Reinvention
Jun. 21st, 2020 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: Final Fantasy VI, Tales of Symphonia
Characters: Edgar Figaro, Lloyd Irving
Word count: ~5200
Warnings: None
Notes: For![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
intoabar. Edgar walks into a bar and meets Lloyd.
This was a lot of fun and my thesis statement is: /Will Smith poses at a bunch of JRPG tropes
He had been playing the same character for so long it was frankly disorienting to contemplate a new one. After ten years in the role of Affable Horny Idiot who Doesn't Ask Inconvenient Questions - and seven improbable months of freedom with the Returners, even as the cracks in the world began to show - he couldn't remember how he'd first landed on that persona, or the thousands of small decisions he'd had to make in those first few days. How to design a mask you could live with indefinitely.
He wished he could talk to Locke - not for the first time, and not only about spycraft. But he would make do. It'd been more of a blow to him than he'd expected, dyeing his hair darker; the thought had flitted into his head that now we don't match anymore but of course, that had happened long ago. Anyway, what was the sacrifice of his vanity next to all the pieces of the world falling into the ocean, or scourged by new storms? Or that wall of light he'd seen advancing on him as he trudged across the plains. There'd been no way to escape it. He had thought he would probably die, which made him angry, when there was so much left undone.
But it had swept over him, and after a moment's uncertainty he'd kept walking. If he was dead, the afterlife looked a lot like the northern plains. Maybe the humidity was a little higher. He'd proceed as if he still had work to do.
And he was entering a town, which was why it was important to think about who he was now.
He'd have called it a small town, before, but now it was the biggest intact settlement he'd seen in months. Smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard dogs barking. It was all so normal. And almost certainly real; if he'd been imagining things he wouldn't have thought to put dogs there. He was not a dog person.
His path eventually intersected with a wide, packed-earth road. It had seen regular maintenance and recent, wheeled traffic. Something so ordinary didn't mesh with the world as he now understood it. Who was maintaining this level of infrastructure all the way out here? How? With what resources? Where did the other end of this road even go?
He looked back over his shoulder. The road went on to the horizon. The sky was a blue he hadn't seen in weeks.
He scrubbed all outward appearance of unease from his bearing as he entered the town. Then he wondered if he actually needed to go to the trouble. "Too dumb to worry about anything" had been a characteristic of the King of Figaro, but did he need to carry it with him into his new part? Whoever he was now? It was time to practice being that person.
The town had a pub. As evening drew on, it was Gerad who walked into it, and ordered a beer, and – sat in the corner very studiously not making faces about it. Sometimes this amount of sediment in a beer was associated with older brewing techniques, and sometimes back home it simply meant the castle's air filters needed replacing, but sometimes - No, he told himself, let's not go there.
He looked casually around the room. There were, broadly, two kinds of towns since the end of the world. The kind where travelers were welcomed aggressively and pumped for information about the state of affairs elsewhere, and the kind where travelers were a burden on already strained resources, and would be encouraged to leave in ways subtle or gross. This common room was consistent with neither. People were just calmly drinking beer and eating snacks after a long day of – whatever people worked on in this town. He'd gotten a few friendly nods as he entered, the barkeep had been perfectly pleasant, and now he was sitting here undisturbed, the object neither of curiosity nor suspicion.
The walls and the exposed joists above showed no damage from seismic activity, or Magitek laser fire, or actual fire. There was a patio area ringed by actual potted plants, which looked, to his inexpert eye, both still alive and still recognizably plant-shaped. What was this place? Why had it been spared?
A sudden jolt of color behind the bar as a young man in bright red emerged from the back room. He wiped off his gloves (also bright, also red) and spoke cheerfully to the proprietor; Edgar caught words like “coupler” and “regulator” and immediately decided this was the most interesting person in the room. After a brief conversation the young man shook hands with the barkeep and ducked down to retrieve something from some storage place – a sword belt? Two sword belts. He strapped them on and came out into the common area.
Edgar flagged the young man down as he walked past his table. “Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing – is there something wrong with the tap system?”
“There shouldn't be now!”
“But there was?”
“Yeah, the air pressure was all weird and stuff was backing up into the hoses” - he noticed Edgar's mostly untouched beverage. “Oh! Yeah, maybe give it a few minutes for everything to flush through and go get another one. It should be better then.” He smiled sheepishly. “I think so, anyway. I don't actually drink, so I'm not the best person to ask.”
Edgar eyed the man in some surprise. “Then how did you get into this line of work?”
“I'm not!” The frankness was astounding. “My friend and I are traveling around gathering Exspheres. But sometimes people have a hard time getting their machines and stuff to work right without them, so I stick around and help fix stuff. People are kind of scared to give up that kind of power, but I want to show them there's always another way.”
“A worthy goal,” said Edgar, pretending he knew what an Exsphere was. Unless that was just what they called magicite, here in this weird pocket of the world untouched by Judgment. He took a risk: “Technology powered only by death doesn't deserve the name.”
The man nodded. “Yeah. It's not anybody's fault for using Exspheres before they knew what they were, but now the secret's out – it's just not right using a whole human life just to keep your drinks fizzy. That person used to have dreams. Maybe even a family.” Not quite the same as magicite, then, which had some disturbing implications. Was some other entity still making Magitek? Had they found a way to chew up humans as efficiently as Vector had the Espers?
And then, with the same forthrightness, the stranger said, “Who are you?”
For a moment Edgar's mind stalled out. That was the question, wasn't it? He'd come here meaning to try on the mantle of a simple vagrant, whose path might lead to Figaro only by coincidence. But he'd already let on certain convictions that he was pretty sure “Gerad” shouldn't care about. Everything since the wall of light had been so completely divorced from everyday life since Kefka's ascension, he had forgotten. And somehow it seemed impossible that anything given away here would come back to bite him, back in the real world. (But if this world wasn't real, what was it?)
“I'm Edgar,” he said finally. “I'm a machinist.”
“Oh, then you might know more about bar hardware than I do. My dad's a dwarf, so he trained me in lots of stuff, but not that.” He shrugged and held out his hand. “I'm Lloyd. Nice to meetcha.”
