2019-08-11: I'm Not Coming Back
- Log: I'm Not Coming Back
- Cast: Loren Voss, Fei Fong Wong, Elhaym van Houten
- Where: Macalania
- Date: August 11, 2019
- Summary: Elly and Fei cross paths with Loren, who learns that Elly is still alive... and other things besides. And then...
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
ELLY VAN HOUTEN is out here to fish.
See, she's done a lot of that lately, and while it has been rehabilitative - almost salvific - it has not just been that Elly has some grudge against the inhabitants of Spira's waterways. Nor is it that she's taking up a hobby and abandoning the world behind her. For in her relentless uptake of this place, Elly has been able to define herself.
To build a new identity.
In this case, that identity is one as a reliable if inexpensive-to-hire journeyman angler. She has a proven record of catching fish of all kinds. And so she was asked to go up to Lake Macalania; to catch a couple dozen freshwater trout; and then, to follow some directions... to cook some rice, to layer the fish between them, and to add some brown gunk from a bottle which Elly immediately identified as a micro-organism culture. To do that, to seal it tight, and to bring it back to that teahouse, where, Yevon willing and the Sin don't rise, it will ferment into a fine dish for later in the year.
Perhaps there will be much repeat business for Elly van Houten and her travelling companion if she should do well in this... but Elly isn't thinking about that, because the small keg of salt and the pottery of rice fermenter, the bag of rice, all of that...
She's carrying it. She's carrying it over clothing that is both familiar and alien, for she has gotten warm boots and a pair of gloves as well as having put on her old, late, lamented Kislevi naval coat.
She's carrying the load because it's not all that heavy in absolute terms...
And because Fei's hands need to be free...
Because what they're *really* doing out here is making a map of the route the pilgrimage of Yevon takes, and assessing the quality and potentials of an ambush site.
Which is why, RIGHT now, Elly and Fei are standing in the open near the top of one of the many crevasses that surround the lake. Elly is strolling across the perimeter, preiodically prodding the frigid ground with a stick and contemplating the surroundings.
"This would be a lot easier," Elly says as a lake-effect breeze stirs her bright red hair, "if there were even a few trees..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It has been very nearly five months since the newly minted Captain Voss -- with everyone else who ended up transported here -- was stranded on Spira.
And about three months, nearly, since he managed to escape the clutches of the Guard and slip from Kilika to the mainland.
A little less than that, yet, since he reunited with the other operatives from Solaris -- deVriese, the researcher and her pet -- and then with none other than Krelian.
And all that time since then, he's been playing the part of scholar and junior scribe to Krelian, who, playing his own role, is assistant to none other than the Maester Seymour.
So that's how it's been. From captain to prisoner to junior scribe in less than a half-year's span of time. Just trading roles about for the sake of necessity, all in the hopes of someday being able to escape this place and return to where he needs to be. It won't be too much longer--
Just a few more months remain until he turns twenty-one. And then...
He hasn't been idle. Even when he was in captivity, he had been at work. Maybe it was his helpless situation and the fact that no one would rescue him. Maybe he'd been moved to think about van Houten and the way her control and power over her Ether had outstripped his own. Maybe it had been partially out of necessity, with his glasses lost somewhere in the Spiran sea. Maybe it was all of that, all together.
But Elly isn't the only one who has been applying themselves.
Officially, his role with Yevon is as support staff, assistant to Krelian. Unofficially, the man had made it very clear what he ought to be doing. It was entirely possible there was some means back to Filgaia in Spira, and he was to do what he could -- when he could -- to find it.
What happens in Spira is of no concern.
And that is why the young man is here now, pushing past the forest he had surveyed and out into the icy lake that lay beyond it. The Maester's temple was out here. Maybe there are other things. He could afford to leave no stone unturned.
He's put on as many appropriate articles of clothing for the temperature drop as he could. One of the monks had been quite clear about how cold it got out here. It still feels like the air is biting through every single layer. He heaves out a breath, watching it fog.
For a moment -- only a moment -- he fleetingly longs for Aveh's heat.
The surface world -- Lunar -- all of it... it's been making a mess of his desires for too long.
He treads the ice, searching for signs of anything out of place. There had been a rumor about...
...about some ancient structure...
He's noticed, now, that he's not the only one out here. There are people here. Two, in fact, near the lake.
