Shadowbane

"Go on then, girl. Wow me with your plan to take the codes by yourself when even the clans themselves have given up on them." Bertram said.

I turned invisible and quickly circled behind Bertram before removing my veil. I attempted to tap him on the shoulder but the moment I removed my veil he rolled forward out of his rocking chair and immediately pointed a shotgun at me.

{Wooow he's fast~! And where did he get that gun from?}

It was laying next to his chair. He grabbed it and dove forward in one fluid motion.

"Impressive! Most people panic when I appear behind them, and sometimes they straight up lose the ability to move."

Bertram stared at me for a moment before lowering his gun. "... I don't know what war is like out there, but you always need to be ready for surprise attacks here. Even some of the bigger machines can sneak up on you if you're not careful."

My Uncle was staying uncharacteristically quiet as I looked at him. He was looking down with one hand over his mouth. A pose I used to see him do back when he was thinking deeply about something.

Bertram shouldered his shotgun and waited patiently for him to speak.

The sounds of people arguing about something behind me in the bar is all I could hear until my Uncle eventually lowered the hand covering his mouth down to his chin.

"Rei, how long can you stay invisible?"

"Forever if I'm alone and not blasted by light."

"So it doesn't drain mana and light is its weakness..."

Bertram snorted, "If I'm alone, huh? You suggesting you can cloak others too?"

Irvine cut in, "It wasn't the same as cloaking. You saw it yourself, there wasn't a shimmer."

"I know that dipshit, but that's the word I'm used to using."

"You two are taking this in stride... I didn't expect a reaction like this."

Bertram walked toward me and rested the shotgun against the rocking chair before sitting in it again, "No denying that I'd love to hear how you obtained such an ability, but that's not important right now. You use what you have in missions, and if someone is going to approach me with a broken invisibility ability, then I'm damn well going to use it instead of wasting my time fawning over it. I mean shit, girl, you might actually---"

"Hang on, old man." Irvine said, holding his right palm out, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. While her ability is broken at first glance, it will only work if they aren't aware of her. There are plenty of machines and ruins with automated defenses that aren't shy about blasting light everywhere. Don't forget that some of them even use it as a tactic to blind us. And on that note..." He looked at me, "Any other cons you'd like to share?"

I walked around Bertram and sat down in another wooden chair on the porch, but before I could reply to my Uncle, Bertram spoke up first.

"Ey, girl. Don't go telling anyone else about this ability. As your Uncle just said, it will only work if people don't know about it. I'm friends with almost everyone who visits this bar, but all it will take is for one person to blabber about you and things could become problematic real fucking quick. So all I'm sayin is, don't risk it. And uh, well..."

Irvine chuckled while shaking his head, "What he's struggling to say is 'Thank you for telling me'. Old fool still doesn't know how to be nice to others."

"Don't worry, I was only planning on showing my Uncle if he was still alive. But after seeing how friendly he was with you, I decided that one more might be for the best. You were clearly an old veteran, and in my experience, those are the people I can trust the most."

"Bah, they're just as likely to sell you out for some extra funding to enjoy their retirement a bit more."

"Like I said, he doesn't know how to say thank you." Irvine said, "Forget telling me about the cons for now, we should go eat. You're starving right? But one thing first; Luna, can you come out please?"

Luna crawled out of my chest and waved at Bertram, "Hello Mr.Bertram!"

Bertram rested placed his face into his palm, "A Fairy... You gotta be fuckin kiddin me." He lowered his hand and looked at Irvine, "Can she...?"

"I hope so." Irvine walked up to the door and cracked it open, the sounds from inside the bar quadrupled in volume, "Luna, can you come look at my daughter, please?"

Luna flew up onto his shoulder, "I-It's your daughter?! Why didn't you say so? Let's go!"

Bertram stood up and inserted his shotgun into a slot in the wall. "And my granddaughter. So if you can help her..."

I got up from the chair and followed the three of them inside.

"Hey, look who survived again!" One patron yelled while pointing at my Uncle.

