The Future History of Doooooooooooom

The history of the future, as viewed from the perspective of the  Space Family Gray

1968: Kenichi Suzuki born in Hakodate, Japan.  He grows to adulthood in Hokkaido, and is captain of his High School Kendo team, leading the team to victory in the All Japan Kendo student championships.

1987: Though accepted to prestigious universities in Japan, including Tokyo University, Kenichi elects to study optics at the University of Arizona, which he selects for the University’s reputation among space travel enthusiasts, as well as repeated viewings of movies filmed at Old Tucson studios.  In Tucson, he meets Suzann Beckenbach, a veteran of the US Navy attending the U of A on the GI Bill.  After an initially rocky courtship, the two marry, and Suzuki remains in Arizona.

1994: Rihoko Suzuki born at Tucson Medical Center.  From the age of four until the age of thirteen, she spends summers with her grandparents in Hakodate.  During high school, she learns historical European style fencing from her involvement with the Society for Creative Anachronism, a historical reenactment group.

1998: Jane Gray born in Bernardsville, New Jersey.  Growing up, she spends most of her leisure time with the family’s horses.  She begins to fall ill in high school, and is diagnosed with Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).  Despite her illness, Jane graduates high school, though she defers her college plans while she struggles with the condition.

2012: Rihoko Suzuki attends Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, where she falls in love for the first time -- with a woman from Korea.  Unlike her parents situation, neither nation recognizes same-gender marriage, and at the end of Ji Hun’s year at NAU, the two are forced to part.

2017: Rihoko secures a reserve commission in the United States Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer, and begins active duty service aboard USS New York (LPD-21).

2020s: As expert systems begin taking over more customer-service tasks, unemployment skyrockets.  The Upheavals begin as disenfranchised poor increasingly feel they have nothing to lose from throwing off civil compacts.  Revolutions, bread riots, wars and rumors of war spread.

Jane Gray, in a period of remission, attends Vanderbilt University while debating between pre-law and pre-med.  She does not complete her studies, but does meet Eric, her first husband.  The marriage lasts three years before Eric finds the demands of her illness too great, and leaves.

Rihoko continues her career as a Naval officer.

2030s: Japan opens their space elevator to public traffic. The downport is located on Aranuka atoll, an island leased from Kiribati. Japanese Empress Aiko becomes the first sovereign to visit space. Within the decade, Ravenstone Investment Group (IG) has built a SeaStead in the American territorial waters south of Baker Island to serve as the downport of a second elevator.  Lunar stations are opened by the United States (Armstrong Station) and Russia (Lunagrad), as well as by commercial interests (Heinleinburg and Shin-Shimizu).

A nuclear weapon is detonated in Seoul.  Although it is not clear how the weapon arrived in the city, blame is immediately placed on North Korea, and a retaliatory strike is launched against Pyongyang.  To the surprise of the world, China joins the war on the United Nations side, and the conflict lasts less than a year.  Following the war, reconstruction efforts begin on a single, reunified Korea.

Suzann Suzuki dies in a bicycling accident in a national park.

A better therapy for SLE is developed, and Jane suffers no more flare-ups.  She meets and marries Conner, her second husband.  He, however, becomes abusive, and the two divorce less than a year later, after which Jane resumes her interrupted studies and eventually graduates from Harvard medical school.

Rihoko retires from the United States Navy as a Commander.

2039: The Great Chiba Earthquake.  On March 24, an earthquake of magnitude 9.4 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter under the city of Chiba, shakes the Kanto region.  A week later, on 1 April, Mount Fuji erupts.  This is widely seen as the worst April Fools prank ever. Before the disasters, forty-two million people live in the Kanto region.  After the disasters, there are twenty-five million refugees.

2040s: Japanese diaspora begins. The first large scale orbital colony is built by Ravenstone I.G. using material from Earth-crossing asteroids. It turns out that gravity is required for the development of fetal neural tissue, but it also turns out that rotational inertial provides a sufficient simulation of gravity for normal fetal development. "Island One" is a 512-meter radius sphere with a water shell for radiation protection.

Rumors begin to spread of anti-geronic treatments available to the very wealthy at spas in Europe and North America.  Then, in a surprise move, an Israeli medical group drops the full protocol and formulary for a rejuvenation treatment on the open internet.  Within a year, most people have taken it, and resumed the appearance and functional health of a person in their mid-twenties.

