The Crystal Heart

Best of the Best

"Wanna see how you stand to me?" Nereus said with a challenging smirk.

"Oh, are you sure you can handle me?" she asked excitedly for the fight to come. She had always loved sparring in the training yards, armed or not combat was her playground.

"You should be asking yourself if you can handle Zavania's best fighter. He boasted, stepping towards the door.

"If you're such a wondrous fighter, why are you running?" She bit back pointing out the distance between them.

"Oh I'm not running, you're just hesitating. Otherwise you'd be out here with me ready to square up or do you Marconians need to prepare yourselves for hand to hand combat training?" He threw back as he stepped across the threshold and out into the yard.

"The only thing I have ever hesitated on was leaving my comfortable little life to fly out of my territory and meet a man in person that I met online." She called following him out the door. He was amping her up even as he was amping himself up. No matter how they looked at it, he wouldn't be able to hold her hesitation on coming to meet him over her head, she was in enemy territory and had gotten shot down because of it. If her ship was found where she had crashed her people would consider her a traitor, especially if they ever found out how she was behaving with Nereus, top fighter pilot, and apparently hand to hand combatant as well, the all around best fighter the Zavainian nation currently held. She would be lucky if her people gave her a death sentence or banishment for how things would look from the outside at present time.

As she took in the yard she noted the faded well worn square marked on the ground. Within the square Nereus was waiting like a caged beast squaring up with her before she even set foot inside. Every move he made reminded her of training with the men in her battalion. Slipping into her fighters mindset she stepped inside the lines falling into her stance as they made their first circle she had an idea. "Hey Zakiah! Call points." she said turning a simple sparring match into a mock trial of their yearly competitions. Every nation tested their newest recruits against those who were seasoned in the field to decide on ranks and positions. Everything was earned, nothing was a gift.

Laughing as he took his place at the corner of the box he made the starters call. "Beon!"

Instantly she felt the force of a meteorite crashing into her, the moment her back hit the ground she felt the wind sucked from her lungs. "Ouucchh." she groaned as he pushed off to his feet and offered her his hand. "What do they feed you, dark matter?" She asked remaining on her back long enough for the air to creep back into her lungs and up to her brain.

"Haha, well I guess we know an easy way to win the war." Nereus teased pulling her to her feet when she did accept his hand. "I focused on my tackles for worst case scenarios, in a short sprint distance I learned to hit with almost twice my normal force.

"Okay, so don't let you get a tackle in, got it." She groaned as they squared up for round two, two and a half hours later they had graduated from hand to hand and moved slowly up through close range weapons from staffs and daggers to batons and swords. As they locked blades once more Verantheis appeared in the courtyard with three of his guards. "Getting tired yet Mr. Chaos?" She teased breathing just as heavy as he was. The swords shook with the tension and force between the two of them.

"What on earth is going on here?" Verantheis asked Zakiah as he approached his son's current predicament. "How long have they been at this?"

"Since, about fifteen minutes after we left your office. They started light and worked up through almost all the close range weapons on the barracks wall. Watching as the two pushed off of each other and slid backwards stopping just short of the boundary lines, both swords hung low, ready for one last bout before the wielders would drop. "They're actually tied. Unarmed combat and armed combat they are almost identically matched."

Looking between the two Verantheis found it hard to believe such a small woman would be able to stand toe to toe with his son, but given all the times he had watched his son train he had only ever seen Zakiah get him as worn as he was. "Esa dah minte." He called ending the bout if they were following the points rules like Zakiah was leading on. He watched as both fighters stood switching their weapons to their secondary hands they met and shook hands with weary smiles before turning to face the small audience they had acquired in their last round. "Alright back to your posts everyone." He called out as one guard offered bottles of water before turning away.

As they put their weapons back on the rack inside she rolled her neck and laughed a little. "You realize if your father hadn't called the match we would've gone one of two ways. Either we'd be locked in an unmoving hold with steel on steel grinding beneath our hold, or you'd be on your back in front of everyone." She teased as they opened their waters.

"In your dreams, you'd be on your back showing the rest of the camp how this war will end." He said reaching over and wiping a smudge of filth from her cheek.

"Nothing like a little sparring to turn a well seasoned soldier into a mothering cat." She teased as he withdrew his hand. "I am surprised though. No one has given me that fulfilling of a challenge in a long time. The guys back home hold back when they face me for my size."

"If your opponent in practice holds back but your opponent in war does not, then your friend is the death of you for not allowing you to become all that you could've been." He said as they made their way back towards Verantheis. "If you train with us, you'll find that it's the friends that push each other beyond their capabilities, look at me and Zakiah, that first tackle you felt, is because he felt that for over five days of sparring and training when we weren't on duty.

"Yeah and it still makes me wince watching someone else feel the force I remember so well." Zakiah said, bumping fists with his brother in arms.

"Who would've thought that the two best fighter pilots would not only swear allegiance to one another, but they would be an even match for one another in hand to hand combat as well as in the skies." Verantheis said as if in awe of what he was seeing. As the two stopped in front of them he turned his attention to her. "It seems you're enjoying yourself."

"It's been a while since I've had someone actually push me in a sparring match." She admitted wondering what he had come down for.

"Nereus, if you're planning to make her your own you should probably start considering the options since our two nations are at war with each other." Verantheis said killing the moment for the three younger warriors. "Her ship has started sending broken transmissions that are showing up even on our screens." He said looking at her as if that would be the end of the world to her.

"That means the transmissions have been going back to my people for hours now. Without receiving a response for so long of a time it'll start openly transmitting rather than staying on the closed channels. That means if they think I'm still alive they'll be searching for me. If they find the ship they'll see I was shot down and without a corpse to collect they'll turn to you and either demand my return, or try to negotiate what you desire in return for my going home safely." She wondered how Jeremiah would handle things if he found out she had been shot down. Most likely if she was shipped home he would demand she step down from fighter pilot so he could lock her in a house for the rest of her life. He was over protective of her to a suffocating point and they weren't even married. They had been betrothed at a young age by their parents' decisions, and since they were ten he started worrying about her safety, she had been searching for any valid reason that she could call it off. He wasn't anything like the men in her stories or her dreams, they had so little in common she had caught herself daydreaming nearly every time he spoke. He desired the safe orderly drama of a housewife, while she desired the wild chaos of battle and the dangers of space. "And Nereus, there's something you and I need to discuss." She said feeling it would be better to get this out of the way now rather than giving him time to put his heart into whatever was forming between the two of them, before anyone got severely hurt.

"Alright, what is it?" He asked as if she was gonna tell him what she wanted for her birthday.

"Is there somewhere the three of us can go with less ears?" She asked not wanting any extra people to know anymore than they had to.

"We can go back to my office, but be warned little woman; where Nereus goes, so does Zakiah." Verantheis said, smirking at the boys who had been attached at the hip since their first week of training.