Session 92: Vault For One
The Vault has been breached.
The Vault is full of treasures.
To the left as they enter, on the same wall as the Vault door, hangs a mask. The skull of a dragon missing its lower jaw, blackened pits instead of eye holes, crowned with a mane of coarse purple hair.
Next to the mask is a scabbard, though it does not hold a sword. Instead, slots on the outside each hold a card, the same size as the playing cards that live in Jasper Samson’s utilikilt. Those cards certainly don’t live inside of a heavily trapped vault, despite any reputation that Jasper has tried to cultivate.
Next to the scabbard there sits a series of four locked jewelry boxes, the same size but different colors, red, blue, yellow, and green.
Next to the jewelry boxes sits a checkerboard game with ancient marble pieces, on a pedestal with a light gravity manipulation field protecting it.
Next to the board game sits a lifelike doll of a human girl in a red dress and matching bow. Her eyes rest open, with the sclera of the doll’s eyes just as black as the pupil, and the iris matches the red of the dress.
Next to the doll, directly across from the Vault door, there waits a spear. The handle of the spear is six feet in length, and the blade atop the spear is long and curved, with a spike near the base of the blade on the opposite side of the blade’s curvature. The blade is fully suspended in the air, floating inside of another gravity manipulation field. The edges of the field are easily seen; the field is covered in bitter frost.
Next to the blade sits a beautiful pink flower fan, silhouettes of tumbling flower petals and sinuous dancing forms painted on its delicate canvas.
Next to the fan hovers a white metal sphere, a black band ringing its equator, and a circle of red in the center facing the party. It makes no sound, nor does it move from its position to the right of the fan, merely floating in place, rising an inch, then falling an inch, over and over.
Next to the sphere sits a translucent box, twelve inches long, six inches deep, four inches high. The box has three separate locks on it, all securely fastened. The box appears empty.
Next to the box is a key of the whitest metal they have ever seen, a key identical in every way to the key of the Starfall except its shade.
Next to the key, to the right of the door as they enter the Vault, sits a violin, its wood stained black at the neck, its strings quivering to be played, the instrument vibrating in anticipation of being held once again.
In the center of the room there stands a square pedestal of jade and obsidian, each face two feet in length. A screen in the base of the pedestal flashes green in a steady rhythm, with text scrolling from the bottom and disappearing in the top, a level of technology thoroughly unheard of thus far. Atop the pedestal, nestled in a grooved slot, there is a sphere, a cerulean sphere encased in thick bands of light-swallowing onyx. The rich color of the sphere pulses through the darkness in time with the pedestal’s own light.
The Vault is full of treasures, but our brave adventurers have only come for one.
*******
Orrey shakes out the first of the bags he's brought with him, eyeing all of the items. "Anything we shouldn't take, do you think?"
Linnet puts out a hand to halt Orrey's rampant looting. "Let him look at that...blinky box first."
Bast scans the room. "Let's limit how grabby we get here. I'm guessing the spear is the Frost Fair Blade? Any idea which of these might be the Alterna relic?"
Bast comes closer to the scrolling pedestal, to get a look at the text. "Limited...got it." Orrey grabs the dragon skull mask and places it inside the bag.
"Look first, grab later." Bast shoots Orrey an annoyed glance. "We don't know if they have secondary alarms."
Linnet hasn't a breeze of a clue about the Alterna key, so she kneels to read the text alongside Bast. "Catalog, maybe?" The text scrolls every ten seconds. There are always two lines, though the lines around them change periodically. The steady lines are: Containment Field: Operational
Mitigation Field: Operational "Does 'Mitigation' mean what mitigates the Alternan response?" Orrey asks, looking over Bast's shoulder.
"Or something harmful from the thing it's containing, maybe."
Orrey wanders away to admire the fan and the checkerboard pieces.
The other lines of text that occasionally accompany these two reference other sections of the ship. Everything always says "Operational." "They don't seem to reference anything in here, unless everything's hooked up to its own section of the ship on the alarms, in which case we're in deeper chocobo shit than we realized," summarizes Linnet. "Right. What looks Alternan?" "That spear must be the Frost Fair Blade, right?" Orrey says, holding his hand closer to the frost. "That'd be my guess," replies Bast. "Can you tell what's with that frost around it?" The air around the spear is not cold at all. There is no change to temperature here, short of putting one's hand in the frost field itself. "Just watch, and the Blade will be, say, the key or something, and the spear is a trap," Linnet jokes with very little humor.
