Universally speaking – that is to say, from the overarching perspective of the universe – time is relative. Thus it only goes to reason that the timeliness implied by the phrase "get this over with" is sometimes profoundly relative as well.

Noctis and Gladio waited by the Regalia, their eyes haunted.

"Gladio. I think this might be the end for us."

"After I die," Gladio said, turning to give his prince an earnest look, "I want you to take Iris on as your Shield. She's a kid, but she's still an Amicitia. She'll get the job done."

Noctis opened his mouth to offer a solemn reply but was boorishly interrupted by a streak of excitable blonde. "Heyaz!" Prompto called, launching himself over the stone partition before he'd made it halfway down the stairs. "Bad news, dudes—"

"You don't say," Noctis muttered darkly.

"–but Lestallum is fresh out of hunts. A pair of Dave's guys nabbed the last ones available earlier this morning. Iggy's not too happy at the moment, so it's a good thing you guys finally got..." He trailed off as he took in their faces. A look of severe apprehension slowly dawned on his own. "Ohhh…Em…Gee. You don't have it, do you."

Noctis despondently wiped at a trickle of sweat trailing down his neck. "Some daemon smashed up their latest shipment of chocobeans enroute to the city. Manufacturer says they're out of Ebony until they can get some more."

At Prompto's stricken look, Gladio clarified. "The good news is that they'll resume operations if we restock the beans ourselves. So we were thinking we'd run down to Galdin, take on a couple hunts there to appease Iggy, and then harvest the patch we found up on the cliffs last month. Bad news is that Iggy's probably going to murder us first."

"Wait," Noctis said, a dim suggestion of hope kindling in his eyes. "If the tipsters up here are as dry as Prompto says, Ignis might actually welcome a backup plan."

Gladio raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Maybe. Guess we could sweeten the deal by promising to camp out and save the money we would have spent tonight."

"I s'pose giving up the Leville for the beach haven isn't the worst trade ever," Noctis admitted. "And deep in his heart, I don't think Ignis actually wants to go to jail for murder. Probably."

Prompto's stare was swinging back and forth between the two in growing consternation. "Wait wait waitwaitwait. Wait," he interjected. "Ummm, so. By 'patch we found up on the cliffs last month,' you couldn't possibly mean the same cliffs where we encountered that chubnormous bird, do you? Am I the only one who remembers the fun we all had up there? Test review time, dudes: it was basically like a mountain, if mountains were really really nasty and held massive grudges. And it had a beak made just for eye-stabbing and teeth for us-as-dental-floss-using and claws built EXACTLY for the purpose of eviscerating prince posses…"

Gladio nudged Noctis. "Think he's short-circuiting?"

"—and wings that could knock a dropship out of the sky—"

"He'll be fine," Noctis assured. "So, assuming Ignis is game for a trip down south, we won't be rolling in till late afternoon."

"—TWO SETS OF THEM—" Prompto loudly reminded them.

"Coctura said there was a batch of hobgoblins running around in the foothills," Gladio recalled. "We could set up camp, wait for sunset, and take 'em out before dinner. If not, those crabs have been making trouble on the beach again. Bam – dinner and paycheck combined. Then up the cliffs for beans first thing tomorrow morning."

"And those FEATHERS! Think of all the ticks and mites and fleas and…andand THINGS living in them…like, they could probably totally rival the population of Lucis…just COLONIES of them…"

"Yeah, about that," Noctis hedged. "I kinda think the less Ignis knows about this, the better. We should find a way to go tonight – you, me, and Prompto, all quiet-like. Only problem is, Specs could wake to the sound of silence getting quieter." Noctis stared glumly off into the distance, reliving some frustrated teenage memory.

"A total microbe METROPOLIS—"

Gladio considered. "I actually might have an idea for that."

"Okay, seriously guys," Prompto said, forcefully shouldering his way back into the conversation. "This is the worst idea we've ever had, including whatever you're dreaming up right now, Gladio. It's worse than tossing Noct in a dumpster so he can poison Ignis with fake Ebony, and we've all seen up close and distressingly personal how that's turning out. There absolutely has to be a better option out there—"

"A better option for what, pray tell?" a smooth voice that was becoming upsettingly proficient at unexpected interjections unexpectedly interjected.

