Possibly the funniest thing about Honey B Lovely is that the more you learn about her the more you realize that her character was rigorously crafted in an Arcadion lab to be the ultimate wrestling heel.
-her persona is a powertripping idol singer throwing tantrums and demanding affection from the audience
-her fused soul is a stinging insect
-her primary attack is charming opponents to leave them wide open for cheap shots, an easy way to "cheat" her way to victory
-her secondary gimmick is slinging venom around the area, poison being typically themed as a coward's weapon
-her themesong is an overproduced pop earworm sung in a high register
-not least of all, her persona includes "queen" status in a society that has a popular female monarch
This woman was primed from minute one to walk out and holler into the mic "where's my AFFECTIONATE little bees?" and put a hand to her ear to luxuriate in a stadium full of boos.
Except they failed.
People loved the new girl. By the end of night one the Arcadion crowd had a stomp-stomp "QUEEN BEE" chant going. By the beginning of night two people were holding up I'M STUNG and DAT ABDOMEN signs. Attempts to reinforce her heel status just backfired further as insulting her fans as "drones" had them latch onto the title. A video "leaked" of Metem telling her to turn the pheromones down got facemasks thrown at the announcer booth the night after.
Until in the end the Arcadion basically had no choice but to roll over and support the new queen of the ring.
writing the charter for a pirate fleet in 40k but I have to do it from the standpoint of a man that doesn't like to use any more words than necessary
1. Don’t shoot each other.
2. Listen to [our ship coordinator] in a void fight.
3. Shipmasters can run their boats as they please.
4. If two shipmasters can’t agree on loot they must ask for a tribunal of three other shipmasters to decide between them. Names get drawn from a helmet (not by a psyker).
5. Space Marines don’t get extra votes. If you want to take pride in being a Space Marine go rejoin the Space Marines.
6. Ships are allowed to leave and rejoin the Vultures if you’re up front about it and don’t bring trouble.
7. Qualifiers for joining the Vultures have to be known in advance.
8. Staying in this fleet is contingent on offering support to other ships so do what you’re good at.
9. Xenos are allowed if they behave.
One thing I'd like to see from Dawntrail patch content is some kind of "Labors of Bakool Ja Ja" side chain or MSQ subplot where Bakool Ja Ja retraces the steps of the Succession journey and does some community work.
Ok'hanu
Where he attempted to steal the Ihih'hana festival float and threatened violence when opposed.
Reparation: Gathering reeds and learning to weave new roofs for the hanu hanu buildings, which teaches delicacy and respect for the work put in to maintain their homes. In specific he works with Linuhanu and Wuk Evu to ensure he gets the job done right.
Wachunpelo
We didn't see his work here, but I wouldn't put it past Bakool Ja Ja to hear "bring me an alpaca from the valley" and immediately use his bulk and strength to forcibly carry back a screaming, spitting, terrified animal that needs serious pacification.
Reparation: Herding a group of Tobli's alpacas from Wachunpelo to Miplu's Mate Garden to pick up a shipment of mate leaves and bringing them back without them spitting on anyone. Contributes to the pelu pelu love of trade and their care for their animals.
Earthenshire
Where he failed to bring in any returning or new Potsworn. (He also tried to fight Zoraal Ja and kidnapped Wuk Lamat, but that's part of the game.)
Reparation: It's probably too late to recruit new Potsworn by now, so maybe something to do with crafting, I'm fuzzy on this one. Maybe helping the moblins talk to the independent crafters at Cracked Cistern?
Worlar's Echo
The big one; not only did he fail to climb Worqor Zormor and fight Gurfurlur, he loosed Valigarmanda on the world putting untold lives in danger.
Reparation: I like the idea of Gurfurlur tasking him with taking up a big load of stone and the pair of them climbing the mountain together, martial arts master & student style; once at the top Gurfulur has him use the stone to build a sepulcher and directs him to carve Yok Huy runes into it which turn out to tell the tale of how he freed Valigarmanda, how he changed the course of history for Mamook and defended Tuliyollal. And then they fight, natch.
Iq Br'aax
Another big debacle. Failing the cooking challenge for one, but more importantly kidnapping the Elector Hunmu Rruk and threatening his life.
Reparation: I like the idea of him redoing the cooking. Dawntrail is enamored of its food and usage of it in storytelling, and giving the blessed siblings a chance to cook real xibruq pibil (with the challenge being to cook enough for everyone in the village) maybe even with Hunmu Rruk stepping in to help, seems a good way to revisit this part of the plot with a healing metaphor.
