Session 10 - The Train's On Time, But Orrey's Clocking Out Early

Previously, across the Horizon… At Isa’s urging, the party decided on a course of action. They would travel together for a while longer, and they would follow the suggestion Cid Tantalus gave them nearly a week earlier. An airship, said to be carrying The Truth, lay waiting for them at Laurent’s Tomb. All of Alterna’s rulers are buried in a mausoleum underneath Castle Atma in the ruins of the old kingdom.
To find the truth, our heroes would have to brave the magical storms left over after a kingdom’s fall.
While going to Alterna for any reason is dangerous, there are those who still do it. Relics of the Alternan people are valuable, for collectors and researchers both. Fragments of the Great Crystal can still be found, pieces of that ancient power scattered throughout the fractured kingdom from the empire’s detonation. Airships risking the tempests take off from the Triad semi-regularly. Those risking an overland journey follow the abandoned railways from Saron.
With Bast needing to keep the Triad far from him, Saron served as our party’s destination. The train would take them to Orrey and Ingrid’s hometown, and from there, supplies could be had for a hike into danger, a journey in search of the Truth.
Then the vision came.
Ingrid’s vision came on hard and fast, delivering a searing headache to the young woman. For a moment, the party was at a loss for how to help, and Ingrid’s pain increased.
The fallen star, the fractured mask Isa threw at Yves, lifted up and seemed to want to help, to everyone’s surprise. Then the task was no longer a mask, and instead a shimmering, sea-green rabbit, albeit one with a sparkling ruby embedded in its forehead. It looked to Bast, as if Bast had some hold over it, and when Bast took something out of his bag but kept it hidden inside of his hand, the rabbit then bumped its gem against Ingrid’s forehead, and vanished, taking Ingrid’s pain with it.
Orrey urged Ingrid to come with them to find the twelfth of the Twelve, the Forgotten, as Orrey counted himself among the hidden god’s followers.
We join our heroes as the train pulls into the central station in the city-state of Saron….
The train lurches to a stop, emitting a satisfying blast from the whistle, and all around you, you hear the bustle of passengers standing up, reaching into compartments and behind seats, gathering all of their things.
Isa has gathered her things well before the train arrives at the station, and is doing a passable job concealing her impatience at the passengers who are less prepared to debark.
Orrey puts away his collection of notes that he’s been occupying himself with organizing. He looks around at the station, feeling that sense of coming home…but also feeling just a little bit of dread creeping in.
“…as the Margrace let his trews drop to the floor, Lady Amaranthe gasped aloud in sheer delight – oh, hey, we’re here.” Linnet shuts Margrace Under Fire and fist-bumps her dramatic reading partner, Yves.
Ingrid, on the other hand, looks relieved to be home, perhaps for a number of reasons.
Yves offers Linnet a solid fistbump in return. He is no longer in the Black Mage getup, freed from hat and robe both. He glances down into his unlatched bag, and says, “Looks like we’re all here.”
Linnet peeks into the bag and confirms, with slight disappointment, that the mask is still a mask. “Can we name the bunny if it comes back? Or, wait, it probably has its own name already. Wonder if it has a way to tell us. There wasn’t anything etched on the mask, was there?”
“No running off. Just give me a wobble if you want to be let out for a bit,” Yves whispers into the bag, then lets the top fall loosely closed again. “Right,” he says, in a more normal voice, “let’s definitely look for etchings the next time we sit down somewhere private.”
Bast gives the station one last appraising look out the window before doing a quick check of his belongings and companions. All seem to be accounted for.
“Speaking of private, I assume we can get rooms in town?” Isa asks.
The Cactuar Conductor hops down the aisle, looking in at every group, dancing in place to convey It Is Time To Disembark (surprisingly effectively, in fact).
Linnet attempts to figure out how to tip a cactuar, settling for tucking a couple of coins behind the ribbon on its hat.
Isa taps a knuckle to her forehead as the conductor comes by, and will disembark as soon as her route is clear.
Orrey looks up at Isa, still gathering his things. “There’s no need to get rooms. You can stay with us.”
“That’s not going to cause any problems?” Isa asks.
Yves has gathered his few things—the bag, the painting—and is now close enough to overhear that. “All of us, or, uh, not so much on the all? Because there are a few of us now.”
“What time is it? I totally lost track while we were reading. Not that the book was that good, but somehow everything becomes much more interesting when read dramatically aloud.” Linnet is craning her neck to take in all the sights of a new city at once.
