Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

INTRODUCTION

This is something I've been wanting to for a while, as a means of preserving the little works that I've done (mostly on my Tumblr, which is now basically defunct), and perhaps hopefully to spur me on to do larger stories as well. You may know that I've already posted some of this stuff here before; honestly, I am not sure if this is the sort of thing that is really welcome on AO3, but hopefully keeping everything contained within one compilation will not be quite as obnoxious as giving a thousand little bitty bits their own separate entry.

My longer works (e.g., So Come the Storms) will still be posted separately, so please look forward to that!

Updates:

• 09-08: We get the kettle boiling with a special recipe from Mr. Bigshot Newcomer himself, plus our first installment where YOU get to "Ask the Ironworks" your most burning questions. Then, get the gen on Nero's more embarrassing addiction in the vignette "Mog House".
• 09-10: In honor of today's Tales from the Shadows, I have dredged up a couple Cid + Nero shorts in everyone's favorite format: SCRIPT. Please enjoy the rapid-fire between Cid and Nero as they discuss (in a bathtub, of all things) very important topics like black roses and coconutty chocolates, family trees and the ethics of apocalyptic engineering, and just who IS responsible for the whole chicken/egg mess anyway (Spoilers: Gaius Baelsar).
• 02-16: Another patch day is fast upon us, friends! Another miserable slouch in the frump of the unknown, especially regarding our favorite Garleans (or at least one of them). But here is a story from Happier Times—two years ago to the day (plus two), in fact—where the biggest worry on Cid Garlond's mind concerned the ethics of introducing a Garlean innovation to Eorzea. VACUUM CLEANERS. We cannot see what the future holds, but for now, please enjoy "Vickie" and remember the Ironworks fondly. (And also when I used to write actual fics on a regular basis...*ugly cry*)
• 02-20: Today's update is something I'm not really proud of. HOORAY! It is the first chapter in a story I'd planned as a more detailed offshoot of SE's official "Bad End AU" story (A World Forsaken...the one where Cid and Nero invent quantum mechanics to save the world). It was called "Stand or Fall"; unfortunately this first chapter isn't really very good (that is to say, it's frustratingly bad) and I sort of gave up on it. So! Into the Junk Box it goes, so now EVERYONE can read it and experience the same frustration. Go on, try it!
• 03-04: Let's take a trip back to the 1980's with this little AU vignette, that's always been one of my favorites even though it goes absolutely nowhere. Also ft. Cid in Jogging Gear. It's the one where Nero walks to work...and that's pretty much it! Supposed to be part of a longer piece, but a Long Format Story by Swilly is about as realistic a prospect as Swilly finding a pair of jeans that don't gap in the rear while cutting of at the sternum in the front.
• 05-26: A surprise update to herald in the beginning of summer! "Sweet Caroline" was going to be an Ironworks/Portal crossover, but you know me better than to actually finish a fic. (Sad Trombone Wah-Waaah) This snippet is very brief, but it still makes me heave a sigh for what could have been. Ahh, Nero Scaeva and Aperture Science, a match made in... well...
• 03-03: What's this? An update? Indeed, "Nobody We Knew" is a little bit of Ironworks dialogue that takes place somewhere in the latter stages of Endwalker. Featuring Nero, Biggs, Wedge, and a lettuce sandwich. You're probably thinking by now that I can't write anything but script fics, and you would be wrong. In fact, I can't write anything, period. The fact that this exists at all may be taken as proof of the existence of something like an Echo, allowing authors to exceed even the limitations of their own crushing irrelevance. Huzzah!

TABLE OF CONTENTS THUS FAR

Chapter 1. (YOU ARE HERE)

Chapter 2. Cooking With the Ironworks: Hot Wet Rice

Chapter 3. Ask the Ironworks

Chapter 4. Mog House

Chapter 5. Father's Day (Script)

Chapter 6. Tub Talk (Script)

Chapter 7. Vickie

Chapter 8. Stand or Fall (Unfinished Story; Chapter 1)

Chapter 9. Did it in a Minute (Unfinished Story; one chapter)

Chapter 10. Sweet Caroline (Unfinished Story; brief snippet)

Chapter 11. Nobody We Knew (Script)

Chapter Text

(A pre-press excerpt of the so far-unedited 233-page “recipe idea pamphlet” that will come packaged with every new Mk. XV Thermocoil Boilmaster...)

Hot Wet Rice - Black Shroud Style

In recent years, this savoury entree has become especially popular with a certain genre of thirty-something affluent gadabout one can usually find swarming like well-swaddled fleshflies around Bentbranch Meadows’ high street, searching for a place to sup that serves trendy fare, but not so trendy that it’s already been made available in a conveniently packaged form at the local supermarket. As it is rather difficult to duplicate the deceptively delicate composition of a fresh Hot Wet Rice (or Risotto, as Biggs over there keeps insisting, but over here, Jessie keeps insisting that correction tape costs money and I’ve already typed Hot Wet Rice out twice) in a plebeian pre-packaged format, it ever remains the King of Hipster Slop.

If you are anything like me (and rest assured that you are not), then you understand how it feels to be so transcendentally hip that even the merest possibility of being seen loitering around an upscale “gastropub” (that used to be a regular pub before an overpaid interior designer went at it with a load of hand-tooled wooden accents and “mood lighting”) fills you with an inescapable urge to voice your complaints very loudly into the nearest toilet. However, the Mk. XV Thermocoil Boilmaster has made it easy for you to prepare your own Hot Wet Rice (sorry, typo) in the comfort and privacy of your own flat. Which, if you are anything like me, contains naught but your laundry, a wall of unmarked boxes you’re too afraid to open at this point, and that stolen wooden cable spool you’ve been using for a table Jessie, can we edit this part out?

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 1 ½ cups dried brown rice.
• 4 cups chocobo stock.
• ½ cup dry white wine. If you drank it already, I don’t know what to tell you.
• 3 tablespoons olive oil.
• 3 tablespoons butter.
• 1 bunch green scallions, chopped fine.
• A tidy pile of chopped up mushrooms; if you dislike fungi or cannot obtain it, chop up a kitchen sponge instead.
• A few cubes of some kind of bird meat, whatever you prefer; chocobo, cockatrice, dodo, anzu, pterodactyl, saber-tooth penguin, it’s your move. Vegetarian options include tofu, boiled popoto and nothing.
• A fistful of Yanxian parsley, muddled; if this is too patrician for your budget, rip up a fistful of grass from your front garden, as I personally assure you that for a fraction of the price, the net effect is identical.
• Lemon juice, to taste. If you cannot get a lemon, oh for fuck’s sake
• Salt.
• Pepper, if you enjoy dicing with fate.
• Some more salt for afterwards, when you taste it and realize that it needs more salt.

1.) Gather all of the ingredients, minus the broth and wine, and add them to the Thermocoil Boilmaster ingredient tray. Set the tray flush in the kettle’s holding slots.

2.) Pour the chocobo stock and white wine into the Thermokettle Coilmaster’s liquid reservoir.

3.) Close and seal all lids, then set your Thermomaster Boilcoil to “Rice - Medium”. The timer will automatically set itself to 45 minutes.

4.) Wait. Use this time wisely. You may want to sleep, or finish today’s crossword, or simply curl up in your bathtub and die.

5.) When your Hot Wet Rice is finished, let it cool for five minutes, mix well, then serve. If you died during step 4, it may be some time before someone discovers your body. In that case, you may skip this step and let your next of kin or your local coroner’s office decide what to do with your Thermominster Fullerbuster, as well as the Hot Wet Rice, which will likely be quite cold by then.

6.) Salt to taste.

-Nero tol Scaeva

Editor’s Notes: Since when is a pterodactyl a bird? My book says “seafood”. Anyway I asked him to draw a picture to go with this but now I don’t think I want to see it. Chief, I have like 20 pages of Wedge rambling about different types of pudding to get through, so can you do this one instead? I’ll let you take the rest of the week off, just help me out here. Please. -JJ

Chapter Text

(Originally appeared in Garlond & Friends Time Hole Special #9: Garlond Ironworks Meets Parliament Funkadelic)

Everybody’s got a little mail under the sun… Or at least we do! Howdy. Hello. It’s me, the one, the only, the grooviest deputy president of Garlond Ironworks—heck, the only deputy president of Garlond Ironworks, Jessie “JJ” Jaye. While everyone’s out on the dance floor helping our new pals lay it down, I thought now would be as good a time as any to sneak out of showin’ y’all my Aqua Boogie moves (or lack thereof) and answer some mail!

Now we may not be able to find the Funk right now, but as luck would have it, the Postmoogle did find a couple postcards y’all sent in! Hit it!

-----

Where the hells does Nero’s hammer come from when he summons it? I live in fear of the day he drops it in the wrong spot.
- Karol G., Shirogane

Nero: You live in fear of the day I drop it in the wrong spot? How endearing.

Cid: My guess is that it’s a fear shared by a lot of people, Nero. Especially those who usually happen to be standing in the general vicinity when you summon it.

Nero: Safety third, Garlond. Or fourth—whatever, anyway Karol, you ought to know full well that a good magician never reveals how he does his tricks. But I am neither good nor a magician, so it comes from a pocket Magitek portal that I can generate on the spot, automatically offset at a certain destination vector relative to the top of my head. Under the hood, the driving mechanism used here is similar to the aetherophysics employed by your teleportation crystals—the Aethernet, you would call it. Ironically, as Garleans, neither Garlond nor myself can use Aethernet technology to transport ourselves. Nevertheless, we have made it possible to transport objects—and yes, people—using Magitek-powered structures. However, such portals tend to be static, whereas the ones generated with my device are dynamic. See, all portals must have an entry plane and an exit plane—

Cid: —I think they were asking where you keep your hammer, not for your sixth-year dissertation on interspacial physics.

Nero: Oh please, Garlond. You love a good palaver on the conservation of linear momentum as much as I do. Sadly, we are running out of column ilms, so in conclusion, I keep the hammer in my flat. On the balcony, next to my armor, my helmet, and my bicycle-mounted rocket launcher. Which you don’t need to know about.

Cid: Well, I enjoy traveling along public roads while safe in the knowledge that I probably won’t get unexpectedly blown to bits, so… …no. I really don’t.

Nero: On a somewhat tangential note, I perfected this technology first with the Red Baron. To this day, it’s how I avoid paying the absolutely exorbitant garage fees at my apartment building.

Cid: Gods’ garters! Then where’ve you stashed that ridiculous rattletrap?

Nero: Tsk. I believe I’ve said too much, old friend. But perhaps some inquisitive soul will ask that very question for the next issue…?

Cid: If such a soul actually is out there, please, I am begging you: Spare us your curiosity!

-----

I use my Mark XIV Thermocoil Boilmaster every day when I make my morning mulled tea. It’s so handy! But what else can I use it for besides boiling water? And there any truth to the rumour the Mark XV will be a gunkettle?
-Osterby A., Lavender Fields

Cid: Er… Wedge, I’m a bit busy at the moment. Why don’t you take this one? After all, she’s your baby. I’d hate to steal your thunder.

Wedge: Sure thing, Chief! So, “Osterby”! You’re usin’ the Thermocoil Boilmaster for what it’s supposed to be used for! That’s weird. Nobody ever does that.

Biggs: Aye. Most of the time, what I hear about is people using them to cook tea towels. Or that’s what Jessie does.

