New Year, everybody and so far I'm on track for my resolution! Today, I'm going to adress something about the FFTA fanfic community. We're a pretty small group of writers, and because of that, we tend to have our own little specialties. Besides unfunny humor, my main thing's my love of all things mechanical. I like machinery, and I try my best to sneak some of that stuff in when I can. I had a field day with this chapter, since it's basically a nerd version of the Breakfast Club. Anyway, I hope you all will enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
When a mage or magic user of some power dies, there are a few things that happen to his spells and studies. His research must be given over to public acess, or, if he chooses to keep it secret, he can give them to the government for safe keeping. The Committee of Secrets was made so that those spells that the magic user wishes not to be known aren't. Of course, mages are a selfish and suspicious lot near the end of their lives. Years of rivals, family members, and government thugs attempting to wrest their knowledge from them leaves them paranoid and loath to part with anything. Many of these old men and ladies of magic keep in Cadoan, where governmental encroachment is impossible. Most will hand their knowledge down to a trustworthy relative who doesn't mind spending the rest of their time in Cadoan. What's dangerous is when a magic user is away from the nu mou city and into the jurisdiction of Katzu or his secret police.
Of course, stealing from dead mages is nothing new. It's a well known fact that the Southern Region prison complex, constructed in Cyril by Katzu Cross, was only possible through the confiscated notes of the then recently deceased Ezel Berbier.
There weren't too many inmates in Katzu's paradise prison. Just twelve, from the look of it. Most all were old nu mou, talking to each other and exchanging papers and books, with a few people from all the other races as well. There was a proud bangaa in military fatigues reading a book beside a slightly smaller but equally serious member of his species, two humans and a moogle laughing at yet another table, and the most beautiful vierra Beth had ever seen, sitting by herself and eating nothing.
"So, Beth, let me introduce you to the group." Veronika took her new friend by the hand and guided her to one of the tables situated in the oblong room they had just been escorted into by the guard. Sitting around the table were the three laughing boys she saw coming in. They waved as Veronika came to their table.
"Beth, this is Sunny Brentham," a young man with shaggy black hair nodded to Beth, "his friend Grigori Genson," a towering brown boy smiled waved, "and Roger Finn," a little moogle, even smaller than most of his kin waved above his breakfast plate. "Boys, this is Bethany Winston, a new inmate."
"It's a pleasure to meet a Winston, kupo," Roger squeaked.
Beth looked first at the colossus happily buttering a thick piece of rye bread in front of her. His dark brown hair stuck out everywhere, upon his jaw was a tangled wiry beard, and he had these massive cut crystal spectacles that made his eyes look twice as big as they actually were. All she could think of to say was, "Grigori's a bangaa name, kupo."
Grigori grinned at this. "Yeah, well, Sunny and I were born around Sprohm. My dad was a stone mason, worked with a team of bangaa doing fancy stonework for the city buildings and what all. When I was born, all my mum's friends, who were bangaa themselves, said I should be named Grigori. I was born premature on his day of honor, you see. The bangaa are big on omens and stuff, and it's a fairly common name with them. Anyway, it's better than being called Sunny, eh?"
The other boy grunted and continued to eat his breakfast. Beth decided she'd better get to know Roger a bit more as the two humans were odd, even by human standards.
"Well guys," Veronika said finally, "I just wanted to introduce the new girl before we get something to eat. See you in a second."
"I could see why you wanted a new roomie, kupo," Beth said as they made their ways to the steaming tureens that lined the dining hall.
Veronika smiled. "Aw, don't be too hard on the boys. They're nice enough."
"One talks way too much, the other's a mute, kupo! What about that Roger guy, kupo?"
"Oh, Roger's a sweetie. He came in around the time that I did. I'm not sure what he did to get here, but he was living in Cadoan, apprenticed to Oleff Vogin."
"The Crimson Mage Oleff Vogin, kupo?" Beth asked, astounded at having someone apprenticed to the famed mage. "I specialized in the field he started! His modeling of magical combustion was one of the cornerstones of my thesis! His laws of magic based thermodynamics were revolutionary!" The Winstons have often been divided into two groups, the scholars and the business moguls. Bethany really was a professional student at heart, and it had been a long time since she had been able to "talk shop" with someone.
