Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2007-08-25 12:11 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2007-08-25 12:11 pm
Because An Idea Doesn't Have To Make Sense To Be Good.
I have been rocking out to Michelle Branch's 'Everywhere' on the ukulele, and I am not ashamed.
Anyway! Have the further adventures of Balthier, Fran and Captain Jack Harkness. This is set directly after In Which Our Heroes Meet and dedicated to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thebaconfat, because her enthusiasm about this fic makes me so insanely happy. I'm afraid there's, er, not as much plot progression as one might hope.
“Viera tend to be a rather insular race,” Balthier says, “and they were almost unknown in Hume society until fairly recently. We may garner a few strange looks.”
“I can live with that,” Jack says, cheerfully.
Balthier smiles slightly. “I can’t say I’m surprised that you’re happy to be the centre of attention. Fran, however, prefers to keep to herself.”
Jack looks over at Fran. She is showing no outward signs of being uncomfortable with the attention they are getting, but he knows better than to assume he can read the mannerisms of a species of which he has almost no experience. Balthier clearly knows her far better than he does.
They are walking along a street a hundred years in the past of this world, which is, Jack has come to understand, apparently called Ivalice. Jack has been keeping an eye out for any interesting differences in technology, but if there are any they certainly aren’t very noticeable. Still, most of his knowledge of this world’s future has come from a rather poorly-equipped dungeon.
“Curative magicks hadn’t been discovered at this point,” Balthier explains, watching as a wounded young woman staggers along the street. He raises a hand to his forehead, frowning in concentration, and then makes a sweeping gesture; a strange light surrounds her, healing her wounds, and she stops short and looks around in astonishment as the three of them slip back into the crowd. “Many bold adventurers died young. There were various potions and remedies, of course, but magicks are generally far more useful out in the field. It seems incredible now, doesn’t it? Well,” he corrects himself, with a slight smile, “by ‘now’, I mean the period from which we came, obviously.”
Jack, who has no experience whatsoever of ‘magicks’ and so finds it somewhat less than incredible, makes a vague, non-committal noise. “You really shouldn’t use things that don’t exist yet around the locals.”
“Forgive me, Captain, but that hardly seems decent,” Balthier says, looking at him. “Are there going to be dire consequences if I save her life?”
“You don’t know. She could end up as a murderer.”
“So I should have ignored her? Is that what you would have done?”
“Well, no,” Jack admits. “But I thought I should probably play the responsible time-traveller, as I’m the one with experience. We’re not supposed to interfere. It’s one of the things we have drilled into us at the Time Agency.” He hesitates. “Still, the person I travelled with after that would have saved her, and he’s the one I’d trust.”
Balthier seems about to speak, but Fran looks sharply at him and he falls silent. After a moment, he changes the subject. “Do you have a licence to use Cure?”
“I, uh, I don’t think so,” Jack says. “I’m not really from around here.”
“Ah. Hmmm. Well, I don’t imagine it’ll be terribly easy to acquire a licence for a magick that doesn’t exist yet, but you probably can’t be arrested for using it without one, either. It’s a useful spell, and you’ll almost certainly need it before long. Have you ever used magicks before?”
Jack, feeling increasingly uncomfortable, shakes his head.
Balthier sighs theatrically. “I had hoped we wouldn’t begin to regret our decision quite so soon. Well, come on; if I’m going to have to teach you all the very basics of combat, we had best start immediately.”
-
“You’ve never used any bladed weapons?” Balthier repeats, sceptically.
“Look,” Jack protests, “I’ve never exactly urgently needed to learn. I’ve always had my sonic blaster.” He pauses, then says, rather wistfully, “Wish the guards hadn’t taken it off me.”
“Had they left it with you,” Balthier observes, “they would have been more than foolish enough for you to escape on your own, and we would never have met the invaluable third member of our little team. And we couldn’t have that, could we? Now: to swordsmanship.”
“Couldn’t I use a gun instead?” Jack asks, looking at the holster on Balthier’s hip.
Balthier looks at him in incredulity. “You want me to lend you my weapon?” he asks, in the sort of disbelieving tone he might have used if Jack had asked to borrow one of his legs for a couple of days.
“Maybe not yours,” Jack says, hastily, “but I could buy one for myself, couldn’t I?”
Balthier considers him for a moment. “Even if you’re planning to use a gun, you should probably at least know how to wield a sword,” he says, eventually. “Good guns are difficult to come by, and you’ll often find that the bladed weapons on sale are more effective.”
“Swords are more powerful than guns here?” Jack asks, half-laughing. “What kind of place is this?”
“A place in which, if you do carry a gun, your foes are like to sorely underestimate you,” Balthier says, smirking, and he brushes his fingers fondly over the holster. “Shall we begin your lessons?”
