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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years

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FFXV: Eschaton - 2/4

Fic: Eschaton (ao3 link) - chapter 2/4

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Pairing: None (gen)

Summary: Sure, it’s the end of the world, but that just means someone’s got to fix it.

And then the world found its somebodies.

(aka, with Noctis gone into the Crystal and no one sure when he’ll be back, Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto end up saving the world one piece at a time)

——————————————————————————————

SIX MONTHS

Prompto insisted on seeing the devastation for himself, instead of staying where it was safe like certain other people thought he should. Certain other people who seem to sometimes forget that Prompto is a Six-accursed hero-of-the-nation level fighter that even Cor the Immortal once said "did well".

He won the argument, of course, and he felt good about that, right up until he was standing in the center of what used to be Galdin Quay.

After that, he didn't feel good about much.

The Quay is – it's all but gone.

Oh, there aren't daemons roaming the streets anymore – they were largely cleared out before Prompto got the idea in his head that he needed to look around – but the damage they wrought is still there.

Buildings broken into like shells cracked open for the juicy meat inside. Whole structures demolished. Claw marks – daemon and human both – on the bloodied walls, visible only in the large spotlights set up to illuminate the town (mostly for Prompto’s benefit, he suspects). The waters filled with the broken carcasses of boats. Skittering creatures hiding in alleyways. Bodies in the streets...

"Don’t we have a detail clearing the bodies?" Prompto asks.

"Yes, General," one of Prompto's assistants says. She's an MT, though she's one of the few which took advantage of Cindy's workshop in Hammerhead to customize her metallic face-mask a little. Her shortened designation – Prompto insisted on them – is T4, though recently Gladio's "this is what a name is" educational programs seem to be having an impact, because she's started slurring the syllables the way humans generally do, ending up with the name "Tifor".

It's a pretty name, feminine and almost delicate sounding, which is a bit funny when applied to a six-foot-something axewoman.

She is totally a bodyguard as well as an assistant.

Eufiv – U5, the original negotiator they worked with, who mostly stays back in Lestallum HQ or Hammerhead with several other commander units to assist Ignis with coordinating with the MT armies – calls her and her colleague, Jiten (formerly G10, a sniper unit), Prompto's aides-de-camp, which is apparently what you call secretary-slash-bodyguards for generals.

Because Prompto's a general now.

Sometimes, his mind still gibbers helplessly about that. (A general! With aides-de-camp! Prompto! What is wrong with the world?! Other than the usual whole daemon-infested Long Night end-of-the-world stuff, anyway). He totally freaked out at first, when the job he accepted – a job that originally sounded like being a messenger between Ignis at Lestallum and Eufiv with the MTs, passing along orders, just like he did for Hammerhead – turned out to be a lot less 'messenger' and a lot more...army.

A lot more 'General of the MT Army', because the MTs desperately wanted a general to give them orders. Which they mostly wanted because all the independent thinking had been crushed out of most of them ages ago.

And the General they picked, the first major collective decision they made – picking a General they thought would actually care about them – was Prompto.

Cor and Gladio and Ignis all explained at length why it would be both psychologically and politically damaging if Prompto refused the post, which Prompto got, but Six damn it all, Prompto is not exactly General material.

He’s barely even accepted that he was Lucis material.

This is definitely not anywhere he saw his life going, let's put it that way.

Honestly, Prompto never really gave much thought about what he was going to do 'when he grew up', so to speak. He'd worked his ass off to join the Crownsguard, but that'd been inspired by his desire to protect Noct (and look at the awful job of it you did of it, too, some part of his mind whispers, but he quashes that thought ruthlessly because there’s time for despair and there’s time to be a general, and right now he has to be a general) rather than an actual desire to spend his life mindlessly patrolling in an endless circuit around the Citadel.

Compared to being a General, a mindless, endless circuit around the Citadel sounds positively delightful.

It's not that he minds the power involved – being able to do things like point at a dead body and say "we should bury them" and have it get done – but rather...

"It's in my paperwork pile, isn't it," Prompto says, not really asking a question.

"Yes, General," Jiten says. "The squad designated for body collection has photographed and buried – or burned, if they were infected by Starscourge – a large number of bodies so far, but they are running out of room in the area designated 'Graveyard'. They’ve requisitioned additional space, but they’re running up against the restriction you imposed of not letting the Graveyard get too close to where we’re housing the refugees, so they’re waiting for you to give an order."

Given that Prompto gave them two entire fields to use to bury people in, that's minorly horrifying. Maybe not surprising, but horrifying.

"Great," Prompto says. "Logistics. My favorite. I love it so much, I may die if I ever see another piece of paper about logistics ever again." After a second, he adds, "Sarcasm."

He's started sometimes adding an automatic clarification at the end of his sentences. His aides-de-camp are pretty prone to misinterpreting him and getting fussy if he doesn't.

Of course, that's because they're MTs, and therefore sometimes have difficulties with the nuance of human emotion.

"I can set up a digital projector if it makes you feel better," Tifor says. "Sarcasm. We don't have one."

Sometimes. Tifor's definitely picking it up.

All the more impressive, actually, since she's still using a radio to communicate. It turns out most of the MTs have vocal cords, they're just atrophied from lack of use over the years – though some of the units had apparently had them surgically removed entirely, which, uh, gross – and they don’t know how to use them. Instead, they’ve built radios out of spare MT parts, which luckily they have lots of, and started wearing them around their necks as chokers, letting the sound come from there.

Yes, they still have their helmet-based (brain-device-based?) methods of communication, but Prompto just isn't willing to wear the helmet like Gladio does, sometimes; he's tried it, but it was too confusing and claustrophobic for him.

Too many bad memories involved.

Father-son reunion, his ass. Prompto’s Lucian, not Niflheim, and he’s not an MT.

He’s just, you know, their general.

At any rate, he avoided the issue for a few days, then pushed it off entirely by ordering Eufiv to work with Cindy come up with a better solution, which Eufiv is working on. Eufiv might not be the most creative person, but he's really good at getting MTs to think of stuff, and Cindy is, of course, a genius with a wrench.

Besides, Eufiv – most eloquent of the MT commander units, which is why he’d been assigned the all-important duty of negotiating with Lestallum – actually stumbles and stutters every time he has to deal with Cindy.

No one knows how to deal with Cindy; that’s just a fact of life.

Prompto both sympathizes and thinks it's hilarious, so he assigns Eufiv jobs that involve Hammerhead as often as possible.

In fairness, Prompto’s pretty sure Eufiv assigned Prompto aides-de-camp in secret retribution.

Prompto only gave in because Eufiv was so stubborn about it, but he's secretly grateful. If he had to do all of the paperwork himself, he really would die.

“No, no, I’ll get to it,” Prompto says, but he can’t help but look around some more. His memory isn’t photographic – that’s why he has a camera – but he can’t help but compare places he took pictures of (pictures with Noct, who’s gone now) with the current devastation.

It was been different, then. Galdin Quay wasn’t a total mess, for one thing; there weren’t bodies in the streets and dirt in the air, but that isn’t really what Prompto is thinking of.

He's thinking of memories.

Gladio trying the super spicy stew and turning bright red while insisting that he was ‘fine’.

Ignis declaring that he was going to learn to cook with Galdian flavors.

Noct –

Noct liked this place. They came back here a few times, during their travels. He liked fishing in the calm blue of the bay, sometimes for hours. He even joined Prompto in nagging Ignis to let them stay at the fancy hotel.

The bay isn’t blue anymore. There aren’t that many colors in the dark.

It’s just black.

“Is there a difficulty, General?” Tifor asks. She’s more talkative – relatively speaking – than Jiten, and also better at logistics and mathematical calculations. She was an axewoman unit, officially, tall and built like a truck, but she'd been assigned to an artillery squad, which meant that she had needed to know how to operate (and calculate) trajectories. She’s Prompto’s go-to person for logistical questions, like “where to put people” and “how to get the army from point A to point B”, which means that Jiten mostly gets left with all of what Ignis euphemistically calls "resource management" - which Prompto has discovered is a fancy word for "reads all the mail and decides what Prompto needs to care about".

Technically, both aides-de-camp do that, but since Prompto is mostly dealing with logistical questions nowadays, Jiten gets stuck with the bulk of the paperwork. He doesn't complain, but Prompto feels bad anyway.

Ignis swears that in the long run, filling out these forms will be for everyone's benefit. Prompto already discovered the use of it three days ago, when Jiten managed to produce a file dealing with a certain daemon's strengths and weaknesses that someone in the East Wing had filed last week, and which the West Wing was able to take full advantage of.

Some daemons attack other daemons for fun, who knew?

Certainly not Prompto.

Prompto sighs. “No, no difficulty,” he says. “Just, you know. We came here a bunch of times and it, uh, was – it didn’t look like this.”

“Would the General like to engage in reconstructive activities immediately?” Jiten asks, his quiet voice neutral. He wouldn’t argue against the stupidity of the idea until Prompto actually accepted the stupid suggestion.

