Master Isolde bore the Kirins' assorted criticism with grace, simply bowing her head and accepting their scorn.

"Forgive me, but it has little to do with the presence of a healer. Tis merely that the intent behind the trial is already known by Neve, and it wouldn't be much of a test if one possesses the answer before it even begins. I can say no more on this subject. In the meantime, we will have accomodations prepared for you at the finest traveler's lodging available in the city. I will seek you out on the morrow."

A quick trip to the nearby upscale inn confirmed her words, and the Kirins were left to their own devices until the next day once more...

___

@The Otter @Click This

Some time throughout the day, both Esben and Eliane would find a letter each planted in their rooms, written in standard SEED cipher. When decoded, they would read:

We need to talk. I've a room prepared and sanitized at the merchant's inn three streets south of your lodgings. Meet one hour after sundown, second room from the stairs on the third floor.

-K

When Esben and Elly arrived at the proper time, they would find a room barely of anything but a bed and desk, with one Deputy Director Lambert waiting for them, arms folded.

"Close the door behind you." A snap of her fingers and the glow of materia warded the entrance once that was done, and she stayed still, looking at the two expectantly.

"The two of you weren't supposed to link up." She afforded herself the luxury of a frustrated sigh. "I've had to rearrange no few of our deployments to cover the gap in our network. Now, I want a full report since you left Osprey."

___

@VitaVitaAR @vietmyke @HereComesTheSnow

Goug had asked Galahad, Robin, and Rudolf to accompany him in acquiring supplies, given that they had been the only three remaining at the inn when he'd checked. He had promptly, and very confidently, gotten them supremely lost within the winding, gnarled streets of Brightlam.

One wrong turn into a dark corner had them set upon by a half dozen men in tattered cloaks and theater masks, brandishing thrusting swords of various types.

"Stand and deliver!" The highwayman in lead snarled. When no payment was forthcoming, they attacked. As the fight went on, one detail would be clear to all three: most of the men fought just like Robin did. The same rhythm, the same footwork, the same cut-and-thrust. Much like it had been with Izayoi and the Revenant in the desert, the fact was inescapable.

___

@Raineh Daze @Ithradine

Rumors heard out in the streets had led both of them to the same location.

"Did you hear? That healer, out in the wilds. The one going about saving people from Blight? Soriel, they called her. Someone saw her again, closest to Brightlam she's ever been. And she's got a new hanger-on. Some ginger Mystrel, seems to be a mage of some kind too."

"Eh? I don't know anything past that. You know who might, though? There's an information broker called the Gardener, just off the main market."

Further asking around would lead them to the same location, with the two coming across each other just as they were about to enter the ramshackle hut that had been deemed the Gardener's residence.

Eventually, the two would enter. With the instructions they had received through eavesdropping, bribery, or outright threats, they would make their way through several dilapidated, musty corridors until eventually reaching a trapdoor in a storage room. Upon descending, the world changed before them:

Marble and gold leaf coated the floors and walls, while a bronze sculpture took up the centerpiece of the office. Behind a desk of rich, aged mahogany, a corpulently obese man sat, smoking a pipe.

"Well, well. Two travelers have found little old me. You must have questions. I may have answers. For a reasonable price, of course." A cheshire grin.

@VitaVitaAR@vietmyke

"Friends of yours, Fey?"

Blades crashed, painting the heavy shadows of the narrow alleyway in brief showers of orange as the trio of Kirins (nobody reasonably expecting Goug to fight) squared off with twice their number in soon-to-be unlucky highwaymen. Negotiations had quickly fallen through after it became clear that nobody intended to part with their gil so easily— Rudolf had barely the time to raise a smirk and an eyebrow at the thought of robbing people so heavily armed as they were before he was set upon by a pair of masked ne'er-do-wells.

Silver lining was that they'd prove a fair first outing for his new recruits.

The seconds that followed were a cacophony of steel striking steel, as the heavy, curved Crane's Wings at his hip were set to work on their first sortie, turning aside the straighter, thrusting attacks made by his sudden opponents. His eyes narrowed, taking their measure while he had these opening moments of uncertainty. They darted to and fro between the figures, his companions, the narrow space and sturdy walls they'd walked themselves into. Something itched at the back of his mind, feeling like familiarity.

