The Class was Told to Build a W.e.a.p.o.n— Human Snapped a Chair Leg and Called It a Spear. He Got Laughed At, But Little Did They Know…

 

The training hall buzzed with a low, charged hum—the kind of silence that only comes before something significant. Rows of cadets stood in formation, representing half a dozen species from across the coalition worlds. Some had scaled hides that caught the light like polished armor. Others bore translucent feathers that shimmered faintly in the sterile glow of the overhead lamps. Metallic claws clicked. Bioluminescent eyes shifted colors in anticipation. Even the air seemed to vibrate with expectation as the instructor stepped into the center of the hall.

“Today,” he said, his voice cutting through the noise like a blade through fabric, “you will prove your worth.”

No one moved. No one breathed.

“You will build a weapon,” he continued, his tone unwavering. “You will use only what is in this room.”

A soft, collective murmur followed, rippling through the ranks. For most of the cadets, it was an easy task—almost insultingly easy. They came from species where weapon-making was an artform written into their bloodlines, where technology and biology fused seamlessly. The Silvix could shape plasma into form with their own hands. The Tolrin could coax living bioforms into whatever shapes their minds imagined. Even the massive, armor-plated Kumari could reshape metal using the vibrating harmonics of their own exoskeletons.

And then, at the back of the room, there was the human.

Jason McCree.

He sat three rows back from the instructor’s podium, elbows resting loosely on his knees, his head tilted slightly forward. The only human in this training unit, he looked almost fragile compared to the others—soft skin, no natural armor, no augmentations, no symbiotic weapon systems. Just a regulation academy uniform and a pair of calloused hands.

Someone near the front whispered loud enough for half the hall to hear. “What can a human do? Wave a spoon at us?”

Laughter rippled through the group, metallic and sharp. The Silvix cadet who’d spoken looked back over his shoulder, his mandibles flexing with amusement. Jason didn’t react. He didn’t even raise his head.

The instructor didn’t smile. “Begin,” he said simply.

The room erupted into motion.

The Silvix cadet hissed, lowering its hands toward the floor. Lines of blue-white electricity crawled over the tiles, condensing into a molten arc that shimmered as it solidified. Within seconds, a plasma blade took shape—sleek, elegant, deadly. Its surface hummed with barely restrained power.

Beside it, a Tolrin cadet knelt and whispered to a fist-sized seed. The seed pulsed faintly, then began to grow, sprouting tendrils that coiled around the Tolrin’s arm like vines. The vines hardened, forming an organic stinger, alive and thrumming with bioelectric potential.

Farther down the row, the Kumari cadet—twice Jason’s height and easily three times his weight—pulled the instructor’s bench apart with surgical precision. Using its lower limbs, it reshaped the reinforced alloy into a war hammer. Vibrational nodes along the shaft activated, producing a low-frequency hum that rattled the floor beneath them.

Weapons took form all around the hall: crystalline spears that refracted light into colors no human eye could fully perceive, symbiotic creatures that wrapped themselves around their hosts’ arms, molten blades that cooled into shimmering edges of compressed plasma. Every weapon was a reflection of its maker’s world, its culture, its strength.

Every cadet seemed born to this.

Except Jason.

He hadn’t moved.

He sat perfectly still, watching—not in awe, not in intimidation, just… watching. His eyes tracked every motion, every movement, every transformation. His fingers tapped absently against his leg, a rhythm only he seemed to understand.

When the final weapon had been completed, and the air smelled faintly of ozone and charged metal, Jason stood.

The sound of his boots on the floor drew glances. Then whispers.

He walked to the front of the room with empty hands. No glowing arc of energy, no summoned bioform, no visible plan. Just quiet steps and deliberate movement.

He stopped beside one of the standard-issue wooden chairs positioned near the wall.

And then, without a word, he crouched.

There was a crack—a raw, splintering sound that cut through the air like a gunshot. The chair leg came free in his hand, jagged and uneven. Several cadets flinched. One dropped their weapon entirely. The Kumari’s hammer went still, its hum fading.

