Epsir

Arkus Academy

I think they meant a rule against open carrying your posse of grim reapers, but same answer.

Arkus Academy

This is merely the prelude for the shit talking to come.

Arkus Academy

Kirigina's discomfort only grew as the room they'd been corralled into was packed with more students every minute. The portholes gave a clear enough impression of when their landing would be complete but as she stood there in the jammed-in madness of the crowd she could only wish the end would come sooner. The gate flung open, their exit ramp unfolded, and a grassy airstrip shined up at them. For a second she was happy to distract herself with a musing on the Cresian preference, rather, the privilege of existing in a climate that permitted an unmetalled airstrip to possess manicured grass instead of packed dirt. She was the second, tied with about six other students abreast, to touch the grass after Kress. Not that she was a brave explorer, there was just nowhere else to go since the two had been deposited against the door and now the crowd behind them was unstoppable.

Well, she wanted to get away too. An unsteady gait carried her down the ramp, legs adjusting with difficulty to the sloped surface and the speed she was being pushed at. She did her best to stay close to the first human she'd spoken to in a couple days, and even if they hadn't started out right next to each other she felt it would have been hard to lose track of that much rich blue. Standing at the edge of a crowd made it all so much easier to deal with, and after a glance over her shoulder and a deep shudder she felt pity for those stuck in the center of maelstrom as they all waited to be talked at.

They were all so very colorful, there wasn't even a uniform for the staff here... At least those who didn't belong to the security group. Well, in her homeland, eccentricity was a privilege afforded to the genius. At an academy of this prestige, it went without saying that she was being addressed by some of the brightest minds in the world. It was a little disappointing to not feel more awed. One of the redheads introduced herself as an artificer, and Kirigina's eyes flickered up to find what would undoubtedly be one of her instructors. A rune adorned her face, her attire was sensible, very witchy. Kirigina nodded in approval. She had no idea what there was to even learn in the world of artificery for her, perhaps the precepts of airship design rather than base maintenance, but if there was to be a mentor in her life it was definitely going to be this woman. Her choice had been made for her several days ago.

The wrench girl finally looked around as the academy staff indicated the other airships that sat the lot that morning. Prototypes, production models, craft that she knew only by their reporting names within the Verholt military. Things of mastercrafted bronze and steel that graced the skies of her homeland on occasion, but also creations that the Cresians tended to themselves while in foreign territory. Her free hand's digits flexed unconsciously, clawing up as her mind anticipated the privilege of delving into the metal beasts laid out before them. Her distraction from all the magic around her didn't last long, as a voice, alluring though it was, intruded upon the sanctuary of her mind. Kirigina flinched and looked around, caught halfway to swatting at her ear as the unusual sensation of a voice that seemed to come from the very corners of her mind beckoned her. That was an intelligent way of getting one's words to an entire crowd! Just... Unnerving. She would oblige the siren's call, whenever the crowd started following.

And that wasn't the end of it. A voice whispered to her. Her name. Hadn't she... "Huh? What's what?" She looked to Kress, then to where the boy was staring off at. Immediately her face tightened in a grimace at the sight of a host of demons casually wandering out in the open. Maybe, just maybe, they were here to learn the merits of agriculture, so tooled as they were. She was a witch, and a witch was wont to know when they were looking at some really cursed stuff. Flaunting the imagery of death was tasteless if it was in vanity, cruel if that was the sheer measure of power expected of students of Arkus. All the hope she felt looking out at the inanimate bits of technology on the grass washed out of her as she was once again confronted by how dreadfully out of place she was in all this. But, she was standing next to Kress' enthusiasm. She didn't know a whole lot but he hadn't turned his nose up at her and was apparently really loving the variety in the crowd... Manage the same, she commanded herself. It was worse to look out of place than to be out of place.

"Uh... wow! That is wizards for you, at least I hope those are... leashed. There aren't many ghosts on airships, at least the ones that still fly, I have no clue what that is... and what's that?" Her head turned, somehow, away from the grizzly reapers to the student sputtering out blood and screaming at their instructors. Tanya shot an uncomfortable look to Kress. "Is that, er, allowed?" That was beyond out of line. Forget being the nail which sticks out, that was rebar jutting errantly from concrete. But, new country.

