ATUHOR'S NOSE: I was going to make this needlessly complicated by splitting the story into one route where they go into the ranch first and one where they confront Dorr first, but uhhhhhhhh I couldn't make it work. Maybe you'll see them confront Dorr in a non-canon "what if" side story.
Colette wanted to hear everyone's opinion before deciding...
... and she quickly realized that the only one who wanted to go back to Palmacosta first was Kratos. "Sorry Kratos," she said lightly, "but I don't think anyone's willing to walk away from this, even just for a little bit."
"I'm surprised that even the professor is advocating for hasty action," Kratos said.
"Gathering information has its obvious merits," Raine said, "but right now avoiding Dorr is more important. We shouldn't confront him until we're ready."
I knew she was leaving out some details — I wasn't planning to mention my notes yet either — and for the same reason, I also knew she was right. "Let's go kick in some Desian teeth and free some prisoners!" I declared. ... and hopefully a little more effectively than my first attempt, I almost said out loud.
"I won't let them destroy Palmacosta too," Lloyd said. "I'll take out the whole ranch!"
"Since we are barging in the front door, we'd best make sure we're completely prepared," Raine said.
"Hold up," I interjected. "Before we do that, let's check the perimeter. The ranch at Iselia had barbed wire fences I was able to just cut through."
"The ranch at Iselia also had a non-aggression treaty and no expectation of attacks happening at all," Kratos pointed out. "They could afford to loosen the leash a little bit."
"Yeah, I mean, I'm not optimistic, but we should still check. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if we didn't check and only saw there totally was a cuttable fence when it was too late?"
"Hmph," Kratos hmph'd. "Fine. Chosen, while we take stock of our supplies, you fly around the perimeter and look for any wire fences. Stay low and don't get too close, you don't want to be spotted. Your wings are as much a liability as an asset here." Colette nodded and took off.
We'd just about checked all our gear when Colette got back, and much to my surprise, she did not look disappointed. "I actually found one little patch of wire fence, but I don't think it's possible to get there on foot. Leaf could probably jump there, and I think so could Lloyd and Mr Kratos. But not Genis or the Professor."
"We'd have to split up if we took that route, then," Raine said.
"Hm," I hm'd. "I wasn't... actually expecting this idea to get this far. Our goal here is to free the prisoners, kill Magnius, and generally wreck the whole place, right?"
"Um, the back area was really small," Colette said. "I don't think more than two people would be able to go through there."
"It's not immediately obvious from the outside which group is gonna run into what, so we want to be careful..." I rotated that in my mind for a few moments, mentally shuffling the party around and considering the various arrangements. "We should send a frontliner and a healer, of course, but since me and Kratos can be both, that basically just rules out sending Colette and Lloyd as our pair."
"I think it would be safest to send the Chosen in through the rear," Kratos said. "It seems likely to be less defended, which means it will be safer. Additionally, it's likely to be nearer to any prisons, allowing her to serve as the face of the rescue."
I nodded. "In that case..." The other person would have to be either myself or Kratos. Honestly, by all logic, Kratos was the better choice — he was tougher, hit harder, and had far greater mana capacity than I did, and the only thing I had over him was my ability to copy other people's techs. (Which, while certainly good, didn't seem likely to be crucial to this operation.)
But, y'know, I just felt sneaky today. "...I'll go that path too," I said, punching my palm with determination. Thankfully, nobody seemed to react to me pausing half a second mid-sentence to rotate it in my mind, or maybe more likely they had no reason to find it questionable.
After hashing out a few more details, me and Colette split off from the group and she carefully led me to the little nook in the back of the ranch. I hopped up a few outcroppings and down to, as far as I could tell, the only border of the entire ranch that was barbed wire instead of a solid wall.
"Isn't it kinda weird that they have this, though?" I mused as I dug through my backpack for my wire cutters. "Like, what purpose does it serve to put up barbed wire in the one spot normal humans can't get to anyway?"
"Maybe they got bored of having solid walls everywhere and this was just the only place they thought was safe to do something different?" Colette offered.
I glanced behind me at what was mostly solid rock, with the only vaguely interesting thing being the sky and a few trees. "I dunno. The view here isn't exactly spectacular. Maybe it looks better at night, but... even if they did want nice scenery at a human ranch, they could've put a glass window here. It's almost like..." I trailed off, not entirely sure what it was almost like.
"Well, never mind that," I said, digging through my backpack for my wire cutters and preparing to snip our way in.
