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Rosé had her next match thirty minutes after her second. She fought the boy with an electric sword and dust spells used in their raw form. She adroitly played around the lightning and fire spells the boy favored. He would cast fireballs which would linger and prevent her from approaching while he would set up an enormous thunderbolt with yellow dust. When she finally got in on his zoning, she was met with a sword imbued with yet more electric dust in a wavy quadruple recurved edged blade.
Rosé got caught in a fireball which burned her and held her in place and then he struck her with a thunderbolt and the combination brought her aura from bright green all the way to orange.
She avoided the fireballs after that at all costs and tried to break his zone with her machine gun fire. He tried to hit her with a thunderbolt raw. She rolled under that and clashed with his blade. She was his superior with sword play and she never let him escape from her tools from then on. She clashed with the lightning blade and pressed him back. Then she swung the sword horizontally from the right, diagonally down from the left, horizontal from the right again and finished off with a series of fast thrusts at the very tip of her sword. She caught him with each and he was forced to roll in on her to recover away from the edge of the stage where he would lose by ring out.
She smashed him as he did with an arcing overhand attack with both hands. It slammed him against the shield and knocked his aura into the red at the same time.
Rosé sighed. Breaking the boy's zone had been exhausting to even watch. He did a considerable amount of damage to her aura. She better rest up and start recuperating. She shook hands with the boy and walked over to me. I was waiting and politely applauding her victory. She came up to me and hugged me. I patted her on the back and she let go. Her face was pink from the fight but she had an enormous grin.
"Whew that's three down. How many rounds are left?"
"Ten if you stay in winners." I answered. Her face fell. "These tournaments are brutal. You only have five more rounds to top sixteen and you can still lose once. If you're going to lose, then lose by ring out. Not aura exhaustion. You'll have a tough time fighting after that."
"I'm going to be so tired by the time I get to the big stage."
"Yeah. It's a marathon not a sprint. Go get some water in you and recover some aura. You got hit pretty hard out there."
She left to get a drink and I waited around the same arena. Some next batch of kids in the loser's bracket would be coming through and I could watch that. It was something at least.
A kid came up beside me. He had silvery blue hair and bright blue eyes. By his side hung a red and gold sword with a spear dropped point. He had a heart shaped face with a narrow chin.
"Oh excuse me. Am I in your way? Are you competing?" I asked the young man.
"No. I'm too old. I came to talk to you. To find you. You're Rosé's trainer. Her coach? I saw you talking to her."
"You know Rosé?" I asked him.
"I'm prince Chrome. I'm her brother. You've got some nerve putting your nose in my family affairs."
"Prince Chrome?" Realization struck me. "No way. That would make Rosé…" Some pieces clicked together in my head.
"Princess Rosé? You didn't know?"
"I'm not well learned. She kept her last name from me and I didn't even recognize it."
"Well regardless I'm here to talk to you. Where do you get off dragging my sister into hunting? Huh?"
He got right up in my face. I was taller than him by a couple inches but he didn't seem intimidated by me.
"Is that really what you think happened? Fuck off."
He hit me across the jaw with a sucker punch and he was strong enough that I flew a couple of feet into the ring.
"You ought to be more respectful to your superiors."
I floated back to a standing position and cracked my neck. I pulled my long, long blade from my back and he whipped his sword from his belt..
He came at me into the ring with a lunging thrust. I activated my semblance with a thought, flew behind him, and Cross slashed him in the side. He slammed hard into the shield wall inside the ring. I nearly shattered it with his body. We were starting to gather a crowd of onlookers. I flung him nearly twenty meters with that Cross slash. To his credit he actually started to get back up. He did it slowly. To my credit I flew until I was standing right over him in a blur then I kicked him in the skull with the tip of my boot. He collapsed from the bent over position he had been staggering up to. He was breathing hard and his purple aura crackled over his body.
"You'll regret that," he panted.
"Come now, good prince, that was just a love tap," I spoke with a smoldering voice. I stood over him charging my semblance in a rigid pose.
"Cloud what are you doing?" Rosé came bursting through the crowd and ran up behind me.
"This jackass sucker punched me. He's lucky I didn't kill him."
"As if," Chrome snarled.
"Try me again," I challenged. "Seriously."
"Both of you stop it! Chrome, are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he grunted. He shoved his way to his feet.
"Is it true? Did you attack Cloud?"
"We had some fighting words first..."
"Chrome… why…?"
"I never wanted this for you. Hunting. It's dangerous. He dragged you into this."
"I always wanted to be a huntress. Chrome go find some place to recover. I'll talk to you later."
He shot me one last glare but he took his spear and left. He shoved his way through the crowd.
"So…" I enunciated. "Princess Rosé Gainsborough..."
She froze. Then she slowly looked up at me.
