Lance shifted, lifting his right foot, and left heel, then using the bare minimum force to pivot around the flash of flickering steel that zipped past him.

As quick as the first strike arrived, two more followed, each one aimed at his waist - where a manilla folder was bound awkwardly to his side.

Dodging each blow with the same ease as the first, Lance waited for the rhythm of the strikes to pause - then muscles tensing, he struck. Lashing out with the simple forward kick he had always favored, he planted his foot directly in his attackers sternum, launching them into the opposite wall of the room.

"Better, but you're still fighting like an animal. You have built in swords - you should be better at wielding them than this." Lance chided pleasantly before pulling the envelop at his waist up to fan at himself.

"Graaaaaaah!" Laura screeched from her position lodged in the blue mat that had cushioned her impact on the wall. Her hands and feet- which were both bare - flexed and twitched, sending the paired claws in each appendage in and out in time with the movement.

Lance was actually quite impressed. It had been nearly two weeks since John had hired him, even offering a generous cash advance on his first cheque so that he could relocate himself and Laura closer to the Bugle.

He had been training Laura to fight whenever he had time away from standing aimlessly behind his boss for hours. When they had first started, his Squire had quickly demonstrated the short sightedness of her makers.

It wasn't that she lacked training or conditioning. She had those in spades. No, the problem Lance was encountering was that she was 'trained' to fight like every attack was a suicide dive, and she was 'conditioned' to dog her target with all the fury and belligerence of a badger.

This meant that if they spent more than half an hour training, Laura would quickly devolve into a snarling demon that he had to hold still just to prevent her from trying to tear his head off.

Honestly, the fact that she was just laying still and twitching was a vast improvement.

Lance waited patiently for Laura to finish her fit, idly wondering if this could be considered child abuse. He couldn't help it though - her entire fighting style was based around her regeneration. Every attack she made was intended to be an instant kill, and her stance was so full of openings to abuse, that he was genuinely surprised the first time she had tried to dodge something.

Granted, that had been less than three days ago, after days of repeated bludgeoning...

"You're doing much better now. Would you like to stop?" Lance asked cordially, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice as he continued to fan himself lightly.

"Again." Laura growled, pushing herself up and taking a ready stance.

Lance smiled at the fiercely determined girl. Since he had begun training her, he had levied increasingly prohibitive limits on her. His most recent challenge was for her to separate the rope belt from him - without cutting him.

For anyone else, the prospect of training with a fully unleashed Laura and her adamantium claws would be borderline suicidal. For Lance it was mostly just a nice warmup.

"Alright. Last chance though. You can't just growl at me to avoid your first day if you lose." He said pointedly, waving the envelope he was holding at her. Naturally, his squires only response was a growl.

Under normal circumstances, Laura would have already finished her training regimen for the day. The house Jameson had helped Lance purchase was modest enough that there really wasn't much room in its basement for much more than the open space they were currently using to fight. And that was after Lance had knocked all the walls out.

Today however was different. Today, he had challenged Laura to destroy or take the Manila envelope he was currently taunting her with. Because contained within it, were all the neccesary papers to have her placed at the nearest highschool.

Lance hadn't thought much of it at the time, but Laura apparently took an extremely dim view of a normal education. When she had found out she would be going to school and not assisting Lance in his duties she had scowled and refused to speak to him for the better part of a day.

Which brought him to now.

Lance knew that there was no reality where his squire defeated him in combat of any sort. Forget the use of his superhuman capabilities, he was fairly certain he could take Laura even if he was a normal man.

Deciding to change tactics slightly, Lance patiently waited for Laura to initiate the attack. Of her many flaws, perhaps the most noticeably was her distinct lack of patience. Lance knew that if he just waited long enough, she would-

With what would be blinding speed to a normal person, Laura lanced forward, her entire body tilted towards her erstwhile mentor with the same rigid lethality of an arrow in flight. Her arms were pulled back and her claws were fully extended in what would inevitably become two powerful forward thrusts.

Lance snorted, turned slightly, and then stepped forward just as she began to extend her arms. The timing of the movement was such that by the time Laura had registered his change in strategy, he had already placed himself too close to her to be cut by her claws.

All that happened in the first second. By the second, Lance had brought his knee up, and allowed Laura's own moment to carry her face directly into it.

A sharp crack rang out as his squire collided with his reinforced body. Her head snapped backwards, and her body - hit subject to any other force but her own forward momentum - continued on.

