Chapter Twenty-Six
"I think this one is meant to be a helper robot, not a fighter," Mustadio said. He swiped the back of his forearm against his forehead, wiping sweat and loose hair out of his eyes. "It's a lot smaller than Construct 8."
The machinist hitched his overalls into a more comfortable position as he stood, and he gestured at the nearly-unearthed metal sphere. In its balled-up form it was only perhaps three feet tall.
"As long as it's not a fighter, then we should be making our first sale soon," Malak said. "If I help you, we could probably have that dug out the rest of the way by this afternoon."
"Eh," Mustadio shrugged, "Let's not be hasty. I'd rather we take our time and don't leave any unnecessary dents in it. You know, our customers will care more about its appearance than we do."
"So, you want my help over here, or were you just taking a break?" Malak asked, while stretching his back and arms. He had been working a little further down the tunnel, before Mustadio had gotten his attention.
"I just needed a break. And wanted to show you how far we've come on this one!"
Malak nodded. "I'm going to go refill my water canteen. Want me to take yours too?"
"No, I'm still good. Thanks," Mustadio said.
Today, it was only Mustadio and Malak working in the mine. Besrodio, Alma, and Rad had the day off. Now that all five of them knew the basics, they generally only had two or three people working at a time, always with either Mustadio or Besrodio present. It was reassuring to know that they had friends outside at all times who had been trained in how to try to rescue them if there were some sort of minor cave-in, or other accident in the mine.
Besrodio was acting as more of a mentor than an actual worker, so they usually tried to arrange that two people accompanied Besrodio to work, while only one person accompanied the more able-bodied Mustadio.
Besrodio was having more trouble with his back and his leg with each passing year. Mustadio thought that soon his father would have to retire, and only offer mining advice from the comfort of their home. Hopefully by the time that happened, the others would be expert enough that they could have days where they safely worked with neither Bunanza present. Mustadio did not relish the idea of having to work seven days a week himself.
When Malak eventually returned, with his full water canteen, he had also brought Alma along. Mustadio could hear them talking to each other as they descended.
"Oh, hi, Alma!" Mustadio exclaimed, when the two rounded the corner into his sight. "Didn't expect to see you today!"
"I am not here to work! I only wished to see the Construct; Malak said it is almost free," Alma said.
Mustadio was pleased to show off his progress. He was also happy that Alma had been treating him like a normal person, for the past couple weeks. He didn't know what had changed her mind, but lately she was talking to everybody quite openly. Mustadio wasn't sure if Alma was still angry with him about Orbonne, but he hadn't brought it up again yet. It was nice that she was willing to talk to him at all, for now.
Last week, they had chattered together quite a lot while they worked, and Mustadio had been thrilled that things seemed to be back to normal between them. But then, it seemed like Alma had gottenmore standoffish with him once again, after the festival.
He had barely even spoken to her that day! He didn't think he had done anything to earn further cold treatment from her.
Unless Alma was jealous that he had kissed Alicia… But what right did she have to be jealous? She certainly didn't seem interested in kissing him anymore. She had spent weeks refusing to speak to him!
And Alicia had been very sweet at the festival. She had even helped Agrias choose a belated birthday gift for him, and had been eager to dance with him.
He had never really thought of Alicia as a romantic possibility before the festival… There wasn't anything wrong with her; it was more that she just faded into the background of the group, most of the time. She wasn't very talkative toward anyone other than Lavian, and her Lancer's gear wasn't exactly as eye-catching as, say, a Dancer's costume.
Mustadio had been surprised at how comely Alicia was when she wore a nice gown and styled her red hair. She had hardly looked like the same person! He hadn't at all minded being bullied into dancing with her, and she had been obviously pleased when he kissed her.
The problem was, when he was sober the next morning, Mustadio wasn't sure if starting a fling with Alicia would be a great idea.
Now, if they were still nomads traveling every day and living in tents… well, then, Mustadio would have done his best to get into Alicia's skirts as quickly as possible. Honestly, consequences hadn't seemed real during those days. He would have jumped at the possibility of sex with any cute girl, and not given much thought to the aftermath.
It felt different now that they lived in the same house. Alicia was nice, but it wasn't like he wanted to marry her. He was a little wary of giving her any reasons to get attached to him… there would be no escape from a tryst gone sour, when they all had to share a home.
Alicia had acted flirty with him in the days since the festival, but he was keeping her at arm's length for now. He couldn't help flirting back a little (he wasn't sure he was even capable of not flirting with a girl who liked him), but he had also tried to avoid being alone with her, knowing that that would probably be a one-way ticket to him and Alicia officially becoming a 'couple'.