“Not at all. We have lots of family and friends who drop in and need a place to stay. We’ve got a guest room and cots and my cousins can let my sisters stay with them if we need more room. We do this all the time,” Orrey says.
Isa nods to Orrey. “Thanks,” she says simply. “Now let’s get off this train before the needles fly.”
Orrey proceeds to stuff the last bits into his satchel quickly and hurry after everyone.
“Hm.” Bast scratches his chin with his left hand, the right being currently occupied by his toolbox. “I wouldn’t turn down free rooms, but if we’re planning to help you with your problem, do we want all of us in the one location they would know to observe?”
“Dibs on a place with a bed,” Yves says immediately.
Orrey pauses. “I didn’t really think about that, Bast. Um…maybe not?”
The sights, Linnet notices as the group disembarks, are worth it.
Saron’s Central Station is a large domed building, with massive glass windows on all sides, showing a city with old brick buildings and steep rooftops dotted with chimneys. The buildings are tightly packed together on the sides, but separated by wide streets filled with chocobos, people, and carts.
For a nation dealing with an alleged civil war, there is little tension in the air; people are doing the same thing they always do, traveling, boarding, disembarking, following the scent of cinnamon rolls, shielding their eyes from the sun as they look out at the buildings beyond the glass.
“Though if they’re in our neighborhood, they’d be spotted pretty easily…everyone knows everyone who lives there, and not many outsiders stick around there. They just buy from the shops and head out.”
“It’s a lot of city to search through. Though I suppose we could map it out on a grid and do it systematically—but we’re not looking for a static object, so that could still miss moving people. Hm,” Yves muses.
“I mean, airships are pretty hard to miss, right?” Linnet says.
“Door-to-door is a terrible way to search for someone in a city.” Isa squints at Linnet. “What airship?”
Ingrid slips past Bast. “If you’re heading toward Alterna, you’ll want to head to the northwest, which is the one place they really don’t want to showcase from the station. It will get a little more dangerous, but I think you’ll be all right.” She takes a few steps on the walkway away from the group, and then turns around to come back. “I’m sorry, did you want me to come with you or—”
The walkway detonates.
“…sorry, is this not where we were looking for the airship?” Linnet has been gawking ever since the party left the station and not really paying attention – until the explosion. "What the – "
A bolt of lightning shears the air, the Thunder spell slashing through the railing, crackling along the metal walkway, and erupting in a shower of sparks off of the train. Only one particularly deft moogle has the reflexes to dodge.
“GodDAMNIT!” comes a cry from the west, through the haze. A red-furred viera snapping at another, fear in the latter’s eyes. The sound of a sword hitting metal echoes from the east, over the clatter of retreating, panicked footsteps.
“No time!” a woman’s voice shouts from behind that sword. “Get her and go!”
Bast lands from his leap in an ungainly slide, looking around wildly for the attacker.
Isa is blown sideways, but turns it into a roll and comes up armed, singed but still hale. Her braid lashes as she searches for the source of the spell.
Yves hits the ground, not entirely voluntarily, and tries to push himself back up on his forearms. One ear’s coated in blood.
Linnet comes up pointing mostly the right way – though about eighteen inches off the ground – and frantically assessing everyone’s damage.
The walkway to your left, heading into a set of shops and t-shirt salespeople, has three viera approaching — red fur linking them as related. One has an eyepatch and looks very, very angry with the second, a mousier sort with a thick book held in front of him as a weapon and a shield both. The third looks… distant, disconnected.
Orrey throws up his arms in front of his face as the world shatters around him, flying violently backwards and crashing into a cinnamon roll stand.
To your right, a human woman with short black hair stalks forward, dragging a large two-handed sword behind her, scraping along the metal. Behind her, two tonberries get into position, one with a floppy sun hat and a small crossbow taking aim, the other hiding their expression behind a thick welding mask and two small knives.
“Hey, assholes! Watch who you’re frying over there!” Linnet swoops over to the cinnamon roll stand and blocks Orrey from view while frantically checking for a pulse.
Ingrid is slumped against a bent railing behind the group, thrown by the Lightning spell. She is not conscious, but she is breathing.
“…Mama…help…” Orrey groans and slumps over, eyes glazing over as he stares blindly up at the beautiful stack of cinnamon buns above him.
Yves staggers to his feet, and looks for whoever looks the most responsible. “That,” he says, wiping blood off his face, “was distinctly /anti-social/ behavior and I do not /approve/.”
Bast dashes towards Ingrid, making as if to drag her away but changing his mind at the last moment. He stands over her, one hand clutching something he just tore from his pocket, glaring daggers at the approaching viera. He bares his teeth with a growl, takes aim at the black mage, and lets fly.