The result would have been extremely comical if it wasn't also extremely lethal. A normal person would have broken their neck as a result of that strike - even one of the much more hardy people that had walked the earth in his time. Laura however, was at no such risk. Obviously the strike would have hurt, probably more so than anything else Lance had done to her today, but Laura's body contained within it two very special properties.

First, she could heal from anything.

Her head, which had been bent at a funny angle began to twitch and pop, as the tendons in her neck that had been torn realigned and repaired themselves. Her hands twitched along the floor before one of them shot out to grasp Lance's work boots, squeezing so hard that he was pretty sure she was trying to hurt him.

And second, her bones were - as far as Lance could tell - indestructible. This meant that the blow to her skull, which even without much effort behind it should have effectively caved her head in, had done nothing more than rattle her brain around slightly.

Lance stared down at Laura as she recovered, a mixed look of pride and discomfort on his face. Laura, of all the people he had encountered in this world, had potential. The problem was, that potential was far too reminiscent of another hero he had once served under. Arturia, while she bore that sacred scabbard of Excalibur known as Avalon, was functionally immortal. She would regenerate from any wound that wasn't lethal within seconds, and Lancelot had even had chance to witness her entire heart regrowing itself on one occasion. The only weakness of this healing, this immortality, was that if her head was ever sufficiently damaged, she would die before her body could be healed.

And here, laying on the ground beneath him and leveling a baleful teenage glare at him, was someone who bore those some traits, and none of the weaknesses. A part of the reason Lance was so insistent on Laura going to school and having what passed for a normal life was the fact that a small part of him felt as if raising her up to be his equal could only result in suffering. Suffering, loneliness, and eventually - betrayal. Just like his King.

"So! You've passed the equivalency tests. We've signed the paper work. Tomorrow, you are going to school." Lance said blithely, stepping away from his Squire and waiting for her to stand. Despite knowing she couldn't actually suffer them for very long, his eyes still swept over her, seeking injuries. Medical sciences and training methods weren't as advanced in his time as now, and he would freely admit that many a knight had accidentally injured a Squire beyond mundane help before Agravain had standardized things.

She was wearing baggy sweat pants and a hoodie, so most of her was blessedly covered, but as her claws retracted and she rose he noticed small red slits in her knuckles quickly healing over. It irked him that so much of Laura's training and modification seemed to be based on her healing ability. Anyone else would have bled out from the wounds her own claws created. Glancing up at her face, which was still firmly set in a scowl, he noticed the last vestiges of a fairly sizeable bruise fading from sight.

He of course, was wearing his work outfit. Steel toed boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt that he had rolled up to his elbows. It wasn't exactly a suit and tie, but when he had asked Jameson if he should procure a set for himself the old man had merely waved him off, claiming that he preferred Lance's 'blue collar' look over a jumped up suit. Lance would have argued the point - being very well aware that the resplendence of ones armor could be it's own deterrent, but the cost of one of those constricting and impractical garments precluded him from doing so.

The sheer amount of food he could purchase for the cost of a single good suit had caused all the blood to rush from his face as he paled.

"School's a waste. I already know math." Laura growled, her eyes flicking towards the envelope at his waist.

"But can you socialize? Do you have friends? Do you not wish to be a wife some day? Hold a profession?" Lance pointed out, already knowing what she would say in response but not really knowing what else he could say.

"Yes. No. No. Yes." She said in quick succession. Laura was still just a bit on the quiet side most of the time, but she always became more chatty - and by extension, more sarcastic - after they had sparred for the day.

"I have undergone days of assimilation training, I can blend in with any group and was taught all the ways to please-" She complained, crossing her arms in front of her petulantly.

"Ah! No! Stop!" Lance blurted, raising his arms to form a large X shape in protest.

"Come on Laura, it's not the same and you know it." Lance chided tiredly, glancing up at the clock on the wall and trying to determine how long it would take him to reach work that morning.

"But I don't need it! I can help you! I'm your Squire!" Laura continued to complain. She said the word 'squire' with an odd kind of desperation to it, as though she had decided to pin her entire identity on the word in an effort to forget her past.

"Tell you what. Do good in school and you can come with me on the weekends okay?" Lance offered.

"...How good?" Laura said suspiciously, walking up to him as he turned to head up the stairs.

"How should I know? I never went to school!" Lance responded jovially.

Laura merely growled in response.