"I'll leave the magic questions to you two. Let me know what you decide." Bast turns back to the pedestal, trying to figure out what it has to do with the ship and what's being contained.
"The spear blade matches the descriptions of the Frost Fair Blade as far as I remember. Five of these are definitely Alternan in origin: the scabbard, the game, the fan, the doll, and the key." Orrey says after examining everything quickly.
"The gods work fast." Linnet gives him a wary nod of approval. "Well, snaffling everything will no doubt trigger entirely too many alarms, so let's be a little picky." "Sort out the spear first. Does it need special handling?" Bast looks dubiously at the field of frost.
"I don't have the blizzard experience," Orrey says, looking over at Linnet.
Linnet decides not to call him out on his crap (out loud) and steps up to the Frost Fair Field.
"Here goes." She reaches in and grasps the shaft of the spear the way she sees Isa do all the time, like she's not afraid of it.
This is much worse than Linnet's usual blizzard spells; the arm she pulls out of the force field is an unhealthy purple, and the fingers clasped around the spear are nearly frozen to it. She's also nearly bitten through her lip trying not to curse Orrey's name loud enough for the entire ship to hear. No one outside would have heard it anyway, with the sudden commotion outside the Vault door, people racing by to the port side of the ship. Bast swears under his breath, and points to one of the sacks Orrey has. "Get it in there before you start losing fingers."
With great difficulty, Linnet manages to pry her fingers off the spear and drop it into Orrey's sack. "I'm fine. Keep moving."
Orrey attaches the sack to his backpack and then grabs the game, the fan, the doll, the scabbard, and the key. "What's going on out there?" a reedy tenor asks.
"It's that blasted gang," replies a silky baritone. "The one that's going around hunting down undeclared food?"
"What are they doing here?"
"Causing general havoc. They're completely blocking the pier, and they're saying no one can leave here at all. This entire region is under the 'protection' of the Triglycerides, and the Yinha Harvesters are on their way."
"That's going to be an all-out battle."
"Yeah. Good thing none of us need to go anywhere. The path to the other ships is completely blocked."
"Can the Captain still make it back?" "Trust me, the captain can get wherever she needs. That won't be a problem." Bast's fingers twitch slightly as he watches Orrey grabbing things; finally, he turns to Linnet, whispering to make sure of staying unheard outside. "Once we're heading out, don't stop. Get out, let them know to expect a hard drop with me carrying him, see if they can get into a good position for it."
"...so I'm fleeing and leaving you two to haul yourselves and everything?"
"Yup." Orrey says, double checking the straps and buckles holding everything together.
"And setting up the escape. You got it," confirms Bast. Suddenly, there is a lot of shouting and blaring klaxons outside the Vault.
The klaxon then shifts into a different kind of warning siren, the long blare of an alarm meant to travel across a long distance, the kind Orrey heard whenever there was concern in Saron about an incoming wave.
As the siren dips into the lower register, a cry is clearly audible, even through the door. Bast presses his lips together. "We're done here. Ready to go?"
"That's not good. That's calling people from far away." Orrey says, settling his backpack into place. "Ready."
"Manifestation! Manifestation!"
The Ultimate Armageddon rises to point at the Vault exit.
Linnet nods, just trying not to move her wounded arm. "You point, I'll sprint."
The air suddenly smells different, like it did when Diabolos was summoned for the first time. Somewhere, an Esper has manifested. "That should be enough of a distraction to allow us to get out of here. Right? Right." Orrey is not convincing himself very well.
"I'll get the lock, Haste Bomb, then out the way we came." Bast points at Orrey. "Grab on tight when we're getting out, try not to have any part of you right under my feet."
Even as he speaks, Bast's eyes are drawn to the pedestal again. It has to be tied into the rest of the ship somehow...what was it that it was saying... The pedestal's screen readouts flicker, briefly, as Bast looks closer. While both lines display the same as they did before, the Containment Field was reading something else for a moment before. With the shouts of 'manifestation' from outside, plus that familiar smell in the air... combined with the individual readouts listing out particular rooms on the ship, the pedestal is used to direct the effects of the sphere on top, and measure the effects of that sphere throughout the entire ship. Orrey watches Bast eyeing the sphere. "I have one more sack."