The grenade bounces down three stairs, lands at their feet, and explodes in a blast of fiery shrapnel. All three remain up, but all three are wounded.
“YVES!” Isa snaps, as the grenade leaves Bast’s hand. “Keep that other group off our back!” She doesn’t look back to see if she’s being obeyed; instead she is moving towards Team Redbunny. They might have time to clear their heads after the explosion, but it’s also possible their ears are still ringing when Isa leaps down the stairway, sword held high in a two-handed chop meant for the mage.
The enemy black mage dents a railing deeper than Ingrid, and does not get back up.
Isa wrenches her sword free of book and mage alike (safety tip: books make bad shields), and whirls around with her sword in one hand and her armored right hand open, prepared to parry with it.
Linnet throws a hand out to catch the entire party with a bit of a boost, yelling in the meantime, “I HOPE YOU STEP ON A CACTUAR, MOTHERF***ERS!”
Yves is hastily spinning to face the /other/ group, on Isa’s orders, on the principle that if anyone here knows how to handle sudden combat, it’s—well, it’s probably Isa, but it’s /definitely/ not him. “I’m going to end up kicked out of /every city/ the train /ever stops at/,” Yves mutters under his breath, and starts throwing lightning in the direction he was told.
“I don’t think anyone would blame you in this case.” Linnet has temporarily given up on trying to heal Orrey – whatever state he’s in, he’s beyond her skills at this point – and floats in front of him and the stand, tense.
The fighter on Yves’ side takes the blast of lightning full-force in the arm, teeth rattling, lightning arcing off of her sword into the railing. With a growl of desperation, she attacks, charging in and swinging her sword at Yves. A bolt from the archer follows, aimed at Linnet, their sun hat wobbling with the recoil. The third tonberry darts in quickly (for a tonberry), looking to pull off a snatch-and-grab. On Isa’s side, one of the two remaining viera swings wildly, bare-handed, at Isa, full of rage at seeing his partner drop. The other very calmly casts Slow at Bast, not a care in the world.
The bolt from the crossbow thuds into Linnet, and Yves fares no better with someone charged into his personal space. The world shifts into something entirely too quick for Bast, shouts and screams shrill and speedy, though the Time Mage opposite him doesn’t look to be moving any faster, really.
Isa grabs the wild-swinging viera’s wrist with her armored hand, and gives a snort as she grinds the bones together in her grip. Her other hand swings the sword down towards the junction of shoulder and neck.
Linnet takes the bolt in her shoulder, pushing her back a foot or two but not to the ground. She screams something that might have been a word at some point, yanks the projectile free, tries to snap it over her knee, fails, and throws it away in contempt.
Underneath the sweater this viera is wearing, there must be some sort of armor; why else would a collarbone just shatter, instead of be slashed entirely in two. Regardless, Isa has now felled two viera with frightening efficiency.
Bast shakes his head in a futile attempt to clear it and quickly goes through his pockets.
(a few heartbeats earlier)
The walkway detonates. A bolt of lightning shears the air, the Thunder spell slashing through the railing, crackling along the metal walkway, and erupting in a shower of sparks off of the train. Only one particularly deft moogle has the reflexes to dodge. Orrey is blown clear from the blast, crashing through a cinnamon roll stand. The world stops. The world stops, but one part doesn’t. He — it’s a he, that’s all you can tell, the rest is hazy — kneels down in front of you. “Hey. What happened?”
“Uh…um…ow? I think,” Orrey says.
The figure looks up, at the sparks frozen in the sky, the heat forever distorting the air separating you. “We have to make the most of what we are given. Do you want to try again?”
Orrey nods slowly, barely comprehending what’s going on around him.
The pain is gone. The wounds were never there. The walkway is in pieces. Linnet is standing over empty space, swearing at everything. Electrical smoke and panic fill the air. But you’re back.
Orrey looks around, taking in the carnage and the threat to his new friends. “Oh no not good not good…” He breathes rapidly, almost panicking until he spots Isa in the middle of the fray and rapidly sparks an idea: HASTE!
Orrey then RUNS AWAY. Preferably behind a solid wall.
Bast squints angrily, trying to make sense of the sped-up events around him. Isa is among the viera, so those are out; the figher from the group on the right is too close for comfort and for the sort of response he has ready at the moment. One of the tonberries has moved in as well. The other…hasn’t. Well, then.
The handful of grenades catch the light briefly as they arc toward the archer, speeding up in Bast’s magic-dulled sight.
