“I can’t believe we’ve got to sit off to the side like kids in timeout.” Peter pouted, seated on some rubble with his elbows propped up on his knees and his palms on either side of his face.
“Well, what do you expect? We came across people we –apparently– weren’t ever meant to know about sneaking into these ruins and then happened to break multiple hundreds of meters below where we were meant to be and stumbled upon a top-secret Guild operation. Honestly, the fact that we haven’t been executed or arrested is already a blessing.” Angelica explained, trying to get her brother to stop grumbling when honestly their luck had been nothing short of casino-emptying.
“The Guild wouldn’t do that.” Haley denied with a shake of her head before stopping and pondering for a moment, which very much did not help any of their moods. “Well, maybe the arresting part. But I’m just worried about what’s going to happen to my story, there’s so much juicy stuff in there!”
“What a shameless reporter.” Felicia droned, jabbing the brunette in the side with a finger and getting a loud yelp in return.
“Well, what do you expect me to do? I went with you guys because I was expecting to get a good article out of it, and I got a godly one instead!” She gushed, clutching her notebook to her chest and turning this way and that as she squealed quietly.
“There’s no possible way that they don’t take that story and burn it to a crisp.” Angelica deadpanned, giving Haley a half-lidded stare as the reporter pouted even more and clutched her notebook tighter.
“Well, they’re not meant to since I’m a reporter and there’s others here too and we’re not meant to be something that regular adventurers can get in the way of.” She began explaining, only to be cut off by Angelica.
“Except this isn’t a regular adventurer, this is a [Platinum-rank].”
“Yeah, except that. There’s really nothing I can do to stop her if she really decides to get rid of the story except go to my higher-ups when I get back.”
“Which you can’t do if you get arrested too.” Felicia added in helpfully, only to tilt her head to the side as Haley shook hers.
“Even if I am, it’s common practice to visit reporters no matter where they’ve been placed and get a truthful recounting out of them. It's one of the ways that the Guild’s reporters have developed to get around situations where a reporter has uncovered something that higher ranked adventurers or employees don’t want to see the light of day.”
“Doesn’t that make you like a separate faction inside the Guild?” Peter asked, a little confused about how the Guild’s reporters could have so much power.
“Sort of, we’re still very much a part of the Guild but the Guild Master himself has a pretty vested interest in keeping us as individualistic as possible. Not to mention that a bunch of the higher-ranked adventurers agree and help enforce his ruling.”
“So….is something bad going to happen or not?” Peter’s eyebrow raised as he asked, the teen startling a little as she wined and buried her head in her hands.
“I don’t know! This suspense is killing me!”
“’Sup Runts?”
“AH!” All four of them jumped at the sudden voice of Tristana in front of them, Peter and Angelica hugging each other while Felicia had both of her hands up at about chest level with her fingers curled weakly and Haley fumbled for her notebook that she’d accidentally thrown high into the air.
In response to this, Tristana could do nothing except burst into a fit of laughter that left all four teens in various states of embarrassment. Her arms crossed in front of her and her hands clutching her sides as she laughed.
After seeing her in the fight with Trexin and the sheer intensity that she had gone through it with, seeing her now when she was calm and relaxed felt like nothing but pure whiplash to the four teens. Where had the rough, brutal-yet-skilled adventurer that had manhandled a winged behemoth of a man gone and where had she been hiding this relaxed, teasing demeanour in the meantime?
Though it's not like that teasing nature of hers hadn’t shown up amidst her fight with Trexin, some of her comments flashed through the teen’s minds as she finally calmed down from her laughter and began speaking again.
“Ah, gods that was good.” She chuckled, wiping a small tear out of one of her eyes with a finger before taking a quick moment to breathe in and out deeply and calm herself down. “Alright, kiddlings. I’ve just finished my talk with that party over there so now it’s your turn.”
‘Here it is. How much trouble are we going to get into…?’ Angelica thought to herself, trying her absolute best to keep the nervousness off her expression.
Unfortunately, both Felicia and Haley were far better at that task than she was, but at least she didn’t come in dead last. That particular honour went to her brother and his complete lack of a poker face.
“So, to get the boring stuff over with, this place was somewhere that you four weren’t meant to be and definitely weren’t meant to see.”
“It wasn’t our fault we fell down here!” Peter argued back, clicking his mouth closed as she looked over at him without her body or expression moving a single centimeter.
“Yeah, believe me, I’ve already gathered that from the brief rundowns you four gave to the others. However, fact of the matter is that you girls, and guy, did see this place and did see and hear things that you really weren’t meant to.”
“So, what’s going to happen to us now?” Angelica asked, almost shyly, as she twiddled her thumbs together and tried her absolute best to look the [Platinum-rank] adventurer in the eye.
