LOCATION : KITCHEN FOUR - STARKILLER BASE

STARDATE : 16/09/1843

It was a weird sensation, coming back to Kitchen Four after everything that had happened over the past two days. I had a friend who worked there, RN-5400, and my hope was to sneak in and grab a box of dehydrated carb supplements without bumping into the head chef. I didn't think he'd forgiven me for Ren force throwing him into a box of egg powder yesterday.

I reached the kitchen just after twelve O'Clock, and, luckily for me, it was mostly empty. Almost all of the workers had clocked out to eat their own lunches, leaving the usually mad busy kitchen with only a few workers. I sighed in relief to myself when I spotted RN-5400, up to her elbows in soapy dishes, her jet black hair piled high above her head and tucked into a regulation blue plastic hairnet. I strode over to her quickly. I didn't know how much time I had before Ren expected me to meet him back at Training Room R6 for combat training, but I wasn't keen to be late.

"5400," I said as I reached her. She spun around, a look of shock on her clear face, a half-washed dish in her hand.

"Holy shit, 0087," her eyebrows had raised so high that they almost disappeared behind her hairnet, "Where the hell have you been? Head chef's not telling us anything apart from the fact that you were sent for reprimanding following the incident with Ren yesterday," Her words came out in a jumbled mess. I rolled my eyes at her questions and reached up into a cupboard above her head for a packet of high-fibre crackers.

"I'm not getting reprimanded," I told her, biting into the cracker. It was dry, and I wrinkled my nose slightly at the aftertaste it left in my mouth, but food was food, so I kept eating.

"Did you seriously drop a plate on the floor?"

I snorted out a laugh, spraying crumbs out of my mouth, "It's kind of hard to explain," I begun, "But he's training me."

Her brow raised in confusion and she gave me a stern look, "Ren is training you?"

I nodded, pulling out a bottle of water from below the sink and squirting at least half of it into my mouth in one go, "When I dropped the plate, I caught it."

"He's training you because you have good reflexes?" She raised an eyebrow incredulously. I shook my head.

"I caught it with my mind, 5400,"

She dropped the plate she was holding and it crashed into the sink along with the others, the loud noise causing some of the kitchen workers to look around. She leant into me and hissed.

"You're force-sensitive? Why did you never tell me?"

"I didn't know!" I defended myself, "I only found out when I dropped his bloody sandwich on the floor!"

"Holy shit," she let out a deep breath, then looked back at me, a mischievous smile on her face, "What's he like to work with?"

"A pain in the arse," I responded almost immediately. She let out a snort of laughter and I continued.

"Seriously. It's all 'focus, you're not trying hard enough," I explained, trying to make my voice deeper in a mimicry of Ren's baritone, "I've got combat training with him next. The guy's going to tear me apart!"

"You have combat training next?" she asked, panic on her face, "Shit. Go, hurry up. You don't want to be late for a guy like Ren."

A wave of panic hit me. She was right. I shoved the remainder of the cracker into my mouth, grabbing two bottles of water from under the sink.

"I'll see you tonight," I said, turning to go. RN-5400 was in my dorm room, along with twenty other kitchen workers, we had known each other since as long as I could remember.

"Good luck, 0087," She said to me as I left.

"Robin," I corrected her.

"What?"

"He calls me Robin."


I practically ran the whole way to Training Room 6, bottles of water in my hand. The look on my face must have warned all of the other workers, who stepped quickly out of my way as I passed, that I was on a mission. I reached the room within minutes, and scanned myself in with my fingerprint, pushing the door open and practically falling in, out of breath from my run.

"Well this isn't a good start,"

I struggled not to roll my eyes at the confidence in his voice, and instead stood up as straight as I could, still almost a foot shorter than him, and looked him in the eyes. He'd taken his mask off, I could see it in my peripheral, propped up against the wall in the corner of the room, and his gaze was so intense that I had to drop my eyes after a few seconds. There was something about those dark brown eyes that creeped me out.