"How long have you known?"
"Literally a minute ago was when I found out. So, you were all too happy to keep me in the dark. You kept your last name from me. You let me think it was Delatour," I spoke slowly with a smile on my face.
"Okay. I can see that you're mad…"
"I'm not mad. Well. I'm not angry at least. You must have had a good reason. I'd be happy to hear it."
"See I was going to tell you… but then I was worried you would change around me… so yeah. I lied to you and kept you in the dark. I was born princess of Vale."
"Huh… come on. Let's get out of the ring and we can talk about the future."
She swallowed and nodded.
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We found a locker room that was quiet and mostly empty. She sat down like I was going to start yelling at her.
"Well for starters it couldn't have come at a better time," I began.
"W-why's that?"
"You don't need me anymore. You're Beacon material baby."
"Oh… right…well the thing about that is… that is to say..."
"You didn't think I'd go back to school, did you? Once school starts up I have shit I need to head out and do."
"The laboratory stuff…"
"Yeah. That stuff. I swear I'm not angry. It isn't like I didn't keep shit from you as well. But you can see the position I'm in here. Right?"
"I…"
"Go on."
"I don't know what you mean. It's a long story..."
"Princess," I admonished with a smile.
"Don't." She half ordered, half begged. "Don't call me that. Not you."
"Rosé, then?"
"I don't see why we can't move right past it. Nothing has to change."
"If you really thought that, then you wouldn't have kept it from me."
She was quiet.
"Well? Would you? Do you really think that?"
"I…"
There came a buzz through the speaker system. "Rosé Gainsborough to ring thirteen. Gainsborough to thirteen."
"Well. Duty calls. Go get 'em tiger." I nodded my head towards the door. Rosé breathed a heavy sigh. But she did stand up and start to make her way to the designated ring with some trepidation. She looked back once. Then she turned and marched out of the locker room.
She would do fine at Beacon. She didn't need some crusty huntsman like me dogging her.
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She lost the match. It was brutal and she was in her own head the entire time. She committed half-heartedly. Her heart wasn't in the game and she was assaulted by a boy wielding a grenade launcher flail combination. She wasn't focused and she got out played. That's all there was to it. She was in the loser's bracket now.
I was standing there when it went down. She was crushed until her aura was in the red and she lost the match. She refused to respect the boy's range and power. She got punished over and over for it by enormous crushing blows of the flail and she got shot by grenades directly to her center mass at a distance. She never found her rhythm and was castigated repeatedly. It hurt me to watch it all happen.
She didn't come running up to me like after her other matches. She sort of sagged over and she wouldn't look at me.
"Rosé, you have got to get your head in the game or you won't make it to top sixteen. You'll get double eliminated. Your heart just wasn't in it."
"Why do you care?"
"Don't give me that. We can still be friends. But I wasn't going to be your teacher forever. You knew that. So chin up. You can still win this thing with a loser's bracket run all the way to the top. You have almost twice as many matches now. You can do this. But only if you focus up. Especially now that you're in loser's with low aura. You need to not really get hit again if you're going to pull this off. It's still doable for you. You can still show your parents that you're up for this. But you gotta get your head in the game and not worry about me. I'm still right here, aren't I? I haven't left just because now I know some more about you. We're still friends. We can talk more later but for now you have got to focus. The way you're fighting now you're going to lose again. And that's not right because you're good at this. Do you understand me?"
"I… yes. We'll talk later? You'll stay with me?"
"Yeah. Of course I will. I haven't left you yet."
She hugged me hard. I thought she was going to start crying. This really had been stressing her out and I never knew. I didn't know what she was thinking but I wasn't going to take off on her or start treating her differently. It must have been a major stressor hiding her name and identity like that.
But I was right. She could do this but not if she started to doubt herself and lost her mental edge. It was so crucial in a tournament like this. Especially in loser's bracket. It would be so easy to crumble.
I squeezed her back benevolently but with firm meaning.
"I'm sorry about my brother. Thank you for not hurting him. Only his pride got injured. I saw that much."
"Eh. It was nothing. He wasn't ever really a threat to me. Come on. It's round five next. You're nearly halfway to top sixteen."
"How many rounds do I have?"
"Thirteen if you make it to grand finals. Five to top sixteen."
"That's a lot…if I would have won it would have just been two rounds to top sixteen."
"You could get a bye round. That would be lucky so I wouldn't count on it. Better rest up and get ready. It's do or die time."
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Her next matches went by in a blur. She was focused and sharp and she kept her opponents off balance. Rosé strung along this one girl until she won by time out just by chipping away at her with Falchion's assault rifle mode.
When she had to get in she was fast. She never did get a bye but she never got hit hard enough to dispatch her aura to the red again but it stayed in perilous orange all the way up until the tournament's top sixteen. There were eight rounds for her left if she made it all the way to grands.
