Pruned Trees Re-Sprout!! ~ Ragazza Volpe Magica ~

“Yup, I’m gonna kill you,” Rebecca decided upon seeing Shouri with four tuners at his waist.

Shouri, Emily, Elijah, Colette, and all of their Resonators plus the new (temporary) addition to Shouri’s roster in Liza had gathered in the Presidential suite.

“Come on you.” Shouri grabbed Rebecca’s hand. She didn’t refuse, but still maintained her death glare. “Taika, Pacifica.” He motioned for the other two to follow. “Liza, stay here – Colette, keep an eye on her.” He tossed the second fire tuner to the uninformed Maestro.

“What?! Me?! What’s even going on?!” Colette failed to catch the device in time, but thankfully Kaira did.

“No, you’re not making me get along with her. I don’t care how much shit she went through; she fucking deserves it, that bitch,” Rebecca sneered, sitting on the bed, while her three teammates stood in front of her.

“What’s even the problem with her?” Taika questioned.

“She hated me, I could feel it. I know that bitch whispered into Lyle’s ear ‘She’s a Renard, don’t waste your rhythm,’ she made my life even more hellish than it already was,” Rebecca retorted.

Shouri opened his mouth, but Pacifica beat him to the punch. “Even if what you said is true-” She paused, her expression clouding. “-she’s broken,” the otter uttered. Her gaze fell to the empty spot on Shouri’s waist where Liza’s tuner had previously occupied.

“Broken?” Taika furrowed a brow.

“Ah, it’s like, her spirit is crushed. Worse than Rebby was when she first joined us.” Pacifica grimaced. “I’m not sure there’s fixing her if I’m being honest,” she admitted.

“Is she Feroce?” Shouri questioned.

“Not at all.” Pacifica shook her head. “I couldn’t sense it in her.”

That was interesting to Shouri – Feroce was a condition that formed from extreme emotional distress. “That means-”

“-not all Resonators can succumb to Feroce,” Pacifica finished on her Maestro’s behalf. “There must be many that just break,” she theorized.

The room went quiet. Rebecca stood up from the bed and quickly made for the door.

“Rebby-!” Pacifica stepped forward to grab the fox but was stopped by Shouri. “Sho-!”

“Let her go,” was all he said.

Immediately the other Resonators in the suite were on the guard as the previously enraged fox stormed out of the room and stomped towards Liza.

“Hey wait!” Albarich went to grab the fox, but she easily pivoted around him and shoved him away. Next, both Kaira and Ritika attempted to restrain the fox with their sand control, but a burst of fire just resulted in them losing most of their sand as it was melted into glass from the insane heat she was able to put out.

The Maestros couldn’t move – they were powerless as Rebecca stood in front of Liza.

“Shouri! Get in here and do something!” Colette shrieked.

Emily held her hands over her mouth, unsure of what to do. Albarich, Ritika, and Kaira were at the ready, glaring down the fox, who in turn was scowling at the dragon.

Elijah and Zino just sat on the couch, not lifting a finger to intervene. In fact, Elijah almost appeared to be amused by the developments occurring in the suite.

Liza herself offered no resistance or even acknowledgment of the vixen that stood before her.

“Why?” Shouri leaned on the doorframe with Taika and Pacifica by his side.

“She’s gonna-!” However, Colette was cut off by-

SMACK!

-the sound of Rebecca’s hand whipping across Liza’s face. “Wake up. He was using you,” the fox growled at the dragon.

Liza slowly shook her head.

SMACK!

Now both of Liza’s cheeks were red. “Try again. He dumped you for a stronger Resonator, didn’t he?” Rebecca asked. “Except this time, you couldn’t convince him you were needed like you did me.” The Renard bared her fangs at the fallen dragon.

“…ned…”

“What? Can’t hear you.” Rebecca raised her hand to strike the other girl again, except- “Let go!”

Taika held Rebecca’s hand. “You’ve made your point,” the lunar said simply, her eyes glowing brilliantly with blue rhythm.

“H-holy shit…” Albarich stepped back.