Mamook
My instinct is to say there's nothing for him to do here; after all we had a whole plot about him helping Wuk Lamat pull the Mamool Ja hardliners away from their obsession with blessed siblings. Add to that the way his father the Autarch bullied him and this was already where Bakool Ja Ja really started his face turn.
Reparation: A part of me still likes the idea that he asks the Autarch to resummon the shade of Gulool Ja Ja for a fight and although it's close, he's losing until the three mamool ja he was previously traveling with jump into the fight to help him and they win together; and together they all bury the hatchet on how crappy they all were to each other.
Tuliyollal
You squashed our tacos. >:(
Reparation: Dinner at the Xbalyav Ty'e to conclude the quest chain.
The psyker's forearms had been replaced by simple augments - unadorned pipes leading to basic manipulators with fingers like cleaning rods that mimicked the shape of human hands. They sat limp in the man's lap. Apart from the occasional slow blink, he'd made no move to shift position for some time, his head rested against the back wall of the cell. He was a rangy thing, tall and lean, his long, unshaven face marked by pocks as if from terrible acne scars or perchance some manner of shrapnel, cheeks lined by reddened tear tracks. His hair was grayed. At a glance one might have pinned him as a man in his fifties, a tragic fate for one nine and twenty.
The man that pulled out the chair opposite and sat in it was much the opposite, blocky and square-faced, his eyes hidden by shaded lenses. The psyker showed little reaction as the Inquisitor pulled himself up to the table and set a dataslate atop a stand where both men could view the screen.
He pushed a button and a scene began to play, the sound filtered through the speakers barely loud enough to be heard. Gunfire flashed through the vista of a battlefield, the camra centered upon the figure of a man fallen to his knees. His arms were outstretched, though not in welcome but rather in horror, his hands clawed as if struggling to grapple with some monumental force.
Then it leaned into view. An abomination. A thing that should not have been. A long, inhuman face of horn and bone and cartilage and long, scythelike teeth, eyes glowing with a malevolence felt even through the small datascreen. A face large enough it could have been mounted to one of the Imperium's knight-titans, jaws parting as the bio-form closed in on the comparatively miniscule human. As its mouth opened, it began to howl, an unearthly sound of bone-chilling vibration that filled the world and made the dataslate's speakers crackle and between the two figures the air could be seen to waver and sizzle as invisible forces pushed-
The Inquisitor jabbed another button and the scene froze. All throughout the playback, his unseen eyes had been locked to the figure across the table. He had studied the footage more than was sufficient to commit the scene to memory. The psyker had reacted to the display, at least to the extent that his own dull, sunken eyes had risen to watch the footage play out.
"Tell me what you felt," Kryptman said.
Long moments passed in silence as the psyker's eyes drooped, bobbed upwards again, drooped once more. Kryptman didn't hurry him, watching his every twitch in the silence of the too-warm room as the seconds slid languidly by. Finally, a parting of the lips, a subtle swallow. "Mm...mfelt like," the man murmured in a dry voice, speaking as if for first time in his life, "I wwas..." blink "...an algae. Beinng... swallowed by a whale." A blink. A breath. "A whale that...hh-hhated me," he said, voice shuddering, "ffor being...too small t'be worth the effort. T-too small for the hunger it had, like...it could eat and eat and never stop eating, and it was desperate to have me even though it hated how worthless I was because it had to have me and anything else that could feed it because it was so hungry and it hated that I was the next thing to eat."
Like a tumbling rock down a mountainside, the psyker's speech had gathered speed and clarity until it abruptly seemed to reach the end and shut off. All throughout his tone was gray, exhausted.
Kryptman waited for several seconds more before resuming the playback. He knew what came next - the norn emissary miraculously subsumed in a tidal wave of fire and smoke as the rocket artillery dropped, even at the moment the camra picked up the distinctive wobble in the air around the psyker's outstretched hands. By some miracle of chance, the camra had stayed in place to continue recording as the smoke and dust cleared, a hazy outline of the psyker still knelt in place, hands held out before him, a crescent of clean ground around his body. It had continued to record until the reinforcements had found him, still rooted to the spot, arms necrotized up to the elbow by psychic permafrost.
