Deep breaths.
Slow but steady.
Eyes on him. Eyes on her.
It was all about the timing of the strike.
It did not matter first if you were strong or fast—it mattered if you were wise and patient enough to find a window of opportunity from your opponent's undoing.
A thud, a squeaking skid, and a grunt escaped from Jamis, receiving a blow and a kick from Kylo and an electrostaff which luckily is switched off as they can easily stop a heart in seconds.
"Get up! You are still unbalanced and clumsy," Kylo chided. "Have I not taught you enough?"
Jamis propped herself up with her own staff—a quarterstaff that was made out of thick and durable metal, the handle wrapped with bandage-like cloth serving as grips for both one- and two-handed handling, and a customized end which she personally installed where an electrostaff's shock generator can be attached or detached according to the owner's liking. She adjusted her grip on the staff, hugged its bottom half against her rib—as if in a stance—and pointed the far end at Kylo.
"Again!" she bellowed, gasping for breath and rubbing her abdomen.
Their training was usual: rough, noisy, and almost brutal even though they were not using real weapons. It came close to violent physical contact whenever Kylo would attempt to grapple at her, trap her in a choke, and pin her down—but if Jamis thought fast, she would have countered his grapple and kicked him off of his feet, his weight would not have mattered, the adrenaline would take care of that.
The bounty hunter—though young—has received and landed punches, kicks, and strikes prior to her temporary residency in the Finalizer, she has made several enemies as well as friends from her cantina skirmishes and street brawls, she has taken trophy weapons from her enemies either due to a bet or by her claim; in the world she lived half of her life in, that is a commonplace lifestyle, whilst there may be guards and peacekeepers on certain cities, the underground region of a planet is where you will usually find hunters, scoundrels, and smugglers alike in flocks—where no civilian would dare come through alone in fear of being mugged, or robbed or worse, killed.
In a split second, Jamis gained the upper hand by kicking Kylo on the shin to lose his balance, thus making her escape from his grasp and repaying him with a firm punch to the jaw and a kick on the abdomen—sending Kylo to stagger a few inches away from her; he rolled off the ground and dropped his electrostaff, the weapon clattering away from his hand while Jamis has hers still in-hand. Kylo quickly picked himself up, readied for his next attack and Jamis prepared for this lumbering man who was ironically near her own age; she only had a few seconds left before she could make up her mind between evading and then attacking or the vice versa.
She slipped away from his line of attack, she spun to the right and as soon as she faced front, she clubbed Kylo at the back with the blunt end of her quarterstaff—again, he stumbled. Although she has the swift luxury of savoring this little fragment of victory, she knew better than turning her back from him and immediately claim victory. She learned it the hard way. A memory flashed before her eyes, back when she was naïve and barely a young adult, she was too arrogant back then, she had lost a fight for a pouch filled with 5000 credits; she had turned her back from her felled opponent, basking in cheers in the arena which was her undoing, and ended up being pinned down with a thick-soled boot until she was beaten senseless until she was barely standing up but "saved" by the acting referee of the match—thus, losing her key to survival for that week.
"You shouldn't turn your back on an enemy until they're dead or unconscious." Sniggered a female bystander who stayed behind when the crowd dispersed while they left her bleeding out and bruised.
It was one of the few lessons young Jamis had learned from one of the scoundrels who eventually became her friend—a Twi'lek whom she had met in a cantina in Mos Espa. That "friendly" advice stuck to her mind long enough to become used as a strategy—and a lesson recall—in the present.
After that evasion and that quick blunt hit on Kylo, she readjusted her stance and prepared her weapon in the offensive in case he lunges at her again with brute force and her assumption was correct; for some reason, she must have struck a nerve in him when she pommeled him and that was the catalyst that ignited his rage. She managed to counter his patterned attacks but she could not find a window where she could land a hit on him—he was hitting too fast.
"Come on, Jamis, use your rage to your advantage! Don't even hold back," Kylo instructed.
"Don't worry, I'm just welling it up," Jamis responded, smugly.
Three weeks spent on practice, both for physical combat and mental exercises which sharpened Jamis's skills with the Force. It took Jamis long enough to master and polish her footwork. Her brawn is still there but used to an advantage—she did not charge or attack whenever she saw an opening, she only attacked when she knew the opportunity deemed fit. When she is not overworked and exhausted by sparring practice, she takes her time in practicing in using the Force in the confines of her bedroom, although she has not exactly leveled up from lifting small objects inside her room.
Shortly after, pulling away from the barrage of attacks, Jamis readjusted her stance and there! She found the perfect opportunity to hit him by the ribcage—a sharp lunge of the staff, she dared not in risking of evading the attack to frame herself in doing the perfect attack. Graceful and fluid, her strike landed. A solid thud planted on Kylo's flesh and he staggered; before he could even stand up or tilt his head up to catch her in his line of sight, Jamis's quarterstaff found its way on his jawline and then his temple.
