#love alex's hair - specifically love the duck tail thing he has going on

[alexxgaskarth]

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[0bsidian5ire]

Design Theory (Scaeva Edition)

Summary: Getting new armor is always fun. Particularly when it's state-of-the-art Garlean armor designed by Nero tol Scaeva, Kharagal's research partner for the last several months. Naturally, Carmen decides they should show off their new armor to someone who will actually appreciate it and if that happens to involve trolling the Garlean Consulate, so much the better.

The Kungane Frumentari are not amused in the slightest.

Nero, when you get things right, boy do you get things right, Kharagal thought to herself as she flexed her arms to see how her new Scaevan Armor of Casting moved. It had a lot of give to it and was nowhere near as stiff as the older Ironworks armor was. Even the parts of it that were hard were very lightweight. Kharagal lightly rapped the strip of metal that covered the middle of her torso and cocked her head when it didn't sound quite like how metal did. Sounds like what the vanguards are covered with, cermet maybe? Nero had complained about how difficult it was to make cermet from Eorzean materials, but he also hadn't complained about it recently, which meant he had eventually figured out how to make it. Now that complaining made a lot more sense.

There was one last test to do. Kharagal let aether pool in her hand and held it against the coat's side panel. Instead of resisting the aether like most Garlean armor did, the Scaevan Coat of Casting absorbed it and conducted it along its seams, ready to be used. Oooh... so this is what you were talking about, Kharagal thought. "Anyone who says triple-weave carbon fiber can't conduct aether hasn't been making it right." Ha! This coat is amazing. And comfortable. I am definitely wearing this for the next major fight we have. If--

"Enjoyin' the new armor, I see?" Carmen walked up from changing into her own Scaevan armor.

Kharagal grinned at her. "Yeah why? The Resistance still grumbling about Rowena selling Garlean style armor made by a former Tribunus of the XIVth Legion?"

"Unfortunately." Carmen rolled her eyes. "But never mind that. You got any plans for the rest o' today?"

"Well, I was going to test this out." Kharagal patted her new Scaevan Grimoire and grinned at the thought. It had a basic tomestone reader built into it!

"Save that for tomorrow; I got an idea." Carmen was grinning like she had the one time she had managed to sneak into the Sekisegumi Barracks and grab their complete roster and their guard patterns of Kugane for the next few months without being found out. "I was thinkin' we should get our advertisin' o' Rowena's new armor out o' the way and show it off to someone who would appropriately appreciate it."

"Okay..." Kharagal looked at her in puzzlement. By this time, just the word that Rowena had new armor would have most adventurers dropping all their hard-earned tomestones at her feet to get it. "What am I missing here?"

"You'll see," said Carmen. "It'll only work if we're in Kugane though. Bring your nail varnish, or somethin' else you can do with your hands for a while. We aren' really going to be doing anythin'. I know you'll like it."

"Alright," said Kharagal and reached down into the compressed hyperbolic space bounded by her Accompaniment Node to get her nail varnish. Carmen didn't do much in the way of practical jokes. If Carmen said Kharagal would like whatever it was, then she probably would. Besides, her nails needed to be redone anyway.

Once they were in Kugane, Carmen led Kharagal to the Ijin District and ducked around the side of the Ruby Bazaar out of view. "Alright, here's the idea," said Carmen. "I was thinkin' we should just show up and walk down to the Garlean Consulate and sit at that one table near it no one ever sits at and jus' have some meaningless small talk for a few hours."

"Oh," gaped Kharagal. "You mean that one table everyone knows is near enough to the Consulate that it's always on their security footage and always gets picked up by the microphones they built into the fence?" The "everyone" in this case was Hancock.

"Yep," nodded Carmen. "That one. I figure we'll get at least a few good conversations out of everyone else in the Ijin District too. Might as well make those count for somethin'. I wouldn' want the security footage to be too boring to re-watch tonight."

"Give me a second," Kharagal said and pulled out her new grimoire. "If we're going to be messing with the Garleans' heads that much, we might as well go the whole nine yalms." With a twist of aether, Garuda-Egi took on the appearance of Shinryu-Egi, a long-tailed dragon that flashed all the colors of the rainbow. "Now we're ready," she told Carmen.

