'And in the footsteps of my patronage I walk - Scholar, Soldier, Pirate. My name be Aleethia, and title be Balthier.'
[AU OC rp for Balthier's daughter, tied to the account of thewarprivateer. Willing to rp with any one, including cross fandom. Please read the about page before rping. All art found on this blog is my own unless stated otherwise, please do not repost or reuse.]
"You know, Uncle Gabs," said a fifteen-year-old Thia one day as they were showering off after a training session, "I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that faint scar across your back."
Thia had a way of obscuring her questions with observations. It was very much a trait of her father’s, and Gabranth had had much practice over the years in interpreting her wants and desires through her occasionally indirect manner of speech. At that moment, she wished to know how he had come to obtain such a mark on his skin.
His return from death had rendered him free of any physical blemishes whatsoever. Everything from the marks left by Landisian farming tools to the spot where Vayne had crushed the side of his skull had been completely erased from his body. The proofs of a childhood of hardship and twenty years of service to the Empire had been no more. After a time, however, many of those marks had begun to reappear, like ink soaking through fine sand on parchment.
He had seen this particular mark himself some weeks prior, and it did not seem to be growing in conspicuity. Hopefully, if he were lucky, it would remain a faint and faded gash.
This notion brought Gabranth no comfort. From the moment he had noticed the reappearance of the scar for the first time, he had been plagued by a new set of nightmares: yellow eyes gleaming from a cloud of Mist, the Doctor’s insufferable smirk, being thrown with such force against a pillar that he had been rendered unable to think or breathe or act. Those dreams were always accompanied by jubilant, triumphant laughter that rang through to the very depths of his brain.
He could not bring himself to explain this to Thia. He could not lie to her, and yet he could not begin his reply with the words “your grandfather.” Most of all, he could not speak of the malice he still held for Doctor Cid while a child lived in the world who bore his name. Cidolfus Christophe was only five years old, and yet he resembled the man so very much.
"During the war," he replied, "I faced an onslaught of Mist and was thrown against a wall. Even with armor, the blow tore open the skin here-" He traced the length of the scar with one finger. "-and injured my spine."
Thia nodded, although he could tell that her curiosity was not wholly satisfied. But the useful thing about the phrase “during the war” was that it was a simple and effective way to put an end to a conversation. There was much that Thia did not know about the war, or even her loved ones’ involvement in it. Much to Gabranth’s displeasure, she had been told that her uncle had been a “hero.” Doubtless she assumed that he had fought alongside Basch and Balthier and Fran. And the lady Ashe… that thought was nothing if not laughable. Even more than a decade after Vayne Solidor’s death, Gabranth still could hardly look Dalmasca’s queen in the eye.
At least for now, there would be no more talk of this. The eventual conversation about the war would wait for another day, and Gabranth now had another item on his list of secrets to be kept.
"Basch," She murmured, one filled with laughter as her mouth lilted upon it’s corners. T’was a fair expression - one of due peace and happiness that she could only have picked up from her mother (It was one of the few things she remembered from those days before the war, when she was scarce a person, but every bit her mother’s daughter).
"Three years at sky will do that to a girl," She quipped, stepping forth with haste, only to envelop said man within a hug. Her affections came frequently and with much love. There were times, it seemed, she was a Bunansa in name only.
Her arms were strong, far stronger than they had been upon her leaving - hardly sixteen, and dogged by puppy fat and teenage rebelliousness. There was no roundness to her now, that much was plain. Still, she held him close as any child would with a happy hum. "Hello, Uncle."
She embraced him as family, and family he duly was - a stead fast figure in her life since her very youngest years. "It’s been too long, and I cannot stay for longer than a few days. Forgive me this?"
Stepping back she kissed him once upon either cheek (her time in Rozarria had fair left it’s mark, and she cared not if it made her a social pariah among Archades’ elite. "Though I come baring gifts with which to bribe your favour."
Basch’s smile came easily at the sound of his name in her voice, holding not the strained that had held his features in reserve for so long. Aleethia was not truly of his own, but it mattered not; Gods, he loved her, as he loved her father, and her presence was a spark that he could not begin to explain.
