Lance was the type of person who - largely as a result of an extremely eventful life - greatly relished the time after any major event. This was the time in which events were least likely to occur, at least not so soon after the last (usually terrible) thing had happened.

Which is why, later that night, he was somewhat annoyed to realize that someone was breaking into his apartment.

Again.

"Is there any way I could convince you to just... I don't know... leave?" He asked with some exasperation, not bothering to open his eyes or sit up on the couch. His only answer, ofcourse, was the rough prodding of a rifles barrel, as it's owner jabbed it into his temple, bouncing his head lightly to the side. A small part of Lance mentally weighed whether to be offended or amused by the response - but it was a short lived excercise. Instead, he paused, taking the time to fully wake up and consider what was going on.

Deciding to take full stock of the situation, and knowing there was nothing of value in his home, Lance relaxed. He cracked one eye open to look around the room, to get a better look at his silent assailants.

"Are you guys maybe in the wrong place?" Lance said quizzically, missing the concerned looks his nonchalance elicited from the three armed men crammed into his living room. He was much more focused on how well equipped these men were. They were positively covered in tactical gear. Black coveralls, black bullet proof vests, black masks, night vision goggles. Honestly, Lance thought they looked alot more like a spec ops team than home invaders.

"Shut up. Don't move." One of the men said, poking him in the side of the head with his rifle barrel again. Lance allowed his other eye to flutter open, blinking several times to help himself adjust to the darkness shrouding his living room. A moment of confusion passed over him as he tried to remember why exactly it was that he was sleeping in such a place when he had a perfectly good bed. Then he remembered the young woman who had recently broken into his home. I had to bite back a silent groan as he put two and two together.

Lance waited patiently in place, not overly worried for his own safety. Mulling it over, he thought it best to handle every attacker at once - if only so that no stray bullets killed his neighbours.

Several tense moments later, his suspicions were confirmed when a young woman - Laura - was dragged bonelessly into view by several more men, each dressed similarly to the three ostensibly holding him back. They weren't of course - his strength and speed were more than enough to avoid a few bullets, at least until he could call forth his armor. But there was the annoying fact that he was a spirit with a flesh and blood body. While this did mean he was a servant that could generate its own prana, it also meant he had to consciously focus on his physical form in order to reinforce it, bringing its durability up past that of a regular humans.

"She secure?" One of the men asked, jerking his head towards Laura where the men were busy clamping several metal devices to her arms and legs. When they had finished that, they withdrew a collapsible metal rod from one of their packs and slid it between the restraints - effectively hogtying her. It was a pretty ingenious way to hold her all things considered. She could still extend her claws, but hanging from the rod as she was, she would have no leverage to turn them on her attackers or bindings.

"Yes sir." Another man answered perfunctorily.

"The witness?" The man hovering over him asked.

"No witnesses. Use your knife - don't need to wake up the whole neighborhood." The leader declared, clearly ready to leave.

'I believe that's our que to act.' Saber noted dryly.

"No shit." Lance grumbled, shooting up from where he lay on the couch of his room and donning his armor faster than anyone present could perceive. One moment he was on the couch - and the next, he wasn't. In his place, stood a suit of resplendent white armor, trimmed with gold and radiating an aura of purity and strength that even the most mystically deficient of men would be forced to notice.

"Gentleman. I suggest you leave well enough alone." Sir Lancelot Du Lac declared, sweeping one gauntlet clad hand outward to take in the entire room. There was a period of silence as the men considered his words. One of them looked as though he may be about to ask a question but was quickly silenced by the sudden glare of his superior. Lancelot watched this all with a relaxed air. He knew these men were unlikely to just leave. Whats more, he actually couldn't allow them to leave now that they could easily connect Lance Lake and the Hero Lancelot Du Lac.

Still, he was nothing if not a fair man. And if they were willing to leave without a fight then maybe he could -

The first man pointed his gun at him, followed quickly by every firearm in the room rising to follow the first. Even the men holding Laura aloft dropped her unceremoniously on the ground to aim at him.

'I don't think they're surrendering.' stated Saber blandly.

'Yeah I picked up on that thanks.' Lance shot back, before shifting forward. A Servant, especially one of the three great knight classes such as he, was capable of moving and articulating themselves at a speed comparable to the speed of sound. To one such as he - provided he wasn't caught off guard like he was during the attack on the F.E.A.S.T center - dealing with a handful of mortal men with firearms was essentially trivial. Even the red and blue knights from the day before were nothing in the face of this single fact.

