Chevaleresse

"More guns never killed anyone. Well, they did, that's sorta the point, but you get what I'm going for. Lower odds of us being the dead ones." Spook shrugged, and started to head in the direction. "They can bitch about how long we took all they want, if they're not gonna equip us right for the job then they can deal with waiting seven to fourteen business days for delivery."

"Well, umm, I'm not sure how good I am at finding information, but I'll do my best, I suppose." She elected not to comment on the disagreement between Navin and Friedhold; Heidrun agreed with the former, but didn't feel comfortable bringing up the conflict again after it had been dealt with. "I'll just follow your lead," Liliya seemed to know the most about what she was doing, even if she questioned where the expertise came from.

Kyou nodded. The Ruins were vast enough that it was rare to come across another party, and harsh enough that those meetings had usually just resulted in banding together for warmth for a day or two before moving on, but she wasn't so naive as to think everyone was there for purely scholarly pursuits. "Many searchen for weapons, but we tried to let lie them. Worth lots of money, not but the cost of sleeping at night." The conversation was starting to grow grim again, so Kyou shifted tacks slightly. "Always bad it not been, though. Traveling to cities helpen find and share more discoveries, and cityfolk pay for trivia like dragon pudding recipes."

"Pays for searching more. Travelen far into Ruins can dangerous been, need much supplies and sometimes help. Always interested in dragons; they had much knowledge, but seeming not enough. Interested in Bane, why it happened, and maybe find how cured it been." Kyou looked slightly embarrassed at the last; it was a lofty goal, to say the least, but it was one that went back a couple generations. "Exploring paid for exploring."

N14, dance Liz and Lys

"I'm of forested foothills. Lived withen family and nobody else, until. . ." Kyou went quiet for a moment. "Until not." A shadow passed over her expression, but she seemingly recovered from whatever it was after a moment. "Studied dragon ruins, would travelen to cities to sellen knowledge."

"Feeln't uncomfortable, Ke," Kyou said, slipping into the Ruins dialect for a moment. "Yourn't only one talken like this. And, stared be not worst thing to happenen. We're trying attracten attention, after all." She had to get up and go, anyway, so it's not as if it'd help her avoid the crowds if she didn't go with. Patting her tome to ensure the book was still secured where she wanted it, she moved over and grabbed another stack of fliers for herself. "Sounden as- uh, sounds like a good idea, Satomi."

"Hey, not to be rude, but can you maybe not?" Kyou cast an irritable look at the pair already spraying testosterone at each other. "It's kinda early for this nonsense." This was already starting to look like a bad idea - especially considering Anna's comment earlier. Winks like that were never something that led to anything good. It wasn't as if she had much choice in the matter, though; her little group was basically out of money already.

"You know, you just gotta ask. Negaran nabashid. Don't worry, I've been dirty before, it's not exactly gonna kill me." Kyou didn't know the maid that well, though she did have a point about menial tasks. Granted, the scholar hadn't expected to be left to her own devices outside of the occasional enchantment. . . but that didn't mean it wouldn't be nice if it had worked out that way. "Actually, if there's anything left to do, I could take care of it." Kyou didn't want to quite show it, but she still wasn't used to crowds. Show it she tended to do anyway, mostly because it was hard to hide that level of discomfort.

"Keep it up like that and I'm gonna have a brand new fur lining for my boots!" Rhian shouted angrily before turning her anger on the axeman, loosing another shot from her stout bow. P27 shoot axedude

"Well, first I want to make sure my Drive works right again. I'm already feeling better about it, but might as well make sure." Kusuke thought for a moment. "I also want to try bringing one of those men in here, see if that clears their heads up. I can't imagine living in a place with distorted time and space like that is healthy, so maybe taking them out will help. We should also test what happens at the boundary of it." He nodded, and gestured to Satomi to give him a bit of space before testing his powers as he did so before.

Hiroki frowned. There were seven, of course, unless one counted the false plane of Nil. Watcher had also mentioned hailing from a plane that underwent some great cataclysm, at least from what she could infer. "Nine. At, um, least, as far as I know. Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Lust, and Sloth, um, plus Nil and where you came from. There's um, also dream planes, but I don't think, um, you mean those." She fully expected to be told she was wrong, and led to the answer if she wasn't told outright. Hiroki was liking this situation less and less; she didn't exactly mind learning more about the nature of the planes, but being guided and nudged around until she reached a place where she no longer had to be dealt with was exactly the thing she'd pushed so hard to avoid.

