Chevaleresse

Kusuke Lucine

Lucine relaxed slightly when Tim reassured her that he didn't have the talents for turning her into anything - even if it would be alchemy, and not whatever thaumaturgy was - though she didn't seem entirely comfortable quite yet. "That staff thing he has seemed kinda magical, though, since he can just kind of plug it into whatever he wants and have it work. Plus he was talking about how much he didn't like artificial intelligence earlier, and then all of a sudden he's talking about 'termination' functions in me. . ." She seemed distraught, pushing her hair away from her eyes with rather unnecessary force, at least until Tim mentioned something else. "Bigger guns? Do you mean it? I never got to shoot the armored guy, umm, Nader's gun. Do you know about SSK Industries? Or you have to know Smith and Wesson, right? There's a bunch of those I always wanted to try but Dad never actually bought any for me, he said it'd attract too much attention."

"Wait, don't beat up Freya! Freya is nice! Even if she's a necromancer." There was only one person she recalled that fit Tim's description that actually traveled with the group. "She was really helpful with that cult, don't you remember?" She seemed legitimately offended that the wizard would suggest such a thing."You don't point drunk people at people you actually like."

Justine started to say something, opening her mouth, then closed it abruptly. She restarted again after having changed her mind on what she was about to say. "You know, Cecily, there's no point in doing anything if you can't enjoy it even a little."

"Don't worry, Knight, sometimes I like it a little rough~"

Justine hummed a song to herself as she moved up to give Ferdiad some encouragement. Or tried, anyway; it was an orchestral piece and rather more demanding than most songs one would try to perform by themselves. M27, dance for the pretty man

Kusuke froze for a moment. How was he supposed to go forward here? What was one supposed to do with a crying girl? Evidently his verbal reassurances hadn't been enough; he had figured that he'd be able to placate her. "Satomi, you, uhh, just need to rest- ah, damnit!" Knowing that speaking to her probably wasn't quite going to work given prior results, he scrambled for the next thing that came to mind - and pulled Satomi into a tight hug. --- Lucine nodded. "That's probably a good idea." She shuffled awkwardly in place, not sure whether to let the topic drop or not. She did want to be done with it, but she would also be uncomfortable around Tim until she felt it was fully resolved. She elected to, once again, go back to watching the wizard, trying to glean some kind of hint to his true intentions from his expression.

Lucine froze at Aquila's "homothingy" line. She had, in fact, misremembered; Tim had been nice to her and seen her sleeping against the power core, so she'd just assumed she'd told him. She didn't speak, quite yet, but it was hard to miss the searching, questioning look she gave the wizard, trying to determine if he was responding to anything but Aquila becoming drunk with an alarming alacrity. This, actually, was enough to draw words out of her after a few moments of internal tension. "Um, are you okay? I don't need you to break someone or something, but I don't think drinks are supposed to affect you that fast."

"Definitely guns first, not that I'm hearing a lot of argument. Just watch your goddamn triggers when we find 'em, I don't feel like picking bullets out of anyone today." Spook proceeded down the corridor, sighing when he realized he was likely going to have to be near the front of the group. Yes, an excellent place for the engineer, that. . . He idly rapped the metal bar he was holding against his palm. He wasn't overly confident in it surviving more than one or two encounters with zombies, but ideally that's all he'd need.

"Okay." Her cheer seemed to be returning with the pat, even if she didn't sound entirely reassured yet. "I mean, she can't fight. I'm the one doing all the work!" A familiar voice sprouted from Lucine's backpack; evidently Opal was finished sulking. "H-Hey! I can too! And it's my body, you're just running a stupid program!" "It's my brain! Well, I don't have a brain, but it's my circuits! And I have to use them because you're so bad with yours." "That's not fair, you know I'm trying! Just shut up!" She thumped the backpack, prompting an irritable-sounding squawk. "Hitting me won't make you a better mage, you know." Lucine simply whacked it again; Opal fell silent, but there was an unmistakably smug feeling to it, as if the magical device was grinning. Lucine deflated slightly after a moment, sighing. "I mean, I don't know." Lucine started to respond to Tim after an apologetic glance at her backpack. "I heard of a mage who turned his daughter into a talking dog or something just to prove that he could. They can be really mean." And the Grail is supposed to be really valuable. "Especially when you're. . . um, like me," She couldn't recall if Aquila knew about whether she was a homunculus, and didn't particularly feel like putting herself at risk of further stress at the moment.

