melodiesoflife | The Hunt Begins

What: The beginning of the hunt for the Black Crystals
Where: Palitutu's Secret Laboratory
When: Throughout September

The written invitations went out to Fairy Tail (with a second invitation sent to Doc Ed, if he's such an Alchemist, Kaji wants him on board), Jade, Rukia, Sephiroth and Cloud, and anybody else Kaji can think of who has expressed an interest in the Black Crystals. There's also a request to tell your friends, if Kaji accidentally skipped over someone who would be useful.

He asks them all to meet in Palitutu's Secret Laboratory, the one that Jade and the others discovered recently. If there's anything to be cracked about the Black Crystals, he thinks it might be more effective here.

"We've currently got our hands on two of the black crystals, obtained from Mograma and our wonderful host here, Palitutu. There should be four in total, from what we saw in the Rift. The crystals formerly held by four Heroes of Light last cycle, Kalki, Nebilim, Igor, and...Ib." A frown when he says this. "I don't know which ones we have."

"But when we entered the Rift last year? I saw images of the four Heroes. And I tried to help Ib, to take her out of there. It didn't work, obviously." Pause. "But I got something else, instead."

Kaji slowly and deliberately pulls a small spice tin out of his pocket. There is obviously something clanking inside. He pops the top off, and overturns it. The object is wrapped in a small cloth, which Kaji slowly peels back. It is a black stone cut perfectly into the shape of a rose. If anyone has seen Ib's crystal, it looks exactly the same.

"Now. This is not one of the ones we're looking for. Well, obviously, because-" There's no better way to show his point, so Kaji finally picks the stone up with his bare hand, lets it rest on his palm. He looks down at the stone, then up at everyone else. No ill effects. "I can't do this with one of the real crystals. If Kalki is to be believed, it is a direct link to the Calamity. And it turns us into monsters. So. When we do find these, we don't use them, ourselves."

"But. It's not a black crystal?" He drops it back to the table. "I don't know what it is, instead. I'm hoping that the Crystal Resarcher Job or something in here is going to help us figure it out."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Perhaps it's seeking out its counterpart, much like the Calamity seeks out what it lacks to become whole," Rukia suggested with a light shrug. "If that's the case, it will make finding one of the black crystals much easier." Either way, they'd best find a method to keep it from shooting off too far once they made the attempt outdoors. "I can speak with either of them, but I've never been formally acquainted."

That said, she looked to Ales, who looked to have trailed off in his speculations. "Something the matter?" she inquired, regarding him with curiosity.

Kaji looks at Ales, and he thinks he knows what the Teensie is up to. It takes some time to get a map, and he lines it up on the table as best he can. From the center of Aqures Ixen, okay. He looks at the mark on the wall, left from the Black Stone, and back to the map. "There's got to be a way..."

He's trying to determine where it's headed. If it's going anywhere obvious. He has a few places that he'd bet on.

"The compass." Ales rummages through his bag abandoned in the corner of the room when he sees Kaji pull out a map. He has one there, a portable one that he received when he was promoted to airship Captain. The paint on the casing had chipped over the past year, but the innards worked perfectly.

"Orient it to the east," he commanded before hopping onto the table and setting it down.

Sephiroth looks back over his shoulder as Kaji and Ales arrange to get a map out on the nearby table, flashing Rukia a silent glance in acknowledgment that he did hear her and understood what she meant. Before turning, retrieving the small black crystal again and coming back to the table with it.

He's used to picking out details on maps of Aqures Ixen, even if new maps -since the Battle- really weren't that old. He didn't quite get what Ales were trying to with instructing them to orient it to the east; he supposed so that they might look at it the 'right' way up in relation to their location currently.

There are a lot of landmarks to the east of them, but Sephiroth waits for Ales to finish making his point before he might comment.

"Moogles were supposedly the original inhabitants of this planet before the Ancients came. They would have been around when the Job System was first created. That might explain their connection to the crystals."

Whether it's the same for Black Crystals, Jade's not sure... but they were once Heroes' crystals. Perhaps that's why Moogles can still use them, even after they turned black?

