Chapter twenty-three: Mist guns and conversations between a father and his son
Author note: I will come out on record and say that I never liked Reddas, so be warned of that prejudice. Also I never thought that Balthier and Fran were really ignorant of ReddasZecht's) true past -it just seemed too improbable. Anon Anon let's get on.
Fran hissed in recognition as the dusky skinned, bald man with the double swords approached them, stalking like a panther.
Balthier turned from waiting impatiently for the party to exit the elevator to see what troubled her.
' Reddas.' Zecht
Every time Balthier referred to the pirate king of Balfonheim by his assumed name she heard the echo of his true one in the spiteful curl of his lip.
None of the rest of the party heard him, or had noticed the older man, a former Judge Magister, approach. As the man attacked Basch, then apologised in polite fashion before running off, Balthier and Fran both kept quiet.
Reddas, equally, had maintained the pretence that he did not recognise them; though their association these last two years had been extensive and not entirely pleasant.
Balthier had once remarked that Reddas had no right attempting to steal his thunder by turning from Judgehood to piracy, especially as he, Balthier, had beaten the man to it by four years.
Fran considered that Balthier was hardly likely to be impressed that Reddas had also taken it upon himself to be avenged on Cid at much the same time that Balthier had.
For her part, Fran thought that all the help they could muster against Cid was for the better, though her personal feelings towards Reddas, as much as she allowed herself any at all, were mixed.
Dr Cid was teetering on top of a plinth in front of his huge, wall to ceiling windows, crowing mockingly at Reddas when the party stormed in.
Balthier, unable to keep quiet mocked his father with honeyed distain.
' Consider your bones old man.'
Fran watched Cid carefully. She had never seen the ghost of Balthier's past before and would confess herself, if only in the privacy of her own mind, more than a little curious.
The man, dressed in Archadian finery of red frock coat trimmed in blue, could have been a prophecy of Balthier's future, so much alike they were.
'Pirate scum, what brings you here?'
Yet the venom in his mockery, so much reminiscent of the carrion birds that pecked the flesh from dead men's bones left to rot on battlefields, did not hide the quiver of deeper emotion behind the glassy eyes.
'Treasure old man, what else?'
Balthier extended a hand in a show of nonchalance. Fran supposed that only she, with her keen sight, could see that hand shake.
'We'll take the Dust Shade if you please.'
It was the wrong thing to say, Balthier pushing his bravado too far, as he was want to do. Cid laughed, acidic venom dripping from his words as he dismissed his son from his thoughts.
' That trinket? I thought you above such things.'
And there just for a moment; regret. The whisper of a father who wanted better for his child than the fate he had created for himself.
A whispered conversation with empty air and the mad man's attention turned to the Princess, an even riper target for his incisive, goading mockery.
'A test! A test for Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca!'
Fran's focus during the battle with a triumphant, maniacal Dr Cid was solidly maintained upon Balthier.
Who she thought, managed to handle himself with usual self-control despite the pain every blow landed against his father and his contraptions, wrought upon him.
The Rooks, Cid's mechanical playthings, were as deadly as they were phenomenally well made. The laser fire sliced into them all with sickening precision. Fran would have liked opportunity to study their inner workings.
Vaan, Ashe and Basch ripped into the Rooks, while Fran covered Balthier with magick and her simple presence as his father's laughing fury was wrought upon him one bullet at a time.
Penelo worked her magicks and took pot-shots at the Rooks and Reddas, determined to clear his name for the sin of Nabudis' destruction by the shedding of Cid's blood, charged the man endlessly.
' Enough man!'
Balthier threw the older man backwards bodily as he attempted once more to pierce the protective paling protecting Dr Cid.
' Can't you see he's laughing at you? The Rooks are the key.'
Balthier turned to take on one of the Rooks, slicing into it with platinum blade.
Fran saw in the corner of her eye Cid's twisted smile as he took aim and fired at his son's exposed and unprotected back.
Fran tackled Blathier to the ground and the shot went over their heads. Both rolled to their feet in an instant no time for any reaction beyond the physical.
When the first Rook fell and the paling around Cid fluctuated, it was Balthier's turn to gloat. Venom for venom exchanged.
'Always hiding behind your toys? A shame if something were to happen to them.'
Cid seemed focused in his entirety on eradicating his son. He cackled inanities and mocking hints to the Princess, never addressing his son in anything other than a veiled off-hand manner, yet his violence was directed at Balthier and Fran exclusively.
Cid had eyes only for his son. Fran, closing in once the paling had lifted with the destruction of the last Rook, caught the scents rising from Cid. They made her head spin.
Joy and bitterness, amusement and disappointment, curiosity and rage all twisted and corrupted by the maddening scent of Mist burning in the man's blood.
Cid turned to her with eyes that were glassy with his own inward perspective, clouded by ambition that had robbed the doctor of his sense of self and the world around him.
Fran raised her axe to strike a blow and Cid smirked at her, his heavy set face still baring the faded mark of features she recognised; the similarities between father and son disturbing.
'And who might you be, Viera?'
Cid asked in reasonable tones, even as he struck Fran across the face hard enough to send her to the ground.
Reddas ran at Cid from behind and the man turned, informed by the Mist that permeated his being of imminent attack, to face the former Judge Magister.
Balthier was at Fran's side helping her up immediately. They stood watching his father warily. Balthier's eyes darkened with a maelstrom of conflicting emotion as Reddas and Cid exchanged blows.
