Yellow Jacket

The next blow didn't land clean. But it didn't have to.

It caught Warren just beneath the ribs, a wide sweep that wasn't meant to break him, only to move him. He staggered sideways, boots skidding in blood-slick stone, and barely caught himself on a shattered length of column. The truncheon scraped the ground. The hand lance hung limp in his grip. He didn't fall.

But it was close.

The Behemoth didn't roar. It didn't celebrate. It simply moved again, relentless and exacting, like a machine that had learned to hate in silence. Its wounds still glowed, pulsing with that unnatural blue, the chems in its blood stitching it together mid-motion.

Warren's breath came shallow. Not gasps. Just a kind of hollow dragging. His coat clung to him, torn at the shoulder, trailing through the rain like a corpse's flag. He tasted metal. Smoke. Something sharp in his own blood. The world around him blurred at the edges, not from pain, but from overload.

He vanished.

Just for a second.

Then he was back, too early, too far left. The Behemoth's follow-up strike grazed his arm, just enough to send him spinning. His back hit the far wall of the courtyard, stone biting into bruised ribs, and the lance slipped from his hand.

No cheers. No mockery. Just the sound of the storm. And thunder, counting down.

Warren dragged himself upright. One knee, then the other. His fingers closed around the truncheon again like it was memory, not weapon. His vision pulsed at the edges. Muscles misfired. Balance faltered.

The Behemoth watched him.

Circling now.

Not fast. Not savage. Measured.

This wasn't a beast hunting prey. This was an executioner waiting for the condemned to stand.

Warren forced his legs to lock. His coat rippled in the downpour. He didn't blink. Couldn't. He needed to see every twitch of motion. Every breath. Every mistake.

Another step. Another hit. A graze across the ribs. A glancing strike to the thigh. Not enough to kill. Just enough to erode.

His mind screamed for an opening. A reversal. Some forgotten tactic that might give him distance. But nothing came. Not this time.

The Behemoth wasn't losing ground. It was gaining him.

He could feel it in the way its body moved now: tighter, more focused. Its eyes didn't wander. Its balance didn't break. Every blow was testing him. Measuring.

And Warren? He was slowing. Flickers strained his nerves. Movements that had once been graceful now dragged just enough to matter. The ache wasn't pain anymore. It was limitation.

And he hated it.

He wasn't like other people. He never had been. A thing shaped for violence, sharpened by silence, built wrong on purpose. Some might have called it monstrous. Others might've whispered about ghosts when they saw him. But Warren didn't think that way. He didn't think of himself at all.

What mattered now was simple: Even things like him had limits. And this... This was his.

He needed more. Not strength. Not speed. He needed to become something the storm would answer again. Not watch.

Because the Behemoth wasn't just healing. It was learning. And if he didn't break through this wall, this flesh, this fear, this humanity choking the fight from his bones, he wouldn't survive.

Let alone win.

High above, Deana leaned close to Wren, her voice sugar-wrapped and venom-deep.

"This is the part where he dies, isn't it? Your little shadow prince. You thought he was something more. But look at him now. Bleeding in the dirt."

Wren didn't answer.

She couldn't.

Because she was holding herself still, so still, fingers dug into the stone rail, nails breaking, breath held like a blade behind her teeth.

The crowd had changed.

They'd watched in awe. Then fear. Then silence.

But now....

Now the sound was swelling again. A roar of voices, swelling like a wave. Some screamed Warren's name. Most didn't. Most were cheering for the Behemoth. For the monster. For the inevitable.

He was going to die. That was the story they saw. And they wanted to see it end.

A few of them were already celebrating.

And still....

The storm rose.

The pressure thickened. Not just weather. Something older. The kind of weight that made breath catch and bones creak.

Lightning didn't strike. It crawled.

Across the walls. The air. The wet stone.

It felt as though something just beneath the skin of the world was watching too.

Waiting.

And building.

He brought the truncheon up again. One hand. Loose grip. Blood on the handle. Lightning licked the sky above, but this time it didn't feel like it answered him. It felt like it was watching.

And Lucas, Lucas was laughing again.

Warren vanished.

But when he reappeared, something went wrong.