2050s: First Earth-Mars cycler, Buzz’s Dream, launched by Ravenstone I.G.  The American Space Agency buys transport for a series of escalating missions to Mars; by Ares IV, a permanent base has been established inside a lava tube, and robots begin construction of a mass driver on the upper slopes of Olympus Mons.

Λόγχες του Άρη, pagan extremists, hijack an asteroid resource extraction ship from an Earth-Moon L4 construction facility and shape a course for Mars.  Everyone in the solar system watches as the craft closes on the red planet.  Ares IV mission commander Bjorn Valentine succeeds in contacting the ship, but the hijackers will give no proof of life of the dockyard hands missing since the ship was seized, and communicate little other than reading a prepared statement about the destiny of Mars.  Faced with the possibility of armed extremists attacking an unarmed base full of scientists, Valentine uses the Olympus mass driver as a kinetic kill weapon, destroying the ship.

When Ares IV is relieved by Ares V, Valentine returns to Earth, where he faces a Board of Inquiry.  His actions are upheld by the international panel, and the United Nations security council rules that, though individual nations are prohibited from taking weapons of mass destruction to space by the Outer Space treaty, the UN itself has the authority to do so.  The United Nations Space and Planetary Authority: Customs and Excise (UNSPACE) is founded, with two initial divisions: Orbitguard, which monitors Earth-Moon space, and Spaceguard, which monitors trans-lunar space.

Rihoko and Jane separately decide to undertake a more extensive body remodeling; Jane to repair the damage from SLE, Rihoko as a result of injuries sustained during the Two Koreas war.  While in the clinic, the two women meet and fall in love, though it will be over a decade before they marry.

2060s: With population pressures growing due to negligible age-related death, off-Earth settlement increases. This era marks the end of the Upheavals, as economic conditions improve and new frontiers open.

Spaceguard adopts the nomenclature of the American Coast Guard for its patrol ships, and the first UNSPACE cutter, UNSC Dag Hammarskjöld, is commanded by Captain Bjorn Valentine.  As Earth-crossing asteroids begin to be rarer, resource extraction pushes out toward the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Following her rejuvenation and body repair, Rihoko Suzuki joins UNSPACE.

Meanwhile, Jane Gray leaves the practice of medicine for the practice of law, earning her JD from UC Berkeley.  She specializes in interplanetary law, and joins a law firm at Baker Island high port, located in geosynchronous orbit and attached to the Baker Island elevator.  This posting brings her into regular, though widely separated, contact with Rihoko. The two maintain active correspondence.

Late in the decade, Rihoko and Jane marry.  Rihoko believes families should have a single name, but Jane, already married and divorced twice, is reluctant to make changes. Rihoko she adopts Jane’s family name, becoming Captain Rihoko Gray.

2100s: Rihoko, now a full Captain in UNSPACE and in command of UNSC Madeleine Albright, retires from active service.  She accepts a reserve commission.  Jane feels ready for another career change, and finishes the coursework required to test for an interplanetary engineer’s ticket.  She takes the test to coincide with Rihoko’s retirement, and the two buy a small asteroid resource extraction ship and head for the main belt.

2130s: Over the course of decades, the Grays gain experience with asteroid resource extraction, and decide to focus on volatiles, pushing their range to the Jupiter side of the main asteroid belt and beyond.  After much planning and dreaming, they commission the construction of a large ship from the Ceres yards.  When it is complete, they name the ship Gray Maru.  They set off to fill the cargo capacity with CHON mined from water, ammonia, and methane ice.

2140s: With full holds, the Grays drop down to cis-Lunar space and sell their cargo.  While in proximity to Earth, they commission two daughters created from the mingling of their genes.  While both girls have matching tissue and bloodtypes, and similar phenotypes, Autumn has Jane’s red hair, while the other girl, Winter, takes after Rihoko’s black hair.  It is the Grays' plan to slowy fill Gray Maru with their extended family.  To this end, they invite their only surviving parent, Kenichi Suzuki, to join them aboard ship.  Though it is not initially planned, Kenichi becomes the primary caregiver for the young girls as Gray Maru moves back out to the deep belt and resumes ice mining.

