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Oh my fickle muse and writing ability! Why must you waver between abandoning me and fixating on other projects?
Well, it's coming back to me now and that's what matters. I direct you all to the virtual basket of virtual tomatoes I have right here which you may choose to throw at me in a vengeance seeking manner for my absence. But be informed that, as I am an air elemental/blue ghost lady, the tomatoes will most likely fly right through me and hit Chase in the face. Poor boy.
x x x
FTaBV Omake: Hasty Departure - Clearing the Air
x x x
He hadn't slept well. Could've sworn that he hadn't slept at all, except that the other guys had left the room without him noticing at all. Karol sat up and yawned, arms stretching up over his head. His hands bumped against the cabin ceiling since the upper bunk didn't have all that much head room. Down on the floor, Repede lifted his head to watch him for a moment before resting it back on his forepaws. Not being fond of the open ocean, the dog would probably spend most of the voyage inside the cabin again.
As he rubbed the scraped knuckles of one hand, Karol wondered briefly if he should just roll over and try to go back to sleep. It sounded easier, at least, than to go outside and figure out how to face Yuri and the others. Especially Yuri.
"...Hey Yuri, can I ask you something?"
The swordsman probably already had a good guess what he wanted to ask, but he went "Yeah?" anyway.
"Is it true that you...that you killed Ragou and...?" He'd been about to add "and Cumore," but remembered something that Letha had said. 'Yuri didn't kill Cumore.' But he didn't get it. How could she be so confident? And why only about Cumore?
"It's true." Yuri informed him flatly. A simple fact without a shred of regret.
"How could you keep that from me...?"
Karol fell back onto his mattress, arms spread wide, as he stared up at the wooden boards over his head. Yuri had said that he hadn't meant to keep it all a secret, that he just hadn't found a good time to share it with them. He'd like to believe that, he really would! But...he still had his doubts. Hadn't they all wondered before and talked about what could have happened when Ragou went missing? And again when they heard the news about his body being found. Yuri hadn't said anything either of those times, just gotten this weird distracted look and agreed with whatever the rest of them were saying.
...Maybe Karol had just been avoiding the truth. He hadn't wanted to believe that Yuri, who he looked up to, could do something like that! Having to accept it now made him feel like the world had flip flopped.
"Wow Captain. If I didn't know you were just goofing around, I'd swear you were really scared."
"I was scared!" he mumbled, admitting it only when no one was around to hear and scold him for being a coward. "But it was okay if I was scared, as long as you guys were around."
Yuri was always so cool and strong! No matter what happened, he could always be relied on to laugh it off afterwards and be ready for whatever came next. Judith somehow managed to always be prepared, whether it was in a fight or when someone else needed looking after with either a firm word or a helping hand. Her calm smile always made him feel better, even if it meant she'd just gotten the idea to bust through with force. And Letha was good at lifting his spirits. There were the stories she would tell, and it was obvious that she'd always been happy to share them. And even with some other small things, like how she shared his fear of bugs, sort of.
For the first time, he'd been in a guild where it felt like it was okay to be afraid of some things or not good at others, because there'd always be friends at his back.
Was I the only one who thought that way?
None of them had relied on him for help, not even once. They'd each carried their secrets on their own.
So what kind of guild boss did that make him, if he couldn't help any of his friends?
...And what kind of guild boss hid under his blankets?
His breath hitched, and he rubbed at his eyes vigorously before they could spill over. He wasn't going to cry! Or hide! If he was too weak for others to depend on, then he could get stronger!
Karol gave a breathy laugh as he sat up again, this time swinging his legs over the bed's edge and onto the top rung of the bed's ladder. Hey, that's what Nan keeps telling me to do, isn't it? All the guilds he'd been in, however brief, his comrades would give him up as a lost cause. His friends now, Yuri and all the others, had accepted him as he was. The time when they forgave him in Caer Bocram for running from that huge monster was one of the best memories he had. But it was Nan, always Nan, who gave him a scolding when he needed one. Nan who told him to shape up.