His body folded mid-step. Blood sprayed from his mouth in a violent arc, and he collapsed to one knee, hand pressed hard to the courtyard stone as if the ground itself might anchor him. A red smear bloomed beneath him, and for the first time since the gate fell, he didn't rise.

[WARNING: MOLECULAR INSTABILITY]

The message burned behind his eyes. Not from the Behemoth. From the System. Cold and clinical.

[STRUCTURAL DEGRADATION IMMINENT]

[REPEATED USE OF HIGH-STRESS MOBILITY IS UNRAVELING PHYSICAL COHESION]

He didn't need a translation. Every flicker-step tore him apart at the seams. And now the seams were giving way.

The Behemoth didn't hesitate. It struck.

The fist landed square across Warren's chest.

Stone ruptured. Bone cracked. His ribs didn't just break, they collapsed. The impact launched him backward into the shattered remnants of a column. He hit hard, spine bent, limbs limp, the sound dull against the howling storm.

Something inside him tore. He felt it. Not pain. Not a scream. Just the horrifying silence of a body too damaged to scream.

The truncheon fell from his hand.

His fingers twitched, clawing weakly across the broken floor, dragging slowly toward it. But there was no strength left. His hand smeared blood in its path, the color nearly black in the flickering light.

His breathing slowed. His vision blurred. And the pain...
The pain receded into cold.

He was freezing from the inside out.

His pulse was faint. His lungs shallow. Something rattled when he inhaled, a jagged flutter of wet and ruin in his chest.

He stared at the weapon. The shape of it. The weight that had always been there. The thing he'd held since the first time he chose to fight instead of run. It was inches from his hand.

And still too far.

The storm screamed above him. The crowd roared around him. The Behemoth didn't move. It didn't need to.

He was dying.

That thought didn't come with panic. It came quiet.

Like a whisper between ribs.

This would be easier.

He could feel his body giving up. Feel the blood draining toward the stone. It would take nothing now to just... close his eyes. To sleep. To drift.

And he would never know how it ended.

The world would turn without him.

Wren would live or not. Lucas would gloat or burn. None of it would reach him. Not anymore. Not wherever he was going.

A dozen thoughts flickered through him, each one softer than the last.

He had come so close. So close to saving her. So far from what it would take to defeat the warlord, the one who could give Lucas monsters like this as trinkets. As tokens of loyalty.

Was that the scale of things now? Had he truly believed he was enough to tilt it back?

Mara would've told him the truth.

Even the greatest fall, Rabbit. That's not failure. That's just life. The world doesn't care who you are. The reaper still comes.

He let that line hang. Not as shame. Not as prophecy. Just a fact.

He could die here.

No legacy. No scream. No flash of glory. Just blood. Just rain. Just a limp body on the courtyard floor. One among the many he personally had laid to rest.

And still... Still his hand twitched.

Fingers curled. Scraped. Dragged.

The truncheon was there. Inches away. But his strength wasn't.

Another breath. It hurt.
The broken ribs stabbed at every inhale. He could feel one digging into his lung. Feel the blood filling it.

Each beat of his heart was softer than the last. His ears were ringing. His vision was pinpricks of motion and light.

He thought of Wren. Her voice, not her face. You'll come for me, right?

And he had.

He had come through fire. Through steel. Through pain that would have killed better men.

He had moved like myth. Fought like the storm.

But the storm was above him now. Watching. Waiting.

And maybe.... Maybe it wasn't waiting for him.

Maybe it was waiting for the end.

Because that's what this looked like.

This wasn't a legend rising. This was a man dying.

His head dipped. His eyes closed for just a second. The blood from his lips bubbled with each breath.

It would be so very easy to let go.

To stop. To stop hurting. To stop clawing at the impossible. To stop pretending this fight could be won.

He could rest.

He had earned that, hadn't he?

A life of pain. A trail of ruin. Every breath bought with sacrifice. Every bond cut from loss.

Who would fault him for stopping now? Who would know?

Maybe even Mara would understand. Maybe even Wren would forgive him.

His hand dropped. Not from surrender. From gravity.

That should've been the end of it.

But something stirred. Not strength. Not resolve.

Just memory.

Of her hands on his face. Of her blood on his coat. Of the way Mara had taught him how to breathe through a broken rib. Of the cold nights under black ceilings counting scars instead of stars.

