Session 73 - Half Thunder, All Storm

Previously, Across the Horizon...
Yves has traveled through Ducorde and to the southern reaches of Caerwyn in search of a way to communicate with the masks, following the guidance of Diabolos.
Long before, there was a Speaker, one who bridged the world of Esper and Person, one who could serve as a liaison between those worlds. It was Diabolos's thought that Yves could serve in a similar role, if he could find the Speaker's mask, now that the Speaker had died.
What precisely happened to the Speaker, well, that was a problem for someone else, right?
Sometimes, Yves has learned, sometimes that someone else ends up being you after all.
We join our brave adventurers right as everything is about to go wrong...
**
The half-mask does not approach, hovering in the air, the flickering lights from outside casting long shadows that seem to shift form in the ruined estate. "Haranya sula covaste kalan. You haven't even asked my name."
"You're right," Yves says seriously. "That was very rude of me. I kept asking questions based on my misunderstanding, instead of paying attention to your circumstances. What's your name?"
"Taijiya." The mask tilts to the side. "Let that be your final memory."
"...in that I'll think of it fondly for a good long time?" Yves asks, not too optimistically.
"We're taking a break from the conversation? Alright." Bast shrugs the crossbow off his shoulder.
The mask flickers in the light, shifting to a faded white, and the outline of a memory of a man appears in the darkness, wrapped in a cloak of darkness that hides the lines of the body as it blows in a wind everyone but Linnet can feel. A calamitously loud bang accompanies a flash of light, as no one gets the drop on Taijiya.
Before the afterimage of the flash fades away, Isa's already at a run. She stays on the ground, but her spear is held two-handed in a full speed bayonet charge. As the spear slams through the semi-corporeal form, Isa gets in real close. "Could have kept talking," she says.
"Shal ba lar," comes the bitter reply, and then Taijiya is a flurry of motion.
Two more loud bangs erupt from within the shadowy half-Esper, and then Isa finds herself the target of four glowing red dots, following her every movement, separated from the others by even this little bit.
"Still can go back to talking if you get tired." Bast takes a few seconds to be sure of his aim and sends a bolt through the overactive shadow.
"Hey! He was being nice! THAT'S NOT COOL!" Linnet, who until now has been silently watching the action, hurls something that looks like a snowball directly above her head; it bursts and showers mint-scented glitter over everyone except Taijiya.
Yves looks hurt, both emotionally and physically. "There are better ways to handle this," he insists. "If you want to remain a ghost-Speaker, Taijiya, you could simply say so, especially since we came here under the wrong impression. Or come back with us, and speak with someone else, like, uh, Diabolos? Were you on good terms with--hm. Well. Cinnabar! Everyone loves Cinnabar, right?"
Taijiya does not dignify that with a remark.
"...yeah okay I guess some mixed feelings," Yves mutters to himself.
Isa executes a flurry of jabs and slashes, flensing wisps of shadow away from Taijiya's shape. "All of you keep. Trying. This. And it never ends the way you want."
The four red dots have remained locked on Isa for the last few seconds, never close enough to any other ally to spread the target around. As Taijiya bleeds shadow, a quartet of blasts go off, all targeted at the brave dragoon.
The shadow bleeds itself back around, forming a blackened wing dripping darkness, as the outline of Taijiya's lower body erases itself, replaced with the silhouette of a severed spine.
When the shadow and smoke from the blasts fade, Isa is nowhere to be seen....unless you look up, where she is sailing clear. Her gauntlet makes an unmistakeable gesture.
Four slugs of metal embed themselves in four different walls.
Chains erupt from the core of the Esper, slicing through the air toward Bast and Linnet. One chain wraps itself around Bast before vanishing in a searing puff of smoke, while the other slices through a decaying couch past Linnet. Dark tendrils of arcane magic briefly lash at Yves and Isa before receding.
"I don't think this is a constructive conversation!" Bast bites off through a grimace of pain as he slips a longer bolt out of his sleeve and twists the head, which almost immediately begins to glow with heat. It hits the shadow just above where its spine ends, hanging in what would have been its chest cavity, still glowing. The smoke doesn't seem to want to mix with the shadow.
"We've had better!" This time, Linnet's healing rally just follows the sweep of her right hand across the battlefield; she follows it up with a flurry of icicles flung forward from her left hand, passing through Taijiya but taking little wisps of shadow as they burst.
