Chapter 138: Friendly Relations
{Our company has been getting ready for an audit and I've done 12-hour shifts for basically the last three days. A depressed guy like me doesn't have the strength to write after that, sorry. Not asking for sympathy, just hoping for understanding. Not that I feel bad at all, so many much slower releasing fanfics on this site or with rates similar to mine. But I digress. The next week might continue looking like that, I'll try to post as much as I can but be warned.
I also had a fun time when after one of those long shifts, the dog got skunked. Fun fact if anyone needs it in the future, there's a formula requiring 2 teaspoons Dawn dish soap, quarter cup of baking soda, and a quart of hydrogen peroxide that will get the worst of it off your pet quickly. You'll have to do it more than once though later.}
Maes had talked the ears of Roy and Yuri clean off about the intricate and esoteric art of fatherhood and the virtues of his wife and daughter. Even Yuri, who is continually letting the meaning of the passing of time slip as his immortality is ingrained into his identity, remembered the meaning of impatience and swore to not helicopter his children at the same level as this man.
But during the conversation, Roy wasn't the only man who had an intricate understanding of Maes as Yuri had begun to delve into the mind of Maes. Roy puts up a facade of a frivolous womanizer to send coded messages to his adopted mother, Madam Christmas, or other colleagues while ensuring that any unknown variables underestimate him at first, second, and even third glance. Maes did the same, for entirely different reasons. In fact, it wasn't so much of a facade as a defense mechanism. He was a man who attached his good-hearted nature to his identity as a husband and a father, a man who felt that his work had long since tainted him and his family was his saving grace. He wouldn't even speak seriously of his job and his family in the same sentence or with the same mood, thoughts of his family always brightened it because he knew he was doing something right.
He was a careful tactician, sniffing out ambushes leagues ahead of his superiors and planning routes through exercises and real-life border conflicts with the same level-headedness that earned everyone around him their respect. There was a reason Roy, a rare-type Alchemist and a career militarist, only just pulled ahead of Maes by one rank.
'I'm getting more and more comfortable with rooting around people's heads.'
As the conversation sobered, then petered out, Yuri turned to leave. "I'll see you gentlemen in the future. Thanks for your hard work, Roy." Yuri leaned over and rested his hand on a stack of papers like a gesture of his meaning, but a quick skim would later reveal that they were perfectly filled out with an identical counterfeit of Roy's handwriting.
Taking no notice, Maes wishes him well before Roy rises from his desk and stops him.
"Wait!" Yuri merely turns around and raises an eyebrow.
"You must know what it is... tell me..." Roy referred to the feeling he got from beneath his very feet.
Yuri cocked his gaze to the remaining and confused Maes. Roy nodded his head, asking him to trust Maes who started feeling the tension.
"Are you sure, Roy boy? There's no going back."
"If it has to do with this country, I need to know everything."
Yuri nodded lightly as if mulling something over, then turned back to him. "Then figure it out yourself!" Yuri flashed his eyes and grin in a sarcastic challenge and he exited after slamming the door.
"What the hell was that, Roy?"
"Hughes... nothing is as it seems, be it our country or that man."
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As Yuri was leisurely flying back home above the clouds as he sometimes does when the author finds it convenient, he heard a call from his Sigil. The thread contacting it was coming from Xing.
"Yello?" He put his hand to his ear for no reason.
"I thought my color was green on the Sigil? Anyway, I want to ask you to send some information in my Sigil to be unpacked for me, if you can."
"What kind of information do you need, Drem?"
"Hrrnhmm. I want Roaring Dragon."
"...You want a human martial art? I know Ally got the upper hand over you with it but I didn't expect you to actually ask for-"
"You've got it all wrong. I've started a little venture in Xing to take over as a major power through your subtler human machinations, as you suggested."
'I didn't-'
"The premise of which required me to teach the next generation to become much better than their predecessors and owe me."
"Sounds fun."
"But now they're asking me to... uh... teach them martial arts and not just the Chi training I've been giving them. If I even try, I'll look like a clown waving his fists about and not the immortal martial artist they think I am."
"Ha...that's the dumbest reason to learn martial arts I've ever heard. But you'll probably need it in the future anyway so I'll give it to you. Incoming!"
Yuri dropped a headache in Drem's DM's and closed the channel while whistling the rest of the way home.