Jessie: Wash tea towels, Biggs. I wash them in the boiling water. And that one you made before this one, the Mk. XII Thermocoil Boilmaster—

Nero: Mk. XII? Not XIII?

Jessie: Because Wedge can’t count—that thing actually dried the tea towels too. Why’d you scupper that feature?

Wedge: Because… Because… …oi, I can count, alright! I just skipped #13, okay? Everyone knows‘s unlucky. Reckon if I made a Mk. XIII, the damn thing’d explode mucky coffee water all over the breakroom and make a big mess every day.

Biggs: But the Mk. XIV does that already, don’t it?

Wedge: Not always!

Nero: So… Every other day, then?

Jessie: Every day that ends with a “Y”, Nero.

Wedge: Bah! Horse apples, you’re just going off topic! Now! To get to this guy’s question! The Thermocoil Boilmaster is a really handy little appliance that can boil water, unboil water, brew tea and coffee, boil old hooves into gelatin, cook popotoes, cook porridge, cook Ilsabard-style arrowroot gruel, cook instant noodles, uh…

Jessie: Tea towels.

Wedge: Tea towels, it can cook those. I bet it could also cook a mean diaper.

Nero: Oh, how appetizing. We are truly at the vanguard of gourmand technology here at Garlond Ironworks.

Wedge: And if you want to have a fancy feast, it does… What’s that stuff called with hot wet rice and cut up bits of mushrooms and chocobo meat—

Alpha: Kweh! Kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kweh!!

Wedge: Oh! Oh no, Alpha, I didn’t mean you personally. I’d never turn you into the only good part in hot wet rice.

Alpha: Kweh!

Biggs: I think y’mean risotto there, which cooks up well enough so long as you don’t overload the pan. Also, I tried to use the kettle once to steam a raisin cake, but the pitiful thing looked nothin’ like it did in the cookbook. I reckon a proper raisin cake ought not defy Newtonian physics like that, neither.

Jessie: We had to send for a plumber. Judging by the look on his face and the number of numbers on the bill, it was the first time he ever had to deal with a u-bend clogged with raisin-studded dark matter.

Wedge: Right. So, uh. “Osterby”, was it? If you got one of the Mk. XIVs, don’t use it to cook a cake. Diapers, yes! Cakes, no. Pancakes, maybe.

Biggs: If it’s a risotto pancake, maybe?

Alpha: Wark!

Wedge: Any road, the cake making setting is something I hope to have tweaked by the time the Mk. XV rolls around. No guns on it, though. Dunno where you heard that rumor, but we are gonna try to install an ultra high-speed spinning lint centrifuge on the next beta model for our new portable Void-O-Vacuumator. It’s not a gun, right, but all our test sausages have shown that it’ll definitely chop your finger off if you stick it in there while it’s running. But there you have it. Uh. That’s it! That’s the Mk. XIV Thermocoil Boilmaster in a teacup.

Jessie: Which is now on sale at a good ‘n authorized Garlond Ironworks dealer near you!

Wedge: Yep!

Biggs: Mm hm! …

Jessie: …

Wedge: …

Nero: …

Cid: … … …well? Go on, out with it, man.

Nero: Hm? Who, me?

Cid: What ho! Are you seriously going to let this one go without making some comment about reverse engineering one of our kettles into a godsdamned buckwheat kernel bomb?

Nero: I was. But if you absolutely insist: With the right know-how and the technical savvy, you could also reverse engineer the Garlond Ironworks Mk. XIV Thermocoil Boilmaster into a dandy buckwheat kernel bomb. Simply perfect for when you feel like Sticking It To The Man in a way that is not quite destructive, but more than capable of ruining Garlond’s—I mean—Somebody’s day with the number of gulls and rodents such a thing tends to attract when detonated. Or something. Satisfied?

Cid: …

Nero: What?

-----

Oh no! I do hope that hot wet rice-looking mess in the breakroom doesn’t have anything to do with this one. Then again, it is a day ending in “Y”…! Well kids at home, be sure to tell mom and dad about the Mk. XIV Thermocoil Boilmaster if you don’t have one in your kitchen already. Oh yeah! Mention this article and get a 10% discount off the suggested retail value!

And if you have a question for one of us or the whole crew, don’t hesitate! Shine it on the funk! I mean—send it to us!

-Jessie J.

Chapter Text

The atmosphere in there was cacophonous. However, it was an organized cacophony, a fully composed lullaby, metered with thousands of tiny twinkling plasma lamps, underscored with some hideous day-glo carpeting that emitted a faintly carcinogenic aura. But there was no music, only noise , and all noise generated within the confines of this building defied physical law. Sounds did not reverberate throughout the cavernous halls of the Manderville Gold Saucer, so much as they accumulated in its hollows and crannies, and congealed into a rhythmless mush. Which was also probably carcinogenic.

Nero always figured his life would come to that anyway. Cut short by some bizarre or ancient, or best of all totally unidentifiable disease. Barring that, some easily avoidable industrial accident, as Garlond kept insisting. Barring that, any other way , so long as it was hilariously ironic. He slurped some more triple-potency Ishgard-style black coffee (which was not recommended for the elderly, children or anyone else with a functioning heart, for that matter) from the cup he gripped fast; the man had long since learned you only needed one hand to play Mog House. Barring that, a nose. Barring that, a pulse.

It had become more than a game, but an actual shelter from the din and the revel and the organized gambling and the little cactuars woven into the carpet. Safe in the pastoral simplicity of Mog House , there was no war, no political imbroglio, no constant threat of global annihilation from any one of several sources (a small percentage of whom Nero himself could claim at least partial responsibility, which brings us right back to the whole hilarious irony thing—which he cherished, mind you), no social climbing, no inescapable poverty, no sunflower mills, no shopping trolleys with wonky wheels that go everywhere except precisely where you want them to go.

There was only Mog .

And… House .

The familiar tableau flickered to life on the screen and Nero settled in for another game, his dry lips poised against the rim of a paper drinking straw.

This is Mog’s House. It’s in Mog Forest on Mt. Mog. The beginning of another day in the life of Mog.

This year, Mog is pipapopupo years old. …that’s 28 in human years.

Pipapopupo . Nero had climbed over this word dozens of times by now, but it was still his cue to give a passing thought to the moogle and what must be an incredibly precarious mode of conversation for the creatures. How many degrees of separation stood between, for example, asking a fellow moogle about the weather, and stating one’s disdain for the way his mother dressed him that morning?

Then he would try to remember what he was doing with his life at that age. Six years ago. Fortunately, the game would usually begin in earnest before he could travel any further down that particular lane.

He’s at that age where he should be looking for a mate. Here’s where you come in…

“Hey, mister.”

The speaker would have simply melted into the surrealist sublimation that was the entire Manderville Gold Saucer, had he not yanked so violently on the hem of Nero’s blazer. And he kept tugging until Nero turned around and beheld a gap-toothed Roegadyn boy, perhaps ten or eleven summers. A smaller moppet of a girl bustled around him shyly.

“My sister wants to play,” he said.

“Oh?” Nero awkwardly straightened his jacket. “Well, I paid for this round, miladdo. Come back later.”

“You been there all morning,” returned the boy, crossing his arms and cocking his head. “Don’t you gotta go to school or somethin’?”

“No, see, I’m a grown-up. And that means I get to play whenever I like, and as much as I like, so long as I have the wherewithal to do it.”

“Huh.”

“One day you too shall become a grown-up, and then you can throw your own life away however you like,” Nero continued. “Until then, what can anyone do about it, hm?”

“I said . My sister wants to play.” The kid was beating his fist into his other hand, pounding an imaginary catcher’s mitt. Ah. That’s what he can do about it . It was a gesture Nero recognized from his halcyon days, even before the Academy, when he was still a runny-nosed target cutting a path through yalms of sunflowers on his way to the nearest hiding place.

This kid had already learned a basic precept of both philosophy and physics that took many adults an entire lifetime to grok: The taller they are, the easier they fall . And Nero was beginning to feel rather uncomfortably aware of the location of his center of gravity. Frowning, he dipped into his pocket and leveled the playing field, knees cracking.

“Listen kid,” he started, calmly. “What is it worth to you?”

The boy appeared confused. “Huh?”

“How much pocket money would it take to convince you and your sister to run along?”

There was a silent consultation. The little girl said nothing, as she was apparently capable of communicating with her brother through the diameter of her goggling eyes and the angle at which she clutched a well-travelled rag doll.

“Five hundred million,” the boy finally replied. “Up front.”

Nero groaned. Kids. Economics. Inflation . All of the above. “Be reasonable.”

“ Ten hundred million!”

The little girl, still mum, happily showed off a sparse collection of nubby teeth.

“Alright! Alright. Uh, you got me. We have a deal. Take it. Take it, this is everything I have, alright?” said Nero, keeping one peg of attention on the screen that waited above his head. From the his trouser pocket, he pulled out a supple uraeus leather wallet, white and embossed in red foil, and given to him six years ago upon reaching the rank of Primus Frumentarius ; he was not Nero goe Scaeva for very long. Meteoric would be putting it one way.

Coolly, he aimed the wallet into the boy’s hands with an underhanded toss, and said nothing as he watched the two run off with it, chattering victoriously as they too vanished into the moiling thicket of light entertainment.

-----

“I can’t believe this!” And it was true, even Jessie couldn’t believe it and like the White Queen, she strived to believe six impossible things before breakfast. “Those field tests, that’s all you talked about the whole godsdamned week and when the day comes, you go AWOL on me, soldier.”

Nero shrugged, reflecting her regret. “Forgive me, I lost track of the time.”

“Doing what? Ah yes.” Cid’s voice was coming from behind a wobbling tower of office boxes, Heaven-on-High in miniature. He emerged carrying one such box, which looked just as perturbed as he. “Playing Mog House for eighteen bloody bells, that’s what.”

“That long?” said Nero, innocently.

“ Mog House ?” said Jessie. “But that’s for babies! Little kids. Little little kids, like, little kids with nubby teeth.”

“Is it? I found it subtly challenging. Easy to learn, but difficult to master.” 

“What’s more!” Cid intervened. “You were bribing little kids to leave you alone so you can play Mog House for eighteen bells, that’s what.”

Jessie cringed and gripped her brow in exasperation. “Oh no, Nero. Hells bells! I’d be pissed if that wasn’t so pathetic.”

“Hardly a bribe. I haven’t used that wallet for years,” he countered. “It contained naught but old business cards for people who no longer exist, and perhaps enough fare to catch a streetcar from the Financial Quarter to the Cosmos* .”

“I’d ask why you kept it on you then, but I’d rather not go tripping down another rabbit hole this week. Instead, I’m just going to inform Jessie that you have something of a gambling problem, and in the future, to maybe not schedule field tests inside, around or anywhere near a bloody casino,” said Cid, transferring the shambling box to Nero’s arms. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Activity stubs what need documentation and filing,” replied Jessie. “You seem to be having some difficulty keeping to your own time, so I went ahead and booked you a date with the industrial typewriter.”

“Oh? Sounds like a delightful way to spend the next eight bells.”

“Eight?” Jessie sucked her teeth, then reached up and clapped his shoulder, a silent brace for some bad news.

