Session 6 - You Must Attend This Party Before Venturing Forth

Isa and Yves have traveled south through the beautiful countryside of Caerwyn, their train winding through the hills and fields through the night. For once, the train itself was uneventful, giving Isa and Yves a chance to get to know each other a little more, since circumstance had thrown the anxious viera and stern human together for far longer than either had envisioned when Kurt Heibel asked for applications to be his friend.
Their destination was the station of Kinneas, for Isa to pick up a sword for a friend of hers to give to a girl.
With Orrey, Bast, and Linnet engaging in some level of breaking and entering at the Valles Estate, taking Yves far away seemed like a prudent course of action. After all, surely picking up a sword would be simple. Especially one that had already been paid for.
We join our heroes as the train is pulling into the station in mid-morning, train staff coming by to ensure passengers are ready to disembark…
“…and be sure to collect all of your belongings, as this train is continuing south to Dreich in twenty minutes.” The tonberry gives you both a smile and then slowly meanders down to the next car.
Yves has a satchel with no significant mortal remains within, and all his piercings back in his ears. Which makes him about as ready to disembark as ever.
Isa has been awake for several hours by mid-morning, and is fully assembled and packed and ready to go. Braid tight, boots right, and all that. She nods to the tonberry before they move on, and looks to Yves. “Ready?”
“Yes,” Yves says, “assuming that no one here—that there isn’t any sort of secret—maybe I should just, uh, follow your lead.”
“Solid plan,” Isa says, and disembarks.
The traditional Train Cactuar stands with the engineer and conductor, silent expression and jaunty pose welcoming everyone to Kinneas, or perhaps just thanking everyone for traveling on their train, or whatever it is that the cactuar do on the trains.
The Kinneas station is not at all like the Bernier Station, and not just because there are no masked shadows lurking under streetlights. Bernier Station was a quiet intersection, few buildings and one restaurant greeting travelers before shoving them in the direction of the estates.
Kinneas Station is a party.
Ten brick buildings accompany the station, connected with strings of multicolored flags, cobblestone pathways bordered with purple and gold flowers in full bloom. Benches ring a stone fountain, a serpent coiling to the heavens in relief, water pouring out of its mouth to splash children running giggling through the fountain’s pool. The smell of pancakes and sausages fills the air, chatter of a dozen conversations blending together into one melodic drone. There is almost too much to take in at once, and you are left on the outskirts of the festivities, free to approach it how you see fit.
“Maybe the smith is on the edges of town,” Isa hopes.
Yves has always been somewhat unclear on the purpose of Train Cactuars, and gives the one at hand a covert look on his way past. But then he catches sight of the town as a whole, and freezes. “It’s like…a festival,” he hisses. “In the middle of the /day/.”
A very small moogle, his pom-pom a tiny purple ball of fur, offers Yves a yellow balloon.
Yves stares at the balloon. “…what’s the catch?”
They’re certainly celebrating. Looking around, though, you don’t see any identifying markers — no words written on flags, no banners hung on the streetlights, no posters advertising particular specials in the restaurants. It’s almost like… like they just do this all the time…
“No catch!” the child says, then breaks out into a wide, gap-toothed grin. “Except catch!” And they let the balloon go, the string drifting up in front of Yves.
Yves grabs frantically for the balloon, in case letting it go might cause disaster.
Yves has gained: Balloon (1)
Isa takes a deep breath, and sets her duffle firmly on her shoulder. “Nothing for it. Let’s circle around and see if we’ll get lucky.”
Yves nods solemnly. A viera with a mission! And a balloon (1) (yellow) (suspicious).
There are so many people here, it’s hard to get lucky. People of interest along Isa’s path — allowing for a detour around the musicians playing on the north side of the fountain — include a viera with a tufted green mohawk, a broad bald human with a thick white beard, a gray-furred moogle with a bushy mustache, and a red-haired sylph dancing to the music, eyes closed and lost in the sound. There are also, of course, pathways leading off to the various estates. They would be of even more help, had Art given you a name or anything else of note.