From the jump, it seemed like they at least had a rudimentary idea of how to maximize their advantages within the space— cramped as this back alley was, he couldn't completely open the Wings up the way they demanded. His new recruits were well-suited to casting oneself almost into a dervish, swinging the body through powerful arcs as one blade played off the momentum of the other, each strike lending some of its torque to the next— fine as a lone fighter, but when minding his comrades in such tight environs, he'd suddenly found himself kind of wishing he had brought along Valon's spear instead—

That, at least, would allow him to more than contend with his opponents, who had far less concern for the likelihood of accidentally striking an ally. Theirs were the classical form of cut-and-thrust, in keeping with the highwayman look, all in-and-out movement punctuated by needling tempo. He was penned in by the space, and forced to make his reads on the defensive— they would already be out of the way by the time one of his cuts would pass through where they'd been. Trapped at the edge of their range and with no way in, he most out of the three present would be suspect to a death by a thousand cuts once they wore him down. In basic terms, this was what he intuited to be their gambit.

What they had failed to account for was to be a fatal gap in the theory. One they had no reason to know of, in fairness, but was simultaneously a load-bearing element of the whole idea that had been swiped from beneath them, one that made him probably the worst to encounter, rather than best. He'd figured out what it was about the feeling of each exhange that had been bugging him.

He watched the nearby man step in deep. The rhythm, the form, the openings...

He had seen this before.

A few times with his eyes from afar, but more importantly, once over the span of a moonlit bout behind his swords. The other half of that ill-fated eve was barely two steps to his right. The space was very different, true, he didn't have a whole courtyard to open up and apply pressure through—

As the masked mystrel man tried to retract his spada, he found it off-course and caught between the Crane Wings as they crossed over its length, catching his edge on the "featherlike" quillons on the spines. Behind the thin strip of black cloth, his eyes would go wide for the moment the pressure was relieved after a slight tug forward.

"Either way, if they're holding us up I'm playing rough." a cold voice intoned from directly in front, as a blur swelled through the gloom. Still trying to catch himself, the next instant saw the world explode into a field of white pain as Rudolf's pommel smashed into the bridge of his nose. Blinded, he reared back only to find a boot planting itself into his stomach, sending him crashing into another.

—but with that revelation in hand, these guys were now an open book. Forget responding in time— by the end of sparring the better version, he was confident he knew how to break rhythm and regain initiative at a moment's notice. He could attack stance, wedge his cuts in between theirs, or leverage physicality in tight, just as he had here.

The time to sit and watch on the back foot was over. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, it was time to smash through their game the way he had the best of this archetype. Having bought himself a moment's space, the Sagramori Auxilia decided it was his turn to use the terrain to his advantage.

As though channeling the spirit of the mighty sabertooth whose fang he had pried out four years ago, the young man surged forward and pounced, using the nearby wall as a springboard to launch himself clear over the heads of the highwaymen—

"Heads up, nimrod."

—Only to descend upon their rearmost like a falling buzzsaw, twisting at the hips and trunk into a whirling set of hews as his boot planted upon the wall opposite and launched Wings and Warrior both towards the earth. Now behind their lines, suddenly it was the three Kirins bunching up and entrapping the would-be robbers.

He had no intention of letting up his assault.

Right… well, she couldn't think of much that she had to offer, but this man was the best lead that she had, so… she would just have to see what the cost was and if she could manage it. Or Arton, if he was interested in the answer? Maybe; the swordsman had to have come along for some reason. Maybe he was just super invested in their finding another healer.

And if she didn't have whatever this fatty was asking for, then she would just have to… go and get it. Maybe even from him, if it was generic enough; that way if it was too extortionate, nobody would really suffer. This one could stand to suffer a bit more, even, he might be able to fit onto his chair properly then.

"I w-want to know w-w-where I can find Soriel." Did that sound confident? She hoped it sounded confident, the obvious aside. And she was even looking in the right direction! Mostly. This was much easier than a casual conversation.