"You two will get along just fine, then," Veronika smiled as she put chopped apples into her oatmeal. "Roger and the others will be happy to meet yet another metamagical physics geek to talk with."
"Another, kupo?"
Veronika laughed. "What did you think the other two did to get in here? I can assure you, they don't come from good families."
"I dunno, kupo. Revolutionaries, I guess?"
"Actually, yes. They both wrote a heavily anti-establishment newsletter, and Grigori was an author of numerous penny dreadfuls, mainly about revolutionaries and government rebellions. Did you ever hear of an author named Georgie Sharps?"
"That was him, kupo?" Beth said, incredulous at this revelation. She almost flung her mighty stack of pancakes into the air in surprise. "I read his stuff through college! It was schlock mostly, but it was fun to read, kupo. So why are they here, not rotting away in some governmental prison?"
"Ask them," Veronika answered, pouring herself a cup of tea and returning to the table.
Beth caught up and sat down at the table. Sunny and Grigori had pretty much finished their breakfast, and there were papers strewn between them. Taking a look, Beth saw schematics and equations carefully drafted onto the plans with a professional craftsmanship. And here she was about to stake the two as a couple of worthless rabble rousers.
"You two are engineers, kupo?" she exclaimed.
Grigori nodded and smiled. "Yup. Got my vellum from the Sprohm Engineering Academy, fourth in my class. Sunny here got first, the freak. I majored in kinetics and thermodynamics, especially the fluid properties of various magically treated gasses. Sunny here probably had more patents than any student coming out of that school. Brilliant metallurgist, this guy." He playfully punched his buddy in the arm, and Sunny just about smiled in acknowledgement. You could almost see it, around the eyes.
Beth was impressed. Sprohm Academy wasn't an easy college to get a degree in, especially in hard science. "And you actually wrote the 'Tales of Vera Blackgate and the Ulei River Rats' series, kupo?"
Grigori raised an eyebrow and grinned. "A fan of my work, eh? You know, truth be told, writing's a lot more fun than engineering in some ways. I don't end up dreaming in numbers after a writing session, for one. Unfortunately, Katzu would rather have me design the steam pipe layout for airship engines than write a novella, but waddaya do, eh? At least they feed us decent here. I mean, I have a cousin who ran arms to revolutionaries up in Bierlond and let me tell you, when he got caught…"
As Grigori continued blabbing on, Beth finally decided that while her two new human acquaintances were quite odd, they weren't bad as she had thought they were. I mean, engineers aren't exactly normal people anyway. She was actually rather surprised she'd judged their character so harshly. Did she do this with everyone, she wondered? "Really, kupo? So what happened to him after that?"
"Managed to escape, thank Adramalech. Sold the weapons, bought a charter to Cadoan, and has been a fugitive there ever since. Anyway, why are you here?"
"Why do you swear to the bangaa totema, kupo?" Beth's image of Grigori went right back to weirdo status.
"Hee. There aren't too many human churches around Sprohm, you know? Heck, there aren't many humans.The days of Sprohm being a major hub for clanners ended under Katzu's reign, most people try to get out of there as quick as possible if they have to come. My family went to a little Saint Markus church. I was baptized by a bangaa bishop and taught Grigorian theology in Sunday school. When I kick it, I figure Adramalech has a better claim on my soul than Mateus. Plus it'll mean that I'll be able to go to bangaa heaven. I understand they have a lot more fun than the humans. Theres is all light and winged people."
"Umm," Beth wasn't sure what to say to that. "That's good then, kupo. Anyway, I was on my uncle's blockade runner, some Black Eagles captured me and a sage named Roland trying to cross the border to Roda, and here I am."
"You're going to have to go into more detail than that, kupo!" Roger said. He'd also finished with his breakfast and was listening interestedly to the conversation.
Beth smiled and gave a condensed version of her adventures with Arthur, from the moment she was thrown into her bangaa friend's midriff all the way to her and Roland being captured, then to her introduction to Veronika. The three boys laughed. While Beth had placed the trio pretty firmly in the "weirdo" stable, they had pigeon holed their new friend as "a bit uptight".
"While very amusing," Roger said, "There are a few odd points in your story, kupo."
"I personally liked the part where you hid in a wine barrel," Veronika said with a chuckle. "I'm surprised it didn't stain your fur."
"I'm bright pink from the top of my stomach to my toes, kupo," Beth returned. Veronika perked up her eyebrows interestedly. " Anyway, what's odd, kupo?"