“No, we don’t have time,” Prompto says. “How many refugees do we have?”

Jiten gives him the numbers. They’ve set up some of the Empire’s old portable fortresses – fairly flimsy defense-wise, but that doesn’t matter when it's surrounded by regular MT patrols – outside of town and they're taking anyone they discover hiding in their houses or, in one particularly interesting twist, in the sewers, there to recover.

The Graveyard is supposed to be some distance away, but apparently is starting to get close. Prompto set up priorities: first refugee rescue, then supply rescue, then daemon elimination (as necessary), and only then could they engage in body clean-up.

They’ve already sent several shipments of non-perishable goods from the warehouses back to Lestallum. Ignis pressed into Prompto’s head the importance of using up anything with an expiration date first and only then shifting over to the stuff that would last.

Prompto doesn’t like that line of thought. That line of thought assumes the Long Night will go on for a long time – past the quickly approaching winter – and that in turn means that Ignis doesn’t expect to see Noctis back in two weeks, when the six month period hits, but, well, just because Prompto doesn’t like it doesn’t mean he can’t see the value in thinking that way.

“We have enough food for them, right? And medicines?”

“The warehouses are still only half-empty,” Tifor assures him. “Squad 13 discovered an almost wholly intact storage unit filled with elixirs yesterday.”

“Really? Cool. Give that squad a commendation or something.”

His aides nod.

“Okay, so other than the Graveyard thing, is there anything we need to think about?”

Prompto’s being flippant. There’s always something to think about.

Like what they’re going to do with their refugees, for instance. There’s no light here but what the few generators Ignis was able to spare them can manage, so the refugee holding point is only defended by a constantly rotating set of MT guards rather than by light. Lestallum has light, but Lestallum’s already full to bursting, so they can’t send the refugees there.

Hammerhead’s not much better.

Ignis has floated (yes, he made that pun) some ideas about setting up a permanent base in Galdin Quay in order to get access to regular seafood – that’s one of the reasons it's a priority to salvage – but Prompto’s not sure that’s possible. The refugees are still people. They still need light.

He vaguely recalls someone mentioning something about a vitamin that your body only produces when there’s light. Vitamin D, for daylight? He doesn’t remember.

Ignis said something about fish containing the relevant necessary vitamin. Thus the urgency of securing the Quay.

Maybe Ignis could be prevailed upon to give up some more of the precious generators…

“We’ve only uncovered approximately 38% of the Quay,” Tifor says. “Progress has been slower than expected, given the larger than expected number of refugees.”

“Galdian tenacity at its finest,” Prompto agrees. Sure, there was less than a 60% survival rate, but it was still larger than expected. “Suggestions?”

“We should bring East Wing here,” Tifor says promptly, meaning that she’s been thinking about it for a while. “They’re the closest wing. They’ve finished canvassing the area around Hammerhead –”

Okay, so maybe Prompto was a bit biased with where he initially set out assignments.

A bit.

Maybe.

Nah.

Hey, Hammerhead is certified daemon free right now!

Sure, neither Callanegh Steps nor Snulhend Pass are, but whatever; it's the road between Lestallum and Hammerhead that's important, and they’ve set up checkpoints practically every two miles on that. That means there can be more regular communication and shipments between Hammerhead and Lestallum, and that, in turn, means there's a place for Ignis to ship the more adventurous refugees to help deal with his overcrowding problem.

“ – and East Wing’s presence here would accelerate the clearing of the Quay considerably.”

“I can see that,” Prompto concedes, and at any rate Hammerhead has enough hunters to protect itself right now. “But doesn’t that involve marching them all here?”

“There is no valid alternative,” Tifor says confidently. “North Wing is finally starting to make a dent in the harvest in the mountainside by Lestallum, and South Wing is either guarding the Lestallum-Hammerhead Highway or mining the Disc for additional medical supplies. Any deviation from those forces would involve retraining. Moreover, additional city canvassing experience would be beneficial to East Wing, which has been primarily focused on daemon-slaying for now. Moreover, a faster conclusion to the survey of the Quay will permit additional rotations back to Lestallum for off-duty time.”

Tifor still sounds a bit dubious about the whole notion of going off-duty, the way most MTs are, but the MTs who are based around Lestallum regularly send back glowing reviews on the subject, so the MTs directly under Prompto are - to put it nicely - interested in trying it out. Prompto wouldn't mind some off-duty time himself, actually.

“Agreed,” Prompto says, conceding to Tifor's logic - as excellent and implacable as ever. “So that means we have either to use up power for a drop ship to get them here, or we need to feed them as they march.”

“Correct.”

“Ignis isn’t going to be happy about losing more of his generators for the drop ship, but he’s also not going to be happy about losing food for the march. And no one suggest that they just go without food, okay? That's not going to happen.” MTs are way too eager to suggest hurting themselves to try to make things more efficient. They need less food than non-MTs, but they also need daemon blood to preserve their MT-ness – luckily, daemons are the one thing the world is not in any short supply of. And daemon blood couldn't replace food entirely, anyway. “What are you thinking?”

“We propose a trade,” Tifor says. “Commander Ignis provides us with additional generators for the drop ship to bring East Wing here, which will require several round trips, and on each journey back, the return journey will be filled with another shipment.”

“What, refugees? Ignis doesn’t want more of those; he’s got all the ones he can handle.”

“I was thinking fish.”

The thought of fish brings thoughts of Noct, standing peacefully on the edge of a quay that no longer exists, fishing pole in hand.

The thought hurts, as it always does.

Noct needs to come back soon, or else –

Actually, Prompto’s usual way of finishing that thought is to think that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Noct doesn’t come back soon. But he guesses that’s not true anymore, is it? He’s got an army to look after.

An army of MTs who look to him to lead them, and probably would even after Noct came back. After all, Noct is just a king; they never swore any oaths to him. They swore one to Prompto.

Ugh, all the responsibility is going to crush him.

But in the meantime: fish.

"Fish might do it," Prompto says, gnawing at his lower lip thoughtfully. They'll need to find a way to get the fish to survive the trip to Hammerhead, and from Hammerhead to Lestallum, but Ignis will be delighted to give the people of Lestallum a treat while also preserving their supply of canned goods a little longer. "Maybe shrimp."

"One of the refugees suggested scallops," Jiten says. “While they may not contain the necessary vitamins in as large amounts, there is still some benefit. As they are still in their shells, they could be shipped fresh and preserved during the journey.”

“Good idea,” Prompto says, turning the idea over in his mind. “We will need figure out what we’re doing with the refugees eventually, though – send a message to Ignis to ask about how construction is going in Lestallum. Or Hammerhead. We can’t just keep them in camps here; we either have to commit to rebuilding the Quay or bring them back with us."

Now that’s something he’s not looking forward to. The clearing of the road between Lestallum and Hammerhead was bad enough – marching and marching and more marching, and it didn’t matter that he was riding in a car himself, Prompto still felt bad about all those poor legs, and he figures he’ll feel even worse if it’s refugees doing the marching instead of trained soldiers.

"If he wants to commit to rebuilding," Prompto adds, "we're definitely going to need the extra bodies, possibly even starting to integrate regular soldiers into the army sooner than expected.”

That's not a particularly cheerful alternative either. Prompto very distinctly remembers how kindly people took to non-Insomnia citizens joining the armed forces; he doesn't think people will be all that pleased with the notion of being the newbies in a fully MT army.

“I will compose a message for your approval,” Jiten says.

“Great,” Prompto says, already reviewing his to-do list for the rest of the day. It’s extensive, and there’s several lists beyond that that he needs to worry about. Who knew Generals did so much work? But before he forgets – “Who’s the refugee who suggested scallops? I want to thank him.”

“He’s in the main facility,” Tifor says. “His designation is ‘Dino’, sub-designation ‘Ghiranze’.”

“Wait,” Prompto says. “Dino’s still around?”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gladio doesn't know how it happened.

Really.

It's not like the MT kids were his responsibility or anything, even though he did feel a bit bad when he dropped the kids off back at Lestallum.

So, when he came back from an oddly unsatisfying hunt – it all felt like pointless grinding nowadays, given that there were always more daemons – he figured there was no harm in checking in on how they were doing.

Little did he know.

Really, it's after that point that things started getting hazy.

One minute he's come back from a hunt and swinging by the MTs to see how they're adapting (answer: they weren't, at all, it was horrifying – they didn't even understand the concept of beds), the next minute he's up in someone's face yelling about how the MTs need to be taught the basics of humanity because they can't just neglect them the way Niflheim always had, the minute after that the fateful words "well if no one else is available, I'll do it" are coming out of his mouth...

Well, long story short, Gladio's now in charge of a school.

Not just an MTs school, either. He meant for it to be for MTs, who desperately needed lessons in things like "eating" and "sleeping" and "fun", but the second someone – Gladio doesn't know who, but he's going to find them and hurt them – mentioned the word 'school', a few dozen men and women showed up with their kids and determined expressions.

