Sorry for the brief hiatus, didn't mean for it to happen at all! For missing three weeks, I plan on catching up a bit in the coming week or so; hopefully we'll catch back up where I want to be by the time University starts back up!


Chapter Nine


"Blake. You really should have said goodbye before running off like that."

A variety of profanities in a variety of languages left my mouth as a quiet breath. She had sent him after me alongside her favored adapts. I considered simply running before remembering that he'd been the one to hone my skills – I couldn't hide from him.

"If you turn back now, neither you nor your pets will be harmed. We will take you into custody where you will face a fair trial." Pyrrha spoke well, comfortable both in the authority she wielded as a commander in the Republic military and knowing full well that assassins didn't surrender. From my spot in the back, I saw everyone prepare for battle.

Directly in front of me, Jaune's golden saber was held above his head, ready for an attack from any direction, but both he and Weiss were blind to his presence. Around me, the others took their own defensive stances – save Yang and Nora who seemed to lack any sort of true defensive stance.

"I counter your offer with one of my own. Blake, the woman before you is a defector. A monster who lacks all traces of honor. I offer her life for yours, Jedi." Adam's eyes never left mine, his words were very clearly meant for me. He'd known I ran away because I felt burdened by some of the blood I'd shed. He'd seen my slow walk toward thinking outside the strict doctrines taught in the Academy.

Before I could respond – blast – before I could decide between fighting or giving myself up to save the others, Yang responded, shouting "Frag that" before opening fire. After the first two bolts left her repeater, everything happened at once.

The Grimm charged the group in once motion, ignoring much of the reflex fire my allies let off in response. Adam stepped back into his cloak of darkness, likely trusting the Grimm the adapts had created for him to do the heavy lifting before engaging the survivors. It only took a second for them to break our loosely assembled line, forcing everyone that didn't have a melee weapon out to the middle with me. Pyrrha barked an order as she drew a lengthy bayonet, "Fan out!"

Her orders were obeyed immediately: the group scattered, Ruby, Yang, Jaune, and Pyrrha moving west and Ren, Nora, and Weiss moving east. What had been a relatively quiet field erupted in blasterfire and bestial snarls. I could faintly hear the Jedi as their blades cut down creatures that got too close.

I'd fought these abominations before – how else was the Dark Lady supposed to master the process, after all? These corrupted Kath hounds were significantly easier to stop than many of the other beasts she and her acolytes had used to test the various spells and chemicals needed to create a Grimm, but in force they were still nontrivial opponents; something my allies were quickly discovering for themselves.

Before I could fully prepare myself for a duel against Adam, all of my senses went haywire. In one fluid motion I dived into a dodge, feeling Adam's blade as it cut through the air where I'd been only a heartbeat ago.

I didn't even consider not surrendering to my instincts. I'd been trained to react, not to think, so without considering the consequences I pulled my cloak of shadows around myself and swung a counterattack.

Adam parried my desperate swing without a hint of effort, but it gave me the split second to regain my balance. Before he could attack again, I was in the air.

Gambol Shroud's hidden disrupter fired out of the hilt at the apex of my leap, sending a black beam of energy down toward Adam. One fluid motion allowed Adam to gracefully move out of the way of my shot and take position on the ground where I would land, blade ready to impale me.

I called out to the Force and willed my feet to find purchase on the air, pushing off of nothing to extend my jump out beyond where Adam waited. He charged forward at the same moment, pushing the offensive.

As soon as I landed, my brain began to shut down all nonessential processes. I could feel the vague orders and time frame slip away until there was only the duel. We settled into a familiar dance, the same general routine that we had started every morning with while I was under his tutelage. I swung at his legs, he jumped and aimed a thrust at my dominate arm. I dodged backwards with my blade arm while punching out with my other hand.

He was toying with me. Giving me one last chance to beat him in our drill – one last chance for the student to earn her place as the teacher's equal. The thought struck me off balance for a millisecond, but that was long enough for him to notice. With impossible speed, he swiped out diagonally, forcing me to dodge under.

It had been a trick, something I would have noticed if not for the interjection of thought. Right before he let the swing loose he twisted his grip and thrust.

His blade went right through my armor. Right through my stomach.