Maybe if he'd been good enough to live up to her expectations, then he could have done something earlier. Something that would have kept Yuri from killing. That would have kept Letha and Judith from leaving.
"I think there are some things that you have to do, even if they're a crime. Someone has to do them, even if it means taking the blame."
His bare feet touched the cabin floor just as he remembered what Yuri had said the night before. Yuri hadn't expected him to...accept what had happened. But he got the feeling that the swordsman he respected wanted Karol to at least understand him, and maybe hoping...that he would accept it? But how could he?
It was too much to figure out all at once. Karol dropped down to sit on the floor, grabbing his shoes from where he had kicked them off the night before and pulling them on. I just don't get it. I don't know what made them all act the way they did. Even if Yuri says that, I don't believe that he really had to do it. But if it wasn't the only way, then wouldn't Yuri have become a murderer for no good reason?
Even if he'd been willing, why did Yuri have to be the one to take the blame?
Karol really just didn't get it.
Opening the door to the outer deck, he had to raise an arm to block some of the sunlight that nearly blinded him when he stepped out. When he blinked the dazzle from his eyes and looked around Karol had to wonder what in the world everyone was doing to the ceres blastia.
"And you put that end in there-HEY! Don't be so rough, you idiots, or you'll break it!" Rita was barking orders at Chase and the ship hand Wedge as they forcefully muscled the blastia into position as the mage directed. Off to the side Tokunaga was, less obnoxiously, likewise in charge of Yuri, Raven, and Biggs as they lugged another blastia across the deck. That blastia had been split down the center, body and core both damaged.
"What are they doing?" Karol asked aloud, not sure who he was expecting to answer. "Why do we have two blastias?"
"They're reinstalling the old one," a voice came from by Karol's elbow. "Since the new one can't be fixed. We're lucky they didn't throw out the older model when they replaced it in Nordopolica."
"Uwaah!" he shouted, nearly tripping over his own feet when he reflexively tried to jump away from the voice.
Harry was sitting by the door, eying Karol's reaction unappreciatively. "What's your problem?"
Karol scratched at his cheek and tried to laugh it off. "No, it's nothing." It was then he noticed the bags starting to form under the blond's eyes. "Were you out here all night?"
"I wasn't," the Don's grandson grumbled, defensive. "But that angry girl was probably up all night. I don't know why, it was obvious from the start that the blastia was hopeless."
The brunet boy spread his hands as he shook his head. "That's Rita for you. She doesn't even know the meaning of 'give up,' especially when blastia's involved. And she doesn't have any restraint either."
"Hmph," the man sulked. "What good would that do her? Not knowing when to give up just makes things worse."
They watched as Rita crawled all over the blastia, hooking up wires and pieces while snapping at Yuri to do the same where she couldn't reach. "No, I don't think that's it," Karol said contemplatively. "I mean, yeah, she causes lots of trouble. And she has a pretty short temper on top of it all, which doesn't help. But I think that's why Rita is so good at what she does. She hates failure, so she just keeps trying until she can figure out what works. So she learns something new where other people would have just given up."
Harry's back straightened and he seemed to be looking at Rita with a new focus. "Learn something new from failure..."
"Well," Karol allowed with some embarrassment, "That's just the feeling I've been getting."
Dropping off of the blastia body, Rita stretched and finally looked away from her work. In doing so she noticed the two staring at her. "What are you two freaks looking at? You could've helped you know!"
"S-sorry!" Harry and Karol both yelped guiltily.
Heheh, the boy rubbed his neck. Her attitude needs work though...
"Alright, now that that's done with," Yuri announced to the group at large. Everyone gave him their attention immediately, though Raven was grumbling softly about having been made to work so hard despite his age. "We shouldn't be dead in the water any longer, right?"