Arkus Academy

A cut of black and red swept into her peripheral vision, an instinctive recognition of an officer's peaked hat precipitating a sudden straightening of Kirigina's normally slumped shoulders. Her ears still strained for the call of 'officer on deck' even as she realized immediately from the woman's hollow, but not angry tone that the two of them had done no wrong. Furthermore, the security officer immediately recognized the youth in front of her and called to him with that vaguely familiar name. Probably someone at least a little famous, she decided. Yet another reminder that she was being shipped to a prestigious academy for people who actually knew magic.

Cold cut through her as those glassy red eyes fell on her, though she answered immediately. "Ja!" And Kirigina fell silent, letting that rest as her only answer for a few seconds before thinking it would be best to elaborate. "Cresia's vessels are very comfy." She could not yet say anything of the land other than it looked okay enough from above. All she did was nod as Kress handed them over to Mett's escort, and no sooner than they had agreed to be lead did the reverberating voice of the airship captain begin to transmit through the ship. Kirigina held tight to her wrench. The rest of her stuff was far out of her hands, belonging to a luggage team that was hopefully way more gentle than the customs people at Verholt's aerodromes.

She stared attentively at their high contrast security officer, waiting to be lead off to the gate.

Arkus Academy

Kirigina smiled back, meeting his beaming and his extended hand with a nervous chuckle and a timid, brief wrap of her fingers around his. "Tanya Kirigina, good day to you." Her laughter continued as he made to explain himself, and she raised a palm to wave down his apology. "Faux pas? Ne, I belong here more than in a magic school but I am told Arkus is quite equipped to teach wrench witches too." Briefly her mind wandered back to the observation deck and the brief time she'd spent on theirs. Noisy, crowded, but in all the wrong ways. Aside from the voices there was only the sensation of helplessly sliding through the air. She shivered, despite heavy garb and the sweltering engine heat of the compartment. Her arm crooked to carry her wrench clutched tighter at her shoulder. For that, the artificer was quite happy to distract herself with indulging curiosity.

"It is the logo of where I used to... still do? Work. A shipyard, we build airships some times, fix them most of the time." Kirigina paused in thought. The meaning of that symbol?... Well, it was known more or less to everyone who wore it, but in that general, vague, passed down way of things. To sum it up off the cuff, it felt wrong to chance perverting and diminishing the thought that originally went into the simplified crest they took for granted when they put their hats on.

"Well... It's supposed to be the people's fist, first raised in revolution and now, uh, grasping the machinery of the future. The Olyagovsk-Foevch plant was one of the first to go up, so back then," And still today though it sounded too confrontational to her to put it like that, "It was still like they were taking back what they'd been denied. Oh, suppose I should say first it is a shipyard of Verholt. I have never left before, it is strange to be the foreigner." Even for someone who spent all of their days locked in a ventilated steel tower. She shuffled her wrench in her grasp, sort of holding it up after Kress had called attention to it. "And thankee, every ship tech in Verholt carries one of these. The symbol is nice but as you say this is what really makes a technician look the part. At least home, here the tools are all different, it's very interesting."

Something slightly tugged at her attention. The name he'd given sounded familiar in very, very distant way. Alstein. Was that a common name in Cresia or something? That'd be a little rude to ask, plenty of people were sensitive about their names after all. "Is that answer sufficient-" For an instant she hesitating, tossing her word around in her head as her country's mannerisms suddenly felt a little conspicuous. "-Kress?" Just sputtering a name out alone. This was a wild and free place.

Arkus Academy

The crushed tip of her hat cut an arc through the air as Kirigina's head tilted aside, a curiously worried look dragging her face as she wondered if the blue boy was speaking a different language for a moment. The witch's hand retreated from him, clutching the brim of her falling hat before she nodded an affirmative. A force of habit, that justified all things. A cultured greeting she was not yet familiar with, or something she had dearly misheard. As she was inwardly thanking her luck to encounter someone both possessed of social grace and forgiving of her foreign ways he pulled out a pocketwatch. Her eyes drifted down to the device, and discovered that it was no such thing.

Kirigina flinched backwards reflexively as magelight erupted from the device into an ultimately harmless (probably) display of the local conditions. Even symbols for weather conditions seemed to appear, but before her eyes could adjust to its luminescence it was gone, snapped shut and stowed away without an ounce of flourish for an artifice that was surely more valuable than the village she was raised in. "Ah, that's a nice watch." Poetic praise carrying a respect for the hundreds of years of history, craft, and pedigree all wound into the time piece. Another slight nod for the time he reported. Sleepy eyes shot left to the door, then back to him. "Thank you comrade wizard," she had been in the middle of saying as he smacked her with his words. Late for your shift. A shrill ring pierced through the girl's senses, ushered in on the bomb blast of his line of questioning. Stone eyes went hard, locking with him with all the intensity of a death mask as the witch seemed to shrivel within her comfy wrapped up attire. By them an engine blustered, flames roaring within an iron cage. The spell broke with a blink and a sudden relaxation of Kirigina's whitened knuckles.

