Chevaleresse

"Uh, I don't know your name, but mine is Yamaguchi Masaru. I don't think we need to whisper at the moment; if our enemies are already in this castle, I don't think any amount of whispering and planning is going to save us." The man looked more than passingly strange to the half-dragon, a thought that was likely mutual. "As for positions, I usually lead from the front of the party. If that's what you mean, anyway."

"Still. Subtlety is a thing that is valuable in more places than one. I am also not one of your clients."

"Okay, yeah, that's pretty funny." Marisa got her giggles in while she could. "Who knew magic from eldritch horrors beyond our understanding could provide so much comedy?" Eventually, her expression of mirth faded to a more neutral one. "Alright, we've still got some work to do before we relax. I figure I can try to readjust that binding while Laver takes a break." She looked over the boy for a moment. "You feeling all right, by the way? I didn't cook anything I wasn't supposed to, right? Healing's not really a specialty of mine." Turning back to Lexiel, she asks another question. "So. I'll let you give me the word to start. My plan is to basically just try and snag the part of the spell that actually targets it, and redirect it somewhere meaningless. Like your elbow or something. Or the space three feet to the right of your head. That work?"

"Uh, shit, I suck at curative spells, um . . ." She glances at Lexiel, and at the massive magical ritual currently drawn up around her. "Just, uh, scream if this lights your insides on fire or something. It should stop if I just cut it off. Probably. Um." She places one hand on Laver's head and makes a couple odd gestures with the other, and speaks two words in what seemed to be the same language from earlier. Laver would feel a faint burning sensation followed quickly by the poison fading out of him.

Ayaka was frustrated, confused, and all too generally upset by today. First the terrible live, and then this woman just shows up and starts trying to kill them for no reason whatsoever, and then after Ayaka figured out how they were supposed to be defending themselves, she just dodged her attack like it was nothing? It was so mean! With a yell that sounded less fearsome and more, well, pitiful, she swung her wand wildly at the woman, sending out a wave of energy that resembled the lace that festooned her outfit, at least in passing.

"Well, let me think so I don't screw up the details. I was, what, seventeen at the time? Eighteen? Honestly I should remember that better, that was before I started jumping between places running off different calendar systems and all that. . . Anyway. Long time ago. I was with this group of four other adventurers; they'd picked me up a couple years back after I got out of my hometown." She still winced slightly at that mention. "I'd gained a lot of skill in a pretty short amount of time during that, and I helped them fight off this evil overlord type. Said his goal was saving the world, but pretty sure that was just to sway you over to his side; I know someone who's full of shit when I see them." "Anyway, to the actual story. We're storming this guy's underground lair. Felt too easy going in, and it was; half his army and all of his elites were with him when we got to the bottom of that place. We were pressed into a corner and the corner was filled with sharpened stakes, with some broken glass on the ground for good measure. There was no way we were making it out of there alive; Tiberius had taken a shot to the shoulder that screwed up his sword arm, Martha was pretty much just praying and hoping at that point, you get the picture. So I did something desperate. Called up an imp messenger and told him to bring an archdemon a deal: he gets us out of there alive, and then he gets my soul." "I haven't seen destruction on a scale like that for a long time. Overlord guy ended up as a burning club that the bastard crushed his lieutenants with. I had demons rushing to my fingertips wherever I pointed, tearing anyone who even thought about threatening me or my friends to pieces. I almost enjoyed it." Marisa closed her eyes for a moment. "Of course, I knew what was coming, even if they didn't. Once we were out in the sunlight, it was time for me to pay my end of the deal. I faded in midair right there. I didn't even get a chance to finish saying goodbye." She shakes her head. "I waited for so long for them to come and get me. I don't know why; there was no way of them knowing it was even possible, let alone how to get there. It's just. . . there's still some part of me that says they should have tried harder. The knowledge was out there. It was buried, hidden and under lock and key, but it was out there." She sighed again. "That's why I never went to see them after I escaped. I figured that there wasn't a point; they didn't bother to come and get me, so why should I care what happened to them? You helped me get past that, finally, but. . ."

"Well, I can think about those four without wanting to cry or break something, so that's a start." She sighed. "They were the first group I traveled with. I met them almost right away after I left home." She glanced at the soup can, the slight flickering of the magical torch that consisted of the room's lighting glinting off her brass-colored eyes. "I'll have to think about that. Those conversations are going to be hard. Really hard. I. . . don't think I want to cut ties with them, though. We had a lot of good times and I'd like to at least find out what they're doing now. I'll have to explain what happened there at some point, huh?" She directed the question at Laver. "Or now, I guess. Looks like those two are, uh, occupied."

"Ah, hell, Laver, are you alright? Here, uh, gimme a second." It was a good thing that Marisa had mastered the art of survival spells; she took an empty vial from one of her pockets and quickly spoke a small incantation in some indecipherable language over it; the beaker quickly filled with clear water. "People always tell me it tastes like soot, but this should help a little." She held the bottle out toward Laver. "By Avandra, it looks like someone rolled you through a bonfire. Made of swords."

