[LOG] How Do You Solve A Problem Like Fon Fabre, Part 1
In Which Luke Discovers The Wonders Of Underwater Trains
WHO: Squall Leonhart, Luke Fon Fabre, Jade Belmont, Selphie Tilmett (NPCed by Squall)
WHERE: The Train To Balamb, Then Balamb Town
WHEN: The 26th of November
WHAT: Squall has been hired to guard Luke while Jade keeps him away from Akzeriuth. There are trains, tutorials, and insane people who want to mount heavy weapons to vehicles.
WATCH FOR: The Pot Calling The Kettle Black
The train to Balamb is one of the world's more impressive wonders. A trainline that can get you damn near anywhere in the world. In fact, if you hadn't seen it so many times before this trip, you might be more impressed.
For his part, however, Squall is not. Squall is, instead, sitting in the swanky SeeD VIP cabin, going over the information he does have on his current client. Things like 'allergies, enemies, habits, annoying obscure things you have to hunt down for him'. Squall may be paraphrasing in his head. With a sigh, he puts the file to one side, reseals it, and rubs his eyes. This... is probably going to be difficult. Very, very difficult.
The train continues rolling, headed towards a tunnel.
Luke has been on a total of one other train in his life, and this one was a considerable step up from a subway train. For one, its amenities were almost up to par with what he /liked/ things to be. Clean, organized, thoroughly comfortable, in colors he found appealing - there was even a liquor cabinet, which would have interested him more if he liked alcohol. Being thoroughly pleased with this simply means the whining has, so far, been negligable. And he hadn't stayed in the cabin, either, though he'd been herded back more than once now. Out to the windows, back inside, down the little halway thing to peer at the connection between cars, back again-
And finally he's stopped, for the most part, though he does keep wandering back to the door to peek out. Trains were /awesome/, and really fast too; the facination he displays would probably be better suited to a child much younger than he is. At least, unlike Selphie, he's not singing about it.
Allergies he has none of. Habits he has plenty of, being aristocracy and expecting to be treated appropriately, expect to have to hunt down stupidly expensive things - enemies by the /score/, most of wihch he doesn't even KNOW ABOUT, though Malkuth is only nominally on the list. Squall's current client is probably going to be one of the fussiest he'll ever have to deal with.
... They're going into a tunnel. "Do the lights stay on when we go in there?" It might seem like an obvious question. Except he doesn't -know-. His nation has nothing at all like this.
(...you can't be serious.)
Oh yes. This is going to be one of those clients he's heard about. A horror story client. Squall nods. "The lights stay on. We're going to be in the tunnel for a while." The SeeD remains on the quiet side. He does that. "...You might want to sit down. It's a relatively sharp drop."
And the train goes into the tunnel. The tunnel itself is short.
It's the completely transparent Intercontinental Underwater Tunnel part that's important. Which is one hell of a view.
"So the fontech isn't solar powered then." He's thinking out loud. Squall's quiet enough but he's not /horrible/ company, just not at all what Luke had expected when he'd been told he was being left in the care of a mercenary. Mercenaries were dirty and filthy and scrabbled after money at the price of innocent lives, this guy.. well, he didn't say much but he didn't seem like a maniac.
When bidden to sit, the redhead merely gives a brief scornful look and stays right where he is. Up until what Squall says is going to happen actually happens, and only then does Luke hastily take a seat, but not before nearly falling over as the ground suddenly shifts. This doesn't keep him from watching very alertly as apparently they GO UNDER WATER.
Squall doesn't seem nervous about this, and Luke's too busy being completely delighted to be afraid of the tunnel suddenly collapsing. "Oh wow. We definitely need one of these too." Where can they put it? there's gotta be somewhere!
It's awfully scenic for something that was the easiest way from Point A to Point B. Sealife wander around the tunnel, a few crustaceans crawling over the top of it.
(I wonder if I was like that when I first saw it?)
Still, the train only goes through the tunnel for a while, before Squall speaks up again. "We're going up soon."
This time, the pitch is much sharper, as there's a whole lot less space on Balamb Island, and the station is right on the edge.
The entire time, Luke's watching. Seeing the ocean only a few times and now being /beneath/ it but being able to see all the stuff inside it was an experience that he'd probably have never had on Auldrant. Although part of him still chafed terribly at not being back home helping out like Master Van wanted, he was .. kind of glad. He'd have missed seeing this. And all the -things- in the water.
Almost none of them does he have names for, past 'seaweed' and 'fish' and 'hey a clam'. "Huh?" Up. He expects the same sort of slope as before, and once more completely underestimates things, managing to grab onto something secure before overbalancing. Wow, trains could handle slopes far steeper than he thought! Maybe he wouldn't have to have them all go over flat land.
... Maybe they could go right up mountains too. "...Sooooooooo. Where are we going anyway?" He's probably asked that at least twice already, and just as likely forgot what he was told.
Somewhere on the MUSH, Agrias Oaks has connected.