Edgar shook his hand. “If we don't trust the beer right now, is there anything you do recommend? I'm buying. I insist.”
Lloyd got an iced coffee. After minutely questioning the bartender Edgar decided the beer probably was okay by now, and got a new mug of the same, with a much less gritty consistency. Lloyd did know what he was doing. That was heartening.
“So,” Edgar said, “on a journey collecting Exspheres. What route are you taking?”
“Well, we're just kinda going wherever, but it makes the most sense to start with Tethe'allan towns. Most people in Sylvarant don't have any, except when somebody finds some old Desian stuff. But we blew all their bases up, so there's not much to find.”
Where to even begin pulling that apart? Edgar thought. “So this town is Tethe'allan, I take it? I'm new to the area.”
“Yeah. We're a little bit south of Sybak. That's the university town, if you didn't know. Sounds like you're from Sylvarant, huh?”
Edgar shrugged. “I came here on my way up out of the desert.”
“Oh, you're from Triet?”
Edgar tried to match that against any place name he had ever heard in his entire life and, as he had this whole time, found nothing. “A little further than that.”
“But where else would somebody...?” Lloyd leaned forward suddenly, his look of puzzlement replaced by one of conspiracy. “Don't tell me. There's a secret village living in the ruins near the Seal of Fire.”
“Okay.” Edgar sipped his beer. “Then I won't tell you that.”
“That's so cool!” Lloyd slapped one hand down on the table. “Do you know any secret ninja moves?”
“Do I – what?”
“Like disguises! Or punching someone's pressure points so their arm goes numb. Do you have a secret name, too?”
“Hmm. In order: Maybe, no, and yes. My brother would know more about pressure points, I think.” But even less about disguises.
Lloyd nodded sagely. “That makes sense. I bet you're the one who handles all the traps and defenses and stuff. If it's a secret village, you have to be able to protect it, right? Or make it look like it was never there.” Edgar hid a grin. How did someone manage to get so very near the truth when starting from such fantastically flawed premises? And then, without waiting for confirmation, Lloyd seized on another tangent: “Who makes all the smoke bombs, anyway? Sheena wouldn't tell me.”
He had some mockups, of course, somewhere in the castle. He hadn't really gotten the composition of the bombs ironed out – chemistry was the least interesting part, and he'd assumed he could rig something from a signal flare when he got to that point – he had mockups for something that could throw a smoke bomb, anyway, hopefully at an angle that would obscure your starting position –
Somewhere in the castle, which had gone missing. He shook his head. “I'm sorry. If your friend decided not to disclose those secrets, it's not for me to gainsay her.”
Lloyd sighed. “Yeah, I figured that was a long shot.” He returned to his coffee. But he didn't say discouraged for long: “Anyway – you came up from the south, right? There's actually some guys in Sybak working on a new world map. If you keep heading north, you'll find 'em. They can tell you more about what's what.”
That would have sounded promising, except for the fact that he'd never heard of any place called Sybak and he liked to believe he would've known about any institute of higher learning, and especially one that was still operating after the world broke. “I'm sure this is an exciting time to be a geographer,” he said, and then regretted even that small sarcasm. Maybe these scholars could tell him how to get back to the world he understood, of which this place was clearly no part.
“Yeah. It's crazy to think that this is the way the world was always supposed to be, right?”
“Come again?”
“Tethe'alla and Sylvarant, as one planet, with all the continents mixed up together.” Lloyd set his coffee down and interwove his fingers, in a visual demonstration of something or other. Two things meshing together? The creation of a mountain range? “Even if this is the way things started out, that was thousands of years ago. Nobody remembers what it was like, not even the elves. Professor Sage said...” He frowned in concentration, trying to recall exact words. “She said Cruxis was actively suppressing all the maps and stuff from before the war, so nobody would -” He stopped, and for the first time in the conversation he looked a little wary. “Uh. I hope you're not religious.”
That startled Edgar into laughter, although it sounded more bitter than he was accustomed to. “No. Not at all.” He'd been content to ignore the Triad as long as they'd stayed out of his business, but as of now he was officially on the outs with the divine and the deified.
Lloyd relaxed. “Okay, cool. I know the Church is still important to some people, but...”
Yes, lots of people these days were finding refuge in secret cults and inscrutable mysticism. Tearing up old buildings and erecting monuments to anything they thought could save them. He knew these people deserved sympathy in their despair. He did know that. Intellectually. “You don't have to justify yourself to me.”
“It's still an adjustment, y'know? Even if the worlds couldn't last the way they were, even if life in that system was horrible for a lot of people – this is a big change, and it's scary. I get that. But... that's part of why I'm on this journey. We're building a new world, a little bit every day. For all the people who died in it, and all the people who live in it, I wanna help make it a good one.”
Lloyd spoke without vainglory, as if this was all attainable – reshaping a world and changing the minds of its people, a completely reasonable project for a man who couldn't be more than twenty, traveling with precisely one other person.
Edgar sighed. What was there to do but wish him every success? Maybe this was the kind of world where things worked like that. “Cheers.” He held up his glass.
There was no answering clink. Lloyd looked dubious. “This is just coffee. Am I allowed to toast with that? Zelos said they arrest people for partying wrong.”
What an interesting precedent that would be. “But the old world is gone, isn't it? The same rules don't apply.”
“That's true! Cheers.” Lloyd smacked his glass against Edgar's with more force than the situation called for, grinning like he was getting away with something. Then he frowned. “Wait. You think maybe he was messing with me?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Damn.” Lloyd brooded on this probable hoodwinking for a few seconds, then glanced at the window. The sky outside was a twilight purple-gray. “Oh, man – I almost forgot. There's one more thing I was gonna look at before it gets too dark.” He stood in a hurry, but then paused, looking thoughtfully at Edgar. “Actually... if you're almost done there, do you wanna come with me? This lady has an Exsphere-powered water pump. I was gonna see what needed doing to make it mechanical. If you're a machinist and you're from the desert, you probably know about -”
Edgar held up one finger as he drained the rest of his beer. He hadn't been almost done, actually, but this was more interesting. “Please,” he said, getting up to follow Lloyd out, “I'd he happy to help.” He almost asked, This woman: is she pretty? But after ten years playing the fool, he wasn't sure whether the impulse was organically his own, or just ingrained habit. A put-on that he would not now be able to shake off. This was disquieting, so he said nothing else.
