A Crown of Red Dahlia

“Psst Max, are you awake?” Lyra quietly asks outside the door of her twin brother’s room.

A few silent footsteps could be heard before Max gently pries open his door, an excited smile plastered on his face.

“You bet I am,” he whispers, “now let’s go check on our surprise for Nonomi.”

The Carolds Farm was mainly known for producing two things; the first being grains and the other being flowers. Therefore along with their expansive fields of wheat, corn, and barley, they also had large flower fields, groves, and a large greenhouse located a few meters away from the forest.

Growing up on such a farm, Max and Lyra had prepared to give Dahlia a gift the only way the Carolds knew how—by bestowing upon her a specially made crown of flowers—a gift that the Carolds would only ever give to those who they considered one of their own.

The two of them quietly slip out of the house and make their way to the greenhouse through the fields of unharvested wheat, and once there, they sit at their workbench, brainstorming different ideas for what type of crown they would make her.

“What kind of flowers should we make it out of?” Lyra asks as she looks around their greenhouse for inspiration.

Their greenhouse was reasonably large and contained many rows of table-sized pots filled with a wide variety of flowers; each one sorted and organized accordingly. The options they had for the flower crown were hardly limited, and it was just the matter of picking the right ones that made the choice difficult.

“Well, I did overhear the Espers calling Nonomi by the codename ‘Dahlia’, so we could make it out of one of those,” Max suggests.

“Yeah but dahlias are quite big and it’d look weird hanging off her head.”

“What about putting one big dahlia on one side of her head so it’d look like a hairpin? We can then just connect the rest of the crown together with smaller flowers like lavenders and rosemary.”

“Good idea, but that’s too much purple, we need some variety in the colors. What about picking a different color for the dahlia that goes well with the purple?”

“Like black?”

“No you idiot, black dahlias are a sign of death and bad luck,” Lyra reprimands him, “maybe something like… red?”

“Red…? Why red?”

“Because that’s… the color of her hair?”

Max lets out a sigh.

“Look, it’s the middle of the night okay? I’m tired already as is… plus red dahlias represent perseverance and confidence—something that I think perfectly describes Nonomi since she’s always there to cheer us up when we’re sad and feel like giving up.”

“Hmm… you make a fair point. Let’s just ignore the fact that the red might blend in too much with hair and—”

Max suddenly froze as his eyes filled with horror, staring at something behind Lyra.

“What? What is it?” she asks, turning around to see what he was looking at, only to freeze up upon seeing the sight of a group of four Wilted—their twisted faces in the shape of dying flowers attached onto a strangely humanoid body, staring at them through the glass of the greenhouse.

The two of them let out a terrified scream before Max grabs a shovel while Lyra grabs a nearby pair of pruning scissors—both useless weapons against the enemies that stood before them—but it gave them a sense of security, as small as it was.

“What are the children screaming about?” one of them asks another, their language unintelligible to both Max and Lyra, “do they not know we don’t attack civilians?”

“Cut them some slack Boris, the war tactics that the species on this planet use are quite primitive, so they most likely haven’t gotten past that point in morality yet.”

Another one lets out a sigh—the biggest one of the group—most likely their captain, as he says, “we wouldn’t have to be in this situation right now if you didn’t get us lost anyway Boris. We were supposed to confront the enemy in the battlefield west of the mountain range in a few days, and now we’re stuck here looking for flowers to eat because our supply lines are cut off.”

“Ok, ok! I get it boss, I’m sorry I got us lost. Let’s just quickly break into this weird glass house thing and get some food before—”

CRACK! TAKA-TAKA-TAKA-TAKA!

The Wilted named Boris suddenly collapses dead onto the ground, as the rest of his comrades make a decisive move to burst their way into the greenhouse and hide behind a planting box.

Soon enough, Dahlia comes rushing inside the greenhouse, grabbing Max and Lyra and tossing them behind cover before telling them to run back to the house and wake the others up for backup. As the two of them run off with Dahlia keeping an eye on the corner of the planting box that she saw the Wilted hide behind, she silently thanks Peony for always reminding everyone to always carry their guns on them.

Luckily she had drilled that into our heads, she thinks to herself, hoping to stall enough time for the rest of her team to arrive.

Meanwhile the Wilted strategize about their next course of action.

“What should we do, captain? She killed Boris!”

Their leader thinks for a moment before saying, “as dumb as that idiot was, he was still my best friend, and I’m not letting his death be in vain. I don’t think this person is letting us go unscathed either, and she’s most likely got backup on the way. Our best course of action right now is to finish her off quickly and loot this place as fast as possible.”

One of the Wilted suddenly rushes out from behind the box they were hiding behind, quickly moving his way behind another box as Dahlia begins to fire at him. In the corner of her eye however, she sees another one poke their gun-infused arms out and begin firing, as she barely manages to duck under one of the planting boxes for cover.

Shit, they’re spreading out and trying to surround me, Dahlia realizes. She wasn’t the brightest one in the group for coming up with strategies—that role fell to Iris—but she wasn’t dumb enough to not realize simple tactics like this.

Instead she makes a plan to utilize her speed from her Esper powers to constantly weave through the planting boxes to make sure that they didn’t surround her. She pokes her head out and begins firing at them, running between each box, countering the direction they were moving in as to avoid being encircled.

One by one, they exchange bullets as the soldiers move and run around the greenhouse in a frenzy of intense close-ranged guerilla warfare. As she’s reloading her gun, Dahlia suddenly notices one of them pop out their head and begin rushing straight towards her, hoping to catch her by surprise.

She quickly shoves the magazine into her gun before gunning him down just in time, but as his body collapses to the floor, another one was secretly running through the boxes, and lunges at her, successfully catching her off guard and launching them both through the glass of the greenhouse.

As they land on the grass outside, Dahlia gasps out in pain but summons the energy to pull out a pocket knife and stab the Wilted right in the gut, causing him to wail back in pain. She takes the opportunity to kick him off of her, putting enough distance between them for her to unload her gun right into his body.

Noticing she was out of ammunition and out in the open, she picks herself up, summoning the last of her stamina to use her Esper powers and run straight into the forest, however, as she stands up, she hears a loud BANG! as she realizes she’s been shot right through the chest.

Dahlia collapses onto the grass, wincing out as a pain flared straight through her body before numbing just as quickly as it came. Her vision was getting blurry and her body was no longer listening to any of her commands as she began to realize that it might be over for her, as she heard the Wilted say something she couldn’t understand.

“For giving my comrades a quick death, I shall reward you with one as well,” the leader of the squad says before immediately getting tackled by a girl wielding a riot shield, and eating a shotgun blast to the face.

Dahlia manages to tilt her head just enough to see the sight of her friends running up to her, but she couldn’t make out the pained voices coming from them. Upon seeing Lily however, she had just one thought coming to her mind:

Everything is going to be alright.