Squall sighs. "Balamb Garden, via Balamb Town." He says, as the train starts to come into the station. "And before you ask, no, it's not an actual garden, it's a building, and yes, everyone has made that joke before." What? He's cutting it off at the pass. "We'll have a vehicle waiting to pick us up at the outskirts of town."
The train comes to a halt, and stands up. "After we're done at Garden, accomodation will be organised at the Balamb Inn. Beyond that, nothing is scheduled."
Now that it seems things are slowing back down, he hops right to his feet again and dusts himself off, even though there's nothing /to/ dust off. "Balamb Garden, right." Which isn't a /real/ Garden, as Squall says. "That's why you're called SeeDs, right?" It's more creative than 'dirty mercenary', anyway. Sounds almost nice. Like something you wouldn't mind having around.
Still, gardens always made him think of Pere. He'll have to tell the old gardener about all this when he got home.
Nothing scheduled sounds boring, like he'll have to sit around for the rest of the day. "And you have to go with me if I decide to go somewhere else?" Luke doesn't have the terms of the agreement, but he doesn't want to just sit at an inn and wait. If he's on some other world, he wants to check it out! "Or can I just... go look around and come back later on?" It's not easy to even think about accepting the authority of someone his own age, but it's worlds better than Colonel Curtiss.
"...I've been hired as a bodyguard." Squall says, in response. "Which means I have to accompany you."
(Of course, it would be easier for me if you don't go anywhere that you're likely to get killed.)
"That said, there are monsters on an around the island. Everything but the town is used as training for Garden students and SeeD. That's why we're taking the vehicle."
(You'd probably whine if you had to walk, too.)
Luke settles into what is most definitely a sulk at those words, more than willing to be petulant if he wasn't going to get his way. And he probably wasn't, and Squall was going to get his money whether or not Luke was an easy person to deal with, so why go out of his way to be nice? "Tch. I've dealt with monsters before." He sets his hands on his hips, looking vaguely annoyed. "A whole bunch of them, too. I'm not afraid of them."
Fighting people, /way/ different matter.
Yes, he'd whine if he had to walk the whole way. It's not an overly long distance but he wouldn't like it anyway. "Anyway, let's go then. The sooner we get to nowhere the sooner I can try to find something more interesting to do." Go see this Garden thing, this town, maybe a monster, try to convince this guy that he doesn't need someone breathing down his neck the whole time..
"I'm sure." Squall says, as he walks toward the exit of the train.
(That's why your family are paying exorbitant amounts for bodyguards.)
At least they ARE getting paid for this one, though.
As they step out of the train, and onto the station, the seaside town of Balamb is revealed. The sea breeze passes through the town, seagulls fly over, and people wander through town. There's a souvenir shop right outside the station, and past that, a workshop, specialising in weaponry.
And next to the tool shop, there is a spinning series of pink lines, crackling occaisionally with electricity.
"I can!" Luke's good with the sword he carries, just nowhere near as good as he /thinks/ he is. "If I couldn't I still wouldn't be alive!" And there goes Squall, and for a moment Luke stays where he is, fairly bristling, before jogging after the far more composed SeeD. "You don't believe me, do you?" He has the tone of intening to prove it sooner or later, the surly grumbling whine that almost always fortold trouble.
But Squall's not familiar with the different in whine-tones. Yet.
He comes to the abrubt conclusion shortly later that Balamb is WAY CLEANER than any other port town he'd ever seen. Most other towns period, for that matter, and the buildings all match. That's really neat. At least rubbernecking shuts him up again for the time being, and he's as docile as he ever gets, hands laced behind his neck, watching everything with interest.
The silence is broken when he notices a bit of swirly color, and it's pointed at. "Hey, what's that thing?" It's not entirely a /visual/ thing too. "The building have a leak or something?" It's kind of pretty, but the tang of electricity suggests trying to touch it would be a bad idea.
Oh, he'll learn. He'll LEARN. But Luke's noticing of the ball of magic surprises him somewhat. "...Huh." Squall pauses for a moment, then nods. "That's what's called a [Draw Point]. It's essentially a concentrated form of the energy used in Para-Magic." He looks for another moment. "Seems to be Thunder."
Squall touches his head to his forehead, and concentrates. Then, there is that rush as the magic is dragged into his body. The concentration of magic fades, and Squall is very briefly charged, before the energy is stored. "...It will recover over time."
There's something in what Squall says that makes it different from a normal word. 'Draw Point' is clearly an important thing around here, and Luke watches with narrowed eyes, as thoughtful as he EVER gets, as Squall explains what it is, its element, and then eats it.
Absorbs it. ... Whichever. "Your world's got more than just seven types of fonons, I guess.." And Squall seems no worse off for sucking up that particular fonon, Thunder wasn't it? The young aristocrat sidles over to the spot cautiously, intending to poke at where it was, but the ribbons of energy were gone now, only the latent sense that it would come back, eventually. "Are these common here? What's para-magic anyway?"
