When Laura saw an intruder utilizing a camouflage item or skill and running towards her sister's building, her mind began to think fast and move slowly back inside, as to not alert the intruder that was a few blocks away.
''What is his objective? And why now? Sending anyone weak in here would be suicidal, and sending anyone strong wouldn't be beneficial to the rescue parties out there risking their lives to find new people to recruit and grow a faction's power. Thus, they would send only people with mediocre levels of power, like five stars at most.''
An idea began to spring in Laura's head, one which involved her dealing with this without alerting even her own allies and delivering some of the castle's men right to her sister. Without noticing, the young deaf girl was beginning to adopt some of Jack's behaviors, such as the one of training amidst combat and serious situations.
Despite reprimanding him for it, she realized after trying it that combat is the best training, especially if you are trying to make do with restrictions. And that is how Laura got majorly stronger in these 6 months.
Inside the building, she immediately ran to her room to pick up her weapon.
Meanwhile, the sneaking opponent was just passing by the entrance doors, he went by so fast that the two guards guarding it didn't even register his existence.
Laura was armed and ready, while calculating her other question, what was his objective?
''Stealing an item? Stealing information? Assassination? Sabotage?'' Everything was going so fast to her mind that she instinctively went to one single place where she gathered the most value, not because of the valuable information but because of the secrets it might hold... it was Nike's room.
Laura silently opened its doors, which her sister told her to avoid doing even when both were inside. Thus,she thought that would be the most dangerous place for someone to intrude, followed by the headquarters planning room, weapons shed and so far.
Nike's room was somewhat different from all the others, as it was the second highest one in the building and had no more furniture than usual. Its colors were also white and pristine, not a spot of dust to be seen and Laura knew there were secrets there which is why her sister only allowed Laura inside even cleaning and decorating it herself, usually with windows to let more light in or her old weapons.
Laura got to the window and dropped herself down, still holding on the frames, and waited, carefully feeling any vibrations coming from inside the building. Then she felt the door open and quickly close behind whoever entered.
There was no need to ascertain who was it that entered, as all people working under the Brightstar name knew Nike's room was strictly off limits to all but Laura.
Yet, she still waited, while crashing resounded in the room, unbeknownst to Laura. Still, the deaf warrior didn't need sound or even image to locate the intruder.
Slowly, Laura got up the window and drew her bow, aiming at where she last felt vibrations and where her vision detected more inconsistencies with the background.
It was a weird and creepy sight as she saw drawers on her sister's bedroom being opened by themselves, like a perverted ghost was sorting through her stuff, looking for something desperately. Were it not for her acute visual prowess it would be very difficult to see the slight distortions in the air left behind by the imperfect invisibility skill.
''Though I have no idea what this person is searching for, I must stop him.''
Thus, Laura decided to spend some of her blood to activate her skill, but instead of using a huge blast like she did when helping Jack with the fallen bird lord, now she used a much more subtle and less destructive amount of firepower.
After all, her control of her energies had greatly increased in the last few months, as before, she would've needed much more time to accumulate energy, and she could even produce smaller amounts of light on shot, lessening the burden on her eyes.
This arrow, for example, emitted such a small radiance that on the soft light of almost perpetual dusk of the settlement it was barely visible.
Even its intended victim was too preoccupied with its purpose to recognize he was in danger.
The deaf warrioress focused with all her might and vision, trying to make out a human shape out of a blur, interacting with the environment.
And when she finally made it out for a split second, a slight crackling and almost imperceptible laser sound could be heard coming out of her bow, swiftly delivering the arrow to its target.
However, her control still wasn't perfect, and the slight warning was enough for the intruder to avoid a fatal hit.
''What the fuck?!'' The camouflaged enemy blurted out. ''isn't this the little deaf princess? How the fucking hell can she see me?''
But the infiltrated enemy had no time to think, as several swift and slightly incandescent arrows began flying his way, with renewed precision due to the blood gushing out of the wound on his shoulder.
Still, the intruder wasn't picked for no reason and managed to dodge most of them except for a few who grazed his skin, drawing more blood. That, in and of itself, was Laura's goal: to make her opponent easier to kill and gradually deplete him of his energies.
''I must lose her tail, or I will be at a disadvantage!'' he thought as he dashed towards the door.
''Like I'd let you!'' She thought while chasing after him in silent pursuit. You see, unbeknownst to most, the frail little princess had slowly changed not just due to the life-and-death situations she was in with Jack, but because she had found her battle niche.
It was nothing fancy and showy like her sister Nike, but a silent, and unexpectedly deadly type. She had been practicing that all her life in a certain sense anyway.
Thus, a battle that no one in the base even knew of began on the emptiness of the cohort.
Most of the people around were already sleeping soundly, and the arrows that missed would lodge their tips in the stone with nothing but a slight sizzling sound, doing nothing to awake the unaware personnel.
Adding to it, both Laura and the intruder, moved lightly and mostly soundlessly, all that making it so the low level ''employees'' of the cohort couldn't even be woken up by the fight.
The only proof of any conflict whatsoever was the blood that now both combatants were now loosing, as the invisible assassin began throwing daggers at the ranger chasing him.
''If I can't go back to the older sister's bedroom, then I'll just have to change the priority of targets...'' Thought the assassin while taking a turn at the end of a hallway.
