HereComesTheSnow

Falling Skies

LTJG ROY KILMER, CALLSIGN "COMMIE"

---

The barest hint of a sigh fled through the tall blond's nostrils, accepting the points made when they came from the O-5. He didn't have much constructive to say of the two renegades that had muddied the waters, not beyond what he had already regarding their mission statement. the heiress didn't care much beyond playing gadfly to as many people as she could, and the groundpounder missed home, beneath the token attempts at rhetorical framing.

"Project Forge". Really?

In any case, it had come about that the boss had plans already— and effectively, the final say. He shrugged, favoring his diametric opposite with a wan smirk.

"Guess we've been overruled, Rhino. They say it's best to know the enemy as you'd know yourself— tell me if you ever feel like starting an insurrection against this rank tyranny. We can get into OPFOR's heads a little." he jested, lightly clapping Von Brandt on the shoulder before he began to shrug off his jacket, taking one last moment to savor the plush comfort of faux-sheepskin. "If we've got ten, I'll be ready to scramble in five. Any preliminary thoughts on the division of labor, Commander?" he eyed Sagan curiously, before his gaze darted between the two most common sources of communicational static for an instant with a raised brow.

There wasn't much guessing at his meaning. Between Sab's optical camoflauge suite and literally everything going on with Leah's Blackout, the frontrunners for conducting the actual infiltration seemed obvious. Rhino would necessarily mind the rear and provide fire support, Roy himself... was almost certain that whatever was harassing the 233rd would come screaming into power plant airspace to investigate once the grid was severed.

These all made sense to him. But they had their inherent points of friction, and beyond that, his nature was to shy away from the bigger picture that Kodos was obligated to consider. It was why Kilmer had so happily ducked promotion for this long, after all.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

There it was again.

At the center of a growing umbral bonfire, the whirlwind of steel surged with redoubled desperation, as Rudolf hacked, slashed, and threw all his might into his strikes, each one boiling with abrading stygian flame— but each strike was turned away by the plating. The blaze itself found purchase, of course, the grinding and gnawing burn flooding each mote of damage, each fleck of indeterminate alloy their combined forces had spalled off. It crushed the exposed material, scoured it further apart, forced each minute scratch and crack wider and wider open— uncaringly weakening the constitution of the bleeding edge work of Valheim's military-industrial complex until Chisato's bombs, this time forewarned by a timely Fire in The Hole! at the back of his skull, blew the plating clean apart.

He leapt away as another brace of scarlet-orange flashes blossomed out from the damaged limb, watching the colored flames intermingle and dance with the lingering black before springing forth again behind another swing—!

And there. For a moment, a gleam of light within the burning shadow, and his dead steel found the briefest moment, one pure slice, of life. Why? He couldn't puzzle it out. He couldn't tell what prompted those instants of realized potential, no matter what he tried to keep track of—

Another spear from on high, forcing him back on the move before he could admire his handiwork, let alone even begin to divine what it was that made those two strikes different from every other. His breath was thick, heavy, smoke-laden. His lungs and blood afire. For a moment, he felt the dissonant urge to snicker bubble up within him— but it burned before levity could counter the weight of his inner blaze. A shame. The only one who'd appreciate the irony of just how literal his favored vows before a duel had now become was gone with the wind. She was better off for not seeing this.

He batted the last of the streaks of ivory talon away before they pulled back, and Reisa's tinny voice echoed again through the loudspeakers. Up at the weapon's top half, Izayoi and Galahad's efforts were writ large in more separated armoring, and one eye put out. The work was far from done, even as the mecha collapsed to a knee— but if they kept hammering...

"Dying light, rend my sword and sing in shadow!”

'Sing in shadow'... hold on.

Before Rudolf could leap in and keep hammering at the crippled weapon in hopes of, however it came, catching lightning in a bottle a third time, he felt his muscles lock against his will.¹

His aethereal sense was nascent if it existed at all. There was a large part of him that had believed that, whenever he could feel a shifting in the winds before the release of magic onto the world, mostly from Miina or the sudden shocks upon the world that were materia being loosed— it was mostly background leakage from the shadow that resided next to his soul, his still-nameless passenger feeding him an undercurrent of insight that barely stirred the surface of his senses. Nothing so concrete as what he believed the naturalborn experienced, when they read the ebb and flow and twist of the world's current, or for that matter the warped expressions it felt he ceaselessly produced these days—

But this, he could practically taste.

Oh no. Your shield. Grab your shield.

Anima from the very fabric of the world around them was torn, rushing inward, coalescing against the frame of the stricken warmachina, warping space. The image of the deck itself seemed to bow inward, as the surge of aether swelled into the upraised palm, shriving clean life itself. In a wholly new sensation, Rudolf realized that a wave of fear was flowing out into him, rather than from him.

”From the deepest pit of the seven hells to the very pinnacle of the heavens,"

His instincts began to scream at him, punching through the burning umbra, nearly drowning out the building panic from the second voice in his head. He planted his blades to the flooring, freeing a hand to dive for the pouch on his hip. His palm closed around averdant orb, used only twice before, but by all knowledge impermeable. Perhaps not the barrier he mustered on the dunes², but...

Not impermeable. Very, very strong. Shield is a spell known to me. So too is this. It is older, greater. When this world was young, it was primordial destruction. The light that cleft earth from sky. Ancient even in the age I lived. That it is manufactured in yours, bearing down upon us, is the worst card you or anyone might draw.

"The world shall tremble!"