Their potential future as adventurers pretty much entirely hung in the balance right now. And the acknowledgment of that had the girl scared, more so than anything else she had ever faced in her life up until this moment.
With the singular, understandable, exception of Trexin himself.
“You worried about something, by chance?” She questioned with a small, cheeky grin, as she looked at Angelica. “You seem to be under the impression that something is going to happen.”
“Not under the impression. Just….worried.” She weakly countered, the twiddling of her fingers picking up their pace as Tristana just gave the four of them an impish, intimidating, grin.
“Banishment, Exile, Jail, Death. They’re definitely all punishments that await the four of you for the level of secret that you’ve just stumbled upon.”
Her words had the blood draining out of the four’s faces quicker than water down a drain and their expressions slackening into nothing but pure disbelief and fear.
Her words confirmed every last one of their worst fears, and the fact that all of them were on the table was something that none of them particularly wanted to hear. Especially after the near-death experience marathon that today had turned out to be for them.
“…But not something you need to worry about!” She cheered with both of her hands thrown up beside her face.
Peter collapsed off the side of the rubble he was using as a seat and Haley slowly slid down with an expression halfway between dizzy and nauseous. Angelica and Felicia only blinked in stupefaction at the woman’s surprise reveal.
“Relax, brats.” Tristana snorted, lowering her hands to cross them over her chest. “In all honesty, having little Miss Reporter there has probably been your biggest saving grace of this whole thing.”
“Hm? Because of the agreement between the reporting branch and the rest of the Guild?” Haley questioned, blinking rapidly and pointing at herself weakly.
“That’s right! In all honesty, I reckon that keeping some of this stuff in the dark is just a recipe for disaster but some of the higher-ups amongst both the adventurers and the Guild admins believe it easier to keep the peace if it’s simply just not out in the open. Now that the four of you are aware of all of this stuff, expecting you to stay quiet about it is out of the question entirely, as is expecting you to slink off quietly and go back to your regular lives.”
“So…what’s going to happen then?” Angelica asked, trying to figure out where this conversation was going and finding herself thrown for a complete loop.
“Well normally I’d enter a Magic Contract with the four of you to keep quiet about all of this and you’d simply just have a bunch of scrutiny from the Guild. But then that would require placing our dear brunette here to a contract that limits the information she can relay, and that’s a big no-no now, isn’t it?” Her green eyes slid over to Haley once more with a devious grin on her face, her thoughts on the predicament more than evident to the four of them.
“That’s- that’s right.” Haley nodded.
Her brain, sluggish from the lack of adrenaline and anxiety, began to kick back into gear. Pieces of the puzzle slotted into place slowly as Tristana talked more and her own –limited– knowledge of the reporting branches’ rules and stipulations came to the forefront of her mind.
“Forbidding a reporter to report something can only be done by a reporter's direct higher-up or the Guild Master himself, any adventurers or lower-ranked employees that attempt to do so are subject to incredibly strict punishments.”
“And wanna know who isn’t here in this little cavern with us? Your higher-ups or the Guild Master.” Tristana’s grin seemed to sharpen for a moment as she spoke, her fingers tensing and squeezing her own arm roughly.
“Which means that you can’t stop her from reporting any of this without punishments falling on everyone here.” Angelica mumbled, the girl clutching her chin with her forefinger and thumb as she thought through what that would mean.
“Bingo! Which, and I cannot stress this enough, really has the Shadow Mooks here twisted into a pretty big pretzel. I can’t lie.” Tristana joked, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder towards a larger gathering of said ‘shadow mooks’ that she spoke of.
“Then why not take us out?” Peter questioned, only to yelp as his sister slapped him over the back of the head.
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“Peter, are you nuts!?”
“Dude.” Felicia just gave her friend the driest of stares that she possibly could.
“Why?” Even Haley was giving Peter a look of minor devastation, which was probably what hurt him the most.
He knew that he really messed up when even people outside Angelica and Felicia were giving him that kind of look.
“Pffttt, I like your guts kid. But they thought that too, and the simple answer is because I refuse.” For a brief moment, a few pebbles at her feet bounced off the ground and her eyes glowed in the shadow of her fringe, the four of them shivering as they felt the ever-so-brief pulse of mana that left her body.
“I didn’t just go through all of that shit and let them get away just for those murky bastards to turn around and merc you kids the moment it finished. Casualties are always something that’s expected in a quest, but when you quest with me that shit ain’t going to happen when I have the power to stop it.” Tristana smirked and poked her thumb against her chest while straightening her back out a little, oozing confidence in a way that only someone of her rank possibly could.
“So, what’s happening then? I’m not getting where this is going.” Peter pouted, clearly getting impatient with Tristana not just coming out and explaining their fate.
