Well, this took a long time for me to update . . .T_________________T SSSOOORRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYY!!!!! I don't do it on purpose, I swear!! Here's the next chapter. It's not my most favorite one, but read it anyways! PLEASE!!~~

Urosia stopped his men at the top of this rise. He saw Aaron. His eyes caught sight of the retreating horses and the people that rode them. He knew what had happened and he realized what had been done to make it happen. The lies that were laid, and that he had been tricked, fooled even by her, though he would never admit this even to the day he would die. Riding out a few yards, he made sure he stood out among the men.

" You lied!!" Urosia shouted, not angry, but bluntly at her from a distance. Aaron let out a scornful laugh loud enough for him to hear.

" I do that more then you might think!!" she replied, still laughing. Urosia frowned, not liking her reply to his comment.

" You know you'll never get out of here on your own!" he exclaimed, blankly back at her. She let out another set of laughs at Urosia.

" We'll see about that, won't we, bastard!!" she answered him.

Truth be told, she wasn't sure how she was going to get out of this. With a set of cavalry around, obviously she wasn't going to try and out run them anytime soon. Although running and hiding had it's perks, one of them wasn't a prideful return to ones comrades. Not that had ever stopped her before, but there had always been a part of her that really hated the way she kept running away like this.

" What next?!" he called to her.

That was a good question to be totally honest. All this time, and now this happens? Alone with an army and their commander with her arm in a sling and covered with blood around the abdomen. It had soaked through the shirt at this point in time and even Urosia saw the blood even from the distance he was from her.

" You have no plan to surrender to us, but we can not allow you to escape!"

" An impasse, moron!" Aaron snapped, annoyed with his choice of words, as though to say he thought she was rather stupid in some way. " I get it already!" The irritation in her voice reached Urosia, and rather had him feeling irritable with her.

" No need to be snippy."

" Try saying that when you're in my position, jerk off." she answered with a voice loud enough to be heard by them all. Urosia looked confused at her, as she smirked slightly at him despite the situation she found herself in now.

" You seem to have already decided what you would like to do?" he asked her and she nodded, snickering mockingly at him from across the way.

" I have," she shouted out, " and you may not like my choice." Urosia's head turned a means of inquiring what she meant exactly by this. " You may think this foolish of me, but I'm sick of always running away, and sick of hiding like I've done some crime. I'll fight!" she exclaimed, slipping her hand out of the sling again, and this time tossing the sling away completely.

Kneeling down, she grabbed up one man's sword into her good arm, and dug her injured one into her pockets to get to the final knife she had left to her name. Urosia stared at her, and that was clear even from the distance between them both.

" You can't be serious!" he exclaimed, as, despite himself, he'd hoped on only capturing her. With a cavalry of a good number of men still left behind him, he didn't think she would consider making an attempt to escape, let alone attack them head on. She was even bleeding and had a broken arm!

" Say what you will, Urosia!!" she hollered, not backing down, even taking a pace forwards. " I won't run now! This is where it ends, dammit all!!" she persisted at him.

" You expect me to set my men, numbering forty or so armor covered soldiers, to fight a wounded, bleeding girl?" Urosia asked in reply to this. " That's absurd!!" Unfortunately, Urosia only got a cold hearted snicker from Aaron in reply.

" Not so many as that, now that I've killed some of your men along the way here!" she answered him, darkly. That got Urosia's blood boiling, don't be confused. However, he wouldn't have himself be unsettled by such a simple gesture from Aaron.

" You're a fool."

" If you won't send them on me, then I'll force it from you!!" she snarled out to him. " You know that!! Or would you rather come end this yourself?!" that suggestion had a great deal of appeal for Urosia right now.

However, it had a greater downside then he was willing to take at this point. It would be like admitting just how hard of a person she was to break, that it took a commander to take her out to keep his men alive. Urosia wouldn't dare shame his men and return home on that note of failure.

" It won't be me you'll be fighting!!" he made a gesture to a random soldier behind him right now.

A regular soldier, no one in particular. Despite that he cared for all of these men, Urosia couldn't say he could call all of them friends or even say he knew them all by name for that matter. He might have tried to do so if he'd had the time.

Anyways, the man brought his horse forwards.

" Sir?"