Jade has been here all along! Really! She's been maybe a little quieter than usual today on the ride up so compared to Luke...
Blame a certain Mr. Maddox.
Lingering behind, she streeeetches hugely, her joints popping as she takes in the port town. "Hey, this town's kinda cute," she murmurs, before realizing she's getting left behind. "Hey, wait up!" Jade shouts suddenly, breaking into a brisk jog.
Her gaze too falls on the mass of swirly color. "What's that?" she asks, crouching down beside it. Unlike Luke, she doesn't seem to be worried about an electrocution; the athlete reaches out to touch it with one hand. Leaning back and glancing up at Squall as he explains what it is, Jade asks, "So, this is just a ball of magic sittin' out here? Where's it come from? What makes it?" She pauses, looking on as Squall does /something/ to make the 'draw point' vanish. "So what did you do to it?"
She finally stands, after a little bit of poking shows it's not there anymore. "Hey, Luke, what's a fonon?" Jade looks confused, reaching up a moment to scratch her head. "Did that old guy talk about that stuff once? It sounds kinda familiar."
"I stored it for later use." Squall responds, to Jade's question. "Para-Magic is the only magic normal humans can use. It's fundamentally manipulation of energies that Para-Magic specialists have stocked, or using the area around them." It might be a bit technical, but hey, you try scientifically explaining magic! It's not easy!
Squall, however, doesn't stop much longer. "Come on. The driver is waiting for us."
The car waiting at the entrance is another of SeeD's VIP vehicles. Sleek, yellow, and secretly armored. The driver, however, is standing outside the car. A young woman, about Squall's age, with brown hair turned up at the end, wearing a short yellow dress, with a pair of red shinobou strapped to her side. Noticing the group, she starts waving and jumping enthusiastically.
"Hey, Squall! Over here!"
Squall again, pauses to facepalm. (...They told me they'd send one of the senior drivers...)
...Huh. That sounded a lot like some of the explanations Colonel Curtiss had used to try to get Luke to understand how fonic artes worked, and fields of fonons and the like. "Sometimes on Auldrant we could /make/ things like that, but they're not usually just sitting around waiting to be sucked up.." He straightens up again likewise, satisfied that it's not going to pop back up any time soon.
And now he's going to be keeping a weather eye out for /more/ of them. Tear hadn't taught him how to manipulate fonons of different kinds yet, but he was certain he'd be able to if he just had a little time to play with them. "Fonons are ... .. tiny little particles of everything. There's only seven different types though, so all their different combinations have to be used to make everything, from people to sticks and rocks and such. Jade - the, uh, other one, he knows a lot more about it than I do, but I can tell when they're there." He can -now- anyway.
Couldn't before, so that's one thing he's almost grateful for. And Squall's leaving again, so the young nobleman promptly heads after him again. "There's probably a book on it somewhere if you like to read, but I never really bothered."
Luke knows about cars, he's been in one once and had seen them since. Not as nice as the fontech back home but more useable everywhere else normally. And it's YELLOW. As yellow as the dress that girl's wearing, and Selphie is appraised silently before Luke decides suddenly that she's probably annoying. "I guess everyone around here is really young, huh?"
"So you've got... lightning in your body? Weird." Jade's grinning as she says this, though. It's more like she thinks this is /totally awesome/, really, judging by her body language. Pausing to hear Luke's explanation of fonons, the athlete comments with a, "Huh." This is followed by, "Kinda like atoms, I guess. Except there's lots of atoms. Um... carbon, silicon, gold, um, hydrogen..." Jade recites, counting them off on her fingers. Hey, she had to learn them for a test once. "...There's more than that." She shrugs. "I guess it doesn't matter. And, nah, I don't really like readin' all that much."
"Oh yeah, just hangin' out here'd be boring," she replies to Squall's comment about the car. "C'mon!"
The car is soon sighted. "Is she a friend of yours, Squall?" Jade asks, giving the girl a little wave back. "I guess even mercenary guys gotta start early," she says with a shrug, on the matter of their youth.
"....Co-worker." Squall replies, with a sigh. He does not, however, comment on the remarks about youth. The evidence is there in front of them. And then, he walks towards the car, as the young woman starts speaking again.
"Bet you're surprised to see me! Can you believe they were going to send that guy who graduated with us to pick you up? And then when they were going to send Zell if he didn't show up, but can you imagine him driving? So I organised a few things, and here I am! So, which one are we going to have to throw people in the line of fire for?" She looks at Jade, then at Luke. "Huh, guess it's you. I'm your driver for tonight, Selphie Tilmett, SeeD Rank 10, and Head of the Garden Festival Committee. I don't suppose I either of you want to join, do you?"
(....of all the people they could have sent...)
"Selphie. What happened to the others?" Squall asks, when he can get a word in.
"They're.... around." She says, with a shrug.
