Ah, the dangers of a bored Kairi...

You don't make people wait. They start plotting. –Kairi

Chapter 9.3 – Back on Track
Part 80

"Then please add your signatures to this document."

I stuck my tongue out slightly and made a face at Asch, who sat with his father, uncle, and cousin on the Kimlascan side of the table. Luke stood over his shoulder, much like Dark stood over Natalia's and like I stood over Jade's.

Asch gave me a sympathetic look, while Natalia, the only other person to spot my little act of defiance, gave me the evil eye. I rolled my eyes at her. Well, this certainly wasn't going to be boring for much longer. Their fault for making us wait for three hours after we arrived. You don't make people wait. They start plotting.

Like we'd started plotting.

"Good. With this, we conclude the formation of the peace treaty," Teodoro said. I glanced at Guy, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Wait just one minute," he said, sounding irritated as he walked over to King Ingobert. I shifted my weight slightly. I'd been standing just behind and to the right of Jade, who was, conveniently, seated right next to Emperor Peony.

"Guy!"

"Sorry, Luke, this is important. Shut up for a minute," Guy snapped at the replica, hand already tensed to draw his sword. "You made an agreement like this right after the Hod War. Can you keep it this time?" he asked the king.

"This is different from Hod. That was to bring us prosperity through the Score," Ingobert insisted.

"That's why you destroyed Hod?!"

All eyes turned to me next, Jade's widening even further when he realized the implications of just where Guy and I were standing.

*Don't interfere. This needs to be done,* I told him.

"There were Kimlascans there, too! Like my mother," Guy added. His sword slipped free of its sheath easily, and before Emperor Peony could move (because he'd certainly shifted to do so) he also found himself at the edge of a blade.

"Kairi, Guy?! What are you doing?!" I'm not sure who all spoke out. Natalia and Luke for sure. Asch, too, though he sounded less scared and more confused. A few others, too, though I'm not sure who all.

"I was born in Hod, too," I reminded everyone of my cover story. Asch was still giving me an incredulous look, for obvious reasons, since he knew the truth, but it was obvious Sync had figured out my ploy. "And I'm getting the feeling Kimlascans weren't the only ones involved with this."

But King Ingobert was making an odd face. "Your mother...?"

"Eugenie Cecille," Guy clarified. "You sent her to marry into House Gardios as a gesture of peace. Don't try to say you've forgotten."

Duke Fabre stood up. "Guy. If you've come for revenge, then kill me. I'm the one who killed Countess Gardios, because she refused to aid in the invasion of Malkuth."

Guy growled. "My mother at least knew what she was doing when she married into that family!" He glanced at me here. "But what possible reason was there to involve everyone else?! To destroy Hod?!"

Peony sighed. "Kairi may have chosen a more worthy target for her blade than you, Gailardia Galan." He glanced up at me. "She was correct in assuming that Malkuth was involved as well. Kimlasca didn't destroy Hod. It destroyed itself. No... We destroyed it."

"What are you talking about?" Tear asked from the corner we'd stuffed the rest of the group in.

"Fomicry research was being conducted on Hod. Jade knows what I'm talking about," the emperor said.

Jade cringed. *Oh yes, I remember...* It took every ounce of my self-control not to jump. He'd never severed the connection I'd made when I warned him that this was necessary. "With war about to begin, we shut down all of our fonic experiments on Hod," he said aloud. "There just wasn't time to deal with the fomicry research."

"The previous emperor—my father—decided to destroy the Kimlascan army, and Hod with it," Peony interjected.

"I heard a test subject was connected to a device that artificially generated a hyperresonance," Jade continued.

"So that's how Hod was destroyed..." Guy said softly.

"My father presented the event as Kimlasca's work to quash anti-war sentiment at home," Peony added.

"That's horrible... I feel so sorry for the test subject..." Anise said. I snorted, drawing eyes back to me again, most indignant and shocked eyes.

"I would have a year ago. He's kinda managed to majorly piss me off since then."

And no, I did not miss Jade's smirk at that comment.

"Though, the record shows he was only eleven years old at the time," he managed to say, sounding... well, not amused, but certainly not as sympathetic as I'm sure he does when you're playing the game. "You may have known him even then, Guy."