" Bring her here." Urosia said, simply. " Show her how small she is, and how foolish she is. Bring her here alive" That would be the greatest of insults to her right now. To find herself captured alive. The man straightened to salute to him.

" Aye, sir!" he said, then rode out a few paces ahead of his commander.

There was a moment of hesitation in his motions because he could see that she was already wounded. These were men accustomed to attacking fully armed men on horse back just as they were themselves mounted soldier. Attacking a wounded girl in regular attire like any farmer's or merchant's daughter or something like that was a rather cruel idea.

" She refuses to be taken without a fight." Urosia said to him, seeing the man's reluctance to attack her at all. " Avoid killing her. Simply subdue her." Understanding now the man nodded firmly, and set himself up for an attack.

" Come at me to kill!!" Aaron had an unusually commanding voice, as though she had been some sort of war leader for a part of her life. The sound of a command made the man about to face her stop a moment. " You'll not survive if you come at me half-assed!!"

" For all of my comrades that you've killed, I'd be stupid not to!!" he screamed in reply, clearly not betting to bring her back alive as Urosia had to him to.

" STOP!!" Urosia tried to command the man once more, but this time the sound of a demand like Urosia's fell on deaf ears. He no longer heard other voices around him. That was his mistake.

Coming at Aaron with a shout of fury his horse galloping hard forwards with his weapon out and ready to strike Aaron through. He did fail to consider that as a target on the ground, she might jump out of the way.

That was what she did, rolling up onto her feet, wheeling on her heels and catching the man with the sword in a fairly clumsy swing. The swing did little actual damage, but knocked the man off balance and from the seat of his tall horse.

Falling to the dust, he struggled to his feet with all of his armor on. This left Aaron, in her light clothing, enough time to run the man through with her sword so that he lay dead and motionless.

After that, Aaron turned a stone cold glare on Urosia who looked rather horrified by this failure to follow his orders and by the way she so quickly took to killing the man.

War was something Urosia knew well, and he knew the look of a warrior when he saw it.

What stood there was a fighter, not a boy or girl, a merchant or farmer's daughter.

All he saw was the adrenaline of battle flowing through her burning eyes.

" COME AT ME, UROSIA!! YOU GOD FORSAKEN BASTARD!!!" she snarled and yelled all at the same time, demanding Urosia.

The men around were unsettled by her shouts and demands. The insubordination of the man who had just met his death didn't bother them. Rather, they understood what he had meant when he said that enough of his comrades had fallen to her hand.

It was a shared feeling between them all, and the urge to go against Urosia's orders was becoming more tempting at his request to bring her back alive.

" YOU!" Urosia snapped at one man, sharply, getting the man to stiffen to attention when addressed. " Go and fight her!"

" Sir-!" but he wasn't given much chance to protest.

" Would you have us all come home with my need to intervene while capturing ONE person?!" he hissed harshly, getting the attention of all around.

Now they were beginning to see just how much of a stop they were all in at this point. This was supposed to have been an easy task. Catch Aaron. There were logical explanations for most of the casualties along the way, the winter weather, sickness, what have you.

There would be no excuse to cover up for the fact that a commanding officer had to step in to capture one teenager. It not only sounded bad and looked bad, simply it was bad.

Humiliating even, but there was nothing else to say about it. That was simply how it happened, and they had been misfortune for that fact they had struggled so much along the way.

Still, there would be no excuse for Urosia needing to be involved with Aaron's capture as it would be considered very poor back in their country.

So, the man stepped forwards to fight. And again, men were struck down. One after another after another. Some were simply knocked unconscious. Aaron was many things, but not cruel or solid as stone. Most she knocked out so that they wouldn't be attacking her.

Unfortunately, since Urosia and his men were at a distance, it rather looked like she was killing men in cold blood, which does nothing for the already disgusted image they all had of her at this point.

But with each passing fight, and each falling man, she weakened. Her injured arm was becoming numb, and she'd lost her hold on the sword for a few seconds in the last two fights she'd been in.

The blood on her stomach began to spread as her wounds began to close and reopen repeatedly for the time she spent fighting. The constant sensation of the stinging wound forced her to ignore the injury when she should normally have gotten it tended to right away.

