"Premonition to Disaster"

What: Flashback/forward

When: Before Flashback 1

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

The sound could have been anything. It could have been a forge, heated up to scalding where something wonderful was made. It could have been a father clock counting up or even down to some event that had happened, was about to happen. It could have been the beats of someone's heart, steady and true, yet somehow sharp.

Perhaps it could have been all of them, or perhaps it was simply what it was. A duel of slender steel between two combatants who made it more of a dance than a competition between the two of them. It was easy in watching to tell who the successor of this match would be.

Her body movements were more graceful. Her sword so fluid that it was more like an extenuation of her body. She watched her opponent for her actions and reactions, while her opponent was very much opposite. She was all fire, without a formed direction. Her movements were based on that energy, without hesitation. She had no patience and moved more on the need to win, than the ability to look for the win.

And those things resounded out as the first with a spectacular move swiped the second hard, and made her sword go flying into the air to land some fifteen feet away. Her petite body went rigid as though she couldn't believe she'd been shown defeat.

"Again?" Her voice called out, as her face turned to the long thin sword lying on the ground. Her voice was thin, almost as thin as the blade, and as silver as it was too. Sometimes she almost felt a twinge when the young girl spoke. Something she was making sure to notice now.

"No." He head snapped to her mentor, who had her blade, tip slightly into the ground. Not a good care, especially after lecturing her many times on how to care for hers. "You've had enough practice for today. Go inside and relax for a while."

The older woman regarded her charge as she noticed the twitch that kept her from rolling her eyes while being watched. The slump that showed that she was disappointed both in the fact she was being sent inside and in the fact she hadn't won once and feared failure in her teachers eyes.

The looked very much like duplicates in many ways both with long black hair and snow pale skin even in this humid summer sun. While her charge was a mixture of dissents, she herself was very much so Greek down to her pale violet grey eyes. Very different from the vivid sapphires of her pupil, too.

Their pasts were different but they had atleast one key activist that effected the both of them, and she feared that the ingredients were only coming together now for the reaction to what had happened. That they'd simply been bidding their time, because of the age, and the times, and the world.

"You're doing a lot better, Casse. Keep practicing." She said, watching those eyes take her in for a moment and then turn her away, before she defaulted with a nod and left her mentor standing on the green lawn that spread out around them.

Watching her go, taking the sword and carrying it palms up as she'd been instructed not so long ago, she looked off to her side for a moment. Her hair flew about her face in ebony ribbons, laced with red clothed pieces flapping in the breeze intertwined with them.

"You could have come out and watched her without hiding." When there was no response, her lips crooked in an odd half smile, somewhere between amusement and annoyance. "She's your daughter. She does need to know you are still there watching over her."

The was the faintest rustle of movement, a sound that most trained ears wouldn't pick up even, and trusting in that sound she heard she sat on the ground. Taking the Sai and placing it across her knees, she ran a piece of the red cloth across it. Not cleaning it though, just running it along the metal.

She was growing accustom to the fact he didn't like to speak. He seemed to stay long enough to listen and spoke seldom to any of them even now. Even years later. It fell to them to pick up the pieces, to try and find ways that eventually would bring him back.

"She'd make you proud. She's learning faster than most of the children that come near to her age, as though she were to simply touch books and soak their information. It's something of an awe to watch. She is learning as much of everything as she can from stars to cooking to people to-"

"Fightin'."

She shivered when he spoke, and for a second tried to place that last time he had spoken to her. It hadn't been long. But the last time there's been an actual conversation? Too long.

"Yes, fighting. She is your daughter, in almost every sense of the word. She takes to it like she has a burning need to know it intimately. To know how to use it, beat it and even discard it once learned. She's trying to master too much of it for her young age."

Running her thumb across the blade, soft enough to feel the razor sharp edge, but not enough to cut herself she thought of the things she thought that no else seemed to notice.

"She is all will, to be who you are." Or were she thought silently. "She wants to prove herself to you. And though she is very like you, that fire in her eyes isn't. That's her mother, almost incarnate."

"You'r not sayin' somethin'."

Elektra pressed her finger tip against the point, and pulled her finger to look at the jewel drop of blood for a second. It wasn't anything special anymore, didn't even hurt. Running it on the red cloth, she thought on his words, before adjusting the sword.

"You're going to loose her." she said softly.

Having tilted the blade, she caught his eyes in the reflection of the silver. Almost unfindable in the expanse where he hid, but they stood out to her. She'd known them to long. Even knew the things that ran wild in them now, and because of it didn't look away.

"If you don't do something soon, your going to loose her completely."