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Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Sunlight streamed through between the branches and leaves of the treetops of brightlam, showering the streets and path below in brilliant rays of light. It was a pleasant, picturesque sight, only marred by the signs of the reconstruction and regrowth that was already taking place in the city. Poetic and poignant maybe, to someone who directly cared about such things. The window was left open, letting the pleasant aroma of the oven waft out into the trees, attracting chirping birds perched on the windowsill.

The pink-haired baker smiled and fed them some breadcrumbs.

Then she frowned at the oven. But Éliane Laruelle decided that she did not like this country.

She did not like it very much.

The constant, arduous conflict that they had endured since the very moment the Kirins set foot on their soil had worn her down to the point even someone obsessed with fighting was temporarily sick of it. Even free from the shackles of Valheim and the yoke of the traitor that was Loki, Éliane looked upon the beautiful landscape and only felt frustration and annoyance.

At least it was still better than being stuck with chirurgeons all day. Éliane had been lucky enough to not taken any significant injuries, especially with the crazy risks she and Esben had taken together in the battle for Brightlam. She had still exhausted herself to the point that she had passed out long enough to the point she woke up in one of their sickrooms after a full day. Despite being recommended against it by one of the healers, the pink-haired woman had been glad to be out of their beds soon afterwards.

Some of the other members of their group hadn’t been quite as lucky as her. Rudolf and Esben had gotten themselves absolutely trashed in that fight.

That had been the impetus for a surprisingly domestic errand run through the markets of Brightlam. Flour, coffee, sugar, gun parts, butter, milk, armor piercing ammunition, eggs, almonds, cordite, coffee…

Unfortunately, the coffee here was truly subpar.

For the strangest coincidence, she had run across Galahad during that shopping run, who tried to pull her off to… somewhere. Éliane had managed to take the slip and complete her run, though.

She found her schedule surprisingly busy afterwards. Between baking, sorting through the Valheimian weapons recovered from the battle, and the project that was her now horribly mangled auto cannon…

Éliane had shuddered at the sight of it when she found its mangled wreck. It had also nearly landed on top of Rudolf, which would have been seven ways to Not Good, but it didn’t happen, and that had been good enough for Éliane.

It would be a while yet until she could get her baby into a working state again, and she blamed the people of Drana Asnaeau for it. Well, it really wasn’t their fault in the end, but she still greatly disliked them and Zacharias even as allies, and she knew the dislike was mutual. At least the small armory’s worth of Valheimian weapons went a long way to finding parts to repair the cannon, and just being able to sort through it all was a treat by itself.

Baking was a comfort to her. It was a simplicity and a taste of home that she always enjoyed, but here in Brightlam, she found the ovens and the kitchens that she could use… offensively wrong. Inadequate. Barbaric, even, and it made her decide once more that she did not like this country.

Things were nice enough now, but the initial saga to bake sweets using Dranan equipment would be buried and left to be forgotten for all time.

But Esben and Rudolf, and later the rest of the Kirins got the madeleines and baked sweets that they deserved after spending so much time in such a hellish country.

Setting aside a newly baked tray of steaming cookies, she smiled.

It would be good to be back home soon.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane had to wonder if she actually had a luck materia on her body somewhere. She really did seem to have an uncanny ability to make it out of every crazy situation she voluntarily got herself into. She had made it out alive after that last attack on Reisa and her weapon, and with the help of her wind materia once again, managed a clumsy landing on the golden platform after recovering from her own attack. Any more stress on the poor thing was probably going to make it detonate like another one of her grenades.

The entire thing had left her completely spent, though, and she was not alone. Laying down on the platform face up, she was joined Rudolf and Esben in using the thing as a massive bed.

Yet even with it all over, the craziness hadn’t ended. If she had anymore energy, or the fact that her materia was a hair’s breadth away from backfiring from overuse, she might have participated in throwing herself off the platform like a madwoman, but she refrained. Instead, she stared as three Kirins in succession launched themselves off into the air and disappearing into the airspace below.

