Chapter Twenty-Nine: Going home is as easy as falling off a Chocobo
The old man had a point.
It was disturbing and as much as Balthier tried strenuously to banish the thought it kept cycling back around to the forefront of his mind. Cid might be right.
But, Balthier argued with his own mind, the means could not, ever, justify the ends. Not the way the old man had gone about it.
Had he but told me back then!
But no, Balthier realised with an ironic understanding that twisted his lips in a cold smirk, he would never have believed Cid, would he? He had convinced himself that his father was mad.
Made of it a grand excuse that saved him from having to despise the old man for the life he had forced on him.
Yet the party's sojourn to Giruvegan had opened up a fissure of doubt and question inside Balthier that had never existed before; he did not doubt himself. Until now.
The words of the Occuria echoed in Balthier's mind and the smirk he could not see playing on his own lips twisted into more of a grimace.
The Occuria. Filled with pride in their own impotency, blinded to the fact that they were gods of nothing but worthless history, claiming themselves stewards of said history when all they did was sit idly by and let it happen.
The Occuria appropriated the glory of long dead Hume's and claimed their victories as their own; Balthier felt his lip curl in a sneer that had been known to give even the soldiers of the Imperial army pause, just to think on those creatures.
Yes, Balthier conceded, he could well see how his father would be driven in disgust to oppose the Occuria.
And so Balthier was left to wonder if, all those years ago, he had accompanied his father to Giruvegan as he had asked him to, would he now be standing side by side with Cid and his Venat?
The sky pirate doubted himself, cracks appearing under the layers of self-confidence and bravado that held up the facade of the Leading Man.
Under the weight of questionable foundations built on suddenly unsubstantiated conceits, Ffamran looked out through Balthier's eyes and doubted himself.
Neither facet of the man, the reality or the mask enjoyed the sensation.
Balthier was too caught up in his own quandary of doubt, questions chasing each other by the tail around and around inside his head, that he barely participated in the group's discussion on how to get back to Balfonheim and their dear friend Zecht – pardon – Reddas.
Therefore the trek back through Golmore passed in a blur. He wielded Platinum blade with autonomic efficiency barely noticing his own movements as he pilfered loot from the carcasses of fallen fiends and poorly hidden treasure chests scattered on the route.
Balthier did notice, if only distantly, that Fran walked up front with Ashe and Basch, occasionally her musical lilting voice would drift back to his ears.
Fran appeared to have superseded Balthier's own position and become advisor to her majesty; sharing Basch's opinion that the Occuria should not be trusted.
It was strange that Fran should be so vocal in her opinions, but then, Balthier mused, if anyone was to be against the Occuria and their twisted design it was Fran.
Fran, who was to Balthier, the embodiment of freedom.
Vaan and Penelo were subdued. Balthier suspected that they understood only a small fraction of what was going on but knew enough to realise the magnitude of the mess they had fallen into.
No doubt they were both sorely wishing to run back to Rabanastre as fast as their legs could carry them and never leave her walls again.
Though he would never admit to it, Balthier had a good measure of sympathy for this view.
If the Strahl had been docked nearby he fancied he would be off like a shot flying as far from the Princess and her troubles as the Strahl's Glossair rings could take him.
It was, Balthier found himself thinking with a cynical self-deprecation, all so much easier when his father was nothing more than a dangerous lunatic.
Balthier could lie to himself then quite cheerfully, and tell himself that what he did, taking up arms against his father, he did as much for Cid's sake as his own; saving the man from himself.
Bah. They were all puppets in the end. Cid had led them on a merry dance, dropping the Princess into the Occuria's lap.
And, Balthier, the supposedly free sky pirate, had almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to run his father's gauntlet. Just like the old days.
It was one of those occurrences of blind luck that led to the party stumbling out of the perpetual twilight of Golmore jungle and landing at the feet of Gurdy the travelling Chocobo rancher.
What the cheerfully and extortionately expensive Moogle was doing on the border of the Ozmone Plains and Golmore was a question best left unanswered.
Having decided to make for Rabanastre, the largest city even remotely close to Golmore and the one where the Strahl was docked, the party was unanimously in favour of using what was left of Fran's gambling winnings to hire three Chocobo's.
Balthier was still a million miles away in the past when the arguments began over whom should ride with whom and so when the Princess dragged one of the huge, spindly legged birds over to him and looked at him expectantly he was somewhat at a loss.
'Balthier?'
'Yes Princess?'
'Do you wish to ride in front?'
Penelo and Vaan were squabbling over who would sit in back and who would hold the reins on their bird; the seemingly placid bright yellow creature trilling away while they pushed and shoved each other.
Basch had already gently spurred his mount onwards; Fran sitting with elegant nonchalance on the creatures back looked back at him with a curiously raised eyebrow.
Fran and Basch
Slightly shaken Balthier was forced to admit, if only to himself, he had been seriously remiss in regards to the ever shifting social dynamics of the group that he had missed whatever seismic shift had occurred to create a situation where Basch would ride with anyone but the Princess and Fran would deign to ride with anyone but Balthier.