Gladio's protestations that he wasn't teaching anything appropriately scholastic were met with implacable statements of "don't care as long as they're kept busy a few hours during the day, now take them".

Which – well.

What was he supposed to with that?

He's a Shield. His job is supposed to be to protect people, in the end, and besides, tired, overstressed refugee mothers determined to drop their kids off at school are a lot scarier than daemons anyway.

That left him with a bunch of off-duty MTs (they didn't really understand the concept of being off-duty, but Ignis, via Prompto, had imposed requirements that all squads take some staggered time off anyway), unfinished MTs, and a bunch of regular kids.

Gladio panicked.

Luckily for him, it turned out the regular kids, mostly elementary or kindergarten age, had already been to school and had very firm ideas of what it consisted of.

This apparently involved things like "building with blocks", "finger painting" and "nap time". Some of the older kids even got really into explaining basic concepts (mostly incorrectly, but whatever) and enforcing order because they decided that they were self-dubbed 'teacher's assistants'.

The MTs were instantly entranced.

Gladio breathed a sigh of relief.

A sigh of relief that came much too soon, because apparently once word got around that Gladio was running a school that kept kids busy during the day, there was a massive influx of sign ups.

So many kids.

Gladio went to beg Ignis for help.

Ignis – after laughing himself sick for something like ten minutes straight – authorized him to hire additional teachers. Gladio was apparently paying them in nicer quarters for their families, since gil weren't really useful anymore.

Some of them had actual teaching experience, thank the Six.

Gladio somehow thought that'd be the end of it, the teachers would take over and he could go back to hunting.

But no.

In the first week or so, Gladio had – in sheer desperation and lack of experience – decided that instead of actual classes, he'd just gather everyone together and just ramble on about something. It'd worked out pretty well – it didn't matter if he was talking about the importance of regular sleep cycles or trying to explain the concept of personal agency, or explaining the concepts of "names" as opposed to "designations", everyone was really into it. Kids, MTs, everyone. The kids liked to volunteer suggestions, and the MTs – speaking through their helmets – were slowly getting used to the idea of asking stupid questions.

Technically, the classes were meant as rehabilitation for the adult MTs. Practically, everyone attended, and he does mean everyone. Even bored adults sometimes showed up.

Gladio's still suspicious that at some point they were going to start heckling, but no, the Gladio Talks About Something show was everyone's favorite show in town, apparently.

And when he hired the teachers to, you know, actually put all the kids into groups and teach them real things, there was a near riot at the suggestion that the show was going to stop.

Gladio's more popular than chocobo plushes.

He didn't even know that was possible.

Gladio started to run out of subjects to talk about. And then, in a fit of desperation, he'd lasso'd Cor into giving a talk about "why not to fight everything you see, up to and including minor deities".

Cor had given him a Look when he’d announced the subject.

Gladio has to deal with kids now. Cor's Looks are nothing.

Cor's talk turned out to be insanely popular. Not so much a surprise – half the camp wanted to hear the Immortal talk, especially with Gladio there to act as a minor buffer between him and the kids – they kept suggesting things for him to say to Cor, mostly via notes, presumably because they were too shy to ask any questions of Cor directly. Cor mostly glared at the audience and escaped the second he thought he could.

Gladio thought it was a success.

Sure, Cor nearly killed Gladio when it was all over, but the respite was worth it.

In fact, it gave Gladio an idea.

He posted a list asking for suggested topics and speakers to talk about them, figuring that as long as he was there, it still counted as a Gladio talk for the kids. He expected to have to burn favors to get a hunter or two to talk, but in fact the list filled up remarkably quickly.

Lots of people had stuff they wanted to talk about. Who knew?

Yesterday's talk was about the life cycle of frogs.

Normally, Gladio’s pretty sure that Sania wouldn't have gotten such an enthusiastic reception for a talk about frogs, but it turns out that no one ever explained to MTs that regular people get born, not made in tubes, and so the whole thing turned into the world's most embarrassing multi-person birds and the bees talk ever.

Gladio's too busy thanking the Six that he wasn't the one giving it.

He wonders, idly, if he can get Prompto to give them all a lecture on photography. The kids would love that.

And if it’s Prompto, the MTs would love it too.

He winces when he gets a mental image of Prompto lecturing his gigantic armies.

Well, that would probably be funny, but that would almost certainly start a mania for photography that they couldn’t handle, if only because they'd never find enough cameras. The MTs idolize Prompto to a probably unhealthy degree.

Might incentivize them to find more cameras, though...

Gladio will have to double check with Ignis. Apparently, after the whole sex talk thing, he's supposed to run his ideas by the camp's Supreme Commander.

A Supreme Commander who can't keep a straight face for more than five seconds when the subject is discussed. Gladio's counted.

Honestly, Gladio doesn't mind. It's good to see Ignis laughing again.

Prompto, too; he's looking better than he was before. His eyes are sharp again, his smiles have come back – mostly when he's relaying the more bizarre antics of his newfound army -- and responsibility suits him better than anyone might have thought.

If anything, Prompto thrives under the weight of generalship. For all his childhood shyness, he's always liked people, liked being around people who liked him, and now the number of people he called his own numbers in the thousands.

Cindy, on one of her visits to Lestallum for an exchange of supplies, looked both fond and slightly relieved.

Huh. That's definitely someone he should get to give a talk. Car repair, maybe?

Besides, with the advent of the portable fortresses and the start of actual construction, he has a place to put his 'school', a bunch of teachers to teach classes before each afternoon's Gladio Talk (he'd punch whoever named it that, but he has the sinking suspicion it was him), a schedule in place for the next two weeks of speakers, and, well, he's starting to feel like he's getting the hang of this whole thing.

It's working.

"Hey, Gladio," a familiar voice says from behind him.

Gladio turns with a grin. He can always finish his morning workout later. "Hey, Iris," he says. "Or should it be Iris the Daemon Slayer?"

Iris blushes. "Oh, shut up. It's not like that."

"It's totally like that," Gladio says gleefully. "You took out a whole nest by yourself. Not too shabby."

He yelled at her for being stupid at the time, but since she was fine, he's let it turn into glowing pride.

She rolls her eyes. "It was a small nest, and I had backup," she says dismissively, but Gladio can see the flush of pleasure on her face. She likes her new nickname.

As long as it doesn't encourage her to do more stupid stuff, he likes it too.

It's a big brother's duty to tease, after all.

"So, Great Daemon Slayer, what have I done to earn the honor of your presence?"

"Shut up!"

"First you come interrupt my workout, then you tell me to shut up," Gladio says mournfully, shaking his head. "I guess that's what they mean about women being changeable..."

Iris shoves him. He shoves back.

They're wrestling on the ground a minute later, both laughing their heads off. It's not even proper sparring, just the old fashioned wrassling they used to do when they were small. The only thing missing are some pillows to smack each other with.

Iris fights dirty, but Gladio's her big brother. Pinning her and sitting on her until she cries mercy is a matter of honor.

"Fine! Fine! You win! Get off of me, you big lunk! You're crushing me!"

"I don't know –" he says, pretending to have to think about it. "You haven't said please –"

"Gladio!"

Laughing, Gladio rolls off of Iris and offers her a hand up. She takes it and sticks her tongue out at him.

"Very mature," he tells her, grinning. He wonders if he can invite her to recreate it at one of his talks – the MTs need a proper introduction to the concept of 'siblings' that's a little less rosy tinted than in, say, books...

"You're one to talk," she sniffs. "Besides, if it'd been swords, I would've won."

"In your dreams," Gladio laughs, grabbing a towel and slinging it over his shoulders.

"No, really," Iris persists, following behind him. "How long has it been since you've been on a hunt?"

Gladio shrugs. He's not actually sure. Since before he started the school, that's for sure.

"Doesn't matter," he says. "I can still beat you with one hand tied behind my back."

"Maybe you should try," Iris says.

Gladio frowns at her. "Why're you being so persistent about this?" he asks. "You trying to hurt my feelings or something?"

They aren't hurt, for the record. He brought down a behemoth and a bandersnatch and a whatever Ignis had named that thing in the swamp. He's fought Astals and MTs and Ardyn fucking Izunia. He passed Gilgamesh's trial. It'd take a lot more than a several month break (has it really been that long?) to make him doubt himself.

What he does wonder about is why Iris is so fixated on it.

"No, nothing like that," Iris says quickly.

"Then what's up?"

"It's just – I just – you're a Shield!" she finally bursts out. "You're a warrior! You're more than just some – some – some schoolteacher!"

Gladio's eyebrows go up. This is more serious than he realized.

He catches Iris by the shoulder and hustles her over to the side of the gym, where they can at least pretend to have some privacy.

