Powder Miner

Well, Mitsurugi seemed to have at the least stopped crying for now, and she wasn't angry at him, so Navin figured that his approach was the right one. Understand her as best he could. Of course, she was still clearly having a lot of trouble not falling back into weeping, and she was speaking again, talking about her expectations of herself, so Navin couldn't exactly go patting himself on the back quite yet. He raised a hand to her shoulder height and hesitantly moved it over to her, before lightly putting his hand down, resting it gently on her shoulder -- that was something people did when consoling someone, right? People had done it to him before. He hesitated again and then spoke. "...yes, I understand that too. How... that guilt follows you, even when you know it shouldn't, but it still does." Navin sighed internally just a little bit; he wasn't being particularly eloquent here.

When they first arrived at the safe house, Nader had spent a significant amount of time just leaning against the inner wall, mask unhooked, held, and lifted away from his mouth but not actually pulled off of his face (he wasn't willing to let his guard down that much). The feeling of adrenaline wearing off may have been one he was used to, but he had received a hell of a lot of adrenaline from the insanity of the past two hours, and when combined with the chills and fear that his mind tended to bring, right then he hadn't been sure if he would be sick. He wasn't. But he did note to his dissatisfaction (mask reattached) as he approached the set of guns that Vitor had mentioned to him that it appeared to have been at least partially pillaged. Oh, well, he would make do. Nader took a PDW and a frag grenade, and proceeded to locate a workshop or something where he could disassemble the weapon and take a look at its contents. He had cottoned onto the fact that gun technology seemed to be well improved in the time of this place, and he wanted to see if he could glean a thing or two from the work on the weapon.

Satomi considered Dragon's words for a moment. "Ummm... I do doubt that I will have the amount of time I would need to learn from any of the dojos here, but I suppose that it's possible I could buy some books... if I could convince the others to spend that much, heh heh..." Books are really expensive, after all! She had no idea how much money two thousand dollars was, but if it was a lot she could probably get a book or two.

Satomi continued to stare up at Dragon, rubbing an eye before flipping the page on her notebook, which had gone through several pages already in the eighteen hours she'd been there, filled with notes about buildings, Armsmaster's machines, the crossbow she'd built with them, the world, and now Dragon's device... though, for obvious reasons, not on her pen. "Oh, um, I see. Ah, that wasn't quite what I meant. Ehehehehe," One of those too-long sleep-deprived laughs, "Um, I guess this is probably a bit much to ask, but, you see, I have something of a fascination with technology, um... but given how tinker technology tends not to be the sort of thing you can learn too much from, I was just curious how much of this device is more mundane techn--" The "phone" that Julie had given Satomi buzzed suddenly, and she squeaked and literally jumped. Face red, she then managed a "U-um, excuse me!" Satomi then took the phone and shoved it near her face to more easily be able to read the small text, and very visibly struggled with the phone for a few moments (Dragon would probably be able to see that it was the kind of silly amount of trouble with it that you would associate with a very old person) before she managed to type out a response to Harry (why did these keys work this way?!) over a few frustrating minutes: <Yes pldase wotld love food. The nthers heqe are Lucille, Lhlly, and Misi and Frigus just asived> (And that reminded her, she still had to try to talk to Mirri later...) Glaring at the phone both out of frustration with it and out of a desire not to get too sad in front of Dragon as she hunted down and pressed the button to send the message to Harry, Satomi spoke up in Dragon's general direction. "Umm... sorry. But, yes, I suppose I wanted to know if there is anything I could learn from you. This is just so fascinating..."

Nader proceeds to nod, grimly. "I spoke with her back in the castle. She told me that she was twelve years old, and besides that she is clearly, visibly, a little girl. Have you never seen one before?? And people don't even have to be fucked in the head to do things that terrible, in any event. I'm fucked in the head, and I wouldn't have sent a twelve-year-old off to fight... but I have seen some things. A soldier this young, that's... new, admittedly, but it's not the worst thing I've seen people do when their lives are on the line." Nader shrugged languorously at Sha'tith when the lizardman said his piece -- wasn't really his concern what some other country or people had done in the lizardman's homeworld.

