[ Balthier's hands deftly flake dried goo from the contours of Fran's lightspeeder. It comes off easily, leaving the exposed machine below clean and gleaming. He can hardly believe his luck.
He's less surprised by the way his heart pulls. He wants this to mean that Fran is here too, but it's been several weeks, and he's had an ear out. If a six foot tall Black woman with white hair and rabbit ears were here, he'd have heard about it.
Still, this is a huge help, and it shouldn't be too hard to dig out. He fishes through the other caked lumps to find ammo for his gun and a favorite sword that he learned to use while he was working with Ashe and the others last year.
He digs through the final pile and nearly yelps. There's a small opalescent stone there, a lab experiment with unfortunate levels of success that led to the death of thousands of people.
It led to him killing his own father, less than a month ago.
He doesn't know what to do. It's impossible to destroy without causing the equivalent of a nuclear explosion. He doesn't want it to fall in other hands. But having it too near disrupts the Mist, and quite frankly, disrupts his sense of self.
There's no one here now, so he loads the ammo and sword onto his belt and turns back to Nina, aware he's stalling his own decision even as he justifies it as doing the gentlemanly thing and checking on the lady. As he approaches her, he sees the tension in her body. ]
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He's less surprised by the way his heart pulls. He wants this to mean that Fran is here too, but it's been several weeks, and he's had an ear out. If a six foot tall Black woman with white hair and rabbit ears were here, he'd have heard about it.
Still, this is a huge help, and it shouldn't be too hard to dig out. He fishes through the other caked lumps to find ammo for his gun and a favorite sword that he learned to use while he was working with Ashe and the others last year.
He digs through the final pile and nearly yelps. There's a small opalescent stone there, a lab experiment with unfortunate levels of success that led to the death of thousands of people.
It led to him killing his own father, less than a month ago.
He doesn't know what to do. It's impossible to destroy without causing the equivalent of a nuclear explosion. He doesn't want it to fall in other hands. But having it too near disrupts the Mist, and quite frankly, disrupts his sense of self.
There's no one here now, so he loads the ammo and sword onto his belt and turns back to Nina, aware he's stalling his own decision even as he justifies it as doing the gentlemanly thing and checking on the lady. As he approaches her, he sees the tension in her body. ]
Everything all right?