Lost Causes // [Fayt]

[Nel Zelpher]

This made two leaders she had lost (Or at least, seemingly lost) to causes far beyond her control. First was her queen and possibly the entire universe she had lived in in the still-returning memories of her travels with Fayt, and now she held no hope that Laguna Loire had survived either. The only reason she had was because the President of Esthar had sent her to scout out the battle and see what was going on. The Celsius just happened to be out of attack range when the monster appeared, and her own sense of shock was what had kept her away for that long. Now she was among the ashes, looking for anyone who might have survived. Nel hadn't managed to find any, and after roughly an hour of searching, she found a wall to lean on and slid down to the ground, disheartened and confused. She could remember a few times when she had been without orders, without a superior. A few moments in her childhood that stood out... but they provided no help or comfort.

She had been a soldier for almost all of her life, and now, she had no leader to claim. She suspected that Cocoon and Archades would not have her, and she had no desire to scout out the other settlements that Laguna had been talking about. For the first time in almost twenty years, Nel Zelpher, Crimson Blade of Aquaria, had no idea what to do, and no force to drive her actions. She wasn't going to cry for the city; enough tears had already been shed by other people. She couldn't find and kill the attacker; he was likely beyond her ability to fight in the smallest way. She let out a loud sigh and hung her head, green eyes closing. "... What now? We can't fight gods... Has Apris forsaken us...?" Nel asked herself quietly, her sharp ears picking up the sound of footsteps. Normally she would have been on her feet with a hand on the hilt of her knife... but she had lost any motivation to do so. "Who is it? Survivors, or monsters here to finish the job?" She called out, gazing in the direction she heard the noise, sounding to have come from a distance around the corner of a ruined building. If it was a survivor, her Runology could help them most likely. If it was a monster, then that would likely be her end unless there was some bit of her still willing to fight for a lost cause.

[Fayt Leingod]

Fayt exhaled.

It felt like he'd been breathing through a closed windpipe the entire time he'd been walking through the ruins and wreckage of Esthar. There were no signs of anyone, dead or alive, and this was probably the most foreboding part.

Laguna. He thought. You were a good ruler. You didn't deserve for this to happen; none of your people did.

He wasn't a religious type, but he sent out a prayer to whatever deity might be watching anyway. The creature that did this was still out there, but right now, he didn't care about that.

He was looking for Nel. She was sturdier than most, but nobody he had seen had survived this... Fayt hoped against hope that she was still alive and well, but the odds seemed to be stacked against them. Not even a trace of a body had been seen to him, not that other scavengers, animals or otherwise, hadn't been looking.

"Hey, Nel," he said out loud. "Remember when we kicked Shelby's ass? You survived that - you better have survived this. I know you did."

Pleas on deaf ears, if any were even nearby. A crow peered at him funnily, black eyes glistening as it hopped to and fro on a multi-leveled chunk of rubble. He looked at it and then away, approaching a building that remained standing even through the destruction.

He passed the corner of it, and caught a voice. "Who is it?" it asked - "Survivors, or monsters here to finish the job?"

"Nel," he breathed, coming across the raspberry-haired woman leaning brokenly against a destroyed wall, collapsed to her own lack of energy. "Are you hurt?" he said immediately, dropping into a squat next to her without preamble.

[Nel Zelpher]

Nel was a bit surprised and, admittedly, a bit perturbed by who came around the corner. It was a relief, no matter how small, but at the same time it put her a bit on edge. If memory served, he and Albel were fugitives under the crime of assassinating the queen of Alexandria, something she had a keen feeling that Albel would have set up just by nature of who he was. That meant that the person who had been trying to destroy her home and way of life for years was nearby, in addition to a friend. "That depends on how you're asking the question. I wasn't in the city when it was hit, if that's what you're after," She answered curtly, perhaps a bit overly so. She didn't like the idea of Albel being nearby, regardless of if he was on her side or not (Which she doubted).

"I've been following orders for almost as long as I remember. Now Aquaria and Esthar are gone, one right after the other," Nel explained, shaking her head and shifting her gaze back to the cracked and dirty former street. She had walked down this street not days before admiring the city. Now it could almost be mistaken for gravel. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I don't hold any hopes that Archades and Cocoon are interested in employing me, I assume the other countries are similarly inclined as well. Trying to go after that monster isn't going to end in anything but more deaths..." she trailed off, more or less glaring to the side Fayt wasn't on. She hated herself for being so weak... but she couldn't help it at this point. All her strength would do nothing but get her killed, and no one existed now to tell her what to do instead to tackle the problem, her mind still reeling from the day's events...

[Fayt Leingod]

Silently, the bluenette reached down and picked up a squarish chunk of synthesized blue alloy, turning it over in his hands and examining the scorch marks marring its semi-reflective surface. They built it to defend themselves... but nothing could defend them from this.

The redhead beside him caught his attention by speaking - her sharp 'question' nearly eliciting a mildly indignant response from him, but leaving him unable to speak as she finished, answering his inquiry. Left open-mouthed for a moment, Fayt could only then shake his head. I shouldn't get on her for being like that. I wasn't the one most connected to Esthar.