Nader sighs at that, before putting his armored hand (the one on his machine-gun arm) to his mask for a moment in a facepalm, before putting his hand down and then leaning on his Horsekiller. "If you're trying to bait me into a fight, you're not going to get it. I'm not the lizardman, I don't respond with violence to insults, only to getting attacked. I may be a paranoid of the most genuine variety, but believe me, I've had too much time to think about myself and been through too much for that to work on me. I'll just repeat my point: even if she is talking now, don't go harassing little girls, and don't go getting too damn nosy."

"And the sooner we get to that safehouse then the sooner we're not relying on that! I'm going to go crazy. Er. Crazier." Then he looked at Aquila again. "I've never been one for trusting everyone I'm working with instantly with every detail of my life, and I don't much like the idea of trying to make everyone else do so, too. I don't like nosy people, unless it's literal counter-espionage. I wouldn't worry about being a "homunculus", though, Lucine. After meeting and being threatened by an actual lizardman, I almost can't be surprised by anything strange anymore."

Nader shifted to look at Aquila with the sound of metal clattering and fabric rustling. "Nobody cares about if you're a fugitive from your world. Why would we? We don't know anything about your world, after all. Let people keep their secrets, this isn't some sort of trial here. Especially if they're little girls. Don't need to be so damn nosy unless you've got a very good reason for it." "Also, can we get moving? There's a sniper out here, I'll point it out again."

Vitor couldn't see it behind Nader's mask, of course, but at the suggestion of receiving additional guns Nader was grinning widely. "Oh, I'll gladly take any gun that you give me; I make a point of being as armed as possible. And yes, maybe I can do something with them. I'm from 1942, so powder weapons are far from obsolete for me - obviously, Forenia sees heavy use of them, and along with armor, small arms are my specialty... but usually fairly large small arms I'll see what I can do."

Next up Nader spoke (well, after sighing a truly legendary sigh of relief at Roadhog's retreat and then clanking over to the group), though not immediately to introduce himself, voice coming in slightly muffled through the small holes near the mouth of his mask. His Horsekiller touched the ground, the long and heavy weapon's top resting on it, for now. "Can we do this while we walk? They might have been friendly for that engagement, but I don't like standing here out in the open when we know there's an unknown sniper in the area. Anyway, I am Nader Jabal, weapons engineer for the Republic of United Forenia. If you gave me the space and things to work with, I could probably do a little work on the guns and armor of the people here, but for the most part what I'm probably bringing to the table is my guns and armor. This armor is the Rabid Tiger Armor, my pride and joy. It's based off of my country's Tiger Infantry Armor, which I helped design, but it's significantly improved over the years, and I built in mountings and rails for heavy weapons. It's made out of mangalloy, so it's fantastically tough, and I'm more or less resistant to shrapnel and small arms. As for my guns, I've got the Mark 2 Osprey, which is a sharpshooter rifle. I admittedly get less use out of it than my others, but it has use. I have the M3 Sorraia, that's my general purpose machinegun. Obviously it's somewhat difficult to fire from my arm, but with the bracings I made it's functional, and sending 20 bullets at something can be useful. Then I have my Horsekiller 1935R, which shoots .60 cal bullets, and though it's not the most accurate, it packs a punch -- it's what I blew the explosives man's arm off with."

Satomi swayed on her feet once again, but she stayed up -- despite not having slept for twenty-four hours, and very barely having eaten for that same period of time, it didn't look like fainting was going to be a concern for a while. Instead of being concerned with whatever amount of money was being handed over (even though Satomi could quite clearly tell that this was a monetary exchange, she hadn't the slightest idea what a dollar was worth) Satomi was still enraptured by Dragon. She walked up closer to the metallic horse-sized dragon, still quite sketching out messy notes. Eventually, the exhausted samurai asked Dragon directly: "Ummm... is all of your work on that incomprehensible tinkertech...?"