Tokunaga nodded as the swordsman looked to him for confirmation. "Right. We've moved the ruined blastia into storage, where fortunately we were keeping the old one before. Hopefully it won't stop working again like when the Atherum showed up out of nowhere."
"If it does," Rita declared, "I'll make it work anyway!" Karol grinned, and when he glanced over at Harry he caught the blond man smiling as well. They shared a quick look, like an inside joke.
Yuri nodded at the ship captain and the mage. "Okay, so now we just need to decide what we're going to do next."
"If ya don't mind," Raven spoke up, waving a hand in the air. The senior guild member was sitting on the crate he had helped pack the broken blastia into. "I need ta take that one there," he jerked his head in Harry's direction, making the blond grimace and visibly withdraw, "back to Dahngrest. The old man's gonna want to have some words with him, and the rest of the Union'll be wantin' to hold him responsible."
The door to the girls' cabin swung open slowly and Estelle stepped out. "But," the princess started hesitantly, "...what about Judith and Letha? Aren't we going to look for them?"
"We can't exactly do anything about those two right now," Rita answered, folding her arms over her chest. "One's back in Nordopolica, which will be crawling with Knights and angry guild members. And who knows where the other one is. She and that dragon could be anywhere by now."
Yuri frowned, "Hate to say it, but I have to agree with you. Anyway, it's not like they need us to hold their hands for them."
Karol looked down at his boots, hands curling into fists at his sides. "Even if we can't look for them now, I definitely want to once it's possible."
"Of course," the swordsman agreed. "If nothing else, they broke guild laws and need to answer for it."
"Right," the boy nodded, though the idea of punishing his friends didn't sit well with him. "But first, I want to hear their reasons."
Estelle folded her hands. "Also...I was wondering what we should do with the apatheia. It's...what would Belius have wanted us to do with it?"
No one wanted to speak right after that. It was unexpected when Chase, who had been lingering on the edges of the gathering, broke the silence. "I can understand if no one wants to listen to me, but I'd second going to Dahngrest."
"Really?" Karol blinked at him, "Why?" He wasn't sure what he thought of the man in brown leather. None of them knew him very well, he'd been more like a friend of Letha's who they'd run into now and then. Karol had, honestly, assumed that the two must have known about each other through their father and uncle. They'd both been former members of The Protectors guild after all. But with him being a Child of the Earth...what was that even supposed to mean?
Chase sat down on the deck. "Well...that Belius woman was a friend of Whitehorse, right? There's probably not many people she trusted with her identity as an Entelexeia, and most of them would be back in Nordopolica, right? And no way do we wanna go back there right now. So the Don would be the only other option. That we know of at least."
The black haired swordsman gave half a grin. "That makes sense. But you don't think we'll believe that's the only reason you've got for wanting to go there?" The smile vanished from Yuri's face as if it had never been, and Karol felt a brief chill. "I think we've waited long enough for some answers. What are you up to? Exactly how much do you and Letha know about what's going on?"
While Yuri spoke, Chase's head had listed to the side. His shoulders rose and fell as he heaved a long suffering sigh. "Didn't Letha tell you guys anything? Anything at all?"
"Instead of worrying about what she has and hasn't told us, why don't you just start from the beginning?" Yuri suggested.
And Rita, not surprisingly, couldn't stay quiet. "I want to know just what the 'Children of the Earth' are supposed to be!"
"Yes," Estelle's quiet voice added. "I'd like to hear the answer to that as well."
"Heh," the man shook his head with a helpless laugh. "I'm getting ganged up on here. I'd almost think that this was the reason why Letha jumped last night; to leave me to deal with the inquisition on my own." He laughed again and then clapped the palms of his hands down on his knees. "So I guess we'll start with the basics.
"Letha and I are aliens from another world."
Stunned silence stretched out until Raven muttered, "Well, that was nice an' straightforward."
Rita ground her teeth and growled out, "This isn't the time for jokes!"
