spira_rp | When the ghosts are found

When the ghosts are found

They were on.

An expedition to Pulse had been a long shot, a secondary concern ranking somewhere behind observing Khamja's movements, courting allies, and monitoring enemies. Ignis was a diplomat, and he'd been sent to do a diplomat's job, albeit unconventionally. Lucis occupied a delicate position and could, not to put too fine a point on it, use every bit of help it could get.

Pulse was something Ignis believed could help. As did most of the council, but the problem with Pulse was that it would take a lot of resources and a lot of bodies, and something Lucis couldn't spare was bodies. The rewards could be worth it, of course. Pulse was the Lucian homeland, the country's origins lay on the long abandoned continent and what little they did know suggested a huge backslide in technology. The royal archives spoke of the Old Wall, of statues with minds, and machinery they had only recently reinvented.

Lumi's airship had sealed it. Pulsian in origin, dating back to the brief period when trade between the continents had taken place, and technology had been shared between them. It was a marvel. It was at once ancient, and more advanced than anything currently being designed.

Ignis and Gladio had made friends, allies, and acquaintances among the various ranks of Khamja. They'd been surprised to learn that so many of them were such powerful warriors. It was perfect. If they consented to come, if their respective masters allowed them to come, they had all the strength they needed to explore Pulse.

Aizen had been released from D District while Ignis had been recovering from his encounter with Phoenix. The Aeon was ever-present in his mind, the sensation akin to that of being watched from some distant corner. It was strangely comforting.

Aizen's release had seemed the opportune time to contact the Lucian council. The reply had come a few days later. Ignis and Gladio's shadowy sponsor served as their point of contact, and the permission had come through to start formally recruiting people. The party they assembled would have to be of sufficient strength and size to convince the council that it was worth dedicating the necessary resources to them, and the venture, but Ignis had no concerns that after meeting the Arrancar there would be any question remaining.

Of course some of the Arrancar had been very much in favour. And some of them had suggested others from outside Khamja.

"You should ask Ila," Tayuya had said. "Their white mage is as good as Nel, and if you're asking this gang of idiots along the healers are gonna need all the help they can get."

Ila, it turned out, were a clan that Kadaj and Grimmjow and the rest had dealt with multiple times before. The Selkie berserker had fought Grimmjow numerous times but they'd since called a truce. Kadaj had vouched for one named Lea as being a bit of a dork but a decent guy.

They could usually be found in Rabanastre, unless they were off on a hunt. The white mage, Aerith, sold flowers in the square. She'd been easy enough to find as their first contact, although she'd insisted on selling Ignis and Gladio a flower first. From there they'd been directed to the Sandsea, which was how Ignis found himself on the mezzanine level, looking down at the rest of a bar that looked every inch as if it was trying not to be a dive and not doing a very good job of it. It was rustic, perhaps even quaint, but it was very much the sort of place that felt like somewhere shady dealings happened.

Ila consisted of four people; a blue haired, yellow eyed man with pointed ears and his hair scraped back in a ponytail; a very red haired man with a very spiky hairstyle; Aerith, the canny businesswoman; and a dark haired, very pretty woman that carried herself as if she could gut anyone that dared say she was pretty.

The one with blue hair was the last to sit down, placing a round of drinks on the table as he did so.

"Thank you," Ignis said. His purchased flower lay on the table, looking thoroughly out of place. "Has Aerith elaborated on why we wanted to meet with you?"

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"Not as yet," Fang said, and leaned back in her chair with her arms folded.

She gave off the aura of a bodyguard. Her words came out relaxed, but she held herself bow-taut in her chair, arms and legs crossed, not at all hiding the fact that she was ready to go at any moment even if she didn't appear to be armed at a glance.

She was the newest member of Clan Ila, new enough that her initial didn't feature in their clan name, unlike the others. Isa, Lea, Aerith. Ila. There was no F for Fang. But that didn't matter. They'd accepted her all the same, taken in a strange woman without a License, thoroughly foreign and definitely a fish out of temporal water. Maybe it was because two of the three of them were somehow stranger than her, maybe it wasn't. Either way, they'd been good to her and she took her place with them seriously.

This man, with his funny accent and his glasses and his open attempt at collected diplomacy didn't frighten her, but the big bastard he had with him looked as ready for things to deteriorate as she did. She didn't think they would, but it was always a risk and it was worth being ready.

