Chevaleresse

"Magecraft is something that's still within the laws of the natural world. A spell can start a fire, but you could do the same thing with a match." From Lucine's tone of voice, it sounded like she was reciting a lesson she'd heard once. "Magic is the performance of miracles that are outside of the natural laws. True Resurrection, Teleportation, Time Travel, things that one could never achieve through effort and mundane ingenuity alone." She stumbled a bit over the second-to-last word, before dropping into a slightly more normal tone of voice. "Opal was supposed to copy the Second Magic, Kaleidoscope, to generate infinite energy. I'm the one connected to the Third Magic, Heaven's Feel, but I'm not actually doing it. And I don't want to, either." The homunculus shivered slightly at the thought.

Kyou stood over Asuka as the girl picked herself back up, her attack seemingly ceasing for the moment. It was hard to stay aggressive when your would-be opponent wasn't being such at all. Kyou, did, however, continue to sputter for a few moments, attempting and largely failing to chain words together, until finally she spat out a question. "What the fuck was that for?" Kyou had been ranging from irritable to outright angry at Asuka over this entire "practice," but getting stabbed over and over in that simulation was agony; she was still panting, and not only from the exertion of running and punching the redhead.

"Oh, hi." The necromancer, right? She was sure she'd seen one or two of them wandering around the castle. . . They were typically a little ostracized, even among mages, but the Yggdmillenia didn't exactly have much ability to be choosy. "Um, they don't really channel numbers. Imaginary Number Magecraft might, though? Um, anyway, Opal was exaggerating. She doesn't really actually perform any Magic, just magecraft that's trying to imitate it." The capital M was audible as Lucine explained.

Arturia feigned shock and fear (well, her actual fear made that a bit easier) as the woman approached with her weapon, starting to put her hands up. She focused for a moment, despite her hair being pulled (she had a little sister, did Cora really think she'd never had her hair pulled?) trying to call up the power from before. As she transformed, she dropped the facade as she tried to knock the stun gun away with one hand - which her sword was forming in already - and threw a punch at the woman with the other. "Like hell I will!"

"Doesn't sound like you're very interested in protecting her. Besides, she's thirteen. They'll forgive whatever it is." She maintained her stern expression despite her continued nervousness. Arturia knew she had to protect Lilith regardless of what she had done. . . but what was it? Had she accidentally killed someone, the way she'd lashed out at her once? Whatever it was, if all else failed she could ask Katherine - Kallisto - about it. She had influence, right? "That and you're doing a pretty shit job of actually making any demands, unless trying to intimidate teenagers is just your hobby. The hell do you even want?"

Arturia's face betrayed startlement and fear for a brief moment; she'd been suspicious of the woman, but the sudden transition was still jarring. She quickly managed to force it back into a scowl despite the anxiousness rising in her chest. "Threaten me as much as you want, but I'm not letting you do anything to Lilith. Not any more than you already have." Maybe she could spook the woman, make her think Arturia knew more than she did. Though what she did know was more than enough in her eyes.

Arturia glanced between Lilith and this Cora. Lilith seemed panicked (not that this was unusual,) Cora didn't seem bothered. Some kind of reprisal after she left, Cora just putting on a nice face? But Cora had asked if she was staying to help with some kind of work. . . Damn, she was the wrong person to try and navigate this. Still, she didn't want to leave Lilith alone, and couldn't deny that she wanted to know what this work was. She gave one last look at Lilith as she answered, watching the other girl's reaction. "No, I can stay and help out with whatever it is. I haven't got anything else to do, anyway."

"Piety doesn't save you from the fire. I suppose you'd be pretty familiar with that, wouldn't you?" Nobunaga at this point seemed to actually be growing somewhat physically taller and more imposing-looking. "Unless you need to be taught that lesson again, hag." Nobunaga glanced over at Magna, tone dropping immediately to a more cheery one. "Well, of course we've met already, this is a Holy Grail War after all! It's only natural for Servants to have clashed, though I don't remember this Saber being quite so edgy."

Arturia stood, confused, but did allow Lilith to start shuffling her off in the direction she wanted. . . though likely not as fast as the other girl would have liked. "What's going on?" she asked, lowering her voice. "You just not supposed to have guests over, or what?" Remembering what Lilith had said weeks ago in that crater, she had her suspicions that it ran deeper than that. Still, she waffled on actually asking about it. If there was, what was Arturia supposed to do about it? If Lilith couldn't just fight her way away from them and run off, something told me that physically trying to fend off her abusers - if that was even what was going on - wasn't going to be a good idea. And it's not like she had some kind of. . . political influence or whatever to help her that way. She supposed that she could offer to let her squat in their room, Kaede would probably understand. . . They were supposed to be getting a new roommate, but she doubted that situation would last long. "If you need help, I can try to do something," she said finally.

Kyou stumbled out of her tube clutching her chest, nearly falling over and quite visibly crying. She took a brief moment to actually regain her footing as she looked around, zeroed in on Asuka, and then broke into a sprint at the redhead. What she yelled as she did so came out to be some kind of unintelligible mess of multilingual profanity, but the balled fist raised in Asuka's direction was pretty hard to misinterpret. Kyou put all of the force and weight behind the punch that she could muster - while she was neither particularly large nor some sort of trained fighter, she led a pretty active lifestyle and had plenty of rage and pain to put into the blow.

The woman, still giving a polite smile, said something in French as she glanced between her various guests, before following up in a language they could actually speak. "Here, sit down. I've made tea for us." She gestured at a table with several seats, though as she spoke she moved over and removed a chair from one end of the table, glancing at Chise as she did so. "Now that you've had your fill of bickering, I want you to repeat the information I've already given you back to me, Immanuel."

