Grün Rot

“And for tonight's big news - the Sakrin Auction House is holding its annual charity auction in support of many good causes in the city.” The female news anchor, who had a small flower blooming from her head, announced with a cheerful voice. “To this occasion we have a very special interview guest live from the venue, who made time in his busy schedule to tell us just what exciting things we can expect - Mr. Sakrin himself! Good evening, Mr. Sakrin.”

Another window popped up on the broadcast, filled with some kind of distortion, making the face of the man barely visible with exception of his bright smile.
“What’s wrong?” The news anchor whispered, while keeping her now awkward smile.
“I-I think it’s supposed to be like this.” someone answered shortly equally quietly as to not disturb the broadcast.

“Good evening, Miss Dandy.” The man finally spoke, his voice crystal clear despite the visual errors still flickering across the screen. “As you know, this will be our biggest auction yet and for a special reason! Because tonight there is a chance for those with a big enough heart and of course a big enough wallet to purchase a elusive relic - the gauntlet of none other than the Gold Standard Hero: Emblaze himself. Once wielded for the good of the city and thought lost forever, I hope that I, in memory of this once grea-...”

The voices and sounds of the broadcast faded in the background of the nightly city noise as a shadowy figure rushed past the billboard sized screen it was running on, before becoming one with the darkness once more. “...Keke.”

A bit later in the backstage area of the Sakrin Auction House, a hall filled with valuables on each pedestal from one corner and the other and someone standing against the wall at the very back, before pushing off.
“Come on, come on, be a hero, you can do this, Weiss!” Johanna hyped herself up, giving her cheeks a light slap with both hands and shaking off any fatigue. “They specifically requested you!”

She tapped a device behind her ear and then spoke. “I’m ready, Mr. Spring Dragon Hero: Seiryu, sir!”
In response she earned a sigh from her ear piece. “I told you, just Seiryu is fine.”
“I sure hope you know what you are doing, heroes are so… inconsistent these days.” another voice chimed in, the same of the auction house owner on the broadcast.

“Believe me, there is no one better for the job.” Seiryu responded with a confident and professional tone, but surely he took a big risk involving an exchange student with a provisional license who had just arrived in Japan. “Okay, Weiss Schwarz, let’s begin. The trap is set - lights out.”

The lights along the sides and at the ceiling von the hall turned off row by row, until the entire room was dark. Johanna took her position, hidden away behind at the wall behind the biggest pedestal in the room, holding the pure gold gauntlet of the Gold Standard Hero: Emblaze.

Then she waited. And waited. And waited some more. Occasionally she could hear the sounds coming from the venue, where the auction was supposed to take place and if it went on like this, that would happen without a hitch.
Johanna almost began to feel relieved as their supposed target didn’t seem to want to make an entrance tonight, but then she heard another noise, this one much closer.

“Too easy.” A small voice whispered and Johanna, without losing a beat, closed her right hand and pulled.
Just when Karma was about to snatch the golden gauntlet from the pedestal it suddenly snapped backwards by itself. In that same moment Johanna activated the trap she had laid out earlier - Red strings that covered parts of the floor around the pedestal, that now pulled back into her gauntlet at high speed, encircling Karma from all sides to bind her.

“Kekeke, knew it~.” Karma laughed and just made a casually hop into the air and spinning her entire body around with unnatural agility, somehow making it through the openings between every wave of thread about to wrap her up as it vanished back into Johanna’s gauntlet, before she landed back where she stood, even finishing with both arms stretched out like a gymnast.

Johanna was in shock for a moment, staring wide-eyed in disbelief, just long enough for Karma to grab the golden gauntlet for real this time. But Weiss Schwarz wasn’t done yet.
She pulled on the golden gauntlet again, causing Karma to slow as she pulled against it.

“Give the gauntlet back and surrender! Y-you’re under arrest!” Johanna called out to her as she got closer, concentrating on keeping the artifact in place, while also wondering if she was allowed to say that.
“No way!” the chameleon villain remarked, not giving an inch either and managing to still somehow move slowly forward. “You don’t need this one, you already have your own!”

In that instant the lights turned on around them and thick metal shutters slammed down over the doors and windows.
Karma’s movement halted for a moment, but for some reason so did Johanna’s.
“On second thought, you can have it.” The villain just let go and the golden gauntlet was catapulted back into Johanna’s arms, causing her to slide backwards as she barely caught it.