"Three years? It has been too long, truly," he said with a small shake of his head, arms coming around her in a hug. He had once feared, when she was younger, that he might embrace her too tightly, but the frailty was gone, and this struck him hard. "And already I fear that ‘girl’ is no longer appropriate for you. You are woman now, on sky, land and sea."
His words were fond, gentle as the hand he placed upon her neck as they parted, a gesture of affection that he, without noticing, had taken from his father. He commented naught on her pirating; it surprised him little, for she took more after her father than it pleased Balthier himself. She had always loved the skies, and he had seen plain in her eyes the admiration when the time for stories came, even when she had been no higher than Basch’s hip.
Still, he could not help the reprimanding look—playful, for her eyes had always worn at his will too much for discipline—at her words, disappoint me as they were. “After such a prolonged absence, you would already leave me behind a trail of smoke? This sky of yours seems too demanding.”
He squeezed her shoulder when she kissed his cheeks and then motioned to the chair across from his as he sat back down, clumsily using the sheets he had been writing on to mop up the ink spill. It would do for now. “Come, sit. Might I offer you something? Tea?”
As he looked back to her, it was with raised brows—bribes? Already she spoke as a pirate, through and through. “You know your presence and smile are enough to sway me. Although, I would find myself even more forgiving if these gifts of your include the promise that you will keep safe.”
She sat with ease, folding herself unto the chair beside him like a child, or indeed, a kitten - as snugly and precariously as possible. The carriage of a Lady, it seemed, had been a passing fancy, foregone for Aleethia's own flare and grace as the years had worn on. It ill befit a woman of archadian birth, but as the man she had begun to present herself as?
It fit the role of Balthier far too well.
"Safe? Come now, Uncle - there is little fun in safe," She jested, fingers idly twirling the ring upon her finger. It was one of the few discrepancies in her redesign of Balthier - her lack of adornment. One lonely ring and one ear filled with gold by three sparse hoops, she was hardly as flamboyant as her father.
A grin stretched her lips. "But for your sake I will endeavor to try."
The thought of tea, on the other hand, was a tempting one. For whilst telling Aleethia to be safe was like telling a coeurl kit not to sit in a box, offering her tea was akin to a offering a shark fresh seal. The answer was always immediate, and always positive. The day she didn't want tea was probably the day her heart had stopped beating.
"Tea would be lovely, Uncle Basch - just milk, no sugar any more. We can scarce afford it on the Strahl and I fear I've become rather accustomed to the taste.
"As for my gifts," It was with enthusiasm one hand took to the pouches slung about her hips, withdrawing a small wrapped box. T'was nothing intricate, held together by twine and brown paper, in the manner that she had received it, but she set it upon the table none the less.
"I picked it up in Rabinastre. The seller said it was Landisian - one of a set."
He was young for one within Gabranth’s quarter – handsome, un-cut, probably tried and at least seven years her elder. It was endearing the way he gaped at her like a fish out of water, eyes wide and she could see his panic clearly. It was a point in her favour, she thought that she’d set him so off kilter. He was expecting an empty room filled with meaningless things; instead he’d the sky pirate Balthier, sans armour, sans guns. Indeed, all she faced him with was the shirt on her back and the leather’s on her legs.
He had not expected this, had not been prepared, and already the fight was hers.
“My apologies you’ve caught me in disarray,” She purred and his jaw worked silently whilst she spoke. “You see, I rather was not expecting to be watched – I must hand it to you, you lasted at least an hour longer than the others before I was aware of your eyes.”
A smirk drew her lips with ease, charming, dangerous. “For that I offer praise indeed.”
The man seemed to jolt, his shoulders drawing square as jaw set. A pitiful show, even as his voice set to barking. “Sky Pirate Balthier – you’re under arr-“
“Arrest, yes, I know,” Her hand gave a flippant wave. “Why Agent, if you’d wanted to cuff me, all you simply had to do was ask.”
She could have laughed as he caught the implication, his breath stuttering in a little choke: Adorable. Archadian’s she had found were too easy to rile, for too heavily they relied upon propriety to draw the lines within their society. Aleethia had never had such qualms.