''That direction...the end of that hallway is the tactical meeting room!'' Laura realized, increasing her speed. ''I must solve this, unless I want Nike to never recognize my worth as a warrior!''
But when she turned around, he was already gone, the trail of blood leading toward the meeting room's doors. ''Shit! He's fast, I hope no idiot actually left anything important lying around.''
Using her blood in the most basic level, a blooded could greatly increase their speed, strength, and many other aspects of their physical body, but it would cost them some vitality, Laura guessed that he had used one such technique but was smarter than to follow suit.
She had learned her lesson on preserving her energies, thus deciding on only straining her body physically some more, meaning she would be behind him on reaching the objective but ahead of him in combat efficiency.
Inside the room, papers were thrown around and reports flew by as the swift intruder looked for anything of importance, and he did find some things, tactical plan on sabotaging the castle and even some related to increasing Brightstar's influence in the settlement. ''All right that is one objective acomplished... but why is she not giving chase? What is her plan?'' There were no windows in this room thus the invisible man had to come back from where he came from, and that, he did, only to find himself face to face with Laura.
When she was about to burst in the room, the doors actually opened themselves on their own, not hitting her by a single meter.
With great speed and precise movements, she drew her bow and shot another light arrow, that hit the invisible intruder again, this time on his waist.
''Goddammit, wasn't she the weakest of the group?! This wasn't in my report!'' He panicked, his invisibility slowly corroded by the blood splatter.
But he did not stop as there was one more place to look, as in the previous one he was unlucky to find no documents of vital importance, he dodged many other arrows that zoomed past him, blocking his path towards any exit of the building.
Thus, the intruder changed strategies, dashing towards Laura and trying to knock her over, so he could pass to his next objective: the weapons deposit.
When Laura was about to intercept him, the mysterious attacker used his invisibility to his advantage, grappling her and throwing her to the floor, then continuing on his run towards the armory.
''I must find something that could help us in the fight against Nike or else boss will kill me! But I never expected to be caught... I need to get rid of her quietly.''
Upon reaching the weapons deposit, the thief decided on an insidious plot, one that could not just kill his pursuer, but also cause some devastating damage to his enemies, lucky for him, his maneuver managed to buy some time.
Laura, meanwhile, was dazed from the impact on the floor and took a few seconds to get up and resume her chase.
She needed not to try and guess where the last vital location was and to e honest, it was the one that terrified her the most as some stuff in the weapons deposit had the potential to kill most of the people in the building.
Thus, she rushed in its direction, as worried as ever for the safety of her people and now starting to wonder if her petty pride was getting in the way and risking lives.
Finally, she turned a corner and saw the agape door of the weapons deposit. With no hesitation, she ran towards it as fast as she could, only to arrive inside and see... nothing. The intruder was nowhere to be seen, and no red flags had gone off about the items that were stored there.
The place wasn't too big, wooden crates were spread around the room and the walls were adorned with weapon racks showing a great variety of spears, swords and many other instruments of death.
''Where the hell is he?'' But before she could actually look, her instincts flared up in danger, leading her to try and dodge by crouching just before a starving for blood blade cut in an arch right through her shoulder.
She shouted as the pain rang in her head before jumping back and shooting three arrows in quick succession. Of them, only one struck, dealing massive damage and leaving both Laura and the intruder on their last stand.
''You definetly surprised me young girl!'' He said. ''I never expected you to be the one twarting my plans, but it ends here.'' The intruder then drew on almost invisible wires strewn about the room, pulling many weapons on the walls and heavy objects crashing down on Laura.
At this point the thief had, without knowing it, chosen the best possible target—the one that would actually destabilize Nike the most, beyond secrets, battle plans, or weapons—her very own ''defenseless'' little sister.
However, she was not the same as before her disapearance and with her incresed angle of viwew, she dodged every trap, one after the other as the sound of breaking crates and metal on stone ressounded. ''Crap, I won't let you even wake them up!'' She thought, leting some of the damage go through so as to not alert anyone of the silent battle.
''Foolish girl! Your pride will cost you your life and that of many people here!''
The assailant tried to go invisible again, but failed because he was too close to Laura and her vision had picked up on a smear of blood on his camouflage.
Nonetheless, he tried to approach her from behind, grapple her, and then cut her neck with both of his knives.
Despite his disadvantage due to her being able to see him, he was still faster than her and managed to actually grapple her and even begin to cut her throat.
However, he didn't expect her determination and quick thinking, which she used to run towards a wall and slam him into it, hurting them both severely due to the weapons that hung around.
The assailant screamed in pain as a lance stabbed him in the back, but Laura wasn't done yet and actually activated her powers to ignite her stardust energy in the weapons all around them.
Flames roared, burning through the skin and camouflage of the intruder; they did deal some damage to the deaf warrioress too, but due to him being between her and the weapons, it was minimized. Yet the assassin still kept on holding onto Laura, making sure he would at least make the Brightstar cohort lose their minds in anger.
Thus, both were locked in a mad brawl for life, both being burned and stabbed, but there was a significant difference in determination as in a few minutes only one stood up from the smoldering pile of weapons, Laura Brightstar had defeated her enemy while loosing nothing of importance this time.
''Idiot, we aren't even that far apart in age, you shouldn't have underestimated me like everyone else.''