"Um. . ." She really wasn't sure how to explain the situation to Aquila, especially with his. . . enthusiasm. "I don't think you need to beat him up. He just, uh, used that staff thing, and the stuff he said afterward really scared me." She was quiet for a moment, then somewhat belatedly added "B-But I don't think he did it on purpose! I think. I don't know, I just don't want to worry about this. . ." Lucine really did appreciate Aquila's wanting to comfort her - at least, that's what he seemed to be trying to do, it was possible he was just looking for an excuse to fight - but she would have rather the situation had never come up at all. Even if she's the one that mentioned it. . . The girl almost slapped herself for bringing it up.

Lucine blinked. "Eh? A drink?" She shook her head a bit, stumbling verbally. "I mean, um, no, I wasn't looking for a drink, I was just wondering. . . um, there was a thing that happened. But, uhh, it doesn't matter, just, er, let me know if you see the weasel guy." She might have overreacted; Lucine wasn't really sure what she planned on doing if she ran across Law, but the thought still made her nervous. The list of functions he'd listed out that he could supposedly activate wasn't exactly benign and comforting, to say the least.

Lucine waved at Aquila at his hello, but still looked markedly nervous at his approach. She didn't really think he meant any harm, but she was very rattled by what had happened earlier. "Um, hi, Aquila." She gestured at her scaly companion. "This is Moss, I met him in a swamp. He's nice. Unless you're mean, then he'll melt your face." The magical girl flashed a smile at the dragon that probably looked less humorous than it was intended to. "I didn't lose anything, no." Her eyes rose from the dragon to Aquila once more. "You, umm, didn't hear anything about cups, right?"

Kusuke had herded Satomi back to the ships, heading into the larger one in the hopes that they could find a less public space. And find one he did, hustling Satomi into a room and trying not to think about the distressingly large disparity between how competent Leo believed himself to be, and how much competence he had actually displayed. Located in a more private location that was less likely to offend her already-damaged sense of honor, Kusuke finally replied to what she'd said earlier."Satomi, you're not a failure. The only reason that village is still standing is because you worked day and night to get those walls in place. And of course you were scared in that place. I was scared in that place. And I didn't have one of my supposed allies backstab me right before it happened." He was still going to throttle Arminius the next time he saw the man. "I mean, yeah, you reacted emotionally, because you were tired and battered. That happens." --- Lucine slinks aboard, Moss in tow, behind Tim. She wasn't sure if she should tell him why anyone would want to turn her into a cup, then he might want to as well. "I mean, that little rodent guy somehow knew about it, and Father always told me to look out for other mages, so I thought. . ." He'd never outright said that's what it was, of course, but it wasn't hard to put two and two together.

She nodded. "Was just thinking the same thing. Bolts, nails, any kind of fastener, really. Dunno how fast I can get them but at minimum they'll make decent caltrops." He set about disassembling more beds while the rest of the group variously tore apart the rest of the waiting room, gathering a collection of the aforementioned items. "If this is a medical facility, I could probably get needles to stick people with too. Granted, if these are anything like the zombies in horror movies, needles probably won't slow 'em down much but hey."

