Book II, Part I: Outbreak - Vector's Gambit

Chapter VII—Nebulous

[Ethereal Plane, Fifth Division Barracks]

It had been some time, Etchel noted, since the two of them had gotten together like this. Kari was seated across from him in the old Captain's office inside the barracks, a glass of white wine sitting beside the bottle on the table in front of her. The former Fifth Division Captain had a great fondness for wine that had existed almost as long as Etchel had known her, and it had come as no surprise to him that she still had a robust selection left over from her days in the Order.

"So, what do you think of Sir Powell's progress?" she asked, looking over at Etchel with a curious gaze. They had been training the Planeswalker for what would have been nearly two Gaian weeks now, and both had decided to spend some time evaluating his progress and seeing where they were to go from there.

"If you want me to be honest? It's pretty startling, for a Hume," Etchel replied, shrugging. "Kid's got a lot of heart, and that whole business with Manes - that is his name, right?"

"Yes."

"Right. Anyway, that whole business with him seems to have the kid fired up and ready to prove something. Could get him in a lot of trouble, but...I guess that's what we're trying to keep from happening with this whole deal, right?"

"Correct," Kari said, taking a sip of her drink. "He does seem to be unusually spirited, especially in light of recent events. Where I would have expected others in his position to falter, he seems to have gone the other direction entirely and become even more determined - as you stated, that could easily lead to trouble if not attended to."

"Far as his swordsmanship goes, it's not too bad," Etchel continued. "For a kid who's not even twenty yet, he does okay for himself. He already knows how to do the two basic Blademaster techniques and how to chain them to enhance the effect. Two more attacks won't make much of a difference right now, but he'll learn the rest in time. I've already shown him all the skills I know, so I figure he'll puzzle out how to get it right eventually."

"I'm sure he has quite a bit of training yet before he is capable of the higher-level arts that you know of that style," Kari remarked, to which Etchel nodded. "I was mildly curious, however, as to why you decided to show him that particular style as opposed to the Champion arts."

"He's faster than he is strong - it'll work better for him in the long run," Etchel replied. "The faster he can attack, the more strikes he can chain together, and you know how much better some of those strikes become when they have a chance to draw from the energy of those before."

"That is true," she stated, seeing the logic behind Etchel's argument. "I may have been focusing too heavily on his preference for dual-wielding."

"While I'm thinking about it, didn't you say that Mai was going to teach him more about his Planeswalker status? I don't even think he fully understands what being a Planeswalker really does for him."

"I was going to mention that, but yes," Kari answered, "Lady Kuroki is going to assist us. She is currently off with Lady Hiraki in First Realm, but they should be returning in a day or two."

"Maria Hiraki...there's a name I haven't heard in a while," Etchel said, chuckling. "How's she doing? Still breaking libraries?"

"You realize, of course, that Will forgave her for that...incident."

"Doesn't make it any less funny."

Kari simply sighed, shaking her head. "Lady Hiraki is well, to answer your question. Most of her time as of late has been spent in First Realm, though I do not know why she is there."

Etchel merely nodded, letting the matter drop as he returned to the task at hand. "So, what about your side of this little project? Is he able to keep a lid on that Daiesthai in his brain?"

"For the time being, he shows no signs of losing control. Conversely, he shows no signs of being capable of progressing further and becoming a Vizard, nor does he seem to have a desire to attempt it. It seems that merely keeping control is enough for him; when I explained what I knew about the process, he seemed rather...firmly opposed to the idea," Kari explained, sipping from her wine again.

"Probably for the better, really. If he did learn and word got out around Seireitei that there was a Hume with Vizard powers, G.U. would be tripping over themselves to try and recruit him so they could study him. That'd just be a big conflict of interest, and I'm sure Kuchiki doesn't want to have to deal with that."

"Beyond that, he seems to be stable. Only time will tell whether that remains true, of course."

"I'm fairly sure that if anything happens, we'll know about it somehow. Pretty sure Lady Freya's got a lot of eyes down there in the mortal plane she doesn't tell anybody about." He shrugged a moment later, a grin creeping across his face. "Besides - we can just ask Katanas DeValle if all else fails. Katanas knows everything."

Kari almost laughed - for a mortal, Katanas DeValle certainly knew a host of interesting things about the higher planes, and she could only imagine what kind of information network he might have in place on the mortal plane given his position. Her face regained a more neutral expression as she considered her next words, watching carefully to see how Etchel would react to what she was about to say.