He didn't believe in destiny. He believed in motion.

And motion....
That had always started with pain.

He tried to lift his arm. Nothing happened.

He tried again.

A twitch.

A scrape.

A drag.

The truncheon didn't come to him. But he reached for it. Closer. Again.

His body screamed. His chest cracked. Something inside tore loose.

He grit his teeth.
Spat thick blood that clung to his teeth like rust.

The world wanted him broken. Lucas wanted him forgotten. The Behemoth wanted to erase him.

But he didn't stop.

Not when he was losing. Not when he was broken. Not when it hurt so badly he could barely remember his name.

He had never taken the easy way.

His way had always been through blood. Through bone. Through pain.

And even now, as death wrapped its hands around his throat.... He chose it again.

Because even then.... Even the fear of death....

Was never part of him.

He wasn't the kind who crawled away. He wasn't the kind who begged. He wasn't the kind who waited to be claimed.

When the reaper came, he would meet him standing.

Covered in blood. Out of time. And still ready for the fight.

The storm didn't answer his rise.
It became it.

Warren's hand closed around the truncheon, not cleanly, not with force, but with a trembling, deliberate grip, as if his body wasn't entirely sure it belonged to him anymore, as if the fingers themselves were acting out an ancient reflex passed down by something older than will. His knuckles split open as they tightened around the weapon, and the handle, slick with rain and blood, did not fall.

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That was enough.

Above him, lightning carved across the sky, not with violence, but with breath. It didn't strike. It exhaled. A soundless flash, pale and immense, like the sky was holding its breath to see what he would become.

Then he felt it.

Not power. Not pain.

A pulse.

It was faint, barely there. But it wasn't from the Behemoth. It wasn't from the System. It wasn't even from the storm.

It was from Styll.

A flicker. A heartbeat. Something fast, sharp, and alive, threading through the bond that linked them, humming at the edge of perception. Somewhere close. Somewhere coming.

She was on her way.

He didn't smile. He wasn't capable of smiling. But the corner of his mouth twitched, revealing a sliver of teeth, as if the part of him that killed for silence had just remembered what hope felt like.

"Soon." he whispered, the word thick with blood, barely carried past his lips.

The Behemoth shifted. Massive limbs moved with controlled precision, each motion echoing with the gravity of thunder. It didn't roar. It didn't charge. It approached, each step like the end of something final.

It knew he wasn't dead.

And it did not approve.

Warren stood. Slowly. With agony. With purpose. The motion was not fluid, it was ritual. Bones cracked in defiance. His yellow coat, shredded and soaked through, clung to him like a second skin flayed down to muscle and memory. He looked like something made of war. Not reborn, remembered.

The truncheon in his hand hummed, a low, pulsing sound that didn't belong to any tech signature or system script. It resonated with the air, with the rain, with the rhythm of a world finally catching up to him.

And the storm listened.

Water bent at his knees. Mist climbed his back. Raindrops hovered in orbit, suspended for a breath too long before trailing his motion like celestial debris caught in his gravity.

He didn't flicker. He didn't phase.

He moved, and the storm yielded.

Not out of fear. Out of loyalty.

The rain.

It was his.

It had always been his. Not as a weapon. As a truth. As the shape his soul had always taken when everything else was stripped away.

When the bones of him were exposed, when nothing remained but the core of motion, of silence, of enduring, it was there.

He didn't discover it. He didn't earn it.
He remembered that he had always moved like this. That the storm didn't follow him because of code, or nanites, or fragments.

It followed him because it recognized him.

And it rose with him, not as a technique, but as identity.

Not through code or System interface.
But through will. Through pain. Through movement honed by a lifetime of survival and a refusal to die quietly.

The moisture around him twisted, not outward, but inward, spiraling toward him as if the very molecules of the world recognized him as their center. Rain turned to mist. Mist turned to motion. And motion turned to purpose.

A new law. A rewriting of physical truth. The water in the air didn't simply accommodate his body, it revered it. Trails of spiraling vapor wrapped around each limb. Steam curled at his shoulders. The environment itself formed an echo of his silhouette, like the world was trying to keep up with his shadow.