"Haha, no. No." Once again she held the brim of her hat, tipping the red streaked crest of her office down for show. "I worried we might all be late to Arkus, but by your clock we will enter landing approach maneuvers soon." She turned away and stooped to pick up her fallen wrench, cradling the overlarge instrument in a practiced carry when she came back around. "You are a student too, yes?" They didn't make officers so young and fancy... did they? Cresia could do anything, after all.

Arkus Academy

It had been a journey fraught with delay, of over seventy two hours of uninterrupted flight connected between several airships. From her station at the iron works to the Sakigorki Aerodrome of the capital and then into Cresian airspace, her new hosts had made a great show of their country to the foreign students. Perhaps, maybe, by necessity they had been taken all the way to Emersa to board the final airship, the one set out for Arkus Academy itself. Foreign students all of colors and different bearings thronged them there, but capacity was seemingly no issue for a Cresian vessel. There formed a clear divide, between the haggard foreigners plucked from their faraway islands and distant factories and the fresh faced youths of the Cresian heartlands, taking to the sky as easily as if it were their morning commute.

For Tatjana Kirigina's part, being a technician for airships didn't directly translate to any particular comfort with living on them for days at a time. Indeed, having a witch on your ship was an omen of the worst kind. Not for any kind of superstition, actually, just the simple fact that having a problem solver aboard meant there was a problem with your boat somewhere. Proofing voyages were necessary shakedowns of the Republic's military capabilities. They also invited the opportunity to pancake yourself onto hard permafrost while conducting altitude stressing, many called them the closest thing to a combat deployment one could enjoy in the postbellum. This airship in particular, was the worst she had ever sat down on. Too quiet, too smooth. It was as if the damned Cresian bucket had lost power at all times, so smoothly did it slide through the skies. So she found herself in engineering, where the engine noise was unmistakable and the warm glow of boiler faces lit the routine cycling of the ship's crew from station to station. Where the smell of soot and oil overpowered the homely scent of cleaners and perfumes that lined the public facing sides of the airship. All she had had to do was promise to keep that wrench away from anything that worked, and she'd found her place to sleep for the first time in a while.

Kirigina's wrench stood propped up against her while she sat propped against the bulkhead, nestled between two vertical spans of piping that had stayed mostly inert and cool during her slumber. Probably demand water lines or something. Only on a passenger ship would you find pipes large enough to hide a small child in dedicated to comforts. The bundle of a tattered overcoat and tipped down witch's hat probably went unnoticed by most after she'd first settled in, a softly shifting mass of rough fabrics that ever so often betrayed its humanity with a rough snore and a slight turn. The finest aircrew for the finest students labored with beauty, geniuses of their craft worked wonders out of an airship that was equal parts bold statement of Cresia's technological supremacy and humbling offer of the nation's highest comforts for a brighter, international future. Tatjana Kirigina snored so loudly she stirred herself, shivering out of a deep sleep as the vessel barreled towards its final destination. The brim of the bundle's hat rose up, baring a glimmering sliver of bleary eyes below, shifting side to side as they sought a clock on any of the engine room's walls.

Were they there yet? The shapes of the room blended together in her vision. Blinking rapidly, she settled on the overwhelmingly blue form of someone else caught up in the makeshift observer's gallery. Perfect. She rolled forward, wrench clanging onto the metal floor with an ear rending noise that she paid absolutely no mind to. She reached a hand out to the idle person, thinking to grab them by the shoulder and ask the time before an awakening fragment of lucidity spotted the obviously fine make of their fabrics. Aristocracy given form, she had seldom seen the glimmer of textiles such as the blue person's on even general-officers' attire. "Ah," A verbal, guttural realization of decorum, she looked at her hand to make sure it wasn't coated in oil before tapping him on the shoulder blade. "Uhh... do you have the time?"

@ERode

Arkus Academy

Hello everybody, just another arrival from PMs slipping in. I'm excited to see this all moving.

