Powder Miner

Nader fiddled with his Horsekiller a little bit, thinking. "We have computers, but whatever you have is far, far different from the things we've worked on here. The most we have where I'm from is things like targeting computers that can track things based on inputted variables. Maybe you can consider radar displays as computers, with the way they're made to take information and encode it, but to be frank that isn't my area of expertise, so I don't know if it counts." He shrugged as best he could in his armor, which wasn't very. "Nothing to the point where they can communicate or display things like that, though. Fascinating." Nader had started to lower his guard, with his posture untensing somewhat and with him focusing more steadily on the people he was talking to.

Satomi sniffled again, and took a moment to take a breath so that she wouldn't get more than a little teary. "R-right, that might help, with the technology, thank you... I must apologize if this, um, means that I am a failure, but I think that it is still going to be a long time before I understand everything. I beg your patience. And, um, lots of things in the pen. The coiled spring was a new device to me, though I have seen similar, non-coiled pieces before, but also the rotating point, and the tube of... plastic, right? Those were all new as well. If you want me to talk about religion... I... I don't think it'll really fix anything, but, um, maybe it'll help you understand, or something. There are basically three key pieces I can summarize of Rokugani religion. Realms, the kami slash sun and moon. The last part isn't, I guess, particularly relevant, but as a summary... there were Lady Sun, Amaterasu, and Lord Moon, Onnotangu, they created the world and the beings on it, and then they fought, then there were humans. Then there were some of Amaterasu's children, the Kami, that came down to Ningen-do, and they formed the Rokugani Empire. The kami Hantei was the first emperor, whose descendants were the Emperors for centuries. and there were also the other kami who made many of the clans, and one of them was Hida, who made my clan. So... then you have the realms. Um... there are a lot of them, but the two that really matter for me are Ningen-do and Jigoku. Ningen-do is the realm where mortal people live, and Jigoku is basically a hellish realm of evil and darkness. Um, I know that this part is true because Jigoku has partially made it into Ningen-do, and because that makes the Shadowlands, which is this twisted, tainted realm of evil where oni and the risen dead constantly try to attack, kill, and taint the people of Rokugan so that they can destroy the entire Empire." Satomi suddenly got more intense for this next bit, angry. "The Crab Clan, where I come from, holds a wall which we have to continually fight to keep out of the hands of the Shadowlands, which throws horrors at us day in and day out, and my clan loses hundreds of brave samurai and ashigaru, sometimes even thousands in particularly bad battles, just trying to keep the Empire alive. And none of the other clans understand, they think we're overstating, or that it's okay that we die like this, and that attitude, in fact, it-- ggh-- when Kusuke suggested that I "throw myself upon a mountain of thousands of corpses of people that died for twisted beliefs", he was JUST like them, and s-suggesting that I should die with the others who got backstabbed, like my mother, or killed by the oni, and it-- it--" Satomi let out a long breath, changing the topic before she cried again. "And then the Celestial Order is the thing with the souls, which... which is such a problem." She wasn't likely to forget the sensation of being choked like that for a while. "It also has the caste system where your soul is born into a position, where you have the samurai, then the monks, then the peasants and then, like, the Eta and criminals and other people like that. ...and... no, I've never seen a foreigner before this, they're not allowed into Rokugan. I-I didn't even know that there was... an alternative to most of this. I didn't even know that people disagreed." She curled up a little again. "That's the problem, right? Like I said, I... I didn't understand. I don't understand so many things. At this rate, by the time I maybe start to understand some things, I will already have blundered so much that truly everyone will hate me, or ch-choke me, and, and I don't know what to do because it's all so terrible and confusing. I just I guess have to hope I don't shame myself so much that i-it can't be overcome and has to be... um... but it's so hard..." Satomi sniffled again, and put her hand to her cheek, eyes teary and on the edge as she tried not to cry again. "I don't know what I'm going to run into next because I don't even know wh-what people will hate..."