Navin sat patiently and listened as Mitsurugi told her tale of guilt, destruction and sadness; it was almost a surreal experience watching the woman slowly fall apart more and more, until she was outright sobbing and in tears in front of him. Of course, with what Navin had heard from her, it was not as if he were passing judgement on the goddess for that. Her story... part of it did resonate for him; the struggle to keep her world from being destroyed, the grueling and horrible battle against invading forces, and the guilt of people dying for her... Navin was familiar with those, and to a painful degree. This must have been what Empi had been talking about earlier, when she had said that Navin would be able to understand Mitsurugi. But this... nothing Navin had experienced could ever compare with this. If the Earth had failed to defend itself in his world, maybe, but even then her story had horrible, extra details, and she had killed thousands in her battle (not that Navin thought less of her for it, seeing as that was what it was). Still, he had to try to understand and help. It's what he'd put himself in this position to do, after all. That didn't make consoling a woman crying over her failure to save the entirety of everything she'd ever known and sought to defend much easier, of course, but he definitely had to try. Nonetheless, Navin was silent for a few moments, the sounds in the room just Mitsu's sobbing, as he mulled over his options. He wasn't going to pretend that he could say some magic words to make it go away, or that she should just buck up and move on, or something stupid like that. Things didn't work that way. Incidents like those never left you, because that was the kind of scar that was permanent., something he knew well himself. Instead what he could try to do was to understand her, and perhaps therefore give her some sort of... opening to... speak about it, to have someone listen to her and get it. Eventually, he spoke. "...I believe that I might understand," he began. Maybe the best thing Navin could do right now was just to speak openly and honestly about his intentions. "I will not claim to have been through what you have been, and I am not going to... trample you by trying to talk about my own life, but miss Powderbelle talked to me earlier and said that perhaps I could understand you more than the others. I... do not think that she could have known quite enough to really call this her prediction, but I think that maybe she was right. I understand, to at least some extent, the burden and the guilt of others dying for you." He paused for another moment, searching to put his thoughts into words. "...I do not know everything about it, of course, but I know enough that maybe I can help in some way besides," and here he was perhaps taking a gamble about their similarities, "just... telling you to stop being so saddened by it or to move on, as if it works that way. I can... talk. And understand, at least some." Well, that was all Navin could really think of. But hopefully it was a step in the right direction.

Isobel Low Isobel watched the younger girl stare at her, and though Sachi did eventually speak up, Isobel's face twisted into a grimace. Yeah, that stare did not seem like a good one, just judging from the length, the moment of unfocus, and Sachi's clear distress. Isobel took a hand and traced it up the edge of her own bandanna, thinking for a moment. Sachi probably did need to calm down, if the repeated attempts at deep breathing and the earlier almost-slamming-into-her were to tell, but Isobel didn't figure it was particularly likely to happen on its own at this rate. Maybe Sachi would end up dwelling on it without actually getting anything out of it, maybe Sachi would press whatever was panicking her (probably something about the battle) down for a bit and then just have it resurface later. Isobel couldn't claim to be a psychologist or a counselor or anything, but maybe she could help. After all, even if she was aware that it probably didn't seem like it, Isobel had had some experience with blood and gore and violence (and some pretty horrible instances of it, at that), and though she hadn't been the one to deal it out, Isobel had had a chance to collect herself when faced with that sort of thing. She put a hand on Sachi's shoulder again, a light but persistent contact that would hopefully keep the girl a little grounded. "The barracks might be good for that, I think. There are a lot of different rooms, and I could help you find somewhere to be undisturbed." Perlita Diaz Gabriel spoke, and Perlita... evidently found what he'd said literally groanworthy. Giving Gabriel yet another nudge with her elbow, she leaned in towards him and muttered at him, but juuust a little bit louder than she'd intended to -- still quieter than normal, but plenty audible if one of the others listened. "Oh Dios mio... Gabriel, we are not going to do this thing where we stumble over ourselves to say we're not as useful or the other or something, I swear. Also, yes I will admit it, just waaatch." That out of the way, Perlita turned towards the others. "Actually, we're just as important. Uh, I do a lot of the healing like I said, with my Persona Crawford (uh, as in Joan Crawford) and that keeps us up when the Shadows -- those are what we fought are called -- attack us, which they do, and then with his Persona Oppenheimer (that's Robert Oppenheimer) he either radiation blasts the Shadows or sets them on fire and then radiation blasts them, and he's really good if he gets the chance to work with some of our other (but they're not here) companion's attacks, like freezing or shocking." Perlita paused and appeared to be trying to think of something. "Ummm, um... I guess I can list off his abilities too, if that's useful. Freila is his most powerful kind of attack, where he just hits one targets with a concentrated blast of nuke, then he has Mafrei where he hits a few with some nuke, and then he has Agilao where he hits something with a burst of fire. It's not as strong as Freila, but it does make them a bit less tough. Also, he has a tendency to kinda set things on fire when he hits them with any of these spells, and then that also makes Freila and Mafrei stronger. Yeah. Uh."

