It was amazing how well you could stalk someone while riding a dragon. The trick is that people tend not to look up unless they have a reason to. As long as you hover behind them out of audible range, your chances of being spotted are relatively small. It also helps that Sylphids colours blend in well with the sky, so that as long as she flew high enough, it gives them natural camouflage.

The Person Tabitha was stalking was of course Blanc, who was walking amicably down the East road, she had dismissed her weapon, and in an action very familiar to the Bluenette, was reading a book.

Tabitha had been confused at first, she had seen her with the bounty notice when she left town, and had assumed correctly, that she was off hunting the bandit leader. But did not seem to be doing anything proactive to that end, she was just walking along, book in hand.

It took a while before she realised what Blanc was doing.

She was using herself as bait.

It was actually fairly clever, Blanc cut a very unthreatening figure, she was small and innocent looking, almost childlike.

And it was just now that her trick seems to have paid off.


Bored.

Bored Bored Bored.

God travelling around here was dull.

If this was back home she would have probably run into some dogoo's and a convenient passerby to give some exposition, or join her party.

She'd even settle for C-Sha by this point.

Ok, that thought was probably meaner than it needed to be.

God she hopes someone shows up soon.

Finally when three people stepped out in front of her in leather armour and holding various weapons, Blanc felt ecstatic.

"Alright girlie, hand us over your valuables and no one-" the front one tried to say.

"Freaking finally!" Blanc said, tossing the book over her shoulder, it dissolving in the air. But Blanc had already closed the gap to the stunned bandits, and with a leap, she grabbed the leader's head and brought his face into contact with her knee with a sickening crunch.

Blanc kicked off the guys face into a backflip and landed gracefully on the road again. The man however, bounced off down the road, landing in a heap.

With a flourish Blanc summoned her hammer into her hands. "Alright, which one of you wants to go next?"

The Bandits looked at each other. Then as one they turned and ran.

Blanc stared blankly, as they sprinted for the trees beside the road.

"Wha-Hey get back here you cowards!" Blanc said indignantly.

She doubted she could catch them, her Agl is one of her lowest stats, and they were moving at the speed of fright.

With a growl she swept her hand downwards. "Gefahrlichtern!" she shouted, the balls of magic hovering in the air. With a swing of her hammer, the scattered like shot, pulverising the surrounding tree cover, and striking one of the fleeing bandits square in the back. Freezing him and sending him spiralling into a tree…

Where he shattered into chunks… huh.

"Well there goes my appetite for lunch." Grumbled Blanc, as she stalked over to the remaining bandit, who had been pinned by his foot by a fallen tree, and strangely enough had been the lucky one. These must be some low level bandits, she hadn't meant to kill them. She idly wondered if the one she had kneed in the face had survived or not, and decided not to find out, not when she still had a conscious one she could use.

It's been ages since she actually fought ordinary people, but they hadn't been that weak back home right? Admittedly it had been years since the Deity of sin incident, and decades since the end of console wars, and even then she had mostly been fighting the big bads and the other CPUs. Was she out of touch, or were these just stupidly low level bandits?

The Bandit struggled to free his foot from under the tree trunk, and when he noticed Blanc approaching, he struggled all the harder.

"Hey, Asshole." Blanc said, her face curled in a snarl. "Unless you wanna end up like your friends you better tell me what I wanna know."

After all, just because she didn't mean to do that, doesn't mean she can't pretend it wasn't intentional, and she really needed this one alive and co-operative. Adopt, adapt, and improve.

She took out the wanted poster. "This Guy! Where is he?" Blanc said, thrusting the poster into his face.

The guy paled. "No way, he'll kill me if I-"

"If you don't tell me, I'll kill you, you consider that?" Blanc said, kneeling down, besides. "Sides, he can't kill you if I get to him first. So spill, before I crush you and try my luck with the next lot of idiots."

'Please talk.' Blanc thought, 'I really don't want to have to wait for a different group of bandits, and I really need the money, otherwise I'm sleeping outside tonight.'

The Bandit seemed to think very quickly, but thankfully he seemed to realise that the threat of potential bodily harm later was outweighed by the threat of certain bodily harm right now.

"The hideout is in the forest a kilometre up the road, walk off the road east at the fork until you find a spring." the man said, the epitome of helpful.