Karol couldn't stifle the gasp that came with an abrupt memory. The first time they'd gone through the Weasand of Cados, he and Letha had been separated from the others after falling through a hole Rita made in the floor. And then...
He was resting on something warm and nice smelling. Like apples, or the blended tea one of his teachers in an earlier guild had liked to make. And there was a sound, a soft humming. It was nice, he would have liked to have stayed like that for awhile. It was the throbbing pain in his head and the slow churning in his stomach that kept him nodding off again.
Mumbling something he forgot right away, the humming sound stopped and a cheerful sounding voice answered him. When he tried telling the voice something else, it laughed at him before letting him down onto something cold. Which was fine, because the churning in his stomach had been getting worse and he couldn't hold it in any longer.
When Karol could think clearly again, he realized it was Letha with him. She summarized the situation lightly, not making a big deal about it. He'd been glad she was there with him, on his own he might not have had the courage to keep going. The young guild boss was sure that he'd have been so afraid of getting lost and never finding the others again that he'd break down and start jumping at his own shadow. But he hadn't been alone, and she chatted happily with him about ships that could visit other worlds.
And she'd made that joke. "...Hey, Ace. What if you met someone who said they were from a different world? Like me, for instance."
He had laughed at the time, and after a minute she had laughed with him. But...
"No way," Karol breathed in little more than a whisper. "She was serious? But-but I thought she was joking!"
Despite how quiet his voice had been, Yuri at least had heard him. "Wait, you mean she actually told you?" the swordsman asked in disbelief. "Why didn't you bring it up earlier?"
The boy's face flushed in embarrassment and shame, not even understanding what he felt ashamed for. "I forgot, I mean, I only just remembered now! Letha didn't actually say she was from another world, and it just sounded like a joke!"
"Hmm," Raven rubbed at his scruffy chin. "Maybe she was testin' the waters? An' when the kid didn't believe her, well, it just made her all the more certain the rest of us wouldn't."
Karol fidgeted, feeling even more guilty. Does that mean I messed up? I failed as a guild boss and didn't even realize it? Maybe if I took her more seriously that time...
"Wait, you're not seriously buying this, are you?" Rita looked at each of them in turn, the glare in her eyes calling them idiots for being so gullible. Then she spun and appealed to Estelle as her last ally. "You know it's ridiculous, right?"
Put on the spot, the princess stammered, "I, um, well, it does sound hard to believe, but...but we can't really say until we hear him out?" The mage gaped at her, stunned at being let down in her stand.
"As I was going to say," Chase picked up again after patiently waiting for the others to quiet down, "I'm only speaking for myself. What Letha's gone through and how she feels about it, I can only make guesses. In my case, everything started over six years ago." He raised his arms over his head and stretched them until the joints popped softly.
Dropping his arms back down so that his hands rested in his lap, Chase finally got into his story. "Six years ago I was your typical high school student on Earth. That's what we call the planet we live on: Earth." He leaned forward to look straight at Estelle, glancing briefly at Rita too. "You're probably wondering how that makes me special, right? Like, if a Child of the Earth has any unique abilities not common here."
Estelle nodded as Rita affirmed, "That's right."
"Well, sorry to disappoint," the man spread his hands, "but we're not any different from you guys. Other than having grown up in a different environment, we're pretty much the same as humans here."
"'Humans here'?" the genius picked up on the way he phrased that part.
Chase shrugged and supplied, "Well, we don't have krityans back home. Or Entelexeia. So far as we know we're the only species capable of intelligent thought. Though people get all excited at the idea of finding some intellectual equal somewhere. But that's not really the point here."
"An' you were sayin'?" Raven prompted. "Most 'typical guys' wouldn't end up on some other world, right?"
"Yeah, well, I happened to meet someone weird. I didn't really get along with Al at first. Ah-" Chase raised a finger as he reminded them, "By Al I mean Alastor. I usually tell people that he's my boss because it's just easier than explaining. Back then I thought of him more like a kidnapper. He wouldn't have seen it that way, but he seemed to think it was funny."