"I have one more arm," Linnet offers.
"You keep that arm where it is." Bast breathes out slowly. "Could be a real stupid idea, but it looks like it's a central component of the ship somehow."
He looks at Orrey. "See if you can bag it without touching it, at least."
Orrey shrugs, gets out the last sack, and attempts to fit it over the sphere.
Orrey bags the sphere, bracing himself. The display text changes. Containment Field: Offline
Mitigation Field: Offline "Bast, can you tie that sack on the backpack for me?" Orrey asks, holding out the bag.
Bast takes the bag, hefting it for a moment to gauge the weight, and ties it on.
"Hmmm...we may have a problem. I can't cast any spells...it sucked the power right out of me." Orrey says.
Bast closes his eyes for a moment. "Fuck." Then he's busy with the ties again, taking the sack back, stuffing in into his clothes. "Try an ether."
Orrey pulls out his X-Ether from the backpack's side pouch and downs it.
"No good. We're not going to make it out of here." Orrey says flatly.
"I don't need magic to fly. Same plan, hang on to me. No Haste on the way out, I guess."
"...right, don't hand that thing to me. Shut up and let's get moving." Linnet hands Orrey her sword - her sword hand is useless anyway - and looks to Bast for directions.
Bast moves up to the outer door, unjamming the lock and bending down to unlock it. The hallways of the Seventh Dawn are full of activity, as people respond to the commotion outside, the manifestation of an Esper (what and where is yet unknown), and the ignored demands of a very irate Inspector Jenks, who, quite frankly, has just been proven right in everything he suspected. Bast is fast on his feet after he closes the pre-vault door behind the team - obviously they have somewhere to be, everyone does, didn't you hear the alarms? But it seems that, with the occasional detour, they will not even have to argue their presence on the ship. And the captain's cabin is not that far away.
Orrey shadows Bast, managing to duck out of sight whenever anyone passes by. "Do you know when Perilune is due back?" Cassiat Alyon can be heard to ask as Bast nears the hallway on the next level up, in between the captain's cabin and the stairwell, in between the thieves and their escape.
(Linnet manages not to stop dead in the corridor while listening.)
"I don't, I'm sorry," answers an unfamiliar voice. "Just -- just stay here, okay, everything's under control," and then one set of footsteps retreats, heading in the opposite direction. Linnet manages to blend the three of them into a group bustling up the stairwell, generating just enough breeze around them to blur their edges if anyone tries to look too closely. Nothing to see here, nothing to guard, nobody to watch out for, where the hell was that VIP door...
In the commotion, Cassiat's hair blows into her face in a sudden chilly gust that sweeps through the stairwell. The mask at her hip clacks a bit.
The VIP room is just ahead, where the hallway curves just enough to stay out of Cassiat's line of sight. Past that, the captain's cabin, and the way out.
Linnet passes the VIP room with visible, almost tangible regret; she does actually touch the door as she passes, but she glances at Orrey's sack and passes it by. With her good hand, she touches the pocket where Perilune's message crystal rests. I'm going to hate this either way. The captain's cabin awaits.
Bast pauses for a moment, listening for any movement inside before trying the door.
There are no sounds from within, and the door has not been locked in Bast's absence. (There are a lot of sounds from outside, but those have been consistent since emerging from the Vault.)
Bast slips inside, motioning Linnet over to the window right away and waiting for Orrey to come through before easing the door closed.
Orrey backs in, watching the hallway for anyone heading their way. It is surprisingly dark outside, especially for this early. There isn't enough visibility from inside to get a true understanding of what is happening without opening the window and emerging from the ship. Linnet struggles a bit opening the window one-handed, but it's doable.
Orrey readies himself to head out the window and grab onto Bast’s contraption in an attempt to perform something approaching a controlled fall toward Meteor.
Bast locks the door behind them, against any last-minute surprises, and walks over to the window with small, sleek metal wings slowly spreading out to the sides from his back. Outside the window, there is absolute pandemonium.
The dock is overrun with people of all shapes and sizes, skirmishes breaking out between food smugglers and customs officers, just the type that are heavily armed on both sides.