---

Esben looked down at the note that had been left in his quarters with a raised eyebrow. Sure enough, when he and Éliane had been hunting down baking supplies in Costa del Sol, he thought he'd seen a familiar face trailing behind them, whenever he'd seen more than just flowing blonde hair poking out from under a dark hood. An obvious standout among most of Drana Asnaeu's darker-complexioned people, and given that she wanted to meet with them, it explained why she hadn't gone to any great lengths to really keep herself from his view.

'One hour after sundown' left him with plenty of time to prepare for whatever it was she'd want to discuss—and given that he had yet to find a safe drop to get his reports back, it suited him just as well.

---

Some hours later, after time spent wandering the city for the short time he had to do so, Esben was unsurprised to find Éliane coming up to the inn just ahead of him. He followed along silently, into the room that they'd been directed to enter, dutifully shutting and locking the door behind himself—

Only to immediately be accosted as soon as Kayliss was sure the door was warded. He nonchalantly walked to the bed, sitting down on it and setting his bag next to him as he began to look through it, though not without a small greeting for Kayliss: "It's nice to see you too, mom!"

Given the nature of their respective deployments, it was obvious that her words were directed more towards him than towards the flamboyant guardswoman in the room with them; he also knew that letting her have her way from the outset would mean he'd have no chance to get any words into the conversation. Better, then, to steer it away for a moment, for all that he might be risking the ire of one of the heads of Skael's intelligence agency. "We've been telling you for years that you need to take a vacation, and you're still working even out here? Shameful."

He handed over his most recent written reports, as well as all the documents gained from Mizutani Tane's mansion. "You've at least been sleeping, yes?"

---

Arton stood behind Miina as she initiated negotiations with the plump man, looming over the proceedings like her personal guard. His features were largely indistinct under the coverage of his plate armor. Everywhere he turned to pointed in the same direction Miina's own investigations pointed. An unorthodox cleric by the name of Soriel that seemed somewhat opposed to the current grove-masters on matters of principle. Rumor had it that she regularly marched through the area of the country most affected by the Blight and would burn down what could not be saved. It was hard to imagine that Miina's brother had ended up with her of all people.

He stepped forward after Miina had spoken. His voice had grown hoarse, as if he was afflicted by a sore throat. "Soriel's a great healer, right? Besides location, what else can you provide?" Arton spoke as few words as he could. The soreness in his throat had deepened his voice which reverberated in the enclosed metal helmet he wore. It had been his own initiative to operate as Miina's personal bodyguard. He only hoped she would forgive him for leaving much of the future talking in her hands.

@Raineh Daze @Ithradine

A chortle came from the man for whom fat was a gross understatement of a descriptor.

"Soriel, Soriel, Soriel. Everyone's talking about her these days, it'd seem. Makes sense, what with all of the Blight nonsense going on. Good for business in the short term. In the long term? Well, I don't much fancy dying should it reach here, regardless of what our illustrious Grovemasters say." The Gardner took a puff of his pipe, blowing smoke out in lazy rings.

"I can provide many things, oh tall, dented, and dinged. Exact location would be a stretch, even for a king's ransom. That woman comes and goes like the wind, with only rumor left in her wake. But I could point you in the right direction. For a...more than reasonable sum, of course." His teeth flashed in a grin. Silver, every last one of them.

"Three hundred thousand gil. Convince me you're not out to kill her, and I might lower it." An absurd price. Not exactly spending change, even for high nobility. One could buy a small plot of land with that high of a sum.

Was… was that even a real amount of money? How could you even go about carrying it? She had only carried a tiny fraction of that before and it had been noticeable, and they obviously hadn't come in here carrying sacks and sacks of gil, so how could you even think that anybody might possibly have that much to spend? Maybe there was some special coin that only rich people had, but that didn't seem useful if you couldn't get change…

Maybe it would be quicker to jump to threatening him? Except then he'd have no reason to give the right answer and it would be trouble to come back after they were sent on a wild goose chase. So… theft was out because it would be impractical, violence was a last resort…

She could be honest, but honesty to someone like this was just going to get her swindled worse for being desperate. She needed something that convinced him and would hopefully lower the price. But they were talking about a healer, so… maybe that would do it. White magic, white magic… a light was pretty simple, she could just light her hand up like this and—

"I w-w-want to learn from her," Miina stated, lifting her hand up as evidence, "I know s-some healing, b-but practice can only t-t-take you so far."