"Show-time then," Carmen sing-songed and the two woman walked out into the thick of the Ijin District. Stares from all directions followed them all the way to the Consulate.

Most of the tables on the plaza in front of the Garlean Consulate had people sitting at them, but the one nearest the Consulate didn't. Carmen slid fluidly onto one of the benches around it and Khargal sat opposite her. The angle of the benches gave anyone at the Consulate looking at them a great view of the armor they were wearing, which was the point after all. Circling a few fulms above the table was Shinryu-Egi.

Kharagal pulled out her set of nail files and a bottle of the Sky Blue Metallic Nail Varnish she had fallen in love with. It was true that her nails had been getting long and some of the points were becoming too dull for her taste. Carmen pulled out her set of magitek maintenance tools and began disassembling one of her Scaevan Daggers for cleaning. Kharagal could tell Carmen was disassembling it much slower then usual.

"So," Kharagal said as she filed away at her thumb-nail. "What's your take on Kugane's underground shipping business?"

Carmen smirked at that. For them, this was small talk. And anyone who knew anything about espionage should know all of this anyway. "Kugane needs to do something about its import taxes. You know it's gettin' bad when the EATC is specifically talkin' with the Confederates and Rowena to figure out a way around them. By this point, they'd almost rather skip Kugane all together to get to Othard. And--" Carmen glanced at something behind Kharagal. "Well, this should be fun."

Khargal looked over her shoulder and waved. Hersande and a group of Clan Centurio hunters were walking over to them. Carmen was right; this was going to be fun.

By the time it was late afternoon in Kugane, Mutius goe Cimber was beginning to hope that the day was going to end up being an uncomplicated one. The Garleans had not insulted anyone yet and the East Aldenard Trading Company had only traded in the markets to day and not tried its hand at subterfuge. That hope was dashed when Silvaire eir Valtin rushed into his office without knocking. "We have had a Warrior of Light sighting," the elezen burst out.

Mutius resisted the urge to curse and resigned himself to having a busy night. "How many of them?" he got out as he and Silvaire made their way through the basement of the Garlean Consulate.

"Two, sir. The Auri mage and the Hyur ninja. They have not done anything yet, but you know how they are." The two men made it to the surveillance room the Frumentari had managed to squeeze into the Consulate during construction.

"I do indeed," Mutius almost snarled. "What have they done so far?"

"Nothing much," Silvaire said. "They just teleported in, but..." he gulped. "You should see what they are wearing for yourself, sir."

"Where are they now?" Mutius stared at the wall of cameras the Frumentari had managed to scatter over Kugane.

"They just entered the Ijin District," the roegadyn manning the surveillance equipment said. "We lost them for a bit but they turned up around the Ruby Bazaar as usual." She blew up the camera feed the Warriors of Light were in on the main screen.

Mutius caught a glimpse of two women; an au ra with purple hair, four horns and what looked like a simplified version of the primal Shinryu flying next to her and a hyur with short honey blond hair and plain features who moved like a ninja. He inwardly cursed. "Please tell me that is not Kharagal Mierqid and Carmen Mercer." Unfortunately, no one corrected him.

Silvaire was the first one to break the silence. "Well... if it helps, we did not see Alex Mercer and Osric Brasher teleport in with them. And we have not seen Alex and Osric anywhere else in Kugane."

Mutius let out a sigh of relief. Alex, Carmen, Osric and Kharagal had been reported as often acting as a unit when the Warriors of Light had been fighting the VIth and XIIth Legions. If the four of them were not together, Kharagal and Carmen were probably not planning on doing anything that involved serious fighting. That meant he could focus on the other thing Silvaire had said earlier. "We should assume they are not going to do anything for the moment. Silvaire," he turned to the elezen. "What was it about what they were wearing that was so important?" With how the woman were enmeshed in the crowd of the Ijin District, he couldn't make it out.