However, Lancelot abhorred unnecessary violence. He was very much aware that the men who had come to stop him were heroes - 'good guys' as it were. More so, moving at supersonic speeds tended to have... deleterious effects on the surrounding area. In an empty field or in very short bursts it was fine, but Lancelot was leery of tearing apart every street he ran on simply because he could.

All of these things, of course, were things that did not factor in to the current situation as the only property present was his own. It took Lancelot no time at all to flit past each of the men, hammering one armored fist into their skulls. He looked over them as they fell, an unimpressed look on his face, before turning to Laura. He tried very hard not to think about the mess his mere passing had caused, sending small articles flying about his living room as though a windstorm had occurred there.

"Hey are you alright?" He asked, leaning forward and making as though to pull apart the metal restraints holding Laura in place as he approached.

That is, until his gauntlet touched her hand, and her eyes exploded open, there pupils dilated and bloodshot. Before he could even think to question what was going on the girl began to thrash violently, steel claws exploding from her hands and feet, helpless to actually harm anyone hogtied as she was. If his normal impression of Laura was that of an apex predator, this was more akin to a rabid dog. A bear raging through its last moments.

He blinked once beneath his helmet and stepped back, unsure of what to do.

"Laura, it's me. Uh. Lance?" He said plaintively, lifting his hands into the air to show he had nothing threatening in them. Instead of calming her down though, this appeared to do nothing but change her focus, from a wild thrashing to a directed struggle to reach him. Her hands flexed helplessly against the restraints binding them, and her arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles as she fought her own anatomy to reach him, managing only to shimmy a few inches towards him.

"Laura you need to relax, these guys are finished alright? I handled them. Do you know why they wanted you?" He tried again, this time de materializing his helmet so she could see his face. She stared at him, and for a second there was the flicker of recognition. Her struggles slowed, and she looked around herself, blinking in confusion.

Aaaand then her gaze feel on one of the unconscious soldiers. And she started to thrash again. Only this time, while screaming and snarling like an animal.

'She's basically a berserker huh? You're going to have to hold her still till she calms down.' Saber said.

'Shoulda killed the chuckle fucks.' Eddy chimed in from wherever the angry little man existed in Lancelot's shared mindscape.

'Your right. I just really don't want to get closer to those claws than I have to. Something tells me they're... dangerous. Also Eddy? Shut up.' Lance replied, wondering just when conversing with the voices in his head had become such a casual occurrence.

Thoughts of soul based insanity, and worries about the uncharacteristic silence of his Berserker filled Lance's thoughts as he watched Laura thrash about. He carefully waited, timing his movements so that he could roll the girl over without being cut by her claws. Lance wasn't really sure if her claws could actually hurt him, but he hadn't gotten to be a master combatant by simply allowing unknown weapons to hit him. When he was sure he had a good grip, he picked her up by the back of her shirt, treating her like a very unwieldy suit case. The contact seemed to alarm Laura, causing her to start her struggles anew, eve trying to break her own neck in order to spin around and bite into him. Lance sighed dejectedly, and shifted his arm in front of her where she promptly set to trying to bite through his gauntlet to reach his arteries.

Lance was simultaneously appalled and impressed with the razor focus the girl had. Most berserkers he had met in his time on the earth had been impressive for their physical strength and endurance, but not altogether very smart. They were more likely to headbutt someone a dozen times then go for the more expedient option and just slit their throat.

He couldn't tell if she was just extremely well trained - or just that predisposed to combat.

Having now distracted Laura sufficiently, Lance lifted his free arm around her, and gently carried her out of the room full of unconscious men. He carried her like a very large thrashing puppy under one arm, stepping carefully over the downed men until he made it to his bedroom. He then levered the door open with his foot, and slid inside. He was unsurprised to find his mattress - which was a gift - reduced to tatters. It was as though someone had run the thing through a blender and then placed it back atop the bed frame.

Pushing the fact that mattresses were expenses into the same portion of his mind that was worried about all of his other stuff being broken now, Lance dropped Laura on the torn apart mattress, quickly swapping his forearm for a shirt he scooped off the floor. She howled in indignation at that, but as he left her line of sight she seemed to calm down, breathing deep ragged breaths as though she had been underwater and was only just now coming back up for air.