At least, if she seemed suspicious or evasive, it wasn't any more than normal.

---

"Goug. We're lost, aren't we?"

Galahad barely had time to say anything before they had made one too many wrong turns and were now being faced down by a group of bandits. Twice their number, though perhaps only half of their arms and armor, the Kirins nonetheless found themselves waylaid by this group- demanding their- something. Not that Galahad would've given them anything, but the bandits didn't even wait for a response before they begun their attack- it seemed these bandits were content to just loot their corpses instead of attempting any sort of extortion. A vein on Galahad's forehead pulsed, though unseen due to the helmet that covered his face.

"Is this really what you want to do?" Galahad asked them plainly, with a faint shrug as he unslung his pack and dropped it onto the cart, removing his halberd from its place on his shoulder. Rudolf was already getting stuck into the fight. On another day, Galahad might've been concerned with Rudi's apparent tonal shift, but honestly, Galahad's frustrations from the past few days had finally gotten the better of him- a part of him actually looked forward to the fight. He needed to blow off some steam, and these bandits provided the perfect excuse. "Fine then. Your funeral."

With Rudolf having gotten behind them, that opened up the narrow alleyway at least a little bit for Galahad and Robin- though Galahad still wouldn't be able to make the wide sweeps he was used to with his halberd. To make matters worse, these bandits, while still just highwaymen, were no slouches- their footwork was fast and precise, their blades quick and nimble, an almost familiar feeling. They fought like professionals, they fought like Robin. Had they come across some poor band of travelers, or common guards, they'd likely make quick work of them. But unfortunately for them, the Kirins were no common sellswords. They were surrounded in a narrow pass, and the Dragoon had the only polearm around.

Galahad immediately put the reach of his weapon to good use, holding it at the end, and stabbing forward at the front of the group. Rapid, quick stabs and lunges with his massive halberd's spearpoint, and narrow swipes with the axe blade. Its weight alone was enough that these flimsy blades would've had difficulty guarding against it. The intent was simple- the bandits would either stand there and be stabbed, or be pushed backward into the cutting wheel that was Rudolf. Galahad shifted to the side, to allow Robin the ability to slip in where needed, but instead of doing his usual thing of jumping around the field, like a dragoon, Galahad seemed more than happy to stand where he was and tear into their lines.

Perhaps a bit desperate, one of the ruffians attempted to slink in past Galahad's reach, narrowly deflecting a stab as he tried to close the distance and run Galahad through with his blade. A quick twist and twirl of Galahad's polearm was enough to knock the man off balance, enough for Galahad to step forward and twist, using a pushing kick to send the bandit flying into the wall. A moment later, the heavy axe of the halberd crashed into the wall, crushing and cleaving body and stonework alike.

"Lets wrap this up quickly." Galahad growled, the blade of his axe rasping against stone as he yanked it out of the wall.

---It didn't make any sense.

These were highwaymen. Robbers.

Certainly they weren't as elegant. Certainly they weren't as lethal. Robin, who had spent so much of her life practicing her skills, honing both her theatrics and her talent for defeating enemies to the sharpest point she could manage, was able to recognize as such at the sight of a single swing, as her blade met the blade of one of the bandits with the scraping sound of metal against metal.

They weren't honed to the same point that she was, for one reason or another.

But she recognized every motion, every block, every thrust and slash.

This was the very same style she had been trained it. Her first reaction, when she drew her blade and immediately parried one of their opening strikes in the very same motion, had been disbelief. Or perhaps that it may have been a mere coincidence. There was no way that these highwaymen had learned the very same style of swordplay as she had.

And yet---

Undeniable truth had come to stare the girl directly in the face.

No matter how much less they focused on theatrics, these men fought with the same method as she did.

That didn't make any sense.