"Kidnapper?" Estelle exclaimed, hands flying to cover her mouth in her shock.
Karol gaped at the idea. "You were kidnapped? Seriously?"
Chase waved off the reaction as if it wasn't worth getting worked up over. "Not really, I guess, since Al hadn't meant to bring me along with him. I just sorta, you know, got caught up in the ride. Pretty stupid actually."
Yuri had been watching the other swordsman intently throughout the whole explanation. Here he finally put in a question of his own. "If it was an accident, then why didn't that guy just send you back home?"
"He was going to," Chase said softly. "Al was actually trying to find someone else at the time. You see, the thing about Al is he's actually a fairy."
"Oh please!" Rita scoffed. "First you're aliens from another world, now you're bringing in fairy tales? Just how dumb do you think we are?"
"Which iiis," Chase drew out the word, "exactly what most people on Earth would say. I didn't believe that's what he was, not even when he was warping all over the place or making his magical wings appear and disappear. Bastard got a good laugh when I asked how he'd managed to slip me some drugs." The skeptic mage continued to glare at the man with a look that said she was in no way convinced.
He just shrugged back at her. "Believe it or not, I'm just telling it how it is. And the main issue with the fact that my boss is a fairy is that him and his people have some sort of set of rules of their own that they have to follow. Even if they bend those rules as far as they can or exploit every loophole there's just some stuff they can't do. So they get humans to do their work for them."
In a less than complimentary tone Yuri observed, "And all this is to say that you're one of the humans playing by their rules."
"That's about it," Chase agreed with a rueful smile. "I've been given the option to go home a few times, but in the end I'm still working for them. So I can't really complain about it anymore."
"So if you're here cuz you're workin' for them," Raven brought up, "That goes for Letha too, right? Someone popped her over here from Earth to do a job?"
The remaining humor faded from Chase's expression. "Something like that. Like I said, I can't speak for her. I've never met the guy who did it, but I've heard some about him. They...it seems that a lot of fairies don't really care about 'informed consent'. They make a sport out of tricking people into doing what they want. From what I've heard, Letha probably wouldn't get along well with the one she met."
"What a shame, when it sounds like they have so much in common," the black haired man turned his back on the circle.
"Yuri," the princess said softly, but that was all anyone had to say. Feelings in the group towards the missing woman were still a bit strained. Karol found himself looking from person to person, wishing that somebody would say something, anything to clear up his confusion.
So, Letha really is from another world? Is that even possible? He looked to Rita. The genius was scowling fiercely at the wooden boards beneath her feet, chewing her lower lip and muttering the occasional random phrase. She was set against believing it, but wasn't coming up with any of her usual arguments, fact or temper, to support her denial.
Why didn't she tell us? We're friends, aren't we? Even if it's hard to believe or understand, couldn't she trust enough to share it with us? Yuri was still facing the other way, his thoughts and mood impossible to read from his inscrutable back.
Estelle was staring sadly at her folded hands and Raven's gaze was fixed at a point off in the open ocean. Neither of them even seemed to be seeing what was in front of them. I don't get it. What are we supposed to do? Didn't that make it sound like she's in some kind of trouble?
And Chase hadn't reacted at all to what Yuri had said about Letha and-and one of those "fairies" sounding alike. He just leaned back to look up into the sky, frowning at who knew what. Why? I thought they were friends? They're both from Earth...
"Wait a minute!" he blurted. "Don't you both have families here? We've even met Letha's uncle!"
"I thought that'd be obvious," Chase shrugged one shoulder, "I got adopted. Something similar must have happened for her too."
"Bit old for an orphanage, ain't ya?" Raven joked weakly.
