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Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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“Oh for fuck’s sake!” That kind of outright outburst was an unusual epithet from Éliane, but seeing this thing here, in this place, and now made the pink-haired officer want to throw up her hands in exasperation. They were already so close to her family yet the gods couldn’t be satisfied with shapeshifting traitors and roving zombies, no. The stupid jester creature of all things had to show back up again. Nonetheless, they all made it to relative safety from the zombies again as they scrambled back onto the roofs at the other side of the boulevard. At least that worked.

As they got situated, Éliane realized that Esben was trying something novel. Negotiating with the evil clown thing was not on the shortlist of things she would have tried when trying to get rid of such a thing, but she nonverbally wished him luck, even as she discretely fished around in her pouch of bullets and shells and found some of the flair shells she still had. She chambered them into her gunblade, refraining from firing them immediately pending the outcome of however Esben was trying to get a one up on Ferdiad.

She gave her countrymen a once over, making sure they wouldn’t do anything rash given the situation.

“I’m not convinced a sanctuary will help, truly, but I don’t want him following us,” she ended up replying, keeping her voice low. She really didn’t want to lead the clownshow to her family. That would be a disaster on top of a disaster. Glancing back towards Miina’s brother, she inclined her head. “Hmm. That could work. It’s the biggest and most… funded one in this area, if that has any influence on…” she gestured her free hand at the general situation. “Follow me.” Without further word, she detoured, leading them off to the sanctuary in question.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane had expected the thoroughfare, but she had hoped that the street wasn’t going to be as problematic as she thought it was. Unfortunately, it was worse. Having made it this far with the team and her injured infantryman, there was a grim look on her face as she took in more and more of her hometown and the macabre fate that had befallen it. There were too many dead, and she knew that it would cripple Skael for years to come.

She helped steady one of the men after a wobbly landing, shaking those thoughts from her head as she focused on the road ahead of them. The amount of walking dead was staggering. “Too bad we don’t have a working bus,” she mused, thinking of how a high powered battering ram might have cut through the dead.

At Esben’s comment, she checked her own explosives pouch. “I’m worried the noise will just attract more of them, but I have enough. We’ll just have to go fast.” Éliane gave Rudolf a thumbs up of encouragement, the morale just as much for herself as for him, but she pulled out several grenades, calculating the worst damage she could do in the crowd of undead.

“On my mark, then. As Esben –Mr. Matthiassen—said, stick together, don’t stray, because we’re not going to be able to get you out with so many here.”

Waiting several beats, she tossed her grenades to their designated spots, landing amongst the shambling dead. What followed was a quartet of muffled booms of fragmentary explosions and black smoke, prompting Éliane to give the go ahead. “Go, go! I’ll keep the bombs going!”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Although she had made it look effortless, somehow Éliane managed to land on her feet amidst the rooftop wreckage. Perhaps a small mercy, but the fact that the ship had crashed to begin with was not—she had very specifically wanted to peek over the walls, not bloody fly over them. It became very quickly obvious that a certain traitor was involved once again, making the pink-haired officer grit her teeth in frustration as she assessed the damage to the ship and their party. The Kirins, as experienced as they were knew how to or had the means to land well… regular Skaelan infantry, not so much. Now that they were in Solitude –she thought she would never have to think this—they were in deep trouble. Especially with injured fellow countrymen and servicemen at that. Looking around, she quickly got her bearings as to where they were in the city.

Éliane checked her pockets, making sure her now very important wind materia were intact, which they were.

The solution to her was obvious, and given that they all knew her background, the others, too. She said it anyway. “Whatever we do now, keep to the roofs as much as we can. Unless there are intelligent, jumping zombies, that’s the safest option we have.” Éliane bobbed her head in agreement with Esben. “Yes. We should head to my family’s bakery. Ever since the crop riots 22 years ago, papa’s always had a mind for being prepared for another riot. Zombies aren’t the same, but it’s close enough, and if we’re lucky my friends from the 1st might be holed up there too. And we can jump to it.”

Scanning the rooftops and the path ahead of them, she couldn’t help but to frown. “It’s not going to be an easy trip from here, though. We’re in Whitewater Gardens, a neighborhood that’s kind of shite for roof jumping in some parts, and we need to get to the Laruelle Bakery in Renelle, which is down that way from here,” she pointed, gesturing down towards a part of the skyline away from the walls. “Still have to try though, because I’m not leaving without giving it a good go.”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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There was a complicated expression on Éliane’s face as she listened to the red-haired mystral explain himself. Although she continued to remain somewhat skeptical, there was no denying how concerning the information was. She stood there awkwardly staring at Zeke Malina for a few seconds longer than normal before she tore her gaze away from him, prompted by the raid captain and Esben’s words.

“Yeah, no, I want to have a ship at the end of the day,” she nodded, agreeing with Esben. Leaving the still suspicious Malina to his own machinations with their only easy means of egress or ingress was just a plain bad idea; she didn’t need to be told to keep an eye on Zeke while Esben did… spy things. She gave him her best glare.

It was fairly impressive fibbing, she had to admit. Far beyond anything she was capable of in this regard, but it wasn’t a surprise when she left SEED in rapid order with her poor fit.

Still, it was impressive.

Although her mind was in overdrive, Éliane found herself agreeing with Esben again against the raid captain. “I agree with Esben,” she cut in sharply. “It’s worse than we thought; need to update the others in person…”

Wincing towards the city walls, she inclined her head towards Rudolf. “I’m… not opposed to seeing if we can manage a flyby close enough to scout over the walls without being detected.”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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As unexpected as the mystrel’s striking resemblance to Miina was, the words that came out of his mouth made Éliane immediately stop. Her mind momentarily blanked out, her face frozen in a rictus grimace at that simple statement.

A city of the dead.

Impossible.

Her thoughts immediately flashed to her family, at their bakery, and then her own team, both experienced and savvy. If there was any truth in what the man was saying, then of anybody, they should be fine. She shoved the other, rising, dark thoughts down. Hard. Either they escaped, or they were hunkered down somewhere, she reassured herself. That was if this person who was alleging themselves to be Zeke was actually Miina’s brother. It could just as easily be another plot from the traitor. Her grip tightened on her weapon, before she forced herself to relax, glancing at the other Kirins.

She could see that both Rudolf and Esben were taking this very seriously. That they immediately jumped to necromancy or worse came as a surprise to her, though; Éliane had immediately thought disease or chemical disaster, but either way, she approved of Esben’s caution to keep their distance. Whatever the hell it was, if Zeke had been exposed to it none of them yet knew how contagious it was.

“One more question,” she began slowly, racking her brain for trivia from her interactions with Miina. As paranoid as they all were now, they needed to confirm his identity, and this one issue provided a healthy distraction for the pink-haired woman to pursue instead of other, less helpful things in the immediate moment. “If you are Zeke Malina, what was the first magic your sister learned?”

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.