at him when it broke Ulan's leg sideways. It hadn't needed to. The coat moved like smoke. The umbrella came down like punctuation. And the screams hadn't stopped.

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Cassian had dragged Ulan out. Tried to tourniquet the thigh. Ulan begged him to leave. Not because he didn't want to be saved, but because he didn't want to be there when the Yellow Jacket came back.

He wasn't the only one hiding now. Two more guards crouched beside Cassian. One praying under his breath. One staring at the mud with a look that said he'd already given up.

"Why isn't he killing us?" one whispered.

Cassian didn't answer. He couldn't.

Because deep down, he knew the truth.

It was worse this way.

Dead men don't scream.

Dead men don't drag others down with them.

Whatever was in that coat, it wasn't just hunting. It wasn't even killing. It was doing something else entirely.

And that umbrella.....

That fucking umbrella....

It wasn't even a weapon.

It was supposed to be for rain, for sidewalks, for people with somewhere safe to be. And this thing, this man, this... judgment, was using it to tear through trained fighters like they were nothing.

Cassian had seen men cut down in raids, mauled by Broken, chewed up by mines and malfunctions. But this wasn't that. This was surgical. Intentional. Slow.

Not just to defeat.

To break.

To make them know they weren't worth the real weapon.

That thought stuck harder than the wounds.

The Yellow Jacket wasn't fighting them with a blade, or a lance, or even a proper tool of war.

He was using a thing no soldier should ever die by.

And he wasn't even trying to kill.

He was erasing the idea that they were dangerous.

He was making sure every survivor walked away knowing they weren't warriors.

They were warnings.

And they would spend the rest of their lives carrying that shame.. It was culling. And it was doing it like a surgeon: efficient, cold, and without passion.

A flare burst somewhere to the north. The guards flinched. Cassian nearly pulled the trigger.

No target.

Just noise. More confusion.

He wanted to run. But where?

The others still muttered, trying to remember the rally points, the fallback plans.

Cassian stopped them.

"He's not just some ghost," he said, voice shaking. "He's the reason ghosts exist."

And somewhere, out in the storm, the Yellow Jacket moved again.

The next team moved in formation. Military. The Warlord's troops by the way they swept corners. Their lances tracked angles with practiced ease. Their footfalls were measured. Their eyes hard.

They weren't dupes of Lucas.

They were here for the Warlord.

They were here for Wren.

Warren didn't hesitate.

He dropped into the corridor from a rusted pipe overhang and drove the tip of the umbrella straight into the squad leader's throat. The armor plate flexed but didn't save him, the spear point slipped beneath the edge and punctured deep.

Blood sprayed across the man to his left, who flinched just long enough for Warren to bury the umbrella's hook behind his knee and yank. The joint popped. The man went down screaming.

No games. No mercy.

The third spun, trying to bring his weapon to bear. Warren ducked, let it fire overhead, and drove the umbrella forward with both hands. It crashed through the chestplate and pinned the man to the wall. Screams died in his throat.

This wasn't fearplay.

This was execution.

The fourth made it three steps before Warren was on him. He tried to run. Got three steps. The tip caught his calf and tore muscle from bone. He collapsed mid-turn.

Warren left him breathing. Barely.

The fifth, a woman with a buzzcut and eyes like steel, got a shot off. It grazed Warren's coat. She lined up a second.

He didn't let her take it.

He surged forward, slammed the umbrella across her collarbone, and then again as she dropped. The second strike punctured below the ribs. Clean in. Deep.

She exhaled like the fight had left her soul.

Warren stepped over her.

The last one tried to flank. Came at him from the side with a high strike. Warren caught it with the shaft of the umbrella, twisted, and reversed the momentum into a low stab to the gut. The man folded.

Blood misted into the rain.

This time, there were no survivors.

These weren't patrol grunts or frightened conscripts.

They were hunters.

They were here to drag Wren back to the Warlord.

To take her back to him. To the cage she had already flown free of.

He left these ones broken and still.

The rain pooled around their bodies. The mist didn't even bother to hide them.

He moved on, silent again, the umbrella trailing behind him like an afterthought.

The storm answered with a crack of thunder.

Somewhere ahead, another squad moved.

They hadn't heard the screams yet.

They would.

By the time he reached the third ring, he'd left forty men behind him. Moaning. Crawling. Whimpering. Mostly alive.

The alarm didn't sound. No one could agree on what they were seeing. Some screamed ghosts. Some screamed broken. One tore out his own chip trying to make the System recognize the shape hunting them.

It didn't.

Outside, thunder cracked like a fracture in the sky.

Captain Rorik slammed his fist against the comms terminal.