Behind the fence was, well, very little. We were in a back yard, and not even a particularly well-maintained one. It didn't look like anyone actually went here, and I was fully prepared to slink away dejected if we couldn't actually find a door back here, but incredibly, there was one after all — or maybe not so incredible; they'd fenced the area off for a reason.
There were already alarms going off before we opened the door, presumably from the others charging in on the other side of the base. Certainly nobody seemed super interested in the state of things back here, as I inferred from the complete absence of anyone actually being here.
"This is unsettling," I said, unsettled. "Like, I cut through the fences at Iselia already, surely they know it's a thing I can do and would leave like, one guy just in case?"
"Look out!" Colette cried, and suddenly yanked me back as a crossbow bolt flew through the space where my head had been a second ago and embedded itself in the wall.
"Yeah, see, like that!" I said, drawing my spears and turning to the Desian who had shot the offending projectile. Well, I assumed there was a Desian in that direction — whoever they were, they had the sense to pop back into cover after firing.
The problem was, this hallway had a good five branches off it, and any of them could be where they were hiding. So I approached slowly and carefully, holding my mana ready for a shield spell, while Colette covered my behind, chakrams in hand and eyes darting back and forth.
The first hall looked empty enough, and so did the second, but the third was filled with a bunch of random crates and while I didn't immediately see anyone, that was obviously not conclusive. Especially since anyone who was hiding in there would have a perfect line of sight into the other branches.
"Let's make sure this isn't a double-bluff," I muttered, knowing Colette's angel hearing would pick it up. I kept this hall covered while Colette carefully looked down the other two. She turned back to me and shook her head. "All right. Cover me, 'Lette.'" A forgotten technique had just popped back into my mind, but it would drain me pretty bad if I was remembering accurately.
I stepped carefully down the hallway, drawing in mana for my arte. "C'mon, buddy, we already know you're in here, come out and face us." They weren't behind the first set of crates... or the second...
... or the third...
... but they were behind the fourth.
I let the gathered mana dissipate. I wouldn't be needing this arte. Their throat was slit.
"Uh. Okay. Not what I was expecting to see today."
Look, it's not like I'd never seen a blood-stained corpse before. I'd killed a number of people myself on this journey, from the Desian guards back at the Iselia ranch to bandits that had tried to mug us — not to mention Marble and the other prisoners, as much as they weren't shaped like people at the time — and running someone through with a spear hadn't produced particularly less blood than this.
But, y'know. When those people had died, I'd been expecting it. They hadn't dropped dead spontaneously just out of eyeshot.
"Who did this?" I wondered, as I checked the body for an Exsphere (no dice). "And where'd they go afterward?" I glanced further down the hall. "... and do we want to follow them, or avoid them?"
"I think we should focus on saving the prisoners," Colette said. "If we run into this person we can try talking to them when it happens."
I nodded and then, for lack of any reason to do otherwise, we continued down this same hallway, still keeping our eyes out for more Desians. It looked like this really had been the only one, though.
"Are you weirded out by this too, or is it just me?" I asked Colette. "I know the others are drawing aggro on the other side of the base, but seeing nobody no matter how we wander, that's creepy."
"The empty rooms are a bit eerie," Colette said, "but it's a good thing, right? It means we can save the prisoners without trouble."
"See, I'm not so sure it does," I said. "It could just as easily mean trouble got here before we did."
"Hmm, maybe. I guess we'll just have to keep our eyes open."
And we did just that, but it wasn't until we found the human cells that we ran into any more Desians, a pair guarding the doorway.
"Hey, you!" one called out, immediately loosing a crossbow bolt at me.
"Hey yourself, Meteorite!" I countered, jumping over the bolt and thrusting down. He managed to dodge, and I brought up my broken hilt to intercept his partner's whip.
"Pow Hammer, Ray Satellite!" Colette chucked projectiles at both of the Desians, rattling the whipmaster's head and forcing the ranger to jump back instead of shooting me again.
If they thought they'd get a chance to counter while Colette recovered from her attack, they were gravely mistaken. There was an energy in the air that demanded to be followed up on. I gave Colette a quick glance to double-check —
"Now, Leaf!" she called as she wound up to throw her second chakram. "Satellite —"
I jumped once more, this time coming down on the disarmed whipmaster just as Colette's chakram got her from the other side. ""— Strike!""
With the whipmaster down, the ranger growled and jumped back further, hoping to at least get a few potshots in before we closed the gap.
"Multishot!" he shouted, pulling out an arte that let them fire at both of us simultaneously. Colette dodged by pulling in her wings and falling to the floor, while I tried to sidestep and got grazed in the shoulder. "Multishot, Multishot, Multishot —"
I spun my spear to help deflect the hail of bolts as I grabbed Colette and pulled her behind a pillar for cover. "Well that's no fair, why can you cancel this one arte into itself and I need to do it in special combos?"