Yves follows just behind Isa, eyes darting around to see all the horrifying details of this merry town.
Yves’s balloon bobs along happily.
Yves begins to wonder if he has already become complicit in this horror.
Since your arrival, a few people have glanced at you, but with expressions that say things like “oh, I wonder if they want pancakes” or “gosh, they don’t have flowers in their hair!”
Isa looks around for someone to ask directions from. Someone who doesn’t look like they’re too into the festivities. But someone who looks like they’d yield to gentle pressure. Like Yves, but native.
Yves stares in growing horror at his balloon. It was /itself/ the catch. Oh yes.
The first person that reminds you of Yves is the other viera — not because of that, but because the viera looks surly and uncomfortable, arms shoved into his jacket pockets, barely noticing the slice of cheesecake some precocious youth sat next to him.
Isa approaches, and just asks straight up. “You know this place?”
“Worked here ’til yesterday,” he grumps, barely looking up.
“Looking for a swordsmith.”
Yves hovers (though not in the literal wind-sylph sense) just behind Isa’s shoulder, like the world’s gloomiest and least necessary bodyguard.
He looks around, giving Yves a second look, giving the balloon a very curious look. “There’s some traveling one staying at one of the Estates here. Art-something. Apparently he’s also going to fix the stage I broke.”
Yves glares back defensively. It’s a goth balloon. Because of who’s holding it. Yeah. That’s how it works now. That’s how it always worked and maybe some people just didn’t /know/ but that’s on /them/.
Isa looks around. “Art-something is the smith, or the estate?”
“The smith.”
“Where’s the stage?”
He looks over to the right, but doesn’t take his arms out of his pockets, that would be too much effort. There is a set of risers, or at least most of one, between a florist and a bakery. They are a tangle of metal and broken wood currently. “Didn’t mean to break it,” he mumbles.
“Didn’t say you did.” Isa starts to walk off, pauses. “Thanks,” she tosses back, then heads stagewards.
“If it can’t handle one viera, it wasn’t built right in the first place,” Yves says, because actually keeping quiet and following Isa’s lead is harder than he expected.
“It was the timpani that did it,” he says mournfully, sinking into himself.
“Should’ve been able to hold a timpani too,” Yves says firmly, “especially if they’re so into live music around here,” then hurries off after Isa.
The festival continues, for reasons unknown. The mustachioed moogle has found some sort of roast bird and is happily munching away. The sylph is basking in the adoration of a few young men post-dance. The human is sitting by the fountain, whittling something out of a light-colored wood.
Yves almost tries to hand his balloon off to a stranger, but then recalls what happened the last time he tried to get rid of something disconcerting by stuffing it into a presumably appropriate person’s hands, and just clutches the damn string instead.
Isa circles the ruins of the stage, looking for either a) someone repairing it or b) someone looking distraught and waiting for someone to repair it. Failing that, c) a swordsmith’s stall with her parcel pre-wrapped and ready to pick up so she can be on her way promptly.
No one is repairing the stage, nor is anyone looking distraught about the stage. A few minutes after you’ve come over, though, the mustachioed moogle ambles over. “Did they send me help?” He has gray fur with a burnt orange pom pom, a sharp vest with a pocket watch, and a celery stick in his mouth.
“Maybe. We’re not it,” Isa says.
“Not unless this balloon is going to lift a stage up,” Yves says, mostly under his breath.
Isa glances at Yves, then continues. “Did you have a name to expect?”
“A name? Hardly. All they had to do was hear my name and that was the end of any proferred assistance. ‘Oh, Artemicion can fix it, he can fix anything!’” he says in a mocking falsetto, before returning to his own raspy tenor. “I could, Susan, but I wasn’t hired to be some stagewright’s errand boy. This is why you don’t hire a bassoon player to be an engineer. Likely the fifth rule somewhere written down, I’m sure.”