Cis-Lunar space is becoming crowded, and habitats begin to be built at the Sun-Earth Lagrange points.  The phrase “the Greenbelt” becomes common for the expanding sphere of human settlement inside the main asteroid belt.

2150s:  Late in the decade, the Grays time their next trip to the Greenbelt to coincide with Autumn and Winter’s college acceptance.  Autumn chooses to attend Jane’s alma matter, Vanderbilt University, located in Tennessee; Winter attends Transylvania University in Kentucky, drawn mostly by the name.  The 350 kilometers between the two universities is the furthest the twins have ever been separated, or ever will be within the scope of this history.

While at Transylvania University, Winter uses an expert system match-maker to locate a suitable life partner.  In her third year, she meets Sarah, whom she will eventually marry.  Autumn dates, but shows no interest in long-term commitment.  Upon the twins’ graduation, Gray Maru returns to Earth to pick up the three young women… and two more daughters for Jane and Rihoko, whom they name Ren and Ran, Japanese for Lotus and Orchid.  Satisfied with their elder daughters, Jane and Rihoko see no need to remix their genes, and Ren is Autumn’s clone, while Ran is Winter’s.

2160s: Following a trip out to the Jovian Trojans to fill Gray Maru’s cargo capacity once more with CHON, Gray Maru is headed to Vesta to sell her cargo when a strange signal is intercepted, changing the Grays’ plans.

The First Page of Doooooom!

They were asleep in the jungle.  They often slept in the jungle, drifting in microgravity.  They were in an experimental stage; one of the women had blue skin and space dark hair.  The other’s skin was green, and her long copper colored hair worn in dreadlocks that seemed almost tendrils, moving slowly in the gentle air currents.  The blue woman had one foot hooked in front of the green woman’s knee; her opposite hand held gently to a naked green breast.

“Captain Gray,” said the smooth alto voice of the ship’s expert system.  A moment later it repeated, “Captain Gray.”

Before the voice could repeat a third time, the blue woman cleared her throat and answered, “Yes, Josephine?”

The green woman stirred, not quite waking, and with the ease of long practice, the two adjusted their posture and grasp of each other.  “I have detected an anomalous signal,” Josephine revealed.

“Anomalous in what way?” Captain Gray asked.

"It is a radio frequency signal which is not binary,” the computer answered, “but seems to be intelligently pulsed. It is repeating, within a three-sigma margin of error, though the frequency is shifting erratically."

"Uh-huh," Captain Gray said, sleepily.  She vaguely remembered that she had put SETI related signals into the list of things Josephine should wake them for. "Play the signal."

The green woman’s eyes popped open, and the two shared a moment’s startled look. There... in the static... was something they had never expected to hear again, but would never mistake or forget. Bursts of static... short, pause, short, pause, short, longer pause... long, pause, long, pause, long, longer pause... repeating.

"Localize that signal!" the Captain instructed. She kissed her wife and flipped around, using one foot to push lightly against her knee, pushing herself towards the open hatch to the ship's spine, and the green woman back towards a palm tree. A moment later, she'd pushed off the palm tree, and followed the Captain out.

私に届け (Reaching Me; a Kimi ni Todoke fanfic)

Ayane put her hand on my shoulder.  I hadn't heard her come up.  As I looked at her, startled, she said, "You can't have Kazehaya."  I was scowling, expecting her to gloat, to rub my face in it.  Instead, she looked almost sad, though it wasn't pity.  She took her hand away, and went on, "But you know, it'd be different if I were a guy, wouldn't it?  If I were... I'd accept all your dirty little secrets."

I blushed, looked away.  I had behaved so badly.  "That's none of your business." I wiped a tear from my eye.  "It's just... when I thought I could finally get out of this, I felt relieved."  I took a step, but her hand was on my elbow.

"Here," she said, holding out a folded handkerchief. "I know," she said.  She didn't look away from me as I wiped my eyes.  "Go away, Kento," she said, quietly.

"Oh," he said, and, "uh," and then he nodded, stepping through the door, disappearing.

"If I were a guy," she said, "would you cry on my shoulder?"

I took a deep, shuddering breath.  "Please," I said, looking down.  She had every right to hate me for what I had done to her, to hurt her friend.

