Search and Rescue (Episode Prompto Part 1)
So, this was their plan;
Ride the train all the way to Tenebrae. Check.
Say good-bye to Luna and Gladio. Check.
Meet up with Aranea at the decided rendez-vous spot just outside of Niflheim's frozen tundra. Check.
Next, let Aranea take them in her airship as close to the primary magitek production facility as possible. This one was a work in progress.
While her airship hovered across the snow fields of Niflheim, Prompto and the others passed the time until their arrival by putting on the warmest clothes found in Noct's armiger. None of them had actually thought of buying new clothes back in Altissia, so they made do with what they had.
The door to the cockpit opened and Aranea entered the cargo bay.
Somehow, every time they encountered the Dragoon, she got more attractive. Not only was she one good-looking bad-ass fighter with a strong attitude, she also had the guts to blaze her own trail, running a search-and-rescue business now, and to top that off, she still commanded her very own airship and crew. As much as Prompto admired her, even he was starting to believe Aranea was way out of his league. He was probably better off trying his luck with Cindy.
"We're approaching our destination," Aranea said. "I still can't wrap my head around why you'd be wanting him back, or why you're thinking he's still alive, even. As far as search and rescue goes, I've helped you with the search, but you can go rescue him yourself. The only reason I'm helping you with this mission is that there are rogue MTs strolling through Gralea's streets, killing citizens, and they've escaped from a facility such as this. So if you go and take out the production line while you're in there, we'll have a few tin heads less to worry about."
"This leaves us with the question on how to get in," Ignis mused aloud.
"There is little public information about the production facilities, but I know they are run by a skeleton crew of researchers and maintainers," Aranea explained to him. "Most of the facility is automated, which includes security. If we attempt to land on their grounds without clearance, the defence system will blast us out of the sky." She paced along the wall of the cargo bay, eyeing the fur trimmed jackets of Noctis and his friends as she kept talking. "You're not gonna climb those walls and fences, either. Any breach of the perimeter will bring the whole facility down on you. So, you're gonna jump."
"J-Jump?" Prompto did not know what she meant, but he did not like the sound of it.
From a hook on the wall, Aranea took a backpack with a parachute and tossed it to him.
"What, you afraid of heights or something? Yeah, you'll be jumping off the tailgate. Small targets, difficult to hit."
He cast a glance over to Noctis who looked unconvinced by this plan as well.
"So you're saying they'll still be shooting at us? Great, can't wait for it."
"Sarcasm is hardly a viable solution to this problem," Iggy reminded him.
"But it is always a valid reaction."
Aranea chuckled. "Hey, the thrill of danger is what makes life interesting." She hit a button at the far end of the cargo bay and the tail gate began to open. "Gimme a call when you're ready for pick-up and I'll come and get you out of this hellhole."
Both Noct and Iggy took two of the remaining parachutes off the wall and prepared for the jump. Prompto too, pulled the googles over his eyes, hurried to put on the backpack and checked for the pull string to make sure he found it when needed. A strong wind blew in from the open tailgate, tugging at their clothes and muffling their voices.
"We owe you a lot, Aranea," Noctis shouted over the noise.
The Dragoon looked to be completely unfazed by the winds whipping about her and the long drop just a step away. Below of them, the structures of the production facility stood out starkly against the white snow fields.
"You can pay me back once we've got your princely ass on that throne in Insomnia," Aranea responded.
Noctis took a run-up and was the first to jump out of the airship. Heights had never bothered him, of course. He was used to warping high up and bringing down his blade with devastating force. Without much hesitation, Ignis followed him. The height itself was no problem to Prompto, either, but he would certainly feel much more confident going down in an aircraft. He gulped.
"Get a move on!" Aranea prompted him. "We're not gonna turn back just because you miss the drop-off point."
Prompto walked a few steps backwards to take a run-up as well, then jumped.
"Here goes nothing!"
He spread his arms and legs out as he fell. Both Noctis and Ignis were still in his sights below of him. They appeared to be headed towards a sufficiently unobstructed area on the facility grounds, away from the patrolling magitek troopers.
All of a sudden, shots ripped through the air.
Prompto made out two defence turrets aiming at them. A number of missiles was headed their way just as Noctis opened his parachute.
Prompto pulled the string on his backpack right after Ignis did, still a little earlier than needed. The parachute shot open and with a jerk, his descent was slowed. One projectile zipped past his feet, only missing him thanks to the change of pace. He drew his handgun and took aim at the remaining missiles. With two precision shots, he managed to explode some of them before they reached Noct and Iggy, but many more were still on their way.
