Okay. More time-skipping to get to here. You've been warned.

"Ah, shit... Don't tell me that's Colonel Curtiss' little sister..." –Random Unnamed Soldier

"Children. It's like trying to control children." –Kairi

Chapter 11.7 – Dances With Death
Part 96

"Again!" Ari barked.

It took a lot of self-control not to laugh at the looks on his soldiers' faces. As it was, I was grinning when Ari walked over to stand next to me, mostly out of sight in the tree line. "I suddenly wish I hadn't accepted that damn promotion..." he grumbled. I shrugged.

"Neh. I actually have fun screwing with the minds of the idiots that think the Intelligence Division is a fun place to be. Hue finds it pretty amusing."

Ari chuckled. "Wish I could pull off half the shit he's told me you did. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face."

I laughed. "It was difficult! It was very difficult! And funny! So funny to watch them tiptoe around me like I was a bomb about to go off."

He shook his head. "You're nuts... By the way... whenever you're ready."

I nodded and walked off, disappearing behind the trees completely. We were in Northern Chesedonia, just south of Tataroo Valley, doing practice maneuvers. My little squadron of twelve would be attacking Ari's training platoon of thirty-three. My squad was relatively fresh, and we'd have the element of surprise, but we were outnumbered almost three-to-one.

This was an exercise for both groups, one that I knew Sync was doing with a group near Belkend as well around this same time. I'd already done this run once with a training platoon under Jade's watchful eye, and again with one of Aslan's groups.

Sync had done the round with Glenn... and then gone on his date with Selenia afterwards. Given that he hadn't stopped grinning for three days, I'd say it went well.

I glanced around at my squad. As with the last two times I'd done this, there were two of my Intelligence Division agents hidden among the other soldiers. All thirteen of us were dressed up as bandits, though everyone was carrying hidden weights to simulate the weight of the armor they were missing.

Hue glanced up at me as I stepped over. "Are we ready, Lieutenant?"

He stood up. "We are, ma'am."

Everyone else grouped up at that, and I nodded once, approvingly. "Good. You all know the point of this drill, but don't hold back. Knock out your opponents as quickly as possible, and if you think you're outmatched, retreat. Remember, the colonel knows we're Oracle Knights, but his soldiers don't. Once they regain their mental footing, they likely won't be fighting to disable," I warned them. No one looked like they were wanting to back out. Good. Very good. "Alright. Let's go."

I carefully adjusted my hood and nodded to Hue, who turned, waved for the soldiers to follow him, and raced off toward the training platoon. I and the rest of the soldiers followed him.

It had been roughly half a month since the incident in Keterburg, or an Earth month, if you'd rather. And, aside from reinforcing my network in Malkuth and training with Malkuth soldiers—and some of my own—I'd done very little. Well... There may have been a few dates thrown in that mix.

Regardless, the minute we broke out of the tree line, the nice, orderly lines that had made up the training platoon scattered. I laughed a bit as I stopped and started casting. Most people knew I used a sword, since that was openly displayed on my person, so for these training exercises, I always used fonic artes and my bow. It took about four minutes for the soldiers to gain their bearings, and by that time, my soldiers and I had knocked out a third of them.

Retaliation was swift and painful, however, and I glanced at Hue after the fifth man had to be hauled away or risk getting killed.

"Back out!" he yelled.

Then I spotted them. Only a few wore proper armor. Some wore only rags. Their weapons were obviously ramshackle.

But they carried the banner of Kimlasca, and I remembered the moment I saw them.

"Ari! Incoming hostile!" I yelled, tearing my hood off.

"Aw, hell! Desist and regroup!" Ari yelled.

The Malkuth soldiers who hadn't been in on the fact that this was a training exercise looked positively baffled as I repeated his orders. My soldiers grouped around me, and I glanced around, noting injuries. "Ari, you got a healer?"

He nodded and turned to one of the female soldiers in his platoon. "Lyra, cast as many Healing Circles as you can before those men reach us."

"But—"

"We're Oracle Knights," I said quickly, tossing my bow and quiver off to one of my men who'd gotten a leg injury. He preferred close-range combat, but I knew he could use a bow in a pinch, and we'd need all the help we could get, given that we were very outnumbered. I felt at the replicas coming at us, and wasn't surprised when I found minds that were about as individual as the feral southern ligers had been.

