I’ve played every Fire Emblem game except for FE5, spinoffs included. I’ve been in love with the series for 15 years. FE10 is my favorite mainline game!
No noteworthy triggers that I think will come up in this space. Happy to tag basically anything for literally anyone. Just lmk—you can even send me an anon message if it’s more comfortable. No questions asked.
If I’m committing a faux pas or doing something that bothers you, tell me! I promise that I’m chill. Like to think I’m pretty cognizant of the fact that I unknowingly make mistakes sometimes.
About Emma:
"The real fight's still to come! My journey's not over yet - and it won't be until the day I earn my pegasus knighthood!"
I'm roleplaying Emma as post SoV and post Cipher. I play her as having been recruited, so she would recognize the rest of the recruitable cast and prominent villains the players interact with.
I'm taking her characterization from a marriage of her dialogue in SoV, Cipher Frontier, and Let's Go! Cipher. I keep all three of them in mind when it comes to characterizing her.
Emma is a world-hopper! She is a little scatterbrained, but does have basic knowledge of the events of most FE games and is especially familiar with Hoshido, Nohr, and Valentia, having spent most of her time in these places. But if you're a particularly noteworthy figure in your canon, she might know about you.
My Emma is of mixed heritage, and Emma / Ema are both correct spellings of her name. I will mainly be using the former, but may switch to the latter when threading with other Hoshidans.
Emma is 13 at the start of Cipher, and I am playing her as age 16 here, after three birthdays at the academy. I probably am not comfortable shipping her with your character unless they're her age since she's such a baby—sorry!
Related to the above, Emma does often internally or externally compliment other muses' appearances (e.g. calling people cute, pretty, gallant, etc). This is an act of admiration and entirely platonic! If you aren't comfortable with it lmk, but rest assured it isn't her crushing on your muse or anything 👍
Emma has a good point. The odds were 50% - one right, and one wrong. They had picked wrong the last time. One might think they have stronger odds of getting it right this time, but it's still 50%. It's still one right, and one wrong door. Nothing about their decision last time should have effected how the choice might be made this time...
So, Niamh find a good place to keep the key, and turns away the temptation of what it might open for the time being. Studying at home would provide them an advantage for the next that either might encounter one of these. Perhaps it might even give a clue to how to face these ever changing threats next time, too.
"I'll look into it..." she confirm as well with her voice. she's truly fortunate that the two of them made it out of that mess in one piece. She looks to the rising sun, the light providing more clues about what exactly had went on while she was knocked out.
"...and, you'll tell me about those super moves. Ok?"
Niamh can tell that this will be a story to remember.
She thinks she feels weirder without a partner than she would without a weapon.
As Emma creeps through the dark, lance in hand, she feels slow. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she is aware that she is moving no more slowly than she usually does in her day to day—but out here, she is especially aware not of her current speed, but her potential and comparative. The crunch of the leaves beneath her feet, the rustling of creatures in the brush, and the chirp of nearby crickets are all left surreal situationally; on a mission, she never hears such things in such close proximity. From the start, after all, her training has always been for the air.
Then, silence. They kind that comes from quieting prey.
Unbelievable though it may be to her, there is always something weaker, something lower on the chain. Maybe there were a time when she were a young enough girl that her frolic through the woods wouldn't send creatures scattering, even if the hooves of her pegasus always would have. She is not that girl anymore.
Because even on her own, Emma, too, is a predator to some things.
-
"Are you sure you want to take this one on?" the staff asks her. "Maybe you didn't infer, but you won't be able to take a mount with you. The cave complex is too narrow at its entrance."
The girl nods, because she did infer, actually. "I wanna do it anyway. If I can learn to do it on my own, I'll be even stronger when I'm working together with a partner, right?"
The woman frowns. "A mission isn't the time to be learning."
She's not sure about that. She's learned way more in a real fight than anywhere else.
-
The girl sidles through the gap in the face of cliff side, wondering if anyone bigger than her would've been able to get in here anyway. Wondering how whatever is in here is managing to get out to disappear people, too. But if she knew anything, she knew that danger came in all shapes, sizes, and times.