"Care to enlighten us?"

Ignis nodded, refraining from taking a drink as they were set down. There were, he noted, enough for each of them, minus Aerith who was already clutching a glass of something fruity looking and smiling. They hadn't given Aerith a lot of details, just enough for her to agree to introduce them to the others of her clan.

He flashed a smile at the dark haired lady. She reminded him of Gladio in a way; they had a similar quiet, no-nonsense seriousness about them. "We're gathering some of the strongest hunters we can find," he began, "for a lengthy expedition into unknown territory." He was going to leave out the name 'Pulse' until it became unavoidable; the mention of it would put off a lot of people with sense before the pitch began. "Your clan was suggested to us by another we've already approached." He dangled that bit of information over the direction of conversation hoping it would distract, for now, from the issue of the location of the unknown territory. "We've been told you're familiar with Grimmjow and his companions."

It was a risky gambit, but one Ignis felt secure in venturing forth. By all accounts the two groups had met several times, usually explosively, but there was now a truce, and a grudging respect between them. Ignis was banking on that being mutual. If it wasn't then it wouldn't be a good idea to bring the two groups into close proximity for any length of time in any case.

Saix snorted. "Grimmjow," he repeated. He'd have expected it from Akatsuki perhaps, or Luxord if he'd encountered these men on his travels, or perhaps from the Gullwings. He hadn't anticipated Skite having put them forward.

He eyed the nerdy one. Sandy hair, dull green eyes, and the sort of delicate way about him that made Saix pin him as a mage, but not a very combat experienced one. Lea was a mage, amongst other things, so was Saix himself, so were most of the rest of the Order, what was left of it, but they all looked like they could handle a fight.

This one looked like he relied on the hired muscle next to him to do the dirty work instead. His bodyguard looked like someone had taken Lexaeus and pared him down to a slightly more reasonable size. Saix just hoped that didn't make his speccy companion the Zexion of the equation.

He retrieved one of the bottles of beer. "He must be short on friends these days," he said, before taking a drink. Not that the idea of Skite naming them as some of the strongest hunters they knew wasn't a nice massage to the ego. It was just funny because nine out of ten of their meetings with the others had consisted of scrapping with each other.

"Familiar," Fang sounded nearly incredulous, and a hint of laughter laced the word, but it was more like a tot of something warm suspended in a cup of coffee than sharp poison somewhere it shouldn't be.

She just found it amusing and that she did was evident on her face as much as in her voice. She'd met Grimmjow and his cohorts precisely once and that meeting had been tense. Tense in that it had almost exploded into more than one fight in the middle of Rabanastre for a small variety of equally petty reasons. She'd later learned that while there was a long-running enmity between the two Clans, certain members, late recruits on both sides, had somehow managed to meet with people from the other clan, forming friendships all while ignorant of the hostility that went on between their old friends and those of their new ones.

Kadaj had met Lea and helped him out. It was a fun coincidence that they'd met while Lea was new enough to the Clan that he'd only faced Skite during the brief period where Kadaj was absent from their number and exploring the world alone. Likewise, the newer Apache had met Saix independently of the rest, having never faced them in battle, and hadn't considered that the blue-haired Selkie she'd spent a night of no-strings fun with might be the same blue-haired Selkie that she'd heard her nearest and dearest complain about.

It had been, and Fang had recently discovered the term and really rather liked it, a complete clusterfuck, but the public nature of the spat and the cross-Clan friendships had reduced it to a truce.

For all Spira was a massive world, easily bigger than any he'd visited in his former life, or in the period of time he'd spent as a Nobody, it seemed alarmingly small where Grimmjow and his cronies were concerned.

He wouldn't have thought it possible that two small groups of people could somehow meet the same other small group of people, multiple times, without prior arrangement, but here they were with two strangers and what do you know it? Grimmjow's name had come up again. He was like a stain that wouldn't come out.

These two strangers had found them through Aerith. It wasn't weird to think that, she was the best flower seller in the city, and they made no secret of their association with her. It was just curious why Grimmjow had recommended them, of all people. The world was full of mark hunters. They tended to keep to themselves as a rule, because if they talked too much, it meant other mark hunters swooped down and stole their prey and the reward they would have gotten. He couldn't blame them -- they'd do the same.