Just then, there was a change in the air. It almost crackled with magic. Even though he had no supernatural powers of his own to compare, Prompto felt Noctis' magic surge and radiate off him. Clouds had formed in the sky. From previous encounters with Ramuh and Titan, Prompto knew what this meant.
The air grew crisp and cold, much colder than it already was, and from it materialised a human-sized goddess with blue to greyish skin and braided white hair. Time seemed to slow as she floated towards the missiles and her body split into multiple copies of her, each of them heading for a different projectile.
Gently, the Shivas redirected the missiles away from Noctis, Prompto and Ignis and let them explode where they caused no harm. Prompto was awe-struck at the sight of the ice goddess protecting them during their descent.
Thanks to her, all three of them managed to land unharmed and undetected, if the lack of a blaring siren was anything to go by.
Prompto fought his way out of the parachute that had collapsed on top of him, unbuckled the backpack and caught up with the others. Just a few minutes past their landing they found a way out of the snow and into the building.
They entered a corridor with plain white walls and lights lining the ceiling, leading up to a closed door. In passing, Prompto eyed a cabinet filled with machine guns of Imperial design. Noctis was the first to approach the door. There was no obvious way to open it manually, only a control panel next to it.
"Great, now what?" the prince said after taking a first glance at the panel. "Do we need a key card or something? Hey, Prompto, you're the technophile. Help me out here."
Prompto tapped Noct's shoulder and pushed himself past his friends. "Watch and learn!"
The door control consisted of a display reading various data, most of which seemed cryptic even to Prompto, as well as a large black panel of yet unknown purpose. Since there were no buttons, Prompto checked whether the display reacted to touch. The moment he reached out for it, the green light of a scanner activated in the other panel. A number appeared on the display.
"Unit 0-5-9-5-3-2-3-4 confirmed," a female computer voice said, and with a crack, the door unlocked and opened.
"Nice!" Noctis exclaimed.
Prompto stood there, baffled. It took him a second to process and understand that the scanner had read the barcode tattooed onto his wrist. His sleeve must have gotten pulled up when he had untangled himself from the parachute.
"Warning: this unit has been compromised," the same monotone voice continued. "Initiating retrieval of compromised unit."
The door leading outside opened and in came two magitek troopers. Another one approached from the inside of the building. They posed little danger. After all, Prompto and the others had taken on MTs in much greater numbers.
"Let's wrap this up quickly," Ignis said.
"On it." Noctis held out a hand to summon his blade, but nothing happened. "The hell?"
"I can't access the armiger," Iggy said.
Prompto, too, tried to call his handgun back into his hand. "No luck here, either."
The first of the magitek troopers opened fire at them. Noctis took cover behind a cabinet and so did Ignis, but not without pulling out one of the machine guns first and throwing it over to Prompto.
He found this particular model to be very easy to use. Taking a few steps back through the open door, Prompto aimed and returned fire at the MTs storming in from outside. He took out the first trooper quickly.
Meanwhile, Ignis tossed another firearm to Noctis. "Given the circumstances, I'm afraid we'll have to make do with what we got."
Out of the corner of his eye, Prompto could tell it took a couple of seconds for Noctis to familiarize himself with the machine gun. They all had been trained to use any kind of weapon at a basic level, but when it came to firearms, there was only one professional among them.
Prompto turned around to take care of the MT coming from deeper within the building when he heard the door fall shut behind him.
"Restricting access for compromised unit."
By the time he whirled around, it had already closed. He finished off his opponent with haste before attempting to use the control panel nearby. The scanner read his barcode again, but only a red light flashed up.
"Noct!" he called out.
The noises of shots being fired died down.
"Hey, Prom, can you open the door back up?", Noctis called back.
"Doesn't look like it."
Glancing around, Prompto noticed that this part of the corridor opened up into a room further up ahead and while it seemed unlikely that it was going to lead him back to the others, at least he was not locked in entirely.
"Let us find another way into the building and try to meet up inside," Ignis suggested, apparently addressing Noctis.
"Right," the prince agreed. "Hey, Prompto! Keep going as far as you can. If you happen to find Ardyn or come across whatever is suppressing my magic, you know what to do."
"Sure thing!"
There was just a twinge of worry in Prompto's heart as he walked away from the door. Sticking together had been an integral part of their plan. Well, so much for that plan in general. At least Noct had Iggy and Prompto had a firearm to defend himself with, so … things could be worse, probably.
