Yellow Jacket

The storm had been building all day.

It wasn't just the rain now, though the rain came hard and ceaseless, carving lines into the mud and metal alike, it was pressure, the kind of deep, air-holding tension that bent trees sideways and pulled howls from steel that had long forgotten its voice. The wind moved low and angry like it had been born somewhere ancient and hadn't forgotten what it hated but not the hate itself. Above, the clouds rolled not like mist or vapor but like flexing muscle, alive with friction, thick enough to feel in the lungs.

Warren stood at the edge of the fortress causeway, coat clinging to him like a second skin, yellow streaked deep with crimson and rain, soaked through and unmoved, as if the weather had bowed to him rather than the other way around. Behind him, there was ruin, the alley, the Broken, the flicker of something new still crawling beneath his skin like static with nowhere to land.

But this wasn't a moment for silence.

"I love you."

It echoed, again, and again, and again, like a loop caught between heartbeat and memory, Wren's voice not breaking but resonating, the breath she gave to the words still caught somewhere behind his ribs, the shape of them just as sharp as the moment she said it. Like it meant more than comfort. Like it was a choice. A tether. A warning.

"I love you."

Warren's jaw tightened, not from pain but from anchoring. The storm didn't move around him. It moved through him. With him. Inside him. Beneath his skin and behind his eyes. Lucas had touched her, taken her, and Warren could feel the wrongness of it settle into his bones like an itch he would carve out with his hands if he had to.

Something screamed in him, not voice, not thought, but motion. It had nowhere else to go.

He pulled open the satchel Car had packed. The scatter bombs were waiting, six metal canisters, no larger than fists, humming faintly with mechanical intent. Lights pulsed soft amber. Stabilizers hummed like they knew the shape of what was coming.

He armed them in sequence. Magnetic pins clicked with purpose. Timers remained silent. Precision born of rage. Ritual made of violence.

He approached the gate with the kind of calm that made men hesitate. No stealth. No whispers. No mercy. Each step was a declaration.

"I love you."

He placed the first bomb at the lower piston joint. Second at the gear housing. Third inside the rail slot. The fourth went dead center. His hands moved steady, but his body, his mind, was not still.

Something was rising beneath the surface.

Something vast.

He stepped back.

And waited.

Five seconds.

The gate didn't break. It disintegrated. Sound, fire, and shrapnel split the night open like a scream too long swallowed. Metal folded like wet paper. Walls that had stood for decades launched outward into the dark. The storm didn't flinch. It swallowed the noise. Like it had been waiting.

Then Warren moved.

The Stinger came off his back with a clean snap, weight settling into his grip like it belonged there. It was heavy. Honest. Built to stop whatever thought armor was protection.

He crossed the threshold.

The first guards didn't hesitate, but they didn't get far. They came out of the smoke, two, maybe three. They didn't speak. Didn't even raise weapons in time.

Warren fired.

The Stinger sang. One collapsed in mid-sprint. Flechette buried in the chest. Another turned to run, too slow. Warren pivoted, fired again. The shot clipped a shoulder, but the panic had already set in.

He advanced.

Storm behind him. Fire ahead. Wind howling like it was could feel his pain.

One merc charged. Warren slung the Stinger back with a practiced sweep. The strap caught smooth across his shoulder. Valk's hand lance came up in his right. Truncheon filled his left.

The man swung wide.

Warren didn't dodge.

He flickered.

For just a breath, shattered form, light breaking, static humming, then reformed one step to the left. Not far. Not smooth. Just enough.

His balance stuttered. The step hadn't been clean. But it was enough.

He landed beside the merc's exposed side, planted his foot, and drove the truncheon down with the kind of finality that cracked cartilage and bent limbs. The scream was brief.

Another moved behind him.

Warren spun. Fired the hand lance once. Recoil snapped through his arm. He followed it through and smashed the truncheon across the side of a helmet, hard enough to drop the body before it hit the ground.

Two down.

The rest came.

Warren didn't care.

He was already in motion.

Into the storm.

Into the breach.

Into that special kind of silence, the one that only follows destruction so complete it feels like something holy.

And above it all:

Just behind his eyes.

Something was building.

It wasn't rage. It wasn't clarity. It was instinct uncoiling. Something building itself into him. Something powerful looking for a body to wear.

And Warren, soaked and screaming without sound, wasn't just ready.

He was opening the door.