The second thing he notices is her hair. He can feel the pulse in his neck pick up.
He takes off, at as near a run as he can, at this point so near to the glazed-over lake. He stumbles, just once, iced over snow cracking underfoot and just about swallowing a good third of a leg before he recovers.
And he shouts for the red-haired figure as he pushes himself up at all the speed he can muster:
"Van Houten!"
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei Fong Wong has kind of been using this opportunity to recover. To appreciate life without having a demon god (metaphorical) in his head raging about who to kill. Id has been quiet since Fei had last been consumed by him. He has appeared once or twice, usually just when asked for, but has otherwise been pretty chill. Maybe in the end they won't have to worry about Id again. Maybe he's satisfied. Maybe he's found something to be happy with.
Maybe not. But Elly is learning how to fish. She is building her own new identity. Is she intending to become a fisherwoman or is she just going to appreciate it as a hobby. Honestly, at this point Elly is better at fishing than Fei is.
Fei is working on the map, sketching studiously. He is paying attention to the natural surroundings more than the people around him, aside from Elly, and says, "Well I'm not a professional cartogropher so they might have some tricks to it. I know I've learned a bit just from doing it over and over. Maybe I should be working on maps and get real good at it instead of just doing it as needed."
There is some noise behind them. Fei rolls up the map he's been working on and turns to look.
It's Loren!?
"Loren?" Fei asks. "What are you doing here?"
Did he forget that Elly was pretending to be dead? Wait WAS she pretending to be dead or did they just...not tell Loren she wasn't dead?
Well this is awkward. And possibly dangerous. Fei's heart is starting to race. The old voices are starting to reassert themselves. Fei cringes deeply and tries to ignore it.
It'll be fine, he thinks. It's fine. It'll be fine.
Probably not though.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"I think your maps are beautiful," Elly says to Fei - though she would, wouldn't she? But she elaborates. "You really render the spirit of the land, and I thought that you were good at using shadow to represent how things really are... Official survey maps use lines, but I think your method may be more useful, if you're trying to enjoy it as a person, not just figure out things like where water will flow."
Her cheeks puff out for a moment, at the topic of what they are superficially intending to do. "I don't know if they'll be coming this way any time soon, anyway... Leon can probably plan things better," Elly muses. "If we split them up... this would be easier if she didn't have so many..."
Elly trails off.
She raises her head because someone called her by her last name. Her last name and *only* her last name. She has not been using it widely, and it was clearly enunciated. There is a subtle tendency for people to blur it slightly - Vanouten, or vanhuten - and no, no, it was crisply and precisely said by -
"Loren?" Elly says, astonished.
She startles. She was about to dash when it looked like he was going to fall into the lake. But he recovered - and so Elly doesn't. Instead, she moves a little closer to Fei, the staff in her hand falling out as her fingers go slack in shock and she says to him, "It's really... how..."
She is close enough to Fei for her warmth to be felt when she calls out, "LOREN?????" followed by, "Be careful! The water's freezing cold!!"
"He's going to fall in the crack and freeze," Elly worries at Fei.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Of course, the one with her is Fei, he thinks.
Of course.
He recovers from that stumble, his pace somewhat slower as he makes his way ever closer to where they stand.
But he is still making his way to the rise where they are with all the good haste he can manage on the ice encrusted snow.
She warns him not to fall in. Loren turns his head once, glancing at the crevasse, only to soldier on.
There's a path, he thinks.
Fei shouts at him to ask what he's doing here. This question he blatantly ignores, for his next shout up to them is, "You're alive! I thought--" His words are punctuated by the crunch of boots on snow, a gasp here and there for breath. "--We thought you were dead!"
The last thing he had seen of her had been the hint of her figure in Vierge, already torn to pieces by Sin.
And then there had been nothing.
Almost a year ago, now...
Somehow she had survived. Somehow, she's here.
He finds the path up, after a fashion.
He pauses about halfway up, apparently to catch his breath. Moving on ice and snow is different than walking on a flatter surface, different even from running on the same. He's a soldier, but even basic training didn't prepare him for arctic conditions.
"...How in the world did you..." A deeper breath. "...forget it. Come on. We can meet up with the others. You can give your report then."
