The class laughed. She didn’t.

Camille hadn’t looked at the board once since her name got its final mark. She was looking at me instead, and her expression carried something that wasn’t disappointment about losing to Petra. It was the same thing she’d left in my doorway two nights ago. The undecided thing. The thing she still hadn’t figured out what to do about.

I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the other thing.

Yeah. That thing.

I filed it under problems for later and looked back at the whiteboard, at the seven marks next to my name, at the proof that I’d talked my way into a room I had no legitimate business being in.

Story of my life. Both of them.

"Speech." Caden’s voice cut through the settling noise. He was already standing, already grinning, already fully committed to making my life difficult in the specific way that had become his primary hobby. "The new rep has to give a speech. It’s tradition."

"It’s not tradition," I said. "You made that up ten seconds ago."

"I’m making it tradition retroactively. Speech. Speech. Speech." He started clapping in rhythm, and Marco joined immediately because Marco would follow Caden into a burning building if there was a good bit involved.

Eden picked it up next. Then Theo, who’d just lost to me and was clapping anyway with the easy grace of someone who genuinely didn’t mind. Then half the room, the chant building into something with actual momentum.

"Speech, speech, speech."

I didn’t have a speech.

That was the problem. I’d spent two days building coalitions and buying endorsements and telling Camille Ortega no in the most catastrophically effective way possible, and at no point in that process had I written a single word of a victory speech, because writing a victory speech before winning felt like exactly the kind of arrogant tempting of fate that gets you a whiteboard with someone else’s name at the top.

And now nineteen people wanted words I didn’t have.

Fuck you, Caden.

The thought arrived with real warmth, which was the confusing thing about Caden. He’d endorsed me. He’d swung two votes my way with a dinner-table performance and given me his conditioning data and asked only that I fight for Rina and give him credit. And now he was going to make me improvise in front of the entire cohort out of pure chaotic affection, because that was how Caden Holt expressed loyalty.

Also, as class rep, he was absolutely going to do my Combat Theory homework as reparations. That two-thousand-word engagement analysis due Monday? Holt’s problem now. I’d decided this in the space between two heartbeats and I felt zero guilt about it.

I stood up.

The chanting cut off. Nineteen faces turned toward me, plus Steele, who leaned against the podium with an expression that said she was very interested to see how I handled a moment I clearly hadn’t prepared for.

I didn’t have a speech. So I said the true thing instead, which was becoming a bad habit.

"Two weeks ago I got told I was in the wrong class."

The room went still.

"Class 1-B. The other combat track. The one that gets compared to 1-A every single day and always comes up second, according to about four different faculty members who’ve made sure I heard it." I let that sit. "Steele told us on day one that we’d spend two years being measured against people who scored higher, trained longer, manifested earlier. That some of us barely belonged here and existed mostly to fill tactical gaps."

Steele’s expression didn’t change. She’d said exactly that. She remembered saying it.

"She was trying to make us angry enough to prove her wrong." I glanced at her. "It worked, by the way. Don’t tell her."

A ripple of laughter. Even Petra’s mouth twitched before she caught it.

"But here’s what I’ve actually watched over two weeks." I moved out from behind my desk because Diane had drilled into me since I was nine that you never deliver the important part sitting down. "I watched Rina put a field full of combat-trained lunatics to sleep with wool that made everyone forget they wanted to fight. I watched Percy call timing in a live engagement so precise I could’ve won that match blindfolded if I’d trusted him faster. I watched Camille fire three rivets through the same hole from thirty feet while somebody was actively trying to kill her."

Camille’s arms uncrossed. Slightly.

"I watched Theo take punishment that would hospitalize a normal person and turn it into a counterpunch that put a hole in a wall. I watched Nyx flow through a hollow wall to capture two people before they finished arguing about their entry strategy. I watched Petra build a fortress out of nothing in ten seconds that took me exceeding every documented limit of my Aspect to break."

Petra’s chin lifted a fraction. Acknowledgment. Wariness.

"That’s not a class full of gap-fillers." My voice dropped into the register Diane used when she wanted a room to lean forward. "That’s a class full of people who don’t fit the standard mold, which is exactly why we’re dangerous. 1-A does everything the way it’s supposed to be done. We do it the way it actually works when the situation stops cooperating and nobody’s Aspect functions the way the textbook promised."

The room had gone quiet in a different way now. The engaged way.

"Dravid taught us that power is useful but intelligence is better. That the ability to identify what an opponent needs and take it away is the only advantage that scales forever." I spread my hands. "Every single one of us is that advantage. Every weird, non-standard, doesn’t-fit-the-mold Aspect in this room is exactly the thing that wins fights the textbook says are unwinnable."

I looked at Steele.

"So when we hit joint practicals with 1-A in, and Dravid tries to weaponize the fact that we’re the second track. When 1-A walks in expecting to run us over because their scores are higher and their manifestations were earlier." I let a slow grin spread across my face, the cocky one, the one I’d been growing into since the day I opened my eyes in this body. "We’re going to make them wish they’d been born wrong too."