Chevaleresse

Masaru - Servant's Quarters "Your world's version of the Phoenix Force is much different from the one in mine. That one's just a bunch of insane buggers that go around and try to ride into battle on actual phoenixes. As far as burnout goes, that's probably something we could work on together." He offers a hand to her, both for shaking and pulling herself up off the bed. "It occurs to me that I never introduced myself. I'm Yamaguchi Masaru. Now, we should hunt down the spider or the orc, since you look like you could probably use the attention of a healer."

In any other situation, Hiroki would have grinned. Everything was going according to plan now; she'd disposed of countless melee builds with very nearly the exact same method she was in the midst of executing. Using it on Kagari, though. . . She was just angry and sad. Hiroki swung the main cannon up, locking onto Kagari as she discharged the shield in her direction. A rough, expanding wave of plasma flowed forward, during which the high-pitched whining of her cannons charging could be heard. As it reached Kagari's position, a dull, but loud boom sounded as Hiroki spoke the keyword to the attack: "Giga Flare!" The attack made the discharge of the shield look like a blast from a squirtgun in comparison, lancing out from every barrel on the mech save the ones pointed downward, and would prove essentially impossible to dodge by dint of sheer volume.

Masaru nods. "That's the gist as I understand it as well. And no, the saw trap wasn't here. It was in a fort a lot like this one, though, and I don't know how thoroughly this place has been explored, so, uh, mind your step. As for that power surge, as far as I can tell, it was you, or something right where you are. I felt more energy than I've ever felt before concentrated in one place before, and I've seen full-blooded dragons showing off before." During the conversation, he'd shifted his blade into less and less of a ready position, until it was once again something to lean on and look cool. "So I'm pretty sure you've got SOMETHING to contribute."

"Killer what now? No, I haven't grabbed anyone while they were asleep recently. Awake, yes, but I think stopping the idiot from walking into a serrated disc trap was probably good enough justification for that." He doesn't quite enter the room yet, though he does note the power receding. "Two questions. Who are you, and what was that massive power surge?" His sword, now that the door was open, draws closer to his body in a ready-but-not-quite-hostile stance.

The first strike of the hammer rattled Hiroki inside her mech and set of a few more warning lights - in a greater quantity than the frontal blow had, despite that one's greater force. There were several important connections in the region, though with any other place on the bot they had redundancies and thick plating to guard them. One hammerblow was also likely the only thing Kagari would have the chance to land before reacting to Hiroki's next move - "Activate Mantle," she spoke, her voice shaken and still a bit cracked, but starting to fill with a rising anger. Jets all around the Knight - including some that would have had to be right on Kagari's handhold - flared to life, spewing out orange-white plasma that formed an expanding shell around the mech's body. Needless to say, this was not what one would call a friendly environment for a lightly armored mech.

Masaru jumps at the explosion, and jumps again as a tremendously powerful something shows up abruptly somewhere in the castle. Something strong enough that he could probably pinpoint its exact location - a level of precision he'd never bothered to develop and rightly shouldn't have been able to achieve at all. "So we've got the boom, and we've also got something extremely magically powerful. I say we investigate the latter, because it tends to be connected to the former." Without waiting for the assent of the other two, Masaru heads toward the source of the signal, hesitantly edging open the door with the end of his sword.

Masaru glances questioningly - and with more than a little annoyance - at Laver. "You forget your glasses at home or something?" It doesn't last long, however, as he quickly returns his attentions to Navin. "And, yes, the, um, spider? Told me that the rest were missing. Gone on other missions, I think, so we're playing the waiting game until they've got their business sorted out. Glad to hear you're on board, though, sounds like we need as many competent fighters as we can get. I'm assuming you're competent, anyway; I can't say I've ever seen armor that looked like that before, but you've given me no reason to believe you can't fight."

Masaru elects to add a bit more to Laver's rushed explanation. "From what I understand, this is some sort of multi-universal monster hunting operation. Apparently they're nasty enough to destroy entire worlds if you leave them on their own. And yeah, I was in the middle of exploring a different castle when I rounded a corner and wound up in here." He hefts his titanic sword over his left shoulder, resting it there, and reaches his right hand out. "Yamaguchi Masaru is my name. Hoping to get things organized around here once whoever else is part of this operation gets back from wherever they are."

Hiroki righted herself; she'd obtained just enough breathing room to do so, not that it took all that long. This wasn't the first time an opponent had tried to set her off balance, and her mech was designed with that situation in mind. With a simple keyword spoken as she rolled forward onto her feet, the cannons flared up; the automated pattern likely wasn't striking the bits at any rate approaching useful, but Hiroki wasn't immediately concerned with them. Her targeting systems highlighted Kagari's motion, and laid out some loose projections on where she'd appear next; that information went to waste, however. She held off on her main cannon until Kagari closed, until she was too close to start putting distance between herself and the Knight, and then savagely swung her main cannon in a jet-boosted strike, aiming to knock the HUNTER clean across the icy arena if possible.

Mitsurugi assesses the situation. Those containers of Dark Eco - she believed that's what they called it - would no doubt be dangerous. She attempts to dislodge them by deftly flying forth and knocking them to the side, or, if that is impractical, prematurely detonate them (or knock them off) with a mixture of ofuda throwing and rattling up a good wind storm.

Entrance Hall "Well, looks like there's someone there right now; you mentioned wanting to meet people, right?" Masaru said, turning at the sound of footsteps. They weren't particularly loud, but neither was the castle - the only sounds that might've covered her approach were coming from a fair distance outside, in the marketplace of Val Habar. "Are you new here too, or do you actually know what's going on?"

Hiroki watches Blink for a few moments, sliding slightly closer to her and slightly further away from the unfamiliar others. She looked between the god and her gaming device a few time, confusion evident on her face, before returning to watching her own lap intently.