Maybe he should start trying to get to know some of the women who lived in the town. Courting someone he already lived with seemed like it could be tricky.
Walking around the new Construct, looking at it from all sides, Alma asked, "Do you think we can truly manage this? Renting Constructs to noble families, without anyone learning how they are powered?"
"Gods, I hope so… I think our plan is a good one. We know we can power them without anyone ever seeing the actual stones," Mustadio said.
"I still wonder if our customers will accept that?" Malak added, "Sooner or later, someone is probably going to try to steal a power sphere from us. They might not all believe that story about the 'spell' being necessary to make the sphere work."
They had all had this discussion many times before, but sometimes they repeated it amongst themselves, almost as a means of reassurance that their work was not for nothing.
Mustadio had discovered months ago, completely by accident, that Construct 8 could operate even after the zodiac stone had been removed from his metal body. The machinist had only learned that fact by clumsily knocking the stone out of its metal chamber and on to the ground while he had been examining Construct 8's wiring.
To everyone's surprise, Construct 8 had continued to be able to talk, walk, and fight.
It seemed that the zodiac stone filled Construct 8 with a sort of life force. And even when the stone was removed, the life force remained inside the machine, being slowly used up, over the course of about one month. At the end of the month, they had to insert the stone again, to re-charge their robot friend.
Knowing this had filled Mustadio with ideas, back when they were still roaming Ivalice as heretics.
He thought what a business opportunity it could be, to actually put a use to all the Constructs abandoned as useless antique machinery in mines around the world. They weren't all fighters, like Construct 8, he was pretty sure. Old legends said that there had been robot servants everywhere in the age of sky ships. If they could bring some of those robot servants to life…
Then idiot noblemen would pay a premium for them.
And it wouldn't even be because a robot servant was particularly helpful. It was going to cost quite a bit more than simply paying a human servant's wages. And the robot would have to be "serviced" by Ramza's crew at least once per month (for an additional hefty fee), in order to continue functioning.
They had encased each of their zodiac stones in a plain, locked metal sphere which could be inserted temporarily inside a Construct. They planned to tell outsiders that the metal sphere itself was worthless, but was a vessel used to transfer power when Ramza or one of the others cast a strong spell through it.
Of course, there was no spell. The power was all from the zodiac stone inside. The spell they would be muttering under their breath as a decoy, while the sphere powered each Construct, was just gibberish.
Mustadio believed that the nobles would pay, though, simply because owning a functioning robot servant would be a fabulous status symbol. It would show that they were wealthier and more cultured than the nobles living in the other manor house across the street.
Mustadio himself might pay for a robot servant, if he was part of the nobility. He knew that there were status-seeking suckers like that who would pay for the Constructs, because… truthfully, he might do the same if he were in their shoes.
He had told this to Alma last week, and she had laughed. She said that she herself would just pay a human servant, and spend the rest of the money on shoes.
Mustadio had pointed out that she was wearing a pair of dirty work boots, so she didn't really seem like the sort of woman who obsessed over footwear.
Alma then amended her statement, claiming that she used to be rather obsessed with shoes, but her time spent in captivity with Lord Vormav had caused her to somewhat lose interest.
Mustadio had no idea what in hell that was supposed to mean, but Alma had refused to elaborate.
As far as he was concerned, Alma didn't need to wear fancy shoes to look good. She made even clunky work boots look sexy…
Gods, get a grip on yourself, Mustadio thought. You've been kissing a different girl lately, anyway, remember? Alma doesn't seem interested in giving you another chance at that.
Mustadio pulled off his dirty work glove and used his bare hand to brush dirt and dust off of one section of the Construct he had been unearthing.
"Look here, this one is labeled 'Construct B14'," he said to Alma and Malak. "I don't know what that means, but, hey, we have something to call him."
"Or her," Alma insisted.
"Sure. Yeah," Mustadio said.
Leaning down to look closely at the script on Construct B14's side, Alma suddenly grabbed hold of Mustadio's bare hand.
"I don't know how I never noticed this before!" she exclaimed. "What happened here?!"
She was pointing to the mottled skin, the scarring where his hand had been badly burned.
Mustadio grinned. "It's not that bad! Believe it or not, it didn't even happen in battle… It was half Ramza's fault, actually."
"Oh gods," Alma rolled her eyes. "What did you two idiots do?"
Mustadio grinned even harder. "Remember that day Ramza got his bald patch?"
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Meliadoul was standing on her toes, trying to get tall enough to spot Ramza through a crowd of gyrating bodies.