She'd learned from the old man. He'd taught her. She'd never seen him teach anyone else. And she certainly had never seen him teach the sort of people who would rob from others.

He wouldn't. Of course he wouldn't.

So who could these men have possibly learned this from?

The sound of blade on blade rang out once again. This time, Robin caught her opponent's blade and guided it upwards, striking again as she brought her weapon low and putting it through the man's sword-arm.

These men robbed from the weak on threat of death.

But she had to know. She had to know where they learned to fight.

In the very moment she rammed her elbow into the man's face and sent him to the ground, clutching his injured arm and knocked senseless, she was caught by the attack of another of their number, attempting to take her while she was preoccupied.

---Even if you fight just like me, I'm still better!

Steel rang out through the alley as she forced the attacker's blade aside, and this time swiftly pierced his throat with a thrust. While he'd hoped that his angle and the opportunity he'd seen would take her off guard, instead she'd responded quickly as to turn the situation around on him.

---

Ultimately, Éliane was a bit conflicted to see Kayliss, especially here in Costa del Sol as a surprise. On one hand, it was partially her influence that had gotten Éliane out of the Garden and onto the track that had gotten her into the prestigious Household Guards and she tended to get along with the deputy director in that capacity. On the other hand, she had been annoyingly ripped right back and temporarily seconded to being back under the Garden—in other words, directly under the command of Kayliss, however temporary.

There was a reason she had left SEED, after all.

She sat right on the bed next to Esben and made herself comfortable. Glancing between the older woman and Esben as he made his greeting, she looked back at Kayliss. “It’s been a while, mom!” Stone faced as her delivery was, Éliane was clearly amused.

“At the very least, you should be having more coffee if you aren’t relaxing. The beans I picked up in Edren are fantastic.” She rummaged through her own bag, producing her ever-present thermos of coffee and holding it out. “Would you like some?”

It was obvious that most this arrangement was for Esben and his reports, but being a diplomatic envoy of sorts, as hawkish as she tended to be, Éliane had been writing her own reports that were generally for the Overseer’s eyes. She produced them now from her bag.

“No, we weren’t, but I was also supposed to be reporting directly to Overseer Baramoux,” she countered. She much enjoyed the freedom of that assignment and was still somewhat annoyed by the change, even if it mattered little in reality. “These reports are supposed to be for him, so I must protest.”

@The Otter @Click This

"Neither of you have nearly enough parental issues in your profiles to get away with that." Kayliss groused, taking the reports she was given and starting to read through them. The thermos of coffee was taken without a word and drank through in record time. After several minutes of reading, the veteran SEED set the reports down and tucked them away.

"Well," She began, taking a moment to massage her temples. "No one can say you haven't been busy. Dame-Commander, and congratulations on the promotion, I'll make sure yours makes it to the Overseer."

Kayliss sat in room's only chair, one leg crossed over the other.

"You two do realize, by the way, that this information is more than enough to net you King Leonhart's ten million gil? Food for thought. In any case, you've done well. Ordinarily, this is where I'd call for at least Mathiassen to return to Skael with me for redeployment. Though something tells me you two would protest that at this point."

She pulled an antique-looking timepiece out of her tunic, taking a moment to set it.

"Five minutes. Convince me."

___

@VitaVitaAR @vietmyke @HereComesTheSnow

"Gah!" The highwaymen's attempt at robbery failed to pan out, the three remaining of the group that hadn't been slain looking at each other helplessly for a moment before unaninmously deciding to throw down their weapons.

"Enough, enough! We lay down our arms!" Cut-and-thrust swords clattered to the stones, the masked men putting their hands up, palms open. "Himstus be damned, you people fight like demons!"

"That's a Dragoon, you dolt! How in the hells did we even run into one out here?! I thought we left all that shite behind with Edren!"

"Forget him, why's the boy in the stupid uniform fight like a godsdamn copy of the Cap'n?"

Somehow, the goons managed to forget they were being held at sword and spearpoint as they started to bicker among themselves, though not without inadvertently revealing some choice information...

___



Izayoi sat on the patio of a local bistro with Ciradyl, enjoying dinner. Nothing else happened.