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Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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This was now the third time Éliane had been invited to a grand Edrenian banquet. She had to admit that she was slightly apprehensive about it; her track record for attending such meals hadn’t been that great. The first time had been assaulted by a Valheimian crack force and diplomatic team had nearly died to a man for it; the second time had resulted in a very awkward family reunion that very nearly had food thrown across the table. Admittedly, Éliane had done little to help the situation, as annoyed with Galahad’s dad she was at the time…
Éliane was pretty sure the silverware that she had walked out with was still in Goug’s wagon somewhere.

Her eyes ran over the food in front of her. It was the Edrenian fare that she had come to expect when hosted by nobles, with delicious roasts, rich wine sauces, and hearty sides. Best of all, of course, was the coffee, and she made sure to consume a lot of the delicious, divine liquid. The pink-haired Skaelan was content to simply eat, drink, and half-listen to the conversations between the Demets and the rest of the Kirins –or at least some of them, given how quiet the Ospreyan members of the party seemed to be at these Edrenian events. She added her own comments here and there, but Éliane wasn’t truly a committed conversationalist here.

That said, seeing Rudolf’s change in behavior since returning here gave Éliane a funny idea in her head that eventually made her lean towards the man that she had been bumming stories off of since coming here, a grin on her face.

“So… Given you’ve known Rudolf quite well over the years, you must have some fantastic stories about him, Lord Wulfric…”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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No matter how much Esben had advocated caution, Éliane had been looking forward to some sort of fight or brawl and she was somewhat disappointed that she didn’t get to witness one. Intellectually, she knew it was for the best, but she couldn’t help it with her nature. Oh well, there was always next time.

While her own manners had suffered in the course of their journey, she still made a formal introduction befitting her as a representative of Skael as she did with certain… previous Edrenian nobles, although this time things went far better.

Most of the byplay between Rudolf and Wulfric as well as the household staff was lost on Éliane, given Edrenian noble politics was very much not her expertise, but she could at least get the gist without directly asking Rudolf about the strange treatment from the household servants.

Frankly, if she was served whiskey instead of apple juice she would be rather happy, even if she still preferred a certain caffeinated beverage over all else. Unlike Galahad, embellished or not, Éliane ate up Wulfric’s stories. While she didn’t quite hang on to every word, the pink-haired officer had always been fond of these sorts of tavern tales and she had to admit seeing the way Galahad and Rudolf look a bit put out was also amusing to her, especially after she urged the young nobleman to continue his stories.

Before long, she was chiming with stories of her own misadventures.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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The Skaelan man before her was one that she had not expected to see again, at least not outside of Skael itself. Given her last encounter with him so long ago, the memory of Cherle d’Artoe was still strong—especially the visage of the man’s bloodied face, caved in by fist. She couldn’t help but snicker at the crooked appearance of his nose. She had actually followed through in sending the letter to snitch on him to his father. The man was an embarrassment and had reflected very poorly on Skael. Oddly enough she never received a reply. Typical.

She was also familiar with the other party in this encounter, although only in passing. She knew the Demet name as a matter of course being on the periphery of noble politics, but it was the sort of foreign policy thing that she didn’t care for or deal with much. It was already evident that the appropriate members of the team knew Wulfric and apparently how to deal with him, although Éliane found herself narrowing her eyes at Esben.

“I resent that implication, Esben,” she replied, throwing up her hands in a shrug. Nonetheless, her voice was pitched just enough for others to hear, although not enough to address without making a fool of themselves—“In fact I was going to do absolutely nothing, because it would have been absolutely entertaining to see him regret start up a border conflict with the Edrenians…”

She recalled what she had thought when she had first encounter them. She stood by her assessment at the time. “Your estimation of his personal influence is overinflated, anyway. Nobody likes that family. I really don’t mind burning a few favors to have a second shot at his nose…”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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Éliane thought that the Warrior of Light moniker was a silly and stupid one, but unlike the others in her team, she decided to keep her mouth shut about it. It really was the sort of name that she felt that people who actually knew how to fight would laugh at. No doubt her own colleagues and former subordinates back in Solitude would have a riot when the name filtered through to them, but it wasn’t something that she could really stop, either.

She just shrugged and shook her head.

When Neve made her announcement, she had more to grouse about, though. “I’ve been betrayed… Neve has become an awful Dranan bureaucrat…” The healer had been, after all, been one of the few remaining members of the group from the beginning. Still… “At least the leadership of this country will improve dramatically,” the pink-haired woman concluded, speaking freely at Zacharias’s expense without him present.
…No, she would have had the same words to say even with the man present, as helpful as he had been in the end.

Nonetheless, she nodded at Neve, and then Eve, in turn, the latter more solemnly, wishing her luck on her breakthrough.

Éliane, of course, did not need to be persuaded to return home, with the comments she had made throughout their travels comparing each locale to her home country and city. Each further day here in this particular country was tantamount to her suffering from withdrawals. When eyes fell on her, she looked back at them with a deadpan face. “Do I need to be asked?”

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!”