AN - another non christmas story...well, er, battle. Yes, much of it is my mind relieving itself of stress by typing in my favorite type of scene - a battle scene. This is not reading for dummies and playing ragnarok and seeing some action movies may give you a better picture of what is being shown - I don't expect any reviews since this was for the sake of my stress level and probably rushed. Nice and short :D Don't ask about the order with part 1, 3, and 2 - it's special.

Again - you will only be able to connect this to part 1 if you have a super mind!!!!!!!!

'Thanks. You too.'

part 3 in Mocking Bird

by Miname

The wind was strangely airless – not quite there, you could say. Any cheery sun that might have been there was blocked out by dark clouds that had the look of impending doom. The usually passive and tranquil Al De Baran that gave stressed workers a haven of peace was filled with an unnerving tension and was practically dipped in a jar overflowing with miserable hearts. This day was so dark that it was frightening, not to mention the perfect day for a few suicide attempts, a green haired thief decided.

Picking at a simple lock with her hair pin, an irritated scowl on her face, the female thief wondered why she had accepted a job on such a depressing day. Chances were, her moral would dip so low, she would give up her job from pure gloom and end out sacrificing a one hundred zeny bet she made rashly not to mention stupidly. Remembering the look on the knight who had betted on her made her grind her teeth angrily. Stupid stuck up knight!

After a moment of expertly rotating her twin hair pin to form a makeshift key, an expected click! sounded to Lief's ear and the cheap one-use lock fell apart in pieces and into an open palm.

'Easier than something other than pie,' Jinnata, or Jinta thought as she remembered the first time she had tried to cook with a blob of dough before adding thoughtfully, 'A bit too easy'.

The green haired thief swiftly opened the nicely decorated door and tumbled – a skill she learned from watching taekwons - backwards to avoid any sneaky assaults by wary sentries. After doing a few silly looking make-sure rolls and twirls, Jinta went back on her two feet, slid next to the doors and peeked through to check for hidden people.

The infiltrated room had none of the darkness of the outside city that looked like a dry swamp. There were magnificent probably double cut jewels decorating the shiny walls which were painted with an endless wildflower field view by an anonymous master artist. All furniture – chairs, beds, tables – had carvings of stories of mighty wyverns and strange alien creatures being united or hunted.

Jinta recognized a design with a glowing bird being chased by an arrow as a forbidden story a peasant had told her about the time when there were seven suns, the bird, and a master hunter who sought a true challenge. The hunter was told by villagers to shoot down the birds of sun for they were too hot and fields were dry. He shot down six and began a long battle with the last. The peasant had exclaimed magically that nobody knows who won, only that the villagers had pleaded the man, now gone mad from his will to black out the world, to not kill the last sun. Some said that the sun was shot down but its offspring came to power, whiles others viewed the mother bird as the winner in the epic battle.

All of this, including the floor that was painted into a sky, was amazing, almost supernatural, but Lief's eyes were on something else.

On the left of the room, a very dark and ugly chair was placed in the shadows, sticking out like a black rat in a pile of silk and gold. The wood it was made of was obviously rotting and growing mold from dampness. On the seat of the chair, a small necklace was spread across as if somebody had taken it off and carelessly thrown it away as they hurried to leave.

However, Jinta decided, this probably didn't happen since the necklace was the most beautiful thing in the world she had ever seen. The gold item threaded with small but shining jewels seemed to produce a shine of its own, making all the majestic furniture and paintings seem more like a drab background to a much superior object – the queen and her peasants.

Jinta felt her hand twitch and open at the thiefs need to steal something valuable. For a moment, she just stared like a hungry lion before reaching out to grab the irresistable necklace.

"I see our little god necklace has caught your eye."

Suprised, Jinata whipped around to view the culprit of surprise before immediately dropping on her belly to avoid an incoming knife. There was a slight chink! of the knife chipping into the old moldy chair, a nerve racking reminder of near death. Jinta faked a slide and expertly tumbled backwards. By luck, a quick venom knife swished past her instead of hitting its target. Another soft chink! followed by sixteen more made the female thief instinctively jump away in panic, avoiding a well aimed katar which then sliced back into her arm.

'Assassin!!' her mind cried out in shock.

"Well, I guess you aren't too bad for a thief."