Jamis staggered back herself but she shortly caught herself, propping herself up by the end of the staff, she looked at Kylo lying flat on the ground.
"See? I didn't hold back," she snickered, as if taunting him.
She fell to the floor, lousily sitting down with one leg folded up and the other resting flat on the floor. She poked his side with her staff to check if he was unconscious.
"I did your rule, Fira… I didn't turn my back away," she muttered to herself.
The thought of attempting to turn him over face up using the Force sounded like a child-like idea, but since she was eager about mastering the Force, she gave it a shot. Evidently, Kylo was heavy, but she still tried; her push was not so much as a nudge but she exerted enough effort to roll him over.
"I must've hit him… a bit too hard."
In the silence of that hollow room, she checked for his vital signs to confirm if she really hit him that hard; she placed her hand lightly on his chest in search for at least a single pulse—there was one—then she heard him breathe out very softly through the mouthpiece of his mask, then she wondered if removing his mask was necessary for him to breathe easily.
She realized that she has never seen his real face underneath the mask.
She always have been curious about what he looked like.
But the thing stopping her was that he might kill her if he wakes up and just finds out that his helmet has been taken off by no other than her.
"Yeah, I'm not ready to die yet," she mumbled.
She was honest to herself, she did not know what else to do while Kylo lay unconscious on the cold floor; she looked around the both of them, she saw their dummy weapons, and she thought it was a good idea to try and lift up both of them. Come to think of it, she has not attempted to lift two things at once using the Force, and so she pointed her hand in the general direction of his electrostaff which was a good meter away from his head and she let go of her own quarterstaff—but immediately was held, mentally, by her through the Force.
As she continued to gesture her arms so as to make the weapons follow her whim, she lured the electrostaff into her hand and examined it—noticing that the shock generator was of a different model than what she has and the shaft was slimmer, she took a closer look at the shock generator and attempted to switch it on; she found the switch, the electricity crackled sharply it made her shoulders jump, it almost reminded her of the thunderstorms of that night of her disturbing past. Suddenly, her heart felt heavy and tossed it aside. As she stared at the unconscious, young Sith lord, she wondered if she could pull off in re-erecting the Force wall that shrouds the room's door.
"I think I just might pass out if I try," she thought to herself. "Did I hit him that hard to make him out cold?"
Jamis grabbed her staff again and poked Kylo harder at the rib.
"I think you're just playing this out to boost my morale, Ren, well, guess what? It isn't, now get up!"
"You used that hate inside you too much, you knocked me out cold," Kylo sighed.
Kylo popped and cracked the stiffness out his neck and joints before leaving the room with Jamis, while she was trailing behind him before he shrouds the room again, the thought of putting up the wall herself came into her head; when they got out, Jamis watched Kylo lock the room using the Force and then the faint, shimmering wall is up in front of the door again.
"Will I ever learn how to do that?" Jamis thought out loud.
"You still have a long way to go before you can even pull this off," Kylo sniggered.
"Figures." She said as she rolled her eyes and then made her way ahead.
Before she could even get out Kylo's sight, she was stopped by a firm "Wait" from Kylo, stopping dead in her tracks, she turned around and saw him walking up to her.
"Earlier, in the room, you suddenly had a burst of strength, what happened back there?"
"Can't exactly explain it to you—I don't have the right words for it," replied Jamis. "It just… got to me and then my instincts told me to let it all out in a way I know how—I didn't have the time to think it through, I just thought that you beating you with it was the effective way to 'let it out'."
Kylo thought for a moment and then realized that this is her episodic jolt of energy wherein she becomes strong just like the first time he fought her—he knew she needed to polish it before it became her undoing and so he was planning out, in his head, on how he is going to refine that trait of hers.
He knew he had to act quickly before she loses her patience for him completely.
"She's almost there," he thought to himself as he strode back to his chamber, "I don't understand why she hasn't realized it yet! My plan cannot backfire if she has come this far."
As always, the bedroom in the Finalizer has always been stale for Jamis. Inns in Tatooine were much cozier than steely bedchambers in Star Destroyers. In the back of her mind, she was thinking of sneaking out just to make sure she is not rusty from bounty-hunting, she could not care less if Kylo would send out a search party just to find her, she scoffed at the idea and concluded that he would not come looking for her—whether their training regimen was complete or otherwise.
The last thing he said rang in her mind. What did happen back there?
The burst of energy surely would have a root cause. Was it the rush in her veins? The thrill of actually pinning down Kylo? Perhaps. Probably because Kylo was so difficult to defeat these past few weeks every time they go sparring with one another.
She would be lying to herself if she denied that he was a brilliant fighter—of course he is! After all, what kind of a Sith lord would he be if he were not brilliant? A dead one, certainly.
Recalling how she handled her quarterstaff, she realized that she had indeed become rusty with fighting in melee; in the confines of her bedroom, she grabbed her staff, and practiced a variety of spinning techniques, attacks, and a combination of both, to avoid further distractions she was practicing while facing the window with a view of the cold, black vacuum of space.
