middleofsomewhere | The Will to Fight: Finale: All teams

The Will to Fight: Finale: All teams

The Far Gate

Given that people have scouted ahead, it will be no surprise when those who arrive at the Red objective find an army of demons there. Unlike the other packs they have encountered, these ones are not roaming, and don't appear to be heading towards the city. Instead, they are guarding something.

A gate. It is larger than the others they have seen so far by an order of magnitude, and if there are this many demons outside, the keystone must be guarded just as well.

For those who are actually on the red team their SCA will flash up a message: This gate has multiple keystones. It is the focal point for other gates closer to the city. Close it.

Around the City

In the Caverns

Once the rockfall was cleared, those that wished to could make their way back towards the city. They might come across demons on the way, small packs scouting the land and hunting survivors, but for the most part their way will be clear until they get to the city and to the Voidtrecker camp.

For everyone else, there are plenty of non-combatants that need protecting. The cavern itself remains warded against demons, but patrols still pass and keeping everyone safe and hidden is important.

Almost all the citizens have thrown off the mind control now. Some of the younger children have started having nightmares, and keeping everyone positive and calm is harder than it was before with a goal in sight.

In the City

The sigils hum and glow. For those feeding them power it's a very long couple of days; though once the monks are free they join in, brusquely waving off any questions or concern about their wellbeing to focus on the task at hand: protecting the city. They will of course accept any extra energy. The wards are not meant to go out completely, it will take a lot of energy to restart them.

By the eleventh day it is clear something else is wrong. Some of the focus stones on the city walls are out of place, either knocked awry in the battles before the false peace, or sabotaged by demons. Either way, for the wards to fully activate they will need those not giving energy to go out onto the walls, to find the stones and align them. It's not too technical but might be dangerous, because outside the walls, a fight is about to begin…

The Battle for the City

The attacks have gotten more frequent but on the evening of day ten they stop. Silence. No gates open, no demons attack. The whole night is spent in a tense, almost eerie silence.

It is broken at dawn the next day, two massive gates open, one to the north of the city and one to the south. Demons march out, heading towards the city.

Not just demons, they each have two large structures, siege machines. It seems they wish to knock this city down completely, securing their victory over the humans.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The downtimes, the rests she has to take where she's just too tired to keep on fighting, are perhaps the worst parts of this mission to Alice. If not just because it involves a lot of conflicting feelings. First of all there's the boredom that comes with the rests. Sure, fighting the demons may be dangerous, but at least that makes it interesting. It's a lot better than just sitting around and doing nothing. Alice has never been good at that. She's already been forced to do it for ten years.

And there's not a lot to remedy that boredom here in camp. All there is to do is sit down, eat, and sleep.

.. and talk to other people, but that's exactly where the conflicting feelings come in. Alice sure doesn't want to sit here in silence and feel bored, but speaking up to people? It's such a two-edged sword. Especially when Alice's tolerance levels for people are so low.

But right now, as she's sitting down near a fire and watches an already present boy sitting there and eating too, Alice mostly just doesn't want to be bored.

So she sighs and speaks up.

"Do you think it's just going to be this the whole time? No matter how much we're fighting, it seems like we're making very little progress."

He'd been doing that thing where he was so physically worn out that he was staring into space. Something about passing through the gates just made him so sluggish when he came back. At least there was a camp with food and drink and a place to sleep that seemed relatively safe.

"Um, w-well..." Prompto was a bit flustered she spoke to him at first. "Yeah, probably, I mean. Kinda reminds me of home." He said with a bit of a chuckle.

".. home?"

Alice is just a tad bit too naturally curious for that word to not stand out to her in what he's saying. Sure, she knows that even worlds people on the train come from can be cruel - her own is very much like that, after all, though perhaps in a different way than this world they've found themselves on right now. But most of the people on the train seems so weirdly carefree that Alice can't imagine their own homes being anything like this.

She takes a bite of her food, chewing it thoughtfully and swallowing before she speaks up again.

"In what sense?"