Squall didn't look like he had lightning fonons in him, to Luke. Maybe it was just hard to notice once they got sucked up. "..We have all that stuff too, gold and ... hydrogen and all those, but they're even made of fonons, so maybe they're even tinier than atoms." He has no idea really, but he's hazarding a guess. Maybe things just worked differently on all these other planes, and Auldrant's the only one that works right.
Just hanging around /would/ be boring, but being stuffed into a car and driven to some mercenary school sounded a little wierd.
Luke's decision that Selphie was probably annoying is proven when she begins chattering away. Normally he didn't mind chatterboxes /too/ much, but she wasn't saying anything that made any sense! "Jeez, why don't you sh--" Wait, throwing people in fire? "Nobody's going to be throwing anyone else in the line of fire." Luke sounds certain of that. "Nothing's going to happen." He gives a negligent gesture. "It's been pretty boring so far, except for the train ride." Which was, in his book, thoroughly cool.
And once he has an opportunity to write, it's going in his journal! "..Join what? The festival?" Maybe they DID have to start young, squishing all those methods on how to mangle people and ruin lives had to take time and effort. "Hey Jade." His voice drops to a murmur, as Squall queries selphie about some 'others'. "Are these people /really/ mercs? They don't seem like coldblooded murderers at all."
"Wow, smaller than atoms..." Jade looks thoughtful for a bit. Atoms were so tiny you couldn't see them with a microscope! So fonons must be... really itty-bitty. "That's pretty cool."
Selphie's chattering is enough to even give Jade pause. "Um..." the athlete utters, clearly taken aback by the sheer volume of it all, "Yeah, we're... the guys who're goin' to the Garden." She thinks that was one of the questions in there, somewhere. "Also, uh, what's a Garden Festival?" She might regret asking.
There's a shrug Luke's way. "I guess so?" she whispers back, leaning in towards the nobleman. "Squall does a lot of stuff for hire, I know that much."
Squall sighs at Selphie's ranting. "...whatever." Squall mutters, opening the door for passengers. It's rather swank inside, but not as fancy as the SeeD Cabin.
Selphie, for her part, get's caught up talking again. "Well of course the train was the best part!~ It's a train! And the only things better than trains are heavy weapons! Or a train WITH heavy weapons!" The thought seems to tickle Selphie's fancy. And then her next greatest love is mentioned. "The Garden Festival is a yearly event at Garden! All the students take part and there's concerts and stalls and good food and all sorts of junk! It's a great time to relax! But, membership was kind of low but then Squall told me to try some of our clients, so I did, and there have been a whole bunch more members. I didn't even have to threaten anyone!"
Squall continues to getting into the car, where ti is relatively safe from the crazy person. Meanwhile, Selphie hears the comment about 'cold-blooded' killers. "Oh, we can be plenty coldblooded! We're just relatively off duty at the moment!" It's abotu then Selphie realises Squall has already gotten in. "Well, everyone aboard! Next stop, Balamb Garden!"
Trains he could agree on, those are awesome. But trains with weapons? He can't even imagine something like that. Well, actually, he can, but a whole row of traincar-sized Tartaruses all hooked up to eachother was a strange image to have in one's mind. Luke dismisses it. And before he could respond to Jade, Selphie's going on about the cold-blooded part, and the redhead's expression kind of blanks a bit.
It could be alarm. Or more likely, utter confusion. Squall he could imagine killing people, but not this girl, she's too ... perky. Perky in all the bad ways. It's like Anise grown up a bit. "...B..we're not students though." Either him /or/ Jade, and Luke's suddenly not entirely certain he -wants- to help out.
What if this festival is full of people like this? He'd go crazy! Getting into the car might be an escape route. "Maybe you gotta be crazy to be a mercenary, that'd certainly fit all this." Jade's sane. Squall's .... /quiet/, and quiet never meant anything good, and he could suck up fonons. "You're not supposed to HAVE to threaten people to go to parties! If you do, something's not going on right."
It is not by accident that given the opportunity, Luke's going to put Jade between himself and the spaz with the heavy weapons love.
Jade appears to consider Selphie's words thoughtfully. "Man, a train with heavy weapons'd be pretty awesome." It'd be totally hardcore badass. "Although what'd be really cool would be a car with heavy weaponry. And I don't mean like a tank!" Mmm, tactical weaponry on a car... Jade looks a little too happy at whatever mental imagery she's got going. Maybe there's a good reason her parents don't let her drive the family car.
"Oh, so it's like a school fair!" Jade grins at this. "Well, like he said, we ain't students here or nothin', but... well, I'll think about it, okay?" It's always such a pain when school fairs are lame. "Hey, what kinds of food do you have at the festival? Is it really expensive? It sucks when fair food costs too much." Oh god, maybe Selphie and Jade shouldn't be in the same general area.
She slips into the car, providing what might be for Luke a welcome shield from the other girl. It's at Selphie's comment that she frowns, saying, "Hey, you don't force people to go to the fair, or to help make up the fair! You gotta... make it exciting! Make 'em wanna go or whatever, not scare 'em into it!"
