I Want to be Your Knight Chapter 13

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Three hours.

Three hours of getting the kark smacked out of me by those two girls. And despite Jys' pronouncement that the sparring session was each of us against one another, and everyone against the remotes, that's not how it played out. Oh, no. It was the girls beating on me, as all the remotes aimed for me.

And four points? I don't know what she was thinking when she declared that it would stop at four points. She probably already had it all planned out.

When every remote suddenly went dead at the end of the three hour time block that Jys had programmed into the system, I collapsed to my knees, my breath coming out in pants. I glanced up at Seha and Jys and noticed that neither of the girls appeared as tired as I did. Of course, the remotes weren't aiming for either of them.

I glared at Jys, and she just smiled sweetly at me in return.

Before I could call her all sorts of interesting things that I had learned in the Guard, Kyp's voice came out of the speakers hidden behind the walls. "That was a good warm-up, but you three are supposed to be a team. Now... work together."

I lifted my head and stared at the reflective transparisteel plate where the control room was. I could feel Kyp's amusement through the Force and my stomach dropped to my feet as gravity suddenly reversed, flipped and then re-oriented once again on the far wall.

We crashed against the ceiling/floor/wall, all of us groaning from the impact and disorientation from the suddenness of the gravity shift.

We were tangled together, a mass of bodies and limbs. I shook my head, and opened my eyes to realize that my face was pressed tight against Jys' stomach. If she wasn't in the training armor, I would have enjoyed it much more.

I began the process of disentangling myself from the two girls and rolled away from them to sit on my rump and gather my bearings in the new gravity orientation. The door leading out to the hall was now half way up one wall, jutting outwards from the right angle where it met the next bulkhead. On the ceiling, nearly opposite of us, was the control room.

Vertigo washed over me as my mind tried to assimilate Kyp standing there behind that window. I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed at my temples. Then heard the small puffing noises of remotes. Lots of them.

A whole lot.

I opened my eyes and looked, and felt my mouth drop open as I saw them.

My guess would be that Kyp had emptied the Jedi store room of the things.

I stood up and called my saber to my hand. Suddenly, cables shot out from every surface snapping to some alternate surface, creating a maze out of a gymnast's nightmares.

The door to the room opened, and three droids floated in. I recognized these, having trained against them years ago. In fact I was training with one the first time I met Seha. She had been amazed when I thought up a quick way to beat one of them. Basically, they are large bins with a mag-rail canon that shoots out metal balls. Four years previously, the metal balls were about the size of both my hands clasped together. But that had been changed-these droids were outfitted with a number of different sized balls, ranging from the size of a ball bearing to the size of a grown human head.

All metal. All flying at you as fast as the droid could toss them.

And all containing a small shield generator so that our sabers wouldn't scratch them.

I stood up slowly, igniting my saber, as I allowed my gaze to flicker from one threat to the next.

Then I turned towards the control booth. "Are you insane, Kyp?"

Laughter greeted me. "I took you as an apprentice didn't I? Don't worry-I have faith in you three. And I only set the training room on 8-5.7-3-5."

I groaned. The training rooms had 4 different control variables each represented by one of those numbers. The first was the difficulty in opponents. Most Masters trained on a setting of 5-7, with groups of them taking the numbers above that. It controlled how smart and aggressive the automatic opponents were.

The second number was the terrain we were faced with. Things like the cables. A setting of 5.7 meant cables every 70 centimeters.

The third number was gravity. There were three options there. One for standard. Two for none. Three for varying. The fourth number was tied to the gravity variance option, and represented how often the gravity would change.

So, while it was not the hardest configuration for the room, it was harder than anything any of us had ever faced before. Either by ourselves or in with a group of other trainees.

Jys and Seha ignited their sabers as well, and we moved so we were standing in a tight circle, with our backs faced inwards, shoulders touching.

Kyp's voice rang out. "Begin."

A wall of stinger darts flashed towards me, and I was subsumed by the Force. My blade flickered around me, batting away blaster bolts and the metal balls, being careful not to send any towards either of the girls.