Mark Hunters did tend to have decent survival skills, though. Camping, eating what they catch, knowing which plants were good for cooking and which were better left alone unless you wanted to end up sick, or worse. But even so...

"What kind of expedition?" He asked.

Sure, they had a truce, but it didn't hurt to be wary.

Gladio thought this was a bit of a long shot, but so far the local Clan they'd gone to petition didn't seem to be reacting too badly.

Their relationship with Grimmjow's clan seemed to be a bit of a joke, or at least a source of humour somehow, but they weren't asking them to leave and never come back yet. They were, however, a mixed bag.

Aerith, the flower girl, was nice, but Gladio suspected she was smarter than a flower seller had any need to be. The blue-haired one with the pointed ears seemed to be roughly as personable as a certain member of the Kingsglaive. The other woman was obviously a bodyguard, or at least an active member of the Clan instead of a healer and the last one, the redhead, fox-faced and suspicious, seemed wary.

He kept his arms folded, mirroring the woman, letting Ignis do the talking.

The reaction was better than Ignis had expected; there was definitely more humour than skepticism, and if he was any judge, the blue haired one was a little flattered and covering it poorly. There was definitely a hint of the smug going on.

"A lucrative one," he answered, turning his attention to the red haired Selkie. With the likely exception of the two ladies, Ignis suspected he was the brains of the operation, or at least that the ladies allowed him to think he was. "We're searching for a long abandoned city," he elaborated, "but the area is currently unexplored. We can expect it to be hostile, but we can't vouch for the variety of flora, fauna, or terrain we're likely to encounter." Ignis flashed the party another smile, "Hence the call for strong hunters. We need people that aren't going to back down from a challenge."

Aerith had agreed to bring Ignis and Gladio - Gladiolus - to meet the others because she'd taken a liking to them. Ignis was charming, even if his accent sounded like he was trying to sound Archadian, and Gladio had a steady strength to him that it was hard not to like. He was smarter than just hired muscle, although probably not as smart as Ignis.

She wondered how smart Ignis thought he was. "There aren't many places still unexplored," she pointed out. There were plenty of places that no one went, but that was because they'd been explored and people had barely made it back, or hadn't come back at all.

Of course, wanting to go to anywhere even remotely like that explained why they wanted a veritable army of the most powerful hunters they could find. She doubted Skite and themselves were the end of the recruiting process, but you could definitely do worse than having some Ryoka and some Arrancar along for the ride. "Are you only taking hunters?"

"So you want us," Saix began, "to agree to risk our necks in terra incognita, where we might encounter anything from venomous wyrms to particularly aggressive dreamhares in pursuit of a site of archeological significance?"

His gaze went from the nerd to the bodyguard, lingering there as he took in the breadth of the man's chest, the swell of muscle on his upper arms, and the scar down his face that skidded over his eye. His eyes returned to the nerd. "I wasn't aware scholarly pursuits were so well funded these days."

Saix had a point.

It was lucrative, so they were obviously looking to pay them... if they lived, or else they were talking about the mission generally and planning on giving them crap about 'fine print' later down the line, but he doubted it. If they were paying, they obviously had cash reserves, enough to pay all of them, plus Grimmjow's group, and whoever else they'd got on board.

"You're not planning on inviting us on a date to Nabradia, right?" He asked, not looking at all thrilled with the idea of that. That went beyond simply needing 'hunters'. It needed Mistants, people who could withstand high concentrations of Mist without specialist equipment.

Aerith had a point, there weren't many places that remained unexplored. Most maps showed ruins, even vaguely, on them, suggesting that they'd been explored enough to add them, at least.

The blue haired one was stubborn, Ignis decided. He seemed wary, as did his red haired friend, but the blue haired one was definitely wary in a much more confrontational way.

"Nowhere so well documented, I'm afraid," he replied, turning his attention to the red head instead of addressing the comment about their funding. The source and extent of their funding would only be of concern if they agreed to come along. The crown were good for it. "The location of interest lies somewhere on the abandoned continent of Pulse." They seemed interested enough to hear that bit of information, or Ignis hoped they were.

Pulse.