"Me?"

"He was the son of a knight who served House Gardios. I believe their family name was Fende."

Tear's eyes widened as she looked at me. "You can't mean... Vandesdelca Musto Fende?!" Though she said the last two fast enough that it sounded more like 'Vandesdelca must offend they.'

"You know him, Tear?" Luke asked, looking cautious. Guy closed his eyes.

"If he's the son of Fende, she more than knows him. And so do you Luke. Think about it," Guy said. Luke looked like he'd swallowed something sour.

"Van."

I nodded. "It's how he knew about animate replication, even though the Malkuth military sealed the information."

Ion stepped forward. "Guy, Kairi, why don't you sheath your swords for now? It's beginning to sound like you'd have to kill almost everyone in this room." Guy nodded and complied. I sheathed my sword only because this next part, the part Guy had really wanted my help with, was more threatening them over the future than the past.

"I stopped wanting revenge a long time ago," Guy admitted.

"I never thought Van's name would come up like this..." Teodoro said.

"Wait. Before you send us all running off on our own, there's one more thing Guy and I need to make clear," I said. Asch mouthed a dejected 'now what?' at me as I crossed my arms. "Aureriun. Barakaru. Seshire. Darigan. Fende. Garudiosu."

Peony and Ingobert gave me shocked looks that bordered on horror.

"Hod was originally given to the Clans, two thousand years ago. To the day it was destroyed, it was still Clan territory. And each Clan is the safeguard of one of the six seals that binds the summon spirits of Auldrant," Guy said. "The problem is, there are only two remaining descendants of Aureriun in Reighn and Aerith Aurelius. The same can be said for Fende, in that Van and Tear are the last of that Clan. I'm the last of House Gardios, the last descendant of the Garudiosu Clan. And Seshire has since changed to Cecille. It is, literally, the only of the six Clans that is not in danger of disappearing."

I sighed. Trust Guy to give me the tricky parts. "Darigan has four surviving descendants, thanks to fomicry. Miyagi-ojii lives in Baticul. His granddaughter Din can be found in Chesedonia, if you know where to look. We don't have a clue where Danté is. And Dark is in this room." Ingobert gave Dark a worried look after that comment. "Barakaru, which had already changed to Balacruft by the time Yulia read her seven-part Score, has since evolved into Balfour. Jade's been adopted out and Nephry married out. Had Seth not been born before Nephry married, the seal they safeguarded would have already been broken."

Jade blinked a few times. "Your adoption makes you the current heir, though, doesn't it?"

I nodded. "Yes."

It was quiet for a bit before Ingobert sighed, muttering something that I didn't quite catch. Judging from the look on Natalia's face, it wasn't exactly polite either.

"And this is deadly important because...?" Peony asked, looking just about as worried as Natalia. Ingobert huffed.

"Reighn Aurelius has invoked the Clan Precepts."

"No. Aerith did that," Guy said.

"Reighn only stood up because he'd have been giving up his place as heir to Aerith if he didn't," I added. "And Aerith doesn't appear to be on our side."

"Miyagi is the current Clan Head of Darigan. And Din, the child of his elder daughter, has chosen to abdicate," Dark said reluctantly. "If Danté does the same or he somehow ends up dead, I'll be the heir."

I crossed my arms and looked at Tear. "With the way things are going, we're not going to have much of a choice when it comes to killing Van. Which means not only will Tear be the heir of the Fende Clan, she'll also be the last of its members."

"We're running out of time, and to be quite blunt, Aerith was right to invoke the Precepts. We can't afford to stay in the shadows any longer," Guy finished.

Peony, Ingobert, and even Teodoro now looked bashful.

"I see. Then, perhaps it would be best to adjourn now. We all have much to think about, it would seem," the elder of Yulia City said.

No one argued. I was tired of standing around in that room, and so was just about everyone else.

I left before Asch could catch me. It was obvious that Duke Fabre wanted to discuss something with him, probably something to do with the fact that we were now dating, and it was probably a warning not to get caught up in the mess with the Clans. Really, Guy and I barely understood it ourselves. Guy had known a little before Miyagi had started teaching us, but not much.

What we needed to do was get to Tataroo Valley. Reighn gave us that hint for a reason. We needed all the information we could get on this mess.