I could feel the toxins we coated our blades with enter my bloodstream – not to kill me but to render me immobile. I would die of blood loss. Painfully. I felt my legs give out as I fell to my knees and looked up at him, for once not bothering to hide my emotions. I wasn't mad, and I couldn't bring myself to hate Adam for what he'd done. I was simply afraid to die.

He pulled his sword out, flicking it to get rid of the blood on the blade, moving it into its sheathe in the same motion. Adam looked over me as I kneeled at his feet, his yellow eyes meeting mine.

"Disappointing."

I would have responded with something witty – I'd always thought I would have the last word before I died, but I couldn't open my mouth to speak. Instead I felt my heart, twisted and dark as it may be, shatter at his comment as he turned and walked toward my allies. I was disappointing. These people would die because of me. More innocents.

Everything went black.


"Yang, ETA on Patch?" my sister's voice was calm, quiet despite the immense array of noises around us. Beautiful things, buy'cese.

"Zwei made three high pitched chirps and two low pitched chirps, so I'd guess about two more minutes?"

"Understood. Everyone else hear that?"

Ruby's Crescent Rose was fully deployed next to me, cutting through any of these beasts that got inside my firing arc while Ember Celica cut through all the others around us in her own special way.

With lots of blasterbolts.

Lots.

Various confirmations came across the comlink, but I didn't really listen. Planning, tactics, communication and coordination? Those were Ruby's strong suit, I didn't have a mind for them and I knew it. Instead, I focused on the battle around me.

I'd always loved the battlefield – ever since my buir took me with him for my first time when I was of age. I had barely been big enough to cart around blaster clips, but when the enemy overwhelmed the line, I found a blaster and a knife pushed into my hands by one of the men around me. Buir would always tell everyone that I'd single handedly turned the tide, pushing the settlers back to their huts before ruffling my hair and smiling. That day I'd found beauty in battle; a certain peace that could only come when you were forced to your limit.

I was shaken out of my thoughts when a beast got inside my fire arc while Ruby was dealing with three others that had ganged up on her. A flick of my wrist sent a knife into the eye of the charging brute; a step to the side put me in its new blind spot; and a single punch from my gauntleted left fist sent a vibroblade through its neck. A final movement and Ember Celica was once again letting loose a torrent of blasterbolts into the thinning crowd of beasts.

"…Blake?" I snapped back into the conversation as soon as our objective's name was dropped.

"What about Blake?" I shouted into my buy'ce, probably a little more forcefully than I needed to.

"What do you mean, she isn't with you?" They seemed to ignore me, or at least, Ruby ignored me. It seemed my vod had just skipped the angry stage of learning that you'd misplaced your fracking objective and moved strait on to finding out why you'd misplaced your objective.

"No, I assumed she was still with Jaune!"

"Jaune's with us, di'kut! Why would we ask about Blake if she was with Jaune?"

Ruby found time mid stroke to shoot me a look - osik I'd forgotten about her rules about Mando'a over the comlink with aruteii. It was an annoying rule, yes, but I suppose I saw her point.

Didn't stop me from sending the next dozen blaster bolts downrange with added frustration.

"Well she's not with us, and I can't really go looking for her. Nora's…enthusiasm has attracted quite a few of these creatures. Ren and I are barely keeping them off her!"

"We'll come help, if that's alright with you two?" Pyrrha looked to Ruby for confirmation before running off with Jaune to offer support to the other group. It should have bothered me, but I saw the reasoning behind it. Nora was easily doing the most damage to this horde of beasts, and doing it loudly. She needed all the backup she could get. Plus, that left more for me over on our side.

"That doesn't answer the question of where our objecti…" I was cut off mid-sentence as I found Blake. She was kneeling on the ground on the outskirts of the battleground, the assassin's blade just barely visible with the filters Ruby and I switched to when he spoke before the beasts attacked.

I started running toward them – he'd already stabbed her through the gut. She'd bleed out in a few minutes, but she would likely go into shock before that. He was turning toward me. Good. The comlink was buzzing with activity but I pushed it to the back of my mind, not bothering to listen. This was going to be a good fight.

I opened up with Ember Celica, thanking my luck that the objective wasn't high enough to be hit by a stray bolt. The assassin would try to dodge her torrent of blasterfire, but Ember Celica was too fast. I was too good.