Noctis cleared his throat and slowly turned to face his longtime friend, advisor, and probable demise. "Ignis…all right, so. We don't have the Ebony, yet. I promise we will, though, by tomorrow night. We already called the tipster down in Galdin. Turns out she's got some hunts for us so we were thinking—"

"Have her number, do you?"

Noctis had never heard a voice manage to sound so blank and insinuating at the same time. "Gladio had it," he replied, a bit sullenly. "Anyway, we thought we could get a hunt in before dinner, camp to save some money, and tomorrow we'll—"

"Now, then," Ignis interrupted. "Whatever it is you're up to, I'm sure I'd rather not know. As there are neither hunts nor Ebony to be found in Lestallum, let us simply proceed to Galdin without any further ado, shall we?"

Noctis blinked. "O-okay."

As a slightly disoriented prince and his various-degrees-of-disgruntled Crownsguard slid into the Regalia, Ignis sighed. "So much for the laundry."

xxx

The drive to Galdin Quay was very, very, very quiet. They arrived, five hours later (including the pit stops, ad hoc photography, and a bit of financial opportunism by way of holding an apparent regional monopoly on car repair kits) just as the sun began its melt into the sea. Coctura had her hands full with the dinner rush, but managed to hastily jot a scattering of locations onto their map.

By nine o'clock, they'd succeeded in taking out both the crabs and hobgoblins. Ignis prepared them a spicy pot of crustacean curry, maintaining a weird formal pleasantness that had Noctis chewing nervously on a fingernail. Eventually, though, with the fire fading into embers, the balmy somnolence of the night prevailed. Gladio passed around some peppermint tea – eliciting an eyebrow raise from Ignis – but which he accepted nonetheless, complete with a murmured word of thanks. If he noticed Gladio's slight flinch, he didn't let on.

Sometime after midnight, Noctis started from a half-doze as a large hand shook him awake. Squinting through cracked lids, he was unsurprised to find himself face-to-face with Gladio, eyes glinting faintly in the moonlight. Seeing him awake, the big man tipped his head in acknowledgment, then unfolded from his crouch and exited the tent more gracefully than anyone his size had any business doing.

Noctis eyeballed Ignis – who, by all appearances, remained soundly and miraculously asleep – then reached out and gently nudged Prompto into wakefulness.

As if their Shield had left some sort of anti-Gladio energy in his wake, the two straightaway managed to break a stick, rip velcro, snap elastic, and set off a phone alarm on their way out – after which, despite their slowest, most painstaking efforts, the zipper's tortured noises as they attempted to clandestinely close up the tent could undoubtedly be heard down at the resort.

Ignis slept on.

Crawling out into the soft, blue-limned glow of the haven stone, Noctis clambered to his feet and turned to hoist up Prompto. Gladio stood nearby, one eyebrow fixed in what appeared to be a protracted cringe. "Recreating the Moogle Chocobo Carnival in there?" he whispered through gritted teeth.

"Hey man," Prompto protested in a screech-whisper, "I swear some daemon snuck those crackers in just so I would accidentally roll on them (cos you know I wouldn't bring food into the tent). And seriously, I have never heard a zipper make that sound. Can we like, oil it or something next time?"

Noctis' gaze was flitting rapidly between his Shield and the eerily peaceful tent. "What on Eos did you feed Ignis?" he hissed.

Gladio shrugged, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Had some leftover cold medicine," he admitted. "The peppermint buried the flavor pretty well. Don't worry, Iggy'll be fine. Hell, he'll probably be getting the best sleep of his life."

Noctis couldn't help but commiserate with Prompto's soft groan of dread. Administering Ignis two unethically derived drinks in less than eighteen hours felt not only unfair, but like plain bad luck.

