Agathor
When I became an adult, it became clear to me that no one had any interest in taking me seriously. They saw a man of my stature and immediately patronized or belittled me. This made me want nothing more than one thing: respect. And I quickly caught onto the type of professions people latched onto and respected the most.
“Kick his ass, Terror Crusher!”
“He’s got nothing on you!”
The truth is, I could’ve been a firefighter or a police officer…but seeing everyone flock to radios just to hear the latest escapades of the BCT brought a smile to my face as I listened across the cafe. Before I knew it, I began fantasizing about being one of these superhero CTs. Stopping crime, saving lives, and getting a nice pat on the back for it all seemed like the perfect life for me to live. So naturally, I applied.
And I hated it.
I scored terribly low on the aptitude test. I had a score of 25. It was very close for grounds to kick me out of the academy. And to top it all off, Dr. Archon didn’t really have nice things to say about me.
Dear Mr. Septimbre,
After reading your aptitude score, I couldn’t help but do further research on who you are! You’re the type of man to fill an order no matter how tall it is, aren’t you? My apologies! I couldn’t help myself!
Allow me to be frank: people that are incredibly strong pique my interest. Sadly, you are not one of those people. But people who are incredibly weak and survive in this profession long enough become outliers and loop back around to piquing my interest! Let’s hope you’re one of those people. The stemata I gave you is one that I think would be rather funny for you to own. Have you ever read a fantasy book? Well, maybe that joke is a bit too far. Best of luck, Septimbre.
From,
Dr. Archon
Regardless, I pushed through. Because my goal of respect was getting closer. Through rain, sleet, or hail, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into those swings of my pickaxe. Everyone could make fun of me all they want, but I was going to reach my dreams!
One day, Instructor Gophlin approached me while I was training.
“The truth is…you’re lacking a lot compared to everyone else here…” He said while his eyes looked towards the floor. I figured it was the usual things people would say to ease into pitching the idea of me quitting.
“But there’s one thing you have an abundance of…” He then stared directly into my eyes and as he did, I could feel a surge of inspiration hit me. This was it. This was the look of a man that wanted to pay his respects to another.
“Determination. And that’s the most consistent thing to rely on. Don’t waver, trainee!”
“Sir, yes sir!” I gave the first man to give me respect my deepest salute as I held back this feeling of overwhelming joy.
===
That’s why I’ll hit it here! You will look my way! You will acknowledge that I am here! You will respect me!
I swung my pickaxe down to make contact with the growing branches and as I did, I felt it. Exactly what I was looking for. Dr. Archon said it himself at the end of his letter.
P.S. I should probably mention how your stemata works. It’s a pickaxe that upon use has a chance to land a critical hit. This critical hit has the force to tear down entire buildings. Although it’s only a 1/100 chance of happening. After testing, I noticed a pity system designed within it. Meaning for every non-crit, it increases your chance of getting a crit by one percent. Good luck!
And I did it! With a 2 percent chance, I obliterated all of the branches aiding her in her escape. The trainees chasing behind her all had to use their stematas or their own agility to get out of the way. Therese flipped over the three of us unscathed and gracefully landed, seemingly unaffected by the sudden attack. Regardless, it was time for our counterattack!
“Rono!”
Rono
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Gotcha!” I aimed the end of my staff right at her chest and extended it as quickly as possible. She sidestepped the incoming staff with ease and used her stemata to wrap branches around my staff. Before it could get a complete hold on my staff, I shrunk it back to normal size as I landed. Bossman wasted no time in trying to use his pickaxe to blast away the encroaching vines and bark, but it was another one of his weaker swings. When he realized that his attack wasn’t as effective, he fell back as quickly as he could as the vines chased him. Thankfully, Derris was there to switch out and immediately cut the vines away. But I realized something the instant he swapped in…
I have to get in there and switch with him. Otherwise, he’ll get taken out.
Derris’ stemata is one where he’s not able to keep up with fast moving stemata users. It’s more of a stemata based on explosive power from what I’ve seen of it. He can ride on it and even control its pathing. It vaguely helps makes his swings slightly faster, but it won’t be enough to gain the advantage. Not only that, but there’s the obvious detriment of his greatsword BEING BROKEN IN HALF! I thought it was stronger than that! What happened?!
Before I could even intervene, I noticed that as Derris was winding up for a swing, multiple vines latched onto his sword, completely restricting its movement. In that exact moment, multiple roses blossomed in front of him and bent to reveal their thorns collectively shooting forward to stab Derris in the abdomen. I wasn’t going to make it in time. Derris is going to get severely injured and we’ll be down a fighter…
But that’s not what happened. In the face of this predicament he found himself in, he grinned from ear to ear and unleashed his trump card.