"Where the fuck is Echo Squad?"

No answer.

A second channel crackled with static. Screams bled through it. Then silence.

Another thunderclap. The lights flickered.

He pivoted, sweat already slicking the back of his neck. "Anyone got visuals? Anyone?"

Around him, the command bunker had descended into chaos. Mercs shouted across channels. Maps flickered on cracked slates. Emergency pings spiked in overlapping colors no one could parse fast enough.

Lightning flashed outside the slitted windows. The glow hit pale faces. Then darkness again.

"He's just one kid!" Rorik roared. "One! Why are we bleeding bodies like it's a full fucking siege?"

A runner burst into the room, helmet half-fastened, eyes wide. "Another wave just came in. Injured. All of them. Can't even walk, sir. They're screaming like, like something's crawling inside their bones."

"Where's the damn med team?"

"Buried, sir. They're triaging in the mud. There's too many."

Rorik turned back to the screen. Four elite squads were gone. No pings. No return signals. Dead or hiding.

"They're not responding. None of them. Even the heavies. Even the ex-Green fuckers."

A comm panel screeched.

"Section 2! We need evac, he's in the walls! It's not, it's not human, it's...."

Static.

A distant lightning strike backlit the mist for half a heartbeat.

"Goddammit!" Rorik turned, fists clenched. "I said lock it down. Get me a perimeter. Call in the Red Squads if you have to. If this kid's a ghost, we're gonna need monsters to stop him."

A merc near the back threw down his headset. "No. Fuck this."

Rorik's head snapped around. "What did you just say?"

"We're done," the merc said, voice shaking. "This isn't a job. This is a fucking grave. He's a ghost. He's...."

"You're done when Lucas says you're done," Rorik snapped. "And he ain't here, so guess what? You're not fucking done."

The merc looked around. Others nodded. A few didn't meet anyone's eyes.

"Fuck Lucas," the merc muttered. "Fuck this place. Fuck you. We ain't dying here for some psycho's girl."

"Don't," someone warned.

But it was too late.

Another bolt of lightning struck nearby. The room trembled.

Deana stepped into the room.

Her coat was still streaked with drying blood. Her lance was already raised.

"You die here or you die fighting," she said coldly, leveling the weapon at the merc's head. "Either way, you want to take your chances with me or some little kid in a coat?"

The merc's hands went up slowly. "Fine. We'll fight. We'll fight the ghost. But when we get back, we're dealing with this shit."

Deana pulled the trigger.

His head snapped sideways. He dropped.

She turned to the rest. "Seems like he picked here."

A long silence. Outside, the storm began to howl.

"Anyone else?"

No one moved.

Lightning danced across the sky again.

Inside, no one dared breathe.

Rain poured harder now. The storm overhead began to flash,not lightning, not yet, but static pulses across the clouds. The air felt electric. Hungry.

Warren stepped through a field of broken patrols. The storm wrapped around him like a cloak. Sparks jumped from nearby signage and the gutted remains of lighting rigs, flashing against the rain-slick ground.

The main gate loomed above him. Massive. Mechanical. Old-world iron with a motorized rail system. Reinforced pistons. No key. Just a control node on the inside.

He stared at it. Calculated angles. Mapped pressure points. Not a breach, not yet, but soon.

Movement to his right.

No warning. No broadcast.

Red Squad.

Warren had seen them before, the day he first tried to join Lucas's clan. They hadn't spoken to him then. Just watched. Evaluated. Even back then, he knew they were the real deal, Scavs who didn't flinch, didn't brag, didn't miss. They weren't for show. They were for shutting doors permanently.

There were six of them.

They didn't announce themselves. Didn't scream. They moved in silence, formation tight as a wire, their placement perfect. They flowed like water, each one compensating for the other's movement, striking in concert. They weren't a squad. They were a single body wearing six skins.

Their armor was matte-black, heat-scattering. Their visors burned faint orange. Each bore the red slash of a Zone Diver. Not Warlords troops.

Elite even among the suicidal. Trained in places most people didn't even believe existed.

And they were here for him.

They circled without a word. Six black helmets facing in. The rain hit their armor like drums, and they didn't flinch. They moved like predators, no wasted motion, no fear.

One by one, they lowered their lances.

And then, in perfect sync, they holstered them.

The sound of it, locks clicking into place, plates sealing, was deliberate. Mocking.

One of them chuckled. "All this trouble for one little brat?"

Another added, "Let's see what the legend's made of. Give the ghost his shot."

Their leader didn't laugh. Just stared at Warren through his visor. "Drop the toy. Make this easier."

One of them laughed. Just a snort through the voc-filter.

"All this trouble for one little brat?"

