Chevaleresse

Satomi coming into view prompted an immediate expression of concern from Kusuke. "Satomi, what happened?" It looked like she'd been attacked, even set on fire - more enemies that stuck around? Even then, though, he doubted that even a near-mortal combat would put her into such a state. Had something even worse happened? It looked like she'd been crying, and she hadn't bothered to even tend the kimono after it had taken such damage. "Here, I can probably at least fix your kimono." He waited for some kind of confirmation from the girl, not wanting to violate some facet of her rather prickly honor code by helping without being asked.

Rhian just looked at Kris, then made a face as she went back to watching for enemies.

"Oh." She couldn't really think of anything to say in response to that. It sounded unpleasant, sure, but. . . that was the cosmic threat in her universe? Otaku? Nevermind that she seemed to act like one herself. . . Maybe that was a similarity. "Er. That's really different from where I'm from. I fought witches, monsters made of negative energy and despair. They don't really work together or anything, they just try to lure people into their barriers and kill them or worse." A strange note entered her voice as she spoke. "Kyubey knows more about them, but he doesn't like to tell you until it's too late." The creature in question glanced at her for a moment before continuing, seemingly forgetting about the statement immediately. Not that I want to talk about it, either.

"No, but I have a strong soul. Wouldn't be able to do my tricks otherwise." It was actually interesting to hear about how Leo's tech worked, though it was tempered by the knowledge that said tech could easily bite the group in the ass. Exposure to strong magical ambiance could outright reprogram it? He couldn't imagine what something like the Black Beast's leavings could do to something like that, once they were twisted through Leo's rules. "Remind me to never take you to my home timeline." He shook his head. It could be fine, but it wasn't a risk he wanted to take soon. "Just because you don't feel it doesn't mean it's not happening, though. If a brief flash of exposure was enough to do that to your golem, imagine what being immersed in that could do to you? I'm just saying, we literally just finished an argument about being careful with obviously dangerous things."

Kusuke put a hand to his forehead and groaned, tilting his head back. He wanted to get mad at Leo, especially since his previous irritation with the golemancer hadn't exactly faded, but. . . "Ugh, extradimensional movement is a pain in the ass." He hadn't seen that in a while. It was hard to remember the last time. . . Kusuke shook his head. "See, this is why I don't like robots." A lie, or at least not the real reason. "You can't reprogram a person, not normally anyway. And if the Ouroboros was here, we'd be in major trouble." Arguably as much trouble as if that masked man was here. The time traveler shuddered at the thought. "You have a plan to get in there and avoid being driven insane?"

Kusuke sighed, having not gotten particularly far away from where the discussion had occurred before Leo, shockingly, managed to find another problem. Fortunately, this also placed him fairly near the smithy. He stalked up to Leo, clearly still irritable from earlier. "What did you do now? And I'm smashing anything that looks too dangerous. Captured and in a lab is one thing, but I'm not risking my life to get you more toys."

"Elemalians?" It wasn't a term she'd heard before, as evidenced by the way she stumbled over replicating the girl's pronunciation. "Tail gear" was unfamiliar, too. Though she supposed it wasn't too odd; the depressed girl had her cat instead of Kyubey, but the first other magical girl she'd met had known of witches as well, and the creature with her at least looked superficially similar to the little plush bastard. "Where I'm from, we fought witches." There was a pause just long enough to be uncomfortable. "What are Elemalians like?"

"That works for me." Kusuke shifted in his seat, grumbling under his breath. "Serves me right for doing favors."

"Then I'm not satisfied. I didn't ask you to go about business as usual, I'm telling you that since you haven't minded yourself, I'm going to mind you personally if I have to. This is ridiculous and I'm not dealing with this any more." Kusuke's already fairly limited patience was fairly quickly reaching an end. "I don't care if you think Satomi is paranoid, you can wait ten goddamn minutes for us to come to a consensus before you blow something else up."

"Will you agree to not start at all until everyone is satisfied with the containment procedures in that case?"

