#but i just have one more one-shot left before I publish this elsewhere so yaaaaay

[satorisa]

To celebrate over 100 notes on my Ignea oneshot, have another one-shot that takes place during the beginning of Chapter 7. Mostly follows Noctis, Prompto and Ignis, but I do hope you still enjoy it nonetheless!

Ignis loved feeling the breeze tousle his hair so long as he wasn’t relegated to the back seat of the Regalia. In those situations, it felt like a maelstrom buffeting his styled hair out of its firm yet flexible shape, an omen heralding his impending death.

And on that particular day, exacerbated by the absence of his back-seat neighbor either snoozing away or reading, he was sure that he was, in fact, going to die.

Oof.

His seatbelt knocked the wind out of him as Noctis, infamous for his sharp turns that came without warning, took a left onto a particularly gravelly road.

“Sorry, Ignis.”

“No need to apologize,” the older man grumbled. “I’m glad that you’ve taken an interest in using the road less traveled; however, I do advise that you slow down before all this bouncing knocks my glasses off.”

Prompto snickered from the shotgun before positioning his camera, taking bursts of snapshots as they whizzed by. The calming hum of the engine and distant ebb and flow of the water by the shore gave way to the topic—abandoned earlier because of Noctis’ god awful driving—at hand of obtaining the mythril and dealing with Gladio’s sudden departure, only to be forgotten once more with another outburst from Prompto demanding to take a picture by the Vesperpool.

“Can it wait for Gladio?” Ignis mused.

“And miss a shot like this? No way! It’s the big guy’s fault he went AWOL.”

Noctis easily pulled into an open space, half-enclosed by moss covered rocks, by the out of place Chocobo meter. The men filed out before following a worn path between two of the rocks, with Noctic silently taking the lead, Prompto oohing and aahing behind his lens, the main purpose of their mission immediately lost to him, while Ignis rounded out the back, avoiding the patches of wet ground.

They made it to the shore, polishing off a herd of Sahagin to clear out the area before Prompto set up the camera. Compared to when they had first left the capital, the young man had certainly become more efficient at setting up and taking down the trifold since the whole ordeal took less that fifteen minutes including Prompto fussing over the batch of photos until he found the perfect shot. (The first time they had done this, out in the sandy and rocky expanse of Leide, the tripod had toppled precariously before falling several times. Luckily, the camera survived, but they wasted so much daylight for one picture. And don’t get Ignis started on the incident in Duscae. How the camera survived that was beyond them. Really, Duscae’s lush greenery was a sight to behold indeed, but there was far too much water for him to warrant returning if he were on vacation.)

And now that they had gotten the sight-seeing out of the way, Noctis called the Chocobos, and they strode around to find the mythril. Ignis hoped, feeling the breeze blow through his hair, that this was an easy retrieval mission because, honestly, it would at least give him some semblance of control.

When he saw that familiar car parked in front of the entrance to some kind of ruin, Ignis had half a mind to trample over it with his Chocobo because my god, of course this situation couldn’t get any worse. But he stayed his ground, merely looking at the rather cute, vintage car with derision.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Noctis remarked.

“Does this guy have anything better to do with his time than, like, talk us in the middle of Mosquito-ville?” Prompto smacked his arm and groaned. “Of COURSE he’s here! He’s practically mayor of these bloodsuckers!”

“Didn’t I tell you to put on bug spray before we left earlier?” Ignis asked, playing into the light-hearted conversation.

“But that stuff stinks! I can’t live with myself smelling like it!”

“Plug up your nose, then,” Noctis suggested with a sly grin. Prompto groaned yet again before smacking his other arm, marring his slightly tanned skin with a splotch of red. “Well then, Ignis, what now?”

“We approach cautiously,” he answered, getting off his trusty steed. Ignis rubbed the head of his Chocobo before shooing it off, and it disappeared into the wilderness as a streak of yellow.

“Do we gotta leave them?” Prompto pouted.

“Would you rather they get into harm’s way?”

The young man, ever full of discontent, dismounted his own Chocobo before reluctantly sending it off. Noctis had done the same, albeit not so disinclined, and the group walked through the arch nearby and into the swampy waters.

“It’s getting into my boots!”

“Prompto!” Ignis hissed. “Silence is a virtue and, as of right now, a necessity!”

The water was getting into his shoes as well, squishing in between his toes and the soles of his feet. With each step, the mud pulled him in, and the murky water had seeped through the hem of his pants, crawling upward until it had gotten before his knee. Any longer in this state and even Ignis, paradigm of composure, would lose it.

And so, in a begrudging silence, they trudged on with Noctis, ever-present at the front, struggling to get through the terrain with his limp leg. Prompto had forgotten about his discomfort by coming to his best friend’s aid, helping the slightly disabled young man whenever he had gotten stuck. And Ignis, as always, rounded out the back, directing his attention to their surroundings to get his mind off his soiled shoes and protect the other two in case Ardyn decided to strike when they were at their most vulnerable.

“You…”

Hearing Noctis’ voice, Ignis snapped his head forward to see Ardyn off in the distance with that disgusting smile on his face. What the hell did that smarmy bastard have in store now?”

He had never expected, under any circumstances, to come face to face yet again with the woman that nearly killed him back at the Niflheim base. And because of Ardyn’s insistence, using Gladiolus’ absence as an incentive, the group had no choice but to listen to his demands and allow Aranea to accompany them to retrieve the mythril.

Honestly, Ignis would’ve rather succumbed to the swamp than have to deal with the flurry of emotions just the sight of her brought.

“The sun’s setting soon, so we can just stay here until the ruins open,” she suggested, leaning against the nearby column.

“No.”

Ignis raised his eyebrow, wondering what triggered Noctis’ snappy attitude.

“I want to camp out, eat something good, dry out my clothes, put some ointment on my mosquito bites, and sleep.”

He sounded just like a fussy child, and Aranea’s two underlings laughed, briefly relaxing their stiff posture. She shot them a sharp look, effectively silencing them, before she pushed herself off the column and marched in front of Noctis.

“I don’t like this situation any more than you do, but I certainly don’t want to extend it any longer than it has to be, so just suck it up and move it.”

“Come ooooon, Aranea,” Prompto chimed in. “Can we pleeeaaaaase rest?”

“We have had a long day,” Ignis seconded. “It would be wise to rest and prepare for what we may possibly meet in there.”

“Fine. Suit yourself.” Shaking her head, she ordered her men to fall out before she started walking off. “I’m not getting paid enough to babysit a royal and his whipped consorts…”

“Um, Aranea, the haven is that way.”

She shot a glare at Prompto, who ducked behind Ignis, before marching off in the right direction.

“Noctis,” Prompto started, “if anything goes wrong because she’s with us, I’m blaming you!”