"I'm a superior half-elf — Multishot — and you're filthy humans!"
"No, I don't think that's it," I countered, drawing in mana for another arte I had remembered. I stepped out from behind cover for just long enough to watch him unleash another Multishot. "Mimic.
"Multishot." I swung my spear like a giant magic wand and ethereal arrows materialized out of nowhere. "I think this might just be a trait of the arte they taught you. Multishot, Multishot, Multishot."
None of my projectiles hit him, as he had taken cover in the doorframe. He stepped out to return fire, but before they could, Colette dropped from above and caught their crossbow in her chakram, pulling out out of their hand and flinging it across the corridor.
"... more importantly, I think you forgot that you need to look up," I finished. "... Weird thing to forget, honestly, when there's this whole prophecy about an angel taking down your entire organization."
I looked around and evaluated the situation. The whipmaster was down, probably dead but definitely no longer conscious. The ranger was disarmed and at Colette's mercy.
"Do we have to kill them?" Colette asked.
"Hmm. I think we kinda do? I mean, we could also lock them in a closet, but that's just killing them indirectly, what with the self-destruct."
"How do you know about the self-destruct‽" the ranger shouted.
"Nunya." Uh. Hm. Good question. How do I know about that? It wasn't in my notes, I just... remembered it. This wasn't the first time I'd 'just known' something about this world despite not having learned it, but the phenomenon weirded me out every time. "... Let's presume we do want to spare these mooks. Are we actually able to? We'd want a way for them to get out of the ranch, but without immediately going back to ranching activities."
"I'll die before I surrender to inferior humans!" the ranger said.
... I sighed. "Let's just lock them in a closet." This is sad.
...
There was a closet in this very hall, conveniently, and we tied the handle shut with the whipmaster's whip. I dug out the lighter I wasn't able to find back at the Water Temple and melted it into a solid loop, so any old Desian who came across couldn't simply untie it.
"Of course they'll still be able to cut it open," I noted, "if they have a blade on hand. But they might not. We carry knives all the time because we're journeying around in the wilderness. These Desians spend most of their time in a building where cutting things is only occasionally useful." I shrugged. "Even if they do, it'll take longer than just pulling a knot apart. I think."
With that squared away, we went into the prison hall and were immediately greeted with cries of joy and surprise.
"It's the Chosen!"
"The Chosen and also some girl has come to save us!" I snrk'd at that comment.
We quickly set about opening all the cells, and had just opened the last one when the door on the other side of the hall opened.
"Leaf! Colette!" Lloyd exclaimed. Genis gave a wave, and Raine and Kratos both gave a nod.
"Y'all!" I responded cheerfully.
"... how'd you get here, anyway?" Lloyd asked.
"If we came in from the back and you came in from the front, I would guess this is the middle-ish of the ranch," I said.
"Is it? We've been running around and getting lost in a bunch of warps."
"Warps?" I exclaimed. "Maybe we're still closer to the back, then." I shrugged. "I mean, I'm kinda just saying things, I don't have much of a sense of direction."
"In any case, we must escort the prisoners to safety," Kratos said.
"Oh, yeah, about that, have any of y'all seen a girl named Chocolat? About yea high, brown hair up like this, brown eyes, little red scarf? Unless the Desians confiscated the scarf, I suppose —"
"I've seen her," one prisoner spoke up. "She was taken away for testing. They do that to all of us to decide what ranch we'll live at full-time."
"Ah. How long does that take? Are we going to be able to get her out of here, or will we need to chase her to another ranch?"
"She's probably still in the testing room. My testing — well, they only drew a blood sample, but they made me stay there a whole day." The other prisoners nodded; this was apparently a typical test experience.
"Definitely gonna have to find that room before we blow this place," I said.
"I've been trying to draw a map of the ranch as we explore it," Raine said, leading the way out, "though it's been somewhat difficult as most of the connecting warp rooms have the exact same layout of a cross with a warp pad on each end."
"Yeesh. How do the Desians get through here, do they just memorize the paths?"
"I'm not sure how they do it," Raine admitted. "I've been marking the warp pads we've used by leaving random garbage near them. There's always something in a defeated Desian's pockets to use for that purpose."
"I wonder if they use the ray dar?" Lloyd said. "Everything looks a little different when I use that."
"The what now?" I asked, and Lloyd quickly explained about the altered Sorcerer's Ring function he'd picked up.