Inquisitor Kryptman didn't wait for it all to play out. Instead he pressed buttons on the slate that stopped the footage and restarted it, but this time the gunfire was muted, all but inaudible. Instead a man's labored breathing could be heard as if he heaved directly into the pickup. This time, as the terrifying face of the norn emissary leaned close, a whisper could be heard at the edge of sound, entreating "Emperor protect me...Emperor...protect...me, Emperor..." The voice of the man that sat opposite him now.
He jabbed the button to pause the footage once more. "You called out to the God-Emperor," he said. "Do you credit His intercession for your survival?"
Once more the psyker's eyes wavered, and this time as the moments passed the corners of his mouth began to tremble. "No," the man croaked. "I couldn't feel Him. There was just Her. There was only Her." He began to sob, lifting his pipe-shaped augments from his lap and pressing the cleaning-rod fists to his eyes.
Inquisitor Kryptman deactivated his slate, gathered up the damning evidence, and left the room.
The interior of the thunderhawk was dark, the passenger hold illuminated only by strip lighting.
The giant figures of the Sigil Knights had been strapped and locked into their individual seats, most of them subjecting their wargear to a last once-over before deployment. The serfs passed among them to perform final checks of the space marines' harnesses, ensuring that none of them would spring loose should the thunderhawk need to engage in defensive maneuvers.
As he passed the figure with the blue shoulder plate, one serf paused in mid-step. None would gainsay it if he went on without speaking...but he had taken the bet, and refused to renege no matter how stupid it might be. "Your pardon, ma'am," he said with a bit of a cough. The space marine's faceplate came up in a sharp, unmistakably surprised motion as being addressed. "Pray forgive an impertinent question, but to settle a wager - are women among the Night Lords ever referred to as Night La-hnk."
This last noise was issued as the armored figure had raised a hand and, with surprising deftness, pinched the serf just beneath his nose and used that pressure to lift his face until the man stood on his toes. Ceramite-clad fingers that could crush a windpipe with ease squeezed just enough to keep the man prisoner by the philtrum like a fish on a hook, and he wisely said nothing as the moment stretched out for one heartbeat, then a second, and a third. The man's fellow serfs were frozen in fear and indecision. In the belly of the thunderhawk, time itself seemed to pause for breath.
"Night. Lord. Remember," said a whisper that seemed too quiet to issue from such a hulking figure. Then the serf was released as abruptly as he'd been seized.
He stumbled back, instinctively rubbing his nose where he'd been pinched and nodding, hastily bowing as he stepped away. "Yes milady, of course, of course," he murmured as he went, eyes darting from one seated figure to another to see the reaction of the other Astartes. Several of them had looked up during the confrontation, but upon seeing that the VIII Legionary intended no further bodily harm to the servant, their attention was returned to their own wargear. In particular he glanced towards the figure seated in the officer's position at the head of the chamber, but the Astartes with the white 'U' shape upon one shoulder showed no sign of having noticed the situation at all.
A Varis zos Galvus backstory fic, spinning off from the Tales From the Shadows story 'Through His Eyes.' What does a young Varis yae Galvus do with his grandfather's cryptic remark that what disappoints him most about his grandson is "your body?"
It all came out in a rush, an uncharacteristically impulsive act.
Other nineteen-year-olds might have a history of asking impulsive questions of their grandfather. Other nineteen-year-olds, however, were not a Crown Prince of Garlemald. Still, the words came so quickly that they were out of his mouth before he even realized that he had spoken.
"What is it about me that displeases you so?"
It was a petulant outburst, as good as the stamping of a foot by a child, and Varis' sense of dignity regretted the lapse the instant it passed. Even at the same time, however, a part of him was secretly pleased by the demand. No matter how foolishly asked, perhaps now that the words had been spoken aloud he could finally receive some clarity. He had excelled in his training. He had performed admirably in his first command, minor though it was. His mistakes had been few in number and well within the bounds of acceptable oversights by the standards of the Garlean army. Here, perhaps, was finally his chance to learn what facet of his behavior had garnered the Emperor's disapproval, what error he had committed-
"Your body," came the grumbled response.
Varis tottered briefly on his feet as if a sudden gale-force wind had struck him in his chest. He might even have uttered a plaintive "what...?" in his confusion. Of all responses, he had not, could not have expected... He suddenly felt his face flush as he realized he had indeed spoken aloud once more, the second uncontrolled outburst in as many minutes, and without further hesitation he turned on his heel and fairly fled the presence of his sovereign without so much as a by-your-leave, surely the most hideous of his errors yet. The Emperor said nothing more, however, and let the young man go without further comment.
