Chapter 319
Ars Poetica
ULTIMA RATIO NEMO OBLIGATUR
- Location
- The Kingdom of Fiore
- Pronouns
- He / Him / His
Let's try this again. This time, with feeling.
-x-
The hardest part was finding Medusa's trail after she left.
When you're investigating someone who might pose a significant threat to you and the people around you, then you want two things: First, you want to be able to avoid being detected. If you're found out, the investigation fails. If there's a hostage, then that hostage will almost certainly die. If they know you're coming, then they'll be able to specifically prepare for you.
Second, you never want to cut off any means of reinforcements. It's a careful balance to keep, but if you can leave behind subtle enough breadcrumbs that only the people you know about are able to follow them, then maybe you can lead others to wherever you left off in the event the worst came to pass.
Medusa didn't do the second thing. She just left a message behind to be passed to me if she took too long.
Or maybe she did and I just wasn't smart enough to tell, or observant enough to catch it – maybe there was some kind of personal deficiency that prevented me from seeing what she'd planned. I knew I wasn't that bright, but…
I furrowed my brow, "Ow…" I mumbled, lifting my bare heel.
…
…Why was I walking around without shoes?
Checking my pants, I shook my head, clapped my hands, and built a pair of boots from them. Sure, that meant I would be walking around in shorts for a little while. But it was a small price to pay.
-x-
Souls influence the bodies they are a part of, just as bodies can influence the soul and the mind. What was it that Meisters always said? A sound soul comes from a sound mind and body? Something like that.
It followed that I'd be a little out of whack without Meds around. "Have you considered flying and using your Ultimate Eye to take a look around?" I heard Desiree propose.
"That could work," I replied, "But if I end up spoiling Meds' investigation by revealing myself like that, then she's kind of fucked."
"Poe, at this point, she might be–"
"No way in hell." That wasn't my voice. Startled, I looked over my left shoulder and watched as Lust stepped towards me in the colorless world. "That snake wouldn't just up and fail. If she's taking this long, there's a good reason for it."
"Lust," Desiree looked like she was reaching for her, "We need to be realistic. If Medusa is dead… what will we do?"
"Nothing." I answered, "Because she's not dead. Trapped, maybe. Stuck in a tight spot, sure. She said to assume the worst, but the worst doesn't have to mean she's dead. As-is… if she really has died, I think I'd have felt it." I said, looking over myself. No scratches or marks…
"How so?" Desiree inquired.
"I came to an epiphany while I was fighting Larry… but in truth, this is something I've been thinking about for a while. What's the difference," I raised a finger, "Between a Stand and a Zanpakuto spirit? What's the difference between a Ghost and a piece of Innocence? If the colors of Titanite denote what it is strong against, then surely the things it is strong against are color coded as well. Blue for blue, green for green, red for red – and like attracts like."
"Are you… proposing a kind of relationship between everything you've seen? Poe, that doesn't–"
"We already know there's probably a relationship between it all," I interrupted her. "There almost certainly is a relationship between everything – and even if I'm still a little unsure how it all comes together, I do think I can conclude… that a Stand is, almost certainly, a Zanpakuto spirit. And if Medusa can operate independently of me, if she can accurately represent a core aspect of my abilities, then maybe she's become a part of me… enough to qualify as one or the other. If she died, then I'd die too."
"But that can't be right." Desiree replied, "Medusa is clearly her own entity. And you know as well as I do that there are Stands as well as Zanpakuto that can be separated from their users and destroyed under the right circumstances… There are plenty of examples of both that don't even needspecial treatment, and that trait is just inherent to them. Muramasa, Super Fly, Cheap Trick… that's just naming a few. And there are dozens more besides them."
Wrath's exhale made my head turn towards him, his form fading into view. "Even if you weren't wrong about Medusa being an aspect of your soul, she is sufficiently independent of your soul that you might be wrong about her survival. After all, to perform Soul Resonance requires two souls, not one." I sucked in a breath at that and looked away. "Poe," I could feel his stare penetrating me, even as I observed every crack in the ground. "Poe." He barked, "Look at me. Look me in the eye and tell me what will you do if your Helen of Troy is dead before you could tear down the enemy's gates?"