Heidrun, moving towards the fringes of the group deliberately, brushed past Mar on her way to cower in the corner. She let out a small "oh" at brushing the elderly orc, then peered at him curiously for a moment. He didn't look human, but would it be rude to ask. . . ? "Um, sorry about that, I can be a bit clumsy at times." She waited a moment or two before speaking again, continuing to awkwardly shuffle backward slightly. "I hope you're right. You seem like you're a little calmer than the rest of the group, not that I mean to offend anyone else in it."

"Look, all I want is for you to not be poking the obviously evil bullshit without supervision. If you're fiddling with gunpowder or explosives or whatever, I don't care. And you already know what I think of your current danger assessment tools, so you can stop playing the 'nobody will understand' card any time now." Kusuke barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Half the point of this discussion was that you DON'T know everything. All I want, all Satomi wants, all EVERYONE ELSE wants is a chance to stop you from jabbing the MurderDeathKillite with a magical stick and being surprised when bad stuff happens."

"Nuh-uh. not good enough." Kusuke shook his head. "You are definitely going to stop every time it's anything even remotely hazardous. The "check in whenever" thing already doesn't work. Besides, there's plenty to be done with things that aren't liable to explode in your face or turn into gray goo. And yeah, it might be a pain to set up a lab everywhere, but the point is not having places ruined. I, for one, would like to think saving lives is worth the risk. As for rigging the places to blow, I don't really care whether it's a literal explosion or not. There needs to be a panic button that stops whatever is in there from getting out and ruining things." Kusuke resisted the urge to sigh. At least they were getting somewhere, but it didn't stop Leo from still being an insufferable, ungrateful bastard.

AA12 shoot Tactician after Dulcie moves

"The containment squad is a good start, even if it gives me the creeps. We get to review anything hazardous you want to work with, and whatever comes out the other end of your workshop. Said workshop gets built in isolation from anything important, and should be rigged to blow as a last resort. Outside of that, we don't bother you, and you get a crack at whatever you want as long as it's not hoarding something unique for yourself. Fair?"

"I suppose that makes sense. Doesn't mean I want you wantonly experimenting with whatever dangerous nonsense you trip over; safety radius or no, there's still plenty of risk to the people around. A place the size of the bus, or this town, could easily go under because you decided to synthesize up a zombie apocalypse or something." He was at least trying to get the hostility out of his voice, even if Leo was still mostly refusing to admit he'd been wrong about anything. Granted, he had been wrong about whether this delineation thing applied to Leo, but he'd been right on every other count.

"So what you're saying is, despite having 'next to no understanding of what I am talking about,' I was right this entire time?" Kusuke almost had to grit his teeth. There was little that was more infuriating than someone smugly strutting about their flawed understanding of the world around them. "I've been saying that the entire time. Things are different in different places, I figured that much was obvious. If this was my world, with this much magic in the air? Everyone who wasn't beastfolk would be slowly dissolving into seithr. Furthermore, who's to say this little safeguard thing is going to hang around once he leaves? If it's his influence that's stopping things from being even worse than they already are, there's no guarantee they stay stable once he's gone."

Hiroki looked around the tunnel. Systems weren't picking up any more targets incoming, so that seemed to be dealt with, at least. She was still a bit unsettled, to say the least, at Dackly suddenly doing what she did. What made you think you could trust her? Fortunately, there were plenty of other distractions to be had. Reluctantly, she dismissed her armor, dropping to the tunnel floor lightly as she lost the height the suit of mechanized weaponry gave her. "I think we, um, should go find the air stone. If it makes, um, air, it should help us get the water, um, stone."

Kusuke took another deep breath. He would at least attempt to be polite for the sake of the other two here. "Alright. My problem is that Leo has been experimenting with increasingly dangerous materials and coming up with a number of cruel ways to use said materials, whether it be some kind of gear or his own magic. Myself and others in the party have asked him to stop, or at least slowed down, and his main responses to me have been informing me of something called "Elemental Delineation" that will somehow prevent any of the things he creates from spreading. To my knowledge, there is no such thing, judging by both what happened to my own world, and the tainted areas that exist in this one. He also tells me that we should talk later, but I can't in good conscience allow him to go unsupervised, because I have no idea what he is going to experiment with or what the results will be in the meantime."