As he talked to the people around him, I checked the bar out and found that it was pretty much what I expected it to be. Nothing amazing, but nothing bad either. A rather homey old bar that reminded me of Urza. In fact, I remember a bar in Xelba that looked almost exactly like this one.

There was a line of booths along every wall except the left side where the bar and kitchen was. The only oddity was the two arcade machines in the left-side corner on the entrance side.

Lastly, the lady attending the bar had the same skin color as Bertram and a blindfold over her eyes. Weird choice for an accessory. Can she see through that?

"Rei!" Bertram yelled. Looking in his direction I saw he was near the back-right booth, standing next to a little white girl with long platinum blonde hair sitting in a wheelchair.

I've only seen one wheelchair in my life, and it was on a fictional TV show. Very few people are unable to have their body parts restored through soul magic. It does happen, but it's so rare I can count with my fingers the amount of times I've seen it happen.

So that could be why she's in a wheelchair, but I'm going to assume she's the one who was cursed. Who the hell would curse a little girl though? And I'm still having a hard time coping with the fact that my Uncle has a daughter---Wait, doesn't that mean she's my cousin? I went from thinking I had no family, to suddenly having two left...

I began to walk toward Bertram around the same time Irvine said he'd 'be back in a bit' to the people he was talking to. So we ended up walking together toward the two waiting for us, and the closer we got the wider my Uncle's smile became.

When we reached them Irvine knelt down next to the girl and kissed her on the forehead. The girl brought a teddy bear up to nose and whispered behind it, "Hi Daddy..."

It took me a sec to figure out why she was whispering. Her eyes kept looking at me and then quickly darting back to her Father. Ahh, she's nervous because of the weird white haired girl.

"I'm back, princess! Were you good for your mom while I was gone?"

"Mmhmm..."

Irvine chuckled when he realized why his daughter was so quiet. "You don't need to be so scared of her. This here is your cousin, Reimia! She's my brother Will's kid."

The girl lowered the teddy bear and looked up at me, "Cousin...?"

I leaned down and smiled at the girl, "Nice to meet you, little cousin. What's your name?"

"Nia."

"Nia huh? Now that's a really cute name!"

Luna landed on Nia's shoulder, causing her to jerk away in surprise. But once she saw it was a fairy her eyes widened to the max as she looked back and forth between Luna and Irvine.

"Okay princess, Daddy needs you to do something for him. Luna, the fairy here is going to enter your soul and try to cleanse that curse of yours, okay? Do you remember what you had to do for the other people who tried cleansing you?"

"Y-Yes, I remember!" She said, smiling at Luna who was smiling right back at her.

After she finished speaking, Luna immediately crawled into her soul through her shoulder. From what I could see there was zero rejection, so Nia definitely knew how to accept the mana of others. Which was odd for a girl so young as her outside of Xelba, but it made sense considering her situation.

"How long does this take?" Irvine asked me.

"I don't know? You should've asked Luna that."

About a minute later Nia looked up at her dad, "S-She says it's going to take a long time. Many days."

"So she can get rid of it..." Bertram mumbled before slumping down onto one of the nearby booths.

I don't know what they went through up till now trying to get that curse removed, but I wasn't worried at all since I knew that Luna was a Lord. Even regular Fairies have powerful cleansing abilities so a Lord like her is unlikely to ever run into a curse or debuff she can't remove.

While Bertram looked like a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, my Uncle was as still as a statue.

"Are you doubtful, Uncle?"

"... Yes. Please understand that it has nothing to do with your fairy friend. I'm just having a really hard time believing it'll all be fixed so easily like this out of the blue. I mean shit, I had nearly given up hope after Termia was destroyed."

Well, I can't really blame him, and I'm sure Luna will succeed, so he can save all of his joy for when that time comes.

Bertram stood up and walked over to the bar where the lady behind it was currently handing over a grilled cheese and fries to some drunk at the counter.

"I'm guessing that's her Mother? Is she your wife then?"

"Pfft, no chance in hell. She dropped me long ago. The only time we talk now is on matters concerning Nia." Irvine said, causing Nia to chuckle.

She saw me quirking an eyebrow at her and she laughed while saying, "It's funny when mom and dad fight!"