The most popular tavern on the main street of Tiridates was packed tonight. There were no bar games to be enjoyed here, but a troupe of musicians was playing a lively tune, with a talented Bard at their front, and many people were writhing merrily to the music.
Rafa loved to dance. She had jumped into the press of bodies right away, and Meliadoul had happily followed. It took her a couple minutes to realize that Ramza had not joined them. Leaving Rafa dancing with a handsome dark-haired lad, Meliadoul made her way back to the edge of the crowd.
Ah. Unsurprisingly, Ramza had stayed glued to Alma's side. The blonde girl looked quite fetching in her new red dress, and Ramza seemed to be literally standing in the way of the group of young men (mine workers, by the sooty look of their hands and ears) who were trying to speak with her and ask her to dance. Alma seemed pleased by the attention; save for the annoyed grimaces she gave her brother whenever he tried to lead her away from the miner boys.
Meliadoul sighed. She wondered if Ramza would ever learn to relax, and realize that it was normal for his adult sister to flirt with available people in town.
Honestly, did he expect Alma to become a spinster? Or to join a convent again? Alma had not shown any interest in such a lifestyle. And judging by the flushed smiles she was flashing at the mining boys, sooner or later Ramza would have to accept the fact that Alma would want to meet someone in their little town, and probably marry.
Wrapping herself against Ramza's side, Meliadoul slid a hand up his waist and suggested they go get drinks. The physical contact seemed to snap him out of protective-older-brother mode for a moment, and Alma shot Meliadoul a grateful smile as she grabbed one of the boys by the hand and pulled him over to the area where the others were dancing.
Meliadoul and Ramza found Rad, Alicia, Mustadio and Besrodio loitering together at the bar. Meliadoul silently reminded herself that she needed to call everyone by their fake Ordallian names, while they were here in the tavern.
When they had all been selecting new names to put on their forged Ordallian paperwork, Mustadio had bet Rad five-thousand gil that he wouldn't change his name to Rudolf.
Well, Rudolf's pockets were now five-thousand gil heavier. But his friends still couldn't manage to speak his new name in public without chortling.
Meliadoul had managed to learn a little about Rad's past, even though Rad was not a very talkative fellow. She was so curious (or, as Agrias had once accused her, nosy) that Rad had eventually caved and given her some details.
Rad had lost his parents when he was very small, and had been thereafter raised in an unpleasant, overcrowded orphanage. When he reached his teen years (around the time that the orphanage would have kicked him out anyway), a mercenary called Gafgarion came through town looking for recruits. Specifically, the type of assistants who were quiet, obedient, and could hold their own in a fight.
That was Rad. He had done plenty of fist fighting in the orphanage (mostly out of simple self-defense), and he figured he could also learn to use a sword, if that was required of him.
He knew how to keep his mouth shut, too. The adults in charge of his orphanage were not exactly trustworthy, and Rad had learned early on that it was best to avoid attracting their attention. Silence was second-nature to him, by the time he met Gafgarion.
Two other boys from his orphanage had also joined up with Gaff's little mercenary company at the same time Rad did. Neither of those boys had survived the first year. Rad, however, turned out to be quite talented as a squire. He was the only mercenary, other than Gafgarion himself, who had survived a particularly vicious job that saw them sorely outnumbered by smugglers.
A few weeks after that awful fight, Ramza had joined up with the two of them, using the fake surname of Ruglia.
Rad told Meliadoul that he had never before met anyone like Ramza, who was always exceedingly polite to him even though it was obvious that Ramza was well-bred and Rad was just an uneducated street rat.
When Meliadoul had asked what eventually made Rad choose to follow Ramza and abandon Gafgarion, Rad had answered easily. He said that he knew Gafgarion would not have cared if he was killed in a fight, and he also knew that Ramza would care. He said it was nice to follow someone who might grieve if something happened to him.
Rad did not tell her anything about Luso, but Meliadoul could guess a fair amount. She had seen how much Rad had valued Luso. Loud, confident boy that he was, Luso had often done most of the talking for Rad, and Rad had seemed to appreciate that arrangement. The two had been inseparable, practically joined at the hip during marches.
Meliadoul knew how much a friend like that must have meant to Rad, who had grown up so very alone. She cursed Luso for running off and leaving poor Rad so despondent. She knew Luso had been very traumatized by their journey through Hell, and had just wanted to be free of all reminders of those horrors… but it still made her angry, that Luso would just run off like that.
She hoped this time at the tavern might help Rad to cheer up. The gods knew, sometimes booze and dancing were the best medicine.
