The Hub. Training Division.

In a concealed room, Jean and Sara were standing face to face. Both of them wore a black tank top and a pair of shorts that maximized their agility. Both had their hair tied into ponytails so they wouldn’t block their vision in combat. The innocent smile on their face meant their mask was on. As of now they were voyagers Jean and Sara, not lurkers Jean and Sara. After all, this place was unlike Sara’s room. Who knows who might be listening.

Jean activated the training blade and the training rifle in her hands. This was a practice, not a real fight. As much as both girls trusted their control, neither of them wanted to risk their lives with serious weapons. Red crystal powered weapons couldn’t even graze their skin, but that might be even worse as it would attract more attention on them. For most recruits red crystal weapons were deadly.

“Ready?” Jean asked challengingly, taking off her shoes. In a real fight she would’ve been striking already. Fairness meant nothing to her. But the element of surprise was pointless in a training.

“Yep.” Sara replied with equal confidence. Jean nodded before charging forward. Her blade on her right hand and her rifle on her left. Sara raised her own weapons.

Both girls knew very well one of their best cards, one of their greatest advantages, was the powers they gained in their missions. The Hub had limited control over voyagers when they were in missions, and the girls were careful in terms of hiding their powers in front of their AIs. Since most voyagers failed their first mission, and most of the successful ones returned empty handed, their hidden power would go completely unchecked. It meant they could take whatever enemy they were facing by complete surprise. This also meant if they wanted to keep their cover and stay away from unwanted attention they would need to rely on their voyager gadgets to take down most enemies.

Thus came the practice. After spending ten red crystals to rent a practice chamber for ten days and purchasing necessary training gadgets, Jean found herself being taught by someone much more experienced than she was. Sara have already passed four missions with mostly just her gadgets. That said something about her combat abilities without using her power. In an all out fight Jean could probably kill Sara, with all her xel’naga power and her purifier fleet, but on equal ground Jean was no match against the brunette.

Jean realized that when Sara turned her blade and casually deflected Jean’s shots. The white blasts coming out of the training rifles disappeared as it made contact with Sara’s training blade. Dropping the rifle without any hesitation, Jean held her blade with both hands and slashed down on Sara.

For a second Sara didn’t move. If Jean didn’t know the nature of the brunette she would think the girl was paralyzed by fear. But knowing who Sara was, Jean merely continued her strike.

Just when Jean’s weapon was going to land on Sara’s head, the latter raised her weapon over her head and blocked the attack. The two blades clashed in midair. Jean pushed down with two arms, which was more than the one arm Sara used, and managed to force the blades closer and closer to Sara. Seeing the approaching weapon and the closing in Jean, Sara smirked. She got what she wanted to achieve. Her weapon brought her a few seconds, and Sara wasted no time to use the opening to punch Jean in the undefended chest with her spare left hand.

The brunette was much stronger than she appeared. The blonde stumbled back a few steps before stopping herself.

“You have all attack and no defense.” Sara explained as she flipped her blade tauntingly. “Raising your weapon as high as you did is menacing to the inexperienced, but from the perspective of someone as talented as I am, your action just makes your upper body vulnerable. You’re lucky it was a punch and not a stab or a shot.”

“Yeah right.” Jean replied with a snarky comment, playing the role of a salty loser, but her mind was clear. Despite all the act they were putting up, Jean understood why she was here. When she was in the starcraft universe she mostly relied on tactical maneuvers, underlings, and sheer power to push through her enemies. Her melee skill was next to non existent. She silently took Sara’s advice and tried to incorporate it into her own battle style.

Picking up her rifle, Jean made another attempt. This time she tried a similar start. Once again the firing from her rifle was deflected. Jean didn’t know what power Sara had, but whatever it was it enhanced her reflexes. Power was off limits here, but passive enhancements these power brought, like additional strength and quicker reflexes, couldn’t just get turned off. To Jean, this meant that under normal circumstances the possibility of hitting Sara with projectiles was quite low. Unless she could put the rifle right next to Sara’s head and pull the trigger, the fellow lurker could always dodge the blasts. There was a reason Sara wasn’t using her ranged weapon. Sara knew Jean could do the same thing.

The rifle brought no success, but Jean wasn’t disappointed. It was the melee part that she was trying to make a difference in. Dropping her rifle again, this time she wielded her weapon across her chest and approached with much more caution than before, and this time Sara was the one who attacked.

