Ayana sent Fate a text that Nicola was looking for her. Fate checked the text on her new Virtue phone and agreed to meet at a specific place: In the mall underneath Clover Tower. Fate didn't really want to bring people to the Waldia house because it's been... under some attacks lately, so meeting somewhere else seemed like a good idea.
Fate's currently sitting on a bench and eating a cupcake. She's looking around and waiting for Nicola to appear.
Nicola doesn't have anything as fancy as a virtue phone, but the girl does have a regular one, and a device that helps her find her way around. So, when told where to go, she goes there. "Fate-chan!" She greets, looking happy, when she sees the girl she'd been wondering about.
She sits down next to Fate, and looks up. The girl's red-flecked eyes seeming to carry some degree of sadness. "How are you doing? Ayana-san said you were doing better than when I last met you." Which'd be the lost logia thing.
Fate notices Nicola and waves at her, and when the other girl sits down next to her, Fate offers her a cupcake. "Hi, Nicola-chan."
The last time they met... yeah, things were a lot different for Fate up until recently. A lot has happened, more than can easily be summed up in just a few words. "Yeah, I am. I don't... know what's going on with my mother anymore, but I think in some ways I never did. Still, I'm out of all of that. I'm still looking for the Jewel Seeds, but it's different now."
She tilts her head and looks at Nicola. "How about you? How've you been?"
Nicola isn't going say no to free pastries, she takes a quick bite, clears her mouth and then remembers her manners. "Thanks." She listens to Fate talk, and there seems to be some empathy there, the girl's alien accent becoming a bit more apparent when she talks. "I hope things work out for you, as for me, uh... I recovered my Device. Ruby Rose got lost when we got to Ea--Japan." She seems to hope Fate doesn't catch that slip up.
Fate herself is Midchildan, and isn't that thrown off by either the accent or the slip of the tongue, though she also doesn't notice it. Nicola's just talking normally from her perspective.
"I'm glad you got your device back. Sorry I couldn't help much with it before... I wasn't in any position to do anything. Still, the next time you get attacked by a Witch at least you'll be able to do something about it, right?"
She frowns a bit. "I still don't know what to think of the TSAB, but apparently I'm allies with them now... at least indirectly. So I'm glad they aren't keeping that away from you."
"It's okay, and... Yeah. It'll still be scary, but it's a lot less scary when you know you can do something." Nicola smiles, clearly she does think it's good. "And it's a bit of home." The mention of TSAB seems to cause Nicola to frown, and she looks away from Fate, seeming to be a little distraught by the news.
"So uh... please don't tell anyone what I'm about to ask, okay? Especially not TSAB? I'd like to keep this, uh... a surprise." She tries to phrase it in a way that sounds less negative than other ways to call things secretive.
Fate notices the frown, and then blinks. Well, of course she wouldn't like it. Fate herself isn't really keen on that particular aspect of things, but... things were better this way, overall. She shakes her head and says, "I won't tell anyone. It won't be the first secret I've been asked to keep." Fate still has a number of those that she's clinging onto, out of loyalty to old friends more than anything. With an apologetic smile she says, "And I certainly won't tell the TSAB. I know how they... get sometimes. So what's up?"
"So uh. I don't know a lot of people around here, and I feel like I don't fit in." Nicola starts explaining, and she looks down, this admission seems a little private. And a little like it's a personal failing, "Earth is very different from home," this time she doesn't even catch her slip up, "and I thought if I can't make friends, maybe I'd make a friend? If that makes sense." She pauses, and then clarifies, "A familiar."
Fate takes a munch out of her cupcake and eats it. She doesn't react to Nicola saying she isn't from Earth, because Nicola did mention something like that before. One would assume she was alien anyways, considering the TSAB's involvement.
"Yeah Earth is kinda weird in a lot of ways Not nearly as advanced as Midchildia, and magic is somehow hidden from everyone's sight. Plus there's all this other weird stuff around. Like I don't remember there being any Witches in Midchildia."
She turns her head to look at Nicola, saying, "Do you have an animal picked out? Arf was my pet before I ever made her my familiar, and I think that helped a lot."
"There was plenty scary stuff on Al-Furat, but no witches." Al-Furat is a non-administered world known mostly as a hostile place that's the only source of a valuable raw material. The only reason it's got as many people as it does is because this material drives trade.
"I'm not supposed to admit I'm not from Earth, but I guess it's okay if you know." Nicola admits softly, and then the last question makes her think some more. "Not yet, but Ayana-chan said she'd ask her friend Ikiko-chan to help me pick one out, apparently Ikiko-chan has a lot of spare animals?"
Al-Furat? Fate blinks. She's heard that name before... or has she? Her memories of her past are so weird. Sometimes it's easier not to think about them. Still, she thinks she has at least some concept of what Al-Furat is.
"Really?" Fate blinks. She's not allowed to tell people she's not from around her? "Well... I think that non-magical people probably shouldn't be told. I don't think they'd understand even if you tried to explain it. Earth is strange like that. Still... we aren't the only outsiders around."
Fate shrugs at the mention of Ikiko having spare animals. "I know I saw them feeding stray dogs the other day." Fate was a little busy with something else at the time. "If she says she does then she probably does."
"I don't know why, but this world wasn't supposed to have magic, so I guess it's just 'avoid trying to let the locals know about everything.'" She seems to not really understand the rule, but then, she doesn't seem to think it that big of a deal either. "Yeah, probably. She seemed nice, she said you gave her a gift some time."
Did Fate give Ayana a gift? "Oh yeah," remembers Fate. "Last Christmas. A collar. I wasn't sure if she'd find it... condescending or not, but actually she really liked it."