Through the cavernous dark, she treads. Forcing bravery into tentative steps, afraid of the dark a couple years past when she ought to be.
Ten minutes in, she realizes the tinny smell in the air that has bit-by-bit become stronger is iron. Five minutes later, Emma realizes that she hears steps even when she stops walking. Two more, panting.
Her breath catches in her throat when she sees the shadow. Gangly, lithe, starved enough that she can see its ribs even through the dark. Standing quadrupedal, still larger than her regardless. Mangy fur stuck together with dried blood and viscera. It raises its sticky, mangy hackles. Subconsciously, Emma hunches her shoulders. It's the wrong move—she ought to be taking the opportunity to move first.
She doesn't, and so that opportunity is seized from her. It closes in to show its fangs first.
-
That same staff member comes to see her off on the night she departs.
Back at home, when she had been a trainee green as could be, someone had always seen her off, and someone had always been there to welcome her back. When she had come here initially, that trend had continued. But each year, it happens a little less.
The worriers still come, though. Always.
"Be careful. They say it's a crafty thing," the woman stresses. "Given the rumors, it's likely stronger than you."
Emma doesn't really need a reminder. Most things she fights are stronger than her.
-
It's bigger than she is. Almost definitely stronger. And clearly, faster too.
With a partner, the playing field would be even. Without one, there is only one practical conclusion: if she doesn't have someone to lift her up, she just needs to bring them down to her level. It's a dirty tactic. The her of a few years ago would protest; Emma, thirteen, would call it cheating, sly. Shrewd, if that were a word in her vocabulary.
In practice, one rarely has the privilege to consider such priorities in a fight if they actually want to win it.
An average girl, many of whose greatest boons were banes in the context of who she wanted to be, wouldn't win in a fair fight. So she shoves her lance into the meat of the beast's thigh, and twists. It wails, and she rips her weapon from its flesh. She feels bad that it hurts.
"Sorry!" She hisses an apology, genuine, under her breath. "I'll try to end it quickly. Like a real knight would."
A real knight probably wouldn't have to resort to things like this. So maybe this is a stopgap—or maybe she'd never be one of those, anyway.
-
Truth be told, she isn't sure how she feels when people worry about her. She gets it—she knows she has yet to really prove herself, and she knows she has a long way to go. Emma is still a trainee on her best days, and a girl on her worst.
"Don't worry," Emma tries to play it off. "I'll be back by dawn, promise. And if I think 'whoa, there's no way I'm winning this one', I'll run. I'm pretty good at that!"
She knows from experience it's the only reassurance she can offer that adults will actually believe.
-
Emma leaves a smear of blood behind when she emerges from the cave.
It's not hers. Fighting from atop a pegasus afforded her a distance she did not have today—she isn't used to the sticky feeling of not-yet-dried blood. The feeling makes her scrunch her nose, unconsciously flicking her wrists to try to dry her hands. But it's not intolerable, and for each time it happens, it'll be a little less intolerable than the last. In due time, she will become who she needs to be.
Because even on her own, Emma, too, is a predator to some things.
Niamh looks to the key that rests in Emma's palm, and then to the surrounding area. That's why it's so quiet? Had she really taken everyone else that posed a threat down while she was out?
It's less a matter of whether or not Emma could. Niamh knows Emma can bring the best of herself when it counts the most. But her, alone, fighting them off while ensuring that Niamh did not sustain further injury was not an easy task. Niamh has to express her thanks in some way once they're out of here.
And speaking of, she looks again to the key. It's similar to the one that they saw before, and had two different doors it could be used on.
So what was causing Emma to pause?
"But...?" She repeats back, slowly sitting up. "There has to be a place somewhere...you can be the one to use it, if you want..."
She pauses, looking herself for any sign of a door, or anything that might have a lock fastened to it. "I'll be ok...thank you for stopping them..."