"You did it," I congratulated her. "You could quit now if you wanted. No one would blame you. You've had a crazy loser's run."
"Stop now?" She wondered. She sounded like she couldn't believe it one way or another. "I'm so close to actually winning this thing. I can't just quit. If I lose I lose but I won't just quit."
Her hair was drenched with sweat. She had been fighting on and off all day. She'd had nine matches so far. That was a lot of fighting to do. The times where I had to fight it hadn't been close to this much. Each match had been a mental battle as well as a physical one. Your brain gets tired the same as your body. It had been an uphill struggle. No one could find fault in how far she had come. She was guaranteed a trophy and she had proved her metal.
"And another thing… don't you think you've made your parents wait long enough to see you? Same with your brother. Even though he seems like an asshole."
"I… I suppose I could see them. You could meet them. We do have our lunch break…"
"Go see your family Rosé. They'll be proud of how far you've come. Or they should be at least. I really can't speak for them but you know what I'm getting at."
"I'll see them," she decided. Then she took a long drink of water and chugged it. She panted out afterward. She slicked back her now dark red hair. It was stained by her sweat as though she had been in the shower. She was drenched and so I tossed her a white towel. She rubbed her back and ran it through her hair fiercely. It didn't do a whole lot but she was a touch more dry. "Let's go," she said.
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Rosé shot a message through her scroll. She set up a meeting place between her and her parents and I followed her through the back rooms of the stadium.
When Rosé saw her mother she ran over to her. She was a short woman with silvery pink hair. Just the same as her daughter. The queen of Vale had that same heart shaped face as her daughter and son.
The king of Vale had dark blue hair and strong blue eyes. He was handsome I supposed. Not hunter handsome but he was good looking.
Rosé's mother went to hug her daughter.
"Mom, you don't want to hug me. I'm all sweaty."
"I don't care. It's been so long."
There was a third person with the king and queen of Vale. The future headmistress of Beacon academy. I tried to make myself invisible in the corner of the room but Glynda Goodwitch sought me out.
"So, this is the student you mentioned. You didn't tell me she was the crown princess." The professor had a sly smirk on her face.
"Yeah well… I didn't know. Not until today. She lied to me about her last name. And even if she hadn't I doubt I would have recognized it. You know what kind of student I was."
"Hardworking?" She asked.
"Typically falling short," I corrected. I was smiling softly. "She did well. I'm proud of her for making it this far."
"You must have taught her well."
"I didn't think I would be preparing her for tournaments."
"Glynda? Who is this young man?" The king of Vale paced over to the two us. They wrapped up a quick family conversation on their own while the headmistress and I chatted.
"Oh, Dad, Mom, this is my teacher. Cloud Strife," Rosé introduced hurriedly.
"It's a pleasure," I said, shaking the king of Vale's hand followed by the queen.
"So you took my daughter under your wing. She must have been a handful," the king said.
"Dad!"
"I am Tycho Gainsborough and this is my wife Lydia," the king went on with a small smile.
"She was an angel to train, she was like a sponge. And I was happy to do it. It's one thing to remove evil from the world; it's quite something else to add something good."
"Like when you killed Raven Branwen?" The headmistress asked me. She had this pleased look on her face that I couldn't truly place."
"Yeah. I suppose."
"It's you we have to thank for that?" Lydia asked me.
"I killed her. Killing murderers is a part of the job."
"But Raven Branwen was more than some mere bandit."
"She was a handful. That's true."
"You must be very talented," Tycho murmured.
"I get by." I was uncomfortable with all this attention put on me. Today was about Rosé.
"He's incredible. His semblance is wicked and comes with a grab bag of powers."
I shook my head at Rosé minutely. Now was not the time.
"Chrome got to see him up close and in action already. Cloud floored him," Rosé went on heedless of me.
"We had a disagreement…" I confessed. "It was regarding Rosé's training. The prince blames me. He thinks I'm putting her life in danger."
"And aren't you?" The king challenged me with his eyes flashing.
"Probably. Yeah. I've done the best I can to keep her alive but hunting is dangerous."
"Cloud!" Rosé protested. "It's my decision."
"I could have left you with your family in Winhill. I didn't. That counts."
"I always wanted to be a huntress and to go to Beacon. I have you to thank for that."
"Maybe…" I hedged. I was uncomfortable being put on the spot like this. "Don't thank me yet."
"Cloud, I have a proposition," the headmistress started speaking with this same sly smile as if she just struck silver. "Beacon needs a new combat instructor. I won't have the time to run the school and teach my old class. You have proved that you're capable of teaching. You've shown that you are, in fact, dangerous. You're responsible and you know what's on the line. I think you make for an excellent candidate."
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-WG