Chapter 7

Pan left the following morning, shipping out before lunch and while Kat was in class. Before breakfast, they had barged into Minerva's office and announced their plans to marry. Minerva did not look particularly pleased about the development but didn't try and forbid them. The Agency did not have any rules about co-workers marrying, though it did frown on fraternization between Agents and trainees.

Kat, for her part, spent the day in a funk. She had opened up to someone and had found a part of her that she hadn't even know existed. Now she was stuck here while Pan was on assignment, playing student when all she wanted to do was be by his side. She was so distracted that Chief, after dumping her on her butt for the third time in as many minutes, actually yelled at her.

"Damn it, Themis! Concentrate! Are you some moon-eyed teenager who needs someone to hold her hand? You are going to get yourself killed if you do not pull your head out of your ass and pay attention."

Kat, shocked at the vehemence in his voice, looked up from the mat at the anger on his face. She had never seen him lose his temper and, frankly, was afraid to answer. Instead, she wiped the blood that was trickling from the corner of her lip and stood, setting herself.

Chief struck without warning, his left foot shooting out with incredible speed, aimed for her left knee.

Sliding a half-step to her right, she used her left hand to guide the leg past and drove in with her right elbow to his midsection.

Chief slapped the elbow to the right, moving her center of gravity and attempted to grab a hold of the material on her gi, pulling her to him and off balance.

Kat slipped under his grasping fingers, continuing the rotation that her elbow strike had begun and turning it into a spinning leg sweep, trying to take Chief's legs out from under him.

They continued, back and forth, strike and counter-strike, in a flurry of moves almost too fast for the observers to catalog. The battle was more fierce than any in the training sally had ever seen and the other students paused, slowly backing away and watching, awestruck at the speed and ferocity of the contest.

The only sound was the slap of feet, the thuds where blow met block and the harsh breathing of the fighters. The fight continued for almost ten minutes, well beyond what any of the students had expected and far beyond the time any of them had ever lasted when sparring with the Chief. Path was a fast, hard-hitting and brutal discipline that focused on speed and strength, the blows designed to cripple and kill. There were no katas, no formalized dances and niceties that other martial arts disciplines taught.

Most scrums were over in seconds, ending when an opponent was on the floor, but this one continued until both opponents were gasping for breath, beginning to weave on their feet, exhausted.

Sweat dripping from her eyes, Kat was having trouble drawing enough air into her lungs to feed her exhausted muscles. She was done in, and she knew it. If she didn't finish this now, Chief's greater experience and strength would finish it for her.

Feinting with her hips, as though she was going to throw a kick at his head, she tried something that she would never had tried with a fellow student, trusting that Chief's reflexes, ingrained by decades of Path training, would respond the way she hoped. As Chief's center of gravity shifted, minutely, and his arm came up an inch or so in anticipation of the block he would have to make to counter her kick, Kat dropped to the mat in a full split. It was a stupid move, one that left her vulnerable to a dozen different counter strikes, but because it was so unwise, it was unexpected. When she struck, her fist exploding from hip level and powering up, into the Chief's solar plexus and driving the air from his lungs, she knew that it would not have worked if Chief had not been as tired as she was.

But it did work. Chief folded over her fist, his feet leaving the mat for a second as the full force of the blow rocked his midsection. He collapsed to the mat, his face red and his chest heaving as he tried to draw a breath. Kat stayed in that split for a second, then just collapsed backward, flat on the mat. Her own chest was heaving as well, gulping down air.

The class was silent, shocked at the length and the ferocity of the contest they had just witnesses. Into the silence, a single set of hands began to clap. Slowly at first, and then with increasing enthusiasm. That pair of hands were joined by another, and another, until the entire class was clapping and stamping their feet, voices raised in laughs and cheers.

The class gathered around the two combatants, helping them both to sit up. Hands pushed water bottles into the hands of both fighters, towels wiping was the waterfall of sweat that cascaded over their faces.

Kat turned her head to look at the Chief, afraid of what she might see. He was smiling at her. A real smile, obviously pleased with the contest. When he saw her looking at him, he nodded, a strangely formal movement considering is position on the floor, being supported by a pair of students. Kat nodded back, just as formally, and then smiled.

After the class, Chief asked her to stay behind as the others students headed to the freshers. When they were alone, he motioned her to sit and slid easily into a cross-legged position on the mats.

"Themis, you have a real talent for this. You are much stronger than people give you credit for and your shorter stature means that people will underestimate you. That, and that amazing speed you have, means that you can do some serious damage before people even realize that you are dangerous. Your biggest hurdle though, is not your opponents, but your own mind. You proved today that you are good, probably, with more experience, as good as anyone I have ever known." He shook his head, rubbing his bruised stomach. "Hell, it has been a lot of years since anyone hit me that hard."

Kat smiled faintly, but didn't speak, knowing that he was not done.

"I shouldn't tell you this, the books say it is wrong to play favorites with students, but I like you. You have spunk, a real fire in your belly. You have taken to this training like a fish to water, but you still do not have control over your emotions. If you can't find your center, you are going to get yourself hurt or killed. Worse, you are going to get someone else hurt or killed. I don't know much about you, I never dig into student's past. There is obviously something, some ghost, that is bothering you."

Kat stayed silent, looking at her hands. She would have been furious at the idea a couple of days ago. Opening up with Pan, the first person she had ever talked to about her past, made this idea seem not as unspeakable as it might have been.