Another kind of green
"Stop!" Katma Tui hollered.
She pushed her trainee's arm down and glared at him. Her solid light model of a Jennian warship shimmered and disappeared. John retracted his emerald laser cannon into his Lantern ring.
"What?" he asked warily.
"You don't get any points for causing the biggest explosion," she spat. "The mind is the weapon, not the metal."
She muttered under her breath. "Yakid!"
John Stewart pursed his lips. He couldn't ask for a glass of water in the Korugan language, but he was pretty sure he knew all the insults in Katma's native tongue by now. Yakid was her favourite. It meant "Idiot". She used it on John a lot. More than his name. She always acted like she couldn't understand why the Guardians had ever chosen John Stewart to be a Green Lantern. She accused him of handling his ring with the mental acuity of a toddler. She was impossible to please. Just to get from one day to the next without strangling his trainer, he allowed himself to think that perhaps after all these months, Yakid had somehow morphed into a term of endearment. He doubted it though.
"Begin again!" she ordered, her translucent grey eyes flashing.
John bit back a sigh. Back at Marine Corps boot camp, he'd had a drill instructor who Mason fondly referred to as 'Bear' Gordon. He was a big barrel-chested guy, with a voice that could carry like thunder and an extremely low tolerance for mistakes. Bear Gordon had hounded John and company from the minute they stepped on the base. He called his recruits "slugs" and drilled them mercilessly, endlessly, to their breaking point. He used anger as motivation, and had a sadistic streak a mile wide, sipping on cool water and then pouring it on the parched ground while the recruits were near keeling over from thirst. Ten out of ten people who met Gordon wanted to quit the Marines there and then. Three out of ten did. He still haunted John's nightmares.
"Stewart!" Katma barked, snapping John back to the present. She rolled her eyes and breathed an expletive. John groaned inwardly, narrowed his eyes and aimed his ring.
He really missed Bear Gordon.