Chevaleresse

"Um, I'm Lucine Nadine. Please don't threaten to stab me again." She followed after the man, listening to his explanation on the way. The girl seemed somewhat nervous and hesitant for someone wielding two hand cannons that were nearly the size of her arms. She tried to think of the magical power sources she knew of. He wasn't a mage, and it didn't sound like he always had magic, so he wasn't like her either. Nadine supposed he could have some sort of Mystic Code that either stored power or let him tap leylines directly. Nadine pushed her hair back as she spoke. "I could try to help figure out where his mana is coming from."

"I don't want to leave anyone behind if I can help it." E10, attack

"You see that!? Who's next!? I've got plenty more for ya!"

"Bastard! You've got Ecquis in there! Only thing that's gonna save your ass from me is someone else killing it!" With an angry shout, she rushed at the guard once again. Attack

Kyou quickly slipped on the clothes she found in the locker; blessedly, the outerwear was a simple t-shirt and jeans. Evidently the staff hadn't had the time or inclination to get cute with her. She pulled them over herself with a clearly hurried manner before quickly walking back out of the locker room. If no one stopped her, her first task would be digging her communicator out of her still-sopping discarded clothing and checking it - unless someone had already taken care of such.

"I got something entirely different. I'll wait." Kusuke tried to keep out of sight; it wouldn't be good for violent criminals to catch him skulking. Or maybe it would. . . Regardless of how badly he wanted to get into a fight at the moment, he continued to bide his time. If the password kept changing, though, he would just stroll up, offer the password he'd overheard earlier, and force his way in if the guy decided he didn't like it.

Lucine was not particularly fond of anything occuring at the moment. While she had experienced summer heat before, it was usually when she had the leisure to prepare for it, and generally a Romanian summer did not compare to an Australian one. This served as a backdrop to the myriad other unpleasantries occuring; namely the sounds of what was apparently a warzone, a man being hooked to some sort of unfortunate fate, and now a person pointing a magical spear at her with a sort of signature she associated with her cards. Lucine froze up, her hands immediately going up. However. . . "Opal!" "Understood," the strange device replied, with an abnormally serious tone. It . . . broke apart, into two almost comically oversized boxy hand cannons, which flew into both of Lucine's hands. Her body glowed for a moment, and she was suddenly in some sort of elaborate dress in a color of a slightly more subdued shade than her hair. "Combat protocols: initialized," the girl said in an eerily robotic-sounding voice as she dropped into a position that, while clearly made for fighting, made it ambiguous as to whether she intended to use the weapons in her hands as guns or clubs. However, as the stranger dismissed his weapons, she immediately pulled back up into a more neutral stance. "Disengaging combat protocols temporarily." She stayed in the outfit, but there was a noticeable shift in her manner back to a more natural one. "Fueh. . . huh? We didn't fight?" She sounded somewhat happy about that prospect, if rather confused, as she glanced around at her surroundings.

"Lucine Nadine Einzbern Yggdmillenia." She performed another small faux-curtsy. "I'm from Trifas, in Romania. My dad is German, though." Nadine leaned over slightly, an expression of frustration flickering across her face when she couldn't get a good look at whatever video the hacker had been showing. "Um, the Internet is something that computers use to talk to each other." She pushed her hair back again. "Uh, do you have computers. . .?"

Kusuke attempts to eavesdrop on whatever exchange he can, getting away with it by jumping slightly backward in time if at all possible. If successful, he'll attempt to get in the same way. If not, he'll just start to barge in as if he belongs there and see what happens. If that goes immediately, horribly south, he'll reset, circle around and try to find a view into the building, and blink in where (hopefully) nobody has a sightline on him.

"The Internet, mostly. Sometimes I convinced dad to buy me guns to take apart, too. And I'm not ten, I'm, uh, twelve." Her speech hitched slightly, but noticeably. She'd been told a number of times to tell people she was twelve years old if asked; she was physically and mentally about that age (if a bit odd due to various factors,) but strictly speaking she had only been alive for six. "I don't think your country exists in my world. . . at least, I've never heard of it before. I guess I could look it up later." She patted her jeans, only to realize that she had, in fact, left her cellphone at home. I wasn't going to get reception anyway, was I. . .