"This," said Silvaire and he pulled up a still from the footage of the aetheryte plaza. It gave a good view of Kharagal and Carmen right as they had teleported in. "I know Eorzean armor designs pretty well by now and that is not Eorzean armor." In the still, Kharagal and Carmen were wearing armor that would have looked right at home in the Magitek Academy's exhibition hall.

Mutius blinked, dumbfounded. Non-Garleans simply didn't use armor made out carbon fiber and cermet. Most of them unconsciously used aether no matter what their fighting style was and both carbon fiber and cermet were some of the worst aetheric conductors around. And yet here were two of the Warriors of Light, one of them a mage who was infamous for the amount of aether she could throw around, wearing armor that was clearly Garlean in make and design. "Get Penelope bas Flavus on the line," he ordered. "She should still be in her office. And get the live feed on the screen again."

The feed blipped up again. Kharagal and Carmen were making their way further into the Ijin District from the Ruby Bazzare. Mutius could see the stares following them as people saw the surprising sight of Warriors of Light in Garlean-style armor. Kharagal and Carmen looked like they did not notice everyone's attention, but Mutius suspected they were faking that. Carmen had been said to be the closest thing the Warriors of Light had to a Frumentarius and none of the Warriors of Light could be as good as they were at reading battle fields if they could not notice where the attention of civilians was.

"What are they doing?" Silvaire's musing brought Mutius out of his thoughts. Kharagal and Carmen had finally stopped and settled in at one of the tables near the Consulate. "They..." Kharagal proceeded to take a manicure set from her belt. Carmen brought out a set of tools that looked exactly like the tools used to do maintenance on magitek. Then she unsheathed one of the knives at her belt and began taking it apart. By this point Mutius was almost expecting the magitek knives she had. Silvaire massaged his sinuses. "They are acting like a pair of normal adventurers who are not on a job at the moment," he finished weakly.

Mutius almost groaned as the tension left the room. This was what was so nerve-wracking about the Warriors of Light. For all that the recordings of them fighting against the Garlean Legions showed them to be peerless warriors who had killed a legatus, fought another legatus to a draw and survived fighting Zenos three times, most of the time they acted like just another Free Company of adventurers. It often led to the Frumentari preparing for the worst only to watch as the Warriors of Light solved various problems and ended up endearing themselves to the public. Or in this case, watching as two of the Warriors of Light enjoyed a day off.

"Should we--" the beep of a long-distance radio connection interrupted Silvaire. "Should I put Penelope on?" he asked Mutius.

Mutius nodded and another section of the screen lit up to reveal Penelope bas Flavus. She was a tenured researcher at the Magitek Academy who did not mind using her position to look into the Academy's activities at the Frumentari's behest or to push through research for them. "What happened?" she opened with.

"We do not actually know yet," Mutius said, "but the Academy may very well have a security leak on its hands."

"What?" Penelope look scandalized at that.

"I need to know if you have seen any armor like this being developed at the Academy recently," Mutius tapped a few buttons on his console and set the picture of the Warriors of Light to her.

Penelope's eyebrows raised and she softly gasped. Mutius guessed that she had seen the picture. She blinked and looked up at Mutius again. "I have not seen armor like this recently. If I had, I would have gotten whoever designed it in touch with the military immediately. Yet..." she slowly twirled a lock of hair around her finger and looked down again. "I have seen a design of something with a similar style before. But..." she thought for a moment. "It was a long time ago." She turned back to Mutius. "I think it was from when I was at the Academy as a student."

"Fantastic." Mutius kneaded his third eye. Penelope had been a student at the Magitek Academy at the same time as Cid nan Garlond. A lot of the people in the Academy at that time had gone on to become Cid's assistants and had defected with him to Eorzea. That had been messy on the Frumentari's end. "I assume you have the same opinion on the magitek they are using?" He sent the live feed through to her.

Penelope watched the feed of Carmen meticulously cleaning her magitek knives, seemingly not paying any mind to the crowd of Clan Centurio hunters around her. "Yes," Penelope nodded. "Same feeling. I saw this idea a long time ago, but the implementation was all over the place back then. This feels more... complete. Finished maybe? Whoever--"

"Quiet!" Silvaire hissed. "Someone said something about their armor." He turned the audio feed up.