When he was sure she wouldn't bite her own tongue off, he went back to his living room, disarmed all the men of every weapon he could find, and sat down to wait.

He assumed the men would wake up fairly soon. The average human being rarely stayed unconscious after a knockout for more than fifteen or so minutes by the modern reckoning. However these men simply... didn't. After about an hour they all simultaneously began to shudder, and then fell still - no longer breathing.

"Well that... happened..." he mumbled to himself. With a casual thought he released his armor back into its astral form, and stepped curiously over to the now dead men. He knelt next to one, poking gently at his cheek and frowning at the unexpected clinking noise the mans jaw made as it fell open. Continuing his inspection of the man, he began to pull his clothes off, looking for identifying marks. This was an inspection he had done often as a knight of the realm, seeking out and destroying foul cults that threatened not just the kingdom but the world.

'Really you sparkly armored fuck? You think they're just gonna have fucking matching cutie marks or some shit?' Eddy sneered at him.

'Well no. But -' he paused, rolling up the sleeve of one man to find a highly detailed tattoo of an iron riveted skull on his forearm. He rose quickly, shifting to the next man and the next, finding each bore the same mark in different places on their bodies.

'Does this count? Also what's a cutie mark? Actually, don't tell me. Shut up Eddy.' Lance thought.

'My niece used to love this show and -' Eddy started but Lance summarily tuned him out.

Lance sighed, exhaling a breath of fetid air that he knew were the first signs of the smell all these dead bodies would surely produce. He was thankful for the area he lived in. With any lucky his neighbors would simply think Laura's screaming was the result of a drunken rampage, and the police wouldn't be called.

He briefly debated cutting off one of the mens arms so he could keep the tattoo as a reference but quickly decided against it. In his homeland bringing the heads of a dozen bandits to the authorities would be worthy of a reward.

Now it was worth a life sentence.

Still exceedingly tired, Lance sat back down on his - thankfully undamaged - couch. He was too tired for dealing with the modern world right now. He would handle the corpses in the morning.

'And you know it teaches important lessons for kids and -' Eddy continued droning along in the background.

Lance reached for a nearby throw pillow and covered his face with it, groaning.

-ooo-

The next morning found Lance surprisingly refreshed. He hadn't had to execute anybody - which was good even if only because all of the invaders to his home had spontaneously died before he could interrogate any of them. He'd helped Laura avoid being kidnapped - something he was reasonably certain wouldn't have gone over well with the savage teenager. And most importantly -

'And your sure you found a way to make him stop talking.' Lance asked for the umpteenth time, doing a lap of his kitchen in search of food. There was none of course, which meant he had to go to the grocery store today before work.

'Temporarily at best. We could seal him up entirely but his psyche is where you draw all your common knowledge from, so the effects it might have on your daily life could be... unpleasant.' Saber reported blandly, as though he only partially cared about the repercussions.

"Well it can't be that bad. Not compared to his constant suggestions that I murder people anyway." Lance said, not bothering to restrict himself to mental communication in his own home.

'In all likelihood, all of your present knowledge of the modern world would go with him. Cars would suddenly seem like dreadful iron monsters to you. Your refrigerator could be powered by nothing less than magic. Rap music would be a sin and -' Saber said, sounding for all the world as though he was merely reading from a list.

"I get it. He stays. Damn. How'd you get him to shut up anyway?" Lance grumbled, opening his freezer for the third time in the vain hope that a waffle was somehow hidden in the door.

'We have agreed to look into the circumstances of a homeless commune in San Francisco.' Saber said perfunctorily.

"You know we don't have a car right? And that we work seven days a week?" Lance pointed out, grabbing a warm beer from the counter where he had apparently left the gifts the other day. He realized that calling beer liquid bread was bullshit - but it was better than an empty stomach at least.

'We actually only work five days a week. We volunteer for the other two. At a location that was recently torn apart, that we are trying to avoid.' The reasonable voice of his personal secretary stated. Lance knew before he even finished thinking it that the descriptor had annoyed Saber.

He resolved to continue using it.

"Fine. But not right now. We have to figure out what's going on with these guys." Lance said, waving his hand in the generally direction of the pile of dead bodies in his living room.