"Iris," he says, but he's lost the momentum of the conversation; Iris' face is flushed red and she's on a tear

"I don't know why Ignis assigned this to you, but it's wrong! You're the bravest, strongest guy I know, the best warrior we have left – yes, I’m including Cor – but instead of going out and fighting, you haven't left Lestallum in weeks; you've just been trapped in here, doing paperwork and taking care of kids and I just don't want you to be unhappy, Gladio!"

"I'm not," Gladio says, and is so stupefied by his own statement that he loses the next few minutes of Iris' ranting.

He's not unhappy. He's not happy, the way he used to define happiness – the open, gaping wound that is Noct's disappearance still lingers, unable to be closed by the final knowledge that he's gone for good or back for good, and of course it's probably a bit crass to be happy, really happy, during the Long Night.

Six, as long as there are no operative Cup Noodles factories and they're on strict rations, he can't imagine being happy.

But –

He isn't unhappy, either. Not the desperate, sticking, painful sort of unhappiness, lingering and bleak, like trudging through an endless, pointless marsh with nothing but his failure (what use is a Shield who's lost his King?) to keep him company. Not like the way it used to be, when he buried himself in the endless repetition of daemon hunt after daemon hunt.

He likes hunting, it's not that he doesn't. He fully expects to give a talk to his school at some point about it – how to track, and how to fight, and how to ambush; how to carve meat off a carcass and pick wild vegetables, assuming any remain. Maybe do some sort of field trip, if that were manageable. If they only had more food, he'd like to bring Ignis in to give cooking demos, see if any of the kids like that. Maybe bake cookies or something. He bets none of the MTs have ever had sugar.

And it's not like daemon-hunting isn't fulfilling in its own way, either; he likes the knowledge that he's helping people, protecting them, destroying evil one daemon at a time. That's what it felt like, when he was with Noctis.

What it was like before.

But there's always more daemons, now, during the Long Night. They're never going to run out of them. And somewhere along the way, daemon hunts started feeling like nothing more than endless grinding.

More and more destruction, because that's all a failure like him could do.

Somewhere along the line, Gladio forgot why he hunts. It isn't to get stronger, or to mark down a list of accomplishments; it's to protect people. It's to make their lives better.

Better, like the way his school's made things better.

He's seen the change in Lestallum ever since the school opened – not consciously, not really, but it's there. People aren't just sitting in their tents with nothing to do, caring for kids that have no future. The're talking, for the first time since the Long Night covered Eos, about the future.

Sure, it's little things they're looking forward to, inconsequential things – next week's ‘Talk By Cor The Immortal Part II, This Time With Questions’, for instance, that's a big one. People are already planning to show up early to reserve seats.

Not all of it's the school, Gladio's the first to admit that. Ignis has been working miracles – the Empire's old portable fortresses set up in ever-increasing concentric rings, designed both for defense and easy navigation, transformed into places for people to live that isn't a tent or the ground or a single room apartment with no space. Sure, the process of setting up each fortress takes time, but no one's upset at having to wait, now that they have hope – Ignis' waiting list for rooming arrangements is a mile long, and the list of volunteer floor supervisors nearly as long.

The MT armies, too, they've helped – sure, people were scared at first, all of those metal figures marching in formation, but it's hard to be scared after you've seen them all asking very serious questions about how you differentiate red and blue, and who came up with these silly color names anyway.

Man, the MTs are going to flip when Gladio introduces them to chocobos, assuming he can find some. No one's going to be scared of an MT after that.

Sure, there are food shortages, and they're going to have to worry about medicines, but – there's light, and there's safety, and there's something to look forward to every day.

Hope.

They have hope.

And he's part of it, part of building that hope, in a way he never imagined he could be.

He can help build Noct's kingdom into something he can be proud to come back to, and not just by killing things.

"Iris," Gladio interrupts her.

Iris takes a deep breath and looks at him.

"Ignis didn't assign this to me," he tells her. "I volunteered."

"But why?"

Gladio's not sure he can explain it to her, his heart too full with revelation. This is for him, he knows, not for her; she would hate it in a way he definitely doesn't. He's not sure how to tell her that he sees her face in every kid's, feels that same twinge in his chest that he'd first felt when his dad had told him that he was a big brother now. He's not sure it'll convey properly.

"Dunno," he finally says. "Guess I just enjoy suffering?"

She smacks his arm.

"Seriously, Iris," Gladio says, catching her hand and pulling her into a hug. "Don't worry about me, okay? Maybe what I'm doing would be boring to you, but it's good for me right now."

"You're sure?" she asks, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he says. Then he grins. "But I'm glad to know that you'll take over for me in case I really need a break."

"Wait, what?! I didn't agree to anything like that!"

"It was implied!"

"It was not!"

Someone ends up calling Ignis on the two maniacs chasing each other while waving swords about the length of their bodies around in the air like sticks, but it's totally worth every minute of Ignis' surprisingly effective "I'm disappointed in you for your juvenile behavior in the middle of my city" look and accompanying speech.

(The only thing that would make it more effective is if he stopped looking like he's about to laugh the whole time. Luckily only someone who knows him as well as Gladio does can tell.)

No, Gladio reflects, things are going pretty damn well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things are going terribly.

Ignis knew, didn't he, that accepting all the refugees would be a problem. More people, more problems – compounded old problems, new problems, problems he hadn’t even conceived of yet.

But he couldn’t turn them away.

It wasn’t what Noct would have done.

However diminished, this is still the kingdom of Lucis. Noctis’ kingdom, and it's Ignis’ duty to carry that forward in both rule and spirit, as long as possible.

The day will come, he knows with grim certainty, when he will be forced to choose between the people of the kingdom and its soul, but every day he can forestall that fate, he will.

Forestalling every problem, expected or unexpected, that he can along the way.

He’s been doing that since the beginning.

Ignis remembers the first days, when they lugged the Crystal back from Niflheim, that horribly long journey by thankfully still working train. He remembers how they hoped, how they were disappointed, how they wept, how they spoke in low, despairing voices.

He remembers Prompto all but tearing out his hair when the sun didn’t rise – “Is the sun actually gone? Are we all going to freeze?” he shrieked. “Are we going to spin off into space?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Water will freeze! Animals and plants will die! The weather – Six, Ignis, what’s going to happen to the weather –”

“If the sun was fully gone, we’d be dead within about seven minutes,” Ignis said calmly. “It’s been several days. The sun is not gone.”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the sun is definitely not rising.”

“Maybe it’s covered up?” Gladio suggested.

“Drastic cool down!” Prompto shouted. “Followed, very shortly, by a horrific increase in the greenhouse gas effect, resulting in us all boiling! Before we freeze! What’s left of us!”

“There’s no particulate matter in the air,” Ignis said in his best reasonable tone. “Clearly that has also not occurred.”

“Maybe we’re stuck on the dark side of the Earth!” Prompto exclaimed.

“I feel like we’d notice if the Earth’s rotation had stopped…” Ignis started.

“Has anybody got a compass?” Gladio asked morbidly.

“You’re not helping, Gladio,” Ignis said.

“Prompto, if we were stuck on the dark side of the Earth, we would have all the same problems that we’ve already discussed,” Gladio said. “It’s clearly a magic curse blocking us from receiving sunlight, but since it hasn’t gotten noticeably colder –”

“It’s freezing!”

“We’re in Niflheim!” Ignis exclaimed. “In the last part of winter! The Glacian’s body is less than three miles away! It’s always freezing here!”

Prompto and Gladio, entirely unaccustomed to Ignis shouting, turned to him, probably, if he had to guess, with wide eyes. He can hear their bootheels scraping the floor as they make the turn.

Ignis cleared his throat, somewhat embarrassed. “As I was saying,” he said sternly. “Gladio is undoubtedly correct – this is a work of magic, and therefore it is by its very nature artificial. The sun is still there, we simply cannot see it. As we leave Niflheim, the weather will likely maintain its regular patterns, including the next winter, which we must prepare for. The crops will die without access to the sun, but we will not be freezing or boiling or – any of it. We must focus on surviving – and ensuring the survival of the kingdom – until Noctis’ return.”

“Uh, yeah,” Prompto mutters.

“Right,” Gladio agrees.

They both sound vaguely overwhelmed.

“And besides,” Ignis continued, “if we die, it’ll be in a few months when our bodies run out of Vitamin D. We will develop rickets, followed, eventually, by death. You can worry about that instead.”

“Ignis!”

They had not, in fact, developed rickets.

Mostly due to the large supply of Vitamin D enriched milk concentrate they apparently have because someone decided to lay in a large warehouse of stock pre-Night, Ignis suspects. Ignis has no idea why someone decided to stock up on that, but honestly he doesn’t care what the reason is. The milk will last them until Galdin Quay can be fully secured, especially if their diets are supplemented with fish and an endless supply of night-thriving mushrooms, which also provides the Vitamin D they are all sorely lacking.

Instead, of course, they developed a brand new set of problems.

Item 1: Food.

As the farmers suspected and Ignis grimly agreed, vegetable life was largely beginning to rot on the vine.