They left the haven anyway.

xxx

The larger daemons tended to prefer wide open spaces for their crushing and maiming needs, so the three of them stuck to the narrow shelves and escarpments of the westernmost bluffs – approaching from the opposite side of the route they'd taken last time from Vennaugh Haven. Even with the admittedly outrageous advantage of Noctis' ability to warp up cliff faces, anchor the line they'd found in the armiger, and lower it back down to his friends, it was exhausting work; he grew both hot and clammy and was soon glazed in perspiration, despite the coolness of the sea breeze. Gladio, watching him carefully, finally cut him off, ordering no more magic usage except in case of emergency. They scrambled the remaining distance largely on hands and knees, Gladio boosting them over the more difficult portions, grunting and groaning the whole way and with no small occurrence of boots connecting with faces.

It was nearly four when they finally heaved themselves, wheezing and panting and streaked with mud, over the lip of the long, tablelike plateau where the chocobeans grew.

"That…" Prompto choked between gasps, "was…probably the fourth worst experience of my life. The third will be when that flying pie wagon of a bird notices us and decides it's time to fix his little human problem indefinitely."

Gladio, herculean pillar that he was, seemed predictably unaffected by the exertion, standing staunch and gleaming in the glow of a nearly full moon as if he were some sort of living cologne commercial. Prompto glanced at him and immediately looked like he might vomit.

"I don't see any birds," their human-shaped Atlas announced.

"See, Prompto?" Noctis said, groaning as his third attempt to roll from his face to his back finally met with success. "Told you it'd be gone. 'S probably off twittering around the Vesperpool by now."

"That thing did not twitter," Prompto hissed, but he wobbled to his feet nevertheless.

"All right kids, naptime is over," Gladio announced. He hoisted Noctis bodily into a position that vaguely resembled standing. "Let's get this done."

Noctis staggered forward, tripping on a short rocky slope that conveniently deposited him straight into the scrubby stretch of chocobeans. Praying he wouldn't unearth some feral, toothy creature from its pleasant chocobean-glutted sleep, Noctis reached into the leafy shadows and plucked a single smooth-skinned legume. Nothing burst from the shrubbery in a rage-fueled frenzy, so with growing confidence, the three were soon elbow deep in bean plants, dismissing their harvest to the armiger by the handful. Noctis even began to find it all rather pleasant, the repetitive but undemanding labor allowing his mind to relax into a sort of tranquil white static it hadn't been allowed in days. Even Prompto looked content, his anxiety ebbing as the minutes ticked on and no daemon or avian the size of an aircraft carrier or any combination of the two materialized. The wind from the sea picked up as the starlight began to fade, replaced with that proverbial darkness before the dawn, but even that was soon nudged aside in favor of the barest lightening over the sea.

Noctis allowed himself to sit up for a moment, stretching his back. His magic was slowly recovering, infusing him with strength and dispelling the fog in his brain. His gaze flickered over his friends – Gladio, whistling softly as he worked; Prompto tossing beans in the air and bullseyeing them with imaginary finger guns before dismissing them to the armiger mid-flight – then roved to the delicate stone arches, just beginning to glow in the predawn light. Finally, it landed on the giant nest tucked away in a corner of the rock face, filled with eggs the size of the Regalia.

"Prompto," Noctis said.

His friend glanced at him, leaving several of his airborne beans to plop back into the bushes. "Yeah, man? Whoa, what's up? You're doing that weird deadpan panic face thing of yours."

"Just thought you should know…that it's her little human problem."

"….Eh?" Prompto queried, turning one ear toward him like a nonagenarian gone a bit vague.

"You said the third worst moment of your life will be when the giant bird notices us and decides it's time to fix his human problem indefinitely. I'm now telling you he's a she."

As Gladio looked at them – then up to the sky – in alarm, Prompto merely continued staring straight at Noctis, his face oddly expressionless. "No man. No way. We are not doing this. You said no bird, so there will be. No. Bird."

Gladio now stood, muscles and face rigid as his blade shimmered to life in his hand. Noctis rose to his feet as well, swallowing tightly as an elongated shadow appeared in the distance, just above the arches, and rapidly grew in size. Very, very rapidly.