Chase snorted at that before quietly explaining, "I said before that growing up on Earth means growing up in a different environment. When I first showed up here I kept passing out because I wasn't used to the aer. My body just couldn't handle it. I still have trouble with it. Arcas and Mellie found me on the road when they were moving from Dahngrest to Halure. They had just lost their own son in an accident and were trying to start fresh somewhere without the painful memories. You could say...they latched onto me as a replacement. But you'd have to say the same about me, since I was missing my own family at the time."
Karol still didn't get it, no, he couldn't let it go at just that. "But you already have your own family! If you miss them, then why don't you go back?" He himself had often wished he still had a family. People who stuck by each other no matter what happened, who'd always be there for you through thick and thin. He couldn't imagine just...giving that up willingly. That Chase looked downcast while talking about them didn't help either. And his question was left to hang in the air, unanswered.
Harry, as well as the ship hands, had all been listening in on the entire conversation. It would be difficult for them not to, and it was probably hard enough for them to follow without being up to date on everything that had happened. But it still was a surprise when the Don's grandson entered the conversation. "This is all an interesting story," he said with the same level of skepticism Rita had been maintaining, "And I'm sorry if no one here cares about my opinion. But personally I don't think I can believe any of this man's story without some form of proof."
"Yes!" Rita pounced on the suggestion, "Proof!" The mage rounded on the man in question. "Do you have any proof that you're from another world? Or that your weird friend is a 'fairy' like you say?"
The question seemed to actually annoy Chase. "Are you kidding? Even if I'd had anything on me that could prove Earth's existence back then, I've had six years to lose or break most of it! And anything really important to me's been left back in Halure so I won't lose that too!"
"Whoa, settle down," Yuri placated him.
Chase slumped back with a mumbled apology. "It's just, you know, when you don't have much left to remind you of home, losing anything is downer. Even if it wasn't something you care about before."
"So there's nothing then," Karol couldn't help but feel disappointed. The point might have been to check and see if the story was true or not, but privately he thought it would have been cool to see something that came from another world. Like, it would be real awesome if Chase had one of those "space ships" they had in Letha's stories!
"There might be somethin'," Raven interjected, speaking slowly as if unsure he should be bringing it up. "A broken music box in Letha's things..."
x x x
"We really shouldn't be doing this," Estelle fretted as Chase turned the bag over and shook its contents out onto the table.
"Don't worry," he assured her, "I'll take responsibility." It didn't make her look any happier about what they were doing, but he couldn't tip toe around everyone's feelings.
Everything tumbled out into a pile: gels, some non perishable food items, nearly empty canteen of water, a cheap looking comb, battered notebook, yadda yadda-more-of-the-same-stuff-any-traveler-would-carry and all of it easy to find on Terca Lumireis. While he didn't know what about a music box from Earth would make it any different from the luxury items here, he trusted that something about it must have caught the archer's eye.
The clothes that had been layering the bottom were more interesting though. A black tank top with thin straps, denim cargo pants worn so thin the knees were practically threads, a denim vest just as light... Must've been what she was wearing when Nevys snatched her. There was also a folded blue uniform that puzzled him as he started to pick it up. Why Letha'd be carrying around something like that, he had no idea-
A few shards of blue and white plastic fell from the uniform. He snatched them up, ignoring when a sharp point jabbed into his palm. Bingo. Shaking out the uniform, a mishappen object of plastic casing and green circuit board, with sand ground into every crack, and barely held together by colorful plastic coated wires clattered onto the table. Half a word printed on the front, directly under the cracked screen, was legible. SanD- Chase winced sympathetically at the sight. "Ooh ouch. Losing that would really suck."
"Why?" the boy Karol asked, "What is it?"
"Pricey," Chase answered drily. "If she got it when it was new on the market at least." Scraping up tiny pieces of plastic that had fallen off onto the table, he held it out so Raven could get a better look at it. "By 'music box' you meant this, right?"
The older man nodded. "At any rate, that's what she called it. Was pretty anxious to keep it all quiet like too. I'm guessin' that makes it somethin' from your world an' not ours."