Luke Fon Fabre needs a tag!
WHO: Squall Leonhart, Luke Fon Fabre, Jade Belmont, Selphie Tilmett (NPCed by Squall)
WHERE: The Train To Balamb, Then Balamb Town
WHEN: The 26th of November
WHAT: Squall has been hired to guard Luke while Jade keeps him away from Akzeriuth. There are trains, tutorials, and insane people who want to mount heavy weapons to vehicles.
WATCH FOR: The Pot Calling The Kettle Black
The train to Balamb is one of the world's more impressive wonders. A trainline that can get you damn near anywhere in the world. In fact, if you hadn't seen it so many times before this trip, you might be more impressed.
For his part, however, Squall is not. Squall is, instead, sitting in the swanky SeeD VIP cabin, going over the information he does have on his current client. Things like 'allergies, enemies, habits, annoying obscure things you have to hunt down for him'. Squall may be paraphrasing in his head. With a sigh, he puts the file to one side, reseals it, and rubs his eyes. This... is probably going to be difficult. Very, very difficult.
The train continues rolling, headed towards a tunnel.
Luke has been on a total of one other train in his life, and this one was a considerable step up from a subway train. For one, its amenities were almost up to par with what he /liked/ things to be. Clean, organized, thoroughly comfortable, in colors he found appealing - there was even a liquor cabinet, which would have interested him more if he liked alcohol. Being thoroughly pleased with this simply means the whining has, so far, been negligable. And he hadn't stayed in the cabin, either, though he'd been herded back more than once now. Out to the windows, back inside, down the little halway thing to peer at the connection between cars, back again-
And finally he's stopped, for the most part, though he does keep wandering back to the door to peek out. Trains were /awesome/, and really fast too; the facination he displays would probably be better suited to a child much younger than he is. At least, unlike Selphie, he's not singing about it.
Allergies he has none of. Habits he has plenty of, being aristocracy and expecting to be treated appropriately, expect to have to hunt down stupidly expensive things - enemies by the /score/, most of wihch he doesn't even KNOW ABOUT, though Malkuth is only nominally on the list. Squall's current client is probably going to be one of the fussiest he'll ever have to deal with.
... They're going into a tunnel. "Do the lights stay on when we go in there?" It might seem like an obvious question. Except he doesn't -know-. His nation has nothing at all like this.
(...you can't be serious.)
Oh yes. This is going to be one of those clients he's heard about. A horror story client. Squall nods. "The lights stay on. We're going to be in the tunnel for a while." The SeeD remains on the quiet side. He does that. "...You might want to sit down. It's a relatively sharp drop."
And the train goes into the tunnel. The tunnel itself is short.
It's the completely transparent Intercontinental Underwater Tunnel part that's important. Which is one hell of a view.
"So the fontech isn't solar powered then." He's thinking out loud. Squall's quiet enough but he's not /horrible/ company, just not at all what Luke had expected when he'd been told he was being left in the care of a mercenary. Mercenaries were dirty and filthy and scrabbled after money at the price of innocent lives, this guy.. well, he didn't say much but he didn't seem like a maniac.
When bidden to sit, the redhead merely gives a brief scornful look and stays right where he is. Up until what Squall says is going to happen actually happens, and only then does Luke hastily take a seat, but not before nearly falling over as the ground suddenly shifts. This doesn't keep him from watching very alertly as apparently they GO UNDER WATER.
Squall doesn't seem nervous about this, and Luke's too busy being completely delighted to be afraid of the tunnel suddenly collapsing. "Oh wow. We definitely need one of these too." Where can they put it? there's gotta be somewhere!
It's awfully scenic for something that was the easiest way from Point A to Point B. Sealife wander around the tunnel, a few crustaceans crawling over the top of it.
(I wonder if I was like that when I first saw it?)
Still, the train only goes through the tunnel for a while, before Squall speaks up again. "We're going up soon."
This time, the pitch is much sharper, as there's a whole lot less space on Balamb Island, and the station is right on the edge.
The entire time, Luke's watching. Seeing the ocean only a few times and now being /beneath/ it but being able to see all the stuff inside it was an experience that he'd probably have never had on Auldrant. Although part of him still chafed terribly at not being back home helping out like Master Van wanted, he was .. kind of glad. He'd have missed seeing this. And all the -things- in the water.
Almost none of them does he have names for, past 'seaweed' and 'fish' and 'hey a clam'. "Huh?" Up. He expects the same sort of slope as before, and once more completely underestimates things, managing to grab onto something secure before overbalancing. Wow, trains could handle slopes far steeper than he thought! Maybe he wouldn't have to have them all go over flat land.
... Maybe they could go right up mountains too. "...Sooooooooo. Where are we going anyway?" He's probably asked that at least twice already, and just as likely forgot what he was told.
Somewhere on the MUSH, Agrias Oaks has connected.
