It's really not fair. Like, how brave is brave enough? What good does it do finding a momentary spark when life just asks you to stoke it again and again and again and again? Ok, sure. Maybe not enough gets asked of a house fox on a daily or even a weekly basis. So realizing the foxgirl games were getting out of hand and that she'd need to be the one to save the world? That's fair. And it's fair to make her recruit her own party to do it, too. Even if that party turned out to be super scary and everyone hated everyone else. That's fine, that's fine. I dunno if there's such a thing as responsibility debt or anything but if there is that's Kat paying it. 

But like, c'mon? She had to be the one to stand up to Cy. She had to stand up to Actia. She had to stop herself from calling for help from anyone she knew on an almost hourly basis. She had to march up to a rampaging mecha controlled by a death-tainted raider warlord and stab her in the ribs with the Friendship Poker. She had to wrangle the lot of her ragtag bunch into something halfway resemblin' a decent dinner (which she had to cook!) and at no point during any of this did she get to really sit down and rest. This was not the kind of adventure she'd seen once before from inside a messenger bag. But after everything, what was her reward? 

Berserker, who she had to wrangle constantly to keep from destroying and/or conquering everything she saw, was frozen stiff at the sight of this new woman. Avenger, who not two days ago was closer than anyone ought to be to slaughtering the planet in the name of revenge on a single person, looked at her opponent and simply stuck her obnoxious glowing sword in the ground. Which, I dunno if you knew this? Is not a thing most fighters do when they're trying to win a duel? 

She'd done the thing. She'd screwed up her courage and kicked at the phone monster and did the every day magic of a tiny impossible miracle and it saved her life. So. Why was there another non-optional superboss to begin with? And why the h*ck was it on her to deal with it? She didn't know this woman! She didn't know what a 'Rome' was or why anyone would care! Could you eat it? Could you hug it? No? Then what the fluff?! What the actual fluff? Could she really work herself up to get shouty again when she didn't know if that'd work to begin with? And, like, she'd been trainin' with Berserker for a little while but she was still less than half the demon swordswoman Yue (ehehe!) had been at the end of her first adventure. And as a little reminder, that demon swordswoman lost every fight she got in (...ehe. Heh. Ah)!

"Julia the Philosopher?" Avenger's creepy ghost voice startled Kat out of her reverie/tantrum, "I don't suppose you bothered to get any better at arguing before you gave yourself that title. Tell me, is that spear a blessing from your gods? Or is it just another stick you plucked out of the mud?"

She stood there with her back straight and her feet planted firmly underneath her. She had no weapons in her hands because plainly she had no means of fighting back, but here was a warrior meeting not just the threat of annihilation but complete and total erasure from everything she'd ever held dear. Never mind her future, to have her [i]past[/i] stolen from her as well? Kat couldn't even imagine. But there was Ivar. 'The Boneless' she'd called herself. And even so she stood prouder and braver than any role model Kat could have hoped to have right then.

In fact she was just opening her mouth to do a bit of barking of her own when she felt one of those long, rough fingers press down against her lips. She yelped, when she'd meant to scream. To speechify, even. She glared up (and up, and up) at Avenger, who quietly shook her head. With a flick of her hollow golden eyes she indicated that dragon still sputtering in the corner about the destruction of her tablet. Opalis? That was her name, yeah. 

Katherine shuffled cautiously and heroically backwards. Ok, sure. That sounded easier than fighting another hopped-up-on-superpowers-bad-vibes-old-lady-ghost. She was so relieved she didn't even notice her sword was missing yet. Protect the dragon, sure sure! Or... wait. Was that not right? Was Avenger trying to tell her something else?

"Listen to me, Lancer. Give up on this at once. You are only going to be embarrassed by how it ends if you continue. I admit, no Servant manifested here can contest you. But these Masters are surprising. And this is their war, too."