'Agreed.' Saber said tersely, before falling silent.

Lance sat in silence for a minute more, sipping his lukewarm beer. He hadn't actually gotten undressed the day before, so he supposed he was already prepared to go to the grocery store. He was a heroic spirit but he did need to eat. Quite a lot actually. Thankfully his bodies needs were purely for calories. His spiritual body provided everything else, the two feeding off each other in a never ending cycle. This allowed him to primarily purchase food that was high in calories and low in nutrition in bulk. Sure it looked strange when he tried to walk out of the grocery store with bags laden with one dollar cans of ravioli and chili, but he could live with being merely 'strange'.

Still, it was a strange balance to strike between two states of being that really weren't meant to co-exist, and it left him painfully vulnerable to simple starvation. He supposed though, that if he ever found himself low on prana and unable to find food that he would probably have much larger problems to worry about.

Finishing off his breakfast, Lance stood and headed out the door, locking it behind himself. He made it out into the streets quickly, waking himself by jogging down the many flights of stairs to the ground floor. It was a nice day out, sometime in the early afternoon he guessed since he hadn't been able to see his clock past the dead guys. Actually, what was he going to do about the dead guys? He supposed he could call the police but it might be awkward to explain why they were in his apartment to begin with... No, it was probably for that best that he avoid the proper authorities for the moment. He could revisit the idea of cooperating with them when he had established himself.

It wasn't long before Lance made it to the grocery store, which was... surrounded by police. Lance squinted at the scene suspiciously, wondering if he might be seeing things. He had gone months in this city without ever encountering anything this bizarre, but since yesterday it felt like the universe was just looking for any excuse to hurl him into strange situations.

"Er excuse me, but whats going on?" He asked, walking up to one of the officers holding the heedless onlookers of New York back.

"Some idiot with a gun holding the place up. There's a SWAT team en route - so please stay back." The officer said tiredly, his gaze flicking up to Lance and then back to the rest of the crowd like he was used to answering these questions.

"Oh." Lance said, pure relief filling him at the knowledge that this was just a normal, non costumed crime. He winced mere moments afterwards. Crime was still crime, even if there wasn't an idiot in spandex behind it all.

"Do you need help?" Lance asked after a few more seconds of watching the silent grocery store.

"You bullet proof? 'Cus if not I advise you wait for the professionals - or Spiderman - to get here." The officer said with a snort.

Lance considered for a moment before nodding to himself. He assumed that being a superhero and getting paid for it was much like earning your place at the round table. Perform great deeds, have your name spread, wait for the king to extend an invitation. Or... the president. Or whoever was in charge of New York, it was honestly hard for Lance to tell given the labyrinthine nature of rulership in this country. He supposed he would find out eventually though, so he pushed the idle thought to the side, and stepped past the officer, once more donning his gleaming white armor. After a moment of consideration, he opted not to use his helm. Recognition was the point after all.

"Hey uh, you can't..." the officer started, but trailed off when he turned to find Lance watching him with a single raised eyebrow. Lance tried to ignore the fact that all of the previously silent onlookers had exploded into hushed whispers when he had donned his armor. He also ignored the dozens of cellphones the mystically appeared in the hands of the crowd as if summoned by magic. He simply stared at the officer, willing himself to maintain a serene and relaxed outward expression.

"You can't go in there." The officer tried again lamely.

"...You said if I was bulletproof..." Lance pointed out helpfully, not bothering to actually finish the sentence.

"Right. Yeah I... I guess I did. Uh. Don't... don't tell anyone I said that? Please? I could lose my job." The officer said meekly, angling his face so the glare of the noon day sun off of Lancelot's armor didn't obscure his vision.

"Sure thing Officer. I'll just be a second." Lance said. Then he turned away from the awkward exchange, and began to troop slowly towards the grocery store.

'Very heroic. That poor man is going to forever remember this as the day he gave a vigilante permission to beat up criminals.' Saber said with a hint of amusement.

'Well at least I asked. Besides the whole police force treats Spiderman like he's a part of the scenery. Be a bit hypocritical to give me shit afterwards right?' Lance responded absentmindedly as he strode through the automatic doors of the grocery store and looked around.