Squall sighs. "Balamb Garden, via Balamb Town." He says, as the train starts to come into the station. "And before you ask, no, it's not an actual garden, it's a building, and yes, everyone has made that joke before." What? He's cutting it off at the pass. "We'll have a vehicle waiting to pick us up at the outskirts of town."
The train comes to a halt, and stands up. "After we're done at Garden, accomodation will be organised at the Balamb Inn. Beyond that, nothing is scheduled."
Now that it seems things are slowing back down, he hops right to his feet again and dusts himself off, even though there's nothing /to/ dust off. "Balamb Garden, right." Which isn't a /real/ Garden, as Squall says. "That's why you're called SeeDs, right?" It's more creative than 'dirty mercenary', anyway. Sounds almost nice. Like something you wouldn't mind having around.
Still, gardens always made him think of Pere. He'll have to tell the old gardener about all this when he got home.
Nothing scheduled sounds boring, like he'll have to sit around for the rest of the day. "And you have to go with me if I decide to go somewhere else?" Luke doesn't have the terms of the agreement, but he doesn't want to just sit at an inn and wait. If he's on some other world, he wants to check it out! "Or can I just... go look around and come back later on?" It's not easy to even think about accepting the authority of someone his own age, but it's worlds better than Colonel Curtiss.
"...I've been hired as a bodyguard." Squall says, in response. "Which means I have to accompany you."
(Of course, it would be easier for me if you don't go anywhere that you're likely to get killed.)
"That said, there are monsters on an around the island. Everything but the town is used as training for Garden students and SeeD. That's why we're taking the vehicle."
(You'd probably whine if you had to walk, too.)
Luke settles into what is most definitely a sulk at those words, more than willing to be petulant if he wasn't going to get his way. And he probably wasn't, and Squall was going to get his money whether or not Luke was an easy person to deal with, so why go out of his way to be nice? "Tch. I've dealt with monsters before." He sets his hands on his hips, looking vaguely annoyed. "A whole bunch of them, too. I'm not afraid of them."
Fighting people, /way/ different matter.
Yes, he'd whine if he had to walk the whole way. It's not an overly long distance but he wouldn't like it anyway. "Anyway, let's go then. The sooner we get to nowhere the sooner I can try to find something more interesting to do." Go see this Garden thing, this town, maybe a monster, try to convince this guy that he doesn't need someone breathing down his neck the whole time..
"I'm sure." Squall says, as he walks toward the exit of the train.
(That's why your family are paying exorbitant amounts for bodyguards.)
At least they ARE getting paid for this one, though.
As they step out of the train, and onto the station, the seaside town of Balamb is revealed. The sea breeze passes through the town, seagulls fly over, and people wander through town. There's a souvenir shop right outside the station, and past that, a workshop, specialising in weaponry.
And next to the tool shop, there is a spinning series of pink lines, crackling occaisionally with electricity.
"I can!" Luke's good with the sword he carries, just nowhere near as good as he /thinks/ he is. "If I couldn't I still wouldn't be alive!" And there goes Squall, and for a moment Luke stays where he is, fairly bristling, before jogging after the far more composed SeeD. "You don't believe me, do you?" He has the tone of intening to prove it sooner or later, the surly grumbling whine that almost always fortold trouble.
But Squall's not familiar with the different in whine-tones. Yet.
He comes to the abrubt conclusion shortly later that Balamb is WAY CLEANER than any other port town he'd ever seen. Most other towns period, for that matter, and the buildings all match. That's really neat. At least rubbernecking shuts him up again for the time being, and he's as docile as he ever gets, hands laced behind his neck, watching everything with interest.
The silence is broken when he notices a bit of swirly color, and it's pointed at. "Hey, what's that thing?" It's not entirely a /visual/ thing too. "The building have a leak or something?" It's kind of pretty, but the tang of electricity suggests trying to touch it would be a bad idea.
Oh, he'll learn. He'll LEARN. But Luke's noticing of the ball of magic surprises him somewhat. "...Huh." Squall pauses for a moment, then nods. "That's what's called a [Draw Point]. It's essentially a concentrated form of the energy used in Para-Magic." He looks for another moment. "Seems to be Thunder."
Squall touches his head to his forehead, and concentrates. Then, there is that rush as the magic is dragged into his body. The concentration of magic fades, and Squall is very briefly charged, before the energy is stored. "...It will recover over time."
There's something in what Squall says that makes it different from a normal word. 'Draw Point' is clearly an important thing around here, and Luke watches with narrowed eyes, as thoughtful as he EVER gets, as Squall explains what it is, its element, and then eats it.
Absorbs it. ... Whichever. "Your world's got more than just seven types of fonons, I guess.." And Squall seems no worse off for sucking up that particular fonon, Thunder wasn't it? The young aristocrat sidles over to the spot cautiously, intending to poke at where it was, but the ribbons of energy were gone now, only the latent sense that it would come back, eventually. "Are these common here? What's para-magic anyway?"
Jade has been here all along! Really! She's been maybe a little quieter than usual today on the ride up so compared to Luke...
