They stopped in the town on La Rochelle, to feed Wardes' griffon. (Louise still couldn't remember her name, blast it, and it was getting too awkward to ask.)

As Wardes left to a nearby merchant's, Tabitha landed next to Louise. She gave a slight nod as the wind picked up. "Clear."

Louise smiled. "Was it hard to ditch Zerbst?"

Tabitha shook her head. "Simplicity." She eyed the other girl. "She won't like it."

Louise waved her hand. "I'll wrestle her later or something." Strange, Tabitha looked oddly flushed at that statement. "Was our path clear?"

The wind mage nodded, then frowned. "The knight. Trustworthy?"

Louise frowned back. "He's my fiance."

Mukuro gave her a patient look. "That is irrelevant, Miss Louise."

Now, Louise felt annoyed. "Are you saying my parents can't tell if someone is trustworthy or not?"

Tabitha rolled her eyes. "Not infallible," she stated. "Still human."

A M U S E M E N T

Ramiel projected a bit of good humor from Louise's shirt pocket, giggling quietly in that haunting, mechanical manner for a bit. Apparently it reveled in the implication that, as it was not human, it was therefore infallible. Or at least, far less fallible than its squishy tiny companions.

Louise crossed her arms, pouting. "I feel like I'm being ganged up on."

Tabitha reached out and tweaked her nose slightly. "You're not."

L A U G H T E R

Ramiel's giggling only increased in volume as it floated out of Louise's pocket, growing to almost the size of Louise's head and spinning around idly while floating above her shoulder.

Looking as unamused as she could manage - curse them both for nearly making her giggle when she was supposed to be sulking - Louise flatly pointed a thumb over her shoulder towards her familiar. "Then what do you call this?"

"What do you call what?"

Louise turned. Wardes was standing behind her, arms crossed, but looking faintly amused. She grinned wickedly. "Why you of course, Jean-Jacques! What do we call you if not..." She took note of a sudden flash of alarm in his eyes. "...hot?"

D I S G U S T

Ramiel's response was nothing short of comedically perfect- a perfect blend of mild disdain for Wardes' general existence and a deadpan desire to fuck with him just for shits and giggles.

"You look like my former sensei, but at least he knew proper grooming habits." Shimura added.

"You look like if Jacques Schnee became a washed up actor." Roman added.

"You look like a beta design for Monokuma." Tsumugi added.

"You look like a drug addict demon slayer." Rui sniped.

"Prime Minister Honest looks better than you, and he trained his body to handle a lifetime of hedonism." Aria snarked.

"You look like a meth addict sniper." Grimes added

"You literally look like a worse off Jared Fogel." Taylor sniped.

Louise nodded in contemplation. "Sorry, Jean-Jacques. My familiars have spoken. Not hot."

Behind her, Tabitha snorted.

Wardes stared at them "I just thought of something," he began casually. Almost too casually. "The situation over at Albion is getting worse. The royalists are quite bad off." Yes, that was a grin. No, Louise didn't like the look of it one bit. "I can't possibly lead two teenage girls into a warzone..." Wardes' grin looked positively evil now. "...without knowing they can handle themselves."

