Summary: Set two years after Hide and Seek. The call to free her sister country has finally arrived, but Anastacia no longer wants to hear it. She is about to realize, however, that when it comes to sky piracy, the dead can be very convincing. BaschxOC
Sorry I was gone so long! I had school to worry about, and a bunch of other personal life things. But it's summer now! And things have subsided here. So I'm back and ready to resume the story! I don't have much to talk about today, but I hope you enjoy reading! R&Ring will be received with ehugs and ecookies and appreciation!
Chapter 2
Blue electricity crackled in the air around a crashed and smoking hover bike, as if laughing to taunt its former owner. Its once blinding glare had been reduced to blinking flashes of dim light, lost on the dark, untraveled waters of the Garamsythe Waterway. To put things simply, the sewer had softened their landing. Although in this case, thought Vaan, softened meant rushed and landing translated into impending deaths. They were still alive, though, and barely, only having jumped off the bike at the last minute. It felt like he broke a rib somewhere, if there was such thing as a rib on his posterior, but he ignored it and stared at his companions. The guy with Adela (or whoever she was) had just finished casting Cure on his light gashes, while the girl he thought he knew cleaned her slightly bleeding elbow gashes with a potion she had in her pocket.
It wasn't any better for Fran, who, though she remained unscathed, had built the hover bike with her own hands (and perhaps with the help of the small hands of their airship mechanic, Nono). This had been her first creation, her "child", as Anya often referred to it, and as the case would be for any creator, its death was much more painful than a couple of bruises and was much lamented.
"What happened?" asked the Viera, still frustrated with the loss. "Our hover didn't just drop–it disappeared."
"Well," Anya cleared her throat, "Maybe if Vaan gave me the-"
"Bah, forget it," said Balthier, not having heard Anya speak and looking down at Fran from his seat on a broken flight of stairs. Those things had broken their fall, too. If fall, in this case, had meant their backs. "Even if we could fly, the Ifrit's playing with fire, and I'd rather not get burned." His gaze flew past his companions and landed on the small bulbs of light scattered among the stale blue of the sewers. "We'll go the old-fashioned way."
Anya huffed, half at the irritating smell the waterway and–no doubt–its rats and other filthy inhabitants carried, and half at Balthier's interruption. "If your precious feet can survive the rat dung-filled waters...can't even join a simple game of mud pile treasure hunting..."
"What was that, Anya?"
"Nothing," she replied with an obviously forced smile. Was she the only one who actually remembered why they were here in the first place? "You know, Vaan, the Imperials will be very angry if they catch you with that stone. You'll be arrested when they do. Flogged, even! Why don't you let me hold it, first?"
Vaan made no reply. He seemed to be very busy staring at the broken bike, like Fran. But desperation had always easily clouded Anya's mind. It wasn't the first time her senses had failed her, but had Balthier known her thoughts he would have been so disappointed by her lack of intuition. Or angry with her betrayal, depending on which thoughts he chose to read.
Nevertheless, Anya slowly tiptoed towards Vaan, hoping to grab the Magicite from him. "Hah!" she laughed, only a foot away from Vaan's hands. "Yes! It-"
But her voice was loud this time, enough to snap him out of his trance, and he managed to step out of her way before she could touch any part of him. Stumbling, Anya cursed, but she caught herself and turned to glare at Vaan again. Twice! He'd evaded her twice. How embarrassing!
Shaking his head at Anya's naïveté and want of tact, something he was never able to fully correct especially when she was this desperate, Balthier cast his tired eyes on Vaan– who had gone back to staring at the 'Viera' in amazement– and raised an eyebrow.
"Not many Viera where you come from, thief?" asked Balthier, an amused look on his face. Anya rolled her eyes and shot him an expectant look, but he made no move to help her take her treasure back.
"It's Vaan," said the boy, frowning, and turned shyly to the Viera, who stood as she finished mourning her loss and when she realized she had become the topic of conversation. "Sorry."
"Well, Fran is special, in that she'd deign to partner with a Hume," said Balthier, grinning at the Viera before he noticed the girl behind her. "Two Humes now."