Jason sat cross-legged on the floor, holding the broken chair leg. He lowered the jagged end to the tile and began scraping. The sound was harsh and grating, a rhythmic rasp that echoed through the room. Back and forth, slow, steady, purposeful.

“What is he doing?” someone whispered.

The Tolrin tilted its head, eyes narrowing. “Sharpening,” it murmured. “Like a predator.”

No one laughed now.

Jason’s movements were precise. Focused. Patient. When he was done, the jagged edge had been honed to a rough but functional point. Not perfect, not clean—but lethal. He stood, holding the makeshift spear loosely at his side. His stance shifted, weight balanced, ready.

The instructor’s gaze followed him, unblinking.

Jason turned toward the back of the hall where the reinforced training dummy stood—a hulking figure of alloy and synthetic muscle, designed to withstand plasma burns, acid strikes, and high-impact kinetic weapons. The Kumari’s hammer had left only a dent on its surface earlier.

Jason exhaled once, raised his arm, and threw.

The spear spun once, twice—then struck.

The sound was deep and violent, like a thunderclap trapped in metal. Splinters flew. The makeshift spear buried itself almost a quarter of a meter deep into the dummy’s chest plate. The metal groaned. The floor vibrated.

Silence fell.

Every cadet froze, staring at the weapon still quivering from the impact.

The instructor walked forward, inspecting the damage. He ran a gloved finger along the crack spiderwebbing across the dummy’s torso. Then he looked back at Jason.

“Note,” he said finally, tapping his datapad. “Humans don’t need technology. Anything can become a weapon.”

No one spoke. Even the humming of bio-weapons dimmed, their light flickering uncertainly.

One of the Silvix cadets approached, jaw set in disbelief. He wrapped his four arms around the protruding spear and pulled. Nothing. He pulled again, harder. Still nothing. On the third try, his lower arms joined the effort—and the weapon didn’t budge.

Jason’s voice broke the silence. “You’re pulling wrong,” he said quietly. “It splintered on entry. You’d have to break it to remove it.”

The Silvix froze, then released the shaft.

The instructor’s eyes narrowed. “What do you call that?”

Jason shrugged. “A spear. Back home, kids make them when they’re bored.”

The hall stayed silent long after the exercise ended. The glowing weapons dimmed, the laughter gone. The chair-spear stayed embedded in the dummy’s chest for the rest of the day.

Later that evening, well after curfew, a security drone drifted silently through the dormitory corridor. It paused outside Jason’s room, recording through the half-open door.

Jason sat on his bunk, humming softly to himself. In his hands, the metal post from his bed frame. He was carving it slowly with a flattened cup, shaping it the same way he had shaped the chair leg. His movements were steady, almost meditative.

When he tested the edge with his thumb and nodded once in approval, the drone recorded everything. The footage would later be reviewed.

The next morning, the chair-spear was still there. The instructor didn’t remove it. Neither did the cadets. Days passed. Then a week.

No one tried to pull it free again.

The dummy stood like a monument in the center of the room, its metal chest caved inward where the wooden spear still lodged. Every time the training hall lights flickered on, the broken shaft caught the artificial sun and cast long, uneven shadows across the floor.

By the seventh day, the cadets began to avoid looking directly at it. Some hesitated before stepping into the hall, while others glanced toward the weapon as if it were watching them.

That morning, the instructor announced the next task. “You will form triads,” he said. “Mixed species, mixed backgrounds. This time, you work as one unit. In the field, you don’t get to choose your allies.”

Jason was grouped with Yakai, a Tolrin whose symbiotic plant-creature coiled around his arm, and Theren, a Kumari cadet who still carried himself like a walking mountain.

The task: breach and clear a simulated structure under hostile conditions. Competing teams. Shifting walls. Real pressure.

Inside the simulation chamber, the air buzzed with static energy. The lighting dimmed to a crimson glow.

“Stick close,” Jason said as they moved into the maze. His voice was steady, his tone clipped and professional. “Don’t wait for orders—watch, listen, move.”