-
Balthier works for the next few days on teaching Jack how to use swords and a couple of basic magicks. Although the time they can spend on lessons is slightly limited by Jack's habit of slipping off and sneaking into bars to mingle with the locals at every opportunity, he is a quick learner, to Balthier’s evident surprise, and he soon becomes quite adept at cutting down the wolves that roam outside the city, with Balthier and Fran waiting to step in if it all goes horribly wrong. ‘Cure’ quickly becomes Jack’s favourite new ability, although he only ever casts it on his companions (and sometimes, when he feels like giving the finger to the Time Agency, on strangers in the street); it speeds up the healing of wounds, and he sometimes wishes he had known it earlier.
They sleep in a protective bubble of magicks on the outskirts of a small settlement to the south of the city (Rabanastre, Jack has discovered, is the city’s name), and live on whatever they can find at the market. Balthier regards the food with a certain amount of distaste, but Jack loves it; it is plain and simple fare, but it is very filling and tastes reasonably good. Fran, he notices, never seems to eat. When he asks about it, she looks coolly at him and says nothing, and he moves away with the vague feeling that he has committed some sort of faux pas.
Eventually, Balthier concludes that Jack has learnt enough to survive for more than a few seconds on their highly dangerous mission. The sword he has been using to practice with is a cheap and rather ineffective one, he explains, and he would do best to purchase his own weapon.
Which is why Jack has ventured into the busy Rabanastran market and is presently examining a finely-honed blade.
“It’s three thousand Gil,” the weapon vendor says.
“How about two thousand and I buy you a drink?” Jack asks, with his most winning smile.
The vendor looks distinctly unimpressed. Jack is a little relieved; he made the offer almost without thinking. He doesn’t even have the money for the drink, let alone two thousand Gil.
-
“So,” Jack says, as casually as possible, “how do you get money around here?”
“And you were doing so well,” Balthier says, putting on a show of deep disappointment. “How can you possibly have survived for so long without knowing how to make money? Or have you always been living by dishonest means?”
“I know how to make money,” Jack protests, choosing not to mention his days as a conman. “I just don’t know how to make it here. And I don’t think the weapon guy understands exactly how much my company should be worth.”
Balthier looks at him with an expression of mingled exasperation and amusement. “I’d rather not spend our winnings pre-emptively on your equipment. And spending a few weeks skinning wolves and selling the pelts would be more than any of us could bear, I suspect. You’ll have to use the flimsy thing you were practising with and hope we don’t run into any trouble.”
There is a brief pause.
“If it became necessary to acquire skins,” Fran says, apparently reluctant to suggest the idea, “my claws – ”
“It’s out of the question, Fran,” Balthier says, firmly. “We’re already making enough demands on your dignity with the sewer entrance.”
“What?” Jack asks.
-
“There is a way into the palace through these sewers,” Balthier says. “Not dignified, but practical. I doubt that the rat problem is any better controlled in this time than it will be a hundred years from now, so I hope you can remember how to use your weapon.”
“Oh, excellent,” Jack says, following him into the ankle-high water. “Is fighting rats with swords a popular pastime around here, then?”
-
“Those are some big rats,” Jack says, rather stunned. He is still gripping the handle of the sword as tightly as he can, despite the fact that the rodents have already been dispatched. He’s met giant frogs and insects the size of skyscrapers, but even with all the planets he’s visited the rats have always been a manageable size. The one constant. He feels betrayed.
“You must have lived a very sheltered life,” Balthier says, suppressed laughter colouring his voice.
-
They move swiftly through the sewers, pausing only to defend themselves against the Gigantic Sabre-Toothed Hellrats and a number of highly irritating batlike creatures that delight in swooping at Jack’s head and flying away again before he can strike. At one point, Fran shoots a bat-thing when it is bare inches from Jack; the arrow passes so close that he can feel the air displaced by it ruffle his shirt, and he spins around in astonishment.
“If you express the slightest doubt about Fran’s aim,” Balthier says before Jack has a chance to speak, “I’ll leave you to the rats. I can assure you that she knows exactly what she’s doing.”
Jack takes the hint and falls silent. They move on a little farther, passing two enormous hovering fish (“Not aggressive unless provoked,” Balthier says, “and I have no particular desire to provoke them”), and eventually reach a ladder leading upwards. Balthier pauses, his hand resting on one of the rungs.
“You’ll need to stay unobtrusive,” Balthier says. “That, I have to remind you, means no flirting with the guards whatsoever. I have no concerns about Fran; she knows how to stay out of sight. You, however, are another matter entirely.”
“No problem,” Jack says, cheerfully.
Balthier does not look entirely convinced, but he leads the way into the palace regardless.
