ElfCollaborator

"Why the hell would I be worried about you? One, I know you, two, you're literally the size of my palm either way. Also, in case you haven't noticed, because apparently you've been stuck in her pocket for the entire time we've been here, where apparently shooting each other is a hobby, we've been attacked by fairies, the local plants, more fairies, a witch possessed by an eldritch monster from Lovecraft's wet dreams or something and more fairies, and we're currently in front of a mansion with two bloodthirsty vampires that may or may not have escaped from which said robot chick just came from, from which both guards of said mansion are apparently either fired or slacking! I may be covered by free insurance -thanks, boss- but my insurance doesn't cover any of the bullshit I just mentioned, so you'll excuse me if I'm a little suspicious of anybody we pick up here. You can also cut the AI rights activism while you're at it; I've seen those movies too and it's an overdone trope."

Empi looks....fairly confused. Names were being thrown around, none of them she knew. Except Reimu. Reimu sounded like that chick who worked in Troubleshooting; pretty hot, but was a cheapskate who only ate cheap ramen and lived in an unheated apartment because radiators were expensive and looked like she never got any sleep because of the damn repo gremlins. Probably not the same Reimu."Uh, can we have a LITTLE bit of context as to what's going on here? Who's this Flandre chick, what's a Remilia and.....why should we be worried if whoever Flandre is gets out? The redhead's face here looked like she got told she got put on septic tank duty when you said something about Flandre getting out."

Empi looks over at the robot girl, examining them with curiosity and a little bit of suspicion. After all, even the damn flora here was dangerous, and Empi was already a little bit on the twitchy side."So you're basically a Terminator with a medkit. Boy, are YOU in for a ride in this circus. Sure, why not, come along. One extra body between me and the bastard kids of Cthulhu and some emo kid's idea of fun sounds better than nothing. However, we gotta check; one, are you from around here, and two, how the hell are we meant to trust you're on the side of the angels and not, say, an actual Terminator sent to shiv us when we're not looking??"

Gabriel looks fairly concerned for Perlita, but this isn't the time to panic, not when there were other people around who were far worse hurt than her and there was something that needed bringing down. Besides, there's nothing he can realistically do to help her at this moment except help bring down the threat faster, as much as he'd like to start beating the crap out of the thing for even trying to touch Perlita. After all, she was his friend, and he wasn't about to let that go unavenged. Luckily, one had a few options to bring down monsters when one's powers involved nuclear hellfire."Hey! No tongue yet! You haven't even got the niceness to buy us dinner first, man!" Classy. Freila on Trick, inflicting Sun Arcana. Freila: Utilising Oppenheimer, Gabriel blasts an opponent with the power of nuclear radiation, unleashing a miniature nuclear blast onto them. Gabriel does 5d6+SYN (12) damage to a single target. Sun Arcana: Gabriel's Persona is of the Sun Arcana, the searing light that burns all who are revealed to it. Nuclear and fire attacks used by Gabriel inflict a burn on the opponent, dealing SYN/2 (6) piercing damage for three turns, each subsequent nuclear or fire attack adding an extra stack of burn. Enemies who resist radiation and fire cannot be affected by Sun Arcana's effect.

Lenore sighs. She figured Kane would say something like that. She liked his determination; it was one of the traits that made her think he'd be a decent boss, but all the same.... "I figured you'd say something like that. Like I said....in my line of work, I prefer to know what I'm targeting and what I'll get out of it. There's conning some gullible archbishop into thinking he's just scored himself a pretty trophy wife, and there's robbing some of the biggest fortresses on the continent to summon gods that I'm pretty sure either don't actually exist or died a long time ago. I'm still not buying this story about the gods, don't get me wrong. I work with people and money, I don't work with fables. " "All the same......a heist only goes well if you can trust your fellow cons to keep their eyes on the prize without snitching on you, ditching you or backstabbing you to get their paws on your share of the take. Believe me, I know from experience; you don't want disloyal or greedy accomplices. So, if you're going to ask us to steal them, Phoenix, then I'll go along with you; I'm no rat, and I'm no snake. Whatever my opinion is on your goal here, I came here to work with you specifically, and I intend to do that as long as I can." "Besides....like I said, I like a challenge."

Lenore, remaining masked, mulls over these new pieces of information. "Well....I've always wanted a hand at stealing stuff like that. I've heard about these things before; chatter on the streets, you know how it is, but I always thought they were rumours, or ceremonial artifacts that were just worth a ton of money, enough to leave us set for life if we nabbed even one of them. Even if they're real, what are the odds that chasing down these relics is just a wild goose chase, huh? In my line of work, I prefer to know what I'm getting into and what I'll be getting out of it and there's no way for us to know if getting those things will really bring us to some god-realm or if it'll just be another fable we chased down for nothing. As much as I'd relish the challenge of having a crack at stealing them, the risk ain't worth the reward."

Empi lifts an eyebrow at Rory. Empi was going to move to check what was going in the lake, but given that Isobel had already made to do so, she refrains for the moment. If Isobel ended up getting screwed up by something, Empi wasn't exactly equipped for lifeguard duty. "If this place actually had standards about not blasting kids with magic bullets, I'd be surprised, considering what our local gumshoe thinks is an acceptable way to go ask someone out. Also....what the helld o you mean 'die' all the time?"