He says nothing else for now, content to watch the others prepare the map.

Once it's lined up with the map, the direction of the Compass is more obvious. Shinji takes the opportunity to activate it a few more times, and they'll notice that one out of every four activations, it points in a different direction.

Three out of four times, they are correct, it points to the East, but the explosion and speed seems to be much more powerful, almost like the Compass is indicating that that Crystal is much closer.

But the fourth time, the Compass points to the Northwest, straight for the Lost Continent. With Ales' expertise, he can tell that the biggest landmark in that direction is the Village of Santa Claus.

Kaji looks down at the map. "I can get our flyers on this, try to pin down the location more. But what do you want to do about this?"

Rukia leaned over the map as she laid a thumb thoughtfully against the side of her chin. "It's likely that one of the leaders of the refugees holds a Black Crystal. I'll write to Prajapati and see if she knows anything about it. The Eastern crystal puzzles me, though. Mysidia?"

Looking at the map, it seemed to be further to the southeast of Aqures Ixen, and certainly not closer than the Santa Village. She folded her arms with a pensive hum. "It may be in the city...or the Ancient Caves. I've been meaning to travel there for quite some time, but I thought it had already been thoroughly explored."

As others step closer to observe what happens with the compass, Sephiroth found himself following suit. Like Rukia, he considered those three definitive eastern indications and by comparison found within himself that the north-westerly one was perhaps the easiest to fathom.

"So we're thinking of three potential draws to it in this direction-" He gestures on the map, as if they needed any more of an illustration. "-potentially distances apart with a third much closer."

A moment of silent pondering later

"Could it not simply be drawn to the cardinal Crystals? The Crystal of Fire could be the closest eastern mark to our position..."

But there was still the question of the fourth location...

"If they were pointing to the cardinal Crystals, wouldn't this shoot out in different directions? The Earth Crystal is in Hera..."

It certainly was a thought to consider.

"Do we know what happens when a Black Crystal and a cardinal Crystal meet? If this used to be a Hero's crystal, it might not have any connection to the Crystal of Fire, or it may as well lead to negative consequences."

"Roalie," Kaji can answer Ales' question certainly. "The Crystal will survive, but Cid is pretty sure that's what caused the explosion that destroyed his homeland."

"But there were still four in circulation after that point. Kalki was reported to still have one of the Black Crystals during her experiments in the Empire. So it wasn't used up." Pause. "We don't know if that is one of the ones we've regained. Palitutu could have gotten hers off Kalki when she killed her. Or Kalki could have hidden hers away, and this is the only way to find it." Kaji shrugs.

"We're going to need some people to search locally." Kaji glances at Sephiroth and something seems to amuse him. "I think I know somebody who can fly right into the Village of Santa Claus and not arouse any suspicion. I'll have to go along as Santa Cloud's Helper."

"The map we found here in the lab places two Avatars in the Santa Village, so I agree that's likely where we can find one of the Crystals. But the other..."

The force of the explosion is what stands out to him. It seems the eastern Crystal is eliciting a stronger reaction. If that's an indication the target is close by...

"I'm concerned that we still haven't located Narasimha. There's a good chance he's hiding here in the city, and if he has a Black Crystal in his possession... We could risk facing another incident like the murders in June."

"Agreed." With a nod, Sephiroth made the comment specifically about Narasimha in the wake of Jade's.

It was no small task, to root out that troublesome avatar before he might cause trouble again, with Aqures' population being so swollen with refugees. Already he called in a substantial fraction of his own standing army to help police the city, as well as having to schedule rotations around at least three other locations in the World. If he were to be brutally honest, strictly speaking he was pulling rank a little in getting the time to come to this meeting, at all.

"...we can only have faith that the sophistication that he's using to stay under the radar is also keeping him from repeating the same trick. Hardly ideal, hence the sooner we get these locked down, the better for everyone."

Sephiroth then turned his gaze from the others back to the map, not wanting to linger on the facts surrounding how the Black Crystals got out there in the first place. He spent long enough considering past failures on his own, let alone actually bringing it up for discussion.

Edited 2016-11-22 21:48 (UTC)

The Hunt Begins

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