Varis blinked. He was standing at the balcony of the palace's central tower, his hands gripped tightly at the railing. He had only a dim memory of how he'd gotten there - striding with almost military purpose through the halls and out the doorway to the exterior retreat. His lungs filled themselves with the cold air of the coming autumn, and something about the sensation made it easier to loosen his hands, merely resting them atop the rail rather than clutching it like some manner of lifeline. The sky outside was blue, dotted with a mere few patchwork clouds, and the capitol stretched out before him, glinting in the sunlight. Beyond the city itself could be seen the snow-capped peaks in the distance, shining pristine white.
Despite the beauty of the day, the sight of Garlemald in all her glory brought little comfort to the young man. A part of him could not help but wonder, suddenly, if there was some flaw in it that he had not previously thought upon. That there might not be some hidden weakness. For surely if he himself were subject to such an oversight-
"I did not expect to find you here of all people, Varis," a voice interrupted his thoughts.
Varis turned his head a little too quickly to be casual in reaction to the sudden intrusion. A moment later he stood up a little straighter and offered a nod of greeting. "Senator."
Titus yae Galvus came onto the balcony more slowly than his nephew had done, a concession to the way his movement was restricted by his lame right leg, upon which side he leaned on his cane. Despite being only a single remove from one another, Varis and his uncle did not look much alike. The young man had taken much from his mother, most strikingly her fair hair, but had inherited the golden eyes of his father, and by extension, his grandfather the Emperor. Titus was a near reversal, receiving from Solus zos Galvus a head of thick, black hair, but had his mother's blue eyes. Were it not for a bit of the shape of the face, perhaps, they would never have been mistaken for family.
"It's good to see you, nephew," Titus said as he joined Varis at the railing. "Though I expected you to be at that audience about Tchita."
Varis felt the frown grow once more, and turned his head away to look out over the city once more. "I chose to...forego attending," he said, knowing his avoidance was a childish act, piled atop his other childish behaviors of the day.
There was a long moment in which the only sounds were the wind and the stirring of the two mens' clothes. "You present the expression of a man with deep concerns," Titus said finally.
Varis tightened his lower lip. "It is nothing to trouble any besides myself, Senator."
"Varis," Titus said a bit sharply, and when Varis turned his head his uncle had tilted his head slightly, looking at the younger man with disapproval in a way that mimicked the Emperor's own expression. "There are no others in attendance for whom you must maintain imperturbability." The older man's face softened slightly and he leaned atop his cane, the shifting of his posture giving Varis a few more inches between them. "Talk to me," he urged.
Varis tapped one canine tooth against the other, and became vaguely aware that he had to stop himself scraping a thumb against the railing in idle motions. "I was...considering something that the Emperor said to me, earlier," he finally admitted.
"What happened?"
"I..." Varis took a breath, sighed it out. "I grew short with him. I asked him what it was about me that so disappointed him."
He was treated to the sight of his uncle's brows shooting skyward. "And what did he say?"
Varis tightened his hands on the railing once more, forcing the words out of him. "He said to me 'your body.' And I do not know what he means."
Another moment of nothing more than wind and rustling fabric. Then Titus let out an unguarded snort, huffing out a breath that was plainly the prelude to a laugh which had been aborted. "He said that to you, did he?"
Varis turned his head to regard his uncle directly, golden eyes narrowed. Though he was near two decades younger than Titus, such a response was not a thing to be passed over without comment. "Begging your pardon, Senator, at the risk of bruising my own ego, is there some obvious deficiency about me that all my family has seen and I have not?"
Titus hurriedly waved a hand and shook his head as he gathered his breath. "No, no Varis, it's not that. Ahem. Forgive me, I didn't mean to imply that I was laughing at you." Titus briefly lifted his hand to pat Varis at the back of his nearer shoulder before letting it drop once more. "I was taken by surprise, rather, because frankly I would never have expected him to say it to you of all people."
Varis blinked. "...he has said such things to others?"
"Oh yes," Titus nodded. The Senator gave him a wry smile and clapped a hand softly against his bad leg. "To me, of course, on multiple occasions. To several of his generals, more than one of the household courtiers. Supposedly he even once said it of his lady wife, though he was deep in his cups at the time, and certainly never repeated it to her face."
"What..." Varis felt his confusion swelling as he sought to puzzle out this behavioral quirk of the Emperor's of which he had never known. "What does he mean by it?"