He's moving again from the sound of it, making his way up to the top of the rise where Fei and Elly stand. His gaze moves between the both of them, evaluating, measuring.
He gestures towards Fei.
"Do whatever you want with him. Maybe bring him along. I think Command's still interested in its pilot. It'll help make up for your absence."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Aw you're just flatterin' me." Fei grins to Elly probably shortly before the problems happen but can't actually get a comment out before Loren appears and shit starts getting weird.
They thought she was dead?? Fei stumbles back in shock. "What--why? Why did you think she was dead??" Fei places his hands on his head. Wait, didn't Loren say something to him once when Vierge was out? He SAW her robot before didn't he? Why would he--
--wait, didn't he say some weird stuff like all angry at him at the time?
Fei blinks a few times.
Then a few more times, but like double the speed.
Then he finally manages to say what's on his mind: "Oh shit." He says, eyes wide.
He has a few ideas now of why 'Command is interested in him'. "Uhh pretty sure Ramses wants to kill me for what the other guy did so... No thanks?"
He looks around a bit, half expecting Lan to pop in and say something ridiculous. Luckily that doesn't happen.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly moves towards Loren for a moment. One step, two steps.
She doesn't come closer. He's coming.
Relief is quickly eroded by what Loren says. I thought - we thought - that you were dead.
Elly's cheeks color and she raises her hand up to her lips as if to cover them. "... Of course," she says. "I hadn't been advertising myself. They probably assumed that I died in Vierge... that you had salvaged it, and that Lily or someone was using it," this quietly, to Fei.
Loren has paused and is catching his breath. Elly steps closer, gingerly. Her eyes stay on him. Her face is hard to read in this moment.
"Loren..." Elly says, her voice soft, if lifted to be audible at this distance. The wind from the lake ice stirs her hair again, throws a little diamond dust down range.
"... I'm not coming back."
"I'm glad you're safe," Elly says. "If you need help, I'll help you. But I'm not coming back, or giving any kind of a report."
She slides her hands into her coat pockets. She looks at Fei for a moment, then back to Loren. "You seem like you're doing rather well, despite the weather out here," she then attempts to say, as if she can just slide past that and into small talk.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He comes to a stop a good yard and a half from them, the snow here crunching underfoot; he is alone. If Lan is about, she does not show herself. His attention trades between the both of them, then falls on Elly alone.
He is not, whatever his faults may be, stupid or unobservant. And he remembers the 'salvaged' Vierge that day, the first day he had returned from his recovery in Solaris.
"...That was you? In Nisan?" A pregnant pause follows. "Why didn't you say something? That transmission..."
He's not stupid. But he's still relatively young, and as a result, naive. A certain possibility has not even begun to suggest itself to him.
He looks at Fei when Fei speaks.
It's the sort of look someone might give a beetle that has just been found trundling around across a table.
That same sense that it doesn't matter what it is that Fei wants in this moment. That there are only two opinions that matter, and neither of them are his. He doesn't say a word to Fei, but the manner in which he deliberately thereafter ignores him is as blunt as any statement might have been.
His attention returns to Elly, and is thereafter only on her.
"... I'm not coming back."
"...What?" He looks as if he had misheard the statement at first, advancing just one step towards her. "What did you say? You're..."
He swallows, just once, as she gives her final statement on the matter.
She's not coming back.
The reason she hadn't reported in is because she's not coming back.
He stands there as still as a statue, as if he's barely daring to breathe.
She's not coming back.
At his sides, his hands twitch.
She's not coming back because she's turned traitor.
Isn't that... what I should have expected? She's... always...
The silence between former classmates, teammates is perhaps nearly palpable.
...even when she killed them all, they still... it's because of her 'power'...
She continues, as if it were nothing. As if she hadn't just expressed that she was deserting. As if they were old friends.
Even now. Even after this. They'd take her back, wouldn't they? I know they would...
He draws at last a deep breath. Something flattens behind his sky-blue eyes.
And here he finally moves, drawing the blade at his hip from its sheath.
Only briefly does his hand shake as the sword slides free; he is thereafter as steady as anyone might be.
/I would never get that. Never! Only she would!! Only her!/
"VAN HOUTEN!" he snarls abruptly. All his previous frozen stasis is gone, burned away by the fury that now grips him. His eyes are bright with it.
And then he moves, lunging for her and her alone with that blade.
