Session 110: Being The Elite

To fully learn the secrets of the Starfall, our brave adventurers will have to return to the site of its discovery; the ruined kingdom of Alterna.
To do that, they will need to survive the raging elemental storm that protects the island, the one that very nearly sank their ship mere hours after they had gained its use.
To do that, they will need to create their own Luminous Engine, the machine that powers the nethicite inside the Seventh Dawn that allows that ship to gain easy access to Alterna, at least until the Seventh Dawn's nethicite became the Starfall's nethicite when Bast led a heist crew into the ship to steal everything that wasn't nailed down.
To do that! they need the services of the engineer who created it, Isara Marquez, who until very recently was traveling Machanon on a quest for hedonistic pleasures until she was very briefly taken hostage by a band of zealots who had opinions about hedonism and who was supposed to engage in it and who was to perhaps just be set on fire instead.
To do that -- well, they are doing that. In fact, we join our brave adventurers as they make progress on that and specifically that...

**

"One more time?" Jasper Samson asks, splitting his attention between the ocean below the Starfall and the ship's newest hire.
Isara rolls her eyes. "I need metal for the Luminous Engine," she patiently restates. "A lot of that's not a problem to get. Your kuposmith's got plenty, and I've already got silver and copper reserved for us to pick up. What I need is scintillant, and that's not exactly common. Fortunately for everyone involved, but mostly you," she indicates the officers, "I keep tabs on where this shit can be had, and it just so happens the getting can get got around here. Some big company is trading with some other big company somewhere for something, and there's some scintillant aboard their ship. It's in Yinha right now, or at least it was until about..." she checks her watch. "Two hours ago? Ish? picking up food, and now it's sailing up to Cardia to unload everything."
"So if you want the scintillant, you can go buy it from 'em when they come through here if you've got shittons of gil, or you can just steal it from them since companies aren't people, just a picture on the side of a ship. Go be a rounding error in their year-end financials."
"I mean, that sounds pretty ethical to me," says Yves. "It's like she says. Companies aren't people. They made that very clear in the contract-signing when I got my first real job."
Linnet's still stuck on (a) the lack of details and (b) "the getting can get got."

"So it's to be piracy," Isa says.
Bast leans back against a railing, thinking. 'How much are we talking about here? Weight, volume, cost."
"Hell yeah." Isara bumps fists with Yves on her way to stealing the navigator's chair since Celeste is still poking at the smaller sphere elsewhere on the ship.
"Ethical piracy," Yves says helpfully. "That makes it privateering, I think? Or is privateering the one where you're doing piracy but you got a note from a government saying it's okay?"
"The latter," Isa says. "Legality and ethics are only lightly entwined."
"Oh, so I guess it's still piracy," Yves says. "There we go. Right the first time."
"Weight? Seventy pounds. Gives me some extra on both sides in case there's trouble with it. Volume, about the size of a tonberry shoved in a burlap sack. Cost? I don't know, are you a cop?"

"...I'm going to pretend I'm not listening to this conversation, until the point where you need me." Linnet unsheaths the Akademia Deck from the two leather bands she's using as a holster. She lays it carefully on the table and sits poking at the cards.
"But ethical piracy, Linnet," Yves says earnestly, and goes to watch what she's doing with the cards.
"Anyone in favor of some market research and buying the stuff?" Bast asks offhandedly.
"I'd prefer to at least know what our obstacle is in that department." Linnet gives Bast a one-eyebrowed look of well, we should try.  "If you tell me 'this is going to take sixteen years to earn the purchase price,' I'll have much less of an objection to pinching it."
"Fair." Bast nods. "Maybe Artemicion might know?"
"But if it's something we could buy right now and we're just too lazy to, that's different."
Isara leans against the wall next to Luca, close enough for their shoulders to touch, though neither she nor they make any note of it. Luca watches Linnet's cardplay, Isara listens to the sounds of the Starfall, nodding occasionally at something no one else picks up.

Moments later...

"Scintillant? Hm." Artemicion takes his pompom in one hand, pulls it all the way down in front of his face, and then releases it. By the time it stops dancing over his head, he has his answer. "That size? Eighty thousand if it's priced to move, one hundred and eighty if it's not. Specialized. I'd expect they already have a buyer. Probably the crown, if it's going north."
"...I have different objections, but they're unlikely to be heard." Linnet looks at Bast again. "Just don't bugger it up."
"What sort of different?" Bast looks at Linnet, in no apparent rush either way.
"The crown bit, mostly. But if there's no other way to get us into Alterna..." Linnet holds up her hands and steps back.
"If it's destined for the Crown," Isa says, "then it's definitely piracy but also, the crown isn't going to miss it in the long run. It's just another requisition.  Like she said, a rounding error."
Linnet looks like she wants to monologue about the kind of people who consider a hundred thousand a rounding error, but she stops herself. "Right. Let's make a plan."