"There is another matter I wanted to ask you about, Etchel. I...wanted some advice, if I may ask for it."

Right off the bat, Etchel knew it was something that she had great concerns over - calling him by his first name instead of 'Beoulve-taichou?' Even he knew that meant something was up, and his face shifted into uncharacteristic seriousness as he leaned forward in the chair.

"What is it?"

"How confident are you in Sir Powell's overall abilities as a Planeswalker, both now and in the future?"

There was a long pause as Etchel considered the question based on what he'd seen so far, looking down as he thought about his response. Finally, he looked back up.

"He's loyal, he's dogged, and I think that if we give him a little time, he'll be as good as Bayloh was when he started. He's got a good head on his shoulders, even if he's not entirely sure what he's doing just yet," Etchel stated, looking firm in his assessment. "Why?"

Kari didn't verbally respond to the query, instead standing up and moving over to a cabinet in the room. She cast a quick spell on it, removing the magical locks that encased the contents, and withdrew a long, wrapped object from within. Quietly, she walked back over and sat down again, moving her glass and the wine bottle out of the way in order to lay the object across the table. Deftly, she untied the cord holding the fabric around the object and carefully removed the cloth, letting Etchel get a look at what she had retrieved.

A katana with a blue cloth-wrapped hilt and bronze-colored guard in the shape of a four-pointed star now rested upon the table, the green sheath polished to a glimmering shine. Etchel's eyes widened visibly as he realized what he was looking at, and his gaze met Kari's again with a look of mild shock.

"You're kidding."

"What makes you believe that I am?"

"You're actually planning on giving this to him?" Etchel asked, disbelieving. "I thought -"

"Times change, Beoulve-taichou. There was a time when I thought I would never let this blade see the light of day again, but now..."

The silence that fell across the room was heavy, filled with the weight of emotion that neither Malakh could quite express.

"You really believe in this kid, don't you?"

"It is...hard for me to put into words, but there is something about him that reminds me of her. I've held on to this for centuries now, but somehow...I think that Chieko-taichou would be proud to see it finally passed on."

"...You know, I think you might be right," Etchel said, nodding slowly. "Might be time to put a few of the ghosts of our past to rest."

"You never found her in Soul Society, did you?" Kari asked hesitantly, to which Etchel shook his head. "All this time, and yet..."

"I know," Etchel said. "I'm sorry."

If there was one thing Etchel Beoulve hated, it was lying to a friend. The fact that he was doing so now, knowing that it was for the better, hurt more than he cared to admit. He knew where Chieko Murakami, the former Captain of Fifth Division, resided in Soul Society, though she no longer went by that name. He had spoken with her on occasion, but respected her wishes to be left to her new life for the most part. He had promised Chieko that he would say nothing to her former pupil, and it was one of the hardest promises he had ever had to make.

"It's okay," she replied, still looking intently at the sword on the table. "I am considering Sir Bayloh as well, though I believe that our division's former Vice-Captain's blade may be more suited for him."

"Bayloh, too?" Etchel asked, even more concerned now than he was before. "Are you expecting something to happen?"

"In truth, I do not know. There has been much upheaval as of late surrounding this plane, and much of it involves Lady Freya's chosen. With Lady Hiraki under Lady Kuroki's tutelage, I have little concern for her safety, and Lady Kuroki herself is unquestionably skilled, but I cannot say the same for Sir Bayloh and Sir Powell. While Sir Bayloh is also a remarkable individual, even he cannot measure up to ones such as the Pillars of Reality, and I fear that the recent events may simply be the precursor to something infinitely more troubling."

She looked back up at Etchel, concern evident in her eyes.

"Do you intend to return to the mortal plane?"

The Malakh shrugged. "I hadn't planned on it just yet, but I could go hang around for a while. Why?"

"If something is amiss, I would feel better knowing that someone will be around to lend aid. If I am wrong, then there is no harm done," she replied, reaching out and beginning to rewrap the blade again. "In the meantime, I will speak with Lady Kuroki so that we may complete Sir Powell's training once she returns."

"Works for me," Etchel said, standing up from his seat and stepping around the table towards the door. He was almost there when Kari reached out and grabbed his hand, looking at him with worried eyes.

"Etchel?"

"Hm?"

"...Please, be careful."

He looked back at her, starting to say something with his usual carefree attitude...then stopped. He wasn't used to seeing his former comrade like this, and something about it unnerved him more than he cared to admit. Instead, he put a hand on her shoulder, nodding quietly as he turned back to face her.