"YOU TRAITOR!"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wllIEOsNMBA
GS: Loren Voss has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Extinction Edge! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. DC: 1 turn has elapsed in the battle against Loren Voss! 3 turns remain! GS: Fei Fong Wong used Defend! He takes Loren Voss's attack on Elhaym van Houten on himself! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Loren Voss's Extinction Edge for 66 hit points! GS: Loren Voss assumes the Avenger stance!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei quiets down at that look, pressing his lips into a thin line. Odds are he's seen looks like that before. He doesn't say anything even as the drama plays out.
See? They don't see us as people.
Fei can't close his eyes. He has to stare right at Loren because he could make a move at any moment. He doesn't really have rage against the man. He even sympathized with the way the world seemed to be bouncing him around like a pinball. But in spite of that, in spite of everything--there isn't a cell in Fei's body that can allow this man to harm Elly.
There is no hiding from them anymore. They will come after us, over and over. Without me you'll die. SHE will die.
Maybe, Fei thinks quietly, but if I let you out will everybody else die instead?
There is no response.
Fei steps quickly in between the blade and Elly. He raises a hand up, catching the strike across his hand but Loren's going off a kind of strength that you only really get when you're this enraged.. The blade slides across his hand cutting open a big gash in his hand and Fei tightens his grip desperately to keep it from sinking into Elly.
It stops, just short of Elly's neck.
Fei's knees wobble. He drops the maps, is own blood splattering against them.
Fei grits his teeth.
They killed him. They killed our brother.
"No kid to hide behind this time...!" Fei shouts as he throws both of his palms right for Loren's chest, trying to slam him backwards, leaving a bloody handprint on his clothes in the process. "So back off!"
He has already set the pace, you're going to end up killed by a fucking medic.
Fei grimaces as if in pain but doesn't comment any further. Either to Loren, or to his mental guest.
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Loren Voss with Hoten! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action. GS: Loren Voss critically Guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Hoten for 25 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly smiles at Loren, a little timidly, a little shy. "Yes," she says. "I'm sorry. I didn't... I was focusing on other things, and I didn't want to say..."
It feels good, Elly thinks, to be honest. Honesty is the best policy, isn't it? If you're honest you don't have to keep your lies straight. If you're honest, you don't have to think. You don't have to worry.
Loren's look to Fei does not shock Elly. Especially when it is brief. It is familiar, and Elly begins to say something else -- when Loren asks, 'what?' she answers. Fei can hear it at least. "I don't want to come back. Besides, I wouldn't be any use," before Loren speaks again. Elly falters.
She raises her hand as if to reach towards Loren. The reflex even now is to comfort him. She has felt anger at him, and upset, but right now, she thinks, perhaps he's just feeling whip lash. He missed me; I knew he was a good person at heart. Elly opens her mouth -
She can see that cold flattening, like the lake ice - and he's pulled his sword. Elly recoils back, raising up her hands. "Loren," she says, "don't--"
The sword is coming towards her. Elly flinches -
It doesn't find her neck.
What she sees next is Fei, there, holding the blade with his bare hands. He's struggling - he pushes Loren away - and for a critical moment Elly's guts twist. The decision has been made, and though regrets may linger, the thing that her eyes fall upon is the blood on Fei's hands. She reaches up to touch where a droplet of it touched her cheek.
She sucks in a deep breath even as Fei strikes a blow. "Loren," she says afterwards, and then
S T O P ! ! ! !
The sound comes from her mouth, her throat. It is visible. There is no agony to it; she is, somehow, magnifying it. The sound rings outwards across the still depths and reach of Lake Macalania, the ice nearby making a soft "crunch" in reply as the rest ripples out. By the time the echoing -- but maddeningly discernible-- results of this screaming reach back, Elly is fumbling for, and finding, her staff.
Which falls apart in her hand. She twists it round, one of the lengths under her arm as she speaks with a growing heat. "Loren, you aren't my enemy. Put your sword away! I don't want to hurt you." Is it compassion or arrogance? Is there a difference?
(Please, Elly prays inside of her gut. Please listen, Loren. I don't want to --)
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Loren Voss with Screamer! GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Screamer for 0 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss has lost 1 Combo from Interrupt!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She's sorry, she says.
She doesn't want to come back, she says.