“What monstrous rhythm,” Ritika muttered, similarly backing away from the lunar fox.

“Tch!” Rebecca yanked her hand away. “You’re lucky,” the fox grumbled at the comatose dragon, before backing off.

It was now Taika’s turn. Kneeling in front of the dragon, she gently laid her hands on the girl’s cheeks and closed her eyes, a warm glow spreading from them, the pain being eased from the fire Resonator’s beaten body.

“Ah…” Tears poured down Liza’s face before she slumped over.

Colette and Emily jumped, about to rush over, when Pacifica motioned for them to stop. “It’s okay, she’s just asleep,” she advised.

Elijah chuckled. “How interesting. Perhaps I misjudged Miss Taika.” His gaze was fixed on the Lunar healer, who maintained her magic despite the recipient’s fall from consciousness.

“Pacifica is right, she’s not Feroce. In fact, she has the immunity factor,” Colette began.

Liza had been laid in one of the bedrooms to sleep on a real bed and recuperate. In the interim, the group began to compare notes. Shouri’s group huddled by the front wall of the room, Emily’s opposite of Shouri, Elijah, and Zino on the couch, and finally Colette and Kaira on the ground in front of the coffee table.

“Immunity factor?” Taika folded her arms across her chest and her lips curled down in thought.

Colette nodded. “Correct. Shouri, your entire team has this factor. I noticed it when I checked your Rhythm after the first night you were helping me with the Feroce project,” the scholar lowered her head, musing it over. “The immunity factor has only been observed in individuals who have recovered from Feroce already.”

That news was hard to digest. “What?” was all Shouri managed to muster in response.

“That doesn’t make sense.” Pacifica furrowed her brow.

“None of us have had Feroce,” Taika pointed out.

Rebecca remained quiet, stroking her chin.

“See, that’s what I thought too, but you all have it somehow.” Colette frowned. “I don’t know what I’m missing here,” she commented, flipping through a notebook and reviewing her research.

“Well-” Emily spoke up. “-maybe it’s a quality Shouri himself has?” she offered.

“Yeah, those fuckin’ Feroce douchebags were wiping the floor with us, and he just waltzes in and mops them up like they were common Resonator,” Albarich commented.

“It was crazy! It was like their spells were hitting a weakness or something!” Ritika chimed in.

“Shouri cured Zino by punching him straight in the face. I wish I could have seen it myself,” Elijah mused. Zino simply stared at his Maestro in disbelief but refused to comment.

Colette slowly shook her head. “No no, that’s…” she trailed off. “I have to be missing something here.” She mumbled.

“What about that weird dream shit we went through?” Rebecca finally spoke up.

“Weird dream?” Colette’s head snapped up.

Shouri, Taika, and Pacifica looked to their fellow party member. “Remember? With the Cecil thing? Pacifica started having those weird dreams-”

“Like a giant loud Scherzando killin’ ya repeatedly?”

The room went silent, turning to the source of that question: Zino.

“Y-yeah, how did you know?” Pacifica replied quietly.

“’cause I had the same dreams before those fuckin spells showed up,” Zino revealed to the group.

“Wait.” Shouri’s eyes widened. Everything had snapped into place. “Pacifica, you were infected with Feroce by Cecil at that time then!” he realized.

“What?!” Pacifica’s head darted back and forth with her gaze finally resting on her trembling hands. “I… Feroce?”

“You’re fine now.” Kaira approached the other Resonator, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Colette and I are certain you possess the immunity factor.”

Pacifica did calm down, but panic was replaced with confusion. “But I don’t understand,” she squeaked.

“Feroce isn’t just achieved by emotional distress, it’s a rhythm-based illness and you were probing Cecil’s rhythm a lot trying to figure out what was wrong with him. It must have jumped to you while you were doing that,” Shouri reasoned.

Pacifica shook her head still. She remained in shock at this whole situation, despite it being almost two months in the past. Shouri wrapped an arm around her to help steady the otter.

“Did anything else strange happen?” Colette asked, scribbling away in her notebook.

The four on trial hummed in thought, pondering that question. “I mean, we did beat it,” Taika commented after considering the scenario.

