>When all your options are bad, you pick the least bad of them.
>It's stupid to think that you'll always have a perfect response to every situation...Which is why Elias was doing what he was.
>Leo had been left with the unconscious mercenary, bound to a tree somewhere away from the smouldering wreckage of her old home, while Elias went over to the meeting spot to explain the situation to Logan and Tai. Leo would stand out like a sore thumb if she went out to talk, but if left with the man who ensured the ill fate of her companions...
>She had been trusted not to kill the man in her beast state...With the mind of her humanoid form, she should be even less likely to...But Elias would worry, as he was prone to.
>Of course, their part had been successful. Not only was the diary an important piece of information that was sure to come in handy, but the captured Boulder was like a shining center forward, ball in hand and powering through the defence.
>God he missed Blitzball season.
>Elias finds his way back to the meeting point, cloak wrapped tightly around him as his eyes scanned around for the familiar figures that hopefully had some good news for him.
Logan Faust!pR.BaFF/uk 3 Jan 2016 8:57:20 PM No.41203877>>41203970
File: 1451872640334.jpg (479.11 KB, 1013x910, On the other hand.jpg)
>>41203830 >When you carry a sword as big as a steel beam and have hair that looks like an explosion, you tended to be easy to pick out. Once Elias entered the bar side of the inn, it only took a moment for Logan to make himself known.
Damn, you sure took your time, I've been here for hours.
>The late afternoon sun slowly turning the sky a deep orange and sending beams of light into the room. Next to one of these windows was a table, and at that table sat a man looking a strange mix between bored out of his mind and generally uneasy. With a half-hearted wave, he made his greeting.
>Curiously, however, his companion out of the four wasn't there with him.
What is it, 6:30? Guess you must've turned that little shack upside down or something.
>Clearly Logan was oblivious to the fact that a large house wasn't something you could search in a day. Or even that it was something of a house at all.
... Where's the cat?
>An odd thing to ask given that he was flying solo too.
>Elias rolls his eyes and makes his way over to the table, sitting opposite Logan and fixing him with a stern look
I could say precisely the same thing about Mr Rime. So clearly, both of us have stories to tell.
>He leans back in the seat, letting out a sigh as he attempts to come up with what happened.
Well...Aside from getting whacked in the face by some kids with a ball...We found Leo's old home. After a quick search, we found a diary-
>Elias stops quite abruptly, an expression of shock coming over his face. The diary. More specifically, the contents of the diary and what they pertained to Logan's actions on the train. The young mage swallows, his mouth suddenly feeling awfully dry. Should he tell him? He'd have to...He'd have to tell him while they were alone, who knows how much further Leo would react if she knew.
...Gaius' Diary. Of the events leading up to the train...Including the details of his pregnant lover who was also part of that little group.
>His expression somber and regretful, not quite capable of looking Logan in the eyes as he recounted it. Logan was his friend, yes. That wouldn't change, but what had happened...was not something he could ignore. No child should be deprived of their family.
>>41203970 Tai? Yeah, we sort of got a little too involved in the goings on around here.
>Still, Elias was opting to go first which Logan welcomed, resting back in the chair to listen over the report. Seemed that things had gone relatively smoothly for them so far, any records they might've found could prove to be promising leads - moreso than what he'd managed to come back with, though at least he wasn't empty-handed.
Not like you to get caught off guard by some kids. Don't let the pressure get to you too- ... hey, you alright there? You look like you just saw a ghost. What diary, exactly?
>And then Elias proceeded to give him the verbal equivalent of a sucker punch to the liver, which was more than he could say for the alcohol around here, something he'd surely need a lot more of now than a few moments earlier. Gritting his teeth, Logan's gaze quickly became hidden by his hair, staring down at the table as though trying to find some kind of meaning to it all in the swirled pattern of the wood.
...
>The silence started to grow uncomfortable. There were a lot of ways to feel about this piece of news, a lot of ways to vent the anger, the pain of it all. It's not always easy to play everything off as a joke or a laugh, and now that he was gripped with the desire to do a great many things, the only question was which one would win out.
>Screw it. All of this. As if it wasn't enough for him to have killed a friend, a leader, a comrade, now he'd killed a lover - a father. Had he been better off not knowing? If he hadn't joined this fucking crusade of justice he wouldn't have had to care, he wouldn't have this stinging pain in his heart, swaying his logic and violating his sense of right and wrong. If Elias hadn't asked him to...