"Right," Yves says through gritted teeth. He's started to hunch over in pain, but straightens up deliberately. "They aren't all like this, Isa. Some of them, like Golem, knew better from the start. Some of them figured out how we could work together. So, Taijiya. Maybe have a quick chat with Diabolos about how this can go down the easy way, or the HARD WAY." His eyes glimmer an unvieraish color not usually found anywhere in reality and possibilities sweep away from him toward the enemy of the hour.
Taijiya is plunged into a nightmarish sleep!
Isa hovers over the battlefield, suspended at the apogee of her Jump as she takes stock. "YVES!" she calls down, holding her spear out to the side. "LIGHTNING ROD!"
Yves snaps a hand out, blue-white energy collecting against the flat of his palm, in a space where it could be peeled off without stabbing through him on the way. "CHARGED."
Isa nods, and Dives. She gathers an aura around her as the air ionizes, nicely conductive.
Yves lets the blue-white energy grow, crackle, and lift off his palm, drifting airily, and yet fast as sound, toward a point in space where it waits for that aura to intersect and come alight.
When Isa hits the ball lightning, she transforms. What hits Taijiya is less a human and more a living storm, all her kinetic energy changed in a flash to electric potential. It's the sort of explosion that knocks out power grids.
The explosion reflects in Yves' eyes. Literally, as the image of the explosion ricochets back from his gaze onto the target, turning the thunderous noise into a truly deafening roar.
When the sound and the fury fades, Isa is kneeling on the ground, the point of her blade halfway buried in the floor, her grip on the shaft keeping her upright. St. Elmo's Fire still dances along her armor.
Yves' ears are standing upright, and puffier than usual.
Bast whistles quietly, blinking away the afterimages, and stops frantically trying to re-string his crossbow.
The shockwave blows out the remaining windows, whips Bast's pompom parallel to the ground, rustles Linnet's clothes and hair not at all, and absolutely obliterates Taijiya.
"...oh dear." Yves tries to blink away the afterimages and see if that's as... oh. Yes. That is what he thought it was. "Oh no. I mean. That's. Oh dear."
The half-mask remains behind, smoke rising from the edges.
Isa rises to her feet, one hand yanking her spear free, the other scooping up the mask. "For things that want our help, they could act like it."
"I really thought we could maybe talk it out after he woke up with some new perspective," Yves says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I suppose after fighting that entire infested metal giant, before, I hadn't, uh, hadn't, I guess we maybe hit it very hard."
"Well, that was emphatic." Linnet flattens some of the fur on Yves' ears while giving him a bit of a healing boost. "Shall we split up and look for some instructions or anything this 'seer' left behind? ...since we didn't get much in the way of useful instructions out of them."
"I'm guessing we're not the first to get this kind of welcome. Watch what you step in." Bast shoulders the crossbow and begins searching.
"If the neighbors weren't awake before, they are now. So any search needs to be quick." Isa walks over to Yves, hands him the mask. "We need to find some way to get them talking," she says to him, "or else this is going to keep happening."
"I should ask Diabolos about this," Yves says. "And... do you think this mask would like a sort of, um, miniature house? As a place to stay? Or would that be too much like mocking it? I could put it in with Golem, maybe. Golem's the most soothing mask of them all. Cinnabar's sweeter, in some ways, but not as calm." He sighs. "This was supposed to help with the talking. I hope it still can. It's not what I expected at all."
Isa nods. "Maybe you're right, and it'll listen to reason after a nap."
"At least no one got too hurt," Yves says, as if he's not still slightly shot. If much less shot than he was recently, thanks to Linnet.
Bast finds easily-fenceable goods worth, he estimates, 2200 gil, plus an Ether, two Antidotes, and a really nice pocket watch that makes him think maybe he shouldn't sell it. Something about how it shakes when he touches it.
Linnet pokes at an old bookshelf, carefully trying to navigate around the mold spots.
Isa nods. "And hey, the lightning rod worked in practice, not just theory, so good job."
Linnet's search uncovers a wooden carving, crude and simple, definitely the work of an amateur. A feminine figure with three faces.
Bast glances at the back of the watch before pocketing it and hands the Ether over to Yves with a muttered "might need it after all that", one ear listening for any further trouble.
The figure reminds Linnet of two stories, one more recent than the other. One, the ancient queen with three children, each of which received different blessings, though none so terrible and abandoned as the middle child. The other is of the titanic three-faced being inside the Starfall's engine.
