Love Beyond the Ashes

Dousing The Fire

Ina pov: Gura and I had been waiting for that flare to come around for hours, but she wasn't having it. She only responded to Noel and, worst of all, she attacked us if we got too close. We couldn't help her if she wouldn't let us near her. We don't even know what was wrong. She was just being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

"Gura Why don't you just give up on Flare and let's go back to council. " Ame said, but Gura shook her head, telling Ame that we wouldn't disobey the orders Mumei gave us. I was going to stand by that too. Orders were orders, whether or not Ame liked them. We can't just ditch the job entrusted to us.

"We should try to learn more about her!" I said but Gura shook her head "the world is cruel does knowing her past really change anything things don't go the way we want!" She argued she did have a point we may gain nothing from learning her past but we had to figure stuff out or we'd never get this job done and arguing about it wouldn't get us anywhere either

"We should try to learn more about her!" I said, but Gura shook her head, "the world is cruel. Does knowing her past really change anything? Things don't go the way we want!" She argued she did have a point; we may gain nothing from learning about her past, but we had to figure stuff out or we'd never get this job done and arguing about it wouldn't get us anywhere either.

"Sorry about Flare, she's just a troubled girl." Noel sighed, sitting down next to Ame, "but she's so cute I can't scold her." She continued. Her nose was bleeding just thinking about her

"What's your relationship with Flare?" I asked Noel immediately answered my question with no hesitation whatsoever:
"She's my girlfriend!" She blurted out that the three of us couldn't believe how straightforward this was. Maybe we could find out more about Flare from her.

"How did you meet Flare?" Ame asked, beginning to sleuth Noel out. The girl pondered that question, wondering if she should answer, but she eventually did, "I am an ex-imperial soldier. Does that answer your question?" Noel asked Gura and I couldn't believe it. For someone like her, being an imperial soldier was farfetched, utter nonsense, and yet we believed it due to the look of regret on her face.

"She trusts you. Why's that?" I said Noel just shrugged, "Maybe because I disagreed with the treatment of the elves, or maybe because I freed her, who knows?" She said both were valid, maybe a combination of both, she was just a person Flare could escape too. I didn't know how bad the elves got it, but if it was similar to how Gura and I were treated, we were in for a rude awakening.

We probably would have to show Flare we suffered too, but I don't think any of us were ready to reveal what has happened in our pasts. Mumei wished for us to never speak of it until the right time so we could gain allies to fight the imperial army. I think this was the moment where we had to tell someone. However, it definitely isn't worth it just yet. We had to get to know Flare before we started dousing the flame, so we had Noel get her girlfriend by force and make her talk to us.

"What do you three want?" Flare growled as Noel sat her down. We didn't know what to say because she was clearly angry and unwilling to discuss anything with us. This stubborn nature was going to be difficult to deal with, but we really needed her to talk. We needed to talk about things and figure out why Mumei wanted us to do this today.

"We just want to discuss things," Ame said, getting a disgusted glare from Flare, "you humans really never learn, do you?" She growled. Flare told her to not be so rude to their guests and Flare obliged, calming down a fair bit and beginning to lean on Noel.

"Noe-chan, you know all the other humans are scum," she said. Noel shook her head, "Some of them are, but also none of them are." Noel said to Gura and I took offense to that since we both aren't human. Noel was just saying that to try to push Flare to talk to more humans other than herself, Ame was the only one that truly had to worry.

"Let me see if we can get some council intervention here." Gura said the three of us pulled out our phones and started calling Fauna, Kronii, and Bae. They wouldn't answer, so Gura and Ame looked at me, telling me I had to call Sana. That's the only way we would have a chance of her picking up right now.

I called Sana and she immediately picked up, "Hello Ina, what do you need?" Sana asked Gura immediately butted in, "go to Mumei's archives and get the files pertaining to Shiranui Flare, we need them." She said Sana immediately understood, she heard the desperation in Gura's voice. This was our last chance to know what happened to Flare since Noel won't tell us.

Sana went into Muemi's office, finding the files almost immediately, "Should I send them to you?" She asked. I thought about it for a second, but that was a bad idea. "No, it's fine, just read the contents to us." I said. Sana cleared her throat and began to talk about Flare, but none of the info so far was useful, yet we could gather some of it by looking at her.

Sana stumbled across files for when Flare was registered in some sort of work force, so I knew we had gotten closer. Finally, Sana found files that referred to Temma. I told Sana to read those to us.

We were about to find out about Flare.