Rita snatched the player from his hand, not to anyone's surprise. "This, what is this even made of? The closest thing I've ever seen to it are some old blastias that researchers never got working again since the right cores were missing, and even those made more sense! I can't even begin to figure out how this works!"
"Sounds like it's from out of this world to me," Yuri gathered from Rita's ongoing rant of wounded professional pride.
"I'm surprised she even showed it to you," Chase remarked while frowning at the smashed device. Something was missing, not that he should be surprised. Still, he pulled the empty bag closer and started to feel around inside. Strange, it looked empty but he could still feel something through the cloth. Nothing was sitting under the bag though. "Did she let you listen to it?"
"Nah," the man shrugged one shoulder, "I found it lying on the ground an' it was already broken. It was only chance that I showed it ta her first."
Chase's fingers caught on a strange seam. Running the tips of his fingers across it he discovered a strange lump of fabric that was concealing a button. Undoing it opened a pocket inside the bag's inner lining. "Here we go!" he couldn't help exulting at the small victory. From inside he pulled out a long black wire that ended in small silver ear buds.
"What is that?" Karol asked again.
Chase dropped the cord into the boy's hands. "No point in having an mp3 player without a set of headphones to actually listen to it with. Here, this end goes in there," he plugged one end into the round outlet on the top end, "and then you'd turn it on. Not that they'll do any good with the condition it's in now," he had to admit when the mage started pressing all the buttons. She gave him a venemous look for not having said so sooner.
His mind returned to other matters and he started feeling around inside the hidden pocket again. "And here we go, Earthly possession number two." A ring of keys clinked at them all as he tossed them onto the table. "And number three's..." a sleek silver phone, one of the clamshell models. Other than a few tiny scratches in the surface, it could be brand new. "The jackpot."
Flipping it open, he found the power button and thumbed it. Nothing happened. "Well, rats." Disappointed, but telling himself he shouldn't be surprised, he handed the cell over to the greedy hands of the mage and let her have her fun pressing buttons uselessly. Further searching of the pocket only turned up spare triple A batteries. For the mp3 player no doubt.
"So what is this supposed to do?" Rita finally broke down and asked him. The music player had been passed on for the others to look at while she inspected the not broken piece of human technology.
Letting the batteries fall back into their pocket where they wouldn't get lost, Chase started repacking everything he'd removed. Other than the items from Earth. "On Earth, we have appliances called telephones that let us talk to people far away. That right there is a cell phone, the same thing but made for portable hand held convenience."
Karol's eyes lit up. "Talk to people far away? So we could use it to talk with Letha or Judith, right?"
Chase felt a little bad shooting down the idea, but it couldn't be helped. "Sorry kid, doesn't work that way. Not only would they need to have phones on them, but we'd need to know the numbers to call. And even then it wouldn't work because there aren't any satellites or radio towers set up all over the place. And this one's out of the power needed to run it."
"It sounds complicated," Estelle marveled at the device when Rita passed it to her. He could only shrug; a phone was a phone to him, even if he could understand how unheard of it was in this world. It had been years since he'd last seen one, but having found a dead cell phone wasn't all that special. "You said it's out of power? What does it use?"
"Well, like most of the stuff we use on Earth, it runs on electricity. Small stuff like this has a battery inside, and when it dies you plug it in to...recharge..." He blinked as an idea sprouted in his mind. In theory it should work, but he'd have to do it himself. Even if one of the group could use lighting abilities, their unfamiliarity with even the concept of a battery made it all too likely that they'd just overload and short the phone out. And then they'd have to deal with Letha murdering whoever fried her cell while she was gone.
Yuri was watching him with interest. "Something wrong? You were kind of in the middle of saying something."
Making his decision, Chase held out a hand to Karol who had just accepted the phone fom the princess. "Just thinking how Al's gonna be up the wall with 'I told you so's next I see him. Could I see that again?" The guild boy handed the phone over without argument, but looked disappointed that he hadn't gotten his turn.