(* Don’t let the name fool you; the Cosmos is one of the Imperial Capital’s rattier residential districts. However, at least once in a generation, it becomes very stylish to be “ratty”, and so the place sees a regular ebb and flow of gentrification, with the former usually triggered by the inevitable outbreak of rat-borne impetigo. As far as its distance from the Financial Quarter and the fare in question, to call it a pittance would be too generous. You see, in keeping with the Garlean national love of irony, the Financial Quarter is a massive slum.)

Chapter Text

It is an early morning, a pink morning, skies crystallized by the aetherial gloom that characterizes Mor Dhona, and occasionally provides a selling point for illustrated tourist brochures on the subject. Cid Garlond has moored the Enterprise Excelsior, his vehicle and his home, at an airship dock just outside of Revenant’s Toll, the area’s one and only town. Or at least its one and only supermarket, where Nero Scaeva, Cid’s temporary roommate, had earlier purchased the vital components for a proper weekend breakfast.

Nero huddles abaft a griddle in the airship’s galley, which rather seems an over-generous term for the small facility. Garlond had, however, fitted it with a breakfast nook, and while he is usually determined to get his gil’s worth for the trouble, he sits there now at Nero’s request…

-

Nero: (cracks a large brown egg into a frying pan) Oi. What’s weirder, the chicken or the egg?

Cid: The egg, of course.

Nero: The egg? But chickens come from eggs.

Cid: Usually, I reckon. Yeah.

Nero: Doesn't that make the chicken weirder by default? I mean, the chicken lays an egg, sits on it for a while, and in a few weeks, there's a new chicken there. (cracks another egg into the pan) Assuming the egg gets that far into the process.

Cid: I take it you don't intend to help it.

Nero: YOU asked for eggs and rashers, Garlond. If you are experiencing a change of heart, I'd be more than happy to fry up a few shingles of toothpaste instead.

Cid: Were you comfortable last night? I know that old sofa's missing a few slats on the bottom.

Nero: I noticed. (pokes at the pan with a spatula, shifting the rashers which are already beginning to curl nicely) Oh, I'll recover. I've a naturally elastic spine. Very flexible.

Cid: What, like Gumby?

Nero: (shrugs) I've been likened to worse.

Cid: Anyway, why's it always chickens and eggs? We never talk about roosters and their role in the whole mess of life.

Nero: Roosters? (pauses, realizing) Ahh! It IS Father's Day, isn't it? Then it is only natural that we regard the rooster this morning, however briefly.

Cid: MY rooster.

Nero: Pardon?

Cid: Er. My FATHER.

Nero: Which one?

Cid: Do you know he never referred to me as his son? Not even once?

Nero: (As if sensing a Bad Tangent) Tomato?

Cid: I was expected to be some great prodigy of Magitek on account of my... (spits) pedigree. And yet—

Nero: How about a nice sliced tomato? Fried up? In the pan?

Cid: —he never said "Cid, my SON". And then Gaius—

Nero: A lovely sliced up tomato. I'll get on that.

Cid: —always called me "Son of Midas"! Can you believe that?

Nero: (hastily halving a small tomato) I can.

Cid: How can I accept the legacy of any of these men as "My Father", they could not even look me in the eye as "My Son"? "My Child"...?

Nero: My egg? (drops the tomato halves into the pan with a nice, loud sizzle) Crikey, I should've put these in first, they take the longest to cook.

Cid: 's fine. I don't even really like tomatoes.

Nero: What's not to like? They're red. Full of goodness. Full of vitamins. Full of unresolved paternal angst.

Cid: Eh?

Nero: Lycopene, Garlondo. Good for the heart.

-

Some time passes, some eggs are fried, some bacon is burnt... Breakfast is ready.

-

Nero: Say. Don't you get a newspaper delivered to this Drifting Tender?

Cid: Occasionally. Sometimes the boy throws one a mite too far and it lands on the deck.

Nero: Right. I suppose it falls on me to check, I wouldn't want to have all that time and effort in putting on these trousers go to waste.

-

On his way to the door, Nero serves Cid his platter - Two sunny-side up eggs for eyes, with two tomato-red "cheeks" and a collection of rashers arranged to resemble a mouth.

-

Cid: (Regards this for a moment, as one does when presented with a bacon portrait) You know, I've only just realized. I don't know anything about your old man.

Nero: (shrugs) Well. If ever you find something out, I promise you'll be the first to know.

Chapter Text

(Overheard very early one morning, behind the curtains of the changing room of the Revenant's Toll public bathhouse...)

-

Cid: Dare I ask this question and imply any vested interest in your machinations, but how does one go from being a relatively respected engineer who constructs cutting edge warmachina for the Garlean army, to being some disheveled drifter who subsists entirely on black coffee and spite—who has apparently jury-rigged a flamethrower to a wind-up airship so it can terrorize the postmoogle?

Nero: Oh, that is just like you, isn’t it? Believing that there is some inherent moral superiority to be found in one methodology over any other. What does it matter? Anyway, you ought to know better than anyone that devices and tools are completely irrelevant, and only gain significance with respect to the intentions of those who wield them.

Cid: Oh, good, jolly good, a philosophical debate on the ethics of apocalyptic engineering for the criminally bonkers, and before lunch. If I’d known today would be my lucky day, I’d’ve picked up a cactpot ticket on the way here.

Nero: Well Garlond, what can I say? You’re a lucky man.

Cid: That doesn’t answer the question.

Nero: (Sigh) … … Your Boss had expressed that there has been some difficulty recently in keeping up with the bills. I asked if there was anything I could do to help. She said–and I quote–“not if you can’t stop that bloody buggery moogle from showing his furry white arse around these parts ever again”, and—

Cid: —And, let me guess. You said “consider it done”.

Nero: I said—er, yes. That. More or less.

Cid: Unbelievable. Absolutely crackers. We haven’t gotten any mail in weeks.

Nero: (finger snap and point and a wink–it really is Garlond’s lucky day) …bingo.

(Overheard very late at night, echoing up the high tiled walls of the soaking tub in the Revenant's Toll public bathhouse...)

-

Nero: And the really sad thing is that there is always, ALWAYS someone, some withered-off old branch of the Galvus tree, ready to insinuate himself into the gap.

Cid: I've heard of that, you know. Trees strangling themselves. I s'ppose that applies to family trees.

Nero: What are they all fighting over? Garlemald? Garlemald, this planet's equivalent of that one chair at your dining table that never sits on the floor quite right, it just makes big dents into the lino whenever you pass the peas.

Cid: It's not that bad, Nero. As much as I despise the place, Garlemald has some natural assets.

Nero: Tubers? ... Tuberculosis? See, you see a legitimate succession crisis, I just see a swarm of oligarchs descending like turkey vultures on the last chocolate in the variety box. But it's not even a good chocolate—

Cid: —what IS this, Nero?

Nero: Wha? It's a rubber duck, Garlond. Rață de cauciuc. Get with it, miladdo.

Cid: Miladdo...?

Nero: What was I saying? Oh, right. It's not even a GOOD chocolate, not like one of those lovely coconutty ones.

Cid: Those are disgusting!

Nero: I did NOT come here this evening to have you sit there, you naked hairy bastard, to defame the good name of coconutty chocolates.

Cid: Oh ugh, they're like biting into the thorax of some rotten beetle!

Nero: You're wrong, but anyhoo, we've got a whole load of Imperial high-hats fighting to the death over what we all know is, say, a wadge of choc-covered fish eyes—OH! That reminds me.

Cid: About choc-covered fish eyes?

Nero: No, no. Garlondo. I had to hear about this today and now YOU have to hear about it. Is it true that some Garleans find, uh, gentle manipulation of the third eye to be something of a turn-on?

Cid: Uh. Y-you've never heard that, Nero?

Nero: I've HEARD it, I just don't BELIEVE it.

Cid: Well. I... I mean... Okay. Think of it this way. If it's the right person, somebody you care for dearly, surely you would go to certain extents to accommodate their... wishes. And some people really DO experience some sensation up there.

Nero: What extent, Garlondo? So like if your...lover, or whatever, suddenly expressed the desire to lick your eyeball like a chameleon—

Cid: —that's NOT the same thing, Nero.

Nero: Eugh! Just forget I asked.

Cid: Right. Go play with your duck. And your coconuts.

(Overheard very early one morning, in the soaking tub at the Revenant's Toll public bathhouse...)

-

Nero: I mean, I know I have never been the most "Hip Hip Hooray" sort of gent when it comes to your Scions and their whole world-saving biz, but Black Rose, BLACK ROSE, Garlondo, this goes beyond the pale. Enough to make me say "harrumph".

Cid: Oh! A whole "harrumph", eh?

Nero: Indeed. Harrumph, and then some. Now THAT is something that needs to be stopped, toot sweet. Pardon my Ishgardian.

Cid: I've forgiven you for worse.

Nero: I absolutely cannot bear to think of a scenario where it would actually be deployed. Why! The destruction wrought would be unlike anything ever seen! It would be unfathomable! Unimaginable! I literally cannot imagine it, Garlondo, and you KNOW the sorts of things my brain can conjure.

Cid: Er. Yes Nero, but imagination aside, isn't this usually the sort of thing that makes your little heart go pitter-pat?

Nero: Well, a normal, healthy amount of destruction, yes. But not this! For one thing, everybody would die and then who would I show all of my great inventions to? Who would I strive to best in every facet of life? Life! Hah! Life would be meaningless if you—err—everyone died!

Cid: Life! Hah! Assuming you even had one afters!

Nero: That's preposterous, Garlondo. Of course I would survive.

Cid: YOU would survive.

Nero: Naturally.

Cid: You would survive Black Rose.

Nero: Of course I would, I'm Nero Scaeva.

Cid: And THAT'S your reason?

Nero: What other reason do I need?

Cid: I don't think the Grim Reaper operates on a name recognition basis. You can't slip the guy a fiver and expect him to overlook you when the time comes. Though I really do believe that a Black Rose attack would be one of those scenarios where the living envy the dead, so perhaps you ought to rethink your perspective.

Nero: (sinks nose-deep into the tub and blows bubbles for a solid half-minute) ...

Cid: Hard to believe that it's come to this. Black Rose, back like a bad dream. Nero, did—

Nero: (bubbling pointedly)

Cid: (inhales) ...—did Gaius ever tell you anything about it? Black Rose, I mean.

Nero: Bblblbllblblb—no, sir. Nothing beyond a passing mention of his past favors to the world. I believe that whole rhubarb happened when we were still lads, in the Academy.

Cid: He's very proud of that. All you need to do is ask him.

Nero: Proud. Hmm. Gaius Baelsar was always a most ardent believer in Gaius Baelsar. Beyond that, it is difficult to ascertain his intentions.

Cid: Oh? Did you pick that up from him?

Nero: Come now. Believing in Nero Scaeva and believing in Gaius Baelsar are two completely different things.

Cid: That's for damn sure.

Nero: Oi. Sun's come up again, imagine that. Shall we?

Cid: Shall we what? Dance?

Nero: I was going to say drown ourselves in a puncheon of coffee, but if you're asking...

Chapter Text

Cid flicked through the booklet, one photograph after another, a veritable advertisement for Tourism La Noscea, albeit one aimed at a rather specific portion of the population. He could not decide which one. That would most likely reveal itself later on, probably during lunch or one of his breaks, or whenever he had quaffed just enough coffee for a really good spit-take.

“Whaddya think?” Jessie was still crackling with energy like an isotope, and still a bit sunburnt. “And everyone at the seminar was so super nice. You shoulda come with. You coulda learned something, Chief.”

