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Post by Celes Chere on Feb 23, 2023 9:33:55 GMT -6
I’m sorry, did you say that Terra is there? In short, yes. You can trust her with the Dragonblades. She’s a tad unreliable, but she’s strong and she has the best heart of anyone I know. I can’t believe she’s been here all this time. I think I met her once years ago, but I thought I was going crazy and I wasn’t emotionally ready to stay with her. And then…
I thought it must have been a dream. But she’s been here all along. I can’t believe it.
I’ll be renting a chocobo and starting the journey to Torensten tomorrow. It’s entirely possible that this letter will be superfluous by the time I arrive, but I wanted to at least try to send it ahead of me as a warning anyway. If Terra is there then I need to see her. I’ve put out the word for Yuna’s clinic so she should be able to screen for potential new hires while I’m gone. I’ll leave the money you’ve enclosed with her.
I’ll see you in a week or two, I suppose. We can talk more then.
Celes
P.S. We will most definitely not be partnering with the Rising Stones. Alexander Sorel found me while I was trying to recruit white mages for Yuna’s clinic and he made a complete ass of himself trying to sabotage the whole affair. He might be the most conceited, childish fool of a man that I’ve ever met and that’s saying something. I refused to engage his ridiculous attempts to bait me into an argument, but once I return to Provo I might just pay the Rising Stones a visit to properly address every absurd accusation he made of both of us. And I will make him regret his harassment of me that day. And he wonders why no one wants to work with him…
Keep away from him if you can. I wouldn’t wish that man on my worst of enemies. He’d likely join them.
Final Fantasy VI
22
YEARS
Female
Complicated
Heterosexual
429 POSTS
Fin
Use your own eyes and see for yourself whose side I'm on!
[attr=class,bulk] Celes breathed in slowly as Alex spoke of the Dragonblades. She breathed out slowly. She’d already let herself be baited by him. This was just another one of his attempts to force a reaction out of her. If she answered it with equal animosity then she would seem immature. If she answered defensively then it would seem that she had something to hide. Instead, she just listened, breathing slowly.
She wished she knew all of the references that the two were making at each other. Maybe she would know better how to respond to them. There were so many words she didn’t understand, proper nouns mostly, she thought. She wanted to be annoyed at them, but it was only natural when two people from the same world spoke to each other. Caius had rambled on about his entire history to her shortly after their first meeting, and she hadn’t understood a thing he’d said then either. It was natural, but that didn’t make it any less disorienting. She felt the only person left out of a joke. She felt, well, excluded in her own place of business.
The feeling did not mix well with her fury and indignation with Alex. Still, she did her best to swallow it back and keep her composure. When she spoke, she addressed only Monori.
”I would never want to put you in an awkward situation,” she said. ”Let alone in the middle of someone else’s argument. Please. Feel free to take whatever job you see fit. We’re just looking for help from local white mages who’d like the work. Working with Yuna wouldn’t mean joining the Dragonblades, but if it doesn’t seem like the right place for you then we won’t mind.”
Unlike some people she knew, she didn’t take a refusal to join her organization as a personal attack. She swore, Alexander must have seen himself as the Rising Stones incarnate, and anyone who chose not to join might as well have been making rude gestures at him personally.
Then there was Alex’s obsessive, one-sided feud with Caius. It was like a pissing contest that only he was aware of, and it always left Alex standing in a mess of his own creation.
Finally, she glanced in his direction. It was only a glance. Nothing more. ”I’m going to ask you to leave. If you’re so concerned about your business then you must have something better you could be doing for it. Set up your own table if mine bothers you so much. And if you have something personal to say about either myself or Caius then I ask that you do so in private..”
[attr=class,bulk] Desperate? Did Alex just call her desperate? Celes’ eyes sharpened on him. ”Excuse me?” No, she did not want him ‘coming by in a bit.’ She wanted nothing to do with him at all, actually, and whatever was going on between the two people in front of her was none of her business. Her business was finding white mages who were willing to work for the money she could make taking mercenary jobs in the area. That was her business.
Not because she was desperate. She certainly wasn’t desperate enough to accept help from Alex.
The whole scene played out in front of her, and she just stood there, palms on the table watching like the least enthused audience at the world’s most awkward play. She interjected only when the matter at hand directly concerned her.
”If you want to meet that Yuna though, keep going. I’ll drag you to her myself.”
”No you won’t,” Celes scowled. ”Do you even know where she lives?”