“Unless orchestra was an extracurricular, that seems like a good rule,” Isa says.
One corner of Isa’s mouth elevates a few millimeters. “No justice in this world,” she agrees.
“This broken stage will outlive every one of the families around here, undoubtedly. Regardless; not my responsibility, no matter how many tuts are tutted.” He takes a bite of his celery. “I recommend not standing by it for too long, lest they decide you’re suddenly menders or whatnot.”
“Mm. Here’s the thing. I don’t think you’re the type who appreciates dancing around. You know a man named Covus?”
“Familiar with him.”
“Says he’s business with you.”
Yves is sort of tuning out of the terse conversation to stare at the ruins of the stage.
“I may know a man named Covus.” He gives you an appraising look, focusing on the gauntlet and the sword. “I may know a man with no name, a god that was forgotten, and a chocobo that roams free with no master to bind it.” Bite of the celery. “Thing is, I don’t know you.”
Yves tilts his head further and further to one side, until his left ear is hanging straight down. “…why,” he says at last, “would /anyone/ do that to a perfectly innocent riser? Much less more than one?”
Isa nods, because this is the way the world is now. “Normally, you give a proxy small things like a way to identify themselves, and maybe the name of the person you’re meeting. And then there’s Arthur Covus.”
He lets out something between a laugh and a snort. “That matches up with the letter. You’re here in his stead, then.”
Yves waves at the other gloombunny, and then points to the risers, making deeply illustrative hand gestures.
Isa offers her hand. “Isaline.”
The viera makes some incredulous gestures back, and drops his head in his hands.
“Artemicion.” His handshake has strength behind it. “I do have a delivery for you. I’m staying at the Cassida Estate, and I have a hunch you wouldn’t mind coming now.”
Isa looks over at Yves and his attempts to communicate. “That’d be best.”
Yves ties the string of the balloon to his satchel, fishes around for his notebook, and then flips past the pages of transcribing the Unreadable Book to start sketching out some very basic disassembly and reassembly suggestions.
Artemicion heads for the Cassida Estate, Isa and potentially Yves in tow, unless Math Art is more interesting.
Isa passes Yves on her way after the moogle, and says “Heading to Cassida. Come along, or stay exactly here so I can find you.” And then leaves him to his own decision. She’s not his mom.
Yves rips the paper out of his notebook, and hands it to the other viera. “Good luck,” he says, and hurries after Isa. Because there is no way he can promise to stay in one place if people might hand him /balloons/ and /cake/ at any given moment.
Artemicion leads them away from the festival, and the festival’s constant, if catchy, music. The moogle blacksmith guides them into a workshop that looks newly constructed, though he doesn’t lead them into the forge itself. “I won’t keep you long. If you’re going further south, you can leave at 7. West, 3. North, 1:30. You’re here for a sword,” he says to Isa. “And you are Isaline Osler.”
“I am, and I am.”
Yves is playing the role of the trailing, quiet, lead-following viera for the moment.
He walks around behind a counter and disappears for a moment, pompom dancing above the top. After a moment, he walks back around, not carrying a sword. An envelope, instead, which is handed over to Isa.
“Small sword,” she says, but takes the envelope.
Yves bundles his balloon further down toward the satchel, wondering idly if Isa’s friend stuck her with the bill, too.
Isa breaks the seal on the envelope, and reads the letter. The only moving muscles in her face are the ones flicking her eyes over the words. She folds the letter up, puts it back into the envelope, and then tucks the envelope into an inner pocket of her jacket. “Northbound train is at 1:30?”
“There was one other thing with that letter,” Artemicion says. “Just a moment.” Artemicion walks back around behind the counter, and then a moment later, something breathtakingly familiar appears.
A spear.
THE spear.
“That’s going to require an explanation,” Isa says quickly.
“I’m not always the best at specialized weapons terminology, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a sword,” Yves says.