Well, most of what Nadine said made sense "Twelve, huh? That's just a little young even by Forenian standards, but it does make sense, I suppose. Not that you sound Forenian to me, and you said it doesn't exist in your world. You sound... German, maybe, maybe Balkan, but if you were German your father probably wouldn't have been allowed to have guns, if it's like my Germany, so maybe Balkan. That would all make sense, I suppose. Or maybe it's just a different version of Germany. Mind if I ask your name? I think I want to know now. ...oh, and... what's an Internet, though?" Nader's confusion would soon have reason to increase: the other man suddenly was thrusting a small device at him, and Nader proceeded to lean in (putting the Horsekiller barrel on the ground to provide a third point of balance) so his mask was a mere few inches from the commlink, so that he could see clearly through the fairly small lenses on his mask, and incidentally likely shielding Nadine from the horribly gory video. "Glorious," he breathed. "Is this thing an Internet, little miss? This is a hell of an advance. This sure isn't CRT, and it's so SMALL. That's insane. Not to mention the detail, and color... You're from the future then." He looked up at Alan as the video ended, pulling back somewhat, his final statement a sure statement and not even a question.

Nader was struck dumb for a moment by the sudden criticisms coming from some other man at another point in the room, and the... twelve year old girl, apparently. "...the Horsekiller 1935R breech-loads, but I designed its 1935 modifications to work with the rails of my armor so that it loads an additional round every it goes back on them, which makes magazine capacity not much of an issue. I have a module that gives it a magazine of 12 capacity in a pocket, for independent use. Also... no, of course it's not high explosive, this thing is a rifle, not an autocannon. I'm not trying to fight vehicles with it, and the AP round pierces the average Tiger Armor fine anyway. What, did you see that propaganda poster of a man freehanding an autocannon, and think 'yes, clearly this is a reality'?" He's a little disgusted at the end of that. Then he turns to the small girl, and takes a moment to think. "All my weaponry is Forenian, because I'm a Forenian weapon engineer and all, and it usually matches what the other nations can put out. But... I've never heard of this FN MAG weapon before, and I consider myself something of a weapons expert, even though it sounds like a fantastic weapon. Do you know where and when it was made? Oh, and... how do you know so much about guns...? You look around ten."

She was silent for just a couple of moments before she started to explain. "A, a lot of things are difficult... just... nothing is familiar to me. There isn't a single thing in this world that made sense to me until I put long thought into it. The roads are all covered in a strange material, the buildings are massive even for the poor, those glittering spires in the center bend my mind to think about, the library computer device you were on is so far beyond my comprehension that no amount of thought will fix it, these strange devices roar along your streets, and evem the things you write with had a device I had never quite seen before inside of them! That... that was hard enough, how alien it all is, but I could deal with it, because it gave me something to learn about. Hard, but manageable and fascinating. But then... um, I will explain something of my world to you. Religion... um... Religion in my world is the Celestial Order. The Kami came down, founded the clans, and the celestial order came to be, where the souls of Rokugani reincarnate, and foreigners don't because they don't have souls. And... and... before today I never ever even heard anything contrary to this. I didn't even know that anyone might be more than slightly offended by the idea. And then... and then, um, all of this happened, and I-- I just-- I don't understand anything, I don't understand anything at all, I keep trying but I'm so lost and now I'm hated for it, and I've failed my honor and I've been choked, and I can't do anything about it because I just don't understand!" By the time she finished her rant, Satomi had run out of air, and she was trying very hard not to burst into tears again.

Nader leaned in towards Freya and squinted, though that would be very hard to see what with his mask. After a couple of minutes. "...oh. Uh. Hmm. This all gets stranger and stranger by the second... but, yes, things would be different if I were, well... your size." Then another small being spoke to him, but instead of being... whatever the little tiny blue thing was, it was a girl that looked around ten. He turned to look at her, and for a few moments just stared at Nadine, his expression hidden by his mask as he silently looked at her (in reality mindboggled at this little girl suddenly asking in detail about his guns). "Uh... aren't you a bit young to... nevermind, I suppose. Ah, the Sorraia is effective to about 800 yards when mounted, but when mounted on my armor, the effective range is significantly smaller. As for penetration, it's not fantastic, seeing as it's just 7.62mm rounds I'm speaking of here. I doubt it could penetrate Tiger Armor, though it would possibly knock someone down in it. Still, firing a quick burst of 20 or twenty six bullets at someone can be quite useful, needless to say, even if most of them miss."

"Hmm? Oh." Though initially a bit perplexed by the specific wording of Freya's query, he eventually understood that perhaps she came from a world where guns had not been invented (as plausible an explanation as everything else going on around here, really) and he nodded at her. "Don't worry. I'm a weapons engineer, I would be remiss if I didn't have some pride in my country's work, some of which I did do work on, especially the armor." Nader first tapped the gun on his back. "These are guns. They use explosive substances to expel pieces of lead, bullets, at high speed from the barrel, which generally do a fantastic job of putting holes in things or in people. This one is the Mk. 3. Osprey. It doesn't fire these bullets as hard, or bullets as large as some of the other guns I have, but it is generally the most reliable." He tapped the long device on his left arm. "This one is the Horsekiller 1935R. This one I have put some work into on my own, back in 1935 -- it was a rework of a then decades-old gun, which could already kill a fairly large horse in one shot, but making it more accurate and making it able to fire every time I depress a trigger... and don't touch, by the way. It is powerful and fires very large bullets, but can still be inaccurate." Then he tapped on the wide and bulky gun on his right arm, which had straps and braces distributing its weight. "This is my M3 Sorraia machinegun. The individual bullets that it fires are not the most large out there, but the thing about this gun is that it fires its bullets very very fast, 800 bullets in a minute, though I can only keep firing it for a second or two because the explosions that fire the bullets shake the gun too much. I had to modify it heavily to get it on my arm. I'm very proud of all of these guns, both for my country's work and my work, because they're wonderful devices and help keep me prepared for quite a few things."

"Oh." She said flatly, when Harry revealed that he had heard her crying, and she wilted a little bit, placing her hands into the kimono sleeves of the opposite arms for a moment. Then she heard him asking around about potential injury or side-effects from the strangling that the non-ambassadorial armored woman had dealt her. Well, she didn't feel any lasting dizziness or damage, thankfully -- well, it felt like her rear end might in fact be hurt a bit, considering that she had been half-dropped half-hurled onto the ground right onto it, but she was hardly going to mention that. "Ummm... no. It took a lot of my vitality and stamina out of me, I believe, but... there isn't any other kind of effect any more, so far as I can tell..." He hadn't shunned her or anything upon revealing that he'd heard her weeping, but after a pause Satomi felt a need to justify herself anyway, at least half-heartedly. "You... you know... it's been difficult..."

Satomi blinked as he described the things he'd seen, but what she ended up responding to was his indirect inquiry as to what he'd seen or not seen. After a moment of hesitation (she really didn't want to open up the likely comments on how she was weak or something like that, but she'd be dying to know if he'd seen her lowest point so far on this strange mission), she spoke up. "Um... I... um, ever since the end of the argu-- of the fight, I guess..." She had been strangled, after all. "But... mostly I meant for the last few minutes, in the alleyway. Did you...?" Yeah, he probably saw. Heavens, she was pathetic.

Nader looked down at the short teenage girl that had just addressed him, and then he sighed. He had to feel bad about scaring her, if that's what he did, or perhaps causing her to be guilty. Nader was still far from ready to drop his guard, and thusly his posture didn't untense, and he only slowed down his vigilance of the room slightly to halfway keep his head turned towards Freya, but he did sigh and then speak with a clear note of guilt in his voice. "I wouldn't worry about that... Freya. There wasn't any option that anyone could have taken that would have lessened that initial shock, considering what it was. Hell, I'm still in shock, but that is hardly your fault, or anything like that."