"Oh?" the rare Viera gave her Hume a smirk. "Like a sky pirate that chooses to steal through the sewers?"
"Rarer is the sky pirate that refuses to acknowledge what take is rightfully whose!" said Anya, quiet enough to be a murmur but loud enough to be acknowledged by her Tatah. Monid came to mind, too, and he dragged along what should have been a foreign feeling called guilt for looting all of his Marks before. "Rare, but not unheard of."
"Sky pirates?" Vaan exclaimed, "You're sky pirates? So you have an airship-?"
"You can ride once if you give me the sto-"
"It's Balthier," interrupted the leader of the pirate trio, a two-year old memory rushing back in mixed segments as he stood from his seat on the stairs their hover bike had crashed into and permanently damaged. "Listen, thief– Vaan. If you ever want to see your home again, you'll do exactly as I say. Myself, Fran, Anya–" he pointed to each of them as he said their names, "–and you. We're working together now. Understood?"
"Don't even think you're getting this."
The older man shrugged nonchalantly, as was his habit. "The thought never crossed my mind." Which was, of course, the complete opposite of what was going through his head, but Balthier had presumed that as long as he continued to lie, the guilt produced by doing so would never catch up. That assumption would hold up for now.
"Let's be off then, shall we?"
The Garamsythe Waterway was...well, full of water. Dirty water, to be specific, and if you were one as observant and easily disgusted as Balthier, the sewer liquid, because it didn't even warrant such a pleasing name as water, carried the stench--no, the taste-- of not only its decaying metal gates but waste, Hume and otherwise. The sky pirate wrinkled his nose and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth in utter dissatisfaction. This place was a breeding ground for insects, and-- Balthier stopped, a displeased expression coming to his face--not just of the bloodsucking kind.
He hated to step into the amoeba-infested water, but it was his duty to know the situation full well, to Fran and to Anya and no one else, so, with a deep sigh and a cringe as little specks of dirt and trash crept into his already waterlogged shoes, he dragged his feet forward.
Balthier stopped before a pile of dead bodies, men, Seeq and Bangaa whose uniform armor was unidentifiable. Tainted swords and bows lay beside them, still as their bloody, arrowed bodies. Yet the water flowed on, over and under and past the corpses, as if they had never moved or breathed before, as if they had already been forgotten.
"Insurgents," he spoke, turning his gaze to water ahead of them. By the morning the blood would have all but disappeared. "Most like they thought to take advantage of a lax watch while the fete's on...to feed the good consul a length of steel for his supper." Balthier shook his head. clearing it of any knowledge of such complications of being in the elite. "I should think Vayne used to such hospitality. Clever. He used himself as the bait to draw them near, and then sent in the Air Brigade. A fine, bloody banquet."
Fran bowed her head in respect for the dead, but knew that there were more pressing matters at hand for them. "A battle may have taken place here; we'll be fools to believe we are safe from the Empire even in these sewers."
"Hmph." Balthier frowned and folded his sleeves back, not at all pleased with this fact. "I daresay I've soiled my cuffs. If a dungeon's waiting for us at the end of the night, it had best have a chance of wardrobe." And he moved on.
Anya and Vaan stayed behind, taking last glances at those with enough gall to fight for their freedom. "Where did they come from?" Vaan asked, but to himself, because the girl beside him was too eager to take his steal to enter conversation with. "I never noticed you guys..."
"And no one ever will," replied Anya, crouching before the bodies and removing the arrows that desecrated them. "All the lost and dead are forgotten."
"That's not true. I'll never forget my family. I'll never forget my brother."
"Then don't. And never forget these men. Let us never forget those who stood their ground, no matter their futility," said the sky pirate, and she turned away almost shamefully.
"Anya! Vaan!" Balthier called past the right turn he had taken with Fran. "Are you going to stay there till the Steelings begin to pick at your heads?"
"We're coming!" Anya shouted back in the most cheerful tone he'd heard all night, but when she turned back to glance at the stone and its current holder, she frowned. "In time, I'll get what's mine."