He'd removed his thick black cloak and was stood in only a pair of black trousers and a loose-fitting black shirt. Ease of manoeuvrability, I assumed.

"I just ran... here... from the kitchen," I explained my lateness between gasping breaths, still winded.

"From the kitchen?" he asked, "And you're that out of breath?"

I knew he was insulting me, but couldn't find it in me to care. My daily routine was get up, cook, eat, cook, go to bed. Of course I wasn't used to running such large distances.

"Yeah, well they don't really factor much cardio into Kitchen Training unless you count kneading very thick bread dough so I'm a bit out of practice."

Where the hell had that come from? I was tired and hungry, which always led to a snappy mouth. I looked up warily at Ren for any sign of anger, but he just pursed his lips in distaste and let a small huff of air out of his nose.

"Give me two laps of the room."

My eyebrows raised. The room was easily had a perimeter of more than a kilometre.

"Come on, Robin. Let's not waste any more time, here." He said, but I couldn't help but notice the tiny glint in his eye that betrayed a twinge of humour. I struggled not to roll my eyes, and instead placed my water bottles down by the side of the room and started running.

It turns out, it was considerably bigger than a kilometre. By the end of two laps, I was gasping for air, my face red, my hair sticking to my cheeks with sweat. Ren, as always, was infuriatingly immobile, his dark hair as disgustingly perfect as always.

I looked up at him expectantly, and he studied his gloves, saying offhand, "Thirty press-ups. Then we start."

Well if this was my punishment for sassing him earlier, I figured I should just shut up and take it. I suppressed an irritated groan and dropped to the floor.

Thirty press-ups sound easy in theory, but, in reality, it's quite different. By the time that I had finally finished my warm-up, my hands were sweating so much that they slid around on the blue mats the floor was covered in. I managed to push myself up off the floor with great difficulty and face Ren, who had been watching me silently throughout the whole endeavour.

"Alright, so we need to work on your fitness," he said, raising a single eyebrow at my bedraggled state, "That goes without saying. But what are your combat skills like?"

I was silent for a second before I realised that the question wasn't rhetorical.

"Not good," I admitted, my heart rate beginning to return to normal, "I've never been in a fight."

He nodded, unsurprised.

"Okay, I'm going to start with some simple self-defence, alright?"

I nodded once, and he took a single step towards me, covering the distance between us in one stride. I had to strain my neck to look up into his eyes.

"You would only use this in hand-to-hand combat," he explained, "The moves and stances only work if you're weaponless. As it is, I wouldn't stand within twelve feet of you when you're holding a lightsaber, so I'm going to try to improve your balance and coordination before we move on to actual weapons training." The corner of his lip quirked up into a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"You need to get into a guard stance first," He took a step back and tilted his head to the side, his eyes running down my body. I suddenly felt slightly too exposed in my tight tank top and leggings.

"You have good posture," He told me, "That works in your favour. Bring your fists up and put your right foot forwards."

I did as he said, and he took another step back, appraising.

"Not quite," he muttered. He walked behind me. I automatically tensed up, on high alert. Something animalistic inside me told me that this was the kind of man who wouldn't hesitate to attack someone with their back turned. I felt a lot less secure when I couldn't see him.

"You're too tense, relax." His voice came from behind my head.

Yeah, easy for you to say.

Before I could say anything in response, I promptly stopped breathing as he unexpectedly placed both hands on my waist, his long fingers spanning over my skin. I jumped at the contact, but he ignored it, moving my hips slightly to the side with his hands. Even through two layers of fabric, I could feel the warmth from his fingers.

"You're a little off balance," he mumbled, letting my hips go. The absence of heat from his gloved hands left goosebumps on my skin. He walked back in front of me and looked me dead in the eyes.

"Punch me in the face."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Come again?"

For the first time since I met him, he actually smiled. A very small, fleeting smile, but one that definitely reached his eyes.