"I'm mostly familiar with it when it's used for focusing big power sources," Yves says, with a bit of a shrug. "How many weapons targeting systems would the crown even need, anyway? So, a piracy plan! Is it going to be like when we broke up the ring doing giant dogfights? But with more theft."
"Well." Bast walks over to the table and takes a seat across from Linnet. "I figure we don't want a ship fight here, more of a hit and run. Don't want people to mark the Starfall any more than necessary, but the Meteor is much less distinctive. And it would have no issues with the weight."
"Are you intending to board in midair?" inquires Linnet.
"Seems like a better bet than inside Cardia," Bast replies.
Isa has a bit of a chuckle. "If Meteor was exclusively an Albarea design, that'd be funny..." At Bast's comment, she nods. "We need to hit them before they cross the border. I'll tolerate piracy in Machanon, but I won't be a part of it at home."
"That seems fair," says Yves, who almost certainly does not know why that makes such a difference, but figures Isa must have her reasons, however mysterious.
Bast smiles back at Isa. "I'd say dress it up as Albarea, but we don't want people connecting too many dots."
Isa nods. "It's a common enough design that it won't raise too many questions. Some review of surplus sales that won't go anywhere."

"Right. So - hit them over the ocean, Marina at the helm, at least a nod to disguise, get the goods and disappear." Bast glances at Isara. "What are we looking at here - your basic trade barge, or something pointier?"
"It'll have some weapons, mostly to dissuade your garden-variety pirates. People in it more for the swag than the life." Isara is very casual about everything, thus far. "I think it flies with some dragoons aboard. Cardia's just lousy with 'em. So a bit of anti-boarding, bit of aerial deterrence. Girl I was with said that when they took on a Cardia ship they always stayed up and to the side -- you come in up and behind they'll just send a dragoon back up at you with that big jump of theirs."
"Yeah," Isa says with a grin that's just a little bit nasty, "we're assholes like that."
"Oh, there might be ways of dealing with that." Bast smiles without elaborating further.
"Whenever you people stop being cryptic and want to actually attack something, let me know." Linnet's building a tiny card house out of her Akademia Deck.

A short time later...

Meteor boulders through the clouds, Marina's expert piloting keeping it well-hidden on its approach. The Type-6 Transporter up ahead skirts the edge of a storm system, its captain clearly worried about piratical activity in the region.
Isa is taking advantage of a rare time when she is not piloting the skiff to be up on the deck. Her overcoat is flapping extremely dramatically as she holds onto a guy line and watches their target. For everyone who is not Yves, the fact that she has started wielding the Frost Fair Blade is a surprise.
Isa has the perfect vantage point to see the shield emblazoned on the side of the Transporter, marking it as a ship of the Vega house.
Bast, after the first look of surprise at Isa's new armament, keeps his eyes on the other ship and one hand on his belt, occasionally checking the fit of a couple of new pieces of equipment.
Lightning flickers in the clouds just to the port side of the Transporter; the storms loom, giving the coming thievery a backdrop worthy of a ship of actors, not that any of the actors were allowed to come along.

"They're not going to Cardia," Isa points to the livery of the ship, "they're coming home.  All the more reason to get this done before we're over the border."
Yves is wearing his best adventuring coat, with the dramatic stitching for all the places where he's been stabbed through it before. He's brought his staff along for this event. He has also, perhaps out of a sense of theme, or because he's been talking to the actors too much recently, donned a dramatic hat. It is threatening to escape in the wind, so his hand without the staff is busy with keeping the hat on. Piracy is so much more complicated than the pulp novels made it out to be.
Bast grimaces slightly at Isa's comment, eyes watering a little under the mask. "Chances of someone recognizing you?"
Linnet sits cross-legged on deck, back to the wall below the gunwale, practicing dramatic flips of a card in nervous fingers and admiring Yves' hat. Eiri does good work.
Isa shrugs. "Not great. I don't really have any close friends there, and it's unlikely they'd have any ranking family members aboard. If we end up with hostages though, someone else can talk to them. Noticing someone in a fight is one thing, when they're up close and conversing it's another."

