Youmu was silent for a few moments. It wasn't that Nanoha's way was wrong, but just that... ah, she didn't know how to reply. Instead, after watching Nanoha incapacitate the creatures that had appeared, the small, pale girl strode forward to investigate the chest. The letter inside, that had to be something, right? It was possible that it would lead them to just how to handle the entire situation and clear these caverns of the strange fish creatures and the walking corpses. As she carefully cut the lock on the chest and forced it open entirely, the half-phantom ignored the gems in favor of locating the note.

"This could be something important..."

With that, she unfurled it. For a moment, she couldn't understand a single word of the page, but then it shifted into kanji before her eyes. She recalled that somehow, the other people she had met... some spoke Japanese, like Nanoha, but the others hadn't. Somehow, the words had simply registered in her mind as Japanese.

But now wasn't the time to wonder about things like that. Now was time to read the note.

...

By the time Youmu finished the letter, she was shaking. The fish creatures weren't simply monsters that ate people and demanded deaths. They transformed people, robbing them of their very nature and forcing them into these terrible forms. Youmu could feel her hand tightening on Roukanken's hilt.

"... They don't just kill people," she said, finally, raising the note towards Nanoha as she did.

[@KoL][@PKMNB0Y]