The conversation that Goblin Slayer and Noble Fencer commenced shortly after BB was able to recreate the tavern that they had all left behind them, with High Elf Archer and Fairy Knight sitting on each side of the ten year-old, while the teenager with honey-blond hair sat across from him at the beautiful-carved oak table they were occupying within the dining area. With the six pacified members of the gold-ranked adventurers locked up away in the outdoor prison-shed that BB had made to house them separately from them, Goblin Slayer had a clear enough mind to rightfully think over the side-quest that Noble Fencer had offered to him.
"Relena… Forgive me if I sound judgemental, but… Why on Earth did you leave the rest of your companions behind in front of that cave? Wouldn't it have been to have taken them to Matterhorn with you?" Goblin Slayer questioned, which made Noble Fencer lower her gaze slightly.
Sitting down with her legs raised up and the heels of her expensive leather-boots resting on top of the edge of the wooden table, Noble Fencer remained silent for a brief moment before smacking her lips softly to herself. "I… I'd hate for you to be under the impression that I'm careless when it comes to the lives of others; the thought did cross my mind earlier, when I was last with them. I mean, I in fact I actually did bring that up to my party, but it was pretty much unanimously agreed upon that the goblins would chase after us if we were all to leave for Matterhorn together; and the less of us that were there to keep them trapped inside that cave, the higher the chance that those staying behind would be overwhelmed," Noble Fencer explained, while expressing a worried look of her own that was hidden behind the uneasy smile she had across her lips.
Leaning forward to rest her elbows down on the table on her side, High Elf Archer arched a single eyebrow toward Noble Fencer. "Ironic how instead of trapping goblins, it was all of your combined efforts that ended up actually getting trapped instead; if the lives of others weren't on the line, I'd call you all a bunch of morons who lack foresight," High Elf Archer said with a smug smiling across her lips, as Noble Fencer's eyes raised up to glare into hers with a shocked expression on the teenager's face. "Whoopsies, guess I ended up saying it anyway~…! How careless of me~…!" High Elf Archer chuckled meanly, while getting satisfaction from the way Noble Fencer was visibly getting angered.
Opening her mouth to let out a rebuttal, Noble Fencer paused while silently reflecting on the situation; analyzing her options, before finally letting out a deep breath as she sunk back into her chair with her cool returning to her. "Huh… You know, that's awfully brave of you to say, Tohsaka-Chan; considering the fact that you're pretty much hiding behind a literal ten year-old," Noble Fencer shot back with a sly grin forming on her face; seemingly no one else but Goblin Slayer taking notice of the fact that she had referred to High Elf Archer as something completely different than her name, "Arthemis Maiven".
"… W-What?" Goblin Slayer uttered out inaudibly, as he suddenly felt a sickening feeling churning from within the bottom of his gut; his whole body suddenly feeling cold, as the dread from when he was attacked by the inhabitants of the Oakshire Forest returned to him. And with Goblin Slayer unable to vocalize his thoughts, the scene before him began to play out in a way that shouldn't have made sense to anyone in the room; his mind feeling dizzy, as if the deja vu he was experiencing was causing him to feel the same symptoms of vertigo.
Letting out an offended scoff mixed with a chuckle, as if though that alone would have been enough to mask the fact the retort given to her had gotten on her nerves, Rin Tohsaka moved away from the round-circular table, so as to cross her arms over her breasts. "If you're attempting to get underneath my skin, Fujimaru-Chan, then just stop while you're ahead! God knows which one us is going to win this argument, and it sure as hell isn't going to be you, you "Goody-Goody Two-Shoes"; you don't have the nerve for it," Rin scoffed, while chuckling at her own quip, as the pale-skin teen with red pig-tails
""Goody Goody Two Shoes"…? N-No one even says that anymore! And besides, y-you better watch your mouth, Tohsaka-Chan! It would be unwise for someone like you to throw bricks at others, when your house is made entirely out of glass-walls," Ritsuka Fujimaru shot back with a slightly shaky voice; clearing taking more personal offense to the heated argument than Rin, who was sitting down with her dominant smirk still plastered across her gorgeous face.
"Oh, hehe~? Oh wow, are you trying to insinuate that I've got something to be ashamed of, Fujimaru-Chan~? Heh, don't be so absurd; desperate claims are never classy," Rin chuckled with a slight bit of nervousness written all over her face, as she tried to play the accusation off in front of her table full of friends, and her younger sister as well.
Seeing where the argument was heading, Ritsuka's twin brother, Ritsuko Fujimaru, let out a nervous chuckle as he stood up from his chair, all while placing a comforting hand on his sister's shoulder to try to calm her down. "Girls, girls; let's save the shit-talking for the classroom tomorrow, yeah?! That'll give something for everyone to talk about; it'll give us all something to break the up mundanity of your typical Monday morning," Ritsuko said jokingly; trying to defuse the situation with his sense of humor, while only managing to earn an uncomfortable chuckle from Shirou Emiya, who was sitting beside Rin with an equally uncomfortable look on his face as everyone else around the table had on theirs as well.
Shaking her head furiously, Ritsuka brushed her brother's hand off of her shoulder before looking up at him with a frustrated look in her brown eyes. "No, I'm not going to let it fly, onii-san! She's only going to gaslight everyone into thinking that I'm the weird-jerk; just like how she always does!" Ritsuka protested, before turning her head to face Rin. "Everyone thinks you're oh-so perfect, Tohsaka-Chan… I wonder if everyone would still put you up on an ivory pedestal, if they only knew the sort of person you were OUTSIDE of the Clock Tower," Ritosuka said resentfully, before suddenly catching Rin off guard as she pointed a finger straight at Shirou. "Makes me wonder if anyone would still white-knight for you, if they knew about you and Emiya-Kun?"