Blame a certain Mr. Maddox.
Lingering behind, she streeeetches hugely, her joints popping as she takes in the port town. "Hey, this town's kinda cute," she murmurs, before realizing she's getting left behind. "Hey, wait up!" Jade shouts suddenly, breaking into a brisk jog.
Her gaze too falls on the mass of swirly color. "What's that?" she asks, crouching down beside it. Unlike Luke, she doesn't seem to be worried about an electrocution; the athlete reaches out to touch it with one hand. Leaning back and glancing up at Squall as he explains what it is, Jade asks, "So, this is just a ball of magic sittin' out here? Where's it come from? What makes it?" She pauses, looking on as Squall does /something/ to make the 'draw point' vanish. "So what did you do to it?"
She finally stands, after a little bit of poking shows it's not there anymore. "Hey, Luke, what's a fonon?" Jade looks confused, reaching up a moment to scratch her head. "Did that old guy talk about that stuff once? It sounds kinda familiar."
"I stored it for later use." Squall responds, to Jade's question. "Para-Magic is the only magic normal humans can use. It's fundamentally manipulation of energies that Para-Magic specialists have stocked, or using the area around them." It might be a bit technical, but hey, you try scientifically explaining magic! It's not easy!
Squall, however, doesn't stop much longer. "Come on. The driver is waiting for us."
The car waiting at the entrance is another of SeeD's VIP vehicles. Sleek, yellow, and secretly armored. The driver, however, is standing outside the car. A young woman, about Squall's age, with brown hair turned up at the end, wearing a short yellow dress, with a pair of red shinobou strapped to her side. Noticing the group, she starts waving and jumping enthusiastically.
"Hey, Squall! Over here!"
Squall again, pauses to facepalm. (...They told me they'd send one of the senior drivers...)
...Huh. That sounded a lot like some of the explanations Colonel Curtiss had used to try to get Luke to understand how fonic artes worked, and fields of fonons and the like. "Sometimes on Auldrant we could /make/ things like that, but they're not usually just sitting around waiting to be sucked up.." He straightens up again likewise, satisfied that it's not going to pop back up any time soon.
And now he's going to be keeping a weather eye out for /more/ of them. Tear hadn't taught him how to manipulate fonons of different kinds yet, but he was certain he'd be able to if he just had a little time to play with them. "Fonons are ... .. tiny little particles of everything. There's only seven different types though, so all their different combinations have to be used to make everything, from people to sticks and rocks and such. Jade - the, uh, other one, he knows a lot more about it than I do, but I can tell when they're there." He can -now- anyway.
Couldn't before, so that's one thing he's almost grateful for. And Squall's leaving again, so the young nobleman promptly heads after him again. "There's probably a book on it somewhere if you like to read, but I never really bothered."
Luke knows about cars, he's been in one once and had seen them since. Not as nice as the fontech back home but more useable everywhere else normally. And it's YELLOW. As yellow as the dress that girl's wearing, and Selphie is appraised silently before Luke decides suddenly that she's probably annoying. "I guess everyone around here is really young, huh?"
"So you've got... lightning in your body? Weird." Jade's grinning as she says this, though. It's more like she thinks this is /totally awesome/, really, judging by her body language. Pausing to hear Luke's explanation of fonons, the athlete comments with a, "Huh." This is followed by, "Kinda like atoms, I guess. Except there's lots of atoms. Um... carbon, silicon, gold, um, hydrogen..." Jade recites, counting them off on her fingers. Hey, she had to learn them for a test once. "...There's more than that." She shrugs. "I guess it doesn't matter. And, nah, I don't really like readin' all that much."
"Oh yeah, just hangin' out here'd be boring," she replies to Squall's comment about the car. "C'mon!"
The car is soon sighted. "Is she a friend of yours, Squall?" Jade asks, giving the girl a little wave back. "I guess even mercenary guys gotta start early," she says with a shrug, on the matter of their youth.
"....Co-worker." Squall replies, with a sigh. He does not, however, comment on the remarks about youth. The evidence is there in front of them. And then, he walks towards the car, as the young woman starts speaking again.
"Bet you're surprised to see me! Can you believe they were going to send that guy who graduated with us to pick you up? And then when they were going to send Zell if he didn't show up, but can you imagine him driving? So I organised a few things, and here I am! So, which one are we going to have to throw people in the line of fire for?" She looks at Jade, then at Luke. "Huh, guess it's you. I'm your driver for tonight, Selphie Tilmett, SeeD Rank 10, and Head of the Garden Festival Committee. I don't suppose I either of you want to join, do you?"
(....of all the people they could have sent...)
"Selphie. What happened to the others?" Squall asks, when he can get a word in.
"They're.... around." She says, with a shrug.