Fang stared for a moment and then leaned forward, uncrossing her arms like she was about to get mouthy in a police interview. Her first thought was that somehow, somebody had found out about her and were using this as a thinly veiled way of bringing it up, but if that was the case, it was rather an elaborate set-up. She dismissed it.

"Are you serious?" Eyes still a little wide.

She hadn't realised it was even possible to get to Gran Pulse any more. The Miasma had swept in after the War of the Magi, a thick blanket of Mist potent enough to addle gods and monsters alike. Everything had gone to hell then, but she'd been encased in crystal for much of it. She wondered if there was anything left? Maybe the land had recovered, the animals slowly returning to normal, the plant life recovering from the battering it had taken from that much Mist that quickly. Maybe people still survived there, in the furthest reaches of the continent, little enclaves of humanity that had moved past the atrocity. If nothing else, the Hunters could have survived. Her people, used to living off the land. The city folk would have suffered when they fell, the high concentrations of people making them a target for their mad gods, but those like her... maybe there was a chance.

Gladio didn't move when the woman did, though it was a close-run thing.

He had expected scorn, suggestions that they were mad, even incredulity, but not like that. Her reaction was completely unexpected. He half expected her to lean across the table and shake Ignis, but she didn't move.

All anyone knew about that continent was that it was abandoned. The War below had ended, the Mist had come. The fal'Cie had gone insane, cursing everyone left and right, and the founders of Lucis had fled across the gap to Eos. What happened to it after that... they hadn't been able to find out. The records ended there. They could be walking into hell, a blasted landscape more inhospitable than even the worst bits of Nabradia, or it could have recovered. Nobody knew. Nobody could know.

But she seemed interested.

Aerith looked at Fang as she reacted. Pulse had been Fang's home, but it had been her home centuries ago. Fang no more knew if anyone still lived there than they did, but the opportunity to go back and find out was one Aerith didn't imagine she'd pass up.

Of course, when it came to possible people to put into a party to venture to the modern day Pulse, you really couldn't choose any better than Fang.

"What are you looking for there?" she asked. A city, from what he'd said, but 'a city' was rather vague, especially when you were talking about somewhere that had once been a thriving civilisation destroyed by Mist.

Fang's reaction wasn't unexpected if you knew her situation. These two might as well have just turned around and declared they were heading to Radiant Garden; the odds seemed just as long, and success just as unlikely.

"I was under the impression Pulse was a mist-laden hell, at last record." So said the scholars, and Aerith, and when it came to Spiran history, Aerith was the best source Saix had access to. "It sounds inordinately dangerous for a simple historical excavation."

Ignis blinked at the lady's reaction, sitting up a fraction straighter and touching his glasses higher up his nose. 'Interested' would be an understatement. The others seemed similarly intrigued, although perhaps more cautiously so.

"I assure you, we're completely serious," he promised. "The fact is that the country we're from claims its origins on Pulse. That is what we seek. Historical records point us to an approximate location, but our founders departed at the beginning of the mist saturation. Who can say how much history was left behind?"

They could take a guess at the technology, however. The historical records indicated some advanced magitek, or simple magic, and things such as Lumi's ship, Noctua, had been a tantalising glimpse at what might remain. It was worth the expedition, for the historical significance if you were a scholar, and for the technological exploration if you weren't.

Fang's response wasn't surprising.

There was a time where he'd have been just as eager to return home as he suspected Fang was, but that time was over. He had things here on Spira, people, that he wouldn't give up to go home. Aerith, a renewed friendship with Isa, or Saix as he still preferred, a job, a life...

Fang still wanted it, he could see that.

Who could say how much history was left behind? All of it. All of it was left behind, because the Mist ruined most of the continent and what it didn't, the fal'Cie finished off, though it was strange to consider it history. To her, it was a lifetime and a few years ago, both in equal measure.

She couldn't say what happened after she got crystalised, whether Pulse repopulated, affected heavily by the technological backslide she'd learned had hit everywhere else, or whether the entire population had been wiped out by marauding monsters, dissolved into civil war or turned Cie'th. She hoped it had recovered, that people had survived, but with what she remembered of Pulse... she had her doubts.

But she tuned out her thoughts and went back over what Ignis had said.