Now that she wasn't bawling her eyes out, Satomi did in fact notice Harry's approach. She took a couple of deep breaths, and shut her eyes tightly for a moment -- she was well aware that she must look terrible, and that everyone had seen her weeping, and that she really couldn't hide any of it, what with having JUST stopped crying maybe thirty seconds ago, and with how rumpled she was both from sitting there and crying and from being lifted and dropped. But, for now... well, maybe she could just act as if that weren't the case. Taking another deep breath, she spoke, in a quiet and remarkably defeated little tone of voice. "...did you see anything...?"

The people standing at the end of the alleyway squabbled, and then they left, but Satomi barely registered, seeing as she was kind of curled up and crying in the middle of the alleyway. While they argued, and then for a good few minutes after they left, Satomi just hysterically sobbed and sobbed into her kimono. Her not understanding things had been a problem for every single hour of the time she'd spent since she'd been suddenly summoned out of her world, and it had occasionally given her a spot of trouble or caused a stab of emotion to run through her, but she'd never thought that it would get that bad. In fact, before that incident, Satomi hadn't even thought that anyone could get more than maybe mildly offended by the concept that gaijin don't have souls. But then she tried to explain things to Kusuke, and it just got worse, and worse, and she couldn't explain anything, and every time she tried, it got worse, and worse, and worse, until he said her clan should die, and she was screaming back at him, and then she was being strangled, invisible hands tight around her neck... no matter how much she thought it over, it didn't stop being horrible to think about. Now they all hated her, enough to choke her, and she didn't even know what to do to make it better. She didn't know anything. And it was all going to ruin because of that fact, that fact that no matter how much she thought she knew, how smart she thought she was, she still just didn't understand. It didn't help that she'd burst into tears in front of everyone, either; it was nearly as gross a violation of the tenet of Honor as one could imagine, and she had always been bad with her Honor. She wasn't sure if it was the aftermath of the strangling, or the result of her own failing, but she felt sick, and weak, and it all just fed back into itself. Still, though, even with as bad as things were for Satomi, she did eventually cry herself out, and shakily she stood up, red-eyed and leaning against the wall. She sniffled a time or two, and tried to wipe at her tears a couple of times with her kimono sleeve... then she looked down and saw the wetness of her kimono around her knees and sleeves where she'd bawled into it. "D-dammit all... I really am a failure at Bushido..." she said to herself.

Satomi had ran deep into this alleyway, which, being an alley with two buildings on each side, was a rather large one. This meant that the scuffling three, especially Calvera, could probably see Satomi, the small samurai sitting against a wall with her legs curled up to her chest and her head buried into the silk fabric of her kimono. They weren't quite close enough to hear her, especially with the commotion happening over there, but it wouldn't take a genius to guess what exactly Satomi was doing (crying). Caught up in her emotions as she was, and being all curled into a ball, she didn't notice Calvera approaching, at least not yet.

Nader finally finished fully attaching his machine gun to his right arm, and with that done he slipped his scoped Osprey rifle into a loop on his back, before standing up from his position on his knees to a proper standing position... a movement that took a lot of precarious balancing, considering that the guns on his arms, one of which protruded five feet, made them a lot less useful for propping himself up. But when he did get up, he pointed at the lizardman, more confident now that he was fully armored, armed, and prepared. Nader was still more than a little freaked out, but now he was more confident. He took a deep breath and then spoke. "I do not know anything about your world where lizards are people, but on mine there are no lizard people and no eggs to steal from lizard people. Because there are no lizard people. This is all very very strange. But anyway! I am not an "EggSnatcher". My name is Nader Jabal, weapon engineer of the glorious nation of United Forenia, proud member of the Forenian Self-Defense Advocacy Organization, and of the coalition of the Forenian Independence Party." He paused, his instinctive paranoia-fueled braggadocio deflated for a moment. "And... since that probably means nothing to most of you if this insanity really is my life now, that means I've spent over a decade designing guns and armor, I have lots of guns and armor and I love them, and I am prepared to use my guns and armor to defend myself if anyone tries to get me, respectively. So, uh... don't. Try to get me. And then I guess I'll help prevent anyone from getting you, if we're all in the same boat."