"No, he's right," Grigori said, stroking his trangled beard. "First off, Black Eagles on a blockade run? That's pretty extreme."
"Well, we were fugitives, kupo."
"No, that's understandable that they'd want to get you, kupo. But why use Eagles? If they knew a blockade runner was coming, they could have sent a pigeon to the border and bulked up the patrol. Less money then sending three Black Eagle ships across the continent, and the end result is the same, kupo."
"Yeah, the way that they did that denotes that they wanted to take someone in without the rest of the world knowing. And no offense to your family, but if some rich girl was to get caught running the border in her uncle's ship, they'll just think you were playing silly buggers with your family's money. Even if they were using you to control your family, the preparations that they met were pretty unnecessary. Hey Roger, do you think I got the heat transfer formula right on the new engine's superheater designs?" Easily segueing from Beth's story back to engines, Grigori passed a parchment to his moogle friend for perusal.
" Looks like it, kupo. The spiral design for the superheater tube's a lot more efficient, as is sending it throught the furnace as opposed to having an external heat source for the thing. If it works like it looks like it should here, efficiency'll go through the roof kupo. But those tubes are awful thin for the stresses you're putting on it, from your specifications. Do you think they'll handle the steam, kupo?"
"Hey, ask Sunny about the pipes, the alloy's his territory. I'm just keeping the steam hot and flowing in the right direction."
"Oooh, can I see?" Beth asked. She pored over the engine designs interestedl until she got to a little foot note on the fuel. "Who made the fuel compound for this, kupo?"
"That was my work," Veronika said a bit smugly. "I was quite proud with finding that formula. You can make fuel burn hot or you can make it burn long, but it's hard to make it do both like I did."
"Uhuh," Beth said, looking at the paper again. "And who made the fuel's combustion model?"
"That would be me, kupo," Roger said. "Is there anything wrong?"
"Actually, yeah, kupo. You," she pointed to Veronika "have no idea how the combustion modeling process works and left out some key variables. You" she pointed to Roger, "didn't know which variables to use that Veronika gave you and created an effective but highly unwieldy combustion formula, kupo. Here, watch." She took a blank sheet of paper from Grigori's ready hands, and went to work with a pencil also offered by the large fellow. He was grinning ear to ear and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying seeing his friends getting a dressing down. "See, the gasses are the main thing here. The fuel itself is a homologous solid, right kupo? I don't know most of the materials in it, but I'm seeing you used powdered anthracite and white rock oil as the two main things. Lessee, the rock oil was used to discourage air bubbles, kupo? Right, then the main thing you have to worry about is the gas made by these two little fringe substances you have. You put those in to keep the fuel pellets from burning and then dispersing, you want to keep them in one piece so they'll burn long, right? Well look, all this gas is going to build up, and once the pressure reaches a certain amount the molecular energy's going to make the whole thing combust, kupo! This isn't a boiler, it's a time bomb! The main thing I'd recommend would be a decent ventilation system, kupo. Still though, you'll probably waste a lot of heat with that. But that's Grigori's problem, right?" Throughout the entire thing Beth was righting out equations and nixing different letters and symbols in Roger's original formulae. "I think this is a lot simpler for calculations, kupo."
There was silence as everyone looked at Beth. Then they peered at her work. Finally, Sunny looked up and said. "I like her."
Grigori laughed and slapped Beth on the back, misjudging the strength he'd used and flung her out of her seat. "Hee hee, sorry, but physical humor's always the best. Well, my little friend, I'm impressed. You've made probably the two best educated members of our group look like complete fools. Not only that, but you made Sunny open his mouth for something besides stuffing his face. You win."
Veronika was still staring at her. "Well, I see now there's plenty up here," she said patting Beth's head, "and not just up-"
"Watch the hands, kupo!" Beth yelled. "Don't you have a husband?!"
"Bismarck's a very open minded fellow, thank Ultima. Besides, teasing you is fun and easy."
"Aaaand that brings me back to the point I was going to make," Grigori said, slipping back to talking about Beth's capture. "I don't think they went this far out of their way to capture you. You were just a big ol' bonus. No, I'm rather curious as to why they did all this for Roland."
Ahh, wasn't that fun and not at all painfully confusing? Thanks for reading everyone, see you before the end of the month.
