loligiary | FFXIV Misc. Posts

Hythlodeus liked his job. Mostly. Honestly. He liked seeing people's creativity, their passions, even their silliest and stupidest ideas were charming in their own way.

But it had been nearly nothing but sharks for about a week straight and Hyth was starting to get very tired of sharks.

"This one doesn't even have a way of excreting, it's just a mouth on each end," he lamented, shoving the latest concept submission over to its designated pile. "I wish people would have a little more creativity in their designs."

It had gotten to the point that between meetings or concept reviews he'd started doodling notions of his own in the corners of spare documents. Strange creations, full of spiralling tendrils and bioluminescent fronds. Things he would never have the strength to make on his own, but...that was why you had powerful friends.

Powerful friends who would be home from their extended business trip this evening, as it happened.

If you had asked Gaius what he had been thinking when he came into this agreement with Valdeaulin, he would admit that he was likely concussed and not in his right mind. He still accepted the agreement, as he was a man of his word, and that means that when it came time Valdeaulin could take his life if he still deemed it necessary for the justice he needed to exact for Eorzea. It was, in Gaius' mind, only fair. After all, the strong rule the weak, and Valdeaulin had found him when he was weak and taken his due as the stronger party.

However, this agreement apparently did not preclude other punishments. One of them had briefly presented itself in the Azure Dragoon - a man Gaius could share something like honest camaraderie with -- seeing as Ishgard and Garlemald has never managed to be in true, direct conflict. That's why, in his spite, Valdeaulin has suggested to Estinien that they are obviously up to something; how else could he view Gaius favorably, if he wasn't putting the lance to the fallen legatus?

Gaius had not been lancing anything, or getting lanced, or any of the sort. Instead, he was just sitting there with a sheaf of notes and some Ala Mhigan tea, trying not to think about anything except the liberation of Garlemald from Ascian machinations. No more, and no less.

When Nero left after the Omega incident, it had taken everytthing Cid had (including several long talks with Biggs and Wedge) not to chase him down. The more he tried to hold tight to Nero, the more he'd struggle. That was in the man's nature, he was like a damn housecoeurl that way.

So he waited, and fretted, and did what he did whenever something kept him awake at nights: he worked. The concept seemed vaguely obscene, based on several civilian-use machina he'd heard about but never personally purchased, and Cid comforted himself with the notion that if Nero returned and turned him down for good at least he'd be able to put it to personal use afterwards.

Preparing the device did put him in mind of some of the more ecletic reading he'd done as a youth. He'd adored the boys' adventure novels with their young, stalwart Garlean lads facing off against savage hordes and corrupt engineers. Bigoted as all get out, obviously, and just as much a part of the propaganda machine of Garlemald as their daily news reports on the radio but it didn't make them not fun.

Cid had often found himself coming back over and over to the scenes of the viewpoint Strapping Lad, or perhaps a Gasping Maiden, chained to a worktable as a cackling mad scientist went over them with clinical precision, examining and touching them as if they were no more than just another experimental subject. The idea of being that subject had thrilled him, just a little - or of being the one inflicting such cold inspections upon a partner.

And he had to admit, Nero did make an excellent mad scientist.

Unsundered Perversions

Gaius and Estinien: An education