Spook raised an eyebrow at the display. "Well, that's not bad. I wanna give this a shot myself, though." He focused for a moment. That's what this kind of magical nonsense was supposed to be about, right? Reach out and grab it with your head, or whatever. Not exactly his modus operandi; trying to will a machine to work usually just resulted in a headache and your boss yelling at you. He strained, focused, pulled. . . and it wobbled a bit. That was. . . Well, it had worked, so he didn't have much room to complain. Maybe he could work it back and forth, fatigue it, maybe even try to do some microscale nonsense to heat it. She slapped herself in the forehead when she realized her mistake. "Duh." Another look of concentration, and a quiet sound of metal scraping later, one of the legs of the bed came free, intact, the bolts holding it in place dropping to the floor before Spook walked over and picked it up. "Neat."

"Hey man, this whole deal was so I could get my fleshy parts back. It's not an obsession, I just wasn't expecting to wake up as a little girl." At least he wasn't pink. Her sour expression went sourer still as Slate mentioned what their plans were, but brightened somewhat as he heard the last bit. "See, if you would have lead with that, I would have been a lot less bitchy about this deal. That, I can work with." He decided to just drop the question of the virus for now. Damn mercs. Sure, he was a merc too, but he did his best not to do blatantly evil shit, like selling off a dangerous mutagen to the highest bidder.

Spook placed a hand to her head, sighing deeply. "Let me get this straight. You did experimental procedures on all of us, in an unsecured facility - don't bullshit me, this shit doesn't happen in somewhere that's secured - then left us here, without immediate and ready access to hardware. The mission is to take a bunch of people freshly off the operating table with said lack of hardware, many of which are untrained civilians, and secure the source of the current warcrime going on. I'm sure it's to "synthesize a cure." I'd be worried about getting infected but I'm pretty sure I don't have enough fleshy bits left to catch a cold." Not quite true; in fact contamination of his nutrient solution and subsequent direct organ infections had been a fairly big concern of living as a skull and lung. Still. "Yeah, it's supposedly only through injection, I know. Because bioweapons are well-known for their predictability and never leaving established parameters, right? Gimme a break." He avoided sighing again. Now he was going to have to figure out how to get everyone here out without someone getting ripped apart and eaten. "I'm at least gonna need a rundown of how this whole 'geo-organic prosthesis' works." She crossed her arms, pouting. "And why I'm four feet tall and dickless."

"Uh, thanks." He still wasn't really sure what to make of the. . orc? Azgurk seemed to have a high opinion of himself and a fondness for smashing things, but he seemed to mostly smash things that needed smashing, and thus he had little issue so far. Though there was a faint twang of disappointment as he politely handed the seed over to Leo instead of doing his usual. Irresponsible to even think it, yes, and it's not like Azgurk was likely to practice proper containment either, but. . . Kusuke shook his head. The tension was slowly draining out of the knot it had formed between his shoulders now that things seemed to be done blowing up for the moment. "Just be careful with the damn thing, you hear me, Leo? Especially if it's absorbing magic, that shit's dangerous." He doubted he could convince the fool to actually destroy it, but. . . Still, there was more to worry about. Kusuke turned to Satomi. He didn't want to say it out loud, but she was a mess. Some of the tension returned as he reminded himself of why. He moved towards her slightly, looking her over. "You didn't catch any shrapnel or anything, right? You're okay?"

Kusuke dashed about the monster, blade sinking past the bindings into . . . something below as he made short hops through space to position himself for followup after followup. Something that was revealed as the last of the creatures binding it (it was tough to call them minions) fell away. The roar nearly knocked him over with its force, and the undercurrent of feeling that almost seemed to pervade it. It almost sounded sad, which he supposed made sense if Leo was correct. Still, this thing had to be put down. He steeled himself, dropping into a crouched position. In a flash, a knife left his boot, seemingly vanishing right as it left the tips of his fingers. There was a brief sense of *wrongness,* even moreso than usual, as the group looked at the Witch - and then it exploded, the knife and her glassy frame mutually destroying one another as they tried to occupy the same space.

