The clothes came next, and it turned out to be a stranger kind of decision-making than either of them expected — ten years of having every choice made for them hadn't exactly prepared either of them to stand in front of a rack of civilian clothing and simply want something.
Yasin settled on it faster than he expected to: a black hoodie, black joggers, white sneakers so clean they looked almost wrong against the rest of him. Something plain. Something that didn't ask to be looked at. 028 took longer, turning over option after option before landing on a white turtleneck and blue jeans, white sneakers of his own, grinning at his reflection in a mirror like he'd just discovered his own face for the first time. They each grabbed a second set on the way out — quiet, practical paranoia neither of them said out loud, the shared, unspoken understanding that the army giving you something for free didn't mean the army wouldn't eventually decide to take it back.
They were still adjusting to the weight of actual bags in their hands, still getting used to clothes that fit them rather than simply covering them, when the corridor ahead filled with trainees moving fast in one direction, a current none of them seemed to be resisting.
028 caught a passing shoulder — someone half-familiar from the parade ground, a face without a name attached yet. "What's going on?"
"Two special grades," the trainee said, already moving again, already three steps further down the hall. "Sparring. Reese and Kane."
Yasin's eyes widened before he'd fully decided to let them. 028 didn't bother hiding his own reaction at all.
They ran.
To anyone ordinary watching, it would have looked like nothing more than a blur cutting down the corridor, gone before the eye had time to properly register a shape to it — but nobody ordinary was watching, because everyone left in that hallway was running the exact same way, a current of green and civilian clothes moving at a speed no untrained body could have matched.
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The arena, when they reached it, was nothing like the training rings Yasin had grown up sparring in.
It sat below ground level entirely, a vast reinforced bowl carved deep into Northstar's bedrock, walls thick enough that Yasin understood, looking at them, exactly what kind of impact they'd been built to survive. Layers of plating lined the lower walls, scarred in places with old, half-repaired damage that told its own quiet history. Tiered seating rose in wide rings above the pit itself, already filling fast with trainees and off-duty soldiers alike, all of it angled to give a clear view down into the sunken floor where the actual fighting would happen. Overhead lighting threw the whole space into sharp, shadowless clarity, built for spectacle as much as safety.
Yasin and 028 found two seats wedged near the upper rings, breathing hard, the last of the running still working its way out of them.
"What are their names again," Yasin asked, scanning the pit below.
028 snorted. "You forgot already? Daniel Reese and Lucas Kane." A pause, and his grin widened, something dreamy creeping into it. "I wonder if either of them ever had the same number as me."
Yasin didn't answer that. He was already watching the two figures standing meters apart on the arena floor.
Lucas Kane wore a black long-sleeve, round-necked top, grey pants, black boots — nothing about his stance announcing anything, the same economical stillness Yasin remembered hearing about long before he'd ever expected to see it in person. Daniel Reese stood shirtless for no reason Yasin could immediately identify, his tag hanging loose against his bare chest, green pants and black boots the only real concession to uniform he'd bothered making.
"Looks like we've got enough people to see your ass on the ground, Luke," Reese called up, grinning wide enough to be visible from the upper seats.
Kane sighed, audible even at this distance in the way the arena carried sound. "And how many times have we done this, Daniel."
"You might've won those." Reese's grin didn't falter. "But those times aren't now. Today's the day I triumph over you."
"I suppose I'll entertain you," Kane said, an almost-lazy smile crossing his face — though it didn't quite reach far enough to hide the sharper thing sitting underneath it.
"I know you enjoy our battles, you four-faced demon," Reese shot back, reading him easily.
"Then there's no use waiting any longer." Kane bent, picked a pebble up off the arena floor, and straightened. "The moment this hits the ground, we begin."
He threw it high, arcing up into the overhead light.
Both of them dropped into stance at once, muscle drawing tight, the entire arena falling into a silence so complete Yasin could hear his own pulse over it.
The pebble struck the ground.
And both of them vanished from where they'd been standing.