"How do you mean...right? As in, the right thing to do? Surely there's a few....short-term goals you got."

"Really? No reason at all? I doubt that. Everyone's got a reason for doing things, even if they're not quite sure what it is yet."

Michi lifts an eyebrow. "I've never understood why you have such disdain for humans. Well, I lie; I understand why someone might hate humanity. But you seem.....convinced animals are better company than humans."

"I like that helmet."

"So the legends go, the von Wilhelm family was....apparently, descended from dragons; one of our real old ancestors supposedly took a dragon for a wife. Dragon blood apparently runs through my family's veins, and so we took a dragon as our crest. It's all hearsay and rumour, of course; I, for one, don't believe a whit of those rumours."

"You want an honest reason? Well, I'll give you two. One, I got sick of watching scumbags up in their ivory towers, hogging all the wealth and thinking they could do what they wanted to us in Perus while the rest of us had to go live off their scraps like dogs. So, I.....balanced the scales, so to speak. Took from the scumbags, humiliated them and gave their gains to the poor. With a little finders' fee, of course; a girl's gotta eat too." "Two, because I'm good at it."

Michi continues to scratch. "Acoustics. They're a wonderful thing. Sorry to disappoint you, but the closest I get to being a dragon is the family crest."

Michi - or rather, Michaela- picks up a nearby fallen stick and obliges Naomi's request; armor wasn't exactly the most flexible thing to do anything with."I never said I was a dragon in the first place. You said that, I decided not to correct you." "I'm surprised nobody thought I was a woman. I had thought it supremely obvious. It wasn't something I was actively trying to hide."

"You'll get there. Some guys, they fake it 'till they make it. Others, they find the one thing they know how to do, and they do that, and everything else they do is defined in relation to it. Point is, it's hard to get that ball rolling, but once you roll it, you can't stop it."

"Well, of course I've got experience. Phoenix didn't hire me just for my good looks, Ficus. It's why I thought you could handle protecting the boss; Phoenix is a little too idealistic for my tastes sometimes, but he knows how to pick 'em. If he picked you, he saw something he could make use of." "As for those stories? One of the tricks in my toolbox is....confidence, really. You can be the most experienced thief in the world and have all the best tools and a merry band of rogues, but if you choke before you get your hands on a take and panic, they'll have your hands in irons before the day's out."

"No, it's for your imaginary friend Count Olaf Gundersson. Yes, of course it's for you, Ficus. Do you see anyone else here?" "And yeah, I feel you. I wasn't exactly cut out for royal intrigue either. Most intrigue I ever got into was that time I bluffed a cardinal into thinking I was this hot wife of a count he wanted to sleep with." "Stupid idea. I got too careless. Young, foolish, too many mistakes were made." "But, well, no point letting you wander around like a lost puppy."

"Hey, Ficus. Perk up. Seems like you're the only person I haven't checked up on somehow yet." Shin gets his arm lightly elbowed by Lenore, a loaf of bread outstretched towards him. "What's eating you, hm?"

Michi storms forwards, a sense of deadly purpose on their mind. As everyone might notice, the reason for their silence throughout the fight might suddenly make itself apparent. Their helmet, part of the armor they so valued, has been very badly dented.  "I will not give up the fight." "But you....you have soiled the pride of the Wilhelm family. This armor was passed down in our family for generations, and I wear it with pride and purpose. You have blighted this world, harmed my comrades and made fools of all of us for too long. So, as we stand here...." Michi wrenches their helmet off, after some effort, an armored fist smashing the dent out of the helmet to smash the dent flat.  "....I, Michaela Adler von Wilhelm, daughter of the ancient Wilhelm family, will no longer allow your injustices to continue." "Whether it is by my hand or the hands of my comrades, BEGONE!" J5, set fire to the bastard

I7

"The fuck kind of place lets you kill your own employees for incompetence? Not that I haven't considered throttling the odd idiot intern who decides to overshare with a client, but if that were me, I'd nope out of there even if they offered dental, stock options AND a company card."

Empi looks....extremely suspicious. Between the earlier path (yes, she DID read Japanese, after all most of her NEET clients were from there) and the fact that they were in place called Misty Lake, Empi was on the look-out for monsters emerging from the haze to try and kill them all. Which, considering people thought shooting each other with magic bullets was a fun pastime here, wasn't entirely unexpected at this rate. "I'm assuming you're not a betting man, because I'm pretty damn sure that between that witch chick and your boss apparently nabbing us to clean this shit up, the same crap that got that Marisa chick is probably here already. At least, I'd bet fifty dollars that it is. Unless she's normally supposed to be away from the post, which would make her a terrible guard."

Lenore shrugs at Mim. She wasn't going to dispute the point; that would just prove Mim's. "Snowbird, you know where the baths are? Take Ficus there."

"Cut it out, Orchid. We're all a mess today; it's not like I'm particularly feeling clean either, and it wasn't like I was in the middle of the fight. We can get him one when we're done cleaning up here."