"I see. Perfect." Kusuke started to walk out of the alleyway, then stopped. "I don't suppose you can point me in the right direction? I can do a lot of things, but the whole 'sensing' thing isn't one of them. At least. . . nevermind." His head still hurt, and he wasn't sure why. He had a theory, but he had no idea of whether it was true or not, or how to broach the topic with someone else without sounding like a complete lunatic. He wasn't sure if being from an entirely different world would make it sound better or worse. . .

"Oh." She almost sounded. . . disappointed. "Is there a reason you haven't adopted something like the FN MAG? It has three hundred more yards of effective range when tripod mounted and fires the same caliber of rounds with probably better accuracy. Plus it'd be easier to service, since I've never heard of a Sorraia, so I doubt you'd be able to find parts for it easily. . ." She did notice the man's seeming confusion at her interest, but this didn't serve to slow her down.

Kusuke nodded at the offer, somewhat glad to have the topic changed from Satomi. "Of course. What've you got for me?" He was still annoyed that the other members of the party felt the need to chase him down; he was probably safer here than most of the damned natives, even without counting the fact that he'd spent a fair amount of free time skulking around places a lot more dangerous than some city streets. A minor factor next to discovering left and right that his party members held such insane views and/or thought little of others holding said views.

Lucine nodded at Aquila's response. "Something like that. Which one gets into which class can be. . . weird." As Nader spoke about his guns, he'd find a twelve-year-old girl inching closer - not that she herself seemed to notice - with an intrigued expression on her face, her sassy flying box following behind (without slamming into her skull for once.) "Eight hundred rounds per minute? What are the effective range and penetration stats like?"

Kusuke tried to avoid glaring at the Ethereal as he appeared. Kusuke failed miserably at this, of course, having been fruitless in finding any obvious criminals to beat the hell out of. Shockingly, even criminals dumb enough to do anything in broad daylight were smart enough to avoid trying anything near very angry-looking capes. "Willing? Yes. Particularly keen on actually doing so? Not really."

"They're called Class Cards because they contain a fragment of the power of a Servant. Servants are placed into one of seven classes based on their capabilities; Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. There are other classes possible, but not many of them have been observed." The girl's expression lightened a bit as she spoke - it was a distraction from the somewhat stressful situation. "A Servant is basically a copy of a Heroic Spirit. They don't usually get summoned any more, because they ended the Grail Wars. The Cards are supposed to be leftovers of that, but they can appear in other ways - I can make them, if you give me time. Opal helps too. Kinda."

"Hi, I'm Lucine Nadine." She nodded slightly with her own introduction. "This is Magical Opal. Don't listen to anything he says." The winged box responded by bumping into the back of her head again, hard enough to jolt it forward without dealing any actual harm. "Uh, he used a Class Card." She pushed her hair back again. "I don't know he pulled a shield out of it just like that, but I could tell you more about them. I can make them myself, it's just hard. . ."

With another sort of flicker, Kusuke was back, shouting blindly at her. "HOW DARE YOU!? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF THAT!? DO YOU HAVE ANY FUCKING IDEA-" His words were abruptly cut off as Mirri tossed a bolt of lightning after telekinetically strangling Satomi, the actions taking a moment to actually pierce the veil of anger around his thoughts. He took a step or two back, breathing heavily, with a brief glance in the direction Mirri had gone. ". . . Don't follow me." He skipped forward again, vanishing into thin air. The surging emotions he'd felt were scattered around in his chest like debris after a car wreck. His limbs still twitched with rage, rage that was lacking a solid target. Of course he was angry at Satomi, but it was pretty hard to continue to want to beat the hell out of a person when you just watched somebody else strangle them. He more or less started to wander the alleyways, looking for a fight, something to work his frustrations out on other than their target, her words still echoing about in his head.

Kusuke whirled, rage splattered across his face. "MAYBE YOU FUCKING SHOULD! Throw yourself onto the mountain of corpses built from men and women that died for their twisted beliefs, and at least I won't have to be working with somebody who thinks that only the people from her incredibly special homeland are the ones who get the privilege of being more than soulless objects!" He took a deep, shuddering breath, before speaking once more in a much quieter, deeper voice. "Stay the hell away from me." He turned on his heel, and flickered as he teleported forward three times in quick succession, rapidly putting distance between himself and the rest of the group. He half-wanted to continue sprinting off, but settled for the rapid walk of somebody who would probably run a person straight over if they didn't get out of the way in time rather than swerving.