Arkus Academy

Tatjana Kirigina

Tatjana Kirigina

Technician Efreitor of Aviation 2. Grade

"Ja, smack the nacelle again."

17 | 163 cm | 55 kg

A diminuitive girl with a posture like rotten wood and the presence of a taiga hare, Tatjana Kirigina is a ghost that dwells in corridors of steel and crawlspaces of oil and engine smoke. Her attire is often bulky, resilient, but not quite baggy. Canvas trousers dotted with the stains of industrial fluids, a sweater to ward away the winds which whip through airship yards, and a durable coat which smells of burnt coals over it to protect the sweater's cotton. Dull orange hair, the color of the misty sunsets of her homeland, surrounds her in wispy, wild offshoots. Below that mop steel-gray eyes stare out at the world, stricken with apathy and hollowed of feeling. It is difficult to determine whether it is a vacant gaze or simply her choice to stare through the world in front of her. Always atop her head or at arms reach is the symbol of her craft and the uniform of her office: A pointed witch's hat, edges bitten by gear teeth and zig-zag tip bent down by the confined spaces she works in. On the face of its cone is a shield shaped emblem, its field the dark gray of construction steel and its charge the image of two gears held fast by a monochrome fist. Below, along the shield's pointed lower edge, the words "OLYAGOVSK-FOEVCH STATE IRON WORKS" are written in bold red.

Vital Statistics:

Strength: C
Speed: D
Precision: D
Endurance: E
Mana Reserve: E
Control: D

Spellcasting Class: Mage

Specialization:

Verholt Artificery

The needs of the Republic are many, and they are pressing. The magical technology of the far world poses an existential threat to the utopia of the new government, which wisely accepts that the bayoents of its former allies-by-proxy might one day be turned upon the cities of steel. So, for need to close the gap in development and continue the many-year climb from the dark age enforced by the parasitic aristocracy, the Verholt 'school' of artificery was forced into being through the modification of old ways which had survived suppression under vampiric rule. Countryside witchcraft became married to the steam powered march of progress, dousing rods put down for wrenches and boiling pots of herbs traded for cauldrons glowing with molten steel. The new government scraped together every expert it could find, and also anyone it could call an expert, and from arcane chaos a semi-standardized system of scientific spellcasting came to be. Trappings of the "old ladys' way" still pervade the new science, oddities forgiven in the motherland as the powerful traditions of the people but sometimes taken as superstitious or eccentric by foreigners.

Notable Spells/Techniques:

Find Problems

The great beasts of iron and canvas that man has created are not born tame, as one might come to believe watching the great airships of Cresia cruise the sky. They frequently become unruly, parts breaking, magic becoming unstable. Hundreds of man-hours are the great bulwark between the majestic sight of a proud airship and the ruined, smoking wreck of so many failed endeavors to the sky. The builders of that bulwark are Verholt's technicians, magimechanical engineers with the responsibility of maintaining the fleet. Even a small personal airship can contain kilometers of runic inscription, and as designs have increased in complexity access to important mechanical components has only become more dangerous and labor intensive. A technician of the Republic must be as efficient as they are skilled, no matter the machine. A simple technique known by all who pick up the wrench is to diffuse one's own mana into the machine in minute waves, tapping along its exterior in a series of soundings to 'feel out' anomalous conditions within the structure, like what might be making the engine chug that way. It's always the last belt you thought to check.

Cart Start

The need for efficiency breeds a certain kind of improvisation, it is well known that the state has little use for slow, indolent workers. Rising to the occasion as brave heroes of the Republic and proving themselves above reassignment, a technician of Verholt knows how to expedite the important processes of a machine. After making sure enough how the internal scripture of a machine is arrayed and which magical structures correspond to its various functions, it is possible to briefly and sometimes safely interfere with or control those parts of the machine. Whether this is quickly powering an airship component for diagnostic testing or speeding the toaster so that you do not exceed the standard lunch hours, a technician with sufficient control can spike his mana into a machine, matching the operating signature of its spells and effectively tricking the system into working a certain way.