Maybe he did, actually. Yuna lived at the clinic which happened to have the Dragonblades iconography all over it. It wouldn’t have surprised Celes at all if Alex took a walk in front of the place at least once a day just to scope out his “competition” and maybe consider all the ways he could ruin a good thing.
The woman with the animal ears, for her part, seemed to be trying to keep the peace. She eventually introduced herself as Monori. Celes still couldn’t decipher most of the conversation going on between Monori and Alex, but it seemed at least that Monori was a white mage and some kind of adventurer back where she came from. Which was the same place that Alex came from. And something about that pissed Alex right off.
Monori held out a hand for Celes, and Celes sighed before taking it and giving it a firm shake. ”Celes Chere,” she said in turn. She tried for a smile again. She had to really force this one. ”Co-founder of the Dragonblades. We’re trying to make this world as safe as we can in as many ways as we can. Let’s just say we’ve both seen enough bloodshed.”
She chanced a glare at Alex. ”That’s Alexander Sorel. He founded a mercenary guild here in Provo, and he’s blamed us for his lack of business. Because that’s all he seems to care about. His business.”
If looks could kill then Celes would have sent him a formal invitation to a duel with the look she gave him then. Sometimes Celes remembered exactly where she came from. She was a general for the empire, charged with the training and deployment of countless men who constantly seeked to demean her. She’d broken prouder men than Alexander Sorel.
She turned her attention back to Monori. ”If you’d like to stop by and meet with Yuna, I’m sure she’d love to have you. There will be a skill test, of course, in case you happened to be a fraud.” She rolled her eyes. ”But mostly it’s just to see how you handle the setting. Yuna may be young, but she knows what she’s doing. She cares about helping people more than anyone I know.”
[attr=class,bulk] Celes had been expecting Alex to call the Dragonblades names, try to undermine their mission, and to generally be a nuisance. She’d expected that he’d talk over her and that she’d have to ignore him in order to talk to this interested potential hire. What happened instead, however, was something she absolutely could not have predicted.
Instead of turning his ire on her, Alex turned it on the strange, animalistic white mage. He spoke in a way that she’d never heard before. It was cold, sharp, and deathly serious. Celes had no idea what he was talking about for all of that, but it was clear that he meant business. It was equally clear from the white mage’s reaction that what he’d said had been deeply offensive.
Still, for all of that, Celes had absolutely no idea what either of them was talking about.
”Um…” Celes glanced behind them. The streets weren’t exactly busy at this hour, but there were more than a few people passing by, and they’d all stopped to warily watch the argument at hand. The white mage was screeching about killing birds and looked about one moment away from casting some kind of spell at Alex. She was, in fact, growling, and as she turned to face him, Celes saw what looked like a tail sticking out from her red jacket, bristling like a startled cat’s.
It would be just her luck, wouldn’t it? If after all of her hard work and sleepless nights, Celes’ entire booth ended up being destroyed in an unrelated street fight merely an hour after she’d gone through the trouble of setting it up. She cleared her throat.
”Could we…not?” she asked, perhaps a little weaker than she’d intended. She wished she had her sword at her hip, but she was a civilian today, unlikely to get into any fights to the death. Or so she’d thought.
”You’ll find all of the information on that flyer,” she said, picking up one of said flyers and trying to force it into the potential white mage’s grasp. She shot Alex a sharp look. ”And you. Take this somewhere else, Alex. I’m trying to help a friend run a charity to save lives. I don’t need you mucking it up!”
[attr=class,bulk] Celes hadn’t been waiting long – maybe an hour at most – when she heard a voice that she unfortunately recognized. She looked up, her forced pleasant smile souring into a scowl as Alexander Sorel sauntered up to her table. Why he didn’t just keep walking was beyond her. Apparently he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to needle her while she was most stressed, and more importantly, working.
He had a lot of needling to do, it seemed, and she let him talk while shooting him the iciest and most unamused of looks. Dragonlames? She would have laughed if she’d been in any mood for laughing. Instead, she was exhausted, sleep-deprived, and desperate for some relief. She didn’t have time to verbally spar with him. She didn’t have time to talk with him, period, and yet…
”I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were a white mage. Are you here looking for work? Maybe our salary would help with your failing- No!” The words had hardly left her mouth before a sudden gust of wind swept through her flyers, the flyers she’d spent hours on, and sent them shooting off the table. She was on her feet in an instant, toppling over her chair in the process as she charged after them, trying to catch the ones in the air that she could, and stooping down to dejectedly pick up the ones that she couldn’t.