Sharing a shocked, wide-eyed expression that had found its way onto Rin's no longer smug face, Shirou raised his hands defensively up toward his shoulders, while looking up at both of the Fujimaru twins. "H-Hey now, let's not escalate this into something that it doesn't need to be… Besides, this isn't the time or place for this sort of discussion. We're guests here, after all; we shouldn't be behaving this way," Shirou reasoned, while earning an appreciative gaze from Rin, who in turn was receiving a jealous and hurt look from her younger sister.
Looking away from her older sister, Sakura Matou turned over to where Ritosuka was looking around the table at everyone with an exasperated expression on her face. "Please refrain from making such false accusations, Fujimaru-Chan… My sister and Shirou-Kun are just friends, that's all," Sakura said in a soft-spoken voice, while feeling hurt herself as she turned away from Ritosuka to lock eyes with Shirou, who in turn did his best to comfort the purple-haired teenager by smiling reassuringly at her.
Although he had moments ago been in favor of de-escalating the tension in the room, Ritosuko couldn't help himself, as he let out an amused chuckle while smiling snidely at Sakura's attempt to deny his twin-sister's insinuation. " Kehehehe, ha…! Yeah, sure; let's go with that then," the black-haired teenager said sarcastically; realizing the error in what he had accidentally said aloud too late, as the group of friends began to squabble even louder than before.
In the grand-scheme of things, none of their juvenile bickering was ever all that serious, as all of their heated arguments that they always had in-between their sessions of "Dungeon and Dragons" never crossed the line; merely it was just a way for the group of teenagers to let out their grievances, each time that the unforgiving Dungeon Master had put them into an unwinnable situation. The only person at the table who ever truly disliked the times when things would get heated up was the Dungeon Master himself, who sat in-between his two younger siblings.
"Bloody hell… If you muppets are all done faffing around with your wobblies, I'd love to crack on back to the campaign; that is, unless you all have something more important to waste my time on, then PLEASE, proceed as you may!" Goblin Slayer sarcastically spoke out with a clear sign of annoyance in his voice, as he impatiently rolled his eyes. It was only then when he was done speaking did Goblin Slayer register the foreign accent and particular vocabulary he had used. Receiving confused stares from everyone at the table, especially Fairy Knight and BB, Goblin Slayer was left self conscious and even frighteningly confused, before quietly saying "Forgive me, I… I don't know where that came from… I-I don't even know why I sounded like that, for a second…"
Recognizing the dialect almost immediately, Fairy Knight piped up as she gave Goblin Slayer a perplexed stare. "You were using a Cockney accent, Master… I find that extremely unusual; I haven't heard anyone else speak like that ever since I've been here," Fairy Knight said, before turning her attention over to where only her and Goblin Slayer could see BB sitting down at the table. "You're resourceful as you are irritating, woman… Please, enlighten us on where that British outburst came from."
Appearing visibly unsure, BB tapping her finger tips together while furrowing her brows; quietly humming to herself, while trying to come up with a probable explanation amongst the sea of less-likely possibilities that she could conjure up in her algorithm-based thoughts. "If I were to make an accurate hypothesis, I'd say that what we experienced was nothing more than a glitch in Ashta-Kun's thoughts, created by the increasing quantum-signal between his magic crest, and the Moon-Cell itself," BB mused, after having given her best guess. "There's quite a lot of archived data stored within the Moon-Cell, so anything's possible at this point, with how volatile the integrity of its stored data is at this point; with the entirety of it all crossing through the multiverse to transfer itself over to this universe and timeline."
Unimpressed with the answer she got, Fairy Knight scowled slightly as she rolled her eyes at BB. "That's an underwhelming explanation, coming from a managerial AI like yourself… I figured you would have been more knowledgeable than that," Fairy Knight muttered, before letting out an indifferent sigh as she stood up suddenly from her chair. "Forget it; there's no point dwelling on it. As a knight of the Round Table, it's my sworn duty to aid the righteous who are in need of rescue… With that being said, I certainly wouldn't be losing any sleep over their deaths," Fairy Knight stated truthfully, as she gave Noble Fencer an unapologetic and stoic look. "That's just my own personal outlook on things, though; granted, I say that, only because I already know that you're going to volunteer us into helping this spoiled brat with her problems, regardless of what I say."
Frowning, Goblin Slayer's knee jerk reaction was to argue against Fairy Knight's claim, but it didn't take long for him to realize that what she said was solely the truth. "… I think you care more about others than you let on, Melusine. If that weren't true, then you wouldn't have agreed to spend time cheering up those orphans, nor would you have felt the empathy you did when my village was pillaged and destroyed," Goblin Slayer rebutted, instead of trying to argue against Fairy Knight, which caused her to repeat the same actions he did moments ago; opening her mouth to protest, but slowly finding herself unable to deny her master's claims.
The one benefit that came of having his strange hallucination of seeing a bunch of teenagers arguing in a basement was that Goblin Slayer managed to skip right on ahead to the part where High Elf Archer and Noble Fencer had already apologized to one another, and were both on the same page that he was on. With BB giving accurate predictions of what would happen to Noble Fencer's party without intervention, Goblin Slayer felt validated with the knowledge that what he was doing was the right thing, while also feeling somewhat riddled with an odd sense of guilt sticking with him, as the party of five departed from the warmth and comfort found within the replica tavern; braving the chilling winds and falling snow, as the sun began to set over the silhouette of the Mythril Mountains, which were just a day's journey away.