'Don't', she says.
It's all more fuel for his inner fire.
When Leah told him to find his fire, is this what she meant...?
Unlike some graduates from that illustrious school, Loren did not study the blade in Jugend. There were other things that he had to master, so much crammed into too little time. They had taken what they had thought were the essentials for someone of his expected level of output to learn and they had hemmed him to it.
He wouldn't have had the ability to have done otherwise as it was. Experience has taught the instructors at Jugend just what a particular student can attain in the time afforded to them, and in Loren's case, they were almost correct.
He had accomplished less than the aptitude tests had indicated.
This, he has not yet learned.
But there are more ways to learn than in school alone.
He's no master of the sword. He's not even a journeyman -- he has at best a year's blood, sweat, and tears poured into learning the blade.
He's learned it the hard way.
Apprentice he may be, his arm is steady as he lunges for Elly--
And Fei interposes himself, catching the sword's edge with his hand.
There's blood on the snow. Blood on the maps.
Loren gazes at Fei with nothing less than the wrath of one denied.
"Who's HIDING?!" he snarls in response to Fei, his teeth bared.
Where the martial artist attempts to shove him back, Loren does the opposite.
He charges into the palm-first strike, taking the hand to the chest with barely a flinch, before he moves to shove Fei aside with his shoulder. Only the palm print remains, a crimson badge emblazoned against his jacket. "Get out of my way!"
It's as if he is focused on Elly and Elly alone, his intent here and now nothing less than murderous.
His grip on the blade tightens, his left hand joining his right on the hilt. "Van Houten--"
And in the next, he might have been at her again.
If she hadn't loosed a scream like that. He staggers back, upright still in spite of the impossible reverberating sonics of her scream. He plunges his sword point down into the snow, and perhaps an outside observer might think for the moment that he is heeding what she says.
Green light swarms across his body in a rapid fractal-pattern pulse of his Ether.
And then it is gone.
He wrenches the blade from the snow with a spray of ice.
"Shut up. Shut up!" he shouts at her. "Stop acting like you're-- that you're some kind of--" He shakes his head, furious, the rage in his eyes no less dimmed for his failure to see it bear fruit.
"Just die!"
He moves without further warning, closing in on her. The blade comes in as a powerful, hewing strike; here he apparently intends to strike her down, with little regard for his own safety.
As if anticipating interference from Fei, he turns next, angling the blade in a similarly high-angle strike as if his intent were to knock the martial artist flat to the ground.
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Loren Voss with Sigma Factor! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Sigma Factor for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge! applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Astral Hammer! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Meteor Break! DC: 2 turns have elapsed in the battle against Loren Voss! 2 turns remain!
GS: Elhaym van Houten guards a hit from Loren Voss's Astral Hammer for 79 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Meteor Break for 114 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei is still alarmed by Loren's rage here. He expected anger sure but this seems pracctically blinded by bloodlust. His attempts to mitigate the fight fail utterly and he's shoved to the side and as he starts to get up Loren COMPLETELY reads Fei's instinct and clobbers him with the reverse edge of the blade, sending him crashing back down into the snow.
"Ugghh..."
She's still trying to help him, Fei thinks, still trying to reach him. Even now. She is always like this.
But Loren says something strange. The betrayal? That seems to bother him sure but there's clearly something else besides that.
And maybe his own skills have atrophied, Fei thinks. He has kept himself in shape but he hasn't had a real fight in ages. Not a fight like this. He stands himself up slowly.
Snow, he thinks.
It's cold. Maybe Loren needs to--
Fei stomps his foot into the ground and channels his chi, unleashing a wave of ice towards Loren, trying to catch him within his own freezing ether as if trying to snuff out any flame that may be burning within Loren.
He doesn't say anything else. What is there to say?
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Loren Voss with Suikei! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action. GS: Loren Voss critically Guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Suikei for 29 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The sword comes down to hit Elly.
It hits wood instead. The hard Spiran wood makes a noise not unlike THOKK! as Loren's blow is parried, Elly's head half tilted forwards as he moves to follow up against Fei.