Another snorted. "Brass must be pissing themselves if they called us in for a kid."

The leader didn't laugh. Just stared at Warren through his visor. "Drop the toy. Make this easier."

Warren tilted his head.

Then, without a word, he let the umbrella drop beside him.

He reached behind his coat and pulled the truncheon free, his Reaper's Scythe, the weapon that didn't judge, it ended.

The laughter died instantly.

Warren rolled his neck once. The rain slid down his face. The storm above surged again.

He stepped forward.

And then they moved.

Warren didn't speak.

The first came at him with twin blades, arcing low. Warren twisted, let the momentum carry the strike wide, and slammed the truncheon across the collarbone, once, twice, until the armor cracked inward like a dented hull.. It didn't drop him.

The second nearly took Warren's leg with a swing of a weighted chain. It missed by inches, caught the coat and spun Warren sideways. He rolled, planted his stance, turned his hip, and drove the truncheon upward in a tight arc, smashing into the helmet from below with a snapping crack. that cracked the helmet visor on the third operative.

They came fast. Smarter than the others. Not panicked. Not loud. One tried to flank. One came in low. The last leapt from above, using old scaffolding for leverage.

Warren bled. Twice. Once along the ribs. Once behind the shoulder. But he didn't fall.

He began to count them. Not with numbers. With movement. The leader, broad shoulders, dual crescent blades, coordinated their rotations. Warren watched how the others pivoted off his step. Every time he advanced, they closed ranks.

He changed pace. Faster. Wilder. He clipped one with the truncheon but didn't follow through. Let the rhythm break. Let the pattern stutter.

Then he surged.

He didn't go for the weakest. He went for the spine.

He shouldn't have gotten that close.

They had him boxed. Perfect geometry. No lines open. No gaps. Just wet concrete and six apexes closing.

And then it changed.

The leader tried to redirect. Too late.

Pain hit first. Not sharp. Deep. Dull. Wrong. Like his chest had forgotten how to be solid. The spike drove in under the chin, through the gap they didn't think he'd find.

The HUD blinked. Static. Heat. Error codes.

He dropped.

The rest faltered.

No order given. No signal. The kind of stall that only meant one thing: their center was gone.

He wasn't fighting like them.

It wasn't evasion.

It was a rhythm.

He spun between their blows like he'd heard the song a measure ahead of them. Every footstep hit just before theirs. Every dodge left after they'd already committed. He wasn't trying to avoid them. He was setting pace.

He moved like they were props.

Like they were there to complete the choreography of his violence.

He weaved inside a blade swing and tapped the side of a helmet with the truncheon, just enough to disrupt timing. Another tried to counter. Warren turned, stepped behind, and let momentum carry his elbow into a jaw.

They weren't opponents.

They were dancers trying to catch up to a lead they couldn't hear.

And Warren was laughing.

Not loud. Not mocking.

Like the song in his head had gotten to the part he liked best.

One went for a shoulder grab, trying to redirect the rhythm.

Warren shattered his wrist and dropped him with a sweep to the side of the neck.

The fifth hesitated, mid-shift.

And Warren was already there.

They'd seen monsters in the Red.

But none of them moved like this.

None of them smiled.

Their leader dropped.

That was the gap.

Everything after that unraveled.

One swung wide. Another stumbled, too slow to adjust.

They hesitated, just long enough.

Warren was already inside the break. He didn't brawl. He didn't clash.

He danced.

The space between bodies folded around him like a rhythm only he could hear. Each pivot he made was a counter-beat. Each strike landed where breath used to be. Every motion made the others slower, heavier, like they were caught in mud and he was gliding across glass.

He shattered a shin with a low kick, spun on the wet concrete, and used the momentum to crack a helmet's faceplate with the truncheon. One went down trying to pull a fallen comrade out of range. Warren didn't hesitate, he stepped into the weight of his swing and crushed the side of the mask. A release of pressure. A whimper. Silence.

Two left.

They tried to reset, but the tempo had changed. Their dance was gone.

Warren wasn't just fighting. He was conducting.

He shifted left, ducked low, and let one blade pass harmlessly above his head. Came up with the truncheon across the ribs. A rib cracked. Another swung in blind panic.

He spun with it, flowed into the next beat like it had always been his to begin with. The spike extended, not with flash, not with sound, but with a grim inevitability.

It punctured low, beneath the plate. Not deep. Just enough.

The fifth fell.

The sixth ran.

Warren didn't let him.

The alley swallowed sound as he gave chase. Past rusted scaffolds, shattered posts, drainage rails steaming with runoff. The thunder was steady now, like drums.

The last trooper turned, desperate to reclaim rhythm.