“How dare you – I’m taking you-“
“Into custody, I’m aware – come now, do they teach every agent the same speech? Have you no flare for originality?” With her foot, she hooked a chair, drawing it out across the floor and closer to her guest. “Take a seat, dear Agent, dear Judge, for we are going to play a game.”
It was easy to see the thought upon his face – the knowledge of his duty warred with curiosity and he wavered. Her brow arched, just slightly, just enough, before she gave another drawing purr. “I am not a fan of asking at gun point, Sir – take your seat. We shall be civil.”
It was stiffly he moved, folding into the chair, and Aleethia crowed internally at her triumph. It was a thing that had taken practise – her tone, her words, just the right phrase and tenor to control a man. People, she had found, were so easily manipulated.
Pacing to the door she clicked it shut, feeling the judge tense at her back like an electric shock upon the air. “Would you care for a drink?”
“What is this!?”
“I shall take that as a no.”
Her steps were near silent as she padded behind him, watching as the soldier tensed, fighting the urge to turn and betray his fear. She couldn’t help but lean on the chair, let her weight make the wood creak as her fingers brushed his shoulders. “I will explain to you now, the situation: You will remain in that chair. You will ask me your questions. I shall answer those I see fit and you shall leave here alive, because I am merciful.”
A noise of rebellion rose in his throat, and Aleethia cut it short with a purr. “Come now, none of that – Behave and you might get more than what you came for, eh?”
He was cut from the same cloth as many an Archadian man – sharp sloping jaw and a head of dark, spiralling waves, cropped close as was due his station. It was a fair face, and one the pirate set to admiring as she watched its eyes narrow, its mouth press unto a confused line. It wasn’t until she was upon her knees before him that his expression morphed to one of surprise.
Her hands were light upon his thighs, even as the soldier spluttered in shock. It was funny, almost, the way he quivered beneath her and yet she had done nothing as yet – how he was armed, and yet complacent, how he was of stature and yet before her weak of character. She heard his breath catch and grinned.
It was a slow line her palms drew, upwards, eyes trained on his as he stared. The questions, immediate in his mind were plain to see, and Aleethia revelled in it. “Oh, and one last rule,” She purred, as she drew his legs apart, settling between them, only to feel him tense (And yet, not try to run). “You are not to touch me.
“Now speak.”
His voice was a stammer when he found it, so off kilter was he thrown, eyes darting from her face to her hands. His questions came in broken tone – the usual things, sordid and mundane: Movements, flight patterns, crimes.
Aleethia answered them with the barest of phrases, simple drabs of words that flitted from her lips like lies as she removed armour and parted leather, her fingers quick and firm with purpose. As she grasped his cock his questions stopped and his breath was loud within her ears. With the first touch of her tongue, he came to moaning...
...And what better use for a man’s voice was there, than that?
It was not the first time, nor would it be the last that she had touched a man so, and as her mouth fell around his length, he was naught but silk unto her tongue. She purred a moan, eyes fluttering closed as she felt the muscles of his body clench beneath her touch, felt him twitch within her mouth.
This was what power tasted like.
His knuckles were white upon the chair, as her lips slid over him and vaguely, as though from far away, she heard him swear – a deep, guttural sound that she wished to draw from him again and again. Her hand followed the motions of her mouth, grasping his length in tandem as her tongue worked around him.
Already she could taste salt and bitter liquid.
There was arousal heavy in her gut as she used him so – curling about her body in a dull, slow build up of heat that made her thighs tight as he arched beneath her touch. He was simply noise – whine and moans and pleas as his fingers grasped unto the chair and his hips jerked into the waiting wetness of her mouth, stilled only by her hand.
She watched with hot eyes as he unravelled.
His cum was thick and hot as it slid down her throat and she swallowed, drawing back with an indelicate swiped of her lips upon her sleeve (the shirt was for the wash regardless). Standing, she towered over him – this panting, spent mess of a man - and curled her lip.
“Clean yourself up and take your leave. You gain not your quarry this day.”
It was two weeks hence that Aleethia Daniza Roi Bunansa had returned unto Archades - unto it's gilded walls and it's dour faced peoples, unto it's jewel toned dresses and greyed street ears. It had been two weeks of camping within the Old town, feet hesitant to travel anywhere near Tsenoble.