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” He shrugged, affably.

“Well, I dunno what you were so bloody afraid of,” said Jessie. “If it was the weather or the sea-bos or the two-hour lecture on The Future of Magitek in the Family Home.”

“Err. Let’s go with the sea-bos. Never did trust those little guys. Too upright.”

“Vacuum cleaners, they’re saying. I mean seriously, it’s a godsdamned vacuum in a can and you clean up dust with it! For real! Going to be all the rage once we perfect the tech,” she continued. As she started off, she whisked the souvenir album clean from Cid’s hands, eager to subject some other unsuspecting employee to all its grisly, albeit poorly-framed details (plus the occasional corner of thumb).

“Mmhm.”

“And we are going to perfect it, Chief. Eh?”

She gave a little wave before butting her way backwards into the machine shop. The old door, hungry for maintenance, screeched hideously in appreciable syllables. It sounded like a could, or a should—Cid could not decide which one.

“And that's where you draw the line, Garlond? Vacuum cleaners.”

Nero was scrubbing his face hard, his back twisted most uncomfortably over the bowl of the Ironworks' only washbasin. He had never before encountered a piece of plumbing so resigned to its fate; tucked inside a dank pocket of a closet someone had carved out of the very back of the building before anyone present was even born, only to play cradle to an eroded block of Mother's Child 80% glycerine soap (smelling strongly of lilacs or lye). As such, it made even the simple act of washing one's hands a rather soul-crushing affair.

The present affair was more vertebrae-crushing. If being this tall had a price to pay, Nero was not looking forward to picking up the tab in a decade or so.
On the outside, Cid leaned against the wall, monitoring the action. For once, something had finally blown up in Scaeva's face—literally. Whatever it was, it was deep blue and stubborn and thorough, sparing only the areas that were covered by his safety goggles.

He looked like a raccoon in reverse. It was all very immensely satisfying.

“What happened to you?” Cid asked before question slid down the drain like so much blue-tinted froth.

“Would it be adequate to cite misadventure and call it a day?” Nero sighed and splashed his face. “Alright. The Chief—the other chief, Chief—had me making some repairs to that blasted reaper somebody gave your little friend. Maggie Magitek, I think is her name?”

Cid nodded. “Aye. I’m surprised you bothered to remember it.”

“Well, it struck me as an unusual choice for a machine. A bit rustic, but perhaps fitting for a defector like herself. At any rate, I couldn’t believe it when I saw it, but somebody—no idea who, Garlond, but somebody—had actually tried to replace her servomechanism with a mammet core! Like something ripped fresh out of the back of some sprog’s Totty Tinkles*.”

“Imagine that.”

“No need. You can see the results for yourself. Er…” Nero went in for another round of stiff lathering. “That somebody almost got it right, you know. Almost. Garlemald’s engineers never fully grokked the art of response mechanisms. How to make a machine sense feelings. Static impulses, yes. But feelings?” He scoffed. “Moreover. The Garlean standard #12-C servomechanism was released with a known issue within its control board, something that the Academy refused to fix, much less investigate. So! Replacing a time bomb like that with a mammet core makes as much sense as anything else one could’ve cooked up in this arse-backwards land, but whoever did so failed to make up for the power differential.”

“Of course…” Cid muttered, stroking his beard. But what was the feeling behind it? It was not anger, or even the usual flare of irritation that followed Nero’s words as sure as punctuation. This was the stirring of something long-neglected, he realized. Long-neglected for a reason, like a particularly embarrassing 45 single from one’s youth, the sort of thing one buries in the basement beneath piles of old coats and asbestos paneling. And yet, there it was, unearthed, water-damaged, filthy, possibly carcinogenic but definitely staring him in the face with familiar inanity:

Keith Harris and Orville: "I Wish I Could Fly"

Cid halfheartedly kicked a mental anorak back over the sorry thing and pressed on. “If the mammet core’s capacity was too low, it would’ve caused an excess of potential energy in the reaper’s Magitek cortex. Too much energy, plus exactly the right catalyst—”

“—yes, say, the completely unassuming tap of a metal screwdriver to the plate casing—”

“—at exactly the right time, and… ZAP!”

Nero sighed. Despite the effort, the man in the mirror looked only marginally cleaner. “It was rather more of a PHUT. In my face.”

“You probably weren’t grounded properly,” said Cid. “I seem to recall you never did care much for basic safety. Your behavior in the laboratory was reliably appalling.”

“Oh? And yet my appalling lapse in self-preservation probably saved your little friend’s life.”

“Go figure. I think you like irony as much as you dislike placards.”

“Well, you have to admit, it’s satisfying. The way things manage to fit together sometimes, despite the best efforts of every acting force one could imagine,” Nero continued, happily. “Fate, chance, fortune. Uh, gravity. Basic electrostatics. That fork someone jammed into the company toaster. Help me out here, will you.”

Cid narrowed his eyes. “I also think you like working here.”

“Oh, Garlond. I don’t work here. Anyway, what was I saying before?” He snapped his soap-slick fingers. “Ah yes, vacuum cleaners, and the drawing of lines thereof. Did you know when I was outfitting my flat—I have a flat now, by the way. The rent is positively astronomical, but it does have indoor plumbing.”

“Most places in Eorzea do nowadays. Even older places like this building usually have a pipe or two spliced in, with mixed results,” admitted Cid.

“So plumbing, yes. But when I asked the shopkeep if they had any vacuum cleaners for sale, that young lady looked at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a fourth eye. And I thought to myself, How long has Garlond been living here? Surely by now he has introduced his jolly new friends and neighbors to the time- and labor-saving wonder that is the classic Garlean canister vacuum cleaner?”

“No, I—”

“—the one useful purpose of the Void? Honestly. What is the meaning of Freedom through Technology if you can’t even manage to get the dust off people’s shelves with it?”

Ah. There was the flare, right on time with the dot at the bottom of the question mark. “Now Nero, look, I only came here to ask if you—”

It was at that moment that Nero felt compelled to submerge his head into the basin as completely as he could. The sallow plasma light that illuminated the lavatory and the dried-up husks of approximately four hundred thousand ladybugs that’d gotten themselves stuck behind the lamp casing, was now working its depressing magic on that morass of tepid water and discolored suds, making it all shimmer obnoxiously as Nero bubbled on.

All Cid could do was wait until he was finished: “Now look, I—”

One breath, and Nero submerged his head again, bubbling very pointedly.

“Enough! You godsdamned flap-mouthed measle! Listen to me!” Cid shouted, grabbing the back of the other fellow’s collar and putting a stop to this madness with a yank and a magnificent arc of a splash and a scummy splatter on the mirror (which frankly, did not need any more help in this direction).

“O-ow, Garlond.” Nero sputtered and rubbed the back of his neck, while the front of his face dripped dourly. “What do you want, man?”

“I want your opinion.”

“My opinion?” His brow lifted. “You mean my advice?”

Cid sucked his teeth. To contrast, his own brow was a plateau, quickly darkening. “Your opinion. Your… Thoughts on the matter. That’s all.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have my advice?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely?”

“Yes.”

“Not even so you can simply do the opposite of what I suggest?” Nero brushed a sodden clump of hair from his face. “Wouldn’t that make it easier for your troubled mind?”

“Your opinion, Nero.”

“On vacuum cleaners.”

It did sound a bit ridiculous in that context, coming from a dimly-lit Garlean who was currently waging battle with a washbasin (and losing). Cid nodded it off.

“Well! Well. Handy little things. I believe the noted satirist Cato cen Caelius once described the invention of the vacuum cleaner as an event to rival the emergence of the second wheel, barring that, the roller skate. When I was living in Garlemald, I had one with a face painted on the barrel, who insisted we refer to him as Varigus. Which is a dreadful name for anything, much less a bloody vacuum cleaner.” Nero paused. “Or did you mean something more relevant?”

“That would be a start,” Cid replied. He was beginning to feel dangerously close to making some headway.

“You want to know what I think about Garlond Ironworks taking after the Motherland and producing vacuum cleaners for the denizens of this fine country, but not in a way that may construe the distribution of advice. Very well.” Nero closed his eyes. “I think the Chief—the other chief, Chief—is a woman who, when she sets her mind on a task, will accomplish it one way or another. Therefore, if she wants the Ironworks to design, manufacture and sell a vacuum cleaner, it is not a matter of if, but when she will do it. With or without you and your strange moral nail-biting over household appliances.”

Cid folded his arms, a gesture that happened to conceal both of his hands. “And I think you’ll be right there with them, making it happen.”

“Please, Garlond. I told you before, I don’t work here, not really,” Nero replied, briskly. “Not in the eyes of the law, the company payroll, or my landlord, who refused to lease to me until I could prove I’m able to support myself on a freelancer’s salary. Thank you for that, by the way.”

“Of course. The pleasure was all mine, believe me.”

“Is that all you wanted?”

Cid backed away. “I’ll leave you to your bubble-blowing.”

“Right. Try to not do anything you think I would do," said Nero, a parting shot in the man’s back. “Though, in the off chance that you do, I’m sure you'll come up with a better name for it. Vickie Vacuum, or some such.”

* Tottie Tinkles was a very popular Garlean doll during the early 6AE 1550s. This toy was the source of much grief and consternation for countless parents, on account of her remarkably high-spirited anatomical maneuvers—namely that she could “drink” and “wet” at a speed and intensity not normally seen in dollies of her ilk. As Cid and Nero were children during her reign of terror, her name would evoke a certain nostalgia, at least until one does a bit of mental math and is hit with the full force of how long ago that actually was.

Chapter Text

The whole mess started out like most other messes: With a single grain of mess, something akin to, say, a discarded paper clip or broken half of a colored pencil (turquoise) or subject of a sentence, swept beneath a bureau, or lodged between the sofa cushions, or spliced into grammatical oblivion by so many commas. True, one can handle a single grain of mess tidily and without much trouble in theory, but what happens in practice is that one loses sight of it altogether, allowing that single grain of mess to sneakily embed itself within the fabric of one’s day-to-day, to accumulate layer upon layer of additional mess: More discarded office effluvia, chewing gum wrappers-turned-macerated gum sarcophagi, socks preyed upon by cats, and above all those great mysterious clots of wizened dust.

At some inevitable yet undefinable point, a discrete collection of grains of mess becomes a whole singular dashed heap of mess: A heap. An apt enough word to describe what Cid Garlond discovered after climbing to the top of Node Relay pylon 1β, one of 40 providing solar power generation for the eight main tower nodes that spanned the bottleneck gateway to an aether-starved wasteland known as the Burn.

Cid was perturbed by what he saw cluttering up the pylon’s machinery, but surely such a renowned genius could at least recognize that these were times of war, which tend to produce messes that really deserve their own stories—separate, venerated, not buried within a paragraph about dust clumps. But for brevity’s sake, a summary: After staging a successful rebellion against their Imperial occupiers, the Allied forces in Othard soon found themselves staring down the very real and very urgent threat of retaliation, to match the plight of the newly liberated Ala Mhigan allies on the western continent. While the Imperials regrouped along the latter’s borderlands, the people of Othard decided on a course of preemptive defense and thus enlisted the help of Garlond Ironworks.

A wall, they said. They wanted a wall to impede any Imperial invaders who would dare exploit by air the routes normally untenable by foot.

