Chapter 4 – The Heat of Battle

The dual edged sword spinning round her head and body, Kylah gracefully stepped out into a pivot, then brought her blade back against an invisible enemy. She then brought the sword back for a parry, followed by another attack.

Squall watched her with interest. She wore a tight black tank top and matching workout pants, revealing long lean muscle on her arms and abs. Her auburn hair was pulled up into a curly ponytail. Carefully, she went through the motions of practicing with her weapon. He had to admit; her fluid motions and graceful style impressed him. She would be a difficult opponent in battle.

"Nice," he commented, pulling her out of her imaginary battle. She looked startled, then relaxed when she realized who was addressing her.

She shrugged. "I figured I'd get some practice time in while I had time. The training center at Garden is better for this sort of thing, but I figured this," she gestured around at the empty shuttle bay that she had commandeered, "would do for now."

Squall unholstered the gunblade at his hip, and brought it up to tap over his shoulder. "Interested in fighting a real opponent for a change."

A considering look crossed her face. "Spar? With you?" she asked, picking up a bottle of water to take a swig.

"I need to practice too."

She grinned. "You're on."

Squall shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it on the floor next to a sweatshirt that she had discarded. Kylah nearly choked on her water as she caught sight of his broad chest clad only in a thin t-shirt that left little to the imagination. Good Hyne, the man was well built.

Squall leaned forward on his gunblade, the tip piercing slightly into the floor. He motioned for Kylah to ready herself battle.

Tossing aside her water, Kylah strode with confidence to a position a few feet away from Squall. She spun the weapon from her side with one hand and put it at head-level, holding the handle with both hands, feet planted firmly, shoulder-width apart.

Squall nodded as she took her stance. Picking up his weapon, he easily hefted the weight with both hands. The handle and weight were both soothing and familiar to his hands. While the weight of the weapon often made it unwieldy to many who tried to use it, Squall found the weight added to his overall strength and combat prowess.

Kylah drew in a final preparatory breath, but never had a chance to finish it. Squall leapt forward with amazing speed and agility. Quickly reversing her stance, she brought her weapon into a 90-degree parry. She regretted her chosen defense as soon as the weapons met with a loud clang. His gunblade was much heavier than her swords and the impact sent her reeling. Landing rather unceremoniously on her backside, she rolled to the side to avoid the following kick from the first attack.

"That thing is a lot heavier than I thought it would be," she muttered under her breath as she flexed her left shoulder. The impact had bloody well nearly dislocated her arm from its socket.

Squall's reply was a silent shrug as he turned, again, bringing his gunblade to bear against her. "You're supposed to know your opponent's weapon and what it is capable of," he said in a tone that was very much master to student.

Kylah narrowed her eyes and leveled her blade in front of her. His patronizing tone only infuriated her. Squall sighed at her stance, noting that her grasp in the middle of the blade was exposed to him. Again, he flew at her with amazing speed, bringing his weapon down in an arc aimed at the middle of her blades.

Anticipating his attack, she rapidly sidestepped the attack as he went airborne, leaving a stunned Squall swinging at air. She spun her weapon in a massive circle, throwing her entire weight into the attack. Although the initial move had caught him off guard, Squall recovered amazingly quickly. He brought his blade around on his left side, fending off the broad side of her swallow, then reversed it yet again to block an attack on the opposite side.

Kylah realized that her side-to-side attacks were only keeping her opponent on the defensive, and she didn't stand the slightest chance of getting through. Changing her tactics, she spun the weapon behind her, bringing it against the inside of the Gunblade and knocking it to the side. She followed the motion with her weight, throwing her right foot into the air and catching her opponent directly in the cheek below his right eye.

While the attack was far from deadly, Squall took it rather personally. Only Zell had ever managed to best him in a fight (once), and that had been a fluke. His adrenaline began to flow with renewed vigor as he assumed a much more aggressive stance, waiting to see what she would do next.

Kylah's successful attack filled her with confidence like never before. Squall Leonhart's fighting abilities were legendary in Balamb Garden. If she were to beat him….

Narrowing her eyes, she pressed the attack, spinning her sword at Squall, again, but disconnecting the hilt of the swallow into two blades. "Let's see him handle an attack from both sides," she thought, smugly.

"Overconfident," was all she heard as Squall performed the most outlandish maneuver she had ever seen. As her weapons approached from both sides, Squall ducked to the left, throwing his blade over his right shoulder like a type of shield. Kylah's right weapon flew over his head and her left sword merely impacted against his defensive maneuver. Swinging the gunblade up and reversing his left hand against it, Squall grasped both of Kylah's arms with his right, lunging into her with all his weight. Before she could even hope to recover, his left foot was behind her right and she was flying towards the cement floor in the most undignified manner.

