SovietSniper92: Unfortunately, there's absolutely no real reason as to how I could drag Halsey and Worrick with Celes and Isara. That being said, seeing as the army is blindly bumbling around anyways, I don't think it's too much to say that they could crop up in other locations for, as they would put it, "no apparent reason". Damn, I love lampshading.
DC20: Yeah, Isara isn't everyone's character. Perhaps it was the method with which they had to characterize her for maximum benefit – a deathly calm, almost perfect woman, just so that when she kicked the bucket, you flew into an unstoppable rage. (Hopefully. I did. :D) Her background gives her plenty of possible depth, as does the goal of Darcsen philosophy, if she was taken out of an organized war setting. I always personally thought that there would be very little reason for people to care about racism when they were getting shot out, so… yeah, additional character depth. As for nukes, knowing that a departure from ragnite wouldn't cause people to rage-quit my story… hehehehe. I see how it is. The whole "Selvaria dies" thing was an exact mirror of something like Hiroshima, so the jump to nukes seemed almost logical. But now I put a lid on details. And rest assured that Rooney isn't going to be exactly "in charge". The details are much more… vague. :3
Now Halsey and Worrick hear the story from Isara. Hilarity ensues, not all of it funny, although how that's supposed to make sense is beyond me.
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Now extremely disgruntled with themselves, Halsey and Worrick squared themselves against Isara, Halsey doing his best to look sympathetic, Worrick brooding and dangerous; it was the standard interrogative procedure to force out bits of information. Unfortunately for them, their earlier spat made the entire thing look like the act it obviously was.
Still, they did their best.
The moment she was able to restrain her overflowing humor to a wide smile, Worrick began. "I'm sorry, spy – "
"Not necessarily, sir. This could just be one huge mistake." Halsey, acting in his role, corrected him.
Normally, Isara might walk further into the trap, stretching out her current story. The ploy was for her to stretch whatever constructed alibi until it either looped or contradicted itself, condemning her.
As such, she would only offer the truth, something that could never be a source of guilt. Whatever stories she had forged before, she would tear down without reservation. "My name is Isara Gunther, enlistment number 7UAZ-149-0I14-MNC20." She kept her voice pleasant, as if they were simply chatting over a meal or sharing a drink.
Always truthful, never spiteful. That had been her problem earlier; it was little wonder why she'd landed in this position. She had no hope of winning a direct confrontation with two trained soldiers – so she would simply stick to the facts, and hope that they would believe.
The alternative could only end in her friend's death.
Halsey perked up – not an act, but genuinely interested. "Gunther, you said? As in the late General Gunther, the Blue Unicorn of Gallia?"
Isara let her own enthusiasm rise to the surface. "Yes, corporal," she nodded. "After my father died, the good General took me in."
"Oh, so he's not your birth father?" Worrick seized.
"I am a Darcsen," Isara huffed. The General had been a full-blooded Gallian, along with his wife. "Lieutenant Welkin was his only biological child. I was adopted after my father died."
There was a small silence. Stymied by both that information and the mentioning of the famed general's famed son, all the sergeant could let out was a short, "Oh."
Halsey glared at him. Isara wasn't sure if it was feigned or genuine. "You could have a little more patience, sir." Turning back to her, he said, "So what was it like, living underneath the General?"
A personal question; unexpected. She started a bit – cursing inwardly, knowing it made her look suspicious – but tentatively offered, "He was a good man. Always fair, always kind. He never really got out much – I think the death of his wife hit him hard." She let a wistful smile cross her face. "I'm sorry I never got to know her."
"What did you do with him, most of the time?"
"Well… honestly, I didn't spend much time with him personally, either." She frowned at the thought. "I spent lots of time with Martha, my – our nanny," she corrected, thinking of Welkin as well. It always seemed like a better idea to leave him alone. I did make sure to take care of him… but truthfully, he always seemed to want to be alone." Offering a sad smile, she added, "I did the next best thing for him."