The country he's from claims Pulsian origin, does it? Few people managed to get out, not with machinery failing thanks to the Mist and hostility exploding everywhere over resources, but there was one things she remebered. About halfway between the first signs of Mist saturation and her crystalisation, there was one place who had apparently made a big show of leaving. She'd heard people talk of it. They'd attracted people from other towns and cities as they'd gone north, others who sought a way out. Others had laughed, calling their exodus doomed, saying they faced worse than what the fal'Cie could throw at them. They hadn't gone near the start of it, but they'd been the last place it had affected given their geographical location, so it probably felt that way to them and was clearly penned that way in their records. They'd gone before she was born, but she'd heard all about it, the mad bastards who sought to out-run the fal'Cie.

Now what was it called? Ah.

"Izunia?" She raised her eyebrows. She'd never been there, she was from the north, before the desert, near the plains, near the coast. They weren't too near the fal'Cie, but they'd felt the effects of the Mist. The monsters. She was skeptical. She sounded it, too. "You're descended from the people of Izunia?"

Ignis glanced at Gladio. Study of Lucis's origins was a niche subject even within Lucis; there weren't many that would be expected to know the name Izunia, let alone recall it like this. The woman spoke as if she was familiar with Izunia, but not Lucis.

"So our history dictates," he said, turning his attention back to the woman. "A lot of it is shrouded in fable. The story goes that our founder was given a prophecy. He led the people away from Pulse and founded Lucis on Eos." That was where myth and fable and historical fact all collided, giving their own takes on the course of events. Different scholars put forth different cases for the true course of events. Some records suggested the founder King was not the person that had led them from Pulse, and others were quite clear that it was. Ignis was less concerned with the precise who and wherefore and more interested in the location and timeline. "We've retained a number of customs that seem to trace back to Pulse, but I expect there's far more we've lost."

He smiled at the woman, not wanting to make his next question seem like a challenge as opposed to simple curiosity. "Might I ask where you heard the story? I didn't believe it was common knowledge outside of Lucis."

Aerith set her drink on the table, listening to the conversation. Of course Fang's interest was piqued by the mention of Pulse. It was her home. Aerith would react the same way to someone that said they wanted to explore the Temple of the Ancients, or catalogue some other Cetran sites, and Aerith had never been to those. They just called to her, like a memory in the blood, or the yawning chasm of the sky.

"My mother used to tell me stories of the Mist Saturation," she said, cutting in. She didn't want them to try and trap Fang into revealing her own origins, at least not until Fang was ready to trust them. "She said Pulse became rife with Cie'th, and those that could, fled. Without anyone to put the Cie'th to rest they could still be wandering." Would there still be Cie'th after so long? Or would their bodies have distorted and eroded away by now? What about people like Fang? People sleeping in crystal after completing whatever task had been set to them? It seemed unlikely that Fang was alone in her success.

Others may have woken up too, and be scratching out new lives in Pulse's remains. No doubt that possibility was on Fang's mind, too.

Gladio... hid his surprise well.

Here, somehow, two women knew some of the history of their ancestral home and, somehow, they both seemed to know more, far more, than he'd expect anyone in Lucis to know, let alone a couple of Lowerworlders.

He knew they had stories of the Mist Saturation, because it was their war that caused it, at least that's what the stories said. A great Ivalician war changed the face of everything and unleashed an evil like nothing the world had ever seen. People rebuilt, but the evil prevailed... and when it was finally destroyed, the Mist came. More poetic accounts described the Mist as a punishment, others simply as an effect of the evil being destroyed. Whichever it was, Gladio knew that it spread everywhere, crippling Machina the world over and unleashing hell. Pulse, according to their legends, was badly affected. The Founder King was given a prophecy to save his people and they left, landing in what is now Lucis.

Most people knew the story of the Mist, of the Founder King and his founding of Lucis, at least those within the country in question. Others knew just of the Mist, or their own local history. There was no real reason why they should know any details of Pulse, especially of Cie'th. All that happened after the Purvamae had been cut off from the continents below. He'd read enough historical fiction to recognise the name as signifying a mindless monster, something akin to a zombie, that would hunt down people. Some of the stories claimed they were cursed by gods. They were certainly used as boogiemen by parents trying to make their kids behave, that was for sure.

He wanted to know how this girl's mother knew those stories, ones even Lucians had consigned to legend and warnings against trying to return home, but he kept his silence.

