Back to the mansion.
You look out at the ruined city for a few more seconds, then turn to face Hatate. The humans flinch back, the two soldiers raising their weapons nervously, and the cameraman tumbling back and falling off the roof. Hatate nods slightly as you raise your free hand to your necklace and follows suit; you snap the slender rod hanging from the necklace between your fingers, and the castle is instantly replaced by the bookshelves of Patchouli's library. "You're back," the magician calls out from behind you, and despite your tiredness your hand twitches toward your camera. For once, the magician has dressed up, wearing a black and blue dress, her hair neatly braided, and a short and slender hat similar in style to Marisa's. In front of her desk is a badly mauled human, long blonde hair framing a viciously snarling face, and shards of metal sticking out from where her limbs used to be attached. "Don't mind her; she's just a loose thread of Flandre's that I'm going to take care of. I don't expect to be gone more than an hour or two, but if you need anything in the meantime, please ask my familiar." She waves absently at the mischievous devil, who gives you a toothy grin.
"Is Remilia busy?" You glance at Hatate as Patchouli looks up sharply from one of her books.
"Remilia is recovering from a mistake, and her sister is making sure she actually does instead of shortcutting and just telling us she's fine. Is it something important?" Her gaze shifts from Hatate to you, and you shake your head.
"No, nothing that needs immediate attention. Right now I just want to sleep." Patchouli's expression returns to its typical placidity and she gestures at her familiar again.
"She'll show you to your rooms. Remilia still won't let me put up some rat-zappers, so you'll have to stay down here so no one gets any ideas about what you're doing." You nod and start walking toward the familiar. Patchouli closes her book, and with a wave of her hand the woman on the floor flies over to a mirror, following the magician through. The familiar nods her head and gestures for you to follow her.
"If there's anything you dislike about your rooms, please let us know and we'll have it altered by the time you return from your next trip," she says. You just nod, while Hatate mumbles a response, but the little devil doesn't seem to be paying attention, instead just flouncing through the shelves. You frown – you're tired, but not so out of it that you don't recognize that
something is off about the library.
"Aren't there more people in here? You have a few co-workers now, don't you?"
"Well, as Miss Patchouli said – a certain black-white witch can still make it to the library. So this section is temporarily walled off from the rest of the library, and only Miss Patchouli and Lady Remilia have the proper keys to enter. Anyone else would have to blast through the wall. Here we are! I'm pretty sure the rooms are identical, but please make yourselves at home." You nod and keep walking past her, aiming for the door on the right. Hatate gives you a look, either worried about you or wanting to talk about something, but you just open the door, walk into sinful luxury, and flop onto the bed.
***
You wake up again and throw off the covers. After waking up from the exertion-reaction you had simply crawled toward the pillows and burrowed yourself into the thickly-cushioned coverings, spread your wings flat, and gone to sleep. You scramble off the bed, not wanting to fall asleep a third time in a row, and consider your room more carefully. A writing desk, a large chest of drawers – empty – quite a lot of spare paper and pens, a menu, a table with a shogi set, two large wall mirrors offset from each other so you have to step to the side to get from one to the other … and, of course, the mild breeze blowing through the room, not enough to disturb the loose sheets of paper, but enough to feel and to make you think, if you close your eyes, that you're outside. You shake your head and try the second door.
Rather than opening to Hatate's room, it opens to a bath room that certainly shouldn't fit between your rooms, but since it's here you're hardly going to complain. Hatate is lying in the large pool, drowsing if not completely asleep, and you dip your fingers in the water. A little cool for your taste, but not bad. You wash yourself in one of the smaller baths, and when you slip into the soaking pool Hatate turns her head and gives you a drowsy smile. Her wings lie flat on the surface of the water, and you imitate her, hanging on the edge of the pool and letting your wings rest. "Did I miss anything interesting?" Hatate chuckles weakly and shrugs.
