The way he walked made Fluttershy nervous. As one who personally disliked noise, even she had to admit that the Human beside her was too quiet. He never strayed, never lost focus and went to go inspect a flower, nothing. He was so unlike any Human she'd ever seen before. Even Polly, as well trained as she was supposed to be, had to be reminded to keep walking every few metres or so. That is, when she wasn't spending time trying to court the male Human in a manner so overt that Fluttershy was starting to flush.

He, apparently, wasn't having any of it. The first time she tried rubbing up against him, he had simply moved to the other side of Fluttershy. The second time had been a more forceful attempt, and the man had resorted to pushing her away from him.

The Pony didn't understand it. From what she could see, Polly was a perfectly healthy girl with a good pedigree and even better body for bearing young. Wide hips, but not fat. Clean skin; silky black hair, a large chest...And the man was adamantly refusing to give her even a second glance. In Fluttershy's highly embarassing experience, Humans weren't overly picky about who they laid with. And when. Or where.

That was just one of many mysteries surrounding Humans. Unlike essentially every other animal on the planet, they didn't have heat cycles. Breeding could and did happen at any time of the year, although Human women did carry their offspring for quite a while, disabling them for several months near the end of their term most of the time.

The yellow mare intently focused on the journey back to her house to prevent unbidden thoughts of the times she'd visited Applejack's farm and seen...So many things that would have reduced her to a puddle of blushing fur if she hadn't been too busy running away from the barns in question to have such an event occur.

Not that she could fault Applejack for it. A farm needed strong workers for manual labour, and Humans were perfect for the job. And even though the farm mare would ever admit it, the strongest of her Humans could probably beat out Big Mac in terms of physical strength. The embodiment of Honesty had gotten very good at breeding Humans, it turned out.

Fluttershy had her own suspicions about why she liked getting the biggest and strongest males considering that only half of them were on the field at any given time, but that sort of thinking was for thoughts only.

The walk to the house he could see just on the egde of the mist would have been a pleasant, refreshing little jaunt if not for the persistence of the feral woman he'd curbed the advances of several times over. Just when he felt he could start to relax and simply enjoy the act of walking, she'd try to draw close and wrap her arms around him. Not that she got very far. Hazama didn't get as far as he did in life by being slow, after all.

But it was enough to spoil his mood. Unable to fully enjoy the trek, he turned his attention to the horse at his side when he thought she wasn't looking, still trying to comprehend the fact that Humans were essentially dogs on this planet.

The mare, for he'd decided that she was female based on her voice and...In all honesty, she had perhaps the girliest appearance he could have possibly imagined. And he'd thought that Celica Mercury had that field covered!

His lip quirked downwards, but he recovered before his travelling companion noticed. That was one massive incident he'd rather not care to remember. The Chronophantasma was just. So. Damn. Happy. He doubted that any being alive could rival her kindness.

Fluttershy felt like somepony had just been talking about her, but dismissed the thought just in time to see Polly go for her most daring attempt yet.

Hazama sucked air through his teeth in a quiet hiss as the naked woman circled ahead, standing directly in his path and sticking her chest out as though it was meant to be impressive. In fairness, it would have definitely been somewhat so if he hadn't spent a good portion of time working with/brain controlling one Litchi Faye Ling. 'Seriously', he thought, 'How the bitch never had spine problems even after gettin' stomped into the ground...'

Fluttershy had to stare in open-mouthed awe as the green-haired male paused in his tracks, stared directly into the eyes of the woman, and casually sidestepped the obstruction, continuing on the path that Fluttershy had set.

Something was definitely up with this Human! Even the most well trained of Humans that she'd seen wouldn't have been able to shrug off an offer like that so easily, if at all! It just didn't happen!

Even Polly appeared to be utterly bewildered by his actions. It was almost sad, the manner in which she remained in her pose for several seconds before realising that she'd been absolutely denied. With an extraordinarily downcast look for a Human not normally capable of showing much emotion, she rejoined the group, trailing several paces behind at all times.

The rest of the trek to the house was done in mostly silence, pierced only by Polly's confused whines at regular intervals.

Standing in front of the house, Hazama was... Bemused, but not entirely surprised.

It was, on the one hand, one of the smallest houses he had ever seen. It seemed to be more plant than building given the giant mass of leaves and grass that made up the roof. Even with the home's diminuitive stature, there were windows at every single possible angle. He was surprised to find there wasn't a giant skylight, to be honest.

And the animals. Oh dear lord the animals. He was stunned. His world being as toxic to life as it was, he'd never seen more than a few domesticated dogs and cats as far as creatures went. But now there were rabbits, birds, squirrels, mice, and even chickens all running around outside. He only recognised some of them from picture books! There were homes for all of the animals scattered around. Holes in the ground for the rodents, burrows for the multitude of rabbits, and not to mention the birdhouses that burst from every possibly branch, twig, and bush, all filled with chirping birds of all different colours.

