A Rose by any Other Name (Open!)

The evening sunset was shimmering in the sky above the Academy, in the Rose Garden there stood a solitary, petite form. Ansleigh sighed softly as she walked through the Garden, her curly auburn hair shimmered it's deep, dark red color was almost glowing in the orange sunset. Her right hand trailed softly over the tops of the roses, a bright, wide smile had plastered itself on her face, her naturally curly hair was draped down low over her shoulders and back.  She quietly dipped her hand to the lower half of the stem of a white rose. She raised the white rose and snapped it a bit lower, and slid off the thorns of the rose. She slid the rose behind her right ear and intertwined it with her hair. In a motion very similar to the one that had happened moments earlier, she picked a red rose between two fingers.

Ansleight lifted the rose up to her fac and placed the nose into the tip of the rose, she inhaled deeply and let out a happy sigh, the smile that had already found itself on her face widened up even a little bit more. Her right leg curled up behind her as she went up on her left foots tippy toes. She was wearing no shoes as she continued her leisurely stroll down the rows of roses. She began to hum a little tune to herself as she moved through the area. She dipped one hand into the pocket of her jeans and shrugged her grey hoodie further up over her shoulders. Her voice began to raise in pitch as words began to form.

"You're the inspiration to this precious song."

    Imoyama decided to take a walk before he went off to bed. He was just strolling around the academy along with he rest of the island and ended up in the rose gardens. He could smell the beautifully sweet smells that came from the garden. It was calming and soothing to smell this. He began to hear a voice, a little high pitched but not bad. he continued through trying to relax and take in his surroundings. As he walked through, he got closer to the voice and saw a girl also enjoying the garden. He didn't know if she had noticed him or not but he didn't want to ruin her enjoyable stay with all these roses. So he just casually walked along.

Ansleigh, in fact, hadn't noticed the boy, but she simply continued on with her enjoyment. She continued sniffing the red rose, she paused for a moment and began to ponder her barefoot walk through the garden, but soon enough she continued. Her left hand began to flick back and forth, and in this motion an arc of flame appeared above her head, sort of blending with the sunset. It moved in smooth coordination with her hand.

Ansleigh smiled softly at the arc of flame that continued its pattern above her head. Her voiced singing had stopped, however, she had continued to hum the tune.

It took Miller quite some time to venture from the village to the forest, in fact it was nearing night already. He approved of the time change though, it was much easier on his light sensitive eyes. As he exited the treeline he began to approach what seemed to be a garden of some kind. He didn’t particularly cared for plant life, so he stomped right over it continuing his walk until he feasted his eyes on the large castle looking school. “I finally made it!” he announced.

Miller was then quick to notice the girl that was wandering around with an arc of flame over her head. Naturally he was terrified by the sight alone and hopped backwards a little bit destroying another patch of flowers. He drew his bladed arm out in front of himself to defend himself if need be. The girl wasn’t necessarily close to Miller, but it looked as though he was in her line of vision. He barely gave any notice to the other person wandering around the garden due to his attention being focused on the woman wielding fire.

After walking through the garden, Imoyama comes out relaxed and refreshed and decides to head over to the lake. But before he left he had to get another good sight of the rose garden. It was beautiful and enlightened anything in or around it. He picked a rose and began to sniff it. He took such a large whiff of it that he sneezed and burned the flower with the electricity in his hand. With the rose almost in ashes he set it down near the exit and left. He left just a little depressed because such a great thing had to die.

Ansleigh stopped her flames momentarily as she caught a flurry of movement a bit further away. She blinked and began to move towards it, her head tilted to the side.

"Hey... Hey!"

Her walking soon turned into a steady jog towards the person who was quickly coming easily into her field of vision, at this point she hesitated for a moment before breaking into a full sprint towards the man who looked to be holding a large blade.

The flames surrounding the woman were quick to disappear, but as soon as they did she began to shout at him and ran straight for him. Normally anyone would think that she might not have any bad intentions if she put away her fire, but Miller wasn’t going to take the chance. She could be putting away her flames so that she could bring them back when she got close and catch him off guard. He knew better than that and he wasn’t going to let her harm him.

Miller immediately turned the other direction and began a large stride to start up the fastest sprint he could possibly pull off. As though the plants were working against him for the vengeance of their crushed brethren, the weeds and stems tripped him up and caused him to face plant straight into a patch of strongly scented flowers. His head whipped back up as he tried to wipe the strong smells out of his nose furiously with his only arm. He twisted his body around to see where his potential attacker was. He knew he wouldn’t have enough time to get himself up, so he hardened his skin to avoid any physical abuse to his body.

Ansleigh quickly slid to a stop in front of the fallen boy, she eyed the boy up and down, taking stock of each and every inch of the boy. She walked over to him and knelt down, her right hand hovered over him. After a few moments of this her hand gently touched down on the back of his Hamid, fingers brushing through a few tangled strands of his hair. She reached over and grabbed onto his shoulder, slowly flipping him over.

"Hey... Hey. You okay? That was quite the fall you just had."

She supported his head with her hand, the other sliding down his face. She looked at the blade on the arm, head tilting to the left. Ansleigh slowly closed her eyes in a blink.