As a defense mechanism, walls should be blissfully clean, un-messy, an exercise in hard aesthetics and harder labor. But Cid believed in neither. Like most ex-Garleans, he’d long ago had his fill of poured concrete and metal balustrades as impenetrably brutal as the oligarchies that demand them. Likewise, he preferred it when his employees exercised a healthy amount of hard work, bolstered by a good rest and a good attitude, with some auxiliary emphasis on good social skills, good hygiene, good nutrition, and the firm intestinal tolerance required to cope with all of the above.

Case in point: When such a crew is commissioned to construct a wall—say, this wall, Seiryu’s Wall, named after a fearsome creature of Othardian legend—they will innovate, absolutely. No concrete mixers or tortuously sculpted rebar in sight, just a perfectly calculated series of gleaming brass-plated aetherosolar-powered Magitek pylons with the capacity to stretch a shimmering anti-aircraft barrier 5000 yalms into the sky. But even with the most wholesome and aesthetically pleasing intentions, Garlond Ironworks ended up weaving naught but a delicate cobweb of a defense system whose efficacy would depend on the full cooperation of every component involved, including the living ones.

And somehow, it worked. Still. Even. Despite.

Cid was not entirely sure how a bran-based diet factored into the project’s success, but he recognized that he could improve certain aspects of team morale by providing unfettered access to a steady supply of roughage. Likewise, clean water, soap and washcloths, a portable shower and toilets, and a generous selection of general interest magazines and crossword books to stave off the doldrums after the sun goes down. But bran flakes, soap, magazines, those were easy. A positive attitude was perhaps more important, and perhaps the most difficult thing to ask for when on a two-week recce to one of Hydaelyn’s most trying locales, to audit the operational status of each and every single one of those blasted tower nodes and relays, all the way down the line, all 175 malms of it.

He bristled, currently exasperated beyond the agency of a balanced breakfast. A spanner (singular) in the works is an inevitability for any mission, but he had not expected to encounter a whole singular dashed heap of spanners so soon. Curiously, this heap was shaped an awful lot like a bird’s nest, clogging up Node Relay 1β’s solar collector.

“Oi! Looks like a bird’s nest, Garlondo.”

The voice, lilting through so much adenoid, came from about eight fulms below, incidentally the height differential of the ladder rung upon which Cid precariously perched. He spared a glance and saw precisely what he’d expected to see: Nero Scaeva, one of his more persistent vestiges from an unhappy childhood, attempting to target the mess through a pair of Magitek-enhanced binoculars.

A man who makes a career out of clashing is always a doddle to notice; today, the Burn’s steady breeze made Nero’s brazen scarlet scarf furl and flap like the flags their crew used to mark camp, all while having little to no impact on his hair. Physicists hated Nero Scaeva, which was a happy coincidence because Nero Scaeva loved physics, particularly whenever the subject allowed him to defy natural expectations in the most infuriating ways possible.

“Can’t you grab it? That’s obviously what’s throttling the intake!” he shouted. “Oi! Do you need longer arms then, eh wot?”

Cid furrowed his brow as he watched his old friend fiddle with the focus on the ridiculous device. If only someone had the foresight to ring the rims of its viewfinders in lampblack…

By now, the commotion had lured another member of Garlond Ironworks’ intrepid crew towards Node Relay 1β, this time a small-for-a-Lalafell whose swagger suggested a recently unearthed popoto so pitiful in stature and shape that its gardener felt compelled to honor him with a name: Wedge.

Wedge bumbled around the willowy Nero’s legs, a pheasant versus a flamingo. “Look at that size of that thing!” He whooped. “Are there eggs? Chief!”

“Garlond! Mate, just give it a yank!”

“No, don’t! What if there’s babies?”

“I can’t quite see into it yet!” said Cid as he craned his head carefully, carefully, achingly carefully towards the aperture…

…of… …

…the… … …

…nest—

—PSHOO!

A screeching flash of black and white! The memory of feathers and flight! A mother disturbed, at first escaping into the Burn’s cobalt skies, then swooping in a clean arc to land on neighboring Node Relay 1γ, her black jawbreaker eyes trained on the interlopers.

“Good gods!” Cid gasped, rattled, hands gripping the ladder, knuckles whiter than his hair. It was time to come down before his nerves forced their way into the issue.

“Shite me pants!” Wedge’s startled outburst was more crude than Cid’s, but more honest. “Didja see that?”

“Remarkable!” said Nero. “Though rather in-your-face about it, eh?”

“Lucky she missed my face,” Cid replied as he tapped down the last couple rungs and allowed his boots to scrunch into the brittle ground. “She sure wasn’t happy to see me, I can tell you.”

“Well I’m happy to see you, Chief!”

“I can see that, Wedge, you’re practically scintillating.”

Wedge chuckled nervously. “Uh. I mean, we weren’t expecting to see a whole ruddy bird out here. Were you?”

“I was warned about worms, not whole ruddy birds.”

“Well. Why not birds?” said Nero. “Ruddy or whole or half or quartered and roasted in foil with lemon and rosemary and parsnips... Look, if Garlemald can clear the entire Burn with its airships—”

“—which they won’t—”

“—which is why we came out here in the first place,” Nero pressed through Wedge’s worries, “clearly wings are the only way to fly in these parts. Er. Figuratively.” He paused. “And literally, yes. Oi, Garlond. Take a look.”

“What am I looking for?” he returned.

It was a fair question: Long ago depleted of its natural aether—the channeled impetus for life on Hydaelyn—the Burn existed as naught but a vast expanse of salt pans, forever glaring daggers at the sun as they scabbed the valley gap created by the Tail Mountains to the north, the Knowing Sea to the northwest, and the Skatay Range to the south. As such, native flora and fauna were only slightly less rare than raindrops, much less spigots, much less vending machines. However, the Ironworks constructed Seiryu’s Wall just beyond the border between this wasteland and the lush province of Nagxia. Nature returned to her full senses over there, but perhaps still bore the occasional bold specimen yearning for more of a thrill than what the typical Othardian pine forest could provide.

Likewise, Cid and his friends were not yet jaded enough by the scenery to fail to be surprised by its hidden vivacity—not even Nero, who wielded his indifference the way caterpillars wield their stripes. He’d shifted gears at the first flap, whipping his body around in a loose attempt to track the bird’s flight path with his binoculars. Now confident in his target’s current location, he passed the weighty gadget to Cid, freeing his own hands for a good root through the frayed corduroy satchel he often wore at his hip.

He knew what he was looking for.

“Hold it,” instructed Nero as he began thumbing through the pages of a paperback book, soft and thick with a colorful cover: Hydaelyn’s Beautiful Birds.

“Genius at work?” Cid groaned as he lifted the binoculars to his own eyes. “This is heavier than it looks, you know.”

“What does scintillating mean?” Wedge then asked, quietly.

“It means shimmering or sparkling a little,” said Cid, searching. “Like the end of a cigarette.”

“I don’t smoke, chief.”

“Ah. Yes, as we shouldn’t.” He considered this. “Then it’d be like the way the stars sort of glitter under the moonlight out here, where there’s no other lights around to spoil it.”

“Ah. That’s nice, Chief.”

“Mm.”

“Can I look through those thingies next?”

“Ah ha!” Nero interjected. “I knew it! Look over there, perched on top of the next relay!”

It took Cid some twisting and turning, of body and binocular knobs, until the specimen became sharp enough to admire. “Oh! What a striking thing she is.”

“C’mon, I wanna see!” Wedge bounced, uselessly.

“She is a Garlean pied magpie, Garlond.”

“Oh? She’s a long way from home.”

“A member of the passerine order,” Nero continued his reading, “the Garlean pied magpie is a medium-sized bird who is noted for its black and white plumage, its impressive repertoire, and its aggressive behavior during the nesting season.”

“You don’t say, muttered Cid, feeling a phantom razor talon skim his cheek.

“What’s a passerine?” Wedge asked him, quietly.

“Oh that’s… That’s a sort of type of bird I reckon, er—”

“—songbirds, Garlond, oi. Let’s see what else. Gets up to 12, 15 ilms in length. Omnivorous. Favors insects, snails, that sort of thing.”

“Worms?” Cid tried.

Nero ignored him. “Demonstrably hardy,” he read, “the Garlean pied magpie can thrive in a variety of habitats and climates, and has in fact insinuated itself into the native bird populations of many other regions, including those in Othard and Eorzea, where it is oft regarded as an invasive species. Well, that’s fitting.”

“Does it say anything about eggs?” said Wedge.

“I’m getting to that.” Nero squinted, regretting his usual habit of leaving his reading glasses back at camp. “Oh! Interesting. According to this, she is a fantastic mimic: While unable to emulate speech as we—that’s you and us,” he gestured loosely,”—would understand it, birdwatchers have reported hearing Garlean pied magpies imitate other animals, including songbirds, as well as noises typical to its environment, such as vehicles, machinery, and even musical objects d’art like wind chimes or deer scares.”

“Wind chimes!” Cid hooted in disbelief. “Since when did Garlemald ever have any wind chimes?”

Another fair question. While Garlemald had its share of gales, its people were of more practical stock than the sort who might try to make music out of them. But here in the Burn, there was very little to imitate, given its dearth of people (pragmatic or not), songbirds, machinery, musical objects d’art, and the requisite fresh breezes to make it all sing. No environmental aether meant the wind—while steady—was more akin to a peculiar staleness being pushed through an empty keyhole. A sensation that should be refreshing akin to a Northern Empty breeze, more comparable to a fetid Yafaem waft. It was neither warm nor cold. Inoffensive, but frustratingly so.

Wedge had long been pushed through and beyond the point of inoffensive frustration. He balled his tiny fists and pounded an imaginary wall, like cudgels into a week-old loaf of Home Taste (Eorzea’s favorite pre-sliced sandwich bread, enriched for better health and fewer collywobbles).

“Blimey! Stop jawin’ and tell us about the fuckin’ eggs!” he cried. It was not a question.

“Oi oi!” Nero raised an eyebrow. “Spud wants to know about the eggs, Garlond.”

“Then you’d better tell him!”

“Apparently I’d better. Uh.” He continued reading, placidly. “Like other magpies in its clade (pages 87 to 94), the Garlean pied magpie has a long breeding season, though one that begins somewhat later than its cousins, typically lasting from the fourth astral to fifth umbral moons. That’s about now, isn’t it?”

Cid shrugged. There was a calendar at camp. Somewhere.

“Their nests are bowl-shaped and typically constructed from soft, flexible sticks, grasses and reeds. The Garlean pied magpie prefers to nest in high tree forks, though with the advent of technology and architectural progress in its native home, it is no longer unusual to see the birds roosting in the heads of lampposts, radio masts, or other such structures,” Nero read, skimming. “Then some jive about courtship, rituals, swooping—ah. She will lay a clutch of two to five eggs, greenish-blue in color—Well, did you see any greenish-blue eggy things up there, Garlond?”

He glanced at Wedge, sheepishly passing the binoculars off to his eager hands. “I, er. Well, it was difficult to tell.”

“Then we can pull it out of the collector. No harm, no foul!”

“Chief didn’t say no babies, Nero, he said he couldn’t tell.”

“It’s blocking the solar panels, the node relay won’t work with that monstrosity clogging it up.”

“That might all be a moot point,” Cid intervened. “I’m stuck on something you said, Nero.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, Garlond.”

“You said the birds make their nests from sticks and reeds, but look at this place,” he said, gesturing loosely. “It’s a bona fide wasteland, there’s not a blade of grass in sight, much less a bloody tree. What’s that nest made from, then?”