A single point of light gleamed at the center of the maelstrom of aether. Around it, a dimming hurricane. Death itself. It seemed to even eat away at the prow of the ship careening into them from the side— the enormity of the moment slowing the mighty engines behind it to a crawl. The mote of diamond shone, again and again, brightening and brightening until even the rising sun itself seemed to be enveloped, defeated, folded in. He could even feel the fire that licked at his blood being pulled. The voice continued, even as the instant they had to mount their defense against this unfathomable collection of power hung. If that was all true, then—

I cannot bring out Svalinn. You would not survive what it would take to fuel its constitution. You're too deep in the hole.

A bit late for all that, isn't it? I've already set myself alight.

You're burning your blood. Your body in parts. You would be burning your heart itself. You would die, and then I would be rootless— my fundamental essence torn to dust, little more than smoke against a gale. Not happening. This is a bridge beyond what I can allow, beyond any destruction you have seen. In my tongue, for it was the end of all magic—

"ULTIMA!!"³

Rudolf thrust the materia forth, the orb of brilliant, polished emerald faint against the white-hot torrent of raw aether that swept towards the Kirins even as it thrummed with power, with blackened will. He could feel it, through his passenger's emotions, through their knowledge, through their unfathomable tides of experience, that the spell on its own wouldn't make the cut. Against such a massive surge of raw aether, the power that was available to the stone, even one so impossibly precious as Shield, would be swept away...

There was a faint howl, scattered against the rushing wind and blaze, but belonging to Izayoi— he knew the sound of her throwing everything she had to give and more towards certain death all too well by now. Sure enough, the blur of the samurai smeared across his vision, a streak of shadow against the wall of light spinning into a single, divine cleave. Shin-Zantetsuken struck the boundaries of the explosion and feld, one, two, three seconds. An impossible feat. Her iai strikes already being the stuff of battlefield legend, with each moment that he was flooded by exogenous understanding furthered the absurdity.

But through the haze, through the flooding starburst bearing upon them, through the rank hopelessness of this struggle, it left him with an idea. He had no time to think it through. It was miracle enough that she'd bought them all this much. All he could do was try.

"Everything one has to give and more", surely, didn't just apply to the body. It applied to magic, as he'd seen from the others. From Miina, from Eve. It could be made of anything that could carry the will—

This time, the materia itself began to smoulder, burning black like the gamble of every swing of his armaments.⁴

If Shield didn't have enough power to contest Ultima, then he would have to provide Shield with more. All materia was, when you boiled it down, aether compressed so thoroughly it became a stone that you could catalyze a specific spell through— an equation, supplying every input save the direction of the wielder. To maintain its use, there was only so much aether that could be released before the stone was rendered inert, lest the structure be degraded.

So conversely, if they intentionally pulled apart that structure, bit by bit...

"BEHIND ME!" He bellowed, perhaps fruitless against the din, perhaps fruitless in its redoubled unclarity. Before him, meeting the wall of raw offensive might, the white-gold of Shield blossomed outward— then another. Then another! Like the tigerlilies of Crandor in the summer heat, the barriers seemed to bloom, petals of hardened magic overlaid atop one another, and burning black at the very edges of the gold luminescence.

In his palm, he could feel the energy that thrummed about the stone, so familiar after all the times he had asked materia for aid, beginning to leak through the gaps in his fingers. For as numb as his arms had felt since this fight began...

Even at the epicenter of a profane, twisted bonfire, the Garden of the Gods awaited the Kirins' victory below, the fate of the continents' most devout hanging in the balance even as they fought their own war. If not here, then nowhere would be close enough to the ears of the divine for Rudolf to pray that this would be enough.

The dome met the shield with an almighty, bronzed bell tone, and the through nothing more than the channel of his final link of will that Shield would ever know, Rudolf felt his arm jar against the joint, beginning to burn with the strain of forcing back raw power. He grit his teeth, almost tasting copper.

There would be no second chance if it wasn't.

---

---

• _{1. When I say hold on, I mean it. I recognize that chant, enough that it gives me a sinking feeling in the stomach I haven't had for longer than everyone in this fight has been alive put together twice over.}
• _{2. It was a reasonable assumption when he departed that they would be effectively interchangeable. The same way it's a reasonable assumption you wouldn't need a raincoat when it's a sunny day outside. But sudden storms happen, and that woolen sweater doesn't exactly cut it for rain the way it does a brisk wind.}
• _{3. Oh, good. the name hasn't changed. I should hope not. This is the ideal destruction that all black magic chases the purity of— there are even schools of white magic that believe it to be their endpoint as well. The thought that all of order begins in an explosion, a burst of power unparalleled, is too rooted in faith. I guess.}
• _{4. Remember the part where I said I love foreshadowing? I've had that hunch for a page and a half, and I spent it looking over just enough of the gradient of the stones he's got that we have a shot of pulling this off. Where would everyone here be without me? We'd all have to pray the capital ship slamming into her hull does the heavy lifting we'll be too vaporized to do ourselves.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

Flame flooded him.

Heat in his veins coursed. A burning river, surging through aching muscle, leaking out from the scrapes Valon had left, like the winding channels of flame beneath a volcano. It bubbled, boiled, flickered, leapt, filling his world with writhing black. When it left, he could feel the stinging pain melting beneath it, as though the lines on his face themselves were burnt away. His limbs responded to his will, but they seemed to do so of their own accord— it was like the weightless nous of doubled-over haste. It seemed like it made sense. Pain and the weight of his limbs were both a response signal. If you wore away one to nothing, then another was sure to be affected, somewhat.

His breath was thick with smoke. Hot, and sticky, it didn't seem to tighten the throat or chest the way the grain silo had... but each breath seemed to fuel the chorus within him, the oscillating surge and drone of rushing, rising tar, water pumping into a cauldron about to bubble over. Were it the time or place, he'd have likened it to feeling in some way like he was under the waves all over again. A haze of heat coated each breath. There was a strange sense of familiarity to that. Almost like a fever.