The impact on her head, combined with the abrupt absence of air in her lungs, was mind numbing. Instincts took over, however, and she rolled to the side, delivering a nasty kick to Squall's rib cage. Although a very skilled last second attack, it merely produced a startled grunt from her foe as he stood up to face her.

Squall's face seemed to relax and his mouth shot a lopsided grin at her. "Ready to give up, yet?" he taunted before his expression took on its usual sullen appearance.

Kylah felt like her blood was about to boil right out of her veins. She had finally caught a glimpse of Squall Leonhart grinning, but it was at her total humiliation. With an enraged cry that brought to mind Ifrit on a bad day, she ran forward, swinging both weapons in a repeated figure 8 attack against her sparring partner.

The attack, while incredibly vicious, was by no means unpredictable. Squall had studied swallow swords. The figure 8 attack was the most basic of the attacks taught by the masters. He held out his gunblade directly in front of him while slowly backing away, keeping the attacks well out of range from himself.

What he didn't expect, however, was the oil drum that was lying behind him. With one misplaced step, he found himself flailing wildly into the air and falling backwards, despite his best efforts to stay airborne. Kylah smirked as she jumped into the air, leveling her swallows below her foot and driving it towards his chest. Squall managed to get his weapon between his chest and her swords, but the impact drove the handle of his weapon hard into his chest, the business end landing between his legs and nearly making his weekend miserable in general.

Squall gasped a ragged breath as Kylah shifted her weight, remaining perfectly balanced atop of his gunblade, supported by her swords that were now on either side of his chest. Using all his might, Squall kicked hard with his left leg, landing the toe of his boot directly into her gluteus maximus and throwing her off balance. Kylah fell forward, ducking her head and trying to get her weapons untangled to use in some sort of defense against a certain attack. The anticipated rebuttal never came, though, as Squall was slow recovering from her last impact. He held his chest in obvious pain from her weight driving the revolver of his weapon into his ribcage.

Concerned, Kylah called out to him, "Are you hurt? Do we need to stop?"

In answer to her question, Squall merely stood upright and shook his head. He narrowed his eyes and leveled the gunblade at Kylah, again. He had beaten Seifer, had bested every other training partner, and had even defeated the Sorceress Ultimecia. There was no way he was going to loose to this pint-sized upstart.

Kylah was slightly impressed at his ability to take a licking and keep on ticking. Determined to keep the advantage, she flew forward, bringing both weapons over her head and into a vertical attack towards his head, anticipating that it was the hardest surface on his body, and the least likely to be damaged. Squall had attempted to calm his emotions, though, and tried to react with logic, rather than emotion. Rather than block the attack, he merely stepped into her swing arc, rendering the attack completely useless, while allowing him to throw his shoulder into her side.

Kylah jerked hard to the side, hearing her neck pop as her body jarred from the impact. She landed on her feet, though, and quickly put up her weapons to redirect the blade that was now thrusting towards her. Using her weapons to push the larger blade to her side, she spun off of Squall's body, throwing an elbow into the back of his head for good measure. As she tried to establish some distance between them, however, Squall spun around, swinging the blade into her opposite side.

Cursing her luck, Kylah had to parry the weapon dead-on, and was slammed backwards from the impact, again. Squall was trying to push the advantage, but she would not have anything of it. She jumped forward, crossing her weapons to strike in a pincer style attack.

Squall was too quick, however, as he thrust his blade between hers, then used his superior weight to throw her backwards. Determined not to let him get the last laugh with this attack, Kylah released her weapons and grabbed onto Squall's shirt, carefully avoiding the blade end of his weapon and taking him into a wild tumble towards the concrete below. If she was going down, he was going to go with her.

Squall quickly abandoned his weapon as they fell, realizing that either one of them could be seriously wounded if the weapon remained between them. Using his newly freed hands, he grappled with Kylah as they fell. The initial impact wasn't that bad for him, most likely because he landed on top of her.

Kylah grunted as the air rushed from her lungs a third time. Throwing all her weight to the side, she put both of them into a roll, trying to pin him to the ground. The only problem was that he had a significant weight and strength advantage on his side. Not only did she roll to where she wanted to, but they kept rolling. Once they stopped, she was neatly pinned to the ground, arms above her head and Squall Leonhart atop of her, inches from her face.

The two of them stared at one another for a long, silent moment, fire and fury burning in both of their eyes. Both were breathing hard, sweat glistening on both of their faces. Kylah could feel his muscles rippling beneath his soaked t-shirt as he fought to catch his breath. He was so close, she could see deep into his gray eyes, laced with small flecks of green.

Emotions finally calming, Squall realized exactly where he was. Kylah's chest heaved against him as she struggled to refill her lungs with air. Her long, muscular legs were tangled with his. She was utterly helpless beneath him.