He continued making his way deeper into the building and passed through a room with even more consoles and cabinets filled with records on paper and tape. Ever curious, Prompto glanced over some of the papers that laid spread out on a table. They referred to the "Deathless project", and the rest was all-too-specific technobabble about various aspects of test results. It piqued Prompto's curiosity nonetheless. If only he had the time to leaf through all of those records, he would have loved to work out how magitek functioned exactly. Since Prompto had to keep moving, however, he grabbed a handheld playback device and a random voice recording from the cabinet and marched out into the next corridor whilst listening to it.
The recording was something of a journal entry made by the minister and chief researcher of this facility, Verstael Besithia. According to the date given by the minister, the entry dated back all the way to M.E. 722, making it over a decade older than Prompto. He spoke of using daemonic energy to fuel magitek cores and strengthen their infantry, but apart from that did not reveal much about the actual process regarding the creation of magitek cores.
Prompto wandered through more rooms, finding more cabinets with recordings as well as other kinds of firearms, some of which looked to be in-development models. He was also attacked by MTs again, but never in such numbers that he could not have dealt with them.
He slotted another tape into the playback device.
Another one from M.E. 722. In this entry, the minister openly contemplated experimenting on humans. A shiver ran down Prompto's spine, not just once, but twice, when in a follow-up recording, Besithia reported on those experiments having been failures and intending to work on infants next. Seriously, what kind of sick bastard experimented on babies? The thought alone left an uneasy feeling in the pit of Prompto's stomach.
And then there was also a question, a creeping and sickening feeling, of why that scanner had been able to process the barcode on his wrist. It was something that lingered on the very edge of his mind, something a part of him continuously pushed aside and refused to contemplate further.
Keeping the machine gun raised, Prompto followed corridor after corridor. More often than not, he was uncertain which way to go so he explored all options. He eventually fought his way past another small group of magitek riflemen into an almost cylindrical room with what appeared to be three prisoner's cells to each side and a control unit in the middle.
Every cell was furnished with what appeared to be medical equipment. Instead of iron bars, walls and doors of reinforced glass separated the smaller rooms from the main room. At first glance, they appeared to be empty. Prompto had not checked all of them yet when his gaze was drawn to more reports lying on the control panel. This facility was positively littered with confidential information.
This particular report mentioned the effects and side-effects of an upgraded version of what was referred to as the "Wallbreaker Wave".
A female, muffled voice and banging noises caught his attention. Someone appeared to be calling his name. He turned around to see a woman about his age standing in one of the outermost cells and pounding on the glass.
She wore Crownsguard attire, consisting of a black tank top and a pair of jeans with patches and fake tears. Well, some of the tears were fake, anyway. Due to her leather jacket apparently having gone missing, the upper part of the phoenix tattoo on her sternum was visible. Although she gave off a bit of a ragged impression, possibly because of some fights she had been through, the braid adorning her long, flaming-red hair was still intact.
"Val!"
Prompto was so baffled to see his friend that he ran up to the glass wall before realizing he needed to open it first. Judging by her expression, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but her voice made it barely through to him.
"Get. Me. Out!"
"Right! Gimme a sec." Prompto hurried back to the control unit and took a moment to figure out how to operate the cell doors, before finding the right button to unlock Valyria's cell. The door part of the glass wall slid open almost without sound.
Prompto turned back at about the same moment Val stepped out of the cell.
"Prom!" she shouted in relief.
"Am I glad to see you!" he replied.
Overjoyed at finding her alive and well, Prompto ran up to her and they both pulled each other into a brief, but tight hug.
"Man, when Caligo told us he'd captured you I almost feared the worst!" he exclaimed.
Valyria stepped back to meet his gaze with a worried look in her green to blueish eyes. "Did you meet him? Is he around?"
Prompto slapped her shoulder in a manner of encouragement. "No worries, Val," he said and winked. "Caligo's dead. We gave him hell back in Altissia."
"Serves him right for ambushing me on my way back from Altissia. If he would've fought fair, without that stupid MT armour of his, he'd never stood a chance." Upon glancing around and noticing that there were no enemies nearby, she seemingly relaxed a bit. "Where is everyone else? You didn't come to get me by yourself, did you?"
"Noct and Iggy are 'round here somewhere, but we got separated. Actually …" He hesitated for a moment, searching for the right way to put the next bit. "We didn't know you were here. We didn't even know you were still alive."
"Apparently I was too valuable to be executed on the spot," Val explained. "Caligo brought me to this weird facility here. That was … how long ago? Weeks? Or months now?"
