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[Powder Miner]

Faith looked down for a few more moments, and didn't reply, instead shoveling a couple more spoonfuls of ice cream into her mouth both to stall her answer and to help with her stress. "Pretty... pretty difficult. Um, up until... today... I'd have said that it was still easier here. But, but <God, fuck, I don't know anymooore!>" Despite the wailing quality of her last words, Faith shut her eyes tightly and avoided bursting into tears again, though she still looked pretty bummed.

[Twinwolf]

After the guy teleported away (and Yuki made sure the knife, if it dropped, didn't fall on anything important), Yuki checked on her mom. While still... mostly the same, she did seem as if she'd had food and drink, wasn't looking physically ill... she sighed, and went to go make something to eat for herself. "I'm going to get paid soon, you know. I think it'll be a bit more than my normal job, so that'll probably help..." she told her mom as she took some instant noodles from the appropriate place. She... really couldn't afford much else, truth be told. Maybe that'd change. She would probably call Enn and Winter afterwards.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"I see. I'll not press you for more information, but if ever you want to talk about it....I'm here, alright?"

[Chevaleresse]

Noriko let a strained-sounding sigh out through her teeth, leaning back slightly. Fatalities not something they expect, excellent installation record. . . still, nobody expects people to die in surgery. But, it'd give Kouta a fighting chance if it worked; at least enough to let him run away if he got jumped in the streets. It'd keep him safer from mundane harm too, like muggers, car accidents, et cetera, but it was also a surgery that could cause lifelong complications and might not even work. Was it wrong for her to even consider this? She just wanted to protect her little brother. "I guess for the money, a fifty-fifty split wouldn't be bad. And, er, is it just those patients they're going after?"

[Powder Miner]

"...okay..." Maybe someday, Faith thought. But not right now. No matter how wonderful and kind Minato was, no matter how often he was there to look after her, she wasn't ready to talk about home, not really talk about it. She didn't even want to think about it... especially not right now, not after this godawful piece of shit horrible day. For now, Faith was just happy to lie there, head on Minato's lap with a bucket of ice cream she was probably going to eat most of. Well, maybe not happy. Presently content.

[Empiricist]

Faith
It is now Wednesday. Afternoon, you think, you could check but to be frank you can't be bothered. At this point you're just drained and tired, cocooned in blankets. Strangely you doubt that you'll emerge a beautiful butterfly, a couple tubs of ice cream heavier maybe, butterfly not likely. A figurative butterfly? Even less likely.

Knock knock.

Someone's knocking.

Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock knock.

Someone impatient. It sounds strangely hollow though, it takes a moment for you to realize the cause though - it's the sound of someone knocking on glass. They're not knocking on your door, they're knocking on your window.

[Powder Miner]

"Go 'way." Faith muttered quietly, as if there were any possibly way whatever was outside the window would hear her. She didn't want to deal with anything right now, so whoever was knocking... on her fucking window what the fuck could just go away, she didn't give a shit, Awakened or not, she didn't wanna deal with it.

[Empiricist]

Faith
The knocking just keeps on going until...
"<Open the fucking window or I swear to God I'll smash my way in!>"

[Powder Miner]

An angry (and rather threatening) voice filtered through the window, threatening to smash Faith's window, and she of course screamed at the top of her lungs, before rolling out of the mound of blankets she was piled in, fabric all over the floor as she scrambled to her feet -- barefoot, and in her pajamas, a dark blue set of top and bottom with multicolored flowers printed on them. Something in Faith's memory told her she recognized the voice, but in her panic she couldn't remember quite what. So she dove for her dresser her hand went immediately to her comm (resting atop it), making the first contact to the AI from her end for two days. "<THERE'S A WOMAN ABOUT TO BREAK INTO MY APARTMENT ROOM HELP>"

[Empiricist]

Faith
"<Understood, the nearest active unit is just->"

The entire window explodes open with a flash of pink light and love hearts.

"<...inside your apartment. Are you sure this is an emergency?>"

"<FUCKING HELL! Next time just open the goddamn window!>"

Standing inside your room is a magical girl, a magical girl that just two days ago you saw kneecap a guy before giving their mates radiation poisoning and hurling them off a building. She, does not look happy.

"<Fluffles->"
"Already on it! Replacement pane and cleanup drone will be here in five!

[Powder Miner]

Faith, somewhat predictably, screamed as the window exploded in a flash of light. "<SHE'S IN MY APARTMENT AND SHE'S ACtually the girl who helped me in that fight what the fuck?> Faith (still in her pajamas) stared at the entrant for a few moments, before protesting with a stunned "<I... uh... I wasn't... I wasn't accepting visitors...>" She looked at the glass all around the room nervously -- she was barefoot after all. Guess she wasn't moving until the cleanup drone came.

[Empiricist]

Faith
"<Too bad. You look like shit by the way.>

Disengagung the transformation, Nico takes a seat on your bed. She opens up her school bad and tosses you... a few boxes of chocolate sweets?