"Hm. Well," Titus dithered for a moment. "Of course, not many people are willing to call him out directly, and he has a ready-made excuse in my case, but...if you want my thoughts on the matter," Titus hesitated.
"I do," Varis prompted, recognizing that the Senator was looking for such a cue.
"Here's my theory, nephew," Titus said, resting both hands atop his cane. "Solus-" Varis briefly flinched at his uncle's casualness, "has spent the better part of his life extolling the great virtues of the Garlean race. Year after year, speech after speech, always returning to the same idea over and over again. The history of our exile, the mark of the third eye, so on and so forth."
Varis found himself frowning once more at Titus' cavalier description of their people. "As is only right," he said carefully.
Titus blinked his blue eyes as the words interrupted whatever flow of thought he'd been having at the moment and then nodded quickly. "Of course, of course. But I think for Solus it's become rather an obsession. All this time he's spent building an idealized picture of the perfect Garlean race that he's become quite enamored of it, perhaps to the point that he's unable to reconcile the image with the real thing."
"You think the Emperor has gone mad?" Varis whispered as horror clawed into his heart.
"What? No, no, not at all," Titus said hurriedly, frowning. "Merely that in his head he's constantly measuring people against this ideal standard he's spent so much time building. And the thing about ideals is that when you measure flesh and blood against impossibly lofty ambitions, people can't help but fail. A scar on the face, an unruly head of hair. A bad leg," he added with another of his wry smiles.
"So, you say he's become...unreasonable in his expectation," Varis said slowly. Something about the idea troubled him, but he could not puzzle out what. "That there is...nothing a reasonable man would find wrong with me, but that he has...created some flaw, in his own mind?"
"A fair way of putting it. Perhaps you cut your hair too short once, or you smiled too slowly on some occasion, and it's set him off for good. It's the kind of behavior which in the lowborn is deemed 'instability' while amongst the powerful is called 'eccentricity.'" Titus smiled, but he forestalled Varis voicing his own thoughts on that matter when his breath came out in a sigh. "And if I must be truthful, I think part of it was the loss of your father."
Varis felt himself brought up short, his chest tight. "How...do you mean?"
Titus was silent for a long moment. Varis saw the motion of the man's tongue behind his cheek and recognized a reflection of his own reluctance to speak on matters near the heart. "Did you know," he finally said, "when your father and I were young, he once dreamed of being Princeps Senatus?"
Varis blinked. "I did not."
"Oh yes," Titus said with a nostalgic smile. "The Emperor's firstborn son, the voice of the people. Growing up we imagined ourselves as the two halves of Garlemald's strength. He the speaker and I the arm by which the will of the Senate would be carried out. I made little medals out of some household detritus and repurposed a chair leg as a gunblade."
Varis felt the world shift a bit beneath him. "You imagined yourself a military man?"
Titus laughed heartily. "I know, it's almost absurd to think about nowadays, isn't it? But then I took that little tumble when I was nine," he idly tapped the butt of his cane against the floor, "and everything changed. Truth be told I think it would have worked out this way in any case. Your grandfather had ambitions for your father and bade him pursue more martial dreams. Everything was falling into place, just so." Titus' smile left him and he sighed. "Then that damned sickness struck. Despite everything - his previous good health, all the best chirurgeons, even those magic-using healers, he was taken away so quickly."
Varis felt his head bow a little bit as the slowly-dimming memories of his father went by.
"Sorry. Dwelling too much upon it," Titus said with brisk pace Varis knew was forced. "I think our father never quite reconciled all his hopes and dreams against that loss. I think it was the one thing in an Emperor's life he couldn't control, and now no one can measure up to the idealizations of the past." He paused, as if the subject had taken so much of his energy he needed a moment to recuperate. "In any case. Don't dwell overlong on such disparagement, Varis," he said. "Men - even Garleans - aren't meant to fit an ideal mold, and nothing good comes from trying to force them into it."
Varis felt his earlier puzzlement unlock itself into a sudden answer, and he scowled. "If the Emperor had not set us such a lofty standard to rally the people, Garlemald would still be a landlocked province of no renown and no destiny," he said sharply.
Titus blinked and turned his head quickly, the vehemence taking him by surprise. "Of course, there is truth in that," he said. "But one must be careful that one separates the difference between beliefs and reality."