Sara moved more like a dancer than a fighter as she turned her blade around her body. Her toes, covered in white socks, tapped lightly on the ground. Ignoring the shiny weapon in her hand, she would receive quite the completements if she was on a stage. Yet Jean didn’t let her guard down. Beautiful and deadly. That was the most accurate discription possible for lurkers.

Suddenly, as she got close enough, Sara stopped flipping her weapon and instead held it tight in her right hand and slashed it down on Jean almost exactly like how Jean attacked her. Frowning, Jean copied what Sara did a few seconds ago and raised her weapon horizontally to deflect the attack. Her left hand rested next to her stomach, ready to hit.

And then, a second before making contact, Sara’s blade turned into a whip.

Jean wasn’t exactly caught by surprise, but no idea came to mind as her blade was caught by the white whip. The soft weapon swinged around the straight blade and threatened to pull it way. Jean had to use her entire body and both hands to keep the weapon in her grip. The nature of the whip allowed Sara to divert more strength from Jean with less strength.

As Jean was doing the tug of war, she suddenly realized Sara was holding her left hand out. Jean frowned in confusion and extended her arms out to keep a distance between her and Sara in case of another punch, but her attempt was rendered useless when by what Sara did next.

Sara’s training rifle, previously kept in her watch, appeared in her left hand. Jean turned her body as Sara fired, trying to dodge, but the projectile traveled much faster than she imagined. In less than a second the white light hit her chest and sent her flying backwards. If she was a distance away she might have been able to dodge that, but the rifle was almost literally tucked to her stomach.

Luckily it was a training rifle, and Jean was far from hurt. Landing on the solid ground, she groaned and looked at Sara with an annoyed look.

“What was that? Can you just stop with your tricks and really fight me?”

“Those ‘tricks’ is called adapting to the situation and developing countermeasures.” Sara bragged, but neither allowed the words to distact them. “Keep in mind, Jean, we are voyagers. We are not warriors. We are not knights. We are voyagers. We don’t care what method we use as long as we win. Advantages like our watch and our rifles might be unfair to our enemies, but so what? Who cares about fairness if we can be victorious? There is no way to a certain victory, but learning to use whatever advantage we have under the right circumstances will make us mostly successful.” She gestured for the rifle on the ground as Jean sank in thoughts. “What were you doing with your rifle?”

“Shooting.” Sara rose her eyebrows at the response. “Doing as much damage as I can before the hand to hand combat.”

Sara signed like a disappointed mother. “Look, at the level of you and me there are only two things you can do with your rifle. You can either set it to maximum power and minimum frequency and use it as a one shot one kill weapon or set it to minimum power and maximum frequency and use it as a distraction. What you did, setting both types to standard,” Sara picked up Jean’s rifle. “means the blasts are neither frequent or quick. Anyone that’s somewhat good can dodge your shots.”

Jean nodded as she stood up. Sara tossed her rifle back to her.

“How about your whip?”

“Voyager blades can take the form of melee weapon. This change can take place in combat. This can be especially helpful. Back there, you were completely taken by surprise.” Sara swinged her white training whip.

Jean looked down on her blade thoughtfully. She remembered something the Butler told her about mentally changing the shape of her weapon, but she had never thought of using it in combat. It wasn’t because she was stupid or anything. She just lacked the experience and the innovation needed to come up with that idea. Sara was different.

Gripping to the weapon, Jean focused her thoughts. A second later the blade turned to a two meter long lance. The two tips were covered by white light and the center handle was solid. The laws of physics was nowhere to be seen.

“Ahhh.” She swinged the lance around before realizing she was much better at using a sword. Turning the weapon back, she looked at Sara. “You talked about adapting to the situation. Is that it? That doesn’t sound so tough.”

Jean was being a bitch. Even now she didn’t forget about what the Hub and whoever might be observing her knew. As far as they were concerned, she was an arrogant recruit that happened to be lucky enough to get past her first mission. She established a deal with an experienced voyager named Sara, probably by wasting the easily earned reward, and hired her to train her/sleep with her. Still, her arrogance remained through the entire training process. Everything was completely normal and reasonable. Everything between Jean and Sara was explained. Without enough information, even the most doubtful person wouldn’t question it.

“It is much harder than you think.” Sara saw the arrogance on Jean’s face and decided to rain on her charade. “It takes training and experience. Trying to do this blindly will fail terribly. Back when you were attacking, changing my blade to a whip can be disastrous.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing we have this room for the next ten days.” Jean shrugged.