"I only woke up an hour ago, so I dunno. Patchouli should be back, so you can give her that book." You nod and look around the pool. You haven't forgotten about asking how much more they could have told you, too. "Couldn't find any faucet or anything to change the temperature; I'd like it a bit hotter, but this isn't too bad." You sigh.
"Well, have you thought about where to go next?" She makes a face.
"Behh~ … are you really
always on about business? Can't we just relax for a day or two?" She perks up as you huff, and claps her hands. "Ah, that's right! We can try playing one of those games I got! It's a photography game~" You cut off your objection and give the smirking tengu a considering look. On the one hand, you
do have a duty to perform; on the other – well, a day or two is unlikely to make
that much of a difference ….
"Alright," you begin, and Hatate squeals happily, "here's what we'll do. After we finish in here, you get those games and we'll try them for a short time. Then we eat." Hatate pouts, crossing her arms unhappily, then grins and nods.
"Deal!"
***
You tear into your food as Patchouli watches dispassionately, only a cup of tea and the book from Mimoza in front of her. Hatate devours her food as well, although not quite as quickly as you do, in part because she takes the time to scowl at you occasionally. Of course, if things had continued the way they were, you two would simply have finished the game with a tie; the scoring method was designed for humans, after all, not tengu, and the possible shots are limited. "... Have you considered your next destination yet?" Hatate almost chokes on something when Patchouli asks her question, glaring at both you and her as she manages to swallow it.
"Not much, so far," you say, and the magician's eyes flicker up from the book to you. "I'd like to get a few more articles written right away, while everything is still fresh in my mind and I don't have anything else distracting me. It might be a day or two before I sit down and actually think about it." Patchouli makes a noncommittal sound and returns to the book. "Although I
was wondering if you were, perhaps, holding back some information on us." The magician sighs and slips a ribbon into the book to mark her place before closing it and looking across the table at you.
"There are matters of time and importance attached to our information-gathering capabilities. It takes time to study things, as you are well aware, and more time to condense them properly to explain to another. And if, through haste or miscalculation, a mistake is made, it could perhaps bring harm to yourself, which would distress Remilia somewhat. And, as it is in the interest of the tengu that these trips are being made, I also convinced Remilia to not try to understand your mindsets and what you consider important and instead leave such things to the investigation itself to uncover. After all, if
we were the ones doing a thorough investigation and spending time and effort learning about these places in detail, we might as well simply dispatch a report to your leader with a summary of the location we had chosen for your people to move to. Moreover, should it transpire that you fail to visit every potential location, then we will not have wasted time and effort explaining the details of those locations to you." You hold the magician's gaze for a moment before nodding; she isn't
wrong, exactly, and arguing about something so minor probably won't help and could easily backfire horrifyingly. You don't doubt her ability to construct reports that are long, dry, boring, and full of irrelevant details with the actually important things given one or two sentences at most. That's exactly the sort of spiteful behavior you would expect from someone like her.
"Um, how did the contest go? Between Il- the Einzbern sisters?" Patchouli frowns at Hatate, then looks back at her familiar, who smiles.
"I believe Lady Illyasviel made more of an impact on the judges, although young Illyasviel believes that they should have been allowed to make visual performances for the judges and not simply have the audio available to them. As the initial disagreement was over
singing ability, however, implications that she is being a sore loser make her cute and pouty and quiet." She smiles blissfully, lost in her own imagination for a moment. Hatate looks like she would have preferred it the other way around … but, oh well. It's hardly your affair.
What do you do?
[ ] Final Fantasy VIII
[ ] Breath of Fire III
[ ] Valdemar
[ ] The Black Company
[ ] Overlord
[ ] Akame ga Kill
[ ] Ravnica
[ ] Super Mario RPG
[ ] Redwall
[ ] Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
[ ] Wheel of Time
[ ] Other?
NOTE: The Other option is in place only if you wish to have Aya do something on-screen in the day or two before actually heading to the next place.