She reached out with her left hand, took mine, gently.  "I accept all your secrets," she said.  "Even that one."

And then, my forehead was against her shoulder, and I was crying.  Her arm went around me, and it felt... right.  "Don't be a guy," I said.

"Alright," she answered.  "I'll just be me.  And you just be you."  And we were.

The Relationship of Doooom

Once, there was a rock.

How the rock got there isn't important.  It was an igneous rock, if knowing that makes you feel better about things.  It was a large rock, as rocks go... some people called it a bolder, but the rock made no fuss about labels.  As rocks are wont to do, the rock sat in one place for a long time.

Under the rock was a seed.  As water dripped from the sky, and fell on the rock, it percolated down, into the soil, and the seed grew.  It sent up feelers, looking for light, and it found a crack in the rock.  It grew some more.  Each time that it grew, it pushed the rock a little, and the crack got bigger.  Eventually, the seed grew into a tree, and the crack grew quite large.

In time, the tree died.  It fell to the ground, and over time, it decomposed.  But the rock remained.  The rock retained the crack.  In its own way, and in its own time, the rock remembered the tree.

The Day of Dooooom

It was a small thing that ended it.

Rather, it was a small thing which began the ending.  The ring of Goblin Sorcerers was stronger than their opposite numbers, the Council of the Magi of Light.  As they chanted and swayed, their minds moving through the twisting passageways of magic, unveiled to them by the noxious smoke of the lurga weed, they found the opening, and a decurion of the second legion turned, sliding his gladius smoothly under the third rib of his legate.  The legate did not gasp, nor cry out; she simply died.

The Goblin Horde found the weakness in the legion.  They broke through, rolled up the left flank.  The corrupted decurion outlived his legate by no more than a quarter hour.  There was a moment, at the hill on which the command group stood, when things might yet have turned in favor of the forces of Light.  The Champion of the Great God stood his ground, his sword glowing with holy power.

But the Horde reached the circle of Magi, and tore them down.  The ring of Sorcerers, freed of the obligation of countering the magics of light, bent their eldrich forces on the hill, and summoned fiends.  Outnumbered, outfought, the Champion of the Great God fell, and his body was violated by the fiends, opened to their dark force, made the fulcrum which levered open the Final Seal.

The Unseen Gate opened, and the Lady of Darkness stepped forward.  Her terrible beauty swept the land, driving the last of the forces of Light mad, causing them to fall on each other in violent paroxysm of unslated, unspeakable feuds and desires and unrequited lusts.  The Goblins looked on her, and were no less affected. Soon, they, too, lay dead in pools of blood and urine and semen.

The Lady of Darkness, surrounded now only by the fiends which had been summoned, and those which had poured through the Unseen Gate behind her when it opened, smiled.  "Go forth," she whispered to the fiends, and they took her command gleefully, spreading destruction until all things were unmade.

There, in the no-place which had been the Plain of the Final Battle, the Light Blossomed, and the Great God stood forth, released from his promise not to personally interfere until the bounds of the world were undone.  "Well played," he said, smiling, and he reached forth his hand.  The Lady of Darkness took it, and drew him in, and they kissed for an eternity, centuries of unspoken words flowing between them.

When at last they spoke again, the Lady of Darkness said, "I thought you had beaten me in the Seventh Century.  Your prophet was quite effective."

"Not effective enough to stop the feuding between Men and Goblins," the Great God admitted, ruefully.

"I have some thoughts on that," the Lady said, beginning to take on an aspect of Light, her terrible beauty subtly altering to glorious radiance. "Shall we play again?  I'll take Light this time, and you can be Darkness."

"Later," he said.  "Later."  And for a time more, there was no need for words between them.

C'mell and the Armor of Doooooom!

This is Fan Fiction based on the world of Final Fantasy X|V.  All settings, places, and concepts from the game are used in accordance with the licensing agreement contained within the game.

It was night.  In Central Coerthas.  In the winter.  I had wall patrol, though the snow was howling so badly I couldn't see more than two dozen yalms in any direction.  I was standing by the brazier, near the gatehouse, looking out, when Ser Ophelie approached.  I came to attention, saluted.

