Session 98: For Those About Ramoc, We Salute You
With the Rising Stars and the Seventh Dawn behind him, the time has come for Captain Bast of the Starfall to put his past behind him, or failing that, deep underground.
The Frost Fair Blade is to be handed over to the mysterious buyer in the Triad, an exchange that will secure the safety of Bast's father. Or, more correctly:
The Frost Fair Blade, if they so desired, is to be handed over to the mysterious buyer in the Triad, if they ever existed, an exchange that will secure the safety of Bast's father, if he ever existed.
However, the fact remains that there is a hostage of some variety, one that the officers want to see go free and no longer be held as collateral against a moogle with an obfuscated past. And Bast's time in the Triad has a tendency of following him even after his departure, and the officers would like to see those shadows bleed out in the gutter. (At least two of them voiced support for that idea, if perhaps not in those particular words.)
So with mere minutes remaining at 'neutral ground,' ground with which Bast and Chmurka seem tremendously familiar, before the alleged buyers arrive, we find our brave adventurers surrounded by a flash mob in potentia, actors in their places, everyone waiting for their cue... ***** Yves has been cast (on the advice of those who know his acting ability, and its limitations) as the anxious first date of a member of the crew, and is accordingly seated at a cafe table with a cup of coffee, a worried expression, and his second-best jacket. (The best jacket is too formal for this, and the adventuring jacket is too dramatic for blending into a crowd.)
(Of course, they're all black, anyway.)
Bast adjusts something on? in? his sleeve again as he waits, one hand on the long box on the table before him, the cue to clear the stage (and the actors' arch humor about having to "fade away") clear in his head. He'd have expected some sort of trouble by now.
Linnet is "waiting tables" with an apron, a notepad, and a suitably concerned expression. She keeps whispering for silence at various questions, cue checks, and impatient requests of "are they there yet?" They're like children, sometimes. Honestly.
Isa sits at the table with Bast, dressed in her best "hired muscle" casualwear, her chair pushed back far enough that she can stand without hindrance. "What do you think - here, or outside?" Bast tears his eyes away from the entrance to glance at Isa. "Less exposure, more room..."
The doors open.
(Yves has reached the point of repeatedly dipping the same cookie into his coffee. There's more cookie at the bottom of the cup than left in his hand. But at least he's portraying 'anxious about a first date' more convincingly than any sort of emergency combat backup.)
Isa shrugs. "Chmurka and I agreed this was the best option out of a list of shit ones." The first figure that walks in is a viera, male, over six and a half feet tall. He wears a leather jacket, or at least leather that started as a jacket. It is now a vest, and his arms are bare, the left covered in a winding tattoo of a leviathan coiled around a black mass of a burn scar. His right ear is almost entirely missing. The shredded remnants of it sport two gold studs. He carries no visible weapons, but then again, he wouldn't have to.
The second figure is a water sylph, short blue hair constantly churning on her head, river rapids pulsing with every step. Her mouth curls in a sneer, made permanent by the scar on her lip and the confidence she is draped in. She carries no visible weapons, but then again, they wouldn't be visible. The viera drifts his eyes over the interior, then casually strides over to the waitress. "Bottle of whiskey for me and my friends," he tells Linnet on his way to Bast's table.
The sylph gives her a once-over as she follows him, a 'tsk' escaping her lips.
Linnet raises an unimpressed eyebrow and delivers a bottle of second-from-top-shelf whiskey sometime during their conversation. (She can't reach the top shelf without flying, and this doesn't feel like the time for it, somehow.) Bast gives the newcomers a flat stare as they approach the table. "I'm guessing you're not hiding him in your pocket. Or did you miss the part where you were supposed to bring him?"
("...so," Yves is asking Owen, rather desperately, over at their table, "what do you like to do for fun in your spare time?" More of his cookie disappears into the coffee.)
"Were we?" the viera asks. The sylph shrugs as she sits down on Bast's left. The viera takes the seat on the right. "Guess that messenger got lost. You're running low on those, aren't you?"
"Word of that heist is making the rounds," the sylph says. She's watching the waitress, waiting for the drinks. "Real amateur stuff. Shame about your old crew."
"Not your problem, Ramoc." Bast pointedly ignores the jab from Strela, sliding the box he was holding off the table and leaning it against his chair. "And neither is this until I have more than a piece of paper to go on."