Blanc stood up, and kicked the tree off the man's leg. But before he could celebrate his good fortune, Blanc grabbed the injured leg, and started dragging the man along the ground, with the ease of a young girl dragging her favourite dolly.

" Ow, What are you doing?" the man said, scrabbling at the ground without success.

"Insurance, I need to make sure you aren't bullshitting me afterall, and if this camp isn't where you said it is…"

Blanc tugged the leg suddenly, making the man wince. "Alright Alright! It's in the old quarry between those two peaks, walk southeast from here, and you'll find what looks like an animal trail, follow it up the valley." the man said more truthly.

"That's better." Blanc said, turning around, still dragging the man, "Now keep quiet for the rest of the trip, and I might just let you go."


Tabitha blinked owlishly.

Well that was embarrassingly brief, for the bandits at least. It seems that Blanc is capable of being just as vicious, if not more so then Tabitha was.

But that strength, she barely used her hammer for that fight, just her knee and those odd magical projectiles.

She only wished she could have gotten a better look at that fight, she had barely been able to hear with wind magic.

Well, she at least could get a better look at the bandit hideout, she knew where Blanc was heading, and now she knew that Blanc didn't need Tabitha's protection. Best to get there ahead of her, find a good position to watch how this unfolds.

She did stop to check the remaining intact body.

She didn't think it was possible to fully cave in someone's skull like that with only your knee, although maybe the kick afterwards had helped.


"Well, it seems like you weren't lying." Blanc said, mainly to herself, as her unwilling passenger had been concussed on the way up due to all the bouncing.

There was a large rampart built into the quarry walls, with a sturdy looking wood gate, with two ramshackle towers with guards who were watching her approach with suspicion.

She dropped the leg without ceremony, hefted her hammer, and approached the gate.

Someone with a crossbow off all things pointed down at her as she approached, and shouted something in french.

"Speak a language I understand, why don't you?" Blanc said irritably. Seriously, why couldn't she have landed in a fantasy country that spoke her own language, or at the very least German, she could manage German.

"Who are you!" the guard tried again.

"The girl who's gonna bring in your boss Oswell, now are you gonna open the gate or am I gonna have to go through you?" Blanc said, impatient, this little exercise had already eaten up a significant portion of the day, and she wanted to get back to La Rochelle before it got dark, so she could cash in the bounty, and hopefully find a decent Inn.

The guards looked at each other, before they both raised their crossbows at her.

Blanc sighed. "Hard way it is then." she mumbled, breaking into a run.

She didn't even bother trying to dodge the incoming projectiles, her AGL was dismal, her HP was high, and Her VIT was off the charts. The crossbow bolts bounced off her harmlessly, and she jumped into the air, not enough to clear the gate, but that hadn't been her aim anyway.

"GETTER RAVINE!" She snarled, bringing the hammer down in front of the gate.

The ground erupted and the gate shattered under the splintering earth and the eruption of heat caused by pure kinetic energy at the epicentre. Both towers collapsed with their occupants thrown to either side with cries of alarm.

"KNOCK KNOCK!" she called. Hefting her hammer back onto her shoulder.

There was a flurry of movement as various men were stirred to attention at the destruction of the gate, scrambling to pick up their weapons and surround the intruder in their camp, the various people staring disbelievingly at Blanc, the fractured earth Behind her, and ridiculously large hammer.

"So which one of you is Oswell?" she said conversationally. "If you come forward now, it will save me a lot of time, and you guys an awful lot of bodies." she nodded back to the gate. "We can do this the Hard way or the easy way, and in either way, it ends with me walking away with your boss's head, and the bounty wasn't particularly picky about whether it needed to be attached."

She'd rather it was personally. She didn't have that many spare outfits, and there probably wasn't a washing machine or dry cleaner to be found in this kind of setting, should she get blood on it

"Heh, you got guts kid."

There was a parting in the back of the crowd, and a huge man, a veritable wall of muscle, pushed forward to the front. Blanc pulled the wanted poster out of her inventory and compared it to the man in front of him.

Yeah this guy was probably her mark, he looked like he had all the right features.

Still she checked, it would be pretty embarrassing if she dragged back the wrong guy. "Oswell I take it?"