“Weis… …verthi… igh… the.. …uction… i…” The voice of Seiryu flickered into her ear but was barely understandable and quickly cut out again, like something was disrupting the signal. She tapped her ear piece a few times, but it didn’t help.

“Now surrender!” Johanna put her focus back on the situation at hand, but the villain didn’t even respond, before she started to race off through the hall. “Damn it!” The senior student cursed, running after her as best she could, throwing her white gauntlet forward, which was her only chance to go after her at all.
The gauntlet moved according to her hand, swiftly flying towards Karma, trying to land hits and grab at her, but the villain seemed unimpressed, dodging each time with minimal movement between the pedestals.

Johanna’s blue eyes darted around, trying to keep up with Karma’s movements, while doing her best to avoid the other art pieces and relics around.
“Kekeke.” When Karma noticed that, she started to give a few old vases, statues and pedestals just a little push with her tail as she ran past them, to preoccupy the hero student, who was clearly in over her head, a bit more, only to hear awful shattering noises behind her a few times.

“Fine, be like that! Now this won’t matter as much! Weiss…” It seemed like the villain had hit a nerve, because instead of trying to go directly at her, the white gauntlet moved up over Karma, before she was suddenly enveloped by a huge shadow. “...Schwarz!”
The gauntlet, which had grown massively in size in an instant, struck down, crushing pedestals and relics alike together with the villain.

Of course Johanna would never actually try to kill someone, just, you know, gently smush her a little to get her to stop. She walked over to her enlarged gauntlet, before slowly making it lift off the ground, little by little.
“Now… surrender.” She repeated as she kept a close eye, only to quickly realize, as her gauntlet was airborne again, that there was no one there. Karma was gone.

“No, no, no, no…!” Johanna’s eyes quickly searched the destroyed area, trying to figure out where she could’ve gone.
“Keke, say, little hero, shouldn’t that dragon guy be here by now?” Someone asked her from above and as her head slowly panned upwards, her eyes met nothing but a deep red pair glinting back at her from the shadows beneath her floating gauntlet. “Looks like I got some time to kill after all.”

Johanna’s eyes widened. This whole time, piling up one mistake after the other, like the clueless supporter-turned-hero that she was, she had overlooked the simplest and yet by far biggest one - she was facing a real villain.
The sharp pain she felt cutting along her side however gave her clue as Karma demonstrated that same agility she had shown so playfully earlier now weaponized for harm. Then another and another. The senior student shrunk her gauntlet back down as she took those hits to protect herself with it, but even that wasn’t good enough with the chameleon slipping past every defense she put up.

One of her legs finally gave in, letting her barely stand and her white gauntlet hit the ground with a thud.
“Aaaahhh!” She let out a cry and reached out with her empty hand.
There was still one thing she could do, something that took even Karma by surprise as the villain’s lower body almost lifted off from her own speed as though she got caught on something mid-sprint - Her own glove. “...Eh?”

It got tighter around her hand and dagger, holding her in place in a way that her feet didn’t even completely touch the ground. While Johnna stood with her right arm stretched forward and her hand balled up to a desperate fist.
On each of her fingers, except her thumb, there was a single letter tattooed, spelling out the word: “HOPE”.

“A bit much, isn’t it?” Karma remarked jokingly, but the young hero didn’t seem eager to talk anymore, her breath was heavy and all her effort seemed entirely focused on holding on.

Clapping broke through the new standstill. “Ah, I see, you aren’t entirely useless after all, Miss Weiss Schwarz.”
The remaining pedestals around them moved to the side accompanied by the sound of turning gears as though some kind of contraption beneath the floor was starting up.
Then the walls of a massive cage shoot out of the ground, one separating Johanna and Karma. The hero student had no idea what was going on anymore, but stopped her control of the villain's glove, when she was fully locked in, so she could catch her breath.

A screen of equally massive size unfolded out of the wall nearby and the face of the owner of the auction house showed up, distorted as ever, only the row of sharp teeth on his half-moon smile clearly visible.
“I knew there was something weird about this, first the trap just being this girl and then dragon guy not showing up..” Karma spoke as she looked up the screen, outwardly not any less confident than before. “...Sawgrin.”

“You young upstarts are all the same. You want too much too fast and in the process forget all manners and step on the toes of the wrong people." The man began to speak calmly, somehow exuding an oppressive air even through the screen awash with distortions, while the chameleon villain casually spun her glinting dagger in one hand. “Who steals from a retired man… twice? For shame, Miss Karma, for shame.”

