Yellow Jacket

Overview

Jim is the instructor of Bricks, Pipes, Anything Sharp, famed for his unmatched creativity in turning the useless into weapons. He made a career on brutality, on proving that with enough imagination, anything could kill. Cadets spoke of him as the man who could murder armies with nothing but a dining set.

But the story of Jim's heart, the moment he fell in love, did not happen in the Citadel. It happened on the battlefield.

The Moment

During the Legion's campaigns, Jim fought alongside Alorna Peace in a skirmish against Princedom forces. The fighting was vicious, close-quarters, steel and blood in the mud. Jim was doing what he did best, breaking bones with rusted rebar, choking men with belts torn from their own uniforms, when he stopped cold.

Because Alorna was there.

He watched her rip eyes out of the skull of an enemy soldier with her bare hands. Then, with cold precision, she used the man's own eyeballs to suffocate him.

Jim, the master of improvised killing, froze. And then he laughed. Not at her, not at the absurdity of it, but at the recognition: she had surpassed him.

His words, In that moment:
"I've met the goddess of violence. And her name is Alorna Peace. Someday I will marry her"

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From that moment, he was lost.

The Campaign

Jim has tried everything, each attempt more absurd than the last.

The Candlelit Dinner:

Jim dragged a table into her office, set with a homemade meal and an insanely expensive bottle of wine. Her response: a four-panel stick figure comic of him choking, vomiting, and her calmly walking away.

The Marriage Proposal Drill:

Jim lined up cadets into a formation spelling

MARRY ME.

Alorna returned with a battle map drawn in stick figures showing his position encircled and destroyed.

The Serenade:

Jim sang outside her estate. A note slid under the door: a stick figure of him dangling from a rope with the caption "music." (Note: Jim cannot carry a tune if his life depended on it.)

The Instructors' Bets

The other instructors watch every attempt like spectators at a pit fight. They don't place formal pools; they bet between one another with Bragging rights, favors, keeping score on who can predict Jim's latest failure.

Lisa

once bet he'd be left bleeding by sunrise. She won.

Imujin

bet that Jim would survive the serenade but wished he hadn't.

Deck

claims he doesn't gamble, yet has never lost a bottle of liquor on the subject.

Gwen

openly encourages Jim, not because she wants him to succeed, but because every attempt is the best entertainment the Citadel has ever had.

To them, Jim's persistence isn't tragic. It's hilarious. Every "date attempt" is a private show Alorna answering in flawless stick figures, Jim refusing to give up, and the rest of them tallying victories in their own little ledger.

Notes

Jim insists that one day Alorna will draw a "yes."

None of the instructors believe him, but none want him to stop trying.

Within the Citadel, the saga has no official name. Among the instructors, they call it

The Misguided War.