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Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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It seemed nothing ever went right going up against these barbarians, be it by whatever unholy machinations they came up with, or as it was in this case, by fate. Reconnaissance in force it was. The Skaelan fireteam opened up nearly as one at their captain’s command, who was filling the role that Éliane was typically used to. In that regard, she did little else but to reiterate that, and she found herself realizing that she was almost in the position of political officer now, in a spot just a little further back of her force trying to see or root out if any of the good Skaelans on her side were actually enemies of the state.

It was a cheerful thought.

Nonetheless, Éliane’s own rifle joined the fusillade as she worked the bolt, cracking out several shots into the charging Valheimians. From the corner of her eye, she also saw Rudolf maneuvering into place before engaging. Approving of the move, she gave a different command. “Friendly left! Watch your fire!”

Pausing from firing to lob an explosive down the hill, she added to the rallying cry with “Skael never falters!” as she planted another shot center mass into another barbarian invader.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane admittedly was less attuned to Miina’s personal troubles than some of the other members of the party, but when the voices of the enemy patrol reached her ears, she had to pause. It could easily still be a plot from the traitor, but the person they were supposedly searching for… sounded suspiciously like a certain relative of the redheaded mystral in their party.

Leave it to fate that Miina wasn’t with them at the time, but she considered for a moment and decided it was probably better, at least for this immediate engagement.

She glanced back at Rudolf as he made his hand signals. It took her a moment to understand his intentions, but it was a better immediate plan than what she could come up with. She nodded, keeping herself hunkered down still for the moment.

For her part, she flagged the attention of the fireteam captain, making a few hand signals of her own in the standard Skaelan style.

Keep bloody quiet and don’t engage unless the jig is up.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane did not groan, but she angled her head heavenwards as she rolled her eyes. She did pause that moment to give Rudolf a strange look for a moment regardless.

She knew how unlikely it was for things to go as planned, but she had still naively held onto the hope that it would. But given the woman they were working against, of course there would be a wrench in every step of the way. Having been backstabbed once already, Éliane didn’t need to communicate to be on the same page as Esben and Rudolf when it came to the soldiers that were seconded to them. Any one of them could be that thrice damned traitor.

The pink-haired woman shot off a sloppy salute towards Esben by way of reply before ducking down towards Rudolf. “What has the world come to when you have to worry about your sightlines from both sides of the field…” she muttered darkly once the unfamiliar squad was out of earshot. Catching Rudolf’s words, she gave him a thumbs up. “I’m guessing it would be too much to hope that there won’t be a second assassination attempt on me or another of us in this battle?”

With a sigh, she shrugged, unslinging her own rifle, unsafing it as she began to hunker down for her own ambush position—one that covered Rudy and gave her a view of her own countrymen as well. At least it also made for a good place to shout orders from if it really came down to it.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane was uncharacteristically dressed. Instead of her usual, far more bombastically colored officer’s uniform, she had taken the unusual liberty to change into mission appropriate garb, donning a winter field uniform that was usually given to Skael’s alpine forces. As such, she actually blended into the environment for once, matching with the snow drifts that were common enough around Solitude nearly year-round. After confirming that short-range radio still worked, she even fitted herself accordingly.

The pre-mission planning aboard the airship ultimately hadn’t yielded too much given the sorry state of their intelligence even right in their backyard, and they didn’t have nearly the right numbers for this mission even with the reinforcements, but there wasn’t much else they could do but to scout it all out.

It came without question that Éliane had the most tactical knowledge here, especially when it came to the environment around Solitude.
“As much as I dislike it, we’ll have to do this piecemeal,” she agreed. There was a map already in her hand, and she gestured for them to gather around, before pointing at the two positions nearest to the forest. “These two positions will be easy to approach from cover from the forest. If the barbarians are halfway competent, then they’ll have scouts themselves in the forest; we’ll have to maneuver with that in mind.”