Varis pushed back slightly from the railing. "I thank you for your counsel, Senator," he said. "It will no doubt give me much to think on. For now, your observation that I have ejected myself from the very audience I returned home to attend-"
"Now, Varis, hold on a moment-"
"-is equally important. It has been a pleasure speaking with you in regards to family, but regardless of their reasonability I do have responsibilities to uphold."
Titus frowned. "Very well, Centurion," he said with stiff formality. "I hope we shall chance to meet again before you are called away once more."
Varis nodded and said some agreement before he left the balcony, leaving his uncle there to contemplate their conversation. In truth, despite his abrupt departure Varis did find himself coming back to the Senator's words on the matter of ideals clashing with reality. However it was oft interrupted by the rest of the day's business, throughout which the Crown Prince successfully kept his personal feelings buried beneath the mask of professionalism, even crossing paths with his Imperial grandfather once more and exchanging nods with the man.
As the day's light sank into the west, he departed the palace and returned to the more comfortable familiarity of military surroundings, though he was still troubled by thoughts of the morning's exchanges. The blunt, if cryptic statement of the Emperor as well as the altogether more vivid but equally opaque musings of his uncle. They continued to echo in his mind, bracketing him with a poor choice of options. Discount the opinion of the Emperor himself and take refuge in recognition of the audacity, or else pay it mind and perhaps never truly meet an impossible standard.
He was holding his chin in his hand, scratching at his cheek with a thumbnail as he walked with more slow a pace than was his norm, finding himself at the entrance to the practice ring and the figure that stood within. Varis could not help but smile to see his friend Regula - Regula oen Hydrus, now - practicing at his sword-work. The man was heedless of his blind eyes, reliant on his pureblood third to guide him through the feats necessary for any man to triumph in the contest of the ring.
"I would hazard a guess that your own dreams have been termed 'impossible' more than once," he said aloud as he entered the room and began to shrug his formal coat from his shoulders.
"Hmm?" Regula turned in the direction of his voice, cocking his head slightly. "Naturally. Something on your mind?"
"Tell me, what have you done in the past, when I or any other listened to your declarations of ambition and declared them 'unreasonable?'" Varis questioned as he selected a sword and shield from the racks.
Regula smiled. "Charged past you to show you more the fool, of course," he replied, stepping back and readying himself as Varis entered the ring opposite.
"Indeed," Varis agreed, feeling more himself than he had since early that morning. "We are not such subtle creatures as they who fill the halls of the capitol. Instead we meet our detraction head-on and show it for the foolishness that it is."
"Aye," agreed the other man, and the two promptly lost themselves in an altogether more familiar clash of wills.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Kidnapping of Reis Duelar
Of late I've been following an LP of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, a game I never quite managed to find the time to play for myself and while I've been enjoying it immensely, I found myself sufficiently peeved at the suddenly and rather graceless moment of writing wherein dragonkin lady Reis gets abruptly kidnapped offscreen to prompt her fiance Beowulf to come riding to her rescue.
I felt like Reis deserved the chance to do some damage.
(AO3 link)
.........................
The wind that swept over the plains of Lionel was a chill one, but the lady that stood atop the battlements seemed unbothered by it. Though it ruffled her long skirts and blew her pale hair back from her face and shoulders, she showed no sign of discomfiture as her brown eyes scanned the horizon. It was strange, the lady reflected - strange to look over the vast expanse of Ivalice and see only the beauty of the land. One could take in such a sight for hours and never so much as think on the troubles that plagued the kingdom, troubles with which she had intimately become experienced. Troubles that reached up to claim her as she finally turned from the beautiful sight and made to follow her fiancé down the crumbling steps to the bottom of the hill.
As with many great troubles, it was first announced with a sound deceptively soft - the sizzle of a teleportation spell. "Your pardon."
Reis Duelar jolted to a halt mid-step, her nerves jangling. A moment ago she had been alone atop the battlement, but with the passing of an instant she had been joined by a unwelcome amount of equally unwelcome company - ten assorted men and women, most in the garb of thieves and assassins, a pair in the long robes ubiquitous to Ivalice's spellcasters, and one bedecked in armor and armed with sword and shield. This last seemed familiar to her, but he wasted no time on explanations: "take her."