The rumor of undeclared shipments spread like wildfire as the day went, drawing multiple competing gangs to the Yinha docks, with authorities on all sides converging to try and contain the damage.
The fighting covers not just this dock, but the one below as well; the Meteor is surrounded by high-calorie violence.
The fighting has led to a complication; there are nets now stretched underneath the Seventh Dawn, as the method of apprehending the criminals appears to be shunting them off the inner side of the dock to be collected later in a tangle of limbs and canvas beneath the docked airship.
The initial escape route has been sealed off, or at the very least complicated immensely.
The nets are not the only complication.
The shadow that stretched across the Seventh Dawn moves, as the being responsible for it shifts, no longer blocking out the sun.
The first thing that comes into view is a tail.
A long, thick, tail, the color of a pale beet, cracked scales and jagged bark-like growths distorting its shape.
The tail widens, tail turning into body, bulbous and bloated, drifting its heft with an ominous grace ever downward.
Then, the mouth.
A mouth that stretches dozens of feet across.
A mouth that hangs a hundred feet down.
No eyes. No ears. No nose. No limbs.
Just a giant mouth in the sky.
Atomos. "Oh, we're in so much trouble." Linnet wedges herself into the window. "Still on target?"
“You two can make it to the docks, flying. I think I need another exit. Take the stuff and go. I’ll find another way out.” Orrey says after seeing the massive Esper in the sky.
"Go already, don't get caught or eaten," Bast tosses off to Linnet while looking at the nets below to judge how far they'd need to travel to avoid them.
Turning to Orrey, he manages to keep the "What's this about now?" to below a snarl, but it takes effort.
“You know we can only kind of fly on that thing.” Orrey says.
“I’ll throw myself on Cassiat’s mercy and get off the ship with her help.” Orrey explains, quickly formulating something like a plan. “We need this stuff off of this ship. So take it and go.”
"Fuck. That. We didn't get caught so far, I'm not inclined to change that, and they're not going to have much mercy after this." Bast points out the window at the giant maw in the sky. "And the backpack won't fit over the wings anyway. Now are you grabbing on or do I have to carry you by your collar?"
“You sure, cap?” Orrey asks, taking in the nets one more time. Linnet dives out the window and attempts to aim around the net and toward the Meteor, but the input is blindingly distracting, so much going on that her already limited navigating senses are rather overwhelmed...and bloody hell her arm hurts...where is she going? Atomos drifts lazily through the sky. The dock vibrates as it inhales, but the breath has no intent behind it. The wind direction flags droop down again.
Fire whips through the sky, a black magic spell soaring wide of its mark.
Arrows thud into the sides of crates. "Damn right I'm sure." Once Linnet is clear of the window, Bast tweaks something in a nozzle hidden in his sleeve and lays down a spray of dark oil aimed away from the window, like a jet misfiring, covering most of the captain's desk. A blast of bitter cold, nearly as frigid as the shock that numbed her hand just minutes earlier, brings Linnet down out of the sky in a heap on the dock, surrounded on all sides by the battling crowd.
Orrey pulls out the knife Isa gave him and closes his eyes, taking in a calming, centering breath. Then he grabs onto the handholds on Bast’s wings and prays to all of the Twelve for help getting them through to safety. The crowd converges, but then separates, forming a circle around her.
The moogle slots another bolt into his crossbow. "Intruders," he says, coldly collected.
"Your orders, Doctor?"
He tilts his head, and then turns it back. "Oh, right. She's not back yet. So I will use my best judgment."
Byakko levels his crossbow at Linnet. "We can get the answers out of your corpse."
Bast and Orrey linger at the window of the captain's cabin of the Seventh Dawn, heavily laden with stolen goods and intense pressure.
Linnet is on the business end of a crossbow held by one of the officers of the Seventh Dawn, shot down over the food riots raging all along the Yinha docks.
Nets strung below the dock separate the Seventh Dawn from Meteor, cutting off the heist's pre-planned escape route.
The rogue Guardian Force Atomos drifts through the air, a ten-story mouth causing localized earthquakes with every inhale.
Two officers are aboard the Seventh Dawn, responding to the manifestation of Atomos, sure to find the thieves in a matter of seconds.
The others must be on their way.
The heist is over.
