Yoroi had never known what [i]hate[/i] was until he reached Jump Zero.

Seriously, in every day life, how much can someone actually say they hate anything? Little girls might hate to eat their peas, boys might hate pink, you might hate having to stay late after school, but please. The average person couldn't give enough of a shit about even the worst things in their life to muster the kind of consuming, fueling, burning [i]hate[/i] that Nagamura Yoroi had learned for turians. The soldiers, the First Contact vets and the Shanxi survivors back home came the closest talked about the bird-men, the hawks, and he could relate. But for them the war was over, the enemy in memory.

Yoroi breathed his every day.

Nobody had known what to expect when they arrived. It was all very hush-hush, plenty of grand overtures about 'the future of humanity', 'pushing the limits' and 'broadening horizons', but the result was more boot camp than Brain Camp. You could almost forgive it turning out to be the sort of quasi-military bullshit it was; biotics were a future weapon, a staple of intergalactic interpersonal warfare. Of course it was the military that was funding the game, and of course the game was testing battle viability. If the uniforms and blank halls and efficiency bunking wasn't exactly marshmallows and ghost stories, you could at least see where it came from.

The turians, though. Nobody had expected [i]them[/i] to be there. They were kids, not soldiers, though Yoroi was pretty convinced that turians didn't see much of a difference between the two.

On earth, Nagamura Yoroi had been a nobody. He was a stupid fucking teenager who'd grown peach fuzz and discovered extranet pornography ahead of the curve. He wasn't one of the real hoods--hell, he hadn't been old enough to be a real hood!--and instead filled in that awkward role of classroom cut-up. Smart enough to know he could do better than he had been and lazy enough not to bother, he was funny and friendly and muddled along just fine. He had as much brains as any fourteen year old, which was to say not a lot, but he wizened the hell up the first time one of those fucking hawks but a taloned boot on his throat and he realized he [i]couldn't[/i] have shoved it off if he'd wanted to.

This was not supposed to be fun. They were not supposed to enjoy this. They were supposed to be tested, and pushed, and pushed further, and put back together when they broke so they could keep pushing. And they were, or at least Yoroi was.

If someone had told you who Nagamura Yoroi had been two years ago, anyone in hearing would have laughed in your face. Nice guy, wise-ass, joker? You been huffing 'zaust, man? Yoroi was one of the hard boys, the assholes. The ones that buckled down and [/i]Sir, yes Sir![/i]'d and asked [i]How high?[/i]. If he'd ever cracked a joke, if he'd ever been a buddy or a good shoulder to cry on, it was so long ago that nobody remembered. Not after the full-contact training sessions or the stupid-powerful barriers he threw up during practice--he was the worst kind of partner, the one that tried. The instructors fucking ate it up, alien bastards, and they made it clear that he was one of the ones that 'had a future'.

Other kids had friends. Yoroi had himself, and the loose association of kids like him figuring out the pecking order and racing for the top. More than anything, he had his hate, and if hate meant being cliche then so fucking be it. Careful fighting monsters, gaze into the abyss, blah blah blah. 

Anything to never feel like prey again under steel talons and pinprick pupils.

[hr]

"Again."

Two mats away, Court was fucking up. [i]Again.[/i]

"Half your ration says he cries like a bitch."

Al-Tariq was a shit. Most of the hard boys were, the ones that buckled down and fed into the training program. Everyone knew who they were and the mixture of disgust, fear, and hate was palpable. They were [i]one of them[/i], just as bad as the asshole instructors. Little turians in human clothing, earning their predator eyes. Up until recently Al-Tariq had kept lockstep with Yoroi, the up and comers of their batch, but that was last month. This month Yoroi was Step Five and Al-Tariq was dealing with it, which meant being fake-friendly until he got close enough to fuck him up. It was as obnoxious as it sounded.

"It's Madan." Yoroi tried not to roll his eyes, but not very hard. "She'll get herself sent to the med-bay before she lets that happen."

Fucking Madan.

There were a lot of reasons Yoroi didn't like Kaylani Madan, the most obvious being that she was weak. She wasn't really, but that was the problem: one of the few, the proud, the Step Nine, everyone knew Kaylani had chops. She could throw up a barrier in a heart beat, punch through all but the toughest just as easily. There were rumors saying that she'd managed to make a black hole, but those were just rumors--the upper division training couldn't be [i]that[/i] far gone, could it? At any rate, it was obvious she outclassed even the try-hards and equally obvious that she really just wanted to pussyfoot around. It hadn't done her any good, she was still [i]one of them[/i] to all the scrubs she babied that were too stupid or tired or hungry to see that she was trying for them, but to Yoroi she was personally offensive.

Yeah, she'd had a head start, but she was still flat better than him. Demonstrably, meaningfully, and yet here she was playing with fucking kid gloves so she didn't hurt the poor baby's feelings. Didn't she get that it was better her than the hawks?

"I'll take that bet." Al-Tariq snorted before snapping to life, fist crackling into vibrant blue that streaked towards Yoroi with mnemonic flick. He was fast and had put some [i]oomph[/i] into it, but Yoroi was ready. It met his own swiftly-raised barrier in a flash, dissipating in a swirl of warped physics like a heat-shimmer in the stale station air.

"Fuck off."

Before the boy could respond, Yoroi had dissipated his barrier and stepped off the training mat. His back was straight as ever, his arms at his sides as he made his way without ceremony or hesitation towards the Commander and the now-focal training pair. The hall had grown quiet at the little confrontation, waiting to see how things panned out (and secretly happy for the break), so his request was clear as day as he snapped to attention by Caelnus' side.

"Sir! Permission to take over as Madan's training partner and show Court what a real biotic can do, sir!"

It was always a toss-up with the turians. Some days they ate that macho-crap up and others they bitch-slapped you for interrupting training. But it was the only way this was going to end well and Yoroi knew it--if Court broke he'd be punished, and Caelnus would not be gentle. He probably wouldn't ever really recover. If Madan went full Monty on him he'd end up in the med bay and Madan wouldn't look anyone in the eye for the better part of a week. And if Court had it in him to begin with while he was as exhausted and tired as the rest of them, he'd have given it.

So it was a gamble, but fuck it. Give her someone she didn't have to play soft-ball with.

His eyes didn't leave her for a moment as he waited for the call.