The recent infusion of the MT soldiers was both good and bad in this respect: good, because they were able to effectively scout the cities for more nonperishable foods and their extra hands to work the fields were invaluable, especially when guided by experienced farmers or non-experienced but imaginative volunteers, and when the non-MTs were working the fields the MTs patrolled as guards.

Bad, because they represented additional mouths to feed. Ignis hated to do it – and Prompto wasn't any happier about it – but he'd ordered the MTs to remain on those awful protein bar rations while on active duty for the time being, and authorized them to continue harvesting daemons for their regular injections of daemon blood, which enabled them to eat significantly less.

It appears as though daemons conduct their own bizarre form of photosynthesis during nighttime hours, which is both horrifying (they attack humans not because they needed to eat, but rather for the pure pleasure of killing) and extremely convenient (humanity is unlikely to collectively die as a result of the plants no longer converting carbon dioxide to oxygen).

Not ideal, but Ignis can't have thousands of people going through withdrawal in the middle of a crisis, but it doesn't make him feel any better about ordering it. Nor does it make him feel less like he and the other citizens of Lucis are benefiting from the suffering of others, even if those others knew nothing other than suffering.

Especially if they knew nothing other than suffering.

Still, it's nothing more than a preservation of the status quo, and if things ever stabilize, Ignis fully intends to start some sort of rehabilitation program for them; the good intention will have to do for the time being.

At least, by rotating their off-duty shifts, they're able to attend Gladio's school and start to learn more about what it means to be human.

No matter.

Ignis conscripted every able-bodied adult he could, hunter or refugee or MT, to harvest the fields, and they've gotten in everything they could, but that was it.

Barring what Prompto's army could collect from the cities they'd been sent to clean up – Galdin Quay being the first, with its access to the seaside and hopefully a steady supply of seafood – they're now officially limited to what vegetables they have collected, and what prepackaged versions of them they can find.

Ignis has imposed strict rationing, and he thinks they can make it to years' end before they need to cut it again. But what if Noct doesn't come back at the six month mark? What if he doesn't come back at the year mark?

What if the Long Night continues?

Ignis huddled together with some of the surviving mathematicians (rather a lot of those – an indoor species for the most part, they seemed just fine with the lack of outdoor light when they even noticed) and they did the grim math.

Six months – they’re fine.

Noct returns in a year – still minimal casualties.

Three years – 25% attrition rate due to starvation.

Six years – 40%.

More...

He doesn't want to calculate more.

Worse, that calculation only includes the matter of food.

They have far worse to deal with.

Item 2: Disease.

Six, Ignis had very nearly forgotten about disease.

That’s not a mistake he’s ever going to make again.

Overcrowding – shoving all those people side by side into tents – led inevitably to disease, and not just the usual bouts of colds and coughs that always happened when people from different places met after some time separated and began to breathe each other’s air.

Their alliance with the MTs came barely in time – the MTs were able to provide at least a few portable fortresses, and the bodies to raise and protect them, the very same week that Ignis received the first reports of true sickness.

Cholera, the city dweller's disease.

Too many people in one place. There were lines to use the limited number of restrooms, the sewers were backing up, and far too many caravans flouted Ignis' rules about not fouling up any water that could be potable.

The fortresses took time to set up, for all that it was less time than actually building something, and more and more people began to fall ill.

Those that were already weak, first: the elderly, the sick, pregnant women, children. But soon enough they'd have an epidemic.

While the first fortresses were being set up, Ignis seriously considered imposing martial law over misuse of bathrooms. What has his life come to?

But then they built the fortresses, and they expanded the sewer lines to connect to them, and they finally had enough room.

For now.

Of course, the fortresses are out in the darkness, so people are wary of them and of the MTs that guard them. Luckily there are enough adventurous souls – or at least claustrophobic ones – to ease the pressure on the city.

The fact that the MTs don't mind sewage duty helped. Of course, Prompto rightfully yelled at Ignis that 'not complaining' didn't mean 'fine with'; Ignis recruited more refugees to help after that, but it's working, at least for now.

They treated the first few cases with elixirs, potions, curatives, all watered down to barely nothing to make them last longer. Prompto sends potions back whenever he could, and has assigned a wing of his army to the Disc of Cauthess to mine some meteorite dust to try to make more, but they would run out of those, too.

They're managing for now.

Managing, but not thriving.

More diseases as the population swells. Increasingly less food, fewer vitamins, which means people’s natural resistance would be weakened. And as people died, their corpses would immediately become centers of contagion and would have to be dealt with.

At least the rivers mean that water is plentiful, even if they do have to carefully filter it after discovering daemons trying to intentionally pollute it, as well as the accidental or purely stupid pollution of overcrowding.

They're managing – but for how long?

At least the spread of the Starscourge seems limited – Ignis would think that perhaps what remains of the Six had opted to have mercy, deciding that daemons infecting bodies in the refugee zones deliberately is enough of a problem, but he knows it's more likely because the daemons were too busy running free in the wild to effectively spread the scourge to the cities. Lestallum is spared for now, but only because there were still enough bodies outside of Lestallum for the daemons to target.

It's hardly what he would call mercy.

Item 3: Civil Unrest.

Overcrowding doesn’t just mean less food and more disease. It means less space, which means sharper tempers. Less light, which means more of the fears that come in the darkness, a darkness that makes people feel free to whisper to each other things they would normally disdain to say during the day.

Moreover, people are unnaturally idle, and Ignis – as someone who thrives on work – knows well that idle hands are unhappy hands.

Too many people, not enough food, sickness and boredom, and all the anxiety of having lost everything – all enough to drive anyone to unhappiness, and all that unhappiness is aimed at whoever they can think of to blame. And, unfortunately, the obvious choice for most of them is to lay the blame at the feet of the local government.

As the man currently representing the local government, Ignis can both sympathize with the people's plight and also very sincerely want them not to do anything about it.

Luckily, most people seem to understand that Ignis really is trying his best.

Most.

There are enough agitators that Ignis has had to reposition hunters away from useful tasks, like hunting meat or killing daemons, and put them on patrolling the camp. He doesn't like it – especially the part where the hunters report to him on any unrest they find, it makes him feel like he's spying on his people – but he doesn't have a choice.

They have to enforce order.

The hunters, at least, seem to understand for the most part; led by Cor and following his example, they don't judge him for receiving the reports on identified troublemakers, for ordering that anyone found assaulting another refugee be immediately cast out – theft, Ignis can understand as desperation, but he can't afford to let any violence go unchecked – or even for his request that they do their best to encourage patience, his own little propaganda machine.

The system works imperfectly. There are a handful of individuals who have started spreading rumors – rumors from all angles, no less. Rumors that Noct yet lives, and that Ignis, Gladio and Prompto have conspired against him and imprisoned him somewhere so that they might rule. Rumors that the MTs, with the daemon blood, are carriers of Starscourge and that Ignis has sold them all out to the daemons by allying with them. Rumors that the Astals have promised to bring back the sun once all the daemons (MTs included) were dead. Rumors...

Well, Ignis has heard a lot of rumors.

He credits Gladio's school with the fact that no open rebellion or riot had yet broken out.

In truth, Ignis would not have expected Gladio to be the one to take initiative to start reforming the social order – Gladio, whom Ignis loves but whose interests lie primarily in fighting, bad books, and Cup Noodles – but somehow, when faced with an endless darkness and despair, he grew strong enough to take upon his shoulders that most slippery of challenges.

Ignis isn't even sure Gladio entirely realizes the magnitude of what he's taken on, much like Prompto and his MTs and his newfound generalship. But it's true.

Ignis, they call the Supreme Commander, following the MTs in their need for structured order; he represents the government that makes them wait in line, that sends their hunters out on dangerous tasks, that knows things they dp not. They respect him and thank him, but he is both good and bad.

Prompto is their General, leader of their armies, savior of the refugees and source of much of the food they have – Ignis has heard the reports of Prompto's efficiency, his care for life, and the devotion of his troops, and he knows that even the hunters have started agitating to join his squads on the front lines, MTs or no MTs. It is only a matter of time (and of preparing Prompto) before Ignis transfers all external martial matters into the hands of the least militant of their original quartet. He has only refrained from doing so already because doing so would inevitably result in losing Cor, their most experienced military leader, to his proper place as Prompto's advisor, and the sight of the Immortal is one of the biggest morale boosters they have.

At least Cor seems to recognise the issue and is very obviously training (and selling) Iris as his successor in leadership of the hunters. Iris Amicitia, the Daemon Slayer – people are already whispering that the second child of the King's Shields, unusual in a line that typically matches the Caelum line's tradition of a single heir, was born for this, the defense – the Shield – of her people against the dark.

And Ignis only started half a dozen of those whispers himself.