Satomi had been practically blind with rage at Kusuke after the "mountains of corpses" comment, and accordingly she had got into something of a screaming rage... and then suddenly everything turned upside down, and faster than even Satomi could really process she was suddenly unable to draw breath-- and then-- her throat was closed off-- then she was choking-- and then she could feel the hand around her neck, she could feel herself being strangled, choked out, and all of the words and screaming of the others faded away with the colors at the edge of her vision as... the armored woman, maybe? continued to strangle her. Her feet left the ground, and Satomi couldn't, she couldn't-- Satomi fell to the ground again. She struggled to take in a breath, feeling the bruises forming, and coherent thought, even incoherent thought went away for a while as her entire world turned into getting oxygen back to her lungs. "Ggk-- nn-- nnhuu-- aah..." So it took a couple of seconds for Satomi to realize that everything had boiled over inside of her, all of the fear and confusion and alienation she'd been feeling up until now bottling to a point, then pushed forward by Kusuke's hostility towards her and her country and her people and everything that she ever knew. And then, of course, she had been strangled and at that point Satomi couldn't take it anymore, and she suddenly moved her hand to her cheek to realize that tears were streaming down it, and that her chest was heaving with sobs. Oh no. She was crying, outright weeping perhaps, and Satomi didn't know that she could take such a big failure of her Honor and such a blatant showing of her emotional failure and her inability to keep up with the image of a samurai, not on top of everything else, she couldn't handle it! First she tried to wipe the tears off with her sleeve, then when that achieved nothing she batted away the hands of Arminius and Ren, and then she got to her feet and just tried to run, run as fast as she could, in whatever direction, just so that they couldn't watch her bawl and break down.

Satomi had been increasingly frustrated before, but the moment Kusuke suggested that she throw herself onto a mountain of the corpses of her own clan and kin, it wasn't a matter of frustration anymore, because Satomi was pretty much going apoplectic. Red-faced, fists clutched behind her, and shouting at the top of her lungs in Kusuke's direction, she screamed: "MOUNTAINS OF CORPSES?! MOUNTAINS OF CORPSES OF THOUSANDS OF MY CLAN AND KIN AND MY FAMILY, AND MY MOTHER?!" She choked for a moment, and then took a breath, and started shouting again. "SOULLESS OBJECTS?! IF YOU WOULD TAKE DEATH SO LIGHTLY, IF YOU WOULD SUGGEST THE MASSACRE OF THE ENTIRE EMPIRE, THEN YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES ANYONE AS SOULLESS OBJECTS, YOU RAVING, LUNATIC, HONORLESS--" Satomi finally pretty much completely cut out of air at this point, and was now hyperventilating to the point where taking breath enough to speak was an impossible challenge.

Satomi let out a short bark of derisive laughter, or at least she tried to -- she was rapidly getting too shaken to even manage something like that, and it just turned into a formless noise of frustration, followed by Satomi's rattled, angry rant that followed. "Of course, go against centuries upon centuries of history, and everything I've ever known, and the most powerful man of Ningen-do and just abandon my duty in the process. Q-question the emperor, h-hah... if I were to go announcing some superiority to all of the spiritual order of the Emerald Empire, I might as well go spit on the corpses of all the thousands of Crab Clan that died fighting the Shadowlands, because obviously i-it's just a parody of a fact! Then I might as well drop my kimono, pull my wakizashi, and cleanse my shame on the spot, because I'd be lucky if they even granted me seppuku if I went and started ranting against-- against--" Satomi was having very real trouble even putting into words the scale of what ranting against the Emerald Empire would mean, "Everything that every loyal Rokugani has ever known and died for!"