Within this symphony, however, muddled by the fog of war, the blaze of black, through the dulled voices and rushing fire and howling wind and muted colors and crashing metal... was a single discordant note. A feeling. A response signal that was so alien, not even calcinating¹ fire could break it apart. Not before it reached his head.

He knew by now the feeling of striking with the blackflame. It was a gnawing, abrading thing, it burned and chewed through something when it struck, grinding and pulling it apart by the bonds that arranged a material out of base elementa. It siphoned structure, subverted order, melted form— that was part of why he had reasoned it to be fueled by luck. To start a fire you need ample fuel. To eat through order, order must first be ordained. Thus was fate². But in making contact with the Ruby Weapon's ankle girding...

What the hell was that?

The scream of shearing metal, armor forced to split. The resistance of sinew, taut muscle being severed by a blade, a sharp blade, and unimaginably sharp blade— but when he struck with the lump of cursed metal he wielded, he swung through empty space until he was left, simply, with a light tap. Every time before now, no matter the technique or force applied, it was always brushing a feather against the target and no more.

This was not that. Not at all. This was neither of those two sensations. Beneath the weight of the fire, there was an unexoected lightness for a moment— like a binding had become loose. The curse needed to be broken either through a specific ritual or through the death of the caster, the man who walked presumably upon a whole separate plane from theirs. What was the reason for this sudden, unexpectedly proper feedback? Impressions raced in his head, almost-thoughts swirling, clashing, racing through the smoke. Isolde lied? Wrong?
Uninformed? Enough fire burns curse?
Not enough for that.
The Weapon ate aether before.
right, Leviathan's absorption.³

A thudding. Pressure waves at the top of his skull. Light from on high, a scream of orange.

Heavy drums above his head, some fifteen feet, scattered the swirl, as Chisato, Galahad, and Izayoi made their moves. Bidden to alertness, Rudolf's head snapped upward, greying eyes wide and unwavering as Reisa redirected her chariot to counterattack, shifting the weight, even her mighty titan of flesh and steel forced to give an inch. Its arm extended, tipped in razor claws, each easily eclipsing even the accursed greatsword in length and lethality—

Side.

And one showering his frame with sparks as it burst out, telescoping and stretching as if made of putty, and Rudolf brought the hardened steel of the rondel up to divert its course even as his feet carried him out of the way. A rush rose from the pit of his guts, scattering as it hit his heart. He recognized it as what was supposed to be fear. He was scared. That was the whole reason he'd come this far, worked this hard, sacrificed this much. He knew he was scared. He knew he was terrified of this enemy. It wasn't like he stopped feeling it altogether—⁴

Quick as lightning, quick as it had extended out, the claw retracted back to the hand of the weapon, adjusting its aim minutely before firing again. He could perceive the form of this. He and his enemy would dance on the margins until whatever Reisa used to read his patterns caught him.

He would break that form. The burning told him to. It told him something even more important than that—

Whatever the reason for it was... his dead weight had woken up, and could break this juggernaut down where everything else failed.

He dove forward this time, summoning the memory of the last time he had fought the insurmountable. He couldn't recall the thoughts, but the feelings, the arcs of weight and balance—

Clearing the path of the next incoming strike, Rudolf let the blaze roar through him as he drove the knife through the steel that held the massive foot of the Ruby weapon's weight on the deck, and wrenched his torso, swinging the seven-foot tower of steel and fire 'round in a vicious crescent, crashing through the claw as it contracted from the miss, carrying through to the armor again. He leapt, he struck.

He roared, crashing through, daring to let the next attempt to impale him that would doubtlessly come meet the godslaying blade he had awoken through unknown means, to test its mettle as it deflected away, and he swung again. His voice seemed doubled. A trick of his ears?

Not the time. He needed to focus only on cutting through the armor, keeping the weapon from regaining any more initiative, and not dying before he⁵ they had killed it.

---

---

• _{1. That's a specific term I would really appreciate having some time and space to double check whether or not I let slip.}
• _{2. Luck of course being another name for the winding whims of fate. You can always make your own luck— and many times, you do so by playing nice with the big folks upstairs. It's bribery, really.}
• _{3. Two streams of consciousness, even collaborating, are indistinguishable from two guys trying to talk at the same time and neither backing down. I've done my best to make it legible for you, dear reader. I'm a caring curator.}
• _{4. But it's like the fear breaks apart before it can get stuck in and be a problem. In a way quietly horrible, but I can't deny it's saving our asses. Speaking of, less chatter unless it's relevant. Tell me when more bombs are hitting my airspace.¹}
  
  • _{4-1. Hold on. Time out. Who let you in here? That's not how thi— All of it's relevant, you rock-munching Northron barbarian child! Watch the skies, the shadows of the fleet are moving out of formation! Wouldn't want one of them to veer into this big new ego you've got, would we?}
• _{5. Admittedly, it's getting very loud in here. Even if some senses aren't being as dulled as others, there's a lot going on that can drown out outside stimulus. But never mistake that for being in isolation. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean something isn't there. This is a fundamental concept to the people of the night, and our magics.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

Contact.

The breaking of resistance at the end of his dagger, driving all the force through an icepick grip his torso could wrench through that desperate lunge. He reached out with his far hand as Valon reared back, to try and hook the back of his neck with the spine of the blade and pull him into a true killing blow—

A blur in his peripheral. Too quick, too close—

!!?!!E$^#&&!

Enormous pressure, the ringing of a heavy sledgehammer on steel, through the side of his head as he found himself a second behind, his vision swimming. What? What was that? How had he hit the floor?

A silvery blur erupting from below bought him time to piece it together, forcing the cocky traitor to retreat before he could capitalize on the suddenly-shaky legs he had given Rudolf. Nothing, though, would stop him from talking their ears off, it seemed... Rudolf grit his teeth and began to work will back into his frame, to pull himself back up to his feet.