"... interesting, but uh. Little question. Why the hell do the Desians have a device with the sole purpose of expanding the functionality of an artifact from the Church of Martel?"
"I'm not entirely sure why," Raine said, "but several of the Desians we've defeated have had another Sorcerer's Ring equipped. Perhaps they're copies."
"Hm. It is a useful little tool, but that raises the question of how they got their hands on it to reverse-engineer, and why they didn't just keep the original afterward."
"I bet they stole it from an old Chosen a long time ago," Lloyd said, "and then a later one got it back afterward."
"Could be. That sounds like it'd be in the history books. Both parts. We'll have to look it up when we get a chance."
"Waiiiit a second," Lloyd said suspiciously. "Is this homework?"
"I mean, I just thought it was interesting and I wanted to know more." I shrugged. "Speaking of interesting things — Colette, what was that combo move we did? I didn't practice for that, it just came out of nowhere!" I'd been a lot more hype about it in the moment, but I couldn't bring it up immediately with the other Desian still spamming bolts at us and then I'd sorta forgot until randomly remembering just now.
"Whoa, you did a Unison Attack?" Lloyd said. "That's so cool!"
"I know for a fact I explained Unison Attacks earlier, Leaf," Kratos said, looking distinctly unimpressed.
The gears in my brain halted for a good half-second there. "That was that? Wow, I didn't make that connection at all, I was expecting something else entirely." I closed my eyes and took a moment to completely reformulate my understanding of reality, or at least the part of reality that was 'how Unison Attacks work'. "Okay! Mental model updated."
Conveniently, it was around this point that we reached the front gates, so we handed them off to Neil and told him to take them to —
"Surely Palmacosta isn't going to work, at least not as long as Dorr is actively betraying the town," I pointed out. "The Thoda Dock is right there, though that raises the question of whether it's even remotely equipped to handle all these refugees. There is the other House of Salvation in the other direction, though..."
"They're both Houses of Salvation, and they're about the same distance from here, so wouldn't they be basically the same?" Lloyd asked.
"They would, yeah. Umm..."
"The normal House of Salvation is probably the best option," Kratos said. "While they can't take in this many refugees indefinitely, we are going to confront Dorr at some point., and that'll make a shorter trip for them back to Palmacosta when it happens."
That seemed like a good plan, so we went with that. Neil led the prisoners off, and we headed back into the ranch to look for Chocolat — and Magnius.
After all, if we didn't deal with him, the prisoners wouldn't be free for very long.
...
We spent some time fumbling around through the teleporter maze — and a maze it surely was, for there was no way this was at all practical for everyday use — and eventually found our way into what looked to be some kind of control room.
"This must be the heart of the ranch," Raine declared. Given all the devices around, anything worth controlling remotely was surely accessible from here. I immediately got to work alongside Raine poking at things looking for any hint towards Chocolat's location.
"Something doesn't make sense," Lloyd said. "If this place can control the entire ranch, why isn't Magnius here controlling it?"
"Oh, but I am, vermin!"
Immediately set on alert (what did Magnius think was going to happen?) everyone hastily jumped away from the sound of the voice, just barely dodging as Magnius slammed his axe into the floor, unleashing a blast of fiery magic.
"Nice of you to finally drop in," I quipped, pulling mana for my opening attack while Lloyd charged in with swords swinging. "Misfortune!"
Magnius faltered for just a moment as he felt the spell's effects. I had a feeling it was an unpredictable one, so I couldn't tell exactly what I'd just done to him, but with a name like that I was sure he wasn't going to like it. "You think you're clever, vermin, tagging along with the forsaken Chosen?" he taunted as he rushed me with a axe swing.
"Vermin, vermin, vermin, do you have anything else to say?" I jumped out of the way and aimed a kick at his kneecap.
Magnius dodged, but that gave Kratos and Colette an opening to ping him with Double Demon Fang and Pow Hammer. "Forsaken?" Kratos said, sounding confused.
"Tempest!" Lloyd did a dizzying-looking spin jump attack at Magnius, forcing him to block instead of chasing down Colette. "The only one who's forsaken here is you, Magnius!"
Magnius counterattacked with a massive axe swing, which Lloyd just barely avoided. "Ha! As if an inferior being like you would have any idea what's going on. I, on the other hand, know everything you're up to — even your little jailbreak."
"And what are you gonna do about it, huh?" I taunted, thrusting my spear right at his face.
Magnius managed to dodge my strike and tried to grab my spear, but I pulled it back before he got a grip. "Why, perhaps I'll unleash their Exspheres and turn them all into monsters!"