Warren breached the fortress like a thunderclap given shape.

He didn't pause in the wreckage. Didn't wait for formation. He was already moving, already cutting angles through the atrium, his coat soaked, streaked with blood and rain, moving like part of the weather.

The first wave met him fast. Mercs. Warlord troops. One or two from the harem still holding blades. All armed. All desperate.

He moved through them like the eye of the storm.

Flechettes tore past his shoulder. One skipped off the floor near his foot. Another came from high left,he stepped into it and brought the truncheon up in a rising arc. The flechette struck the blacksteel mid-air, ricocheted into the ceiling.

Warren kept going.

One guard rushed. Warren flicker-stepped, vanishing in static and reforming behind him. A twist. A hook. The truncheon dropped the man instantly.

Another came from the side. A harem girl with twin knives. Warren caught one with the edge of the truncheon, pivoted around the other, and drove an elbow into her throat. She dropped gagging. Didn't rise.

Two more. Then five. Then more.

They came too fast. Too many. They started tripping over each other, fighting to get closer. Some shouted orders. Some didn't even know who they were shooting at. One fired wildly and hit a comrade in the back. Another stumbled over a corpse and screamed before Warren even touched him.

He didn't stop. Didn't slow.

He slammed the butt of the hand lance into one jaw, cracked the truncheon against another's ribs, and turned to stab forward, flicker. Reappeared behind a third. Drove the spike into the gap under the arm.

They attacked in packs but fought like strangers.

Warren fought like storm and rhythm.

He phased in and out,appearing between enemies just as they turned, vanishing before their blades landed. A guard went for a backstab and caught only mist. Another swung at Warren's flicker-form and struck a harem soldier instead.

The air filled with shouts, steel, and blind panic.

Warren bled. A graze along his side. A tear in the coat. Didn't matter.

He lashed out with the truncheon,blunt end crushing a thigh. Then reversed grip and stabbed with the spike, puncturing a shoulder and wrenching the joint apart with a twist.

One guard tried to run. Warren let him,for three steps. Then flickered. Came back ahead of him. Slammed both weapons forward,one into ribs, the other into the face.

Thunder shook the hall.

"LUCAS!"

His voice cut through the din. He wasn't shouting for intimidation. It was a call. A promise.

"You slimy little fuck, get out here!"

A squad of four tried to box him in. They tripped over the fallen. One got stuck behind a corpse and shoved another off balance. Warren hit them mid-collapse, flicker, drive, crush, step.

"I told you!"

A blade came from his right. He dropped, swept the legs, stood in a blur of motion, and jammed the truncheon against the temple hard enough to splatter blood across a wall.

"You couldn't hide from me, you piece of shit!"

The floor was slick now. Blood and rain pooled in corners. Screams rebounded.

Warren stepped through it.

A merc screamed and begged. Too late. The hand lance silenced him. Another charged and fell on a body, tried to roll up, caught a kick to the face instead.

Flicker again. The world stuttered.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Warren drove the spike through a merc's gut before he even solidified.

Every motion mimicked the storm above.

Ragged, loud, relentless.

He didn't stop.

Not until Lucas answered.

And then he did.

Half-dressed, barefoot, and smiling like he'd already won. Sweat still slicked his chest and collarbone, but somehow he looked untouched by the chaos around him. Clean. Polished. Gleaming. Like someone who'd just stepped out of a private victory.

He stepped out from a gilded corridor on the upper tier, still pulling on a jacket that didn't match the blood-slick floor below. His hair was damp, uncombed, the collar askew. But the grin on his face, wide, arrogant, gleaming, looked like it had been carved there.

He surveyed the bodies. The smoke. The blood.

And smiled wider.

As if none of it mattered.

As if this, too, was part of the plan.

The storm hadn't stopped. But Lucas looked like the one who brought it.

Lightning licked the upper sky, crackling through the storm-heavy clouds as Lucas stepped onto the balcony with the ease of a man born to pageantry, not war. The storm framed him in flickering silhouette, his shirt half-buttoned, chest still damp with sweat, the smugness on his face a shine brighter than the lights overhead.

He raised his arms in theatrical calm, a conductor calling his symphony to rest.

"Everyone, everyone, please," Lucas said, voice carrying over the broken courtyard with smooth, practiced warmth. "Let us stop this violence. Our guest of honor has arrived."