>That was when Logan took a brief glance up at his friend, looking across at that regretful expression on his face, before his emotions twisted it into a look of disappointment. Of course he'd bring this up. Why wouldn't he want to shove that glorious 'no killing ever' mentality around, why wouldn't he want to push his idealistic view of the world on him now that he was stuck feeling this way?
Well, I guess not everyone can have your perfect fucking record, can they, Mr. S-Class?
>The response came back like a slap to the face. Elias' face switches from one of regret to a look of horror, of confusion. Of all the responses he could have gotten, this was the one he expected the least.
>Perfect record. Perfect record.
>That face. The face he only recognised from the image given to him. The surprised expression on his face as his throat was slashed open wasn't even close to the austere image the photo gave. The sight of his frien-guildmate, with nary a care on her face as another human's life came to an end at her hand. The body fell, and he could have done something to stop it. Anything. But he hadn't, and now they were gone.
>Elias' face twists from shock to abject fury, his hands slam on the table as he leans in close to Logan, a snarl marring his features as lightning bursts into life around his purple eye, his words blasting out into the inn without even so much a care for the others around him
My record is NOT PERFECT!
>After a few seconds of glaring at him, Elias folds back into his seat, anger still holding a grip on his face as he coldly goes on.
I thought you deserved to know. Before I have to read it out to Leo on the train and she claws out your throat a second time.
>He glowers out the window as he goes back to what had actually happened while they were searching.
We found the diary and left. But they knew we'd go back. The 'Boulder' guy that Leo mentioned torched the place with the help of a couple of thugs. She used her beastkin form to incapacitate Boulder, I convinced the two fire mages to leave. She's waiting out in the woods with him still unconscious.
>Finished with his story, he now preoccupies himself with whatever's outside at the moment, not wanting to really look at anything else.
>There's a brief moment of shock in Logan's expression, if not for the revelation itself then for the look Elias had in his eye right then. For just a moment, as Elias's eye surges with energy and power, his own flicker to a deep purplish hue themselves - though it would likely be of no concern, easily passable as the simple reflection of purple rather than anything else.
>As the tensions begin to calm somewhat, Logan rests an elbow on the table, pressing a palm to his cheek and looking away himself.
I'd rather have her tear me to shreds than know any more. I don't need this to keep being rubbed in my face when it's just so easy for you to-
>Thankfully for the pair, Logan stopped himself from exploding into a second rage-filled comment. The world wasn't so fair that it could move along without death and fighting, this was something he had felt for too long a time, and while he often appreciated Elias's nobler standards they were, at the moment, putting more of a burden on him.
Wait, torched the place? So that-
>The moment of realisation helped to distract him from his emotional turmoil, finally looking in Elias's direction again, though still not looking particularly pleased.
I saw a building catch fire around midday time but I figured it was just some kind of freak accident. But to think that you caught that son of a bitch...
>Logan's grip tightened. Several parts of him wanted to unleash all this inner fury on that scumbag, but thankfully he knew better than that. Besides, he hadn't even given his own report yet.
Here.
>Logan tossed across a small piece of paper, folded neatly in a way that the man himself would likely never care to do. It gave Elias a bonk on the forehead because he wasn't looking, unintentional on Logan's part, but amusing nonetheless.
Five shipments from here that never reached their intended destinations - Three more that got there with only part of the order, with specific items missing. The worst part is... we found out why all of this happened in the first place.
>The paper whacked him in the head and he whips around, glaring at Logan once more before he picks it up and scans over the paper.
>Well, that painted a picture. Not a particularly nice looking picture, the sort of thing you'd see and question the very nature of art itself. So, it was a pattern then. That definitely showed the work of a very organised group. Momentarily discarding the ushanka of rage, Elias dons his thinking cap.
So, it's a group then? Between this and the symbol it suggests some form of organisation, especially if they can hire people like that 'Boulder' fellow. If Leo wasn't so strong, that fight could have ended very differently...
>He shakes his head, before finally returning a more level gaze to Logan, the paper clutched in his hand
>>41204616 >Sighing, Logan brought a few fingers to his forehead, doing the best he could to try and recount what had happened that day and condense it down into the key points. There was so much to say, and yet so little at the same time.
Tai and I went over to see an old friend - you remember Bolven, right? Turns out he's running security around here, even for the slightly shadier parts of the operation.