Magical Items/Equipment:

Izanvek Central Craftwork Object No. 104

A large wrench, as long as her own torso and with a set of adjusting jaws that allow it to manipulate any of the assorted nuts and bolts used in Verholt's airship factories. Though it is specifically an airship technician's wrench, the greatest limitation of its universality is that in the great wide world there are indeed nuts and bolts too large for even Kirigina's monster of a wrench to engage. Notably absent are any manual controls for the jaws, which are actuated by the user's magic. Its long handle has a painted purple band at its jaw end, identifying its type at a technician's glance while its full name designation is etched down the side for closer reading. Following the object number is the serial number YS1004, denoting the factory of origin and serial number for this individual tool. Kirigina's is of a particularly early production number, indicating a date of forging that makes it almost as old as the girl wielding it. It was a gift from a senior technician. A technician's wrench is a matter of grave personal importance for him, the act of handling a No. 104's immense weight and first attuning oneself to controlling it are the rites of passage for those who work witchcraft in steel. The burning in ones arms as its ponderous weight turns is the fire of the revolution, and Kirigina was entrusted with a flame sparked in the Republic's first days. A fitting device for one of the youths sent away to secure many more years of triumph for the state.

Short History:

Tatjana Kirigina was born in the twilight of the Last War, in a border settlement of what would become the Republic of Verholt which had been one of the first places caught upon the frontline between the coalition and the monarchist armies. The war had long since passed the place of her birth by, but what was left were pitch black, burned lands made destitute and lawless by the passage of political giants. From the ashes, Izanvek made flowers of steel bloom. The new state reconstructed aggressively, taking the fields made unsuitable for agriculture and turning them into factories for everything they would need to protect their hard earned freedoms. So wise were Izanvek's council as to craft laws which protected those freedoms against the failings of the people. When it was her turn, Kirigina was conscripted into the workforce and sent into the labyrinth of industry that had grown up around and ultimately consumed her hometown.

Her mother was a woman of middling magical aptitude, what would have less gently been called a witch had she ever practiced her craft. So distant from the arcane arts was her mother that she was unaware of that heritage until her own minuscule ability was used as an excuse to ship her off to the airship yards. It was a mercy afforded to the daughter of a man who had been fortunate enough to be appointed a production director in one of the many new factories. Spared a fate of slightly more manual labor and an oppressive existence in the belly of Verholt's industrial centers, she was taught the basics of how to turn a wrench and added to the collection of every artificer the country could mobilize to maintain its struggling fleet of early airships reverse engineered from Cresia's designs.

She was not a particularly successful engineer, but managed to grasp the basics of witchcraft well enough to survive. Kirigina made no grand contributions to the order of operations for the factories, never championed the repair of a notable airship, nor ever managed to fail so spectacularly as to be cast back down into the smog and soot. For all her mediocrity, she was well liked. Early in her days as a tech she was given the wrench she still carries as a show of acceptance from one of the more senior crew. None of them were brilliant, but they were a team, and it was there she learned the most important part of life in Verholt: the ability to look out for one's clique, to guard your fellows from the administration's example-making and from the subversions of opportunistic competitors. It was a miserable life, interrupted by moments of fulfillment and camaraderie.

However, all of it was to be taken away from her not by the efforts of others or any prevailing virtue or fault of her own character. No, her course was ordained by something simple and beyond her control, her youth. For many years the Republic had depended on importing talent, borrowing mages, administrators, generals, teachers, doctors, every scrap of knowledge they could to catch up to the other nations. They built everything from nothing in Verholt, the vampires had done their best to contain any development in their nation that would have elevated the stature of their human constituency. Ever gazing outwards, they had for years sent students abroad to absorb the teachings of foreign lands and return that knowledge to the state so that it may prosper further. The opening of Arkus Academy to worldwide students, of course, had sparked the establishment of a formal program to move young minds into higher magical education. As a young witch, and teachable enough, she was on the chopping block before long. Her things were packed for her, her letter of assignment from the bureau above her factory as well as her acceptance from Arkus Academy were delivered hand in hand. She would become one of Verholt's numerous tendrils abroad, her only responsibility to learn ravenously and learn well, for the glory of the Republic and the brightness of its people's shared future.

Fate/Secondary Genesis

Franz Burine Plaza

@ERode@King Cosmos

Reverberations echoed up Katherine's spare limbs, the enemy mage's cane tapping along lethal thorns, bopping vines left and right as they coiled in its direction, always an instant behind its fluid movements. And like that they were tangled, misdirected, flailing around each other in one direction as her prey escaped in the other, throwing some gesture to keep her balance before wheeling into a kick. This was some sort of highly physically capable Magus, or a beneficiary of a Caster class. There wasn't time to analyze the source, and she was kidding herself is she thought she could keep the pace set by the flow of their actions. Katherine had never once subscribed to the idea of subtlety in a duel. With her arm still cast aside she resolved to step forward, chasing the twist of her opponent, accepting whatever a kick could mean to so much raw power in motion. Her mind raced as her fist clenched around the dagger still held tightly at her side. She raised Berserker's tribute up to chest height, fang bared outward as she went in for the kill.

