ROSES HAVE THORNS

Ayako stood alone in the shattered ring. Her gaze burned with a quiet rage of restraint as she watched Emelie’s retreating figure. It took everything she had to fight down the overwhelming urge to chase after her and force her to finish what she had started.

Emelie, unaffected by the daggers being stared into her back, casually strolled back to the benches. When she reached her teammates, she stopped in front of a wide-eyed, mouth hanging open, Zack, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

"Looks like you’re up, senior. Make us proud."

Zack couldn’t believe what he was hearing as he looked at Emelie in disbelief. He slowly turned his head to look at the arena, where Ayako was currently radiating a dark aura of plain frustration, and then looked back to his junior, who simply offered him a cheerful wink.

Zack nervously pulled up his red scarf, covering the lower half of his face. "Hey, uh... can I just forfeit? Like, right now?"

Amber slid up next to him and curved her eyes into a sweet, yet dangerous smile.

"Of course you can. But then you’re going to have to deal with me after all of this is over. I wonder which is worse for you~? Pick your poison, Zack."

"You’re too cruel, Prez."

*Gasp* "Cruel?! Me?! I’m the nicest girl you’ll ever meet! Isn’t that right, Vicky?"

Victor looked at him deadpan and pushed up his glasses. "That’s right. Now pull up your socks, Zack, and go out there and represent Eldoria like you’re supposed to."

"You can do it, Zack!" Summer cheered with encouragement.

"Yeah, show them what you’ve got!" Junior threw a small fist into the air, while Lilly gave him multiple supportive nods from the back.

"Haaaa... Alright, alright, I get it. Thanks for the support, guys." Zack adjusted his scarf and slowly began to make his way toward the arena.

As he walked away, Autumn marched over to Emelie. She stood right in front of the silver-haired girl with her arms crossed tightly over her chest as she glared down at her.

"What?" Emelie raised an eyebrow.

Autumn stared at her for a long, silent moment, before clicking her tongue in disgust.

"You really are a piece of shit," she snapped, before turning on her heel and marching back to sit next to her sister.

Emelie watched her leave when a small, dry chuckle escaped her lips. A soft green light gathered around her hands as she began to knit her own minor cuts back together. "... You don’t have to tell me twice." she murmured to herself.

Zack stopped several yards away from Ayako, who was looking down at the ground with her hair completely covering her face and her shoulders tense.

"Hey there, uhm... Izumi..san? Looks like we run into each other again, huh?"

No reaction.

"Don’t worry, I won’t run away this time."

His dark mana flared and he clapped his hands together.

Suddenly, every single shadow from every dark corner of the cracked arena, along with the shadow stretching from Zack’s own feet, began to shift and expand upward. The darkness climbed toward the sky and weaving together to form a massive dome that began to seal the entire arena in pitch-black darkness.

Before the dome could fully close, Zack offered a quiet smile. "Welcome to my territory."

["WHOA!"] Commentator Ken screamed as the darkness sealed them from view. ["IT LOOKS LIKE ZACK IS DEPLOYING WHAT SEEMS TO BE HIS SIGNATURE MOVE! With this, he has total control and mastery over the fight!"]

["That’s a very smart move,"] Christy noted. ["In the dark, a swordsman’s visual advantage is like, suuuper neutralized. But this is Ayako we’re talking about. Who knows what she’ll pull off!"]

"Looks like Zack is going all out right from the start." Lily watched with interest.

"Will it be enough, though?" Summer interlocked her finger anxiously.

"Zack is strong!" Junior insisted, his eyes bright with hope. "And Ayako– Errr... Izumi-san is already tired from her fight with Emelie! He’s definitely going to win–"

The shadow dome began to shift.

Then, it slowly began to unravel, peeling away from the top down like a dissolving curtain. As the silhouettes inside were revealed, the seventy spectators gasped.

Ayako was standing perfectly upright. In her left hand, she held a beaten unconscious Zack up by his scarf with her katana.

With a bored sigh, she tossed his limp body toward the waiting healers, before turning her cold gray eyes back toward the Eldorian bench.

"Next."

"""YEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!"""

The Myrian crowd erupted into a deafening roar of triumph.

["E-EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT JUST HAPPENED IN THERE!"] Ken yelled, looking completely flabbergasted. ["One thing is for certain! Izumi Ayako is far from done!"]

Feeling extra pissed off, Autumn stood up from the Eldorian bench, her green eyes flashing with anger. "I’ll put an end to that gorilla with a sword."

"Autumn, please be careful," Summer looked up at her sister with worry.

Autumn gave a firm nod, gathered a current of wind beneath her boots and shot into the air, flying gracefully toward the center of the arena before landing with a soft hiss of air.

"Hmmm... You’re small and cute."

"Shut up, gorilla!" Autumn’s face flushed with anger as she pointed a stiff finger at Ayako.