I don't think I've ever heard that line from a kid before. Isn't it usually the opposite?

Irvine sat down in the corner booth behind Nia and motioned for me to sit across from him, which is exactly what I did.

"I don't care what it is, just have her bring something edible. And a lot of it. I can eat way more than the average person now."

"Heh, that's fine by me, I'm starving too after the shitty week I've had." Irvine said before reaching out to a nearby console and typing something into it. Once he was finished I heard a loud ding from the kitchen. Considering how old school everything here is I didn't think this place would have consoles like they do above.

"Now then, tell me what happened. I already know the answer to this, but just in case... Is anyone else still alive?"

Nia turned her wheelchair around and listened in as I began to tell him everything that happened to me, all the way from the beginning.

~Four hours later~

"Well god damn, girl. That was one sad and weird fucking tale." Bertram said before looking at the dozens of empty plates, "... And you eat way too much. Is this an every day thing? Your Uncle has the money, but I bet he's sweating after seeing this."

"No no, I was running on near empty, so this amount maxed my reserves. I should last a couple of weeks like this. Although I can always force myself to eat more, and I think I will. You have no idea of how much I missed food that was this delicious... Xelba didn't exactly have bad tasting food, but it wasn't great either. I remember Viktor complaining one day that the only thing he missed from this place was the food."

"Speaking of Viktor..." Irvine leaned back into the booth and crossed his arms, "I need to look into this fucker. I thought I knew all of the ins and outs of Arcadia's clans, but I have never once heard of this 'Viktor'. Do you know what his last name was or what clan he belonged to?"

"No, but when I mentioned the clans and how I wanted to request their assistance in killing him, he talked as if they'd obviously know who he was. He doubted that they'd bother to come after him, but he didn't doubt that they wanted him dead. So someone here has to know him. Oh, and he had a brother but we called him 'Bear' or 'Master'. So sadly, I don't even know his first name..."

Irvine leaned forward and held his hand out, "Give me your keypass for a moment. I need to see the ID number. And don't worry, I'll figure out where Viktor came from and why people here want him dead."

I unclipped it from under my tassets and handed him my keypass. He placed it on the table and typed something into a small console he had attached to his waist up until now.

"Alright, I'll send the money over tomorrow. You said you watched your old memories, so did you have any memories of your parents at the bank?"

"Nope. I'll need to figure it out from scratch. Is it easy to learn?"

"It'll be easy, the people there will show you how to access your account and whatnot."

I looked at the empty wheelchair. A few hours ago Nia was falling asleep so her mom came over and carried her off to bed, but before she left, she said to come back another day so she can properly thank me for helping her daughter.

"Your daughter is really cute. But it's going to take me a while to get used to having a cousin..."

"Isn't she though?!" Irvine said, nodding with a smile on his face.

"Bah, obviously she's cute, but enough of that, I want to hear what your plans are, girl."

"Hmm, I'll go to the bank tomorrow and then probably sign up for a mission? A simple one that I can do alone. As much as I don't mind working with others, I work better alone."

Irvine tapped the desk for a moment while rubbing his chin. Bertram saw that and snorted, "Now what are you thinking? Don't tell her to go straight for the codes. I think it's best she takes a few easy missions too so she can get used to this place and get some experience with ruin diving." He continued, "Oh, but girl? There are no such things as 'solo missions'. Only you could do that. I'm sure you understand why we only operate in groups? Anyone who was stupid enough to go out there solo would have their death certificate written up at the same time as their mission statement."

"I was thinking about exactly that, old man. I think I know of a mission she can do."

"Oh fuck off. You did not just conjure up a magical solo mission out of nowhere."

Irvine grinned, "What about emblem recovery missions?"

"......"

Bertram looked down, lost in thought. While he was silent I asked, "What's an emblem?"

"To put it simply, we don't create clans. They're already there in the database from the people who lived here previously. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the emblems are the only reason the 'big' clans are big. They're like the codes you're trying to acquire. Once you have your clans emblem back, you gain access to the clans main housing unit, which comes with a shitload of perks, like power core creation."

"Creation?! But I thought the machines were the only way of getting power cores?"

