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The twenty-ninth loop starts off two days after his eighteenth birthday, and the second he opens his eyes he knows exactly what he wants to do this time.
Because from his perspective, he’d just been in Gralea, cradling a grievously wounded Noctis while a legion of MTs had descended upon them with the emperor of Niflheim cackling like a madman at the far end of the ostentatiously furnished throne room, and. Well.
That loop had ended in blood and fury and tears just like all the loops preceding it, and Prompto just wants very desperately to shoot someone.
Shoot Aldercapt, specifically, because he may be stuck in this eternal loop death and grief and failure because of Bahamut but right now, in this moment, all Prompto can hear is Aldercapt’s insane laughter and all he can see is Noct bleeding out in his arms again.
So he decides to head to Niflheim.
It takes him less than an hour to pack what he needs and then he’s gone, leaving behind only a brief note for Noct and a dusty apartment that’s never felt like home in any of his endless lifetimes.
(Because home, for him, is four idiots crammed into the Regalia, laughing and fighting and quarreling and reconciling, but always, always together.
Because he hasn’t had that feeling of home in…years, chronologically speaking. Not since Noct had died that first time, sacrificing himself so the rest of the world could live on and rebuild a brighter future that he would never get to see.
And he wants that back.)
So he packs a bag, buys a gun from a black market merchant in a bad part of town, and then rents a car and breaks all the speed limits on his way out of the city.
The journey to Gralea is, quite honestly, something of a clusterfuck. Not as much as it could have been, since in this timeline he’s still two years out from Niflheim blatantly attacking Insomnia, but there is still a war on and it’s hard to avoid that when you’re literally driving straight into enemy territory.
He almost gets killed at least twice along the way, and by the time he finally slips into Gralea after having fought countless monsters and swapped out cars on seven separate occasions, he’s got three new scars to show for his trouble, one across his left cheek and two on his torso.
Not that it really matters, since those marks will be washed away like chalk on a sidewalk whenever this loops resets. And it’ll probably reset sooner rather than later, given that his current goal is assassinating Aldercapt and it’s unlikely that the emperor’s command staff will let the murder of their monarch slide without retaliation.
So whenever he glances in a mirror and feels that little spark of surprise at the scar curving across his face, he carefully sets it aside because it doesn’t matter; those scars won’t be with him forever, not unless he manages to make this loop the last loop and if that comes to pass he’ll be so relieved to have finally broken the cycle that the scars will be a price well paid.
Actually getting to Aldercapt turns out to be the most frustrating part of the entire thing, because Zegnautus Keep is the most nightmarish facility to try and navigate in any timeline much less one where it’s still full of living and breathing and murderous Imperial officers and the MTs that follow their every order, but eventually he manages to work his way through the twisting hallways to the Imperial throne room.
And if he puts a bullet between Caligo Ulldor’s eyes along the way, well. He doesn't think anyone will miss the bastard, and that’s one less asshole he has to deal with later on.
He just wishes he had enough time to do the same to Verstael, but regrettably he doesn’t have time to deal that twisted bastard right now if he wants to make it to Aldercapt before the entire Keep goes into security lockdown so he files that particular desire under the Maybe Later column of his to do list.
Except then of course the entire place goes into lockdown anyway, because Prompto’s luck is catastrophically terrible at the best of times.
So he picks up the pace a little bit.
He takes down two MT strike teams and blows up an engineering room before another Niflheim commander catches up to him.
It’s not at all who he expects.
“Argentum?” Ravus says, pulling up short with a look of abject shock as he halts in his attack. “What in the world are you doing here?”
Prompto’s brain-to-mouth filter seems to choose that specific moment to break down, because the first thing he blurts out is, “Killing Aldercapt.”
A moment of silence falls between them, tense and awkward as they just sort of stand there and stare at each other in mutual wariness and confusion.
Then, because today is apparently a day for surprises, “You’re going the wrong way,” Ravus tells him, lowering his sword and tipping his head towards a hallway going the opposite direction. “He’s down in the East Wing today, prattling on about to his great destiny as a conqueror to whoever’s dumb enough to listen to him.” A pause, some sort of strong emotion flickering across his face before it resolves into something less wary and more determined. “…I’ll show you the way,” he says, and gestures for Prompto to follow him.
Prompto trails behind him obediently even as he makes a sound of confusion. “Dude, aren’t you like a commander in the Niflheim army? Isn’t leading an assassin straight to the emperor not something a good commander does?”
“Yes, but please consider: I hate this job. And also I hate Aldercapt,” he adds, mouth quirking up faintly at the snort of laughter Prompto gives before he turns serious again. “And if you can take out Aldercapt, it will throw the Empire into chaos, perhaps give the other countries a chance to rally and fight back.”
Give Tenebrae a chance to fight back, he doesn’t say, but Prompto can hear it beneath his words regardless, along with the ever-present worry for Lunafreya that Ravus always seems to carry with him no matter what loop Prompto’s ends up stuck in.
From Ravus's perspective killing Aldercapt might throw just enough of a wrench in the works to postpone Luna’s death if not thwart it completely, and given that Prompto can totally understand why Ravus would go along with his crazy plan to kill the Emperor of Niflheim.
“Okay then,” Prompto says. “Let’s go have a little chat with the emperor, then.”
(Killing Iedolas Aldercapt is, as expected, immensely satisfying for both Ravus and Prompto.
They don’t make it out of the Keep afterwards, of course, but neither of them really expected to.
They take down a good number of Imperial soldiers before succumbing to their own wounds, though, and as everything goes gray and cold Prompto can’t quite help but feel viciously smug about the look of flabberghasted alarm that had been on Aldercapt’s face just before Prompto had put a bullet right between his eyes.
That feeling dims slightly when he wakes up at the start of yet another fresh loop, but it doesn’t disappear entirely.
After all, he reasons, he can always just kill Aldercapt again.)