2020-06-10: Guild Galad Nights

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  • Cutscene: Guild Galad Nights
  • Cast: Claude C. Kenny, Cecilia Adlehyde (cameo)
  • Where: Number Four and a Half, Shoe Lane, Guild Galad
  • Date: June 10, 2020
  • Summary: Claude C. Kenny tries to process some recent revelations.

Guild Galad never truly sleeps. Even now, as dusk slowly surrenders to the inevitable, the young men and women of the industrial and merchant classes are heading out into the last fading moments of the summer evening, in search of a good time. Or the right sort of bad one. Across the city, the darkness that has been congealing in the streets for more than an hour begins to give way to thousands of motes of light. In the richest parts of the city, the cold blue of electric light flickers to life in a rising tide that moves quickly... and then stops at an invisible line that demarcates those who can afford the service from those who cannot. Strikers make their way through other boroughs, lifting long poles to freestanding lamps fueled by gas or oil. A spark begets a flame, and the strikers rattle onward, slowly spreading a blanket of yellow and orange across the town.

Claude C. Kenny shuffles through the streets, methodically swinging one foot in front of the other in the perfectly efficient, mile-eating gait of a weary soldier on the march. His jacket is off - stuffed into his pack as a concession to the early summer heat - and sweat stains his dark shirt at the neck and shoulders. The sword belted to his hip feels about ten times its normal weight, and a hitch in his step speaks of either a blister or some other injury. His eyes, however, are quite alert; they continue to scan the alleys and rooftops, on the lookout for footpads... or a more sophisticated and dangerous tail. Not that Claude is terribly worried about either - his tricorder has been set to warn him if any humanoid lifeform keeps a constant distance from him for longer than a half-minute - but it never hurts to be careful.

The bad guys only need to get lucky once, Roddick often warned him. His mother said much the same thing, with more profanity.

After several minutes along the main thoroughfare, Claude turns onto a side street, then off and through several more. At one point, he slips into an alleyway, takes three steps, and vaults over an eight-foot wall, touching down on the opposite side. He reverses quickly, placing his back against the wall. He holds that position, scanning with eyes and technology alike, his hand on the hilt of his sword, waiting for any sign of pursuit. After five minutes, tension eases slowly out of Claude's body; he sags backward, letting the wall prop him up for a brief moment of respite. His hands rise, untying the dusty red headband and setting his hair free. He gathers it back into a short tail, tied by a rawhide loop. His black Federation-issue shirt goes into the pack, replaced by a roughspun linen vest. It's not much of a disguise, but it's not meant to be. Claude draws in a long, steadying breath and resumes his journey home.

Ten minutes later (walking down Old Inn Hall Street, left at the Blue Boar Tavern onto Beef Lane, right into the alley past the renderer's, across Frideswide Avenue and onto Merton Street - Claude turns left onto Shoe Lane. At the second house on the right, a woman in her late fifties is taking her ease on a barrel, puffing on a curved pipe. Claude stops in front of her - the acrid tang of cheap tobacco hangs thick in the hot summer air - and offers a respectful nod. It pays to be polite, especially to your landlady. "Mistress Nancy," he greets her.

"Master Kenneth," she responds, teeth clicking on the end of the pipe. She draws in a long breath and exhales smoke through her nose, a gesture oddly reminiscent of Ashton's dragons. "Long time you was gone. Week or more," she observes. "Your cousin mending?"

"Well as can be expected," Claude answers laconically, prodding his weary mind for the details of the cover story he had worked out before leaving. "Stepping on a nail can be nasty, but the doctor got to him quick." He shrugs. "No sign of the gangrene, and his neighbours helped us get the barn up just fine." Claude offers a faint smile. "Crop's in already, so his boy should be able to manage things until he can get back on his feet."

The old woman takes a deep draw from her pipe, the orange glow casting her face in a sinister light. "That's well and done, then," she says. "Maybe you stops helping other people so much, you finally finds time to put a baby in that pretty young girl o' yours." Nancy pauses, then emits a short burst of laughter at the sight of Claude's reddening cheeks and ears. "Ah, the newly wed," she cackles, her eyes dancing through the haze of smoke. "Get you on up there, boy. And if you've a mind, my Harold could use a strong back to shift some things tomorrow eve. Be well, Master Kenneth."

Claude swallows through a blocked throat. "And you, Mistress Nancy," he says, putting the old woman's amusement behind him. The big man slips through the small gap between the tenements, toward a staircase that leads up to a small apartment above the cobbler's shop. Claude takes the stairs, which groan in protest like old men at a sauna bath - an inadvertent but welcome security benefit for its inhabitants; no one is sneaking up the steps of Number Four and a Half, Shoe Lane. It's exactly the sort of shabby but serviceable place one might expect a journeyman blacksmith and his scrivener wife to take up while making ends meet in Filgaia's largest city. And not the place where one would expect to find a princess who is the most important person on the planet. Which is sort of the point, actually.