-ooo-

Working for Jameson had been weird at first. Despite how bombastic and generally crotchety the man was, he seemed to have an almost split personality when it came to dealing with things he appreciated and things he didn't.

Lance had expected to come to work on his first day and be forced to stand behind the man for hours as he screamed his way into an early grave. He had been swiftly disabused of that notion when he arrived to work that day and walked into his office only to find him sliding on a long coat and crunching away at his unlit cigar.

'Where are we going uh... sir?' Lance had said, forcing himself - just barely - to avoid saying 'my liege'.

'Anti-Mutant Rally.' Jameson had answered succinctly. Lance had paused at that, staring at the man before him and tensing slightly. He didn't know much about mutants on the whole, not in the modern age, but they had always sort of existed. In his time they had been called Changelings though, and the general consensus among the people was that they had been changed by interactions with the Fae - a concept Lancelot had felt both ironic and likely wrong at the time given his own origins.

'What?' Jameson said grouchily as he reached for the door and Lance made no move to follow.

'I was unaware of your stance on mutants.' Lance had said plainly.

'Eh? Oh. Listen Lance, journalism isn't about what we want, it's about what is. I'm gonna go down there with my shiny new bodyguard, take pictures of every idiot I can, and move on.' Jameson had growled, waving impatiently at Lance, who reluctantly began to trail behind him.

'But... why? I'm told many mutants are all but helpless...' Lance had said, trailing off. It was a half truth. He had been told that many Changelings were all but helpless. A child who had the ability to change their hair color had no means of defending themselves beyond what any other child would, but most certainly would have a target painted on their back for their differences.

'Oh! You think- Lance, listen, I hate superheroes because they lack accountability. Do you know how many of the morons Spider-Man stops end up in jail? Less than half! Why? Because when the only witness to your crime is a guy who refuses to stand in court, it's pretty damn easy to say you were assaulted for no reason!' Jameson barked, once again demonstrating an uncanny ability to make sense while simultaneously stating his point in the most unlikable way possible.

'But these poor mutants? Most of them haven't done a damn thing. They lynched a kid with webbed feet down in Illinois last week. And that just ain't right. So! If I end up standing between the mob and some kids, and my bodyguard has to protect me, what's there to be done?' Jameson finished, with a savage grin that left Lance temporarily dumbstruck. This man claimed to hate people that skirted the law, but he seemed more than willing to do the same. It was so hypocritical it was almost funny.

And yet...

'Lead the way sir.' Lance had said with a nod.

"Lance! You're making that face again! What did I tell you about thinking!?" Jameson rumbled at him, his voice (just barely) occupying a volume level that could be considered friendly.

"That you don't pay me to do it?" Lance answered with some amusement.

"Exactly! So! How's the kid? Still a little pain in the ass?" Jameson asked, looking away from him and allowing Lance the opportunity to walk around him to his position by the newly repaired window. It never ceased to amaze Lance at how his boss could care about how someone was doing, but phrase it in a way that implied the exact opposite.

"She's doing well sir. Starts school tomorrow." Lance offered, his eyes dutifully scanning the streets below. Upon taking up his duties one of the first things he had done was begin to research every possible threat to his employer. Manhattan really was the spandex capitol of the country as far as he could tell. The sheer number costumed lunatics running around here would be enough to give Agravain fits. If it were up to him, he would have gathered a detachment of Knights and soundly put as many offenders to the sword as he could just to send enough of a message that the rest would leave.

His research had, of course, provided several pieces of information that he was significantly less than comfortable with. For one, so many of the local rogues gallery could fly, climb, or jump great distances that Jameson's window might as well have been an open door to most of them. For another thing, nearly no one with powers ever stayed in jail for very long. This meant that even if he did prevent an attack on Jameson by someone like the Scorpion, that the man was likely to return on a bi-annual basis.

"School huh? You let me know if she has any trouble. Local news has been slow, there's room for an expose on bullying." Jameson grumbled, not once looking up at him.

Lance had to stifle a laugh at that. Laura? Bullied? He pitied the kid that tried. She would tear them limb from...

Lance paused.

Laura would know better than to tear apart some kid for trying to take her lunch money wouldn't she?

He paused again.

He had given Laura lunch money hadn't he?

He paused again.

"Sir?" Lance asked his boss tentatively, wincing when old chimney lungs turned to him and exhaled a puff of black smoke.

"What?" He asked, removing his cigar and tapping it once against the tray on his desk.