Isa is silent, but unapologetic about sizing up the two who have presented themselves.
(Linnet is bustling and shutting down more than a few requests to jump those arrogant sons of sandstorms.)
Strela twitches forward, but Ramoc calmly lifts a hand, and she settles back down. "He's a good son, Strela," Ramoc says. "Just wants to make sure no harm's going to come to any innocent old men who didn't quite know how important they were." He leans back in his chair, smiling slightly. "You wound me, Bast, to think that you wouldn't trust me after all we've been through. Let me see the Blade."
Bast thumbs a catch open on the box and lifts the lid enough to give Ramoc a glimpse of bluish steel inside, glimmering with wisps of frost, before the lid comes back down.
Ramoc nods. "He's outside," he says, twitching his head back toward the window on the south wall. "Having a churro with a friend of ours."
"Then you won't mind sending your errand girl here to fetch him. You're not the only one who wants to see the goods."
"There's a window right there," Ramoc says. He then adds, "Fly on over and look."
Isa's eyebrow twitches.
Bast rises from his chair, box in hand, and crosses behind Strela to walk up to the window.
(Linnet distinctly does not approach the window, tempted as she is.)
Bast keeps to the side as he looks outside.
A moogle sits outside on a bench, holding a churro. Gray fur, hair trending in that direction as well. His arm has healed badly from a break, perhaps an innocent fall, perhaps not. From the way he looks around, he should be wearing glasses, but isn't. Someone with Strela's fashion sense leans against a streetlight ten feet away, casually being nearby.
He does look like Bast.
Isa maintains eye contact with the viera as she leans forward and pours four whiskeys.
Ramoc pays her absolutely zero attention despite sharing a table with her.
Isa sets the bottle down, and leans back with her glass. Bast nods, leaning against the wall for a moment before making his way back to the table. He rests his elbows on the back of his chair, not sitting down yet. "So. You and me in here, one of your people with the old man outside. How does this go from here?" He's a touch louder than before.
(Yves has finally given in and drunk the cup of coffee. Complete with a half inch of cookie crumbs at the bottom.)
"You put the Blade on the table," Ramoc says. "I make sure it's the real thing. Then I give the signal and my friend leaves. You go see the old man. We don't talk ever again."
"You know, 'don't talk ever again' was pretty high on my list of priorities. Yet here we are. What's this blade to you? And if it's so important, why not have your own crew fetch it for you?"
"The Blade, Bast," Ramoc says with a roll of his eyes.
"Not even a minute to chat with an old friend, Ramoc? I'm feeling downright hurt and surprised. After you've gone to all this trouble to find me, you just want me to fetch a trinket for you and fade away?"
"My crew's busy," Ramoc says. "The Blade's special. Beyond that, I'm not feeling especially chatty. If you're looking for more work, I'm sure we can come to an arrangement."
One table pays their bill and gets up to leave.
Two women excuse themselves to go to the ladies' room.
Isa drains her whiskey.
A pair by the window spot someone they recognize outside and hurry out eagerly to see them.
A server heads into the back to check on a special request.
The waiter decides this is the ideal time for a smoke break.
Bast sets the box down on the table, both hands resting on the lid. "Get him in here and let's do this."
A viera's date remembers that he left the chocobo outside in another country.
Yves is left alone at his table with an empty cup of coffee, a woeful expression, and half a cookie.
"I don't find myself overflowing with faith in your crew's ability to act according to plan."
The dining room is considerably emptier now than it was three sentences ago.
(Linnet takes off her apron but continues to polish nonexistent stains on the bar.)
Ramoc shakes his head. "Shame," he says, and nods to Strela.
Strela stands up. Slowly, not aggressively, but without bothering to make sure her hands are where anyone can see them.
Outside, through the window, the bruiser walks past the bench and raps his knuckles on the old moogle's shoulder. The moogle stands, quickly and unevenly, and follows.
Isa brings her feet in and stands as well, equally nonaggressive.
"The Blade, Bast," Ramoc repeats.
Bast straightens up, standing behind his chair. "I don't see the old man that I'm trading it for in here. If you're not taking this seriously, I guess there's no point in staying." He gives Isa a nod towards the door.
Isa nods, and heads to the door. Anyone entering or leaving will have to go through her.