The grocery store appeared almost entirely normal. He had half way expected there to be racks knocked over and produce everywhere as a result of the people panicking or the rubber being overly aggressive. Instead, two men in ski masks were standing near the single open register. Lancelot idly noted that there were over a dozen hostages kneeling in the aisle nearest the two robbers, and both men had turned their weapons on the innocents as he entered.

'Yeah but Spiderman doesn't reveal his face to everyone watching while simultaneously keeping a half dozen corpses in his living room.' Saber chortled - actually chortled - at him. Lance paled as realization dawned on him.

He had to finish this and deal with the dead guys fast.

"Who the fuck are you?!" One of the men yelled, and it occurred to Lancelot that he had been completely ignoring them as he thought.

"I'm..." Lance paused his mind going blank. In the past, when he wanted to arrest someone he simply told them to stop what they were doing or he would kill them. Back then however, he was meting out the kings justice. Now he was essentially just 'some guy', and he doubted strongly that 'surrender or die' was looked upon kindly by the actual police.

"You knaves may refer to me as Sir Lancelot Du Lac, Knight of the Round Table, and Blessed Child of the Lake! Surrender, for you have no chance of defeating me in open combat!" Lance declared loudly, maintaining an outward calm while inwardly he began to sweating profusely.

'What... what was that?' Saber asked pitifully. If Lance paid close attention he almost felt as though he could hear the sounds of manic laughter echoing in the background of his thoughts.

'I panicked! I didn't think this through! All the Super Hero's have special names now don't they? And stupid catch phrases!' Lance babbled.

Both of the would-be robbers turned to look at each other, before whipping their weapons around to fire at Lancelot without even speaking another word. Lancelot grimaced, knowing that bullets ricocheting off of him and harming the nearby innocents would not likely go over well with the people he was currently trying to impress. Thinking about it, this was something of an audition for him. How he comported himself now would be the first glimpse the modern age had ever had of Lancelot Du Lac.

That thought actually somewhat relaxed Lance. Truthfully he had never actually failed to achieve much of anything once he decided to do it. That was why he was such a famous hero. Second only to King Arthur herself really. He allowed that knowledge to calm him, and without much further consideration, began to move - not so much that he would tear apart his surroundings, at least not while he was using extra prana to contain the force of his movements, but more than enough to pluck bullets out of the air.

Which is exactly what he did. Like a man with nothing better to do, he sauntered forward, plucking bullets out of the air where he knew they would bounce off him and hurt someone, or merely smacking them into the ground harmlessly if he thought they were going to pass by him entirely.

'And what were you planning for your catch phrase exactly? Your Friendly Neighourhood Knight Errant?' Saber asked mockingly, making light of the hail of bullets Lancelot was slowly walking through. He could have charged forward, but since he was trying to avoid damaging anything, or killing anyone - even the criminals in this case - he thought it best to go slow.

'Heavens no. I was kind of hoping no one would talk to me and I could just... not speak.' Lance answered desperately, hoping against hope that things would work out in his favor on that front. His hopes however, were dashed a few moments later, when upon finally reaching the criminals in question and taking their weapons as if wrenching a bone from a dog, they merely stared at him blankly.

'They're not surrendering.' Lance complained.

'Try another threat. They are unarmed now - it should work this time.' Saber advised.

'True.' Lance acknowledged. He allowed his gaze to pass over the crowd of onlookers, who were too busy watching the proceedings to bother using the distraction to try and escape or - heaven forbid - help him. Then he frowned. He could swear there was someone missing...

With a mental shrug, he raised his arm into the air and withdrew Arondight, the Unfading Light of the Lake. His true Noble Phantasm, bestowed upon him by the Lady of the Lake, and sister sword to Excalibur itself. Unlike Excalibur, which radiated a calming light that had ended many a battle before it even started, Arondight appeared to be merely a finely crafted sword with a golden hilt and guard. This wasn't because Arondight couldn't radiate positive feelings. It was simply that unlike his liege lord - who had a preference for 'overkill', Lancelot had worked hard to condense all the power of his weapon into it's blade. It was a mark of pride for him never to let it's power spill forth unless he willed it.

He leveled the weapon at the two men standing against him, and spoke once more.

"Heed me criminals, yield or face the might of Arondight!" He demanded.

'Why?! Why are you doing that!?' Saber asked finally unable to maintain his calm in the face of such perfectly bad acting.