>This was where the story got him frustrated, and he pressed his whole set of knuckles into his forehead to try and bear with what he'd had to pretend to be.
It was Tai's brilliant idea to pretend we were working with the guys who orchestrated all of this, and somehow he pulled it off, convincing a pissed off dwarf to take us to a guy called Supervisor Bellamy who, it turns out, seems to be running this part of the whole plan. So while Tai convinces everyone we're the kind of scum we need to be to get some details, we head up to the mines up over there, somewhere -
>Logan lazily gestured in the rough direction with his free hand, still recounting everything that happened after that.
So Bellamy comes out and Tai gets him talking - don't ask me how he managed to pull off spouting bullshit for so long, but it was pretty impressive, even if it made me feel like crap the whole time. Jeez, you should've seen Bolven's face when he left...
>Realising he was allowing his own problems to divert the point, Logan took a breath to refocus himself.
Bellamy introduced himself as the Jack of Diamonds. Not sure what that means exactly, but when Tai spouted that he was the Two of Hearts or whatever, Bellamy seemed to buy it. So there's that. Don't know much else on that front, but when Tai was talking to him outside, I overheard a decent part of a conversation.
Seems this operation has been running for a while, and they ran into some kind of setback - apparently sneaking crystal out to wherever it needed to go was getting tough. Then he mentioned why Gaius's group was picked to do what they did, and now I've taken a look at those records and figured out what Tai meant when he gave them to me... it's all so horrifyingly clear.
>Putting his hands down on the table, he looked across to Elias without any more of that misdirected anger. This part was more important than any of that, whether or not he had a child or any of it, because that bastard Bellamy was responsible for all of this shit, or at least as far as he knew.
They're using groups of bandits as hired thugs to get the crystal from place to place. On all of those train journeys, each one was attacked and each one had its shipments stolen. Trouble is, people lose faith in a business when that kind of crap is going on, people start getting suspicious too - so they hatch this master plan to clear people's worries.
>Perhaps Elias was starting to connect the dots at this point, but perhaps not. Regardless, Logan continued to look him straight in the eyes, determined to spell it out for him.
They hire a known group of small-timers, hook them up with a delivery job, then hire an inside guy - that Boulder - to screw things up. A rescue team gets called in, the 'bandits' get killed or captured, and suddenly the 'problem' disappears because the culprits have been dealt with. They were a fucking sacrifice...
>Gripping his fists a little too tightly, he did everything he could not to slam the table and draw interest over to their conversation.
... and I brought my team in to play right into their fucking hands...
>So they were a patsy. He'd figured as such back when they first met Leo. A group of small time crooks lured in by a big pay check and set up to take the fall. He sighs deeply, the rage completely drained out of his face, replaced once more by sorrow. What a selfish waste of life.
>He looks back to Logan, so angry, so frustrated by the entire affair...And he couldn't muster up the effort to be angry any more.
You couldn't have known, Logan. About any of it.
>There was more behind those words than Elias was going to elaborate on, but hopefully Logan would understand what he was trying to say.
...Some people are like that. Willing to use everybody and anybody to get ahead. I know that only too well.
>Another memory. This one of his father, the rare expression of sorrow on his usually stony face. A figure being lead away by guards, screaming incoherently...
That's what we're here for. Justice for those who got chewed up and spat out by such cruel behaviour. So that this never has to happen again.
>>41204729 >Still gripping tightly to his own hands, Logan attempted to relax himself. Elias was right - all was already said and done and dwelling over it would just make things worse, 'focus not on the past but on the now' and all that. That said, however, he wasn't alone in this, and one of the members of this little troupe kept forcing him to remember it all.
Not knowing... doesn't excuse it. Not when I have to continue facing the people I've hurt with a smile on my face.
>He'd just have to make it right... but exactly how much he'd have to give seemed to just get higher and higher, as though his sin kept taking new leaps and bounds.
... did you find anything else? Aside from the diary and the asshole that caused this mess? - Actually, never mind. You left Leo with Boulder, right? We should probably get over there in case something happens.
As for Tai, well... he's sort of stuck pretending to be someone he's not, for now. Bellamy took Tai around with him, he managed to pass me that paper when he 'dismissed' me from my 'bodyguard work'.
I don't know when he'll be able to get away, but if we try to get too close to him we might end up putting him in danger.