"We've got the drop on them; clouds here to starboard are thick," Marina says. "I'll be bringing you into boarding range in just a--"
"Cardian craft!"  A husky male voice booms out into the sky, magnified by a ship's speaker system.
From within the storm the ship emerges; black with gold trim, bristling with cannons, sleek and intimidating. White letters outlined in the finest gold paint label the ship on the starboard bow: BTE. "There are a great many ways this can go for you, but they all end in your cargo joining our hold. Would you like the one that sees you all die in the waves below, or would you like to keep your lives to slink away another day and tell your king how you failed her?" the voice continues.
"...oh what now." Bast grips the railing tightly, sizing up this new arrival.
Yves steps over nearer Isa, and asks, "Are they pirating our piracy target before we can, or am I misinterpreting this entirely? Because that seems a bit unfair. This is our first one, so we should have dibs."
Bast shakes his head at Yves' query, squinting against the wind, an almost predatory interest in his eyes as he studies the new ship.
"Glitter pink is no way to do piracy," says Yves. "It's so... it's tacky! Unless that's the point? Maybe it's literally sticky? Huh. Maybe I should design something like that..." He lets go of his hat to dig out a notebook and work out this idea.

"Well! Enjoy the last few minutes of your lives, boys! I know I will." There is an audible squeal from the speakers as they are cut off.
Linnet catches Yves' hat as it blows down to the deck, donning it herself (and yanking it down for better fit).
Isa stands next to Bast at the railing, watching the developing conflict with the sharpest tactical eye she can muster. If there is a mythical general arguing with her in her mind, she does not show it.
"...dumb question: did our engineer commandeer her own ship and get ahead of us?"  Linnet shrugs at the quizzical looks. "She's got the style."
Seven people -- six humans, one moogle -- descend from the BTE ship onto the Vega Transporter.
"I think there would be more skulls," Yves says to Linnet. "As style goes."
"Seven's a cocky boarding party for a ship that size," Isa notes to Bast, being one of four.

The door to the deck falls with a single swing of the leader's sword, and four of the men charge into the ship, leaving three outside. The leader practices his dramatic poses. The second human just waits, tapping his foot impatiently. The third, the moogle, looks between the two.
Twenty-eight seconds later, the four men emerge. One theatrically dusts his hands off. Another is pantomiming playing the guitar as a bard might.
Yves frowns intently at the guitar miming.
"Efficient," Isa allows.
The not-Leader that remained on the deck points to the open door, and then makes the unmistakable gesture of throwing everyone overboard.
The leader scratches his chin, and then raises a hand.

A vote is being taken.
Linnet hasn't moved, but she's squinting intently across at the other deck.
Isa frowns at the proposal. "Excessive."
"Are we going to have to rescue people so that we can rob them?" Yves asks. "Because that seems unfair."
Five ayes, two nays (the moogle and the air guitarist).  The moogle, in particular, looks aggrieved.
Bast shakes his head minutely, watching the scene. "We hold."
"How many guards do you think are left on the BTE?" Isa asks.

The three men who voted aye head into the ship. The leader and the not-leader stare at each other until the leader gestures, leading the not-leader to head in as well. The moogle starts to follow him, but the leader indicates that the moogle should stay.
One of the men returns, carrying a bound, struggling crew member over his shoulder. He calmly strides toward the railing of the chained ship.
"Are we really just going to sit here while they drop the crew overboard?" asks Linnet.
"I mean, we're not, I'm pretty sure," Yves says. "The captain knows how to handle things like this."
Isa looks to Bast to answer that question.
"Less of a risk of someone reporting our presence this way. But then they're distracted right now. Probably won't have a better opening." Bast looks back at Isa. "Your call."

Isa looks at the transport ship. Looks back at Yves and Linnet. "Fuck," is all she says before she takes a running leap off the bow of the Meteor.
"Right." Bast turns to the bridge and yells "Take us in!" to Marina before the jets by his feet flare on and he follows Isa over the railing, sprouting metal wings as his path begins to arc towards the water.
"I'll... I'll just stand here and shoot people with lightning as needed," Yves says. "That's probably helpful, right?" Of course, the two people he'd like answers from on that point have already leapt off the ship.
After a brief splutter of "wait what" and "you did WHAT now," Linnet jumps up, strides to the far railing, and flips a hand of cards open. "Stars, favor me today!"
The Meteor follows, keeping pace with Bast, carrying Linnet and Yves down toward the impending action.