And to that, I was quiet.
The greyed out world could last for however long I wanted it to, or needed it to. I wouldn't be able to move very far though, and the scenery would get annoying after a long enough time. For some reason, I just felt numb – like most of my nerves were gone. It felt like parts of me were just pinned in the air to hold me up.
My eye searched for something to change the subject, but the clouds were too slow, and in my attempt to avoid looking at Wrath, my eyes had been caught at just the wrong time to stare at the sun. I blinked and, eventually, a tree was in the way. My teeth grit, my eye shut, and for a long, painful second I forced myself to think it through.
"…I suppose I'll get angry," I sighed. "I'll get really, really mad. I'll probably kill who or what was responsible for it. And then…" I took a deep breath, "I don't know. I don't know if I'd even succeed at that first step, and if I did… fuck if I know how I'd follow it up." My nostrils flared. I took a deep breath of the air and tried to catch any familiar scent. "But I do know that it doesn't matter." I looked at Lust, "You trained with her, one on one, for a long time. In a lot of ways… you know Meds better than I do. So if she was anywhere, do you think you'd know how to find her?"
Lust nodded, "I certainly can – as a representation of your more parasitic abilities; I'm also the representation of sound-based techniques. This includes Soul Resonance. So if you can't find her scent or her tracks," Lust reached out towards me, and for the briefest moment, I felt my hands move of their own accord.
My hands glowed as Centrecroix's shining gauntlets built up one piece at a time. Their prongs extended, and I tapped them against the earth. Something shimmered in the air. I watched as waves warped and churned, then I shut my eye and reached out.
I knew the feeling of Medusa's soul. But its appearance was something new to me. I felt the cascades of Centrecroix's sound push away ribbons that got too close to my hand as I reached out. And there, I saw a single green ribbon. It was tattered, stained with black splotches and holes – an ugly, serpentine thing.
But to me, it was brighter than any star. I grasped for it, and my eyes opened wide as an influx of spiritual noise coalesced into a single, long string of arrows.
If I was just using spirit ribbons, I might have taken a much longer time. If I was just using Centrecroix's power, or attempting Soul Resonance, it would definitely have taken longer. Yet after combining all the many means I had of tracking Meds, it almost felt like cheating.
Why leave behind a trail if you know there's someone you trust out there who can always find you?
…I mean, the trail still would've been nice, but I like to think Meds had a lot of faith in me.
-x-
The first town we found looked… haphazard. From the outside, it looked like a mish-mash combination of half a dozen different kinds of castles. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. I could still see the displaced earth, ground, and rock that had been pushed out of the way as the castles grew out of the ground.
I could feel an energy in the air as I approached. Tentative, warm, and trepidatious, there was a hint of past adrenaline that carried over the wind. To my chimeric senses, I could smell what these people, new and old, were feeling.
Maids and butlers boasting animalistic features scurried about, some carrying construction equipment with a strength that belied their physical appearance, and at their side, people dressed in clothes that weren't quite modern but weren't quite old offered assistance where they could, bandaged and limping or otherwise.
There were smiles, however melancholy, and a part of me felt kind of proud. But when I raised my hand, and my voice, there was a pause. Everyone's eyes focused on me and on the work apron I'd been wearing on and off for several years.
None of them looked me in the eye. Maids and butlers alike took stances near the people, some levying gardening tools and hammers at me.
Fear. Raw, true, primal fear at the sight of a white pineapple on a blue flag, surrounded by Crusader's Crosses and stars.
"Uh," I coughed, raised my hands just a little higher, and gave my most disarming smile. "I come in peace?"
-x-
"It hasn't been an easy week." The town's mayor was a portly, short man with a wide face and an unwieldy beard that bounced with every movement. He was an old man who scratched the back of his balding head with one hand as he held a pungent cup of something hot.
My cheeks were starting to hurt from keeping up a pleasant expression, and sweat dripped down my head at the feeling of a pitchfork poking my back. "Yeah. I feel that. Really, I do." I turned my head a little, "Could you maybe pull back a little on that? Please?"