“Ah, well that’s simple. If you four agree to tell a slightly altered version of the truth, with all the big things left intact and just a few innocuous details left out or changed, you all get to become minor celebrities!” She exclaimed, clapping her hands together and giving them a wide smile with her eyes closed.
“….huh?” Peter’s surprised sound seemed to perfectly encompass the look of shock that painted all their expressions, the four of them staring at her with wide, unblinking eyes.
“HAH! Yeah, I thought you’d react like that!” Tristana cackled, clutching her sides again as she took a quick moment to get her laughing fit over with before she crouched down to be a little more even with her eyeline.
“Look, I’ll be honest with you kids. After all this, there was no hope of you ever fading into anonymity like before all this happened. This option is the best of three worlds where I don’t get in trouble, those guys over there don’t get in trouble, and you don’t get in trouble. You agree to this, and you still get to release that hit piece of yours without any trouble or fuss.”
She looked pointedly at Haley and pointed a single finger at her too for emphasis.
“And you three not only get public backing from me and some of the other higher-ups here but also fame and notoriety that can seriously help push the three of you through the ranks while the Guild has a convenient excuse to keep an eye on you without it raising any suspicion.”
This time she looked at Blessed Catalyst, sliding her pointing finger to cycle between the three of them like sonar.
“This deal….seems really difficult to refute.” Angelica muttered, her eyebrows furrowed, and lips pressed tight.
“That’s the whole idea. It’s meant to be a good deal for you four.”
“This is really, really important to the Guild. Isn’t it?” Peter asked, his voice quiet and his gaze serious as he locked eyes with Tristana.
“More than any of the five of us know, kiddo.”
“I’ll agree.” Haley said suddenly, making everyone look over at her. “This deal, it’s the only way I can release this story in anything close to its truest state without getting in trouble. It's too good to give up.”
“I agree as well.” Peter suddenly announced, making both Angelica and Felicia jolt slightly. “I can’t let Angelica and Felicia get in trouble for something that I’m just as responsible for.”
“Jeez, you’re acting like we chose not to act too.” Angelica sighed, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “I agree too, Miss Promethea.”
“I, as well.” Felicia nodded, both of her hands clutching her staff so tight that her knuckles began to lose their colour.
“Ey! There we go! Trust me, there’s some pretty nice upsides to this deal.” She tried to assuage their worries, only to snicker suddenly. “But I was serious about not getting to go back to anonymity. I hope you’re ready to be reporting about these three for a while, Miss Reporter.”
“I- uh- Yes of course! They’re all so interesting that I’m sure I’ll be able to get plenty of stories even if I can’t join them on any quests.”
“That’s the spirit! Now let’s go over what details you kiddo’s have gotta change, ok?”
As the four of them nodded and listened to Tristana’s words, Peter couldn’t help but think about their wayward fourth member currently off who-knows-where in the world doing who-knows-what.
What had he done? Who had he met? Where had he gone? Peter wondered about all these things and more. Yet the first thing that he thought, and the main worry that stuck inside his brain like a particularly catchy song, was quite simply: Alec was already struggling with his self-esteem even when he was still an active member of their party, how would he react seeing them constantly in the World Quest magazine?
Peter could only hope that his friend wasn’t much of an avid reader of the magazine, or, at the very least, didn’t take their sudden fame to heart.
‘Hah! What am I thinking? No matter how famous we become, I’m sure that Alec will be right alongside us. All he has to do is focus on himself and what he needs right now. Man, I can’t wait to hear about how much he’s grown when we finally meet back up again! I want to know what he’s learned!’
XXXxxxXXX
Dragon-Scale Academy, Private Training Room 1
“Oh, come now, do you kids not learn?” Headmaster Xyn laughed, an arm curled behind his back as the other held a simple wooden training blade within its grasp.
His blade blurred back and forth as he blocked and deflected blows from both Alec and Olivia in quick succession. His feet danced elegantly as he maneuvered himself to always keep both teens within the same general direction that he could keep his eyes on.
The man seemed absolutely adamant not to let either teen circle around him and catch him in a proper pincer. Yet even on the few chances that they managed to pull off something genuinely clever to escape the cone he kept herding them into he was always quick to shut down their attack and herd them right back into the ‘cone’ in front of him.
“Keep an eye on my blade, yes, but you have to focus on more than that.” Xyn lectured, twisting his blade to throw Alec’s to the side, using him to block Olivia’s rising slash and nearly making the both of them tumble over each other.
“Crap! Sorry!”
“Augh! Why weren’t you prepared for that!?”
Both teens tried to untangle themselves as quickly as they could, only to scream in surprise and fear as Xyn swiped his blade in their direction, picking the air inside the room up into a gale-force wind that threw the both of them across the room.