He paused for a moment to step forward and sideways, unblocking the bridge and letting the horse and the other Human through.

In truth, Hazama did not quite know how to react. He would be the first to admit that he wasn't a good person, which was probably the understatement of the century, but he would also claim that he wasn't quite as bad as Terumi. Now that was a hard act to beat. However, this did leave him with great indecision.

Did he try and prove to this horse that he was intelligent? Should he try threatening her for information? The latter was potentially a bad idea for several reasons. One, he had no idea what abilities this race held, and he wouldn't allow appearances to deceive him. For all he knew, the animals here were all experiments, and would leap to defend their mistress by sprouting machine guns or some such nonsense. Two, the horse might not even know anything worthwhile, making his reveal worthless and painting him as a threat.

If he proved his intelligence, what then? He had no reason to trust this horse any more than he already did, and there'd be no telling what she would do if she knew about his secret. Run away screaming about a monster Human? Sic a horde of scientists on him to try and 'figure him out'? Actually, that might not happen at all. If her house was anything to go by, the technology levels on this planet weren't all that high. Maybe she was the exception, not the rule, though. So again, it wasn't worth the risk.

No, better to keep up the act for as long as needed in order to get information from the background. It wasn't so bad: he'd had much more demeaning work to do in his time as Captain of the NOL's Intelligence Division. He still had the occasional shudder whenever the memories of his time spent scouting a nightclub for a potential rebel group resurfaced. Several weeks of getting hit on could wear down anybody's patience, and it wasn't as though he was overflowing with the stuff to begin with.

He looked again at the house, and saw the door ajar, the horse's head sticking out from the entrance and gazing somewhat nervously in his direction. She stuck a hoof out of the door, and beckoned towards her. "Y-You should come inside. The animals won't hurt you..." she mumbled, unaware that the animal's potential to hurt him was actually a somewhat legitimate if utterly ridiculous consideration he'd had to make.

Hazama spent a few seconds longer than usual to react as part of his promise to keep up the facade of being less intelligent. Groaning somewhat as he adjusted his belt, he made his way up the path until he was face to...muzzle with the horse.

The awkward silence stretched into a solid half minute. Figuring he should do something 'animal-like', he tilted his head to one side and made what he thought to be an inquisitive hum as the horse stared seemingly at his chest. His eyes trailed down. Did he have dirt on his suit? Did she want to wipe it off or something?

"I don't think you should be wearing those right now, they could get dirty and your owner wouldn't like that, would he? I should probably take them off of you..."

His eye twitched. Shit, it was the club mission all over again.

Author's Note

Shorter chapter this time, but it felt like a decent place to end it off.

Updated Keyword Glossary:

Chronophantasma: The name given to a character displaced in time. Celica Mercury is one of these, having been rescued from her death in the past in order to help in the present day.

Nox Nyctores: The most powerful sect of weapons in BlazBlue. They are, as stated, very powerful and stronger than any Ars Armagus on their own. However, most of them have negative impacts on the user's mental state. There are nine in total:

1|Yukianesa, a katana that can manipulate ice. Its blade is also formed of never-melting ice, stronger than metal.

2|Bolverk, a pair of shapeshifting guns that create instant explosions at the target location rather than firing bullets, alongside transforming into a Gatling gun, a rocket launcher, and a rail-gun.

3|Muochorin: A wand that appears to fit the size of the wielder. Its power is the creation of matter, used by its juvenile current owner Platinum to make magical weapons such as giant hammers, jack-in-the-boxes, fans, baseball bats, and missiles, among other things.

4|Ookami: A nodachi sword with the power to disrupt magical element in its target. Including magic-based regeneration and barriers.

5|Musashi: A shorter blade with the ability to cut through 'things which can't ordinarily be cut'. But in essence, it can cut through almost anything.

6|Murakumo: Has the form of a massive floating sword, but when activated it splits into eight smaller floating swords which can be mentally controlled by the user.

7|Ouroboros: Owned by Hazama, it is a chain of theoretically infinite length, tipped by a metallic serpent head. When fired off, it can drag opponents to him, be used to throw things, to bind opponents, and as a grappling hook. It can pause at any point in the air, regardless of if it has hit anything or not, allowing Hazama a massive amount of omnidirectional mobility. On top of this, it has the power to cause direct damage to the victim's mind.

8|Nirvana: A machine shaped vaguely like a woman, taller than most people even while hunched over. Mentally controlled by its user, it can extend the nails made of a very powerful material on its fingers for many different attacks.

9|Rettenjo: An anti-Nox Nyctores weapon taking the shape of a 55-inch nail. It also has the power to disrupt magic element and connections to the Boundary, making it incredibly dangerous to many of the higher-tier fighters in BlazBlue.