Nader put his hands on his knees for a moment after he finished attaching the long gun, the Horsekiller 1935R, to his left arm (which was at a real awkward angle to let him grab his knee), taking a couple of deep breaths and trying to calm down. "Okay, okay, this can't be a hallucination, hallucinations don't last this long... either this is real or I have finally gone and totally snapped... Allah, this is bad, this is..." Nader had to take a couple of moments to try and breathe to some semblance of calmness, which mostly just amounted to him stopping his yelling and starting to attach his machine gun to his other arm, putting the straps around his body where they needed to go. He looked up and saw the lizard-man and his menacing glare, and he yelped again, jumping a couple of inches into the air and pointing his Horsekiller arm at the lizard, with his finger outstretched to point at the lizard-man. "If you try anything, I am a paranoid man with many guns, and I swear on Forenia that I would put a .60 cal into you!" He dropped his arm, took another couple of deep breaths, and continued attaching the Sorraia machine gun, muttering to himself as he calmed himself down. "Okay... alright... this is probably real then. Damn. It is almost as if, hah, this is the end of the Wands Race books... gah. Raafat would call me insane, though, and he wrote them... but, again, he might not be wrong. Hnn..."

Satomi really didn't know what to say in response to that, and it showed in the flustered nature of her response. "But-- I-- I don't-- I've seen the other things in Rokugan, I, um, I don't..." After that shameful bit of sputtering, Satomi gulped and then managed to speak more coherently. "As I said, I don't know how things work in your world, but, um, in Rokugan, this is the uniform, Imperial view of things. Am I to, um, question the Emperor, and the Celestial Order? That's..." Her voice failed her here, "It's... unthinkable for a simple samurai to... I can't, um, I can't even imagine what would happen if I were to suddenly deny the reality of things, especially because I come from the clan that fights Jigoku and the taint, which is another thing accounted for in the Celestial Order. It's not... some fault, it's simply the way things are." Satomi finished her wandering, unsure rambling on that note, but it wasn't one hundred percent sure.

Nader's panic was not abated by the fact that suddenly some girl jumped in front of him out of nowhere and started babbling at him -- in fact, he jumped a full couple of feet backwards with a clanging noise (the guns bouncing as he did), shouting a "FUCK!" as the girl very quickly startled the man, "OH ALLAH," he continued, and then DOOM himself spoke directly at him. "I KNOW, I HEARD, BUT WHAT THE FUCK, THIS IS ALL IMPOSSIBLE, AND I SHOULD BE IN MY NICE, SECURE HOUSE! Fuck, no, this is a hallucination, isn't it?! Shit! It hasn't been that bad since 1935! Wait, and if it isn't, how the hell do you know my name?!" The scoped rifle, Nader's smallest gun, slipped out of his arms, and drew another "FUCK!" as he tried to arrest it between his legs, eventually slowly falling to a kneeling position with his guns clattering onto the floor. "Ah, damn it all!" He proceeded to start to try to attach the extra-long rifle to one of the rails of his armor, onto his upper arm.

Satomi twiddled her thumbs as Kusuke looked back at her and then (probably pointedly) looked away. Silence... oh, kami, Satomi was already feeling the need to-- to try to clarify, or something, because she was getting the feeling that she was making people within this group angry and she didn't need to be hated by everyone else in addition to being confused by the bizarre world that they were in. Really, it would be an awful level of isolation, and she couldn't help but shudder at the thought. After a couple of moments of the awkward silence, Satomi spoke up hesitantly. "U-um... um... about the souls thing... I don't know how it works in your world, but, um, it's..." Satomi paused for a moment, not sure what to say, "Um, it's... not my fault," she finished lamely.