Claude rattles his key in the lock (which is so poor that he could probably pick it, but appearances are important) and steps into the apartment. "Blueberry," he says wearily as he walks into the main room of the flat - a previously open space now stuffed with a large circular table, two bookcases overflowing with paper, and a ramshackle collection of chairs. Small crates containing gear too sensitive to leave at any of the other Dawn Chasers' hideouts are stacked in one of the corners. In another stands an ice chest and pantry that - given the eating habits of the flat's occupants - are rarely full. Claude closes the door behind him and starts to remove his pack, then realizes he's heard no answer to his password; his eyes suddenly harden, his hand dropping to his sword hilt. Where--

(splash)

"Right," Claude breathes with a glance toward one of the two doors in the flat - what Mistress Nancy believes to be their shared bedroom. Lugging that bath up those steps was a chore and a half, but Cecilia had said they'd be glad for it when the summer heat came. She was right, of course, and small wonder she's taking advantage of it now. Tension bleeds out of Claude's shoulders as he moves toward the other door, which leads to Cecilia's workspace. More books and a desk thick with papers dominate the room. A small folding cot - the kind used by soldiers in the field - is propped in one corner. For visitors, he'd mentioned to Mistress Nancy, who bought the lie easily. She'd have little reason to guess he occupied it every night.

Claude unbuckles his sword belt, hanging it from a hook on the wall; his pack slides from slumped shoulders and lands on the floor with a louder *thump* than he'd intended. He suppresses an internal groan as sudden splashing noises erupt from the other room; he clears his voice and speaks quickly in a desperate attempt to pre-empt fireballs. "It's me," he says. "Uh, blueberry."

A pause. "Claude?"

Claude frowns. "Yeah?"

Another pause, then slightly softer liquid noises. The click of a mage staff being leaned back against porcelain. "The password was actually blackberry," she says, the faintest hint of mirth making its way through the walls. "But I guess that's confirmation in and of itself. Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Claude answers; he lifts his shirt to glance at the still-spreading bruise that covers most of his left side. "Yeah, I'm fine. Got some news too, but... it can wait until we all get together tomorrow." The young man runs a hand through sweat-salted hair. "It's not such a great story that I want to tell it three times."

"Oh. All right." Another pause, then softer. "Why three?"

Claude opens his mouth, then stops. Explaining that would take almost as much time as telling the story itself; discretion serves well in this case. "Trust me, it can wait," he says. "I'm going up for a beer."

Silence - and the sound of swirling water - is her response. Which is just as well. Continuing a casual conversation with a young woman in her bath is still not something Claude is used to, even after several months of maintaining this charade. The disguise had made all sorts of sense - Jack, a smirk on his face, had noted that young couples seeking their fortune in the city was the most normal thing in the world - but the choice of who would pretend to be the couple in question had been problematic. You're already married anyway, Jack had laughed. Claude and Cecilia's protests to the contrary - they weren't married, she had the Guardians' word on it - had done little to soften the expressions of two blue-haired individuals in the room.

(splashsplash)

"It really isn't fair," Claude mutters as he opens the small ice chest, pulling out a brown bottle. After a moment's consideration, he grabs another, gripping them between three fingers of his left hand. He shuts the lid and then moves toward the alley window - open wide to let the faintest of breezes into the flat - to poke his head and shoulders. Claude's right hand reaches up and out, feeling at the overhang until he finds the support beam for the roof. Fingers tighten, and he lets out a slow breath. In a single, fluid move, Claude slides out of the window and pulls upward, his legs and abdomen tensing as he swings them around and up. His body curls, tightens, then lands on the slate tiles of the roof. Claude waits a moment to let the pain in his left side ease into a dull ache, then releases the beam and pulls himself into a seated position on the gently sloping roof.

Claude shifts in a series of butt-hops until his back is pressed against the rough brick of the chimney. He wedges his second bottle in between two tiles and then cracks open the first with a practiced twist of his hand. Half the bottle's contents slide down Claude's throat in the first pull; the cold, slick liquid is as sweet as the purest honey. He leans back, eyes closed, issuing a deep and contented sigh. His eyes open again, the warm blanket of Guild Galad's light spreading out before him.

For a moment, the stress and worries of his daily life - the burden of duty, the sounds of water, and the silent judgement of a blue-eyed girl - fades into the distance. For a moment, the only thing that matters is the low warmth of city lights. The rough brick against his back. The chill of a cold bottle on a hot night. The slowly fading tang of hops on his tongue. For a moment, he is just another man relaxing after a long day's work. But only for a moment.

