Sky Striker Ace, but Symphogear

Raye looked helpless, but Tsukuyomi Shirabe calmly stated what she thought.

"I can understand how you feel. But at your age, you don't need to take this on. Shouldn't you be going to school instead of worrying about something so difficult?"

Raye understood the point Shirabe had made countless times, but she still disagreed.

"I can't do that... Kiri-chan and I both know that if you hadn't shielded us from most of the danger, Raye, we would have suffered far more."

"So to repay you, even if fighting hurts and winning is hard, we want to do our part to make you happy."

Crouched before a rabbit statue in the shrine's front courtyard, Shirabe quietly voiced the feelings she and Akatsuki Kirika shared.

To be honest, they both knew that making an enemy of Raye meant asking for trouble.

They were too weak to defeat her, and they knew that if they surrendered, Raye would probably look after them rather than oppress them.

If they had been just a little more selfish, either reason would have been enough to make them accept the path Raye had laid out.

In the end, though, they had chosen to oppose her. They had chosen a path certain to be thorny, all to repay the care she had shown them over the years.

"All right, let's leave that topic alone. Speaking of which, this Shirabe Shrine is where your name came from, isn't it?"

Faced with Shirabe's stubbornness, Raye gave up hoping to persuade her with words and turned to another subject.

"Mm. I had no memories of my past. All I had was an amulet from this shrine, so they gave me this name."

Shirabe nodded and spoke openly to Raye about her origins.

As a Fine Vessel at the White Orphanage, she