"Why don't you. . .come and get me, then, instead of having your little friend. . . blast me with that tome over and over? You just scared?" Z12 and vuln

BGM Isobel tosses a healing poppy in the direction of Hikari, letting her recover to full health, while LOTUS finds a shocking insight of her own to allow Masako to use her signature technique once more. Empi gives some romantic advice to the robotic maid; this seems to reinvigorate her somehow. Perhaps it's best not to ask how. Masako reveals another Shocking Insight, drenching the battlefield in a startling burst of bullets once more! She also manages to get a lovely whiff of poison in the process. Both mushrooms and the fairy swarm evaporate under the assault, which also leaves the larger fairy dazed for [23] damage. Ritsu and Isobel take [7] damage from flying danmaku, while Lambda takes [4]. Another red burst flies out from the dissipating swarm, targeting [Walmond twice, and Isobel.] A wave of danmaku collides with Masako in the midst of her attack, dealing [12] damage. Rory contines to advance on Chen, and finally manages to snatch the cat and scoop her into his arms. She doesn't seem fond of the action, but fortunately Rory is mostly proofed against cats clawing. He's not really sure why, but he feels pretty good about this. Or maybe he's just getting high? Either way, Chen is still damp from whatever she fell into earlier, which does make it a bit of a challenge to hold on. Hikari casts a bit of empowering magic in the direction of Masako, sensing that she'll probably need it. She recovers [6] HP. The Great Fairy finds her rotational velocity to be a tad too high to think of attacking at the moment. Walmond tazes the fairy again, [Success] sparks arcing across her body which deal [7] damage. Lambda interposes herself in front of the fairy in question despite her existing distress. The second line of danmaku strikes Masako, dealing another [11] damage. Ritsu recovers from her stun, and returns to full health. Another mushroom and two more Fairy Swarms appear from ahead. Masako notices that they look a bit unusual for fairies of this area, far too twitchy and full of black and red. They don't really seem that threatening otherwise though. The Poison Mushroom declares Condition: Anyone who strikes it with an area-of-effect attack will be struck with a Paralytic Cloud (3 turns.) Initiative Status

"I tried that already. Every single time, all the bastard does is act like I'm some blithering idiot who's trying to tell him the world is flat and brush me off while saying we'll talk later. I've had it. I saved his goddamned life and that's what his gratitude consisted of." He took a deep breath. It's not like it was her fault. "That said, since I know he's not going to go prodding any obviously evil powers with a stick, I can try to talk to him."

Heidrun skittered into the room, brushing past Alexandria on her way in. She was relieved for a distraction from the current conversation, not that it actually settled the internal debate she was having. She should tell them, she really should, but who knew what would happen if she did? They were dangerous terrorists of some kind, justification or no, and that Friedhold unnerved her regardless of how charitable he was trying to seem towards that Nessa. For all she knew, he knew exactly what the extent of her modifications were because he did them himself; who knew what he would try to do if he found out about Heidrun? The worry was written clearly on her face as she slunk backwards towards the nearest wall.

L5 dance Baldur

Kusuke rubbed his head. Tranquilizers. . . it'd been a while. No need to panic yet. He took a moment to take stock of his surroundings; his room? Well, if he was being kidnapped, that was an odd place to put him, unless it was some sort of reconstruction to set him at ease. Kusuke swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stopped to pat himself down. Probably not a kidnapping, then, since it seemed he still had his gear. And if it was, his enemy was confident enough in their ability to stop him, which meant they were either too incompetent to worry about or far too competent for him to have a realistic chance of escape. He shuddered at the thought; there was only one person he knew of that could realistically pose such a threat. Still, standing up, he continued to ponder the situation. He was alive and unharmed, so someone must have subdued him on behalf of Leo. Was it that sniper he'd seen slinking about? That would explain the seeming appearance of the dart out of nowhere. It was probably fair, he had acted rashly. . . but Leo had to be stopped, and stopped immediately, there was no time to wait for him to take care of who-knows-what before he deigned to have time to talk about basic common sense. And given he was just as ready to fight him, even after Kusuke had saved his life, over being asked to stop for two seconds, he didn't exactly feel guilty about this. Kusuke leaves the room.