“Zwei!”
“Trois!”
“Shi!”
The roll call was complete for another day. He again offered them their right to challenge.
Zwei stepped forward and, with shaking knees, said, “I challenge you to a duel!” He turned to face her silently, giving her the sense through his helm that he was amused. How disgusting. Him looking down on her. Despite her determination, she heard her voice trembling, “If I win, you will give me a full explanation of your intentions.”
He laughed and she was about ready to shout at him, but when he spoke it was tender. “And when I win, I will tell you the full scope of my plan.” She was confused how that was a victory for him, but before she could process, he shone with scarlet light and his armor vanished. He rolled his shoulders and used his hands to rearrange his charcoal black hair. “Since you had the decency to make this a duel, I’ll make it fair.”
She charged him and took a wild swing at him which he sidestepped effortlessly. Following it up with another he deflected it at the very last second with immense precision. She knew somehow she was swinging too wide. To pull her arms in more. She needed to stop wasting so much energy. Pulling in her elbows, she made herself compact, dipping down and trying to catch him from a low angle. She wasn’t surprised that he continued to block the force of her blows but she was surprised at how close he would let each punch get before blocking it. Was he even taking her seriously?
She stepped closer to try and get past his block only to feel his leg hook behind hers. She aimed an uppercut for his jaw, trying to get a shot in before he could act. It was only as she made contact that she felt his hand pushing her opposite shoulder. She thought it was to knock her to the floor, but he seemed to pull her leg into a better position. She felt a solid impact on her fist. The hardest she had hit anything. But that was a two edged sword. The recoil sent a shockwave of pain through her whole arm. As she pulled her arm back, he stepped forward and gave her a headbutt. She staggered backwards, nearly tripping on his leg. Barely recovering, she saw he was face to her with his arms behind his back.
She lashed out with a slap, which he stepped back from and ran his hand along her arm, correcting her form. She was deeply irritated that he wasn’t just fighting her. That instead he seemed to be trying to teach her how to fight. Taking a few more swings she continued to grow irritated as she could feel her attacks grow in power but fail to make contact with her target. Even so, he stepped back and praised her. “You have the killer instinct, which I appreciate. For a coward, you have really good instincts. Just a little practice and dedication and you could be truly great.”
She tried to swing while he spoke but continued to only have her form adjusted and her blows deflected. Still, he seemed excited. Right when she felt like she was starting to get winded, Hepta and Ellefu grabbed his arms. He looked at them with a measure of dull surprise as Zwei charged in and punched him full force in the gut.
But when the impact felt like hitting spun steel she recoiled in pain. He stood there, allowing this clear violation of the duel without much resistance. The others attempted to lay punches on him, each of them recoiling from the impact. While they were clearly leaving marks with each hit, his expression didn’t change. Amusement. Possibly pride. Either way, after twenty eight women had practically broken their hands punching him, he pulled both arms forward and threw his two restrainers to the ground. He looked around at them and applauded. “Excellent. You all saw an opportunity and acted on it. I’m impressed. Hopefully this experience has given you all a little more confidence moving forward. Also, next time, get a better read on your opponent. I know day one I was Transformed so you may have believed that armor made the difference.” He wiped some blood away that was coming from his cheek, “It was not. So maybe take your exercises seriously and work on your form.”
He motioned Zwei to follow him. She glared at him defiantly and he chuckled, “You want answers and you have earned the right for me to give them to you. Let’s see what you do with them.”
Zwei looked around at her sisters for some kind of advice but they were all too hurt from that fight to weigh in. With a large amount of hesitation, she began to follow him once more into the interrogation room.
Once they were both seated, he stated, “Since I won, I will tell you the scope of my plan.” She didn’t have high hopes, but seeing his confident smirk outside of the helmet somehow put her at ease. “I am not a petty man, nor am I cruel. But I am in the middle of a delicate operation. Sending you all to that ship was me testing a theory and taking an opening I was given. Still, I’m after a bigger project. It requires careful planning, trusting Allies, and people who are very strong of heart.” He began to explain, “We have a lot of moving parts in this cosmos. You and your sisters are not important in the broad scope, but with your cooperation, I could help change EVERYTHING.” And then he stopped. And he paused, and he said in a deathly serious tone that took all the warmth from the room, “But you are useless to my efforts if you don’t learn what you need to learn.”
“Then tell us! Be forward! Communicate!”
He laughed at her uproariously before snapping back to focus, “I forced you out of your routine and indoctrinated self-assurance and held you in a prison on my ship. If someone does that and then claims to be your friend, there is no sane person who will listen. Because that’s how you get brainwashed or murdered.”
She glared at him, “Then explain Trinta.”
He smirked before a bright light put him back in his armor. “She saw through this. The voice changer. The armor. Just like the Falos Emperor himself has.” Zwei tried to understand what he meant, but he moved right along. “I’m working on something that involves a lot of faith and trust. Trinta was so thankful to have her beliefs confirmed that she wanted in. So I gave her a job she could handle with the skills she had access to and she was excited to take part in it.”
Zwei sighed, “And what belief is that?”
He tapped the side of his helm and and laughed, “Let me ask you a question. How much have you experienced? Truly?”
For once she had a reply, “Every second of my life. I know about things you could never know.”
He applauded and then riposted, “And yet you spent your entire life with generations of other people’s stories that you never truly knew forced into your head. Told from moment one that you are the same person as everyone else around you. Taught that everything that defines you is community property.”
“I was raised that I was part of something bigger. A grand experiment that unified us and gave us a grounded purpose. No lies or deceptions. Just us knowing where we are from and why we were alive. Leaving actual evidence behind of who we were and building on something great for those who came after.”
“And you had something concrete for that egomaniac’s experiment. Actual evidence which is more than most cultures get. But either way you worked for free for a group that told you who you were and took everything on return. If this wasn’t in context of a tightly controlled social experiment, I would call it a cult.” She didn’t respond, so he continued, “This cosmos is complicated, and I’m not one to judge the fine nuances of another culture, but ask yourself sincerely. Are you content with a life of putting about an office believing that the interesting and exciting adventures of someone else are your own?” Again she refused to reply. “If you are, then I can write you off as a failure and send you home. That’s probably what Ett and a few of the others are going to have to be labeled as.”
Zwei said firmly, “You talk about it like I wouldn’t be at risk of horrific death at every turn out in deep space. You may not care for your life but I do.”
He returned in kind, “I’ve died lots of times. Most of the time because of my own stubborn nature. But I’ve got a chance to live my life for the first time.” He paused for a moment, his tone drifting before he came back, “So I don’t intend to waste it. So, you can become a part of this plan and I can help you stay alive long enough to enjoy it, or you can go home, content to know your place in the world and confident of your role in it.”
Silence froze the room and this moment. He wouldn’t move and neither would she. An eternity in that moment passed. Planets lived and died in the silence between her captor and her. Both had made their case and all that was left was the weight of an entire stellar system weighing on the next words to break the silence.
Eventually she asked a question that he didn’t expect. The silence built from there as he was clearly unsure of if he should reply. She insisted. She needed to know. So he told her and once he did, her decision was made. He offered comfort and solutions, but revealing the answer was enough for now. As the pain in her heart grew, she embraced the silence once again as she pondered where to aim her next step carefully.