Chevaleresse

"Uh," Haruka responded eloquently. She wasn't great in most social situations, and her skills in that regard had probably actually gotten worse with being able to rely on people liking you by default, but she was fairly certain most people wouldn't really know how to respond. Especially since the silver-haired one kept referring to Chihiro but was obviously not talking to her. Apparently they had the same name? Or Chihiro was the other girl's given name. "I'm Chihiro Haruka." She laughed a little, though it came out rather more awkward and strained-sounding than she'd meant it to.

Haruka looked between both girls with confusion for a moment, moving away from the shop and back into her own lands for the time being. "Uh, yes." she said after a moment. How much damage had green-hair actually done? Were they actually fighting over territory, or was there something else. Haruka kept her confusion to herself just long enough for the silence to get almost painful, then spoke up again. "Did I. . . What happened here? It probably had something to do with the groping she'd witnessed earlier. Without thinking, she glanced down at her own rather less prominent chest, then shook her head and went back to watching the green one, still slightly on guard.

Ran failed to suppress her sigh this time. "I understand you're upset, but there's no need to be so vulgar towards me. I'm sure there's a reason this happened." She wasn't quite as frustrated as she could be though; the kitsune had to admit that what was happening with the fairy was adorable. "And honestly, do you think being a tengu somehow makes you above Lady Yukari's . . . hobbies? A detective such as yourself should know that the Youkai of Boundaries has few of them herself." They were drawing close to the manor, now, and indeed, the doors on the place seemed to swing open of their own accord when the party started to ascend the short set of stairs leading up to them. Within the doors, as might be expected, was a hallway, sparsely but tastefully decorated with the occasional tapestry or painting. A mix of styles was represented; it seemed that whoever collected these was interested in Western art as well. One, in fact, seemed to be. . . a poster? It depicted a man backlit by a sunrise or similar, in green power armor with a yellow-gold visor. There wasn't much time to ponder the artwork, though; the party abruptly found themselves at another doorway, as if they'd skipped a portion of the walk entirely. Ran reached forward and pulled this door open, holding it for the party and gesturing towards the room beyond. In it was the lady from earlier - Yukari, Ran had said her name was. She lounged at just over head height for most of the party, draped across yet another one of those gaps in space - this one seemingly solid, as she didn't seem to be at any risk of falling through. "Welcome to my domain," she said, not unpleasantly, as the group filed into the room. "If you haven't been introduced yet, I am Yakumo Yukari, and the one who called you here. I need some errands run, you see, and it's best if some out-of-context help does them for me." She twisted about a bit, the gap she was laying across vanishing with another appearing beneath her, so that she was sitting rather than laying down. "There have been some unusual occurrences lately, and the one who usually deals with such things is. . . shall we say, indisposed." She pulled a fan out of another, smaller gap, and used it to gesture broadly to the party. "I was hoping you could take care of this for me."

Heidrun retreated back towards the group of non-gang members as soon as she got her purse back. She didn't reply to the wish for safety; she wasn't sure if it was intentional, but it was much more threatening than reassuring. "Wow, this place really is different," she said. "I thought we were years away from actual AI, especially now that we're not using Mako any more. . . well, and that most of the research labs for that kind of thing are radioactive ruins now.'

Ran frowned slightly at Rory's anger. "Other than being transported here, I'm not sure what you mean." The look she gave Masako when Ran turned to her was one of commiseration. "Well, if you ask her about it, she'll either pretend she doesn't know what you mean, or claim that there was some greater purpose to it. Which I suppose is true, if you consider her own amusement a greater purpose." She sighed. Why did she deliberately annoy these people and then dump them on her to deal with? Her expression did smooth slightly when Walmond spoke; it was the first polite question she'd received thus far, after all. "You are in Yakumo Yukari's domain, on a boundary in reality. Truthfully, I'm not sure why she brought you here, but I suppose actually heading into Gensokyo proper would have been more effort for her."