A part of her does wish she could have seen this in action. A simple curiosity from a researcher curious about how those adversaries might have handled the losing fight.
She half expected this outcome. Of course Niamh would want to see it through to the end—she was maybe the only person whose curiosity held a candle to Emma's own. Beat within an inch of her life, she'd probably still want to stick around to see things through to the end. Otherwise, it's kind of a waste, isn't it?
Lately, Emma has a hard time thinking of things that way.
"I'm beat, though," She says, scratching her now-messy head of hair. She's not entirely lying; she's not confident she could pull all this off a second time. "If this time is anything like the last one, we're just going to get another fight, aren't we? I already pulled out all the stops on this one. Every super move I've got."
A rare breeze blows through. Sunlight begins to shift through the trees' leaves overhead. Day has arrived.
"So, I was thinking..." she introduces her idea as enthusiastically as she can with what she's got left in her. "Maybe we could keep the key, and you could research it? You're a genius, so you could figure out what it's all about. I bet you're the only one who could!"
She hears Emma's voice just fine. Concerned she sounds, and she doesn't blame her. She thinks...yes, Niamh knows that she had been knocked out. Injured by an archer, if she recalls right, though her mind still seems to be catching up to all that she missed.
As she does, Niamh silently remarks about the quiet. Emma's not a quiet person, and if she were trying to hide them both, this risked revealing their location. But as her vision adjusts, she pieces together that they haven't moved far from where she had fallen.
Which begs the question: where were the enemies that had surrounded them?
"Emma..." her voice is hoarse, forgotten for a moment how to be used. But she brings a hand towards her face, coughing into her sleeve to have it sorted out.
"You're...ok..." Not a question, but relief.
An actual question, though. "...what happened..." Her injury sends a jolt of pain through her body, and she winces.
Niamh wakes up, and Emma lets out a breath, wiping the sweat from her brow.
She'd already known she was still alive—the girl didn't know that much about healing, but she knew how to check a pulse. Still, it'd been long enough that Emma had begun to commit herself to the possibility of carrying her back herself. She might still have to, but at least if she does, she'll have someone to talk to.
"They kinda got you." She responds, with a sheepish smile.
She figures that's not a very good explanation on its own, though. "But I got them all! All three of them," she elaborates, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. She sounds more relieved than proud. Now that the adrenaline has begun to leave her, it almost feels like a distant memory. There's a disconnect between the Emma that could do things like that, and the Emma here. "They must've been pretty tired after all the chasing us around that they had to do, eheheh. I popped a couple arrows in 'em and it was lights out!"
She pauses for a moment, before retrieving something from her satchel.
"The last big guy dropped this when I got him, too." She holds out an ornate key in her palm. "But..."
The uncertainty wasn't good. Actions hesitate and falter when there is uncertainty. Neither could afford that, not now. If for Emma's sake, Niamh needed to focus, and remain strong despite the oncoming danger.
She counts the number of threats left. Two armed with bows, that could spell trouble if either made a wrong move. Two armors, with a spirit housed inside, who threaten to block their path and whittle their energy down.
She compares the armors. The one in blue had a bright, glowing ember. But the one in purple was flickering - the damage it had sustained from Emma's attack, even small, had made a difference.
So, Niamh takes the risk.
She heads forward, drawing her lance against the armor in purple. It attempts a spell, but she weathers the blow, a twirl of her lance as she delivers the ending blow. The purple spirit fades, and the armor, unable to keep itself stable, collapses to the floor.
"Dawn will come..." she reassures Emma. "I know it will-"
Her final word is cut short when an arrow finds home in her shoulder. She veers back, dropping her lance in the process.
She had taken out one of those that remained. But this injury was one too many. She can't find the energy to get back to her feet.
She is easily reassured—even if not confident in her own abilities, Emma is confident in her friends, in their ability to evaluate situations and perform. Each and every one of them she looks to in some form as who she would like to be, someday. It followed, then, that when Niamh reassures her, she feels a flow of confidence,
except that the statement never comes to its conclusion.