Prompto still knelt among the chocobeans, his jaw stubbornly set. "You promised me no birds, Noct, and when I look up at that sky again, I expect it to be perfectly empty. You hear me? Beautifully, sublimely, awesomely EMPTYYYYY…"

Gladio was hurling himself forward, tackling Noctis and Prompto to the ground in one fell dive like some freakishly ripped bowling champion. The gargantuan bennu rocketed past, claws like serrated telephone poles tearing through the air where their heads had just been, the wind from its dual sets of wings flattening their clothes to their bodies and plastering the wild meadow grasses to the earth. For a moment, Noctis couldn't breathe as a torrent of oxygen forced its way down his throat and overfilled his lungs; it subsided and he gasped for air. Unfortunately he failed at that as well, due to the fact that Gladio was still on top of him.

"Get up!" the hulk in question was shouting against his ear, though how he expected Noctis to manage that while flattened beneath 250 unadulterated pounds of muscle, he could only snarkily wonder. The next thing he knew, however, he was being dragged upright by the collar of his shirt, still wheezing noisily.

"Which spells?" Gladio yelled.

Noctis knew the clipped question had a dual purpose: his Shield wanted to know what elemancy he had stocked, as well as what he thought the bennu was weakest to. Unfortunately, Noctis had largely failed to pay attention during Gladio's bygone Elemancy Whack-A-Mole lectures, or whatever they had officially been called. There'd been something to do with the texture of the creatures' feathers or fur, and what kinds of environments they lived in, and even their colors, on occasion. But once Ignis had begun joining in on their training sessions, his uncanny abilities of identification and analysis and the fact that he could simply call out a creature's weakness at the start of every battle vaporized what little motivation Noctis had for learning it himself and Gladio knew that so if this was some sort of terribly timed learning and/or I-told-you-so moment, he was really over it.

And then there was the fact that he felt like something of a monster himself at the thought of bringing the creature down. The thing was an oversized airborne nightmare, sure – but in the end, they had been the ones intruding on its home.

Noctis turned his attention to his Shield. "I got 'em all," he called, as the beast swung around for another pass. "But I don't want to kill it. If we get out of here now, it'll probably leave us alone."

Gladio looked at him closely for a moment, then nodded. "Ice, then. I think that'll damage this one the least. Prompto! You listening?"

Prompto, for all his protesting, had already returned to his feet and was now in the process of sighting the beast with one of his more wicked-looking pieces of hardware. "Yeah, yeah, don't kill the flying terror, let it eat us first – got it," he replied sourly. "Love you guys too."

Noctis thought quickly, readying Ultima in his hand as the beast began its dive. Flying threats were largely his and Prompto's domain; the others couldn't do much but wait until they brought them to the ground. In this case, though, Prompto had a better chance of becoming a blonde-kebob than doing any real damage. "I'll head it off while you two get back down to the beach. Go by way of the highway – less chance of you breaking your necks on those cliffs," he instructed.

"Gonna be a long run," Gladio remarked, and Noctis knew his Shield had, in fact, zero intention of actually leaving him.

He replied as if he would anyway. "Good thing you and Prompto practice so much, then. Go!"

And then there was no more time to watch whether his friends obeyed or not, because a bristling arsenal of talons was headed straight for his face. Raising a chilled flask, Noctis flung a Blizzaga at it before hurling himself to the side. Ice crackled in the bennu's feathers and frosted the grass before exploding into gale-force blizzard winds, driving it off its angle of attack. Annoyed, the beast emitted not a squawk or a screech, but a booming, resonating roar that Noctis could feel vibrating in his ribcage and had him second-guessing their merciful intent. Nevertheless, he seized the distraction to dash for the cliff's edge, iced-over grass crunching beneath his boots, sweat freezing to his body.

He'd managed to warp down a good thirty feet of terrain before the monster overtook him, diving around a rock face to surprise him mid-flight. Fumbling for his blade, Noctis scrambled to alter course, launching himself toward the creature's legs in hopes of avoiding anything vital. Which meant that Ultima drove unerringly into the monster's chest, naturally, leaving Noctis with a mouthful of downy feathers as he caught up to his blade milliseconds later. Midair precision was not his strong suit.