"<Relax it's mostly just synthetic. Cardboard's got more calories.>" She glances at the tub of ice cream "<Don't suppose it matters. Sakurako's recovering well, got a copy of her records with me, figured you'd wanna go over them. 'course you never showed up to school so I had to make a housecall.>"

[Powder Miner]

Faith catches the boxes of sweets, and literally does not hesitate at all, popping off the lid of one and shoving a few into her mouth. <"The day with Sakurako happened to also be... difficult. So. I, uh... I will want to look at the records involving her, though. Maybe I should contact her, but... ggh. Anyway..."> Faith wolfed down another pair of sweets, and then walked over her blankets to the bed, proceeding to sit down. <"Yeah... how is she doing, specifically? It's weird, too, 'cause... she got targeted by an Aramitama when I was there a few days ago, too. What are the odds...">

[Empiricist]

Faith
Well, the sweets may be entirely synthetic, but they still taste like real chocolate.

"<She's on the mend now. Expected to make a full recovery, she got lucky.>" She waves a medical report at your face, pointing at a couple terms and notes. Arrhythmias. Tachycardia. Arterial vasoconstriction. Hyperthermia. Hypertension. Coronary hemorrhage. Pulmonary hemorrhage. Well, that doesn't sound pleasant. "<Foundry hooker her up with something to help keep it under control. Doesn't seem traumatized or anything, but her powers can make her go a bit psycho.>"

Minato
When you returned home on Monday, a request message was waiting for you. 4pm Wednesday. St. Homobonus Basilica. Duel to first blood. Signed Jack O. You never heard of the guy, the AI haven't either. Apparently he just showed up last week, a traveler from the Aethertide, here to meet some grandmaster or something.

Another challenge. You get plenty of these. You're the scion of the Kumon family after all, and seemingly their return to active Godslayer duties, and Professor Kurosaki's test subject on top of that. Lotsa people are interested in seeing how you measure up, and lotsa people wanna use you as a yardstick. Your win rate's, decent you suppose. Won some, lost a lot. You're, not really suited to duels to be honest, first blood's the standard, and it favors blitzkrieg tactics. You can play sure, but your Requiem, your Regalia, it's the kinda thing that can take a bit of time to get going, especially now you've upped your capacity. Plus y'know, if a motherfucker just flies outta reach and shoots you, you can do that much to win. Well, whatever, only a moron would care if you lose like that, duels aren't real combat, someone try pulling that in a real life or death battle and well, you'll be sure to have someone there to put a bullet through their. Well, with Faith now, it'll probably be more a beam through their everything.

Point is, these things little more than the businessman's sparring session. Only someone like Karen would get worked up over one. Take it, leave it, whatever, no one will care.

It's the day of the duel. If you agreed to it, then you're probably in a Sanctuary inside the the Basilica, attend to by Aiko. If not well, you're probably doing something else. Plenty of things you could be doing, like doing a little crime fighting, or doing homework, or maybe you're rereading that interesting little obituary the AIs gave you. It's from a couple years back, concerning one Hideki Mizushima.

Spoiler: Extra Encounters (click to show/hide)

Welcome to the first batch of extra encounters! Extra encounters are generally low stakes with not much at stake save for perhaps your pride, and are completely optional. Extra encounters are also likely more challenging than normal battles as you won't have allies to rely on and enemy "AI" restrictions are loosened. If you've read the Evi fight, then you can think about it like that, but if Evi had the same stat and hyper total as Shef.

But seriously, don't go in there expecting a fair fight. I try to make them as fair as possible, but they do serve to test scenarios and gimmicks that I may later implement in normal encounters.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Minato barely took one, maybe two, looks at the message before tossing it in the trash and thanking the servant who presented it to him. This wasn't an irregular occurrence; people assumed Minato lived to fight, but he wasn't enamoured with fighting so much as it was protecting people. It just so happened that Minato was a good fighter, and that, most of the time, fighting was the best way to protect them.

For all that Minato loved the idea of being a medieval knight and the image of chivalry, some aspects of it he'd never understand, this included. He understood sparring, but duels were useless to Minato; what did Minato have to prove to these fools? He was busy saving people's lives and ensuring the safety of Sendo; his pride wasn't that easy to wound that he had to protect it from every Tom, Dick and Harry that asked him for a fight. That was something Karen would do. Also, what was happening with Faith still had him pretty ringed out. There was something about her life, something about her past, that was bothering him. He had to leave it for the moment, though; she wasn't willing to talk, not yet.

This concerned Minato. This wasn't a threat he could fight, not physically, at any rate. Those were the threats that concerned Minato the most; not the physical ones to his friends. Those, he could fight, he could make go away. They were easy.

The ones that scared him were the demons that came to them and them alone. Noriko's past, Faith's past, possibly Yuki's. Those weren't monsters he could fight to make them go away, not easily, not the way Minato was accustomed to. He was a fighter, a tenacious one at that, but horrible parents or depression weren't something even the most powerful Regalia could make disappear.

No. He wasn't going to think about this right now. For the moment. He hadn't heard from Noriko in a while either, so he resolved to talk to her, after he was finished with something else intriguing, something that might come to bite them all in the backside.

Next to his finished homework, he had the obituary of Hideki Mizushima out, and he was rereading it.