The wind stirs, whisking snow into her face. She wrinkles her nose. So many years away from home, and still, the various climates are no more usual to her than eyes of hues not red or yellow. But she has come this far to see—she'll not turn back.

In the dark cloudy sky the even darker outlines of buildings rise high above this city like guardians or, perhaps, skeletons. Never, in all her years in this world, has she seen a city so void of soul. The streets below are filled to bursting with the forsaken, and the streets above are empty, its occupants hiding in the warmth of their overlarge homes.

She tips her face skyward, snowflakes falling onto her face only to melt. It is nothing like the Jungle, here. Mayhap that is where the appeal lies.

"Excuse me, miss," a muffled voice comes from a person who reeks of blood and metal. "May I see your papers?"

She turns. He is a hume warrior in a hume city, dressed all in metal with his face hidden behind a mask meant to inspire fear and obedience. A shame it will not work on her—she has walked the Plains of the Jahara and seen masks more terrifying than his.

"My papers?" she asks, indulging him.

A farce, even she knows. This city does not love her when she walks the higher streets. As a viera, her place is down, to be trod on and used. No papers exist that allow a viera into the upper city.

Beneath his armor, he shifts uncomfortably. "You're required to show me your papers, miss."

"I have none," she tells him. "I am but a visitor."

"I'm afraid I need to ask you to leave. It's illegal for outsiders to walk the streets of Archades without their papers in order," he shifts again.

She tilts her face up again and nearly smiles when he does the same. The boy is a youngling, his voice behind the harsh metal of his mask not yet broken with age, his build still slight. He does not like this. "Your name? Then I shall leave."

"...Judge Bunansa," he says and then points to the way she'd come.

A small victory is hers this day. From a soulless city, she has the name of a boy who can never know her. This city holds no love for her, but one of its members holds kindness.

For one as unfortunate and old as she, it is enough to go on for now. The snow is her only accompaniment out of the city.

The streets reek of salt and blood and sweat; the streets teem with rage and fear and greed. Steel weapons glint in the sun, sometimes dulled by red hume blood, sometimes not. Neatly, she steps out of the way of an arrow.

Coarse voices shout loudly, curses and celebrations falling from hume or bangaa or seeq mouths. Truly, she has not heard such diversity since leaving Rabanastre.

Down each path lies treachery and violence. She tilts her head to the side. Humes always were a violent race, but, even for them, this is excessive. A vendor looks at her with compassion; he is a man clad in clothes of red and wears a smile like the moon. "You look lost."

"Not lost," she informs him calmly. "Learning."

"This is Balfonheim, city of pirates. Street fighting just comes with the territory." With his smile still in place, he points her to the tavern.

She knows little of pirates—they steal what is not theirs, sometimes by sea and sometimes by air. The road to the tavern is straightforward, but littered with brawling pirates who try to slash at her with knives and swords. Fran sighs. It is but an annoyance—they are neither crafty nor fast enough to touch her.

Perhaps this city does not love her, either.

The path forks, one road leads to the tavern, or so says the merchant with the curved smile, and the other, to a place unknown. Tilting her head to the side, she takes the unknown path.

A building, large and round, rises before her. It does not smell of blood, but of metal. In a town so saturated with the scents of struggle, it is refreshing. She sidesteps what is meant to be a dagger deep in her ribs.

Fran walks through the entryway, breath catching. Aerodromes are new for her still—what viera ever learns of flight? Only birds are meant to soar—were viera meant to fly, they would have wings rather than ears.

Ships made of metal surround her, gleaming in the lights cast from the orange crystals. There is no fighting here, rather peace. People here talk with a quiet, though still rough, cadence, without the swearing and anger of outside. Were she not able to recognize them as pirates by their stenches, Fran would think she had arrived in a new city entirely.

"Kupo, I want you to fix the accelerator."

A moogle nearby talks to his partner who lays sleeping at the foot of the grand ship, his wrench lax in his paw. At his partner's voice, he does not stir. Curious, Fran kneels and lifts the tool gently from his grip.

Again, he does not stir.

She has seen mechanics work at their trade, knows that the wrench is used to tighten and loosen the hexagonal connectors. And to hit a part that isn't working. But, frankly, she isn't sure why that would be effective, not that she has any experience in the matter.