Theren grunted, unimpressed. Yakai released his symbiote, letting it crawl ahead like a living sensor. Jason took point. His steps were quiet, deliberate. He didn’t move like a soldier trained by their academy. He moved like someone who had learned through necessity, through survival.

When they encountered another team—a Silvix and a Lcari cadet armed with energy stunners—the fight was brief. The training weapons marked hits with light pulses and soft impacts, harmless but loud.

Theren fell within seconds, hit twice in the chest. Yakai lasted longer, his symbiote spitting bursts of paint rounds before getting cornered.

Jason disappeared behind a wall panel. When he reappeared, he wasn’t holding his training baton. He was holding the snapped-off section of the wall itself, jagged and flat. He used it to block, to deflect, to mislead. When one opponent moved to fire, Jason hurled the panel like a disc. It hit the cadet’s arm, knocking the stunner off aim.

He closed the distance in two strides and tagged both opponents out.

When the round ended, the instructor recorded their performance as “Low survival, high disruption value.”

Later, Yakai asked him, “Why didn’t you just use the baton?”

Jason glanced up. “Didn’t need it,” he said. “It’s not about the weapon—it’s about timing.”

That night, security logged him again—alone in his dorm, reattaching the damaged post from his bed. He was carving something new.

When asked the next morning why he did it, he said simply, “Because if I can shape something with my hands, I’m not helpless.”

The instructor didn’t reprimand him. The chair-spear remained in the hall.

And over time, something changed. The laughter stopped. The whispers quieted. The other cadets—those who had mocked him—now watched him differently.

They didn’t understand him. But they were beginning to fear what they didn’t understand.

Three days later, during an off-world training rotation, Jason’s squad was dropped into a live terrain simulation. Harsh cliffs. Shifting gravity. Real danger.

Halfway through, the cliffside under Jason’s boots gave way.

He fell.

The last thing the others saw was him disappearing into a cloud of dust.

He hit hard—rocks, gravel, then a sheer drop. Pain exploded through his leg. He tried to breathe, but the air burned. His vision flickered in and out.

And then, lying there in the dust, ankle twisted, ribs aching, alone in a canyon lit by the faint glow of alien moons—

Jason McCree laughed.

Continue below

 

 

The training hall hummed with quiet anticipation. Rows of cadets scaled, feathered, plated, and cloaked in shimmering hides waited as the instructor stroed to the center. “Today,” he said, voice sharp enough to cut steel. “You will prove your worth. Build a weapon. Use only what is in this room.

” The aliens exchanged confident glances, claws flexing, eyes flickering, pupils adjusting to every light change. To them, it was a simple challenge. An exercise in shaping energy, bending alloys, summoning symbiots. A ripple of laughter spread toward the back row. Someone whispered just loud enough to carry.

 What can a human do? Wave a spoon at us. Jason McCree sat three seats back from the speaker, elbows on his knees, hands quiet, heads slightly bowed. He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. The instructor didn’t smile. He only gestured for them to begin. The room erupted with movement. One Silvix cadet hissed and spread its claws over the floor, drawing glowing arcs in the air as its species natural electrokinetic ability condensed plasma into a blade that shimmerred with lethal beauty.

 The edges crackled, occasionally popping with silent blue flashes that danced across the walls. To its left, a Talin cadet crouched low, whispering to a fist-sized seed it retrieved from its personal kit. Within seconds, it bloomed into a coiled bioform. Its stem writhing and expanding until it hardened into a dark green stinger, pulsing with reactive toxin sacks.

 Its arm pulsed as the creature latched onto the Tolrin’s limb, biologically sinking. Another cadet, a massive quadriped from the Kari region, pulled apart the instructor’s bench with careful reverence, using its rear limbs to shape the reinforced alloy into a wide hammerhead. Vibrational nodes activated along the sides, causing a low thrum that could be felt through the floor tiles.