Warren didn't move. He was soaked in rain and ruin, blood clinging to the truncheon like ink on a script, eyes locked on the man above.

Lucas smiled wider.

He turned his head slightly and nodded to Deana.

She vanished into the darkness without a word.

Lucas looked back down at Warren, as if this were a stage and the final act had already been written.

"So," he said, voice silk-drenched spite, "you came for your whore."

Warren stepped forward, just once.

Something flickered.

Not around him. Within him.

Lucas raised a hand. "Temper, temper. The Yellow Jacket is supposed to be cold, detached, surgical. Not some screaming gutter orphan with delusions of grandeur. But look at you, drenched, trembling. So very human. And tonight, oh, tonight... you will scream."

The storm rolled louder above them.

Not metaphor.

It answered him. Each word felt like it summoned thunder. The wind gusted low, crawling across stone and corpse alike.

Then Deana returned.

She stepped from the archway leading to the tower stairwell, one hand wrapped around the neck of the girl at her side.

Wren.

Naked.

No chains. No visible blood. Just rain-slicked skin, arms folded across her chest, lips set hard.

She wasn't broken. Not visibly.

But her silence carried weight.

Lucas gestured to her grandly. "Ah, Azolde, my dear. Would you like to tell him, or shall I?"

Wren's gaze didn't leave Warren. Her voice didn't tremble.

"I slept with Lucas, Warren."

Lucas turned toward her, brow slightly raised, caught off guard by her tone.

Warren didn't react.

No twitch. No snarl. No shift.

Just stillness.

It unnerved Deana more than anything else. She remembered Wren's words from earlier, spoken low and dangerous:

He doesn't freeze like other men. He burns the air around him. When he breaks you, you'll see what I mean.

Lucas tried to regain rhythm.

"Well then. Judging by your lack of reaction, I suppose you're more of the cuckold type than the vengeful lover. And she, well, clearly more of a whore than even I imagined."

The courtyard had emptied. Just the bodies now. Just Warren. Just the storm.

Lucas spread his arms.

"But it doesn't matter. You're still the center of this show. You always were. And tonight, I give the Yellow Zone a legend worth ending."

He took a breath.

"I have in my possession two gifts. Rarities. Unique and utterly devastating. Given to me by a very powerful ally, someone you may know as the Warlord."

He snapped his fingers.

From the far end of the balcony, Captain Rorik stepped into view, face pale, armor dented.

Lucas turned to him. "Let them loose."

Rorik hesitated. "Sir... we already let the small one hunt. It hasn't returned."

Lucas scoffed. "No matter. The other is enough to handle this filth."

Rorik tried again. "But sir, what if it hasn't returned because he...."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Lucas barked, loud enough to echo across the stone. "That boy is nothing more than gutterborn trash. A walking scarecrow. There's no way he could take down the Flickerborn. Let alone... take on the Behemoth."

Rorik said nothing.

Lucas looked back down at Warren.

"Let it loose," he said, quieter now. Cruel. Certain.

"And let us enjoy the show as this ghost is revealed for what he truly is. A boy dressed in myth, born of trash, destined to fade like the lie he's always been. A whisper, barely spoken, crushed beneath something real."

The sky cracked wide.

Rain began to hammer the stone in sheets.

The last wall between thunder and war finally broke.

And then the roar came.

The courtyard shuddered.

Stone trembled.

The courtyard was wide and broken, the kind of open ground meant for demonstrations and executions. Stone tiles stretched outward in a ring, stained with oil and blood, cracked where past punishments had left their mark. Ruined columns circled the space like silent witnesses. A shattered fountain lay crooked in the center, half-choked by mud and rain. The far side had collapsed into a slope of rubble, as if something had once escaped and never looked back.

Mist clung to the floor like a second skin. Puddles gathered in uneven patches. Everything glistened under the stormlight, slippery, treacherous, waiting.

And then the gate at the far end buckled.

Not opened.

Torn.

A metal shriek, long and hollow, split the courtyard like a spine being pulled apart. Reinforced iron peeled sideways like peeled fruit, and out of the smoke walked the Behemoth.

It didn't charge.

It walked.

Massive. All muscle. Taller than any man by half, thick in ways no armor could fake. Its skin was pale, veined with faint discolorations, as if its blood had turned against itself, glowing faintly beneath the skin in warning. Its arms hung heavy at its sides, hands the size of small shields, fingers curled like they were still remembering how to be human.

