On an all-new Xena...
Beyond the last battleground...
Here she was on a summer morning, enjoying all the comforts that life could probably provide, and yet she felt utterly useless. Her thoughts drifted back through the past days again. ...
Returning from Mount Fuji-San with nothing important to speak of. A torn battle dress, the sacred katana, the chakram, and the urn with her soulmate's ashes, and a desperate longing for her embrace that had so untimely vanished into the sunset. ...
Summer, grass, all that remained of her warrior friend's dreams.
The light outside was still hardly worthy to be called a dawn. Its greyish shimmer barely sufficed to rise the room from total darkness. Now she was fully awake, far too early and with a clearer mind than she'd ever been with in the mornings of the past. ...
Gabrielle was already one and a half miles into the forest. It had taken her about six hours to get as far, and now she was smelling one of the assassins. The first shadows of dawn started to appear in the moonless night, and she started to close in on the target. Killing him would be a farewell present. ...
»See? Boys, you'd all be dead by now if she was one of them. ... I've only heard of this once back in... military academy, I think. Uhm,... one of the veterans told us about that magic weapon... That, as far as I remember, there was only .. one .. warrior skilled enough to use the ...chakram, I think it was, right?... with such prowess. The legendary...«
»Xena. Right,« Gabrielle finished the sentence for him.
Gabrielle's hands plowed vigorously through her short blonde hair, as if they tried to straighten out the confusion that had spread underneath, »I just don't understand... Why this invasion? What has become of all the wisdom and serenity of Lao Ma, and the ideals she'd bestowed upon her people with her book? Was it really that long ago, when...«
»Well, Gabrielle, perhaps you'll live long enough to ask her daughter. She's leading the assault.« ...
»Greed, lust for power... anything you could think of. You said it yourself. These are the dominoes, and perhaps someone has just found the right one to trip.« Gabrielle observed, turning back to the map, »Now, all roads lead to Chin. Which one's best? Any ideas?« - »None.«
»...being able to look into the face of the one next to us, the faces of the ones we love, whether we meet again at the end of the day on this shore ahead, beyond the sea, or another shore, beyond this world, and say with pride, yes, we did what we had to do, and we did it right.« with that, she nodded towards the others, »Let's go.«
»Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!«
both of them yelled, as they pulled their respective shields down, and stormed down the alley of men and towards the gate in the bow. All the apprehension, foreboding and fear of the past weeks discharged into a single thrust of action.
... Coming up soon.
all stories, elements, designs, and other products of creativity not previously copyrighted or otherwise documented (c) J.A. 2002
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