(In her heart Elly feels guilt and grief and horror and despair. He's so angry at them. He's so angry at ME, actually, Elly thinks. I've brought this woe on Fei. His hands are hurt - even if it won't stop him from fighting, what if he can't draw any more? What if we lose something here? Oh, there's so much we COULD lose, every single moment--)
So Elly doesn't quite realize when she answers Loren, in Solarian, no less. "-Even if you killed me, it wouldn't help anything-" It's a mumble, like she's been called on late in class.
And a moment after this she raises her arm a little and swings the three-section staff around in a single accelerating whirl, aiming to smash the hard wood down into Loren's sword arm -- perhaps even to tangle it, though the staff has only three sections, not enough for a proper coil. Elly moves to try to put her foot on Loren's torso in any case: to push him over.
Even now she isn't fighting to kill. "Listen to me Loren," she says, now back in 'normal talk,' speaking quick and hasty. "I don't want to hurt you because you have done me no wrong but I am not going to let you hurt Fei. Do you understand me? You can't just hurt whoever you want because you're upset!"
Her eyes shoot momentarily to Fei. They seem apologetic, maybe in a familiar way.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has spent 1 Combo on Gatling, including 1 on Gatling! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Loren Voss with Three-Section Staff! GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Three-Section Staff for 86 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Again, his blade does not find her flesh.
It lodges firmly for the moment in her staff; a wrench on his part sees it free.
Hatred. There is nothing in his eyes but an all-consuming hatred.
The ice comes for him before he can close on Elly. Loren twists, striking the spray Fei flung forth dead-on with his sword.
It flows past him in a rush, one sharp-edged crystal of ice seeing fit to slice him across the cheek.
He barely seems to notice.
Not when Elly addresses him in Solarian.
"-It'll help everything!-" he snarls in the same tongue as she, inelegant in his fury. "-They can't take you back if you're dead!-"
This, perhaps, may help cut to the heart of his wrath.
The staff slams into his sword arm -- the leading arm, his right -- mere moments after Fei's ice-ridden jab failed to sway his current course. Her training has been fruitful; that hand slips from the hilt as his face contorts in pain.
But he was holding onto it with both hands.
It remains so gripped in his left hand.
Into this moment Elly intrudes, driving a foot for his chest. He staggers back here.
But he does not fall. He leans forward, right arm hanging at his side and blade borne forward in his left.
He has noticed that she has been fighting him solely by means other than her magic.
And thus draws the wrong conclusion.
Slowly he shakes his head. "...I'm not even worth your Ether, am I?" he says, a mingling of fury and disbelief etched across his face. "Come on! Show it to me! Show me what Command thinks is so 'special'!
Again, there is that pulse-flicker of green light, sliding along towards an infinite complexity. The fingers of his right hand twitch.
And he once again takes up the blade with both hands.
Blue eyes tilt fleetingly Fei's way. It may have to suffice as a warning for the young man.
In a rising tide of frost a wave of icy needles as sharp as anything made of steel comes for him.
And Loren, Loren is already closing for Elly. As he had before, so he is now: his blade is for her, to carve her flesh to pieces.
Will only her death give him satisfaction?
Give him peace?
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Loren Voss with Healing Function! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. GS: Loren Voss heals Loren Voss! He gains 125 temporary hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Aqua Sequence! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Meteor Break! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. DC: 3 turns have elapsed in the battle against Loren Voss! 1 turns remain! GS: Fei Fong Wong critically Guards a hit from Loren Voss's Aqua Sequence for 20 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elhaym van Houten guards a hit from Loren Voss's Meteor Break for 72 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
'They can't take you back if you're dead.'
'I'm not even worth your Ether, am I?'
'Show me what Command thinks is so 'special'!'
Elly stares ahead as Loren comes towards her again. She raises her weapon to block - the wooden sticks cross - and you see there is a reason why people don't typically fight a guy with a sword with a piece of wood, and it is revealed when Loren bisects one of the pieces of wood, driving it into splintering flinders despite the seasoning and the lacquer. The wood is long enough that Elly locks his blade, momentarily, and that, perhaps, is why she is able to talk. Her arm twists to the side, pushing back on the blade so he can't pull it free and strike her.
Fei, she thinks, please be okay, even as she says; "You're wrong."
Leaning closer, she stares at him, and even now she looks a little like she's about to cry.
"I hurt myself," she says, "against the Trial Knight. I can barely use Ether now. Yours is stronger than mine - if I tried, actively, right now, I'd injure myself..."