I faltered slightly, frowning loudly. "... You can't do that."
"I can do whatever I want to filthy humans — Hell Hound!" Magnius retorted, unleashing a fiery blast from his axe. "What, do you think they don't deserve everything I'm doing to them?"
I dodged again and — "Meteoroid!" — jumped behind Magnius, getting a good slash in with my broken spear. "No, I mean — well, that too, but what I'm talking about is that I don't believe you have the ability to do that. If you could just do that to arbitrary Exspheres at any time, you'd be starting with mine."
"Hmph. You're awfully confident, for a little worm that's just guessing." Magnius pulled a device out of his back pocket. "Care to call that bluff?"
I froze. His thumb was on the button. I couldn't knock it out of his hand without risking him pushing it, accidentally or on purpose. I glanced at Kratos. "You're a mercenary, you've been around, have you heard of this kind of thing?"
Kratos grimaced. "... Exbelua existing in the first place isn't talked about much. The shame of having to end your loved one's life with your own hands... the victims rarely want it known. But I've never heard of the transformation being triggered remotely."
... despite apparently calling his bluff, Kratos still wasn't approaching Magnius. He must have come to the same conclusion I had — even if that device didn't somehow remotely mutate the prisoners, that didn't mean it did anything we'd like.
"Tch. Would've been easier for you if you'd bought the lie," Magnius muttered, and before we could react, he pushed the button —
\— the high-pitched whistle of a teleporter filled the room, and Chocolat faded into existence, alongside a Desian in a white coat who was presumably the scientist testing her.
"Mag— L, Lord Magnius, what's wrong?" The scientist sounded pissed for just a second, before she spotted Magnius facing us down and her tune changed real quick. "Do you need some assistance?"
"No, no, I just want to have a chat with our guest!" Magnius snapped his fingers and the scientist marched Chocolat over.
He grabbed Chocolat by the arm to show off the Exsphere that had been implanted on her hand. "Now from here, I can set off the transformation," Magnius declared, not even flinching as all of us pointed our weapons at him.
"Don't you fucking dare —" I hissed.
"It'd be so easy." Magnius ran a finger over Chocolat's Exsphere. "I'd just need to pull it off her skin, and she'd start mutating on the spot. Just like her dear grandmother."
"G- grandma...?" Chocolat stammered.
"Oh? Did our rebel scum here not tell you what happened to your poor old granny?" Magnius's face twinged for a second and he scowled. Apparently my spell was giving him muscle spasms or something.
"My mom told me enough! She told me Grandma was killed by Desians!"
Magnius laughed. "Sounds like someone has been playing games with the truth."
I grimaced. I hadn't said 'killed by Desians', but I hadn't exactly been trying to stop Cacao or Chocolat from coming to that conclusion either. Claiming exact words wasn't going to earn me any points here.
Magnius continued, not waiting for a response. "Dear old Marble was sent to the Iselia ranch, where Leaf, Lloyd, and Genis here killed her and two of her friends. I heard they met pitiful ends."
I couldn't speak. I was shaking even as I grabbed my spears harder and I couldn't speak, I couldn't think, I could barely even breathe —
Distantly, I heard Chocolat saying something. "...refuse to be saved by Grandma's murderer..."
"That's stupid," I muttered.
"Wh- what‽" Chocolat exclaimed.
"... This was supposed to be a stupid little fight with an obvious solution," I corrected myself. "But I meddled around and made it worse. That's on me. But I am not letting Magnius manipulate you into doing something you'll regret."
Chocolat's glare shifted slightly. She was still furious, but also looked like she was at least considering what I had to say.
"... she only blew herself up because Forcystus turned her into a monster. Just like Magnius is threatening to do to you." On that note — my eyes were still swimming, but I could see that Magnius was still holding on to Chocolat, one arm twisted behind her back.
"Blew herself up?"
"Yeah. Grabbed the asshole by the neck and boom, she was gone and he was bleeding out on the dirt. Kinda badass, honestly —"
"Okay, this is getting beyond stupid," Magnius said. He pulled Chocolat into the air by her arm and reached for her Exsphere —
\— Chocolat's eyes widened in horror —
\— Lloyd dashed forward, but he wasn't going to make it —
\— I pointed my spear at Chocolat and chanted "Rescue!", and the magic yanked her out of Magnius's grip —
\— Chocolat yelped and I thought I spotted drops of blood sailing through the air —
"No!" Kratos cried.
Magnius shook off his latest spasm and looked at the Exsphere still in his hand. "Heh. I was mostly bluffing..."