Well, one of them was Galahad, and the other two were cats. Three such beings known for landing from great distances well.

She was confident they would be fiiine.

Nap time…

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Even as Éliane had urged Esben on, she couldn’t help but to keep her gaze fixed on the falling airship, transfixed by the wreck that it was about to bring, combined with the chaos of the weapon itself. She watched in awe as the vessel finally connected, going up in a brilliant conflagration of fire and raw magical energy.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she managed to utter, watching as the resulting shockwave began to bloom. Of course, that meant that it was also blooming towards her and Esben. It didn’t take her long to transition back into crisis mode as she braced for impact.

The shock of the wave crashing over their ride brought the inevitable conclusion. While they remained in the air, the damage was finally too much. As Esben finally gave up on controlling the thing, she agreed without a word; scanning the battlefield below, she found the same refuge as Esben and launched herself out of the dying aircraft and towards the recognizable and rapidly approaching form of Rudolf.

Although her fall was broken with a combination of her wind materia and Rudolf’s help, her cannon didn’t receive the same fate as it slammed into the ground next to him.

If it could be salvaged, she would deal with it later.

Now redirected towards Reisa and her weapon just behind Esben, she already began attacking, a barrage from her gunblade already adding to the fire that the rest of the Kirins were directing towards Reisa’s war machine before she too made direct contract with her blade.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane lived for moments like this. Her adrenaline was pumping when she made it onto the almost-broken aetherskimmer, the combat and rush of making it out of there narrowly skirting death giving her the high that she hadn’t felt after hours of slogging through combat over the past couple of days. As the rickety craft shot out, the sight of the massive airship falling upon Reisa and her abominable contraption was an awe inspiring sight—and the image of the crew of the stricken vessel spilling out in skimmers, lifecraft, and even parachutes brought further satisfaction to her face.

Unfortunately, she could only admire the scene for so long. The silly barbarian weapon wasn’t looking quite so silly anymore. Rather, it was looking deadly. The amount of aether it was gathering was beyond worrisome—even a relative laywoman to this sort of magitech like Éliane could tell this was going to be pretty similar to a natural disaster…

Below, she could see her teammates buckling up for a massive blow as they began shielding themselves.

Éliane began to urge a certain temporary aetherskimmer skipper to move faster. “Esben. Esbeeen. Fly faster!”

Even as he began to call upon Leviathan for protection, she began fumbling for her wind materia again. The skimmer could barely stay airborne as is. What would happen if they got hit by a shockwave in midair, especially when the airship completed its descent into that madness?

She poured aether into the materia, as much as she could without breaking it.

“Faster, dammit!”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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The new vertical inclination of the ship threw Éliane off balance too, although she found a foothold against the frame of the doorway. She took the opportunity to mow down the temporary incapacitated crew that had been trying to retake the bridge, but she knew that reinforcements would be continuing to try to make their way through that door.

“A-okay!” she confirmed, in between bursts of shots.

She really hoped that Esben knew what he was doing when it came to flying –or ramming—this big floating bastard of an airship.
The pink-haired kirin encountered some more resistance, but from down the hallway, it was clear that the crew were wising up to the kamikaze tactics that Esben was trying to employ and were considering abandoning ship.

Her attention flicked back to Esben as he finally discovered the correct controls, the sudden accelerated lurch that made her fight to steady herself once more telling her that they were now on a direct collision course with Valheim’s newest superweapon.

“The exit strategy is finding the same lifeboats the crew are scrambling for!” she replied back, already hauling her big gun back onto the damaged aetherskimmer.

She wasn’t a mechanic, but she still had enough of a mechanical eye from working on all her guns, so she did a quick visual inspection alongside Esben. “If the engine works, maybe,” she concluded, before urging him on. “Go, go, start the bastard!”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane couldn’t help but gape for a moment at the developments in the battle around them. That Valheim would use some kind of twisted superweapon against them was almost a given at this point, with the way the foreign barbarians hounded them at every turn with their bizarre experiments, but the monstrosity they released today was truly beyond the pale. She only dwelled on it briefly, though. There was no time for introspection in battle, let alone an aerial one.