A niggle of annoyance wormed its way into my head, and as I became aware of it, my ability to block shots faltered and four slammed into my right leg before I had even realized they were there. While I was reacting to the Force, there was something I had forgotten.

Jys suddenly screamed out, "Grav change!"

And I remembered what I had forgotten. Five minutes per gravity setting.

Gravity flickered around the walls, pulling us every which way. I stretched out my hand, and felt my fingers clasp on the edge of Jys' armor as she fell away from me. Muttering a curse under my breath, I snagged one of the cords stretched around the room and used it to slow my fall; which gave me a few seconds to bat stinger bolts away.

Suddenly gravity settled again, and I found myself about a third of the wall up one of the walls. I jumped towards it, and then rebounded with a touch of the Force to accelerate me, aiming myself at one of the ball droids. I arrived at the droid, and shoved my saber into the sensor-spot to deactivate it.

I barked a laugh, and then as I slammed into the ceiling, I realized that I was still a good ten meters in the air.

I dropped like a stone until I hit the first cable, which knocked the wind out of me.

Rolling off that, I started to fall again, and four stinger bolts slammed into my chest, making it impossible for me to catch my breath.

Then there was another cable.

This one I managed to catch, and I swung down to the next cable beneath me as I finally began to breath properly again. It was then that I noticed there weren't that many stingers heading my way.

Frowning, I looked around for Jys and Seha, and couldn't see them. Pulling off my helmet so I could get a better view, I looked again and then cursed as I saw Seha on the ground, her leg bent at an odd angle, Jysella standing over her, batting bolts away from them both.

I snarled and pushed off from the cord, hurtling through the air towards them, pulling the Force to me.

The remotes sensed my movement, and half of the ones that were focused on the girls swung around towards me, towards the spot that they knew I was going to land.

I grinned. The remotes fired before I had even finished falling. The stingers arriving at my landing spot mere milliseconds after me. 50 spurts of energy which I sucked into my body with the Force, converting it into raw Force energy.

I could feel the power leaking out of me, burning at my cells, and I knew I needed to get rid of it fast. Then another barrage struck me, and I absorbed and converted those bolts as well.

Closing my eyes again, I reached out with the Force and grabbed every remote and both of the droids, and threw them at the ceiling as hard as I could. There was a shrill screech of metal and explosions, and I jumped towards the girls, tackling Jysella, covering both her and Seha with my body. I felt a slice of heat across my cheek as I threw up a Force Shield.

Shrapnel was raining down on us, bouncing off my shield, even as Jysella pounded on the arm that I was holding her down with.

Finally the last piece of wreckage had fallen to the ground, and I lowered my shield, sitting up off of Jysella and Seha. Exhaustion pulled at me, demanding I sleep.

Jysella had sat up, already screaming at me, "Why the kriff did you do-"

Her sudden stop in mid-rant drew my attention, and I worked to focus on her. She was staring at me, surprise etched on her face. Then I switched attention to Seha who had a look of horror on hers.

I frowned. "What?"

Seha whispered, "Oh Ben, I'm sorry..."

Then as my frayed nerves began to reset themselves after that excessive use of Force energy, I felt the heat in my face again. I touched it, and pained shot through me. Pulling my hand away, I looked down and didn't see any blood on my hand.

It was too much to figure out at that moment though. We had sparred for three hours, and then I had used a lot of Force energy in that last move, taxing my body beyond what it would normally do. While I knew that I could absorb blaster bolts like that, it always wore me out to do so, and as always holds true, for every action there is a reaction.

I needed to get to a bed, and soon.

I stood up, Jys' and Seha's necks pivoted so they could continue to look at me, so they could continue to stare at my face for some reason. As I reached my full height, the world wavered and the next thing I knew I was laying on the floor, my nose centimeters from Jys' knee.

In that state, too worn out to move, I almost thought I felt the light touch of Jys' fingers brushing against my hair.

I almost thought I heard Jys whisper, "Oh, Ben."

Too tired to do anything else, I closed my eyes and allowed exhaustion to claim me.

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