Take away all freedom and rights, then offer "privileges" for good behavior and performance. That sounds familiar somehow...

If Greens are just better Blues, I’m wondering how the heck Gaston didn’t become one.

Aaaand Gaston is going to get himself horribly injured in an attempt to get promoted to Green Beret rank

@Personthing: Right now, the confirmed Green Berets are Pandemonium users, while "the Peons" seem to be a mix of Spirit Users and Pandemonium users with non-combat powers.

I think that Gaston is being "held back" both because he's "just" a Spirit User, without any fancy schmancy powers, and because he's still very bad at managing his Spirit in a way that doesn't cause extreme, life-threatening backlash. He has great potential but poor discipline. A soldier that kills himself while using his powers is not a good soldier.

Hahaha, yeah, many of us thought of Gaston here, right? XD Surely he'll love training harder.

I presume the demotion threat applies to everyone in the upper quarters, makes sense, fortunately Noah is going to put an effort in his training.

@zet Not that I condone Justopea's treatment on the (magic) population or anything; or the forceful recruitment for that matter. The fact that the empire's army considers promotions or demotions is possibly a better thing than the opposite. It is likely influenced partially by the nobility and all that dark stuff (as hinted in Noah's first lesson), so, not good. They are prisoners in a gilded jail, yeah, but that would have always been like that anyway. Reminds me, somehow, about how gladiatorial schools are though to work like, successful gladiators would have improved lifestyles and all.

@Personthing
I'm betting no one without (good) pandemonium powers is starting as green. A lot of prior assessments of Gaston's (or someone else's) character are probably now "tainted" by being from Veda. And for Gaston in specific, Lieutenant Marble clearly thought little of him after the first stage of the Haven operation, while his more recent impressive feats haven't been witnessed by Royal Guards or Military officers that might vouch for him.

Is calling it a beret instead of a Justopean baret punished by automatic degradation to Peon?

On an unrelated note, do Peons have to answer all orders with "work work"? (bonus points to fellow old people who know the reference)

Gaston has not been very effective so far. First he ended up in the hospital after a fight with the Malhart kids - and they were not even trying to seriously hurt him. Then he got bubbled. So far he has only looked decent against mindless, weak enemies.

Gaston pre hospitalization did better than a lot of the other kids in the Veda program that lacked effective pandemonium powers, but he still failed against the Malhart children. Post hospitalization he fought a lot of nightmares but those were all away from reliable witnesses. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets promoted to green later but it makes sense why he's been held at peon for now.

Gaston has been both great and.... bad but his mission was to capture not kill and he decided to kill. Sure it probably was the smarter play in some ways from a controlling military like this.... well good soldiers follow orders.

Gaston's crap. Even prior to Haven he was average in a group that included someone (Natalie) who just couldn't do it. He was second best at a sport (being beaten by a girl (Cherry)), failed completely at the river crossing test (with only Natalie and Windows (who was failing on purpose) doing worse) and came fifth at spirit sensing ((injuring himself in the process)) despite *two* people being unable to do it - and no one else made their eyes bleed while training. He barely scraped over fifty points in time for Haven. Some of that may be down to trying to sprint before he could crawl, but that's a mark against him. Would he have made it to the Haven group without self harm? One presumes he'd have done better at the river crossing if he hadn't tried too hard, but he'd have done worse at spirit sense and if he lost just three more points at sensing than he gained at river jumping, he'd have been out of the Haven mission.

And you know, I don't recall him defeating any Nightmares at Haven, just some of those possessed humans and a couple of floors as memory serves: And it was his floor destroying antics that brought Windows into range of the dentist, nearly killing him - and he's an irreplaceable Radar.

And another thing, he must have been continuously injuring himself in the hospital, prolonging his stay: https://www.neorice.com/hoh/noah/2707 I doubt his superiors would have been impressed by that.

Holy wall of Gaston hatetext lol. I think Gaston has done better than most of the other kids, just in places where officers weren't around to take note of it.
Speaking of Cherry, I wonder if the fact we haven't seen her yet could mean she's been assigned a different rank altogether than blue or green.

FYI I noticed our green hat friends don’t seem to be wearing their special neck accessories in this page.