Quietly, she slides herself under the ship, wrench in hand. It smells of metal and oil, and it is nothing like the Jungle. Fran stretches herself flat on her back and blinks through the darkness at the thing's vast underbelly. The connectors are there and well, everyone must begin someplace. She'll start here.

Fran fits the wrench around one of the connectors and pulls. It doesn't budge; it doesn't turn as she knows it should. So, she tries the other way. Smoothly, it turns beneath her touch and she tilts her head to the side and continues until the connector falls out, landing next to her head with a clang. Above her, the moogle's actions stop. A long pause follows and then he returns to his work. It sounds as though he stands directly above her.

With a shrug, she returns to removing connectors, calm and peace washing over her with cool familiarity. Almost, just almost, it reminds her of meditating in the Village.

She pulls eight connectors from the ship's underbelly before something changes. Fran feels the metal panel itself loosening long before but thinks little of it and cares even less right up until the thing creaks and comes off. Frantic, she rolls out of the way of a chunk of metal. In fact, she thinks she's removed part of the floor because the moogle lays upon it, breathing hard and swearing as only moogles can.

"Kupo, kupo, kupo!" He looks around until he spots her. "What have you done, kupo?"

"I've learned how not to assist a moogle," she tells him.

His pompom quivers. "You've broken the ship, kupo! What were you thinking?"

"I wish to learn of machinery," she says after a pause. "Will you teach me?"

He examines her handiwork dubiously, and then looks back at her.

"Well… you're certainly the hands on type, kupo. That's good in a mechanic…" But his little furred mouth turns down in a frown.

Fran tries to sit up and bangs her head and flattens her ears. She lays back again. "I am not a viera. I can learn."

"Well, kupo," he sounds resigned now. "Maybe you're not completely hopeless. You broke a ship in ten minutes, kupo. You've got some sort of skill."

Nono is a patient teacher as one can expect a moogle to be, which is not at all. But, he genuinely seems to like her, which goes a lot further than mere patience ever could. Especially considering she breaks more than half of what she's trying to fix, and breaks all of what she isn't.

"Kupo…" he looks at the tiny Tonberry she'd been attempting to repair. "It looked better when it came."

Slowly, she removes her goggles and shakes metal shavings from her hair. "Perhaps," she says quietly.

"Not perhaps, kupo! You've ruined it, kupo! And it had already been blown up by bounty hunter, kupo! I thought it was impossible to make it worse, kupo, but you've managed." He's shaking and waving his wrench at her.

"I…" she tilts her head to the side and gives a small smile, "...have a knack for doing the impossible."

Nono stops raging and then laughs. "All right, kupo. Well, it's going to be impossible to fix this ship. Kupo, let's get to work.."

Violence and mindless killing are not natural for her, but the streets boil with rage. Though she is a mechanic now—more or less, with, perhaps, an emphasis on the less—she is still not safe in a haven-less town. Pirates are a dangerous lot. They take what they want, be it food, gil, weapons, magick, sex, or ships.

In the streets, people fight as much as ever. Balfonheim is a wild town, a pirate town, where fighting exists as much because of drink and disagreement as it does to keep blades and reflexes sharp. Bounty hunters, or so the saying goes, are much less forgiving than a sword through the heart in Balfonheim.

He doesn't realize she knows he follows, his feet heavy upon the cobblestones, his sweat-stench thick upon the air she breathes. Fran sighs. In an effort to lose him as much as keep this encounter strictly to two players, she swerves down an alleyway, and quickly whirls around to face him.

From the gleam in his eyes, she deciphers what he wants in an instant and only barely manages to keep her second sigh back. Beauty is a curse she'd rather live without.

His steps bring him nearer—she has a reputation as a pacifist, here, a title that marks her as weak. Well, it seems he shall learn. Calm, she waits, watching as he pulls out a curved dagger of a make she envies. Such a beautiful blade, with a simple hilt made to function without being unattractive.

When he takes another step, she lunges smoothly, and knocks the blade from his hand. His eyes go wide; she leans down and picks up his dagger.

"Now then," she says coolly, "Shall we reverse this? Or were you leaving?"

"I…" his eyes narrow: to be made a fool by a no-talent mechanic!

Hands clenched into fists, he makes a pass at her, sure she won't use the dagger to kill him, regardless of the wide opening he has left.

He misjudges her.

It is his corpse that lays in the alley that night, his blood that coats her hands, and her smile that shines in the moonlight.