"... And you’re loud. Just like Ryuuji."

Without another word, Autumn unleashed a devastating gale. She swept her arms forward, and a giant, swirling torrent of razor-sharp wind, cut across the stone, tearing up the loose debris and launching it toward Ayako like a wall of flying blades.

Ayako simply tilted her body and clicked open her katana by an inch as she unleashed a vertical air slash that cleanly split Autumn’s gale down the middle, letting the wind rush harmlessly past her sides.

"W-Why you–!" Autumn gritted her teeth.

She manifested several pressure wind spheres and launched them in a crisscross pattern to throw off Ayako’s tracking. At the same time, she manipulated the air pressure around Ayako’s lungs, trying to suffocate her.

Ayako sprinted forward and effortlessly weaved through the oncoming wind spheres. When the sudden drop in air pressure threatened to restrict her breathing, she simply gathered her own wind mana, forcing a fresh pocket of air into her path as she closed the distance.

Autumn quickly levitated, taking to the sky to keep her distance.

She thrust both hands downward and created a rotating vacuum that attempted to pull Ayako off her feet.

However, Ayako slammed the tip of her sheathed katana into the stone which anchored herself against the howling wind as she looked calmly up at the floating girl.

*Grrrr* "Don’t get cocky!" Refusing to back down, Autumn crossed her wrists, drawing upon more mana.

The howling winds around her compressed and spun so fast they began to whistle a high-pitched tune. With a fierce shout, she launched a barrage of invisible vacuum-sealed air lances straight down at the floor.

WHOOSH—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The impacts shattered the stone wherever Ayako stepped.

The Heiress was forced into a high-speed sprint, dodging the invisible lances by mere inches. She moved in an erratic zigzag across the arena with her katana drawn just enough to deflect the stray shockwaves that threatened to knock her off balance.

"You can’t keep dodging forever, gorilla!" Autumn screamed, dropping her altitude slightly as she slammed both palms together.

As the air currents shifted, a massive twister-hurricane materialised directly beneath Ayako, engulfing her form in a column of debris and suffocating pressure. The tempest began to lift the stone shards and grinded them together like a blender.

Inside the swirling chaos, Ayako remained perfectly composed. She sank into her stance and let her left hand gripping the scabbard while her right rested on the hilt.

SHING!

With a draw so fast it left an afterimage, Ayako swung her blade in a full, horizontal circle. A razor-sharp ring of compressed water exploded outward from her position, slicing through the eye of the twister.

The pressure differential popped the hurricane like a balloon, scattering the trapped stone fragments across the ring.

Autumn gasped as the shockwave of the collapsing wind pushed her back in the air. Before she could regain her bearings, Ayako was already leaping off the ground, using the falling debris as stepping stones to close the gap.

"S-Shit!" She pulled wind close to her body to form a propulsion system, which she then shot backward through the air. Simultaneously she threw out twin arcs of wind blades that sliced through the air below at the approaching Myrian.

Ayako parried the first blade with the flat of her katana and ducked under the second, her momentum barely slowing down.

She flipped in mid-air and landed lightly back on the arena floor before staring up at her floating green-haired opponent.

"You’re good. But you’re not ’Emelie good’."

Snap.

"SHUT UP!"

Autumn’s green eyes glowed with wild, unrestricted mana as she flew higher into the sky.

She threw her arms wide and gathered every single atmospheric current in the stadium. The clouds above began to swirl as she prepared a devastating, city-level hurricane, intending to flatten the entire arena.

Ayako sighed, her fingers wrapping around her hilt. She didn’t look up as she drew her blade.

With a swift, horizontal slash, Ayako unleashed a wave of blazing hot fire that shot straight into the sky. The heat of the attack expanded the air, disrupting and dismantling Autumn’s gathering hurricane before it could even form.

"W-What?! What did you do?!"

Before she could recover and try again, Ayako’s form scattered into a cloud of pink sakura petals that rose rapidly toward her.

"Stay back! Get away from me!" Autumn unleashed a defensive blast of wind to blow the petals away.

But the pink leaves defied the gale, continuing their relentless path toward her.

Autumn quickly gathered her wind around herself to form a dense, spinning shield of air. To her horror, the moment the petals touched the shield, they began to slice through the wind currents, unraveling her defense.

That was when she noticed a shadow falling from above.

"No–!" She looked up.

Ayako was hovering in the air above her, her katana raised. With a single brutal downward strike using the flat of her blade, she struck Autumn point-blank directly across the shoulder.

crack—BOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!

The force of the blow sent her crashing straight down into the arena, creating a fresh crater.

"AUTUMN!" Summer screamed from the bench.

Ayako landed gracefully beside the crater. She bent down, picked up the unconscious girl’s body, and tossed her toward the medical priests.

She wiped a light sweat from her brow, sheathed her blade, and turned her gaze back toward the Eldorian bench.

"Next."

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