The Commander, the General, the Immortal Marshal, the Daemon Slayer - these are figures that are respected, honored, saluted. They are the political mind and military arm of Lucis, the might of the much diminished kingdom – insofar as it still is Lucis, with its population swollen with strangers from all over. But they represent the government, and like any form of government, no matter how beneficent, the people see them as what they really are: still armed, dangerous, best to have, but to have at a safe distance.

Gladio, though; Gladio the people love. Every person in the camp, from the straightest laced noble to the least human MT, calls him Gladio with fondness: Gladio, whose rambling lectures are the highlight of everyone's day whether or not they attend; Gladio, who gave everyone something to gossip about and to look forward to; Gladio, who welcomes anyone to his podium, no matter what class or rank or how dull they might think they are; Gladio, who as often as not gives away portions of his rations to children who look a little pale; Gladio, on whose solid strength they all rely.

If Gladio thinks things are going well, the people say with satisfaction, then surely it must be true.

Gladio, who taught the MTs to want the names Prompto gave them.

Gladio, who makes the children laugh.

Gladio, who brought an engineer who had been injured to his school to give a speech on the values of learning mathematics for engineering, and ended up leading a very nearly camp-wide discussion on the best way to expand the use of the generators and to create additional light for everyone.

Ignis received three dozen workable proposals within a week of that talk, and the mood of the camp shifted from a fearful mass huddling at the base of the power plant to a cheerful crowd greedily looking out at the dark, speaking confidently of the expansion sure to come once there was more light. People who had begged Ignis not to send them out beyond the line of the darkness now spoke loudly of the homes they planned to build once there was time for new construction.

Ignis, who had scarcely even thought of new construction, ended up assigning one of the loudest speakers to run a request for proposals for building new homes, given their limited light and resources.

In fact, the very same engineer who gave the talk came by Ignis’ office just yesterday and suggested, very quietly, that they consider – when they had time, of course, time and energy and manpower – sending for the General to create a cleared walkway to the Callatenn’s Plunge the way he had created a safe route to Hammerhead.

“Callatenn’s Plunge?” Ignis said blankly, when this was suggested. “Why? We’re not short of water around here yet.”

Callatenn’s Plunge was near a large lake – perhaps they could set up a fishery there, as well as in the more reliable but distant Quay; Ignis had considered it but thought it not worth the manpower until the cities were cleared. But why would an engineer care?

“Not for the water,” the engineer – Holly? Ignis vaguely recalls her voice – replied. “For the waterfall.”

“The waterfall?”

There is a secret passage behind the waterfall, as Ignis well remembers; frozen and icy, but again, if the purpose isn’t for water, then –

“Again, this is only when we have time,” Holly said quickly, apologetically. “But I was thinking we could build a dam.”

“A dam.”

“Yes. To – generate electricity?”

Hydroelectric power.

A second power plant.

The possibilities are – pardon his pun – electrifying.

“I want you to get me a workable plan,” Ignis informed Holly, who he could hear straightening up with pride. “Let me know what would be needed: manpower, supplies, everything. I want the bottom line in terms of what is needed and a range of options in terms of timelines. Assume you’d be able to get whatever volunteers you need.”

“Yes, Commander!” Holly chirped, and she went off, head held high, smile broad.

And she thanked Gladio for inspiring her, too.

Gladio will need a title eventually, Ignis muses. But perhaps it's best that he doesn’t have one yet.

Item 4: Daemons.

They have many hunters and many fighters in camp, all the ones they could find, but their numbers are dwindling. Some have been lost to injury, others lost entirely, and not every dangerous job can be trusted to the MTs, who are just as susceptible as hunters since the daemons realized that they were being attacked.

They need more.

They need –

“Ignis?” a familiar voice comes from the door, interrupting Ignis’ thoughts.

Prompto feels the absurd urge to wave hello to Ignis, despite the fact that the man is, well, still blind, and without much hope of getting not-blind.

It’s kind of weird being here again, even though he spent three months here before his three months with the MTs. It’s different.

Not a bad different, just different.

Prompto loves Ignis dearly, but something about being here, standing across the desk from Ignis, makes Prompto feel more like the stupid kid always just a little bit behind the rest he felt like growing up. Never quite good enough, never quite fitting in – never the perfect intellect like Ignis, never the perfect warrior like Gladio –

He’s stopped feeling that way among the MTs, actually, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s finally among what were once his own people (Six, he hopes that’s not it) or because of the respect they all have for him, the pressure he feels to demonstrate good human traits for them. And good human traits, in Prompto’s mind, include confidence.

He’s been faking it pretty well, even though he’s still totally convinced they’re all going to figure out what an imposter he is and all turn on him.

Imposter syndrome, Gladio called it in one of his letters, and told Prompto not to let it worry him.

Easier said than done.

Here, though, he has no one to impress, and that feeling – that questioning feeling, the feeling like he shouldn’t be here, because he was only ever part of the group because Noct wanted him to be part of the group – Noct, who isn’t here, who’s gone, who –

Ignis smiles abruptly. “General Prompto,” he says, and his voice is warm.

Also –

“Don’t call me that, Iggy,” Prompto says, flushing. “It’s just for the MTs.”

“Oh, no,” Ignis says, his smile widening even more. “If I have to go by ‘Supreme Commander’, then by the Six, you’re going to go by General, General.”

And suddenly the ice is broken, and Prompto remembers that Iggy does actually like him as a person, not just as Noct’s useless shadow.

“Just for that, I’m going to find some extra titles for you,” he threatens, grinning and coming over to hop onto the title. “How do you feel about, hmmm, ‘the Great and Glorious’?”

“Don’t you dare,” Ignis says primly. “Besides, do you know they haven’t thought of one for Gladio yet?”

“We have to fix this.”

“Certainly.”

“What’s the dumbest military-related name you can think of?” Prompto asks. “Maybe, hmmm, Brigadier?”

Ignis snorts. “I’ve been threatening him with ‘Headmaster’, actually, what with his school.”

“Nooooo, you can’t do that, he’ll just make a ton of jokes about –”

“He already has,” Ignis sighs dramatically. “But enough of that – you’re here! How have you been?”

“Pretty good,” Prompto says with a grin. “We’re making progress on the Quay – I brought you fish.”

“And for my fish, you’ll be taking away one of my generators for a few more round trips in one of the drop ships,” Ignis says dryly. “Yes, I got your message. Tell me, do you still have that terrible goatee?”

Prompto rolls his eyes. “No, Iggy,” he says patiently. “I shaved it off. The MTs thought I was crazy for having it in the first place.”

“Don’t be modest, Prompto,” Ignis replies. “We all thought you were crazy for thinking it was a good idea.”

Prompto laughs.

“I assume you’re here for the six month mark?” Ignis asks. “You’re a day early.”

“Well, yeah,” Prompto says, unable to keep from smiling. Typical Iggy. He’s forgotten.

Iggy, who never forgets anything, always forgot –

“Supreme Commander Ignis,” Eufiv says, coming in through the door, closely followed by Dustin and Monica, Ignis’ closest aides. “General Prompto. It is good to see you.”

Eufiv still says ‘good to see you’ in his scratchy radio monotone MT voice, like he’s not sure why it’s necessary to say it, but human is as human does, as far as Prompto’s concerned.

“Good to see you too, Eufiv,” he says. “Dustin, Monica.”

“You’re holding something,” Ignis says, frowning. They are, in fact, holding a large box between them. “What is it?”

“How do you always know?” Dustin asks.

“The floorboard in front of the door is creaky,” Ignis says dryly. “The volume of the creak varies by the weight of the person entering. If I know it’s you, but the noise is louder than usual, it means you’re carrying something heavy.”

“Man, you’re good,” Prompto says admiringly.

Ignis does his best to look unmoved, but he preens just the slightest bit.

“Gladio informed us that he would be running late and that we should get started without him,” Eufiv announces.

“Huh,” Prompto says. “Iggy, you’re right. We need to get him a title right away. It’s not fair that he just gets ‘Gladio’.”

“I did tell you,” Ignis says. “Get started on what? Did we have a meeting planned?”

“Sort of,” Monica says, and she and Dustin put the box in front of Iggy and unveil it. “Ta-da!”

Ignis reaches out with his hands and runs them over the structure.

“It’s…what is this?”

“A model,” Monica says, very smug.

You made me a model,” Ignis says blankly. He’s clearly touched by the gesture, while simultaneously very visibly thinking, “…a model? Made of what? And who had the time to sit around and make one?”

And apparently saying it aloud now, too.

Prompto dissolves into sniggers.

“We all chipped in,” Dustin says cheerfully. “Whole team.”

“Technically, models, plural,” Monica corrects. “The first one is a three-dimensional depiction of what the expanded refugee housing units and our administrative center will look like. The second one is an in-progress model, tracking the building progress.”

“It’s currently a hole in the ground,” Dustin adds. “It’ll be more interesting as we start building, though – the current plan is to update it twice a week, and then accelerate to three times a week as construction proceeds.”

