Two - Vines
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Eve walked ahead of the rest of them down the path, the waldchen's red eyes flicking back and forth. Blauer knew that the young monchen could hear the forest, hear the gossiping of the trees, but she also knew that all three of her monchen were raised by breeders. There was little chance that Eve could understand more than the general gist of what the trees were saying.
If the moss-haired woman didn't seem as anxious as she did, Blauer would have been thinking more deeply about how she'd screwed up things with Roter. Again. Blauer just didn't seem to be able to keep her calm around him.
Roter had, overnight, managed to teach his apparently unteachable monchen the next level of her favourite spell. Rita, a world-class trainer, had spent a few years and got nowhere. Yet, that cute idiot had managed it, like it wasn't even a big deal.
However, that was as much as she could spare a thought for him.
Eve was probably the closest to learning the next big thing, out of Blauer's pack of monchen. The waldchen was slightly older than the others, but all three were incredibly naive. Blauer, herself, had more experience outside the village than they did, which was downright pathetic. However, the waldchen was aware of her deficits and wanted to improve.
Flare and Nixie, on the other hand, felt like they were pretty much gods among mortals. The feuerchen, especially. Somehow, Blissbun coming close to killing Flare hadn't been enough dissuade the woman of her infuriating arrogance. Eve doubted that being forced to pop a rezpill would even teach the damn woman.
It seriously pissed Blauer off.
Partly because someone so innocent acting high and mighty was irritating as crap. However, mostly because her best chance at proving that a monchen could hybridise was through a feuerchen. A creature that was always on the edge of erupting in a conflagration was necessarily unstable. Their cells were the most amenable to what Blauer wanted to do.
Eve suddenly held up a hand, her pointed ears twitching.
Nixie rolled her eyes, bubbles boiling through her hair, and the wassechen went to keep on walking. The waldchen spun as Nixie walked by her, and clenched a fist instantly, "Powder!"
A cloud of pink and purple dust surrounded the wassechen, and Blauer face-palmed as her monchen swayed for a moment before collapsing to the ground. These three... Every single one of them reacted without thinking, and so overboard. Eve could only use her Poison Powder Wind three times a day, and she was wasting it now?
Eve's red eyes didn't even glance at her fallen sister, despite the fact she even called Nixie her sister. They fixed on the shadows of the forest at the edge of the path, and she clenched a fist, ears pulling back. "Pow..."
"Oh?" A new voice said curiously, "I think we've been spotted, Jakob."
"I do believe you are correct, Yiska." A man stated, stepping out and onto the path, hands up. He was wearing a white suit, with a black shirt. His hair was short-cropped, and bright red. He oozed confidence and charm, and his quiet smile did things to Blauer that she didn't want to admit.
Blauer stepped up quickly before Eve could do something else stupid, "Are you a trainer, too?"
"Oh, not anymore." The woman said, as she also stepped into view, displaying a similar deference to her partner. Her hair hung down past her ass, but was the same bright red. She was wearing a black dress, where the bodice was a white underlayer. Blauer honestly felt jealous. There was no way she could pull off such a beautiful thing.
She, herself, was wearing a stupid-simple getup of tan short-shorts, a cheap black t-shirt, and a blue cardigan over the top. She was wearing a pair of rubber shoes, like the ones she'd given to Blissbun. Blauer had never really grasped fashion, but she was pretty sure whatever she wore - she made it worse. Even somehow made the shoes look worse.
"Not... Anymore?" Blauer said, an edge to her voice.
Jakob shrugged, smiling broadly, "Oh, we lost our permits. We didn't spend enough time training for the audits. Too much time looking to do what our monchen wanted, and not enough in research. You can't spoil them, as painful as that is."
Blauer relaxed a little, but the wassechen beside her, didn't. Eve eyed the two suspiciously. Flare, for her part, was poking at her sleeping sister, completely ignoring the strangers. She just wasn't interested.
The trainer knew, though, that something was more than a little off about this encounter. She was pretty sure that they had at least one monchen waiting in the wings. Especially if loyalty was a thing they'd focused on, before they lost their permits.
Most people failed the audits. That, by itself, was no reason to suspect them of anything, but the fights with Roter had put Blauer on edge. If he could use a previously useless monchen to beat her, then anybody might be a match for Blauer's untrained girls.
"Where are you headed?" Blauer asked casually, "Eastre?"
Yiska giggled, "Oh, oh no. We're not going to the city. We just came from there and it was... Boring. So little to do. Not even a trainer to test our limits against. Battling is banned inside the city limits, even though they don't have an arena."
"Yes, no plans for an arena. We tried to propose one be created. They proposed that we might spend a few nights in the gaol." Jakob shook his head sadly, "So we make for Professor Morgenlatte. He would understand the need, and should have a little political sway. However, he lives in some very small village, for reasons he hasn't shared with the wilder world."