The blacksmith shrugs. “You’ll get one, but I can’t guarantee you’ll like it. He sent me a letter, a spear, and some gil. He said a human woman with a long braid would show up within the month, and could I please give her the letter and the spear.” He crunches the celery stick and then looks around for another. “I did work for the Covuses a year ago, a new blade for an heirloom sword. He’s the only one there who didn’t treat me like some kind of servant class. And he paid for my time here.”
“He’s a second son; they’re generally the more decent ones.” Isa reaches out for the spear, stops. “Need to check something,” she says, before taking it up.
Yves looks at the spear, which is /still/ not a sword, and decides he’s just not going to interfere in Weapon Stuff that he doesn’t understand. That’s supportive!
The haft of the spear is deeply knurled; when you’re jumping point-first out of an airship, you don’t want to lose your grip on your weapon. Isa pulls a knife from her belt, and starts ticktickticking it down the carvings. Suddenly she stops, and turns the spear horizontal, holding the knife underneath it. When she lets go of the spear it does not move – balanced to secretly-encoded precision. She drops the knife away, and grabs the spear out of the air, spinning a quarter-turn and grounding it butt-first into the ground. “That little shit,” she says, shaking her head. “He already did it.”
Yves can’t figure out if he should be making a sympathetic or congratulatory expression, so he tries just nodding.
Artemicion looks interested without looking TOO interested. He then nods, satisfied, and maybe even a little sad to see the spear go. “1:30,” he confirms the time of the train.
“I’ll need a case. I can’t carry this openly.”
“Trains do have weird policies,” he says, the slightest of smiles on his face. “I can give you a case.”
“Appreciate it.”
Five minutes later, Isa’s spear is safely tucked away inside a case nicer than anything else she owns outside of said spear.
Yves has turned his balloon into a satchel accessory with about as much string length as the average moogle bobble gets.
Isa takes a moment to figure out how to shoulder it along with her bag, and then offers her hand to Artemicion again. “Thanks. Maybe we’ll run into each other again someday.”
“Just might,” Artemicion says. “You ever need an interesting smithing job done, put the word out.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. But we’ve got a train to catch.”
“Travel well, Isaline.”
“Don’t let Susan get to you,” Isa says on her way out.
He snorts a laugh.
With a final whistle, the train gloriously pushes north from Kinneas Station, leaving a festive party still carrying on in its wake, though one meager balloon still hangs on, tied to Yves’s bag.
Isa is sitting with one hand protectively on the spear case. Not stroking it; that’d be weird. Just…reassuring herself that it’s there as she watches the landscape pass.
Yves is attempting to draw a stern face on his balloon. “So, uh,” he says to Isa, “mission accomplished?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t supposed to go like this, but it was supposed to end like this.”
Yves watches Isa sidelong, and finishes putting the face on his balloon. Maybe he didn’t take enough liberal arts classes at uni to follow that answer. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” he settles on, at last. “But I think I told that timpani player how to fix the platform, so there’s that.”
“Hey, we stuck together, did what we came to do, and no one got hurt. I’ll be shocked if the other group can say the same.”
There is a murmur from further up the train, and you can both see people standing up and moving to the east-side windows, curiosity drawing them closer.
Yves glances idly over toward the window, though it’s probably just a gorgeous sunset or something uninteresting like that. “Hey, if they got into dreadful trouble, I’ll be sorry, but I’ll also know it’s not just me.”
“I promise it’s not just you. What is going on out there?” Isa says as she shifts to see better.
The answer comes swiftly.
A chocobo stampede rushes past the train, heading south as you head north, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake. And in the center of this stampede, standing astride two mighty birds, cloak flapping in the wind, Liga whips by, a “WAHEY” on the wind. And then they are gone, leaving confused murmurs behind.
Isa rests her forehead in her hand. “It’s not just you.”
Yves stares. Then wiggles his fingers in a still slightly fond farewell to the mad, mad Liga, and returns to his seat.
And with that…
End Session.
****
The letter Isa received, which has been shown to no one else: