Short Ride in a Fast Machine

this one's been eons coming. eons. which basically means the whole two years and plus. three!

A quiet Entertainment District was a sad Entertainment District, in Cole's opinion (in Cole's sad eyes). While he didn't necessarily do well with crowds, the post-play bustle wherein he was assigned into the game of bobbing and weaving to greet those audience members who wanted to see him and duck away from those who didn't was a regular ritual. How could you call it entertainment without noise, unless the empty circle was hosting a silent mime?

Twilight contemplation had become all too commonplace a habit.

New plays...eh, he thought about them. There were only so many ways and times he could revive the scripts he'd written along the original journey, proofread by Brighid and oomf-checked by Haze.

He'd had to produce some new output, of course. Eventually people, even if they weren't critics (genuinely, Cole didn't read the reviews, so he didn't know if there were any), would start to cotton on to the fact that it was all Torna, Torna, Torna, with a splash of ancient Ardain and ideological Indol thrown in for color and the lack, occasionally.

Iona, just like Haze, would read anything, would hang onto her grandpa's every word, and much as Cole would love to cling to such a simple path along artistry (for your friends, principally, and for anyone else who comes a-looking only if they're ready to take what they're given, as the dear ones had ordered it), he can't help holding himself to a higher standard.

Do we do these things because they are easy? Do we do them because they are muscles we can relaxedly flex? Or perhaps do we do them to build those muscles. Because they are exercise, or because they are exercises?

So much of history that had passed by to be recorded, since the fall, was military and sociological in nature. Amalthus rose to power, and then Amalthus's power rose. Mor Ardain laid its hand upon Gormott, then clenched. Factions appeared. Titans disappeared. Mercenaries thronged. Experiments continued. Tantal remained in isolation.

Oh, Tantal. Perhaps the most mythical emergence since the Aegis(es). Anyone could argue about the fact of Addam's residence and eventual death in Leftheria, based on the founding of Fonsett directly following the fall of Torna. Yes, the title of Hero's Rest could easily be apocryphal; you'd have to be a fool to reject that point. But any theories of Addam's inability to be in two places at once fell to a violent discredit when one considered that his father had showcased one particular notable excursion of infidelity.

Those that wanted to believe weren't only the jerks, afraid of Zettar's Core Chip deal being disclosed. Yes, Cole knew about that. It was hard for him not to. Hard for him to be blind to anything so bold.

But back to jerks: the illustrious Prince Ozychlyrus, who was ostensibly not one, believed so heartily in his status as descendent from the fabled Prince Addam, Aegis Driver and all-around great guy, that he kept up the cornball act even when all should have seemed lost to him.

(Most of Tantal, of course, never saw anything of Cole's plays, up in Uraya. Sort of like besmirching the Amish when the Amish aren't there to defend themselves, right? If, in his case, it was even besmirching. But perhaps it was somewhat ethnically inaccurate with respect to what, or rather who, the folks actually resembled.

"My prince," Pandy had sighed, "are you really gonna walk up to ~the great and terrible~ Sir Cole and tell him, 'Your play is racist, question mark?'"

"Why, my dear Pandoria, but it is! Question mark.")

"Ahoy there!"

Oh, blessed peace. It was Addam all over again. Addam, accompanied by an indescribable aura.

"Can I help you?" Cole asked, turning to stand and face this comer. He reserved a little bit of his gentlemanliness, here, asking not what he could do to help, but only if his assistance really was being begged, and reasonably.

"You may," replied Zeke, finger on chin, delivering it as a royal benediction almost more than as a reminder to a schoolchild that they were permitted to use the washroom, and not only capable. "Looking for a chap named Minoth. Supposed to live around here."

There was only one person left living (only one person who would have left these two living) who would call Minoth that. Cole was distantly aware of Zeke's connection to the Praetorium, but the idea that his name would have come up in conversation with Amalthus chilled what remaining warmth he had lingering in his bones.

He took a once-over of Pandoria. Charming sort, weren't they? Cute little necktie, matching choker. Matching stances. Matching smiles.

If ever a Blade had been made for a Driver, Pandoria had been made for Zeke.

That alone brought hope to Cole's crying soul.

"Hate to disappoint," he began, holding back a smile, because oh, it was too perfect, "but you're looking at him."

Pandoria squinted, moving duck lips back and forth. And hey, Cole knew it'd be a bit of a surprise, but what did they expect an old colleague of Amalthus's to look like? A coughing baby?

Zeke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You're the playwright," he said, unhelpfully.

"If I'm known for that and that alone, it's a blessing." But...what kind of blessing? "I'm a Flesh Eater. Usually I'd say I've got no Driver to speak of, but seeing as you've apparently met him, we're mutually acquainted."

Cole had to assume, then, that Amalthus had spoken of his former Blade as someone who'd left some sort of impression upon the Praetor, such as he was, but moreover had become a parable to be told to unknowing listeners. A parable that painted Amalthus himself as a storied figure who'd met many, long ago and much more recently. If Cole had to bet, he'd say Zeke didn't already know.

Judging by the threads of comprehension twisting and snapping across the Zekenator's highly expressive visage as he looked back and forth from the playwright to Pandy, Cole's pockets could be lined a little bit deeper, now, if he so chose.

"So the ol' doctor got to you, too. I see..."

That would explain said "indescribable aura" in the simplest possible terms. Cole darted an eye down, surreptitiously. Indeed. And Pandoria's half...indeed.

"I figured his fancy words were a load of bunk."

Oh, did you now, my prince? Cole nodded conversationally, locking hands behind waist and settling in for whatever diatribe was sure to follow.

At this juncture, Pandy chimed in, "He said you were a disillusioned stick in the mud and you discouraged him proceeding with his research because he was 'tampering with the natural way of the world.' Such visionaries," she laid back of hand to forehead in a dramatic sigh, "are always surrounded by dissenters who can't handle the idea of the world moving on without them, of others doing the work they're too afraid to do."

Cole thought he'd advanced beyond Amalthus's unique ability to make him want to hurl.

Iona, who'd remained silent and observant, broke in here with her two G: "Grandpa's the bravest man I know, except for Mister Vandham." She looked like she wanted to add something about their contributions to making the world a better place, but stopped, hesitant.

"That's more like it, sweetheart," agreed Zeke, hearty and dashing even as he dropped into a squat to meet Iona's eye level. The little girl, to her credit, didn't shrink back behind Grandpa's legs, instead giving the prince a contemptuous expression to match height with. So Zeke rose back up.

Said Cole, "I won't argue with his judgement. He's not a stupid man, just-" sigh "-a hurt one, who was never told what to do with that hurt. Do I admire his choices? No, but unfortunately I can't profess myself any greater. I just write plays about what has been, and I'm even running out of material, now."

"Won't argue, not can't, right?" pressed Pandoria. When Cole nodded confirmation, she breathed a sigh of her own. "Thank goodness! I knew my prince'd never pick a creep."

"Pick?" echoed Cole. "Paying me an exploratory visit is hardly an endorsement."

But apparently they'd scaled their expectations high, and had a system of nonverbal communication going that Cole, the world's most practiced people-reader by sheer dint of time spent, had completely missed. Zeke was putting money on this cowboy, and had been so excited by Amalthus's unenthusiastic description that he'd rushed right over to meet the genuine article, and expand his collection of distinctive individuals met in the course of his travels to include another challenger to the bore-toned Praetor.

Cole could feel himself being inspected, tested, counted and counted upon. He could feel just how badly these kids wanted to trust him.

"Where's your pride, old man? Don't you ever stand up straight anymore?"

Like hell he hadn't noticed, hadn't chafed on about it for a century going, at least.

"Oh, you want to get aspirational on me? See how your shoulders-back tits-up belly-out posture treats you in five hundred years."

"Five hundred?" Zeke stroked his chin, looked Cole over suspiciously. "Who are you to say I'll live that long?"

Cole snorted. And of course he'd ignored the insult, because he wasn't nearly as dopey as his outlook would put on. "Such old hands as me are very sensitive to fluctuations in the ambient ether. I'm sure most all Blades are, but if I had to flatter myself."

In other words, Zeke's barechested disguise, not only transparent due to the fact that anyone not a Blade could never stand the cold of Tantal so unflappably in an outfit like that, was pretty shoddy, in the presence of any Blades who'd see fit to call him on it. But, seeing as most of the mercenaries and/or bandits, even thieves, they'd tangled with ever since that one fateful encounter had been unarmed, in that fashion, and seeing as Pandy's Core, split twinfold, made it so, so easy to take them out before they even knew what hit them, it had never come up, had it?

How convenient. And so the descendants of Addam that weren't continued his proud princely tradition of accidental-on-purpose obliviousness, where "you didn't ask" ruled all.

Zeke, too, had to flatter himself, contriving an instant a one-in-a-million idea that surely Cole had never considered before: "How's about you write a play about me and Pandy, then?"

Cole didn't even bother rooting around his skull for any more ridiculing comment. "And get who to play you?"

Suddenly the comedy and tragedy masks presented themselves before him, all of Pandoria's bright alacrity channeled directly into a haunting grin while Zeke was forced to bend and dull himself to the sour role of doom and gloom incarnate.

They didn't even answer. They didn't have to. Their gazes remained fixed upon Cole, nary a glance exchanged in furtivity, until at last he relented, "...fine. I'll think about it."

Not half so booming as he'd been when telling Haze that he'd "consider it, at least." But, then, he didn't feel like giving Pandy a sock, nor installing Zeke outside the playhouse to busk and pack an audience in.

"You're a gem, old-timer." So saying, Zeke reached out his arms with only a dramasecond of warning before he wrapped them around Cole's back and squeezed the bundle of bones in gray and green to his chest. It was the first time, Minoth had to admit, that he was roundly uncomfortable being face to face with such...tits as these. Oh, well. Cole supposed he wasn't all that attached to breathing, anymore.

And then they left, just as lightning-bolt quick as they had come.

"Well," Cole remarked, looking down at Iona. "I never want to do that again."