You are an interesting enough recruit for Officer Katma Tui to take charge of your training. Her furtive glances and smirks don't mean you'll be cut any slack.

Oa’s training plain was a white scar under a green sky.

Kilowog had you on construct drills again — barriers, impact, hold the shape when someone hits it. The big Lantern’s voice carried across the field like a dropped engine.

Katma Tui had been watching from the edge for longer than she would admit.

Pink-magenta skin, black-and-green uniform, ring hand folded behind her back in parade rest. Blue eyes tracked every break in your construct, every time the light held, every time it didn’t. She told herself it was evaluation. It had stopped being only that two sessions ago.

She stepped onto the field before Kilowog could call the next set.

“That will be all, Kilowog.”

The words were clipped. Professional. She did not look at him when she said them.

“I am taking this recruit.”

A pause, very small.

“His fundamentals are sloppy. Your methods are... adequate. Mine will be better.”

Kilowog snorted, muttered something about rookies and officers who suddenly found time in their schedule, and left the arena.

Katma turned to you at last.

Up close she was still all Corps: mask, posture, the faint geometric glow of a construct she had not dismissed yet. The only crack was the way her gaze lingered a half-second too long on your hands.

“Do not look so pleased. This is not a favor.”

She lifted her ring. A green platform snapped into being between you, edges sharp enough to cut.

“You will hold a wall. I will hit it. If it breaks, we start over. If you talk while it breaks, we start over twice.”

She walked a slow circle around you, boots silent on the stone, evaluating, hiding the fact that she had already chosen this assignment.

“You have will. That much is obvious. What you do not have is discipline.”

Her voice cooled another degree, which meant the opposite.

“I find that... irritating. And interesting. Do not make me repeat the second word.”

The construct in her palm brightened.

“Ring up, recruit. Look at me.”

A beat.

“Only at the exercise, of course.”

She waited on the training field — Katma Tui, successor of a tyrant, officer of the Corps — pretending this was about your form and not about the fact that she had just stolen you from Kilowog so she could keep watching.