“I'm not expecting to fix it today,” said Lloyd. “I mean, it's too late to start a lot of repairs even if I knew what I was doing with wells and stuff.”
It was so strange, walking through grass and hearing it rustle instead of crunch. Edgar said, “You could run some lights out here, but that might keep people awake. And presumably they have water for now, so it's not urgent.”
“Yeah. I was just gonna measure some stuff and write to my dad. He can fabricate whatever parts they need and tell them how to install everything.”
“Ah, yes. You mentioned your father trained you, I think.”
They were approaching a fence; Lloyd paused to swing open the gate and waved Edgar through. “Yup! He's the best dwarven craftsman in both... I mean, in the world.”
“You mentioned that, too. Forgive my ignorance, but what does being short have to do with crafting skill?”
Lloyd laughed. “I'm not saying he's a short human, I'm saying he's a dwarf. It's a different, uh... what did the Professor say... They're a conjurer? Congener?” He shrugged and continued across the field. “They're a different kind of people. They live underground and they know all about metal and rocks and stuff. I guess you don't meet a lot of them out your way, huh? In Triet? They usually keep to themselves. But my dad got more involved with human stuff after he adopted me. We're all lucky he did, too. Like I said, he's the best. Altessa has done some pretty fancy things, too, but between you and me, Altessa is a jerk.”
“I'll take your word for it.”
“What about you? Is machine stuff a family business or did you get into it on your own?”
What a question. How had he gotten into this? He had no recollection of not wanting to be elbows-deep in the workings of the castle engine. Certainly it was part of his inheritance. But the family trade... “I don't know. I suppose it's always been a hobby. Is that the pump we're looking for?”
“Yup. The woman here uses it for her kitchen garden.”
It certainly wouldn't stand heavier use than that. It was a flimsy-looking lift pump, the outlet pipe surmounted by a T-shaped handle; the rest of the mechanism was underground. Maintenance would be a chore.
Apparently sensing Edgar's skepticism, Lloyd said, “Come around to this side.”
On the other side, a cloudy blue cabochon was embedded in the base of the T-handle. “That's the Exsphere?” It didn't look like much. The air around it didn't sizzle the way magicite did. “What does it do?”
He leaned over and gave the handle an experimental upward tug. He hadn't used one of these himself, but in principle, the user was manually lifting an entire column of water. It'd be slow, and sharply limited by how much force the user could bring to bear. Water was heavy.
The handle rose smoothly, and water spurted out of the outlet. He had done this one-handed. He said, astutely, “What.”
“It does stuff like that,” said Lloyd.
Edgar pressed the handle back down. Another gush of water followed the downstroke. He turned to Lloyd. “Is it... increasing the force applied, or reducing the effective weight of the water, or... what?”
“I don't know. Nobody knows. Cruxis only had people studying how to make more of 'em, not how they actually work.”
“It's like the pump is motorized.” He was tempted to give the pump another try, but he had already seen it once, and wasting water was very nearly criminal. “How deep is the water table around here?”
“The whole planet just got all mixed up. Even if we knew where it was before, things have probably changed.”
Edgar frowned. “True. That's definitely a matter for further study when all the chaos dies down. What I mean is, if we remove the sphere, will people still be able to access water with this pump? Would something less powerful suffice?” He waved toward the pump. “This was designed with the Exsphere in mind. Wells aren't really my area of expertise, so, grain of salt and everything, but I don't see a lot of room to make changes without digging up the whole assembly. And at that point, it's probably a better use of time to install a different pump.”
There was a pause. Then Lloyd said, “You know, they turned my mom into one of these.”
“What?”
“An Exsphere. Well – she was a special case, but basically an Exsphere. So... I did some incredible things with the power that she left for me. But I don't know her voice. I can't remember her face.” He shook his head. “I think you're saying that we have to leave this here for a while, until the town can set up something new.” He sat down in the grass, looking toward the pump. “But it kinda feels like letting the bad guys win. Like saying it's okay to forget about people, or turn them into tools.” He looked up at Edgar and said suddenly, ferociously, “It's not okay.”
He thought of Terra, whose father was a stone. He thought of the Magitek laboratory, and of the way the Empire had used Celes and discarded her, and then used and discarded her again, and of strolling into Thamasa and finding the site of a massacre. “I agree. Believe me. And I'm sorry to hear about your mother. But – didn't you say yourself that you didn't expect to fix this today?”
“Yeah.” Lloyd hung his head. “But I said that before I was actually here.”
A few moments elapsed in brooding silence. Edgar said, “It's remotely possible that some kind of flywheel -”
“It's okay.” Lloyd dragged himself to his feet. “I'll just check some stuff out and write a letter to Dad. It's what I came here for.”
Edgar thought a little longer, and then snapped his fingers. “I have an even stupider idea. This woman has neighbors, right? And access to town water in case of emergencies?”
“She should, yeah...”
“So it's not entirely a matter of life and death. Figure out what you want to tell your dad, and then let's have that Exsphere off and try something. How attached are you to your good reputation?”
Edgar spent the night in the town inn; it was one of the most comfortable nights he'd had since the world ended. Followed by the most leisurely morning he'd had since the world ended, followed by the people in the shops giving him a more than fair exchange rate for all his weird foreign coinage so he could provision himself for the road.
It was around the lunch hour that the rumor mill really started turning. Margaret had gotten a threatening letter overnight. Margaret, from the far end of town, who grew those big pumpkins. She'd talked to the constabulary about it and they'd said -
But people wouldn't talk about it in more detail if they saw Edgar nearby. He was not offended. He walked unhurriedly out of town, due east. After thirty or forty minutes he came to a lightning-blasted tree in the crook of a river, and followed that river south to a tall stone marker. As they'd agreed, he sat down in its shade. He started tuning up his crossbow while he waited.