Each and every one of them that had fallen to the ground ended up a little damp at the edges from the morning dew. She felt something tighten in her throat as she looked at them, and she had to urge herself to keep her composure. Why hadn’t she thought to weigh them down with rocks? Why had she just left them out on the table, exposed to the elements and the wind and everything else? ’It’s alright,’ she told herself, ’They’ll dry eventually and then they’ll just be a bit smudged.’ That was until she found one drowning in a nearby muddy puddle, reduced to nothing but papery pulp.
She breathed in through her nose. She breathed out through her mouth. Then she reached into the puddle and picked up the dripping thing. It wasn’t the flyer with the puppy-dragon either. It was or had been one of the good ones.
She was so stupid.
Celes straightened her posture, rolled her shoulders back, and turned back to the table to face Alex again only they weren’t exactly alone anymore. The newcomer looked a little, well, odd, but she was carrying several of Celes’ flyers that she must have caught out of the air, and Celes smiled at her sheepishly as she took them, ”Thanks.” The woman was clad in a red overcoat complimented by her fuschia colored highlights and a rather complicated looking staff. She also had pierced, animalistic ears sticking out on either side of her head, but Celes tried not to stare after the woman had gone out of her way to help her and all.
And then the reality of the situation struck her all at once. This wasn’t just a chance meeting. The woman was a white mage, and an interested one at that. Celes tried to hide the rising horror she felt as she listened to the woman speak. Why now? Why with Alex standing here, no doubt ready to sabotage it all at the slightest chance? Celes was a soldier, she wasn’t used to dealing with people like this or offering them jobs, but she was also a general. She’d learned from a young age how to act professional in even the worst of circumstances.
She counted dealing with Kefka on a daily basis as the worst circumstance imaginable.
And so she let her general side take over – speaking not as a mercenary or a soldier but as a true professional. Alex might try to derail things, but all she had to do was keep her composure and ignore him. He’d make a fool of himself all on his own.
”We are. My colleague Yuna has set up a charitable, low-cost clinic in Provo. She’s been running it alone, but since it’s low-cost, we have a few more patients than we can handle on our own. If you’re interested, feel free to stop by. I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.” Celes smiled again. She wasn’t used to having to smile in her line of work, but she hoped that it looked pleasant enough to pass for genuine. ”Everyone knows Yuna’s name around here. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”
[attr=class,bulk] Somehow, Celes had thought that finding people willing to work for the Dragonblades in Provo would have been, well, easier.
She’d written up her flyers in a neat, curling script with all of the details. ’Help Wanted: White Mages, Nurses, Receptionists. Inquire at the clinic south of the city center. Salaries negotiable.’ She’d even done her best to copy the Dragonblades logo at the bottom so that everyone would know the affiliation and that this job, unlike so many others, was legitimate, and that they wouldn’t go back on their word. Sure, the flyers were a little bare. Celes would be the first to admit that she lacked a little in artistic intuition, but the print was legible at least. She’d written up about five of the flyers and taken them to Help Wanted Avenue where, surely, someone would come looking for work.
Her heart sank when she saw the myriad billboards, all of them stuffed with flyers pinned ungracefully to their wooden surfaces. She’d done her best to pin them where they’d be seen and then she’d left, expecting some kind of response within a week.
It didn’t come. What came instead was a series of rainstorms that had turned her flyers into papery pulp. All the while, she’d had one emergency after another to deal with at Yuna’s clinic, and she’d hardly had the time or energy to make any replacements. When they finally, miraculously, had a slower day at the clinic, she went to work, writing up twenty of the flyers this time and adding a few more details for good measure.
’HELP WANTED,’ this one read in bold print at the top. ’White Mages, Chemists, Nurses, and Receptionists for the Dragonblades headquarters south of the city center.’ Honestly she didn’t know what a chemist was, but she’d asked around the various apothecaries and pharmacies around Provo while she was out picking up supplies for Yuna, and she’d learned that apparently they existed. They’d sounded useful enough that she’d added them to the flyers.
’Opportunities for advancement under the study of master white mage, Yuna. Starting salary ranges from 500 to 1500 gil per month, job dependent.’