The lizard girl in a maid's outfit turned her yellow eyes from me to the mayor, and at his nod, she acquiesced and stepped back. Four more maids and butlers stood at her side, and the wide and spacious room was hardly cramped for it.
A window of stained glass in no particular pattern of reds, blues, and greens loomed behind the mayor, and the town, now a city, below him continued its motions.
"You don't strike me as the sort of person who visits places for the sake of it. So, mister, ah…" The mayor's hesitation fell into a burst of unsteady, awkward laughter, "Ahaha… We never asked your name, did we?"
My smile became more genuine, "Would it be weird if I said this was stillone of the better welcomes I've gotten from a new place?"
The peal of chuckles that left the mayor felt less forced. "Maybe. If it helps, the entire country isn't like our humble, uh, not-so-humble town."
"I'll keep that in mind." I raised a hand to scratch at my nose and barely made it a few inches before I felt the pitchfork again. And a knife. And a nail pressing into the back of my head with, from what I could tell, a large sledgehammer held in position. I didn't trust myself to make another move and instead settled on staying as still as possible. "My name is Poe R.R. Acti. I'm looking for someone I care about. She's blonde, about as tall as my shoulders, walks in bare feet, and she's got a small scar on her eyebrow."
"Is she your sibling?"
"Hah?" I blinked. "What? No, I mean, what? I'm her boyfriend, not her brother." I was suddenly very, very glad I wasn't drinking anything when he said that.
"Oh. I was about to say I could see the resemblance, but…"
"Not. Related."
"Fair enough," he shrugged. "If you say you're with her, though, surely you have an explanation for the…"
"The crosses?" I asked. The mayor nodded, and I considered them. "I've just been wearing stuff like this so long that I don't even care anymore. What's so special about the crosses?"
"A… short while ago, men and women wearing crosses and using magic bearing crosses began visiting our town, searching for a man named Ivan. We could not find this man, so they chose to stay. They were…" he struggled for the words. "Monsters. What magic we could see was incredibly powerful, and more terrifying was the magic we couldn't. We became desperate. Dark Guilds were hired to face them, but rather than confronting the problem they were content to leach off of us in silence and obscurity, and the cross-bearers saw no reason to interfere with them. Those times are not entirely behind us, you understand."
"I don't know what to say… But I'm not one of them. Of either of them. Sorry. If I knew my apron would give you flashbacks, I'd have made it look a little different."
"What's done is done." The mayor said. He took a sip of his brew and offered a contented smile to a middle-aged looking rabbit maid. "The perfect temperature. Good work, Jezika." His head craned slightly to address me, my height and his seated position making it slightly difficult. "The woman you're looking for found us between a rock and a hard place. By the time she was done, that was about eight or nine days ago."
"You don't remember which?"
"We found the wine cellars after the castles appeared, and the days spent watering the seeds were rather stressful."
I could imagine. "And after that?"
"Then we had to file a report to the Magic Council." I winced. The mayor paused. "It is astounding how much faith we've lost in them over the past several days." He pulled open a drawer, filled to the brim with letters, and with one hand deftly picked out a single envelope. "Dozens of calls for help, and the moment the problem is gone they send us missives asking for us to pay higher taxes and barter more with neighboring towns and cities that refused to help or had their hands tied. Incorrigible."
"I feel for you. I truly do. But, not to sound callous or anything, you did see her?"
"We all did!" He nodded, "She won the fight and saved us all, but when we offered to keep her here for a night or two in the few buildings left standing, she declined. Actually, she looked a little uncomfortable at the idea." The mayor whose name I still didn't know frowned, "We don't blame her. She couldn't have known this would happen."
"Thanks for offering," I said to him. "She was–" can't say she's looking for Ivan, don't say she's doing that, say she's doing something else "–in the middle of something important." Nailed it. "Time probably wasn't on her side, so…"
"I understand. We used to have mages pass through here all the time. Say, you wouldn't happen to know what guild she was a part of, would you?"