Too late.

Their weapons clashed, brief, violent. Sparks spit against rain.

Warren pressed in, forehead to visor, and used the recoil to drop low. A sweep. A crash. One last dance step.

The truncheon rose.

Steel split.

The spike deployed with a sound like finality. It jutted out, not for show, not for signature, but for truth.

And then it fell.

And fell again.

The last note in the song.

The rain steamed as blood met stone, turning crimson into vapor.

Warren stood over the last of them, chest heaving, the coat still bright beneath the storm, but now streaked with crimson over its yellow.

He didn't move.

He didn't hear thunder anymore. Just the last note, still ringing

Something was building.

Not in the alley. In him.

Like tension beneath the skin. Like static crawling inside his lungs. It wasn't pain. It wasn't fear.

It was weight.

Not heavy. Just waiting.

A sense that if he reached out, truly reached, he could hold something that hadn't finished becoming real.

Then he heard it.

Breathing.

Wet. Wrong.

He turned.

The alley mist shifted, and a figure stepped through.

It blinked. Literally. Flickered in and out, a smear of error across space.

Broken. Twisted in ways no body should be. Eyes like dying light.

Not a brute.

Something worse.

Warren pulled the truncheon free again. One hand. Low grip.

The storm cracked open above him. Lightning struck something too close. The alley lit white.

And Warren moved forward.

The Broken tilted its head.

Then it flickered again.

Warren smiled.

When it was done, the alley was steam and ruin. The Broken didn't thrash when it died. It glitched.

He stepped closer. The corpse didn't settle. It stuttered. Light scattered across the ground where its frame failed to render fully. A faint pulse of nanites lingered just beneath the skin.

He didn't hesitate. He reached in, found the fragment the way one finds heat in ashes.

And pulled.

No light show. No noise.

Just certainty.

Warren stared at the shard in his palm. Black-edge, iridescent. Wrong in the way it bent reflection. The System didn't speak. Didn't ping.

But he knew.

He had held his slot open for a reason.

This was it.

[Examine]

Type: Fragment

Modification History: Adaptive Layer Present

Embedded Skill: Flicker Steps (Active)

Origin: Unknown
Notes: Fragment contains nonstandard mobility override. Manual integration may induce sync distortion. Temporary molecular desync required for full effect. User advised to maintain visual anchor during reconstitution.

He didn't feel it activate. Not all Skills announce themselves.

But the world suddenly felt more porous.

Like it was ready to let him slip through.

Warren moved

Mist coiled around him. Veils of it drawn from gutter steam and storm fog. Warren moved through it like he belonged to it, as if the mist knew him, had been waiting for him to return.

He didn't disappear.

He became something else.

The Yellow Jacket.

The Ghost in the mist.

Warren Smith — Level 10

(First threshold requirements not met)

Class: Scavenger

Alignment: Aberrant

Unallocated Stat Points: 0

Attributes:

Strength: 10

Perception: 16

Intelligence: 20

Dexterity: 15

Endurance: 11

Resolve: 17

Skills at Level 10:

Examine (Active): Allows close, precise inspection of physical items. Identifies structural materials, mechanical condition, origin markers, manufacturing details, and utility potential. Does not reveal hidden properties.

Scavenger's Eye (Passive): Enhances visual pattern recognition and environmental scanning. Trains the brain to notice material irregularities, out-of-place objects, and salvage opportunities even in chaotic debris fields. Grounded in perceptual filtering and mental cataloging.

Quick Reflexes (Passive): Improves startle-response timing and intramuscular coordination. Allows the body to instinctively respond to fast-changing movement or proximity without conscious input, evasive steps, and reflexive tensing when startled. Reflexes that fire before thought, clean, automatic, almost predictive. As if the body, when trained long enough, starts to anticipate motion before it registers. like instinct honed into something sharp.

Crafting (Active): Activates a system-assisted overlay that highlights structural stress points, compatible materials, and assembly pathways in real time. Enhances focus and spatial awareness, allowing rapid assessment and execution of mechanical or structural tasks. Used to repurpose materials into tools, stabilizers, or functioning devices with heightened efficiency and minimal error.

New Flicker Steps (Active):
Allows the user to disperse into a dense nanite mist and reconstitute nearby within visual range. The movement appears as a flicker, instantaneous, disorienting, and unpredictable to observers. Requires direct line of sight and rapid internal sync stabilization. Not a teleport: the body collapses and reforms, frame by frame, with no time for thought in between.
Most effective when used in bursts: evade, reposition, close. Not silent. Not subtle. It's movement made visual static, like being skipped forward by a broken reel. Flicker too often, and the world starts to stutter around you.