Chapter 6

- POVV: Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière -

After that...very less than a stellar luncheon, the two of us had gotten back to the stables, looking for our horse, who was slurping water from a bucket. "Come on, let's get going," I said as I reached for the saddle to climb atop of.

"Hold on," I heard Brenner say, and I turned to see that he'd opened his pack on the hay, opening another one of those disgusting food boxes with his knife. "I don't know if he's eaten yet. Or she. Is this a male or female horse?"

I blinked before realizing that I hadn't actually paid for any special care for our horse - only that it be given basic care. And horses weren't usually fed for a long time. "It's a female horse," I remarked quietly. "So you're going to feed her...some of that?"

"Horses back home like sweet stuff. Sweets and grains," Brenner said, unwrapping some of the things in his box and revealing it when he stood up - those odd tasting biscuits and several sugarcubes. He came over to the horse and held out his hand with the biscuits. Unsurprisingly, the horse began to eat, biting the biscuits whole and munching loudly all the while.

I watched as he fed the horse, grinning as he did so. "How much do you know about horses?" I found myself asking as the horse ate the last of the biscuits he had.

"Not much. We were staying in this little town at the edge of France, waiting for an armored column to catch up to us. While we waited, we were ordered to help around the town - build relations or whatever. I was helping out on their farm, taking care of their horses," Brenner said as he fed sugarcube after sugarcube to the horse. "I learned a few things. Mostly how to brush their mane and what to feed them."

I couldn't help but find myself fascinated with him. What else did he learn about this kind of stuff? "I see," she said.

"Mhm," Brenner remarked before he wiped off his hands, the horse having finished all that he fed her. "I think she's good now. We should get going." He pulled his pack back on - with the sword and his gun on his back. With a snap of the reins, we begun our ride back to the Magic Academy of Tristain.

The next few hours were spent in silence, and all the while - I was deep in thought. His hands were around my waist this time, but I didn't mind. I remembered being upset for a while when he first grabbed my waist, but he wasn't groping or moving his hands up or down - even if I was half expecting him to. Now on the ride back, I found myself somewhat confident that Brenner would, in fact, behave.

When we came across that broken carriage once again, we found that it had been moved to the side of the path - with several knights and a few horses standing around. At once, I quickly pulled on the reins, slowing down at their presence.

"Excuse me, sir knight!" I called. "But what's going on here?!"

"We've apprehended local marauders that ambushed this carriage, miss," one of the knights said, much to our surprise. "They've been attacking travelers on other local roads as well."

We could've been one of those victims? If there had been something here when we first passed it... "What were they doing this far from other towns?" I asked.

"The nobles this carriage belonged to were to be extradited from Tristain as slave labor. They've been rescued, however. Their camp was in the forest a good few miles from here. It's being cleared out now, and further investigations will be taking part in dismantling and putting an end to any of these underground labor movements," the knight explained.

S-slavery? I gulped, but I simply held my head up high, trying to hide my uneasiness. "O-of course. Thank you for your vigilant work, sir knight!" I said as I quickly galloped off.

"So you have knights?" Brenner asked.

"Y-yes. We have several branches of knights in our army. Dragon Knights, Griffon Knights, and Manticore Knights! We also have standard horseback knights," I explained.

"Uh huh..." Brenner said before speaking much more quietly. "So I was right..."

"About what?" I asked.

"...about something wrong with that broken cart," Brenner said as he leaned back a little - judging by the slight pull I felt from his hands on my waist. "We went through an ambush like that once. I was in a small convoy of transports when we were blocked by a busted truck. Before we could clear it, buried explosives were detonated on the road."

Explosives, buried in the ground? That sounded terrifying. "A lot of us were killed. Then the gunfire came..." Brenner muttered. "We had to pull back. Wait for tanks to come along before we could handle the enemy."

I turned to see he was looking back at where the carriage had blocked the path. "If those attackers were still there when we passed by the first time, we would've been in serious trouble," he finished. I couldn't really say much to dispute that - I was still a little bit shaken over what we had passed.

The remainder of the ride was silent - comfortable yet tensely silent.

- POV: First Class Private Brenner: three and a half hours later -

It was midday at noon when we got back to the school, and we were both utterly tuckered out. Louise had demanded to take a bath, and asked if I needed one as well, which was a surprise. Was she finally softening up to me?

"Don't get the wrong idea!" Louise had spouted off. "I simply need to make sure a servant of a noble such as myself gets all the necessities he needs! A clean bath is one of them - I can't have you looking and smelling so filthy!" I would've believed those words were it not for a pink blush on her soft cheeks.

I chuckled at that. She was definitely warming up to me, even if her pride was not. "Maybe after you're done," I said. "If you want, I could keep guard outside while you bathe."