Halfway up, he realized those teeth weren't gritting at all. Valon's braying zingers towards the pair of them still sounded dull, waterlogged in his left ear, as a sharp, branding-iron pain throbbed just below. Numb all through the side of his face otherwise, and his words came out half-formed. He had to fix this now— no matter how well he might have been able to manage on his own, if old stories from his forefathers were to be believed.

"Eosh," he slurred, waving the glowing point of green in his periphery over. No mistaking it, if he didn't reset the joint he'd be damn near unintelligible beneath the roar of the field. His eyes narrowed— if he remembered this right, the next second was going to really suck.

Isolate the chin. Keep downward pressure, and...

He reached up to his mandible, thumb pressing down on the lower molars as Eos's restorative winds washed the pair of them in green, and coaxed the bone up and back.

"Agh, ffffuck!" he hissed, as the pressure released with a telltale POP of the hinge returning to its proper alignment. The fae wind soothed the lingering pain, luckily enough, but still— for all he lacked a real barometer of the crazy jump in Valon's strength that Galahad and Izayoi had attested to, having never fought him before the untimely introduction to Siren, knocking his jaw out of joint with one swat of the fist... was...

A red glint from on high brought their eyes upward, as one. A crimson comet, streaking out of some hangar within the Valheimr flagship and plummeting, meteoric towards them. Still in their vicious tangle, even Siren and Leviathan were forced to give pause as their battle was encroached upon—

Rudolf's eyes went wide. His face lost color. A ball of cold lead settled in his gut, like Miina had run up from behind and stabbed him, as he saw that meteor tear straight through both true and false Eidolon, stopping a few meters above the deck with the heads of each in hand. It loomed, imperious, over the lot of them— a giant of blood ruby, hewn from gnarled metal and twisted horn, sinew writhing beneath slabs of armor.

"You're kidding..."

He staggered to his feet, and watched the golem clench those wicked claws, crushing the pair of titans down to their constituent mana. A moment later, a familiar voice began to blare out of the tinny, distorted radio speakers that were somewhere on the abomination, but in truth, he hardly registered the words— What he had just seen was unshakable from his mind. It had barely been week since he had seen, since he had felt Leviathan's power firsthand— and barely two since he had been at Siren's utter mercy, practically powerless against her.

There was no way.

There was just no way in hell...

A clawed hand flexed as Valon and his falsified cohort dove over the side, now out the picture, leaving them alone with this unfamiliar monstrosity. Rudolf's eyes caught a speck of disorder in the red of that hand, something of the color that didn't match. For a moment, he was puzzled... but then he tasted a tinge of copper on his tongue that matched.

His breathing was shallow, lost under the hurricane of Izayoi's vengeful bloodlust as the abomination thudded onto the deck. It was slight, to his meager credit, but he couldn't stop himself from flinching. He had barely been able to scratch the false Eidolon when they'd fought... and this "Ruby Weapon" that Reisa now piloted and crushed her like an ant. That was what they had to fight?

Forget Valon.

Forget Izayoi's master.

Forget Adrammelech, forget Famfrit, how could they win against this kind of power? That which dismissively carved through the primordial spirits of nature, which feasted on the aether that held them together... forget winning, how did they get out of this alive?! They couldn't run, the speed this thing had displayed on the flight down here would mean they at best would just be picked off as they fell. He could see it. His own blood, joining the psuedolon's on its claws, painting the armor and razor-edged bone. His hands weren't stilling on his command. Stop moving, dammit, he could hardly still his own mind to begin with!

A blur.

No.

A flash of steel.

Please don't. We're gonna die.

A throat-ripping roar filling the air, as Izayoi's vengeance carried her forth regardless of his silent plea.

You already figured out that running isn't an option. Did you forget? In two seconds, will you forget me reminding you?

He hadn't. He hadn't, but...

Look at the damn thing. Leviathan was already more than humans were ever made to handle, and look what it did to her! He was already pushing his meager luck by trying to go toe to toe with Valon when he'd beaten back Izayoi and Galahad on a lark, but this was a whole level beyond even that!

Let me put it to you another way. If you're going to die no matter what, since you can't run and can't win...

The Wing roosted at his hip, even as Izayoi made first contact, crashing into the gnarled ruby chestplate some fifteen feet up. From his back, he drew the greatsword. No fear had left him as his choices seemed to make themselves, shamefully— his grip was white-knuckled as ever, his eyes still wide as saucers. He was no less certain that his threshold of "losing battles" had been shattered— the scales were just too different. A massive gap in strength between two men was in the realm of possibility. There was no experience he could leverage against this descended god. Absolutely none.

Yet it is a godslaying flame we hold. It is that divine connection to their whims we've burnt all this time. Fate, too, is a divinity. You've built up a lot of withheld divine favor over the years...

Alluding to how much he could cash out on? Or how little he had left to contribute to the fund?

He couldn't tell. But either way, his terror told him there was one path left.

He exhaled. With the breath, black smoke escaped. The ice flooding his veins, his gut, paralyzing him... was replaced by a sticky, burning fire. Like pitch within his heart, clearing away the frozen ball of lead that weighed him down. The red on the claws and the red of the armor no longer looked so different to his eyes... Good. Fewer distractions.

You're right. Everything goes. It's the only way to buy a chance.

A plume of that familiar blaze erupted along the length of the blade. It surged, roiled, twice as feverish as the last. The blaze licked at the edges of his arms. His clothing. His eyes.

He was burning.

Burning.

Burning at the edges.

Burning life unlived.

---

...I marked myself for death here. This was the moment.
There was no time I was more certain that I'd passed a point of no return.
I will carry it with me for the rest of my days.