Prompto was an optimistic type, he wouldn't consider his world to be particularly cruel, although as far as worlds went it definitely was on that side of things.

To him, things just were as they were.

"Oh, well you know, all the demons!" He said with a smile. "Only in Eos they usually only come out at night. During the day it's the wild animals that try and kill you." Didn't that sound great?

"So what you're trying to tell me is that there's constantly monsters out to kill you where you come from." It's said with the flattest tone, because.. please, Prompto? Why are you saying that and smiling? Is this guy some sort of secret psychopath?

After all, even though London itself sure was dangerous as well, the thing you had to fear there was people. Not bloodthirsty monsters like in many of the worlds they're visiting.

"And you.. enjoy that?"

"Enjoy it? Not really." Prompto said, he was just a cheerful sort of person. "I mean, it's just how stuff is? It's kind of wild all over Lucis since the whole wall thing." It was complicated. Outside of Insomnia it was really depressed.

"But it kinda is how it is, you know? And my friends are with me, so it's not so bad."

Alice slowly releases a breath, almost like a sigh.

"Even accepting it like that is already something beyond what most people would do, I'd say." After all, people complained all the time about the dismal state of things back home. Alice included, so she's certainly not putting herself above that, mind you.

But Prompto so casually accepting things? That is a level above that for sure.

"I mean, I doubt the people here are very happy about the constant demon attacks. Or even okay with having to deal with it."

(Granted, Alice hasn't been in the city yet, otherwise she'd know exactly just how Okay the people are with it, because of the whole illusion deal.)

"I mean, it's everywhere we go. Even if I didn't accept it, it would still happen. There'd still be beasts and daemons everywhere." He informed her, tilting his head a bit. "We just have to kinda roll with it."

He didn't think it was strange, it was just how things were. It was what he'd trained for.

"Probably not, people who aren't out fighting them hate it. It's not that I don't hate them, I just can't make them stop."

"Can nobody at all live safely in your world then?"

If the beasts and monsters truly are everywhere as he describes. At least here it seems like the majority of the demons were kept out of the city, but is that the case in this guy's world as well?

After all, if the cities were safe, he could just opt to live there. To live a life ignorant of the struggles going on outside of the cities. It's not as if plenty of people don't try to live while actively ignoring all the bad things around them, even if it means turning their eyes away from injustice and suffering.

"Insomnia was safe, but now that the wall's down, it's not." Prompto said, shaking his head.

"You can find safe places at night if you've got big floodlights. Daemons can't stand the light, and there are a few havens which are like magic-based camping sites in the wild. It's anti-daemon magic. Lestallum, which is the biggest city around now that Insomnia's fallen, has huge floodlights and is well protected by hunters so that's a sort of safe place." Prompto explained.

Everything was dangerous, it was just that people banded together to make a couple of safe-ish places. "We're travelling though, so we don't really get to hide somewhere right now. Noct's got a wedding to get too. I think Altissia's supposed to be pretty safe too, but I haven't been."

Alice pauses for a moment, eating a few more bites as she listens to this whole story. At least she thinks she's starting to get a pretty clear idea of the world this guy is from, just by the way he's talking about it.. Even though it's very different from the one she's always known.

It's only when he gets to the wedding part that she pipes up again.

"A wedding, hm? I suppose some things never change, despite the circumstances." Geez, people already get stressed out enough about weddings under normal circumstances. Alice can't even imagine what it'd be like under those instead. "People still feel the need to get married, even in the middle of all that danger."

"It was supposed to be part of the peace treaty. Since we haven't...well we don't know what else to do, we're going to go meet Lady Lunafreya." He explained. "It could be that everyone knows...or at least thinks, that wedding might lift spirits...or something."

Prompto sighed. "Maybe it will broker peace anyway."

"A wedding? Causing peace?"

It could be that Prompto is speaking metaphorically, but Alice doesn't feel like that's the case, considering everything else he's saying. But really, maybe it's since she's never been to a wedding herself, but she can't imagine it being an event so grande that it'd cause any sort of peace.

.. well, not unless the people involved in it are particularly important. Maybe that's the case here.