In numerous locations throughout the castle, something odd occurred. This, of course, was paradoxically not an unusual thing; all manner of odd things occurred in the castle all the time. However, this seemed to be pressingly strange: several apparent holes in the air, like rents in space itself, had appeared before various denizens of the structure. They seemed to be tied together at the ends with ribbons, as if to stop them from expanding further, and peeked into a space seemingly filled with darkness. . . and far, far too many eyes. They seemed to nearly beg for investigation - in fact, if any of them had stared long enough at them without traveling through them, they'd find themselves being pushed through from behind, before the gaps both behind and ahead closed without a trace, leaving only empty rooms behind. For a brief moment that simultaneously seemed to last far too long, everyone who had fallen through the gaps felt the sensation of freefall, being surrounded by that dark space. Depending on just how graceful one was in a fall, they either landed on their feet on... something, or got a slightly closer feel of that strange nothingness that seemed to be serving as a floor for a moment. It had no visual distinction from the space around it, yet it supported their weight nonetheless. Of course, depending on one's perspective, that might not have even been the strangest thing about the occurrence; after all, suddenly finding themselves in alternate dimensions was rather normal for the team that traveled across them to hunt monsters. Looking down, some of the party might find something different about themselves, though just as many were left unchanged. There wasn't much time to process this, though. The sound of a woman's voice laughing once sounded, and the source of it suddenly made itself clear - a woman, in what appeared to be a somewhat elaborate purple dress and white mob cap, with long blonde hair. It was hard to tell, as only the top half of her body hung out of a gash in space similar to the ones that had brought them to this place in the first place. Even more strangely, she seemed to be upside down, complete with her hair falling upwards instead of downwards. "Oh, visitors? I was wondering when you would show up," she said. The strange woman tilted her head slightly at the party. "Ah, it seems like something might be a bit out of alignment. One moment." The tone in her voice indicated that she wasn't surprised in the slightest at this, though it made a faint attempt at pretending to be such. Another portal opened, and out of this one came an entire woman this time - apparently a different one, with a hat pointed upwards on either side but a similar outfit, but in blues instead of purple. Her hair was shorter, and slightly more notably she seemed to possess a large number of fox tails sprouting from behind her. Her expression seemed to be one of resigned acceptance of the scenario. The gap closed behind her, only for another one to open just downward of where the first one had opened, but arranged vertically. The first woman stepped outward, still upside down but entirely out of the gap this time. She glanced upward, and space shifted around the party before they suddenly felt the same gravity that the woman apparently did, dumping all of them (including the now rather irritable fox lady) onto the "floor" again. "Ran, be a dear and show them in, I've one last thing to prepare." "Ran" sighed in response as yet another gap carried the woman away before offering a chance to respond. "My apologies. Lady Yukari is. . . she enjoys herself, I'll just say that." She seemed to be no stranger to this kind of behavior, though still didn't seem to be fond of it. "I'm sure she has much to tell you, but in the meantime, if you could follow me, I can try to answer any questions you might have." She gestured behind her, where some kind of manor was now visible in the distance. It almost seemed to resolve out of the shapeless space around it, with scattered rocks slowly becoming a path, splotches of grass and the occasional shrub slowly becoming a lawn and neatly kept garden, decorated regularly with cherry trees.

A flash of. . . something. . . moved across Heidrun's face before it was replaced with rather more mundane startlement. She stumbled back a step as if she'd been struck, completely disproportionate to the force of the poke. "Hey! I asked you nicely to please not touch me, it, um, it really bothers me." Also not technically a lie. "I'm sorry, are you saying you're a full AI? I didn't know any of them existed yet, the most intelligent robot I've ever seen was just a hunter-killer drone. Well, um, until it got smashed, anyway. I didn't mean to offend."

That was it. The faint sound of Hiroki growling beneath her helmet - the onboard equipment fortunately not picking this up as something to be modulated for once - was barely audible over the whine of her weapons systems preparing to fire. The Makuta had struck several sore spots in rapid succession, and the dismissive glance at her gear was the icing on the particularly infuriating cake. "TRY ME." She wasn't going to sit here and allow herself to be insulted like this; doing nothing would be admitting her weakness, and that was unacceptable. The rational part of her told her that what she was about to do was madness, but the part actually in control clenched her right fist. A lance of light burst outward from the cannon on her right arm, headed towards the darkness below the set of glowing red eyes that had dared to mock her so.