Chains, she has found, break in the strangest ways.

It's summer when she sees it. The sky is marred only with lazy white clouds and the salty scent of the sea wafts across Balfonheim stronger than is usual. Like magick, the street falls silent, and people move, watching. Even sea pirates can appreciate a good machine, especially if it's a hover bike of that caliber.

The lines are clean and it shines in the hot sun and it is powered by a single glossair engine.

It's beautiful.

Upon it sits a woman with red hair that gleams. She is of a muscular build, with long tanned legs than shine and she carries the thin and fast ninja swords of the west. With a grin that is a smirk and a challenge both, she accelerates, the bike purring beneath her touch, and she zips away.

Fran watches as though in a daze. Such a fine piece of machinery she has never seen, even within the aerodrome. Never, in her days since arriving here, has she wished to be a pirate.

But now, the ability to take what she wants… might be as a blessing.

To want is not the way of viera. Regardless, she watches the bike leave, and knows she will have it, one way or another. If it means that the pirate whose hands control it with love and grace will be dead, well then, Fran has learned greed this day as well.

Want and greed are hume emotions, and if she is to spend the rest of her days in the hume world, she will learn these two things. And she will learn them well. Fran looks up to the sky.

With an excitement she has not felt since before she left the Wood, she walks back to the aerodrome, where her bow sits atop her bedroll deep within. Customers do not walk here, merely moogles, and she has yet to meet a moogle with the arm span needed to string her bow.

She picks it up and feels the mottled surface, the imperfections on what was once flawless wood. But that was long ago, before she left the Jungle. Before she forsook what she once was, and became something else, and then something else again, and she has kept changing because nothing ever seems to fit.

Perhaps a pirate engineer will be the calling that stays with her.

Fran grabs her quiver as well. Long ago, it would have been filled. Now that she needs so few arrows, her quiver sits mostly empty. Calmly, she slings both bow and quiver across her back and nods to Nono on her way out.

"Kupo, where are you going?" he asks.

She grins, a glint of teeth in the smoky crystal lighting. "To become a pirate."

"Sky…" he watches her cautiously, "or sea, kupo?"

"Land."

Without glancing back, she slips out into the city.

The streets seem different somehow, for all their sameness. With the bright machine gone, they have again turned to fighting and slashing, while those who work pass through with surprising ease. They look now at her and do not attack.

Whether this development comes from within or without is moot. She lets a small smile quirk her mouth.

It's one of those codes everyone knows about but no one voices that gives Fran her chance: Every pirate just in will stop by the White Cap first. She takes that familiar path and sees the bike sitting lonely before the tavern.

Too easy. In a town of pirates, nothing is what it seems, and everything is what you know it is. This is a trap and one she will walk straight into. Pirates have never been known for their elaborate plans.

They're known for walking straight into danger and coming back with their goal or dying in the process.

Fran unslings her bow but does not notch an arrow. Best to be thought overconfident than to be thought a threat. Moving swiftly to stand beside the bike, she can feel eyes from within the tavern on her. She bends over it to peer at the console and smiles and runs her free hand over the bike with delicate longing.

"You know," a high-pitched and slightly drunken voice calls, "I don't take lightly to people touching my things. Run along, mechanic."

Briefly, Fran is glad her goggles hang 'round her neck. Another way she will be underestimated. Obviously, mechanics in a pirate town know naught of combat.

"What is the cost of this bike?" Fran asks, with a curve to her mouth.

Both of them know the answer. "It's not for buying."

"I see," Fran says and takes a step back. "Shall we?"

There is no more talk. The pirate pulls out her twin blades, grinning. Her drunkenness had been but an act, she hardly smells of drink at all. Fran steps out of the way of a blade, only to be slashed across her side.

Viera kill their opponents by hiding behind screens, where nothing may reach them. Fran does not. She notches an arrow smoothly and steps back again, and realizes, belatedly, she has also underestimated the speed of her opponent.

Fran can't move far enough back, there isn't enough range. Blades swipe at her and she manages to dodge both this time, because coeurls attack with two limbs at once, and she formerly fought those with ease. The pirate smirks and laughs and attacks with a dancer's grace. Too bad her bike contains more beauty than she ever will.

Fran abandons her bow and arrow and pulls out the dagger taken from a man with more steel than sense. The two circle, blades glinting, and Fran knows it looks like she is at disadvantage. But, in Balfonheim, nothing is what it seems.