Marisa eyes the hand for a second. She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath before opening them and exhaling. "Alright. Let's do this." The witch reaches out, and firmly grasps Laver's hand.

"Abandoned? I, yeah. Well. The first time wasn't really an abandonment, but someone could have spoken up and told the town that I wasn't a demon living in a human body. You know. And the second one. . . hoo man. Yeah. You could say I'm still mad about that all these years." Her face hardened noticeably, the expression looking odd on the normally carefree witch's face. "They just left me behind. I literally sold my soul away to keep them all alive, and they just left me. . ." She side-eyes Lexiel. "I got it back, so don't freak out on me." Her tone falls throughout the time she speaks, getting quieter and quieter, before she clears her throat. "So, uhm, do you want me to go after that binding, or are we going to do this whole emotion thing first?"

"Huh. So you've just gotta beat up some of my emotional issues and then we can start beating up hers? . . . Do I have emotional issues?" A thoughtful look again. "I don't even know how I would tell if I had them. This is probably opening a can of worms that I don't really need opened, but, uh, you can see those sorts of things, right?" She glances back over at Lexiel. "I'll see what I can do. It's going to be pretty difficult to actually mess with magic on this magnitude, especially with how closely tied it is to you being an angel in the first place. Like I said, I don't even know for sure if you'd stay an angel, but I'll try to be as careful as I can. Just, if it does work right, try to avoid any overly large and unformed magical blasts. You know, the kinds with really unpredictable effects? Best case scenario there would be that it'll knock this binding right back where it started. The worst, uh. Well. It might pull on it. Which might unravel the whole thing. Which would be really bad."

Marisa's brow furrows in thought once again. "Say, um. What exactly defines this personal connection you've gotta have with someone? Sounds like you could use some help with all that, but I barely know you."

"Well, I've heard it said that the distinction between bravery and foolhardiness is that if you're brave, you feel fear, you just get over it. There's gotta be some equivalent for doing good, right? Like, I'm not sure if it counts if you're literally incapable of considering evil. Or maybe it does. I don't know, I've never really been a philosopher. Anyway. Your not resisting the binding will help, yes. Actively fighting the one currently on you in favor of the changes I'm trying to make would do more, but that's, uh, hazardous. To you, anyway. So. You've got the facts, just tell me what you want me to do."

"Huh. Well. That's good to know." She frowned again. "This is kind of a moral dilemma. It's like, the reverse of what I normally do. See, my bindings take something like a demon and force them to obey something other than their natural desires - which vary by the demon, but are universally not good for people. Unless said people are being used as tools to hurt more people. They'd work on angels, too, because the angels of my home plane are basically the same type of being, just with different urges and masters. Well, not quite as well; angels are usually a bit smarter than demons; the few times I've found it necessary to bind one, it felt like wrestling a bear. As opposed to the wolves that most demons are." "So basically, what I could try and do here is loosen up or misdirect the binding that's stopping you from considering things like that. The problem, I guess, is that I'd technically be doing the same sort of thing that people are afraid will happen whenever I'm around; I'll be allowing a very powerful outsider to make decisions that are, well, evil, or potentially so. Not that I believe you would," she adds hastily. "But at the same time I can't say the situation as-is is something I agree with, either." "I could also try and untie some of the bonds between your mental and physical states, but I'm not sure that'd actually help. Hell, it might just make it harder to tell if you were closer to Falling, but it also might slow down or stop the process entirely. . ." She glances at Laver. "How do you fix these things, anyway? From the way you described them, it would be difficult and dangerous for you, if it was possible at all."

"But could you just, like, reel back, punch me in the face, and take my purse right now if you wanted to? Please don't, by the way, all that's in there is a couple non-volatile reagents and some gold from my last sale." She frowned. "And I don't think there are laws in the Eternities. Unless there was some grand council that no one bothered to invite me to."

"Uh huh. . ." She idly wondered if she had any of those herself. The answer was "probably," what with the dangers associated with an adventuring life; she'd seen more than one person she considered a friend killed. And sold her soul to prevent another group from getting killed, a group that had totally failed to actually come and scrape her back out of hell once everything was over. That particular escapade was quite the story, all told. "Is there any way to actually help you fix those? I can't say I've ever heard of something like that before." She fell quiet again, thinking for a few moments. She broke her momentary silence a short time after. "So, wait, you said you can't avoid the heroic choice? What happens if you try to do something non-heroic? Theoretically speaking, of course. Like, if you wanted to steal my purse."

"You know as well as I do that you'd need armies of mages to do that, regardless of how powerful that purification spell is. But yeah, that's promising. Anyway, you're probably going to want to sit down." Marisa followed her own advice, taking a stool near one wall of the smallish bedroom. "So, basically, what I'm seeing is you've got a strong binding that's pushing you in a certain direction, not unlike the kind I use. Not Rakdos, by the way; I control and banish demons, I don't sleep with them or whatever the hell else those freaks do. Anyway. Not the point. So you've got this binding on you. Normally I'd just spend a bit counterspelling it and we'd move on with our lives. The problem being that, as far as I can tell, it's preeetty deeply entwined with what makes you an angel in the first place. Which means that if I mess with it - assuming it doesn't just reject and incinerate me or something similarly unpleasant - it could make you into something else entirely. Not an angel, probably not a demon either. Closest guess would be some kind of elemental? It's hard to tell."