At length a galloping tread could be heard approaching, and a white speck on the horizon began to grow larger. Soon a man in red was bringing his steed to a halt before the standing stone and calling out, “Edgar! Hey! Thank you so much! I got the Exsphere just like you said.”
Edgar said, “I feel I should inform you that you're riding a dog.”
“Oh! Yeah, this is Noishe. Did I really not introduce you guys?” Lloyd slid down to the ground. His enormous dog followed a step behind him as he approached. “Noishe, this is Edgar. He helped us out.” The dog whined and looked unconvinced. “Oh, fine, you big baby,” Lloyd said fondly, and patted the animal's nose. “You don't have to be friendly if you don't want.”
You know what? Edgar thought. This is not worth worrying about. “So it went well?” he said, tightening down one last screw.
“Yeah, she just asked me how much I was offering and said 'okay' and handed it over. Didn't haggle or anything. I feel a little weird about paying cash for an Exsphere, but...” He held up a small pouch that presumably contained the stone in question. “Whoever this is, I can give them a more respectful sendoff now.” He grinned. “The lady was giving me an earful about how much harder it is to work the pump without it, but that means it does still work. Just not quite as well.”
Maybe she would decide eventually it was worth sacrificing a little convenience for the sake of keeping blood off her hands. Maybe not. Edgar stashed his tools and got up. “Did she give you any trouble?”
“No, no. But she was pretty ticked off at you. She showed me your letter, too. Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Just something I picked up somewhere,” he said, with a shrug. After testing the pump out sans Exsphere, reinstalling the Exsphere, and going back into town for pen and paper, Edgar had returned late at night and left a note on the woman's doorstep reading,
Dear Madam,
Tomorrow at quarter to midnight I will come to claim your prized Exsphere. There's nothing you can do to stop me, so to save us both trouble you might wrap it up neatly.
-A Gentleman Thief.
Lloyd said cheerfully, “She was saying stuff like, 'I can't believe how much trouble this rock is causing! People keep bugging me about it! If some creep is going to come prowling around my house and try to take it I might as well get rid of it beforehand and get something in exchange! And then I find out you've already left town and you made me come looking for you!' She scared the heck out of Noishe.” Noishe whined and nudged at his shoulder again. “It's okay, buddy. Anyway” - he turned back to Edgar - “what were you going to do if she didn't sell?”
“I would've stolen it. Like I said.” He had, admittedly, not been as confident about this contingency. But he would've given it a try. He hadn't hung around Locke so long for nothing, and he needed to get into practice if he was really going to pull this Gerad thing off.
Lloyd frowned. “No offense, but you don't really seem like...” Then he remembered all his completely erroneous conclusions from the night before. “Oh, duh. All those ninja skills you totally don't have.” He gave Edgar a broad wink.
“Yes,” said Edgar, somehow keeping a straight face. “Those.”
“I sent that letter off to Dad before I left, so she should get parts for a new pump whenever he can get around to it. She'll be okay until then. I'll just come back in a couple weeks and -”
Edgar cleared his throat. “Probably not the best idea.”
“Why not?”
“Look, we left separately so it's not as suspicious right away, but pretty soon, someone is going to come to the conclusion you were scamming poor dear Margaret.”
“Why would they think that?”
Edgar stared at him. “Because I just helped you scam her into parting with her property?”
Lloyd thought about this, very hard, for a length of time that was a little embarrassing to watch. But he did finally get it. “Ohhhh. I see. You kinda did, huh?”
“Kinda,” said Edgar, wavering between frustration and hilarity. “You're welcome.”
“Actually,” Lloyd said, “I don't know how to say this, but – can I give you some advice, too?”
“I would be delighted to hear it.” Maybe only on an ironic level, but delighted all the same.
“If you're supposed to be in disguise right now? You might wanna touch up your dye job. I can still see some blond.”
“In fact, this is an aesthetic choice,” Edgar said smoothly, keeping all trace of surprise off his face. But he studied Lloyd's, in some alarm. Had he been underestimating this man all along? Had he been outplayed at his own game? He mentally reviewed their interactions up to this point, wondering: had he given away anything he would regret?
But Lloyd said, “Well, now I feel like a jerk.” He scratched at the back of his head, smiling apologetically. “I don't know anything about fashion. Don't listen to me, okay?”
Edgar watched him a moment longer, and then decided, with a strange rush of relief, No. If this consistent level of guileless credulity could be faked, one might as well give up on the human race entirely. “No harm done,” he said. “You have a good eye. You're like -” But he brought himself up short. The thought was better kept to himself.
“Like what?”
Like Sabin. Edgar waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind. I was distracted. You're off to meet back up with your friend, I suppose?”
“You wanna come?” said Lloyd. “Noishe seats two.” Noishe did not look any more interested in this prospect than Edgar was.
“Thank you, but no. I have some matters of my own to attend to.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Lloyd shook his head. “But it was great meeting you. Let's both keep working on making the new world a better one.”
Well, that was an excruciatingly earnest way to put it, but... “Let's.”
They shook hands. Lloyd climbed back up onto Noishe's back. But one last thought occurred to him before giving the beast his head. “Hey – I'll tell Sheena to have her people talk to your people, and then there'll be an even bigger ninja information network, and it'll be great. This is so exciting!”
“You do that, Lloyd. By all means, do that.”
When Lloyd and his weird dog had gone, Edgar stood by the marker stone a little longer wondering what the hell this world was. It was so... temperate. So intact. And even here the work wasn't done. There were still things to be rebuilt, still improvements to make everywhere. Why was that encouraging, when he knew he was returning to someplace in objectively much worse shape, with much farther to go, even to become baseline habitable?
Maybe it was just nice to have a project. Maybe there was some excitement in reinvention – in starting not quite from scratch. Lloyd might understand that.
There was plenty of afternoon sun left, so he started out again, walking back to the north. Maybe the people at the university could tell him how to get home from here.