Her eyes *do* water slightly. Despite the cold.
"I don't have any use to them, now," Elly says - pleads, really. "The only reason they put up with everything else, every flaw and stupid thing and - and - and you know what happened - the only, ONLY reason was because of my Ether response and that's GONE now."
"ngh!" Another push forwards, as if to build space for Fei. Or to just drag Loren away from him before he can hurt Fei again. "All this time... all the praise I got, everything... it was just because I was able to destroy, with that ability! I'm glad I lost it! Because I found out who cared about me, and to who I was just a number on a graph!"
"Please-- get away from here -- if you're in touch with Command, tell them you killed me! Tell them Fei drove you off! Or a Fiend, or - or something; but I can't let you hurt them any more! You have an immense gift, Loren, don't - use it like THIS--!"
The wood creaks more, splintering down an extra inch or two. Soon Loren's blade will reach the metal casing for the connectors, and at that point he would be free.
Elly can sense, perhaps, that pleas alone won't do it. "Hahhh--" And so she pushes forwards, then stops, and kicks OFF the ground, aiming to smash both feet into Loren's side at the same moment she lets go of the staff!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has spent 1 Combo on Gatling, including 1 on Gatling! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Loren Voss with Cyclone Kick! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Loren Voss takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's Cyclone Kick for 117 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei takees in a deep breath. The ice needles approach him rapidly before Fei raises a hand up and unleashes a quick wave of fire that melts the ice into harmless sprays of water. He lowers his bloody hand afterward, letting it drop to the side.
Normally he'd charge ahead, forcing himself forward to try and clobber Loren a good one for everything, but Elly draws his attention right onto her.
A number on a graph.
Fei flexes his fingers outward.
Is that why Elly had seemed so happy? Because her control over that power had diminished? It was no longer a prison within which to be trapped within.
Like his own power. That power of his that has drawn so much pain into his life that part of him wishes to be done with, but another part knows it's precisely what's keeping him alive.
"You know what Solaris is doing isn't right, don't you?" He murmurs. "But all you can see is how it's unfair for you, huh? Nevermind all the others they crush."
He then rears back with his hands and throws a burst of flame for Loren, hoping to catch him and give him extra incentive to stay off of Elly.
GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Loren Voss with Kakei! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action. GS: Loren Voss takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Kakei for 143 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The blade slams into the crossed sticks of her weapon and there catches. For all that the muscles in his arm tense and strain, he cannot break his weapon free from hers.
He stares into her eyes. His are a paler blue from her own, just a thin ring of color now around his dilated pupils; even if the rest of his face didn't tell the full story of the emotions that ride him right now -- of his intent -- his unblinking wide-eyed stare would do them justice.
She tells him she hurt herself.
She tells him she can no longer use Ether.
That she's useless to Solaris now.
That she's glad it happened to her.
She shoves into him, trying to push him away from her and -- he doesn't miss this -- away from him.
"So what?!" He shoves forward, straining, forcing everything he has into this attempt to get to her, to cut her down. "That doesn't change anything! Even if you've lost it, you're-- you're still--"
Blue swirls and dances at the corners of his vision, threatening to override everything he says.
He snarls aloud, probably cryptically to the ones he is attempting to slaughter, "Then let it!"
If that color is going to take over everything then let it.
He doesn't care anymore.
"YOU'RE STILL IN MY WAY!" he howls in the end, as the staff shatters, as he surges forward--
As Elly's feet clip into his side--
As he falls in a tumbling roll along the precipice they're all atop, the sword slipping from his grasp. He snatches at it with his left hand.
Fire swells over him in a rise of heat; steam hisses into the air in its passing. Loren pulls himself up onto his knees, his right hand cupped over that side his face, his expression a rictus of pain.
There is green light. The infinity of growing lines spreads out around him in a mandala before even that color runs out into nothingness.
His left hand closes around the sword's hilt as he drops the hand away from his face; his flesh is mended and whole.
His mouth curls in derision at Fei's comment. "Who is going to tell me what's wrong and what's right? You? The Demon of Elru? --It doesn't matter! I'll kill both of you!"
With his will, he reaches out.
Downwards.
There is stress everywhere in rock. The trick is in truth to find it and tell it how it ought to behave.
He reaches for it. He tells it to move, to twist, to jolt upwards.