The stone beneath his feet cracked. Not from force. From momentum. From the weight of something that had passed the threshold of movement and become inevitability.

The storm carried him. Air curved his path. Mist sharpened his timing. His step was no longer grounded in physics, it was supported by a thousand invisible hands holding him in perfect balance.

He advanced. Not quickly. Not silently. But with a majesty that belonged to hurricanes and dying stars.

Water rose with him. Droplets spun in tight orbits around his outstretched arms. The truncheon, jet-black and dripping, gleamed with coiling threads of silver rainfall that glowed faintly with kinetic tension.

The Behemoth braced. Its stance widened. Shoulders dropped. It crouched, every limb angled in readiness, muscles flexing as it prepared to end whatever had just risen from the corpse.

Warren moved.

And the world followed.

But it didn't feel like power. It felt like judgment.

The truncheon struck, not with impact, but with a sound like an entire sky folding inward.

A tidal blast of mist erupted outward in expanding rings. The ground beneath the Behemoth fractured, not from the strike alone, but from the reverberation of Warren's momentum transmuted into force.

Stone screamed. Air split. Rain lifted in vertical waves. Lightning didn't strike him, it avoided him, collapsing around his presence like a field of white fire afraid to trespass.

The Behemoth reeled. Not from pain. From confusion.

The crowd began to move. Not toward the fight, but away. The front line of mercs stumbled backward. Some dropped their weapons. Others just watched, mouths open, as if they'd been told gravity was optional and were seeing proof.

Lucas did not speak. Deana didn't move.

The storm had made a decision.

And now....

It had found its shape.

The System cried a death knell to those who stood against him.

[Area-Wide System Broadcast Initiated]

The Skill: Rain Dancer — has been unleashed.

It echoed. Across stone. Across rain. Across the broken architecture of a world that had tried and failed to forget what power looked like when it didn't ask permission.

Warren heard it, but he didn't flinch.

It wasn't like when Wren created her Skill. That moment had felt gentle. Sacred. A light held in trembling hands. Her announcement had said:

Skill Created: Mercy's Cry

But it....

It wasn't created.

It was unleashed.

Like a vault door torn open. Like a cage giving way beneath something that had been thrashing inside since birth. The System hadn't granted him his Skill it ripped its way free.

It had survived its emergence.

It had acknowledged what it could no longer contain.

And now it told the world not with warning, but with inevitability.

Warren stood in the mist, the water curling at his feet, the truncheon heavy with weight the System couldn't quantify.

He didn't speak.

He didn't need to.

The Rain Dancer had been set loose.

And the storm was following his every step.

Lucas paled further. The color drained from his face in waves, his skin turning a sallow, corpse-like hue that was only broken by the thin stream of blood running down from his forehead, cut there either by his own frantic hands or the tension splitting him apart from within.

He backed away from the railing with shaking hands, his fingers digging into his scalp, yanking at his hair as if tearing it free would wake him from the sight below.

"He didn't have a Skill," Lucas shouted, voice cracking. "He didn't have his fucking Skill! This whole fucking time! How in the hell was he that strong without one!"

He screamed it again. Louder. Shriller.

"This is not possible! This is not possible! That rat! That gutterborn piece of shit! Why is he not dead?! This world is supposed to be mine!"

His hands were bloodied now, streaks of torn hair caught between his fingers, his breath ragged with rage that bordered on madness.

Below, Warren moved like judgment.

And from the platform beside him, Wren laughed.

Not cruel. Not mocking.

Certain.

She stepped forward, her arms still folded against her chest, eyes locked on the battlefield.

"No, Lucas. The world was always his. You just borrowed his air. And now..."

She looked down, expression unreadable.

"Now he's come to take his due."

Deana's face twisted. She lunged, grabbing Wren by the arm, dragging her back with too-tight fingers.

"Then we give him you," Deana hissed, eyes wild. "Or we kill you. Either way, if we die here, at least we took what he came for."

A new voice cut in.

"No you don't, bitch."

Deana froze.

Grix stood behind her, soaked in blood and rain, one hand on her rattle lance, the other holding her Clatterfangs low and casual, too casual.

"That's my bestie down there. You lay a hand on his lady, and I will carve your spine from your ass to your damn eyeballs."