“What indeed.” Nero’s grin faltered into a grim ghost of itself. “Oi, Wedge. See if you can get a better look at it with those things.”

After some contorting and quiet cursing, the Lalafell eventually espied the Mess about which we made much ado at the beginning of this frankly most attenuated scene: In crisp detail—made crisper with some fiddling of the device’s fine focus knob—the mess was, indeed, a nest. Bowl-shaped, as per the book’s observations, and woven from some wiry-looking things, some crudely hewn-off strands of copper, still partially coated in black and white rubber, with the occasional swath of Ironworks blue for added visual interest.

Wedge reported the discovery thus, spurring the Chief and his first mate to sough in minor obscenities, words neither one would deem proper to utter before the little one, even though both knew full well that Wedge himself had already soughed more obscenities (minor and major) before breakfast than either Garlean would typically murmur in a week.

Nevertheless, Cid considered himself the saltier of his peers, with Nero having spent an additional decade and a half in the constrictive depths of Imperial verbal austerity. Occasionally Cid would let fly one of our nastier oaths, but only after giving the matter a careful enough consideration as warranted by the cock-up at hand.

Nero, on the other side of the coin, preferred to employ a more incisive vocabulary, and would usually eschew the generic workman’s F - - - for insults of a more targeted nature.

“Oh, sod it,” he finally moaned out loud. “This… desert.”

The Burn was, after all, an overwhelming target.

“She must’ve been picking off pieces of wire from beneath the pylon wind casings,” surmised Cid of the avian interloper.

“That easily? What did you secure the casings with, Garlond? Spit and a prayer?”

“And chewing gum,” rounded Cid, “but I’m guessing a bird in the wasteland learns the virtue of tenacity faster than her less adventurous peers. To her eyes, she saw more twigs under those casings than she’d seen anywhere else in this benighted land. The rest is, uh… Well, see History for yourself.”

And he gestured towards the nest, rather sheepishly. On cue, and with enviable comic timing, the magpie began her daily repertoire; an undulating warble, eerie but strong enough to penetrate the stagnating channels of silent space between Node Relays 1γ and β.

The trio listened, captivated.

“Ah, beautiful.” Nero exhaled, softly. Then, ticked his teeth with a curt intake of breath. “But! So it goes. Pity we’ll have to tear that nest down.”

“No!” protested Wedge. “No, that’s so cruel, guy.”

“Cruel!”

“What’s the point of tryin’ to save the world if we’re just gonna…” Wedge sniffled. “…gonna be mean and cruel to the things tryin’ to live in it along the way, huh?”

“These are cruel times!”

“Yeah, well. How would you like it if some spaghetti-lookin’, rump-fed Garlean climbed up a pole and tore your house down while you watched?”

The magpie warbled again, as if to add: Don’t forget spriggan-toothed, fop-preening, fiddle-headed…

“My looks are entirely beyond the point, so I shall overlook your attempt at ad hominem, wee spud,” returned Nero, overcome by a sudden compulsion to straighten his collar with a yank and a huff. “Look at all the damage she did to it, tearing out those wires like that, eh? Do you not wager that we are now going to need those wires to repair whatever other node relay pylons she destroyed on her bid to raise a family in the Fifteenth Hell? Right, Garlondo?”

“Nero, I don’t—”

“I mean, we are at war, are we not? Tch!” He clucked, his eyes flaring fulgurant blue to rival the intensity of the skies. If anybody understood the sort of stakes a single Garlean legion could raise, it was Nero tol Scaeva, former Tribunus Laticlavius of the XIVth. “You said the Othardians are depending on you—on us—to keep this wall functional. Look, I love all the blasted bally little critters of nature as much as anyone else, but we’ve got to keep perspective. Nobody wants to tear down a bird’s nest, but it’s one family—a bird family, mind—over thousands. It’s unfortunate, but—”

“—sirs!”

One could, and probably will calculate his arrival to be about six or seven pages late. However, Philiot, the Garlond Ironworks’ newest intern and an import from Ishgard’s frigid tiers, was improving his timing. If one could tweeze out a positive on this occasion, it was that he at least made it into the scene before it ended.

He appeared breathless, pale cheeks reddened with exertion, short blond hair mussed and flickering with the grotty breeze. He clutched a company blue clipboard close to his breast, which usually meant Trouble. However, given Philiot’s current reaction rates, the manner of Trouble was usually completely sussed out by the rest of the crew before he could catch on and embroider his own overly meticulous report on it.

“S-sirs!” He repeated after noticing his first cry did not get the attention he felt it warranted. “You might want to take a look at these power readings—err, the initial power readings, they just came out of the—uhm, hot off the press, as it were.”

He struggled to rein in the printout, probably more voluminous than necessary but accordion-folded so its leaves wouldn’t flap too obscenely in the breeze. Nero noticed the intern’s squirming first and gathered the stack into his hands, feigning surprise before he could even puzzle through the dotty little numbers and lines decorating the first page.

“Good gods!” He gasped. “These readings! Why, I daresay something is throttling the power intake in Node Relay pylon 1β!”

Philiot had heard Nero was a genius, a child prodigy who blazed past his classmates—content to moil forever within their own puerile orbits—like a comet on its way to a plum postgraduate degree in mechanical engineering (with an emphasis in ancient technology).

Being a genius was one thing, but being downright clairvoyant was quite another.

“S-seriously?” he squeaked, concealing his disappointment that Nero’s preternatural guesswork meant there would be no need to deliver his well-rehearsed explanation on why he felt so compelled to disturb them.

“Yes! Oi, Garlond, have you had a look at these?” Nero motioned frantically to the Chief, who seemed unperturbed, save for the subtle hint of vexation searing the crinkles of his eyes.

“No, Nero.” He sighed.

“The calculated power intake levels have a terrible dearth of trailing digits, Garlond!” pressed Nero.

“You don’t say.”

“I do say! A dearth, I say!”

“You say.”

“You do know what a dearth is, right?”

Cid pinched the long-suffering wrinkle at the bridge of his nose; wordless, but nevertheless a convenient response to the softly uttered What’s a dearth? coming from around his knees.

“I know what a dearth is, Lord Scaeva,” said Philiot, eagerly.

“Yes, very well,” Nero said, shifting uncomfortably, a man being laced into a basque boned with mislaid formalities and suddenly acquired earldoms. “And as I told you before, please call me Nero.”

“Aye aye!”

“I reckon we ought to investigate this issue right away. What do you suppose could be causing this unprecedented anomaly in the intake levels?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Anyone? Garlond? What do you think?”

“Yeah, what do you think, Chief?” Philiot’s parrot was an earnest one, at least.

“Whatever could it be, Garlond?”

“Chief?”

“Ah! I’ve got it! Could it be… Could it be birds, chief?” Nero snapped his fingers, singing at maximum lilt for maximum irritation. “D’you think it could be birds, eh? A great big bird’s nest made from wires it yanked out from beneath the wind casings? And blocking the node relay pylon’s solar panel?”

“Why, I couldn’t say, Nero,” growled Cid. “Why don’t you go up there and take a look? Take a good long look, too. All day if needed.”

“Will do, Garlondo! And say. If it is a bird’s nest, well! We will certainly have to remove it, won’t we? Eh, Philiot?”

Philiot recoiled, gasping. “Heavens, no! We can’t just tear down a nest, that’s someone’s home! That’s not the Ironworks Way, is it? Freedom through… Uh… Uhm, well, how would you like it if some—”

“—oi oi!” Nero nipped a spell of deja-vu in its spaghetti-lookin’, rump-fed bud. He was done. “Alright! That’s… That’s enough. You have all made the case for the magpie, comprehensively. The final decision isn’t up to me, anyway.”

“And you think it’s up to me?” Cid folded his arms; the debate had sublimated to naught but the impression that he was now the Magpie, mouth full of pre-chewed worms, trying to decide which bald gaping mouth he should stuff first.

“You’re the chief, Chief,” said any one of them.

“I’m going to regret admitting this, but Nero does have something of a point,” he said. “One thing leads to another, right? Power failure aside, she did scupper some bits of cable from either that relay pylon or another one, possibly more. I don’t know if we have enough extra supplies to spare for a whole chain of repairs.”

Nero shrugged. “I suppose it could be economically feasible to recalibrate the functioning node relay pylons in this series…” he trailed off, now aware that his comrades were mentally skewering him like a miq’abob. “…I mean, to compensate for the reduction in this node relay’s power intake. A small increase levied across multiple node relays should not tax the system too significantly.”

“So now you’re saying don’t take down the nest,” Wedge spat. “We ain’t supposed to be on the same side!”

“Philiot and I shall investigate the situation further. I am sure we can bring this whole bird’s nest fracas to an amenable conclusion.” Nero fired a ripe raspberry of a glance downward. “Whether we like it or not.”

Ahh. Concordance at last. Cid fought against revealing what he thought might be an unprofessional smirk. “That sounds fair.”

“Hmmph.”

“I’m proud of you, Nero.”

“Care to pin a rose on my nose?” He sighed, rolling his eyes. “Come along, Philiot. Take the binoculars, I’ll fetch the ladder. We’ll have to move along the line quickly if we wish to investigate the rest of this portion by sundown.”

“Yes, Lord Scaeva.” Philiot paused. “Uh. Lord Scaeva?”

“Please, do call me Nero. It will make the remainder of our day much more pleasant.”

“Nero. Uh. Nero, what should we do if there are more bird nests in different pylons?”

He allowed the breeze one precious half of a minute to attempt to tousle his hair, during which he studied the impending line of Garlond Ironworks node relay pylons as it diminished into an unfathomably blue horizon, broken only by that spot of black with a flash of white, still, perched atop the nearest future.

She made a peculiar noise this time, a quaver like a wasted afternoon faltering into a restless evening.

“Well! Then we shall all have to recalibrate our respective perspectives on life, won’t we?” replied Nero, brisk, uneasy.

Chapter Text

…Children, we have it right here! — Steely Dan, Time Out of Mind (1981)

The most sorriest conclusion to the whole sorry scandal, Nero decided, was that he wouldn’t know where to get cocaine even if he wanted any. He based his decision on the sheer scope of what it implied about everything he had so carefully cultivated about his own character over the past couple decades—least of all his nationality, a matter over which he held very little sway. What did all those old rumors say? He remembered a few of them by the barbs they left in his psyche. Didn’t the XIVth have a reputation for “rolling in the snow”? Wasn’t the XIVth signal corps running a secret roller disco in the basement of a burnt out munitions silo, a scant ten malms from the Imperial summer palace? Wasn’t it true that van Baelsar wore that helmet all the time because his nose had disintegrated into one big floppy coked out nostril? It all sounded so gauche, even back then. And anyway, it was all talk. Smoke and mirrors. Pearling it in for the sake of an image. Which was so gauche, it was. Even back then.

Baelsar had a nose, a complete nose with at least two entire nostrils. Nero was pretty sure of it.

Still, those two dorks not only scored a half-ponze of cocaine but they got caught trying to snort it in the company washroom. It jangled a nerve Nero couldn’t identify. Now he knew he didn’t want to be in that position—anyone who wanted to be on the butt end of Jessie’s rage was a masochist and there was no either/or about it. He knew their antics were completely pathetic, and would’ve been like super pathetic if committed by a 34 year-old engineer who drives a shambling station wagon with tac-on wood-look sticker paneling, who gets his wardrobe exclusively from a department store that also sells lawnmowers and family portraits.