The rat hunter was shocked not by her words, but by the fact that she didn't jump him or demand for him to return the Magicite to her. Then again, she had never been this serious either. And before this night he didn't know about an Insurgence or an actual plot to kill that new Consul. Murmuring a prayer for the dead and following Anya as she started off for her friends, Vaan knew he was going to see this to the end.
For all its faults, the Garamsythe was still a work of art. Lamps of blue, white, and vermillion lit the labyrinth as symbols of waves and other beauties hugged its walls; its similar copper gates and uneven bridges made it almost bearable. Fran looked over to her right as they passed another narrow gate dropped down to serve as a bridge and cast her eyes past a curving path filled with Lizards and rats. From where she stood, she could hear the splashing, almost thundering, of the artificial waterfalls where she could only see light. Her heart began to beat very quickly at the sound, but she dismissed it as overexcitement and continued without a word.
The four scaled a few walls and avoided packs of monsters through tedious stair-climbing and jumping until they came upon another interesting sight. At the moment they were atop the water, their clothes almost dry, when loud, angry voices echoed from the high ledge across them. Four Imperials cornered a sword-wielding woman who had just attacked one of their comrades, causing him to fall violently into the water.
He could not see her clearly, but Balthier could tell it was a girl. Young, but noticeably older than Anya as she, outnumbered but with sword and shield ready, turned to face her country's oppressors and cried: "Who would be next?"
"Close ranks!" said one of the Imperial swordsmen. Yes, Balthier remembered, Archadians always did follow orders first and asked questions later, when it was too late. "Bring her down!"
"Vaan!" Anya gasped, watching the stone unsafely bobbing up and down in Vaan's pocket as he nearly flew down the stairs and into the water. The rest had no choice but to follow.
The girl desperately looked around for an escape route. She was clearly not as strong as she seemed before; her quick breathing and shaking knees assured Balthier of this. Although her knees didn't wobble as terribly as Anya's did when she was faced with a non-Raksas enemy. She was fine when dealing with beasts and vermin, but he would never forget how petrified Anya was when she first encountered Ba'Gam-
The Imperials closed in on the woman, whose left foot teetered off the edge of where she stood. She held her sword out, threatening to attack them, but her fist shook, and Anya could see that she didn't want to die. And what a lucky woman she was! For foolish young Vaan had come to her rescue, having moved the fallen soldier out of the way to position himself below her.
"Jump down!" Vaan yelled. His arms were outstretched and ready to catch her. What mattered, however, was if she was ready to jump. "Hurry!" All right, it didn't matter; her rancor returned to her in a flurry of excited waves, and she realized that she would rather risk suicide than get cut down by Imperials--by mere foot soldiers, to be exact.
To everyone's surprise, Vaan was able to save her. The two stared at each other with wide eyes– amazed that she actually survived– before the Imperials shattered their hopes once more. Balthier didn't think that anyone had the right to be surprised. They were Archadians; what else could they do but estrange people from each other and from themselves?
"She's not alone!" one of them yelled, ordering the others to hurry to the stairs Vaan had used to rescue the woman.
"Vaan," said Anya, her back turned to him and the woman as her eyes followed the men who would be their apprehenders. She drew out a dagger from her singlet, her knees shaking. "Keep it safe. Amba, Tatah!"
Fran nodded and pursed her lips, readying her bow and taking an arrow from her quiver. "Our ranks grow by the hour..."
"And our troubles with them," Balthier agreed, loading his gun in turn before he and his partner reluctantly engaged themselves in an unneeded tussle with the Empire. At least it was, until one Imperial tried to murder Anya for looting his dead comrade.
Miraculously, Vaan was doing fine, able to handle his own sword. Balthier noted that he was used to fighting even with the sewer's dirty water trying to drag him down and came to the conclusion that he either trained here often or that the boy really was a street rat. Vaan and the girl he had saved joined forces against one of the swordsmen. The latter man was not overpowered, but between Vaan's snide remarks and the girl's scornful grunts, he became confused and thus arrived his early death.
Fran and Balthier stood against one swordsman each. They were rather used to people trying to stab them to death (money-hungry bounty hunters were so much more challenging, being driven by sheer greed and all), which was why they had chosen long range weapons. The two adults of the group aimed for their respective opponent's necks and shot twice.