"I, okay. I don't have anywhere on me that I could have put anything except for here." A small satchel hung at her waist; she ceased pressing herself into the wall and opened it up to reveal. . . Almost nothing, except for a coinpurse. Without being prompted, she opened up both; the coinpurse contained small, silver coins with square holes through the center in various sizes. "See? You can, um, scan me if you want. Remote controlled bodies that are that elaborate usually have lots of sensors on them, right? If you still don't believe me you can scan me, just please don't touch me."

"I already told you, I don't have anything on me except some traveling money. If I could just phase through things, wouldn't it make sense for me have done so to run away from you?" Her voice still held a waver of fear, even if it was also becoming slightly indignant at this point. "I don't want to do anything except get to where I was going, and all I have is pocket change, please leave me alone." She still hadn't moved away from the wall; she had her reassurance that the newcomers weren't involved in the gang, at least, but that didn't necessarily mean they were friendly to her. "I-I'm just a healer, I wouldn't be able to sneak around and steal things from people if I tried."

Lucine pouted slightly at the statement. "I totally could! People speak all kinds of different languages. Though, um, I don't actually speak Draconic. Is it anything like Romanian?" She realized, slightly belatedly, that Romania probably didn't exist in this world, as well as all of the other languages she spoke not exactly having corresponding geographic locations. Maybe they still had the same languages by some weird coincidence? "Oh, and I'm Lucine Nadine Einzbern Yggdmillenia." It occurred to her that she probably shouldn't be sharing her second middle name, but with Germany also presumably not existing here, so the Einzberns themselves didn't as well, alongside their fame as a house of homunculi. "I'm um, I'm sorry to hear that your parents just kicked you out like that."

Hiroki, when the light was dropped, summoned her armor around her. The Hellfire Knight popped into existence, coating the small girl's body in a shell of thick alloy armor and a veritable forest of weaponry; weaponry that immediately began humming and emitting an orange glow. The main cannon on her right arm swung toward where the voice was coming from, though she kept it idling in a primed state rather than beginning to fire just yet. "So you admit that you are a threat and not an ally," she said simply, the voice changing function in the suit masking any quaver that might have been present in her voice.

Heidrun didn't seem too keen on getting any closer to the robotic woman, though it didn't seem she was with the gang, at least. "I, um, wasn't planning on anything rash, I just don't want to get anyone hurt. These people seem to think I've stolen something, but I really have no idea where I am. This doesn't look like any part of Edge, but I don't know how I got from there to here." Was she being remotely operated? Heidrun vaguely remembered a remotely operated animatronic cat seen around Shinra and AVALANCHE; perhaps this robot was something similar. Though, the chance of it being Shinra tech made her wary. The company seemed to have turned over a new leaf, but it was hard to forget. . . everything.

Justine couldn't help but giggle at the numerous reactions she got. This was almost too easy. Ferdiad's reply - and particularly Lenore's addition - actually drew a snort from her. "Ah, but you are a prize. Though I can see why you might not want to feel like a trophy; set up on a pedestal and not interacted with. Fortunately, I prefer to be a bit more. . . hands-on."

Heidrun felt her heart leap into her throat. "N-No, please, I didn't steal anything, all I have with me is a bit of gil and the clothes on my back. Please don't touch me, it's very dangerous." Realizing this sounded like far more of a threat than a warning, she blanched - these didn't seem to be the types that would take kindly to threats - and backed up against the wall she'd just apparently walked out of. "I-I've been exposed to Geostigma, you see." A long shot; they might not have heard of the cure, if she'd been transported to some far-off place, and might believe that the disease was contagious. While she wasn't symptomatic, she had noticed some. . . unusual effects on herself after the disease's appearance in her area, so it wasn't even a lie.