Blauer reconsidered them, "Huh. I guess the professor might actually agree with you. And he lives there, mostly because it's harder to check up on him and the monchen he's prepping."
"You know the professor!?" The two exclaimed excitedly.
She rolled her eyes and shrugged with a yawn, "Yeah. I suppose you did introduce yourselves, at least by name. I am Blauer."
"Oh my!" Yiska said in shock.
Jakob stared in surprise, "Oh wow!"
She brushed a strand of her blue hair back and over one ear, smirking at their recognition of her. She was the youngest expert on monchen in history, but she already had several papers to her name. Of course the knew who she was, just like everyone knew the professor.
"We've never heard of you!" Yiska and Jakob said in perfect unison.
Blauer bit her tongue to stop herself from saying something stupid. She'd already had Roter stick her in her place, this morning. She really didn't need a repeat of that pathetic performance. Roter, she could understand underestimating. However, she didn't know these two.
She did know that there was more to them than a first glance gave, and that they had implied they had a monchen with them. One that Eve had noticed, but still hadn't been revealed. Assuming that she could battle these two would be the mistake of an idiot. She needed more information, first.
"Never heard of you, either." She settled for, burying another yawn.
Yiska put a hand to her chest dramatically, "You've never heard of the famous brother and sister duo? Of fantastic fashion, wunderkind wizardry, and monchen magnificence? How tragic a life you must have led! Jakob?"
"Oh, there's no need to showboat, dearest sister." Jakob said with genuine warmth, "We were assistants to Professor Rita, until last year. My sister was destined for a life upon the stage, you can ignore her outbursts. I do."
"Jakob!" Yiska protested.
He shook his head, and then dug into the satchel hanging from his side, pulling out a small cube, about the size of a thumb. He held it out towards Blauer innocently, but as he did, Eve suddenly snarled. Her ears pulled back and she put her fangs on full display.
Flare jumped up from poking at Nixie, and burst into full-bodied flames. "Oh! Do I get to hurt someone, finally?"
Blauer held up a hand quickly, "Chill! Both of you. I don't want another repeat of what happened to the blitzchen! I'm too tired for that crap."
Flare settled a little, flames receding to just her hair. She stood a little ways behind Blauer, her clothes smoking from her brief outburst. They were retardant, but there was a limit to how much they could take before turning to ash. Blauer wasn't looking forward to spending that part of her maintenance budget.
Eve, however, didn't settle.
The waldchen faced the bemused man, with hands clenched. The grass around her was swaying back and forth, and little creeper vines full of thorns were starting to spring up. They crawled up the woman's darker skinned legs, twisting into little anklets, before writhing upwards towards her knees.
The red eyes were fixed on his face, ignoring Yiska, and the object that he was offering. Blauer put a hand forcefully on the waldchen's shoulder and reached for the cube calmly.
Eve grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm painfully, glaring into her trainer's eyes, "Don't."
Blauer shoved her backwards, "Which one of us in charge, Eve?! You promised. I'm the trainer. Your trainer. Back. Off."
"I take it, that you're a virgin, sweetie?" Yiska said lightly, with a small smile as Blauer instantly turned bright red. The woman shrugged casually, "It's a monchen thing. They can find it harder to listen to you, before you really become a woman. Don't take it as an excuse to rush! There's nothing wrong with being a virgin. But monchen have a sort of... Instinct for it. They find it harder to obey. Humans might not notice, but our adorable partners do."
Jakob handed her the cube, "This should help. I was trying to be a little more subtle than my sister. It's something they sell in Eastre City. It's called an enCube. It's a little digital tesseract, containing compressed information about a particular monchen. You take it like a pill, God above knows why they made it have straight edges, and then the information is unpacked and patched into you genetically, so you can't forget it."
"I've used them before." Blauer said in surprise. They were an invention of Professor Morgenlatte, or at least mostly. He'd had her help to test a few. There was actually a good reason for the cube shape - the extra dimensions would bleed out if it wasn't perfectly oriented.
Yiska smiled, "Oh! Excellent. You see, Jakob and I, we have a dream. Of a world filled with monchen, and understanding. Human and monchen, together, without the confused bumbling."
"You did say you lost your permits because you were too friendly with... Whoever is still hiding in the trees." Blauer nodded, speaking in as kind a tone as she could manage.
Jakob gave a small laugh, "Oh, I wouldn't mind her. We're not allowed to speak to her, since losing our permits. She was supposed to stay behind in Eastre City, but I'm sure a fantastic trainer such as yourself understands the difficulty a monchen goes through when they are abandoned. Forcibly or not."