'I don't know okay!? It just happened!' Lance snapped back, unwilling to admit that he had simply committed to the act when he knew that stopping half way would be so much more embarrassing than following through to the end. Lance, not having any reason to hold on to them, had dropped all the bullets he had been catching into a heap at his feet when he opened his hand to summon Arondight. The criminals looked down in raw panic at the tinkling sound of copper bouncing off the linoleum floors of the supermarket and then immediately got on their knees.

Or they started to at least. They never really got the chance to fully surrender, because at just that moment a blur of blue and red came flying over a nearby aisle of racking, firing two globs of white at the men which resulted in them being pasted to the floor like flies in glue.

"Don't worry folks, your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman is here to save the... day..." Spiderman said as he arrived on the scene, landing nimbly on the edge of one of the checkouts and then looking around in confusion at all the blank stares the hostages were giving him.

"Hark Spiderman, I have heard much of you." Lancelot said, banishing his sword to show he had no intent to fight. He was still painfully aware of the fact that he had been trying to kill this man yesterday, and though he knew For Someone's Glory would prevent him from being recognized, it still made him uncomfortable around the Wall Crawler.

"Oh wow you have a whole medieval times thing going on there huh?" Spiderman quipped, hopping off of his perch and striding over to peer curiously at Lancelot's armor.

"I... do not know what that is." Lance admitted, watching Spiderman warily as he circled him.

"It's great. Horses and jousting and stuff. Hey I'd love to talk but we should probably do it somewhere else. Cop's will be in here soon." Spiderman said, already headed towards the rear exit of the building.

"I... had wanted to purchase groceries though?" Lance stated, somewhat peeved at how his morning had already been derailed. As it was he might have to jump across the rooftops to make it to work on time, not to mention the pile of dead men in his apartment, and poor Laura all tied up and... Lance froze remembering the state he had left the girl in the night before.

"Yeah look, I know back in the day you guys had a whole Judge Dredd thing going on, but the cops actually really don't like random guys in costumes doing their jobs for them so - uh hey where are you going?" Spiderman started, yelping in surprise when Lancelot grew pale and pivoted on his heel to march back out the front door.

"My time is nearly up Spiderman - may we meet again!" Lancelot said absently, trusting to his terrible acting to make anything he said sound as believable as anything else.

"Yeah but that's the front door. Look I know back door was kind of a new thing back then but -" Spiderman droned on behind him, but Lance chose to ignore him. Instead he walked out the front door into a swarm of uniformed police officers, all of whom had their guns pointed at him. He blinked once, looked behind him to find Spiderman missing, and then shrugged.

"I have brought peace once more to grocery store!" He yelled at the men, hoping he wouldn't have to dodge more bullets. When none of them said anything, or even really moved, Lance sighed, and began slowly walking towards them.

Some of the officers did try to shoot at him, but not many. Certainly not enough to be anything more than a minor inconvenience. By the time he had made it to their line, he found himself face to face with the same officer who had originally been stopping the nearby onlookers from getting any closer. Lance smiled pleasantly at the man, inclined his head once in acknowledgement, and then exited the encirclement. The second he did so, his armor vanished, and he began sprinting for all he was worth back to his apartment.

At a normal human speed of course.

When he finally arrived home it was after taking at least two shortcuts, and evading several police cars. He would have liked to say the police were there to congratulate him, or at worst, ask him some questions about what had happened, but the constant low buzzing of Saber laughing at him in the back of his head told him his assumptions might be a little bit too naive.

Lance was already tired of today, and he hadn't even honestly started it yet. He still had to go to work, and see how May Parker was doing. Not to mention the corpses. Stormy thoughts of how miserable the next few days were going to be filled his mind as he unlocked the front door to his apartment and stepped inside - only to find a hogtied Laura slowly inching her way towards the pile of corpses, her eyes intent on a key ring hanging from one of their belts.

The second he stepped into view her head turned towards him, and their eyes locked. Silence filled the air as they continued to simply stare at each other. Or rather, Lance stared, and Laura glared. When finally he couldn't handle the stifling quiet anymore Lance raised on hand in his defense and said;

"I can explain?" In a defeated tone of voice that in no way promised the explanation would be a good one.

He wasn't sure why, but he felt like Merlin might just be laughing at him from somewhere.