"One man offering you his horse, another even offering you a massage. . . Should I throw my own hat into the ring?" "I'm sure I know how to treat you right better than the boys do." Her voice held a playful lilt to it, as she glanced between the three individuals in question.

"Well, it wouldn't make for a very good story if everything went right all the time, would it? At least there's plenty to see walking through the wilderness." Her feet ached too, but she was used to long hours spent performing; a bit of a hike had nothing on back-to-back performances. It wasn't easy to sing and dance for hours on end. "Wish I'd brought my lyre, though, I could have at least used the time to compose something."

Mitsurugi gave the man - Tanabe - a slight bow. Not quite a dismissive one, but the one she tended to give to all strangers, one indicating that she was likely of higher status than them. "My name is Saigai Mitsurugi." She straightened herself out. "I'm afraid we are strangers to this land. It is fortuitous, then, that we would meet one such as yourself at this time." A traveling merchant; he could be an excellent source of information about the area. If he could be trusted, of course; merchants were not always as friendly as they liked to pretend, though they were typically not too untrustworthy, on account of not wanting to be caught in a lie or scam among strangers.

Hiroki peered down the tunnel, somewhat on edge. She was confident that she could handle whatever this place had to throw at her, but she wasn't fond of being underground. The only time she had been was probably the second-worst thing she'd experienced in her life, though it didn't have anything to do with that location in particular. Hiroki shivered slightly at the memory, despite the warmth of the area. Focus on the task at hand, Hiroki. They were likely going to have to fight, if what their guide had implied was true. "What is, um, a Rahi beast, anyway?" Know thine enemy, and all that.

"Oh." That was. . . sad. "I kinda get what you mean." She had good reason to be nervous around mages, and she wasn't sure "normal" people would be more understanding on the whole either. Though she couldn't remember any time her "father" had told her to melt the faces off of anyone. "I guess people could assume you were bad and try to slay you. Sometimes humans kinda stop caring if they're talking about nonhumans." A sad note crept into her voice before she pulled herself back. "But I don't want to slay you, and I bet the other people I'm with don't, either." Lucine tilted her head slightly. He wasn't a full-grown dragon, right? He sounded like a kid, and dragons were supposed to be like a hundred feet long or something like that. "Where are your parents, anyway?"

Lucine peered at the patch. "Ooh, that actually is pretty cool." So he could actually melt faces, if he was speaking correctly. And the creature did seem to be a dragon-like thing of some variety, which meant she was talking to an actual real life dragon! "It's really cool to meet you, too! Where I'm from there's no dragons left." She tilted her head slightly as she looked up towards where the snout poked out of the foliage. "Why do you want to scare people, though? I mean, the stories are all about big huge dragons that did it, but they all sounded like big dumb animals or the occasional cursed evil guy."

"Estevan?" Oh, she shouldn't have questioned it. If she just lied and said yes she could have helped whoever this person was and moved on. "I don't remember the name of the person that needed me, I just heard of the place they were. Er, but I can still help him out after coming this far!" She really, really wanted to avoid being "taken in." It'd be one thing it it were police, but gang members tended to be even less gentle. "I um, I don't know what you mean by causing static, but I don't want to cause any trouble."

"Hello, stranger," Mitsurugi responded, turning to face the oncoming man. A merchant of some kind, maybe? Or just an odd sort of traveler. "I believe we're doing well, all things considered. And yourself?" It seemed they'd be delayed slightly in investigating this world. She caught a glance of herself as she moved, something unusual catching her eye. Her hand, where it poked out from beneath her robes, seemed to have some manner of tattoos on it. A brief glance at the other confirmed the same. Strange. Though nobody else had commented on them as of yet.

Justine will take Dark and Artemis's Song

"'Ooh, the storied dragon knights, here to save us!?' Pah." Rhian grumbled under her breath at overhearing the conversation further ahead. "Don't need to be a dragon knight to fight just as hard as one." She continued to trudge up through the trees, trying to distance herself from Kris's harassment and the awkwardness of Argos's reaction. Whatever. He's just a kid, he needs to grow up and not get all sad because I didn't want his stupid compliment. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. H9