(Yves stares woefully at his empty cup and crumb-covered plate. He has not yet called for the check.)
Including, apparently, Linnet and Yves. Linnet approaches Yves' table and begins clearing his plate, slipping him another cookie while she tries to see over Isa's shoulder. Ramoc glances at Strela.
Strela looks around.
Strela looks at Ramoc, and shrugs.
Ramoc nods.
Isa looks to Strela.
Looks to Ramoc.
Looks to Bast.
Nods.
And jumps through the front window of the café.
Yves bites right through his new cookie.
Isa lands in a shower of shards next to the old moogle and his watchdog. "Hey," she says, as her spear snaps out and sweeps for the thug.
"What the fu--agh"
Linnet sets down the dishes neatly before sketching a couple of complicated signs in the air with her hands.
All three of them left inside feel a bit of a fizzing jolt as a shield pops into existence and then fades from sight; it's still there, it's just less fun if it's glowy. Bast's shield gets a coating of what looks like oil and smells like cinnamon; it should deflect a little something. "Don't get dead before I get out there." Ramoc closes the ground between he and Linnet in the space of a heartbeat, driving his elbow into the waitstaff's neck. "Seeded the place," he says, almost a touch of respect in his voice.
Strela snaps her wrist up, and a cloud of sickly, toxic gas erupts from a tube along her arm, fully engulfing Yves and what remains of his cookie. Bast doesn't get the worst of it.
Bast drops the box with the Blade, kicking it into a corner even as he throws what looks like a loosely tangled ball of wires at Ramoc. Just before they hit, they unspool and whip around the giant viera, knocking him over with enough force to shake the bottles behind the bar - and then hoisting him up in the air, several feet off the floor.
Ramoc growls with unrestrained fury in a very restrained body.
Bast gives him a downright dirty smile in response as a crossbow bolt rips a bloody gash in his abdomen, followed by one punching through Strela's shoulder.
"I wasn't done with that," comes the voice of Yves, indignant, within that horrible cloud of gas. Because there's no way he's eating the rest of that cookie now. It's nasty. Also emerging from the gas cloud, somewhat more aggressively than the viera's complaint: a blue-white bolt of lightning that arcs out to Ramoc, and ricochets off him (with a burning ozone and scorched fur smell in its wake) to strike Strela in turn.
...followed a split second later by a blaze of crackling sparks and light emitting from each place the bolt struck.
There's a faint mutter about cookie-destroying kidnappers from within the cloud. Hard to make out under all that lightning and thunder, really. Outside, amidst the broken glass and the stab wounds, the hired hooligan draws a knife and tries gamely to stab Isa.
Isa just grabs the knife blade in an armored fist and shakes her head, before reversing her grip on her spear and ramming the butt into the thug's midsection.
Coughing and shaking her head, Linnet does some quick math and realizes everybody else's okay at the moment, which means...she should probably hit someone with something. She conjures a quick burst of icicles from the ceiling, a few of which smack Ramoc on his stupid floating tied-up head. It hurts, which she's not used to. The hell was that for?
Ramoc cannot move from his prison of chains, but a shadowy figure manifests from behind him, a scythe of darkness shredding the air and slashing through the two magically-inclined people remaining inside this building.
Strela dives at Bast, flickering in and out of corporeality, leaving a knife in the moogle's back. The skin around the knife begins to harden...
Bast winces as something indefinable is sucked out of him, then yells "Catch!" to Strela as he kicks a chair in her direction. The chair goes wide; the small canister Bast lobbed at her head as she was dodging the chair does not. The glass shards outside rattle from the booming noise.
"Hey," says Yves in deep indignation, still hidden by the remains of that gas cloud. Or maybe not so much 'hidden' as 'standing awkwardly in the clearing fog' at this point. "If you didn't want to get murdered, you shouldn't have made it ethical for people to murder you." He's explaining this even as more lightning surges out of the poison mist to zap expertly between the two murderees-to-be. Inside the cafe, Ramoc hovers, locked in chains, the shadowy form of the Reaper taking over. Strela pings from target to target, dealing out conceptual death and hopeful dismemberment. Yves chokes through poisonous mist while delivering lectures in lightning. Bast battles shadows from his past before he gets weighed down by the sins of a false father and also a knife in his back. Linnet tries to keep everyone together as well as she ever keeps herself together.