Prompto grins when he sees Ignis visibly affected by his team’s efforts. A visual model, so he could ‘see’ how construction was going, since he couldn’t actually go out and ‘see’ the real construction – Prompto told them that Ignis would like it. Twice, even.

“I see,” Ignis says, clearing his throat a few times. “We’ve cleared enough space to start proper permanent construction? I thought we were still a few weeks away from that.”

“All squads worked double shifts to ensure completion,” Eufiv says. “Human and MT both. The prospect of completion was very encouraging and morale increased steadily once completion was in sight. Additional encouragement was put in place to ensure completion by the present date.”

“Additional encouragement? Did we promise them something?”

“Not supplies,” Monica says, chuckling. “We just pointed out that it’d be nice to finish by today.”

“Today..?”

Prompto laughs. He can’t help it. “Happy birthday, Iggy.”

“Happy birthday, boss,” everyone else (including a somewhat confused but game-sounding Eufiv) choruses.

Ignis looks positively dumbfounded.

"I –" he says blankly. "I – oh. Oh. Thank you."

"I thought you indicated that Commander Ignis would respond positively to the 'birthday'," Eufiv says. "Is this a positive reaction?"

"Very positive," Prompto assures him. "He's speechless. That almost never happens. Usually we're trying to get him to shut up."

"Yes," Ignis says. "I – very positive, thank you, Eufiv. I must admit I had forgotten."

"You always forget," Prompto says. He doesn't mean to call up memories, though they're always hovering so close it's impossible not to think of it – years and years of Noct conspiring to present Ignis with a present and sometimes a cake, the shocked expression on Ignis' face when he realizes he's forgotten again (only sometimes faked), the many times they were all together, back when Noct was with them, back when Ignis could see...

But Ignis is still smiling helplessly, running his hands over his model, shaking his head. "Thank you," he says. "Thank you all. Walk me through the model, please."

"It's a staggered structure," Monica says, beaming. "Based on the system we've put in place with the portable fortresses already. We're still using the portable fortresses as the baseline, but we're creating 'streets' that go through them, with regular center squares for congregation – parties and such like – while avoiding excess crowding –"

"Our streets will be a minimum of twelve people wide," Dustin chimes in. "We wanted to avoid people feeling claustrophobic, but at the same time we wanted to ensure that we had adequate defenses if we got attacked -"

"There will be barriers between the residence structures," Eufiv says, reaching forward and demonstrating. "Essentially a horizontal portcullis, but at multiple points rather than just at the city gates. It will enable the 'streets' to become locked down –"

"— but to avoid people being trapped, we've also created internal tunnels through the buildings themselves –"

"And the administrative center is in the middle, of course; we're planning on expanding it significantly as soon as the tents are all cleared out –"

"What about new refugee groups?" Ignis asks.

"We're thinking that they should get a separate zone until they're assigned permanent housing," Monica says. "That way, they can assimilate before being allowed in, and we can avoid any more MT incidents."

"MT incidents?" Prompto interrupts sharply. "What MT incidents? Was I told about these?"

They blink at him, except for Eufiv, who doesn't say anything but assumes that perfect 'at ease' stance that Prompto has learned, via several months' experience, signifies smugness and ‘I told you so’ in an MT.

"Prompto is to be informed of all MT related incidents, Monica, Dustin," Ignis says mildly. "I've already alerted you to that."

"Ah," Monica says. "Yes, of course. I just didn't think it was relevant, it being an internal issue..."

"It's an MT issue, and that means it's relevant," Prompto snaps. "I'm responsible for them, and to them, and I can't do my job if people aren't telling me things! What happened?"

"Nothing serious," Ignis says. "Or I would have had you informed regardless. There was some unfortunate language directed at some MTs, with threats of escalation to violence."

"You call that not serious?!"

"No," Ignis says patiently. "Because they were foolish enough to say it within earshot of Gladio."

Prompto can imagine Gladio's reaction. He's very nearly as defensive of his adult students as he is the children.

"Oh," he says, deflating a little. What was he thinking, shouting like that? Of course Ignis had it under control.

"You were correct, however," Ignis says. "The MTs are your responsibility, and you need information. Monica, going forward, all information relating to MTs is to be copied to Prompto."

"Will do," Monica says. "Sorry, Prompto. It won't happen again."

She seems serious about it, too, even though he just ripped her a new one.

"It's good to see you asserting yourself," Ignis says to Prompto, quietly. "You're too often reserved on matters when you're undeniably correct, which is just as bad as being too aggressive."

Huh. Yeah, Prompto can see that, he guesses.

And, well, the MTs are his responsibility.

Prompto always did find it easier to defend others than himself…

Ignis clears his voice. "What's the purpose behind the expansion of the administrative center? Are the lines too long?"

"No, but we'll need room for the departments," Dustin says, clearly relieved to be switching subjects.

"The departments?"

"You've authorized quite a few individuals to pursue projects in the last few months," Monica says. "We took the liberty of organizing everything into departments. Sanitation, Energy, Food, Defense, Registration..."

"That does sound more efficient," Ignis says, looking interested. "How have they been organized?"

Monica produces a thick file, all typed in that dual-language – typed text and raised indentations – that all the documents in Ignis' office has. "I figured I'd leave that to you," she says gleefully. "Here are the first set of reports."

"They've all been transcribed into the raised alphabet?"

"No need," Eufiv says. "The first shipment of upgraded typewriters recently arrived from Hammerhead. Cid and Cindy said to wish you a happy birthday."

Ignis is surprised into another smile.

"And how is Cindy doing?" Prompto asks Eufiv wickedly, earning a splutter of static in response. It's nice not to be on the receiving end of that teasing.

"Leave him be, Prompto," Ignis says. "It wasn't that long ago you were taking a photo of Hammerhead for your, ah, Goddess of the Gears, was it?"

"Shut up," Prompto says, grinning. He's not even embarrassed about it anymore.

Okay, maybe a little. But that was ages ago! At least seven, eight months!

Wait, really? That little?

It feels like it’s been forever.

"Speaking of which, Prompto, you never said what you got me," Ignis says pointedly. He likes presents as much as the next person, and it makes him absolutely shameless. Prompto enjoys that tremendously.

"Present, me?" Prompto says, batting his eyelashes.

"I assure you, your mere presence is present enough," Ignis says. "Now stop playing around."

Prompto laughs. "Okay, okay! Here's part one."

He pulls a wrapped bundle and hands it to Ignis, who accepts it and quickly pulls free the cloth around it.

"Glasses?" he says, frowning.

"Goggles, really, but stylish - like a visor," Prompto corrects, bouncing on his heels. "Try them on."

Ignis frowns at him, but puts them on. They fit well, as Prompto had hoped – thick yellowed glass, with a black border, a broad strap designed to keep them in place.

"It's better balanced," Ignis says slowly, a little confused. "It'll stay in place better – provide eye protection –"

The glasses activate.

Designed with the same coding as the MT helmet, the glasses are designed to interface with surrounding MT units in the same way the MTs could – via the brain directly, rather than through potentially deteriorated physical facilities.

It can't provide vision – the Empire's scientists which created the system had never seen that as necessary – but it can provide something.

Heat signatures, for one thing.

Eufiv is in the room, which means he's at all times aware of the others not only on the visual spectrum he can see with his eyes, but as glowing infrared signals, with some information included, transmitted directly.

Ignis' jaw drops over and his head turns, very slowly, to focus first on Eufiv, then Monica, Dustin, and finally Prompto.

"Prompto," he whispers.

"It's very vague, I know," Prompto says, plucking at the brand new wristband and earring combo that gives him similar input into the MT conversation stream; Eufiv had given him the first models when he'd arrived in camp, and he's still getting used to it. Based on that, he knows what Ignis is 'seeing', the red-and-black map of the room - he obviously doesn't need the infrared in the same way Ignis does, but he can access it if he wants. "But we finally got it properly compatible with non-MTs, so, y'know, I thought – you might enjoy not having to rely on listening to creaky floorboards all the time just to know if someone's sneaking up on you."

It isn't vision – Ignis is definitely still blind – but knowing about heat signatures would be invaluable defense to a man sitting alone, relying only on his hearing to alert him to potentially violent intruders.

"It's wonderful," Ignis says. His voice is shaking a little. "I – it distinguishes between human and MT?"

"Human, MT and daemon," Prompto confirms. "We designed it so you could expand or contract the link – we'll set up a series of transmitter nodes where you might need personal defense, and a larger set of nodes around the city so that you can coordinate our strategic response in a crisis - sort of like a giant map showing you where the various people are - without having someone narrate." He pauses. "Well, with less narration, anyway. It's, uh, it's not really perfect."

"It's more than I ever expected," Ignis says.

"You need to ease into it, though," Prompto warns. "It takes some time to adjust to. No more than a half-hour a day at first, then steadily more as your brain adjusts."

Ignis nods and removes them, putting his regular glasses on not quite fast enough to hide the fact that his closed lashes and blind eyes are a little wet. "Thank you," he says quietly. "To you and to the MTs both, Prompto."