No. It doesn't. But you're not running away, either. Which makes you a far braver man than any of the people that put you in this mess.
>Elias pulls himself to his feet.
And you're right, we should get back to Leo. With any luck, an extra head can sort out how we're going to transport the man to the Inn without arousing suspicion. The situation with Tai is...delicate, and should probably be discussed by all three of us.
>And with that, Elias makes to set off out of the Inn, back to Leo, and back to their captive.
>>41204753 <"Which makes you a far braver man than any of the people that put you in this mess."
No. I am the cowardlyest coward to ever cower before a cowering presence.
>There we go, dodge the compliment by insisting the opposite, that'll stop him from noticing the dumb grin you've got behind your scarf, you ragtag bunch of iron plates and pipes.
>Just how quickly had the emotional spectrum passed him by? He couldn't deny that everything he felt was, well, how he actually felt, there were some days where Elias's seeming 'nobility' grated on him and he also couldn't really look Leo in the eye for more than a few seconds before feeling immeasurably guilty and playing the moment over again in his head, but at the end of the day it felt good to get these things off his chest, even if it was just a little bit.
Off we go then, I guess. Who knows, maybe Tai'll end up back here and panic 'cause we're all gone. Hrm...
>Turning back for a moment, he looked across at the bartender.
Hey, if you see a guy with glasses and a grumpy sorta frown come in, can you tell him we're not here anymore and give him a drink on me?
>Tossing a few coins for the drink plus a little extra for a service, Logan gave a half-salute in thanks.
Cheers, buddy.
>And with that, the pair set out on YET ANOTHER ADVENTURE YEEEAAAH
>The response brought out a sharp exhalation from Elias tinged with amusement. Not quite a laugh, but hey.
>He lead Logan back through the Town, off through the poorer districts where he'd gotten beaned by the ball and back through the forests.
>He'd left Leo a fair distance away from the burning wreckage of her hideout, lest the fire grow to consume more of the forest. He knew where he was meant to be going, and Leo'd be able to see the two of them troop over to where she and her captive were.
Leopon-dji 5 Jan 2016 10:36:18 AM No.41205939>>41206143>>41206178
>Leo was thankful for the brief peace. It gave her time to think.
>And think she did. The beastkin sat atop a thick branch six or seven feet off the ground, back against the trunk, tail hanging down. She wasn't worried about being exposed this far from town. From her perch, she could see any approaching parties with ease, and be upon them before they knew what was coming.
>The same couldn't be said of her captive. Tied up and bound to the tree, wounds more or less patched up by the shoddy work of a back alley priest, he faced deeper into the forest. He couldn't see anything; Leo made sure of that, tying a blindfold from a handkerchief and stuffing torn cloth in as a gag. The last thing she wanted was to listen to his rambling if he woke up before Elias got back.
>Just as she began to doze off herself, wearied by the day's events, Elias returned, flanked only by the half-armored man. The cat slipped out of the tree, landing deftly in the grass.
Where is the mage of ice?
>Straight to the point, as always. Her emerald gaze focused on Logan.
>>41205938 >>41205939 >This far out? It was probably a good idea, they weren't mercenaries for no reason so wandering out into the woods wasn't as dangerous as it would be for others, and it'd hopefully keep them from the prying eyes of others. A sound plan, all in all, but he had a feeling they'd still have to keep watch if Boulder and some others had been waiting for Elias and Leo, as he'd mentioned before.
>Logan hadn't seen Leo at first, but when she hopped down from the tree it didn't surprise him - she seemed like the type who like to climb. Or chase yarn balls. But aside from being comedically speciesist, she had a question he needed to answer.
Mage of ice meet bad man. Bad man ask ice mage to stay near cave with shiny rocks - pfft, sorry, I couldn't resist. Anyway...
>Jokes were all that kept him going sometimes.
Tai's... indisposed right now. Like I said, he's sort of stuck dealing with someone I'd particularly like to dismember, and I'm sure you'll feel the same way once I go into the details. But first...
>Wandering around Leo to take a look at the other side of the tree, wanting to get a look at the prisoner being tied by the particularly obvious rope.
Wow, is that a mountain of meat. This is him? Jeez... and you did that with just claws? Remind me not to piss you off - uh.. again, anyway.
>The memory of his bleeding neck quickly put into perspective just what a pair of claws could really do.