"I think I might be a terrible parent." Lance said honestly, allowing his mind to flash over all of his children, and recalling the alarming frequency with which he had merely left their care to his then wife. Jameson lifted a single bushy eyebrow at him before a rough chuckle escaped his throat and he returned to his work.

"Well, at least you know." He said, and then the room fell silent.

Suddenly, Lance was much more worried about his decision to send Laura to school than he had been.

-ooo-

Laura awoke in a bed that was too soft. No, scratch that, she awoke in a bed at all. It wasn't as though she had never slept in a bed before, but the bed she used at the facility where she was created had been of the hospital variety - cheaply made and designed to be utilitarian and replaceable. Add to that, they had rapidly stopped replacing her mattress when they realized how frequently she would destroy them in her sleep. She couldn't help it - she was a child with retractable claws having nightmares about the hellish surgery they put her through regularly. What did they think was going to happen to her?

But returning to the point. Her bed. It was too soft. A tiny part of her mind listed all of the reasons that a particularly cushy bed was a tactical error. It would be difficult to rise from in the event of a surprise attack. It would provide for poor footing in the event that she had to use it to maintain a higher ground than her opponents. It was expensive and she was liable to destroy it before the week was out.

Shoving all those thoughts to the side, she rose from her resting place, one hand stretching out to steady herself on the little side table Lance had provided her with. She glanced around the room warily, searching for traps or surveillance equipment. She knew intellectually that there wouldn't be any - but that didn't mean her old training and conditioning would be any less dominant in the way she saw the world. The room was curiously cluttered. A plain brown carpet covered the floor, and her bed was situated in one corner as far away from the single window and door into the room as she could manage. She had originally tried to convince Lance that the closet was the safest place to sleep - since she would be alerted by the sound of any intruders without being immediately visible to them - but Lance had vetoed the request, stating that the closet was for clothes and nothing else.

To the right of her bed and small side table sat a second hand dresser that Lance had purchased for her, placing all of the clothes she had chosen for herself within it, as well as several that he had apparently purchased for her himself while he was at work one day. The man confused her to no end. Her training had been very clear on the most effective clothing for her to wear. She didn't need armor because her bones were indestructible and her soft tissue would heal in a matter of seconds should she be injured. She was also literally made to be attractive. Her healing factor meant she never had a chance of developing in any way that wasn't ideal for her body type. All these things combined meant that tight fitting clothes with little surface area were the most effective for her. They allowed her the greatest freedom of movement, had the lowest chance of getting caught on something mid battle, and had the greatest chance of distracting a male opponent.

Lance apparently didn't hold the same views as her unfortunately. Not that he ever tried to stop her from dressing most efficiently.

Speaking of clothes. She should probably dress herself. The clock read 6:03 am, which meant she could expect the be in the basement sparring in just under thirty minutes or so. She knew she had grown lax in the environment Lance had provided - having woken up slightly later every day until this point, wherein she was only just barely awake in time to fulfill her duties. But for reasons she couldn't explain she was more or less okay with that.

Not that she would ever voice that opinion aloud. Mentioning a problem was, in Laura's experience, the fastest way to become a problem. Something she could never allow herself to be. Not to Lance at least.

Sliding from her bed, Laura dressed quickly in a pair of jeans and a black shirt, twisting slightly as the metal hoops built into her bra dug into her skin. She had tried to convince Lance that she didn't need one of these either but had again been vetoed.

She wanted to sigh at that but couldn't find it in herself to do so. Instead, she simply padded down the stairs to where Lance was, already sat at his dining room table and eating a bowl of cereal. A copy of the Daily Bugle was on the table, and he was carefully paging through it as he ate, though he did raise his head and acknowledge her arrival with a quick nod before going back to what he was reading.

Which was annoying. She had been trying to sneak up on the man. He had made the off hand joke that she almost certainly couldn't do so several days ago and her professional sensibilities had been somewhat more than bothered by it. She knew he wasn't being malicious about it, but that actually made it worse. He wasn't even really trying to catch her most of the time. He just knew where she was.

"Morning." He said in a relaxed tone, making sure he looked up and made eye contact when he spoke with her.

"Mmm." She grumbled irritably, walking around him to pull a bowl from the cupboard and filling it with her own breakfast cereal of choice. One could assume that between the box of Wheaties and the box of brightly colored marshmallow laden cereal in the cupboard, the more responsible food would be Lances, and the more childish one would be Laura's.