"Yes. You are definitely to question the damned Imperial Order or whatever the hell the government is in your world." A rising heat had entered his tone, something that was only continuing to escalate as he spoke. "Especially if they tell you something as hideous as 'only certain people have souls.' A soul is the most fundamental thing a person can have, it's what makes a person a person. They're incredibly powerful, and they hold EVERYTHING about you. Your memories, what you look like, everything you did, all of that is stored in your soul. . ." Oddly, he shook his head a bit, muttering a form of profanity that was likely only understood by himself and Satomi. It didn't particularly slow him down, though. "It is not 'the way things are,' I don't know how many times I have to say it. You're denying reality every time you insist that this ridiculous, disgusting parody of a 'fact' is a law of nature." By this point it was clear that Kusuke was struggling to keep his own voice and speech under control, as a ragged note entered it.

Nadine pushed her hair back on the opposite side of her head, to much the same (lack of) result. "Um, thank you, mister Doom." She somewhat belatedly realized she hadn't introduced herself, and opened her mouth before deciding that the robots and all the weird people were freaking her out and that he seemed to know who she was already. The card was somewhat unceremoniously stuffed into the pocket of her jeans, as Lucine herself slowly started to shrink away from the remainder of the group - only to bump her head against Opal again, who had remained frustratingly immobile.

"Nobody forced you to classify other people the way you do. I don't care what justification you have for it, it's wrong and I could prove it to you if I had the right equipment." Kusuke spoke without actually turning his head toward Satomi, though he did at least match her pace and drop back a bit so they were closer together. "Someone being born in a particular place or into a particular culture doesn't make them better or worse than anyone else, and it definitely doesn't make them soulless. I'm not really sure how you can work up the nerve to tell someone to their face that you don't think they have a soul."

"Fueeeh? But, how, the only ways to get those are to use a Grail to summon them! Uhhh, I mean, um. . ." She scrambled to her feet and backed up several of the other kind of feet in the process, releasing the floating box apparently known as Opal. The. . . whatever it was. . . seemed content with the amount of trouble it had caused. Or it was biding its time. Only Opal knew. Regardless, the girl threw her best interpretation of a curtsy despite not actually having a skirt in his general direction. "Sorry, mister Doom sir, Opal has some glitches in his personality that we couldn't ever figure out how to get rid of. . ." The glitched personality in question irritably bumped into the back of Lucine's head, something which she steadfastly ignored. She pushed her hair back along the side of her face, only for it to immediately fall back into its previous position. "Umm, I don't think-" she stopped and took a breath, remembering the threat of large striped felids - "uhh, those cards would be really helpful to me if I could get one. If that's okay, mister Doom. If not that's fine, just don't feed me to tigers." "You could effortlessly wipe a tiger from existence with my help." "Please stop making comments like that-!"

"Well, this guy looks friendly and not at all like a supervillain." "Opal, be quiet, we don't even know what's happening yet!" "Oh, calm down, Lucine. Nobody this showy is going to be practical enough to be threatening to us working together." "Opal, please, please cut it out!" "What's he gonna do? That typical 'make an example of the dissenter' thing?' Bah." "Seriously, cut it out or we could get in a lot of trouble!" "I highly doubt it. There's no way-" "I said shut up!" A whump followed by the young girl in the jeans and slightly sparkly tee toppling over forwards after putting a bit too much into swinging her backpack downward at what appeared to be a slightly iridescent rectangular winged box floating in front of her face, causing both of them to topple over onto the tiles in front of them. Rather than standing up, the girl stayed hunched over the backpack, muffled protests leaking out from beneath it, her long, bright cyan hair failing to conceal a flush and an expression rapidly approaching terror.

Kusuke glanced over his shoulder to see who was following him. Satomi. He turned back, continuing to stare forward. She doesn't seem that bad, but that line of thinking. . . It's as disgusting as it is dangerous. I honestly don't think I can trust somebody who's so willing to dismiss most of humanity as not having souls. I suppose it's better than what the One thinks. . . but not by much. To Kusuke, not believing in other people having souls was tantamount to thinking of them as animals at best. At worst, it made them objects. Tools to be discarded after being used up. . . that seemed to be the direction that this thinking seemed to go.