[center][h2]Anne Mayer[/h2][h3]Hillside Hamlet[/h3][/center]
The first thing Anne Mayer did, once she and her allies had finally cleared the battlefield, was sit down on the grass and take a long moment to catch her breath. Even if she'd seemed relentless while the fight was still raging, the exertion from all that running around had added up over time... Fortunately, the enemy this time had been pretty weak. Even though she'd ended up a little tired, her body didn't feel like it would give out from a skirmish like this one.

While she rested, the Knight took stock of her surroundings, and with some relief found that her side had suffered no serious casualties. She thought she'd seen Mokou take a hit in all the chaos, but it clearly hadn't kept her down for long. Most importantly, the village had come through it all more or less unscathed, and the sight of those fragile houses still standing tall was enough to drive the tension from Anne's shoulders with a shuddering sigh.

[i]A bloodless victory.[/i] The joy and satisfaction welling up inside her could be read clearly on her features, and for just a moment the tired veteran looked nearly ten years younger.

At a measured pace, she approached the girl with the scissors, arriving a short while after Rayne flew down. The witch had already started asking the important questions, and Anne waited for Gwen to answer before following up with her own. "Anne Mayer," she introduced herself, and extended a handshake to the blue-haired girl, who might have passed for a Knight if she'd shown up in more familiar circumstances. "Forgive me for prying, but... The two of you aren't from around here either, aren't you?"

Her serious look was back, cool and analytical. Even accounting for the fact that she didn't know much of this nation and its customs, it seemed all too convenient for a pair of such powerful fighters to have just been hanging around a village even smaller than Aventon. More likely they'd popped up the same way Youmu and Remilia had after the initial 'summoning,' only much further away from the supposed epicenter of the event. 

[i]Just how far have things spread...?[/i] If otherworlders were appearing out here, then it stood to reason that they'd manifested in even more distant regions as well, perhaps even as far as the capital.