 The room shimmerred with danger. Energy twisted in ornate curves. Stingers hissed with biochemical precision. Blades hissed like whispers from ancient war gods. Each cadet added something ceremony, tradition, memory. Their weapons were more than tools. They were identities. Jason still hadn’t moved.

 His arms remained on his knees, a single finger tapping lightly against the seam of his uniform. His eyes tracked each cadet, but he gave no reaction. It was only when the last alien had stepped back, weapon held high or humming at their side, that he stood. Several turned to watch. One chuckled. Another murmured something in their dialect that translated loosely to, “He’s surrendering.

” Jason walked to the front empty-handed. He paused before a chair, simple, regulation-made wood composite with steel support bars. He crouched beside it. Some of the aliens lost interest. Their weapons, glowing and humming, needed finetuning and admiration, but a few still watched, curious now. Jason gripped the front leg of the chair. Then he yanked.

 The dry crack echoed across the training hall like a gunshot. Several cadets flinched. One dropped a tool. The Kumari’s hammer paused midvibration. Jason held the broken leg in one hand, the jagged end pointing away from him. He sat down cross-legged and lowered the tip to the floor tile. He began scraping long, smooth pulls.

 The sound was unpleasant wood grading against ceramic surface, back and forth, calm and deliberate, not rushed, not showy. The instructor had turned toward him, silent, eyes narrowed. “What is he doing?” whispered one of the silics. Sharpening, replied the Talin. Like a like a predator. Jason didn’t stop until the jagged edge was thinner, cleaner, still crude, but honed.

 The tip wouldn’t pass a military inspection, but it would pass through flesh. He stood, chair leg, stance loose, weapon held low. He didn’t look proud or defiant, just ready. Without a word, he turned and faced the reinforced training dummy set in the back of the room. It was made of hardened plastic steel alloy resistant to plasma, bio acids, and impact.

 The Kumari’s hammer had left a scuff earlier, no more than that. Jason adjusted his grip, feet shoulder width apart. Then he hurled the spear. It spun once in the air, twice, then struck. A thunderous thud echoed. Splinters rained down. The broken leg buried itself nearly a quarter meter deep into the dumy’s chest. It groaned against the impact, the metal frame inside shuddering under the force.

 No one laughed now. The sound had stopped most of them mid-motion. Some were still holding their weapons. Others had unconsciously lowered theirs. All eyes were on the splintered spear vibrating slightly where it had embedded itself. The instructor walked forward. He didn’t say anything at first, just examined the dummy. Then Jason, then the spear.

 He tapped something on his data pad. Note, he said aloud. Humans don’t need technology. Anything can become a weapon. Silence returned heavier this time. The kind that pressed against your skin and made the air taste different. One of the Silvix cadets, the same who had formed the plasma blade, walked stiffly to the dummy.

 He gripped the protruding spear with both hands and tugged. Nothing. He tried again. Nothing. A third attempt using his lower pair of arms for leverage. Still nothing. Jason finally spoke. Voice low. Angles wrong. It splintered on entry. The silvix froze. Then stepped back. The instructor turned to Jason.

 What do you call that? Jason shrugged. A spear. Back home. Kids make these when they’re bored. No one dared speak. The bioweapons pulsed a little dimmer. The plasma blades wavered. The hammer was placed gently on the floor and the chair spear stayed stuck in the dumy’s chest for the rest of the day. Later that evening, well after curfew, a security drone hovering near dormatory hall C.

 Two captured silent footage. Jason McCree sat on his bed barefoot, humming softly. In his hands, the post of his bunk bed. He was carving it slowly, carefully, sharpening it against a flattened steel cup. When he tested the edge with his thumb and nodded in approval, the drone hovered closer, recording everything. The footage would be reviewed later.

 But the spear that would remain in the dummy, untouched until the end of the semester, the chair spear became a problem. At first, it was just a curiosity, an unexpected trick from a softw world species. A spectacle, no doubt, but harmless in the grand scope of things. Then the instructor stopped removing it. Three days passed. Four.

