Notes: If you want to do the Sci-Fi Big Bang challenge that inspired this fic, please check it out on LiveJournal with the community name: scifibigbang. Sign-ups began yesterday. Also, I'm going to start updating this more frequently since the chapters are short enough. Enjoy!

Kia Min met her brother just on the outskirts of the town, and together they walked past the rice fields and into the woods where they had often sparred before her mother sent her to Two Rivers. Wayfarer Wei had stayed the night, and he and her father had struck up a deal that would certainly save the town from anymore economic disrepair. Min barely understood the details of it, but no matter; that was Jun's concern, not hers.

Jun had a metal staff worked for him by One Stone's blacksmith for his birthday last year, he explained. "If you can beat me today," he said during their hike, "I'll get him to make one for you, too."

"And if I don't?" asked Kia Min, though she was fairly certain she outclassed Jun by now.

"Then you tell me why you really came home."

She fell silent; she never did get around to telling her family about Two Rivers' fate. Wei had kept that part of his tale out when he explained his situation to the Kia family. "I feel that's something you should tell them," he had said before he left for Hehua that morning. "The name of the one town we were allowed to trade with was unimportant anyway, and it doesn't matter anymore. Your family is a clever bunch. They'll figure it all out when you tell them."

But Kia Min never did get around to it. She had instead spent the evening trying to get details about her father's illness without revealing that she never received any letters, all while helping her family take care of Wei. It was not that she did not have the chance to either, however. Her father asked her how this visit would affect her training. She responded that it would not. Her mother asked her how she liked Two Rivers, and Kia Min told her that she loved it there.

Jun must have detected her use of past tense when she said these things. She wondered if her parents did, but perhaps they had too much on their minds. Besides, it would hardly have been appropriate to tell them with Wei still around.

So why was she dreading the idea of losing to Jun?

Kia Min scowled. There was no need to look into that further. She just hated losing. Only two people were allowed to defeat her, and they were somewhere else in the Empire by now. She would tell Jun, and her parents, at dinner tonight. Or tomorrow night.

They came to a clearing in the middle of the woods, and Jun spun his staff idly. "You think I should grab a stick from around here and use that instead, even up the odds?" he asked with a lazy smirk.

Kia Min rolled her eyes. "I've had five years of constant, rigorous training. You're that sure of yourself?"

"You sparred against other students in practice matches. I fought against bandits and thieves, sometimes to the death."

"I fought bandits too," she said. "And the students I sparred against? I sparred against them every day. How often did you fight the thieves who came sneaking around Father's stand?"

"Does that matter? I fought to the death, and won every time." A beat. "Obviously. How many times did you lose?"

"Did Wayfarer Wei tell you the part how I saved him from a bandit attack?"

"Aha! You're dodging the question. I win this duel."

Kia Min sighed and shook her head. "That's not enough to get me to tell you what happened." Not that she needed to lose to tell him, anyway, but he had to earn it now, if he was going to be like this.

Jun laughed and fell into a sparring stance. "Likewise, if you had won. I'd have said the same thing. Winning an argument will not earn you a new weapon."

As Kia Min followed suit, she found herself smirking. "For some people, it does," she said, thinking of the many arguments Wu and Jing Woo had won to get what they wanted. Though, Jing Woo had been quicker to call it "using their natural charm" than arguing. And, to be fair, Wu had been more flirtatious in her means to the prize.

Was that how Wu managed to get Merchant Fen Do to lower the price on the poultice? Kia Min cringed. She would much rather not think about that.

Jun, still smiling, shook his head. "That sounds like a story. Tell me after I win. That's the deal, after all."

He slid his feet towards her, lunging his upper body forward to stab her in the gut. Kia Min sidestepped and swung her staff at his head. "Actually, it's not. And you're not going to win."

"We'll see about that," said Jun.

Their bout only lasted for a few seconds, with Kia Min standing victoriously over her brother with a staff at his throat. "I win," she sneered, but then she saw Yao Hong beneath her feet and she jerked away from Jun. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again and pasted a grin on her face. "Looks like you owe me a new staff."

She offered her hand to help him up, but he jumped to his feet and resumed a ready position. "Best two of three," he said with a frown.

Kia Min almost laughed. "I don't think your chances are going to be any better a second time around."

"What, are you afraid you might actually lose this time?"

"No, I just don't want to humiliate you. Losing to a girl. Your little sister, no less."

"Oh, hoho," said Jun, "you're that sure of yourself?"

Kia Min considered this for a moment. "Yes," she decided.

Another short-lived match, and Kia Min proved once more that she outclassed her brother by far now. This time, she pinned him against a tree, his staff fallen to the ground and his arms in the air in surrender.

"Okay, okay, fine," he said. "You win. I'll talk to the blacksmith first thing tomorrow morning."