He made it all look so easy. He let go of his broken greatsword, nearly did a split lowering his entire body to avoid the thorns, and then directly out of his palms, shot out two daggers that he immediately gripped onto and dissected the army of thorns in a barrage of slashes. After doing such a calculated move he let out a long, dramatic sigh as he flipped his hair out of the way. “Give me a moment to breathe. It’s so hard being someone like me sometimes.”
“I bet it is, handsome.” Therese giggled as she winked at Derris. I’m about to throw up in my mouth. Two of the worst people in existence might pursue a relationship before I get into one.
Okay maybe I’m being too mean to Derris.
Speaking of Derris…
“Where the hell did you learn how to shoot swords out of your body?!”
“Oh. Turns out after some training, I figured out how to do that.”
Turns out? Figures? He's starting to piss me off with how nonchalant he's being about this.
“Enough of that though. Excuse me, Miss. Would it be too much to ask you to hand over some of those badges?”
“It would. I’ll tell you what though, if you end up flunking out, I’ll pay for the first date.” Therese winked again.
Excessive giggling…more winks? Is this how courtship works?! This is embarrassing…
“Hey, Thorie! Nice of you to join the fight.” That’s when another seemingly lost child entered the fray, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. It was a girl with a very bushy ponytail and freckles covering the bridge of her nose. She wore the standard training outfit for women, but her sleeves were folded back to reveal her forearms. One of those forearms had a weird device that I’m guessing is her stemata. She seems to know bossman, so I’m guessing they’re in the same class.
“Who are your friends?”
“Oh. This is Derris, and this is Rono.”
“How’s it going?” Derris made small talk with the other two.
“Good, good! I’m Crystal! Crystal Vex! You have a demanding relationship with your father, don’t you?”
“The hell?!” Derris began approaching the girl but I got between the both of them.
“Alright enough! Am I the only one that cares that we’re on a timer?! If you don’t have anything to offer to help either sit back and hope she drops some badges or screw off!”
After realizing I made a loud enough commotion to echo throughout the forest, I wanted to shrivel up and die out of embarrassment immediately after. “Or something like that…”
“I’ve been helping this entire time.” Crystal matter-of-factly said as she showed the stemata on her wrist. “This stematas holds cards here at the bottom. It then spits them out for me grab and ‘play on the field.’” Crystal then flipped her wrist to show a crystalline, holographic blue card with a picture “x4.”
“This card I have activated makes her use quadruple her stem energy with each use of her stemata. Although when I requested a stemata I said I liked messing around with cards. I meant fortune telling, not playing cards. Regardless, she should be running out now!” She said with a smug look as she turned towards Therese, who was standing there as confident as ever.
“What makes you think these vines are my only stemata?” She shook her head.
“What?!”
There’s only one person and one person only that can control multiple stematas at once and that’s the Terror Crusher himself. And even then, he’s an anomaly. A mutation that shouldn’t exist—but does.
“There’s five leaves to this beautiful flower. One of them is stemata that I used to steal all of the regular badges and the one I’ve been using to evade you guys: Overgrowth. That is not the one you’ve been using your card against. The one you’ve been using your card against is one of the five called ‘sixth sense.’ It helps me dodge any and every attack. I’ve been mitigating your penalty by interweaving uses of it with my regular tactics of evasion, but I still managed to use it all up. Not bad, Crystal! But you’ll need more than that if you want to beat me.” Countless vines began to surround her and even blotch out what little rays of the sun were peeking through the trees as her Overgrowth began to envelop everything in the area.
My palms began to sweat as I loosened my grip on my staff. What the hell do we even do? She has three other stematas that she hasn’t even shown to us. How do we counter? How do we even compete against that?
That’s when a wave of silky black hair flowed past me to step in front of everyone. I looked over to see that the outfit this woman was wearing had the normal color scheme of white and red, but it was a bit more loose and flowy around its sleeves. I had no idea who this person was but there was a certain aura about her that told me she was different.
“You’re Tomi Shimamoto! Out of everyone here, I think besides me, you have the biggest chance of graduating at the top of the class. After all, you’re a rather…extraordinary person!” As she finished praising the new girl named Tomi, she spread her arms and all of the flora rushed in our direction.
And was countered with a single swipe.
A sudden blue streak intersected and bisected every branch, vine, and flower and didn’t stop there. It even cut through one of Therese’s wrists, completely slicing her hand off.
“Grahhhh!” As she screamed and recoiled pain, Tomi lifelessly dropped both of her arms and looked to the floor. The bristle of the brush had a blue glow that I could only assume was her stemata as well as a blue dab of paint on it.
“There’s absolutely nothing extraordinary about me…”