 The dummy remained in the center of the room, still hunched slightly from the force of impact, the wooden shaft jutting out like an accusation. Each time the training hall lights powered up in the morning, the splinters glittered faintly, catching in the artificial sunlight. No one had volunteered to try pulling it out again.

 Not after the Silvix cadet had nearly dislocated a joint trying. By the end of the week, cadets took longer to enter the hall. Some averted their eyes, others watched it too long, forgetting why they’d come in the first place. On the seventh day, the Tinyakai stood outside the hall for several minutes before stepping in.

 His boweapon, now dormant and coiled around his wrist, pulsed faintly as if sensing his hesitation. Jason was already inside, seated near the back, notebook in hand. He wasn’t scribbling, just thinking. His eyes flicked up once at Yakai and then returned to the page. It wasn’t just the weapon that lingered anymore. It was what it meant.

 Most cadets came from species where weapons were earned through ritual or developed with highlevel neural implants. The idea that someone could just make one by breaking a chair was deeply uncomfortable. Worse, Jason hadn’t performed it like a boast or challenge. He’d done it like someone brushing dust off his sleeve.

 So, when the instructor announced the next task, a team exercise, there was tension. You will form triads, he said. Mixed species, mixed backgrounds, and in a real scenario, you wouldn’t choose your squadmates. Jason was grouped with Yakai and a Kumari cadet named Theren. Neither looked thrilled. The task. Breach and clear a simulation chamber as a hostile threat team.

 They were handed dummy weapons this time. Soft plastic stand-ins for their usual loadouts. Jason’s was a training baton. It didn’t bother him. The chambers inside was a maze of synthetic walls, dim light, echoing corridors. The goal was simple. Reach the center and retrieve the hostage beacon. But the instructor, ever fond of unpredictability, had programmed in shifting walls, noise traps, and two other cadet teams competing for the same goal.

 “Stick close,” Jason said as they entered. He checked corners instinctively, baton low. “Don’t wait to be told what to see. Watch everything.” The grunted but followed. Yakai flicked out a tiny sensor vine from his wrist, letting it taste the air. Jason moved faster than they expected, less fluid, more purposeful, no wasted energy. It was halfway through the chamber when they ran into another team, one of the scaled insecttoids with dual wheeled stunners and a feathered Lcari who’d managed to scale the inner wall.

 The fight wasn’t real. No injuries, just tagged hits and scoreboard penalties. Theren swung too wide, got flanked, and was out in under 10 seconds. Yakai held up better, his symbiote spitting pulses of paint markers that scored a few hits before he was cornered. Jason didn’t retreat. Instead, he slammed into a sidewall, disappeared for 3 seconds, and came back wielding part of a snapped panel. He didn’t use it like a weapon.

He used it like leverage. A deflection here, a faint there. One of the stunner wielders turned to aim and Jason launched the panel like a discus, knocking the cadet’s arm back and throwing off the shot. He closed the distance and tagged both of them out before they could recover. At the end of the round, the instructor marked their team as low survival, high disruption value.

 Jason sat in the debriefing room afterward, wiping his arms with a cloth. Yakai sat across from him, watching. “Why didn’t you just use the baton?” he asked. Jason looked up. It’s not about the weapon. It’s about the timing. I didn’t need the baton for that. Yakai frowned, mandibles shifting subtly, and thought, “You weren’t trained for this kind of environment.

 You’re an off-worlder. Your planet doesn’t even use neural sync tech.” Jason shrugged. “We’ve had war. Maybe not with tech like yours, but plenty of war.” He stood and stretched. One of his ribs popped audibly. “You all right?” Yakai asked startled. Jason winced, exhaled. Yeah, just bruised. Theren clipped me during the breach. I’ll get it checked. He did.

The medbay scanned him that evening, a mild intercostal strain from the impact and a developing hematoma on his right side. You need rest, the medtech said, passing him a gel pack and compression wrap. No intense activity for at least 5 days, possibly more. Jason nodded, took the treatment without complaint, and returned to his dorm.