"That's me, Oswall the Bull." he said, slapping his chest with a thunderous noise. "I must say, of all the would-be heroes who have come after my head, I never expected to meet one so tiny."

Blanc Stiffened as the huge man guffawed loudly. "Why are you here Girly, did yeh Ma and Pa cut off your allowance, so you decided to go try your hand at bounty hunting?"

Blancs left Eye started twitching.

I don't know what kinda magic you used on the gate girl, but maybe you should run home to yer nanny before she starts to worry." The man said, still laughing.

Blanc slowly lowered her head, until her eyes were cast in shadow. Now, Blanc had been having a bad two days, she's far from home, her girlfriend is missing, she missed her date, she had an involuntary ice bath, she slept on a straw bed, she has been wandering around the countryside for hours with almost nothing happening, she had just had to drag some arsehole up a mountain, and she really doubts she can make it back to the city before nightfall at this point.

Now if Oswall had known this, and more importantly knew Blanc, maybe he would not have been so quick to antagonise a girl who was already quite close to boiling point already.

"Ohh did I hurt your feelings lass?" The giant said. "Maybe then you should run off before I set me men on yer for busting my-"

*Snap*

"I'M GOING TO PULVERISE YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" Blanc roared with such ferocity that several people fell over, and some birds fell out of the sky in shock. Her left eye glowing red, her upper face still masked in shadow somehow.

The man blinked, but Blanc was already charging like a freight train, and everyone who tried to get in the way very quickly learned what it was like to stand in front of one.

The man didn't really get a chance to regret his life choices when Blanc was already on top of him.

"NO USE BEGGING FOR MERCY! HARD BREAK!" Blanc cried.


Tabitha could do nothing but watch in awe, as the column of blue light erupted high into the sky moments later.

Any indecision she had over Blancs godhood was obliterated along with the bandit chief.

'So this is the strength of a goddess'.' Tabitha thought, stepping out of her hiding place, a terrified Sylphid squawking in protest, but Tabitha was already walking towards Blanc, Ignored by the retreating bandits running past.


Blanc stared at the greasy smear that had been her mark with a feeling between the still bubbling anger and frustration at her own stupidity.

Not only had the bandit chief been weaker than she had been expecting, but now she didn't have any proof to bring back to the town.

She smashed the smear with her hammer, causing the earth to shake.

It didn't help, now she just felt petty on top of it. No matter how she looked at it, she blew her cool, and now she had to pay for it.

But just as she was resigned to sleeping out in the wilderness for the night, noticed someone approaching from the corner of her eyes.

She turned warily, and was surprised to find Tabitha walking towards her, head bowed, so Blanc couldn't see her eyes.

"Tabitha? What are you doing here?" Blanc said, raising her eyebrow. Had the girl been following her?

But before Blanc could form any of her own ideas, Tabitha stopped in front of her, before dropping to her knees.

"Woah, are you ok?" Blanc said Alarmed "What's-"

"Charlotte." Tabitha said.

"Huh?" Blanc said.

"My name is Charlotte Hélène d'Orléans of Gallia." Tabitha, or possibly Charlotte said, her head still bowed. "I'll give you anything, belief, shares, I'll devote my life to your faith if that is what it takes. But please, I beg you… I'll pray right here and now."

Her head raised, possibly with more emotion then she ever saw from the girl, her hands clasped together in the universal gesture of prayer. "Please, help me save my mother…"

"...and kill my Uncle."


Chapter Notes:

Alternate title, Tabitha has a religious moment.

In her defence, if somebody managed to vaporise a man with pure concussive force, I'd probably worship them too :P.

But yeah, Blanc, having lived with a levelling system her whole life, did not even stop to consider the idea that this world did not have one, and what that would mean for combat. I consider the average person would probably be around 1-5, usually the starting levels for the Neptunia games, and where the weaker monsters like tulips and Dogoo could still tangibly be a threat, thus warranting extermination, so those levels or weaker would be the baseline, un-empowered human. Blanc, is currently level 40+ meaning she is blatantly superhuman compared to the people of this world, even without her HDD.

This does effectively convince Tabitha that she is something more than just a 'self-proclaimed goddess'

But yeah, Blanc ends up endearing herself to Tabitha by ruthlessly killing some bandits, funny how those things happen.