Fang took a breath, and a moment to collect herself. Aerith had stepped in at the right time. She couldn't reveal too much to them, though she feared she'd already said too much. Even so, there were ways to talk without saying everything. She'd ... just have to be careful.

"People in my village told stories about it," she said, giving what she hoped was a careless shrug that looked looser and less tense than she felt.

She could have laughed at how the nerdy one had put it, though. Fables and prophecy... hah! She'd heard that an Izunian prince had been given a Focus, the object of which involved getting his people away from the fal'Cie and the hell Pulse was becoming. After the fact, people had debated in hushed voices over whether the fal'Cie was mad, like all the others, or if its southerly position had saved it, at least at that point, from the Madness that had befallen the others. To hear the Elders tell it, some of the people of Oerba had gone with them, taking a chance on them, but most had been wary of their supposed association with a fal'Cie, their once stalwart protectors but by then their bane.

"A pair of Izunian princes running from the Mist, the fal'Cie and the Cie'th," it sounded ridiculous, even when she'd been told the story as a child, like a tale told to entertain children. "That they had dragons to cross the divide while Machina failed all around them."

"And now you want to go back," Saix intoned. Fang, of course, wanted a chance to return to her homeland. Perhaps it had recovered, perhaps people had survived, or perhaps they hadn't. It didn't, to Saix's view, make a lot of difference. The Pulse Fang had known was centuries in the past.

So was the Pulse these men were trying to find. And they had a well funded, and well connected expedition they were putting together. How had they got in touch with Skite?

"I presume you're asking more than us and Skite along?" Going from Fang's prowess, and stories of the things she'd once fought, if anything survived from back in her day it was going to be quite unlike anything they were used to fighting.

The mention of dragons sent a spark through Ignis's chest. Dragons were an integral part of Lucian iconography. The Kingsglaive still wore one. Bahamut was associated with the Lucian crown; it had been strange to see him depicted on the lowerworld, stranger still to see him in the flesh as it were at the hands of Kadaj. "I think you'd enjoy Lucis," he said, warmly. "It seems those stories aren't far wrong."

Perhaps some of the diaspora had retained their stories. There were tales of small factions that had split from the rest early on in Lucis's history, striking out to nearby lands. Lucis had been extremely insular for much of its life, but it wasn't a huge leap to think that if they had made it, others might have too.

"We're asking as many as we can," Ignis said, looking at the blue haired man. "You come with a recommendation, if there are others you can recommend we'll certainly take them into consideration."

"That aside," he said, trying not to think about how Saix spending a lot of quality time with Grimmjow would go. "How would we get there?"

It seemed like an obvious question, but nobody had asked. Pulse, as far as his limited knowledge took him, was a big continent out to the far east, floating above the sea and shrouded in Mist, even to this day. The magic that kept them afloat often affected Airships, so travel even to Jylland was awkward, with only a few ports providing safe landing points without the need for a Jagd-proof ship.

Pulse was unlikely to have any of those and if it did, nobody knew about it.

The issue of transport to Pulse was one of the lesser logistical concerns. Obviously the more people they invited the greater the number of airships required to transport them would be, but they had access to Jagd proof airships.

"Riding dragons, of course," unable to help himself. He maintained his composure for a second before he let it crumble. "We have access to more than one Jagd-proof airship, we should have no concerns transporting ourselves and supplies." Admittedly, one such airship was the Ragnarok, and the other was Noctua, and the access was granted because their respective pilots were coming, but they would still be invaluable for the expedition.

Lea thought that sounded fair.

Their own ship would probably also help, but he wasn't going to offer that option too quickly. Especially not before they'd discussed whether they'd actually be going or not. He suspected that, even if the Clan decided that they were going to stay firmly on Ivalician soil, Fang would opt to go with them, if only out of curiosity to see what had become of her homeland.

"Fair enough," he said. "We'll need to discuss it, you know."

Fang narrowed her eyes at Ignis, not finding his joke particularly funny. Although the Izunian exodus was spoken about as if those undertaking had been mad even when she was a girl, she wagered she knew more about it than these guys did. They'd talked about them poorly, but at least it had happened in the past few decades when they'd done so, not hundreds of years in the past and coloured by myth.