“Barbaric,” she snipped, her attention switching back Esben in the brief lull created by the entire fiasco. Her eyes drifted towards the massive Valheimian flagship along with his. It was clear they were on the same wavelength.

It took only the briefest exchange for them to confirm, and Éliane swiveled the gun around towards the ship’s bridge as Esben piloted the craft straight for the most vulnerable spot on the vessel. Pressing the trigger down, she absolutely hammered the bridge with the rotary cannon, slamming hundreds of bullets right through the glass windows and into the bridge crew.

On cue, the pink-haired Skaeler ducked as the aetherskimmer rammed right into the opening she had created. The sound of wrenching metal and glass was deafening as she held onto dear life as the small ship rocked and wedged itself into the narrow space, twisting apart. Éliane barely had time to leap off the mangled thing with her guns before being crushed, but a little burst from her wind materia made her land far more gracefully on the crumpled plate floor of the bridge than she would have otherwise.

“Unf… Impressive carnage, Esben. A man after my own heart I see.”

Some of the bridge crew had survived, and Éliane whipped around, still lugging the big gun and pumped a very quick burst into him. The thing was not man portable when it came to firing, but at ranges this close…

Well, she could keep the door very suppressed as long as she had ammo. “Consider it watched!”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane smirked in smug satisfaction as she watched her shot connect. It didn’t take long for her satisfaction to morph into a frown when she saw Valon was still alive and in fact more than combat capable, seeing how he blocked both Galahad and Izayoi and pushed them back, despite the rest of the Kirins following her personal example and going for the decapitation strike on the traitor. They had great momentum, but it felt like the pendulum was about to swing back.

At least the false dragoons were still being dealt with.

After making her quick snap shot, Éliane changed positions. It wasn’t as fast as she liked, but juggling multiple guns, including the big one generally used for static purposes meant that she didn’t have the mobility that she preferred.

Nonetheless, she’d managed to make her way onto the aetherskimmer Esben had hijacked. Leaving Valon to be dealt with by the rest for the time being, she shifted her fire to the pursuing craft around them. A rapid burst of fire sent one enemy flaming to the ground behind them, but Esben’s attempt at flying was making it very difficult for her.

“Esben! Fly better!” She screamed out between bursts of gunfire.

She sighted on another vessel, only to quickly lose it again as her own craft tumbled away, doing some ridiculous maneuver that was making even her lose her meal.

“Stick to the original plan! Get us a bigger ship!”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane shot the sole remaining grovemaster a sharp look at his comment. “I still don’t like you, but that was before you presented yourself as a halfway reasonable head of state. I can still show concern for a city being sieged by Valheim.”

Nonetheless, she nodded at his explanation.

On Loki, the information Esben confirmed was grim. On the other hand, if she got a chance to play with one of Valheim’s flying ships…
Well, she was looking forward to that.

-

The airborne assault came quickly and ruthlessly. Although it was never intended as the main line, the first line of defense fell quickly as enemy airships began to land.

The position that Éliane had chosen to site the gun, now in its anti-aircraft emplacement configuration was slightly exposed, but the pink-haired officer wouldn’t be who she was without at least taking a medium-level of risk in whatever decisions she made in combat. She was in a very good enfilading position to shoot at the ships bearing down on the city.

Although she still had to nurse her ammunition, she had already made good on her position. There were already a couple small frigates in flames as they spiraled out of control in the sky.

…

Then a certain somehow decided to show up again, his aggravating, irritating voice clearly heard over the din of battle. Was that man vain enough to use a loudspeaker in battle?

Of course, it was that annoying Edrenian traitor from before, standing atop a particular Valheimian cruiser. She swiveled the gun to fire at the ship, but as his stupid speech continued despite his own words, she switched to something that would be far better at swiping the smug grin he no doubt had on his face.