Fran knew Balthier did not know to whose aid he wished to go, as Ashe and Basch entered the fray, laying into Cid.
Penelo ran up alongside the two of them as Vaan joined the knot of fighters who surrounded Cid.
'Should I take my shot?' Penelo asked fearfully, eyes darting to Balthier.
Though Fran did not think Balthier had openly addressed his past with either Vaan or Penelo it had become something of an open secret since the streetear Jules had deliberately let slip Balthier's birth name in Archades.
Balthier glanced at Penelo, distractedly, 'Wait.'
Balthier shook his head sharply, watching as his father parried and deflected the blows against him with unnatural ease, the smile never leaving his face.
' Something's wrong. He's up to something.'
Balthier started moving towards the fight, Fran nodded to Penelo and they too followed at his heel. Balthier held his blade pointed to the floor, not upraised to land a blow.
Suddenly Cid exploded into motion, knocking over Vaan and breaking free of his knot of attackers, dashing heavily, for he was a thicker set man than his son, across his chambers before wheeling on his attackers, from a compartment set into the wall he pulled out a huge, monstrous gun.
'Down!'
Balthier yelled to the others, grabbing Fran and Penelo and hauling them all to the floor. Fran heard Dr Cid's wicked, delighted cry as a huge mechanism whirred into life and Dr Cid fired his Mist powered gun towards the massive deflector screeens that had descended from the ceiling.
'It pains me to inform you that your time here is done!'
Fran heard the thunderous roar of the weapon firing and the heated, acrid scent of Mist created via artificial nethicite. It smelled like chemicals, hot and acidic and wrapped around Fran's mind, her vision flashing red and angry black.
She felt it as the beams of light and energy bounced off the deflector panels and ricocheted around the room, zigging over her head, scorching heat stinging her back. She thought she heard the Princess scream and then there was nought but explosions.
Fran leapt to her feet as soon as the monstrous weapon had discharged its ammunition, Balthier at her side.
' Vaan!'
Penelo ran back across the chamber where Vaan lay bleeding and unconscious on the floor, the Princess equally still near by. Basch remained conscious but heavily wounded, he would fight no more.
Fran launched herself forward. Dr Cid was showing signs of weakness, his scent fluctuating with pain, his clothing tattered and bloody. They must make sure he did not use the gun again.
Cid was smiling and rubbing his hands together in glee. 'Yes, yes, excellent trial-run. The T-28 Tokahawk will be ready for immediate distribution to our ground troops.'
' Cid!'
Balthier's shout was sharp and demanded attention. Dr Cid looked over clearly surprised to see anyone still standing.
'Ffamran? Come home for a visit have you? Venat told me of your note.'
His father asked him calmly, moving from the deflector machine towards his son.
She saw Balthier flinch, both at the use of his birth name and the sudden change in Dr Cid's demeanour, almost as if he had forgotten in his madness that he had been fighting his son all along.
Fran took the moment the distraction afforded her to bring her battle axe down on the control panel for the deflectors, rendering the lethal weapon inoperative.
'Indeed. I was sorry to miss you, Cid. I suppose you were busy masterminding genocide, hmm?'
Balthier kept his sword raised at an angle across his body as Cid advanced on him; his words as dry and lightly indifferent as his father's had been kindly.
Cid stopped, blinking in surprise, the gesture so like his son that Fran paused as she advanced on the man, axe upraised.
Cid shook his head, annoyed his malice returning, like a shroud of hate and delusion dropping over him.
' You cannot understand what I do here. That I work for the good of all man.'
Balthier cocked his head to the side and spoke almost conversationally.
' Is that so? I'm sure all those who died in Nabudis and on the Eighth Fleet appreciate your efforts on their behalf, old man.'
'Ivalice will be free from those who would keep man from his true destiny.' Cid snapped.
But then that fleeting softening of his features returned, as if Cid were two people within the one body. Father and mad man side by side. When he next spoke Cid sounded frustrated, not cruel.
'You have not changed, still the callow youth. You could never grasp the wider picture.'
Balthier allowed himself a snide smile as he shot a lightening quick glance Fran's way. Do it nowHis eyes said. Strike while he is distracted.
'The devil is in the detail, Father. Perhaps you have spent too long looking at the big picture and you have forgotten that?'
In the end it was not Fran who levied the blow that ended the battle, but Penelo.
The rapport of her gun rang loud across the marble floored chamber as the shot staggered Cid, Mist oozing from him as his nethicite corrupted body attempted to heal itself.
'How could you? How could you do this to yourself? How could fall so far?' Balthier's entreaty to his father went unheard.
'That's for Vaan, you bastard.' Penelo hissed heatedly.
Ashe, revived by Penelo was conscious and standing when Cid made his exit, his venat making their appearance known. The Mist entity that had possessed Mjrn; that had infested Bergen.
Cid, much as his son, needed to have the last word. He turned his maligning, distaining wit on Ashe. Taunting her with deliberate manipulations and coaxing hints to travel to Giruvegan.
'I myself to Giruvegan go. Catch me if you dare.'
All the party, in various states of disrepair watched as Cid flew away on his hover craft, Balthier turned to Ashe and Fran both with a long suffering sigh that did not quite hide his relief that his father still drew breath enough to mock them.
'Hate it when he does that.'