Arrows whistle as they sail across the sky. She stands still and allows them to stick her where they may. Superficial damage at the worst; one at the shoulder and another in her hip. She glances down before plucking them free with lazy contempt. A moment later they clash in the manner of legends, and she is forced to draw her sword. But that is the extent of the story, all that the whirling green can draw out of her. Tucking her arm tight against her side is enough to bend her blade to cover every spot that attacks can reach her from. The impacts are not bone rattling, not that they ever could be, but neither are they metaphorically so sharp as to accomplish the feat. It is more akin to play fighting, and when Lancer rolls away it is with a boost from a slow swat of that black sword.

Now she stares down a Roman legionnaire and for a moment the battlefield returns to stillness. For her, it hardly feels different from the flashy displays of a moment prior. Nothing held the impact of those rockets. Nothing pushes her the way that surprise could, the perfect tactic calculated from outside her capabilities. In the attempt to prove that the world of the past was available for plunder, Lancer had lowered herself to its standards, and [i]there[/i] Saber was still a king. Or a warrior on the path to becoming one - the difference in the path of a fight made surprisingly little difference, one might realize if they happened to be observing this.

"Nobody [i]could[/i] fight like Achilles," she scoffs, "What does that matter? Merely donning his armor in his stead was enough to turn the tide of a battle. And in the end it was the rest of that army that accomplished what he could not, or so I've heard it said. Was their reverence for him a hindrance?"

She waits. She knows the shape of this next throw. It will not be weak, it will not be halfhearted. It will be the shape of the same lance that pierced -- that [i]crushed[/i] -- Bohemond. It comes, straight and true and swift and predictable. The cut that defeats it hardly looks like some great act of martial prowess, but the stance she is forced to take is (for once) a proper warrior's grip and follow through. Her sword carves a fresh scar into the earth even as it snaps that javelin in half. And there are those who would praise her for this! Had the two of them been lucky enough to meet in life this would have been a page in Saber's legend, the proof that she was raised by her Father not for her monstrous form but because he saw in her a warrior who could lead a nation in his wake.

She twists at the hip across the edge of her own cut and whirls forward at hunting speeds. Have all the clever tricks you like, world, in this aspect alone Saber remains unmatched. She is upon Lancer as though she were the one fired from a rocket launcher. She does not cut. She does not challenge the armor or the shield. Her arm bends and extends forward, her hand closes around the logician's throat. Her body straightens, and she lifts Lancer off the ground entirely.

"When I died, I told my people they would never know defeat so long as my remains lay undisturbed in the cold earth. I [i]kept[/i] that promise, Lancer. As I keep every promise. We are not history. We are what the people compress history down to because we and our weapons are small enough to be carried into the future."

Her arm lowers enough to reach her hip. She steps forward, and throws Lancer like a skipping stone across the battlefield. All her anger and irritation make the force of it harder than was wise, but even in this she has at least held back enough that they could lie and call this friendly sparring, if they had a mind to.

"Did Rome collapse? Then let it lie, you fool. We went to our graves praying a world like this one would grow overtop our corpses. What kind of idiot would try to reclaim the old glory when they could build a new one now to surpass it? Is that not the point of your Master?"