Bathed in gold.
A sunflower in a garden of overgrown shrubbery, roots, and trees.
But at that moment, all Hilda could see was a crying flower.
A hurt flower.
...However.
'Huh?'
Hilda was utterly baffled.
What had this girl done for her to apologise so much?
'I'm the one who-'
Yet, at that moment.
With her mouth opening and closing, uttering and repeating;
Like the broken music record in her grandpa's house;
"Sorry. Sorry."
...
The girl was repeatedly saying the same thing, without pause.
Hilda, in all her courageous glory and fantastical understanding of human psychology and the abstract mysteries of the world-!
Well, she had no clue what to do.
Yup.
She just kind of stood there.
In front of this weird girl, she stood and waited with the hope that maybe she'd stop at some point.
But then a minute passed.
'Huhhh?'
Hilda pouted her lips with faintly growing frustration.
Then another.
'...Is she messing with me?'
Her face scrunched up as a vein groaned on her forehead; the bundle of crimson was about to reach its boiling point.
And after almost 3 minutes;
Hilda was fed up.
She rolled up her sleeves, balled her fists, and stepped up to the idiot!
Taking a deep breath, she could almost hear the Commander's tips and tricks on how to beat the crap out of boys who try and woo her!
Her favourite tip was this:
[If one punch isn't enough, throw a second!]
"Shut up!"
Frustrated at this dumb girl, her fist flew straight at her face and-
Pah!
-it impacted right on her jaw, rattling the living hell out of the dummy!
Hilda harumphed, puffed her chest, and pnted her hands on her hips.
'That hurt my hand!'
But she won't show it on her face!
She stood tall above the dazed dummy girl while also sneaking her eyes around;
'If Mommy heard me say a bad word...'
She didn't even want to imagine it!
Brrr~!
Shivers instinctively ran down her spine.
"You done?!" Hilda shouted at the girl, who was dazedly clicking her jaw back in pce with a weird look in her eyes, "Done, I said?!"
The girl's mouth started stuttering again, almost prompting Hilda to raise her fist again.
"Uh, yes..." This time, something else came out of the dummy's mouth.
"Good! Now stop being annoying, or else I'll hit you again!"
"Y, yes..."
"And stop stuttering!"
"Y, y-"
Hilda's disciplinary fist rose.
"Yes!"
"Hmph!" Puffing her cheeks, Hilda held her hand out.
But then the dummy just sat there and stared at it, prompting Hilda to once again raise the...
Grip.
This time around, the dummy learnt faster. She took Hilda's hand, held onto the mask with her other hand, and stood up.
"T, t-"
Hilda silently raised her first.
"...Thank you."
Hilda lowered her fist.
"You're welcome!" Saying that, Hilda turned her gaze to the mask held in the girl's hand, that and the weird bck gloves. She adorably tilted her to the side like a baby bird, it was her first time seeing a normal person carrying one outside of a theatre.
Also, who wears gloves like that?
Thus, she pointed at the object that aroused her curiosity the most, the mask:
"What's that for?"
The girl with the mask hesitated for a moment, then tched it on her face, hiding her facial features beneath it.
"...This."
But that only furthered Hilda's curiosity-
'Ahah!'
-However, Hilda figured it out!
Cheekily smiling, Hilda stepped up to the shorter girl and tapped her arm with her elbow. "Hehe, that's smart!"
'A secret hero! That sounds like fun, I should ask Mommy for one-!'
The girl in question, though, had no idea what she meant by that. She merely shrugged it off then began rubbing her jaw again from under the mask, it was still vaguely misaligned.
'Hm... But Papa might cry again...'
Hilda, roaming in this little bubble of conundrums, grabbed the little girl's hand without a care in the world and dragged her along toward the training grounds. Their steps were mismatched due to Hilda being both older and taller.
This meant the girl behind her almost stumbled a couple of times, but that's the most fun part!
Falling over, running around, having fun...
What else mattered other than that?
...Hm...
'Mommy and Papa!'
A cheeky grin pstered itself on Hilda.
She roamed in her imaginary world, putting together all the best memories she had to create a paradise of sorts;
'Mommy's hugs... Papa's piggybacks... That annoying boy, that other dummy that can't figure out how to use the fluffy sparkly stuff-!'
Nothing but happy memories.
She almost completely forgot about the girl she was pulling along.
However, when she did eventually remember what she was in the middle of doing, she came to a stumbling halt, smmed into the floor, rolled across it like a caterpilr, then flipped back up with a solid nding!
"How's that!"