As Navin watched her, even he could tell that she was suffering quite a bit, and that was a little unnerving to watch, in the way that seeing someone in distress can be. Nonetheless, Navin would be at fault if he didn't at least try to listen to the melancholic, beautiful woman and try to help in some way, no matter if (no, especially if) her story was an unfathomably sad one. After a moment, he spoke. "If you are willing to tell it, I am willing to sit here and listen. If you do not want to do so, I will not be offended."

Satomi hadn't taken the hour to sleep or meditate like the others had -- the fact that they were resting meant that the warehouse would be vulnerable to anyone up to no good, especially considering it was just being guarded by three not-particularly-massive girls (and a really small dragon, Satomi supposed). So she'd taken up a position of watch, walking around the warehouse and occasionally flipping through her notes just to try to stay awake. She wasn't passing out on her feet, not quite, but the diminutive samurai was close -- even if she was a Crab, to be frank she didn't have the best stamina. When all of a sudden a metallic dragon descended from the sky on a cloud of fire and noise, Satomi practically jumped out of her skin, literally jumping a couple of inches and scrabbling briefly for her sword hilt before she calmed down. "Wh-whoa..." Satomi said eloquently, before she grabbed her notebook and pen instead and started to roughly scribble things down. Her notes were still actual notes, but they were a whole lot less neat and crisp than her usual work, and if one watched her they could see her literally swaying on her feet, her eyes into a squint of half trying to see Dragon clearly and half exhaustion.

LOTUS LOTUS couldn't resist one additional quip. "Threatening the tablet with a cigarette, that's a productive path if I ever saw one." Perhaps thankfully for all involved, LOTUS mostly decides to hold off after that, sighing again and then speaking a little less blatantly insultingly. "Just to clarify, I'm not behind some desk somewhere, I literally am this little device. Alright, look. I'm going to answer your questions, first, but then I'm going to re-emphasize my point. The command structure isn't a formal one, but we more or less seem to have an informal structure right now. We've had a few squad leaders. I'm one, though I'm not being carried by my usual holder right now, Edmond here is one." The display on LOTUS' screen turns into an arrow pointing in a 2D approximation of backwards to try to denote the man holding him, "Then we have Lexiel, that's the woman who just flew over us, and we have another woman named Ghost. We've each just handled a different fight, though I did most of the organization into teams. As for the Servants, whatever is corrupting them seems to make them pretty much impossible to take in alive, though if we don't instantly blow them to smithereens, from what I've been told there is a short window to ask questions. I'm not sure why they're bizarrely altered historical figures, but that's probably just a function of the magic that brought them here. They have the powers to supposedly match, too. But here's the problem with just translating whatever I'm saying to whatever worldview you seem to have -- if you don't know what's going on, the basic outline of what the situation actually is, you're not going to be able to react accordingly. If you're operating off of the assumption that you're fighting gangs, when, say, a man suddenly starts firing these magical spear throws that pound everyone with energy, or when our healers start slinging their magic (or at least when Aurora does) you're not going to be able to respond precisely accordingly, and this presents a problem even if you don't intend to get involved with the tactics. If you do, well, you just can't be running off of incorrect assumptions. You see how that woman just flew over you? That's not even the most outlandish of her capabilities, let alone the group's. You need to get used to the fact that you're not in the "red, white, and blue", and things aren't necessarily going to be believable from your homeworlds perspective."