Car's voice followed, calm and deep.

"I've seen her do it. Honestly? It was awesome."

He stepped forward, eyes unreadable, hands resting near his weapons.

"But that's my niece-in-law you've got there. So how about this: hands off your lances, and maybe, maybe, you die quick."

Florence emerged from the east barricade, soaked in rain, her robes cut, her sleeves rolled, tools forgotten at her waist. She didn't speak. She didn't call out. She just looked down at the courtyard and nodded once, slow and sharp, as if she had just confirmed something the world was too afraid to say aloud.

Behind her came the guards from the Bazaar, scattered but united, their weapons low, their eyes wide, every one of them staring at the man below like they'd just seen the future take its first breath.

Styll skittered ahead, soaked, panting, fur dark with rain and mud. She didn't make a sound. She just stood on the railing's edge beside Grix, watching Warren, like something sacred had found its place.

Calra stepped out from the cells below.

Johanna stepped up the stairs behind her.

Calra moved past the others without a word, past Grix, past Car, past the tension and death still thick in the air, and wrapped her arms around Wren.

Wren let her.

For a moment, the storm faded. Just for them.

Then Wren pulled back. Calm. Steady.

Then She pointed at Lucas. Then at Deana.

"Not him."

She turned to Deana one last time.

"He learns what pain is. And she...."

Her eyes locked with Deana's, steady and cold.

"She gets to watch.

The air above the courtyard shifted.

Not just the wind, not just the weight of what Warren had become, something else moved. As if the world itself had paused to bear witness.

And it had.

All across the compound, people had stopped fighting, stopped shouting, stopped breathing. From the edge of the walls to the broken tower ruins, they stood in stunned silence, watching not a myth, but something real.

Something alive.

The Behemoth was fresh.

Its wounds had sealed. Its strength renewed. The blue chem-blood still shimmered across its skin, pulsing with synthetic resilience. It stood taller than ever, muscles flexing, posture coiled, not like a creature cornered, but one reawakened.

And it didn't matter.

Because Warren wasn't a man any more.

He was a tidal storm. A hurricane made flesh.

The rain no longer fell on him. It surged with him, spun around him, howled in time with each breath he took. Mist coiled up his spine. Water sheeted off his coat in waves that didn't break but bent, sliding over his limbs like armor, clinging to his every movement like memory.

The truncheon in his hand wasn't a weapon.

It was an instrument.

And the storm followed its lead.

With every step Warren took, the world moved. The ground trembled beneath his stride, not from weight, but from the momentum of nature itself choosing a vector. Air warped around him. Pressure dropped. Static danced across shattered stone. Lightning crawled between the broken tiles, leaping to his boots, racing to the blacksteel.

The Behemoth charged.

Too fast. Too strong. Its fists slammed down, the sound like falling buildings.

And still

Warren met it.

Not with brute force. Not with matched strength.

But with sheer mass.

He twisted, and the storm moved with him. A spiral of rain lashed across the courtyard, carving trenches into stone. The mist thickened. Pressure surged. Every drop of water between him and the Behemoth moved like a single organism, crashing into its chest with a sound like thunder breaking ribs.

It reeled.

And Warren advanced.

The truncheon didn't just strike.

It summoned.

Each swing brought a wave. Not metaphor. Actual flood. A wall of pressure and water, mist and impact, collapsing against the Behemoth from all sides. Rain wrapped around the weapon's arc, twisted into a spiral, then detonated outward the moment it hit.

One strike knocked the beast back. Another sent it to a knee.

A third

A third ended the ground beneath it.

Stone shattered. The force cratered the courtyard, water rushing into the impact zone with the velocity of a burst dam. The Behemoth tried to rise, claws sinking into broken stone, but it couldn't find purchase. Couldn't find air.

It was drowning.

Not in liquid.

In him.

Every motion Warren made rippled through the environment like gravity deciding to break its rules. The rain was no longer falling, it was hammering. Each droplet a nail, each gust of wind a stake, each roar of the sky a eulogy.

The Behemoth opened its mouth to scream

And the storm filled it.

Mist surged down its throat. Rain blasted against its eyes. Its limbs convulsed, thrashing in water that didn't stop. Its own body rejected it now, the blue chem-blood steaming as it met the flood.