But what about it, huh? Nero wondered if it was because they had done the sort of thing people would’ve expected from him, and it was like so irritating. It was like someone else had smooshed their chewed-up wad of gum under his seat. It was like someone else had worn his orthodontic headpiece overnight. Like someone else had just whomped his car up on the kerb and dented that postbox (which was neither his nor someone else’s, but government property and worth a hefty fine if vandalized, tampered with or otherwise misused).

Property damage aside, Nero had kept the car mostly within the lines, making it a fair enough parking job in his book. Don’t waste your time. The doggone dent is mine, he reassured himself as he got out of the vehicle, briefly surveying the damage before pushing the door shut with the sole of his loafer (no socks).

This shoe would be the lucky one as his supporting foot arrived in something wet. Looking down, Nero confirmed the shimmering outline of a tar-colored puddle—possibly the only sizeable body of liquid in this neck of Rhaglr’s Reach, in the thick of a summer drought—dyeing his other shoe and introducing itself to the bottom hem of his loose cotton trousers. Those things were like coffee filters, and he (accurately) predicted that leg would be grey up to the knee by lunchtime.

Nero didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to look at the carpark in which he’d tried to hide his vehicle for the day. This time he had located a suitably derelict public lot, with its only clues to the nature of its former existence being fiberglass hot dog boy who once acted as sentinel of what used to be The Wee-Wee Supper Club (now “To Let” with a toll free inquiry line), ringed by an attractive patch of crabgrass and fluffy cigarette butts. He didn’t want to look back at the car as he walked away, as he always immediately regretted it. There was nowhere else to look but forward, and that was certain doom. In the end, he just looked down at his shoes. More specifically, the clean one.

He did not pass many other shoes on his way to work, and wasn’t expecting them anyway. It made for a positively ideal environment for allowing one’s brain matter to marinate in the usual favorites. Work-related obstacles. Physical impossibilities. Optical illusions. Whether it’s cooler to wear sunglasses in Position A: Over the eyes, Position B: Over the top of the forehead, or Position C: Tucked in the shirt collar. They were all usually at least tangentially related.

“Oi! Nero, eh?” The first line of dialogue in this chapter and it’s a bunch of godsdamned interjections.

Nero recognized the speaker immediately. If not by his voice, by those rubbery white jogging shoes, designed with velcro straps to make fitness easier for today’s sad yet active old git, if he had to put it in so many words. Always spoiling for a challenge, he unfolded his sunglasses and settled them over his eyes, yes, at the same time as he angled his head just so, just indirectly enough, yes, very cool.

Probably.

“Ah, Garlond. Fancy meeting you here.”

It was crap and everyone knew it. Cid screwed up his face, already the color and texture (and if one dared, taste) of a brined plum. A terrycloth headband—striped to match the general motif of the uniform, which yes absolutely included jogging shorts layered on top of a pair of sweatpants, good grief—sagged from one temple to the next, though displaying more energy than the man’s idling bob and weave. The conscious essence of Cid Garlond usually tuned out somewhere around malm #6, leaving his body on autopilot until it was time to hit the showers. He had read in an issue of Jogger’s Jaunt that entering that trance-like state known as “the zone” would leave his brain free to ponder his favorite subjects. Work-related obstacles. Physical impossibilities. Optical illusions.

To his dismay, his trips to said “zone” often had him contemplating the finer points of gum jingles and that blue liquid they use in diaper commercials. Maybe he just needed more practice.

“What? On the way to work?” he replied, huffing as he turned the volume down on his headset. “Thought I’d squeeze in a couple malms before. You know.”

“Oh, right-o, jolly good. Totally… Well, totally.” Nero was trying very hard to be polite about it.

“Ah, bugger all that for a lark. Keeps me fit.” Cid tapped his forehead; his wristband matched the headband in appearance and condition. “Keeps the mind fit too, you know.”

Nero had no idea. He also had no idea just how much he had no idea. “I bet.”

Cid eyed the man up and down; now here was a bloke who was clearly experiencing some conflict with his daily life decisions. Or at least his choice of footwear. “What, no Barbarossa?”

“Not today.” Nero shrugged. “I had it taken into the shop for some new hubcaps.”

“Again?”

He sucked his teeth. “Unfortunately, the old ones—the new old ones—were stolen. Anonymously wrenched right off the wheels in what I can only assume was some hysterical yet remarkably well-prepared fit of desperation. Even the hubcaps on such a vehicle are rather valuable, you realize.”

“I bet.” Cid eyed Nero up and down again, as if he finally noticed the thing he was supposed to notice the first time he did it.

“What?” said Nero.

“Nothing. Uh. Woof.” Cid exhaled loudly, now rowing some kind of invisible dinghy with his arms. “Anyway, I’ll be back at the office later. Jessie’ll have my backside in a sling if I don’t clean up first.”

“Right. Well, there’s a car wash right around that corner, if you want to save her sling the trouble.”

He didn’t laugh. “Ha ha. Right.”

The two parted, going their respective ways, at their respective gaits. Nero kicked off his journey backwards, watching as the other man bobbled ridiculously in place in front of a placid crosswalk, waiting for the light to change.

Why doesn’t he just run for it? Why doesn’t anyone? Like what’s wrong with these people?

By the time Nero arrived at the Garlond Ironworks’ front garage, the morning sky had taken on a gently threatening golden hue. Not quite the red sky sailors were always warning people about, but sufficiently portentous. He hoped he would be able to slip through the bulkhead and into the office unnoticed, but right there on the staging platform, optimistically touching up one of the Sweet Lucy Green Eyes II’s racing stripes, was some version of himself from an alternate universe where he was relatively small and benign and ginger-haired and also a complete moron.

“Oh! Hallo!” By some miracle, Arlen did not forget what he was doing and drop an entire pint of red paint on the ground. He only fanned his fingers and wiggled them cheerfully.

Nero stilled his hand mid-wave, his face contorted as an algid horror worked its way through every muscle in his body.

I mean like this sprog was wearing the exact same outfit for sure, like the same ivory cotton sheeting pop-up collar summer jacket and box-pleat trousers (great value … 860G and 660G ea.), the same heavy cotton web buckle belt (still 98G), the same pastel combed cotton placket-front t-shirt (in six designer colors, 320G ea., or two for 500G), the same polarized acrylic oversized sunglasses (1250G … beat the heat with these cool summer prices, only at Zoggs!).

“Nice day for it, eh wot?” Arlen went on, obliviously.

“For what?” croaked Nero.

“Hey, looking pretty sharp!” The lad considered this further. “I think I have that same outfit.”

“You don’t say.” Nero’s sunglasses slid gracelessly down the bridge of his nose. Fortunately, he was able to catch and tuck them into a lopsided Position C, in a way that looked almost intentional.

“Hmm. Think it’s very stylish right now, inn’t it? That, uh, that whole bit.”

“Well, it cost me a lot of money to get this whole bit.”

“Eh?”

“So it’s highly unlikely you were unable to afford the designer version on that pittance you’re earning here. Of course, nobody has to know you’re wearing a knock-off. No harm, no foul,” Nero confidently popped his own department store knock-off jacket collar. “But you are correct in your other observation, at least. Very stylish. Very Lominsa Vice.”

“Hmm. Hmm.” Only 7 AM and already Arlen’s brain was working overtime. “Right. Like you’ve just stepped off a cruise ship after it got quarantined in port for a whole week ‘cause everyone caught wisteria from the buffet parsley.”

“Listeria,” Nero corrected him as he crossed the garage. “And it sounds like you based that on a very specific and personal experience.”

Arlen shook his head. “Never. Nah. Can’t say I’ve actually ever been on a cruise, much less helped myself to the parsley. Seems like asking for trouble. They’d have you keelhauled for eating the dinner decorations, like some old goat. I wonder if you can’t get a refund for that.”

“For what?”

“Could you hold this for a mome’?” He was holding out his pint of Blister Red detailing enamel, half-full with at least one brush already dropped inside.

Nero took the can wordlessly and watched as the lad started to roll up his sleeves. At a guess, the mercury in the garage thermometer was eddying around the upper 20’s (C).

“My aunt and uncle go cruising all the time,” he continued. “But they do, like, these naturist cruises...? I danno. I reckon that’s the sort of thing where you sit in a bare-bottomed boat and look at shrimp.”

“In a sense.” Nero sensed it was time to put some distance between himself and this conversation. “How long have you been here? Where is Jessie? Please tell me she’s here.”

“Aye. But I think she’s still a bit cross, so whatever you do, don’t—”

Thankfully, the most relevant word of advice Arlen had to offer that morning was totally drowned out by the trundle and roll of the garage’s inner bulkhead door, the familiar sounds of business officially opening for the day.

“—gonna be totally incognito, like, uh,” Wedge was saying on the other side as he very unhelpfully helped Biggs unroll the thing. “Like spies or secret coke dealers.”

“Ach, no!” Biggs groaned. “Have y’learned nothing from yesterday?”

“Yeah, but Jessie wasn’t really mad. You know she thought it was funny.”

“As funny as a flood in a flannel factory.”

“What does that even mean? You’re such a butthe—eeey!” Wedge waved to his coworkers as he entered the garage. “Turn on the radio, Biggs. It’s gonna be a fuckin’ scorcher in here.”

“Turn it on yourself!” he replied. Whenever that door opened, it opened a small portal somewhere within Biggs’ brain, into which he could fully retreat and submerge himself in a pool of his favorite thoughts. Work-related obstacles. Physical impossibilities. Optical illusions. The wreck of the Sweet Lucy Green Eyes II neatly encompassed all three and so he drew close to her, a refrigerator magnet to a chunk of steel.

“I can’t reach it. Oi. Oi, Nero, you can reach it. ‘s on top of that there cabinet. Guy’s like 8 fulms, he can get it,” said Wedge, turning his attention to the man of the hour.

There were many things one could observe about Nero, with his height being the most obvious and therefore least worthy of particular note. The fact that all three of his eyes were perpetually bloodshot indicated any one of several things, all of which were probably valid at one part of the day or another, occasionally simultaneously but never noteworthy.

The fact that he was wearing the exact same outfit that Wedge, Biggs and Arlen had selected from their respective piles, closets and chairloads of clean clothes that morning was a statistic anomaly and therefore noteworthy. The fact that they had accomplished this without any prior coordination made it especially noteworthy.

Curiously, all four would prefer not to bring up the fact that there was a new episode of Lominsa Vice on television the night before.

Nero was aghast. In his incalculable ingenuity, he instantly (and intentionally, as he would maintain for the rest of the day) devised a means of differentiating himself from the pack by allowing— yes allowing, totally intentional, right—the pint of Blister Red to slip from his hand and splash a deviled swath all the way down his trousers and onto and into his clean shoe.

“Oh dear,” Arlen observed, cheerfully. “Well, while you’re at it, could you get my other brush too?”

Chapter Text

Overhead, the fresh aperture exposed the belly of the chamber above them, allowing a ragged pike of artificial daylight to seep downward. It was wan, but one could make out shadows of beams and hints of girders, vague suggestions of pipes and possible inklings of insulated panels, bulging here, sagging there—all the structural confidence of a stale Hokey-Pokey bar. Apparently, that particular chamber was being held aloft by mere whim at this point in time, and it was certainly not prepared to handle the footfalls of two fully grown adult Garleans in long-fall boots.