Not so. Laura briefly wondered if Lancelot had ever had the concept of nutrition explained to him, then reasoned that no, he probably hadn't. She wasn't even sure if 'nutrition' was a word that existed at the same time as Arthurian legend.

The pair ate their breakfast largely in silence. Laura appreciated that about Lance. He wasn't overly chatty. True he made the effort to communicate with her and keep her updated on where he was going to be or what he expected her to be doing, but he never wasted time talking needlessly. If there was something to be said, he said it, and if there wasn't - he didn't.

"Laura?" The knight said after they had finished eating, and she had taken to waiting patiently for their daily trip into the basement for training. She wouldn't call the sensation excitement - she doubted she was ever really going to be able to muster up all that much of that particular feeling anymore. No, it was with a sort of quiet anticipation that she sat. Training had been a part of her daily life for an overwhelming majority of her existence, and even if she had recently lacked handlers to put her through her paces she found an odd comfort in it's return to her normal functioning.

Laura quickly eyed the clock on the wall, wondering why Lance had insisted on installing one in every single room in the house. 6:23. Roughly seven minutes before the usually scheduled training time. Carefully clamping down on the impulse to bounce her foot, she turned towards Lance and tilted her head towards him, acknowledging the question without having to actually speak. She did this less because she was opposed to talking, and more because of how novel she found it that Lance seemed not to really require her to fully explain herself in order to understand what she meant. The facility where she had been made had been run like a military outfit. If she was spoken to she was expected to acknowledge that she had understood and was complying as loudly and succinctly as possible. Lance provided a welcome change of pace to that.

"I don't think it's a good idea to wear... those... to school today." Lance said, wincing slightly as his gaze flickered down to her state of dress. She blinked once in response. Right. School. That was... a thing she would have to suffer through today. Possibly for a few days. She had no idea what Lancelot wanted her to do there except 'attend' and no matter how much she pointed out how much of a waste of time a so called 'education' would provide, he never seemed willing to produce a better explanation of her mission so...

She looked down at her shirt and jeans before looking back up at the knight, once more not bothering to verbalize what she wanted to get across.

"It's just... very tight? And I can see your belly button. And men at that age can be... grabby." Lance said, nervously sliding the coffee mug in his hand from side to side.

Ah. This again. Yes it was tight. That was the point. It was less likely to get caught on something, and if it did it was more likely to just tear and no longer be an issue. Not that she felt the need to come right out and say all that. Lance was a legendary fighter of a bygone age who had become a legend for his skill at arms. He regularly bludgeoned her unconscious with his hands and feet using no more strength than a normal human could muster. The idea of her correcting him in any way shape or form on combat doctrine just seemed silly to her.

Plus she was pretty sure contradicting your knight was bad form for a squire? She would have to do some research on the topic.

"They're comfortable." She said stubbornly in lieu of any of the other thoughts shooting through her head.

"Just... promise me you wont use your claws on anyone okay? Or maim someone. Or kill anyone." Lance said tiredly, clearly giving up on his original point.

"...Unless someone tries to get your clothes off, or kidnap you. Then do any or all of those things." He added, almost as an after thought.

Having not actually received actual orders prior to this with regards to her attendance at school, Laura dutifully committed these bits of information to memory. Her eyes darted to the clock again, and her fingers flexed imperceptibly when it occurred to her that that it was not 6:31. That was one minute of training time wasted.

Apparently having detected her ire, Lance looked up at the clock and then winced apologetically at her.

"Maybe let's skip training today alright? Jameson wanted me to come in early for something today." He apologized quickly, downing the rest of his coffee in one singular gulp and rising from the table.

Suddenly, Laura was finding her prospects for the day very, very dark indeed. How was this fair? She did everything she was asked. She was even considering changing into one of those stupid oversized sweaters Lance always insisted she wear when leaving the house. And yet, now that the only thing she had been interested in doing since waking up had been yanked out from under her, she found herself far less interested in compliance.

Her eyes narrowed as she tracked Lance across the room, watching with thinly veiled annoyance as he withdrew a backpack from somewhere and began to stuff it with odds and ends. Notebooks, pencils, erasers. When he was done he placed the bag in front of her, along with two other objects that she slowly turned to inspect, making sure to keep an eye on her knight as she did so.

On the whole, Laura wasn't one to throw a 'tantrum'. She could - she knew that - but her tenuous control over her emotions usually meant that 'tantrum' and 'murderous flailing' were not typically as far apart as many people would like on her emotional spectrum. So instead, she stared. Angrily.