And then there was a wall of light, sweeping toward him across the plains. All right, he thought, What's next? And walked into it.
Characters: Edgar Figaro, Lloyd Irving
Word count: ~5200
Warnings: None
Notes: For
intoabar. Edgar walks into a bar and meets Lloyd.This was a lot of fun and my thesis statement is: /Will Smith poses at a bunch of JRPG tropes
He had been playing the same character for so long it was frankly disorienting to contemplate a new one. After ten years in the role of Affable Horny Idiot who Doesn't Ask Inconvenient Questions - and seven improbable months of freedom with the Returners, even as the cracks in the world began to show - he couldn't remember how he'd first landed on that persona, or the thousands of small decisions he'd had to make in those first few days. How to design a mask you could live with indefinitely.
He wished he could talk to Locke - not for the first time, and not only about spycraft. But he would make do. It'd been more of a blow to him than he'd expected, dyeing his hair darker; the thought had flitted into his head that now we don't match anymore but of course, that had happened long ago. Anyway, what was the sacrifice of his vanity next to all the pieces of the world falling into the ocean, or scourged by new storms? Or that wall of light he'd seen advancing on him as he trudged across the plains. There'd been no way to escape it. He had thought he would probably die, which made him angry, when there was so much left undone.
But it had swept over him, and after a moment's uncertainty he'd kept walking. If he was dead, the afterlife looked a lot like the northern plains. Maybe the humidity was a little higher. He'd proceed as if he still had work to do.
And he was entering a town, which was why it was important to think about who he was now.
He'd have called it a small town, before, but now it was the biggest intact settlement he'd seen in months. Smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard dogs barking. It was all so normal. And almost certainly real; if he'd been imagining things he wouldn't have thought to put dogs there. He was not a dog person.
His path eventually intersected with a wide, packed-earth road. It had seen regular maintenance and recent, wheeled traffic. Something so ordinary didn't mesh with the world as he now understood it. Who was maintaining this level of infrastructure all the way out here? How? With what resources? Where did the other end of this road even go?
He looked back over his shoulder. The road went on to the horizon. The sky was a blue he hadn't seen in weeks.
He scrubbed all outward appearance of unease from his bearing as he entered the town. Then he wondered if he actually needed to go to the trouble. "Too dumb to worry about anything" had been a characteristic of the King of Figaro, but did he need to carry it with him into his new part? Whoever he was now? It was time to practice being that person.
The town had a pub. As evening drew on, it was Gerad who walked into it, and ordered a beer, and – sat in the corner very studiously not making faces about it. Sometimes this amount of sediment in a beer was associated with older brewing techniques, and sometimes back home it simply meant the castle's air filters needed replacing, but sometimes - No, he told himself, let's not go there.
He looked casually around the room. There were, broadly, two kinds of towns since the end of the world. The kind where travelers were welcomed aggressively and pumped for information about the state of affairs elsewhere, and the kind where travelers were a burden on already strained resources, and would be encouraged to leave in ways subtle or gross. This common room was consistent with neither. People were just calmly drinking beer and eating snacks after a long day of – whatever people worked on in this town. He'd gotten a few friendly nods as he entered, the barkeep had been perfectly pleasant, and now he was sitting here undisturbed, the object neither of curiosity nor suspicion.
The walls and the exposed joists above showed no damage from seismic activity, or Magitek laser fire, or actual fire. There was a patio area ringed by actual potted plants, which looked, to his inexpert eye, both still alive and still recognizably plant-shaped. What was this place? Why had it been spared?
A sudden jolt of color behind the bar as a young man in bright red emerged from the back room. He wiped off his gloves (also bright, also red) and spoke cheerfully to the proprietor; Edgar caught words like “coupler” and “regulator” and immediately decided this was the most interesting person in the room. After a brief conversation the young man shook hands with the barkeep and ducked down to retrieve something from some storage place – a sword belt? Two sword belts. He strapped them on and came out into the common area.
Edgar flagged the young man down as he walked past his table. “Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing – is there something wrong with the tap system?”
“There shouldn't be now!”
“But there was?”
“Yeah, the air pressure was all weird and stuff was backing up into the hoses” - he noticed Edgar's mostly untouched beverage. “Oh! Yeah, maybe give it a few minutes for everything to flush through and go get another one. It should be better then.” He smiled sheepishly. “I think so, anyway. I don't actually drink, so I'm not the best person to ask.”
Edgar eyed the man in some surprise. “Then how did you get into this line of work?”
“I'm not!” The frankness was astounding. “My friend and I are traveling around gathering Exspheres. But sometimes people have a hard time getting their machines and stuff to work right without them, so I stick around and help fix stuff. People are kind of scared to give up that kind of power, but I want to show them there's always another way.”
“A worthy goal,” said Edgar, pretending he knew what an Exsphere was. Unless that was just what they called magicite, here in this weird pocket of the world untouched by Judgment. He took a risk: “Technology powered only by death doesn't deserve the name.”
The man nodded. “Yeah. It's not anybody's fault for using Exspheres before they knew what they were, but now the secret's out – it's just not right using a whole human life just to keep your drinks fizzy. That person used to have dreams. Maybe even a family.” Not quite the same as magicite, then, which had some disturbing implications. Was some other entity still making Magitek? Had they found a way to chew up humans as efficiently as Vector had the Espers?
And then, with the same forthrightness, the stranger said, “Who are you?”
For a moment Edgar's mind stalled out. That was the question, wasn't it? He'd come here meaning to try on the mantle of a simple vagrant, whose path might lead to Figaro only by coincidence. But he'd already let on certain convictions that he was pretty sure “Gerad” shouldn't care about. Everything since the wall of light had been so completely divorced from everyday life since Kefka's ascension, he had forgotten. And somehow it seemed impossible that anything given away here would come back to bite him, back in the real world. (But if this world wasn't real, what was it?)
“I'm Edgar,” he said finally. “I'm a machinist.”
“Oh, then you might know more about bar hardware than I do. My dad's a dwarf, so he trained me in lots of stuff, but not that.” He shrugged and held out his hand. “I'm Lloyd. Nice to meetcha.”