They went down together, along with a sizable chunk of the floor.

Below, fluid. No vague suggestion about it. It was cold and it was highly viscous, judging from the lugubrious bobble of their make-do raft. Both men refrained from attempting a more detailed observation of the substance, deciding that the ongoing assault against their noses provided enough material for the exploration logs. It was the rancid funk of natural decay, mingling with the fume of something immortal, an olfactory chimera with nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there.

Around, stretched a mystery, and not the sort that makes for pleasant reading on a snowy evening. The reverberation of that liquid as it blopped and splashed against unseen surfaces implied that it was a large chamber and it was not empty. However, the darkness that encompassed the pair was without fathom. Save for the light from the ruined chamber above, the only visual guidance available to Cid and Nero was a small bulb attached to the front of the latter’s safety helmet.

It guttered with every move he made, leaving little doubt to the reliability of the brand name printed on its battery. If only Nero could actually translate it to a known language, he would surely appreciate the irony.

“Hold that arm in tight, now.” He was trying to instruct Cid as best as he could with a safety pin held fast between his front teeth. Every move he made also caused their raft to weave and lurch, which had him thinking twice about devouring the one Hokey-Pokey bar he had left in his bag.

“Mm.” Grimacing, Cid pressed his left fist towards his right shoulder, as far as it would go.

“Tighter?”

Cid managed to squeeze it a fraction of an ilm closer, cringing as he felt Nero’s hands unfurling a length of elasticized bandage around and behind his back, eventually tacking it somewhere with that pin. Gods, but the man was frigid, downright reptilian. Not even a mote of warmth within that working embrace to appreciate while being jabbed and taped up and complained at. But was it him, or was it them, marooned together in this sightless void beneath the #13 test chamber, a simulacrum of Halone’s Hell? The orange coveralls so kindly provided to them were lined with something fuzzy but thin, and while the rubber finger pads on the matching gloves were great for handling slippery characters, they did Sweet F.A. for icy conditions.

“Hold the book up a little higher, Garlond. I can’t…” Nero, frozen in place with arms and bandaging akimbo, angled his head uncomfortably in a bid to light up a page of diagrams in his first aid book: EMERGENCY CARE - SPLINTING.

“Does that thing say you’re supposed to wrap me up like a mummy?” said Cid, irritably.

“It says I should first ask you clearly and simply if you’re in pain.” Nero cleared his throat. “Are you in pain. Garlond.”

“My good arm hurts more now, from holding up this godsdamned book.”

“I only scored a 62% on this particular quiz,” Nero said, stiffly. “Would you rather I wing it?”

“I’d rather you sling it.”

“I’m trying.” His headlamp illuminated the white plumes billowing from his mouth and nose. When he spoke, his orthodontic braces would glint through the fog, etching a wry smile. “Oi, Garlond. How in the hells do you take a stumble like that in self-correcting boots, anyway.”

Cid grumbled, noticing Nero’s usage of punctuation. Improper for anyone else but him, who rarely inquired towards anyone’s well being. This was intended to needle, though it would have been a question worth asking. “Looks like the back brace on this one,” he lifted his left leg, “got busted up somehow. When we came crashing down with the floor, I guess I just lost my balance.”

“Strange, is all,” said Nero, gingerly continuing his novice ministrations. “Well, that you didn’t hurt your foot.”

“The boot still kept my ankle from rolling.”

“So if you hadn’t fallen down on your arm like that, you’d probably be right as rain, brace or no. Remarkable, isn’t it?” His braces sparkled, a real grin this time. “Must be unspeakably ancient, but the technology here is beyond imagining!”

“Mmhm.”

“Honestly, I’m still hung up on that soup dispenser. Oh sure, the stuff coming out of it has long degenerated into something definitely lethal, but the principle of the thing. Soup on demand! And you don’t even need a tin opener! Or a spoon, for that matter. You could just—soup directly into your mouth, Garlond! And that gun Jessie found, whatever that thing does…”

He’s already fallen in love with this place. Cid groaned quietly, tuning out the other man’s excited babel like a seasoned vet.

Chapter Text

[LOC: Ironworks HQ Staff Room; late morning/noon-ish.]

A sunny, if somewhat subdued shot of the Ironworks Headquarters exterior establishes the next scene. We are now in the HQ staff room, where a few employees are trying to finish their lunch after receiving some alarming news from deputy president Jessie Jaye; an employee on a work site near Camp Broken Glass has turned into a “blasphemy” and died.

BIGGS
I mean, I s’ppose it was nobody we knew. I didn’t know him. Did you?

He picks balefully at his ketchup spaghetti while Wedge chews obscenely on an overlarge sandwich of some kind; its contents are indeterminable but it seems to involve copious amounts of shredded lettuce, some of which is now providing some festive decoration for the table.

WEDGE
Nah. Um. Jessie told me he was a new hire, some older guy workin’ with that temp crew at Broken Glass. Went bonkers with the rest of the ones what went bonkers up there. Turned into one of those monster things and went on a tear. Said they could only tell it was him because he was still in the uniform, but it was all ripped up ‘n all.

BIGGS
Abominations. We’re s’pposed to call ‘em abominations. Aye?

WEDGE
You sure? Don’t sound much better than monster though, eh?

Invited or not, Nero stickybeaks in from his usual spot, leaning against the wall by the icebox, gripping a thermal drink container for dear life.

NERO
Abomination doesn’t quite sound right either. Are you sure that’s the nomenclature we’re using?

BIGGS
[Scoffs] You and your million gil words.

NERO
Yes, if only I could make money simply by speaking in superfluous syllables. [Sighing wistfully] I’d be a right gillionaire by now.

BIGGS
Yeah. But for now you gotta settle for being a right git.

Nero bristles, but doesn’t seem willing to press the issue. He is either too exhausted or too self-aware.

NERO
Anyway, I forgot the precise term Garlond told me to say, I only know that some people better than us decided on it. [Waves it off] I don’t mean to offend. Though I doubt the abominations—or whatever—are in any position to care how we choose to describe them.

WEDGE
I... I can’t imagine, eh.

BIGGS
Imagine what?

WEDGE
I danno. [Chews, not bothering to control his wayward lettuce] I can’t see any of us… Happenin’ like that. Becoming one of those things.

BIGGS
Nah, I think we’re all pretty cool customers. Even Skeever over there.

NERO
Indeed. Because I, for one, am inured to despair. Utterly impervious. Don’t forget, I was a tribune in the XIVth Legion for several months.

BIGGS
[Furrows his brow] So what?

NERO
So, when I tell you that I was Tribunus Laticlavius of the XIVth Imperial Legion, I may as well be saying that I was the vice-president of the tips out back. And then, you forget, I spent all that time in the Void too.

WEDGE
How could we forget? You bring it up every time Jessie asks you to scrub the lavvy.

NERO
Imagine. Trapped in the Void of Darkness. A psychological, physiological, philosophical wasteland. A literal hole of hell.

BIGGS
Aye. Must’ve felt right at home.

NERO
I know you don’t mean that. You, with the luxury of not having to bear the traumatic burden of that whole… chocolate-coated assortment box of shite. But I bear it.

BIGGS
Sure.

NERO
I do! Picture it. You’re stranded there. Injured. Possibly infected. Definitely unarmed—you haven’t a sword or a shield, no axe or lance, no brass knuckles, nunchucks, Garden Weasel. No experimental plasma cannon to completely deplete one's R&D budget for the quarter, and no R&D budget to deplete for that matter. No. Not even so much as a board with a nail in it. And you’re totally alone, save for two kids who were cloned from Allag nobility, who know sweet F.A. about any of your favorite soaps so you couldn’t even carry on a proper conversation.

BIGGS
Can’t imagine.

NERO
Of course you can’t. It is unimaginable. Unfathomable. Unscrutable—oh, that’s not a word, dear. Never mind. Look, my point being, if I can survive all that, I can survive anything!

WEDGE
Well what about us?

NERO
You? How should I know? Go find your own hole of hell to wallow in for a few months.

BIGGS
A few months? How long have you been working with us? Aye, Wedge, don’t worry about a thing.

WEDGE
I’m still really kinda scared though, yeah? I mean there’s no turning back, is there? If that happens, I mean… I can’t… I couldn’t…

BIGGS
Look, it’s not gonna happen! We are gonna fix this. And if none of us believe that we might as well turn now, right here at this table, in front of all this lettuce. Alright?

NERO
Not me, I can’t turn into a screeching clump of accursed mutant flesh now, I’ve got cactpot tickets so all that will have to wait until after the weekend at least.

WEDGE
Cactpot?

BIGGS
Cor’, you throwin’ your money away on that too?

NERO
Well, you can’t win if you don’t play. Besides, we all need a little something to look forward to.

WEDGE
Does it help?

NERO
What do you mean? Help? Like financially? Obviously not. I mean obviously I’m still here so obviously not.

WEDGE
I mean, does it help you, uh, live? Like keep livin’? You said you gotta wait for after the weekend to turn, so that means it’s something to live for, yeah?

NERO
When you put it that way, I suppose, yes. I mean I blew my last spare 750 gil on these, so. I suppose I do want to see if I’ll actually get my money’s worth for once.

Nero rifles around his wallet—a rather floppy little billfold with nothing much inside of it besides a couple business cards, a supermarket voucher, and what appears to be a signed picture of Cave Johnson—until he locates the thing he was looking for; a neatly folded ticket of some kind.

NERO
Here.

WEDGE
Eh?

NERO
You take this ticket. Give it a try. Maybe you’ll crack the cactpot, so to speak.

WEDGE
Yeah. [Realizing] Yeah, alright! Can’t get turned if I got one of these, right?

NERO
[Gives a humorless Hell If I Know chortle] But if you do win something, I want a cut.

WEDGE
Aye?

BIGGS
Aye. Unfortunately he did buy the ticket so if you win it’s only fair you pay him a little somethin’ out of the winnings.

WEDGE
Guess so.

BIGGS
How much is one ticket?

NERO
Just one? 250.

BIGGS
So, what percent is 250 gil outta… zero?

NERO
Don’t be so skeptical. Lilja here won something not too long ago. Consolation prize. A whole month’s worth of stewed prunes, in tins.

BIGGS
The gift what keeps on giving, eh?

NERO
[Scowls] Oh, applesauce. Look, here. You take my other ticket. We’ll each play one ticket this week and see who among us has the best luck. Go on.

BIGGS
No way, I ain’t wastin’ my hard-earned dosh on that junk.

NERO
That’s right, because I bought the tickets, didn’t I? So you’ve got nothing to lose! Go on.

Biggs mulls it over, perhaps realizing that the man is not going to give up until he relents and takes the ticket, which Nero is now flapping obnoxiously mere ilms in front of Biggs' nose.

BIGGS
Aw. Hells. Alright, but just this once.

NERO
There. Squared up and ready to play. Watch for the results in the paper next week.

BIGGS
Then what?

NERO
Then the whole thing starts all over again. I get my stipend, buy three more tickets, wait ‘til the weekend’s over, read the paper, lose, and so on, ad infinitum.

BIGGS
Really is pathetic.

NERO
I know. I figure by this point it’s more of a philosophical excursion than anything.

They lapse into a slightly uncomfortable silence.

WEDGE
Oi. How many stewed prunes can one rabbit eat in a month, anyway?