2021-03-01: Burial at Sea
- Cutscene: Burial at Sea
- Cast: Kaguya
- Where: Spira (at sea)
- Date: March 1st, 2021
- Summary: Kaguya's musings on the present are interrupted by the past.
(CW: Violence, Blood)
The waves rush and crash along the hull as Kaguya stands on the deck, looking out into the starry Spiran night. Her fingers curl along the rail and her strange green eyes are distant. It's chilly; her baggy clothes do some to keep in warmth, but more by thickness than by anything. Her breathing mask is down, as it usually is here on Lunar--in Spira. And she's on a ship to Kilika even now, though her attention is on where on the horizon she's pretty sure Luca is. Where the battle must be taking place.
She could've hurried up to regroup there; the Golems didn't /need/ her attention immediately. She's trained engineers for that, for better or worse. But she didn't go. She stayed behind long enough to ensure each mechanical monstrosity was properly packed away and stabilized on the ships, and then returned there when they were slow. She isn't even on the ships /with/ them, just the last one to leave, lagging behind.
"...What am I going to do with these things?" she asks nobody in particular, looking up.
"Nothing." To Kaguya's surprise there is an answer--a crowd of humans in Rolancian tabards stand there, one black-haired man speaking to her. His sword is drawn. This distracts her from the crossbow behind him, and that's a mistake.
She realizes as much about the time the bolt slams against one of her ribs, the force through her armor sending stars through her vision even as a shallow hit. Coughing once, Kaguya turns the rest of the way and sees the group start to charge--
"FOR LASTONBELL!" The moment of being stunned is enough time for the first of the soldiers to make their way up to her, and Kaguya without weapons is obligated to dodge the powerful downward swing of his longsword. She's surprised, she /wants/ to be shocked, but--"This is a mistake, guys. You /don't/ want this."
An axe sweeps over her head as she ducks down. In moments she's surrounded against the railing, spears from behind jabbing in for her--one tears through her sleeve, grazing her shoulder. She's a small target, but not small enough. They have her penned in in short order, and just defending is not a winning strategy.
"Oh, the mercenary tells us what we want," one sneers, and Kaguya finds herself feeling a lot less generous in that moment. "We want our city back!"
Kaguya snarls and this time she ducks down and barrels forward, bodily lifting the man in front of her and charging through his line. Leaping upward, she hurls him down into the others, a few of whom go down in a pile off-balanced. Kaguya hops onto the rigging.
"So you've been waiting for this a long time, huh?"
Crossbows start to pelt the area where she is, and the small Veruni runs across a pole to evade them against furled sails. Staying at a distance, too, is a losing strategy.
"Damned right we have! And here we found you hanging back instead of meeting up with the others. Desertion, is it?" Another chimes in. "Now that your foul machinery has failed there's no reason to pretend you're welcome among us!"
Foul machinery; failed. It did, didn't it? It hasn't killed Sin, and it didn't take over Spira, either. The whole war was lives lost and places burned, for what? Kaguya mulls it as she swings down on a rope towards the bow of the ship. Sailing through the air, bolts scythe through the spaces where she was until she hits the deck and rolls, turning around to snarl back at the humans moving to corner her again. Still she has no weapons on her. Still they start advancing, this time with shields out to block the trick she used last time. Her eyes narrow; her sharp teeth catch the light as she shows them, a primal threat that makes her look only more monstrous to the crowd assembled.
"...One. One last chance. You can pack up your weapons and live. We'll pretend this never happened."
They keep advancing. Behind a woman with a crossbow states, "...We have you far outnumbered. Even your witchcraft can't take all of us. You're already bleeding, and unarmed. Why should we hold back?"
Kaguya tries to contain her anger--but her frustration, her rage, all of it boil up to the surface in the face of these humans who now turn on her. Her anger with herself--her frustration with the war--her dashed hopes of destroying Sin, of showing her people the value of humanity... And it's those selfsame humans approaching. They close in, and her back is to a wall. Her position does not look good. But they don't know what she does. If there weren't so /many/, maybe she could take them down without...
A gruff voice floats through her mind. ...All the people of this world had my aid from the first Hyland noble you plied with the promise of power.
The first charges at her again, and is too fast to disarm. "Power..." Kaguya shifts to the side and grabs his wrist. The bone cracking makes an awful noise, almost as bad as the one she hears pass his lips as she hurls him around and back into his friends.
Yes, they are friends, aren't they? With each other. They must be. Desperate for revenge... She can't entirely blame them for that.
No, she knows where that blame goes.
"Ugh--" Another two fall under that one, but Kaguya is in motion now. Something like Ether pulses, and a woman's boots are frozen to the deck. The flying kick that hits her breaks the ice and slams her against the mast, where she falls still. "...Sorry, Dean." There's just too many. Crossbow bolts start firing at her again as the next set hides behind their shields, and a few hit. A few hit outside her armor, but she's ready for it now, and the pain drives her instead of stunning her.
She remembers: amidst coughing, that girl--Even when they are wrong, people are still people...
Kaguya sidesteps another crossbow bolt as she kneels, and her fist bleeds when she slams it down into the deck. The wood warps and cracks, energy travelling through it to shatter underneath the first line of soldiers, who fall partway into the wreckage. She leaps, closing the distance immediately with a fist wreathed in white energy. It shatters the first shield that comes up, crashes through it and into his chest, where it sinks too deeply.
If I must die... That girl, again, in her mind.
She brings a heel down onto the face of another, and that's the end of that soldier. With raw savagery, with the strength of the conquerers of Elru, Kaguya sweeps her way through their ranks. But by that point it's over but for the shouting, she knows; those crossbows won't do any good in melee with her, their swords too slow to draw to be any use.
And there is shouting. Cursing her name, shouting defiance, all of them fall sooner or later, and in the end, Kaguya just stands on the deck breathing heavily, chest rising and falling, her own blood dripping from wounds and their blood sprayed across her clothes. Her white shirt is ruined seven times over; the pin of her noble house is dirty. Her hands are raw. ...And the waves once again are the only sound.
...I want it, to have been for something good.
No groans, no moans. They gave no quarter and took none in return. Kaguya is left alone to stand on the deck, turning around to look at her handiwork; a broken deck, multiple bodies, more scarlet spilled along the rails. Her footsteps echo in that near-silence as Kaguya walks across the deck, looking for... well, anything. Anything other than the dead.
Don't you?
Kaguya finds nothing among the broken weapons. Eventually she makes her way to the stairs to the upper deck and sits down heavily. She sighs, once, closes her eyes, and remembers. Gathering mercenaries in Hyland, hoping to give the displaced Filgaians something more lucrative to do than looting... arming them because of course. Designing the Golems--training more gunmen and engineers. All she's done with the Guard. The war. Luca.
The thought of just leaving comes to mind. She has a ship, after all. She could take it, go to Filgaia... cut her losses of all of this in Spira, on Lunar. Her plans could go forward without them. Maybe she'd be able to fit more into what remains of her life if she wasn't spending her time on this.
She looks down to her hands. Bloody hands. She decides something, and she isn't sure how long she sits there before she does except that she's cold by the time she stirs. Kaguya stands up, and looks around. A moment later and she's gathering the first body.
"...Should've brought along a priest," she mutters. "I don't know your rites..."
Kaguya prepares the bodies in silence as the sea continues its slow song.
Her course still points to Kilika.