Fortunately (or not; Noctis was no longer sure which), the seemingly vital strike served only to rile it. Much as if he were a slug stuck to its metaphorical shoe, the bennu irritably attempted to scrape him off against the nearest mountain. Noctis' eyes widened; he yanked his blade free seconds before they hit, showers of dislodged rock raining about them. Finding himself in freefall once more, air whistling past his ears, he warped to the nearest flat surface, awkwardly rolling as he landed.

He wasn't sure how long their back-and-forth lasted – Noctis warping madly for the beach, the downy monstrosity attempting to disembowel him midair, Noctis hitting it in the teeth with a Blizzaga, Noctis literally eating feathers and/or dirt. It couldn't have been long, because his magic was still operable. Dipping perilously into the red, certainly, but functional for the moment.

Finally, on the third occasion of nearly landing on his head, and by virtue of ongoing probable frostbite (gods he hated the cold), Noctis announced, "This isn't working at all," and lit the thing's tailfeathers on fire.

The bennu liked that considerably less than the Blizzagas, and quickly moved to smother the flames against the rocks. It was a rather intelligent creature, after all. Noctis, however, had used the reprieve to drain the sole ether in the armiger and was now hurtling back toward the beast, leaving a trail of ghostly blue Noctises in his wake.

He and Ultima slammed directly into the meat of its leg, drew back, and struck again. Dodging in and out, connecting hit after hit, Noctis found himself filled with that peculiar, almost drunken exhilaration borne of fully immersing himself in his magic. Back and forth he dashed, in and out, the power of his ancestors allowing him to dance across the sky as if he, too, had wings.

Finally, from somewhere that was beginning to sound muffled and far away, the creature's bellow morphed into something decidedly fed up. With a hiss, it turned tail in the most literal sense of the phrase and disappeared over the hills, the aftermath of the Firaga still crackling cheerfully through the grasses below.

Noctis allowed himself one breathless bark of laughter before turning to sight out a landing zone, wind tearing at his clothes as he dropped back toward the earth. He was surprised to see mostly beach – the fracas had brought him all the way back to shore – and without further thought, pitched Ultima into the softest-looking dune he could find before activating a warp.

Nothing happened, other than the blade slicing through the sand with a gentle, anticlimactic whoomp. Noctis continued to fall.

Panic seized his chest as he checked his magic stores. Panic then proceeded to kick him in the gut as he realized he was dry. How was that even possible? The ether should have given him more, he knew it – he had barely been up there for more than a few seconds –

A nagging little memory of digging through the armiger with Gladio and Prompto only yesterday tugged curtly at his brain, and he groaned, even as he remained in a lamentable state of freefall. One expired ether, he'd inventoried. I'll replace it at the next stop, he'd promised himself. What does "expired" even mean? It's not like it quit working the moment the clock hit midnight, he'd justified as they'd pulled into said stop.

Okay, and the fact that it was six years past expiry had maybe been stretching that rationale anyhow. Regardless, none of his excuses would do a thing to appease Gladio. (Correctly) assuming that Noctis would remember nothing else of his Advanced Warping 201 lectures, his Shield had made sure to grind a single phrase deep into his brain, time after time after time: Flying Foe, Mind Your Mana. It was a cute little ditty, meant to echo Ignis' admonishments from younger years to mind your manners so that he'd never forget.

And he hadn't! He'd been minding it just fine. He simply hadn't counted on having to hang his entire future on an ether from the lemon lot.

All these thoughts raced through Noctis' head faster than the speed of warp; and speaking of the future, he figured he probably had about two seconds of it left. His last cognizant thought for a time was that if he didn't die from the fall, Gladio would most certainly finish the job. Combined with his engraved place of honor on Ignis' blacklist, he suddenly found himself feeling slightly more cheerful about the formidable odds of death on impact.

Then, with a gods-awful clatter, Ignis' plastic prep table came up to meet him, skillets and coffee pot and potato peeler and all. And for a few minutes he couldn't think of anything.

Eventually a familiar, bespectacled (if sleep-rumpled) face swam into his vision. Its mouth was moving, rather vigorously in fact, but Noctis couldn't quite bring himself to latch onto concepts such as words and language just yet.

