Cid Raines (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fallacies) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
concoursec2012-06-20 07:40 pm
fallacies) wrote in concoursec2012-06-20 07:40 pm
the best laid schemes of mice and men--
Characters: Cid and Claire.
Location: Primarily in Trabia? Possibly in a few other locations.
Rating: PG-13?
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed.
Summary: It's not a difficult job, really, so what's the point of sending two Sanctum l'Cie off on such a mission?
To have two back-to-back missions was a bit odd. Difficult? Not really, no, but a surprise, yes. After having been assigned to so few operations since the beginning of his teaching tenure, it struck Cid as… strange, really. Admittedly, though, the weirdest part had to be whom the headmaster had decided to pair him off with for this particular job.
Faint prickles of irritation threatened to overtake his thoughts as he sat on the passenger car, his seat opposite of one Claire Farron. His eyes were trained outside the window, and he lightly drummed his fingers against the window sill as the scenery passed them by. Cid didn’t understand it; this was a ridiculously easy job. There was no need to send two l’Cie out to complete it, even if he did comprehend the reasoning behind the headmaster choosing them to go.
The Blobra infestation in one of Trabia’s chocobo forests had been plaguing their Garden for quite some time now, and in the end, they’d called upon the assistance of Balamb Garden, which in turn sent Cid and Claire along: two individuals who could easily create barriers with their unnatural magic. The idea, then, was to herd all of the Blobra and exterminate them before they could start dividing once more.
To him, though, this was a job that could have easily been done by one of them alone.
Nonetheless, that had been Headmaster Cid’s request, and so, here they were, en route to their snowy destination. Cid sighed quietly and turned toward Claire, doing his best to appear polite. They were to be a team here, even if he honestly didn’t think they’d need to be one; he could at least be civil for that reason.
“Should we review our plans again?” he asked, rather abruptly breaking the long silence that had settled between them. A faint but humorless smile pulled at his lips, here one second and gone the next. Cid would just treat this like any other military exercise; there’d be nothing to it.
Location: Primarily in Trabia? Possibly in a few other locations.
Rating: PG-13?
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed.
Summary: It's not a difficult job, really, so what's the point of sending two Sanctum l'Cie off on such a mission?
To have two back-to-back missions was a bit odd. Difficult? Not really, no, but a surprise, yes. After having been assigned to so few operations since the beginning of his teaching tenure, it struck Cid as… strange, really. Admittedly, though, the weirdest part had to be whom the headmaster had decided to pair him off with for this particular job.
Faint prickles of irritation threatened to overtake his thoughts as he sat on the passenger car, his seat opposite of one Claire Farron. His eyes were trained outside the window, and he lightly drummed his fingers against the window sill as the scenery passed them by. Cid didn’t understand it; this was a ridiculously easy job. There was no need to send two l’Cie out to complete it, even if he did comprehend the reasoning behind the headmaster choosing them to go.
The Blobra infestation in one of Trabia’s chocobo forests had been plaguing their Garden for quite some time now, and in the end, they’d called upon the assistance of Balamb Garden, which in turn sent Cid and Claire along: two individuals who could easily create barriers with their unnatural magic. The idea, then, was to herd all of the Blobra and exterminate them before they could start dividing once more.
To him, though, this was a job that could have easily been done by one of them alone.
Nonetheless, that had been Headmaster Cid’s request, and so, here they were, en route to their snowy destination. Cid sighed quietly and turned toward Claire, doing his best to appear polite. They were to be a team here, even if he honestly didn’t think they’d need to be one; he could at least be civil for that reason.
“Should we review our plans again?” he asked, rather abruptly breaking the long silence that had settled between them. A faint but humorless smile pulled at his lips, here one second and gone the next. Cid would just treat this like any other military exercise; there’d be nothing to it.
no subject
Claire looked off as if disinterested, but to her chagrin even she knew it was a very thin veneer indeed. Her mind was quick to jump into overdrive at the information- information she hadn't expected the man to actually be able to give her. While at first it didn't seem to help her much towards trying to pinpoint exactly what it was that made them so different, after a moment the exact oddity in his guessed-at explanation was quick to stand out.
By the time Claire's mother had died, Serah was just about already old enough to take care of herself, several years past the point where Claire had secured a place in PSICOM's training program. While not everyone stayed with PSICOM, of course, even if she assumed something was flat-out wrong in Lightning's head... the account still seemed off in Claire's eyes.
That said, she'd already noticed that when Lightning had been at Balamb Garden that she and Serah seemed somehow even closer than what she'd experienced with her own sister... and not just because of the gaping rift that had been cast between them back in Claire's world, when it had turned out they'd both been marked by fal'Cie on opposing sides. Before that, too.
Realization flickered to life inside of her. Their parents' deaths... was that why?
Lightning clearly hadn't been commissioned; everyone who knew her always referred to her as a sergeant... and suddenly, Claire couldn't help but think of that last picture ever taken of her mother, before she became too gravely ill for photos to be 'allowed'- it also happened to be the first one featuring her oldest daughter with officer's wings pinned to the front of her dress uniform, near the end of the graduation ceremony for cadets coming out of the Academy.
Claire's head ducked slightly, frown tugging harder at the corners of her lips.
"I see," she said, as neutrally as she was capable of. However, the question lingered: if she'd been left without her parents at a much younger age, would things have turned out so radically divergent? Changed to the point where the Brand on her chest took on the appearance of what she'd been trained all her life to believe was the mark of evil?
no subject
Well, it wasn't exactly very much to receive in response, but that had always been the norm in their conversations, had it not? This time, though, there really wasn't incentive for him to continue rattling away (not that Cid Raines ever rattled, of course), but there was also the matter that he simply didn't have more to give her.
Even if he exaggerated, he couldn't claim to be a friend of Lightning Farron. To extrapolate the data he had gleaned from her files only went so far, and as good as he was at connecting the dots, Cid never was and never would be a mind reader--something that held a fair bit of weight here as well. Claire's thoughts may have been kicked into overdrive at his words, but to him, she only appeared more sullen and unfriendly at his answer.
Again, he wondered why she bothered to ask if all it did was upset her.
Whatever her reasoning may be (convoluted or otherwise), that was all she was going to get out of him unless she pressed further. Cid looked away, gaze trained on the scenery outside once more. His thoughts turned to the small collection of novels he had taken along for the journey; maybe this would not be such a bad time to get one of them out. Theirs was a long trip, and for the two of them to become easy conversationalists would take more than a handful of Q&A sessions from the both of them.