Hiroki gasped as the hammer sped toward her. She fired her jets and kicked at the ground, trying to roll backward so that the blow would land glancingly - and then grunted as it slammed into her chestplate with near full force, sending her some combination of skidding, sliding, and tumbling backward as the Knight's systems tried to compensate for the impact. Several notifications popped up on her HUD: warnings that system integrity was down. All lights were still green, however; her armor was built sturdy enough to take a few hits like this. Her legs kicked at Kagari as she moved - it looked like panicked flailing, and a bit of it was, but Hiroki knew what she was doing. The smaller cannons running along the backs of her legs scattered angry bursts of plasma at the Hellfire Knight's opponent, covering her in an attempt to give her a chance to reassert herself.

"Oh, by the way, I never asked your name. Mine is Yamaguchi Masaru. Not sure where the others are all at, no one seems to really know where they are."

Mitsurugi prepares to bombard the creatures with an area-of-effect magical assault (CONTINUE). "Be on your guards. That sludge will do nothing but harm to mortals."

"Work with me? I suppose. I'm assuming you can take care of yourself if you're running around between different worlds by yourself. . ." He pauses for a moment. He'd been caught up on trying to get his bearings, but this whole "different world entirely" thing was quite something to get used to. He wondered how the gang was doing without him. . . and flinched visibly. That damn paladin. . . "Stories I loved when I was a kid. . . Nishiki and the Swordsman was always a good one, I guess, though I always felt more like the latter. Anyway. This place is pretty old looking, but I don't know anything about its history. I think it can do something like your uh, Heartskipper can though. The big guy mentioned something about it flying between worlds."

"Some sort of trans-universal monster hunting operation, if this Andre guy is to be believed, but it looks like things around here are a bit of a shambles." He set the sword end-first on the ground to his right with a thump, leaning on it slightly. "I figure I'll try to scrape things into something more resembling a working order once I get more information. Apparently this place isn't usually so empty." "What's a Heartskipper, by the way? Never heard of one, but from the way you talk about it, is it some kind of ship?"

Masaru brought the sword down to a more neutral position, though it was still ready to be used in defense or attack. "Do you know what that crash was?" Masaru's tone was guarded, but not accusatory or angry. The kid didn't seem hostile, but you never knew. He hadn't gotten this far by trusting everything he saw at face value.

"Well, the way I see it, ya seem ta be good at two things: makin' scenes and dodgin' stuff. So make a scene so we can get these two outta here and dodge all the stuff that they throw at'cha!" She didn't seem fazed by the arrow that lodged harmlessly in her armor, though she did take a moment to shoot a glare at the archer that had launched the offending projectile. "Alright, down ya go! Hup!" She lifted Belros up and unceremoniously tossed him down on top of the hill below; either she was better at controlling her mount than she seemed, or the wyvern had sensed her intentions beforehand, as it was a drop of only a few feet. "Good luck with that mage!" She promptly flew off a short distance north, once again staring the archer down. "Ya wanna run that last one by me again, bud?" She pulled the arrow from where it'd gotten caught, holding it so it was clearly visible to the man. "I'm not sure I got it the first time." Drop Belros off at K4, canto to J5, roll intimidate check

Mitsu waits for the rest of the party to board the vehicle, then does whatever is needed to move it foward.

"Alright, thief boy, we're going on a trip. Gonna do some straight outta the books hero stuff, right now! Up ya go!" She heeled Ecquis forward, and the wyvern winged his way toward the river. Myrdwyn leaned over and hooked the spy with one arm, and swung him up into position behind her. Ecquis looked back at her questioningly for a moment before turning back to face their enemies. "Let's do this!" K8, rescue Belros, canto to K5

Masaru looks back and forth, from one loud crash to the other. "What the hell did I just fall into?" He walks toward the exit of the ballroom after hefting his sword, moving slowly through the white room and around the strange, glowing device in the center - he'd really have to investigate that later, it was probably important - and cautiously pushes the door open, blade held in one hand and pointed behind himself with the other ready to defend, grab his opponent, or grab hold of his weapon.

"Too small?" He looked around. Sure, there were bigger ballrooms, but that didn't mean this qualified as a small space by any means. What could she possibly be doing if this wasn't enough space. ". . . Huh. This place has a roof, though, doesn't it? And if you're away from home, then surely you won't need to hide from whoever you feared previously." Though her hiding was something of potential concern. People didn't hide for no reason, and the reasons for that hiding were rarely ones that did not invite trouble at a later date.

Hiroki leaned over, taking a concerned step toward Kagari. She could have seen the concerned expression on the girl's face through the visor, undarkened currently due to the lack of need, if she'd looked up. She's passing out again, in the middle of the match? But she seemed find, did I do something wrong? Why is this- Kagari crashed into an entirely unprepared Hiroki. The only motion she'd taken even vaguely resembling a response to the attack was an involuntary jerk backward out of startlement. She's- I knew it, I knew it, I told myself it was just a trap, she was just trying to catch me off guard, this whole conversation, everything was a trick. Half desperate and half enraged, she tried to slam her reinforced cannon into Kagari, using her back jets to both make herself harder to hold onto and give the attack the extra momentum it would likely need. Her off-hand scrabbled at Kagari, the clawed fingers attempting to dislodge the attack. Underneath her visor, her face twisted as angry tears welled up at this apparent betrayal.

"Don't give me that look, you were speaking gibberish to me and expecting me to understand." Andre receives his own annoyed look. "Don't belittle me because you don't actually explain anything you say." He glances at Artitha again, taking note of the burst of fog. "Strength may not be everything, but you've got more to you than your outward appearance - as evidenced by your enchanted cloak, there. And if you do have hidden talents, and we're to work together, it's best to tell them to us now, rather than later."