"Uh…" Should I have said Fairy Tail? If I did, then what if that blew Meds' cover? Maybe a better answer would be to make something up? No, wait, I can use an entire repertoire of guilds whose names I know– "The…" Wait, shit, my mouth is moving faster than my brain– "Pineapple Court…?" Fuuuuuuuck…
"Those people from the land of cheese?"
"…" I opened my mouth to say words, then closed it as I raised a finger in open, perplexed thought. "Ah…" I blinked, "Yes. That is the name of the guild. The Pineapple Court. From the land of cheese. That is the name of the guild she is a part of." Buy it, buy it, buy it…!
"And you must be a member of it! Showing this much concern for your fellow guild member would be one thing, but pursuing the woman you love to the corners of the world? You are an inspiration, sir! I must apologize for how we've treated you."
"Apology accepted," I said with a straight face, giving the man a thumbs up even as I cursed my mouth's inability to shut the fuck up and thanked whatever deities let me pass a cosmic bluff check.
He offered a cheery nod and stepped out of his chair. "Well, after the troubles, she went in a general that-way direction," he said gesturing… not quite North, but not quite South. I understood where he was pointing; I just don't know how to describe it. He was standing with one leg and pointing three ways… but it was really one way because of triangulation.
The long and short of is that I smiled, nodded, and after departing with some quick goodbyes and promises to bring Meds back around if we had the chance, I followed the trail that Centrecroix and the spirit ribbons offered, now with the added bonus of non-spiritual directions.
"That went well," I said aloud.
-x-
Medusa's Story
This was going poorly.
Throughout the centuries I've lived, never once have I been so bothered and annoyed. Ask me about any subject of science or the soul, quiz me on quantum physics and its inherent spiritual properties I beg you.
But for the love of all things valued, never make me ask why the flaming house chasing after me was made of rats.
"Learn your place in the universe, for I am Sternritter "R" The Rat House!" Roared some-odd tens of thousands of screeching voices. At the sound of a broken window, an arrow whistled toward me from behind.
I rolled and stared as the projectile drilled a hole through the stone wall of the internally smoothed-out cave.
With widened eyes, I looked back to the Sternritter and parted my lips to form a wide, exhilarated grin.
Never a dull moment.
-x-
One Foot on the Platform
OR: One Foot on the Train
End-319
-x-
The hardest part was finding Medusa's trail after she left.
When you're investigating someone who might pose a significant threat to you and the people around you, then you want two things: First, you want to be able to avoid being detected. If you're found out, the investigation fails. If there's a hostage, then that hostage will almost certainly die. If they know you're coming, then they'll be able to specifically prepare for you.
Second, you never want to cut off any means of reinforcements. It's a careful balance to keep, but if you can leave behind subtle enough breadcrumbs that only the people you know about are able to follow them, then maybe you can lead others to wherever you left off in the event the worst came to pass.
Medusa didn't do the second thing. She just left a message behind to be passed to me if she took too long.
Or maybe she did and I just wasn't smart enough to tell, or observant enough to catch it – maybe there was some kind of personal deficiency that prevented me from seeing what she'd planned. I knew I wasn't that bright, but…
I furrowed my brow, "Ow…" I mumbled, lifting my bare heel.
…
…Why was I walking around without shoes?
Checking my pants, I shook my head, clapped my hands, and built a pair of boots from them. Sure, that meant I would be walking around in shorts for a little while. But it was a small price to pay.
-x-
Souls influence the bodies they are a part of, just as bodies can influence the soul and the mind. What was it that Meisters always said? A sound soul comes from a sound mind and body? Something like that.
It followed that I'd be a little out of whack without Meds around. "Have you considered flying and using your Ultimate Eye to take a look around?" I heard Desiree propose.
"That could work," I replied, "But if I end up spoiling Meds' investigation by revealing myself like that, then she's kind of fucked."
"Poe, at this point, she might be–"
"No way in hell." That wasn't my voice. Startled, I looked over my left shoulder and watched as Lust stepped towards me in the colorless world. "That snake wouldn't just up and fail. If she's taking this long, there's a good reason for it."
"Lust," Desiree looked like she was reaching for her, "We need to be realistic. If Medusa is dead… what will we do?"