The battle has just begun.
The Vault is full of treasures.
To the left as they enter, on the same wall as the Vault door, hangs a mask. The skull of a dragon missing its lower jaw, blackened pits instead of eye holes, crowned with a mane of coarse purple hair.
Next to the mask is a scabbard, though it does not hold a sword. Instead, slots on the outside each hold a card, the same size as the playing cards that live in Jasper Samson’s utilikilt. Those cards certainly don’t live inside of a heavily trapped vault, despite any reputation that Jasper has tried to cultivate.
Next to the scabbard there sits a series of four locked jewelry boxes, the same size but different colors, red, blue, yellow, and green.
Next to the jewelry boxes sits a checkerboard game with ancient marble pieces, on a pedestal with a light gravity manipulation field protecting it.
Next to the board game sits a lifelike doll of a human girl in a red dress and matching bow. Her eyes rest open, with the sclera of the doll’s eyes just as black as the pupil, and the iris matches the red of the dress.
Next to the doll, directly across from the Vault door, there waits a spear. The handle of the spear is six feet in length, and the blade atop the spear is long and curved, with a spike near the base of the blade on the opposite side of the blade’s curvature. The blade is fully suspended in the air, floating inside of another gravity manipulation field. The edges of the field are easily seen; the field is covered in bitter frost.
Next to the blade sits a beautiful pink flower fan, silhouettes of tumbling flower petals and sinuous dancing forms painted on its delicate canvas.
Next to the fan hovers a white metal sphere, a black band ringing its equator, and a circle of red in the center facing the party. It makes no sound, nor does it move from its position to the right of the fan, merely floating in place, rising an inch, then falling an inch, over and over.
Next to the sphere sits a translucent box, twelve inches long, six inches deep, four inches high. The box has three separate locks on it, all securely fastened. The box appears empty.
Next to the box is a key of the whitest metal they have ever seen, a key identical in every way to the key of the Starfall except its shade.
Next to the key, to the right of the door as they enter the Vault, sits a violin, its wood stained black at the neck, its strings quivering to be played, the instrument vibrating in anticipation of being held once again.
In the center of the room there stands a square pedestal of jade and obsidian, each face two feet in length. A screen in the base of the pedestal flashes green in a steady rhythm, with text scrolling from the bottom and disappearing in the top, a level of technology thoroughly unheard of thus far. Atop the pedestal, nestled in a grooved slot, there is a sphere, a cerulean sphere encased in thick bands of light-swallowing onyx. The rich color of the sphere pulses through the darkness in time with the pedestal’s own light.
The Vault is full of treasures, but our brave adventurers have only come for one.
*******
Orrey shakes out the first of the bags he's brought with him, eyeing all of the items. "Anything we shouldn't take, do you think?"
Linnet puts out a hand to halt Orrey's rampant looting. "Let him look at that...blinky box first."
Bast scans the room. "Let's limit how grabby we get here. I'm guessing the spear is the Frost Fair Blade? Any idea which of these might be the Alterna relic?"
Bast comes closer to the scrolling pedestal, to get a look at the text. "Limited...got it." Orrey grabs the dragon skull mask and places it inside the bag.
"Look first, grab later." Bast shoots Orrey an annoyed glance. "We don't know if they have secondary alarms."
Linnet hasn't a breeze of a clue about the Alterna key, so she kneels to read the text alongside Bast. "Catalog, maybe?" The text scrolls every ten seconds. There are always two lines, though the lines around them change periodically. The steady lines are: Containment Field: Operational
Mitigation Field: Operational "Does 'Mitigation' mean what mitigates the Alternan response?" Orrey asks, looking over Bast's shoulder.
"Or something harmful from the thing it's containing, maybe."
Orrey wanders away to admire the fan and the checkerboard pieces.
The other lines of text that occasionally accompany these two reference other sections of the ship. Everything always says "Operational." "They don't seem to reference anything in here, unless everything's hooked up to its own section of the ship on the alarms, in which case we're in deeper chocobo shit than we realized," summarizes Linnet. "Right. What looks Alternan?" "That spear must be the Frost Fair Blade, right?" Orrey says, holding his hand closer to the frost. "That'd be my guess," replies Bast. "Can you tell what's with that frost around it?" The air around the spear is not cold at all. There is no change to temperature here, short of putting one's hand in the frost field itself. "Just watch, and the Blade will be, say, the key or something, and the spear is a trap," Linnet jokes with very little humor.