She traced her fingers over to the farther two locations on the map. “These two are excellent forward positions on paper, but are easily buffeted under weather and when the drifts are high enough like this, plenty of blind spots in predictable places that any Solituder can exploit.” Pulling a pencil from a pouch, she lightly drew several paths towards the positions. “Scouting and hitting them like this, we should have the element of surprise.”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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The information she received from the ship’s captain was unfortunately not heartening. To Éliane, it was increasingly looking like Command was running around with its head cut off without input from the main administrative core. It was still unfathomable to her that even with an inside job the capital could be taken without a fight from the active Skaelan military. The fact that nearly everything that mattered coming down to her own actions and the rest of the Kirins was getting ridiculous. It was certainly a far cry from the initial diplomatic mission she had been on.

The information at Falcon’s Nest, and from Kayliss herself wasn’t that much better, although the presence of hot coffee did go some way to tide her mood over. The moment she mentioned Solitude, Éliane leaned in, already jumping at the bit to return to the capital. The situation with the Blighted dragons was unfortunate, but she really didn’t care about some jumped up blighted wildlife right now.

Her interest in the city was obvious enough that she didn’t even mention it, ignoring Esben’s prompting as she immediately launched into adding to the conversation on the tactical situation around Solitude. “Not just the locations of the outposts; we’re going to need the status of the existing friendly bases, depots, and installations on the outskirts as well. Any units in the area? Risks of being shot at from the city itself?" Her grip tightened around her mug.

"We’ve heard little more than rumors about anything around Solitude now, and going in with outdated or just plain incorrect information is worse than going in blind.”

She was intimately familiar with the lay of the land here, but she was not looking forward to having to assume that everything in the area was going to be hostile.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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As it turned out, Éliane’s fears were unfounded. A short while later, she was greeting what felt like the first real friendlies in the country outside of personal relations to the Kirins. She returned a slightly sloppier salute, but one that still fell in the bounds of conduct becoming of a Skaelan officer. “With how bad things have been going, better late than never,” she sighed, words dry. “But we’ll gladly take that ride.”

There were a lot of things that needed rectifying now that so many holes had been exposed in her country’s defenses, but nothing that she or any of her superiors could act upon now, unfortunately.

“Now there’s a thought.” Éliane turned towards Galahad at his words, her hands already at her chin. “Let’s do it. I want one too. Think of all the weapons we could put on it, the technology that we could steal…” Wiping the dreamy look off her face, she inclined her head more seriously towards the dragoon. “With our mission, it’s possible. It might depend on how difficult the learning curve and manning requirements are compared to our own ships, though. The design principles are fairly different,” she gestured towards the craft they were boarding. As proud as she was of her own country’s technology and designs, Éliane had to admit they were behind the curve compared to Valheim in at least this aspect.

“When we get one, I’ll crew it with my own men if I have to. I’ll make it work.”

She soon settled into the flight to Falcon’s Nest. With the brief downtime, Éliane took the opportunity to search for the ship’s skipper; it was the first real chance to get a better picture now that there was someone more plugged in to talk to. “What’s the situation with High Command and the rest of the country right now? Solitude?”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane’s reaction to seeing the Skaelan air forces finally respond was instant and loud. Pumping a fist, she yelled out at the specks in the sky as that fist became more like a girl shaking her fist at the sky. “About god damn time!”

The appearance of reinforcements had all but won the battle in the Kirins’ favor, if only barely. The Valheimians had been bullied off of their objectives, but only just barely and in the end at the expense of Garuda and some additional injuries to her team. Fighting back her desire to pursue the enemy ship in some way, she looked back over at Izayoi with some concern, but it seemed she would be fine quickly enough. Safe-ing and sheathing her weapons, the Skaelan officer let out a sigh as she ran her fingers through her pink hair.

Valheim’s continued and nearly unmolested abuse of her country made her feel impotent, even if she was already best placed to do something about it. Shoving the unwelcome thoughts rushing into her head now that the battle high was beginning to wear off, she glanced over at Esben as he pulled out Cid’s crystal.