"... but yeah, Ayana has been pretty nice to me. She purified me... were you around for that? Sorry, my memories were being blocked by the Jewel Seed, but I thought I remembered hearing your voice." And then immediately after that she nearly fainted.
"That was a really bad idea, actually. I never should've touched it with my bare hands, and I knew that."
"She told me she liked it." Nicola says with a smile, and adds on a little. "I met her in a weird way. She was sitting at a koi pond as a fox and I thought she looked cute and would make a good familiar, she surprised me by turning into a person..."
Then the Jewel Seed thing comes up, "Not as bad an idea as hovering right in front of you like that and telling you to hit me, promising not to defend myself, and following up on that promise." Nicola says softly, apparently slightly regretting that decision. "I didn't see her purify you, must've been after you hit me. I don't think I was awake to see what happened after."
Fate blinks at the mention of potentially turning Ayana into a familiar. "Yeah... she used to be Riventon's Familiar. I don't know if she'd want to enter that kind of arrangement again."
Then she turns white as what she did was mentioned. "I did what?!" She looks visibly shaken by that, dropping her cupcake into her lap as her eyes go wide.
"O-oh my god I'm so sorry! I... I was full of dark energy, and the Jewel Seed was messing with my head. I don't even know what I was doing! Are you okay? I hope you weren't too badly hurt!"
"It's my own fault, I should've known you would have taken me up on it." Nicola doesn't seem to be upset, at all, but then this isn't news to her either. She smiles a little nervously, "I was trying to prove I didn't want to hurt you, that I wanted you to be okay, and that I was willing to get hurt to make sure you would be. It hurt, but my barrier jacket stopped the worst of it."
Fate is relieved to know that Nicola wasn't hurt. It certainly makes her feel a bit better. "I'm glad... Sorry. The Jewel Seeds... they were created to fulfill the wishes of whoever touches them, but they're imperfect. They damage the user, and they don't really fulfill the wish. When I touched it, I was trying to figure out what my mother expected from me. She's always saying that I'm too nice, and that I shouldn't be making friends with people. I think... maybe for a while, I forgot who my friends where, and who I was. All I could remember was my mother... and... how I could never really live up to her expectations. I'm just... not as mean as she wants me to be."
Nicola doesn't know what to say about that, so rather than say anything at all, she reaches out to offer Fate a hug. It seems likely to her that it will say enough. All she says is a simple statement "I'll be your friend, if you want me to."
Fate hugs Nicola, smiling as she pulls away. "We can be friends! I don't mind." Then she's quiet after a moment. Not sure what else to say. Well, if Nicola isn't upset or mad, Fate supposes that's enough.
"So..." Fate tries to come up with a new subject. "... have you thought of a name for your Familiar, yet?"
Nicola pulls back when Fate does, smiling. "I've had some ideas, but none I really like." She says softly, trying to think of all the names of familiars she knows. "Uh... there's Arf, and Ayana, and Yuuno" She knows Yuuno is smarter than a ferret ought to be and hangs out with Nanoha, the assumption that Yuuno is Nanoha's familiar follows from there, "Is it important?"
Fate shrugs. Is a name important? "It kindof is. I mean... it doesn't affect your magic or anything, but you're putting a part of your soul into an animal, and that Familiar will have the name you get it. It's someone who will be with you and help you for a long time, so it matters."
"I guess that's true." Nicola seems to get lost in thought a little, her eyes turning sad as they start to point towards the ground. Wherever her thoughts are going, they don't lead to a happy place; but she doesn't say anything about her thoughts.
"Well..." Fate says, "You don't have to come up with one right away. It's better if you think it over, after all." The young blonde-haired girl looks at Nicola's face. She seems... unhappy? Huh. That hardly seems like the kind of thing to be unhappy about... Well, maybe it's better not to pry. "Still. Getting a Familiar is a big deal... though actually, I'm not sure if Yuuno-kun is a Familiar. Nano-chan mentioned not having one."
"Oh, I was just..." Nicola sighs, "... wondering what dad's reasons might've been for naming me Nicola." It seems the sadness is related to her father, not the topic of names itself, and she eagerly pounces on the opportunity to talk about something else. "If he's not, then what is he? He seems to behave like one..."
Why Nicola for a name? Fate has no idea. "Well, it sounds like a nice name." For that matter, why is she named Fate? No, no. Thinking about that hurts. She decides not to.
Fate shrugs. "I don't really know. Maybe he's a mage? Some of them can turn into little animals. I remember hearing something like that when I was learning magic, but it wasn't something I ever learned how to do. I'm not actually sure how to do that, myself."
"Maybe he is." Nicola drops the painful topic of names entirely, focusing on magical curiousities. A far more comfortable topic of discussion. "That sounds like a kind of magic that could be useful sometimes. It seems a lot like he's Nanoha's pet, though... would a mage be another mage's pet like that?"
Fate taps her chin and things about it. A pet? "It would be strange for a mage to do that, wouldn't it? Well, maybe he's someone else's Familiar who got lost? Just because he's not Nanoha-chan's Familiar, that doesn't mean he isn't anyones. Still... it seems a little weird that his master wouldn't be around. I mean... I think if Arf-chan and I ever got separated, she'd be looking for me."
On the note of looking for people, <Master, you've ignored three texts so far. All of them from Jessamine> Nicola looks a little upset about being informed of that, "I guess I can't put off looking at them any longer, huh..." So she looks, and sure enough, she's being told to come back home right now. "That does sound weird, but I gotta go, sorry."
Fate blinks as Nicola's device speaks, and then looks up to Nicola. "Alright. Well, see you around! It was good speaking to you again!"