Prompto ducks his head a little. "Yeah, well," he says. "You know. Happy birthday."

"And you said this was the first present?" Ignis asks, sounding disbelieving.

"Figured I'd start off with a bang," Prompto says with a grin. "Second one is where we got those glasses."

"That is an excellent question," Ignis says, wrinkle starting to appear in his brow. "Your soldiers wouldn't have had time for experimentation – they found it? But it works with MT technology..."

"It was received from Out Wing," Eufiv says calmly, because of course he knew, the dickhead. The MTs have a bad way of assuming that Prompto knows everything.

"Out Wing?" Ignis asks. "I thought we'd designated the four wings with the cardinal directions – north, south, east, west."

"Yeah, we did," Prompto says wryly. "Four wings, consisting of all the MTs we had, that is. Apparently, we've been miscounting."

"How so?"

"The MT units in the four wings represent the MT presence in Lucis," Eufiv says, as if it should be obvious. "There remain other units which were not deployed."

"Not – you mean back in Niflheim? In Accordo, Tenebrae, in –"

Ignis' voice fades as the realization sinks in. The MTs represented the the Empire's vast legions, and were used for everything from patrolling existing cities and guarding high end magistrates to invading new territory.

"Yep," Prompto says. "They've been in production for generations; there's a lot of them. Don't worry, Iggy, they're mostly staying where they are, because they've obtained shelter and food, but we've worked out an agreement with them – they don't automatically recognize me as boss, obviously, just ignore Eufiv calling them Out Wing, that's, like, MT passive-aggressiveness – and we're going to trade things. Including tech like that."

"And what are we giving them?" Ignis asks.

"Radio access to Gladio's school, mostly," Prompto says with a grin. "The MTs around Lestallum told them that it rocks."

Ignis smiles. "Have you told Gladio?"

"Nah," Prompto says cheerfully. "Why put extra pressure on him?"

"The pressure would exist regardless, would it not?" Eufiv asks. "What difference does it make when he knows?"

"He can't feel pressure if he doesn't know about it," Monica tells him.

Eufiv looks suspicious, but nods.

It occurs to Prompto that he's getting really good at identifying MT emotions, at least when they're not in full on linked-up emotionless marching formation.

He's not sure what to do with that.

"So, what you're telling me," Ignis says, "is that we have a trade agreement with the MTs of Niflheim?"

"Exactly," Prompto says. "And they have something we don't."

Ignis arches his eyebrows.

"Factories," Prompto says with satisfaction, watching both understanding and avid interest light up Ignis' face. "The Empire split off a bunch of them to work in mechanical jobs creating 'useful devices'."

"Which means –"

"Guns," Prompto says with relish. "Bullets. And – you're gonna love this – Niflheim's portable fortresses. They can build them to spec."

Ignis grins. He does love it. "And suddenly I see why we all abruptly became so ambitious in our building plans."

"Exactly," Monica crows.

"This is fantastic," Ignis says. "We will need to have a meeting to discuss this - where is Gladio? And Cor? Iris? I would've imagined they'd be here."

"Cor and Iris are out," Monica says. "They were planning on being here, but there was a crisis out by the mushroom grove and the mycologists asked for help –"

"I imagine their request for help didn't leave mushroom for interpretation," Ignis says.

"I sometimes hate you," Monica informs him. "Anyway, they send their best and told me to let you know that they expect – when they return – that Iris will be able to take full leadership of the hunters, and that Cor intends to join forces with Gladio in the teaching field, except he'll be training up a new Crownsguard. Or, well, really most of them will be trained as hunters, but also in city policing, patrolling, defense..."

"That's excellent news! I hadn't realized they thought Iris was ready."

"The hunters all accept her, despite her age," Dustin confirms. "There was a vote – if they couldn't have Cor, they wanted Iris, with Dave as her second."

"Gladio's gift is going to have to be very impressive to compete," Ignis says.

"No kidding," Prompto says. "I don't even know what it is – he was fretting about not having a gift as soon as last week, then suddenly about two days ago, total radio silence."

"Perhaps he didn't think of one, and is embarrassed?" Ignis asks, frowning. "I hope not. He knows I would appreciate his presence, gift or no gift."

"Gladio has stated that he has in fact located the perfect gift," Eufiv volunteers. "He is collecting the final information now from certain MTs."

"Information? From MTs?" Prompto asks. "What is it?"

"Unclear," Eufiv says, sounding vaguely bewildered. "I am only aware that it came up in a lesson, or possibly in the MT-specific practice sessions afterwards."

MTs get extra practice sessions where they focus on boring stuff like "think of yourself as I" or "name your favorite color" for hours, to the point even kids don't want to participate.

"I wonder what it is," Ignis says, looking equally lost, but quite curious.

"Gladio's present had better be epic," Prompto says loudly, seeing the door open with a familiar silhouette. "Super epic, that's all I'm saying."

"Oh, it is," Gladio announces from the door, beaming so hard it looks like it hurts. "I have the best present."

"Better than mine?" Prompto teases.

Gladio smirks. "You bet."

"Just tell me it isn't Cup Noodles," Ignis says.

“Iggy, this is going to blow your mind more than that case of Ebony we got you for the party,” Gladio promises.

“Now that,” Ignis says, face lighting up as Prompto rolls his eyes at Gladio for giving away the surprise, “is going to be a hard measure to beat.”

“Oh, I’m going to beat it,” Gladio crows.

“Now I’m curious,” Prompto says, twisting to look at Gladio. “Stop stalling and get to it already. What is it?”

“I was talking with a couple of our MTs,” Gladio says. “After-school session, we were working favorite foods.”

“The Empire barely gave the MTs anything to eat other than that awful protein stuff,” Prompto points out. He’s still sore about how they haven’t been able to authorize them to move off of it entirely, even though Eufiv, Tifor and Jiten all assure him that the MTs don’t mind waiting, and have even taken to anticipating their once-a-week not-protein-muck supplement (often Cup Noodles) with glee.

“Yeah, it was tough going,” Gladio says. “Except one of them said they liked fresh tomatoes.”

“How would an MT know about tomatoes, much less fresh ones?” Ignis asks. “We haven’t had enough fresh vegetables to be able to distribute them to the MTs as well as the regular populace.” He looks guilty about that, which is the only reason that Prompto forgives him for having no choice but to order it. Thanks to the daemon blood injects, MTs don’t need vitamins the same way non-MTs did.

“One of the researchers gave them to her,” Gladio says. “Just scraps, but Sixen – that’s her name – still remembered it as a high point.”

“Okay,” Ignis says. “I’m following, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

“Sixen’s originally from the imperial lab down in the Ghorovas Rift,” Gladio says triumphantly.

“But Ghorovas Rift is stuck in a perpetual blizzard,” Ignis objects.

“The lab is located underground to avoid the snow,” Eufiv says.

“That’s not the point,” Ignis says. “How do you grow tomatoes…” His voice trails off.

Prompto’s jaw drops as his mind completes the sentence Ignis started.

How do you grow tomatoes – when there’s no sunlight?

“They developed a method of growing vegetables without sunlight,” Ignis says, his voice soft in amazement.

“They were growing them under high intensity lights, using hydroponics,” Gladio confirms. “Lucis has some very limited experience with it, actually; I’ve been talking with the few agricultural specialists we have left, but they said there was never much interested in pursuing it – after all, what’s the point when we had all the sun and soil and good growing conditions we could hope for?”

“What type of equipment?” Prompto says urgently. “We have the factories in Niflheim now –”

“One of the fortresses could be converted –” Ignis adds.

“There’s plenty of seeds in storage,” Monica says, glancing at Dustin, who nods furiously.

“I have a list of everything we’ll need,” Gladio assures them all. “But it’s actually not that complicated – mostly high-dispersion light sources. Honestly, half of the trouble they were having was trying to work with no good soil, which I imagine will be useful with the daemons polluting it all over the place, but if we do use regular soil? It’s a cinch.” Gladio’s smile somehow, impossibly, grows. “In fact, I’ve already set one up, using some garlic, and I’ve already got green shoots.”

“Awesome!” Prompto cheers. He never thought he’d be so excited about vegetables.

“High-dispersion light sources,” Ignis says. “I don’t suppose those would work on humans, would it? For vitamin purposes?”

“Don’t think they’ve tested it out,” Gladio says cheerfully. “But I don’t see why not.”

“I wanna see the garlic,” Prompto whines. “And Ignis can feel it. Show us!”

“Fine, fine, you big baby,” Gladio laughs. “Come this way.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next night, sitting around a table filled with papers and plans and ideas, the Crystal wedged in the back of the room in case Noctis decides to make an unexpected appearance, Ignis takes a moment to sit back and think to himself, I have the finest of friends.

And also –

We might survive this after all.

#final fantasy xv #ffxv #prompto argentum #ignis scientia #gladiolus amicitia #magitek soldiers #my fic

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