In this battle, though she appeared powerful, she was inevitably losing to the numbers set against her. This survival game was hardly good for either side. With each man that went down it set more and more of Urosia's men to uneasiness and fear for some of the weaker hearted among the crowd.

Urosia was biting his lip thinking. If too many more got taken out by Aaron even the stronger hearted men would even be unnerved, which would make for hysteria. He had to prevent that or all of this had been for nothing. They'd all managed to get this far, how could they possibly turn back now? No, it was far past the time it would've been to turn back.

Now it was do or die trying. Going back having failed was not an option. In their country, coming back a failure was worthy of being killed, and as they were a cavalry, part of the military of their country, they would be hunted down and killed if they made a run for it.

That made them no better then common criminals.

Again, Aaron knocked another person to the ground, unconscious. She hit her knee this time, panting and using the sword to keep herself from falling to the ground altogether.

" AARON!!" Urosia called out. Panting, she glanced up from the where she was kneeling.

" What the hell is it now, you BASTARD?" she managed to shout at him despite what pain she was feeling at the time. He frowned, hearing how hard this was on her. This was a slow and painstaking way to go down.

" This must end, Aaron!" he hollered in reply to her.

" Then turn around right now and go!!"

" You know the laws of our country, Aaron!! You know we of all people can't do that!"

" Then start over!!!"

" These men have families, Aaron!!" Urosia exclaimed, disgusted that she was even suggesting that these men abandon their own families like that.

" If they will be hunted down like criminals, then it's probably better for their families if they never return!!" Aaron snapped in reply, now reminded as to why she was never a huge fan of the people in the military. Some of them just didn't have an imaginative enough mind to find their way out of a paper bag. Uh . . .

" WHAT?!" Urosia snapped.

" You heard me fine!!" Aaron panted for her breath, annoyed with Urosia again, her flaring eyes glared at Urosia with fury. " It's not easy and I won't say it is, but you'll have me dead in your arms before you ever come close to getting my Master's message to pass my lips."

That was, obviously, becoming more and more clear to Urosia.

" And you'll all be killed if you go home! Now, I don't know about all of you, but I would rather be mysteriously never seen again then put my entire family through hell by coming back a failure!" that she addressed to all of the men with Urosia.

This Urosia could see, was bad.

She was actually encouraging his men to turn from his command. Those cards she'd had had been played very well, and Urosia couldn't deny that. The majority of the men that would be in the regular cavalry were men whom where young and fearless. These young people were targeted for recruitment because of this.

However, this was a double edged sword in Urosia's current situation. Because the majority of them were so young, they were willing to be men that would travel around a lot to where ever they may be needed. That meant the vast majority of them had nothing tying them down back home.

For that reason, some were willing to be the heroes among their fellows and make the sacrifices needed to protect their country. At the same time, it also meant they had no reason to fight a losing battle. Not to mention the fact that those men would also be the most willing to start over even in a land far from their birth place.

That was exactly what happened too. A good number of men saw the logic in Aaron's words. They understood what was happening, and Urosia couldn't say that he totally disagreed with them either. He was single and looking for adventure even in his later years. At this point he'd given up settling down and was now just out to prove himself and guide his men.

Then again, a good many of the older men where lined in Urosia's ranks as well. These were men that could not so easily settle in a new place. They were the ones who's families lay in the land they'd left all those miles and miles away from this island of Araluen, some with young children they wished to see grow up and become good men and women of their nation.

To be told to leave them was something they simply couldn't do or wouldn't do in some cases.

Still others had lovers back home awaiting their return. There a good number of men that led their horses away from the battle in a neutral place to stay and watch.

" Sorry, sir," said one to Urosia," but we aren't willing to die for something like this." with that, they were gone.

Urosia said nothing to stop them. No matter if he was their commander or not, it was their decision to follow his orders. This failure was his, and he planned to take it all on his shoulders because these men would turn from him like this so easily.~~

What next? Who knows?! Well, I know, but I'm not telling!! All I'm going to say is that it should be exciting!! Please don't kill me for taking so long to update!!! T___T I apologize profusely!! ToT Please review!! Then tell your fanfiction friends about this story and have them read it too!! Well, you don't have to, but I would appreciate it!! ^^ Bye for now!!