firefight fiduary

berry my boat (best of all time)

None of the Mechon were humanoid. Most of them did, in fact, have faces, but Homs were usually too short, and thus had too low of a vantage point, to be able to tell, without confusing some unrelated collection of features for a buglike visage.

It had just been the Homs, alone, versus the unpersonified threat. No Nopon, no High Entia, and certainly no Giants. A pittance proportion of the total life contained in that vast, vast world. Killing, and killing, and killing.

Fiora's no puppydog, friendly to a fault, but she is stubbornly humanistic. The sight of a man in charge of all the destruction, all the blood and gore and remangling of bodily systems, both disturbs and quietly excites her.

Perhaps it's not all for naught. Perhaps there is something, between us and them.

Through Face Nemesis's visor, her eyes blinking thickly as though waded for the first and forever time through primordial sap, Fiora sees diamonds, diamonds, diamonds, and diophantine dilemmas; multiple unknowns, identifying each other uniquely by living on opposite sides.

They all have so much pain. Anyone with half a brain can see that none of them like this! The Machina don't want Bionis, for its land or for its resources. Neither do they want the Bionis, necessarily, to be felled.

(The people on it, rather. What dwells within the Bionis, again primordially, is what must be felled. What is imprisoned at the head brings a strange sorrow to them all, regardless of race.)

They just want their dignity. They just want to be safe again.

And their lovely Lady Meyneth is sleeping, so her dim auspices find her children feeling grim.

What a terrific responsibility it is. Fiora, now, a run-of-the-mill Homs just sister to the Hero, is the vessel of hope for all Machina, for all Mechonis. In the fallen village, she can speak to young children with Meyneth's guise. In the city's shrine, she is meeting herself.

Vanea knows. Vanea treats her tenderly, reverently, but with a pursed-lip tightness.

She can channel divine strength all she wants - and boy, does Fiora want! If she's going to have this body for just a short time, she's going to make the most of it.

But none of that means anything if Egil doesn't believe in her. If she, conversely, doesn't believe in Egil.

Fiora is the only one who has this precious window: eyes of a Homs, mind of a goddess, and body of a Machina. Scramble them up, all three, and the fact remains. People like Mumkhar would never believe it. People like Dickson, however much he knew or knows, would never buy it. People like Dunban would never bow to it.

And so, in a way, this is wonderful. "Because you're close to Shulk," Vanea had said. And sure, Fiora had...bowed her head, bought and believed it, but she couldn't figure quite why.

Put it another way: because there are Homs who love you. Because I am a Machina who loves my brother. Because, through you, we can all live. We can all see. We can all speak.

Through Egil, Fiora finds a mirror to Shulk's determination. All his best explanations can still leave her feeling a little lost; the fascinating Machina leader becomes familiar to her both through his sister and through her friend, and vice versa.

If Egil had lived, she's sure they'd all be the best of friends. They would all have loved each other, fiercely, for the struggle and for what they were protecting on either side of it.

Now, too, Fiora has the privilege of being able to speak of Egil's memory, and of the fumbled handshake they'd shared, for as long as she continues to live. Something beyond Homs, beyond Face, beyond the Titans.

A legacy of friendship endless as the sea. Nothing wrong with that, right?