 Later that night, someone passed by his room and heard tapping again. Not the fast clicking of fingers on a console. Slow, deliberate scrapes. He was sitting at his desk. The bed post had been reattached poorly. The screws hadn’t fit back the way they came. In his lap, another piece of wood. The tapping paused only when someone knocked on the door. It was Yakai.

You’re carving again. Yeah, even with the injury. Jason nodded. I’m just shaping it. Won’t throw it or anything. Why do you do it? Jason considered the question, then placed the almost finished spear beside him. Because if I can shape something with my hands, I’m not helpless. Yakai stood in silence for a while, watching the flicker of desk light off the jagged edge.

 Your kind, he said finally. Turned survival into an instinct. The rest of us train for it. Jason didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. The next day, a notice was posted to the cadet hub. Reminder, unauthorized alteration of academy furnishings is prohibited. No names were attached. But everyone knew who it was for.

 The chair spear wasn’t the only thing that stayed. After the breach simulation, the dynamic between cadets shifted in small, almost invisible ways. They still trained, still compared specs and battle readiness metrics, but the casual arrogance that had once marked interactions with Jason began to falter. They watched him more. He noticed it.

The extra seconds of silence when he entered a room, the way conversations dipped whenever he passed. He wasn’t feared, not exactly, but no one quite knew where to place him anymore. He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t wired into their networks. He didn’t use phase blades or morph symbiotes. But somehow he was dangerous. Not overtly.

 Not by posture or strength, but by mindset. Especially now. 3 days after the breach exercise, the Kumari cadet Theon was hospitalized. non-combat related, he’d fallen awkwardly during a gravity drill and fractured two of his carrapase plates. The academy medteex treated him, but realignment therapy meant he’d be out for at least 2 weeks.

 Jason visited him. He wasn’t close with the barely spoken outside the simulation, but he still came, brought broth, even though Kari taste receptors couldn’t process the flavor. Saturday there, just quiet company. When Jason left the medbay, one of the younger cadets, a feathered Lari named Merie, stopped him near the corridor junction.

 “Why do you bother?” she asked. Theren never even thanked you. “He still thinks you’re reckless.” Jason shrugged. “I don’t need thanks.” “But he mocked you after the spear thing. Said you were unstable, primitive.” Jason nodded slowly. People say things when they’re scared. Merie blinked, crest feathers tightening. scared of you.

 He looked past her to the training hall down the corridor. Number of what I represent. The academyy’s directorate began taking notice. Jason’s profile had been updated six times in two weeks. There were more psych evaluations. Monitoring logs flagged his spear making activity as habitual behavior of potential strategic concern.

 He wasn’t disciplined, just watched. Then came the mid-semester rotation. Real-time drills in open terrain, multiecies squads, no simulations. Jason was paired with Merie and a cold-blooded Danaki scout named Vosched. They were dropped into the Rexus range, harsh cliffs, sharp winds, lowgravity pockets from ancient tectonic disruptions.

 Their objective, locate a signal beacon, extract a dummy payload, and return undetected by the scout drones patrolling the zone. They moved fast. Vosch took the lead, his bio lenses sweeping wide arcs through the terrain. Merie flew short hops between cliffs, her feathers catching thermals. Jason ran point on the ground. Not the fastest, not the lightest, but the most aware.

 Halfway to the signal beacon, a fault line shifted, unscheduled, unexpected. The cliff under Jason gave out. He didn’t scream. There wasn’t time. The earth opened beneath him like a trap door. And then he was gone. Vos dove after him instantly, catching only loose debris. Merie flared her wings and circled the opening, scanning furiously.

Jason hit a slope first, then another. The terrain broke his fall in increments. But the last drop was vertical, a sharp impact that knocked the breath out of him and twisted his left ankle at a grotesque angle. He stayed down, eyes swimming, hands clutched to his side. It took 6 minutes for the pain to break through the adrenaline. Then it hit in waves.