Edgar shook his hand. “If we don't trust the beer right now, is there anything you do recommend? I'm buying. I insist.”
Lloyd got an iced coffee. After minutely questioning the bartender Edgar decided the beer probably was okay by now, and got a new mug of the same, with a much less gritty consistency. Lloyd did know what he was doing. That was heartening.
“So,” Edgar said, “on a journey collecting Exspheres. What route are you taking?”
“Well, we're just kinda going wherever, but it makes the most sense to start with Tethe'allan towns. Most people in Sylvarant don't have any, except when somebody finds some old Desian stuff. But we blew all their bases up, so there's not much to find.”
Where to even begin pulling that apart? Edgar thought. “So this town is Tethe'allan, I take it? I'm new to the area.”
“Yeah. We're a little bit south of Sybak. That's the university town, if you didn't know. Sounds like you're from Sylvarant, huh?”
Edgar shrugged. “I came here on my way up out of the desert.”
“Oh, you're from Triet?”
Edgar tried to match that against any place name he had ever heard in his entire life and, as he had this whole time, found nothing. “A little further than that.”
“But where else would somebody...?” Lloyd leaned forward suddenly, his look of puzzlement replaced by one of conspiracy. “Don't tell me. There's a secret village living in the ruins near the Seal of Fire.”
“Okay.” Edgar sipped his beer. “Then I won't tell you that.”
“That's so cool!” Lloyd slapped one hand down on the table. “Do you know any secret ninja moves?”
“Do I – what?”
“Like disguises! Or punching someone's pressure points so their arm goes numb. Do you have a secret name, too?”
“Hmm. In order: Maybe, no, and yes. My brother would know more about pressure points, I think.” But even less about disguises.
Lloyd nodded sagely. “That makes sense. I bet you're the one who handles all the traps and defenses and stuff. If it's a secret village, you have to be able to protect it, right? Or make it look like it was never there.” Edgar hid a grin. How did someone manage to get so very near the truth when starting from such fantastically flawed premises? And then, without waiting for confirmation, Lloyd seized on another tangent: “Who makes all the smoke bombs, anyway? Sheena wouldn't tell me.”
He had some mockups, of course, somewhere in the castle. He hadn't really gotten the composition of the bombs ironed out – chemistry was the least interesting part, and he'd assumed he could rig something from a signal flare when he got to that point – he had mockups for something that could throw a smoke bomb, anyway, hopefully at an angle that would obscure your starting position –
Somewhere in the castle, which had gone missing. He shook his head. “I'm sorry. If your friend decided not to disclose those secrets, it's not for me to gainsay her.”
Lloyd sighed. “Yeah, I figured that was a long shot.” He returned to his coffee. But he didn't say discouraged for long: “Anyway – you came up from the south, right? There's actually some guys in Sybak working on a new world map. If you keep heading north, you'll find 'em. They can tell you more about what's what.”
That would have sounded promising, except for the fact that he'd never heard of any place called Sybak and he liked to believe he would've known about any institute of higher learning, and especially one that was still operating after the world broke. “I'm sure this is an exciting time to be a geographer,” he said, and then regretted even that small sarcasm. Maybe these scholars could tell him how to get back to the world he understood, of which this place was clearly no part.
“Yeah. It's crazy to think that this is the way the world was always supposed to be, right?”
“Come again?”
“Tethe'alla and Sylvarant, as one planet, with all the continents mixed up together.” Lloyd set his coffee down and interwove his fingers, in a visual demonstration of something or other. Two things meshing together? The creation of a mountain range? “Even if this is the way things started out, that was thousands of years ago. Nobody remembers what it was like, not even the elves. Professor Sage said...” He frowned in concentration, trying to recall exact words. “She said Cruxis was actively suppressing all the maps and stuff from before the war, so nobody would -” He stopped, and for the first time in the conversation he looked a little wary. “Uh. I hope you're not religious.”
That startled Edgar into laughter, although it sounded more bitter than he was accustomed to. “No. Not at all.” He'd been content to ignore the Triad as long as they'd stayed out of his business, but as of now he was officially on the outs with the divine and the deified.
Lloyd relaxed. “Okay, cool. I know the Church is still important to some people, but...”
Yes, lots of people these days were finding refuge in secret cults and inscrutable mysticism. Tearing up old buildings and erecting monuments to anything they thought could save them. He knew these people deserved sympathy in their despair. He did know that. Intellectually. “You don't have to justify yourself to me.”
“It's still an adjustment, y'know? Even if the worlds couldn't last the way they were, even if life in that system was horrible for a lot of people – this is a big change, and it's scary. I get that. But... that's part of why I'm on this journey. We're building a new world, a little bit every day. For all the people who died in it, and all the people who live in it, I wanna help make it a good one.”
Lloyd spoke without vainglory, as if this was all attainable – reshaping a world and changing the minds of its people, a completely reasonable project for a man who couldn't be more than twenty, traveling with precisely one other person.
Edgar sighed. What was there to do but wish him every success? Maybe this was the kind of world where things worked like that. “Cheers.” He held up his glass.
There was no answering clink. Lloyd looked dubious. “This is just coffee. Am I allowed to toast with that? Zelos said they arrest people for partying wrong.”
What an interesting precedent that would be. “But the old world is gone, isn't it? The same rules don't apply.”
“That's true! Cheers.” Lloyd smacked his glass against Edgar's with more force than the situation called for, grinning like he was getting away with something. Then he frowned. “Wait. You think maybe he was messing with me?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Damn.” Lloyd brooded on this probable hoodwinking for a few seconds, then glanced at the window. The sky outside was a twilight purple-gray. “Oh, man – I almost forgot. There's one more thing I was gonna look at before it gets too dark.” He stood in a hurry, but then paused, looking thoughtfully at Edgar. “Actually... if you're almost done there, do you wanna come with me? This lady has an Exsphere-powered water pump. I was gonna see what needed doing to make it mechanical. If you're a machinist and you're from the desert, you probably know about -”
Edgar held up one finger as he drained the rest of his beer. He hadn't been almost done, actually, but this was more interesting. “Please,” he said, getting up to follow Lloyd out, “I'd he happy to help.” He almost asked, This woman: is she pretty? But after ten years playing the fool, he wasn't sure whether the impulse was organically his own, or just ingrained habit. A put-on that he would not now be able to shake off. This was disquieting, so he said nothing else.