The explosion is full of so many beautiful colors, streaking across the midday sky. The KO’ed tonberry drops the floor a moment later.
There’s a saying about subtle wizards and shoulder blades. The viera time mage may be subtle, but Isa isn’t. She is, however, fast. It takes her a second to realize this as she’s closing the distance, but by the time she gets there her sword is already blurred as it goes first for the back of his knees, then for the back of his neck.
The time mage joins his friends, rolling to a stop against the black mage’s toppled form.
The left side is completely clear.
Linnet cuts off her tide of colorful descriptions of tornados flinging her opponents through brick walls and onto non-sentient cactuar spines – long enough to heal her compatriots. “I’ve got you all. Now go get them back!” After a beat: “Oh, hey, Orrey, welcome back to the fight. Wanna cinnamon roll?”
Isa doesn’t wait for the time mage to stop moving before she has bounded up the stairs, past Bast, and towards the remaining two. Her sword is resting on her left shoulder, and her right hand is held forward once more waiting for someone to try something stupid.
“STOP. ATTACKING. PEOPLE.” Yves sketches the shape of a lightning bolt in the air with two fingers, and then flicks it forward. “IT’S. NOT. ETHICAL.”
The fighter, the woman who slashed Yves in the chest mere seconds ago, drops to a knee, wavers, hands clutching her sword as lightning convulses her muscles… and then drops, face-down, on the floor.
The tonberry with the welding helmet on raises it, slowly, looking around.
Isa smiles. “Leave, or talk, but I really don’t recommend fighting.”
Six steps between them and Ingrid, six steps between them and Linnet. Isa approaching quickly. Yves shouting something about ethics behind them. Orrey — somewhere, maybe.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?” Linnet yells from somewhere in that distance.
They take a step back, then another, legs shaking under the robe. Hands tense on the knives.
They switch both knives to one hand, fumbling, trying not to drop them. Mouth moving rapidly, nothing coming out at first, hand in the pocket—
A blue crystal. Tight grip. Something said. Lights flare.
The light molds itself around the tonberry, forming itself into a sort of… armor, rippling out in a refracting scarf, an extra glint across the knives as they move fluidly from leg to leg, a practiced sort of movement that is completely at odds with how the tonberry moved before.
The tonberry slashes forward, nearly stepping outside of reality to appear behind Isa, both knives coming down at her spine, following up with another pair of arcing slashes, the light propelling them forward.
The first slash comes down hard, tearing through Isa’s practiced defenses, with two spins coming to meet at the next strike.
The tonberry ducks Isa’s counter-slash, both knives reaching underneath her defenses and raking across.
Isa misses her first counter, the sword flying high over the tonberry’s head. She quickly releases and reverses her grip, winding back on herself to protect her wounded flank, while stabbing back down at her attacker’s side. She’s still standing.
The tonberry is not.
Isa looks down, clamping an arm across her side. “Told you.”
Footsteps, a lot of them — practiced, in rhythm. A bobbing pompom precedes a familiar moogle in a remarkable hat.
“Drop your weapons, this is —”
Aramog Sydney pulls up, her hand snapping out to stop the armed soldiers behind her even as they raise their weapons (spears and bows, the injured Isa is still sharp enough to note) at you.
“Hold your winds, lady, we’ve got walking wounded.” Linnet throws out a couple more mass cures and then sinks to the ground, leaning heavily on the cinnamon roll stand.
Yves shows his empty, innocent hands.
Orrey peers from behind the corner wall he found to hide behind.
Bast, empty-handed, bends down to check on Ingrid again.
Isa kneels down slowly, to set her sword on the ground. She also scoops up the tonberry’s crystal as it is in immediate proximity.
“Alvin, Boulder, administer healing. Laer, Craey, secure the prisoners.” Sydney walks forward, her short stature doing nothing to diminish her command of the people around her. “You fought them off. I am impressed.”
“They blew up a walkway while our acquaintance was standing on it,” Yves says indignantly. “Who /does/ that?”
“Are they the official welcoming committee around here?”
“Who the hell were they even aiming for? We hadn’t even figured out where we were going yet!”
Isa is silent.
“Mercenaries looking to profit from this damned imitation war,” Sydney gripes. “I don’t know if they were pretending to be part of a side or legitimately part of one. We’ve been watching their stories fall apart for three days, but I never thought anything like this would happen.”
Linnet plunks a few coins on the cinnamon roll stand – more than the rolls are worth, but there’s no vendor around – and passes a few of the sugary snacks around to her companions.
Yves shoves half a cinnamon roll in his mouth and chews indignantly.