Shaking his head to clear it and chiding himself vociferously for being so absent minded, which was really hardly becoming of the Leading Man, with its emphasis on leading, Balthier grabbed the reins and hauled himself up on the mount.
Ashe deftly swung herself up behind him, using his arm as leverage and nearly dragging Balthier down off the saddle.
An hour into their long trek to Jahara and Balthier had come to a firm realisation that the Chocobo he and the Princess rode appeared to be in no hurry to go anywhere.
It plodded along with that odd bouncing gait that left one sore and bow legged after any length of time riding, with placid lack of haste.
When Balthier attempted to spur the creature on it simply squarked, turned its head to look at him with an oddly emphatic expression of annoyance in its black beady eyes and continued on at its own interminably steady pace.
Balthier sighed resigning himself to the ignominy of Chocobo travel, fiercely missing the Strahl.
Ahead Vaan and Penelo were having exactly the opposite problem with their mount.
'Trixxy stop – whoaaaaa, Trixxy, whoa!'
Penelo cried yanking on the reins for all she was worth, which only made the sprinting Chocobo, which anyone with any knowledge of Chocobo's could have recognised as an irritable bird, run all the faster.
The mad bird started to leap in the air, as if it thought to take flight, even though Chocobo's do not fly, leaping over bounders and snake pits as it zig-zagged across the Ozmone Plains.
' Basch help!'
Basch had spurred on his and Fran's Chocobo to run alongside the manic bird, Basch leaned over the edge between the two mounts and snagged Trixxy's reins pulling the bird by its bit until the creature eventually slowed.
Fran had reached around Basch's body to take the reins of their own mount as well as making sure that Basch did not fall as Trixxy, determined to run free as -well - as a bird, lurched away from Basch, so that the Knights upper body dangled over the gap between the two at a dangerously precarious angle.
By this point, simply by moving steadily in one direction at unchanging speed, Balthier and Ashe had come up alongside the ludicrous sideshow.
Ashe had begun rummaging around in one of the provisions sacks, tied like ballast bags, to their Chocobo, for a Gysahl green.
' Trixxy! Look!'
Ashe cried sharply, her own tones that of a Princess trained to talk down to man and Chocobo with absolute authority. The maddened bird turned to fix them both with wild button eyes.
'Squark!'
Ashe threw the Gysahl green a few feet in front of the charging Chocobo who skidded to a halt, clawing up the green veldt of the Ozmone Plains as well as unseating both Vaan and Penelo who tumbled over the creatures bent neck as it lowered its head to feed.
' Oooff! There went Vaan.
' Oooow!' And along came Penelo tumbling after, managing to angle her fall so she landed mostly on top of Vaan.
'Peneloooow!'
'Well that was thoroughly entertaining.'
Balthier drawled as Basch dismounted his bird to help the orphans up. When it came time to write the memoirs, Balthier promised himself, this sad episode would not find itself recorded in any manuscript.
'Perhaps we should switch mounts?' Basch suggested politely, keeping a firm grip on Trixxy's reins.
' Yeah.' Vaan nodded his emphatic agreement, rubbing at his lower back where he had hit the ground with quite a thump.
' But this time I'll drive.'
Vaan turned to glare balefully at Penelo who was picking dry grass stems from her hair and rubbing irritably at the grass stains smearing the seat of her pants.
Penelo distained from comment but meekly clambered up after Vaan once the four of them had switched Chocobo's.
The whole incident had been, Balthier concluded superciliously, thoroughly demeaning to all involved.
In fact, Balthier reconsidered the prospect of said memoirs; it might be of more benefit to his legend to leave no record of this whole affair.
The next hour passed in a jolting, bouncing, sedate blur; so uneventful that Balthier thought he might have fallen asleep still loosely holding the reins of this interminably slow creature.
Taking the Chocobo paths cut miles from their journey but made for some exceedingly dull travelling. Balthier was fairly certain he could feel brain cells dying as they plodded ever onwards.
Having absolutely no desire to spend the time thinking and having little will for conversation Balthier was at a loss as to what to do with himself.
Balthier had oft thought that boredom was a fate worse than death.
Too many more miles of this unending drudgery and he may have chance to put this theory to the test. Even the fiends left them alone while they rode.
The Princess having fallen asleep against his back, her cheek nuzzling his shoulder and her arms wrapped around his waist, offered no respite.
Fran engaged in a quiet conversation with Basch (what he wouldn't give to have her hearing now!) meant that his options for some form of mental stimulation were limited and he would sooner shot himself in the foot than partake in any more of Vaan and Penelo's bizarre conversations.
Balthier therefore, having no further options available to stave off mind numbing boredom, or dreaded introspection, fixed a mental picture of the Strahl in his mind over the bland horizon and told himself that soon he would be flying high once more.
It was a sign of how bad things had gotten that Balthier, man of the oft admired and equally cursed silver tongue, could no longer make even himself believe his own lies.