"--you waltz the Garlean Consulate and say you weren' leavin' until they gave you the best armor they had?" a male roegayden teased.

On the video feed, Kharagal and Carmen looked at each other and burst out laughing. "Nope," Kharagal said once she calmed down, "we got it from Rowena. Again."

"Just ask her for the Scaevan gear," Carmen added as she reconstructed her dagger. "And yes, she'll only take tomestones for it. Again."

All the Clan Canturio hunters around Kharagal and Carmen groaned at that and started to leave, several of them cursing Rowena under their breath.

"Shit!" Mutius blinked at Penelope's sudden outburst. Silvaire quickly turned down the audio feed. In her section of the screen, Penelope had buried her face in her hands, looking less professional then Mutius had ever seen her. "Sorry about that," Penelope said as she raised her head and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "But I remember where I have seen designs like that before." She winced. "Or rather, who designs magitek like that. And it was not Cid or anyone really connected with him."

"Scaeva, right?" Silvaire said. "That was what they said the armor was called."

"You mean Nero tol Scaeva, van Balesaur's Tribunus Laticlavius?" Mutius asked, alarm shooting through him.

"Really?" Penelope looked dumbfounded. "I got my position because Nero did not take the tenured position the Academy offered him since he was going into the legions, but I did not pay much attention to what he did afterwards."

Mutius took a deep breath. This was getting complicated quickly. "Penelope, I know you know this already, but you can not officially know what we are about to talk about."

"Got it." Mutius knew Penelope really did.

"Nero tol Scaeva was Gaius van Balesaur's Tribunus Laticlavius," Mutius started out. "We also know he did a lot of work restoring Allagan devices and reverse engineering them." Penelope nodded at both of those. "What we do not know is what happened to him after Operation Archon."

"I thought the XIIth managed to save the XIVth Legion in Gyr Abania from being overrun by the Eorzeans like they overran the rest of the XIVthe Legion in Aldenard," said Penelope. "So the Eorzeans would have Nero, correct?"

Mutius sighed. Sometimes he found the official version of events told to the Garlean public inconvenient. This was one of those times. Penelope was smart enough to figure out the ramifications of covering up something like this. "We do not know," he said. "The Frumentari decided people did not need to know that the XIIth Legion did not make the effort to go anywhere near the XIVth Legion outside of Gyr Abania. From what our informant could tell, the Eorzeans are leaving the XIVth alone. But other then that..." he shrugged.

Penelope blinked a few times. "So, maybe the Eorzeans have Nero, maybe they do not." She started twirling her hair again. Then she paled and her hand went slack. "Mutius," she said, "even if the Eorzeans are forcing him to do this, it would not matter."

"Why?"

"Back at the Academy, Nero was always the overachiever. Well..." Penelope shrugged. "He was trying to outdo Cid nan Garland at the time; we all were. But he was the only one of us who came close to succeeding. I do not remember him not doing his best. Ever."

"Great," said Silvaire. "So if the Eorzeans did force him to make something, he would actually try to do a good job?"

"Most likely," Penelope groaned.

"So," said Mutius, "you are saying you think the best explanation for the Warriors of Light having Garlean armor and weapons is because they somehow have access to armor and weapons designed by Nero tol Scaeva and not because something leaked from the Magitek Academy to the Eorzean Alliance?

"Yes." Penelope met Mutius's gaze and held it. He nodded to her and cut the connection.

"You think she told us the truth?" Silvaire asked once Penelope's image blipped out.

"Give it a week," said Mutius, and reminded himself that Silvair was still getting used to being a Frumentarius. "She will probably send us a record of all the armor and weapon designs the Academy came up with in the past year and the Frumentari at the Academy will not find anything suspicious about her actions." There simply was not anything to find. He and other members of the Frumentari had looked when they had first chosen to approach Penlope about working with them and had not found anything.