---

He too charged, a pouncing leopard, trailing streaks of black as he joined the fray. The dull copper was gone from his tongue, the fearful glass coating his gaze burning away to steam. With a raw, wet cry, he drew the greatsword back as he landed a few yards ahead of the Weapon and swung, painting a broad, burning brushstroke of ink across its gnarled ankles.

He surged forth after that, in the wake of the blaze— Izayoi would need someone there to occupy and split Reisa's attention at melee distance— any one of them hanging around that close at their lonesome, surely, wouldn't be long for the world.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

High above the morning forest, against the tawny hues of daybreak, sparks flew as one auxiliary of the old legion of Sagramore struggled against the limits of his own ability. Alone, against a foe he'd just watched force the twin luminaries of the war he'd not been enough to join out of the fight in short order— planting Galahad through the deck, forcing Izayoi to call for a switch.

He didn't have time to protest— hell, he barely had time to register just what she'd demanded of him while stowing his spent materia, before Valon had made his own demands clear. The prospect was terrifying, after all he had seen in the past instants, but if there was any silver lining... It was that desperation always bore action. With the turncoat dragoon right in his face, it was act, or get skewered. Moment by moment, breath by sharp, hitched breath, the young man skirted past doom by an edge of steel and no further. So it should have been, and yet—

A line opened up along the bridge of his nose, even as he brought the curved sword he wielded to bear to intercept another flash in its immediate wake, fast as any thrust he'd seen in his meager nineteen years. Were it not for Selene's empowerment, he would have caught neither for certain. But it wasn't deep. For all he had laughed, boasted, and demonstrated the raw force he could produce in a mere instant before they had crossed blades, Valon could surely have gouged him far, far deeper— if not worse.

He inched backwards, forced to give ground with each parry, each catch of the awkward but clearly robust, nimble gunlance, only lashing out with basic, singular strikes to try and wedge some room to breathe, room to think in. As the runt of a fighting family, there was no doubt in his mind what was happening ¹— he could hear it on the mocking edge to the laughter, the sarcastically light touch to each blow that rang down the spine of his sword, the dance of the biting head as it always made sure to harry him away from even drawing his second blade. He wasn't even remotely being dealt with as a serious threat; just the perfect vessel for that stated broader goal of wasting their time.

With the two big ticket items out of the way, what fear would he have for little old Rudolf, the weakling brother of his contemporary who had been "too sickly to move" until a month ago, as far as he was concerned?

A slash down. A lazy sidestep, flanked by a snicker and another burst of stabs— two lines drawn against Rudolf's arm, as three were read and knocked away. From the perspective of just about anyone, this was horrendous. Rudolf was smaller, weaker, slower. His armor was worse, his weapon shorter. His opponent was fresh, riding high on the confidence of power newly redoubled, and he and the rest of the Kirins were still damned near at the end of their ropes after what felt like nonstop battle, ever since they'd first left Brightlam. The deck was wholly stacked against him. A losing fight.

Twin flashes of red hair, flickering at the edges of his mind even as his body recalled rhythm, read form, his eyes focused less on shape and more on movement. They belonged to men from far south of here², whose swords and spears he had collectively spent a thousand hours at the wrong end of, for five long years. A telltale crouch, miniscule since it was before no armored dragon's hide to pierce, but nonetheless a mirror to the thunderheaded Dragoon that Rudolf had watched for a tiny eternity after the flame he carried had been loosed, that he had taught himself to recognize a thousand times over, to prepare defense before the strike was uncorked into the opening he'd left for it.

A black fire roiling inside him. One his horrendous luck had hidden from Valon, dropping Rudolf beneath the waves before the former scion of Arkha had real chance to see it in action. One that, with the stakes this high, the time this short, and the foe this obscene, Rudolf had no choice but to spare no expense with.³

Sparks flew, and the boy bit out an acerbic smirk in spite of his hammering heart, his ringing bones, his short breath, knocked back just a little further in his hasty defense against the dragoon's onslaught than last time.

"Honestly, I did the spear a favor," he bit out, the pale blackened copper of his eyes locking with Valon's visor before pointedly flickering to the gunlance he held. His hamstrings coiled, ready to spring. "Trying to put it through Leviathan's a nobler place to end up than whatever the hell you've been up to— something abominable like that's much more your style now than when you were a proper dragoon."

Incense him. Get him to commit over just that extra bit of space, allow for room to time it, then———

Behind his eyes, his instincts flashed, and his jaws snapped over the scaled neck.

Show him how a tiger hunts a dragon.

What Valon had never once gotten the chance to learn, what set Rudolf apart from Galahad, from Izayoi, from even Otto... was that he was a veteran of losing fights.

The next thrust would be forced down, as Rudolf planted his boot through the haft as though he meant to break it in two, all his might brought to bear to knock both lance and lancer off course, to break posture. As he bore his weight in, his right arm swung out in a reverse swipe with that lone Crane's Wing, this time coated in the inky, opaque blackflame, right at Valon's head. There wasn't a chance it'd pierce his helm. Rudolf didn't need it to— the heavy, lingering blaze would be ample smokescreen for his true strike.

He pushed off, praying to Himstus, to Dhinas, to even Imir that with Selene's speed and the surprise of the counteroffensive he could make this gambit stick, and ripped free his trusty Rondel, channeling more of his passenger's shadowy fire through the rigid length of steel as he attempted to jam it past his gorget.