 He couldn’t stand. The leg was useless. He ran a quick selfch check. Nothing obviously broken in the ribs, but his breathing was shallow and his left wrist throbbed from the fall. He lay back against the stone. And then he laughed. Not because it was funny, but because of course it had to be cliffs.

 Above him, Marie’s voice crackled faintly through the comms. Jason, do you copy? Jason, he pressed his wrist. Still breathing, he rasped. Ankles gone. Might be a hairline in the wrist, too. Can’t move. Hold position. Vosed snapped in. We’re descending. Deploying anchor cables. Jason coughed once. Negative. You go for the beacon. I’ll slow you down.

 There was a pause. Merie came back on. You’re hurt. I’m injured. He corrected. There’s a difference. Now go. They hesitated. He heard it in their silence. He didn’t blame them. When the line went quiet, Jason exhaled and looked around the narrow crevice he’d fallen into. It wasn’t deep, but steep enough that he couldn’t climb with one leg.

 The slope above had scattered debris, broken stone, half-sunk mineral rods, an old surveillance post that had been rusted through and buried by time. He pulled himself toward it, inch by inch, using his good leg to pivot. The injured one dragging behind his wrist screamed with every motion, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving.

 At the post, he scavenged. The outer panel gave him a strip of metal. The rusted interior offered twisted wire. He found a fractured antenna, snapped it clean, and began wrapping it with cordage from his survival pouch. Not a weapon. Not yet. but a brace. He wrapped the makeshift frame around his ankle, braced it with two snapped rods, and cinched it until the pain became a dull roar instead of a sharp scream. Then he sat still.

 10 minutes, no more. After that, he began climbing. It wasn’t heroic. It was brutal. He used his arms to haul upward, his bad leg dangling like dead weight, his wrist burned. Every grip of the rock tore at his palms, blood mixed with dust, but he climbed. “He reached the ledge an hour later.” “Vos was waiting.

” “You shouldn’t have moved,” the Danaki said, pulling him over the edge. “Wasn’t planning on dying down there,” Jason said through clenched teeth. “They found shelter near a thermal vent. Jason’s leg was stabilized. His wrist was wrapped tight. The medkit Vosch carried included a temporary numbing agent, but the swelling had already begun.

 He wouldn’t walk for a week, maybe two. Back at the academy, the recovery was slow. The academy med staff diagnosed a torn ligament in the ankle, a hairline fracture in the wrist, and heavy bruising along the ribs. Two weeks minimum off duty, four before full weightbearing. Jason didn’t argue. He followed every instruction, took every scan.

 By the fifth day, he’d started using a crutch. He didn’t go near the training hall. But one evening passing by, he saw something new. A small marker had been placed under the target dummy. It wasn’t official, just a handwritten note taped on with plastond. It said, “Nothing in human hands is ever harmless.” Jason stared at it for a long time, then turned and limped back to his room. He didn’t carve that night.

 He just sat quietly. The chair remained intact. The pain taught him patience. Jason didn’t rush recovery. He followed the rehab protocol like gospel ankle elevated, wrist supported, mobility sessions twice daily with a sterneyed medical tech who didn’t tolerate shortcuts. The first week he couldn’t put weight on the leg.

 The second he could hobble between parallel bars with a slow limping gate. By the third he ditched the crutch for short distances. Word had already spread across the academy. Not about the injury that barely made a ripple, but about how he got back up. Alien cadets, even ones who had scoffed at him during the first weapon drill, watched him now with wary curiosity, not because he was impressive, but because he refused to stay down.

 They had grown up believing battle was won with firepower, implants, technique. Jason had bled and climbed his way out of a canyon without any of those. When he returned to the training hall, most stopped what they were doing. He moved slower. His limp hadn’t vanished. His wrist bore a support wrap still, and the instructor narrowed his eyes the moment he stepped through the door.

 “You cleared re-entry?” Jason nodded. “Cleared yesterday? No restrictions except sprinting and prolonged wait.” The instructor didn’t comment further. He simply gestured to the far end of the room toward a row of inert combat dummies. Jason didn’t pick up a weapon. He walked past the rack of energy sticks, bypassed the plasma batons, ignored the bioadheshive packs.