“But you are in luck, because this evening I'm in a generous mood. I made this one just for you.” He snapped his fingers and his grin pulled even wider.
As Karma’s hair started to stand up and a prickling feeling washed over her arms and tail , she still tried to evade, but this time there was no opening. Just a wave of electricity enveloping the inside of the massive cage and finding the only conduct, her body.
The agonizing scream of the chameleon girl echoed in the hall.

“W-what are you doing? Stop, that wasn’t the plan!” Johanna interjected as she watched all of that happening, unsure on what to do. And to her surprise, the electricity actually stopped. “We caught her... When Mr. Seiryu gets here, I’m sure we can-”

“Miss Weiss Schwarz, I’m afraid the dragon hero is quite busy at the moment. And I’m just taking it upon myself to punish this villain, the villain that almost killed you, might I add, like a responsible citizen should.” The man responded with an elevated voice level, while the cage already started to load up again.

“Kekeke, ‘responsible citizen’?” Karma laughed, her body steaming from the last hit, but she was still on her feet. “This man was the biggest pile of-AAAHHHHHH!”

“STO-” There was a loud bang, the noise of a cane hitting the floor coming from the screen.
“Enough out of both of you. Miss Weiss Schwarz, need I remind you that you stand in the middle of all the destruction you wrought with your incompetence?! All those priceless pieces of history GONE! Pathetic little miscreants like you and that little thief over there are what is wrong with this world - Heroes? Villains? Tsk. All the same bottom feeders who will never move up.” He spit out in rage, but then tried to regain his composure. “Let me give you just one more chance and educate you. After all, you came here to learn. If you ever tell anyone of what happened here today, no one is going to believe you. And IF against all odds, someone does, I’ll make sure they and you come to regret it. Do we have an understanding?”

Johanna was still, the shadow of her hair covering her eyes as the light from the electrified cage flashed over her and she bit her lips so hard that she drew blood.

“...Yes.”

She pulled her breath in through her teeth and steadied her legs, taking a step forward. Then another. “Very good, very responsible. Now sit quiet and enjoy the-... Miss Weiss Schwarz?”
But there were no answers as she made her way close to the cage, looking at Karma struggling against the electricity with all her might in any way she could even now.

Johanna took the golden gauntlet she had been holding in her left hand the entire time and slipped it over her right hand.
“Karma… that’s your name.” she said more to herself, pulling back her fist as far as she could and then got louder. “You need to duck! NOW!”

“Spontaneous Finishing Move: …

As she struck her fist increased in size to how her other gauntlet had been before, bending the cage walls over the chameleon girl, destroying whatever flooded it with electricity.

…GOLDEN HANDSHAKE!!!”

But then the golden gauntlet size jumped up into an even more massive scale, blowing the cage construct away entirely and past the screen through the wall of the building, opening up a huge hole to the outside.

After that Johanna simply fell over into the dirt, just laying there and looking up at the ceiling.
She could hear light steps closing in a moment later.
“You know I’m not going to thank you, right? I wouldn’t be much of a villain if I did.” It was Karma, somehow still able to move around like this. Maybe she hadn’t needed her help at all. The chameleon girl leaned in over her face, blinking her crimson eyes at Johanna and showing a little smile. “Also I’m taking this.”
Then she stood up straight and walked off through the huge hole in the wall with a golden gauntlet in hand, vanishing into the night.

A slight breeze picked up, coming from the outside.
"Grasgrünes Haar und blutrote Augen…” Johanna muttered under her breath. “Maybe I’ll try becoming a hero a little while longer.”
The direction of the wind changed, blowing up her ripped and cut right sleeve, revealing another tattoo down the full length of her arm, reading “ABANDON”.

…

Johanna had been passed out for a while now, as the half broken screen that had fallen from the wall flickered back to life, just enough for something to be heard from it.
The sound of a door getting unhinged and slammed open and people talking in panicked voices..

“Sawgrin… boss, I-I couldn’t stop him anymore! Oh god, he is…”

“You moron, I told you not to call me that! And we have bigger problems on our hands, we need to leave now!”

“You don’t understand, sir, it’s too late…”

Followed by a roar so loud and intense that it vibrated the dust on the ground and caused the light to flicker brighter for just a moment.

“...He is here.”

Before the screen short-circuited and died.