"—oct…Noct!" The man's hands were grasping at his shirt, and then the well-worn, prickly-warm sensation of a potion engulfed him. Noctis took a ragged breath, but things still hurt. A lot of things, in fact. He hastily revised his immediate life goals from "sit up" to "merely exist for a time."

Two more faces joined the first, and now he could pair them with names. Judging by the bedraggled state of their…everything…Gladio and Prompto had totally ignored his instructions and followed him down the cliffs anyway, though how they'd done it so quickly and without snapping off all their limbs was a mystery he was currently much too tired to pursue.

"Easy on the potions, Ig; we might need to set some bones first," Gladio rumbled.

"Yes, yes, of course, I apologize," Ignis breathed, and for the first time Noctis registered the panic in his advisor's voice. It was receding now, washed away like foam on the tide, but the briny marks in the sand remained.

Noctis blinked and looked around, mulishly attempting to cobble together a coherent string of thoughts. Happily, there were no monster birds in sight. Instead, his three brothers-in-arms huddled close, scrambling to piece him back together. Chocobeans, wild ginger, beetroot, and an assortment of other armiger detritus lay scattered around the haven, evidently dislodged from the void by his most majestic landing. Behind Prompto's soot-stained, fretting features stood their tent, bathed in dawn; behind that towered the erstwhile bluffs, bathed in firelight. Noctis idly wondered if anybody was going to put that thing out, before his mind lit on the trying realization that somehow he'd managed to land on the only rock in the vicinity, rather than the miles of soft and accessible sand. At least the table had been there to break his fall.

Then, another thought clicked into place: Ignis wasn't mad at him anymore.

The realization came on him like daybreak after a night of trying to plow his way through a forest full of pop-up Red Giants when all he wanted to do was get back to camp already. Overcome with relief, Noctis levered himself to his elbows, a heartfelt apology for his abounding screw-ups ready on his lips.

Then his ribs creaked agonizingly, and several phrases unbecoming of royalty barged their way out instead. Ignis' smile bent a bit at the edges.

Noctis groaned as he flopped back onto the stone. Gladio set a careful hand on his chest and raised an eyebrow, and Noctis knew he was in for some serious future flaying over that little mana-minding debacle.

But for now, all his Shield said was, "How 'bout you just stay down for a while, Charmless. Leave the real work to your flunkeys, all right?" He began running his hands down Noctis' limbs, gently checking for breaks. Down at his feet, Prompto flashed him a bright smile and landed a sympathetic pat on his ankle. Then, evidently deciding to be both proactive and useful, he hopped upright and began gutting the tent.

Which left Ignis, who was still pressed against his side, one hand resting on his shoulder.

Sighing, Noctis met his oldest friend's eyes and tried for Round Two. "Sorry for the mess, Specs," he began, casting a weak nod toward the displaced contents of their armiger. Then he nodded again to include the flattened table, burning hillside, and most of all the imposter Ebony that was presumably still lying crumpled in a wad somewhere on the Regalia's floor. "I should never have tried to lie to you. Or made you drink a mediocre knockoff. Or lost track of your Ebony stock to begin with. I know I'm basically the worst, and I can only hope that someday you'll…"

Noctis trailed off with a frown as he realized Ignis wasn't listening. Instead, a familiar thoughtful gleam had burst to life in the man's eyes as he surveyed the wreckage that encompassed them, glinting in tandem with the flames reflecting off his glasses. Noctis shut his mouth and edged closer to his Shield.

And then Ignis snapped his fingers, the sound fracturing the morning tranquility like that time Prompto had accidentally dropped his gun in his cereal bowl with the safety off. Noctis flinched. "That's it!"

"…Whaaat's what?" Prompto queried guardedly, standing frozen with a tent pole jutting from his hand.

"I've come up with a new recipe!" Ignis declared, eyes roving with mounting excitement over the decimated ingredients.

A stiff silence reigned. Eventually Gladio nudged Noctis in a part of his leg that wasn't broken and coughed. Noctis weakly cleared his throat. "I can't wait to try it," he exclaimed in a voice that was admittedly a bit flat around the edges.