Lance shuffled from foot to foot with an apologetic look on his face as she stared at him, before clearing his through and pointing at the table in front of her.

"I got you a wallet and a cellphone. Well, Jameson got you the cellphone, but you know. My work number should be in there already?" He said, his statement turning into a question towards the end as she picked both objects up to examine them. She disliked them both immediately of course. For one, neither one would fit in her pockets - mostly because whoever had designed these pants obviously just added them as decorations with no space to put anything in them. Carrying them on her person would necessitate she change into one of the baggy sweat pants Lance had gotten her. Something she was sure he both knew and had intended.

Unfortunately for him, Laura was a fan of malicious compliance.

Nodding once at him in acknowledgement of the gifts, she opened her new bag and dumped the two objects in it, not even bothering to open or check the wallet or the cellphone.

This apparently, was enough to get Lancelot to crack. For a man who she had seen absorb bullets with little to no worry, he was surprisingly easy to push. She wasn't sure if she liked that. What if he was captured and put to torture? No he would just kill his way out... but what if she was captured and put to torture? She had been trained to withstand such things, but she had no doubt that Lancelot would capitulate should it ever come to pass. He was weak that way.

"Hey uh, we can train as long as you want tonight okay? After school. And only if you actually go." He said, quirking an eyebrow at her.

She was simultaneously pleased and annoyed at this turn of events. On the one hand, training was good. On the other hand - she had fully been intending to just loiter near the school until such a time as she could leave.

"Aw come on Laura, don't pout, I'm sure you'll make tons of friends okay?" He offered, laughing at her.

She was not pouting. Her facial expression hadn't even twitched let alone changed. She was very firmly scowling - like any good assassin should. It wasn't her fault that Lance interpreted it that way. Although, she was supposed to be a squire now. Did squires pout?

Still, remembering that she was, in fact, unhappy with Lance right now, she still felt the need to explain her definitive lack of a pout but never got the chance. Lance had already darted out into the hallway to put his boots on and head to work.

"Have a good day Laura!" he called before escaping out the front door.

And then it was just her - alone in the house. It never ceased to amaze Laura how little Lance did to ensure she didn't just... leave. She wouldn't of course - that would be stupid. But really, the man had no leverage on her.

Well he could kill her on a whim she guessed but still.

Sighing over the conundrum that was her benefactor, she spent the better part of the morning exercising, leaving for school as late as she could possibly manage. She found the idea that she might miss the scheduled time for entry and therefore be barred to be particularly heartening.

So it was that she was doggedly walking towards the address she had been told to go to, when a man in a wheel chair turned a corner in front of her and stopped. This man, she recognized him. He was at Lance's apartment the day they went to see Jonah! Her claws got an inch out of her fists before she recalled Lances warning from breakfast.

'No claws. No maiming. No killing.' She thought sullenly. It was unfortunate but she would have to resort to a different means of resolving her current conflict.

"What." She said bluntly, stopping just far enough away from the man that she would be able to leap at him in an instant should he prove hostile.

'Kidnapping. Stealing my clothes.' She recited in her head, over and over like a mantra, the words an easy way to hold back her instinctual need to tear apart anything she viewed as threatening.

"Miss Lake I believe? My name is Charles Xavier, and I believe we've met once before." The balding man in the overly complex yellow wheelchair said politely, smiling at her. He probably assumed that his smile was reassuring, but all Laura could see in it was the same fake reassurance the doctors would give her before each procedure. Before each surgery. Before each tissue extraction. Before each experiment.

As though sensing the murderous direction her thoughts were taking the smile fell away from the mans face and he hurried to continue.

"Ehem. I was hoping I could convince you to introduce me to your father. You see, I run a school for the gifted - children like you who have special abilities. There are many in the world who view people like you and I as-" He continued on, rushing to get to his point. Unfortunately for him, Laura didn't particularly care, because he had demonstrated two things about himself that Laura loathed. One, he wanted her for her powers - which she'd had quite enough of in the lab she was born in. And two; he wanted her to go to a school.

"Don't care." She grumbled at him, stepping out into the road so she could walk around him without getting close enough for him to attempt to grab her. She didn't really mind if he tried - that would just give her the justification to fight back - but she doubted Lance would appreciate being dragged from work to remove her from the police station.

"Listen kid, you should hear the egghead out." Growled a deep resonant voice that sparked something in her. Something... feral.