When the time came for him to dodge, however, he didn't. He ducked and charged me, sword still in its sheathe. It only took him a few steps to get inside my arc of fire. I changed my grip on Ember Celica, letting the anti-grav plates take more of the load than usual as I prepared to defend in melee.

He opened by shooting his sword at me. It was certainly an interesting tactic; had it not been for my beskar'gam, I would have been pushed back by the force of the blow or impaled by the point of the hilt, but instead the weapon was batted to the side. He rolled to catch it and I retaliated with my own little surprise.

As he pulled the weapon back to him, I hit him with Ember Celica, switching the anti-grav plates off at the last second to put her entire weight into the swing. It made contact and he was flung to the ground immobile. I presumed dead – That trick always left my unwitting opponents dead.

Next thing I know I was falling. The assassin had pulled my leg out from under me – not so dead after all. In one motion he was on his feet and I was kneeling off balance.

I dropped Ember Celica and blocked the swing that would likely have decapitated me with my gauntlets, the shock causing my arms to shake and protest. I looked up at the assassin to see him smiling at me. Without hesitation, my mouth spat the first thing it could come up with through my helmet speakers.

"First time a girl's been on her knees for you?" I stood carefully, picking up Ember Celica with my right hand and used the switches on the grip to reactivate the anti-grav supports.

"First time I've been surprised by an attack."

The momentary pause that had allowed me to regain my bearings was over, apparently, as he thrust once more inside my guard. I twisted slightly so the blade would meet only the plates of my armor and threw my elbow into his jaw. The hit landed but he didn't even flinch, focusing on trying to run his blade through one of the gaps between the plates. He found one, but withdrew when he discovered it was extremely resistant to bladed attacks. Before he could formulate another plan of attack, a white blur hit the ground in between us, a thin blue rod of light thrusting inside his guard in one natural motion. I felt a wall of force push me back towards Blake's body.

Weiss had fallen out of the sky.

"Vode! Get the package on Patch! Now!" I obeyed Ruby's order before I really understood it – a side effect of spending my life with the woman on the battlefield. Hefting Ember Celica in my right hand, I scooped up Blake in my left and looked around.

About ten meters north, hovering a meter above the grass was our ship: Patch. Jaune stood on the ramp holding his hand out toward me, so I began a dead sprint toward him, forgetting about Weiss and the assassin. In this moment my world was focused on making it to that ship with our objective dying over my shoulder.

As I leapt in the direction of the boarding ramp, I recalled that Jaune wasn't exactly the model Mandalorian strength-wise about the same time I remembered that I currently weighed well over three hundred kilos. Imagine my surprise when he catches the package and I with one hand and hefts us on board the ship before calling out to his girlfriend.

"Weiss, they're on board! Move!"

I didn't pause to watch Weiss disengage the assassin, noticing crimson running down my shoulder at an alarming rate.

"Somebody get me a medkit! I need foam!" I shouted as I unceremoniously dumped her on the ship's cargo bay and extracted my vibrosword. One fluid motion and the armor was split down the side. I peeled it off and got a good look at the damage the assassin had wrought. A bottle of disinfectant was shoved in my hand from the side, Pyrrha's voice accompanying it.

"She's lost a lot of blood, do you have materials for a transfusion?"

"In the medbay, we'll move her when the bleeding's done." I talked quickly as I sprayed the wound with the disinfectant. Forcing the spray back to Pyrrha, I felt another item pushed in my hand. Foam. It was an unusual addition to a medkit, being a few ingredients away from the foam they use to patch starship hulls, but when you live a life like ours the ability to stop bleeding and keep a wound held together so you could continue the fight was invaluable.

I applied a generous amount to the wound, waited a moment, and turned her over. The exit wound was clean, that was good. I repeated the process with Pyrrha's help, disinfecting and closing the hole before sitting back a little and preparing to lift the package back to the medbay.

Her armor had hid quite a lot about the girl, her back and sides held countless scars that looked like they had been fairly serious wounds. That hadn't been what got my attention, however. Her back held a solitary tattoo, right in the middle of her spinal cord. It was a symbol, one that had haunted my dreams endlessly for the past ten years: the crest of the Brotherhood of Darkness surrounding a simple symmetrical design.

It had been on the armor of the Sith that murdered my mother.

She had a lot of talking to do.