"Who are you calling gloomy? And for the record... I have my own connection to that Rover." Phrolova bit out the words through clenched teeth.
She didn't know why, but Camellya was pissing her off. Protecting the seed I've taken a liking to.Only I'm the one stalking. What was that supposed to mean?
I was here first! Yet she talks like he belongs to her. What a presumptuous woman! Without realizing it, Phrolova had delivered a textbook losing-rival monologue in her own head.
"Oh? And what exactly is your relationship with the Rover?"
"In the past, they made me a promise. One they haven't kept."
She'd meant to say none of your business. But the words that left her mouth were different, and she wasn't sure why. Her gaze drifted to the Spider Lily baton in her hand, her thoughts pulling her somewhere distant.
Camellya raised an eyebrow, utterly unimpressed.
"That's it?"
"...What?"
"How boring. Clinging to the past like that, what's the point? Why obsess over something that's already over when you could throw yourself into the present? Like... what we're doing right now!!"
A blade erupted from her palm, woven from interlocking red vines, a single vivid Camellia blooming at the hilt. She charged Phrolova without hesitation, swinging straight for her face.
"!!!"
Phrolova snapped her Spider Lily baton up to block. The slender wand looked fragile but held firm against the strike with ease.
"Come on! Let's keep going! Forget a promise you can never fulfill. Forget a past you can never reach. This, right here, two lives crashing against each other, this is what's real! This is what makes the blood sing!"
"I see. We really are incompatible."
Phrolova's expression darkened as she studied the girl lost in the ecstasy of combat. Those words, that philosophy. She understood now. Camellya was her polar opposite in every way that mattered.
Not just personality. Their core beliefs stood in direct opposition.
She pursued the past.
Camellya drowned in the present.
"A person's past forges who they are now. And people like you, so desperate to live in the moment, are usually running from a history too ugly to face. I can promise you this." Her voice carried a weight that seemed directed at more than her opponent. "The harder someone tries to abandon their past, the more certain it is to come back for them one day."
She parried Camellya's vine-blade aside and drew an X in the air with her baton, regarding the Camellia girl with open contempt.
Camellya didn't flinch. She laughed.
"Sure. I'll be waiting when my past comes knocking. I'm curious what it looks like. But whatever it is... it's got to be better than someone who clings to yesterday and lies to herself about why."
"What. Did. You. Just. Say?"
"Ooh, someone's getting worked up. Someone's getting woooorked up~"
Camellya's grin was pure provocation as she watched Phrolova's composure crack in real time.
Was she doing it on purpose? Of course she was.
A furious, committed enemy was infinitely more fun to fight than one looking for the exit. And it worked. Phrolova no longer had any intention of leaving.
"Shut up."
Her baton swept through the air. Countless Spider Lilies drifted on the wind and settled onto the nearby Tacet Discords. In an instant, they fell under her control and swarmed toward Camellya in a frenzy.
She was going to teach this insufferable Camellia a lesson. Show her exactly why flowers bloom red.
The next second, Camellya turned red herself.
"Self-deceivers, become fertilizer for Camellias!"
The ultimate move callout alone was enough to make Phrolova's eye twitch wildly and veins pop on her forehead. Then Camellya's hair and eyes blazed crimson as she shifted into her second form without a moment's hesitation.
Vines erupted from her body, skewering the nearest Common Class Tacet Discords before they could react. The Elite Class ones that closed in fared no better, each one swatted away by a single lashing tendril that sent them tumbling end over end.
And she wasn't done.
A thin scarlet vine extended from her foot and hooked onto a high branch overhead. Two more lengthened from her hands. Suspended in midair, she began to spin.
"Ahahaha! This dance is only getting started!"
The long vines in her hands whipped outward like twin flails as she rotated, cracking the air with a sound like gunshots.
Everything within a fifteen-meter radius took the barrage. Tacet Discords. And Phrolova.
"This fighting style is absurd."
She ducked behind a thick-skinned Elite Class Tacet Discord and pulled another into position to shield her flank. Between the two living barriers, she managed to weather the storm.
But watching Camellya rampage through her crimson form, power output surging far beyond what it had been, Phrolova's eye twitched. It struck her that this woman's energy would fit right in at Fractsidus. The sheer unhinged commitment, at least, scored a perfect ten.
"This is going to be a long composition."
Rover's hunting spree earlier in the day had thinned the local Tacet Discord population considerably. She was running low on puppets. From a raw ability standpoint, Phrolova outclassed Camellya by a wide margin. Possibly several wide margins.
But there was a problem.
She was, at heart, a homebody who hated going outside. Her Forte leaned toward support and control rather than direct combat, and her fighting technique lagged well behind Camellya's.
The Camellia fighter didn't just have superior technique. She was the type who'd bet her life without blinking.
The result was a stalemate, perfectly and frustratingly balanced.
While the two flower women tore into each other, however, both Rovers had already returned to Jinzhou. Back at Yangyang's little house, after a full day of killing, they were ready to wash up and collapse.
...
"Ahh, thanks again, Scar. We're rich."
"As expected of an international terrorist. That bounty's no joke."
Once back in Jinzhou, Sanhua had thrown Scar into a cell. Then she'd transferred the bounty that had been sitting on the Huanglong government's official wanted list straight to the two of them. As a prominent member of Solaris-3's most notorious terrorist organization, his price tag was... substantial.
The number on Rover's Pangu Terminal had gained nine digits.
They exchanged a giddy high-five.
Abby popped out with stars in its eyes, muttering about all those Shell Credits, about renting out Panhua's entire restaurant tomorrow.
"What a generous guy. Gives us his powers, then pays us on top of it. Scar, buddy, enjoy the sewing machine. We'll think of you fondly."
"He's practically our benefactor at this point." She glanced toward the window. No prying eyes, no unsettling presence lurking beyond the glass. "The stalkers seem to have clocked out for the night. Looks like we'll sleep well."
The surveillance had lifted. Good news all around.
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