He reaches for more of it. As much as he can grasp. No, more than that. They both need to die--
Both of them.
All of them.
he can see lines</blue> of blue
The earth here shudders as he wrenches it upwards in a shuddering explosion of rock. Perhaps he intends to crush them. Perhaps he intends to bury them alive.
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Loren Voss with Restorative Arc! GS: Loren Voss has gained 2 Combo! GS: Loren Voss heals Loren Voss! He gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Lock State! applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Lock On! GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Loren Voss has spent 1 Combo on Interrupt, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Terra Axiom! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Terra Axiom! GS: Burst and Surge expired! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. DC: 4 turns have elapsed in the battle against Loren Voss! No turns remain! Time has expired! The battle is over! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Terra Axiom for 148 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Elhaym van Houten has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: Loren Voss assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Loren Voss's Terra Axiom for 97 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
But...
There is one thing to keep in mind. In physics. In structural geology.
And that thing is this:
When you move something from one place to another place, it's no longer in the previous place.
The rise upon which they all stand collapses, sending all concerned in a fall towards the frozen lake.
And the crevasse included.
Loren does not even get so much a chance to shout as he falls in.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"How the fuck are we in your way??" is Fei's immediate instinct and response. It reminds him of Ramses except in that case he at least sort of understood that it was some Id bullshit he never asked for.
He is briefly stunned by Loren's accusation. Fei knows it to be true. Some part of him knew well before he even looked over the very ruins he had created.
"...Which is it?" Fei asks. "Am I the Demon of Elru or some lamb nobody needs to give a shit about? Am I the Destroyer of Continents or a bug to scrape off your shoe? Am I just some fake persona on some level blameless for what my body had done or am I the real deal?"
He steps forward.
"If you don't want to listen to the Demon of Elru, maybe you shouldn't have birthed him!"
But the rock suddenly surges upward.
They are going to die. Both of them.
But in that instant Fei remembers how to move earth and he does so as if he had always known, twisting rock this way and that to try and dampen the punishment Elly is going to end up receiving and take it upon himself instead, or upon anything else but Elly. He tries.
But maybe an instant is too slow this time.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"Leave him alone!" Elly implores of Loren, and it is imploring. She reaches out with one hand but if she is attempting some kind of counter-Ether, it is paltry indeed. The rock begins to tense beneath them and Elly cries out, as she looks down, seeing the forming mesh of blue --
"Fei--!!"
Fei is reaching out. Elly does what she can do - which is to kick off a large chunk of the stony crust of Spira (which glorifies it - it's more like a thrashing shove) and hurls herself at Fei. The impact is at least softer than that of stone. She curls round him, as if to guard him, as the stone falls down.
It falls -
They fall -
There is sharp impact, and shock, and pain, and darkness, and silence.
...
...
And the silence continues.
As does the pain.
For a moment Elly wants to roll over and whine. Her face, hidden in darkness and rubble, does squinch up and the tears flow, not least because of dust in her eyes. It hurts, she thinks. I don't want it to hurt. Why did it have to hurt like this? Loren... why...
If I met Kelvena again, would it be the same?
Oh...
...
How long is it before Elly moves again? She isn't sure. It's not so long that the light is very different when she pulls herself out of the rubble. She grimaces and she wiggles and she hopes deeply that none of this has hurt her spine. If it has, she thinks, she supposes Lily is going to really give her a ticking-off, but the thought makes her cough. She looks up, towards the lake --
-- Wasn't it further...
Then she feels something shift near her, and what had been pained and tentative motion turns into a digging frenzy. Stone boulders, or at least stone chunks, are hurled away as she unearths the man she loves. "Fei!" she says. "Fei, are you alright - ah - Fei -"
She brings out a cloth from her pocket, dabbing at his face. He's still warm, she thinks, but -
"Wake up...!"
* * *
After unearthing one another, and licking their wounds - which in this case constitutes digging out the two Hi-Potions Elly had been toting around in her hip pouch - Elly gazes towards the shift in the landscape.
"... I suppose they wouldn't be coming this way, now," Elly says.
She thinks: Loren...
But what she finishes saying is, "I think we ought to go back, for now. Um. We can come back, tomorrow, perhaps...?"
Perhaps that career as a professional angler won't be off to the best start.