Chapter 3: Soldier

Noam, a hunting village deep in the woods, is visited by a squad of Taplican officers. Their mission; to retrieve the village's sensei and return her to Taplica.

From outside the Noam Training Facility, clashing steel could be heard. The sensei was sparring with a student to demonstrate what it’s like being in a live battle. The residents of the small village were welcome to see the match for themselves and all nineteen of them were able to watch from the sidelines. Nothing exciting truly happened around that part of the woods and those that resided there had been living in the village all their lives. The only exception was the sensei, who arrived in the village three years ago and had been training the hunters of the village ever since.

Holding a hilt-less blade with a back-handed grip in her right hand, the sensei swung from over her head for the student to block. The student did so and went for a horizontal chop across the middle. The sensei blocked it with ease and pushed the student down with her free hand. The student fell flat on his back and grunted as he hit the ground. The sensei cracked the knuckles of her left hand as she looked down at her pupil.

“Get up,” the sensei said, brushing her long brown hair back. “You can do better than that. Don’t have mercy just because we know each other. This could be a fight for your life, Cecil.”

              Cecil picked himself from the ground and nodded, holding his one-handed blade in a ready position. He charged up and went for a thrust, which the sensei countered by stepping to the right, holding her left leg out, and pushing Cecil over it which caused him to trip and hit the mats once again. The sensei circled her fallen student. Cecil grunted from the mats and lifted himself up back up, using his sword as a support.

“Where’s your fire, Cecil? I was wanting and expecting more out of you.”

“It’s right here!”

Cecil raised his blade and swung down upon the sensei, who narrowly blocked the assault. He then began to swing in whatever way he could, putting all his might into each strike. The sensei began to move back as the flurry of metal beat against her weapon. She went for a counter attack, only to be blocked with enough force to disarm her, throwing the blade to the opposite side of where the villagers were watching the match. They all gasped as Cecil raised his weapon for an overhead strike to win the match. To everyone’s surprise, the hit didn’t connect. It was stopped by the sheath of the sword that the sensei was using, lifted moments before the hit would have landed.

“That’s more like it,” the sensei said, smirking. “Here’s today’s lesson...expect the unexpected.” She then kneed Cecil in the gut and kicked him back. She ran for her sword, grabbed it, and tackled her stunned opponent to the ground, pinning him down with her steel at his throat.

“Game set,” she said calmly, getting off of Cecil. Extending her hand, she helped her student up as the villagers applauded the round. The sensei sheathed her weapon as a little girl holding a daisy ran up and hugged Cecil, who lifted and rubbed noses with her. The little girl looked at the sensei and smiled sheepishly.

“This is for you, Ms. Carthy,” she spoke softly as she held the daisy towards the sensei. Surprised, Carthy politely smiled and accepted the flower which the little girl insisted on putting in her hair. The little girl then giggled with glee at seeing her flower on Carthy’s head. Cecil let her down and shook Carthy’s right hand, which donned a black glove.

“Thank you for the match, sensei,” he said as he released his grip to bow. “I will be sure to train harder.”

“And thank you for the exciting duel,” Carthy replied. “I’m here if you need any extra training.”

“I appreciate that. Come on, Dillon. It’s time to go home now. Mommy is waiting for us outside.”

Cecil bent down to hold his daughter’s hand as the two were the last ones to leave the facility.

“Ms. Carthy is so brave and strong,” Dillon said, looking up at her father. “I want to be just like her when I grow up.”

Carthy smiled as she waved to the two leaving the building. As the doors shut, she let out a heavy sigh and took the flower out of her hair, holding it in her right hand. The white pedals sharply contrasted the black leather of her glove.

“No,” Carthy whispered to the daisy. “You really don’t want to be like me.”

              Carthy walked into her small office, placed the flower on the windowsill, and looked into the mirror on the wall. She fixed the hair that got stuck to the bandages that completely covered the right side of her face. After straightening her long blue shirt and adjusting her black pants, she placed the broken sword she used in her match on the mantle.

              On her desk were two curved bronze short-blades; one with yellow brims on the tip and one with blue trimming along the edges. She removed the handles and threw them into the wastebasket under the desk and pulled two more from a collection of them in a drawer. She locked them in place and polished the concave bells of each blade, along with the bent bars protecting the bells. She made sure to turn the safety locks on. The last thing she needed was for the blades to activate and burn down the facility. She also checked that the orange exhaust panels along the sides weren’t clogged with ash or debris.

Once the maintenance was complete, she overlapped the two blades so they sheathed into one another and placed them onto her left shoulder, using the bell protectors to hold them in place. She grabbed the daisy from the windowsill and examined it, leaning back in her chair with her feet up on the desk. She settled in, anticipating a couple of hours to herself after a long day until the front doors creaked open. No one visits at this time of night, Carthy thought. Training hours are over at the 19:00 position, anyways. She looked out her window at the moon to see it hanging in the sky just past the 21:00 position. Cautiously, she exited her office to greet her unwanted guests.