But something was horribly amiss. The flow of mana had shifted, no, halted. Her own continued to pulse through her, driving her legs as she threw herself at the incoming attack. It was Berserker's, ceased. Of course he couldn't exactly report his own status in words, but the sudden gut wrenching shift of a spirit diminishing managed to pierce through her own battle frenzy and register for the threat it was. How? How was Berserker faltering in close combat? A technicality she hadn't known about, a shift in battlefield conditions that no one could have prepared for. Her weapon could only go forward. She could only go forward. Their war would only go forward from here.

Naoko's boot smashed into her knee, the joint crumpling, the feeling of the energy burning away at the Enforcer's body jumping between them like static electricity. Flesh wound. Alchemy. Whatever it took to fix. Falling forwards didn't mean anything to Katherine, she was already going there, reaching out viciously for the swift Magus in her sights. Her left hand raised over her head, her two Command Seals blazing as the sign of her force. The frail, aged dagger spiked with rays of blue light, ether poured into its constructed form at a rate it was never intended to survive. In her maddened hands the ability to wield the Phantasm became irrelevant, it became her primed hand grenade, a Broken Phantasm ready to detonate. The woman who would live forever would make a gamble on her own durability. She shrieked a command, to her faraway Berserker, too distant to hear but perhaps not too far gone to feel it.

"Kill. Kill!" Only the first word on her mind came out, but the order's purpose was clear. She knew not what obstructed Berserker, but by her Second Command Seal she declared: Overcome, and kill. Her own body obeyed well enough. tossed vines unfurling, drawing back in to reorient as her dagger fell in a swift arc for that helmet covered face.

Police Cordon/Franz Burine Plaza

@Sightles

Crowley's continued smile only tugged a little bit wider as Otto quickly complied, rising to the occasion and... going for a smoke. Of course nothing was ever so simple with a magician, and by the time he thought it was probably best to clamp down on his nose, a gesture he did not resort to, the smoke from Habsburg's spell dissipated into the atmosphere. A binding agent, merely some kind of inhalant? Where the previous puppeteer had cut his strings and left the dolls running slack around the cordon, something else entirely picked them up, Otto's words into the nearest man's ear. He only watched over Otto's shoulder as the mage approached him, taken aback by the sight of so many uniformed officers doing their uncanny valley meet and greet, handshakes and all, out in the open. "Creepy, but see, you didn't just kill everyone which is a major step up from what we've been doing here for the past hour or so."

"You liked that bit? I didn't plan on getting spiked by whichever one of you will end up thinking 'hey, it'd be fun to kill that guy and ruin everything,' so I was going to sit this one out but getting us all killed by the American government was not part of the idea of the upheaval. This- This is why the Magi couldn't make this work in over a hundred years, you know. These people just gravitate to bloodshed." Crowley raved, hands swinging in animated gestures towards the spread of swirling dust and broken glass obscuring the street towards the plaza, where the light show continued and other sirens could be heard wailing across the cordoned area. Only as distant gunshots crackled off, echoing from the remaining windows in the area, did he arrest himself. The host slid down from the cruiser, his diminutive frame still forcing him to look up at Otto for the time.

"Nice of you to take over cleaning up here. Really all there is to it is to make sure no one ever gets the order go in. A blockade looks fidgety, or somebody starts checking who's ready on the radio, gotta stop those sorts of things early. Nothing will stop the reprisals if we just let more people wander into the grinder." His eyes wandered past Otto, searching for a Servant he could not see but duly suspected the presence of. Well, hopefully nothing could come of that with a Master preoccupied with the social wellbeing, not anymore. "Really I suppose there's nothing we can do save starve this out and hope to contain it."

In the distance an unseen shade complied with his Master's orders, the nimble Archer spirit disintegrating into light to seek a more advantageous overwatch of the combat zone. The first target had collapsed, fled, and with it the hostilities seemed to cease. There only remained the question of the building, or Masters in the surroundings, though picking the latter out between floating debris was the more time consuming task. No, simply bombarding away the pesky Servants audacious enough to throw their house into the street would satisfy the command. In due time...