Convinced Kharagal and Carmen were not going to be doing anything interesting in Kugane, Mutius got up to write his report to his superiors. As he left the surveillance room, Mutius looked one more time at live feed of the Warriors of Light. For once, it was convenient they had shown up. Almost too convenient, part of him thought. There are plenty of other places they could have chosen to waste time... why did they chose to do it right here where we could not miss them and could see and hear everything they were doing? Mutius shook his head to clear it. The Warriors of Light might be good enough at fighting to survive running into Lord Zenos three times, but being good at subterfuge was a completely different skill-set all together. And no one was better at it then the Garleans were.

"Well," said Carmen as the recording of the Frumentari's surveillance room froze on the screen on Kharagal's tomestone reader. "That was enlightenin'. No wonder Nero had a chip on his shoulder about Cid when we firs' ran into him." She and Kharagal were sprawled out on a cushy bed in one of the back rooms of the Ruby Bazaar with plenty of food to keep them company.

Kharagal giggled around a mouthful of dzo jerky as she copied the data Carmen had stolen from the Frumentari's computer onto a blank tomestone. "I can't believe none of them considered he made us armor and weapons because he just felt like doing it. Personally, I bet it's because he got board once Omega took him out and designing stuff is what bored engineers do."

Carmen snorted and rolled over onto her back, hands behind her head. "If Zenos and the actors on the Prima Vista are anythin' to go by, mos' Garleans don' have the opportunity to even get bored, let alone figure out when other people get bored. We must be so weird to them." She caught Kharagal's eye. "I bet Nero wanted to upstage both Cid and the Garlean engineers and Nero knows us well enough by now to know that we really don' care who we get armor and weapons from so long as they work well."

"Yeah, that's certainly part of it," Kharagal said. The data finished copying over and she pulled out the tomestones. She put the original tomestone Carmen had copied the data on back into the box that held all of the tomestones containing electronic records Carmen made a habit of stealing from the Garlean Consulate's computers whenever she was in Kugane. Kharagal stuck the tomestone she had copped the data on into the storage space inside her Accompaniment Node.

"And just what are you're goin' to do with that data copy?" Carmen poked her chin in the Accompaniment Node's direction.

At Carmen's look, Kharagal giggled again. "I was going to send it to Nero," she finally got out.

"You think he needs his ego stroked more then it already is?" Carmen propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look at Kharagal.

"I think he'd appreciate that someone back in Garlemald finally figured out how bad it is for Garlemald that he isn't working for them anymore," Kharagal shrugged.

"Ah," Carmen blinked at that. "That's fair."

"Besides," said Kharagal with a sly grin, "Nero and I were thinking about rubbing some of our research in the Magitek Academy's face at this year's Arcanima Conference in Radz-at-Han. Knowing one of the researchers at the Academy knows the implications of Nero naming me his co-author is going to make that so much fun."

Carmen burst out laughing at that and flopped back on the bed again. "Kharagal," she made out around gulps of air, "make sure you tell me when you leave for that conference. I so want to see this Penelope bas Flavus's reaction to what you an' Nero get up to."

"I'm sure," Kharagal rolled her eyes at Carmen. "You just want to be there so you can figure out what's on all the Academy researcher's computers while they're distracted." Both she and Carmen further descended into laughter at that. By this time, they'd perfected their tag-team act of Kharagal being the distraction while Carmen copped and stole data.

"Hey, we could always make another girls' night out of it," said Carmen. "I've heard Radz-at-Han has great coffee."

Kharagal pretended to think about it for a moment, before nodding. "I like that plan."

Carmen shared a grin with her and then pulled out yet another tomestone of data she'd copied. She handed it to Kharagal who slotted it into her tomestone reader and grabbed another strip of dzo jerky to munch on. Watching security footage from the Garlean Consulate always made for great entertainment.

Author's Notes: First thoughts at seeing the Scaevan Armor in-game: (a) Nero has way better fashion sense then whoever it was who designed the Ironworks gear, and (b) the Warrior of Light should totally wear it around the Ijin District and troll everyone with it.

Trying to spy on the Warrior of Light must be incredibly nerve-wracking. I almost feel sorry for whoever it was that had to report back to Garlemald that yes, the Warrior of Light and the Scions had shown up in Kugane...

Originally posted here.