A white mage — you’re not sure which one, this is a red-haired man of maybe 17 — casts Cure twice on Isa before fanning out to look for more wounded.
Sydney snaps her fingers at him. “The Augurelt girl. See to her.”
Isa nods her thanks to the man, but still says nothing.
Bast looks up from a frowning examination of Ingrid and moves to make room for the healer.
“Did they say anything?” Sydney asks. “What happened?”
“They attacked,” Isa finally says. “We defended ourselves.”
While listening, Sydney inspects the crumpled form of the white mage, going through pockets like she’s specifically looking for something.
“We heard swearing, then ‘no time, get her and go,’ and then explosions.”
Yves makes broad gestures with sticky fingers. “That exploded, and we all got hurt by that blast, it’s like they weren’t even /thinking/ about collateral damage, they came running from both directions without any sort of—they weren’t trying to help! Just make things worse! It’s not RIGHT.” He shaking, now.
“Not entirely sure who ‘her’ was. Shouting questions at them only made us get attacked harder.”
Yves sits abruptly on the floor, and eats the other half of his cinnamon roll, one ripped shred at a time.
“Mm. Desperation makes idiots do very idiotic things.” She gets up from her crouch, holding a small blue crystal a lot like the one Isa pocketed. “You’re lucky they didn’t get these off.”
“What would have happened?” Isa asks.
“These are modified shards of the Great Crystal,” she says in the same tone Isa’s used to explain how dangerous a top-flight dragoon’s spears are. “They’re modifying these somehow. Last time I saw one of these, someone who wouldn’t last a round in a bar fight took down two of my best fighters before finally giving up the ghost. It takes them over, like a drug, or a possession.” She drops it into her pocket.
“Mm. That would have been unfortunate,” Isa says, noncommittally.
“Are you sticking around the area long, or were you passing through?” Sydney asks.
“Well, we were probably planning to be here longer than fifteen minutes. That’s about how long we had before we got zarked,” Linnet says.
Isa looks around quickly for Orrey, under the guise of surveying the carnage. “A few days, maybe. Nothing particular in mind.”
“Commander, we need to get Augurelt to a hospital.” The white mage tending to her wipes sweat from his brow. “She’s stable, but she needs more than field work.”
Orrey, calming down a bit, is now drawing the scene, making sure he gets every face sketched and a description written down. If he can capture it on paper, it’s controlled and not half as bad as the reality he just (mostly) lived through. The last page of his sketchbook is a drawing of the blurry entity that talked to him on the other side of TIME.
“Will she be safe there?” bast asks.
“I would like to go somewhere with a door and a bed,” Yves says, very calmly, “which is unlikely to explode. And a shower. Or a bath. One of those. The kind of thing that gets blood off.”
“You said you were watching these people for three days. Were they together? How many more of them are there?” Isa presses.
Sydney sucks on the inside of her cheek. “That’s really unfortunate, Alvin. Get her ready to move.” To Bast, she says, “Yes. Finest care, never mind her last name.”
“I’m thinking more in the line of enterprising mercenaries. In case there are more of them,” Bast finishes.
To Linnet, a sympathetic yet firm tilt of her head. “You understand I can’t say much. They were together. I don’t think they operated alone, but they weren’t from here. If you remember anything else about the attack, let me know while you’re here. We operate out of the Windsong.” Sydney returns her attention to Bast. “I’ll have two people posted there until we can deliver her back to her family.”
“Never mind her last name? What in the name of tempests does that mean?” Linnet takes a deep breath. “Sorry, ma’am. I think I’m not the only one who’s a bit shaken.”
Isa looks at Sydney. “If there’s nothing else, I think my friends here could use some time to collect themselves.”
Bast nods curtly at that and sinks down into a crouch, his back to a deformed railing post, looking exhausted and slightly unfocused.
Sydney nods. “You all are the reason she’s safe, or maybe still alive. I can’t speak for Saron at large, but you have my most sincere thanks.”
Linnet packs a paper bag from the stand with a few more cinnamon rolls to go and nods in gracious exhaustion.
Orrey casts Haste on Bast to reset his Slow-ness.
Isa dips her head. “We’ll send word to the Windsong if anything occurs to us,” she says, leaving the syntax vague.
Sydney turns on her heel and leaves, as two soldiers/policeman attempt to stabilize Ingrid’s awkwardly-bent leg, as a bit of grenade shrapnel falls from the railing and bounces down the stairs, as the smoke rising from a fallen archer is blown away by the onrush of the next train to arrive.
End session.