Louise looked like she was in serious debate for a moment, before she shook her head. "No. S-servants must tend to their master at all times! Even in...bathtimes."

I blinked. "You want me to...help bathe you?" I asked. Wasn't this something parents did with their children?

"N-no! Just...to tend to my hair while I soak," Louise said. "Nobles have servants who tend to their needs all the time, so I'm simply letting you know of everything you should expect! Not every noble will be so courteous as to do that."

I just sighed. "Alright. Lead the way, I guess," I said - and Louise did so, taking me to a separate building. Apparently these were private bathhouses for the student nobles to clean themselves up in on their free time only. Each room had a porcelain bathtub similar to the ones we had at home, with large ornate faucets on the wall, right over the bathtub. On one side of the room was a rather large wooden cabinet.

"So...you take cold baths?"

"Of course not!" Louise shot off. "The water pipes are constantly heated, so hot water of the perfect temperature will always come out." She walked over to the faucet and twisted one of the knobs - which began to pour out steaming water. "Do you not have baths like these?"

"Well, we do but we always have to wait for the water to heat up. We don't have magic - so we heat things the old fashioned way," I said. "Though in training, we had to take cold showers in the morning."

"Showers? Like the rain?" Louise asked.

"Yeah," I said before pointing up to the faucet that was currently filling the bathtub below it. "There's a spout up top, just like that one. And it sprays out plenty of freezing water."

"Freezing?! Why?!" Louise asked, a look of abject horror on her face, much to my amusement.

"It wakes us up faster," I said with a half shrug. "Half of the time, we run drills before the sun is even up - so we get as much training as possible. I'm used to the freezing shower method - efficient and healthy on the muscles. I think."

"No thank you," Louise scoffed as she turned off the water, just as the bathtub was filled up most of the way. She turned to face away from me and placed her hands on her hips. "Undress me."

Right...not this again. I started at once - unbuttoning her cloak from behind her, then turning her around so I could start unbuttoning her shirt next. "No offense, but I feel like a goddamn creep doing this," I grumbled.

"You don't have to," Louise said, with much less of the usual verbal spit in her natural tone. "It's a normal occurrence here. As long as you don't try to touch me in an unbecoming way, nothing you're doing in this instance will be wrong."

"That's not how I feel," I mumbled, having to look away as I pulled her skirt down to the floor, then her stockings - which she lifted her feet to step out of. Thankfully like last time, she didn't have me strip her underwear off, and she walked to the bathtub - stepping in and sitting down gently. I was relieved when the water went up to her lower neck, shielding me from looking at her naked body like a weirdo.

"Now, wash my hair," Louise said next. She had her head resting at the edge, pulling her soaked hair out of the water as she waited for me to come over. Sighing, I shrugged off my pack and laid my things in the very corner of the room, before pulling off my jacket and belt. "There's soap and a brush in that cabinet over there," she added.

Bathtime was a relatively quiet affair - with me brushing Louise's long and thick hair and scrubbing her scalp with my hands for a good few minutes while she washed the rest of her own body herself with soap and a loofah, which I was very thankful for. Undressing a girl was one thing, but actively bathing her entire naked body was a line I was not willing to cross with someone I wasn't in love with.

When she was done a good ten minutes later, she had wrapped herself in a towel from the cabinet on the wall. "Now you will bathe," she said as she bundled her second towel over her hair. "I'll wait at the door to keep other nobles from coming in. Make it quick, or we both might get in trouble for a peasant using the private noble baths."

I was already shrugging off my shirt, setting them by the rest of my things before moving onto my pants and boots, then my underwear. Bathtime was not private in the Army, so I had no issue with stripping quickly and hopping in the bathtub. Except I had no intention of waiting for the tub to fill with water - so I did the next most sensible thing.

I turned on the faucet and began to shower directly from the downpour itself. Hot showers hit much more differently than anything I was used to - and I sighed in relief, feeling the water pour down my front and back. It's been a while since I bathed, so I was surprised that I didn't smell that bad. Grabbing the same soap Louise used, I started rubbing the bar on my own body without the loofah, quickly scrubbing off my chest, arms, and moving on to my lower body when I stopped.

Louise - who was still very much nude underneath her towel, was staring at me with the reddest face possible. Realizing that she was locked onto me like a predator, she quickly looked away. "Hurry up or else I'll blow you up!" she cried out.

"Okay, okay!" I grumbled, rubbing off my legs and rinsing as fast as I could. Shutting off the water, I stepped out and quickly dried myself off before going over to my clothes - which were all a little damp from the steam.

Louise waited for me to finish dressing myself with everything before she pointed at her clothes, the silent command of "Dress me" being said without any actual words being said. Thankfully, she was done with her underwear first - like before, and she was back in her school uniform.