Louise slowly looked over at Tabitha. The blue-haired mage was slowly lowering her face into her hands.

~~~~~~~~

Louise panted heavily as she stared down Tabitha, looking far more worse for wear than her current opponent.

"How… are you…. So good…?" she asked, gasping for air as she readied the wooden practice sword Wardes had procured for her again. "It doesn't make any sense…"

"Practice," noted the other girl. She was somewhat smugly leaning on a wooden quarterstaff.

"This is... ridiculous," Louise panted. "I am... not... going to fight... with a sword," she declared. The effect of said declaration was slightly ruined by Louise still being rather out of breath.

Wardes, who up until now had been snickering at her, the traitor, spoke up. "What else are you going to fight with? Magic? I know very well that you have problems on that front."

A savage grin wormed its way onto Louise's face. "Ah, but your... information... is outdated, Jean-Jacques! My magic... works! And it's... greater than... anything I've seen!"

Wardes' eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "Truly? You've come into your affinity? What is it, then?"

Louise paused. "I have no idea. Probably fire. Everything... is certainly destructive enough."

Wardes stared. "How can you have no idea, my darling Louise? If you have come to your affinity, it should be easy to tell. It's okay if you still don't have one. You don't have to lie to me, my Louise."

Louise scowled. "What it... is, my dear Jean-Jacques, is... not making any sense. If I didn't know... any better... I'd say I have my Familiar's magic. Which is nonsense. Right?"

The last question was directed at Tabitha. The girl shrugged. "Undetermined."

Wardes was looking contemplatively between the two girls. "Interesting. Most interesting indeed. Could you show me?"

Tabitha immediately stepped behind Louise.

With a flourish of her wand, Louise waved it about for a moment before pointing it forward and letting loose with what could only be described as a beam of purest hellfire, glowing a hellish magenta red as it quickly punched through the wall on the other side of the courtyard… and then the wall beyond that… and the wall beyond that… before it finally petered out almost half a kilometer away, slamming into and igniting a rather large boulder that quickly melted into nothing but a puddle of slag from the sheer amount of energy poured into the flames that danced across its surface.

She gave Wardes her blandest look. "As I said. Probably fire. And now watch this."

With another flourish of her wand, Louise cast a spell straight up into the sky, unleashing yet another beam of hellfire that crashed and roared like thunder, bursting apart at the apex of the sky and instantly manifesting a roiling stormcloud, flashing with crimson lightning and pouring hot, heavy rain that smelled of ozone and fire and slapped against the ground to form thick, gooey puddles of what almost looked like orange-ish blood.

Ramiel spun around curiously as the storm progressed for several minutes, idly poking at the puddles and making little hums as it examined the primordial ooze that Louise had somehow managed to generate.

Tabitha had managed to conjure an impressive umbrella made of solid wind and was perfectly dry. Wardes on the other hand...

Louise giggled. "You look like a mess, Jean-Jacques," she noted. Indeed, the man looked like a wet cat. Or perhaps a wet fish. He still needed to pick his jaw off the floor.

At Louise's voice, he snapped out of his funk and stared at her in... yeah, Louise was going to interpret that as an awe as the only other possible option was entirely too Zerbst for her fiance, and therefore unacceptable.

"Oh Brimir, you're amazing," he said. Louise preened, all traces of the previous exhaustion gone. She figured it was simply the rush she got from actually casting magic - her spells felt so revitalizing!

Ramiel, meanwhile, just let out a disgusted whine at the display of affection, clearly deeming Wardes too bedraggled and unworthy for Louise's attentions. And if it drooped a little bit in its flight path, then nobody had to know.

Louise clapped her hands together, feeling smug. "Have we now established that I don't need a sword to accomplish any wars?"

Wardes looked somewhat unimpressed. The effect was only further ruined by the fact that he was still dripping orange goop. "And what about when you might lose your wand? What would happen then?"

Louise smiled as Tabitha dug herself a bunker with some rather impressive Wind magic. "That's what I have Ramiel for." She idly gestured at a nearby mountain peak. "Do your thing, Ramiel!"

With a cacophonous shriek of what could only be assumed to be pure delight, Ramiel spun around, shifting its body through alien geometries as it grew and grew and grew, until it was unto the size of a small castle in and of itself, where upon its body unfolded further into a jagged star that glowed with hellish light from its core. A moment passed before a simple flash of light pulsed out from Ramiel's core, the faintest hint of a beam of light flashing between it and the mountain for the briefest second. Barely half a second later, the entire mountain exploded into a vaporized cloud of magma and smoke, the shockwave rumbling over the city moments later and causing glass to shatter just from the sheer strength of its passing.

In the very picture of smug itself, Louise turned to her shell-shocked fiance. "Any further objections?"

Wardes' eyes rolled back and he collapsed into a dead faint.

"Overkill," was Tabitha's contribution. The wind mage was, once again, completely unruffled.

Louise frowned. "One, there is no such thing. Two, how do you keep doing that?"

Tabitha, in a completely uncharacteristic move, giggled at her. "Practice."