“Esben…” she began, as she pulled out a domestic signaling flare that she had obtained with her resupply, “have you considered how that’s going to look when it overpowers the light that’s supposed to signal we’re friendlies?”

She was confident the air patrol would break off to intercept the escaping Valheimians, but there was still a chance a portion might make a flyover or an attack without the knowledge of what transpired on the ground. Then they would be subject to the tender mercies of air to ground friendly fire…

Opening some distance from Esben, she popped the flare and hoped for the best.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane grinned viciously as her trick found its mark, aided by Esben’s own shot. Of course, she had hardly expected it to end the battle in one single explosion, and it didn’t, but seeing the damage brought her a moment of satisfaction regardless as the rest of the Kirins followed in to dogpile the barbarian officer.

Unfortunately, they didn’t prove enough of a distraction for him not to notice Miina and Chisato trying to get past him. Time was ticking.
“My time to support!”

Reloading after she disengaged, the pink-haired Skaelan immediately moved back in to support Izayoi as she made to strike. Éliane didn’t have any lightning aspected attacks or materia, but she could certainly keep Garland occupied for the rest of them to complete the combo, so she simply unloaded right into him again, paced in a way that forced him to block her attacks again instead of advancing again. With retort after retort, each shot went off as she continued to move, zigzagging to avoid any potential spells if her timing was poor.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane didn’t like anything she saw at the summit, but there was little that she could immediately do about half of it. Especially when it was her country and countrymen these foreigners were messing with. What she could do something about was the barbarian scum that had so graciously offered himself as a target for the Kirins to vent their displeasure at. In such a position, there was little that she found intimidating about the man aside from other obstacle for her to deal with.

“This piece of shit…! Cover me!”

With a roar of anger, she leapt at the man, boosting herself with her materia to accelerate her drive and launch her in the air simultaneously. Serendipitously, it allowed her to avoid the quake spell in its entirety as she imitated a dragoon’s dive at a far shallower angle. Éliane wasted no time in firing at him from above with her gunblade before landing right atop him with her weapon, striking out with a rapid stab first at his hand still on the ground, and then at the perceived weaknesses in his armor.

It was an obvious blitz attempt, and with her lack of substantial armor, she immediately broke contact after that, leaping backwards but not before leaving him a parting gift as she wedged a grenade between the gaps in the metal plates.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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The uncontested presence of Valheimian regulars –and especially an airship—felt more like a blow to Éliane than actually getting hit. Intellectually, she knew that the radio silence from Solitude, combined with the betrayal from Loki meant that the command, control, communications and intelligence of her country was deep compromised. Seeing it in the form of her enemies conducting operations like this was nearly too much, especially knowing what they were likely trying to do.

She had her gunblade out within moments, a first shot already cracking out moments after leaving its sheathe to fell an offending Valheimian soldier. Around her, the Kirins were already springing into action. For a frustrating moment, Esben flanked hard around the action by himself, but she quickly understood what he was trying to do.

“I’m following you in!” she announced, firing off another shot before she took an accelerated, bounding leap, courtesy of her replacement wind materia. The pink-haired Skaelan slashed out and kicked aside a man that had put himself between her and her path, blood spraying as her blade found its mark. Another bullet found its way into the back of a soldier that had turned and aimed at her fellow countryman. For good measure, she stabbed that soldier in the back too.

Indeed, it didn’t take long for Éliane to catch up to Esben. As he fired at whatever officer was atop the hill, she immediately scanned the vicinity, clearing out an remaining soldiers in the area with cracks from her gunblade. There weren’t any words needed; as if by sleight of hand, a hand grenade appeared in her free hand even as she joined Esben in firing at the offending foreigner. Without ceremony, she lobbed it at the airship, aiming for maximum disruption. Hopefully it was all enough.