Wednesday, Woden's (Odin's) Day. This is more a reference to the Hanged Man aspect of the guy, power and knowledge derived from suffering, than the TriAce version. Dr. Leingod gets this one, of course.
I'm going to take this opportunity to recommend Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones. Other than that, there isn't really much to say here. While Dr. Leingod is certainly very capable of making with the speculation and world-changing technobabble, this is the midpoint of a Xanatos Gambit. I'm not having to write him coming up with stuff on the fly, unlike Luthor. The game really should have done more with Dr. Leingod. One more instance of They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot...
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Ocean, 3 or otherwise, Tri-Ace and the other rightful owners do. No infringement intended or money made.
Oh, regarding Welch: she's actually a beta tester/employee, fairly low ranking but Luther does get her reports. Welch may show up in 4d at some point, helping Blair, but that remains to be seen. There's a game, I think it's called Creatures, that was kind of an early Spore. Some players noticed that even though the creatures shouldn't really have been able to differentiate between types of food in the coding, occassionally they'd get one that would really like apples or something, or show some other little sign of personality, maybe luck and maybe how the AI experienced the game. Ashton's fondness for barrels fits very well with that, really. The AI inhabitants of the Eternal Sphere manifesting personality, having likes and dislikes because of how their lives played out that aren't just programming. The quirk stuck in Luther's mind when he read Welch's report, so he didn't actually pick the name of a generic hero, he picked one that symbolized that the people of the Sphere were individuals. The last name Fords was just chosen for what it means, a nice little metaphor. The word is even English. Think about the similarities and differences between fords and bridges.
...and I thought I didn't really have anything to say in the A/Ns here. Well, not anything relevant to the chapter, which I suppose is still true.
"Don't think of it as your daughter getting hit with sticks, think of it as government-sponsored daycare."
"Just because you put Fayt in kendo classes almost as soon as he could walk… You're right," he admitted. "It's probably a good idea. Martial arts teach self-discipline, and she should have a means of self-defense other than…" Damn, he'd almost slipped and mentioned her powers aloud. "I don't want to keep a gun in the house."
"A staff is a good choice of weapon for her." Staffs were the weapon of choice for a lot of symbology users, since they doubled as weapon and shield, and so a lot of them were made with built-in patterns and symbols to enhance the power of symbology. Connection theoretically meant that she'd have access to every single spell and type of power, although obviously the more they studied her, the greater the risk, not just that the government would notice the experiments but that she would figure out what was going on, realize that she had this power and start experimenting herself. Sophia was an energetic, sociable girl who was always doing something with someone whenever she wasn't stuck alone in an empty house.
Honestly, letting her stay a latchkey kid would probably have been smarter than letting her get out and do things, since the fewer people she grew close to the fewer that might find out, but Robert couldn't blame her father for feeling guilty that she got so lonely and bored. Tossing all the craft supplies in the world at her (painting, sewing, clay) didn't make up for not having parents or anyone else at home, creative streak or not. Robert couldn't send Fayt over there all the time, even though when Fayt went over to Sophia's house all the time (and vice versa) he didn't ask if he could go over to his classmates' houses. The other thing Robert had done to prevent his son from having much of a social life was install a VR room for his birthday, the kind where you stood there and everything was projected around you, on the grounds that the games would help him practice his kendo.
Ryoko had been willing to go on hiatus and as good as sacrifice her career to look after Fayt, and with him the fate of the universe, but Dr. Esteed's wife was too important where she was, just like Robert himself, even though it meant her husband and Sophia barely ever saw her.
"And the alternative is hiring another babysitter for Wednesday nights."
"See? This kills too birds with one stone. He's teaching the beginners' class, Sophia would just be starting out: he wouldn't let her get hurt."
Dr. Esteed rolled his eyes. "Of course not, that would hinder his ability to pick up chicks," he replied, only mostly joking. Half the department knew that was why Ashton, who normally assisted or taught in the upper-level staff fighting courses – he'd even been in a few competitions and gotten a minor scholarship for it as an undergrad – had let himself be volunteered for the Wednesday night intro course at the student rec center, even if the normal instructor was off on paternity leave. This course was the one that involved people who were there for the exercise as well as gamers and people who legitimately wanted to learn to fight with a staff, either for self-defense or because they were headed for fieldwork offworld, the way Ashton was.
As soon as he finished his degree and got someone to fund The Grant Proposal, anyway. Obviously you'd best be a competition-level fighter if you intended to try to capture a demigod.