Abruptly releasing her wrists, Squall scrambled to his feet, reclaimed his gunblade, picked up his jacket, then looked back down at his breathless and startled opponent. "I win," he said, gruffly. "We both have a meeting with Laguna in an hour. We'd better get cleaned up." With that, he strode quickly out of the shuttle bay toward their suite to take a shower.

Kylah sat up and drew in a deep breath as she stared after him, a dazed expression on her face. She had been beaten, but barely. Groaning, she pulled herself to her feet, reclaimed her discarded weapons, collected her belongings, and followed Squall's lead.

"So, here's the sticking points for Esthar in these negotiations."

Kylah, Squall, and Laguna were all seated around a large conference table in the Presidential Palace going over negotiation strategy for the upcoming summit. Laguna was all business as he pointed to different spots on the world map between them, going over different positions that Esthar would be taking on controversial issues in the negotiation process.

"First, Fisherman's Horizon. In recent months Esthar and FH have reached tentative motions toward reunification between us. FH is going to become a sort of colony of Esthar, but still retain its independence. We'll be supporting them, but they'll be making their own laws and regulating themselves. The goal is to make FH the start of reopening the transcontinental railroad between Esthar and Gabaldia, and hopefully opening trade routes between the two nations."

Kylah nodded as the listened intently to what the president was saying. If she were to successfully negotiate on the part of Esthar, she needed to be well informed of their stand on any issue that might come up.

"Second, the chocobo forest area of the northern part of this continent. Recently, our troops have encountered several Gabaldian troops patrolling this area. Given that this is right at our back door, we want them to withdraw from this area. Period."

Squall fought back a yawn. Political discussions, quite frankly, bored him to tears. He was more of an action first, talk later kind of guy. That was well known by anyone who had ever had any kind of contact with him. "I wonder why Laguna wanted ME at a peace summit, then?" he asked himself.

"Third, and probably less important than the other two: The Shumi Village and Trabia portion of this continent. Gabaldia feels very strongly that a military force needs to be present in this area. Esthar disagrees, as this area has been without military presence for quite a long time…."

His mind wandering, Squall gradually began to tune Laguna out. He was slightly annoyed, as he was unsure why he even had to be there. Political negotiations were not his strong point. With a quiet sigh, he laced his fingers together, rested his elbows on the tabletop, and plopped his chin on top of his hands. His gaze then shifted from the map on the table to the table itself.

Struggling to keep his attention on the briefing, he studied the grain of the wooden conference table intently. After a few moments of that, he shifted his attention to the wall directly above Kylah's head.

There's a crack in that wall, he observed, attention wandering even further. Next his eyes rested on a painting a few inches below the crack. That's kinda interesting. I wonder what it's supposed to be? He studied the artwork for several minutes, contemplating the deep meaning that the artist was trying to convey. Giving up, he allowed his gaze to fall even further. Kylah has some hair out of place. I wonder I should tell her? Or, is she one of those girls that just doesn't care? Hmmm… It's right there, right next to her cleavage. He stopped, realizing where his gaze had stopped. Why am I looking at Kylah's cleavage? he wondered. Suddenly, he remembered their sparring match earlier, and the precarious position in which it had ended. Distinctly, he remembered that cleavage brushing against him as he had her pinned to the ground….

Snap out of it, Squall, he immediately thought, quickly bringing his gaze upward. As soon as he did, he realized that Kylah was looking back at him, shooting him an annoyed look.

Cringing inwardly for being caught, Squall quickly turned his gaze back to Laguna and struggled to bring his attention back to the briefing. As soon as he caught Laguna's eye, he realized that he'd been doubly busted. Laguna was watching him, a twinkle in his green eyes as he fought back silent laughter.

"Sorry," Squall said, a bit uncomfortably. "My mind wandered."

So did your eyes, Kylah silently added, wishing she had chosen a different shirt to wear to this meeting.

"That's okay," Laguna broke in. "I'm finished. Kylah can fill you in on what you missed. I'll see you guys tomorrow at the start of the meetings."

Kylah quickly gathered her belongings and fled the room. She had notes and briefings to go over in their suite before the start of the summit the next morning.

"Hey, Squall," Laguna stopped him as he started to leave the room.

"Yeah?"

"Can I offer some friendly advice?"

"Sure," he said, not entirely sure what advice Laguna could possibly have to offer him.

"If you're going to scope a girl out, first, make sure it's not so obvious. Second, make sure she doesn't catch you."

Squall flushed as a scowl crossed his face. Without a word, he left the room, obviously annoyed. Laguna sank back into his chair, and laughed until he had to clutch his aching sides and gasp for air.