Rose is Rose

A/N: Hey guys! This would the first chapter of this two-shot chapter thing! This is my first fanfiction on this account!
This is set in Tainted!AU with a slight twist! Through it's slightly unclear as to how Sorey got tainted in the first place, this two-shot focuses on my take of the possible changes of what had happened after Sorey got tainted. So enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Tales of Zestiria, but I only my own take of Tainted!AU and the character's slight OOC-ness!

Warning: ANGST and OOC-ness!


Rose kept low from her prey from an elevated position as she tracked her next victim, or rather a long-term prey. After all the original plan was something in the lines of killing Sorey as soon as he got corrupted by malevolence, however currently he seemed to be doing all but reeking of malevolence.

While she can't purify the evil or feel the hanging malevolence that clouds over villages like smog anymore, she can definitely be a good judge of character. And currently Sorey was offering to slay some hellions. Great.

She kept back from letting out a loud shout of frustration. She had been following him for more than a few days and while Sorey isn't all Sorey anymore, he isn't one of those Hellions. While she crouched, hiding she let her thoughts drift to back then to when it happened. Now that she thought back about it foolishly stupid.

It was the first time Rose had met the Lord of Calamity and the second time Sorey fought against the said Lord. The tides of battle seemed to be in their favour and just when everything seemed to be over, Heldalf lashed out in one great final attack at the Shepherd, who had his back turned. They didn't even have the time to react but just stare in various degrees of shock and hopelessness when the attack connected and pierced through the heart of their dear friend.

"Sorey!" Mikleo called out, running next to his best friend. Lailah gasped as she covered her mouth as tears started to gather at her eyes. Edna lowered her umbrella down as she slowly followed the distressed water seraph. Dezel said nothing, perhaps still in shock but his clenched fists were shaking by his side. Rose too rushed over to Sorey as Mikleo turned the boy over. One glance at Sorey's face drove her into rage.

"Lukeim Yurlin!" She shouted in rage. Everything felt numb. With one last attack at Heldalf, killing the Lord of Calamity in an lethal swoop of raining blades. The body of Heldalf moved no longer but the rage, now tears, was still there. Once she was finished the armatization wore off as Rose ran back to where Sorey laid surrounded by his seraphim friends. Even Dezel lingered at the edge of Sorey's vision.

"Sorey!" Rose called again, making his way next to the dying Shepherd. Sorey coughed, spewing a bit blood over his once pure white cloak.

"Hey guys," Sorey tried to smile but it was weak. Beside Sorey, Mikleo was clutching desperately at Sorey's hand like it was his lifeline, whispering not to leave him. He was his childhood friend and they still had a great future ahead of them dammit! Just don't die.

"Mikleo..." Sorey started but he stopped by a storm of coughs that racked his body.

"Don't talk, you need to save your energy Sorey," Lailah's voice was soft as tears streamed down her cheeks.

Sorey shook his head, "I need to... tell you all. Thank you... so much for being with me..."

"Idiot," Enda started, looking away, "Don't say it as if you're going to leave us. After all it us that made the decision to follow you until the end."

A soft but weak laughter bubbled from Sorey but it soon turned into another round of coughing. They all panicked a little before Sorey was able to recover again.

"Lailah, your the first seraph that I created a contract with. Without you we wouldn't even been able to start off his journey. Thank you for looking out for us and holding me back during my reckless moments," Sorey looked up at her who knelt near his head. She bit back a sob and nodded as she put her hands over her mouth. She gave Sorey a weak but sincere smile.

"Thank you, Sorey," she nearly whispered.

"Edna," Sorey began but he was cut off by Edna.

"No," she denied, "I'm not going to listen."

Sorey gave a small huff of amusement. After all it was easy to tell that she was trying to hold back the tears as she pointedly stared left.

"Thank you for coming with us on this journey. We couldn't have done it without you. I... I know that I couldn't keep my promise to free your brother but I still hope that one day you will be reunited," Sorey breathed.

Enda lowered her umbrella and covered her face. Rose, who was crouched by Enda could hear the girl cry. "Idiot," she mumbling, "Stupid, stupid, idiot."

"You know I can hear you, right?" Sorey gave a small smile as Enda hiccuped but she lifted her umbrella up again just for a second before lowering it again.