Navin might have been oblivious to many subtleties of social interaction, or sometimes to how on Earth to respond to changes in emotional state, but the man was not blind, and if he were there was a not insignificant chance he'd have died by now. However, while Navin did notice Mitsurugi's quick finger-scribbling of symbols, he figured that whatever magic Mitsurugi was performing was some sort of barrier or safeguard -- she must be really serious about the privacy of this next conversation, he thought, and he would conduct himself accordingly. When they got downstairs, Navin took a seat across from her, at a distance that allowed for a fairly private and intimate conversation, but one that wasn't so close as to violate personal conversation. "It is... not something you should apologize too much for, miss Saigai. I cannot imagine that it would be particularly easy with all that has been going on, and, well... with people running roughshod all over you in conversation." Navin grimaced a little bit at that, and spoke a little bit more haltingly. "I... want to try to help in any way that I can, but I ask that you please forgive me if I blunder. I will be trying very hard, but I... have lived in such a way that... well, I am not just bad at talking with people, I am genuinely deficient in it. So. I apologize for that. But still, I do want to try."

Isobel Low Sachi might not have been paying attention as she ran (evidently bubbling with all kinds of emotions) in Isobel's direction, but thankfully for perhaps the both of them, being a little dejected about what to do with herself didn't prevent Isobel from doing so. As Sachi barreled towards her, Isobel nimbly stepped out of the way, preventing herself from slammed into by the fleeing, evidently traumatized girl. Then she turned on her foot with the same motion and reached out, a hand brushing Sachi's shoulder and hopefully slowing the girl somewhat. Concern for the teenage girl dispelled Isobel's insecurities, for the moment; she'd talked at the troubled girl earlier, but seeing her like this even between battles did in fact make Isobel's heart bleed. "Hey," Isobel began, speaking at a moderate volume that hopefully wouldn't overwhelm the panicked girl, but that would hopefully serve when combined with the contact to at least be noticed, "What's wrong?" No point in asking if she was okay when she clearly wasn't, but Isobel figured that if she could get the girl talking it would slow her down and maybe let her start helping out. Isobel did want to help out, after all. Perlita Diaz "Uuuhh," Perlita first intelligently responded when Samantha talked about and demonstrated her powers, but after a few moments the most clearly adult woman in the group spoke, and that poked her attention back to actually speaking towards the group. First she actually did respond to Samantha with a "Uh... I guess that helping not get attacked is welcome from me, heh..." Perlita searched for another thing to say but didn't find it so she kind of just felt silent for a moment, her face reddening with embarrassment before she seized on answering the actual question, turning to the woman with the brown duster. "Umm... Liliya, you said, right? Yes, I'm a healer. Uh, the way I heal... I guess it's magic? I don't know if it technically counts? I'm not sure I should demonstrate right now because I don't know if it'll startle people, but basically..." Perlita fell silent for a moment or two midsentence and formulated how to explain, before she began to talk, looking upwards as she thought out her explanation. "Okay, so, basically how this works, and it's the same for Gabriel too 'cause we're from the same place, is that we both have things called "Personas". Uh, it's a lot to explain, but basically they're, it seems, these representations of historical figures kind of representing some of our personality, but not, like sentient, just kind of extensions of us even though they look humanoid. And we bring them forth to use abilities and stuff. I have mostly healing abilities or spells or whatever they are. I can use Diarama to heal a single person for a bunch, Media to heal multiple people for less, but that takes a lot of energy out of me, I can use Patra to take care of, like... things like poison or concussions or burns. I also do have a couple of attack spells to use if I'm not busy healing, but they're not as good. Kouha slings a bolt of light, and Hama does this weird light thing where it really messes something up if it hits, which isn't super often. Oh. Gosh. I'm really really rambling, now, though." Perlita wilted a little bit and turned a bit redder.