Without another word, we began the walk back to Louise's room to wait for dinner time. All the while, Louise was completely silent, ignoring much around her as she walked. "Hey...you alright?" I found myself asking when we reached the door to her room.

"I was just wondering..." Louise began, not moving to unlock the door. "I'm not very nice...I know that. But why haven't you tried running? Or really leaving?"

Why was she asking this? This was a rather open question, more than I was really expecting from someone like Louise. I meant no offense, but even if she was insecure and bullied - she was still snobby like the other students in this whole school.

But some recent events have been slowly changing that. Last night, Louise and I had our first real talk, and I now knew that she could be nice and patient when she wanted to - or needed to. And much of today was surprising as well. For once, she yelled at me much less and was more or less willing to listen.

"Well...probably because I have nowhere else to go," I said, feeling like being honest with her over this question. "I'd get lost, I'd run out of rations...and I'd probably be hunted down for being some kind of alien in this place. I'd rather not, if you ask me. Which you did."

"Uh huh..." Louise whispered as she finally opened the door to go inside her room. When we entered, we were immediately greeted by two people sitting in the room, one of them at one of the chairs surrounding the desk, and one on Louise's bed.

The girl sitting by the desk was a short and petite girl wearing the same second year uniforms as the other nobles. She had short light blue hair - I would never understand the wacky hair colors in this school - with a pair of red half rimmed glasses and eyes as blue as her hair. She wore white stockings, and a large staff with the tip shaped like a question mark leaned against the table. In her hands was a book, reading and not noticing what was going on.

On the bed was Kirche, with a long object wrapped in shiny cloth sitting in her lap. "Oh, Brenner!" she sang, standing up and walking over to me with a spring in her step. "I so wanted to see you, but I couldn't find you anywhere!"

"Just what do you think you're doing?!" Louise demanded - but she was simply shoved aside by Kirche as she shoved the object against my chest, making a loud clanking sound.

"Since today was Hollow's Day, I simply wished to show some kindness and get you a gift!" Kirche chimed as she looked at the girl at the table. "Tabitha was so kind to help me out as well."

I eyed the girl, who simply looked up from her book to gaze at me for a second, before she looked back to her book. A quiet and shy type? Probably the first I've met in this school. Looking down at my 'gift', I unwrapped it to find that it was the same sword the shop owner had brought out.

"I heard it's an incredibly well forged piece from Germania," Kirche boasted as I looked at the shiny and very expensive blade offered to me. "All the best swords and girls come from Germania, don't you agree?"

"How, that- you followed us, didn't you?!" Louise cried, voicing my exact thoughts.

"Does it matter? You were too cheap to get him a proper weapon, so I had to step in and pick up your slack," Kirche cooed as she reached for the rusted blade that I was holding. "How could an honorable warrior fight with a weapon such as this?"

"I only didn't have enough gold because I needed to buy something expensive to heal this idiot after his duel with Guiche!" Louise responded. "And by the way, if you're so concerned for Brenner's health - why didn't you step in to try and stop it from happening?!"

"Oh, does it matter? I probably would have made things worse by stepping in, and I couldn't do that to my sweet Brenner," Kirche said, pressing herself against me with the sword between us.

"Eh heh...personal space?" I asked as I quickly scooted my way past her and to the chair across from Tabitha, setting the shiny Germanian blade down on the table before reaching for the weapon on my back, bringing it up. "Look, I appreciate this but I picked this," I explained. "Rough and tough is my thing, not shiny and new."

"But if you're to showcase your abilities as a fighter, you must look the part, should you not?" Kirche asked. I turned to see Louise for her opinion, but to my surprise - she was conflicted. Kirche had bought the sword she was unable to afford, and it was so much nicer than the blade she actually got me.

"Look at me," I said, chuckling. "Do me and this sword look like I match? Green battle fatigues without a shred of shiny armor." I reached up and gripped the Army goggles that were wrapped around my netted M1 helmet before pulling them over my eyes. "I prefer something simpler to master."

Kirche frowned. "Hmmm, suit yourself. But since I can't return the sword, why don't you keep it? No charge whatsoever..." she offered before she crossed her arms and tapped her chin in thought, something I wasn't sure I liked. "Well...except for one favor."

"Well, it depends on the favor," I said, resting the older blade next to Kirche's gifted sword before clasping my fingers together. "No sex stuff. Not really ready for that with anyone if I'm being honest."

"Hmmm," Kirche pouted before grinning a few seconds later. "How about...a date? A simple dinner for the two of us? Perhaps after that we can learn more about each other..."

"Kirche, a word?" Louise hissed out, yanking on the Zerbst out the door before she could even cry out in surprise, closing the door loudly behind them. Tabitha and I were now the only ones in the room, with Tabitha still reading her book quietly before she looked up at me.

"Sylphid says thank you," she said quietly. "For the food."