"Right, so..." Everyone watched in fascination as he slid the back of the phone off and plucked out the power cell. He positioned his fingers just so, but paused and looked back up at everyone. "...Just so you guys know, you shouldn't try doing this. This is not the recommended way to charge a battery."
With the "don't try this at home, kids!" warning out of the way, he went ahead and cast the lowest level of thunder he could. Like, not enough to do more than mildly shock Reno or someone during a handshake for a laugh. Reno would deserve it. The electricity trickled into the battery from him and he let it continue to charge for a few minutes, but still stopping long before he thought it was fully powered to err on the side of caution. Starting fires was not a hobby of his.
Blowing out the breath he'd been holding slowly, he popped the battery back into the phone and snapped the cover back on. "Okay now, one, two, three, testing..." After holding the power button down again the display and buttons all lit up a cool blue. The usual powering up messages flashed across the screen along with a little hourglass that kept turning over. Finally he got the default wallpaper, a picture of roses sitting on a mirror or something, a display of the battery power that told him he'd charged it halfway, and absolutely no bars. Go figure.
"And it has a camera," he said, holding it up to catch most of the group in the view finder. "Say cheese."
There was a chorus of "What?" as he pressed the "capture" button and the sound of a camera shutter went off. Chuckling, he handed the phone back over again for them all to murmur in amazement at the tiny, and slightly grainy, picture of themselves.
Satisfied that all attention was being given to the broken "music box" and now functioning phone, Chase relaxed his guard and pressed a hand to his lower chest again. He'd hardly done anything and it had already started to ache again. Probably just hadn't fully recovered from all the use he'd gotten from it the day before. Al's gonna thrash me if I keep this up...
He glanced over at the doubting blond Harry. "So how's that? Does this work as proof for you?"
Harry had been standing at the other end of the table the whole time, not saying anything but watching with a nearly brooding atmosphere. While the others had been playing with the phone he had picked up the mp3 player gingerly, like he thought it would bite his fingers off or infect him with an alien virus, and was turning it this way and that. Finally he pronounced, "As for confirming your story about 'Earth' and 'fairies' being real, I'd say no. But it does seem inescapable that your missing friend has posessions that simply don't exist anywhere else, and you obviously know how they work." Putting the broken device down again just as carefully, he conceded with a sigh, "I suppose that what you say may as well be true. That you are 'Children of the Earth' certainly fits better than any other explanations I could think of."
"Great!" Chase gave a cheerful grin. "Now that we've got that settled, just one more thing." Everyone looked up at him questioningly. "Drop the 'Children of' nonsense, will you? Just calling us Earthlings is a lot easier."
x x x
Finally got something from Karol's point of view. Though I feel so so about it...other than trying to convey how lost and confused he is, I don't seem to click with the inside of his head as well. The writing kept falling out of his point of view while everyone was talking, and then snap back to him.
It is possible to charge a battery without a charger, but I am not encouraging anyone who doesn't really know what they're doing to try it. Chase here is only getting away with it because he's SPECIAL and probably has way more experience and knowledge about the matter than me. Credit to his adventures in Final Fantasy land. Please be kind to me, who only knows as much as the internet has told me on the matter...
On that topic, this would be where Chase gains the title: Human Battery Charger.
...Obviously, over the course of the week (and a few days) that they're all stuck on this boat, there'll be much more talking going on. While it wouldn't be unthinkable for Chase to share his life story, or at least the complete story of his adventures since meeting a fairy (*cough* or, in other words, the sorely neglected Final Fantasy 7 fic I started about him), most likely this is about as much as he explains about the details pertinent to this story. Meaning: yes, he probably answers a lot of questions about Earth and Earth history and Earth culture, but defers answering questions about what the fairies are doing or anything about Letha. He'd just keep repeating, "It's better if you hear about that from Letha," or "I can't really speak for her, you'll have to ask her yourself."
May or may not make a set of drabbles of them all stuck on a boat together.