He could worry about what he had just burned when it manifested. They didn't have any time to give up to this bastard— and if he didn't win initiative back, he was going to run out all the same.⁴

---

---

• _{1. The "How to Deal With It" should be implicitly understood as the problem, but he never got around to delineating that.}
• _{2. I'm not doing that. Believe me, I would not screw around in this situation, this is all Rudolf's subconscious overlaying the silhouettes of people from home over the occult-enhanced (like our pact but made tastelessly, I'm sure) Dragoon that's playing with him like a cat with food.}
• _{3. We'll get to the ramifications of this when we've ensured we still have unpunctured lungs in the next five seconds. Unfortunately for me, we did all remind each other just now that Hunting Giants was our one-hit wonder.}
• _{4. Despite how little argument there is to be made on this point, I think I'm allowed to miss the scaredy-cat you all met back in Atsu a little, and the way he would at least blink at being tossed into the deep end by the ex-mother. Or at the ex-mother herself. I think we beat some measure of self-preservation out of him that makes MY continued existence a hell of a lot harder, let alone Ours.}

Falling Skies

LTJG ROY KILMER, CALLSIGN "COMMIE"

---

"I'm with the big man on this one," Kilmer's smooth baritone floated in from the further borders of the glorified shipping container that field ops called a "briefing room", languidly propped against the wall as though an old west gunfighter. Beneath his customary bomber jacket, his arms were folded, but now that he'd had a wash and a chance to lick his self-imposed wounds a little, he was in relatively high spirits again. If only poor Dole could find the same comfort neck deep in the shit— guy could hardly stumble his way through a few sentences of their briefing at a time. If it wouldn't have meant interrupting him and dragging this process out further, Commie'd have cut in and advised him to take a damn breath. The high canopy of the woods and cammy nets were already doing their jobs to keep them concealed from enemy observation— especially when the Coalition had a whole battlegroup right in front of them to worry about first. "I vote option one."

He kicked off the wall, ambling forward to join the round table proper. In truth, his mood had almost soured at the mention of the second task the Comms Officer had pulled— while they had undergone extensive infantry training as part and parcel of Vulture's mild psychosis and the generalist bent the UEE demanded of a broad swath of its' SOF cells, there was no getting around it being a stretch at most polite— They were the 101st... but they were the 7th Airborne. An MAS Squadron, some best and brightest the Empire had to field in that hotly-contested space within combined arms doctrine— one the Coalition still had an undeniable edge within.

There were a thousand illustrious ground pounders, the sons of fighting traditions millennia deep, whose jobs it were to handle concealed infiltration and intelligence gathering. Experts, schooled by centuries of organizational maturation, unparalleled in their fields. People that you built from the ground up to do that, and chiefly that. The guys who would get it done and love doing it.

In his humble opinion, such was literally beneath them— as they would leave him his kingdom in the sky, he felt it right to in turn leave them their kingdom on earth.

But thankfully, that was the perk of their position— for all that these assignments might get lost and wander onto their desk, they had veto power few units could boast, and he was more than happy to kick that one over to the right guys for the job.

"Loosening up their defenses will be tantamount to taking the territory wholesale, with the way the Helldogs handle things, but even if the Coalies still mount enough resistance to get stuck in after the big caliber AA's scuttled, we'll be further up on tempo— between that and the more lenient bombardment lanes we'll have earned the fleet, it'd ramp up pressure to keep them occupied during the strike on the relay. It'd make for a cleaner op— whether it's us that gets it afterward, or someone we feel generous to. How time-sensitive is the blackout, for the sake of argument?"

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

"Friction", in modern understandings of warfare, was a flexible term. Didactically, it was presented in the broadest of scopes to account for the myriad avenues it would inevitably approach an aspiring commander— that of any disparity that might exist between the idealized vision of a unit, formation, or organizational structure and its' real-world counterpart in performance. It was a concept that served a noble function, reminding the student of the differentiation that needed to be made between best-case scenarios, where everything was accurately accounted for, and plans went off without a hitch... And the messy, ugly, imprecise world in which they actually lived. It was a concept he had been waiting to bring up to Robin, before she had left for home— an ample illustration of the difference between ideal and real that he wanted her to understand before she walked herself into hell.¹

Incoming, port side low. An old friend of ours. We're gonna hit the deck hard.

For instance, those obfuscating factors could have been as simple as Rudolf's vague sense at the end of the briefing that some of the concerns he had raised had been buried beneath the clamor surrounding the new Loki conundrum, and that in some way he was still a little brushed off. Immaterial in most scopes, but potentially deleterious to his morale if it proved a real trend, and not just the artifice of the mind he'd trapped himself within all his life.

Or, they could be quite immediately impactful.

"!!"

Sure enough, his partner's warnings rang true, and Rudolf just about managed to tuck and roll as a column of water slammed into their erstwhile foe from the side and he experienced the now-distressingly familiar sensation of weightlessness before the Kirins collectively slammed into a hard landing upon the open deck of not the flagship they'd aimed for, but a destroyer off to the side. Gritting his teeth, the young swordsman came up to a knee, one sword drawn—

And a scowl painted itself on his face, as barely any time to orient themselves had been afforded before a familiar purple thunderbolt planted himself onto the deck a few bounds away, flanked on all sides by his jetpacked, foreign facsimiles of the warrior culture that had raised him. The horror of their first reunion, and the many ways it had ripped his careful yet ultimately flimsy facade apart, had distracted him from giving real consideration to the betrayal itself.

Twice overwritten, really, considering he had been seconds later cast overboard and into Siren's spell, a fate he wasn't keen on repeating here. But hearing his name leave the former scion of the Arkha family's mouth, Rudolf was forced to confront it anew. He had once met this man as... not quite a friend, but all the same, someone he'd trusted to fight for the realm's defense, every bit as hard as his own brother.