"Niamh!!" Emma cries out, and Niamh doesn't respond. For a moment, the girl panics, returned to another situation in which she alone could escape at the sacrifice of the one she came here with. In this situation, she is positive she could escape. She has the advantage of speed and distance.
The thought of it clears her mind. She sets her little jaw, tightens her grip on her bow, and takes flight.
The only sound left is the rustle of dead leaves under Emma's knees. Trying to straddle the line between gentle and firm, she shakes her friend's shoulder. "C'mon, wake up, wake up..." she says, more than herself to anyone else, given no one else is here or conscious enough to hear her, as far as she can tell. A bottle of her own salve sits open beside her, propped up against her thigh for stability.
The fading embers of the green spirit are a short-lived relief. Niamh had figured that with the removal of the peculiar wisp, the mysterious army that tagged alongside it would diminish in number, too. But her assumption is wrong. While she senses that the reinforcements have stopped for the time being, the number that approach her and Emma far exceed what they begun with.
So, Niamh can only provide Emma with a thankful glance before the new threats draw upon them. Not all new, she realizes - that crafty purple spirit had returned in armor, readying itself for battle as well.
She watches as it attempts a spell on Emma. In its frustration, it turns to Niamh next, concentrating a bright, white magic to rain down upon her. A Pegasus knight sees this as an opportunity and goes for Niamh as well - quickly, Niamh retaliates, and her lance grounds the flier permanently.
"They have to end..." She tells herself, seeking some sign that the numbers will dwindle.
The armor in blue, and the nimble archers, both deny this possibility as they, too, close in on her and Emma.
Emma's not stupid—she can tell the battle is wearing the both of them down. This is kind of bad, isn't it? She finds herself thinking the moment she hears a characteristic whistle that she instinctively recognizes as sharp steel through air.
By a hair's breadth, she manages to dodge it with a yelp. She's quick on the draw, but she's too flustered, and she honestly has no idea where both arrows she fires end up. Certainly not in the ethereal, maroon haunted suit of armor swinging at her right now. Emma turns to put distance between herself and the opponent in front of her, because distance is just about the only thing she can leverage right now, only to find—
"Two!!"
—she half gasps half yelps, met face to face with blue. "Um, I think things are kind of going sideways!" Emma acknowledges a little belatedly, recognizing the sight of more than just these two enemies in her peripherals. She grabs another arrow and fires it at the former of their two most noteworthy enemies, this time at least managing to land the shot, even if not to great effect. "But things are darkest before dawn, right?"
The numbers were increasing, and fast. Niamh's thankful that Emma was able to handle some of the oncoming threats, but she was only one girl. Even Niamh recognizes that she only can handle things for so long - putting her through this much strain would quickly take a toll.
This goes the same for Niamh, but she shrugs it off in favor of finding an opening. She needs to figure out a way to ease the dangers that had surrounded them, and it started with the purple wisp-
Or, it would, were it not for the fact that after one swipe of her weapon, the wisp disappears.
It's different from the one that they fought within that armor. Her weapon didn't destroy the purple spirit - it had found an opportunity to flee. And when Niamh looks for where it's gone?
She spots another relic shamble to life. Both the purple and the blue spirits had successfully claimed what they desired as their own, and had joined the ever increasing number of knights in their quest to surround and take her and Emma out.
"Not good..."
There had to be some way to stop them. Something to use to their advantage. But what?
A fourth, green spirit ignites. She looks to Emma,just out of firing range of the newest danger, and something clicks. She rushes forward, towards where Emma is, and quickly sends her forward.
"Quickly!" She urges, "Before it finds it, take it out...!!"
She knows Emma can. She just needs to aim, and land true.
She is thrust into the thick of it without warning, so quickly it almost feels like Boundless Chaos had a part in it. Emma fumbles to regain her grip on her trusty bow, pulling an arrow from her quiver hurriedly enough that a couple others tumble to the ground. She searches for the it Niamh is talking about, eyes darting to and fro.
A flash of green catches her eye.