Pausing her search, Linnet stares at the carving in her hands and tries to recall the details of the ancient story...and not to recall the details of Asura.
Yves accepts the ether, slipping it into his satchel along with the Speaker mask. "Now, Golem, he's had a very trying day, and may still be angry about things, so please be gentle, like you were when we met," he says into the satchel, with a moment of fond reminiscence for that time when a lot of very strange fleshy branches did not murder him. "We should definitely try that again some time in less, uh, urgent circumstances, maybe in a large field with nothing flammable. On top of a glacier, maybe."
"Just make sure there's nothing downhill that you want to keep in one piece." Bast's working hard at suppressing an appreciative grin.
Back aboard the Starfall...
Script etches itself across Yves's wall. Taijiya is tormented with rage and betrayal. You did well to subdue him. You are ready to be the Speaker, if you are willing.
"I likely am," Yves says uneasily, "but I'm so worried about Taijiya. Who betrayed him? Is there any way to help him? If others wronged him before, I don't want to be... another one hurting him. Even if we did have to explode him slightly for the subduing."
Isa is leaning against a far wall, arms crossed. Watching respectfully, but watching nevertheless.
Who wronged him is his story to tell. It is not our responsibility, though it may be your burden to bear.
Yves nods slowly. "We've dealt fairly with each other, as best we can, given our different ways of seeing the world and what we know. So I'll trust you on that. On both those parts. What do I need to do, to become the Speaker?"
Wear the mask.
Yves takes the mask out of his satchel, and looks at it. He's carried several masks at this point, briefly or consistently. He hasn't put one on. "Does it stay there, once I put it on?"
No.
Not this one, Diabolos writes after a moment.
"Ah." Yves pauses. "...ah. Well." He holds the mask up in front of his face, several inches away. "I suppose there's only one way to understand, then."
"Are you sure?" is all Isa asks.
"Moderately sure," Yves says, "though honestly how confident I am and how well things turn out hasn't been all that well correlated in the past, so, uh, anyway, here goes." He places the mask on his face.
For a moment, nothing seems different. Yves looks at the world with half a mask on his face. The curve pokes out the edge of his drooping ear. Nothing explodes, which is nice.
Nothing looks different at all.
But something sounds different.
Raspy whispers.
Yves tilts his head to one side, an ear twitching toward the sound. Sounds?
The slight scraping of chains, the sound of footsteps in sand.
"Yves?"
Isa's voice is the same as it ever was.
"I hear something," Yves says, turning his head about to try to locate the source. "Not you, just... chains? Maybe footsteps?"
Hello, Yves, Diabolos writes, and says, the sound of shadows rippling the surface of a pond.
"No ancient entities taking over your body?" Isa asks, very calm.
"...oh, that's interesting," Yves says. "I mean, no, no possession or anything, but I can hear Diabolos properly now. Hello, Diabolos. Do I sound the same to you? Or does it help make me any clearer in that direction as well?"
I have never had any difficulty understanding you, Diabolos replies. The words etch themselves in gold scratches for Isa and Yves to read; the words drain themselves solely into Yves's ears. My brethren are another story. Speak to one now.
"I was wondering if that might be the case, or if they simply had trouble speaking in a way I understood." Yves fishes about in his satchel, and takes out the Golem mask. "Hello, it's me again. I hope you haven't minded being carried about? I wanted to make sure you were right at hand in case something came up that was helpful to you."
I Have Suffered Not At All, Golem creaks, words rustling in the tops of the trees in the forest of your mind. It Has Been Good To Feel The Sun Again.
Yves beams like sunshine himself. "I'm so glad," he says. "I should take you to the deck more often." Then, to Isa, "Golem's doing well. You know, the one I met when we were exploring right before we got to the ship, the one who wanted to come along."
Isa steps away from the wall. "Everything's in hand then?"
"Yes, it's marvelous," Yves says. "No strange side-effects, just better communication. I have... I have so many questions, and I may be late for dinner."
Isa nods. "I'll let Linnet know." She starts to leave, and then pauses. "I meant what I said back at the house. We need a way to get through to them before beating the shit out of them. I'll leave you to it." On that vote of confidence, she's out of the door.
Yves nods, mostly to the closed door behind Isa, and then turns his attention back to the various mask habitats around the room. "...right," he says, "does anyone want to start? Someone who wants a habitat redesign?"
And with that... End session 73.