Alice shrugs through, dropping the inquiry to instead say: "You sound like you have an awful lot to do for a guy who's stuck here instead."

"That's the hope anyway, that maybe things will work out if they get married." They were very important people, but he wasn't sure what to think about it, besides that.

"Oh uh, not really. Plus Noct is here, so you know, I'd rather be here than leave him alone!"

.. what an odd guy, Alice can't help but think as he speaks.

Then again, given that last part, maybe it'd be more apt to think of him as simple guy instead.

"You're fine with being here just because someone else you know is here too?" (Yes, Alice, some people have actual friends. Just imagine. A wild concept.)

"It's not that." Prompto said, shaking his head. "It's my job to protect Noct." He explained gently.

"So if he was here without anyone, I'd be worried, you know? He's good and all, but it doesn't hurt to have someone watching your back..and Ignis and Gladio aren't here either, so it's just me."

"So this Noct person has a whole group of people protecting him," she points out. It's easy to glance from what he's saying right now, anyway. This guy himself, then this Ignis and this Gladio.. that's already three whole people just to protect one person.

In Alice's world no one but the royal family gets that much protection, really.

"I'd say perhaps that's why the train brought both of you here, but I don't believe that it has such good intentions."

"I don't know why it brought me here, I don't really know what's going on, but wherever Noctis goes, I'll follow." Prompto said without hesitation. He was completely and utterly loyal to his best friend and king.

"He does, the three of us are his retinue."

.. Perhaps a little single-minded, huh.

Not that Alice can blame him. Either he's very job-focused, or he's just got a genuine fondness of that other guy he's talking about. Judging by the way Prompto has been speaking so far, Alice is guessing it's the latter. It's kind of hard for her to imagine feeling that way, considering no one is that important to her, but she's trying.

"I suppose you don't really get a break in protecting him."

Not back home, judging by Prompto's stories, and right now during the mission things seem to be just as much of a mess, with all these demon hordes.

And even back on the train--

"Danger lurks everywhere."

"Not really, but he helps too. He's not totally unable to do stuff. He's pretty strong on his own it's just really important that he get where we're going." Prompto answered easily but he was thinking about it. That shift from prince to king, what a bitch it was too.

"Lucis is counting on him." He sighed.

"Yeah, probably. He's used to that kinda thing. I'm not that used to it, but I'm getting there."

"You ought to get there perhaps a bit more quickly."

Not that she thinks Prompto is incompetent, mind you. She hasn't seen him in battle, though he doesn't exactly strike her as a fighter, attitude-wise. Then again, not everyone grows to be a fighter through the sheer necessity of survival the way Alice did.

But he is admitting to the fact that he's not quite used to it himself, so..

"I'm sure you've noticed already, but these demons won't hold back in the slightest. And they seem to spawn closer to camp more often." So it'd be easier to take all of them camping here by surprise.

"I know." Prompto said with a nod. "I know they won't and I'm ready to kill them when they come near, you don't have to worry about that. I just mean I'm a couple of years behind my friends. They've been training since they were kids, you know?"

She huffs.

"I'm not worried." She knows he's probably just saying it as a figure of speech, but please. With Alice being the way she is, she still feels the need to make this absolutely clear. She'll never be caught alive actually caring about someone else, you hear her?

"It'd just be an inconvenience if someone died here. So many people on the train would throw a huge fuss over it."

"Oh yeah, I bet." Prompto agreed easily.

"Also I really, really don't wanna die." He chuckled lightly. "I mean, if I did that then I couldn't have a great dinner later!"

He was still just barely out of his teens. A huge delicious meal still meant a lot to him.

"That's your motivation?"

Honestly, she doesn't sound as judgey about that as she could be. Being from the backstreets of London, Alice knows just how much it means to have an actual meal with good food. It's not something everyone naturally gets, so savouring it, or looking forget to it.. eh, she's heard worse motivations.

"You better hope that no one preparing your meal burns it before you can eat it then."

The Will to Fight: Finale: All teams

for prompto

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)