It was not so much fear, as it was weary hesitation. It was a second guessing of her character, borne of two years in the sky, away from the land in which she had grown. It would be a lie to say there was not fear there, but it did not consume her, as it once had, and in that she marveled at the measure by which she had grown. For Mathias still lay within Tsenoble, still found himself Judge, she was sure. But he was not the driving force behind her hesitation and for that she was glad.
Becoming Balthier had only served to make her stronger, and for that she was immeasurably glad.
Rather it was the hesitation to approach her family that kept her feet upon the grounds of the poor. Her father she knew would welcome her back with open arms, laughter, and a bid for tales of the sky (Silly man should take to it again, for all he missed it - such was plain in his missives. The ground suited Judge Bunansa ill). Her uncle, however...
She had been dogged by spies of the 9th since first she had made her debut as pirate, and knew, in surety, it was her uncle's doing. Gabranth, for all he needed to watch the pirate, needed also to watch the girl, and in that Aleethia wondered what he thought of the woman she had become.
For she had sent her messages plain, and played well her games with his agents - foolish men, so easily bought to heel.
It was shock, then, that found her as she slid into the (now) opened door of his manse, picks and tools secreted unto her pockets with ease. Gabranth's home was spartan, but familiar in a way that made warmth swell in her chest as she trailed her fingers along paneled oak and embroidered cloth.
He would be home soon, she knew, for his habits held him late at the Judiciary, bound within his work as always. Absently, she wondered if he would be mad at her entry - so obtrusive - yet there was no other way for it to be played. The Judiciary was to obvious, and whilst she had her father's panache, she lacked yet his skill for evaision, carried upon Fran's fleet feet.
With a sigh, she folded unto one of his chairs, feet tucked beneath her like the child she had been whence last she had walked these halls.
Taking the miniature portrait of Aleethia off his desk had been one of the hardest things Gabranth had had to do in recent years. The spot where it had once sat seemed incredibly empty. Then again, the portrait was in no danger of arousing suspicion from inside the drawer of his nightstand. Aleethia had matured much from the endearingly awkward teenager in the portrait, but her face was on every other wanted poster for the sky pirate Balthier and Gabranth would take no chances of her being recognized.
Every time a Judge of the 9th Bureau entered his office with news of Balthier, he was reminded how glad he was that he had made the sacrifice to forgo his only memento of his niece. On one such day, several weeks after his fifty-first birthday, the news on the search for the pirate was particularly grave… so grave that the Judge giving the report was trembling as he stood before his commanding officer’s desk.
"H-He escaped, Your Honor."
"Of course he escaped," Gabranth replied, but his tone was not nearly as harsh or menacing as it usually was whenever the topic of conversation was the failures of his bureau. It had been two years since the sky pirate Balthier’s unexpected return to his life of crime and debauchery, and the Empire could hardly so much as track his footsteps. Balthier - Thia - was making them all look like fools. "What else?"
The Judge swallowed hard. “I managed to catch up with him in Rabanastre.”
Gabranth blinked in surprise. For no more than a moment, his stomach clenched. What if this man had seen something? What if he knew? “You neglected to mention this detail in your preliminary report, Masterson.”
Judge Masterson nodded. “I meant to lie in wait for him at the Sandsea. Fran, the viera, had gone to the Muthru Bazaar to do some shopping. Balthier was finishing his drink, or so I thought. Their gear was still in the room they had rented for the night. I figured, well, neither of them would be going anywhere…”
This tale can only end poorly, Gabranth thought.
"I don’t know how it happened; he was waiting for me. He walked into the room, stared straight at me… I tried to run, but he started talking. He knew I was from the 9th, and he said something to that effect. Asked me my name. I didn’t tell him. But then he tied me up, and-" Judge Masterson’s words were cut off by a tiny choking sound.
"Out with it, Masterson."
"He…" Masterson’s gaze darted wildly around the room for several minutes, as though contemplating making a quick escape. Then his shoulders sagged, and he hung his head in shame. "He… performed fellatio on me."