              Leaning against the office’s door frame with her arms crossed, Carthy watched a group of nine Taplican officers enter her facility. All of them were wearing the red and grey uniforms that were issued by Dyterag with a Scout heavy pistol on their waist. Four officers, including the leader, were brandishing a Taplican double-edged holo-sword; Carthy recognized the crimson hilt and yellow handle resting on their belts. Their grey helmets covered their face with a tinted visor. The leader was distinguished by the blue band that wrapped around his visor. The doors were then closed and locked by two of the officers, the sounds echoing from the high ceiling.

“Good evening officers,” Carthy said sarcastically. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

“We’re here on business, Ms. Ethoros,” the leader replied, walking ahead of the group into the middle of the training room. “We were ordered to bring you to Taplica for an audience with the Lord.”

“You can go tell the Lord that he will be very disappointed then. Also add that sending his moles to search Magraan for me only proves his insanity.”

“Watch your mouth, girly!” One of the officers in the front blurted out, placing a hand over his gun.

“He’s right,” the leader spoke harshly. “You should watch yourself, Ms. Ethoros. It’s best you don’t question the Lord’s demands.”

“I’ve been doing a damn good job at it for three years now and I intend on keeping that streak going. Now get out of my sight. All of you.”

“Or what?” An officer from the back snickered, nudging his partner.

“We don’t take orders from you!” Another in the middle shouted.

“You can’t run forever, cyclops!” An officer in the front said, pointing at the bandages on Carthy’s face. Carthy clenched her hands into fists as some of the officers broke out into cruel laughter.

“Why do you still insist on wearing those tired old bandages, anyways?” The leader asked, teasingly. “Are you ashamed of your past that much?” Carthy’s teeth began to grind behind a closed mouth as she stopped leaning on the door frame.

“You’re just a has-been,” called the front officer once again. “You couldn’t teach the poor saps living in this dump how to breathe air, let alone anything to do with combat.”

“You sure about that?” Carthy began to walk towards the crowd of officers, furious. “I recently finished teaching a very important lesson to one of my students, as a matter of fact.”

“Ha! And what would that be, girly?”

              Carthy quickly drew her blades from her shoulder and deactivated the safety locks. Unsheathing them, she shot a fireball from the right blade’s bell, striking the officer and sending him through the doors of the facility and onto the dirt road.

“Expect the unexpected,” she said as she got into a fighting stance with the left blade in front and the right one in the back, both in a back-handed grip. “Now who’s next?”

              The leader ordered the group to form a circle around Carthy. They all drew their weapons and pointed them at her. Carthy grinned devilishly as she flicked both her blades downwards, shooting two fireballs that rocketed her into the air as two officers pulled their triggers, shooting each other instead of their intended target. While airborne, she released a bombardment of ammunition down upon the remaining officers. Small explosions went off all around them, blasting each of them into different directions and creating more holes in the walls and many in the floor.

Landing on the ground, Carthy heard a holo-sword ignite behind her and turned, raising her right blade to protect herself. The officer was dumbfounded as her weapon was able to stop his assault and couldn’t react in time as Carthy stabbed through his chest with her left blade. Hearing footsteps to the left, she extracted her weapon and swung, being blocked. She then swung diagonally from the right following with a thrust from her left but both hits were avoided. The officer then countered Carthy’s overhead slash, kicking her back with all his might, causing her to tumble backwards to the edge of the mats. The officer then pointed his gun at Carthy, who was looking at the floor as she got up. About to pull the trigger, the officer laughed to himself and Carthy turned her glare onto him. He then fired his weapon.

To his surprise, his bullet was stopped. Carthy had suddenly switched her grip on the left blade so she was holding it by its bell protector, allowing the weapon to wrap around her forearm like a gauntlet. The fast transition was enough to block the fatal blow. She ran towards her assailant who began to rapidly fire bullets to keep the girl at bay. Each of these rounds were halted by Carthy’s gauntlet which she proceeded to use to knock the officer down to the ground so she could finish him off with a well-placed thrust to the abdomen. Scanning her surroundings, she saw the last grunt, dazed from the set of explosions that went off around him. Carthy flicked her right blade towards the officer, hauling a fireball at him. He barely had enough time to see the projectile heading his way before he was sent backwards, breaking through the drywall and collapsing between the support beams.   

She was about to sheath her weapons when the rubble in front of her began to shuffle. The leader surfaced from the pile of wood and stone, his visor shattered to reveal green eyes that pierced Carthy’s brown irises. There were many gashes along his body. The expression on his face was one of pure rage. He activated his holo-sword and grabbed the one of the fallen comrade next to him, clashing the blades together and preparing for a battle. Carthy sneered as fire blazed out of her weapons. The bell of the right blade blasted flames three feet in length then hardened swiftly to create a long sword of mahogany-shaded stone. The blade-gauntlet’s exhaust panels ignited and cooled at the same rate, morphing the weapon into a shield with a diameter of two feet. The leader of the officers growled and ran at her. Carthy yelled out and ran towards her aggressor, her blade ready to swing from the right. 

Author's Note

Please let me know if any of the character dialogue or battle writing is poor, as these concepts are the core of this story. If they do not work properly, this story will be doomed to fail.