SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 603: Aftermath

Selara entered the cargo wagon with her mana firearm in one hand.

Whatever elegance she had carried at the beginning of the trip had suffered badly. Her sleeve was scorched, part of her hair had slipped loose, and the refined director who had boarded the train hours ago now looked much closer to the Selara Trafalgar actually knew. Dangerous, irritated, and one bad sentence away from making someone regret being born with working nerves.

Her attention fixed on Merisse.

Merisse, restrained against the cargo frame, raised her head and smiled as if she had been waiting for this part.

"Hello, Selara."

Selara's fingers tightened around the firearm.

"Oh," she said softly, stepping closer. "This day just got better."

Merisse's smile did not last long. The restraints around her wrists pulsed with silver light when she tried to shift, and pain crossed her face before she swallowed it down with obvious hatred.

Selara stopped in front of her.

"How could you do something like this?" she asked, voice low. "Was being thrown out of every decent project really enough to make you hijack a protected train? Are you that hurt over being expelled?"

Merisse's face twisted at that.

The calm mask cracked, and something uglier surfaced underneath. Anger. Pride. Old humiliation that had clearly not aged into anything healthier.

"Seems you haven't changed with the years, Selara," Merisse said, her voice tight. "You still talk as if everyone who falls behind you did it because they deserved the floor."

Selara's mouth curved with no warmth.

"And you still blame the floor after tripping over your own hands."

Merisse pulled against the restraints again, and the silver bands bit into her mana channels. She hissed through her teeth, but the rage in her face did not leave.

"You never understood anything."

"I understood enough to know you should not be allowed near anything with a fuse, a seal, or funding." Selara lowered the firearm slightly, though not enough for comfort. "You helped build this train. You knew where to hurt it. That makes this worse."

Merisse laughed once, bitter and clipped.

"Worse? Please. This train was built for men with too much money to pretend distance obeys them. I only reminded it that every machine has a throat."

Trafalgar stood nearby, listening without interrupting.

He had heard enough to understand one thing: Selara and Merisse did not hate each other because of one event. This had roots. Deep ones. Annoying ones, probably full of alchemical committees, stolen research, screaming patrons, and some awful laboratory incident Selara would one day describe with far too much enthusiasm.

Eldric stepped between them before Selara could answer.

"Merisse Varn will be taken into Council custody," he said, speaking as if closing a ledger. "Whatever personal history exists between you can wait until she is secured."

Selara's attention moved to him, and for a heartbeat Trafalgar thought she might argue. She did not at the end.

"Fine," she said, lowering the firearm at last. "But if she disappears before I get answers, I will become very unpleasant."

Merisse snorted. "As if you need encouragement."

Selara pointed the firearm toward her again without moving her feet. "Try me bitch."

Eldric made a small motion with his hand, and two members of the First Concord moved in. Toval lifted Merisse as if she weighed nothing, while Narak checked the restraints with a suspicious grunt before giving a reluctant nod.

"She is locked down," the dwarf said. "If she starts glowing, twitching, humming, whispering, or doing anything else suspicious, hit her."

Merisse glared at him.

Narak did not care.

Eldric turned toward the damaged vault.

The sealed cargo had survived. The mithril reinforcement was scorched, cut, and abused, but the inner compartment had never fully opened. The black case had been recovered, and the blueprints remained secured behind the surviving lock layers. Narak had practically snarled at anyone who came within three steps of them until the train engineers arrived to take formal inventory.

The important things were safe. That did not make the train any less ruined.

Several hours passed in hard, ugly work.

The storm kept hammering the outside, but inside the train the damage slowly bent back under control. Engineers crawled through service panels. Alchemists neutralized the last traces of sleeping gas. Narak argued with everyone near the mana lines and fixed half the problems while insulting the people who had failed to protect them. Saaren moved through the passenger cars with train medics, waking the unconscious, checking lungs, sealing wounds, and making irritated comments whenever someone tried to stand before their legs remembered how to work.

The dead were moved aside with more care than the attackers deserved and less ceremony than the passengers should have received.

There was no time for more.

The train had to move again.

Cynthia woke before the repairs finished.

Trafalgar found her in the secure room where Caelum had left her, sitting upright with a mask beside her and one hand pressed to her forehead. Her face was pale, but her breathing sounded normal, and there was no blood on her clothes.

Relief crossed him before he could stop it. Cynthia noticed.

"You were worried?" she said, voice rough from the gas.

"Obviously," Trafalgar replied. She blinked, as if she had expected him to dodge it. That made her lower her hand from her forehead, and for some reason, the small gesture felt heavier than a longer conversation would have.

"What happened?"

"The train was attacked. Sleeping gas. Explosions. People trying to steal from the cargo section." Trafalgar leaned against the wall near the door, arms crossed. "It is handled now."

"Handled by you?"

"Partly."

Cynthia studied the blood on his clothes and the mask hanging from one hand.

"That means yes."

"It means partly."

She gave him a tired expression that said she did not believe him at all. Trafalgar almost smiled. Good it meant that she was fine.

Later, when the First Concord prepared to leave, Trafalgar saw Garrika from afar.

She was near one of the passenger cars, helping a wounded woman toward Saaren. Her uniform was different now. Dark-gray combat coat, light armor, Council silver at the collar. Her tail moved with controlled focus, not the restless excitement he remembered from the shop.

For a breath, he considered going to her. But in the end he didn't.

Garrika had asked for time. She had asked him to wait until she could stand beside him in the way she wanted. Walking over now, in front of her new unit, covered in blood and dragging that old promise into the open, would be selfish.

So he stayed where he was. He had agreed to wait. He would not betray that because he happened to see her across a damaged train.

Garrika did not turn toward him, or perhaps she did and chose the same thing. Either way, the distance remained.

Eldric departed soon after with Merisse under guard.

The First Concord pulled back through the storm with the same efficiency they had shown on arrival. Work completed, prisoners secured, and wounded handed over to the train staff. They left behind the impression of a blade sliding back into its sheath. By the time the repairs finished, nearly a full day had passed since the attack.

The train moved again.

Slower than before, but alive.

The passengers spoke in quieter tones now. The students stayed closer to their groups. Selara spent most of the remaining journey with an expression that promised future violence, while Trafalgar kept his thoughts on the sealed case, Merisse, and the fact that the Conclave had already become irritating before they even arrived.

Hours later, the snow thinned.

The train began to brake.

Beyond the long windows, through the last pale curtain of weather, Aurevane finally appeared ahead.