-
(Here take place the events ofthebaconfat’s Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice: In Which Our Heroes Spend Some Quality Time in a Dungeon.)
Anyway! Have the further adventures of Balthier, Fran and Captain Jack Harkness. This is set directly after In Which Our Heroes Meet and dedicated to
thebaconfat, because her enthusiasm about this fic makes me so insanely happy. I'm afraid there's, er, not as much plot progression as one might hope.“Viera tend to be a rather insular race,” Balthier says, “and they were almost unknown in Hume society until fairly recently. We may garner a few strange looks.”
“I can live with that,” Jack says, cheerfully.
Balthier smiles slightly. “I can’t say I’m surprised that you’re happy to be the centre of attention. Fran, however, prefers to keep to herself.”
Jack looks over at Fran. She is showing no outward signs of being uncomfortable with the attention they are getting, but he knows better than to assume he can read the mannerisms of a species of which he has almost no experience. Balthier clearly knows her far better than he does.
They are walking along a street a hundred years in the past of this world, which is, Jack has come to understand, apparently called Ivalice. Jack has been keeping an eye out for any interesting differences in technology, but if there are any they certainly aren’t very noticeable. Still, most of his knowledge of this world’s future has come from a rather poorly-equipped dungeon.
“Curative magicks hadn’t been discovered at this point,” Balthier explains, watching as a wounded young woman staggers along the street. He raises a hand to his forehead, frowning in concentration, and then makes a sweeping gesture; a strange light surrounds her, healing her wounds, and she stops short and looks around in astonishment as the three of them slip back into the crowd. “Many bold adventurers died young. There were various potions and remedies, of course, but magicks are generally far more useful out in the field. It seems incredible now, doesn’t it? Well,” he corrects himself, with a slight smile, “by ‘now’, I mean the period from which we came, obviously.”
Jack, who has no experience whatsoever of ‘magicks’ and so finds it somewhat less than incredible, makes a vague, non-committal noise. “You really shouldn’t use things that don’t exist yet around the locals.”
“Forgive me, Captain, but that hardly seems decent,” Balthier says, looking at him. “Are there going to be dire consequences if I save her life?”
“You don’t know. She could end up as a murderer.”
“So I should have ignored her? Is that what you would have done?”
“Well, no,” Jack admits. “But I thought I should probably play the responsible time-traveller, as I’m the one with experience. We’re not supposed to interfere. It’s one of the things we have drilled into us at the Time Agency.” He hesitates. “Still, the person I travelled with after that would have saved her, and he’s the one I’d trust.”
Balthier seems about to speak, but Fran looks sharply at him and he falls silent. After a moment, he changes the subject. “Do you have a licence to use Cure?”
“I, uh, I don’t think so,” Jack says. “I’m not really from around here.”
“Ah. Hmmm. Well, I don’t imagine it’ll be terribly easy to acquire a licence for a magick that doesn’t exist yet, but you probably can’t be arrested for using it without one, either. It’s a useful spell, and you’ll almost certainly need it before long. Have you ever used magicks before?”
Jack, feeling increasingly uncomfortable, shakes his head.
Balthier sighs theatrically. “I had hoped we wouldn’t begin to regret our decision quite so soon. Well, come on; if I’m going to have to teach you all the very basics of combat, we had best start immediately.”
“You’ve never used any bladed weapons?” Balthier repeats, sceptically.
“Look,” Jack protests, “I’ve never exactly urgently needed to learn. I’ve always had my sonic blaster.” He pauses, then says, rather wistfully, “Wish the guards hadn’t taken it off me.”
“Had they left it with you,” Balthier observes, “they would have been more than foolish enough for you to escape on your own, and we would never have met the invaluable third member of our little team. And we couldn’t have that, could we? Now: to swordsmanship.”
“Couldn’t I use a gun instead?” Jack asks, looking at the holster on Balthier’s hip.
Balthier looks at him in incredulity. “You want me to lend you my weapon?” he asks, in the sort of disbelieving tone he might have used if Jack had asked to borrow one of his legs for a couple of days.
“Maybe not yours,” Jack says, hastily, “but I could buy one for myself, couldn’t I?”
Balthier considers him for a moment. “Even if you’re planning to use a gun, you should probably at least know how to wield a sword,” he says, eventually. “Good guns are difficult to come by, and you’ll often find that the bladed weapons on sale are more effective.”
“Swords are more powerful than guns here?” Jack asks, half-laughing. “What kind of place is this?”
“A place in which, if you do carry a gun, your foes are like to sorely underestimate you,” Balthier says, smirking, and he brushes his fingers fondly over the holster. “Shall we begin your lessons?”