Kia Min smirked. "I thought so," she said, and she released his throat from the threat of her bamboo staff. "I told you I'd come home and kick your ass. Mother was right; there's no substitute for formal training."

"Eh, we get by with what we know," said Jun as he picked up his staff. "It's always more than the thieves and bandits, and when it's not, we can usually outsmart them. So, when are you going back?"

Kia Min glared at her brother; she knew what he was trying to do. But instead of asking why did he want to know, or retorting that he lost, she replied, "I'm... not."

"Why?"

"The deal was, I would tell you why I left Two Rivers if I lost. I won. So I'm not obliged to tell you anything."

Jun raised an eyebrow. "But you're going to anyway. Or is it that bad?"

"I didn't get expelled or kicked out if that's what you're thinking," said Kia Min. "It's... worse than that."

"How worse?"

She hesitated. "Worse," she said.

Jun chuckled nervously, and said, "You didn't kill anybody, did you?" Kia Min pursed her lips and looked away. Jun's lighthearted tone vanished. "Did you?" She could hear the frown in his voice.

"I didn't have a choice," she said. "If I didn't kill, I would have been killed. The other students, the villagers... they weren't so lucky."

"What are you talking about, Min?"

Kia Min sighed and sat on a fallen log nearby. "Two Rivers is gone, Jun. Destroyed. Completely destroyed. Only three of us survived. I don't know where the other two are, but..."

"Destroyed?" Jun breathed as he settled next to her. "Why?"

"I don't know. They took our master but they killed everybody. Everybody. I don't... I don't know why. They just came, grabbed him, left, and sent in another swarm to take care of everyone else." Kia Min dropped her head into her hands. "And I don't know why. I couldn't save anybody. Everyone is dead, Jun. Everyone. And I couldn't do anything. I couldn't save anyone."

Her eyes burned, and she felt hot tears tickling her eyelashes. The images came back to her, the red flames grazing through the village and licking the sky, black smoke devouring the sunlight, students falling lifeless to the ground one by one, the Ni farmhouse, and the charred bodies of the little girls under the bed or beneath their parents with blood streaming from their backs, Ni Joh lying at the doorway of the home with a knife gripped in his hands...

Kia Min shook away the memories. This was not the time. This was not... not with Jun here, not...

"Oh, Min," murmured Jun as he pulled her into a tight embrace. "Oh, Min, no, you can't go blaming yourself."

"I'm not," she insisted. "I don't blame myself. I just... I should have..."

"'Should have' is blaming yourself. I know you did the best you could. Your fellow students and the villagers would not have expected you to do any better."

"But they would have wanted me to." Kia Min pulled away and wiped her eyes. "I'm fine, Jun. Really. I'm fine. I just wish I could've done more. Anything more. There were a lot of people who didn't have to die. One of my friends was being too stubborn, too proud. Other students... should have retreated, should have hidden. They should not have fought. And I wonder, if we didn't fight, could things have turned out differently?" She sighed. "Would we have been taken in as slaves instead?"

Jun frowned. "After what you saw at Hehua, you would be okay with that fate?"

"Everyone would still be alive," she said, "and possible to rescue. If not by me, then by the senior student, who was away at the time of the attack. She survived. I don't know where she is now, what she's doing now." She grinned. "Maybe getting revenge. She grew up there, you know. In Two Rivers. Never had another home, never had another family. She was always a little bit of a hothead, but not as bad as..." Kia Min trailed off and scowled. Gao.

Jun nodded slowly. "I assume, then, you know who did this. And so does she, the senior student?"

"Yes."

"But you don't know why."

Kia Min shook her head. "I don't. I don't understand why everything happened the way it did, or why it happened at all. If it had just been the mercenaries, I'd have a better idea. If Master Li hadn't been taken, it would be easy. The mercenaries worked for the father of a student who had just been expelled. But Master Li was kidnapped, and the mercenaries didn't come first."

"Who did come first, then?"

Kia Min closed her eyes and sighed. "Lotus Assassins. Have you ever heard of them?" She opened her eyes and turned to look at her brother, to gauge the expression on the face. There she saw a mix of confusion and shock and horror.

He knew.

"The Lotus Assassins?" Jun breathed. "But... how? Why? That doesn't... that doesn't make any sense. They're... I mean... what?"

Kia Min smiled ironically. "You've heard of them, then. I didn't know anything about them until a student came to Two Rivers from the Imperial City. Never heard of them until then. Never cared, until I found out it had been them that attacked. That it was them who were enslaving the people of Hehua." She frowned. "I don't understand. They're sanctioned by the Emperor, aren't they? They work for him? Why would they do things like this?"

Jun was silent for a moment. "Min," he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder. "You need to talk to Father about this."

She shook her head. "I don't want to worry him--"

"Min," he said firmly. "You need to tell him. Everything you just told me. And then you need to ask him about Uncle Jong."