Warren said nothing.

He didn't need to.

He raised the truncheon one last time.

And brought it down.

The impact didn't make a sound.

It made silence.

A stillness so complete it devoured noise, swallowed pressure, erased gravity for a heartbeat.

And when it passed

The Behemoth collapsed.

Steam rose from the crater. Water spiraled downward, into cracks too deep to see. The storm did not fade. It settled, as if satisfied. As if sated.

And Warren stood in the center of it all.

Breathing slow.

Alive.

And more than that

Unstoppable.

High above, soaked and grinning, Grix let out a low whistle.

"Splashy," she said.

Like she'd called it.

The storm was quiet now.

Not gone. Just waiting.

Warren moved without ceremony. No victory. No triumph. Just motion. His coat dragged in the pooled water as he stepped into the crater, boots slipping slightly in the mess of blood and runoff. The Behemoth didn't twitch. It was over.

He knelt.

His hand found the back of its neck without searching. Mara's pocket knife, flicked open with a sound only he could hear. He cut where he needed to. Not clean. Not slow. Just enough.

The fragment came loose.

He didn't look at it.

His fingers closed around the shard, and it placed it into his pocket.

Then his knees gave.

And he fell face-down in the mud and water, the last of his strength bleeding out with the storm.

Silence took him.

But only for a moment.

Footsteps. Fast. Frantic. The splash of boots on stone. A shape closing in.

And then her voice.

Ragged. Loud.

Wren.

"Warren! Don't you dare...."

Another splash. Closer now.

"Don't you dare fucking die after all this."

The world went dark.

But he heard her.

And that was enough.

Warren woke to warmth.

Arms around him. Rain on his face. The soft press of Wren's chest against his shoulder, her heartbeat frantic and real. Her arms locked tight around his ribs, not caring about the blood or the bruises.

His eyes opened slowly.

Above him, the sky still churned, but softer now, quieter. As if even the storm had settled, satisfied.

He groaned.

Wren was already there.

"Warren?"

He didn't speak.

Didn't need to.

She held him like he was the center of the world.

In the near distance, Grix was dragging Lucas across the stone by his hair, the man sputtering and weak, streaked with blood and grime. Behind her, Calra hauled a broken Deana by one arm. The woman didn't resist. She couldn't. There was no fight left in her.

Car, Florence, and Styll were racing down the steps, water splashing around them. Bastard bounded behind Styll reached him first. She crawled across his chest. Bastard pressed into his ribs. He grunted as they curled beside him, forming a shivering pile of fur and warmth and worry.

Car crouched low, eyes scanning him.

"Hell of a show you put on here," he said.

Warren tried to answer. Managed a low cough. Grix smirked and nudged Wren gently with her elbow.

"Splashy," she said.

Warren laughed.

Then immediately choked on it.

Pain flared through his ribs like knives. He grimaced and sucked in a shallow breath.

Wren smiled through tears.

"I have a present for you," she said softly.

She pointed.

Lucas.

"The one you came for."

Warren turned his head. Looked. Then looked back at her.

"No," he said. Voice like gravel. "Azolde… I came for you. He was just in the way."

He closed his eyes. "I don't care what happens to him. After all this… I just want to sleep a bit."

Wren kissed him. Quick. Fierce. Grounding.

Grix groaned. "That's it? That's your big moment? Anti-climactic."

Lucas coughed, still on the ground. "No, no, Warren is right," he croaked. "I… I'm no harm to anyone anymore. I'll just leave. You'll never have to worry about me again."

Wren turned.

Slow.

Her smile was terrifying.

"That's a great idea, Lucas," she said sweetly. "But first… you look wounded."

She stepped forward.

"Let me take care of that."

Lucas tried to scramble, but Grix and Calra were already on him, pinning him down with knees and elbows and smiles far too wide.

Wren knelt beside him.

She looked at Deana.

"What did I promise him, dear Deana?"

Deana didn't blink. Her eyes were dead, voice hollow.

"That he would understand that agony wasn't just a word."

Wren nodded.

"Good girl."

She leaned closer.

"Now let me show you what that word really means, Lucas."

She placed her hand on his chest. The Skill activated.