Outside, Isa is having a great time.
The Frost Fair Blade is to be handed over to the mysterious buyer in the Triad, an exchange that will secure the safety of Bast's father. Or, more correctly:
The Frost Fair Blade, if they so desired, is to be handed over to the mysterious buyer in the Triad, if they ever existed, an exchange that will secure the safety of Bast's father, if he ever existed.
However, the fact remains that there is a hostage of some variety, one that the officers want to see go free and no longer be held as collateral against a moogle with an obfuscated past. And Bast's time in the Triad has a tendency of following him even after his departure, and the officers would like to see those shadows bleed out in the gutter. (At least two of them voiced support for that idea, if perhaps not in those particular words.)
So with mere minutes remaining at 'neutral ground,' ground with which Bast and Chmurka seem tremendously familiar, before the alleged buyers arrive, we find our brave adventurers surrounded by a flash mob in potentia, actors in their places, everyone waiting for their cue... ***** Yves has been cast (on the advice of those who know his acting ability, and its limitations) as the anxious first date of a member of the crew, and is accordingly seated at a cafe table with a cup of coffee, a worried expression, and his second-best jacket. (The best jacket is too formal for this, and the adventuring jacket is too dramatic for blending into a crowd.)
(Of course, they're all black, anyway.)
Bast adjusts something on? in? his sleeve again as he waits, one hand on the long box on the table before him, the cue to clear the stage (and the actors' arch humor about having to "fade away") clear in his head. He'd have expected some sort of trouble by now.
Linnet is "waiting tables" with an apron, a notepad, and a suitably concerned expression. She keeps whispering for silence at various questions, cue checks, and impatient requests of "are they there yet?" They're like children, sometimes. Honestly.
Isa sits at the table with Bast, dressed in her best "hired muscle" casualwear, her chair pushed back far enough that she can stand without hindrance. "What do you think - here, or outside?" Bast tears his eyes away from the entrance to glance at Isa. "Less exposure, more room..."
The doors open.
(Yves has reached the point of repeatedly dipping the same cookie into his coffee. There's more cookie at the bottom of the cup than left in his hand. But at least he's portraying 'anxious about a first date' more convincingly than any sort of emergency combat backup.)
Isa shrugs. "Chmurka and I agreed this was the best option out of a list of shit ones." The first figure that walks in is a viera, male, over six and a half feet tall. He wears a leather jacket, or at least leather that started as a jacket. It is now a vest, and his arms are bare, the left covered in a winding tattoo of a leviathan coiled around a black mass of a burn scar. His right ear is almost entirely missing. The shredded remnants of it sport two gold studs. He carries no visible weapons, but then again, he wouldn't have to.
The second figure is a water sylph, short blue hair constantly churning on her head, river rapids pulsing with every step. Her mouth curls in a sneer, made permanent by the scar on her lip and the confidence she is draped in. She carries no visible weapons, but then again, they wouldn't be visible. The viera drifts his eyes over the interior, then casually strides over to the waitress. "Bottle of whiskey for me and my friends," he tells Linnet on his way to Bast's table.
The sylph gives her a once-over as she follows him, a 'tsk' escaping her lips.
Linnet raises an unimpressed eyebrow and delivers a bottle of second-from-top-shelf whiskey sometime during their conversation. (She can't reach the top shelf without flying, and this doesn't feel like the time for it, somehow.) Bast gives the newcomers a flat stare as they approach the table. "I'm guessing you're not hiding him in your pocket. Or did you miss the part where you were supposed to bring him?"
("...so," Yves is asking Owen, rather desperately, over at their table, "what do you like to do for fun in your spare time?" More of his cookie disappears into the coffee.)
"Were we?" the viera asks. The sylph shrugs as she sits down on Bast's left. The viera takes the seat on the right. "Guess that messenger got lost. You're running low on those, aren't you?"
"Word of that heist is making the rounds," the sylph says. She's watching the waitress, waiting for the drinks. "Real amateur stuff. Shame about your old crew."
"Not your problem, Ramoc." Bast pointedly ignores the jab from Strela, sliding the box he was holding off the table and leaning it against his chair. "And neither is this until I have more than a piece of paper to go on."
Isa is silent, but unapologetic about sizing up the two who have presented themselves.