At the bottom, she once again tried to replicate the Dragonblades logo. After twenty of the flyers, her hand was cramping and it looked a little more like an angry puppy with a few sticks. That’s probably what Caius saw Vordun as rather than the deadly monster he actually was. She decided to keep it rather than rewrite the whole flyer. She was too tired to do any better.
The next day, she’d set off early with a small table, a chair, a table cloth, and a bottle of paint. She set up the table right at the side of Help Wanted Avenue, and she spread the table cloth neatly over it. Then she painted across the front of it as neatly as she could, ’White Mages, Chemists, Nurses, Receptionists Wanted.’ She ran out of room at the end making the whole thing a little off center, but she thought it got the point across. Then she spread out the flyers on the table and sat in the chair behind it, waiting.
The sun was rising at this point, dull and smudged behind a suspicious haze of cloud cover. It was a chilly sort of morning though nothing compared to the winter which had ended only a few weeks before. Celes was fine in her usual yellow jacket and long pants or mostly fine, at least. It smelled a little like rain.
It had well better not. If it did rain, she might just flip the table and give up on the whole affair.
But the sky was clear for the time being, and so she sat there trying her best to keep a pleasant expression as the city woke from sleep and started about its business. ’Please,’ she couldn’t help but beg. ’Please someone take the bait. I want so badly to do something that isn’t working at that clinic.’
For now, she could only wait and see.
[attr=class,ooc-notes]
[attr=class,tagline]@open
Lol does anyone want a job or just to ruin Celes' day?
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna looked properly horrified at Caius’ misadventures. That was good. Celes was glad she didn’t have to explain exactly why the whole situation was far too complicated for words. Yuna had chosen to politely sit on the ground, kneeling there with some amount of practice with her night dress smoothly folded over. The pose carried both innocence and practice, youth and patience. Yuna was a little younger than her though not by much. She felt mature beyond her years. So did Celes, probably, when she thought about it.
”She’s not related to me. Or at least I don’t think so. I was a war orphan. We could be sisters for all I know, but I highly doubt it.” For one, it would be coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence if they were. For another, Celes couldn’t imagine how one sister would be taken by the empire for their little science experiments while another somehow ended up on another continent as an opera diva.
”Her name is Maria. I once stood in for her at an opera house when we were in need of an airship and she was being stalked by a man who planned to abduct her and force her into marriage. It’s a long story.”
A long story that she would probably have to write out for Caius now so that he knew exactly what he was dealing with. She hated telling that story. It wasn’t exactly her proudest moment.
But something in her mutterings must have struck Yuna’s suspicions because now she was asking exactly why she’d left Torensten in the first place. Celes blinked at her in surprise, stumbling over her words before she finally found them. ”O-oh. That. I had a whole speech prepared when I arrived, but you know. I suppose I got a bit distracted.”
She’d practiced the speech too, the whole way to the city on the back of her chocobo once she was finished with that whole misadventure with Alex. But now it was gone – dispersed by the sight of a dying man and a waiting room full of magical maladies. It was only natural for Yuna to question her sudden arrival – once they had a moment to themselves at least.
And here Celes was, speechless and scrambling for a proper explanation. She cleared her throat and hoped that it would straighten her thoughts a little. ”I, well, I suppose I felt a bit…stifled there. And underappreciated. I know it wasn’t Caius’ fault that he was always the one having adventures and making a name for himself, but when one of us was being heralded as a hero and one of us couldn’t be recognized on the street…”
She’d had just as important a job as Caius. She’d trained the recruits, after all, something in which she had years of experience and was quite good at if she could say so herself. And her superior military education had given her an edge on things like assigning the mercenary work, keeping track of their earnings, and that sort of thing. But after a time, she began to feel like a glorified secretary. It wasn’t the most dignified of feelings.
”I’m sure he’s doing fine,” she said more to herself than Yuna. ”He’s hired a woman to take care of my desk work, and now he’s the one training recruits. I bet he’s going too easy on them. Oh well.” It wasn’t her problem anymore. She’d made sure of that. Still, it ate at the back of her mind a little. What if Caius went too easy on them? What if he assigned them work that they weren’t ready for? What if they died in the process? Celes knew all too well that it was her job as a general to not release a soldier to combat until he was ready or the blood would be on her hands. Would Caius feel the same?
Damn it all.