They each downed an ale or two. Meliadoul noticed that Alicia kept trying to strike up a conversation with Mustadio, but Mustadio kept ignoring her, while staring into the crowd. He seemed to be watching Alma, who was dancing with one of the mine workers.
Alicia seemed to notice this, as well, and she did not look happy.
After finishing their ales, they managed to join in the revelry, amidst all the smiling strangers and the loud music. They danced for a long while. They didn't know the steps to some of the Ordallian tunes, but the drinking made it easier for them all to pretend they did. Even Besrodio joined in as best he could, with his cane.
Meliadoul could not recall the last time they had so much fun.
However, the night ended rather abruptly when she and Ramza were ordering their third (or was it fourth?) round of ales at the bar. A woman had pinched Ramza's ass, and then commented on its unusual roundness.
Meliadoul had begun to angrily shout at the woman, and the woman had been entirely too happy to shout back at her, half of her words in a language Meliadoul did not understand. They had seemed near the point of exchanging blows, when Meliadoul found herself being led by her elbows out of the tavern by Ramza and Rafa, as Alma giggled behind them.
"Come on, Meliadoul, this entire argument is absurd," Ramza said, still looking quite embarrassed that so much fuss had been raised over his bottom.
"I should not have blamed you for hitting that woman," Rafa said to Meliadoul, "but Ramza is right, she is not worth your trouble! I am ready to go home, anyway. That woman was far from the only person in that tavern with wandering hands. It would seem the Ordallians forget their manners after an ale or two!"
"Truly? I thought they were all perfectly lovely!" Alma said. She sounded a bit drunk.
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The next morning, Meliadoul felt hungover and embarrassed about her raging argument with the butt-pinching woman in the tavern last night.
Oh, gods. She hoped Ramza, Rafa, and Alma weren't annoyed with her. It was sort of her fault that they had all had to leave the tavern early. Ramza and Rafa had been the ones dragging her out, and Alma had promised to leave the tavern at the same time Ramza did, so she had no choice but to leave early, as well.
The others had stayed out until the middle of the night, from the sound of things. Meliadoul had been fast asleep when she heard the noises of drunk people coming in the front door and stumbling to their rooms. The noise had probably kept Ramza wide awake for far too long, because he was now sleeping deeply on the other side of their bed, despite it being time for breakfast.
Meliadoul got up, stretched, and dressed without waking him. When she got downstairs to the kitchen, she was grateful to see that someone had already cooked the large pot of oatmeal for the whole crew's breakfast.
She was starving. She ladled some oatmeal out of the pot, grabbed the jar of honey, and then joined some of the others at the table to eat.
As soon as she sat down, she noticed that Mustadio was glaring daggers across the table at Alicia, who was obviously avoiding his eye while she ate.
"What is going on?" Meliadoul mouthed quietly to Rad, who sat on her left.
Rad grinned. "Alicia fucked his father last night!" he whispered gleefully.
Meliadoul had to try to turn her laugh into an unconvincing cough. "Watch your language, Rudolf," she muttered back.
Her fake cough had clearly not fooled anyone.
Mustadio slammed a hand down on the tabletop. "Are you happy now, Alicia?!" he demanded, gesturing at Rad and Meliadoul giggling behind their hands, "You've made a laughingstock of us both!"
"Calm down, Mustadio," Alicia said, rolling her eyes.
"Calm down?! Oh, for—Goddammit! You are not even sorry, are you?! You—! You—! You just cannot keep your hands off the old men in this group, can you!?"
Alicia suddenly looked very serious. "Don't joke about Cid like that," she snapped, "And as I said, you need to calm down. It is not as if you and I were truly courting, Mustadio. You've no right to be angry, really! And your father certainly wasn't complaining, last night."
Mustadio gave a sort of strangled scream as he knocked his chair to the floor and stormed out of the room, fists clenched.
Rad buried his face in his arms on the table, shaking with laughter.
Meliadoul stopped trying to hide her smile. "So, I take it this means you are not interested in Mustadio, any longer?" she asked Alicia, aiming for a casual tone.
Alicia chuckled.
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A/N: I had a lot of fun with this chapter! You can totally tell that I miss normal pre-quarantine life, from the partying vibes of these past two chapters, haha. Warzonecall, thank you so much for your comment on the last installment! It makes me so happy to know that you're still enjoying this story, like I am. Poor Mustadio didn't have the greatest time in this chapter, but there are good times in store for him later... If I were to guess at this point, I think there are four or five chapters left to finish up this fic... and then I don't know what I will do, I like writing these characters so much!