"Stand easy," she said, returning the salute desultorily.  "Anything to report?"

"Quiet night," I said.  "Ser Nogeloix's patrol hasn't returned yet.  I hope they found someplace warm to hole up."

"Sergeant Meurise is aware of the situation," Ser Ophelie said.  "She's taking care of it."

"Taking care of it?" I said, dumbfounded.  "How?"

There was the sound of a shod chocobo in the gate tunnel below us, and I leaned forward, looking over the parapet.  Through the snow I could make out a blue-haired Miqo'te on a chocobo, dashing out, into the white oblivion.  For a moment, I would have sworn the chocobo had antlers.  "Is she mad?" I gasped.  "Her chocobo will freeze before she reaches the first road marker!"

Ser Ophelie chuckled quietly.  "Care to make a friendly wager?" she asked.  "I'll bet three nights of wall duty that she's back before dawn... riding her chocobo... and leading the lost patrol in, to boot."

I opened my mouth to take the bet, then hesitated.  If there's one thing my disreputable Uncle Bertennant had hammered into me, it was that if a bet looks like a sucker's chance, the other person knows something you don't.  "No," I said, slowly.  "No, I don't think so."

Ser Ophelie chuckled again, and reached out to the brazier.  "Smart man," she said, wryly.

"What do you know that I don't?" I asked.

"I know who that was," she answered.  "C'mell."

I turned to look into the snow, in the direction she'd gone.  "C'mell?" I echoed.

"They call her the 'Last Sentinel of the Pard,'" the Knight said, looking to see if I recognized the title.  I didn't, and shook my head.  The Knight shook her head in turn.  "Did you see that very shiny armor she was wearing?"

I thought about it.  "I noticed she was wearing armor," I said.  "I was more concerned about the fact that she was heading out of the castle."

"It's made of mythril," Ser Ophelie informed me.  "You know how she got it?"

"She went to the local armorsmith?" I guessed.  I knew it wasn't a good guess... it would take a master armorcrafter to work mythril.

"She went to places it would make you soil your fundoshi to find yourself," she said.  She turned her back to the brazier.  "You know that I was of House Dzemael, before I married Ignemortel, yes?"

I nodded, not seeing the connection.

"A few years ago, I was part of a garrison that got sent out to oversee construction of a new stronghold for the House," she explained.  "I was only a squire then.  The cave... well, caves have been around since forever, I suppose.  And there were legends about this one, but nothing had happened with it in a very, very long time.  So when the City started keeping its gates closed, the House looked around for a place to build a stronghold... and saw the caves."

"I heard something about this," I said.  "North and west of the Observatorium?"

The Knight nodded.  "We took stonemasons and bricklayers, and we began work.  The cave seemed ideal... the temperature was comfortable, most of it had light-giving crystals sprinkled through it already, and best of all, it had fresh water flowing through it, year-round."

I nodded.

"But there was a flaw... somewhere, down below, the caverns were open to the void.  I was there the day the darkhold fell.  Voidsent such as I can not describe faced us.  I do not mind telling you, I felt fear that day.  Fear such as I have never felt before... or since.  And My Lord made the decision to abandon the cave, and lock the gates, and keep a watch on them so that nothing came from inside."  She was silent, thinking, lost in memory.

"I was stationed at that gate," she said, after a long moment had passed.  "For two long years. And then, one day, she walked across the river and up to the gate."

"She?" I asked, to make sure we were reading from the same hymnal.

"C'mell," Ser Ophalie confirmed.  "She had with her three others... V'lenna, a black mage; Rotscy, a Brother of the Fists of Rhalgar; and Lyra, a white mage."  She paused, as if reviewing the scene in her head.  "She didn't have the armor, then.  At least... not all of it.

"You see, the order to which she belonged had been based in a fishing town in Northwestern Thanalan, on the coast.  At Cape Westwind.  After the Empire came, there was no more fishing town, and no more Sentinels of the Pard.  No one knows what became of their armor.  Maybe the Imperials took it home; maybe they melted it down and used the mythril for something else.  Whatever they did, it wasn't available to a young squire who had just passed her initiation test."

I shook my head.  "So how'd she get it?"