”Though if I’m being honest, I’d thought about doing this for some time. I don’t like to stay in one place for too long. It feels…dangerous after everything I’ve seen, and more than that. Well…” She hesitated. Was she really about to tell Yuna this? She supposed she deserved the truth for taking her so unquestioningly into her home. ”Caius…He’s…Well, he’s made it quite clear that he’s in love with me.”
There it was. Out in the open. Celes felt heat rise to her cheeks. She didn’t look at Yuna as she added, ”Now I’ve put him quite in his place. It took some time, but I think it finally got through his thick skull that I’m not interested, but it did make working there awkward to say the least.”
After their initial falling out, Caius had finally stopped making little hints and slips of the tongue where he called her beautiful or something equally stupid. But oh! Those were just mistakes, weren’t they? He hadn’t actually meant it when he said such things! He was far too stupid in the way of romance. How could he ever actually mean what he said? Oh silly her, getting all in a twist over nothing!
She felt an old anger rise to the surface, one which she quickly swallowed back where it belonged. The point was that Caius had stopped that kind of behavior. Finally. But it had gone on for so long that it was enough to leave a woman on edge whether Caius truly deserved it or not. It certainly hadn’t helped matters when added to all the other factors at play.
”I needed some time away. That’s all,” she said finally. ”I’m glad I came when I did. Have you been this busy all this time? I want to help if I can. I know you’re doing good work, but it isn’t healthy to run yourself this hard.” She looked at Yuna, a hint of concern in her eyes. ”We really should hire someone to help you. I’m sure there are plenty of white mages looking for work these days.”
[attr=class,bulk] For a moment, Celes hoped beyond hope that she could avoid the overworked healer and her kind concern, but of course that wasn’t the case. The creaking of floorboards came louder, one at a time, and then there came a knock on the door and the cautious calling of her name.
”Yes?” she called back, and Yuna opened the door, stepping into the flickering lamplight. She was in a night dress, hair rumpled from sleep with a glass of water in her hand. So she had woken her, hadn’t she? Celes was about to apologize before Yuna interrupted her with her own tired smile.
”You couldn’t sleep either?” she asked, leaning against the doorframe. ”Would you like some company then?”
”I’m…what?” The apology was already set on her lips, and it was hard to change course. ”Oh. Oh, yes, I wouldn’t mind that.” She felt heat rising to her cheeks again. How often was she going to make a fool of herself in front of the people she respected? An indefinite amount of times, it seemed. One day she’d get used to normal human conversation. Maybe. If she was lucky.
And she was very rarely lucky.
”You can come in and sit down,” she said, waving vaguely around the room before realizing that her room hadn’t come furnished with a chair. It was either the floor or the bed where she was currently sitting. Celes shifted over to make space in case Yuna chose to share it with her, but that would be rather close, wouldn’t it? It would have been better to suggest that they both move somewhere else, but hindsight was 20/20 as they said, and she’d already let the words out of her mouth.
So her bedroom it was, and it seemed that she was having late night company.
”I was just, well, reading Caius’ letter. I hope I didn’t wake you. It was…” She searched for the right words to describe it. Not funny exactly to anyone that wasn’t her. If Yuna had read it on its own, she certainly wouldn’t have thought so anyway. Celes smirked faintly. ”It was ironic.”
She grabbed the outdated letter and set it in her own lap so that Yuna wouldn’t accidentally sit on it. ”It seems he’s met someone from my world. Someone who looks almost startlingly like me. And I think this woman has taken an interest in him.”
It was absolutely ridiculous to say outloud. It was absolutely ridiculous to even think it, but it was what she’d read and it was the impression it had given her, at any rate. Celes sighed. ”Just when I thought I’d escaped all of that mess…”
Post by Celes Chere on Jan 5, 2023 10:52:59 GMT -6
Caius,
I have no idea how it took your letter this long to reach me. I think it might have been trapped in an international post office at the border for a few months, and then we had a snow storm last week that might have delayed it longer. Did you have any idea how cold it can get in Provo? I’ve spent so long in the tropics that I almost forgot what it’s like to see snow. I know it’s almost always snowing in Sonora, but quite frankly, I hate it there as much as they’d hate me being there. It reminds me a little too much of home.
All of that aside, I’m glad you’re doing well. I’m sure that you’ve had months worth of experiences since you last wrote your letter so I’m assuming that you’re still doing well. I haven’t heard anything about the Dragonblades collapsing at any rate. I’m glad that you’ve figured out business without me. Truly.