Squall didn't look like he had lightning fonons in him, to Luke. Maybe it was just hard to notice once they got sucked up. "..We have all that stuff too, gold and ... hydrogen and all those, but they're even made of fonons, so maybe they're even tinier than atoms." He has no idea really, but he's hazarding a guess. Maybe things just worked differently on all these other planes, and Auldrant's the only one that works right.
Just hanging around /would/ be boring, but being stuffed into a car and driven to some mercenary school sounded a little wierd.
Luke's decision that Selphie was probably annoying is proven when she begins chattering away. Normally he didn't mind chatterboxes /too/ much, but she wasn't saying anything that made any sense! "Jeez, why don't you sh--" Wait, throwing people in fire? "Nobody's going to be throwing anyone else in the line of fire." Luke sounds certain of that. "Nothing's going to happen." He gives a negligent gesture. "It's been pretty boring so far, except for the train ride." Which was, in his book, thoroughly cool.
And once he has an opportunity to write, it's going in his journal! "..Join what? The festival?" Maybe they DID have to start young, squishing all those methods on how to mangle people and ruin lives had to take time and effort. "Hey Jade." His voice drops to a murmur, as Squall queries selphie about some 'others'. "Are these people /really/ mercs? They don't seem like coldblooded murderers at all."
"Wow, smaller than atoms..." Jade looks thoughtful for a bit. Atoms were so tiny you couldn't see them with a microscope! So fonons must be... really itty-bitty. "That's pretty cool."
Selphie's chattering is enough to even give Jade pause. "Um..." the athlete utters, clearly taken aback by the sheer volume of it all, "Yeah, we're... the guys who're goin' to the Garden." She thinks that was one of the questions in there, somewhere. "Also, uh, what's a Garden Festival?" She might regret asking.
There's a shrug Luke's way. "I guess so?" she whispers back, leaning in towards the nobleman. "Squall does a lot of stuff for hire, I know that much."
Squall sighs at Selphie's ranting. "...whatever." Squall mutters, opening the door for passengers. It's rather swank inside, but not as fancy as the SeeD Cabin.
Selphie, for her part, get's caught up talking again. "Well of course the train was the best part!~ It's a train! And the only things better than trains are heavy weapons! Or a train WITH heavy weapons!" The thought seems to tickle Selphie's fancy. And then her next greatest love is mentioned. "The Garden Festival is a yearly event at Garden! All the students take part and there's concerts and stalls and good food and all sorts of junk! It's a great time to relax! But, membership was kind of low but then Squall told me to try some of our clients, so I did, and there have been a whole bunch more members. I didn't even have to threaten anyone!"
Squall continues to getting into the car, where ti is relatively safe from the crazy person. Meanwhile, Selphie hears the comment about 'cold-blooded' killers. "Oh, we can be plenty coldblooded! We're just relatively off duty at the moment!" It's abotu then Selphie realises Squall has already gotten in. "Well, everyone aboard! Next stop, Balamb Garden!"
Trains he could agree on, those are awesome. But trains with weapons? He can't even imagine something like that. Well, actually, he can, but a whole row of traincar-sized Tartaruses all hooked up to eachother was a strange image to have in one's mind. Luke dismisses it. And before he could respond to Jade, Selphie's going on about the cold-blooded part, and the redhead's expression kind of blanks a bit.
It could be alarm. Or more likely, utter confusion. Squall he could imagine killing people, but not this girl, she's too ... perky. Perky in all the bad ways. It's like Anise grown up a bit. "...B..we're not students though." Either him /or/ Jade, and Luke's suddenly not entirely certain he -wants- to help out.
What if this festival is full of people like this? He'd go crazy! Getting into the car might be an escape route. "Maybe you gotta be crazy to be a mercenary, that'd certainly fit all this." Jade's sane. Squall's .... /quiet/, and quiet never meant anything good, and he could suck up fonons. "You're not supposed to HAVE to threaten people to go to parties! If you do, something's not going on right."
It is not by accident that given the opportunity, Luke's going to put Jade between himself and the spaz with the heavy weapons love.
Jade appears to consider Selphie's words thoughtfully. "Man, a train with heavy weapons'd be pretty awesome." It'd be totally hardcore badass. "Although what'd be really cool would be a car with heavy weaponry. And I don't mean like a tank!" Mmm, tactical weaponry on a car... Jade looks a little too happy at whatever mental imagery she's got going. Maybe there's a good reason her parents don't let her drive the family car.
"Oh, so it's like a school fair!" Jade grins at this. "Well, like he said, we ain't students here or nothin', but... well, I'll think about it, okay?" It's always such a pain when school fairs are lame. "Hey, what kinds of food do you have at the festival? Is it really expensive? It sucks when fair food costs too much." Oh god, maybe Selphie and Jade shouldn't be in the same general area.
She slips into the car, providing what might be for Luke a welcome shield from the other girl. It's at Selphie's comment that she frowns, saying, "Hey, you don't force people to go to the fair, or to help make up the fair! You gotta... make it exciting! Make 'em wanna go or whatever, not scare 'em into it!"
Luke Fon Fabre needs a tag!