"Dezel," Sorey started and he could see Dezel flinch a little at the sound of his name. Sorey offered him a soft look. "Thank you so much for looking after us, and especially Rose. I... I'm sorry that you had to see another-"

"No need to apologize," Dezel quickly cut in before Sorey could finish, "I was doing it out of my own interests as well."

Then he took off his hat and through his long bangs he smiled a smile. Sorey returned it with the same intensity.

"Rose," he turned his head slightly towards his squire.

Rose gave him a small smile even on a tear stained face, "Yes Sorey?"

Sorey laughed a little and thankfully he didn't cough this time, "Thanks for being my squire and taking the heavy things into you own hands." Even with the vague sentence Rose understood what he meant. "Look after everyone alright? Become the new Shepherd and finish what I couldn't."

Rose nodded, giving a reassuring squeeze to his other unoccupied hand.

"Sorey no!" Mikleo cut in, "Don't say it as if you're going to die!"

"Mikleo..." Sorey shifted to look at his childhood friend. They had never parted long and they practically stuck to each other through thick and thin. He knew that Mikleo was thinking, no words are needed for a relationship like theirs. He knew that he would take a part of Mikleo when he ascends and so he wanted to give something back to him.

"Mikleo," he started again but Mikleo wasn't listening. Instead he was shaking his head, gripping tightly to his hand. Sorey smiled bitterly, "Come on, don't make that face."

With his free hand he slowly lifted it to Mikleo's face a brushed a few tears away. "Mikleo, stay strong. Don't join me before your time's up okay? You're the first friend I ever had and I cherish you, so stay strong, alright?"

"It's not fair!" Mikleo cried, "'Stay strong?' It's easy for you to say, leaving me like that!"

Sorey offered him the last smile he could muster before he went limp. The mourning redoubled. Lailah let out her sobs, Edna cried harder, and Dezel looked away and a tear or two slipped down the stoic man's face as he clutched his hat tightly. Rose let out a strangled scream as she hit the ground and Mikleo, poor Mikleo, went blank and they could see it in those blank eyes, devoid of everything.

However it didn't end there. All of a sudden a great storm of malevolence gathered around Sorey staining his robe black and the intricate designs golden. His shirt also changed from sea blue to blood red. Lailah gasped.

"Get away from him! He's being taken by malevolence!" she shouted in panic.

They all moved away from him except for Mikleo who still stared down at Sorey.

"Mikleo!" Rose shouted but the malevolence thickened around Sorey and soon Lailah was screaming in pain, followed colsely by Edna.

"Lailah? Enda?" Rose called in confusion and panic, as she put a hand on her knives.

"The contract... should have been dissolved..." Lailah coughed. She briefly glowed in golden energy before it disappeared, "What...? I can't...?"

Before Rose knew it, Dezel, who later explained that he had dissolved the contract with the Prime Lord and reestablished his oath with Rose as his vessel, was protecting her from the thickening malevolence. Once the malevolence cleared, there stood three dragons, one sliver with red markings, another golden with white and green patterns and the last one, the largest one, that had dark blue and purple scales with some white, stood. They roared before taking off in different direction, dismissing both Dezel and Rose whom had their weapons out. The largest one took the transformed Shepherd into it's mouth and with a large pump of it's wings it was airborne and flying in the direction of Elysia. That was the last time Rose or Dezel had seem them.

So naturally Rose was surprised when she saw the missing Shepherd in his fallen garb walking through the roads of Marlind, trying to head East to track down a certain dragon.

"Boss!" One of the sparrow feathers dropped down from seemly nowhere stealthily and hid with her, jolting her out of her memory. "There has been sightings of a dark blue dragon heading east towards Lady Lake."

"Got it! Thanks, Felice," Rose gave a small smiled and her subordinate nodded before leaping away. She shook herself out of those depressing thoughts. It was all in the past and right now had the task to save Sorey from himself is had too. She then looked back down to see Sorey finished with the Hellions. They weren't purified, but either killed or wounded. Sorey was looking down on them with a dispassionate face.

"I know you're there. Come out," the corrupted Shepherd called out.

Rose tensed but stayed were she was for a moment longer, unsure if he was talking to her or somebody else. Her patience bore fruit for a fox-like Hellion walked out of the shadows chuckling in that high pitched voice. Rose gasped as she spotted the familiar uniform of the Shattered Bones.

"Yo Shepherd," the hellion greeted Sorey, "You seem a lot different than how I remembered you to be."