The CRACK of a high-caliber sniper rifle, perhaps predictably, drew a quick "FUCK!" from the paranoid armored man's lips, and in fact it very nearly caused him to dive to the ground out of instinct. Two things stopped him: first of all, if he did dive to the ground he would quite possibly not at all be better off, and he'd have a hard time getting up to keep escaping the terrifying obese man, and secondly, when he turned his head to look, he saw that evidently the sniper had just shot the fat pig guy. And then took some more shots at their enemies. Therefore, while a probable .50 cal sniper rifle was still terrifying, it was significantly less so in this case. Him being turned to look also resulted in him witnessing the massive grenade attack, the wall of force that forced him to stagger a couple of steps backwards and that was a huge burst of light and sound. Nader could feel that maybe he'd wrenched his shoulder slightly awkwardly, but to be frank he was for all practical purposes unharmed. He couldn't say the same about the rest of the team. Almost everyone else, from the 12-year-old girl to the knight and the damned lizardman, was bleeding and/or burned. In that moment, Nader came to the realization that whereas he could probably handle some attention from the explosive man (even if his armor wasn't designed to counter high explosives), the others couldn't, and they were in trouble. Nader muttered a long "Fuuuuuuuckkkkk," to himself just for emphasis. Then he extended his left arm, straightening it fully and slightly turning his wrist so there was a click, moved his head towards the inner side of his arm so that he could approximate his shot near where he thought the explosive-tossing guy was located, adjusted his aim, moved back, and-- BOOM --the heavy report of a large, .60 cal rifle rang out as Nader fired his Horsekiller, a massive bullet flying towards the house his target had taken cover behind, the rifle sliding down the rail on his arm until with another soft click a round was pressed into the breech, and the sound undoubtedly catching some attention. Nader fires his Horsekiller 1935R at Junkrat, which does 3d6+9 damage with a 10% chance to miss, activating his No Silencers Here perk which forces Junkrat to attack him next turn!

LOTUS With the handoff completed (and with Isobel slightly-dejectedly wandering off to another part of the Courtyard), LOTUS was in Edmond's hands when Press and Lucky arrived to the scene. He listened to the police officers talk, and then was silent for a long time. Press and Lucky would watch the small, rectangular device in Edmond's hands suddenly changed the dots on its screen to look like a face looking in their direction, with a singular raised eyebrow. "I am the Logistical, Operational and Tactical Uplink System, or LOTUS. And I suppose that the first question I have to ask you is... ...are you out of your minds? Let me... let me get this straight. If I'm understanding you correctly, you literally think that this is part of some operation to bust gangs in the Western Hemisphere? And that the Trespassers are a gang? And that the Servants are another gang? That's so unbelievably wrong that I almost don't even know where to begin. Wow. I... wow. Look around you. We're in an actual medieval castle. All of the normal soldiers in this castle are medieval soldiers, and the land outside of this castle is invariably hellish and wartorn. This could actually not possibly be Earth. And that's not even counting the absurd variety of the people here. We have what looks to be futuristic people to you, we have people slinging magic, we have blatantly non-human creatures, like me, the actual Artificial Intelligence, or the giant spider woman over there. How could you make this mistake? Here's what's really going on. First of all, Trespassers are, so far as the intel I have received goes, some sort of dimension-eating monstrosities that are trying to destroy the multiverse, which is a collection of different universes. We travel between these universes, and we fight the Trespassers, or at least those they're influencing -- and Trespassers are far above the scale of a gang. The specific world we're on is a medieval one, with an ongoing war between House Asterlux, that's who we're fighting alongside, and House Shienar. Servants are a recent addition to this conflict, a bunch of apparently reincarnated historical figures that have wild powers. One of them, Oda Nobunaga, is on our side and has been helping us. One of them, Lu Bu, died before we got here. The other five are or were corrupted by some strange happenings with the thing that spawned them, and are helping Shienar kill everything. Of those five, Assassin summoned a bunch of skeletons, and had this mist. I don't know who she actually was, but we fought and killed her. We also fought and killed Cu Chulainn, and now we have some sort of thoroughly altered Jeanne D'Arc, King Arthur, and Gilgamesh left to fight. This may sound crazy, but to be frank it may actually be less crazy than what you came up with. How do you make this mistake?" Isobel Low Isobel may have separated herself from LOTUS once that had been what he'd asked for, but now that she was in the middle of the fort without the busybody little tablet clipped to her apron to bark various pieces of sarcasm at people or to ask for information or to something... well, Isobel was kind of lost. She didn't know what to do with herself. She was barely useful aside from being some sort of... of... meat palanquin for LOTUS, anyway. So she kind of just stood there, and the other people in the courtyard would kind of just see the freckled, bandanna'd botanist standing there with her arms crossed, looking vaguely forlorn. Not in some sort of crisis state and not in tears, just looking kind of... dejected.

