2018-10-18: Strength

• Cutscene: Strength
• Cast: Jean
• Where: A Farmhouse, Filgaia
• Date: October 18, 2018 (but is a flashback to last month)
• Summary: After helping to activate the Elw device that brought Azado's people to Filgaia, Jean too finds herself on the Blue Star--and not alone.

After the flood, there was light. One moment, Jean is underwater, manipulating the controls in an Elw ruin, looking towards a friend. In the next, everything is brilliant... and she's falling, not through water but through air. She curls up to take the fall--

There's dirt--red dirt, clay, and the green-haired woman finds herself stirring, still soaked from the swimming. She looks up, tired, and sees gray eyes staring down at her--before she slips and just rests on the ground for a moment. Was that--silver hair?

"Mooooom!" comes a small voice, and there's the sound of scampering away.

-=-=-

In the dream, she was young. Dressed in black, hair hair tied back with red cord, Jean looked towards the girl before her--younger than her by a few years, maybe--and began walking closer to her. "Begin," her master's voice said.

It was too easy, really. Not even a test of her abilities. Her knuckles barely even stung before the girl with the grey eyes was on the ground.

"Better luck next time," she offers the broken form at her feet.

-=-=-

Jean's eyes slide open again and she's looking up at a rough wooden ceiling; looking around, the room is simple enough; the bed she's in, a window, a doorframe. Outside the window Jean can see the sky, and the telltale lack of the Blue Star. But to her side...

"Are you awake?" a little gray-eyed girl asks, blinking owlishly from the doorframe before a woman sighs and steps closer. "Cadi, I told you--"

Blonde, maybe around Jean's age... whatever Jean's age is. Jean blinks at her briefly, and then laughs. "Ah..." It's a little awkward, if good natured, as she starts to rise, not even wincing as she notices the cuts down her back have all been dressed. "So this might seem a little weird--"

"With the Metal Demon attacks," the harried-looking woman answers, "The surprise isn't that there was a stranger in my field. The surprise is that you were alive. ...Hold on. You were hurt."

Jean keeps sitting up, holding the sheet close as she glances around for her things. "I'm fine," she answers. "Just a little fall. I don't want to freeload on you," she starts, causing the other woman to look her over again thoughtfully. Cadi is now hiding behind her, still curious. The blonde woman's hair is up, a few wisps at her bangs, the bun a little messy.

"Suit yourself. If you want to help, then you can join me in the kitchen. We'll eat soon."

-=-=-

The skirt of Jean's borrowed dress sways as Jean does, the dancer humming a little tune as she chops through a few root vegetables with a large knife. Her back is to her hostess, who has introduced herself as Ellen and tending a stove. "Was there anyone else with me?" Jean asks, without actually looking over; instead she glances to the little girl who's still curious about the stranger and lifts an eyebrow, sending her scurrying back to her own chores.

"No, just you," Ellen answers. "And soaking wet to boot, though there were no footprints suggesting where you'd come from. ...Where /did/ you come from?"

"Ah, ha ha... You wouldn't believe me," Jean answers. "I was in some ruins..."

"A Drifter, is it?" Ellen asks. "...That explains the scars."

Jean doesn't say anything to that for a while. She doesn't have to; there's a loud set of knocks at the door that stops Ellen short of what she's doing, making her go stiff and then say, "...I'll get that. Not much longer now."

-=-=-

There's some shouting that Jean can't make out at first, until she silently slips out of the kitchen and towards the living area. Then she can hear it; she can hear it, even as her eyes catch on a photograph of Ellen, Cadi, and a man Jean hasn't seen together, looking happier than things seem right now.

"...So you see we're collecting his debts. Workin' overtime, naturally, with the army at the castle busy with all them demons..."

"Come back to my land one more time and I'll plug those eyes of yours with lead. Get out."

Jean glances past Ellen's shoulder, just long enough; four men outside.

The leader tips his dark hat and grins. "I'm sure you'll change your tune when you have time to think about it. See you tomorrow."

Jean is back in the kitchen as if she'd never left it before Ellen even turns back. The little girl is nowhere to be seen, but there's the setting sun visible out the window this time. Jean says nothing until she finishes up. ...Ellen simply takes back up her position and works in silence. This passes until dinner.

-=-=-

Utensils set down on plates again and it's the three of them at the table here; Jean, Ellen, and little Cadi, the little clatters of normal mealtime obvious despite the fact that there isn't any quiet at all. It's as if nothing was wrong in the least; Ellen's been pleasant, but mostly Cadi has peppered Jean with questions, and the woman from Lunar laughs faintly at another.

"That's right! I could show you a couple of steps if your mother doesn't mind."

Ellen lifts her eyes again, almost speaks, and then more strongly /does/, "I'm not sure there'll be time, Cadi. I think Jean here has to be moving on soon... don't you? I was expecting you to need more time to recover, but you're moving around as if nothing even happened. I didn't know dancers were so resilient."

Jean pauses. "...Soon. Hey..." She turns to the girl, "Cadi, can you go get that doll you were telling me about? She sounded really pretty; I'd like to see her."