"Yeah, you can watch. . ." The way Marisa froze for a moment, and then looked right at Edmond, would have made you think there would have been an audible "click" as what he had just said set in. "P-Phyrexian oil? That's, uh, wow. No wonder she's been having issues." She peered at Lexiel intently, looking for any bits that seemed to be mechanical and weren't supposed to be. Which was rather difficult, given the amount of equipment Lexiel carried with her. She took another deep breath, this one rattling a little bit as she exhaled. "I, okay, at least that's dealt with. That could have been bad. Like, apocalyptic bad."

"There was a lot more to me back then too, if you'd paid attention." The snap back had no actual venom to it, though, her attention already diverted by the problem laid before her. "Hokay. Falling. Bad news. Very bad news. But you know that already. Um. I'm gonna cast some wards, alright? Observational kinds of things, just so I can take a look." Her hands worked, tracing out invisible lines and glyphs, as she muttered the occasional incantation. "I don't know how much I can actually help, but I'll give it a shot." Her eyes widened a bit, before narrowing again as she considered the information her spells were feeding back to her. "This. . . is actually pretty close to something I dealt with recently. Aurora, I don't know if you've seen her yet. Spider lady, apparently not a drider. Granted, that was a divine curse of some variety, but seeing as this isn't doing you a lot of good at the moment. . ." She abruptly leaned back. "Here, come on. Let's do this in a place where we can actually sit down for a second." She gestures at one of the nearby bedrooms.

"At least when I go to insult someone I can come up with better insults than lies and cheap shots at their favorite beverages. Which is funny, by the way, coming from a Boros stooge who wouldn't know a decent meal if it slapped her upside her head. Go figure that I managed to run into the one angel that's actually WORSE to deal with than all the other ones. That's a gods-damned accomplishment, let me tell you."

Marisa's expression turned very flat at Lexiel's name. "Lexiel. You want me to help Lexiel. The bitch who tried to lock me up in a Ravnican prison for years because I happened to be near a crime, and probably STILL insists that I'm a criminal? If anyone ever started anything it was her! There I was, minding my own business, and then boom, angels everywhere, threatening me with lightning bolts and reading off some list of like thirty crimes I was supposedly guilty of." She took a deep breath. "Hoo. Okay. Okay. Fine. She needs help? I'll at least take a look. I could make it worse, but I promise not to."

Marisa's interested expression abruptly turns to a frown. "Wait a minute. Something here's not right. I didn't notice it before, but something else magical showed up here a little bit ago. Something. . . self-righteous . . . Is there an angel around here? Angels are always a massive pain in the ass." She sat in her place uncomfortably, as if deciding whether hiding, running off, or trying to find the source was the best plan. Her expression did brighten a bit, however, at Edmond's arrival. "Oh, hey, how've you been? You seem un-exploded, so it can'tve been too bad."

Ayaka scrambled backward at the assault, and fell over on her rear when the mysterious blue woman pushed her out of the way. "Wh-what? Why is she trying to kill us? The live wasn't that bad, this is kind of an overreaction, isn't it!? How am I supposed to protect myself from that?" She tried to push herself to her feet while still retreating, and two things happened. One, she nearly fell over, and two, as she found herself wishing for some method of protecting herself, a new outfit seemingly appeared out of thin air around her, accompanied by some sort of. . . golden wand thing? If the situation wasn't so intense, she would have stopped to appreciate the dress: it wasn't entirely dissimilar to the one she was already wearing, what with an amount of lace and frills most people would consider excessive. The outfit had multiple layers of lacy petticoats (alternating between a light pink and white) and more white lance running down either side of the chest. The center portion was also white, while the outer parts were a pink a bit darker than the petticoats, almost matching her hair. A set of white leggings coming up to her knee replaced what she was already wearing, leaving a touch of exposed skin between them and where the skirt covered. The wand was a bit more simple, flaring out and then tapering to a point at the bottom and having a large heart shape at the top, with some kind of red orb floating in the center. She reacted to the wand's appearance without really thinking; she now had something in her hands, and so she made an overhand swing. The upper portion of the wand lengthened and turned into. . . the head of a stuffed cat? before crashing down toward the pink-armored woman. Basic Attack on Scorpio

"I understand that it's your job, but you're rather too insistent on that. . ." Mitsurugi shook her head. "Why are you so open about this, anyway? Where I am from, a lady is expected to keep such thoughts between herself and her husband. Or, at the very least, very close friends." Mitsurugi herself hadn't quite followed that rule, but then again it was made by and intended for humans; immortal beings had a bit more leeway when it came to marriage - or a lack thereof.

"I see. Huh. Speed training, that's. . . interesting. . . " At this point, the man's stare had lost all semblances of subtlety. He was clearly enjoying the show. This was supposed to be somehow combat-applicable? Generally, that wasn't the end that you used for fighting, though maybe it had some sort of unseen benefit? Other than the obvious benefit of improving one's, ah, shapeliness.