'Kidnapping. Stealing my clothes.' She repeated, hardening her resolve and taking another step without looking towards the voice.

"Hey ya brat, I'm telling you to wait." Growled the voice again, rapidly drawing closer. Close enough that she could smell it's owner.

'Kidnapping. Stealing.'

She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. She needed to go or she was going to do something she shouldn't. She sped up, walking as fast as she could while pulling her bag off of her back. As quickly as she could she withdrew the phone lance had given her, and fumbled desperately at the unfamiliar lock screen.

"Hey!" The voice said again, and she could feel with every ounce of her being as he came to a halt behind her. She wasn't afraid of him. Quite the opposite. Every cell in her body, every fiber of her being was telling her that this was a man she had to kill.

'Kidnapping. St-ste..'

Not just kill. Destroy, completely and utterly. Of the many, many uses her creation served, this, she knew, was the most important of all. Something she had been programmed to do. With drugs. With gene therapy. With as many methods of brainwashing and torture as one could imagine. She had to kill this man.

"Laura? are you okay?" Lance's voice called through the phone that was only just barely held in her hands.

A thick, meaty hand clapped down on one of her shoulders, and she turned towards it's owner.

'Kid...nap...' She thought, struggling against the hormonal cocktail of preprogrammed homicidal rage that was flooding through her.

"Listen bub, we just wanna talk. Why don't you come with us alright? We'll get you a sippy cup or somethin'" The man said with barely restrained annoyance. He was... short. Shorter than most men she knew at least. And hairy. Probably hairy than anyone she could think of. But most importantly, he had said the magic words.

'Why don't you come with us'

'Kidnapping!' She howled internally as her conscious mind and her unconscious desires aligned themselves, freeing her of any restraint she could muster.

"Laura? Laura are you there?!" came Lance's voice from the ground where her bag and phone now lay in a puddle.

It was the last conscious thought she really had before she found herself leaping at the man, with all eight of her claws fully extended and a feral yowl ripping itself free of her throat.

-ooo-

What a morning. First Jonah had made him come to work early so he could introduce Lance to his 'star photographer' - which, wow was that awkward. Then, because of the timing of it all, he missed his morning practice with Laura - which, going by her expression and well, the growling, she was not best pleased by.

Seriously, what did a guy have to do? He had like two people in this life he really had to keep happy. Not that he was really complaining about the state of affairs as they currently stood. He was... what was the word, happy? Honestly, he hadn't felt so relaxed since he was an orphan living with the fae. And he had no idea why. He wasn't really achieving anything, Jonah hadn't been attacked by a supervillain since he had been hired, which was good because if it was a common occurrence that would just be terrible. He supposed that helping Laura get her life together sort of counted as a goal.

Maybe that was why he was so happy? He was free of the weight of the world, and allowed simply to apply himself to the pursuit of those smaller things that had escaped him in life?

Such were Lance's musings that day at the office - when his cellphone began to ring. He withdrew the device and, still unfamiliar with it, fumbled his way through the password protected lock screen to answer.

"Laura? Are you okay?" He asked, happy to have something to distract him from his thoughts.

"...come with us alright?" he heard an unfamiliar voice reply.

"Laura? Laura are you there!?" He asked again urgently, but received no reply save a feral scream he had become very familiar with over the last two weeks.

"John!" Lance yelped, turning towards his boss who was sending him a curious looking from behind his desk.

"Yeah yeah. Take the rest of the day off." He said, waving a hand through the air as if to clear the air.

"Thanks!" he managed, as he sprinted for the door and subsequently, the stairwell.

"Don't thank me! I'm not paying you for it!" Jameson scowled as he exited. Lance was thankful all the same. He'd worked on construction sights that would have fired him for leaving like this.

He increased the flow of prana through his body as much as he dared, dashing to the stairwell and then increasing his strength even further when he arrived, in order to leap to the landing on the roof. He barely registered the locked door leading outward as he barreled through it, sending it flying off it's hinges. The second he laid eyes on the sky, he summoned his armor, pointed himself towards his home, and leapt.

For just the briefest fraction of a second, he increased his power, launching himself from the roof - likely at the expensive of whoever happened to be directly beneath him on the next floor down. The strength of the jump was enough that the world began to blur around him, and he came crashing down on another rooftop several blocks away.

