Kadance

5d

"Thompson would've tried. That's why he was following you. But the chances are you and closer to 90% of this city would've been dead before we could've finally neutralized him. You stopped him cold. Then after taking him away from others you give him a lecture that takes away any ability he has of ever going suicidal, without major provocation, ever again. You cut out the ground from beneath him. Then you made him laugh. Then you strike him. Never before have we seen anyone do anything so brave. Once we could speak we all came to the same question," the general pauses for a bit. He likes a little dramatization at times.

As the pause lengthens he watches her quizzically, "We want to know the answer, are you willing to join us? The video ends before the answer is given." Rueton gives Thompson a hard look for that. Thompson just smirks and shrugs.

Kadance looks at the General in disbelief, "The offer is real? But I'm nothing special."

The general starts sputtering and choking at her response and signs for Jayse to talk for him.

With devilish amusement dancing in his eyes Jayse turns to his superior, "Told you. No arrogance at all." Then Jayse goes to kneel at Kadance's feet. He gently takes her hands in his and talks softly, "I told you before that once the offer is given it cannot be rescinded, just refused or accepted. The general said, in his roundabout way is that they are slavering to have you come on board. What he's not telling you is, is that redliners are a problem. No one can control them. If one goes suicidal it's not pretty. Yet here you are with the ability to stop one of us in our tracks. You stopped me without any loss of life then you ripped me up and down afterwards. You did things that have our strongest most brave soldiers too scared to do. No one, but no one does what you did. If we could have a hundred people as brave as you it wouldn't be enough. They want you so badly that just about anything you asked for would be yours. You are quite possibly the single most important person in the entire Unified Planets.

Jayse gets a bit of a devilish smile as he continues. "Something else the general hasn't told you is that word of what you've done has spread and all single warriors are waiting for a chance to woo and win your attention. You are about to be bombarded by warriors." Jayse loses the devilish look and turns serious as he squeezes her hands.

"Just remember me and promise to give me a chance please. Please, join us Kadance, we need you." Kadance isn't sure but she thinks that she hears him say that he needs her.

She takes turns looking down at Jayse's imploring face to the generals intense gaze to Thompson's slightly grinning one. She focuses on Thompson.

"It's true? All of it?" Kadance is overwhelmed.

"Yes, and I want a chance if you turn Jayse away. Please, Kadance we need you." Perhaps it is the pleading note in Thompson's otherwise carefree style that assures Kadance that it is true.

She shakes her head in confusion and all in the room are afraid that she is going to turn down the offer. They are pleasantly surprised therefore when she says, "If I agree I want to meet my nephews and have regular updates." The general is thrilled that she wants something so easy and quickly agrees.

Kadance closes her eyes and breathes deeply, then she continues,"I'm not born and raised a warrior. I will NOT do well in martial classes. My abilities lie in healing the injured not causing the injuries. I will concede the need to take small arms lessons for protection, but I refuse to take any other martial classes." Again the general finds her request simple to allow. She wasn't going into combat after all.

"Finally, I don't know how to deal with how did Jayse phrase it? 'oh yeah, hordes of warriors waiting to woo and win my attention'. I've rarely had anyone interested in me. So I ask for personal bodyguards be assigned to me. But I don't want active duty soldiers. I won't take needed men from the fight. I want those that I help be the ones helping me. I want Redliners only. Starting with these two. They can choose others that they may deem necessary and I will take it under advisement.

"But no matter the amount of guards I have one of these two will always have to be on duty. I don't trust any others yet."

She takes a deep breath and looks each one in the eye in turn. "You see general and gentlemen I know how to incite violence as well as take it away. I could just as easily take a redliner over the edge as bring them safely away." She looks directly at general Rueton as she continues, "If I am ever betrayed you'll wish you've never offered, begged me to join you."

Rueton actually finds himself afraid of her in that moment. He fears that possibly he's made a mistake, but it's too late now. He is unable to force any words out of his suddenly dry mouth.

"I'll never betray your trust Kadance. I promise you that," Jayse says softly. Kadance looks down on him and gives him a small but warm smile. Jayse had managed to hide the shiver of fear that raged through him at her words.

"I hope so Jayse, because I'm going to be leaning on you and Thompson quite heavily." Kadance whispers holding back the fears that she herself feels. Not at the job she's accepted but at the start of a new life.