"Shut it, Lunarre. I have a feeling that you know what happened," Sorey's voice was cold, so different from the Sorey that Rose had remembered, and yet she still can see the old Sorey in the fallen corrupted Shepherd. To top it off he wasn't completely evil either. However this wasn't Sorey's responsibility but Rose's responsibility to lay down the Hellion, one of her own Sparrow Feathers, or rather one of her Shattered Bones.

"Oh, that I do. In fact I heard it through the grapevines. However I was surprised that Boss Lady was still pure," the Hellion drawled out, "So I thought I can hear it from you, Shepherd."

Sorey wrinkled his nose at the title. "I don't carry such a title anymore."

"But you do. In fact you're the first one that was able to turn your whole crew into hellions. They must be all naive that they could've saved you or just plain stupid," the hellion threw his head back and laughed. Rose reached for her knives and pulled both of them out. She gritted her teeth as she heard him badmouth her comrades. How dare he when he doesn't even know anything!

"You might be right," Sorey started as Rose did a double take, "They are idiots aren't they? Trying to save a lost cause like me," Sorey too let out a sharp bitter laugh.

Rose couldn't see the frown that marred the Hellion's face for his back was turned towards her. That, and she was already closing in for the strike, taking the chance of the exposed back.

As soon as the first knife seemed to dig into the Hellion's back, the creature moved so suddenly out of the path of the knife, sneering. "Boss, you showed up at last," it almost laughed.

"I'm here to put you to rest, Lunarre," Rose fell into battle stance.

"Come at me then," the other mocked, opening his palms to summon the blue unholy fire.

With a battle cry Rose started at the Hellion who threw the fire at her. She slid under the attack and was prepared to lash out at the Hellion knives a blazing but the hellion was ready. "I'm not going to fall for the same trick!" The fox Hellion laughed.

The creature grabbed Rose's ankle and threw her up while charging up another blast of fire to shoot at her. Rose was able to flip backwards with a little difficulty but now she could see the giant fireball roaring towards her. She crossed her arms in front of her in a defensive position but she knows that there was no way to stop the attack.

She couldn't stop the attack with that size and power just her knives and she wasn't able to move out of the way since she was mid air. The only way to stop such an attack without major injuries was to amortize and she wasn't going to give up.

"Lukeim Yurlin!" She yelled but like she expected nothing happened. It was at least a try.

The attack was so close that she could feel the heat. She wondered for the briefest second if she was going to die this way before she shook the thought away.

The fireball engulfed her in a while explosion.

"Well," the Hellion started, "that was a shame. I thought boss was harder to beat then that."

The fox then dropped his gaze from the sky to where Sorey was standing. Was. He blinked in surprise and confusion as the fox demon looked around searching for the signs of the Shepherd but found nothing.

An ornamental sword slid into his peripheral vision and the Hellion broke into cold sweat.

"Looking for me?" A cold emotionless voice asked, as the owner of the sword stepped forward.

"You wouldn't kill me," the Hellion was unsuccessful in keep in his nervousness in, "You're above that, aren't you?"

"Oh? What happened to that cocky attitude from before, Lunarre? Cat got your tongue?" The sword's sharp slide was pressed to the exposed skin of the hellion's neck.

"However what is right. I am above that," Lunarre let out a small sigh or relief.

"Or at least I was." The Hellion's eyes widened as blood fell onto the ground and the form of the fox demon crumbled to his knees. In one more fluid motion the fox was down.

"Goodnight, Lunarre," Sorey whispered and he slashed his sword downwards to get rid most of the hellion blood on his sword before he sheathed it.

"Goodnight Rose," he whispered into the sky. He paused, staring into the darkening sky before letting out a soft sigh and turned towards the nearest village after picking up the body on the ground and making way towards an Inn.

Rose better thank him when she wakes up. Though he probably won't be there when she does.


A/N: Well I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter of this two-shot! XD

This is mainly Rose-centric, through I had to switch points of view since Rose fainted. Yes, fainted. Hopefully all other answers will be filled in by the next chapter! Also this chapter is not beta-ed so please point out any mistakes I made from names to spelling to OOCness. Also my version of the Tainted!AU does not completely follow the original story of Tales of Zestiria. What happened in Pendrago didn't happen, thus Dezel is still alive. Also Symmone didn't interfere with them too much. After all in this AU Heldalf isn't 'completely' dead yet thus Maotelus hadn't destroyed the Earth yet. Thank you!