A siren sounds from the BTE ship, and those outside snap their heads up. The leader throws his head back and laughs as the others pour out of the Transporter's interior.  Then, his amplified voice booms out once more, as it's not the ship's system that raises his voice, but his own personal body-mounted amplifier.
"Well, well, boys, looks like the heroes of the hour did deign to show up!"
"You see, we came here for one thing, and it wasn't some pretty rocks, oh no. It wasn't some school lunches. It wasn't any little baubles in a box, no no no no, oh no no no. It was you, Captain! You and, much, much more importantly, that ship of yours."
"What the fuck," Bast mutters to himself mid-flight, with only the wind to hear him.
"Oh," says Yves, "definitely shooting people with lightning after all." He looks pleased to have solved the incipient tactical and/or ethical conundrum.
"You see--" he's pacing now, holding his right wrist up to his mouth like a microphone -- "when we ran into you back in Machanon a few weeks back, you were talking so big about your latest score that we knew we wanted in. We'd never heard of you. No one had ever heard of you. But there you were, singing your own praises, flashing the cash, the highest style on your profile. So proud of that hat, Captain. And I said to myself, I said, 'Kenny? Maybe you've been the Belt Collector long enough. Maybe you need to be the Hat Collector now."
The hand that's not holding the cards spreads over Linnet's face, as if to mask this overwhelming stupidity.  "Simog, I am going to get you for this."

"I won't deny myself the satisfaction of telling you exactly who it is that will be relegating you to the footnotes of history." He laughs, and then gestures to the group at large. "We are The Elite... and you are already dead."
"Because after all--" he starts.
"Do you know how much of a price is on your heads right now?" the moogle finishes.
He's not talking to any of the Starfall's descending crew members.
Linnet drops her hand. "Shaul, long time no see. Want to switch sides?"
Yves leans his staff against a railing so that he can cup his hands around his mouth and shout toward the other ship, "WHAT DOES THE B STAND FOR?"
The moogle yanks the tied crew member of the Transporter off of the shoulders of one of the pirates, tosses them over one of the chains as they roll under it, and catch them on the other side. "Already did!" he says. "Cheers, Kenny, but I quit." With that, he's inside the Transporter, sword raised, ready to defend it and its captives from any further boarders.

"Cheers, mate!" Linnet waves and resumes picking out the best card to start a smackdown.
To Yves, she summarizes: "Remember before we fought Diabolos, we took a bounty and fought a pair of idiots and took one of them prisoner? And then he helped us in the original encounter with Diabolos and Bast let him off with a recommendation letter? That's Shaul."
"Seems like he's learned a little common sense, but not enough to quit hanging around with ambitious loudmouths."
"That makes sense," says Yves, "but I still don't know how to unpack that acronym, and it's really getting to me."
Bast brakes hard enough to leave scorch marks on the deck, bending his knees to lessen the impact before standing up to all of his somewhat lacking height. "Well, I'm here. And no hat or ship for you to take."
He throws something at the posturing leader of the boarding party, and metal tendrils whip around him not unlike what the BTE did to the transporter scant minutes ago, dropping him to the deck with a loud grunt and then stiffening to hoist him up in the air.  "Happy now?"
For the mathematically inclined, Bast and Isa perfectly describe the difference between a vector and a ballistic trajectory. This is why, despite leaving the ship first, Isa lands second. But she lands hard, the Frost-Fire Blade slamming down into the deck of the Type-6 Transporter, the shock wave pushing clouds away a good dozen yards away from the deck. If these so-called Elite were even a whit less than their namesake, they'd find themselves in similar straits.

Kenny Alpha watches a third of his stable go sailing overboard, with only the Bucks and Fisher remaining on the deck with him. "Oh, no no no no. This isn't how it goes. This isn't how it goes at all. Without any further adieu I bid you good day and good night!" He draws the sword from his back, aims it at the deck, and then throws it into the ground, where it erupts into the deepest tendrils of darkness, tendrils that seek everyone out and then explode.
When the darkness dissipates, Isa is nowhere to be seen. Unless, of course, you look up.
Bast, unmoved by the explosions around him, gives Kenny a scornful grimace as he wipes blood from his mouth where one of the tendrils cut his lip.  "That the best you can do?"
Meanwhile, a cloud of bats has exploded away from where Yves was standing on the deck of the Meteor. A moment later, the bats gather together again in the exact same place, and sheepishly vanish to leave an unconscious viera bleeding there. Without so much as an amazing hat to make up for it.