"I will. Don't worry about me. Just finish up the kid's training, and we'll see if there's any truth to your fears."

[July 12, 2152 | Galbadia City, Streets | 1:21 PM]

Revolver glided swiftly through the air above the Galbadian streets, Vanish magic keeping his body undetectable to the civilians below as he moved deeper into one of the residential districts of the city. He'd been following the faint trails of Fiona's magical signature for several minutes now, thanks to Pandemona's help. While his ability to sense magic was strong by itself, the Guardian Force's innately magical nature increased that ability dramatically, and combining that with his honed skills as a tracker kept him on Fiona's trail with relative ease. So far, nothing looked particularly amiss to him - mostly small single-story houses of brick that lined the streets, blurring into similarity as he moved despite all the differences in their designs. He cared not for the look of the houses, however, being focused solely on Fiona's magical signature.

His movement slowed as he approached an intersection, coming to a stop as he hovered above the traffic lights and took a look around the area. He was close, he could tell, but approaching carelessly would cost him. Carefully, he descended towards the nearby sidewalk, refreshing the energy of his Vanish enchantment as he did so.

The streets were uncharacteristically busy, which made his navigation of them difficult. Despite the difficulty, however, he passed through without alerting a soul of his presence. Soon, his travels took him from the rich, upper-class areas to the more middle-class neighborhoods.

As he focused in, he inaudibly breathed a sigh of relief. Deling City's lower class neighborhoods were known for their less savory elements, and while he could very easily handle them, it was something he wished to avoid if at all possible.

Fiona Carmichael seemed to appreciate that as well, as he came down a dead end street with moderately sized houses. What they all held in common, however, was the size of their yards.

'Keep your neighbors close, but not too close. Wouldn't want them to see your sordid affairs,' he thought quietly as he moved towards one of the nicer houses.

To an outsider, it appeared that the person who lived there kept up their landscaping as a testament to their status. To a trained eye, however, Revolver could see the nooks and crannies where a trained assassin could hide. Bushes and trees were large enough to hinder a trespasser, but small enough to not look out of the normal in the well maintained neighborhood. Whoever Fiona Carmichael really was, he realized, she was nothing if not a consummate professional with an attention to detail that could've bordered on obsessive. His attitude even warier now, he started to make his approach towards the single-story house that held his target. His magical senses kept him alert of any potential interlopers, but no one moved towards him and no booby traps sprang to greet him as he strode silently and invisibly across the well-kept front lawn towards the door.

He couldn't see inside - drawn curtains prevented that - but both his paramagical and his own mundane senses more than made up for that shortcoming. The door looked innocuous to his eyes as he glided up the steps, and he knew that trying to pick the lock would be difficult for someone untrained such as himself. Darius would have been a better choice for traditional entry, but Revolver was still an alchemist, and as such he had...other means at his disposal.

One swift tap of the door's keyhole and a brief channel of alchemic energy later, and Revolver slowly and quietly swung open the door, drops of melted brass metal falling to the doorway from his transmutation. Carefully, he looked inside the doorway and cast Protect magic on himself before entering - no one there, no traps, nothing except the entryway to a home that was so iconically middle-class that it looked as if had come from a magazine article.

Perhaps that was the point, he thought to himself as he looked around, keeping one hand near the battle hammer at his waist.

There were no lights on in the house that he could see, but his keen ears picked up some faint sounds coming from a few rooms away. Cautiously, he started to make his way towards the source of the noise, checking doorway corners and advancing in the tactical fashion he'd learned from his SeeD training. It was easy for him to feel Fiona's energy signature now, being in the same general area as her, and nothing about it seemed far out of the ordinary. Above average for a person, he noted, but her profile as SeeD meant that he was expecting anything from her. He rounded the corner of the final hallway between his position and her own, checking the doorway leading into the room he now knew he was after, before sweeping in as efficiently as he had the rest of the house.

Fiona Carmichael sat at an oaken desk placed near the back of the room, casually reclining in the chair with her legs propped up on its surface, a cellphone in one hand that she was holding up to her ear. Her eyebrows raised slightly at Revolver's entrance, but she didn't appear to be overly concerned with the intrusion.

"Good to hear from you," she said, glancing up at Revolver and smiling. "Darius."

Revolver frowned, his gaze focusing on the phone in her hand. She was looking directly at him, despite his invisibility enchantment...definitely trained. He let the Vanish magic drop, drawing himself up to his full height and looking down at the woman at the desk.