As for me, I’ve been more busy here than I ever was at the Wyvern’s Rest. I won’t sugarcoat this. Yuna needs help. I walked into her clinic to find her downing ethers trying to save a dying man while six more people waited in the lobby. I’ve hardly had a minute to myself just working as her assistant. I have no idea why she didn’t ask us to send support. Yuna likes to take the world on her shoulders, it seems, and she’s not one to complain about it. She’s also a saint who refuses to charge anyone for more than the basic service. Which makes hiring help more difficult.
But it needs to be done. I’m going to start posting job requests for white mages, nurses, medics, and any other position I can think of. If I get enough interest, I’ll pay them through my own mercenary work. After that, we might need to funnel some of our earnings from the Wyvern’s Rest into Yuna’s clinic. I know we don’t have the finances to fund an entire clinic, but I left notes for just this sort of occasion. If you look at the ledger, I marked a few of our lower performing mercenaries. If their work hasn’t improved, you have my blessing to let them go for the sake of our profits.
It seems cruel, but they were costing us more than they were making. That’s all well and good when our mission statement involves raising a militia for the sake of Torensten’s defense, but if we want to keep going like this then something has to change. Either Yuna needs to start charging enough to pay people to help her or we need to change our priorities to fund her charitable mission. Which do you think is more likely to happen?
Which leads me to my next thought. Torensten has us. It has the king’s army. It has every adventurer within a six mile radius to help if disaster strikes. What does Provo have? Provo has seen its share of problems, but nothing on the scale that we’ve seen down south, and quite honestly, I don’t think they’d be prepared for it. They don’t have a large enough government capable of addressing an evacuation or relief fund. There are adventurers here obviously, but not nearly on the scale of Torensten, and the only mercenary group I’ve seen is our own pale imitation.
Have you heard of the Rising Stones? More importantly, have you met its leader, Alexander Sorel? I was caught up in the countryside on the way to Provo by some ridiculous scheme of his to save some troubled griffins. He has a grudge against the Dragonblades because he claims we’re stealing his business. More importantly, he has a grudge against you personally, and I didn’t get the impression that he was bluffing. Did you really steal his dog? He seemed quite hung up on that.
He also might potentially kill King Hremit and frame you. He was drinking heavily when he said it, but I’d keep an eye out. I’d also keep an eye out for him barging into the Wyvern’s Rest looking for a fight. We took down a behemoth together. He’s no pushover. And he really, really wants his dog back.
I’ll keep watch over his operations on my end. The Rising Stones is only a few blocks away so it shouldn’t be difficult. If against all odds it turns out to be an honorable organization, maybe we could consider partnering with them. I know. I hate the idea too, but Provo needs better defenses, and we’re stretched thin enough as it is. I’ll let you know if I find any signs that Sorel might be scheming something against you. I’ll come by airship even since that seems like a faster way to get a message across than this joke of a postage system.
Finally, there’s the matter of Maria. Are you sure that you wrote that right? Maria? The opera singer? Who looks like me to the letter? If so, I’ve never heard of a greater coincidence in my life.
I’ve told you about the incident with me and the opera house, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone into detail about it. Now seems like as good a time as any to change that.
I was with the Returners at the time, and we found ourselves in desperate need of an airship. It was the only way to reach Vector, the capital of the Geystahlian Empire. Unfortunately, the empire was in possession of nearly every airship in the world except one which was piloted by a madman with a gambling addiction. Said gambler was a recluse, and we had no hope of an audience with him, but fortune turned in our favor when we visited the opera house in Jidoor.
The pilot, as it happened, was obsessed with the opera’s lead singer, Maria. He’d been stalking her for some time, and had even sent letters promising to kidnap her on stage during her performance so that he could force her into marriage. That was when all eyes turned to me. By the mother of all coincidences (except maybe you running into her now), I happened to be a dead-ringer for Maria. This coincidence benefited everyone but me. The opera house could keep their performance schedule without threatening the life of their lead diva. The Returners had an idea on how to get an audience with the airship pilot, and all I had to do was get on stage in front of hundreds of people, sing as though I had any opera training whatsoever, and allow myself to get kidnapped.
A perfect plan, wasn’t it?
I think I only went along with it because if worse came to worst, I’d be more capable of escaping a forced marriage plot than that poor opera singer. The plan went off perfectly except that once I was aboard the airship alone and unarmed, the pilot decided that I was an even more perfect bride than Maria. Knowing that he couldn’t resist a gamble, I made a bet with him. I’d toss a coin. If it landed heads, he’d take us to Vector. If it landed tails, I’d marry him. It was a double-headed coin. He appreciated my tenacity and joined the Returners in full.