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Vehran and Behran were standing on a raft in the ocean surrounding their island, the bottom was painted with a sky blue and white dye. It was huge, about 50 by 30 feet, and let water flow in where holes for attached oars were. The edges curved up so it didn't capsize, and the brothers were completely silent as they waited. To their north, a dummy prey fish about 5 feet long floated from a rope that spooled at the brothers' feet, and to their south, the island of New Ishval was just over a mile away.
The explosion of water they were waiting for arrived, and the brothers moved. Hooks were hidden underneath the false hide of the bait which sunk into the gums of the aquatic beast they had gotten for now. They moved and grabbed the unspooling rope before yanking back in a conjoined effort and tipping the raft slightly forward. The holes for the oars near the edge drained it enough as they continued pulling. Just after it breached to eat the bait, its head was forced above water once more as it lost the battle. Behran let go just a bit as Vehran held firmly before reaching his spear.
Behran reeled his arm back with the spear in hand, revealing that it too had a rope attached. Behran's arm lit up in a green glow, a toxic one that ebbed with a sickly feel extending through the spear through tendrils, and the muscles in his arm contracted before it let it fly. It spun through the air like a football and perfectly pierced through the exposed head to harpoon the beast which flailed for only another moment before going limp. The ebbing aura receded and left no toxicity in their prey. They attached the two ropes to their raft, took up the two oars, and started the paddle back to their island.
That was, until Vehran caught something with his eyes.
"Brother, your left!"
Behran turned and spotted a ship, not much bigger but certainly sturdier and taller. It was a regular sailing ship with two masts and sails made of patchwork vinyl that still had the look of skin. On the deck, slightly tanned people who were still much lighter than the two Ishvalans were milling about and trying to direct the ship towards them.
"That is not us..." Behran stated the obvious. "Ishvala said he brought others!"
Vehran nodded. "They are likely friendly, but let us be careful. They are much faster than us, they will catch up soon. Best meet them here before they reach the island."
Behran nodded and let the moments pass in silence as the relatively small sailing ship passed within calling distance. They arrived over 100 feet to their east to give each other clearance in these waters before a man stepped to the edge of the deck and called out.
"I AM EXPLORER NIKULAS, AND THIS IS MY CREW FROM THE SKAAL VILLAGE! ARE YOU FRIENDS OF THE ALL FATHER, REDGUARDS?!" A man who was about 25 and used to complain of his desire to leave the village seemed to have taken to his new role quickly and gallantly.
The brothers shared a look. They could hear him just fine, why was he shouting so loud with his foot on the side of his ship like some kind of hero? What's a redguard?
"Shut up, Nik! They can bloody hear you just like the creatures at the bottom of this wretched sea!"
A woman of short and stout but lean figure stepped out with a circle-rimmed hat to block the overbearing sun they still barely recognized. Frea the Shaman was here as well, meaning this wasn't a fishing trip.
"We were brought by Yuri Nightingale! Does that name ring a bell?!" Vehran called out with a voice that immediately cowed all but one as they seemingly backed up, though Captain Nikulas shivered but bravely remained beside Frea the uncowed. She took one look at them and shook him, "Those aren't Redguards, you idiot!" Then cleared her throat.
"That's the one! We would like to begin friendly relations with any new villages as good neighbors, perhaps with a trade of information, skillsets, goods, or crops!"
Vehran hid the interest he showed immediately when she said the word crops. They were self-sustaining, sure, but they didn't have much growing on the island just yet and couldn't just sprout new plantlife. Their main source of food was fishing and their main diet was fruity and lacked the rice and grains they used to have. Plus, these people most definitely had better farmers because Ishval never had much success doing so before.
"Come ashore! We would love to discuss further with you there among our council!" Vehran invited.
It was an hour before they got back ashore, but as soon as they did Vehran wasn't even given the chance to give the Skaal a proper welcome before he was informed of something else.
"Vehran, Vehran, there are people walking over from the south! On ice!"
Vehran frowned. Another village at the same time? Could this be a scheduled joint attack? 'Ishvala wouldn't let that happen, but I need to welcome them too.' "Behran, please help welcome our guests to the council hall while I see the other visitors."
"There's even more? Do you know them, sir?" Frea asked as she walked the plank set down on the sandy and dockless beach after having already made anchor.
'She doesn't have a scheming face even if she looks like an Amestrian.' He concluded baselessly before sprinting to the other side of the island. When he arrived, they were already only 100 feet from short and standing on a path of ice that stretched into the horizon as a crowd had come out on the shore to meet them, elders included.