Now, Anya was the self-proclaimed shadow of their little sky pirate trio. Neither Balthier nor Fran denied her this title for she really did seem like their shadow, always hiding and stealing from the enemy while their focus was on the former duo. Were Anya's life ever to be threatened...well, the chance it would happen was so small that they never talked about what they would do should it ever. The first and last time it did was when she first encountered Ba'Gamnan– at that time the Bangaa had managed to raze part of her skin with his lance-chainsaw hybrid of a weapon– and at that time Balthier carried her all the way to the Strahl, which they used to make a hasty escape.
Balthier wasn't there to carry her off at the moment, and Fran was too busy with her own swordsman to save her with a distracting arrow. All Anya could do was move to the side, evade, slash at the swordsman's pockets (which only angered the Imperial further) with her dagger, catch whatever he had in there, and resume avoiding a bloody death. She had never and could never kill a Hume or any being from an allegedly civilized race. It was a stupid self-imposed rule, if Balthier could say so himself, but no matter what he did, he could never rinse that value from her.
"Adela, Anya, whatever–move!"
Anya jumped back and blocked the Imperial's sword with her tiny dagger. The clash sent a painful vibration through her hand, but her focus kept her head on her shoulders. Vaan had now come to save her, thrusting his sword into the nape of the Imperial's neck. Taken by surprise as his comrade was, the soldier choked beneath his helmet before he fell forward. Anya stepped aside and wiped her face in relief before crouching down and looting the last of the soldier's pockets. Standing and turning to Vaan, she held out all she had looted from that one Imperial to him.
"Thank you," she said, earning a quizzical expression from Vaan. "You killed that Imperial. You...deserve his loot." She murmured something about making it up to some 'poor lizard' before Fran and Balthier appeared, subtly checking her for scratches or marks.
Vaan shrugged and turned to the unnamed girl. "You all right?" he asked, the fact that he had actually killed someone slowly sinking in. If he was going to hang out with these people, he guessed he would have to get used to it even if Penelo would never approve. The soldier was from the Empire, anyway...
Balthier, Fran, and Anya stopped their conversation to take their first real glances at what Balthier had correctly assumed to be a rebel. Dirty blonde hair curbed inwardly and barely touched the tip of her shoulders, on which her head stood a few centimeters below the rest's. Baby blues looked back into Vaan's own, containing conflicting expressions of anxiety, relief, and apprehension. The enemies of her enemies were never necessarily her friends.
Still, she was not a complete ingrate. "Thank you." And she would have thanked the two other Humes and the Viera had one of them not stared at her so oddly. "What is it...?"
Anya made no reply, a dazed look decorating her previously deadpan face. Her head tilted to the side and her eyes fully glazed, she clenched her shaking fists. "I would always try to forget," she murmured, but no one could make it out.
Vaan cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Uh, I'm Vaan. And this is Balthier, and–hey!" he glared at Balthier as the man grabbed Anya by the wrist and pulled her away, but he gave up quickly (they were sky pirates, after all, and couldn't be persuaded to do what they didn't want to) and turned to the unnamed girl again. He really wanted to stop calling her that. "What's your name?"
"Amalia," she answered Vaan, her furrowed eyebrows still caused by the glassy-eyed girl being dragged away by an earringed man. Her green eyes were so...unreal. Was that magick?
"Do you know that girl?" Balthier asked Anya, a stern look replacing his usually smug and indifferent countenance. Fran observed the two pairs of Humes with hidden interest.
What would have been tears in a very long time suddenly disappeared from Anya's eyes. Lowering her gaze, she shook her head timidly. "No. Never before have I seen that...woman."
"Anya." Balthier's tone was sharp. "Are you lying to me?"
Only flinching inwardly, Anya glanced up to the man who'd given her a new life. "No. Tatah," Anya's lip quivered. "Would I ever lie about this? Believe me..."
Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think their children are naive...
Balthier's thoughts were suddenly invaded by that man's words. It was mostly the reason why he had turned him into a Ju...Balthier shook his head furiously. He would not be swayed by such madness.
"...I believe you."