And she doesn't have time to question it, so she aims, and fires—before the arrow has even cleared her bow, she's already reached into her quiver for another, nocked it, and fired. She's further out of range than she likes to be. She's further out of range than she has any confidence she can land one shot, let alone two twin strikes in such short order.
Maybe Niamh's confidence is enough to make up for it, because both do.
The green spirit explodes definitively, into a flash of light rather than blood or soot. Emma, while proud, still finds reason for uncertainty. "...I hope that's the one you wanted me to take care of!"
The eerie glow of the blue wisp fades as the two head south. There's no obvious danger nearby them - it makes what's soon to come all the more daunting.
In the distance, the escaping spirit absconds to the ruins. Soon, it too will find something to will life into, allow it to return with power tenfold. It's a lost cause to try and stop it, especially now. But Niamh knows this. She knows this, and prepares herself towards her actual prey - a brilliant purple colored wisp, one that only recently came into being.
Niamh is about to signal Emma of this new development, but she soon finds that she is not the only one nearby the violet wisp. Several airborne units, intent on stopping them both by any mentions possible, access the situation as a whole, and then rush downwards.
But Niamh has a plan.
It's not a plan to deal with the fliers per say - she trusts Emma to take them down herself. But when Niamh continues south despite the trouble, and finds the bridge that'll count them to the southern area, her prediction comes through. That purple wisp has the same idea in mind.
She can keep it at bay.
"We got to keep this one here..." she warns, looking towards the sky again. Both their north and south have fliers on their heels, reading their weapons. But Emma will be faster.
She'll knock them out of the sky before they have a chance to strike.
Emma’s ears have not betrayed her, and soon enough within sight are those they herald—eerie, white-winged fliers, less like angels from heaven and more like specters from a realm she really never wants to be a visitor to. Her adrenaline has long since stopped her from trembling at the sight of them by now, and so with a steady motion she takes aim and fires, letting loose a flurry of arrows that fell the tandem flier and mount before it can even resemble a threat.
Nice job, Emma.
Too bad there are way more than just the one.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spies purple amongst the legions of white. “Another one?!” She asks, flabbergasted. Is there going to be one for every color of the rainbow? The girl sure hopes they aren’t going to get into shades and tones. A bead of sweat travels down the side of the girl’s brow, and she doubles down, taking aim and firing at another target that’s made its unfortunate way into her range. Her first arrow lands true right through the socket of its eye, saving her the effort and the arrows of any further shots. Its distant shriek sends a shudder down her spine.
Quickly, her head pivots, trying not to lose sight of that purple she saw before.
She spots it, and tries to take aim, but too no avail. “It’s—it’s too close!” She calls out. “Unless you’ve got a lance you can toss me, ahah, hah…”
The enthusiasm of the young girl definitely put Sakura in an excellent mood, extremely grateful to share such intimate and wonderful moment and experience with a person that she considered part of her life and home. With a firm nod, she leaded the way and as she waited for the petite knight to come by with the bowl of rice, she eagerly approved the decision of Emma, who actually was very earnest to learn the correct usage of the mallet.
“This sounds like a good plan!” she chirped as she picked the bowl from the counter, pouring it inside the steamer and putting everything on the boiling water, mentally setting a timer as to not let the rice steam cook too much –otherwise, the consistency of the dough would be a bit too...sticky and soft. As she turned to face the petite brunette, she returned to the previous argument, the compliment didn’t go unattended by her, apparently and Sakura was absolutely pleased by her cute reaction.
“I bet that both Ryoma and Hinoka would love to see you in action!” she blurted as she happily trotted towards the counter where the mortar was placed, “Plus, Sky Knights were actually my favourite heroes, I always admire the elegance and the simplicity with which they manage to tame beautiful creatures like kinshi and then to fly among the clouds to protect our people…” she had a dreamy look while she picked up the mortar, though not losing the attention needed to place the instrument in the correct place to begin the crushing of the future dough.