They test each other, each darting in and out, teasing and twisting. The length of the pirate's swords are offset by the length of Fran's arm.

So, when the pirate darts at her with her ninja sword and gleaming eyes, Fran steps back and uses the dagger to slice the woman's wrist. She hisses and attacks with her other sword and heals the wound.

Victory comes the same whether it be in the Wood or in Balfonheim; victory comes from outlasting your opponent.

Their fight picks up speed then, magick meshing with blades and breath and limbs. For a long while, they are matched—blood for blood, burn for burn, spell for spell, dodge for dodge. But, as it so often is, time is Fran's victory and the hume's undoing.

The pirate tires sooner, her breath coming in sharp gasps, her heartbeat like thunder in Fran's ears. "Are you ready to die for your bike?" Fran asks, once, because it is her way, even if it is also the vieran way. "Or do you yield?"

"I'll die for honor," she bites back and attacks again, desperation turning her blade aside more than Fran's dodge.

Fran gives a soft sigh, one that costs her, for even her own breath comes a little heavier than it had. The ninja blade sinks deep into her side and there's victory in the woman's eyes but she's wrong, for even as Fran gasps, she plunges the dagger deep into the pirate.

And, unlike the hume, she doesn't miss.

A final gurgling gasp and a rush of blood and it's over. Her eyes lose their light and she falls, taking the sword with her. Fran grimaces and kneels to catch her breath and heal. People have long been gathered around them and watch with an especial grimness. She digs into the woman's pocket and pulls out a key made of green skystone.

Fran smiles. They applaud and whistle.

Pirates, as it turns out, are a really simple lot who love a good spectacle and let you keep what you earn. For the time being, at least. A pirate, who wears hume undergarments outside his trousers and stands taller than his brethren, helps her to her feet. "Good fight!" he says with a laugh that shakes her. "There's your prize, mechanic."

"Engineer," she corrects with a slow-forming grin.

They watch her, calculating whether or not she is permitted this rise in their ranks from worker to pirate. Then, they glance at her prize and there are grins. She's won. Transformed again, she thinks that—mayhap—this might finally be what she has been looking for since leaving.

A place where she can learn and change, where no one will assume she is what she isn't based on the length of her ears. Where they will not measure her based on where she is from, but, rather, by what she can do and where she will roam and what she does and does not know. Perhaps this is a place she can call home and belong.

With their eyes on her, she lifts her bow up and grabs the two ninja swords as well. If nothing else, they'll become gil. Casting Cleanse on the blades to clean them of the blood, she tucks the dagger away and slings her bow across her back again. Awkwardly, she moves both the swords to her left hand, and uses the right to cling to the key tightly.

Time for the real test.

She inserts the key into the ignition and it purrs beneath her touch, and it's something like elation and something like fear. In all honesty, she's never operated even something small as a gun.

But, everyone has to start somewhere.

Fran throws her leg across the seat and pushes a button that she thinks might be go and just like that, she's zipping away, with the wind making her hair stream a long ways behind her and she steers frantically, because she has only one hand and it would hurt her new toy if she hits someone. The streets, once thought simple and straightforward, become a maze on this thing, as people stop fighting and working to watch her learn with her hand on the controls and a grin on her mouth.

When she turns sharply, down the path that leads to the aerodrome, she nearly tumbles off, and hangs on tight, because this will not beat her. She will learn, no matter how long it takes, because such beauty is to be prized and worshiped, with hands and oil and wrenches and a certain innovation that she knows she possesses and will one day pay off.

As she enters the aerodrome that has become something like her home, she understands that she is going to crash. She knows not how to stop the bike.

Nono sees her, sees the way her eyes widen and her mouth opens and he shrieks something that sounds an awful lot like a curse, and hides himself behind the biggest ship he can find.

Swiftly, she looks at the console and uses the hand not holding the swords to start hitting the buttons that look like they might stop this thing, and, eventually, has to settle on yanking the key out or hitting the Tonberry her and Nono (well, mostly Nono) had worked so hard to fix. Beneath her hands, the bike dies and comes to a halt just before crashing into the Tonberry.

Fran gives a laugh, wild and free and exhilarated. Nono may be yelling at her for her thoughtlessness, but she knows its significance.

This is the first time she's laughed since she left her home.