Balthier works for the next few days on teaching Jack how to use swords and a couple of basic magicks. Although the time they can spend on lessons is slightly limited by Jack's habit of slipping off and sneaking into bars to mingle with the locals at every opportunity, he is a quick learner, to Balthier’s evident surprise, and he soon becomes quite adept at cutting down the wolves that roam outside the city, with Balthier and Fran waiting to step in if it all goes horribly wrong. ‘Cure’ quickly becomes Jack’s favourite new ability, although he only ever casts it on his companions (and sometimes, when he feels like giving the finger to the Time Agency, on strangers in the street); it speeds up the healing of wounds, and he sometimes wishes he had known it earlier.
They sleep in a protective bubble of magicks on the outskirts of a small settlement to the south of the city (Rabanastre, Jack has discovered, is the city’s name), and live on whatever they can find at the market. Balthier regards the food with a certain amount of distaste, but Jack loves it; it is plain and simple fare, but it is very filling and tastes reasonably good. Fran, he notices, never seems to eat. When he asks about it, she looks coolly at him and says nothing, and he moves away with the vague feeling that he has committed some sort of faux pas.
Eventually, Balthier concludes that Jack has learnt enough to survive for more than a few seconds on their highly dangerous mission. The sword he has been using to practice with is a cheap and rather ineffective one, he explains, and he would do best to purchase his own weapon.
Which is why Jack has ventured into the busy Rabanastran market and is presently examining a finely-honed blade.
“It’s three thousand Gil,” the weapon vendor says.
“How about two thousand and I buy you a drink?” Jack asks, with his most winning smile.
The vendor looks distinctly unimpressed. Jack is a little relieved; he made the offer almost without thinking. He doesn’t even have the money for the drink, let alone two thousand Gil.
“So,” Jack says, as casually as possible, “how do you get money around here?”
“And you were doing so well,” Balthier says, putting on a show of deep disappointment. “How can you possibly have survived for so long without knowing how to make money? Or have you always been living by dishonest means?”
“I know how to make money,” Jack protests, choosing not to mention his days as a conman. “I just don’t know how to make it here. And I don’t think the weapon guy understands exactly how much my company should be worth.”
Balthier looks at him with an expression of mingled exasperation and amusement. “I’d rather not spend our winnings pre-emptively on your equipment. And spending a few weeks skinning wolves and selling the pelts would be more than any of us could bear, I suspect. You’ll have to use the flimsy thing you were practising with and hope we don’t run into any trouble.”
There is a brief pause.
“If it became necessary to acquire skins,” Fran says, apparently reluctant to suggest the idea, “my claws – ”
“It’s out of the question, Fran,” Balthier says, firmly. “We’re already making enough demands on your dignity with the sewer entrance.”
“What?” Jack asks.
“There is a way into the palace through these sewers,” Balthier says. “Not dignified, but practical. I doubt that the rat problem is any better controlled in this time than it will be a hundred years from now, so I hope you can remember how to use your weapon.”
“Oh, excellent,” Jack says, following him into the ankle-high water. “Is fighting rats with swords a popular pastime around here, then?”
“Those are some big rats,” Jack says, rather stunned. He is still gripping the handle of the sword as tightly as he can, despite the fact that the rodents have already been dispatched. He’s met giant frogs and insects the size of skyscrapers, but even with all the planets he’s visited the rats have always been a manageable size. The one constant. He feels betrayed.
“You must have lived a very sheltered life,” Balthier says, suppressed laughter colouring his voice.
They move swiftly through the sewers, pausing only to defend themselves against the Gigantic Sabre-Toothed Hellrats and a number of highly irritating batlike creatures that delight in swooping at Jack’s head and flying away again before he can strike. At one point, Fran shoots a bat-thing when it is bare inches from Jack; the arrow passes so close that he can feel the air displaced by it ruffle his shirt, and he spins around in astonishment.
“If you express the slightest doubt about Fran’s aim,” Balthier says before Jack has a chance to speak, “I’ll leave you to the rats. I can assure you that she knows exactly what she’s doing.”
Jack takes the hint and falls silent. They move on a little farther, passing two enormous hovering fish (“Not aggressive unless provoked,” Balthier says, “and I have no particular desire to provoke them”), and eventually reach a ladder leading upwards. Balthier pauses, his hand resting on one of the rungs.
“You’ll need to stay unobtrusive,” Balthier says. “That, I have to remind you, means no flirting with the guards whatsoever. I have no concerns about Fran; she knows how to stay out of sight. You, however, are another matter entirely.”
“No problem,” Jack says, cheerfully.
Balthier does not look entirely convinced, but he leads the way into the palace regardless.
(Here take place the events of
thebaconfat’s Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice: In Which Our Heroes Spend Some Quality Time in a Dungeon.)
no subject
ahahahahahahaha.
I LOVE YOU.
Jack learning to swordfight/use magicks =