"Um, can I?" she asks, and Ellen nods. "Go on ahead."

Only once the girl is gone does Jean say, "I hate to be pushy... But I'd like to stay until tomorrow."

Ellen settles her hands together, fingers interlacing and becoming a place to rest her chin atop hands atop elbows, staring thoughtfully at Jean. "...It's tomorrow that I think you should be gone by. I'm expecting trouble, and I don't need to drag a stranger into it. For your own good, you should move on. Head away from the city. ...Seems like the whole country might be lost at this rate."

Jean looks into Ellen's eyes. She waits; she watches. ...And she thinks.

"...I've got your things gathered up. You could be gone before Cadi comes back. I'll explain it to her. It gives you time to travel before things get too dangerous."

Her things; Jean thinks back to what she was carrying; a few drinks, a little jewelry, spare clothes. ...Her claws. The Medium of Celesdue.

"I'd prefer to stay," Jean answers, firm, resolute. "...At least long enough to show Cadi a few of those steps. But the light's no good this late. It'd have to be tomorrow night." She doesn't have to say she overheard; Ellen's sharp. She doesn't have to say she intends to stand with her; Ellen saw her things.

"...You're a fool woman," Ellen answers, and shakes her head, and her voice softens, "But I know the symbols on that stone tablet of yours. Maybe it's the Guardians' will that you stay. But I only have the one ARM, so be careful."

"...Maybe it is," Jean agrees. "I will."

Cadi comes back; the doll is well-worn, but she /is/ pretty.

-=-=-

Jean puts a finger to her lips when Ellen readies to open the door that morning; the gunsmoke in the air from a warning shot lingers. ...Cadi's inside hiding. Ellen just checks the cylinder on her ARM and readies it to fire, lowering the hammer and putting a hand on the door.

"We said we'd be back," the man in the black hat says, holding a rifle. To his sides are two large men with clubs, and in the brush hiding is one with an ARM of his own. "Your man owed us. And you get to pay up. ...We've been protecting this here homestead from the demons, too. We're performing a service."

A man at his side snickers, and Ellen opens the door, looking warily outside it. "A debt you pushed him into, and you killed him for. The only thing you're getting from me is lead, Jim."

"Suit yourself," he says with a shrug. He's a big, imposing man as he he grins forward. "...But Adelhyde can't survive as it's been. The rules here are the same as the wastes, 'far as I'm concerned. It's already coming for us."

Ellen's answer is a gunshot that goes wide and to duck back against the wall against the inevitable countershots. She mutters a curse; she doesn't have the ammunition for a firefight like this. However...

There's a choking noise suddenly; a man beside Jim stops with his eyes bugged out, grabs at his throat, and collapses to the ground, blood trickling down his side. "...You think this is strength," Jean's voice says over the noise of the brush.

"She's got help!" Gunshots roar through the air, echoing for a long way on the flat plain; Jean just steps up to Jim's second bodyguard, making less than a sound as blood blossoms from a grazing wound on her upper arm. The blades of a claw glint as she ducks down and /sweeps/ him from his feet in a blur of shadow, and somersaults backward. Another set of gunshots ring out; two go completely clear.

One sinks into flesh, into one of the three Jeans that now stare down Jim; the others merely dissipate shadows that stood beside her. Now there is one again.

"That the power to kill, and bully, and terrorize... Gives you the right to do what you want. That it makes you better."

Two of the three duck down suddenly as the martial... artist rears back and delivers a claw strike mid-air that becomes a wave of shadow that throws the man in the brush backwards bodily, his ARM flying wide... Leaving Jim and Ellen. Ellen, watching from the doorway, staring, but training her ARM on Jim all the same.

Jean rises back to her full height, expression stony as she looks over Jim.

"L-look I--what /are/ you!?"

"...It doesn't matter who I am," Jean answers simply. As she speaks, Jim sees what he thinks is an opening. He moves his rifle to point at Jean's center mass, but as silently as a shadow she is beside him in an eyeblink, reaching out to his arm and /twisting/, forcing him over his shouts to the ground with his hand held behind his back, ready to break at any moment.

"This isn't strength," Jean tells him. "...But she has it. I didn't kill your men. If you take them, and leave, now, no one dies today. ...But if I ever see you preying on others again..."

Jean lets go his arm and lets the large man fall, his hat dropping into the dust.

"Then I'll tell you who I am."

A faint, keening wind howls over the plain as Jean looks up towards Ellen again, sees the way the woman looks at her. "...Thanks," Jean says. "...It was nice, to get to be at home again, even if it was someone else's home."

Shaking her head, the assassin turns in place. "...I'll have to give a raincheck on the dance, I think."

"...That's fine," Ellen answers, and it's not easy for Jean to be sure what she's thinking. Ellen gives her a nod, though. "...You take care out there."

"I'll do what I can."

After a last look at Ellen and the house, Jean starts to walk away, into the rising sun. The shadow cast behind her form is long, stretching far back behind where she walks, at first still on the fallen bandit. She doesn't stop walking for a while, her quiet steps continuing on as the sun warms her skin.

The martial artist doesn't say anything as she walks.