All Jaeden wanted to do now was fight. She wanted to fight until there was nothing left of ‘her,’ until she did not have to face herself ever again. She had been right before: she was a Knight before a woman, and she should be a Knight before she was herself. At least nothing hurt her or others when she had been like that.

Her daggers sliced through the demonic being that appeared before her, its image disappearing once it had been cut into thirds. She glanced around for the next monster the program would send at her, and once the lizard-like creature faded into existence, she took the thing out as quickly as it had appeared. As the hologram dispersed, Jaeden caught a glimmer of blue from behind the cloudy projection. Her core rang out.

“Ariné?” she asked, jumping over to her sister in a bit of surprise.

“Jae, I thought you’d be here,” Ariné answered, smiling brightly at her sister. “You fight too much. Aren’t you sick of it yet?”

“No,” she replied, glaring a bit for the comment. “It isn’t enough yet. Besides, anything helps…”

“‘Helps’?” Ariné repeated curiously, catching the hint of emotion in her sister’s voice. “What’s wrong?”

Jaeden frowned, not wanting to explain herself. “You wouldn’t understand.” She turned and slung one dagger away from her just as another one of the enemies appeared, though she did not wait to see the attack sever the being. “You never understand anything.”

Ariné looked very flustered with that comment. “I-I do, too!” she shouted indignantly. “You’re the one that I should be saying that to! You’re the one that might as well be one of those monsters you keep killing because you have everything and yet you just choose not to feel how good you really have it!”

Jaeden turned away, a new dagger springing into her empty hand. Ariné had just reminded her why she was upset, so she needed to hit something again. “Go back to your room,” Jaeden told her, leaping off to go at the next target.

“No way! I came here for a good reason, you know!” Ariné responded, crossing her arms and refusing to move.

“Oh yeah? Then what is that reason?” Jaeden asked casually, still beating up whatever creature showed before her. She was trying to get in as many hits as she could before the thing disappeared to satisfy her rage.

“I want to go find Dad,” she replied, getting a rather confused look from Jaeden. “Lazuli’s already back, you know. Dad wasn’t with him…”

“…Lazuli returned?” Jaeden had stopped paying attention to what was going on after the meteor search ended in finding only a silly café, so that was the first she heard of the news. She chided herself for not focusing on what she should have, too, since normally she would have noticed such a thing.

“Yeah. He was in a fight and unconscious when they brought him back. Mom went in there to wait for him to wake up, too, so something must be wrong…”

Jaeden had completely abandoned her fighting by then, moving back over to Ariné. “If Mother is waiting, then should that not be what we do?” Of course, Jaeden was now very curious about what was going on, so she was tempted to go with Ariné if she came up with a halfway-decent response.

“Maybe, but Mom gets all weird without Dad around. Please, can we go?” Ariné was up for begging. She had a bad feeling about it all, so she did not want to go alone. She was not as skilled at fighting as all the others, and if they ran into danger, she would be in trouble on her own.

Jaeden nodded. “How do you plan for us to go look for Father without making Fujin stop the ship?”

“Oh, well, I was hoping we could maybe get Luke to take us…?” Ariné looked up hopefully at Jaeden, knowing very well that something was going on between those two, so she hoped to use it to their advantage.

Jaeden, however, looked away. She really did not feel like going to see Luke right then after she had upset him, and she especially did not want to ask a favor of him when she had yet to apologize or figure out how to fix things.

“Please, Jae? I don’t know how else we can do it. And if Dad’s in trouble, we gotta help…” Ariné moved closer to her, gently grabbing on to her sister’s arm. She started pulling her towards the door, and Jaeden at least did not try to fight her.