"I'm getting there," Ser Ophelie said, turning to face the brazier again.  "It was during the Fifth Umbral era... twenty-five hundred years ago... that the Miqo'te Sun Seeker tribes crossed the ice to Eorzea.  And I imagine, C'mell's little fishing town was settled somewhere around the time the ice broke.  Over two thousand years of Sentinels of the Pard going out from that little town, providing services, proving themselves the bravest of the brave, proving their worth to pass on their names."

I nodded.

"Not all of them succeeded," Ser Ophelie said.  "Some of them died trying.  And some of those who died, died in places where it was beyond difficult to recover their bodies."

I nodded again, beginning to see the light.

"C'mell worked," Ser Ophelie said.  "She worked hard, selling her services as a caravan guard, as a bodyguard, as... well, not to put too fine a point on it, as an adventurer.  No job too big, or too small.  She saved her gil.  And then, she hired a sage.  She asked the sage to tell her where every one of her great-aunts who had fallen and not been recovered were."

"So when she came to the darkhold..." I said.

The Knight nodded.  "She was seeking.  She had the legs... sabatons, greaves, poleyns, cuisses.  Beyond that, she wore good steel.  A hauberk, not that different from our own.  Stout leather gloves.  An antique sword of goblin make.  A round shield, embossed with the Sun of Ul'dah.  And most important, she carried a letter, counter-signed by the lords of House Durendaire and House Haillenarte, saying that I should open the gate, and let her... and her friends... into the darkhold."

"Four of them?" I asked, to be clear.  "Against things that sent... how many Knights of the House scurrying?"

"Many," she said.  "I do not know what she'd done to put them in her favor," she went on.  "But they'd signed the letter, and it was more than my knighthood was worth to question them.  So I let them in.  And I waited.  I was sure I'd never see them again."

"Clearly you did," I said.  "Since she just rode out of here."

"I did," Ser Ophelie agreed.  "Three days later, as the sun was setting.  The four of them, looking tired, and dirty, and burnt around the edges, came back up.  She was carrying a set of arms... rerebraces, couters, vambraces, gauntlets.  She said that the rest... was beyond salvage."

"Mythril doesn't rust," I said, puzzled.

"No," she answered.  "But it burns."

I shuddered.  Our House's elite, who fought against flaming dragons, wore mythril because it would not melt in dragonflame.  I wondered how hot flame would have to be to melt it... to burn it.

"Aye," Ser Ophelie said.  "Like that."  She was silent, and I was silent, thinking about it.  "I don't know where the other pieces came from," she went on.  "But I tell you this, and tell you true... you don't bet against that woman.  She'll be back, before dawn, with that patrol."

And she was.

The FanFic of Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!

This ficlit was inspired by game play in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game Final Fantasy X|V and all races, settings, and organizations are copyright SquareEnix, used in accordance with licensing within the game.

My name is Friday. I’m a Sergeant Second Class of the Immortal Flames. I was stationed out at Forgotten Springs when the long range patrol from Little Ala Mihgo came in. They’d clearly seen some action, so after we got the wounded off to the healers, I invited the Sergeant leading the patrol to come and have an ale with me on the rooftop. As we sat there, he gazed out over the springs, watching the U tribe going about their business.

Suddenly, he sat up straight. “That woman,” he said. I followed his gaze. “The one with the blue hair,” he amplified, which made it clear for me. Most of the U women have white or grey hair, so the one he meant stood out. Then again, this particular woman would have stood out, anyway. Not because she’s big… she’s a tiny little Miqo’te, hardly comes up to the bottom of my breast. But the U, well, they like to dress for mobility, and this woman, she was throat to toes in metal.

“Lieutenant C’mell?” I asked, just to clarify.

“Lieutenant, is it?” he responded, thoughtfully.

“Why ain’t she wearing a uniform?” asked one of my Privates, a big boy recruited out of Little Ala Mhigo.

“Special Expeditionary Force,” I answered. “Not like you and me. They get the hard jobs.”
The recon Sergeant nodded, took a pull of his beer. “Let me tell y’all a little story,” he said. “Now, this here’s a no-shitter. About a month ago, we were running dawn patrol down south-east of Little Ala Mhigo. You know the Amalj’aa like to attack with the coming of the great fire….”

“That’d be dawn,” I said, to forestall the question I saw forming on my Private’s face. I pointed at the sun. “There’s the great fire.”