The rogues surged forward, grasping hands outstretched, and Reis had time for little more than a hasty "what do you-? Release me!" A set of words that had been spoken time and again in Ivalice's history, the setting for many a hostage-taking amongst rich and poor alike, but a sharp-eared listener might have taken warning on this occasion - rather than fear, the woman in the dress spoke words colored by anger. Even as the kidnappers rushed her, the lady loosened her hold on the strap to the purse she carried and whipped it in an arc. It should have been some cruel jest, the last resort of the desperate lady of gentle breeding, but when the lovingly-crafted bag connected with the side of one man's head there was a sharp crack to the impact and that worthy dropped to the stone as neatly as it an arrow had found his heart.
Even as she struck him down, Reis was swarmed by the rest, arms curling around her limbs with a determination to pin the lady down. "Come on, love," said a woman on her right arm, "don't make this harder than it needs-"
If one might have asked the veteran thief what she saw at that moment, she might have described the pit that opened in her stomach watching the blonde woman's face turn her way, eyes shimmering with unearthly power as a dreadful light built from behind her teeth. Such words would have been the last coherent sounds one ever heard from the rogue, as a moment later her world was enveloped in flame that stole the very breath from her lungs, and the goal of taking the woman's arm was forgotten in favor of finding breath to scream. Behind her, the second rogue, who had grappled with Reis' wrist to ensure another swing of that deadly handbag could not follow, let go in haste to slap at the patches of flame that had washed over his comrade to find him in turn. Reis hauled in her left arm as much as she could and gracelessly punched with her right, a blow that found one woman's nose with a crack of bone and spray of blood.
Amidst the mounting chaos of what had supposed to have been a simple in-grab-out task, the man dressed as a knight elbowed the mage next him. "Well?"
That worthy shook his head to clear it and threw up both his hands. "Sleep!" he commanded.
Reis suddenly felt the world grow distant, dull as if a warm cloth had been wrapped around her head. Briefly disoriented, she stumbled back a step and wavered before, seething, she grit her teeth and growled, lifting one foot despite the way two of the attackers had tangled themselves in her long dress to seize her legs and putting it down to the result of a fresh crunch of bone and a yowl of pain from one of them.
"Sleep!" the mage emphasized, and from the other side of the watching knight his counterpart raised a hand and added "Stop."
Reis Duelar paused, wavered once more, managed one final glower through bleary eyes, and finally toppled to the ground with a crash not unlike a great redwood tree.
Aliste shook his head. "Take her. Go," he commanded. With the struggle ended he could hear the sound of clanging sabatons coming up the crumbling stone construction. The woman that had been burned was no longer screaming, and the man that had been first struck likewise lay silent on the ground. One of the living rogues sported a freshly broken nose, whilst another whimpered and favored the broken arm that had been stomped upon, and still a third remained busied slapping at patches of flame that were slowly losing the stubborn battle to remain alight. Still, it was all well as the mages performed the incantations to spirit away the entire mess of bodies, living and dead alike, leaving Aliste alone atop the battlements. He breathed in, breathed out a short breath, and cleared his throat as the familiar face of the knight came charging up the stairs.
“You managed to mass produce a functioning personal planetary assault frame?”
“Those? Yeah, we call 'em the drop troopers. Based on old pre-FTL lingo. You don’t have them?”
“We could never solve the problem of the neurological connection. Our operators would develop irreconcilable dysmorphia - inability to recognize the difference between their own limbs and those of the machine. After several failed trials we chose to focus on high-atmospheric maneuverables.”
“Oh, the phantom body problem. Yeah we ran into that too. Solved it by mandating limb removal.”
“You…what?”
“Once a candidate’s passed the exams - reflexes, good character, mental fortitude, all that - they sign a couple papers and off come the arms and legs. Removed at the ball joints. Then you can nerve-link them direct to the machine and the brain gets used to thinking of the mech limbs as a new set, no more confused neural paths. Made it easier to fit the cockpit, to boot. Between deployments they wear a harness they can wheel around.”
“What if the frame is damaged in the field?”
“Well, the thing about that is the eggheads ran the numbers and if a frame gets hit hard enough to disable it, ninety seven times out of a hundred that’ll kill the pilot anyway, so we wrote some field rescue procedures just in case and that was that.”
“We see. What of those who…muster out, is it?”
“Oh, well you see, the service provides every veteran drop trooper a lifelong guarantee of functioning prosthetics. Most of them get to stick with the same set their whole lives and it never needs replacing. The funny part is some of 'em actually say they miss the frame more than the originals. Amazing what the human brain can adapt do, isn’t it? Oh, no offense, any brain, surely.”
