The Royal Strikers

Chapter Fourteen: Fury of An Artist

TheNewWorldFool: HO HO HO, everybody, how are you all? TheNewWorldFool and CloudStrif07 coming at ya with a new chapter of The Royal Strikers! Sorry for the delay once again. Metaphor: Refantazio has had me in its snare.

CloudStrife07: As for me, I have been working on a very special one-shot in celebration of 3 years of Tales of Arise, and also 1 year of the Beyond The Dawn DLC. It's called "Tales of Wedding Bells". It's a story that's all about Alphen and Shionne's big day as they are finally getting married three years after the events of the base Tales of Arise game, and I've been working in that one-shot story for an entire year. So, if any of you guys are Tales of Arise fans, please go check it out when you guys have a chance!

NewWorldFool: That being said, these several months have been a long enough break, especially considering I upgraded to a PS5 finally, so now it's time to get our nose back to the grindstone!

Well, I don't think there's really much to go over starting things off. Let us start the game!

Chapter XIV

Fury of an Artist

June 24th, 2017

The Phantom Mobile Interior - The Following Morning

Sumire yawned as her eyelids slowly fluttered open. She had the most pleasant dream last night. She dreamt that she was up on the world stage of gymnastics, at the Olympics. Through all of the sweat, blood, and tears that Sumire was forced to draw during the brutal and merciless expectations of her competition, she ended up coming out on top. She stood on the first place pedestal as she had a golden Olympics medal for gymnastics gently hung over her neck. Sumire watched as everyone amongst the crowd was clapping and cheering to the point where it nearly hurt Sumire's eardrums. However, the claps and the cheers couldn't possibly compare to what came next. Sumire watched as Ren ran out from amongst the crowd, onto the field, and all the way up to the podium to pull her into a tight hug. Sumire had never felt more proud of herself in her entire life; she had finally achieved the dream that she and Kasumi had made together so many years ago, and she's now celebrating that victory with the boy she loved so dearly.

It had been so wonderful... and then she'd woken up.

When Sumire woke up, she felt that there was still someone hugging onto her. Sumire almost wanted to sink into the wonderful feeling of being embraced, thinking that it was still Ren hugging her as he did in Sumire's dream... However, as curiosity suddenly kicked in, Sumire slowly opened up her eyes and came to realize that whoever was hugging onto her wasn't anyone Sumire could have expected... It was Futaba.

Her face turning beet red, Sumire tried to squirm free of Futaba's grip, only for Futaba to try pulling her back in her sleep. Eventually, after a few more tries, Sumire was able to get free of Futaba's grasp.

It wasn't long after Sumire had broken herself free that Futaba had started to wake up shortly after. Soon afterwards, the rest of the girls all began to wake up and stretch out their limbs in order to properly get themselves to be as awake as possible. As the girls all got dressed, Sumire didn't dare to say anything to anyone about what transpired during the time that she and Futaba were both asleep. From what she could tell, it didn't look like Futaba was any the wiser about what happened. It must've just been an impulsive reflex in her sleep that she wasn't aware of. Eventually, all the girls were dressed and were ready to start the day.

Sendai Station - A Short While Later

The entire team of thieves all gathered together at Sendai Station, discussing the plan in regards to gathering intel on their suspected Monarch, Ango Natsume.