(Linnet is bustling and shutting down more than a few requests to jump those arrogant sons of sandstorms.)
Strela twitches forward, but Ramoc calmly lifts a hand, and she settles back down. "He's a good son, Strela," Ramoc says. "Just wants to make sure no harm's going to come to any innocent old men who didn't quite know how important they were." He leans back in his chair, smiling slightly. "You wound me, Bast, to think that you wouldn't trust me after all we've been through. Let me see the Blade."
Bast thumbs a catch open on the box and lifts the lid enough to give Ramoc a glimpse of bluish steel inside, glimmering with wisps of frost, before the lid comes back down.
Ramoc nods. "He's outside," he says, twitching his head back toward the window on the south wall. "Having a churro with a friend of ours."
"Then you won't mind sending your errand girl here to fetch him. You're not the only one who wants to see the goods."
"There's a window right there," Ramoc says. He then adds, "Fly on over and look."
Isa's eyebrow twitches.
Bast rises from his chair, box in hand, and crosses behind Strela to walk up to the window.
(Linnet distinctly does not approach the window, tempted as she is.)
Bast keeps to the side as he looks outside.
A moogle sits outside on a bench, holding a churro. Gray fur, hair trending in that direction as well. His arm has healed badly from a break, perhaps an innocent fall, perhaps not. From the way he looks around, he should be wearing glasses, but isn't. Someone with Strela's fashion sense leans against a streetlight ten feet away, casually being nearby.
He does look like Bast.
Isa maintains eye contact with the viera as she leans forward and pours four whiskeys.
Ramoc pays her absolutely zero attention despite sharing a table with her.
Isa sets the bottle down, and leans back with her glass. Bast nods, leaning against the wall for a moment before making his way back to the table. He rests his elbows on the back of his chair, not sitting down yet. "So. You and me in here, one of your people with the old man outside. How does this go from here?" He's a touch louder than before.
(Yves has finally given in and drunk the cup of coffee. Complete with a half inch of cookie crumbs at the bottom.)
"You put the Blade on the table," Ramoc says. "I make sure it's the real thing. Then I give the signal and my friend leaves. You go see the old man. We don't talk ever again."
"You know, 'don't talk ever again' was pretty high on my list of priorities. Yet here we are. What's this blade to you? And if it's so important, why not have your own crew fetch it for you?"
"The Blade, Bast," Ramoc says with a roll of his eyes.
"Not even a minute to chat with an old friend, Ramoc? I'm feeling downright hurt and surprised. After you've gone to all this trouble to find me, you just want me to fetch a trinket for you and fade away?"
"My crew's busy," Ramoc says. "The Blade's special. Beyond that, I'm not feeling especially chatty. If you're looking for more work, I'm sure we can come to an arrangement."
One table pays their bill and gets up to leave.
Two women excuse themselves to go to the ladies' room.
Isa drains her whiskey.
A pair by the window spot someone they recognize outside and hurry out eagerly to see them.
A server heads into the back to check on a special request.
The waiter decides this is the ideal time for a smoke break.
Bast sets the box down on the table, both hands resting on the lid. "Get him in here and let's do this."
A viera's date remembers that he left the chocobo outside in another country.
Yves is left alone at his table with an empty cup of coffee, a woeful expression, and half a cookie.
"I don't find myself overflowing with faith in your crew's ability to act according to plan."
The dining room is considerably emptier now than it was three sentences ago.
(Linnet takes off her apron but continues to polish nonexistent stains on the bar.)
Ramoc shakes his head. "Shame," he says, and nods to Strela.
Strela stands up. Slowly, not aggressively, but without bothering to make sure her hands are where anyone can see them.
Outside, through the window, the bruiser walks past the bench and raps his knuckles on the old moogle's shoulder. The moogle stands, quickly and unevenly, and follows.
Isa brings her feet in and stands as well, equally nonaggressive.
"The Blade, Bast," Ramoc repeats.
Bast straightens up, standing behind his chair. "I don't see the old man that I'm trading it for in here. If you're not taking this seriously, I guess there's no point in staying." He gives Isa a nod towards the door.
Isa nods, and heads to the door. Anyone entering or leaving will have to go through her.
(Yves stares woefully at his empty cup and crumb-covered plate. He has not yet called for the check.)