Regardless, a lot of people headed for hazardous field research or who just needed to focus on their studies and careers had 'no permanent relationships' (maybe three dates, max) as their ground rule, both for their own protection (so they didn't fall in love) and because they didn't want their partners to get too attached and wreck their dreams, either. Ashton was smart, funny, had the advantage of being a little exotic and was an athlete, but that was actually something of a hindrance in picking up fellow grad students: his female colleagues were a little too worried that they might get attached. Robert had to admit that using him to watch Fayt and Sophia on campus occasionally did Ashton more harm than good: the young man would make a good father someday.
He generally dated seniors who had been on campus long enough they knew how it worked and wouldn't allow themselves to get attached because they were headed for careers or grad positions at other universities, but the school year was just starting and being a TA meant he had to avoid people who might want to take one of his classes, too.
Still, having Sophia attend his class at the rec center would help his chances there, so Robert had known he wouldn't object. "If you hire another babysitter, you'd have to get them a security clearance in advance." When your projects included working on the Federation's most advanced weapons systems, they made sure you were careful.
"I can ask the grad students who already have them." They both knew Dr. Esteed was just playing devil's advocate. Grad students were smart. They picked up oddities. They would view this as an opportunity to get close to him and advance their academic careers: that was how it worked. He couldn't just hire and dump. Any grad student he used to pinch hit would not end up being a temporary addition to Sophia's social circle, and he hadn't gone over the options in advance.
It wasn't as though Ashton had dumped this on Dr. Esteed. They'd both heard from different gossip sources that the intro staff fighting course was suddenly getting an influx of mainly female interest and why, he just hadn't thought about the time and made the connection. If this was an ordinary babysitting job, which Ashton obviously thought it was, they wouldn't have been paranoid enough to need more than a month's warning in advance.
It was Dr. Esteed's own fault he hadn't figured out what it all meant. "We both know this is the best thing for her. You should have thought about this years ago." When Robert had nudged him to do something to get her trained in something that she could apply to her powers when the time came.
"You're insufferable, you know that?" It should be illegal to be right all the time the way Robert was. He still didn't say it with any real venom.
"Being this brilliant is a curse." Robert's smile was more wry twist of the lips than smile. The Voice might have said that it wasn't his fault they were all going to die, that the research would have been performed eventually, but everyone knew that Robert had single-handedly advanced symbological research by decades. Perhaps even centuries.
The world might not be ending because of him per se, but he'd cut decades off its lifespan. Single-handedly hastened its death.
"I just don't want her getting hurt."
"You can't keep her at home forever."
"I know, but… This is your fault, you know. You're the one who told Fayt that she would be taking staff classes." And then Fayt had been all excited that he and Sophia could finally start playfighting together and it would be practice (instead of causing him to get yelled at for 'bullying' by Dr. Esteed even though Sophia stuck up for him), and gotten Sophia excited, and when he'd come home and opened the door she'd run up and hugged him for letting her go to Ashton's class.
"I said she might be."
Dr. Esteed gave his friend, colleague and conspirator of long standing a look.
"I know, I know. But it works out. Fayt's classes are also on Wednesdays after school, Ryoko can get Sophia there and back too."
"Did you just set this up now because there's no way I can say no to Sophia when she's so excited, or because you wanted her attending this class?"
Dr. Leingod hesitated.
"Do you think we would be having this conversation if I hadn't swept my office for bugs?" Honestly. "I'm not stupid, Robert."
"He knows what it's like to perform symbology, not just study it. He's not afraid to think outside the box." Capturing gods? "He should be able to handle the truth. He can fight, and none of the rest of us can, although Fayt's progressing and now Sophia will finally get started. He can keep his mouth shut and he's loyal. There are smarter people," true. This was the most prestigious university in the PanGalactic Federation. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a supergenius, and very few people were smarter than Robert Leingod. "But he's hard working, doesn't know when to give up and we both saw his file."
Ashton Fords' family had been traveling folk, the kind that lived in a starship and traveled from planet to planet. Obviously, that made it a bit difficult to do well in school and create a good enough academic record, so he'd been sent to boarding school, which was fortunate for him, because it meant that he hadn't been onboard when a half-asleep traffic controller had ended up getting his family's ship pulverized by a cargo supership, and fortunate for them because he'd been raised in a large, extended family situation and clearly missed that.