"I'll leave the magic questions to you two. Let me know what you decide." Bast turns back to the pedestal, trying to figure out what it has to do with the ship and what's being contained.
"The spear blade matches the descriptions of the Frost Fair Blade as far as I remember. Five of these are definitely Alternan in origin: the scabbard, the game, the fan, the doll, and the key." Orrey says after examining everything quickly.
"The gods work fast." Linnet gives him a wary nod of approval. "Well, snaffling everything will no doubt trigger entirely too many alarms, so let's be a little picky." "Sort out the spear first. Does it need special handling?" Bast looks dubiously at the field of frost.
"I don't have the blizzard experience," Orrey says, looking over at Linnet.
Linnet decides not to call him out on his crap (out loud) and steps up to the Frost Fair Field.
"Here goes." She reaches in and grasps the shaft of the spear the way she sees Isa do all the time, like she's not afraid of it.
This is much worse than Linnet's usual blizzard spells; the arm she pulls out of the force field is an unhealthy purple, and the fingers clasped around the spear are nearly frozen to it. She's also nearly bitten through her lip trying not to curse Orrey's name loud enough for the entire ship to hear. No one outside would have heard it anyway, with the sudden commotion outside the Vault door, people racing by to the port side of the ship. Bast swears under his breath, and points to one of the sacks Orrey has. "Get it in there before you start losing fingers."
With great difficulty, Linnet manages to pry her fingers off the spear and drop it into Orrey's sack. "I'm fine. Keep moving."
Orrey attaches the sack to his backpack and then grabs the game, the fan, the doll, the scabbard, and the key. "What's going on out there?" a reedy tenor asks.
"It's that blasted gang," replies a silky baritone. "The one that's going around hunting down undeclared food?"
"What are they doing here?"
"Causing general havoc. They're completely blocking the pier, and they're saying no one can leave here at all. This entire region is under the 'protection' of the Triglycerides, and the Yinha Harvesters are on their way."
"That's going to be an all-out battle."
"Yeah. Good thing none of us need to go anywhere. The path to the other ships is completely blocked."
"Can the Captain still make it back?" "Trust me, the captain can get wherever she needs. That won't be a problem." Bast's fingers twitch slightly as he watches Orrey grabbing things; finally, he turns to Linnet, whispering to make sure of staying unheard outside. "Once we're heading out, don't stop. Get out, let them know to expect a hard drop with me carrying him, see if they can get into a good position for it."
"...so I'm fleeing and leaving you two to haul yourselves and everything?"
"Yup." Orrey says, double checking the straps and buckles holding everything together.
"And setting up the escape. You got it," confirms Bast. Suddenly, there is a lot of shouting and blaring klaxons outside the Vault.
The klaxon then shifts into a different kind of warning siren, the long blare of an alarm meant to travel across a long distance, the kind Orrey heard whenever there was concern in Saron about an incoming wave.
As the siren dips into the lower register, a cry is clearly audible, even through the door. Bast presses his lips together. "We're done here. Ready to go?"
"That's not good. That's calling people from far away." Orrey says, settling his backpack into place. "Ready."
"Manifestation! Manifestation!"
The Ultimate Armageddon rises to point at the Vault exit.
Linnet nods, just trying not to move her wounded arm. "You point, I'll sprint."
The air suddenly smells different, like it did when Diabolos was summoned for the first time. Somewhere, an Esper has manifested. "That should be enough of a distraction to allow us to get out of here. Right? Right." Orrey is not convincing himself very well.
"I'll get the lock, Haste Bomb, then out the way we came." Bast points at Orrey. "Grab on tight when we're getting out, try not to have any part of you right under my feet."
Even as he speaks, Bast's eyes are drawn to the pedestal again. It has to be tied into the rest of the ship somehow...what was it that it was saying... The pedestal's screen readouts flicker, briefly, as Bast looks closer. While both lines display the same as they did before, the Containment Field was reading something else for a moment before. With the shouts of 'manifestation' from outside, plus that familiar smell in the air... combined with the individual readouts listing out particular rooms on the ship, the pedestal is used to direct the effects of the sphere on top, and measure the effects of that sphere throughout the entire ship. Orrey watches Bast eyeing the sphere. "I have one more sack."