Irvine shook his head, "Nope. You can make them as well, but only with the full power of a clan house, and there are only six fully operational clan houses. Outside of two, all of the other emblems are located in places that are too hard to get to."

"And what's the problem with those two?"

"They're within range of two of the fortresses, but that doesn't mean you can just stay outside forever. The longer you're out there in the hazard zones, the more you risk being found by the machines, which is why despite the dozens of attempts to find those two emblems, the clans and any mercs looking for them have been unable to acquire them. Their names are..."

Irvine brings his personal console back onto the table and taps away on it for a bit before saying, "The Hothgar and the Inoue clans."

"What the hell are those names... But I do recognize one of them. I saved someone from the 'Hothgar' clan on the way here. One of them had been caught by a snatcher around twenty miles west of here."

Irvine smiled, "Do you really want to know? I know which country those names originate from back on Earth."

Hearing him say that brought an old memory to the forefront of my mind. It was an image of me and a blue haired girl with golden streaks riding on top of a wagon covered in snow.

"... I really wish Aresa was here. She wanted to visit this city and hear about Earth more than anyone else I've ever known."

"Ah, that was your Eldritch Lord friend, right? I hope your allies were able to heal her in Gaia." He took a drink and then continued, "Now that is a place I know almost nothing about. I was considering bringing Nia there, but her mother wouldn't allow it."

To remove the curse? Not a bad idea since he thought the fairies were all dead.

"Girl." I looked over at Bertram, "Your Uncle, loathe I am to admit it, came up with a damned good idea. I've been going over it in my head, about whether it'd be detrimental or not opening up more clan houses, but maybe this will be the jump start those fuckers need to get their asses in gear. And that's not even taking the main core's codes into consideration. God damn, there is a lot to look forward to! I retired a few years back but now I'm roaring to go again."

Irvine snorted, "A few years? You mean fifteen?"

"Uncle, how do I sign up for those emblem missions? If I'm to hide my invisibility, then won't it look odd that I'm taking on such ridiculous missions alone?"

"That's simple, I'm going to sign you up with a group I know that's currently at the fort you're heading to. They're already on a mission, but if I call them and tell them to pretend you're a part of their group, they'll agree. I'll have to pay them of course, but that's not an issue. Plus, it'll help having someone there at the fort who can explain where you need to go and what to expect."

"You talkin about my little sister? You two still haven't told me what you're up to." Bertram said.

"You never asked, asshole. She's being paid to see if the machines behavior has changed at all, seeing as how the amount of casualties we've received in the green zone has gone up by quite a bit the last five years. And I had already agreed to help her back when I stupidly proposed to make her rich if she'd escort us to Gaia. I thought Dana would be delighted at the idea of us all going to Gaia and removing their curses, but then she turned me down, and I still had to hold up my end of the fucking bargain."

"Obviously she was going to say no!"

Before my Uncle could respond I stood up and waved at the two men, "Alright, I'm going to bed. We've been at this for hours and while I don't need to shut down, I'm mentally exhausted and want to rest until tomorrow. By the way, how long will I need to wait before I can actually do the mission? You're signing me up tomorrow, but when can I leave?"

"Anytime you want. So just swing by here---No, we'll use your parents garage as a meeting place to prepare you for the mission. You really only need a transmitter and a portable console, but still, it's best that we go over it all beforehand. I still need to hear the finer details of your ability and teach you about any potential problems that may arise in regards to light, especially from machines."

I nodded and turned to leave. Halfway toward the exit my Uncle yelled 'I'll call you in the morning!'.

I opened the bar doors and walked outside. It was still as dark as ever. Off in the distance I could see some kids playing basketball in a run-down court with lights shining down on it, but everything around it was surrounded in darkness. This is such a weird place compared to the top and mid levels of Arcadia. I never would have imaged this was down here if my Uncle hadn't shown it to me.

I began to walk toward the elevator while thinking about my soon-to-be mission. This will be a nice test run. If I can acquire these emblems, then I'll know that I can also acquire the core's codes. At least in theory anyway. They are housed in the most dangerous part of Caedrus after all...