And now, here they were. At opposition, flanked on all sides by the turnscale's upjumped new lackeys, artificial mockeries of a proper dragoon, all regimented, uniform, faceless. The knight at their head, reveling in where he stood— against them. Against Edren. The very principles he'd sworn to protect out the window, that once-unquestionable loyalty twisted to the point that he'd tried to impale Rudolf straight from the jump, not even bearing it a second thought. At that point, the "deception of a false king" may as well have been pretense.

His eyes darted across the field. Ground troops were slowly penning them in where they stood, but the real issue would be those dozen or so loitering above. They had the mobility advantage, better coordination with Valon due to the specific training, and those gun-hatchets from before that could harass them at a range only Eliane and Miina could sustainably contest. Bad enough on their own, but with Valon in the mix, bad could get worse very, very quick.

That was their ideal use case.

Thing about friction was... it went both ways.

"Chisato. They'll drop!" he growled in undertone, betting her hearing was every bit as keen as her cousin's even when buffeted by wind and noise. He'd seen how quickly she could carve through a crowd last night, provided they were unsuspecting— a situation they were unlikely to find in these guys without a little specific counterplay.

Counterplay he could provide.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the telltale blur of Eliane's rifle being brought to bear, and his hands shot to the pouch that held his materia, flooding it with blackened will² as he focused on the flying Valheimr. They'd never had the opportunity to see this gambit in action, for all he'd been using it— a silver lining to how he'd immediately fallen into the drink last time. An ace up his sleeve, attacking their specialized unit's center of gravity³ with unexpected directness.

KRAK

A half-beat after the first shot of the battle rang out, Eliane's patience clearly spent, the false dragoons' engines would at once find themselves under a redoubled strain that they surely hadn't been designed for. The telltale snap of violet magic, almost like lightning, rang out from the orb Rudolf had produced and jammed into the deck, rendering the carefully calibrated machinery and soldiers alike as suddenly clad in lead— spread out as it was between a dozen men, Rudolf doubted he could ground them all in one go.

But if he could attack their mobility in that crucial, opening second— their assassin on retainer could surely make good use of it all the same.

---

---

• _{1. Note for the people that weren't inoculated in all this Edreni theory since they could breathe— the concept here may rhyme with "Ideal War" and "Real War", enough that most of us would be forgiven for assuming it's downstream of that philosophical differentiation, but those are actually their own distinctions, at their own scale. I wonder if Himstus is aware of the academia that's been built up around his domain. I'm sure he's all about being the God of Policy By Other Means.}
• _{2. No fancy metaphor or narrative sleight of hand to it this time, but I've an idea regarding this actually factoring into future usage. It'd take some study of how exactly aether is compressed to make materia in a functional structure, but as a specialist in deconstructing things... let's just say there's more energy you could potentially catalyze than you really get out of anything on the planet. If it's true of firewood, it may yet be true for other resources.}
• _{3. If you've been following the theme of these past twelve hours, you'll appreciate this one.}

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

"Of course it's a shard." Gerard breathed, feeling a knot grow somewhere on the side of his temple between the revelation that they were dealing with yet another rogue fragment of the voidblade and Gertrude's indiscretion. "What else would it be, out by Brennan?"

Well, at the very least blowing the lid off of their benefactor's anonymity hadn't resulted in total disaster, so with the Moonlit Queen's recognizance that her sister wasn't likely to be the culprit in this new twist, there was no real reason left to stay quiet about the details— with a Shard of Angoron in play, all the more reason to speed through their ever-growing list of tasks where they could.

He cleared his throat.

"You have the right of it, your highness. As recompense for her aid in helping us gain this audience with you, so we might win back Duke Thedric's sanity, your sister tasked us with winning her a token of your power as part of that same wager. All fairly, all as you have seen here."

Don't press it too much. Already, you've been reprimanded for overstepping. Don't go home with a glowing head because you convince her you're trying to strongarm.

"We've promises that bear keeping, and wouldn't rightly be able to turn a Shard over to her, for fear of how it would despoil the forest." He explained. "Best these matters be settled one at a time, and making liars of nobody."

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

"... Never the plan, Miina." Rudolf replied carefully, after an uncomfortable pause. The stress on "questions" in that lead nowhere good, in his experience— through the rush of it all, he'd almost forgotten how many things he still tried to keep in the dark.

Well, hey, that could mean anything. I wouldn't worry.

He cleared his throat, turning his focus back to the table at large, scanning the field with somewhat fresh eyes even as his regimented, soldierly demeanor began to fill him anew.

"Anyway... No real objections here, this is very similar to the ideas I had been building towards when we spoke earlier." he began his piece with a nod, albeit one colored by a stiff look at the Grovemaster, hardly amused despite his approval. Old coot, if they weren't already all making an effort to play nice given the unspoken repartee between him and Izayoi...¹ "Just a few points I want to touch on:"

He leaned forward, setting the visual mockup he'd made the night before off to the side. It depicted the concept in a simplfied flow of arrows, chevrons, and boxes upon the field of a treetop, for any who cared to look, but with the full map before them it seemed largely moot to the discussion. Instead, he reached forward, letting afinger hover over the boughs.

"First, a key operational strength necessary for most mobile defenses is immediacy of maneuver and communication. I understand that as the striking force, we're leaving the shaping operations and staged retreats to you guys on the ground, but I think it'd be prudent to establish a quick overview of how you plan to cue your rolling retreats, your holding patterns, and so forth, if only to get everyone on the same page for the broader context of the battle. Typically it's either a horn or a flag, or in some cases radio, stuff like that— perhaps it's only my curiosity this satisfies, but your plan thus far is too structured for me to think you plan on playing it by ear. I'd appreciate it for the sake of maintaining awareness of the broader picture of the field, if possible."

Next, to Cid.