"This was supposed to be a training exercise," someone realized. "Your men..."

"They'll live. I can't say the same for us; we're still on the battlefield. Brace yourselves!"

The replicas attacked, and I summoned Silver Clematis. I'd have been sympathetic and used my other katana had the situation been even a little more in our favor.

A third of Ari's men were down for the count. Same with me. His men were exhausted. Mine were half-okay and half-rather-wounded. And if I was estimating the number of replicas correctly? There were almost fifty of them.

Twice as many as us.

So I moved, spinning, slashing, stabbing, and unleashing a Guardian's Pain every time I found a compatible Field of Fonons. My men avoided me, knowing full well that Silver Clematis was a harbinger of death. Ari's men avoided me, because they were still miffed about the 'training exercise'. Also, I seemed to be doing fine on my own.

And really, I was doing fine by myself. I'd learned, over the course of a few different battles, how to kill my emotions completely. I could deal with those later, when I didn't have other people to worry about.

Silver Clematis flashed, again and again, and while I was a bit disturbed by the amount of blood staining my clothes, I forced myself to keep going. Because, just like with the fight in the valley against the southern ligers, this dance of metal and blood was life or death. These replicas weren't programmed to spare us.

"There's too many of them!" someone yelled, obviously panicked. I reached out telepathically to find everyone, and sorted them into two groups—panicking and not panicking. I tapped Ari and Hue, and they latched onto my connection immediately.

*Please tell me you've got a plan!* Hue said, just short of panicking. No wonder, he and Ari were surrounded.

*Not exactly. But we've got a dozen people panicking and ten more about to start,* I said.

*How are you so calm right now?* Ari asked, nothing short of amazement in his mental voice. I slashed through another replica, sidestepped a sword, and stabbed, pulling Silver Clematis back out of a falling body.

*Not my first big battle where the odds were against me. But we've got to get our men to stop panicking,* I replied. I chuckled humorlessly. *Well, who knew? Looks like they're figuring out that I'm not the one they want to be fighting.*

*Meaning...?*

*They're avoiding me.* I ran over and stabbed a replica in the back, wincing as blood splattered across my already-bloody arm. *Not that it's going to help them a whole lot.*

I reached out farther with my field, and sighed in relief. *Twilight! How many monsters will listen to a liger's orders?*

*Enough. I can hear that battle from here,* he replied, though it wasn't really said in this manner.

*Hurry. I've got men panicking, more injured, and the replicas have finally realized that Silver Clematis is a force to be avoided,* I said, though it only took me a few seconds. The one good thing I'd found about telepathy when talking with Twilight was that I didn't actually have to speak. Feelings, images, and concepts were more than enough to get the point across.

It was an art we'd nearly mastered after a month of drills with the Oracle Knights.

I heard Ari cry out in pain, both physically and over the telepathic connection that was still open, and scowled, slashing through another four replicas and breaking into the little bubble around him and Hue. Hue was pretty badly injured now as well, and was bent over Ari in an attempt at keeping him from bleeding out.

I unleashed a Guardian Field, and Hue shot me a grateful look, even if it didn't really help Ari much.

Then the herd of Rhinossus charged, and I grinned. "Work around the monsters, focus on the injured!" I yelled. My men adjusted immediately. The Malkuth soldiers, after realizing Ari was down, just looked lost. "Oi! That goes for everyone in blue, too!"

"You're not our commander!" someone relatively close yelled. I rolled my eyes.

"No, but I'm sure Ari and my older brother will have fun putting you through the paces for ignoring me."

"Ah, shit... Don't tell me that's Colonel Curtiss' little sister..."

I couldn't help it. I laughed, even as I took out another replica, and laughed even harder when I realized that everyone was suddenly doing as I'd ordered and ignoring the monsters helping us. Twilight's jaw clamped around the head of a replicated woman and he tossed her away before unleashing a Thunder Lance in my general direction.

He paused a moment before nudging a mental image of me, Sync, and Jade bent over a familiar book at me. I sent back an acknowledgement. Might as well, at least.

I knew this would never work with my normal katana, but since I was using Silver Clematis... I started into a twirl.

"Rising Wind!"