How angry he would be later that he let such trust deepen for her; that he let such words escape his lips. But as long as he knew nothing, Anya thought, he would be fine. What one didn't know wouldn't hurt him, he had said himself.
"...nice to meet you," Vaan said to Amalia. She nodded and turned away from the four, her eyes searching the sewers for any forms of movement. Nothing.
"There were others with me." she explained, having felt their eyes burning into her back.
Fran closed her eyes, remembering the bodies her partner had stumbled upon earlier. "I'm sorry."
"No..." Amalia clenched her fist and let out an uncontrolled sigh, as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders and it would only take a bit more to make her collapse completely.
Balthier turned away from Amalia as something more scandalous caught his eye. The Magicite in Vaan's hand had begun to glow, beams of light trying to break through the orange stone. "Oh, now isn't that impressive."
Vaan narrowed his eyes at his three companions and held the Magicite close. "Don't get any ideas. I said it's mine."
Fran ignored him.
"That's all right," Anya smiled, a heavy thumping in her chest. She was thankful only she could feel it. "It is no longer mine to take."
Balthier shot the two teenagers an appalled look. "I'm afraid the jury's still out on those two!"
Amalia faced the four again and scoffed. "You stole that?"
"Yeah!" Vaan gave her a proud grin, completely oblivious of the glare she was giving him and the other three.
"Have you finished?" Fran asked, looking around impatiently. It seemed she was the only one thinking rationally. Or thinking at all! "When the guards don't report in, they'll come looking for us."
"If they aren't already," Balthier added.
"You should come with us. Better than being by yourself," Vaan suggested a little too eagerly. Balthier didn't know if he should have been amused or amazed by Vaan's ignorance. Ah, well. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
"...Very well," she sighed. Balthier wasn't too happy with the fact that this Amalia seemed reluctant, even forced, to go with them; if it was honor and gallantry she wanted, after all, she could leave. The less people to give their positions away, the better.
Fran was now too involved with her own thoughts to pay attention to Balthier scolding Vaan, the boy still having absolutely no idea about what was going on, Anya watching the stranger (as she was in Fran's eyes) or counting her recent collection of loot, and the stranger who called herself Amalia trying to keep her distance from them. Hmm. Perhaps she did have enough time to notice what they were doing, but decided not to immerse herself in their affairs for now.
The urge to do so was strong, but showing too much interest in Balthier's affairs would only result in disappointment for her. She knew him well enough to know that he cared, but not enough to speak of what she longed to speak to him about... or perhaps she didn't know him at all. Nevertheless, his recent actions disturbed her. He was less carefree, less laidback. It affected their trips and slowly but noticeably– to her, at least– estranged Anya from him.
XIIXIIXII
These people – these thieves– that Vaan boy hadn't known them until this night. He obviously hadn't gotten to know them very well, either, though he had informed her of their identities: they were sky pirates. Now, Amalia considered herself a reasonable woman. So they were pirates (cutpurses, to put things simply). She could put up with them. So they were somewhat clannish and selective, pulling their youngest member along and leaving her with a very talkative Vaan. She could put up with that for a few more hours. So they seemed to look down upon her because she was a member of the Resistance (not an insurgence). Well, she didn't think much of them, either– their leader was a smug Hume with too many rings on his person, their Viera always, well, she didn't do much, but the fact that she was with them spoke rather ill of her, and their other member was a girl who liked to stare at new acquaintances with her obviously unreal green eyes. The three of them were truants, really, and they had nothing to be proud of, but she could stand their presences until they escaped into the outside world. Yes, she was very reasonable – but what they were doing now was completely insane.
They had come near a main end of the Garamsythe, towards a possible exit, when from behind the falls of the elegant sewage system, there ricocheted a perfect sphere of flames, roaring and hissing as it went, until it slowed and landed before The leadernof the sky pirates, taking the shape of a innocent white horse.
Except it was not an innocent white horse; Firemane was its rightful name, with the whip-like flames on its back, and scalding tentacles on each side.