"Wow..."

It seemed as though his tactic didn’t work, the girl was quick to catch up with him and it seemed as though she was analyzing his body. He couldn’t comprehend why she would other than for devious purposes against him. He reverted from his defensive form to allow his body to have free movement. His bulbous black eyes stared at the woman, his jawline gritting as he did. His breath was sort of heavy, though escaping only through his nose. His only hand planted itself in the ground as he pushed his back off of the ground so that he was almost sitting in an upright position, though his torso was slightly slanted.

“Why are you touching me?!” he questioned in a panicked tone as he tried to inch himself away with his hand going backwards in direction. “I’ll be fine, just stay back” he spoke as his cheek twitched due to the thorns stuck in it. Given her lack of hostility, Miller could figure that she might not be looking for trouble, but he still felt he couldn’t trust her. He’d already been attack during the course of the day, he wasn’t going to let it happen again, though last time it was a horde of children not a one-on-one sort of thing. She had the advantage of fire however.

Ansleigh's right eyebrow slowly rose and her mouth formed an unamused flat line. She nodded and pulled her hands back, she stayed on her knees for a few moments but soon came to her feet, making it even more obvious than before that she was a rather tiny lady. Both of Ansleighs hands came to her hips and she made quite the imposing figure of sass. Her head tilted to the right as she waited for him to do what he would.

"Fine then, if you don't want any help you can just go ahead and get up yourself. I can wait."

The unamsued line of her mouth slowly twitched and tilted upwards into a slight smirk. Her right hand reached up to readjust the white rose to fit behind her ear a bit better. As both hands came back to rest on her hips it was plain to see that she was on the defensive side of things now, eyes locking on the blade.

The woman seemed to challenge him on his previous statement that he could help himself. His cold black eyes watched her ease to lift herself up and then he looked back down at himself. “Alright then.” His gaze focused at his blade as he raised it only to jab it into the ground so that he could use it as a crutch. His entire weight of his body pushed down on the sword as he lifted himself upwards. When he was finally stood onto his own feet, it easy to spot how much taller he was in relation to the girl.

He began to pick at the thorns on his face like a teenager with a bad complexion would to their acne. His freshly cut nails weren’t quite sharp enough to pick them out of his check’s flesh, so he quickly seized his attempts thinking that it’d be best to pick them out when he had the proper equipment to. It still caused his face to twitch slightly as though his brain thought it helped in getting them out.

“Why were you chasing me?” he questioned with a bit of a concerned look on his face. He was more so concerned for himself than he was for the girl in this case.

Ansleigh placed her right hand on her hip as her right eyebrow slowly lofted with a look of interest on her face , her left hand soon mirrored her right, eyes locking upwards on the tall mans eyes. Her lips formed into a deep frown and she scoffed.

"Well let's see, it looked like you were holding a massive blade, you began to flee the moment that I began to walk towards you, and, perhaps, I simply wanted to talk to somebody."

She shifted her weight from her right leg over to her left, her toes periodically spread out and retracted.

"I apologize if that offends or scares you, but really, you don't seem like the kind of person who would be afraid of someone like me, you know, given our size difference and all."

Miller swiped the small bits of dirt off his blade as he listened to his attacker’s reasoning behind chasing after him. Regardless of his retaliation, the woman still made movements toward him before he could run away. Though, she was walking in his direction before he showed up or so he assumed since he didn’t see her until he was in her sights.

He had to lower his eye level in order to see the woman correctly and by the looks of it she had to do the opposite as well since their size difference was nearly a foot. “If you were already making judgments based on the weaponry on my body, why would you assume I’d be someone safe to speak to?” he questioned not completely understanding her statement. He left his blade to his side once he finished wiping it clean.

“Size doesn’t matter with your kind. A good majority of you have abilities that could suppress a body builder twice my size. Given that you’re able to wield fire I have every reason to be afraid” he explained in a simple tone still with a slight bit of a panicked undertone. He too also wielded a slight frown.

"Hmm... well let's see, I began running your direction, and directly after I began to run you tried to escape and I figured, eh, probably not necessarily dangerous if he's scared of a girl my size coming after him. Besides that, I was extreeeeeemely curious as to who you were. And sure, I can use fire, but I only do it for defense and occasionally for entertainment, so quit being so paranoid!"

Ansleigh then put on an actual smile, one that simply didn't quite reach her eyes. Her weight continued to shift from leg to leg as she had the conversation with the blade-man.

One end of Miller’s mouth twitched a little bit as the woman smiled at him, it was the best he could do to return the expression. He hectically began to scratch at his thorn covered cheek as the irritation was becoming a bit too much for him to simply ignore. It didn’t change much, in fact if anything it made the slivers sting a bit more. “Using such a power for recreational purposes would be a bit irresponsible given the damage you could do, would it not?” He questioned in a sort of lecturing tone.

Miller’s attention was quickly caught when she mentioned that she was curious of who he was. Given the way she spoke, it seemed like she’d never seen him around school before. “Wait, you’ve never seen me before? How long have you been a student here?” he curiously asked the woman, almost sounding shocked. Given his appearance, it’d be unlikely that she would have simply forgot.