He didn't stop. He didn't wait, he didn't even pause to consider the damage his passing must be doing to the buildings he was leaping from. He just plowed forward, turning the thirty minute commute into a two minute one using nothing but his own superhuman abilities.

"Laura!" He yelled out as he touched down in his front yard, handily killing literally every plant in it and shattering the glass windows of his home. Leaping to his roof he look outward, scanning the streets within view until he caught a flash of movement that didn't match up with the usual morning traffic. Once more he took off, taking only slightly more care to ensure he didn't destroy his own dwelling.

He landed like a meteor, skidding to a halt he turned to survey the scene. There was a bald man who he vaguely recognized having tried to avoid earlier - watching him with a mix of confusion and hope. There was a short hairy man with claws like Laura's, growling like a mad beast. And there was Laura...

Hanging from his claws like a puppet with it's strings cut.

His squire and legally speaking, his daughter, hanging limp from the claws of this thing.

Without thought, he moved. His passing expelling a blast of air that pushed the wheelchair bound man to the side, and shattered the concrete he had stood on. In contrast to how he had left, he arrived at Laura's side so gently that the man who had presently eviscerated her could only glance at him in enraged confusion as he gently grabbed the girl about the middle with both hands - and then kicked the beast that had hurt her so hard he was fairly certain he exploded.

"Logan!" yelped the man in the wheelchair with worry.

"You..." Lancelot Du Lac muttered, turning his attention away from Laura and towards the bald man. He could dimly, tell there was a voice in his head advising he stop, but he had so many of those at this point that one more didn't seem overly concerning. Still, he felt he should probably calm down. Already he could feel the balance of power shifting, hear the heavy iron chains that bound his Berserker grind slightly as their strength was tested.

He might even have succeeded, if not for the fact that the subhuman thing, which he was just about positive he had killed, leapt at him, snarling incoherently. At first he ignored it, more focused on calming down than fighting now that he had his squire safe in hand. He ignored it, and because he assumed that there was nearly nothing the average person could do to pierce his armor, or even his skin really, was both surprised and angered by the fact that the beasts claws swiped cleanly across his chest, tearing a line across his armor and wounding him.

And of course, there it was again. The voices. The yelling. The grinding of chains.

Before the creature could attack again, Lancelot moved again. Faster than any human being could ever hope to move, one black gauntleted hand stretched out, wrapping around his attackers face. He stepped forward and away from Laura, his face blank as his helmet formed.

And then he slammed the heinous thing into the concrete, increased his power to it's maximum, and sprinted as fast as he could up the road. Cars were pushed aside, pavement shattered beneath his feet, and by the time he stopped, the only thing left of his attacker was his curiously hard to damage skeleton. A black shadow passed overhead but he didn't care. He had never really cared. He had triumphed over his enemy as was his right, and now he would go back and punish anyone who considered the thing their ally.

"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!" He screamed into the sky.

Right up until a brilliant beam of red slammed into him, pushing him back a step.

"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅▃▄▄▅▅!" He howled at the interlopers. The voices continued, screaming in the back of his mind for... for something.

But it didn't matter. There were people to kill.

-ooo-

Here we go with this. I can't say I'm 100% on this chapter but it'll do. I once was told that it's best to just write and not look back if you have writers block - so that's what I'm doing.

Some things. I'm aware that theres a sort of nebulous 'Mystery beats everything' rule to the Fate universe - I'm just going to ignore it because it would make Lancelot waaaaaaaaaay stronger than any non magical Marvel hero could manage. I'm also sort of settling for mostly following Marvel's rules for things, like Adamantium can cut and survive nearly anything. Obviously Wolverine isn't dead here, even if it seems he is, since his regeneration has shown him being able to basically come back from more or less anything including just being a skeleton. All things being relative though, Lancelot is basically a speedster in setting, and when I think of the most brutal way a speedster can try to kill someone 'friction' is pretty much the only thing that comes to mind.

So for the Throne. Again, I'm just choosing to say that most of (there are exceptions) the Marvel Heroes don't exist on the thing. When you really examine it, EMIYA only really got on the Throne by making a deal with Alaya, everyone else who's on it (Grand Order doesn't count.) died during the Age of Heroes or what have you. I might get more into the details of how the Marvel universe interacts with the Throne when the Throne becomes more relevant to the plot, but as it stands it's not worth getting into.

Mm, I think that's about it. Easy guess as to who got flown in when it became obvious Lancelot was going to murder Wolverine.

OH and as always.

Thanks for reading.