The sky pirate had said that the chances of its appearance were slim, but not unheard of. Indeed, the gods did not smile upon them this eve. The green-eyed girl's interest in the thing was mostly caused by an observation the Viera mentioned having read before: "When the Garamsythe Waterway fills with a thick fog, it is said that the Firemane is galloping its ways and channels, its fiery rage boiling the waters into steam." The young Hume--definitey older than Vaam, though younger than she--seemed interested in anything that had to do with the Mist. What a bizarre topic to take interest in. Although, once, she might have been able to name a pair of siblings who might have seen potential in studying such a thing.
"Yaaaaaaahh! Take this, you burning excuse for a fiend!" was Vaan's new war cry as he unceremoniously did his best to hurl water at the flaming stallion. Its attention was previously on Balthier (the sky pirate leader, whose name she supposed she could utter for now), who had been firing water pellets being created by a rather grumpy Viera, but quickly turned to face the child and his pathetic attempts to harm it. The attempts, Amalia supposed with an almost interested sort of worry, were not as pathetic as they looked, since the Firemane appeared to have gotten very upset and set its glowing eyes on Vaan.
The Firemane scraped its hooves against the dry ground, undoubtedly preparing to do somethingvpainful to the Hume. Vaan's eyes widened as he stopped cupping sewer water into his hands and backing away slightly.
"Guuuuys!" Vaan screeched, running as fast as he could to the sewer gates they'd entered through and away from the Firemane. He shook the gates in a panic, hoping to whoever he believed in that they would slide open.
They were locked now.
Amalia, who lightly seared her hand earlier when she had tried to attack the Firemane, was finished temporarily curing herself and turned to help Fran create more water pellets. Balthier loaded his gun with more bullets than it could take and began to shoot at the horse, aiming to gain its attention.
It wasn't working. The stallion cried out whenever Balthier managed to hit him (which was every time the man fired), but now it was too angry with Vaan and his previous taunts to care.
"We must lead it to the waterfall!" Amalia declared, standing from her position and watching the Firemane hiss every time it galloped into the water. "There's one in the direction whence it came, but-"
"Hey!" The sky pirate girl stepped up to the plate, flailing her arms around in the air and running after the Firemane. Earlier she had been...what HAD she been doing? "Here, Raksas! Come at me!"
The stallion craned its neck to see which Hume was yelling at it just in time for it to come face-to-face with the girl's violent...raspberry. Its neigh in reply was terrible, a mix between a pained shriek and a howl. Angrily whinnying at its new target, the Firemane charged forward.
"Anya!" Balthier called, "WHERE have you been?"
"Checking for escape routes, as you instructed!" she said, "I heard a bit of shuffling from the only other exit besides that blasted self-locking gate. We've got to wrap things up now and hide or the Imperials will--oh!"
Anya stepped to the side, allowing the Firemane to dash past her and curtseyed, never finishing her statement. The horse turned, the flame-tentacles on its back seeming to go berserk; it screeched and rushed at her once more. Stepping side-to-side before running at her opponent head on and muttering an incantation, she held her palms back- only to fall to the ground, propel herself against it, and– accompanied by a good-natured Aero spell– successfully jumped over the Firemane. She did not land as gracefully as Balthier would have, but at least she didn't break anything.
"Balthier! Your gun, please!"
Balthier loaded water pellets into the gun before tossing it to Anya, about the same time the Firemane appeared over her unsuspecting figure...or perhaps she was not so unsuspecting, as she pressed herself against the ground and slid backward, on her stomach and under the stallion, sitting up once she was far behind its tail.
Firing as many pellets as she could, Anya stood and slowly led the Firemane– which grew angrier and whose shrieks grew louder with every hit– to the 'waterfall' Amalia had spoken of. After shooting at the stallion for the umpteenth time, Anya finally ran out of bullets. She wondered if the Firemane realized this; much to her dismay, it seemed to snort in scorn at her sudden halt.
The rest received the same helpless look Vaan had sent them just a few moments before.
Amalia caught this signal and swiftly tossed a pellet to Anya, but just as the latter held her hand out to catch it, the Firemane lashed one of its tentacles out and wrapped it around Anya's wrist.
"Anya!"
"Aaagh!" Anya screamed as the Firemane released her. It loomed over her once more, ignoring the water being thrown at it by the others. Anya felt herself squirm and cried out once more as she strove towards the waterfall. The stallion took a moment to rejoice in her pain before beginning to catch up.