The recon Sergeant just nodded, and then went on, “You know that promentory there. Always makes me nervous to cross it. A gorge to the north, a gorge to the south, and nothin’ but the rope and plank bridges to get you in and out.”

I nodded. I’d been stationed at Little Ala Mhigo too.

“Well, we were almost to the second bridge when we spotted ‘em. Half a dozen Amalj’aa, trotting along pretty good, carrying those giant bows they got. Running with an arrow on the string, looking for trouble. I took a look at the situation, and figured what the heck… six of them, six of my boys, we could probably take ‘em.” He took another pull of his beer, and set the empty stein down.

I obliged by refilling it. “I’d’ve made the same call,” I agreed, to keep the story moving.

“And you’d’ve been wrong,” he said, quietly, “just like I was.”

“Ambush?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said, picking up his stein again. After he’d had a drink, he went on, “we got stuck in among them, and we were doin’ okay, when our drag man yells out that there’s more of ‘em behind us. I take a gander, and sure enough, here comes another half dozen trotting down from the north. Don’t know when they got back there, but there they are. To warn the other fellows, I yell out that we’re surrounded. I figure it’s time to sell our lives dear, you know?”

I nodded. I’d never been in the last-ditch fight, but every Flame knew that the likelihood was that sooner or later we’d fall into one. Most of us figured we’d rather take a bunch of the enemy with us to Thal’s hall than to get captured and tempered. Most of us.

“Then I hear this voice screaming ‘Take two!’ and out of nowhere, there she is… swinging down off a chocobo. And… I swear this is true… it ain’t a normal chocobo. Damn thing’s got antlers!”

I saw the look of incredulity on my Private’s face, and I nodded. “S’true,” I said. I grinned. “Of course, it’s part of the chamfron she puts on it. She calls that chocobo “Light-trail,” and it’s trained to fight with her.”

The recon Sergeant nodded. “You know what the story is with that battle cry?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s not like we’re on a first name basis,” I said. “Mostly what I say to her is ‘Yes, Lieutenant,’ and ‘right away, Lieutenant.’”

My Private snickered. “I’d have a few things to say to her,” he said.

“Make sure your next-of-kin paperwork is up to date,” the recon Sergeant said. “We’ll send your effects on.” He paused to make sure that had sunk in with the kid, and then went on, “So she yells, ‘take two!’ and swings down off that chocobo. And there she is… that antique shield on one arm, and the sword in the other fist, and I swear to you… suddenly there’s blue lightning coming up out of the ground, and she’s glowing. Light so bright it blinds.”

I nodded. “I’ve seen the Sultansworn do that,” I agree.

He looked at me, sharpish. “She’s Sultansworn?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nah,” I answer. “But you see that armor she’s wearing?”

He turned his head, watching her. She was standing near the bridge over the stream that leads down to the hot springs, laughing with a black-haired Miqo’te girl. She was wearing that shiny metal, and the leather under it was Torama skin. “Yeah,” he said, a question in his voice.

“You know how the U call their warriors the ‘Rangers of the Drake’? Well, the C… that’s the Coeurl tribe… they used to call their warriors the ‘Sentinels of the Pard.’”

“Used to?” the recon Sergeant asked.

“There ain’t no more C tribe,” answered one of the recon Privates, a big green Roegadyn lass I figured had her own reasons for being a long way from the sea. “Leastwise, not the way there’s a U tribe. Used to be. A little fishing village they had, up Northeast Thanalan. Nice little place called Cape Westwind. There’s a Castrum there, now.”

I nodded. “Story I hear is that when the Empire came, the younger version of the Lieutenant was off doing her test for entry to the order of the Sentinels. She comes home triumphant, to find that she ain’t got a home no more.”

I saw the Privates take that in. The recon Sergeant nodded. “Rough,” he said.

“So what happened to your ambush?” my Private asked.

“What do you think happened?” the Sergeant said, looking disgusted. “We all died. Our bones are out there right now, bleaching away in the sun.”

“She saved them,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.

“That she did,” the Sergeant said. “And afterward, she just mounts up on that chocobo again, and trots off south toward Zanr’ak like nothing happened.”

I nodded, and finished my beer.