The hiss of her bedchamber's door alerted her. Jamis spun gracefully while keeping her grip on the staff firm, as soon as she turned around to face the general direction of the door, she released the staff and threw it like a javelin. The melee weapon darted through the air, but it was abruptly halted by Kylo—who simply raised his hand, palm open—and the staff was suspended in mid-air, levitating in a lightweight manner as if it was a feather, and now both ends point to both Kylo and Jamis.
"Practicing in private?" Kylo snarked.
"My top preference," Jamis snarked back.
The sight of the weapon floating in the air impressed Jamis, she never thought Kylo would pull that little trick and she quickly buried the pang of envy in her mind.
"Why have you come here?" asked Jamis.
"I wanted to know…" Kylo said as he stepped inside her chamber, the hem of his cape sweeping the spotlessly smooth floor, "What are you thinking right now?"
The bounty hunter was taken aback by the question. In fact, there were so many things running in her mind right now—sneaking out to finally get a hunt, if she will ever get a hunting contract from Kylo just so she would not feel she is wasting time the longer she stays in the Finalizer, ever finishing the training, if she will ever be able to fight something again outside, and another thing that she feels embarrassed to even ask or talk about.
"I have so many things in my mind right now, Ren," she walked up to her floating quarterstaff and grabbed it without hesitation (or fear). "In fact, I wanted to ask them all but I figured you had a limit of how many questions you can entertain."
"That depends." He simply said.
"All right then," she struck the floor gently—not so much as a tap—with the bottom end of her quarterstaff, then looked at him in the eye, "Have I gotten any better compared to the first time we fought in that room?"
"Yes. Yes, you have. I just didn't say anything because… I was afraid appraising you would lead to you becoming complacent."
"I'm not that type of person, Ren; if anything, I'd be just continuing the training until I actually finish it." She pointed the other end of her staff at him, with the end just inches away from the front of his mask, "Next question," she was not sure on how she would construct it without any possible misunderstanding, she walked up to the wall of a window of her bedchamber, placed her staff on what it may be a horizontal rack, and finally belted out her question. "Am I ever going to hunt again? I miss hunting—I don't belong in some room in a huge command ship, I don't belong here… I belong out there."
She gestured a nod at the general direction of a planet surrounded by its moons and a vast asteroid field, then her eyes wandered off to the stars—which could possibly be planets or a whole system just a hundred parsecs away.
Kylo walked up to her. His footsteps were so heavy that Jamis could feel them like hooves nearing and closing in on her—he was just inches behind her, she could see his faint reflection in the glass of the window—and simply, he answered, "Soon. Be patient."
Jamis glanced to the side and noticed a silver dent on the corner of Kylo's mask, she turned around to face him.
"I guess I've hit you too hard you didn't notice the dent in your mask,"
Kylo—even underneath his mask—did not seem to be alarmed, considering that the mask was part of his identity as a young Sith, but he was hiding a lot of pain in his face from her. She also noticed a maroon streak striped on his neck. Dried blood.
By the sight of it, Jamis went on impulse by playing nurse. She switched on TC-846 from hibernation mode and asked if it knew any medical procedures for combat wounds from a melee attack. The droid delightfully boasted that it was programmed with first-aid in the same level as medical droids, unfortunately, its humble bragging had to be cut short as Jamis fetched a small bowl of water for cleaning the blood off and the wound.
"Take off that mask, I need to check the wound," Jamis commanded as she was rummaging through her things for any first-aid supplies or at least good alternatives for such, "Good God, Ren, did you come to training with a semi-open wound?"
She insisted again, seeing that Kylo was not acting quickly, to take off his mask so she can take a better look at the wound.
While she was away in readying medical supplies necessary in treating the wound and commanding TC-846 to assist her.
"Since when did you have so much knowledge about medical droids and their abilities?"
"A friend of mine owns a medical droid—her brother tweaked it to have similar traits as that of a protocol droid too—and it came in handy during a skirmish we were caught up in." Jamis said while she was at the sink. "Have you had that mask off yet?"
At first, he seemed to be withdrawing from doing so. He was so hesitant. Eventually, he worked up the nerve to take it off and he did. He remembered the last time he showed his face to her, he remembered the look in her face—it was not a face of fear, it was a face of curiosity, and—if he would consider his assumption—a face of familiarity, but the latter sounds so absurd.
The depth of his vision blurred and then sharpened after seeing through a dim screen of a mask. Jamis was standing behind him holding a small steel bowl, he saw it from the reflection of the window pane. Quickly he turned around to face her. He looked at her with his own eyes. Her heart sank for an unspeakable reason; perhaps the event of Kylo taking off his mask was not how she expected it to unfold—close but not accurate.
Kylo's lips parted as if to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth.
Jamis swallowed the lump stuck in her throat that seemed to have hindered her speech.
Both of them were at a loss for words.