A moment later, she had her rifle in her hand, a scope attached atop it. It only took her another brief moment to properly sight in for the man cackling on the ship. Calculating the distance, drop, and the wind—helped a little by a push from her wind materia, she sniped at Valon mid speech just as Miina made her own attack.

“Piss off! I’m first, motherfucker!”

With a crack, a materia-boosted shot snapped right for Valon as he continued to gloat.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane held a cup of inferior coffee. The others had their own, too, if they had needed it. So far, the plans made and the issues presented all seemed sensible to her. As low of her opinion of Zacharias still was, he was playing to the Kirins’ strength by using them as the spearhead of a counterattack. She frowned at the mention of Loki, and then Valon. What was it with Valheim and turncoats?

She still hadn’t fully processed Loki’s betrayal, in truth, and to her, there had been no good reason for the spy to turn traitor. She had briefly wondered if the barbarians possessed some kind of mind control magic, but Éliane had dismissed it as unrealistic.

The pink-haired Skaelan nodded along at Rudolf’s questions, finding them sensible along with Galahad’s own points.

“I’ll defer to Esben on Loki. He knows her better than I ever did. I still have a few points of my own to add,” she finally spoke up.
“We’re going to be in a bad way for communications. We’ll have to assume any codes, procedure words, and semaphore signals for both Drana and Skael are thoroughly compromised. We don’t have time to create and disseminate new ones. We can only do so much but minimize sensitive communication. Challenge and response phrases are better than nothing right now.”

She took a slow sip of her coffee. The next point wasn’t her strong spot –in the field that is—but it was still something that Éliane always had to be concerned about in the back of her mind.

“I didn’t hear any mention of how the fire brigades will be deployed, and that concerns me. Civilian, military, whichever. Your city is very flammable. The Valheimans are going to be throwing around a lot more high explosives and flammable ordinance than I will, and you are going to have fires in the treetops and houses. Do you have a firefighting strategy?”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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It was over.

Only the battle with Famfrit, at least. Éliane slumped down briefly on a piece of debris, getting a bit of very sorely needed rest at this point. They had all been going for nearly a full day now, and there was still the impending invasion by Valheimian scum to contend with on the surface. She was flagging once again; letting out a tired sigh, she knew she would have to prod Esben again for another pick-me-up.
Almost like a backstreet dealer in Solitude, she reflected with tired amusement.

She took the time to reassess her kit once more, first reloading everything before finally rising again after producing her crystal at Izayoi’s prompting.

The pink-haired officer was very much not a practitioner of magic at all, but she still knew how to utilize her materia. The crystals acted similarly enough that Éliane didn’t have too much of a problem joining the others as she helped purify the larger corrupted crystal, marveling as the corrupted essence withered and faded away to be replaced by a brilliant diamond.

Éliane passed by Esben on the way out. “Going to… need more caffeine.”

Thankfully, returning to Brightlam gave her access to real caffeine. After a sharing a short nap with the rest of the Kirins, she had quite literally raided Zacharias for both tea and coffee; the beans in Drana Asnaeu were decidedly very subpar, which she expected for such a nation, but it worked. She was still going to feel very miserable after this was all over, though.

Which sucked, because she was truly looking forward to ventilating more Valheimians, and she couldn’t truly enjoy this even while hopped up on stimulants.

She wasn’t directly involved on account of being knocked out at the time, but Éliane was glad that Rudolf was properly able to negotiate for the proper ammunition. After inspecting the weapon again and its resupply, it would go a very long way for this invasion.

The garrison available to Brightlam was never something that truly impressed Éliane, and a good portion of its elite forces had been scythed down by her team and hers truly. The entirety of their military planning and tactics being compromised by traitors did little to help as well. She knew Zacharias had plans, but she didn’t give it very good odds of success barring further intervention.

Then again, that intervention was here. She’d briefly been able to say hello to Eve after she woke up, but she had since joined Cid in setting up defenses.

Well, she’d talk more about the plans when everyone else woke up.