But Ignis was already turned away, sifting through the wreckage of the table. "I daresay that might work…" he murmured eagerly to the coffee pot, cradling it carefully under one arm. "I must get started at once!" he confided to the chocobeans.

"Hey Gladio," Noctis said. "Do me a favor and hit me in the head really hard so I can sleep till our flights back out of crazy town are secured."

"Yeah, Gladio! 'Noct' him out!" Prompto's voice crowed happily from the tent.

Noctis wondered how hard it would be to call back the bennu.

xxx

Several hours later, Ignis was sipping contentedly from a canteen, one hand resting on the wheel of the Regalia as they made their unhurried way out of Galdin.

"So, Ig," Prompto inquired, hair glinting in the warm afternoon sunlight. "Still digging your homegrown Ebony remix?"

"Not to count my chickens before they've hatched, but I daresay we mightn't need to rely on our Lestallum manufacturer so much as we'd thought. This alternative may outdo even the original," Ignis replied, savoring another swallow.

"I don't know anything about chickens, other than the fact I'm glad Noct wasn't massacred by that toothy one up in the hills. Seriously, though. It'd be kind of embarrassing to have to engrave on your royal tomb that you met your end by way of an overgrown parakeet, Noct."

"Thanks, Prompto," Noctis sighed, slouching further into the door and draping his jacket more firmly over his head. He'd lost track of how many days it had been since he'd gotten a full night's rest, and a wide selection of his body parts still ached atrociously. He wondered if Gladio would notice if the last of the cold medicine suddenly disappeared.

"Plus you dying would just suck period," Prompto continued, his voice a little more subdued. "So how 'bout you don't do it, eh Noct?"

"I wasn't exactly planning on it," Noctis grumbled, "but I might if I don't get any sleep soon. Plus there's still Gladio to consider. Hey Gladio, you mad at me?"

Gladio cracked an eye open from where he was sprawled in his own corner. "What," he said easily, "from irresponsibly draining your magic while you were forty feet in the air because your ass was too lazy to restock your ethers even though it would have taken literally three ounces of effort?"

Noctis swallowed. "Yep. That's the one."

"Naw," Gladio breezed. "You helped Iggy crack his Ebony dependence, something I honestly never expected to see in this lifetime. It was a feat fit for a king, and cancelled all your other bad decisions out."

"Well I wouldn't quite say it like that, and I do think 'dependence' is a bit hyperbolized," Ignis was voicing quietly to himself from the front, as Noctis rolled his eyes and muttered, "Thanks."

"But seriously. If you ever do anything like that again I'm gonna kick your ass. Then I'm gonna heal it and kick it again."

"Please do leave some intact for the wedding," Ignis murmured. "I'd hate to have to alter his suit trousers at this late hour."

"Remind me why I keep you guys around again," Noctis griped. "Hey Prompto, wanna go solo? We can leave them in the woods with some chocobos; they'll be fine."

"But I want the chocobos," Prompto whined. "They're so adorable and fluffy and all-around wark-a-licious and whuuut the crap keeps bumping into my foot?" Shoving his head forward nearly to the floor, he rummaged around before popping up again with a sudden bark of mirth. "Ha! Ignis!"

"Yes, Prompto?" Ignis returned with a barely perceptible sigh. Noctis opened an eye and peeked back out from under his jacket.

"A stray can of Ebony!" Prompto grinned, triumphantly waving the burnished black beverage about. "El-oh-el, it was under the seat all along."

Somewhere in the Savlhend Pass, a handful of mesmenir glanced up in concern as the angry screech of tires echoed off the cliffs.

A/N: Okay, so I'm sure there are a million Ebony-related fics out there, but I just played this game for the first time last month. I had somehow missed that fun little aside in the Alstor Coernix (when Noct and Gladio find the empty shelf of Ebony) for something like the first 90 hours of gameplay, so I was thoroughly tickled when I finally stumbled on it.

(Okay, and also...am I the only one here who repeatedly gets carried away warping off after some airborne enemy only to suddenly find myself hanging out in the stratosphere with no magic?)

Thanks for reading! As always, feel free to throw any feedback/thoughts/constructive criticism my way.

-Salty