"I know, sometimes it feels like an eternity and sometimes it feels like Insomnia fell just yesterday," Prompto said, having lost track of the date at one point, too. They had been pushing on from one event to the next for so long, how much time had passed since their departure from Insomnia had long since stopped being of importance.
An unsettling thought struck him all of a sudden. Prompto was almost too afraid to ask. "They …" He gulped. "They didn't experiment on you, did they?"
"Not directly, no," Val replied. "But they got this device they call the Wallbreaker Wave, which suppresses Noct's magic. This madman of a minister made me fight waves of MTs to see if I could use magic and to which extend. I can't even pull Solferrum from the armiger."
"'Fraid I can't help you with that, but I can give you this." Prompto held out his machine gun to her. There was no reason why he should not share his findings with her. He still had a sniper rifle left he stole from an MT earlier.
"Thanks." Much like Noctis, she too, took a while to familiarize herself with the weapon. "Better than hand-to-hand combat, I guess."
The two of them left the room together. Due to being the more experienced gunner, Prompto took the lead. He was grateful, not only to have found her, but also to be in company again. It helped to keep those dark and unsettling thoughts from earlier at bay. As they continued to search the facility together, Prompto brought Val a bit up to speed.
"So, Gladio didn't accompany you?" she asked him.
"Noct asked him to stay behind with Luna at Tenebrae and wait for us."
"Thank the Six Luna's okay, too," Val said and sighed with relief. "I wasn't entirely sure whether the Empire had been lying about her death as well."
"Yeah, there's so much misinformation floating about. I'm glad we got Iggy to pick it apart for us." Prompto turned around and walked backwards to face her while talking. "If there weren't so many people on our team already, Luna would've even come with us. But we already got Aranea to bring us here and …"
"Who's Aranea?"
"Oh, she's only, like, the most bad-ass chick ever!" Prompto shrugged, smiling. "She used to be a top fighter in the Niff army up until recently, and now she runs her own search and rescue business."
In surprise, Val's gaze shifted from the far end of the corridor to him."You're working with people from the Niff army?"
"Crazy, right?"
Before he could elaborate, the heavy steps of magitek soldiers reached his ears. He turned back around to see a number of state-of-the-art magitek swordsmen running at them. Their attack ended in another small scuffle Prompto and Valyria lived through with barely any scratches to show for. At least, Prompto managed to salvage the serrated blade from one of the MTs so that Valyria could trade the machine gun for a melee weapon, something she was far more comfortable with. From there on out, Val went on ahead.
At the next turn they entered a wide corridor with several long windows to either side, each of which allowed a glimpse into an unlit room with seemingly more medical equipment and other machines of unknown purpose inside. There were no handles on the doors, but control panels next to all of them.
Prompto and Val slowed their advance to try and peek through some of those windows into the darkened rooms.
Further down the corridor, Val gasped. "Hey, Prompto!" she called out. "I think there's someone inside!"
He rushed over to her. The room in front of which she stood was not just merely unlit. There was actual, palpable darkness crawling along the walls and ceiling in the form of a thin layer of miasma. Through the dark shone the soft, white glow of several long objects. The muffled roar of a machine sounded from within. For a moment, the miasma moved, allowing a glimpse of a man lying still on a metal table with blades of light piercing his body.
"Ardyn!" Prompto brought out in a breath.
He hurriedly unlocked the door by scanning his wrist tattoo on the panel and rushed inside, not caring about the miasma.
"Wait, you're not gonna …," he heard Val behind him say. "… aaaand you're already in."
Once inside, the source of all the excess miasma became clear. It slowly bled from Ardyn's open wounds and spread out across the floor. Prompto was not sure how dangerous it was to breathe this stuff in, but he thought himself lucky that it clung mostly to the inside of the walls. He signalled Val to stay outside.
Ardyn laid with his arms and legs spread out across the table. The incorporeal blades ran not just through him, but through the tabletop as well. Embedded into the ceiling above of him was something that looked like the gaping maw of an extraction unit, possibly designed to suck the miasma out of the room. If that was the case, it had had very limited success, obviously.
Prompto moved around the table and found that Ardyn was conscious.
His face was devoid of the usual confident smile, instead he looked worn-out and unfocused.
"Oh, not you again." He sighed deeply upon noticing Prompto's presence before turning his head away. "Please, spare me your ramblings. Can't you let a man suffer in peace?"
Prompto could not think of anyone Ardyn might confuse him with, but he clearly was not seeing straight.