Not to heal.

To punish.

To remake.

Bones that weren't broken fused. Tendons realigned into wrong configurations. Nerves rerouted through pain loops. He couldn't scream long, his lungs seized. His spine twisted. His jaw locked mid-sound.

His body jerked. Twitched. Bucked.

The System spoke.

[Skill Upgrade: Mercy's Cry — Stage Two Requirements Achieved]

Warren watched.

When she was done.

The creature on the ground no longer resembled Lucas.

Even the Broken would have pitied him.

Warren walked over. Slow. Unhurried.

He stopped beside the wreck.

And said, calm and final:

"I killed Reggie. Just so you know."

He turned away.

"His end was easier than this."

Warren Smith — Level 10

(First threshold requirements met)

Class: Scavenger

Alignment: Aberrant

Unallocated Stat Points: 0

Attributes:

Strength: 11 (Determines raw physical output how much force one can exert in a single motion. Influences lifting capability, grip strength, leverage, and the ability to interact physically with the world on a foundational level. High Strength contributes to physical presence and intimidation.)

Perception: 16 (Governs environmental awareness and detail recognition. Influences the accuracy of observations, reaction timing, and the ability to notice anomalies or hidden patterns. Essential for tracking, anticipating motion, and sensing subtle changes in space.)

Intelligence: 20 (Measures cognitive processing power, learning speed, and abstract reasoning. Influences how quickly and efficiently one can understand systems, synthesize information, and solve complex problems. Affects memory capacity, logic formation, and adaptability in unfamiliar situations.)

Dexterity: 14 (Determines fine motor control, limb articulation, and precise bodily movement. Influences hand-eye coordination, sleight of hand, tool usage, and the ability to move through tight or unstable environments without disruption.)

Endurance: 11 (Measures sustained physical exertion capacity, breath control, and internal stabilization under stress. Influences postural integrity, long-term mobility, and the ability to maintain composure during physically taxing activity without immediate fatigue.)

Resolve: 17 (Governs internal discipline, clarity under pressure, and mental resistance to disorientation or external influence. Influences the ability to suppress panic, resist temptation, and commit to a task despite distraction or discomfort. A high Resolve reinforces identity against erosion.)

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.

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

Warren's Skill – Rain Dancer

Stage One

Core Effect – Phase Slip

Environmental moisture, rain, mist, blood, steam, no longer reacts to Warren. It aligns with him. He is not moving through the storm. He is the storm's chosen vector.

Water flows with him, not around him.

Raindrops spiral to his motion.

Mist forms his silhouette before he steps into it.

Visibility itself becomes distorted in his presence.

Passive – Micro-Evasion Boost

Every movement Warren makes is adjusted, not just spatially, but meteorologically.
Wind pressure shifts around his path. Microcurrents redirect trajectories.

Flechettes miss by millimeters.

Melee swings veer away as air density warps.

Objects moving toward him may deflect subtly, as though pushed by sudden wind shear.

To observers, it looks like supernatural instinct.
To the System, it's a behavior it cannot fully explain.

Attack Sync Effect – Kinetic Surge

When Warren strikes mid-motion, the environment becomes a weapon.

A swing of his truncheon may bring a concussive burst of pressure, water, or mist.

Rain compacts and detonates on impact.

Mist lashes like a coiled whip.

Droplets act as accelerants, increasing momentum and range.

His blows land with the violence of hurricanes.
His movement leaves behind impact craters, gouged stone, or collapsing structures, not from strength, but from the mass of motion given form.

Visual Signature

Rain doesn't fall, it follows.
Mist doesn't obscure, it shapes him.

Each movement trails spirals, rings, and pulses of moisture that react before contact.

Lightning sometimes arcs around him, not to strike, but to avoid him.

The storm bends toward him, not in service, but in recognition.

Growth Conditions:

Rain Dancer evolves through high-risk engagements in poor visibility conditions.

Rain, smoke, fog, blood spray, mist, steam, any atmosphere with distortion potential increases adaptation.

Direct kills made immediately following an evasion spike increase psychological effect range.

The more he endures, the more the storm learns him.

Known Limitations:

Less effective in arid, dry, or open-sky environments.

More moisture decreases its limitations.