“I wish I had your optimism, Andie.” Cedric turned his eyes toward the ground below him, avoiding Andie’s gaze. “Unfortunately, I’ve been cursed with a cautious mind.”
“Yet, here you are.” Andie closed in on Cedric and leaned over, forcing her way back into his line of sight. “Ready to fight.”
“Dyllan is my savior…” Cedric took a few steps back and fidgeted with his hands. “I have to try.”
“No. No trying.” Andie stood up straight and pointed her sword at Cedric. “Only winning. Failure is not an option this time.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not?” Andie lowered her sword and cocked her head to the side provocatively. “If life isn’t fair, make it fair. If the world is broken and wrong, fix it. Too many people throw around words like ‘can’t’ and ‘impossible’ as excuses to justify giving up. Always ask what’s stopping you from winning, then ask yourself: What’s stopping you from changing the thing stopping you from winning? If you keep tracing it back far enough, eventually you’ll reach something you have the power to change.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“…you’re really hard to be pessimistic around, you know that?” A smile started to form on Cedric’s face, despite his best attempts to stifle it. “Here I am making a sane and rational argument, stating the simple, provable fact that some things are just… bad, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Yet, somehow, I’m the one that looks like a stubborn idiot! It’s like a superpower, how you make these things seem so easy.”
“Yeah, well, understanding problems is your job.” A massive grin spread across Andie’s face, almost literally reaching ear to ear. It was as if she had taken Cedric’s smile as a challenge. “Dyllan’s is empathizing with people - giving them a shoulder to cry on.” She hopped backward onto a patch of railing that bordered the vortex of smoke - maintaining eye contact with Cedric the whole time. “Both jobs are important, but they only look at the bad side of things. That’s where I come in. Once the problem is understood, and people start to feel safe again…” She took a flamboyant bow. “I give them the hope they need to actually fix the problem.”
And with that, Andie kicked off and let herself fall backward into the smoke behind her - plunging into the unknown to save her friend.