"A little, yeah. Every single roommate we've had has transferred out after a few weeks." There was an implied, but unstated, "bitches" appended to the end of her words. Something pinged at her about the blush, too, but she passed it over, not entirely unconsciously. Good for Kaede. Her attitude changed a bit, the worry she was carrying about finally breaking through to the surface as Kaede spoke. "Yeah, I understand. It's. . . yeah. For the best." Looks like she was alone, for the time being. She barely knew what was going on with Lilith and there was already so much. A part of her desperately wanted to vent about what had happened today, but there were at least three layers of things that would be very bad for the wrong person to hear about. "At least this is doing a good job of confirming how I already felt about the church."

"Oh, spare me the sob story. Yeah, you got sick. I feel for you, I really do. But you think frenching a landmine and being reduced to a couple organs floating in a nutrient tank was a fun experience for me? It's not like they did anything but make you bendy, far as I can tell" She huffed irritably. "Though it's 50/50 that we've all got bombs or something similarly unpleasant planted in us." And then took another breath, slower. "'S'pose you've got a point, though. I do have arms and legs and all that jazz again. Name's Charles Adelman, while we're sharing. Or, uh, was. Charlie works both ways, sorta. Most people in my old unit called me Spook, though." He crossed his arms, considering the question for a moment. "Suppose it could be military, but this doesn't smell like military to me. Not quite crisp enough, and they like to get different kinds of dregs. I doubt there would have been much in the way of the whole 'choosing' thing if this were a government deal." He took on a thoughtful expression, starting to mumble to himself. "Could be both, though, farmed out to a contractor or. . . nah, it can't be connected to that. . ."

Spook resisted the urge to laugh at the pony. Almost. A still-too-high chuckle escaped their lips (were they lips? He was apparently made of mostly light now, but most of the parts seemed to be analogous) before they moved over. He reached up and gave the guy (horse? Girl? This was incredibly confusing) a conciliatory pat on the back. "A censorship chip? That, my friend, has to be a fate worse than death itself." The small, green person's look got a bit more irritable at the reply of the one with the bendy fingers - seemingly his only change. "Look, man, I dunno about you, but I'm gonna be blunt here. I didn't actually mind being a tank that much, but you know what it was missing?" A pause, almost long enough to think they were waiting on a response. "My dick. That was like, half of my motivation to sign on for this shady shit. I wanted my dick back, and they couldn't even give me the courtesy of that. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the whole deal - having legs again is nice and all - but come on, man. How many mercs you see running around with goddamn master's degrees? I'm valuable." She(?) laughed, sounding a fair bit more bitter than was intended. Well, not really that valuable, else he wouldn't have been here in the first place.

"I was the tank," Spook said dryly to the girl's question. She seemed to be mostly normal on first inspection; he thought he recognized her from earlier. He(?) pushed off of the bed, standing as the rest seemed to be doing. He didn't look particularly steady yet, but he hadn't actually had the opportunity to run a set of legs since his date with the landmine. Or maybe it was just the showy one's voice grating at his mind. "It'd be a little weird if we were all hallucinating the same shit, nah? Like the furry over here, unless you're telling me everyone in the room all subconsciously wants to see furries."

Spook groaned as he came-to. He felt funny, which was an improvement over before, but he still felt funny. He blinked, and sat up. His head immediately started swimming - sense of balance was a bit off due to being mounted in a war machine for a while. He was pretty sure it'd pass, though. Once his vision cleared up, he noticed a few somethings off. First of all, there was. . . quite the assortment of characters around him. Possibly in the literal sense. Fucked-up cyborgs were what he expected, but. . . well, things were weirder. A couple looked like normal humans, a couple were pretty much the furthest away you could get from that. Second, he was lower to the ground than he expected. "This is new. . ." Aaaand that was three; his voice was way, way higher than it was supposed to be. "I'm gonna have to second that 'what the fuck,' here." He glanced down at himself. Bright green? And not a lot of contour. They had mentioned something about "holographic light constructs." "Why am I a little green girl?" Well, not that little, but not exactly huge either. If he had to eyeball it, judging by the beds and the dimensions of the room, he was about. . . 140 cm? Maybe a bit less. "You couldn't give me at least five feet?"