The two Gallians nodded, a blonde and black head in unison, different and yet the same. She continued, "I worked on the Edelweiss. As my biological father's gift to the General, it only seemed right that I take care of it, maintain it… upgrade it," she added with a small chuckle, thinking of her not-so-minor engine replacement that had responded so well underneath her driving hands. The turbine engine had been the latest development in Gallian industry – a few adjustments and it practically doubled the vehicle's mobility. With a pang of regret, she wondered who was taking care of the tank now. Ever since Bruhl, she had been the only one charged with maintaining the Edelweiss, as the only one with the knowledge of the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the vehicle.
Bruhl – the place she had first met Celes. She couldn't lose focus on him. A single slipped poorly worded statement could condemn him forever. He was a good soldier, a good doctor – a good man, someone she wanted watching her back. Surely the military wouldn't condemn him for treating her.
Worrick let his face resolve into a quizzical expression. "Wait, so you're saying that your father was Theimer? Professor Theimer?"
The truth. "… yes."
Halsey triumphantly pointed a finger at her. "Ha! Well tell me then – what was his last published thesis about? Surely, as his biological daughter, you'd have looked up that fact." A glint in his eye showed that he didn't expect her to know – but unfortunately, she did.
Right after he had finished that thesis, he had supposedly begun looking for a publisher. But before he could find anyone willing to look past his Darcsen blood, he had had his accident, and the paper had died with him.
She had been too young to remember, a mere infant. But the moment she had begun to walk in her father's footsteps in the field of engineering, she had made a point to study everything that Theimer had done. That meant reading his theses, even if she hadn't been able to understand them at the time.
Isara braced herself. "It had to do with a new element they found deep under a ragnite mine, silvery grey. Supposedly, it gave off similar amounts of energy to activated ragnite – without processing." The paper went on to muse on the possible applications of the element, especially if somehow activated or tapped into, releasing greater amounts of that energy at once, as they had discovered with ragnite already. The hypothetical estimates were unlike anything so much as imagined before. She thought of the huge tank that they had fought in the Barious Desert much earlier, the Batomys, and how much ragnite must have been involved with its power supply. A similar amount of this element could potentially power a city – releasing it all at once would be catastrophic, an incomprehensible amount of destruction.
Exactly three days later, Theimer died in a laboratory explosion – the same building that he'd been doing his research in – and the resulting inferno, not so much as a loose tooth surviving the conflagration, much less any of his latest findings. Although there had been plenty of grief among his friends, including General Gunther, no one had blinked an eye at the circumstances – it was just an unfortunate accident, possibly linked to the amounts of energy Theimer had drawn conjectures on – but to Isara, something about the way the building conveniently burned down completely seemed off. The explosion, she could see, but there had been no reason for the rest of the structure to burn down.
She knew that she was being ridiculous – what possible discovery could cause someone to want to destroy all evidence of it? – but, deprived of ever knowing her biological father, she had nursed the thought since childhood.
She found herself jerked back to reality when Halsey did a double take and looked from Worrick to Isara, the former wearing a puzzled expression, herself a tight, painful one. Isara wondered just who Halsey was to know so much about Theimer; was it a bluff on his part, or did he really know that much about him?
Before she could ask the question, he took a step back, letting Worrick take the active position. "I give up," he sighed. "I'm starting to think this girl's who she says she is," he muttered to his sergeant, sincerity tingeing his voice.
Somehow, Isara didn't think that was a ploy.
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Background exposition!
Theimer dies in freak accident. Hmm. I wonder. Conspiracy theories ahoy.
Also, I couldn't find a single bit of information on either of Welkin's or Isara's mothers. ANYWHERE. So right now… I just killed them off vaguely. So yeah. (Hmmm.) If you could point out any information on these, I'll go back and repair whatever mistakes I've made.
I decided to do this to include nukes and yet still link it back to our main characters. Prepare for some serious mind screw coming up in the near future.
But first, we finish up the interrogation and come to a conclusion...