Nel continued speaking, and he looked up from where his gaze had dropped (to his shoes - again), really taking in just how shaken she looked and must have felt. She trailed off, and Fayt...

well, if Sophia had said something similar, he would have been overcome with the urge to just hug her and tell her everything would be alright. He figured, though, that Nel wasn't the hugging or reassuring type, so all he could think to do was reach out and give her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

"Yeah, you're right. I doubt Archades and Cocoon want anything to do with a good soldier like you right now."

Fayt looked away too, away from Nel and out over the desolate field of ruin. Where the neutral Esthar used to be. Slowly he stood, feeling that his knees were starting to lock, and crossed his arms.

"You could always... you know, come with -" and there was a conspicuously empty space where the Earthling decided not to tack on the word us, figuring that bringing up Albel at a time like this was a very, very bad idea. "No orders to follow, but a place to belong."

The bluenette shifted. "I bet if Clair saw you right now, she'd be pouting," he said, trying to inject at least a little bit of humor into the sort-of conversation, but quickly abandoned that when he remembered where they were and just which cans - yes, plural, cans - of worms that comment would open up. So he backpedaled, and heaved a bit of a sigh, knowing that the Aquarian thief-mage was about as hard to reassure as a rock.

"I know you, Nel. I know you're too strong to give up now."

[Nel Zelpher]

"This is a serious situation Fayt. That monster destroyed Esthar in seconds. Even you couldn't have done that in one shot and managed to get away. Even if I did keep going, there are four more just like him, probably more powerful. You think I wouldn't try if I thought there was any kind of chance? Throwing away my life now isn't any different than waiting for them to destroy everything," Nel snapped back, not looking at Fayt still. She knew, somewhere under her emotions in that part of her that was always collected, that he wasn't to blame. He was naive. He always had been, ever since she had helped him escape Airyglyph. Now... now really wasn't the time for him to joke. He didn't really understand. He had loved ones who had died, she was sure... but her? Nel had made it her life to take the defense of her entire nation upon herself. It was as if her entire reason for existing had been destroyed completely.

She was well aware that Albel was traveling with Fayt, even if he had managed to keep from saying it out loud for the moment. one, sentence flow, her own knowledge of what was happening in the world when Fayt and Albel had disappeared... it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were traveling together. "We aren't the same. I've spent my life protecting the people of the land I lived in. I was able to keep going before because there was still some hope that things could be put back the way they were. After this... there isn't any hope. After seeing what happened here, I don't have any doubt that Aquaria is dead. Two entire nations that I tried to protect have been completely destroyed. What reason do I have to keep going? You have that... thing... in your heart, keeping you going. What purpose do I serve now?" She asked, glaring at Fayt for just a second before averting her gaze again. Her question had been more rhetorical, however, and she didn't suspect that Fayt had the answer even if she had asked seriously....

[Fayt Leingod]

A serious situation? Like I don't know that!

It was very, very much a conscious effort to keep his teeth gritted together, locking away even the hint of a retaliatory lashing out to just bounce off his teeth and back down his throat, to rejoin the swirling mass of ever-creeping despair - desperation at the hopelessness of their situation, associated negativity, and the whole nine yards.

He didn't notice the subtle tightening of his fists, or the creeping chill up his forearms that usually accompanied symbology, until thankfully Faire Virer spoke up from the back of his head, loud and extremely stern. Calm yourself.

So with a blink, the bluenette reclaimed himself without being aware of ever having lost himself - but the evidence was there, pins and needles lancing up his arms and the first hints of a soon-to-be pulsing headache.

I just- Fayt's throat felt as if it would close. It occurred to him then just how near he had come to lashing out in anger, in rage, at the world - at Nel, the poor woman who had every right in the vast universe to despair, having lost everything. Everything. And while yes, he may have once suffered just as much as she did now, did that give him any right to throw a petulant temper tantrum at the utter injustice of it all? And to think, he had been about to protest that he wasn't a child; that he ought not be treated like one.

His right hand made it up to his forehead, where that headache had amped up its output by a few notches, and with a heavy sigh and shuffle of his feet, the teenaged Earthling released all of the fight and tension in a single breath and collapsed back-first against the wall Nel leaned on, himself upright but using it for support.

"We aren't the same."

Nel continued to speak, and it seemed to him that she was partly ranting at the air, lamenting the dismal prospects of their lives. Albeit in a gentler voice than she had earlier snapped to him in, and - he cringed, already not wanting to go there.

The raspberry-haired woman finished her statements with a question, seeming rhetorical in nature, but nevertheless Fayt shook his head... not in disagreement, at least not with her, but with weariness. "We brought Luther to justice for what he did to Earth," I think, he added silently, "and there's nothing I can do but believe we can avenge this on whoever's responsible for all of it." The 'this' was coordinated with a subtle inclination of his head, indicating Esthar and beyond. "What keeps me going doesn't have anything to do with my dad or what he was responsible for. I keep going to protect the people I care about from these monsters - and everything I've lost, every Dion and Ameena I couldn't save, only makes me want to fight all the harder."

His eyes drew closed, as if to express grief for both Aquaria and Esthar. "The only thing we can do now is to keep going in hopes for a future that's a little brighter for the people we care about. Right now with these things on the loose, none of us can afford to do anything but turn every loss into a strength, a reason to keep fighting. And eventually, prevail. It's one cause that'll never be lost, and one I'll stick to until the end."