"I have one more arm," Linnet offers.
"You keep that arm where it is." Bast breathes out slowly. "Could be a real stupid idea, but it looks like it's a central component of the ship somehow."
He looks at Orrey. "See if you can bag it without touching it, at least."
Orrey shrugs, gets out the last sack, and attempts to fit it over the sphere.
Orrey bags the sphere, bracing himself. The display text changes. Containment Field: Offline
Mitigation Field: Offline "Bast, can you tie that sack on the backpack for me?" Orrey asks, holding out the bag.
Bast takes the bag, hefting it for a moment to gauge the weight, and ties it on.
"Hmmm...we may have a problem. I can't cast any spells...it sucked the power right out of me." Orrey says.
Bast closes his eyes for a moment. "Fuck." Then he's busy with the ties again, taking the sack back, stuffing in into his clothes. "Try an ether."
Orrey pulls out his X-Ether from the backpack's side pouch and downs it.
"No good. We're not going to make it out of here." Orrey says flatly.
"I don't need magic to fly. Same plan, hang on to me. No Haste on the way out, I guess."
"...right, don't hand that thing to me. Shut up and let's get moving." Linnet hands Orrey her sword - her sword hand is useless anyway - and looks to Bast for directions.
Bast moves up to the outer door, unjamming the lock and bending down to unlock it. The hallways of the Seventh Dawn are full of activity, as people respond to the commotion outside, the manifestation of an Esper (what and where is yet unknown), and the ignored demands of a very irate Inspector Jenks, who, quite frankly, has just been proven right in everything he suspected. Bast is fast on his feet after he closes the pre-vault door behind the team - obviously they have somewhere to be, everyone does, didn't you hear the alarms? But it seems that, with the occasional detour, they will not even have to argue their presence on the ship. And the captain's cabin is not that far away.
Orrey shadows Bast, managing to duck out of sight whenever anyone passes by. "Do you know when Perilune is due back?" Cassiat Alyon can be heard to ask as Bast nears the hallway on the next level up, in between the captain's cabin and the stairwell, in between the thieves and their escape.
(Linnet manages not to stop dead in the corridor while listening.)
"I don't, I'm sorry," answers an unfamiliar voice. "Just -- just stay here, okay, everything's under control," and then one set of footsteps retreats, heading in the opposite direction. Linnet manages to blend the three of them into a group bustling up the stairwell, generating just enough breeze around them to blur their edges if anyone tries to look too closely. Nothing to see here, nothing to guard, nobody to watch out for, where the hell was that VIP door...
In the commotion, Cassiat's hair blows into her face in a sudden chilly gust that sweeps through the stairwell. The mask at her hip clacks a bit.
The VIP room is just ahead, where the hallway curves just enough to stay out of Cassiat's line of sight. Past that, the captain's cabin, and the way out.
Linnet passes the VIP room with visible, almost tangible regret; she does actually touch the door as she passes, but she glances at Orrey's sack and passes it by. With her good hand, she touches the pocket where Perilune's message crystal rests. I'm going to hate this either way. The captain's cabin awaits.
Bast pauses for a moment, listening for any movement inside before trying the door.
There are no sounds from within, and the door has not been locked in Bast's absence. (There are a lot of sounds from outside, but those have been consistent since emerging from the Vault.)
Bast slips inside, motioning Linnet over to the window right away and waiting for Orrey to come through before easing the door closed.
Orrey backs in, watching the hallway for anyone heading their way. It is surprisingly dark outside, especially for this early. There isn't enough visibility from inside to get a true understanding of what is happening without opening the window and emerging from the ship. Linnet struggles a bit opening the window one-handed, but it's doable.
Orrey readies himself to head out the window and grab onto Bast’s contraption in an attempt to perform something approaching a controlled fall toward Meteor.
Bast locks the door behind them, against any last-minute surprises, and walks over to the window with small, sleek metal wings slowly spreading out to the sides from his back. Outside the window, there is absolute pandemonium.
The dock is overrun with people of all shapes and sizes, skirmishes breaking out between food smugglers and customs officers, just the type that are heavily armed on both sides.