“I'm not expecting to fix it today,” said Lloyd. “I mean, it's too late to start a lot of repairs even if I knew what I was doing with wells and stuff.”
It was so strange, walking through grass and hearing it rustle instead of crunch. Edgar said, “You could run some lights out here, but that might keep people awake. And presumably they have water for now, so it's not urgent.”
“Yeah. I was just gonna measure some stuff and write to my dad. He can fabricate whatever parts they need and tell them how to install everything.”
“Ah, yes. You mentioned your father trained you, I think.”
They were approaching a fence; Lloyd paused to swing open the gate and waved Edgar through. “Yup! He's the best dwarven craftsman in both... I mean, in the world.”
“You mentioned that, too. Forgive my ignorance, but what does being short have to do with crafting skill?”
Lloyd laughed. “I'm not saying he's a short human, I'm saying he's a dwarf. It's a different, uh... what did the Professor say... They're a conjurer? Congener?” He shrugged and continued across the field. “They're a different kind of people. They live underground and they know all about metal and rocks and stuff. I guess you don't meet a lot of them out your way, huh? In Triet? They usually keep to themselves. But my dad got more involved with human stuff after he adopted me. We're all lucky he did, too. Like I said, he's the best. Altessa has done some pretty fancy things, too, but between you and me, Altessa is a jerk.”
“I'll take your word for it.”
“What about you? Is machine stuff a family business or did you get into it on your own?”
What a question. How had he gotten into this? He had no recollection of not wanting to be elbows-deep in the workings of the castle engine. Certainly it was part of his inheritance. But the family trade... “I don't know. I suppose it's always been a hobby. Is that the pump we're looking for?”
“Yup. The woman here uses it for her kitchen garden.”
It certainly wouldn't stand heavier use than that. It was a flimsy-looking lift pump, the outlet pipe surmounted by a T-shaped handle; the rest of the mechanism was underground. Maintenance would be a chore.
Apparently sensing Edgar's skepticism, Lloyd said, “Come around to this side.”
On the other side, a cloudy blue cabochon was embedded in the base of the T-handle. “That's the Exsphere?” It didn't look like much. The air around it didn't sizzle the way magicite did. “What does it do?”
He leaned over and gave the handle an experimental upward tug. He hadn't used one of these himself, but in principle, the user was manually lifting an entire column of water. It'd be slow, and sharply limited by how much force the user could bring to bear. Water was heavy.
The handle rose smoothly, and water spurted out of the outlet. He had done this one-handed. He said, astutely, “What.”
“It does stuff like that,” said Lloyd.
Edgar pressed the handle back down. Another gush of water followed the downstroke. He turned to Lloyd. “Is it... increasing the force applied, or reducing the effective weight of the water, or... what?”
“I don't know. Nobody knows. Cruxis only had people studying how to make more of 'em, not how they actually work.”
“It's like the pump is motorized.” He was tempted to give the pump another try, but he had already seen it once, and wasting water was very nearly criminal. “How deep is the water table around here?”
“The whole planet just got all mixed up. Even if we knew where it was before, things have probably changed.”
Edgar frowned. “True. That's definitely a matter for further study when all the chaos dies down. What I mean is, if we remove the sphere, will people still be able to access water with this pump? Would something less powerful suffice?” He waved toward the pump. “This was designed with the Exsphere in mind. Wells aren't really my area of expertise, so, grain of salt and everything, but I don't see a lot of room to make changes without digging up the whole assembly. And at that point, it's probably a better use of time to install a different pump.”
There was a pause. Then Lloyd said, “You know, they turned my mom into one of these.”
“What?”
“An Exsphere. Well – she was a special case, but basically an Exsphere. So... I did some incredible things with the power that she left for me. But I don't know her voice. I can't remember her face.” He shook his head. “I think you're saying that we have to leave this here for a while, until the town can set up something new.” He sat down in the grass, looking toward the pump. “But it kinda feels like letting the bad guys win. Like saying it's okay to forget about people, or turn them into tools.” He looked up at Edgar and said suddenly, ferociously, “It's not okay.”
He thought of Terra, whose father was a stone. He thought of the Magitek laboratory, and of the way the Empire had used Celes and discarded her, and then used and discarded her again, and of strolling into Thamasa and finding the site of a massacre. “I agree. Believe me. And I'm sorry to hear about your mother. But – didn't you say yourself that you didn't expect to fix this today?”
“Yeah.” Lloyd hung his head. “But I said that before I was actually here.”
A few moments elapsed in brooding silence. Edgar said, “It's remotely possible that some kind of flywheel -”
“It's okay.” Lloyd dragged himself to his feet. “I'll just check some stuff out and write a letter to Dad. It's what I came here for.”
Edgar thought a little longer, and then snapped his fingers. “I have an even stupider idea. This woman has neighbors, right? And access to town water in case of emergencies?”
“She should, yeah...”
“So it's not entirely a matter of life and death. Figure out what you want to tell your dad, and then let's have that Exsphere off and try something. How attached are you to your good reputation?”
Edgar spent the night in the town inn; it was one of the most comfortable nights he'd had since the world ended. Followed by the most leisurely morning he'd had since the world ended, followed by the people in the shops giving him a more than fair exchange rate for all his weird foreign coinage so he could provision himself for the road.
It was around the lunch hour that the rumor mill really started turning. Margaret had gotten a threatening letter overnight. Margaret, from the far end of town, who grew those big pumpkins. She'd talked to the constabulary about it and they'd said -
But people wouldn't talk about it in more detail if they saw Edgar nearby. He was not offended. He walked unhurriedly out of town, due east. After thirty or forty minutes he came to a lightning-blasted tree in the crook of a river, and followed that river south to a tall stone marker. As they'd agreed, he sat down in its shade. He started tuning up his crossbow while he waited.