"Nothing." I answered, "Because she's not dead. Trapped, maybe. Stuck in a tight spot, sure. She said to assume the worst, but the worst doesn't have to mean she's dead. As-is… if she really has died, I think I'd have felt it." I said, looking over myself. No scratches or marks…
"How so?" Desiree inquired.
"I came to an epiphany while I was fighting Larry… but in truth, this is something I've been thinking about for a while. What's the difference," I raised a finger, "Between a Stand and a Zanpakuto spirit? What's the difference between a Ghost and a piece of Innocence? If the colors of Titanite denote what it is strong against, then surely the things it is strong against are color coded as well. Blue for blue, green for green, red for red – and like attracts like."
"Are you… proposing a kind of relationship between everything you've seen? Poe, that doesn't–"
"We already know there's probably a relationship between it all," I interrupted her. "There almost certainly is a relationship between everything – and even if I'm still a little unsure how it all comes together, I do think I can conclude… that a Stand is, almost certainly, a Zanpakuto spirit. And if Medusa can operate independently of me, if she can accurately represent a core aspect of my abilities, then maybe she's become a part of me… enough to qualify as one or the other. If she died, then I'd die too."
"But that can't be right." Desiree replied, "Medusa is clearly her own entity. And you know as well as I do that there are Stands as well as Zanpakuto that can be separated from their users and destroyed under the right circumstances… There are plenty of examples of both that don't even needspecial treatment, and that trait is just inherent to them. Muramasa, Super Fly, Cheap Trick… that's just naming a few. And there are dozens more besides them."
Wrath's exhale made my head turn towards him, his form fading into view. "Even if you weren't wrong about Medusa being an aspect of your soul, she is sufficiently independent of your soul that you might be wrong about her survival. After all, to perform Soul Resonance requires two souls, not one." I sucked in a breath at that and looked away. "Poe," I could feel his stare penetrating me, even as I observed every crack in the ground. "Poe." He barked, "Look at me. Look me in the eye and tell me what will you do if your Helen of Troy is dead before you could tear down the enemy's gates?"
And to that, I was quiet.
The greyed out world could last for however long I wanted it to, or needed it to. I wouldn't be able to move very far though, and the scenery would get annoying after a long enough time. For some reason, I just felt numb – like most of my nerves were gone. It felt like parts of me were just pinned in the air to hold me up.
My eye searched for something to change the subject, but the clouds were too slow, and in my attempt to avoid looking at Wrath, my eyes had been caught at just the wrong time to stare at the sun. I blinked and, eventually, a tree was in the way. My teeth grit, my eye shut, and for a long, painful second I forced myself to think it through.
"…I suppose I'll get angry," I sighed. "I'll get really, really mad. I'll probably kill who or what was responsible for it. And then…" I took a deep breath, "I don't know. I don't know if I'd even succeed at that first step, and if I did… fuck if I know how I'd follow it up." My nostrils flared. I took a deep breath of the air and tried to catch any familiar scent. "But I do know that it doesn't matter." I looked at Lust, "You trained with her, one on one, for a long time. In a lot of ways… you know Meds better than I do. So if she was anywhere, do you think you'd know how to find her?"
Lust nodded, "I certainly can – as a representation of your more parasitic abilities; I'm also the representation of sound-based techniques. This includes Soul Resonance. So if you can't find her scent or her tracks," Lust reached out towards me, and for the briefest moment, I felt my hands move of their own accord.
My hands glowed as Centrecroix's shining gauntlets built up one piece at a time. Their prongs extended, and I tapped them against the earth. Something shimmered in the air. I watched as waves warped and churned, then I shut my eye and reached out.
I knew the feeling of Medusa's soul. But its appearance was something new to me. I felt the cascades of Centrecroix's sound push away ribbons that got too close to my hand as I reached out. And there, I saw a single green ribbon. It was tattered, stained with black splotches and holes – an ugly, serpentine thing.
But to me, it was brighter than any star. I grasped for it, and my eyes opened wide as an influx of spiritual noise coalesced into a single, long string of arrows.