I barely had to jump—the vortex of third fonons did most of the work for me, and blew away most of the replicas in the area to boot. I landed, smirked, and went back to chasing down my enemies.

Between me, Twilight, the herd of Rhinossus Twilight had sent charging into the masses, and Hue, once he'd handed Ari off to one of the healers, we made relatively short work of the replicas after that.

Twilight then had to chase off the herd of Rhinossus again, while I looked around at all of the replicas whose bodies were fading very quickly.

"Replicas... They were all replicas..." Hue murmured, looking around. I nodded.

"Forcibly programmed with the ability to walk, talk, and fight, and given just one directive—destroy the training platoon north of Chesedonia. Slow to adapt, though. It took me killing almost a dozen of them before they realized I was one of the greatest threats on the battlefield, and they didn't know what to do against the monsters," I said. "Casualty report?"

"Three of ours are dead, four are seriously injured, the other four are also pretty beat up, I've got a nice gash down my leg, you're covered in so much blood I honestly can't tell if you're hurt or not, and I'm not sure about the Malkuth platoon yet because they're so uncoordinated I can't get a yes or no on 'are you injured'," Hue grumbled. I rolled my eyes.

"Children. It's like trying to control children," I muttered before turning to look around. Then I gave Hue a warning glance, and he stepped to the side. "Attention!"

Well, that got everyone to stop racing around. "Who's the next-highest ranking officer behind Colonel Miles?" I asked, voice carrying easily over the startled soldiers.

"All of the officers are down, ma'am. The rest of us are just enlisted men..." someone admitted. I huffed.

"Just my luck... Alright, listen up! Any of you with field medic training, attend to the wounded. Someone who is not a medic and is still able to move around, get me a casualty report." Twilight padded back over to us. "Twilight. Head for Chesedonia. Din knows you well enough, get her to send to Selenia for reinforcements, then have her load you up with medicines and come back. Lorelei knows we'll need them..."

Twilight nodded once and took off running.

*Be careful,* he sent back along the channel before I cut it off.

"Anyone who is neither a medic nor too injured to move around, set up a perimeter. We'll have to hold this position until help arrives," I continued.

"You're really trusting a liger to get us help?" one of the Malkuth soldiers asked as he stood up, apparently deciding his wounds weren't serious enough to warrant one of the medics tending to him immediately. I nodded.

"Twilight's more intelligent than some of the idiots I've weeded out of the Oracle Knights' Intelligence Division over the last couple months," I said. "And Din's a pretty smart lady, too. They'll get it figured out."

"Ma'am!"

I looked over at the soldier who'd just run up to me and nodded to him, indicating he should speak.

"Fourteen dead, ma'am. Our healers are tending to the three who are in the worst shape. Two men are still unconscious from the initial training exercise, but they should be fine to take up heavier duties once they wake, as they are otherwise uninjured. Six are safe to be moved, but won't be able to assist in any further fighting. The remaining nine of us are injured, but not heavily, and we should all still be able to fight," he reported.

I started doing the mental math, and scowled. "Damn. Seventeen dead, thirteen too injured to fight, and what looks like just me and Hue still standing as far as the officers are concerned... Great. Just bloody great." I looked around, and the man who'd delivered the report chuckled.

"Well, you are rather bloody."

I couldn't help it. I laughed. "Sorry, but 'the Bloody' is my boyfriend's title."

The man grinned. "And I can't call you Necromancer, 'cause that's your brother."

I shook my head. "Okay, shush. And on that note... Oi!" Eyes shifted back to me again, and I nodded approvingly. "Alright, for those of you who don't know, I'm Major Kairi Balfour, commander of the Oracle Knights' Third Division. The man to my right is Lieutenant Hue Miles. Until such time as we rendezvous with another Malkuthian platoon, I'm taking charge. Anyone who wants to argue gets reported to my older brother, Colonel Curtiss. Now why the hell isn't there a perimeter yet?!"

The idiots finally started setting up a perimeter, and the soldier who'd reported laughed. "Threatening them with your older brother certainly makes 'em move fast, huh?"

I snorted. "And you're still over here because...?"

He stuck his hand out. "I'd been meaning to introduce myself to a friend of my niece. Emmett Andres."

I smiled.

Fun Fact: Emmett just kinda poked me and said "Hey, hey, guess what? I feel like being a pest." He then dropped that last section on me.