"No, Ardyn, it's me, Prompto."
The former chancellor glanced at him again and a sceptical frown formed on his face. "Prompto?"
He nodded affirmingly at Ardyn. "That's right. I'm Noct's friend, remember?"
"Prom," Val hissed at him from the open door. She looked into the room with a mix of concern and confusion in her expression. "There's some information here about the Adagium. You know, like that monster from the Insomnian legend? You don't think the Niffs have actually …?"
Prompto waved a hand into her direction. "Yea yea yeah I know."
A flicker of realization crossed Ardyn's face and his eyes widened. "You shouldn't be here," he said to Prompto.
"Yeah, but now that I'm here, I'm gonna get you out. You just gotta tell me how."
From up close, he got a better look at Bahamut's swords, but he was still not sure he could simply touch the blades, let alone pull them out. They had no physical form. As far as Prompto knew, they consisted of nothing but magic, much like Noct's Royal Arms or Ardyn's spectral weapons.
"No, you misunderstand. The darkest secrets of this facility might shatter your very soul and mind." Ardyn's surprised expression turned into a glare and his voice took on a foreboding tone. "Leave the way you came, lest this place will destroy you."
It took a lot out of Prompto to pretend the implication did not send shivers down his spine.
"Fat chance, my friend." Trying to stay optimistic, he climbed with his knees onto the table. If Ardyn was not going to tell him how it was done he simply had to try. Prompto reached for the sword piercing Ardyn's chest and almost felt it materialise between his fingers as his hands closed around the handle. Holding his breath, he yanked the blade out. The sword shattered and the miasma pooling around Ardyn's wound solidified back into skin and cloth.
Prompto moved onto the sword stuck in his shoulder.
"You must be out of your mind," Ardyn mumbled, looking up at him.
"Where I come from, we don't leave allies in need hanging."
He found his grip on the second sword much faster. With another pull, another wound closed. Once Prompto had the sword in his right arm removed, too, Ardyn stirred. He motioned for Prompto to jump off the table before he sat up by himself with some effort. One by one, the remaining swords shattered the more Ardyn moved.
For a few more seconds, he sat on the edge of the table, seemingly trying to gather his strength and bearings. The excess miasma in the room dispersed. Seeing Ardyn so sore and quiet made Prompto feel even more uncomfortable than he already did.
"You're welcome I guess?" he said, trying to break the silence.
Meanwhile, Val entered the room. "Okay, so that happened," she brought out.
Ardyn shot her a suspicious glare. "Who's she?"
"That's Valyria, she's …"
Before Prompto could even begin to explain their relation, Ardyn got up from the table and walked past them out of the room. "On second thought, I haven't got the mind for introductions right now," he simply said.
Val raised an eyebrow at Prompto. "Is he always this polite?"
"He's usually much politer," he tried to assure her. "At the first meeting, at least."
When Prompto and Val joined Ardyn in the corridor, the former chancellor stood there with his hands on his hips looking thoughtfully at a locked door leading deeper into the complex.
"And who is he again?", she asked.
"That's Ardyn Izunia. He's …" Prompto was almost about to call him Noct's gruncle, but reconsidered, feeling that it might upset Ardyn in a way he was going to regret. "He's a bit difficult to explain, really."
Valyria blinked at Prompto wide-eyed. "Izunia as in the Niff Chancellor Izunia? The friggin' Niff Chancellor? The same man who practically forced that phoney peace treaty onto Regis?"
"That's the one!" Prompto saw Val's brow crease in irritation and quickly adjusted his tone of voice. "Uhm, like I said, difficult to explain. He's switched sides since."
"Which reminds me," Ardyn wondered aloud. "I have yet to file in my resignation form. There's a pesky little clause in my contract that requires it to be signed in blood, I am afraid." He glanced over his shoulder with a sinister smirk on his face. "But, first things first."
And here is the appearance of blackorchid1004's OC character Valyria, who is also present in her stories ("Sword and Sketches" and "Fire and Fear") over on AO3 as well as in my comedic one-shot collection "Lessons to be Learned". I hope I've done her justice.
Obviously, this is not all there is to Episode Prompto, but since this chapter is big enough already, I'm putting in a break here while I figure out how Prompto's revelation and the confrontation with Verstael goes.
I also would like to point out, as I did in one of my previous author's comments, that there exists a mod for the Windows Edition of FFXV that lets you play as Ardyn in the main game, which is pure genius if you ask me! So I recommend you go and check out the YT videos by user Fell Cleave.