"I want you to try to punch me in the face, Robin."

Well, it wasn't like I haven't wanted to punch the guy in the face for the last four months. I brought my right arm backwards and sent it flying towards Ren's face with as much strength as I could muster, all the anger and irritation from the last two days coming out in one heavy blow. He moved his body to the side faster than I would have thought possible for someone his size and grabbed my arm as I punched, bending it painfully backwards.

"Ow, shit," I muttered as he let go of my arm, allowing it to flop back down to my side.

"You can't expect to be in a fight with someone and not get hurt, Robin." he sounded slightly exasperated, "Try again."

I was annoyed now and wildly flailed my arm in the general direction of his face, hoping to hit something. He did the same move, and I ended up with my arm once again back by my side, throbbing, whilst Ren's face was looking irritatingly not-punched.

"That's a simple block for a punch," he explained to me, "You need to step sideways to get yourself out of the way," he stepped sideways to demonstrate, "Then grab the arm punching you and just twist it against the direction of the elbow. You can break it pretty easily from that position."

I nodded in understanding.

"The most important thing about combat is to expect the unexpected," he explained to me, getting back in a guard stance and gesturing for me to do the same.

"Punch me again." He said. He was about a foot away from me, stood in a guard stance, his fists clenched tightly together. I had an idea.

I brought my hand back for a punch and made that I was going for his face. He went to step to the side again, but at the last second, I changed the direction of my punch, dodging his outstretched hand, and hit him directly in the kidney. My fist made contact with a mass of solid muscle, and a choked 'grunt' escaped his lips. He bent double, winded, hand holding his side, looking up at me with amusement.

"I didn't know you had that in you, little bird." he muttered as he pulled himself back up.

"Expect the unexpected," I reminded him, He rolled his eyes.

"Alright, I'm going to punch you, block it."

I nodded and bit my lip. This was the part that I had apprehension for.

I brought my hands back up into a guard stance and Ren brought his right hand back slowly.

"We're going to do this in slow-motion for the first few goes until you get the hang of it, alright?"

I nodded, and he brought his fist forwards towards my face. I stepped sideways, as he had before, and grabbed his wrist, twisting it backwards. He let out a small whistle of pain through his teeth and I let go.

"Nice," he said, rubbing his wrist, "Very nice. I'm gonna speed it up a bit."

I don't know how long we stayed like that, him punching me followed up by me punching him, then swapped again. He was a lot stronger than me, and a lot faster, and I couldn't help but get the feeling that he was holding back a great deal in order to help me. For some reason, that annoyed me most of all. After a few hours, my arm was getting tired, and I was lagging. Ren, of course, was just as irritatingly energetic as he had been at the beginning of our session.

My punches started getting weaker, and I could see that he was beginning to get irritated at me. After one particularly bad punch, which missed his face entirely and was actually hit the air next to his left cheek, he grabbed my arm and twisted it si sharply that I actually let out a low grunt of pain. He didn't stop there, though. He pulled my arm forwards roughly, unbalancing me, and with his left foot he swept my right leg from underneath me, causing me to go crashing to the floor. I landed painfully, jarring my tailbone, but before I could get up, Ren had dropped and was straddling my body, his legs either side of my torso, his hands holding my wrists, pinning them above my head.

His face was inches from mine, and he was breathing heavily for the first time. I wriggled in an attempt to get out of his grasp, but eventually gave up. He was too heavy and much too strong.

"Expect the unexpected," his voice was barely a whisper, but with his face so close to mine, I had no problem hearing it. I don't know what made me say what I did, whether it was the adrenaline running through my body or the irritation I felt and having been caught out, but for some reason, the words came tumbling from my mouth against my better judgement.

"I'm not afraid of you, Ren."

He was silent for a second, the only noise in the area being our laboured breathing. Then I saw a sly smile creep up the side of his mouth.

"Oh, little bird. You should be."