"It's about time your brother got here. I was beginning to wonder if the infamous DeValle family was beginning to lose their touch," she spoke, addressing the one on the other end of the line. She listened for a moment as Darius spoke, directing another idle glance at Revolver in the process before she suddenly laughed out loud. "I was a SeeD too, you know - you've already read my file by now, I'm sure. It would be trivial to figure out a GLD line with that knowledge, wouldn't it?"

For once in his life, Revolver DeValle found himself in a situation in which he had no immediate answer on how to proceed. It likely stemmed, he reasoned, from how utterly absurd the current situation was. He'd expected a lot when he walked in - traps, gunfire, even an empty house at worst. He had not expected to simply find his target not only present, but apparently entirely unconcerned with the fact that there was an armed and trained SeeD operative mere feet in front of her who had been trying to kill her barely an hour ago.

Faced with the strange reality he now found himself in, he did the only thing he could think to do - namely, stand quietly and listen. He found himself intrigued to know what his brother was saying on the other end of the line, even though he couldn't hear his end of the conversation, and any information he might pick up from Fiona's words would be worth keeping in mind.

Provided that he didn't simply decide to kill her outright and be done with the whole messy affair, that is.

"Oh, you won't have to worry about that for long," Fiona said, suddenly looking unusually serious. "One way or another, this will all be over by the end of tomorrow."

She didn't even wait for a response from Darius, instead simply pressing a button on the cellphone as she finally turned her attention to Revolver.

"Now then, mister DeValle. Sorry about the wait."

"So, you're finally deigning to address me? How thoughtful," Revolver said sarcastically, watching as Fiona put the phone away in her pocket.

"I've been paying attention to you the entire time," Fiona said nonchalantly, "but it's rude to call someone and then not talk to them."

"It's also rude to kill someone's girlfriend."

"Touché," she remarked, unfazed. "Did you come here just to say hello, then? Or is there some other reason for this visit?"

Revolver grunted noncommittally, and Fiona nodded.

"Just information, then. Nice to know."

"What if I came to kill you where you sit?" Revolver asked, scowling.

Fiona smirked. "You won't."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"Because, Revolver DeValle, I know you," she answered, standing up from behind the desk and walking over to Revolver.

"And unlike your father, you have a sense of honor."

Without another word, she stepped past him and made to leave the house, almost daring Revolver to strike her while her back was turned. Surprising even himself, Revolver stayed his hand - criminal or not, the woman was right. He did have a sense of honor...he was better than his father. He growled in annoyance as he heard a door slam elsewhere in the house, mentally double-checking and making sure his defensive junctions were in place. While he didn't think he was in any further danger, there was no point in getting careless now. The throaty roar of an engine came from the opposite side of the house, and he moved over to the nearby window in time to see Fiona leave the garage on a motorcycle, heading out into the residential streets and leaving him behind in the house. Apparently, she either didn't have anything there that would matter to him...or she didn't care what he might find.

Either possibility was mildly troubling, to say the least.

Looking around at the room as he moved away from the window again, he started to move to the desk Fiona had been sitting at, seating himself behind the computer monitor off to one side to see what kind of information he might be able to glean from its contents. While Revolver wasn't capable of doing any sort of specialized data retrieval, much like his brother, he was just as capable as anyone else of looking around at any loose files and their contents. His eyes wandered over the screen as he browsed around through folders, looking for anything of interest inside the myriad number of documents and pictures on the hard drive. A few minutes passed as he scanned various files, looking for anything out of the ordinary...when he suddenly stopped, scrolling back through a file to take a closer look. His face twisted into a frown as he kept reading, digging through more of the file's contents until he found what had bothered him previously. What he'd found was familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why.

Flipping open his GLD, he ran a quick search on the information he'd retrieved. The results he got...

Well, suffice it to say that they were definitely not what he'd expected at all. More to the point, Darius needed to know what he'd just found, and fast.

He opened a line to Darius' GLD, hoping that his younger brother would actually be paying attention, but got no answer on the line for his troubles. Revolver bit back a curse, spinning back to the computer and printing out a copy of the information he wanted before starting to head for the door. He needed to get back to Darius' place as soon as he could, hopefully before his brother did something he would almost certainly regret later.

A bitter laugh escaped his lips as he tore open the door to the house and ran back out onto the Galbadian streets, calling up wind magic around himself.

Darius never seemed to regret anything.