Instead, he reached down and detached a loose bench slat from the repair pile. Everyone froze. Even the instructor didn’t speak. He brought it over to the edge of the room, knelt, and began sharpening one end against the flooring. The scrape was softer this time, slower. The edge came together in a more practice shape cleaner, more balanced.

He wasn’t in a hurry. When he finished, he didn’t throw it. He turned and faced the dummy. He held the makeshift spear loosely in one hand, weight shifted to the good leg. Then he stepped forward and jabbed not hard, not fast, just a straight lunge. The wood embedded maybe 2 in.

 No splinters, no echo, just a quiet thunk. Jason leaned his shoulder into the shaft and whispered to himself, “Good enough.” Later, after the hall cleared, Yakai approached him at the water unit. “You’re not trying to prove anything anymore,” Jason sipped, then replied. “Wasn’t trying before?” Yakai’s bioluminescent eyes flickered.

 “Then why do it again?” Jason looked down at the spear still in the dummy. “You ever hear of a kid named Joseph blew it?” he asked. Yakai shook his head. American rural Kansas about 150 years ago. Got lost during a hike. 12 years old. No comms, no equipment. Spent 5 days in the wild. Survived on beetles. Boiled bark for tea.

 Carved a spear from a fence post to scare off coyotes. Yakai’s mandibles twitched with skepticism. Sounds like myth. Jason smiled faintly. It might be. Doesn’t matter. We grow up with stories like that. Not always heroic, just relentless. The point isn’t glory, it’s persistence. It’s figuring out what hurts, then figuring out how to keep going anyway.

 Yakai watched him for a moment. You’re still limping. Jason nodded. For a while? Yeah. The next week, the academy hosted a guest seminar, an open review of interspecies combat tactics. Each cadet had the option to present one technique or theory from their home world. Jason didn’t volunteer, but on the third day, the instructor called his name anyway.

McCree up front. Jason stood slowly, ankle still wrapped beneath his boot. He limped to the platform, took a long moment to scan the room. Then he picked up a standard drill chair, the same type as the one from that first day. The moment his hands gripped the frame, a hush fell over the room. Jason set it down gently. Then he sat in it.

 Where I come from, he began. We don’t always have the best tools. Sometimes we don’t even have decent ones, but we’re taught early. Adaptation beats equipment. He looked up. You don’t need to like discomfort, but if you can’t work through it, you won’t last. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t pace. He just told the room about wilderness scouts, coal miners, emergency field medics, and flood volunteers.

 About people who made stretchers from fence rails and tarps, who boiled water and soda cans, who splinted arms with broomsticks and ran triage on kitchen tables. Then, without ceremony, he stood, snapped a leg off the chair, and this time, instead of sharpening it, he passed it around. Each cadet who touched it held it a little differently.

 Some looked confused, some hesitant. Merie handed it back last. Still not as sharp as your first one. Jason smirked. Didn’t need to be. The room didn’t applaud. They just sat there thinking. That night, a different chair went missing from the mess hall. The next day, an overall cadet was spotted carving its leg behind the arboritum dome, mimicking the same motion Jason had made on the training floor.

 He wasn’t alone after that. When his limp faded, when the wrist brace came off, when he ran a full lap without stopping, no one commented, but they watched. Weeks later, a final simulation drill pitted all cadets in an open field mock siege. Teams scrambled for resources. Energy weapons went dry.

 Symbiotes fled when they sensed danger. Jason’s team used broken tent poles and tarp hooks. They passed the scenario, not because they won, but because they didn’t break. The dummy in the training hall, the one with the spear, it was eventually retired. But the spear stayed, mounted in a case near the academyy’s entrance.

The placard underneath read, “Improvised, effective, human.” Jason didn’t visit it often, but sometimes on quiet nights, he’d stop and look, not to remember the moment, but to remind himself there was always something you could use, even if it was just a broken chair.