If I was just using spirit ribbons, I might have taken a much longer time. If I was just using Centrecroix's power, or attempting Soul Resonance, it would definitely have taken longer. Yet after combining all the many means I had of tracking Meds, it almost felt like cheating.
Why leave behind a trail if you know there's someone you trust out there who can always find you?
…I mean, the trail still would've been nice, but I like to think Meds had a lot of faith in me.
-x-
The first town we found looked… haphazard. From the outside, it looked like a mish-mash combination of half a dozen different kinds of castles. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. I could still see the displaced earth, ground, and rock that had been pushed out of the way as the castles grew out of the ground.
I could feel an energy in the air as I approached. Tentative, warm, and trepidatious, there was a hint of past adrenaline that carried over the wind. To my chimeric senses, I could smell what these people, new and old, were feeling.
Maids and butlers boasting animalistic features scurried about, some carrying construction equipment with a strength that belied their physical appearance, and at their side, people dressed in clothes that weren't quite modern but weren't quite old offered assistance where they could, bandaged and limping or otherwise.
There were smiles, however melancholy, and a part of me felt kind of proud. But when I raised my hand, and my voice, there was a pause. Everyone's eyes focused on me and on the work apron I'd been wearing on and off for several years.
None of them looked me in the eye. Maids and butlers alike took stances near the people, some levying gardening tools and hammers at me.
Fear. Raw, true, primal fear at the sight of a white pineapple on a blue flag, surrounded by Crusader's Crosses and stars.
"Uh," I coughed, raised my hands just a little higher, and gave my most disarming smile. "I come in peace?"
-x-
"It hasn't been an easy week." The town's mayor was a portly, short man with a wide face and an unwieldy beard that bounced with every movement. He was an old man who scratched the back of his balding head with one hand as he held a pungent cup of something hot.
My cheeks were starting to hurt from keeping up a pleasant expression, and sweat dripped down my head at the feeling of a pitchfork poking my back. "Yeah. I feel that. Really, I do." I turned my head a little, "Could you maybe pull back a little on that? Please?"
The lizard girl in a maid's outfit turned her yellow eyes from me to the mayor, and at his nod, she acquiesced and stepped back. Four more maids and butlers stood at her side, and the wide and spacious room was hardly cramped for it.
A window of stained glass in no particular pattern of reds, blues, and greens loomed behind the mayor, and the town, now a city, below him continued its motions.
"You don't strike me as the sort of person who visits places for the sake of it. So, mister, ah…" The mayor's hesitation fell into a burst of unsteady, awkward laughter, "Ahaha… We never asked your name, did we?"
My smile became more genuine, "Would it be weird if I said this was stillone of the better welcomes I've gotten from a new place?"
The peal of chuckles that left the mayor felt less forced. "Maybe. If it helps, the entire country isn't like our humble, uh, not-so-humble town."
"I'll keep that in mind." I raised a hand to scratch at my nose and barely made it a few inches before I felt the pitchfork again. And a knife. And a nail pressing into the back of my head with, from what I could tell, a large sledgehammer held in position. I didn't trust myself to make another move and instead settled on staying as still as possible. "My name is Poe R.R. Acti. I'm looking for someone I care about. She's blonde, about as tall as my shoulders, walks in bare feet, and she's got a small scar on her eyebrow."
"Is she your sibling?"
"Hah?" I blinked. "What? No, I mean, what? I'm her boyfriend, not her brother." I was suddenly very, very glad I wasn't drinking anything when he said that.
"Oh. I was about to say I could see the resemblance, but…"
"Not. Related."
"Fair enough," he shrugged. "If you say you're with her, though, surely you have an explanation for the…"
"The crosses?" I asked. The mayor nodded, and I considered them. "I've just been wearing stuff like this so long that I don't even care anymore. What's so special about the crosses?"
"A… short while ago, men and women wearing crosses and using magic bearing crosses began visiting our town, searching for a man named Ivan. We could not find this man, so they chose to stay. They were…" he struggled for the words. "Monsters. What magic we could see was incredibly powerful, and more terrifying was the magic we couldn't. We became desperate. Dark Guilds were hired to face them, but rather than confronting the problem they were content to leach off of us in silence and obscurity, and the cross-bearers saw no reason to interfere with them. Those times are not entirely behind us, you understand."