"Secondly, I had meant to ask about Eve last night. I'm glad she's with us, but I'd warn that it'd be good to keep an eye on her, to make sure she doesn't overextend herself. Maybe her time under your tutelage has calmed her down a little, but the Eve I knew was prone to get zealous about burning Valheim, or any of her obstacles, to ash regardless of where it might leave her."

A furrowed brow, a glance back towards the board, the assembly of the pieces laid out. "It might be a good call to pair her with Neve, if she isn't already accounted for. Somebody we can trust, and somebody Eve knows." he explained, sliding his half-mug of the coffee Eliane had procured them in the night over to Esben, still in predictably rough shape after getting only half a night's rest. Rudolf would make it on what he had— setting his brain to work like this woke him up well enough to make up the difference, in many cases.

Really, it had taken the veneration of his blades to clear his mind enough to brave the still waters of sleep in his own measure last night.

"Next is scheme of maneuver. With them only an hour away and not already sighted, the question of their approach pattern seems more or less answered— A straight shot in from their ports in Osprey to the northeast. These being airships, points of assembly are essentially rolling right under them at all junctures, which leads me to my lone concern here— as the Grovemaster made sure to point out, the white magic the garrison can leverage will be instrumental at shaping the battlefield and determining the flow of Valheim's penetration into the understory, funneling them into hostile terrain," his hand shifted from a dense cluster of foliage to a collection of figures, depicted with bows, "and then into even more hostile terrain. But on our way to the country, we ran afoul of a Valheimr frigate full of men who, for lack of a better term, seemed to be 'pseudo-dragoons'— utilizing devices on their backs to extend their ability to move vertically, while being commanded by a turncoat from Edren. If they're fielded, those men are going to be much more capable of navigating the branches than a conventional landing force. If their backs are spewing fire, I'd be sure to mark them as priority targets."

He leaned back, finally, and breathed in deep. All these points raised notwithstanding, he did largely agree with Izayoi. Zacharias had covered his bases well, for the lateness of his notice and solitude of his command. It wasn't perfect, nothing was— but with the scant reconnaissance afforded them by their situation, friction was going to be an inevitability, and wargaming more than one or two layers deep would lead you into tactical paralysis as the number of Possible Things That Could Go Wrong spiralled out exponentially.

He looked around the room, at the rest of the team.

"Finally, Miina raises an important point for us as the strike team. This 'Loki' person has already proven a skilled infiltrator capable of wearing faces not their own, and pulling the wool over the eyes of even those familiar with the false identity in life. It's not terribly likely that Valheim would commit a saboteur and intelligence asset to the front of a battlefield, but in case that person lingers around to see their handiwork, we should establish a failsafe for verifying we're speaking to the real us, in case the battle splits us up once we're topside. These things are messy, it could happen. I'm thinking... maybe a passphrase."

He looked over to Esben. Not only did he clearly have prior experience in dealing with Loki before she turned, but these things were also a spy's wheelhouse. It'd be like asking Galahad to identify the different breeds of dragon around Midgar— Rudi absolutely knew a few, but why waste the presence of an expert?

---

---

• _{1. Oh, he's really annoyed about that. I forgot this kid was like this, one more push and he'd have started grilling Zacharias over how exactly some pacifist pulls out the exact same plan the "Edreni War Machine" he hates so much could divine from reading the map for a minute and a half. I say do it: ask the uncomfortable question, call him out on it, have this guy tell the class why his hatred of the Edren-Osprey conflict is rooted in thinking both sides just didn't do War good enough. Bring up the Clausewitz guy you keep mentioning!}

Falling Skies

LTJG ROY KILMER, CALLSIGN "COMMIE"

---

"h-choo."

Not far away at all, Roy Kilmer realized someone must have been talking about him as he reached below the seat for a spare packet of rip-gel, tearing it open with his teeth even as he moved the Shrike's maneuver surfaces through their range of motion, a small corps of technicians milling about around him and his half-opened cockpit. The ailerons responded in time, he could tell by the feel, and his eyes were thusly kept busy by the video feed populating a small, cordoned-off section of the Shrike's visual suite. The fruity, caffeinated nectar of battlefield gods slid down his gullet easily, keeping the edges of his alertness and focus sharp. When the familiar voice of his crew chief piped into his right ear, he had no fear of nodding off now that he'd sat down and given his body a little time to get done aching.

"Alright, Man in the Box. How's she looking?"

"Peachy keen," the pilot intoned, wiggling the Shrike's fins twice in demonstration. "She's all smoothed out. I told you we wouldn't need to source new metamaterial bullshit or whatever the rep was trying to sell. All that's left is a little visual occlusion towards my port side— I don't think the screens liked having to render out the Coalie's afterimage bit."

"Hell, try rebooting it."

"Might. Other than that, it's all just the usual. Buff out my dings and scrapes and then mosey on over to the research teams for your turn with the sword. Hail me if you need me for anything else, I'll be in here."

"Yeah, we thought so. Still, next time up keep an eye on how hot your frame is running, and do us a favor— mark down strafing the plasma beams as something to cut the hell out."

Of course, as if it'd be anything else, the video playback he'd been poring over incessantly was his own handiwork— the black box recordings of his most recent combat sorties. Film study, by any other name; Commie always made a habit of reviewing how he'd flown as close to the aftermath as possible, while the impressions were still fresh. Regardless of how he'd performed relatively spotlessly in both the orbital and city assaults, he still needed to find improvement where he could— it meant little to come home only with token scuffing after seeing the same combat that had the Sparrowhawk go into a nosedive, or the Venator run so wildly out of position. He'd not really pushed too much of the envelope with his maneuvering or ingress into enemy lines today—

His formation flying, though, needed to be tidier, no doubt about it. So there he would sit, reliving the skirmishes, finding the gaps the man he was then had left for the man he was now to close.