Its head was low. Broad. Neck too thick to turn fully. Its back arched slightly, but not from weight. From poise.

And behind the bulk, behind the animal weight of it, something looked out from its eyes. Something calculating.

It stopped in the center of the courtyard.

Rain slicked its frame. Mist curled around its knees. Its nostrils flared.

Then it turned its head sideways, slowly, like it was trying to understand the thing that stood in front of it.

Warren.

They stared.

For a moment, it was just that, two shapes in the storm. One carved by discipline, the other by something no one could name.

Then it roared.

Electricity cracked across its skin like lightning striking from within. Bolts arced from shoulder to wrist, grounding in the wet stone, setting off small explosions of steam and light.

And it leapt.

Fast. So fast. The ground beneath its feet gave way as it launched forward, one hand drawn back, curled into a strike that could level a wall.

Warren moved, but not in time.

The fist struck the ground just where he had been.

The courtyard erupted.

Stone shattered. Puddles exploded upward in a curtain of water and debris. For a moment, nothing could be seen. Just spray. Just chaos.

Lucas laughed.

He threw his arms wide, looked toward Wren with mockery dancing in his eyes.

"So much for the Yellow Jacket."

Wren didn't move.

Didn't blink.

The mist began to settle.

And then the Behemoth roared again, but not in triumph.

In pain.

It turned, slightly off balance, and the motion revealed it, Warren.

Climbing down the monster's back.

Silent. Controlled.

He wrenched the truncheon free from the joint just behind the Behemoth's shoulder blade. Not a killing blow. Not even deep.

But unexpected.

Blood ran. Bright blue. Smoking slightly.

Warren landed lightly, coat trailing behind him.

He didn't speak.

He didn't need to.

The Behemoth turned, slower now, its breath heavier, its skin still flickering with pulses of electricity.

Warren rolled his neck, flicked the truncheon once, and stepped back into the storm-lit ring of the courtyard.

The fight wasn't over.

It hadn't even started yet.

The Behemoth charged.

Not lumbering. Not wild. It moved like the storm, violent, sure, and without hesitation. Its feet cracked stone beneath each step, but the momentum behind it was pure control. It didn't flail. It didn't stomp blindly. It hunted.

Warren met it head-on.

He disappeared into mist.

Not backward. Forward.

He vanished into mist, and whatever happened in the space between was lost to the veil.

And then he reappeared just left of the Behemoth's flank, firing flechettes from the hand lance as he passed, the shots trailing force and shrapnel across the creature's side. One struck flesh. Another sparked harmlessly off thick skin. The third buried in soft tissue near the ribs.

The Behemoth roared.

Lightning arced outward from its shoulders in pulsing beams. Not bolts, lines. Focused. Burning. One scorched the side of a column Warren had just vacated. Another struck the stone just behind his heel. Chunks of the courtyard lifted from the impact and shattered outward.

Warren vanished into the mist beneath the creature's arm, unseen by any eye, and reappeared just above its hip, rising with perfect timing to fire upward. The lance howled. The flechette missed the heart but tore a trench through muscle.

The Behemoth responded not with retreat, but with a pirouette. Not elegant, but fast. Too fast.

Its fist came around with the weight of a falling city. Warren dropped low and rolled just beneath the sweep, the backdraft nearly lifting him off his feet.

Then he was gone again.

He moved like ghostlight on water, impossible to follow and harder to hold. Mist curled in his wake, hiding his movement between each breath, as though the storm itself conspired to keep him unseen.

He didn't move like a man. He moved like instinct given shape, pure momentum wrapped in silence and intent.

The watchers didn't breathe.

Every faction, every merc, every member of the harem, everyone of the warlords enforcer, every eye was fixed on the impossible ballet of speed and strength unraveling before them.

Up on the balcony, Lucas had leaned forward against the railing, his grin long gone. His jaw worked but no words came. His eyes moved frantically between Warren and the monster he'd loosed.

Deana stood beside him, face pale, mouth open. She hadn't blinked in full minutes.

And Wren...

Wren stared down not with fear, but with fire.

This was what she had told them. What they hadn't believed. What Deana had laughed at. What Lucas had mocked.

Now they watched it.

Warren stepped back into view and the Behemoth mirrored him, both bloodied, both breathing like furnaces, steam curling off their bodies into the electric-charged air.

Then the Behemoth roared again, and tore a boulder from the ruined ground with both hands.

