Burning Bright Eyes

Three

        Lotor and Ayiko assumed that Shiro and Lance were done with their training session since Lance was out at the bridge eavesdropping on them and Allura. The hybrid aliens met each other's gaze, as if they were thinking the same thing as Plachu jumped down to the console.

        "Allura, would you mind if we went to the training deck?" Lotor asked. "There is something we wish to try."

        Allura smiled and nodded. "Of course. It's just down the corridor Lance came from. There's plenty of things to do in there. Meanwhile, Plachu thinks Platt took off with one of Coran's things, again."

        Ayiko nodded to the Altean in thanks before the two went down the corridor.

~~~~~~~~~

        "I believe that you are currently in the area is where they hold the Gladiator robot," Lotor assumed, at the computer in the observation deck. "I'm setting it at Soldier Level. Let us see how those mechanisms have affected your fighting capabilities."

        Ayiko nodded in determination from the training room below, tendrils waving. She had on her familiar fighting helmet, which looked similar to Lotor's. The main difference was the open back for her tendrils, covered by a stretchy, protective fabric pinned between the crest and base gasket.

        She focused on the mechanisms replacing her hands, turning them both into large katar blades of violet energy. The Gladiator dropped from the hatch in the ceiling, armed with a long staff with something strange on the tip. The robot instantly charged the Miero hybrid, who was nearly run into the wall as she dodged the instant attack of both the robot and the staff. It instantly ran to her again, twirling the staff only to be met with the twin blades.

        Ayiko felt the cold sting of electricity from the strange tip, but refused to call it quits. She twined some of her tendrils around the staff, with two more locks slithering around its arms, binding them to the heart unit from below. Using the leverage of her tendrils, she jumped back, dancing around the robot on tapered legs. She whipped fiercely at the robot's heart unit with repeated waves of tendrils, one after another, causing it to stall. When the Gladiator went slack in her tendrils' grasp, she dropped the staff and rushed in with her blades, skewering the heart unit.

        The slit-eyed hybrid held her blades in the robot's chest until its lights went out. Only then did she retract her tendrils and blades, watching it get dropped down a trapdoor.

        "As I figured; your skills are still as sharp as always," Ayiko heard Lotor from in her helmet. "I might even argue that they haven't changed at all. Now, I managed to find these odd-looking headpieces, which I believe are thought-projectors that I saw the Paladins using on one occasion. I was wondering if we could see how well they work."

        "You can bring two of them down here," Ayiko replied. "One for each of us. Perhaps our best way of using them will be through our shared memories."

        Lotor soon came into the training deck with two of the headpieces, giving Ayiko time to unpin and take off her helmet. After handing one to her, the two put on the objects and sat down cross-legged on the floor.

        "Now what to start off with?" Lotor inquired. "Perhaps... when you first found yourself on my ship?"

        "The day when I had instinctively attacked Narti and the other generals," Ayiko added. "I suppose we can try."

        Lotor nodded before they closed their eyes and concentrated, thinking back to when it had happened. A screen appeared in front of each of the two. One showed someone piloting a fighter ship en route to a crater, the other is so dark it's hard to see what's happening besides a dim sense of movement before going completely black. Lotor's screen showed him landing the fighter alongside an injured, unconscious Ayiko, cutting her bonds and removing a prisoner's helmet. Then it was him putting her in the fighter, flying back to his ship, handing Ayiko over to Zethrid, and watching her head off.