"Hm?" I muttered.

- POV: Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière -

"Will you quit trying to seduce my familiar?!" I hissed at the detestable girl before me. "Why are you set on sleeping with him? Don't you have a whole school full of your boy toys for that?"

"If you must know, Brenner is just cut from a different cloth," Kirche said, shrugging as she smiled coyly - the kind of smile that suggested innocence when she was clearly anything but. "And I can't help but feel the passion of love whenever I'm close to him-"

"Don't give me that garbage! I know you're doing this to ruin me somehow!" I growled. "You already have the school humiliating me for my own problems! Now I have a familiar that I can rely on, and you want to take that from me as well?!"

Kirche's coy grin fell to a frown - a surprisingly calm one. "If you must know, this isn't anything against you - for once," she said. I blinked in surprise at that answer. I searched for something, anything to suggest she was just trying to mislead me so she could go after Brenner again.

But I couldn't find anything. Kirche was many things - a cheat, a seductive snake, and a manipulative sleaze. But she wasn't a liar - she never has been. And that both confused and worried me. "What do you mean by that?"

"Brenner...Brenner isn't like those boys driven by their lust. Sure he was adorably awkward...and very handsome for a peasant indeed, but he's one of the first gentlemen I've ever met..." Kirche explained, much to my surprising willingness to listen to her answer. "He turned me down. Not because of my family name, nor because of being spoken for...he turned me down because he simply wanted to."

Kirche's smile came back - this time seeming genuine. It was an odd thing, Kirche being happy in an honest way. "Brenner said he was so old fashioned, only wanting to be with one person and only one person - a special someone in his life. How can someone not be so enthralled? Oh, how romantic!" she giggled.

"Either way, you shouldn't be going after him because he's my servant! And I'm his master! He may date whoever he pleases, but I will never allow him to date you!" I replied.

"That may be, but Brenner is a person. He won't appreciate you limiting his options, nor making any sort of decisions for him," Kirche said. "After all, no slave loves a master that abuses him..."

I immediately felt sick at those implications before I forced a smirk on my face. "Oh yeah? Well I'll let you know that Brenner and I have become closer and closer!" I responded. Kirche's smile disappeared, and my pride soared at that sight. A Zerbst losing her smirk was always a victory. "That's right! Our day out was fun!"

"Oh, and what exactly did you do to get some...fun?" Kirche asked.

"The two of us talked about his world, and we had a picnic on the fields outside the city!" I answered. "Oh, and let's not forget that sword! He's the one who picked it - and even if it doesn't look the best, I bought it because he's the one that picked it!" I conveniently left out the part where it was also the only sword I could afford, though Kirche likely knew that already.

"Hmmph. A picnic by a rowdy city, no one can consider that a huge leap. If you really want to get to know someone, you should do it in private," Kirche scoffed.

"Oh, we did. We even shared a bath together!" I said. That got Kirche's attention - and I practically felt myself grin from ear to ear at that shocked expression. "And I even got to see him naked!"

Ohhh, that jealous look! I had to keep myself from giggling with glee - though that was easy enough when I recalled the look of Brenner's body. He wasn't overly muscular, and neither was he fat nor skinny. He was lean with muscles on his stomach, a toned chest, and pronounced muscles on his arms.

He did look very handsome indeed.

Of course, I kept that information away from Kirche - just to leave her guessing. To see that furious expression was one of the biggest victories of my entire life. "Well then, I'll just have to get my own look at him!" she hissed.

"Wait!" I croaked in shock as Kirche whirled open the door. I tried to squeeze my way past her before the two of us stopped at an odd sight in the room.

"So how old are you?" Brenner was asking, staring at the rusty sword in front of him on the table. It would've looked odd for Brenner alone if it weren't for the fact that Tabitha was also staring at the sword as well.

"Thousands of years! I'm a very experienced blade!" another male voice - a tinny voice - said. To my surprise, the hilt of the sword actually moved when the voice spoke. "Anyways, what year is it?"

"It's November of 1944," Brenner responded, confusing the daylights out of me with that talk.

"Bah, that makes no sense! What's 1944?" the blade spat. "Hey, looks like you got visitors!"

Brenner and Tabitha looked up. "Louise, this is probably the weirdest thing you ever got me! Well, it's the only thing you got me - but you just went up in my books!" he said, a wide grin on his face, almost as if he was laughing at me. "Check it out, he says his name is Derflinger."

"You're one to talk! What kind of name is Brenner?" the talking sword - Derflinger - snapped. "You're a weird looking fella for a user to boot!"

"Hey, what do you mean by user?" Brenner asked.

"You got him an intelligent sword?" Kirche asked, very amused. "My, he sure knows how to pick them."

"Oh, like you're one to talk!" I cried, as Kirche and I devolved into arguing once again.