It spun once, anchoring its weight, and hurled the stone like a comet.

Warren vanished.

The boulder struck the far tower, demolishing a full story with the impact. Rubble rained down into the courtyard.

Then Warren was behind it.

He struck with the truncheon, spike extended, no hesitation, driving it into the base of the neck. The Behemoth staggered but didn't fall. It reached back with a fist and caught nothing but air.

Warren stepped back through mist.

The storm rolled harder. Thunder peeled the sky like bark from a tree.

Warren sprinted through shattered stone, leapt onto a half-toppled column, and launched himself forward. The Behemoth turned too late, Warren caught it mid-turn with a shot from the hand lance straight into the shoulder joint. The creature stumbled back.

Lightning spilled from its mouth in a scream.

The beam split three dead guards in half before burning a jagged path through a collapsed barricade.

Warren didn't stop.

He circled, vanishing and appearing again in microbursts. His coat whipped like shadow. His feet left no sound.

Then the impossible happened.

Lucas screamed.

"Anyone with a lance, fire! Fire at the Yellow Jacket! End him! End him now!"

A handful of desperate hands twitched toward triggers.

One merc pulled the trigger.

A flechette launched.

But before it crossed half the space between them, a shadow moved.

The Behemoth turned.

It roared, but not in rage.

In judgment.

It seized a broken pillar near its feet, one-handed, and flung it.

The merc became paste.

Blood painted the walls.

Silence fell.

Lucas looked at the Behemoth. The Behemoth looked at him.

And it shook its head.

No.

Lucas paled.

The storm chose that moment to split fully overhead. Lightning rained down across the far edges of the walls. Water hissed in wide arcs. The courtyard was a graveyard now, alive, lit, and barely standing.

Warren stepped into the center again.

He raised the truncheon.

And the Behemoth moved to meet him.

They clashed.

And the storm roared with them.

The clash didn't feel like impact. It felt like gravity had chosen a side.

Stone split. Wind screamed. And between them, the battlefield trembled.

They clashed.

Again Warren vanished.

But when he reappeared, he staggered.

Not from a wound. From something deeper.

His stomach twisted. Heat surged behind his eyes. The flicker left a residue, like his insides had been turned out and stitched back wrong. He caught himself on one knee, retched bile into the mud, and stood only because the storm wouldn't let him kneel.

The Behemoth paused, not in mercy, but recognition.

Warren didn't meet its eyes. He was too busy surviving his own body.

The Behemoth seemed to moved faster, as if every wound it took gave it rhythm, not weakness. It adapted. Its balance improved. It blocked with forearms like shields, countered with fists that seemed to read Warren's timing.

And then it changed.

Warren struck deep, spike sunk just below the collarbone, twisted hard, and blue fluid spilled out across the creature's chest.

But it wasn't just blood.

It glowed. A liquid shine like chems from a med-strip, bright and unnatural. The wound didn't seal, but it stopped bleeding. Muscle didn't regrow, but it knitted just enough to keep moving without drag.

It wasn't perfect.

But it was more than Warren had.

He staggered back, breathing hard, blood mixing with rain. The coat hung torn at the shoulder. His hand lance clicked empty. His legs felt the weight of every flicker, every dodge, every impact. Not just fatigue, but something deeper, a kind of marrow-deep ache from hours of combat, from endless sprinting, from fighting Broken with no rest and no reprieve, and from the stat allocation he'd forced on himself earlier, the pain of it still lingering just beneath the skin. The injection had dulled the worst of it, kept him from blacking out, but it hadn't erased it. It stretched it out. Made every breath feel like it belonged to someone else.

The Behemoth took a step forward, slower now, but deliberate.

And its eyes never left him.

The glow from its wounds pulsed brighter. The storm reflected in it, as if it carried the lightning beneath its skin now.

Up on the balcony, no one moved.

Lucas leaned forward again. Hope bleeding back into his face.

Deana whispered something Wren didn't hear.

And Wren... she stepped to the very edge of the railing, hands clenched white, watching not the Behemoth... but Warren.

He shifted his stance.

Truncheon raised.

Not done.

Not yet.

But the edge was close.

The Behemoth began to circle.

It knew now.

Warren was slowing.

He was human. Exhausted. Hurt.

And it would end soon.

Unless Warren found something else to give.

The storm overhead coiled tighter, as if the sky itself braced for an ending.