“And that’s death number five for both of you, I do believe.” The headmaster hummed smugly, resting the tip of his training blade on the ground and using it to prop his weight up.
Instantly both teens just went limp, exhaustion and defeat in their slow groans as they realized that their lesson for the night was over.
Xyn had to give them their props though. When he had asked them earlier if they wanted to take private lessons with him, he hadn’t expected Olivia to ask for one right away, and for Alec to agree with her. He could admire that kind of dedication in a student.
Though it was rather late, and he hadn’t been expecting to run a lesson at the moment, so he’d agreed on the caveat that the lesson would end once he had ‘killed’ the both of them five times.
He had had to make sure that things didn’t end too fast, of course, but the both of them had genuinely done better than he had initially thought that they would.
Even in some of the regular lessons that he had filled in for before, very rarely had any of the students actually realized that he was actively herding them, let alone figure out a way to break away long enough to get an attack in.
And while neither Olivia or Alec had even come close to getting an attack to actually land the both of them had figured out what he was doing surprisingly quickly.
Had the both of them actually been trying to work together, they may have actually gotten close to hitting him, but unfortunately that future had yet to pass.
‘Between the two of them, their feelings of inferiority keep pushing them to keep trying and keep improving. The only problem is that those feelings are also directed at each other. So, neither one can truly break away to work for a proper victory because the other one is usually left trying to handle me alone for a moment and that sets the other off. Olivia’s feelings of inferiority are far more obvious and aggressive, but Alec’s are no less powerful.’ Xyn mentally catalogued the two, listening to the conversation between the two silently with fairly rapt interest.
“So close…”
“That wasn’t close at all, Dius. Are you kidding me?” Olivia huffed, rolling Alec off of her and standing up, dusting herself down as he stood up as well.
“Towards the middle, you did especially well-“
“You mean the middle where I was tripped mid-attack and landed on my face while you used the opportunity to engage the headmaster?” She scowled, her grip on her blade tightening as the memory came to mind.
No matter what she had tried she had just been a sidenote to Alec and his performance that entire bout. It’s like he was trying to mock her by rubbing his natural skill in her face.
“No, I mean right after that where he winded me and you held him off.” Alec denied quickly, shaking his head.
Despite his best attempts, the teen couldn’t help but get slightly aggravated with the pearlescent-haired girl. Why couldn’t she see that he had been pulling her down the entire time? She had been at the top of her game the entire match and he just felt like he was stuck with a jammed wheel the entire time, failing no matter what he tried and how he did so.
“He only winded you because you were pushing him too hard, meanwhile none of my attacks even got close to making contact.”
“Neither did mine. Do you think that I secretly had the power to hit him and just chose not to the entire time? At least you could break out of his cone without assistance.” Alec threw both of his arms out to the side as he argued.
He was just trying to help her calm down and give her a few points of praise. How had it turned into an argument like this where she was doing nothing but getting angrier at him?
“You are completely insufferable! Do you find it amusing to just refute all of my points for the hell of it?”
“For the hell- I’m saying that you were doing better than me!” Alec blinked rapidly and shook his head as he leant back a little, thrown completely off his game by that singular comment.
“By pointing out that I was playing a supporting role for you? I don’t want to hear that kind of thing from a genius like you.”
“Genius!? I’m not any kind of genius what are you even-“
“I’m done.” Olivia snapped, cutting Alec off and storming out of the room with a stiff, silent bow towards Xyn and a slam of the doors.
Left standing in the room, shocked mute by the girl’s words and her sudden departure, Alec could only blink owlishly at the door as he slowly lowered his hand, trying to wrap that entire argument around his head and actually understand what the hell he had said that had pissed her off so badly.
“How about you head back to your room and rest for the night, Alec?” Xyn suddenly suggested, mulling over the argument himself. “It’s fairly late and I think the both of you need some time to cool off before seeing each other again.”
“I- yeah. You’re right. Thank you for the lesson.” Alec muttered in a daze, giving a small bow to Xyn as well and making his way out of the room.
None of that conversation made sense and the more he thought it over the less sense it made. He had been trying to tell her that she shouldn’t be annoyed because she had actually been able to do things while he had required her help to do everything that he had actually managed to do. She was undeniably the MVP of that bout and yet no matter what he said or how he said it, it was like she heard completely different words coming out of his mouth.
As he turned a corner to start going down the stairs of the building he yawned and rubbed one of his eyes. The lethargy from such a high-intensity spar finally caught up to him now that the fighting –and argument– was over.
“Whatever, who cares. We’re just too different to ever get along, I don’t know why I try.”
And by the time that he got back to his dorm room, the teens muttered grievances disappeared in a ‘thump’ of his body onto his bed and the complete lights off of his consciousness. The teen asleep before he could even begin enjoying the comfort of his bed.