"And it depends what you're offering," she added. She was going to go regardless, but it didn't hurt to sound businesslike.

"Of course," Ignis conceded. Naturally they'd want to discuss the matter, and doubtless they'd want to discuss what they wanted as payment for their services. Somehow, Ignis didn't think their offer was going to be refused. Any holding out would be quibbling over details, rather than a risk of refusal.

He hoped, at least. Fang had seemed enthusiastic enough, and Aerith seemed suspiciously well informed.

"Payment is negotiable," he added, with a smile. Not everyone was interested in strictly financial compensation, after all. Some wanted a piece of whatever technology they might find, and others might be more interested in sample collection over currency. Some things were more valuable, to individuals of a certain mindset, than money could ever be. "The expedition will start with a trip to Lucis so that appropriate resources and supplies can be provided, so you won't need to concern yourselves with purchasing equipment beforehand."

Saix glanced sidelong at Lea. For Saix, a chance to get away from Rabanastre, and Xigbar, for an extended period of time wasn't one he was about to pass up. He also wasn't concerned about spending a lot of time in Grimmjow's company, although if Yylfordt was along for the journey he may be less likely to make it back in one piece.

Still, a few weeks or months being paid to scour some unmapped continent, living off what they could hunt and sleeping under the stars wasn't the worst offer Saix had ever had.

"We'll take that into consideration," he said. He had no intention of taking less money than they thought was fair just because they were being supplied out of somebody else's pocket. Although it would be a nice bonus not to have to restock themselves.

Lea agreed with that.

Discussion was necessary first and foremost and then came negotiation with these two. They seemed desperate enough for takers that they'd acquiesce to whatever they wanted, so long as it wasn't ridiculous, so money would probably be fine. They could certainly ask enough that they wouldn't be forced to rent any more, once the trip was over. That was always a nice thought... but he didn't know if Saix would agree.

"Fair enough," he said.

The idea of free gear wasn't bad, though he knew they'd all be taking their own weapons at the very least.

Fang didn't care as much about compensation, she just wanted to see if it was possible to go back there and, if so, what it was like. But ... she wasn't so curious that money wasn't also a draw. Money was money.

"So we'll discuss it and get back to you," she said. "Where'll we find you?"

Ignis smiled broadly. "You can call me," he answered, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing his notebook and pen. He wrote down his number in a quick, neat hand. In Lucis he had business cards, but he wasn't prepared to go flashing those around. "We can meet up again to negotiate should you choose to join us."

He tore the page from his notebook, folded it in half, and offered it across the table to Aerith. His attention, however, was on Fang. "I'd certainly enjoy hearing more of the stories you grew up with," he said. "I hadn't expected them to have existed outside of Lucis. It would be interesting to see where they intersect, and where they differ."

Brothers, and dragons. How had time twisted the tales?

Aerith leaned forward and took the folded slip of paper from Ignis. She didn't doubt they'd take the job; Fang certainly seemed to want to go, and if the pay day was good enough she doubted Lea and Saix would turn it down.

And if they were going with Skite then they were going to be short on healers. She wondered if that had been one of the reasons they'd been pointed towards Ila. Skite knew she was a healer, and they certainly didn't seem to have one of their own.

"Will you be staying in Rabanastre?" she asked. She'd certainly be keeping an eye out for them, if so. They could buy more flowers from her if she saw them in the market.

"I think we can spend a night here," Gladio said, not waiting for Ignis to shoot them down.

He didn't much like traveling across desert. It would be easier to stay in the city a night, take in the sights and all the things Ignis would no doubt want to spend some time on, than go back to base and return the next day. It would certainly be less tiring.

Ignis's head snapped towards Gladio at his answer. It hadn't been the plan; the desert palace wasn't too far away, relatively speaking, but the prospect of a night in Rabanastre was enticing. The markets, the food quarter, the architecture, they were all worth exploring.

They were here on business. Time for sightseeing was sadly limited, but...

"That would be delightful."

The sights, some good food, and with a little luck a comfortable bed in a decent enough inn. Ignis wasn't too picky so long as it was clean.

The nerd seemed excited, and yet deferential to his bodyguard. It seemed like he was well practiced at having boundaries set by others.

"Then we'll call you," Saix replied.

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When the ghosts are found

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