We got along fairly well after that. Though I never quite forgot that he had a history of abducting women.
Ask Maria if she worked in Jidoor and if the name Setzer Gabbiani means anything to her. She might have forgotten the whole ordeal with Setzer if she came through with amnesia, but surely she’d remember her time in the opera house if she’s still singing. I really can’t believe she’s here. Of all the people I knew in my time in the Returners, I certainly never would have thought I’d run into Maria the opera singer first, but here we are.
I hope you’re doing well. If you need me, just send the word and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.
Celes
Final Fantasy VI
22
YEARS
Female
Complicated
Heterosexual
429 POSTS
Fin
Use your own eyes and see for yourself whose side I'm on!
[attr=class,bulk] It was at least a few days before Celes was truly able to take time to herself. Looking back, she’d been silly to think of her little trip to Provo as a “vacation.” Truly, all she’d been doing was switching branches of the Dragonblades, and while some part of her was more than a little bitter at the stressful result, the smarter part of her was glad that she did.
Yuna needed help. That was clear from the moment that Celes had stepped through the clinic doors. How she’d managed to run this operation by herself for so long, Celes simply had no idea, but that was what had kept her so busy for those hectic days between her arrival and her first moment of peace. Even with her magic, Celes was no match for Yuna’s healing prowess. Still, life as an assistant white mage was nothing to sneeze at when no other help was coming, and it seemed like yours was the only clinic in the world operating at a cost that would attract the whole of the city at once.
While Celes wasn’t working, Yuna had kindly provided her a room above the clinic and across from her own. The room was comfortable enough, but lacked any real decoration except for a mirror and a potted plant on the dresser that looked like it had missed more than a few days of watering. Still, it suited Celes fine. It was only a guest room, after all, and she had other things to worry about than the surrounding decor.
Like the letter in her hand for instance.
It was from Caius. Of course it was. Celes didn’t know why she’d imagined that they’d keep out of correspondence. The date was stamped sometime after she’d left the city of Torensten, and it seemed like while she’d been off traipsing through the mountains on a crazed mission with Alexander Sorel, Caius had been having an adventure of his own. Of course, that meant that the letter, only recently delivered, was extremely dated by now. Perhaps it had been held at the office due to bad weather? Now that she thought about it, she had no idea how mail delivery worked between the two nations, but that was entirely beside the point.
The point was that while the letter started predictably enough, it quickly took a turn that bordered on the absurd.
”Maria?” Celes stared at the letter. She reread the lines three, four, five times but there was no mistake about it. ’Your lookalike, an apparently famous opera singer, Maria Nightingale.’
”She…that woman…Really?!” Celes stared at it for a moment longer before she burst out laughing. It was a loud laugh somewhere between irony and disbelief. How long had she searched for anyone familiar from her world? How long had she wanted nothing more than to see a familiar face? Apparently if she returned back to Torensten, she’d see a face that was a little too familiar. Whatever strange hand had decided to pluck them all here had chosen the opera singer of Jidoor over the rebels, her friends, who had fought a mad god and somehow come out of it alive.
And from the sounds of it, that opera singer was currently trying to woo Caius. She didn’t know how she should feel about her apparent doppelganger flirting with the man she had kindly rejected in every conceivable way. Well, if that’s what Maria wanted then Celes wished her luck. Caius wouldn’t know romance if it hit him with the full force of a steam train.
The thought got her laughing again. What was her life? What was it, really?
She didn’t realize that she must have been incredibly loud only a room away from her tired coworker until she heard the floorboards in the hallway outside creak, and she abruptly stopped laughing. Oh. Celes bit her tongue and set the letter aside, hoping that she could at least appear composed if Yuna decided to check on whatever madness had overcome her alone in her room. If not…Perhaps she would go out and apologize. Yuna was a saint in Celes’ eyes, and the last thing Celes wanted to do was keep her from sleeping.
And there went another point in favor of her own lack of social tact. Shame rose in her like burning embers, but she tried to bury it as quickly as it had come. It wouldn’t do to get flustered before she’d even started a conversation with her.
The image of Caius with a woman who looked exactly like her, however, would keep her plenty flustered for some time to come. But that was a problem for another time.