This was it. She would die. She would finally be with them... But that girl, that 'Amalia', she was alive. Was it possible that he was alive, too? Did it matter? Would thinking about it prove fruitless, in light of her imminent death?
"Iyaaaaaaagrrruah!" came the Firemane's shrill cry. Anya had entered the waterfall, fully soaking herself. The furious fiend was forced to step back when it had tried to follow her into it andalmost had its fire fully doused. Anya expected it to sizzle down and die like the Flan they had defeated earlier, but the Firemane simply returned to its spherical form of blazing fire and ricocheted out of the area whence it came, retreating just like a fiery little girl who couldn't even swing a sword.
The girl stepped out of the waterfall and slowly paced to Balthier, Fran, and Vaan, who rushed in her direction once she had entered the waterfall. They helped her stand, Amalia watching them as they did. Now that the Firemane was gone, she had lost enough adrenaline to think clearly. Earlier, the girl, the thief, she could barely defend herself! Against the Flan that dropped in from the ceiling she did better, but she had stuck mostly to extracting profitable Caramel from it. When faced with the Firemane...for the first part of the battle she was barely there, but that pattern in which she had infuriated it and baited it... It was all too familiar and it– whatever was familiar about it– was at the tip of her tongue, but she could not remember. Amalia decided that she would have to speak to Anya about it when she had the time.
"Stand where you are!" ordered a stern voice, causing the five to turn around in shock. On the platform above them stood at least ten Imperials with their guns, all of them ready to shoot. So this was what Anya had tried to warn them about. Behind the soldiers was an austere man-- a man Anya vaguely recognized to be Vayne, Rabanastre's newly celebrated Consul.
Amalia recognized him, too. Her face scrunched up; she was about to step forward when Balthier halted her, muttering, "Now's not the time."
Their attention was then drawn by more than a dozen Imperials that had suddenly appeared, some holding shackles to capture them. The new Consul watched his men arrest Amalia, Vaan, Balthier, and Fran.
Still stumbling from the pain caused by the Firemane, Anya hid her right arm behind her back when an Imperial attempted to cuff her.
"Stupid girl, there's no way out of this! Surrender already!"
"No, you buckethead!" Vaan yelled, beginning to struggle. "You're going to hurt her!"
"I won't hesitate to if she doesn't stop this," replied the soldier. "Just let me-"
"You're going to rupture her growing blisters and cause an infection with those manacles," Balthier informed the man. He didn't think the dog would take pity on her, but he had to try.
"Is that it?"
He'd thought so.
Despite the others' protests, Vayne had Anya bound like the rest of them. The heavy weight of the shackles and its rusting edges made her dizzy. She strained her neck, clenched her fist, stiffened her shoulders--all to keep herself awake and ignore the pain while doing so, but failed.
No longer could Anya feel the Imperial forcefully prodding her to walk faster with his crossbow, nor could she hear Vaan's unyielding screams to release her. She took one step forward, her mind wandering far from where she really was. Increasing in size by the second, bright, diamond-shaped shots of white light blinked across her line of sight before her vision began to fade...stealing her consciousness away with it as it did.
Amba - Mother in Bhujerban
Tatah - Father in Bhujerban
Madhu - a wine beverage
Raksas - Monster in Bhujerban
Also! The 'Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave...' thought was originally quoted from Ogden Nash (I don't mean in the story, I mean in real life). But in the story it was said to Balthier by another character before the story started.
Hmm, is there anything to explain here? Yep, I stuck with most of the old dialogue, and changed some descriptions. This time we see Amalia's point of view when they fight the Firemane instead of Fran's. I figured since Fran's going to have a lot of...er...screen time before Amalia pops up again anyway, that I should let Amalia have her turn thinking this time. :p
If you need me to explain anything to you, reader, feel free to PM me! I'll be glad to answer questions as long as they aren't too spoilerific. The spoilerificity (it's a word now!) depends on each question, so don't be afraid to ask if you're confused about something!
So! Constructive criticism is badly needed and greatly appreciated again! XD And thank you very much for reading:)