Colette’s pen stopped. “What?”

“Oh! I said we beat it.” Taika didn’t understand the significance of that statement, it seemed pretty self-explanatory to her.

Colette stood up. “We? As in all of you?” she inquired. Kaira let out a small sigh and stepped back over to where her Maestro was.

“That’s what she said Colette, what’s the big deal?” Shouri questioned, growing irritated.

“Wait wait. There’s no way,” Emily also came to a realization. “Shouri is an à deux user?” She looked to Colette. Elijah sat up from the couch, an interested smirk on his face.

“Uhhh, anyone care to inform the uninformed here?” Ritika asked, speaking up for the lost in the room.

“It all makes sense!” Colette rushed out of the room, refusing to elaborate any further, and nearly bowling over poor Kaira in the process.

“I’m really starting to hate her.” Shouri glared at the spot once occupied by the pushy academic.

“Shouri, à deux users have a certain disposition towards Resonators. Their rhythm flows freely, uninhibited,” Emily began. “It’s said all of the Seven Heroes had this trait – a pure bond with their partner Resonator.”

Rebecca and Pacifica’s eyes widened before their heads snapped to their Maestro.

“Sho’s…”

“…like one of the Heroes?”

Shouri's face contorted as he tried to digest this information himself. A certain curiosity hit him: “Was one of my ancestors a hero?” he questioned.

“Nope!” Colette rushed back into the room like a runaway locomotive, barely skidding to a halt in front of the coffee table where her notebook lay.

SLAM

The rhythm studies major dropped off the cargo she had run off to gather: a huge bundle of documents. “Not in the slightest!” She pointed at Shouri. “You’re supposed to be average!” she declared.

“Colette, cut the shit – what are you talking about?” Shouri stared down the other Maestro.

“Dr. Vim was curious about your success with curing Feroce and had your lineage traced.” Colette slammed her hand on the stack of papers. “From the data I read through, your dad has low compatibility and your mom has never even touched a tuner,” she revealed. “There is absolutely nothing special about you.” Colette smacked the papers as she spoke for emphasis. “Only you and your sister are the exceptions.”

Emily perked up when hearing Shouri had a sister, but didn’t comment on that information.

Shouri hummed in thought. “Yeah, you got that right,” he replied, unable to refute her claims. “Me and my sister just clicked with Resonators for some reason my parents hate them.”

“Your sister, Aureolin Tomoshibi, right?” Colette asked for clarification, thumbing through some of the documents she had retrieved.

“Yeah, she’s a hell of a fighter. Picked up Damian right off the street and started raking in the dough almost overnight,” Shouri recalled.

“Mhm.” Colette nodded, reading as such in one of the reports she possessed. “She picked up a second Resonator recently, from the looks of it. A solar dragon. Quite interesting.”

That was news to Shouri. “Huh,” was all he could muster up to say. At least it sounded like she was doing well, but it bothered him since every time he tried to call her, she didn’t pick up.

“It is said that the Seven Heroes bonded with their Resonators not as master and servant, but as true equals, and it was that bond that led them to triumph over the great evil,” Elijah waxed poetic, leaning back against the couch.

“Okay, so I have this à deux thing, what’s the big deal?” Shouri asked, redirecting the conversation.

“Well, that finally gives me a reason for your insane growth over the past few months. Your Resonators are getting this incredibly rich, open source of rhythm, and in return, they’re open to you. It’s like you all are constantly on rhythmic training weights,” Colette explained, resuming her previous note-taking.

“Given enough time, I doubt even the Grand Masters would be able to stand up to you in battle,” Elijah chuckled, shaking his head and shrugging.

“à deux users are some of the strongest on Luna. Most of them in royal generations end up being part of the royal court,” Emily added.

The more they spoke about this ‘wonderful trait’ the more he didn’t want to hear it. Shouri shook his head, stepping back. “No,” he spoke quietly. “This is too crazy.”

Before anyone else could stop them, Shouri along with his three Resonators fled, retreating into their bedroom with a loud slam of the door behind them.