Including, apparently, Linnet and Yves. Linnet approaches Yves' table and begins clearing his plate, slipping him another cookie while she tries to see over Isa's shoulder. Ramoc glances at Strela.
Strela looks around.
Strela looks at Ramoc, and shrugs.
Ramoc nods.
Isa looks to Strela.
Looks to Ramoc.
Looks to Bast.
Nods.
And jumps through the front window of the café.
Yves bites right through his new cookie.
Isa lands in a shower of shards next to the old moogle and his watchdog. "Hey," she says, as her spear snaps out and sweeps for the thug.
"What the fu--agh"
Linnet sets down the dishes neatly before sketching a couple of complicated signs in the air with her hands.
All three of them left inside feel a bit of a fizzing jolt as a shield pops into existence and then fades from sight; it's still there, it's just less fun if it's glowy. Bast's shield gets a coating of what looks like oil and smells like cinnamon; it should deflect a little something. "Don't get dead before I get out there." Ramoc closes the ground between he and Linnet in the space of a heartbeat, driving his elbow into the waitstaff's neck. "Seeded the place," he says, almost a touch of respect in his voice.
Strela snaps her wrist up, and a cloud of sickly, toxic gas erupts from a tube along her arm, fully engulfing Yves and what remains of his cookie. Bast doesn't get the worst of it.
Bast drops the box with the Blade, kicking it into a corner even as he throws what looks like a loosely tangled ball of wires at Ramoc. Just before they hit, they unspool and whip around the giant viera, knocking him over with enough force to shake the bottles behind the bar - and then hoisting him up in the air, several feet off the floor.
Ramoc growls with unrestrained fury in a very restrained body.
Bast gives him a downright dirty smile in response as a crossbow bolt rips a bloody gash in his abdomen, followed by one punching through Strela's shoulder.
"I wasn't done with that," comes the voice of Yves, indignant, within that horrible cloud of gas. Because there's no way he's eating the rest of that cookie now. It's nasty. Also emerging from the gas cloud, somewhat more aggressively than the viera's complaint: a blue-white bolt of lightning that arcs out to Ramoc, and ricochets off him (with a burning ozone and scorched fur smell in its wake) to strike Strela in turn.
...followed a split second later by a blaze of crackling sparks and light emitting from each place the bolt struck.
There's a faint mutter about cookie-destroying kidnappers from within the cloud. Hard to make out under all that lightning and thunder, really. Outside, amidst the broken glass and the stab wounds, the hired hooligan draws a knife and tries gamely to stab Isa.
Isa just grabs the knife blade in an armored fist and shakes her head, before reversing her grip on her spear and ramming the butt into the thug's midsection.
Coughing and shaking her head, Linnet does some quick math and realizes everybody else's okay at the moment, which means...she should probably hit someone with something. She conjures a quick burst of icicles from the ceiling, a few of which smack Ramoc on his stupid floating tied-up head. It hurts, which she's not used to. The hell was that for?
Ramoc cannot move from his prison of chains, but a shadowy figure manifests from behind him, a scythe of darkness shredding the air and slashing through the two magically-inclined people remaining inside this building.
Strela dives at Bast, flickering in and out of corporeality, leaving a knife in the moogle's back. The skin around the knife begins to harden...
Bast winces as something indefinable is sucked out of him, then yells "Catch!" to Strela as he kicks a chair in her direction. The chair goes wide; the small canister Bast lobbed at her head as she was dodging the chair does not. The glass shards outside rattle from the booming noise.
"Hey," says Yves in deep indignation, still hidden by the remains of that gas cloud. Or maybe not so much 'hidden' as 'standing awkwardly in the clearing fog' at this point. "If you didn't want to get murdered, you shouldn't have made it ethical for people to murder you." He's explaining this even as more lightning surges out of the poison mist to zap expertly between the two murderees-to-be. Inside the cafe, Ramoc hovers, locked in chains, the shadowy form of the Reaper taking over. Strela pings from target to target, dealing out conceptual death and hopeful dismemberment. Yves chokes through poisonous mist while delivering lectures in lightning. Bast battles shadows from his past before he gets weighed down by the sins of a false father and also a knife in his back. Linnet tries to keep everyone together as well as she ever keeps herself together.
Outside, Isa is having a great time.
Comments