"Begin audio log," Claude says, and a timestamp suddenly lights up in the left corner of his field of view, projected there by the contact-lens HUD of his tricorder. He takes a short sip from his bottle, then begins speaking. "Personal log of Ensign Claude C. Kenny, service number Kilo-6506-7315-1486-5308-9131," he says, the long sequence of numbers leaving his mouth with the smooth ease of repetition. "Space Date..." Claude pauses, then frowns. "Well, you know what it is." He frowns. "Why do they tell us to state the date when the device auto-logs that stuff anyway?" he wonders aloud, then shakes his head. Probably some silly old tradition, like the one that says all science officers have to be black belts.

Another pull from the beer - now nearly empty - before he resumes speaking. "Pursuing rumours of some sort of advanced technology in the desert, I entered an ancient ruin known as Fila del Fia," Claude says, enunciating the syllables carefully, as separate words. "I was accompanied by a small number of local adventurers - Fei and Elly, plus some guy named Ashley I don't think I've mentioned before - under their continuing assumption that I'm an agent of an advanced nation called Shevat. Which I know is a dumb idea," he asides, with feeling. "But it's better than the alternative."

Claude pauses, rubbing his chin. "Upon observing the ruin, it was clear to me that this Fila Del Fia was in fact a crashed starship," he says. "Further investigation into the vessel - during which my life was saved by the locals, again," he sighs, "Revealed it was infested by a series of creatures that appear to have been affected by some sort of nanotechnology. We fought our way through them, and made it to the reactor core, where we found a still-active computer."

He finishes the first beer, then swaps it out for the second. "A Federation computer," he adds, a soft hiss echoing out as he twists the cap. "The logs were damaged, but what I've recovered will be attached to this log. The ship was as a Liberty Bell-class research vessel, the Philadelphia," Claude says, pronouncing it carefully. "Designation, uh... it's in the log. They crashed here around SD 6,000 or so. Bad news is the logs confirmed that Filgaia is in the Kepler-186 system," he stresses. "Worse news: the nanotech they were carrying got out when they crashed. Four thousand years is a long goddamn time for that to be in the wild, which probably explains why there's so many goddamn Golems running around manipulating zero-point energy and other stupid crap like---"

Claude clamps his jaw shut, emitting a low, frustrated growl that he tries to drown with beer. This proves a marginal success; the young man closes his eyes again and rests his head back against the chimney brick. He swallows through throat drawn thick with tension, trying to breathe. "Four thousand years," he says, acid dripping from his voice. "So much for Filgaia being an underdeveloped planet - they've had frigging Federation nanotech for like a third as long as we've been around. If the crew survived, that would probably also explain why most of the people around here scan as 99.9% identical to Earthborn humans," Claude adds, with an irritated glance at his pocket. "Except for that one DNA sequence they've all got that this thing doesn't recognize. Maybe if I had a medical tricorder instead of a scientific one..."

The young man breaks off again for a time, drinking more of his beer. "Oh, I should mention on that," he finally says. "I thought that extra sequence might be what gives these folks their magic powers and lets them see those invisible moon people. No dice, though," Claude sighs. "The moon people don't have it. Plus I can hear the invisible people now and I don't have it either. It could be..." Claude struggles. "I don't know what it could be. That was my best guess. I'm a combat officer, not a doctor. I---"

He stops speaking, forces himself to breathe. "I should stop complaining. It's just... this is..." He rubs at the cordwood muscles at the back of his neck. "It's hard," he says softly. "I'm trying to do what I can while keeping a low profile. I could maybe do more if I just stopped lying to everyone. But even if this isn't a UP3 planet after all, it's wrong. I know that," Claude mutters. "Plus if someone out there knows who the Federation is, I'd be putting a target on my back. But if... If the Metal Demons and the Sorcery Globe came here because they were drawn to Federation technology... If this is all our fault somehow... Then I... What should I..."

A warm drop falls down onto Claude's right hand; startled, he brushes tears from his eyes and draws in a deep, shaky breath. Then another, trying to steady himself. "I guess they've got the wrong Kenny here is all," Claude says, his voice rough. "Should have got the great hero Ronyx instead of his goofball kid. He'd have this wrapped up in no time. But me, I'm just..." He stares down at his hands. "What the hell are you supposed to do when the problem is this big?"

Minutes pass in silence as Claude stares downward. A faint whisper of breeze brushes across the cold sweat caked to his back, and he shivers as he comes back to awareness. Claude blinks a few times, then sees the log's timecount still running. He should probably cut that part out - it's not exactly professional. It could be used against him, be further evidence of his failings when - or if - he ever gets out of this mess. He should snip it out, add some good, rousing stuff about dedication and duty.

Instead, he sighs. "To hell with it," Claude says. "End log. Append the files recovered from the vessel Philadelphia, then add to personal queue for transmission when contact is re-established with Federation networks." The HUD goes dark, and Claude leans his head back against the chimney, staring up at the ocean of stars.

Guild Galad never truly sleeps. This night, neither does he.