“I excuse myself for my nosy attitude, but…” she paused, gaining as much respect and gentleness as possible, “Why have you chose to train as a Sky Knight, Miss Emma?” she was genuinely curious about her story and since they had to wait a little bit, she took the opportunity to learn more about what she already deemed to be a friend.
Emma's eyes light up, and in spite of the fact that most would think about how they are presenting themselves in front of the princess of their nation, her answer comes without much thought at all. "They're so cool! The way they fly through the sky, all elegant and strong like you said," she rambles, hardly able to contain herself. "All of the cool moves they learn, and the way you can go anywhere when you have a pegasus!"
Once she reaches the end of her tirade, Emma finally considers what she's said. "That was what made me want to do it when I started. But thinking about it, I guess all those reasons are kinda childish, huh?" She asks, laughing in an act of self-awareness. Everything she's said still holds true, to her, and it's not like she can un-say it, but thinking a little deeper beyond her first instinct, it's more complicated than that, now. "Lately, I guess what gets me is..."
The girl thinks for a moment, before nodding when she thinks she reaches her conclusion.
"Getting to be a part of a team, and having the power to protect people together," tentatively, she reasons. "Everybody works really hard, and when they do, it seems like they can do anything. Right?"
With one of the armored threats down, that's one less thing for Niamh to have to worry about. There is the issue of the fleeing blue wisp, though - one that scurries away at a speed that she isn't sure either can keep up with.
It has her think back to how the first wisp had manifested. They appeared at the center, it seemed, but their goal was to locate and take control of the strange armor they could find elsewhere. One had gone north and completed this task. Emma had taken care it it with little trouble, thankfully, but there was no question what would happen if too many of them sprung to life and tried to surround them.
So, she looks to where the blue wisp heads. Away from Niamh and Emma, of course, and towards the east. If that's the case, then...
"Let's go south..." she informs Emma, as she darts away. She had confidence before that Emma could handle these dangers - even more now, she knows she'll be safe as long as she continues to fight the way that she has. "If I'm right, we might be able to have the wisp come to us next time..."
As she makes her way there, an archer attempts to ambush Niamh. With a wince, she sends a sphere of dark magic towards it, and the magic engulfs the phantom archer, sending it to a world beyond. No long after, Niamh can spot the telltale signs of wings flying towards them - more pegusi, and the sort that for now, Niamh does her best to avoid all together.
"South?" Emma asks, canting her head in the direction that she just barely caught a hint of blue flee, which she's pretty sure isn't that way. Does she have her head screwed on wrong? Her cardinal directions are one of the few things she generally feels comfortable in her ability to evaluate on the fly. "But it's going...
"Ah."
By the time she looks back, Niamh is already on her way.
"Sheesh. She's always so independent!" Emma can't lie—it has always had her a little bit envious. It's difficult to imagine being so confident in her own decisions. Each of her friends had some sort of quality that she could look up to, and in Niamh, this was definitely it. "Alrighty, south it is!" She says to at this point absolutely no one but herself.
Southward she heads, keeping her head on a swivel. Compared to Niamh’s current position, her world is calm—at the moment. The oppressing dark of the trees has it hard to glean much of anything by sight, but her ears still don’t lie to her. The dead air makes it easy to hear through what little rustling of the trees there is, and distantly, she can pick up the ever recognizable sound of wingbeats.
She prepares her bow, nibbling on her lower lip. “Well, if anything does come this way, it’d better come before or after whatever that is does.”
Sara has attended her fair share of events and been around the monastery and back long enough to see all it has to offer, but Emma's performance spoke to a wellspring of study and travel and a reckless willingness to try that surpassed even some of her seniors on the dancefloor. Maybe the execution could use improvement, sure, though no one with eyes would deny Emma's potential.
"You've been working hard, haven't you?"
Insistently, she holds out a glass of sparkling water for Emma to take to cool down after enduring the spotlight. A bubbly drink suits a bubbly girl like her. How Emma has managed to elude her until now suggests that she took this competiton quite seriously.