At length a galloping tread could be heard approaching, and a white speck on the horizon began to grow larger. Soon a man in red was bringing his steed to a halt before the standing stone and calling out, “Edgar! Hey! Thank you so much! I got the Exsphere just like you said.”
Edgar said, “I feel I should inform you that you're riding a dog.”
“Oh! Yeah, this is Noishe. Did I really not introduce you guys?” Lloyd slid down to the ground. His enormous dog followed a step behind him as he approached. “Noishe, this is Edgar. He helped us out.” The dog whined and looked unconvinced. “Oh, fine, you big baby,” Lloyd said fondly, and patted the animal's nose. “You don't have to be friendly if you don't want.”
You know what? Edgar thought. This is not worth worrying about. “So it went well?” he said, tightening down one last screw.
“Yeah, she just asked me how much I was offering and said 'okay' and handed it over. Didn't haggle or anything. I feel a little weird about paying cash for an Exsphere, but...” He held up a small pouch that presumably contained the stone in question. “Whoever this is, I can give them a more respectful sendoff now.” He grinned. “The lady was giving me an earful about how much harder it is to work the pump without it, but that means it does still work. Just not quite as well.”
Maybe she would decide eventually it was worth sacrificing a little convenience for the sake of keeping blood off her hands. Maybe not. Edgar stashed his tools and got up. “Did she give you any trouble?”
“No, no. But she was pretty ticked off at you. She showed me your letter, too. Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Just something I picked up somewhere,” he said, with a shrug. After testing the pump out sans Exsphere, reinstalling the Exsphere, and going back into town for pen and paper, Edgar had returned late at night and left a note on the woman's doorstep reading,
Dear Madam,
Tomorrow at quarter to midnight I will come to claim your prized Exsphere. There's nothing you can do to stop me, so to save us both trouble you might wrap it up neatly.
-A Gentleman Thief.
Lloyd said cheerfully, “She was saying stuff like, 'I can't believe how much trouble this rock is causing! People keep bugging me about it! If some creep is going to come prowling around my house and try to take it I might as well get rid of it beforehand and get something in exchange! And then I find out you've already left town and you made me come looking for you!' She scared the heck out of Noishe.” Noishe whined and nudged at his shoulder again. “It's okay, buddy. Anyway” - he turned back to Edgar - “what were you going to do if she didn't sell?”
“I would've stolen it. Like I said.” He had, admittedly, not been as confident about this contingency. But he would've given it a try. He hadn't hung around Locke so long for nothing, and he needed to get into practice if he was really going to pull this Gerad thing off.
Lloyd frowned. “No offense, but you don't really seem like...” Then he remembered all his completely erroneous conclusions from the night before. “Oh, duh. All those ninja skills you totally don't have.” He gave Edgar a broad wink.
“Yes,” said Edgar, somehow keeping a straight face. “Those.”
“I sent that letter off to Dad before I left, so she should get parts for a new pump whenever he can get around to it. She'll be okay until then. I'll just come back in a couple weeks and -”
Edgar cleared his throat. “Probably not the best idea.”
“Why not?”
“Look, we left separately so it's not as suspicious right away, but pretty soon, someone is going to come to the conclusion you were scamming poor dear Margaret.”
“Why would they think that?”
Edgar stared at him. “Because I just helped you scam her into parting with her property?”
Lloyd thought about this, very hard, for a length of time that was a little embarrassing to watch. But he did finally get it. “Ohhhh. I see. You kinda did, huh?”
“Kinda,” said Edgar, wavering between frustration and hilarity. “You're welcome.”
“Actually,” Lloyd said, “I don't know how to say this, but – can I give you some advice, too?”
“I would be delighted to hear it.” Maybe only on an ironic level, but delighted all the same.
“If you're supposed to be in disguise right now? You might wanna touch up your dye job. I can still see some blond.”
“In fact, this is an aesthetic choice,” Edgar said smoothly, keeping all trace of surprise off his face. But he studied Lloyd's, in some alarm. Had he been underestimating this man all along? Had he been outplayed at his own game? He mentally reviewed their interactions up to this point, wondering: had he given away anything he would regret?
But Lloyd said, “Well, now I feel like a jerk.” He scratched at the back of his head, smiling apologetically. “I don't know anything about fashion. Don't listen to me, okay?”
Edgar watched him a moment longer, and then decided, with a strange rush of relief, No. If this consistent level of guileless credulity could be faked, one might as well give up on the human race entirely. “No harm done,” he said. “You have a good eye. You're like -” But he brought himself up short. The thought was better kept to himself.
“Like what?”
Like Sabin. Edgar waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind. I was distracted. You're off to meet back up with your friend, I suppose?”
“You wanna come?” said Lloyd. “Noishe seats two.” Noishe did not look any more interested in this prospect than Edgar was.
“Thank you, but no. I have some matters of my own to attend to.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Lloyd shook his head. “But it was great meeting you. Let's both keep working on making the new world a better one.”
Well, that was an excruciatingly earnest way to put it, but... “Let's.”
They shook hands. Lloyd climbed back up onto Noishe's back. But one last thought occurred to him before giving the beast his head. “Hey – I'll tell Sheena to have her people talk to your people, and then there'll be an even bigger ninja information network, and it'll be great. This is so exciting!”
“You do that, Lloyd. By all means, do that.”
When Lloyd and his weird dog had gone, Edgar stood by the marker stone a little longer wondering what the hell this world was. It was so... temperate. So intact. And even here the work wasn't done. There were still things to be rebuilt, still improvements to make everywhere. Why was that encouraging, when he knew he was returning to someplace in objectively much worse shape, with much farther to go, even to become baseline habitable?
Maybe it was just nice to have a project. Maybe there was some excitement in reinvention – in starting not quite from scratch. Lloyd might understand that.
There was plenty of afternoon sun left, so he started out again, walking back to the north. Maybe the people at the university could tell him how to get home from here.
And then there was a wall of light, sweeping toward him across the plains. All right, he thought, What's next? And walked into it.