Gabranth actually held his face in his hands for at least a minute before he had the energy to respond. For all his trepidation to reveal his sultry encounter with the legendary sky pirate Balthier, Masterson did not bear any signs of a man violated. If anything, he was going through some sort of sexual identity crisis, one brought about by Gabranth’s own niece. If only he knew.
"Very well," said Gabranth. "Not a word of this will be spoken outside of this room." It was a promise on his part more than anything else, but Masterson gave a salute and immediately left the office, cheeks burning all the while.
Beautiful flintlock pistol with ornately carved ivory stock, late 17th century.
The barrel and lock, marked signed “Lamotte Ainé St.Etienne”, features elaborate engraving work and gold inlays decorated with oriental trophies, a portrait medallion, a warrior in armour and entwined monsters. The stock is made from a single piece of elephant ivory that is delicately carved featuring a pommel shaped like a warriors head with helmet. The stock and furnishing originate from Maastrict, Netherlands, which between 1650 and 1690 produced only 100 ivory furnished pistols of a similar type.
.38 Colt Police Positive with elaborate gold damascened decorating and pearl grips. Grip is inscribed “Pres.V.Huerta Fr Amb H.L. Wilson”,indicating it was a presentation from U. S. Ambassador to President Victoriano Huerta of Mexico.
Gabranth had much to speak of with Aleethia that day, and he chose not to prolong the niceties to make the purpose of their meeting more palatable. He had invited her to a midday lunch the week prior and had been anticipating the event since then with a mix of eagerness and dread. As Thia strode through the door, walked behind his desk, and bent over his shoulder to plant a kiss on his cheek, he told himself that he would not go easy on her, no matter how happy he was to see her.
"It has been some time," he replied, turning back to his work in an attempt to finish off one last paragraph before he put his documents away for a few hours. "How was your holiday?"
Thia plopped herself down in the closest of many armchairs throughout the room. “Quite lovely, as always.”
"Hamish and Del, they are in good health?" Gabranth took a genuine interest in the couple. Hamish had been of Landis, after all, and there were so few of them left that Gabranth felt a sort of muted kinship toward the man.
"They are," Thia replied.
There was silence then as Gabranth returned to reading the missive before him. Thia was not perturbed by this behavior in the least; she had grown up understanding that her Uncle Gabranth was not a particularly sociable man, and that his duties as Judge Magister always took precedence over any and all personal matters.
When at last he filed away the report, he looked up at Thia and studied her. She was but seventeen, yet she could easily pass for a fully-grown young woman. She had much of her father’s face, but more still of her mother’s, and she was beautiful beyond reckoning.
Oh, how he worried for her.
“You are engaged to be married,” he said, and it was not a question.
Rozarria was and always would be a place close to her heart. It was a land rich with colour, food and dance – here the arts were not quiet things studied in halls and left in darkness. They were bright, encouraged and allowed to strut beneath the sun to be revelled in as they were meant to be. Its towers reached the sky in lazy white forms, covered in the patterns of mosaic and stone and she found herself catching her breath as she stood ensconced in Ambervale’s sun and sound.
Archadian raised, Aleethia has always felt Rozarrian deep within her heart. Though this was a strange Rozarria, one from half remembered dreams and childhood play – a city of her past and she trod within it reverently. Her ship – a Shiva MK2, pilfered from an Archadian force about 3,000 miles east – was moored within the Aerodrome, plates changed and security locking re programmed in the hopes it would not be caught.
The Strahl, her Strahl, remained where it belonged, in her father’s hands sixteen years from now.
It left her feeling bereft that ship which had been her home for so many years past now lay once more within it’s creators hands, and not her own. Instead she was alone, with a stolen Archadian cruiser and a small amount of out dated gill within her pockets.
She felt like a specter as she walked, eyes catching on fashions she had long forgotten, and sights that in her own time would never be seen again. Wary as her step was, it was with slow order that she made her way along the city streets, head held high, for all her clothes (borrowed from a wardrobe not her own, and haphazardly tailored to fit) felt ill about her frame, feminine as they appeared, and foreign unto her: the skirt swirled about her legs in the breeze, catching upon her sandals – Dalmascan, as were the rest of her clothes and half a size too big.