Ryoko had adored the young man since the day Robert came home chuckling and told her about the dressing down Ashton had given a couple other students for not cleaning up after themselves in the lab, and he had indeed managed to get Fayt to shut up and just do his chores when no amount of cajoling or threats had.
He'd gotten attached to Fayt, Sophia: all of them. Of course, that was a danger as well as an asset.
"Do you do want to let him in on it too? Eventually," Dr. Esteed added when he saw Robert's look of disapproval.
"No," he said firmly. "I don't. Ideally, we'll wait until Fayt and Sophia are adults," which, in Robert's world, meant 'have gotten a doctorate in something that isn't a humanity,' although Sophia was probably going to end up doing something artistic. "With the maturity to handle all of this. Then we go on sabbatical, somewhere out of the way, and drop by Styx on the way back." After they'd been trained.
"We both know it's not going to be that simple."
"We can hope. We've kept this under the Federation's radar, haven't we?"
"The voice was aware that this power could be dangerous."
"And hopefully it hasn't been paying attention to the details of what we have done." It wouldn't have given them all these years to prepare for the confrontation otherwise, right? "It already knew we were dangerous, and it had made up its mind about what it was going to do when we talked to it. It said that who we were didn't matter," essentially. "So hopefully it doesn't care about us or what we might come up with. If it weren't stupidly arrogant, it wouldn't have given us that warning."
"It was meant as a kindness." To give them time to say goodbye, time to live. To tell them not to blame themselves.
"Yes. Kindness. Like patting the head of a dog you're going to put to sleep because it bit someone who provoked it. Oh wait: we hadn't done that yet."
"But we are going to." It had known them that well.
"Were we given a choice?" When the other option was to roll over and die, and the two children that had already been born with them? No.
Of course, Dr. Esteed's daughter hadn't been born yet. He'd brought her into this world knowing its fate. Knowing that he was going to have to use her as a weapon. No wonder he acted like he wanted to keep her in a world of sunshine and kittens sometimes. No: sunlight had UV and kittens had claws.
Honestly…
"I know I'm not doing any good by trying to coddle her," Dr. Esteed said, recognizing that expression and warning Robert to drop it with his own. "But it would be a good idea to have someone who can be backup, if we need it. Isn't that why Sophia was born in the first place?"
They'd given Fayt the most important gene, Destruction, and Maria the versatile Alteration in case the rest of them were caught and she had to do it alone. Sophia had been given Connection so that she could get Fayt to the Creator or find Maria, if it came down to that.
"I'm not saying that it isn't good to have a backup plan. But we can't consider telling him part of the plan." They couldn't make plans that assumed they'd have him as backup. "Every person that knows or has any chance of finding it out is a potential leak. One leak, and everyone dies. I like Ashton too, but we have to remember that he is a liability." He leaned forward, looked hard at Dr. Esteed before admitting, "But there may be worse liabilities, and it's worth the effort to try to minimize his. Still: what happens if he finds out right now? That we experimented on Fayt and Sophia?"
"He'd report us to child services and the Federation military." Who would see to it that the untrustworthy, potentially traitorous researchers… were certainly in no position to train their living weapons and bring them to the Time Gate.
"Exactly. We wouldn't be able to stop him without killing him, because he cares about the two of them." He was Expellian, too. He'd understand the magnitude of what they'd done to their children, the way this could ruin their lives by causing others to fear them, in ways Dr. Esteed didn't and even Dr. Leingod might not. "We can't even think about it now. We have to wait until he's more worried about what the Federation would do to them than what we already have and might do more of. Until he trusts us enough to hear us out even after finding out about acts of child abuse that make…"
"Enough!" He couldn't stand thinking about it. "You're right, you're right, I give in. Sophia will attend the classes." He sighed. "I don't know why I bother arguing with you."
"It's not a crime to want to protect your only child."
"Oh?"
"Well, it shouldn't be." Even though he'd had to do terrible things to protect Fayt, to him and two other children. He could never forgive himself for what he'd done, but he could never regret it, either. Not if Fayt lived because of it.
He envied Ryoko for being able to go on hiatus from her professorship to be with Fayt as he grew up. He couldn't do that, not given the political situation. The Federation needed his expertise, and when someone was needed they had leeway. Power to use for negotiations. Access to research funding, labs and equipment to try to find out everything he could, anything he could that would help make this work.
Because this was his son, and the daughters of his friends. All of this was his idea.
And his fault.