"I don't know what to say… But I'm not one of them. Of either of them. Sorry. If I knew my apron would give you flashbacks, I'd have made it look a little different."
"What's done is done." The mayor said. He took a sip of his brew and offered a contented smile to a middle-aged looking rabbit maid. "The perfect temperature. Good work, Jezika." His head craned slightly to address me, my height and his seated position making it slightly difficult. "The woman you're looking for found us between a rock and a hard place. By the time she was done, that was about eight or nine days ago."
"You don't remember which?"
"We found the wine cellars after the castles appeared, and the days spent watering the seeds were rather stressful."
I could imagine. "And after that?"
"Then we had to file a report to the Magic Council." I winced. The mayor paused. "It is astounding how much faith we've lost in them over the past several days." He pulled open a drawer, filled to the brim with letters, and with one hand deftly picked out a single envelope. "Dozens of calls for help, and the moment the problem is gone they send us missives asking for us to pay higher taxes and barter more with neighboring towns and cities that refused to help or had their hands tied. Incorrigible."
"I feel for you. I truly do. But, not to sound callous or anything, you did see her?"
"We all did!" He nodded, "She won the fight and saved us all, but when we offered to keep her here for a night or two in the few buildings left standing, she declined. Actually, she looked a little uncomfortable at the idea." The mayor whose name I still didn't know frowned, "We don't blame her. She couldn't have known this would happen."
"Thanks for offering," I said to him. "She was–" can't say she's looking for Ivan, don't say she's doing that, say she's doing something else "–in the middle of something important." Nailed it. "Time probably wasn't on her side, so…"
"I understand. We used to have mages pass through here all the time. Say, you wouldn't happen to know what guild she was a part of, would you?"
"Uh…" Should I have said Fairy Tail? If I did, then what if that blew Meds' cover? Maybe a better answer would be to make something up? No, wait, I can use an entire repertoire of guilds whose names I know– "The…" Wait, shit, my mouth is moving faster than my brain– "Pineapple Court…?" Fuuuuuuuck…
"Those people from the land of cheese?"
"…" I opened my mouth to say words, then closed it as I raised a finger in open, perplexed thought. "Ah…" I blinked, "Yes. That is the name of the guild. The Pineapple Court. From the land of cheese. That is the name of the guild she is a part of." Buy it, buy it, buy it…!
"And you must be a member of it! Showing this much concern for your fellow guild member would be one thing, but pursuing the woman you love to the corners of the world? You are an inspiration, sir! I must apologize for how we've treated you."
"Apology accepted," I said with a straight face, giving the man a thumbs up even as I cursed my mouth's inability to shut the fuck up and thanked whatever deities let me pass a cosmic bluff check.
He offered a cheery nod and stepped out of his chair. "Well, after the troubles, she went in a general that-way direction," he said gesturing… not quite North, but not quite South. I understood where he was pointing; I just don't know how to describe it. He was standing with one leg and pointing three ways… but it was really one way because of triangulation.
The long and short of is that I smiled, nodded, and after departing with some quick goodbyes and promises to bring Meds back around if we had the chance, I followed the trail that Centrecroix and the spirit ribbons offered, now with the added bonus of non-spiritual directions.
"That went well," I said aloud.
-x-
Medusa's Story
This was going poorly.
Throughout the centuries I've lived, never once have I been so bothered and annoyed. Ask me about any subject of science or the soul, quiz me on quantum physics and its inherent spiritual properties I beg you.
But for the love of all things valued, never make me ask why the flaming house chasing after me was made of rats.
"Learn your place in the universe, for I am Sternritter "R" The Rat House!" Roared some-odd tens of thousands of screeching voices. At the sound of a broken window, an arrow whistled toward me from behind.
I rolled and stared as the projectile drilled a hole through the stone wall of the internally smoothed-out cave.
With widened eyes, I looked back to the Sternritter and parted my lips to form a wide, exhilarated grin.
Never a dull moment.
-x-
One Foot on the Platform
OR: One Foot on the Train
End-319