Through the restless swirling of all of the fears and doubts the situation, a flare of anger rose up to illuminate her thoughts for a moment. The alien scenery, beautiful as it was, was hard to appreciate at a time like this, and she glared up at Watcher for a moment. He was treating her like a child, refusing to answer her questions and distracting her with other things. She forced the feeling back for the moment; Hiroki was acutely aware of where she stood in regard to him, especially considering she had no idea where she was or how she would get back home if her host decided she was too troublesome. Then again. . . "Don't belittle me." She was "his" hero (though that thought sent another wave of anger through her, this one more bitter tasting than the last.) Pointless though his machinations may have seemed, surely he wouldn't toss them aside just because she got slightly belligerent.

Hiroki gasped faintly at the feeling, mostly because she felt like she had to respond somehow to the yawning emptiness that opened up inside her when the glowing ball - was that her Favor? Her soul? - coalesced over Watcher's hand. The man's claim certainly sounded true with that evidence placed before her. With that true, how was she supposed to oppose him? It was already fairly clear; he said something about her not being strong enough to fight again. She was to fight Cardinal and win, become Watcher's hero. So, she needed to do the opposite. Cardinal couldn't defeat her, so even if Arcturus's assurance that Watcher couldn't was rather less comforting now, she could do something. . . . Of course, a plan that relied on her charisma and ability to speak well under pressure was probably a bad one. "Isn't that, um, just going back to where, um, we started before Nil?" He did just say he was looking for someone to undo his actions but this all seemed . . . pointless. All that manipulation of people, all of that hurting, for entertainment? Though another, less important question rose to mind. "And. . . what is this place?"

Hiroki stopped for a moment, then shook her head slightly. There was no real point in lying about it, though something about what Watcher had said struck her. Energy and light. . . Arcturus had said something about her holding the power of energy. Did that mean she now had some kind of role to play in this equilibrium? Once again, there was so much she didn't know. Of course, Watcher could very well be lying about this, but this made sense with what she knew already. Lord had mentioned a balance of the planes, the disruption of which would cause great destruction. "What does, um, this mean for Nil?"

She'd tried to forget that match. She was pathetic, so very pathetic, unable to even fight back in a meaningful way. She had been nothing, and she refused to go back to being such. Hiroki took a deep breath. Watcher was probably just trying to unsettle her, but the joke was on him, Hiroki was always unsettled. Nothing he could do or say would be worse than what she'd already tried to tell herself, and the girl had maybe, finally, proven herself wrong. She met his blue gaze with her own violet one, trying not to let her nerves show. "Why did you set, um, up Cardinal as Nil, then?" First things first; though, really, it was the only thing she could think of to ask. What did you do when confronted with a second being the gods feared immediately after the first?

"Uhh, Reimu, that was a little. . ." The mage was evidently quite woozy, as evidenced by her lack of defense of her own headwear. Masako inadvertently proved an occasional hypothesis about Gensokyo false as she snatched the hat away and quite easily bagged the artifact, which didn't really seem to have too much of an issue being contained in the bag - though she could already feel the thing's sinister influence. "Look," Marisa began to slur, "I uh, promise I was jus' borrowin' . . ." She blinked a few times, shaking her head and seeming to become more aware of her surroundings. Masako obtained the Unidentified Magic Crest! Masako scanned Marisa! Marisa may be added to the Bestiary. For completing the encounter, the party gains 3 Crafting Tokens! "Who- Hey, get your bird feet off my head! And gimme back my hat, ze." A sinister magical whine sounded from below Masako, before a much less sinister groan of disoriented pain signaled its cessation. "I promise, whatever ya think I did, ya didn't need to kidnap me and drag me into the middle of the forest to beat me up. Oww. . ." She halfheartedly waved a hand at the tengu, attempting to get her to perch elsewhere before using the same hand to rub at her aching skull. "I don't even know any of ya, well except the tengu kinda, when would I have been able to take yer stuff?"