"It looked to me you were a crowd favorite," she offers without a hint of flattery, smile pulling at her lips. Sara, too, was part of that crowd afterall. "The White Heron Cup may have ended, but if you personally show me the steps, I'd love to dance with you tonight at least once."
White Heron Cup 2026
"Oh, thanks! Gosh, you were watching too, huh?" Emma hadn't really looked at the audience; she feels like she hadn't looked at much of anything. Maybe that is the difference between her and the people who moved on to future rounds—if the people in the audience had become too real to her, she's not sure she could have finished as she did.
She takes the glass from her, but she doesn't drink from it just yet. "If I hadn't put the effort in, I wouldn't have stood a chance at all. Did you see some of the people up there?" Emma asks it with some measure of awe. It's clear she holds no disdain for any of the other competitors, even the ones who had beaten her. "Everyone was so pretty and elegant and practiced!"
(She wouldn't recognize it—but part of it is subconsciously a matter of respect as well. Showing up with anything but her best is a waste of everyone's time, not just her own. For how lighthearted she is, she still takes friendly competition very seriously in her own way. It is not a matter of impressing anyone as it is proving who she is to them.
She can bear the unpleasantness of conveying her imperfections. She couldn't if what she mistakenly conveyed were apathy.)
"Do you really want to give it a try? I can show you for sure! It's all the moves that I thought looked the most fun!" The girl holds a hand out, beckoning. She should probably be tired after the day that she's had—that won't set in until tomorrow. "I bet you'd be really good at it! You could probably ace the style score!"
"Your forms are very strong. It is a sign of good training," Petra nods. "You must continue after the White Heron Cup so that we may be matching again next time." Earnestness begets earnestness, and the weight of self-appointed expectation begins to soften at the edges, even as Ananke begins discussing the next round's choreography, and even as the small knot in her stomach begins to tighten despite her best intentions.
Emma chimes in, and Petra's eyes alight at the thought. "Professor, I am thinking this is a good idea. I would like to show you that I have put my foot forward in learning the steps you have taught." She tries the idiom out, and its curves feel clumsy on her tongue. She tries again, simpler this time. "I... I will do better." In the aftermath of her promise, the announcer's voice booms overhead, signaling the end of Round 1. "Shall we go? It is time."
SWORDS, LANCES, AXES, BOWS. 𐂂 both of the younger girls were such fighters, and the way the brown-haired one got so excited about it reminded her of some of the boys in the watch when they first joined, always eager to prove their stuff and kill as many monsters as they could. nothing wrong with that, of course, but for every go-getter swinging their heart out on the front lines, there had to be someone following to patch them up.
that's not too far off from the answer to the question, actually. "oh, it's not a dance that was made for two people. petra has such a unique style, don't you think? i really wanted to make it shine." the girl had called her like a griffon, after all——which, unlike cranes, she had gotten to meet for the first time at the stables during her grounds tour——which makes her feel as proud as if she'd been the one to get the compliment. "if i tried to muddy it up by being in there, it wouldn't have been half as good. and we just didn't have the time."
"we should start thinking of something different for the second round though, if we end up making it." she's not sure how this actually works, but it's hard to imagine the judges being impressed by the same thing twice.
Emma nods vigorously along all the while as the woman explains, intently listening. She didn't even think of that as an option—having one person come up with the choreography, and one person perform it. What a crafty idea! She breaks into a sheepish grin. "...heheh, my other scores were actually pretty bad, so you guys are probably a shoo-in to make it to round 2," she reveals, playing with her loose hair.
Seeing how much thought they'd put into their performance, she's not surprised. Emma had been so focused on practicing her execution; she hadn't even realized how much work goes into the process before that point. Every time she climbs a little higher, she realizes just how much further she has to go.
So, maybe she shouldn't offer her thoughts when they bring up choreography. But she can hardly ever resist doing so, and especially when she's feeling enthusiastic. It helps that she's usually rewarded—even when she's wrong, she usually ends up learning something. "Maybe you could take the same dance and put a twist on it? They think they're going to see the same thing at first, and then, bam!"
