Chapter 7

Rose pulled out her rapier and started to duel with five of the children. As she fought them, she thought about the date she had with Haschel.

To have been set up by the children of rouge school, it was pretty romantic. The girls came to her room with a brand new pink dress and some high heel shoes.

"You're not going to actually make me where that are you?" Rose asked them.

"You'll look great in it, besides, you're always wearing dark colors, you should wear a bright color for a change. Haschel will love it. Please—"

Rose caved in, but silently swore to her self never to wear pink or heels ever again. She put the dress on and looked in the mirror for a good ten minutes. The dress reached her knees. It was a crop top that curved in for the waist and flared out for the skirt part. Around the top was a white lace. It was a lovely dress…it so wasn't Rose's style, and the shoes hurt her feet. She walked, or rather stumbled, out of her room into the training area were the children had set up for the date.

There was a table set for two, candlelight, and music. Haschel came out in a suit and tie, and Rose almost died laughing, until she remembered how silly she looked. They sat down and had a lovely dinner; rather, it started out that way. After about a minute, both Haschel and she had gotten tired of the charade. She looked at him and asked if he wanted to fight. He said—

"Owww; man." A little girl who had done a Summon-4-Gods brought Rose back to the present. The attack had left a cut that would cause a lasting scar. Rose rubbed her neck trying to ease the pain and being careful not to touch the cut. She held up her hand to stop the fight and grimaced with the gesture.

"We'll continue this training later," She told the children. "I need some time to myself."

"Yes Miss Rose," the children said in unison.

As soon as the children left, she was back in her memories.

Haschel agreed to the battle, but first he had to make a joke about Rose's clothing.

"Are you sure that you can fight in a long dress? It's been years since you've fought in the first place, and the dress won't help any."

"For your information I fight your students every day to help them train, I am perfectly capable to fight you."

"But I'm stronger than my students."

"Only by a little bit, and since you're in a suit, I think we're even." Haschel smiled a bit, a sort of smirk that said he had a secret.

"I can change that." When he said that he took off his suit, which at first had scared her. When she looked at him though, she realized that he had one of his rouge outfits, one more typical of his person, beneath the suit. She smiled and laughed at herself for not thinking of that in the first place. Now she'd have to fight Haschel in a dress, and she knew that he was equal to her when she wore her TYPICAL outfit. The long skirt and heels would put her at a large disadvantage. She got her rapier, and after a second, she took off the heels to get her a little closer to her normal level of performance. They fought and both ended up with many bruises. In the end, Haschel won the battle because Rose kept tripping over the dress whenever she tried to do More-&-More. Since that was her main attack at the time, it really didn't help that she couldn't do it much. Rose was disappointed because she never did like losing a battle, even if it was with Haschel. Then it was curfew time. Rose thought she heard a whisper when Haschel asked—

"May I walk you to your house?" Rose agreed and they went to the little shack that Rose lived in. As she heard another whisper Haschel grabbed her up and gave her a kiss, a passionate one on the lips that she saw often in theater plays but never in real life. As Haschel walked away, she just stood there unable to move. Ha, Rose, greatest dragoon and former Black Monster, was made immobile by one man's kiss.

She came out of her memories and decided to go to her house to rest. She slowly made her way there where, once inside, she almost got scared out of her skin, and almost killed the person who did it.

Actually, she couldn't call the thing that scared her a person exactly, because the thing was wearing a Faeroes Cloak. (I made that up. It's a cloak that gives the wearer no identifying shape, qualities, or voice. Good huh? Give opinion on that please.) It moved to her and held out a sheet of paper. The paper read—

Come to battle me the first of next week at noon in the meadow, I'll be waiting for you there Rose. From, the shadow.

Rose wanted to ask the thing who or what this shadow was and how it knew her name, but the thing was gone before she could finish reading the note. Rose wanted some answers, and she was always ready for a battle, so she decided to go to the meeting.

The shadow had taken a long time to figure out a way to trick Rose into coming, but it knew that Rose couldn't resist a challenge. The shadow could move on to the next person on its list, and it still was bright and early. At this rate, it would have all of the guests ready to come before the sixth day of the week. Next, it would bring Dart.

I'm sorry this is so long, but I wanted to include the date in this chapter, and the only way that I could do that was to make a pretty long chapter.