If he was right about anything, it was the part about choices. She barely knew any of the people involved in this, and yet she had to choose who to trust, and who to ignore. For all she knew, this "invitation" was some sort of elaborate deathtrap; wear down her mech in a pitched battle, then take her somewhere and dispose of her now that Favor wouldn't protect her. The only thing that seemed to disprove that was her newfound strength. Arcturus had promised it, and so it had been. Maybe he was just messing with her mind, like he had before, but she felt like she could trust him. So, instead of turning and walking away, Hiroki took a deep breath and nodded before standing. "Okay. I'll. . . do my best." She turned to face the portal. It was strange. She'd always been uncomfortable with having people's eyes on her, but she didn't like this feeling of its gaze seemingly going right past her. Another breath, and she began to walk forward.

N10 and dance for the two Ls

Hiroki blinked. Once again, she was left with difficulty responding. It wasn't exactly something that should be new to her: the whole point of the tournament had been to fight Cardinal in the end. Having one of the most powerful beings in Tempest assure her that she wouldn't lose to either her or Watcher was still different. She felt the weight of responsibility that she'd been trying to ignore settle about her shoulders as she listened to Arcturus. The girl had tried her damnedest to not think about it, but by joining the tournament, she'd accepted the responsibility of dealing with its conclusion and its aftermath. It was a daunting thought, to say the least. "So I need to convince Cardinal to, um, fight Watcher?" Hiroki halfway began to shake her head even as she said the words. That didn't exactly sound like a likely outcome, and almost certainly wasn't what Arcturus meant. "Or. . . how am I supposed to know what the right answer is?" According to Arcturus himself, the gods were wrong, but it still sounded an awful lot like Cardinal needed to be stopped - and she still wasn't sure who she should be trusting. "Or what to do at all?" Hiroki wasn't really any good at anything other than fighting. If that wasn't the answer, well, she wasn't sure why the man seemed to be placing this trust in her. It seemed genuine enough, but this still felt like it was all over her head.

Save Cardinal from herself? What did that mean? Cardinal was... dangerous, she'd come unhinged and tried to kill Tai, the one who'd apparently been on her side. If it hadn't been for Blink, she might have even succeeded. Maybe that was what the man meant. "Wh-Who is 'Him?' I don't, um, understand." That was an understatement. She didn't even know why she was stopping to listen to what he had to say; Arcturus was her enemy. Though he had promised that she would change, and whatever she'd done to win - or, stalemate, really - was certainly new. He hadn't lied to her that she knew of, at least. Still. . . "And why should I, um, help you?"

Marisa turned to the incoming Faunus with a look of exhausted confusion across her face. "What's dental insu-" she managed, before the fist collided with a loud pichuun in place of the perhaps-expected crunch of her nose breaking, and she was sent spinning head over heels toward the ground (still managing to hold onto her broom somehow.) The odd shadowy artifact she'd been holding also careened toward the ground, though it slowed before it hit and eventually came to rest just above it, levitating slightly above it. It wasn't long before the black-and-white witch hit the ground a few feet past it, digging out a comically long rut before finally coming to the rest at the base of a tree. "Oww, that really hurts, ze. . ." she groaned, sounding more than a bit out of sorts. Chen alighted nearby, but the bakeneko seemed to be giving whatever the object was a fair amount of space. "Well, that's the first one down! I bet Lady Yukari will want to take a look at that, but Lady Ran told me not to mess with anything weird the youkai exterminators dropped." She paced around the item, and jumped in surprise when it started to rotate to follow her, tails fluffing up - but then it simply continued upon its path, apparently just set into motion by a light breeze.

Scarlet let off a string of choice profanities in what sounded like at least three different languages as she hurried over to the downed Jack, attempting to pull him back to his feet and giving him a taste of a different variety of nanite as she reached down.

Lucine made a face. "Snails?" A chocolate bar was starting to sound really good, but it sounded like that was less than a likely prospect at this point. She looked back at Nader quizzically. They certainly had not known the whole story before, and on top of that he'd been the one insisting it was a trap or justification for hunting humans the whole way. Of course, now the man seemed to be rambling, so Lucine's frown eventually turned its way back to Foxface. "But yeah, um, I'm Lucine Nadine. We were trying to find a. . . well, actually, I couldn't really tell if they were a boy or a girl, but there's a kid that fell down here, have you seen them?"

Q27 explode Cavalier 4