The blonde walked straight past her with the confident self-assurance of royalty, and Ludmilla was powerless to stop herself from noticing. Maybe it was the way her eyes undressed her, Ludmilla, like a department store mannequin being changed into the autumn/winter collection. Or maybe it was the way she walked, self-assuredly like the cobblestones under her feet should be proud of themselves for deigning to support her weight. Or maybe it was how when she brushed aside Ludmilla, her soul gem twinged and stung like a picked guitar string. The girl was trouble. Best to stay a few feet behind her, find out what she was doing here. It was easy to follow her in the crowd, people were jostled aside like so much paper around a speeding bullet, and Ludmilla just had to follow on behind. She turned at one point and head down a comparatively deserted alleyway. 

Ludmilla stayed at the mouth of the alley, looking like a lost young woman eagerly admiring a collection of rustic candies on a counter. Her eyes flicked to the side, trained on the girl as she turned into some other nondescript little road and stopped. She transformed, her clothes flickering from normal to magical like a TV changing station. And she brandished weapons, too, some exotic thing with blades and spinning chains. Not magical girl weapons at all. What ever happened to the tiaras and bells little girls had once been so pleased to use to defeat evildoers?

Ludmilla didn't have any time to really consider the question, since she was careful to make herself seem like she gave a toss about the cheap tacky foodstuffs being hawked by whoever was manning the stall. She didn't try to read the overly long and complicated words somebody had been so helpful to write down on a spare sheet of cardboard. But another sheet had "2 X 1" written on it, so obviously somebody here wanted to buy things even if they did make it ruddy impossible for the layperson to understand. The one girl manning the counter was deep in animated conversation with somebody else in that polish gobbeldygook language, and Ludmilla waited patiently for them to finish, occasinally looking over her shoulder to see if she'd been noticed by the girl in black, but apparantly not.

[color=6ecff6]"It is, after all, the duty of I, the 「Blue-Gilded Prophetic Gateway Into the Heart of a False God」, to aid my sidekicks when they require it! Otherwise, how could I ever call myself the heir to the 「Legacy of the Raging Aether」?"[/color]
[color=7bcdc8]"I've uncovered something that I think you can guide me on, while I was travellin- [i]traversing[/i] the shaded lanes,""I looked, and beheld two girls in flight, both blessed with a magic light- and they were strangers to me. They were together treading the familiar ground to the place where witches dwell, but I had never shared their footprints before, or, ah, seen them, other than in one thing: The lead girl wore a scarlet coat made in the very image of the Heir."[/color] 

Oh good, they were finally finishing. Ludmilla made a motion with a finger, but got cut off again.

[color=7bcdc8]"That's the story, Heir to the Legacy. What do you propose I-[i]We[/i] do to find out who these are?"[/color]

Well, that was just rude. She was right there. Couldn't this village tart attend to her needs as a customer?

[color=BF00BF]Sprichst du Deutsch?[/color] She tried, the german rolling off her tongue as easily and smoothly as a gold brick down a hill. [color=BF00BF]"A ty govorish' po Russki?"[/color]