Jinta turned to view her offender. She quickly noted his stance – defensive. This meant that he wasn't going to attack for – the thief calculated in her head, averaging out experience, job, attitude.. – two minutes or after saying two smart things that were supposed to catch her off balance.

Readily, she answered, her cold voice to his mocking tone, flexing her mind skills, "Thanks. You too."

Immediately, she ducked a quick slice at her neck and slid behind her enemy to avoid getting an alternating downward slice for her head. Jinta slipped out her dagger and blocked the next to most vulnerable part of her body – the stomach – from the assassin's other katar.

Quick reaction is valuable in survival but so is strength, something the experienced thief didn't have enough of. Jinta felt her own stiletto get pushed against her stomach by the pure strength of her offender. Below, she heard her feet slide back on the floor, creating a slight scratching sound.

Jinta gritted her teeth – she wasn't too strong against a full fledged assassin. If this continued, she would have her stiletto molded in her bleeding stomach. Attempting to push the katars up a inch so she could slip away before the assassin became bored of staring at her panicky face and decide to cut open her stomach, Jinta felt her energy drain away.

The desparate thief saw the enemy assassin's brown eyes glinted maliciously and his lips formed a smiling line of truimph.

"Well, anyways, you aren't good enough!" he mocked. He slid his katar away, ducked so that Jinta fell over him, and the lunged her exposed back.

Jinta's eyes snapped open in shock as she fell forward. Her mind desperately scanned her mind for survival before screaming at her what to do.

The female thief placed one foot in front of her and spun on the ground and kicked the assassin's leg, remembering in desperation her taekwon skills.

Dropping her knife, Jinta felt her mind switch from careful thief to berserker taekwon. The assassin stared incredulously as the female taekwon dressed on a thief outfit slid across the floor. He sliced at the now different girl. Her techniques, stance, and look in her eyes was completely alien from before.

To his ultimate surprise, the girl jumped onto his katar and sprung behind him and twirled behind him to deliver a kick in a back. He felt himself crash to the floor and a quick jab at his neck blacked out his vision. With his eyes closed, he could feel a darker darkness swirl in like the fresh wind of his homeland, Payon.

----connecting part 1 with part 3

"She doesn't like you :/"

A little taekwon girl, roughly age six stared with big innocent hazel eyes at her miserable lord knight companion who stared at her as if she were crazy. Apparently, his mind processed unbelieving, she had just said that an apocolypse didn't like him – he felt like dying in laughter.

"Are you kidding?" he laughed silently as he watched out for bio labs, "He's the apocalypse. Of course he doesn't. He hates all human beings including you, okay stupid? So just shut up for a moment before the bio labs hear you and get us all killed."

Staring with a confused look on her face, the puny girl shook her head and pointed to the rotating head of the apocalypse they had both been so unfortunate as to stumble upon.

"I don't know what you are talking about," she said in a very genuinely confused voice, "I think you meant she. The acolpalyspy whatever you call it is a she and her real name is HiamuRung. And she only doesn't like you 'cause you have this weird look on your face."

The lord knight bonked his taekwon companion on the head.

"Now you're really crazy. Tell me, how do you know about this. Apocalypses don't speak and will kill you at chance."

The smiley face of the stupid girl chirped up at the chance to correct him again with insane facts and she piped happily, "There is only one apocalypsey thingy :0! HiamuRung is just resurrected automatically by her own soul remnant. And she can speak! But she says she sounds evil and cruel like a Dark Lord or whatever so she doesn't :/"

Pointing at the turning head of the apocalypse, the airhead girl exclaimed, "And the way the head rotates represents what she says:D Right now…she is saying….her favorite food is….s-t-r-a-w-b-e-r-r-y-c-h-i-c-k-e-n-s….strawberry chickens:D"

The lord knight sighed. He attempted to remember how his friend had managed to convince him to take care of some random girl found on the street two years ago. However it was, it must have been really convincing since this girl was damn annoying not to mention a gift from devil's egg.

He glanced at the happy face of the little beat up girl he had found one day lying half dead on a plaza without any limbs and no skin or memory. At first, he had taken pity, and decided to help, but eventually, the girl grew to fast with her mechanical limbs and became this mecha-taekwon – pretty freaky.