The rumor of undeclared shipments spread like wildfire as the day went, drawing multiple competing gangs to the Yinha docks, with authorities on all sides converging to try and contain the damage.
The fighting covers not just this dock, but the one below as well; the Meteor is surrounded by high-calorie violence.
The fighting has led to a complication; there are nets now stretched underneath the Seventh Dawn, as the method of apprehending the criminals appears to be shunting them off the inner side of the dock to be collected later in a tangle of limbs and canvas beneath the docked airship.
The initial escape route has been sealed off, or at the very least complicated immensely.
The nets are not the only complication.
The shadow that stretched across the Seventh Dawn moves, as the being responsible for it shifts, no longer blocking out the sun.
The first thing that comes into view is a tail.
A long, thick, tail, the color of a pale beet, cracked scales and jagged bark-like growths distorting its shape.
The tail widens, tail turning into body, bulbous and bloated, drifting its heft with an ominous grace ever downward.
Then, the mouth.
A mouth that stretches dozens of feet across.
A mouth that hangs a hundred feet down.
No eyes. No ears. No nose. No limbs.
Just a giant mouth in the sky.
Atomos. "Oh, we're in so much trouble." Linnet wedges herself into the window. "Still on target?"
“You two can make it to the docks, flying. I think I need another exit. Take the stuff and go. I’ll find another way out.” Orrey says after seeing the massive Esper in the sky.
"Go already, don't get caught or eaten," Bast tosses off to Linnet while looking at the nets below to judge how far they'd need to travel to avoid them.
Turning to Orrey, he manages to keep the "What's this about now?" to below a snarl, but it takes effort.
“You know we can only kind of fly on that thing.” Orrey says.
“I’ll throw myself on Cassiat’s mercy and get off the ship with her help.” Orrey explains, quickly formulating something like a plan. “We need this stuff off of this ship. So take it and go.”
"Fuck. That. We didn't get caught so far, I'm not inclined to change that, and they're not going to have much mercy after this." Bast points out the window at the giant maw in the sky. "And the backpack won't fit over the wings anyway. Now are you grabbing on or do I have to carry you by your collar?"
“You sure, cap?” Orrey asks, taking in the nets one more time. Linnet dives out the window and attempts to aim around the net and toward the Meteor, but the input is blindingly distracting, so much going on that her already limited navigating senses are rather overwhelmed...and bloody hell her arm hurts...where is she going? Atomos drifts lazily through the sky. The dock vibrates as it inhales, but the breath has no intent behind it. The wind direction flags droop down again.
Fire whips through the sky, a black magic spell soaring wide of its mark.
Arrows thud into the sides of crates. "Damn right I'm sure." Once Linnet is clear of the window, Bast tweaks something in a nozzle hidden in his sleeve and lays down a spray of dark oil aimed away from the window, like a jet misfiring, covering most of the captain's desk. A blast of bitter cold, nearly as frigid as the shock that numbed her hand just minutes earlier, brings Linnet down out of the sky in a heap on the dock, surrounded on all sides by the battling crowd.
Orrey pulls out the knife Isa gave him and closes his eyes, taking in a calming, centering breath. Then he grabs onto the handholds on Bast’s wings and prays to all of the Twelve for help getting them through to safety. The crowd converges, but then separates, forming a circle around her.
The moogle slots another bolt into his crossbow. "Intruders," he says, coldly collected.
"Your orders, Doctor?"
He tilts his head, and then turns it back. "Oh, right. She's not back yet. So I will use my best judgment."
Byakko levels his crossbow at Linnet. "We can get the answers out of your corpse."
Bast and Orrey linger at the window of the captain's cabin of the Seventh Dawn, heavily laden with stolen goods and intense pressure.
Linnet is on the business end of a crossbow held by one of the officers of the Seventh Dawn, shot down over the food riots raging all along the Yinha docks.
Nets strung below the dock separate the Seventh Dawn from Meteor, cutting off the heist's pre-planned escape route.
The rogue Guardian Force Atomos drifts through the air, a ten-story mouth causing localized earthquakes with every inhale.
Two officers are aboard the Seventh Dawn, responding to the manifestation of Atomos, sure to find the thieves in a matter of seconds.
The others must be on their way.
The heist is over.
The battle has just begun.