One moment, Nader Jabal had been happily maintaining his guns in his house in Forenia City, cleaning the large weapons as he stood there in his wonderful, protective Rabid Tiger Armor, in a state of utter relaxation safe in the knowledge that his armor and the traps that he'd set around the house would keep him practically impervious from any threats. The next... A six foot tall figure was one of the ones to suddenly come to awareness in the middle of the hall, their entire body concealed by a set of armor, semi-modern-looking infantry plate armor of blue color and red trim with gun-mounting rails on the arms, with a mask that looked almost like a gas mask but without the nozzle, instead with just some small holes in the front, and with glass lenses covering his eyes. It made it almost impossible to tell if the person within was a human, an alien, or some kind of robot or construct, but potential confusion was probably abated when the armored figure let out a series of panicked breaths and gasps before, in a distinctly human, adult, and male voice (with a mess of a vaguely-Arabic accent) he shouted at the top of his lungs, only somewhat muffled by his mask: "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!" The figure also had a pile of guns cradled in his arms, a rifle with a scope, a significantly longer (a five-foot barrel, in fact) gun, and a literal machine gun (albeit tripodless), a fourty pound pile of armaments that he was now both trying not to drop onto the ground and that he was trying to shift into a maybe-vaguely usable position... but given that was a fourty pound pile of three guns, he wasn't having a lot of luck with this, taking in panicked breaths and rapidly shuffling the weapons around as he fumbled them.

My secondary, a man with a lotta armor and a lotta gun.

There were a few stages to Satomi's reaction as she went outside, found the group practically mobbed by a crowd, and then had a giant person suddenly pop out of the air in front of the group. First, when the group was suddenly swarmed by people with phones, with lights going off in all directions, Satomi was confused and a little overwhelmed, putting her kimono-clad arms up for a moment while she processed what in the world those lights were. OK, yet another piece of gaijin technology. Fascinating... and also something to handle later, probably. She was making great strides in understanding this place but there was only so much that even she could do, and this could be a mystery for a little while longer. She didn't understand why their group was having a bunch of lights shone on them, and for a moment she tensed up, wondering if it was some sort of threat... but upon noticing the lack of reaction from most of the rest of the team, she eased up, though the crowd still made her slightly uncomfortable. Then, when an eight foot tall person, or whatever it was, Satomi couldn't even tell the gender, slammed right into the ground near the group, near the crowd, Satomi jumped and yelped a little, startled. Then, calming down, she stared at the being and after a few moments slapped her palm to her face. Great... this would bring up even more questions from the Protectorate/PRT, no doubt. Still, she realized, maybe that would be a good thing, and maybe it would lend a little credence to the whole dimensional thing later on. Still, she was a bit too overwhelmed right now to want to be making introductions, so she followed Proditor until he got stopped, at which point she stood there awkwardly. She waffled on what to do in her head for a few moments, but eventually decided that since her role in dealing with the boat graveyard was in large part an analytical one, she had better get going, and so she jogged off in the direction of the boat graveyard, leaving most of the team alone for now, until she realized that thanks to her path she was now close to Kusuke (the person who suddenly hated her, probably), and she kind of just slowed down, a little bit hesitant now.

Perlita shot Gabriel a slightly exasperated look in response to his reassurance. "Yeah, because if there's anything you've learned in the months you've known me, it's that not worrying about things is my strong suit. Nerves of steel, me. . ." she muttered with a tone of self-deprecating sarcasm, though that didn't keep her from flushing an angry and embarrassed red when Lucky insulted her clothing. Magna's query didn't help matters, as Perlita worried that it was in fact a prelude to a potentially hostile meeting... and dealing with the aftermath of something like that sounded positively dreadful to Perlita. Still, she stayed quiet, shying a little closer to her friend from her world, until all of a sudden she saw that corpses were raising from the ground, corpses that seemed to match the other group's likely enemies. "Did she just raise..." she muttered before trailing off, a thought starting.