Satomi chimed in when the PRT guy asked if Lucille was in charge, in a voice laced with fatigue. "Well... none of us three are really in charge, seeing as how we have not been a group for very long and seeing as most of everyone is gone, but she is in fact probably the one to listen to right now. I didn't touch anything in the warehouse, and Lilly is... mmm... maybe not the one to consult where careful, precise judgement is involved." Satomi quite visibly stifled a yawn and turned to the blind girl. "...what did go on when I wasn't looking, anyway...?"

LOTUS' expression display gained two flat little eyebrows. "A reminder that Isobel is my holder, and not my owner. So long as I am working in her interests, I am fulfilling my function, as well as working in the interests of a few other people on my homeworld that I hold loyalties to - and I do believe that restoring my full function qualifies for both. I'd move myself, but, you can clearly see the difficulties with THAT particular approach. She doesn't need to worry, either, because this is just a temporary arrangement and I'd expect to be handed back for the next battle. And, yes, I'm aware of my own schematics." Isobel shifted with clear discomfort written on her face, but nonetheless she spoke: "Um... I don't see any clear problems with it on my end, especially because it sounds like LOTUS has thought this through on his end, and I'm not, like... trying to prolong his discomfort, or anything." The idea of being left alone bothered her kind of immensely, because she didn't what she would do with herself, but LOTUS sounded right to her. So she grabbed the personal AI, unclipped him from her belt, and extended him over towards Edmond.

Navin was totally oblivious to the spying presence of Empi, so Mitsu's glare and statement towards her just sounded like a good precaution to him, causing him to just nod. "Right. I will be just behind you, if it does not bother you." And accordingly, Navin followed her down the hall and down the staircase -- he had no objections to her agreeing to go somewhere more private, considering that it was a suggestion he thought would probably be helpful. When the two got down to the doorway, he was silent for a moment, before venturing forth a hesitant "...so..." It didn't take a social competent to notice how upset she had suddenly become, but it probably did take one to eloquently address it -- the awkward beginning of a sentence was all Navin presently could think to offer.

Isobel Low and LOTUS LOTUS emits an electronic little chuckle. "No casualties, but we got very very close. I had to make use of Nobunaga's support at two separate points, because those skeletons were absolutely ferocious. I brought multiple people who could treat injury, and even then they, especially Aurora, had to balance quite a lot on their shoulders to get us through the battle alive. Honestly, I sincerely hope that Assassin's death means that Shienar only has their human soldiers to rely upon; those skeletons were a larger threat than the woman herself, even if her usage of the mist on all of our medics was... problematic." Isobel shudders at the memory. "That... was pretty bad. I didn't even mind slinging my poppies around, but when she hit us with that mist and messed with our heads... eesh..." Isobel shook her head, not particularly pleased with the memory. She'd been pretty much fighting with herself as Assassin's awful mist filled her with all of that paranoia and hate... LOTUS spoke again, however, breaking Isobel out of it. "Alright, here's the deal, Edmond. I wanted you to stick around because I think I might be able to get some use from you. I don't know that this necessarily matches your specialty, but considering that you're an engineer and closer to my technological level than anyone else, I think you have the best chance of helping with the matter of the uplink. I... look... I have had a lot to work on, and that helps, but I'm frankly getting a little desperate. Things have been empty, I suppose I shall say, without the connection to my similar AI. So I want you to take me for a while, and discuss the matter with me." Isobel's surprised expression gave away that LOTUS had probably not mentioned this to her before. "W-wait, but then, what do I..."

Navin was left dumbstruck for a moment after 'Spicy' had some sort of... issue, that he could see with whatever was going on with her eyes, and then left hurriedly. He ran his hand through his hair for a moment, in thought. Well, he wasn't sure what had just happened, but he didn't think her condition was worse than Mitsurugi's, and she was with the strange book man, anyway, so... yeah. Navin figured that he should probably prevent any more interruptions. He looked for an actual door to close, but didn't find one -- it seemed that, this being a barracks, the people in the fort didn't feel the need for more than a doorway in a training room, or whatever this room was meant to be. Navin turned to Mitsurugi, who he was watching go down the same path she had in their earlier conversation, and then he exhaled. Eventually, though, he worked up a suggestion: "Er... perhaps we should move to a room here that is a little less open, and a little more out of the way...?"