The door on the apartment creaked open, and after a brief pause finished the rest of its arc, opening to reveal a familiar (to Immanuel) woman, foreign-looking, and definitely older; gray hair and a wrinkled face tended to betray such things, though she didn't seem to be particularly bent by age. Overall, she was rather... mundane-looking, not wearing any particularly exotic clothing except for a patch over one eye. She didn't seem particularly fazed by the vaguely humanoid ball of belts, though. "Oh, hello, Immanuel. I'm sorry for leaving you and your friends out here, I had an important call to attend to." She gestured at the rest of the group, waving them inside as she stepped aside to facilitate said passage. "Please, do come in." She turned, and headed deeper into the room, rolling her eyes as she did so. Veil of mundanity or no, talking about operations in the hall like that? She'd have to drill proper op-sec procedures into this man, and probably the rest of the party.

The "forbidden word" also made Arturia uncomfortable... granted, not nearly as badly as Lilith, and for some different reasons too. Her desire for a boyfriend at some point was one (though admittedly dating in general was rarely a thought that occurred to her, except perhaps the thought that it may be expected of her at her age.) She cleared her throat a bit to prompt Lilith, and tried to allow herself to calm down slightly. She nearly succeeded in quelling the crimson in her cheeks, until Lilith mentioned that she could use milk instead. Her hand unconsciously drew up towards her chest. "Milk? But wouldn't that, uh, I mean, that would be even more inconvenient. . ." Wow, the table in front of her was suddenly very interesting, or at least you would think that from how intensely Arturia was staring at it and not Lilith right now.

Arturia shook her head slightly and blinked a few times in obvious startlement. She'd been interested - if a bit surprised - at Lilith's sudden tangent about magic, and equally surprised in how the girl still hadn't figured out just who and what she was given her inexplicable knowledge of magic, excessive physical power, and control over both lightning and darkness when pressed. The question about her monthly cycle, though, hit her like the conversational equivalent of a brick, leaving her momentarily floundering for the correct response. She settled on her default response; bluntness followed by inquiry, though her face utterly betrayed any attempt at being truly blase about the question by turning bright red. "Zero, actually. Why?"

Myrdwyn decided to opt for a different approach, one she normally wouldn't consider in combat on foot. It wasn't exactly usual for her to have a weight advantage over her opponent after all. . . but this one was literally just bones. Instead of going for further strikes, Myrdwyn simply put one shoulder forward and charged, smashing herself into her opponent while mostly using her weapon as a method to intercept any potential counterattacks by the skeleton.

"Ya know, you ain't exactly the best at this whole 'appearin' trustworthy' bit." She didn't comment any further as they moved through the dungeon, though the appearance of yet another skeleton prompted her to take up a defensive stance. "Aw, what the hell, now they're copyin' my fancy new armor? What's next, a wyvern skeleton? Go ta hell, you dumbass sack of bones." She moved forward once again to meet this newest foe, striking at its legs and then going for a killing blow, or what would be one on a human, anyway.

"Ain't exactly elite soldiers I'm dealing with here." She leaned over, picking up the ribbon. Hadn't Cadence found some weird ribbon once, just like this one? She shrugged, stuffing it in her pocket before moving on after the continually-mysterious convoy man. "Hell's your name, by the way? Never head it."

Myrdwyn's response was not lance-based; rather, she simply threw a punch at the thing before going for a grab should it dodge or not be deterred. "Ya got a lot of nerve for someone with no organs!"

Myrdwyn gave the convoy man a dubious look. He was still shifty as all hell, and generally one didn't trust creepy old men with fifteen-year-olds. . . but it was that, or try to fight with Cadence slung over her shoulder. If only Ecquis fit down here. . . "If anythin' happens to her while you've got her, I'll turn you into a pair of boots. And that ain't a joke, I'm a cobbler's daughter." She handed the fencer over reluctantly, and then took her lance up in both hands. "Now have at me, ya clunking sets a' dog toys!" Myrdwyn moved toward the pair of skeletons, weapon readied once more.

"I guess. Don't suppose ya got anythin' for this," she said, shifting Cadence up and down slightly on her shoulder to indicate what she meant as she followed the convoy man. "Expected her to wake up sooner than this, but maybe the ghosts here are cursed or somethin'."

"A bit irate about th'number of skeletons I ran into along the way and the number of teenagers I had to carry, and I'm startin' ta get a bit hung over, but been worse. Oh, and a disappointin' lack of treasure, so I'm hopin' that shield there is worth something."

"And I refuse to help you with your stupid plans any more! So get out of the way or w-we'll kill you!"

"To be totally honest, I don't completely understand what's going on myself. I'll do my best to tell you what I know, though." Arturia hesitated slightly herself. "It still sounds a little crazy when I say it out loud. I met Kallisto and she did something to awaken some kind of power inside me; that's where the lightning sword thing and the fancy outfit came from." She wasn't liable to admit out loud that she actually liked said outfit. It made her feel knightly. "Though I thought that was weird, because lightning is historically associated with Layla. . ." Perhaps it had something to do with that vision she had, or the fact that she'd considered becoming a Laylite once upon a time. Or maybe the latter had led to the former? Who knew. "Uh, anyway, I got the impression she could do that for other people. I don't really know what was going on with the girl with the bat, though." A note of anger entered her voice at the mention. "Pretty sure it was the bat, and not her." "I, um, understand if that's a lot to take in. I'm still kind of dealing with it myself."

"I'm not going to work on your weapon any more, now let us through!" Wind Xemnir