"Ah, Vehran! Perhaps you should take over from here."
Vehran arrived at the front and looked out, three people stood before a small gathering of others, but they were like nothing he had seen before. Skin paler than human logic dictates, almost gray, and ears that stretched to the sun with a point, eyes of warm primary colors brighter than even the Ishvalan red with slanted sockets, and hair of the same bone white. They had cast aside their armor, wearing robes of white and gray made from fabrics of harsh quality bearing the journey of their self-sufficience. Others behind the three were draped in clothing from the hides of either their old local Vale beasts like sabre cats and deer or the new beasts from Avalon itself with colorful scales and insect exoskeleton.
One of them murmured to the other, which only Vehran heard.
"Are those Redguards?"
"No, they clearly have different hair and eyes."
"It's been a while for us, maybe they've changed?"
"It'll come up, just wait."
Vehran was perplexed, but he didn't dare underestimate them. They had arrived on an ice borne pilgrimage over an ocean that the Ishvalans themselves wouldn't underestimate purely because of the occasional sea monster. Vehran couldn't even make that much ice if it were his element, this was his time to exchange peacefully with the new and powerful arrivals and learn their ways.
'If worse comes to worst, I can use my Breath Ignition to surprise them, and pray to Ishvala'
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Yuri opened his eyes lightly. 'They've made contact with each other sooner than I thought they would.' Yuri received his prayer and informed Vehran that there shouldn't be any issue between the three native groups.
Yuri jumped as his heart leapt into his throat for a split second, then smiled wryly as Toni removed her hand from his ass. "Welcome home, baby," She planted a chaste kiss on his lips which he gladly sunk into.
'Her mind tricks are better than mine, I couldn't feel her.' Yuri was alarmed, but glad nonetheless.
"Honey!" Ally had also sped into the house from outside at a 'human' speed as their street was now a constant festival and her bolting like a cheetah would be no good. She leapt into his arms from a distance and pecked at him repeatedly. He had to use ESP to stop himself from being thrown backward as he basked in her pecks like it was vitamin D.
"Hey, Win! Liking the proceedings?" Yuri called out to Winry who was at the table staring at them while leaning over a bowl of cereal she was eating in mid-afternoon.
"Crazy crowds, but I got used to it. Learning a lot every day!" She replied enthusiastically after swallowing.
"Glad to hear it! Ally isn't the only person who knows about Automail. In fact, she started learning not long before you." Yuri told her as Ally was in his grip and Toni was on his back.
"Mhm. Ally is spending more time forging now anyway. It's time to learn on my own more!"
Ally helped with the proceedings of the Auto Games and the rest of their affiliated businesses plenty, with either disguised clones or hired hands. She started experimenting more in her forge and gotten away from Automail recently in an effort to get back to her roots and grow further. Yuri's practice with Intent had extended to them now as a joint family exercise. It was a serene and spiritual way to start their mornings, not that they were hipsters or anything. Ally was testing the effect of Intent on things like durability, sharpness, or enhancing the effect certain enchantments have on a piece. She wanted to breathe life into her works, and she was getting there.
Including Winry in forging was a consideration that didn't last long. The temperatures were akin to the bowels of hell and would kill her, the physical strain wasn't possible for a normal human here unless they modified her, and the methods were more magical than scientific. The final nail was when Ally told her what she made and she lost all interest. Cold weapons, armor, and the occasional relic they couldn't even explain were not in her interests.
"Glad to hear it, Win. You've grown so well in the last few years, I'm sure Ed would be proud." His encouragement retained his usual soothing deep voice until it gained a hint of teasing at the end.
"...Do you know when they're coming back?" Winry ignored it and asked him. It had been three years of intermittent visits and road travels across the country for them, spreading their name far and wide and unintentionally sending Yuri more and more people begging to take them as students.
"They just went to a town called Liore, there's a few fishy things going on there that they don't like. They'll be back soon."
{Next Chapter: Relics and Religion}
{Fun fact. I lied! I have already told a few of you that the next world is going to be HunterxHunter, while completely ignoring the fact that that is technically not the case. It's the next Fanfic world, but Yuri will be sent out of our usual fanfic orbit and into my OC territory for a protracted event while the other two go in similar but different directions. This will be by no means a full arc but the Record outside of the fanon is big and I plan on showing you a glimpse.}
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