Hilda harumphed with her fists pnted on her hips.
Pacha~ Pacha~
Dull cps came from the little dumy.
...And Hilda didn't like the noise:
"Take off the gloves and cp again!"
Thus, she ordered.
And the girl...
"B, bu-"
Hilda's disciplinary fist rose.
"...Yes..."
And retracted.
The little sister carefully took off the gloves, revealing her dainty, chubby little fingers;
"Go on, cp!"
Cp! Cp!
With her gloves tucked beneath her armpits, the little sister followed the order and cpped for her. This time, the noise was clear, sharp, and satisfying to the ears. Nodding with a smile, Hilda waved her hand and said;
"You can put them back on now."
The little dummy followed orders well; she put them back on and stood at ease before Hilda.
Hilda, standing at a solid 140cm, 40cm higher than the little dummy, was now curious about something new. "But what are you doing here alone, you little dummy?"
"Dummy...?" The white-eyed little sister was confused, as expected of a dummy.
"Yep, dummy. You. Dummy."
Then Hilda pointed at herself, "Me, smart."
Then, back at the little dummy, "You, dummy."
"Anyway! What are you doing alone? Are your Mommy and Papa okay with it? You're too little to go out alone!"
Hilda measured their height difference with spread hands. "The dummy is..." Pointing out the gap in their height, "This small! How old are you?!"
Sighing, the little dummy held out 5 fingers.
"Five years old?! You shouldn't be out on your own!"
Hilda's panic levels rose. "Your Mommy and Papa will scold you!" She immediately grabbed the bewildered little dummy's hand and dragged her along to the closeby training grounds.
"Until you're as big as me, 10 years old, you shouldn't do that!"
She momentarily turned back to look at the masked little dummy. "Got it?!"
The little dummy repeated her dumb little head nod.
Inwardly sighing at the dummy, Hilda shook her head and continued their adventure through the scary forest.
-----
Weird.
This girl is weird.
Did I make her go crazy?
...Maybe.
She saw my face—she saw its true self. It might have broken her mind...
Holding onto the small dy's hand, I listened to her repeatedly call me a 'dummy' and the sort whilst puffing out her chest with pride.
...
She's 100% showing off her rger chest.
...
I looked down at my tiny pair in comparison.
...
Will the same thing happen to me?
Shivers crackled down my spine, tingling every vein while goosebumps arose on every inch of my skin; no, that can't happen.
"Hey, Dummy! We're here! I'll talk to my Papa for a bit, then I'll py with you until you need to go home!"
Breaking out of the messy path, we stepped into a clearing around a vast, walled training ground.
"W, w-"
The girl's powerful fist shot into the air again, forcing me to swallow my hiccup. "Who's your dad...?"
Hearing that, her ruby-red eyes oozed with swirling lights. They practically dripped with crimson as her face shifted into pride. "The Commander of the Sanctified Knights!"
...???
I don't know much about that being's Domain, but these knights;
I know them.
The Fgbearers of Light; the Domain of Lights' Guardians;
The most powerful orderly knight group in that being's Domain.
...And this girl is their Commander's daughter?
What are the odds of me running into her?
Suspicious—my mind automatically began attempting to connect the invisible dots.
Leaving the breakfast, mother's appearance, the change in pns, happening upon the sidepath and then running into the Sanctified Knights' Commander's daughter.
The series of events was too coincidental;
Is this also a part of your pns, mother?
If so-
You could have just given the order.
My brain froze for a moment.
I shook my head.
Then continued following the daughter.
I didn't have much of a choice; she was much stronger than me and was pulling me around without a care. Plus, it's probably my fault that she went crazy.
Leading us around the walls, she took us through a wide opening into the training grounds. To the side of the training ground was a rge building, seemingly there to accommodate the men and women of the knight's order.
Meanwhile, the middle of this vast area was a massive dirt field that was partitioned into smaller arenas with odd walls.
Some of the partitions had clear walls, almost like gss, allowing you to see into the partitioned field.
However, those that could be seen through were empty, while all the noise came from the blocked training fields. These blocked ones also had gss, but the gss had transitioned into reflective bck gss.
They reflect... Darkness?
The moment we stepped into the open field, the daughter of the Commander and I were veiled in darkness. Like the advent of the night, we were shrouded beneath the shadows of reflective darkness shining from the bck gss.
The light was trapped within the gss walls, the light being the Sanctified Knights.
Then, the bck, reflective gss casts its shadows upon the world outside.
...The Fgbearers of Light, without them, all that shall remain is darkness.
How poetic.