I found myself wandering toward one of the warp pads that led down into the city's underbelly. Well, we weren't planning to leave until tomorrow morning...

I knelt down and pulled up the plate, attaching power cords with an ease born of many hours of practice. Once the pad was active, I stepped on and let it carry me down into the darkness.

I didn't even bother to turn the light switch on. I just started walking, half on the second plane where I could see.

I'd found the eastern warp pad, rather than the western, where I usually came down, but it wasn't as if I couldn't navigate from somewhere else. Besides, the eastern access terminal should be around here somewhere... ahah!

I spotted the platform I was looking for, jogged the last few feet to it, and hopped into the indent in the middle before reaching down and turning it on. I grinned as the screens came up and started tapping buttons.

I'd been doing this for a while when something else in the dark underbelly lit up, back in the direction of the platform. There was a large, fonic reactor between me and the platform itself, but the amount of light told me that whoever was coming knew where the light switch was. I didn't bother to leave. Teodoro had given me permission to come down here whenever I wanted, and to be quite honest, I was having fun... er, sort of.

I'm not sure running calculations is supposed to be fun, but... I wasn't bored yet, so...

The lights on the walkway lit up slowly as whoever it was came around the corner. They were taking their own sweet time, and to be quite frank, I didn't really care who it was. I was much, much more interested in seeing what I could understand about this.

By this point, I'd moved everything so it was hovering over the inner edge of the 'wall' while I was sitting on one of the three flat parts of the terminal.

I wasn't sitting on anything important, so who cares?

"You know, usually when you run off by yourself, you're trying to hide from someone."

I glanced over my shoulder. I hadn't exactly expected Jade to come after me, but I suppose he's probably got questions for me. Still...

"I'm surprised you found me down here."

Jade adjusted his glasses, glanced around the terminal, and walked around to sit on another of the flat sections. "I've been looking for you for an hour. So has Asch. He said something about you and computers and the underbelly of the city when I asked him why he was wandering around looking completely lost. So I asked Teodoro exactly how to get down here."

"He pointed you to the maintenance warps, then," I guessed. Jade nodded.

"He said you'd used the western when you showed them to him, so I started there. It wasn't active, so I checked the northern next, then the eastern."

"Logical." I blinked at one of the screens I had open and waved my hand through the ring of blue light, sending the screens swinging to the left so I could get to the one I needed. I'd been running an estimation of energy supplies for Yulia City, trying to figure out where most of it was going and why it was going there. I'd already checked the basic energy outputs, but they'd been a lot higher than I'd expected, so that's why I was doing this.

I frowned at the information I was getting. It looked like most of the excess energy was being siphoned into something else. Someone had managed to get into some of the power reservoirs and was redirecting that energy.

I started running a trace, trying to see if I could get a better idea of where the energy was ending up.

"You look concerned."

I nodded, tapping the screen I'd just been looking at and sending it at Jade. "Catch."

His hand shot out just in time to 'catch' the screen I'd seen sliding toward him, and he looked at it curiously. I gave him a few moments to examine it.

"Is this redirecting of energy supposed to be happening?" he asked, pointing out the same thing I'd noticed. I shook my head.

"No. I have a suspicion as to what, or rather who, is redirecting it, but... Oh, you know about Tales of the Abyss. I'll tell you..." I muttered that last bit. "Van and the God-Generals have two main replication facilities in the game, post-Absorption Gate. Those two facilities are the Isle of Feres, and Eldrant. Given that the Isle of Feres floats around near Yulia City..."

"Floats?"

I made a face. "I... honestly have no clue as to the how and why. I just know that it does. Anyway, I'm worried that the redirected energy is being used for that, or worse, Eldrant. I'll let the Isle of Feres float around. Once the fomicry machine's gone, it's not hurting anything. Eldrant is another story altogether..."

Memories of Asch and Sync dying in the game come to mind.

"So, what are you going to do about it?"

I smirked. "Cut them off. What else?"

Fun Fact: Twee! More Clan stuff! ...And a bit of foreshadowing that I'm sure no one's really gonna notice until Duke Fabre slaps everyone in the face with the thing being foreshadowed. (Even me. I didn't expect that at all...)