In Port Bastok—

"There you are, I finally found you!"

Kaska (the found one), perhaps not knowing that he was lost, had been sitting on a crate with his crossed forearms hanging over a rail and his chin on one bicep. Presently, he tore his gaze away from some great unknown point in the distance to regard his finder. Giving her little more than a glance, he returned his gaze to that which had held it.

His finder, meanwhile, stood with her arms at her sides. A young hume, reddish-blonde hair in a neat queue, dark eyes shining, scorpion harness launching a bright red outcry against drab stone streets and a skyline of piping smokestacks, she cut a striking figure in the oily fog of Bastok morning. Barely out of school and brimming with internal light and color undiminished by a life (so far) lived in the gloomy mountains of Gustaberg, she seemed radiant, somehow unreal, unfit for the setting into which she had been placed.

She skipped over to where Kaska was sitting, and leaned in, sniffing him loudly and demonstratively. She wrinkled her nose. "You need a bath. You stink."

Kaska, verklempt, grunted. That was no good; that was not even a sigh, and she had hoped for a smile.

"Come on boss," said she, for she had once been his secretary, "tell me what's wrong?" She went to his other side, put her hands on her knees, and leaned down, looking over his other shoulder. "Your linkpearl is off. You missed a recent dive into Apollyon. You have been shirking your investigation of Nyzul Isle. What's up?"

He shifted on the crate and said nothing.

Quite the mystery, she thought to herself. But this reception didn't lessen her determination to solve it. She straightened up, followed Kaska's gaze down into the construction site, where laborers—mostly Galka—moved the earth with massive plows and turned mill-powered drills into the bedrock below the street. How long had this place been under construction? Surely as long as she could remember, and she'd been in Bastok her whole life, which the industrious might account for some eighteen years.

"Well if you're going to just sit there and act emo I guess I'll just stand here and hum a tune or two. The vocal cords could use a little warming up. I might even sing the entire Scop's Operetta, followed by the Shining Fantasia. Oh that one is fun to sing, or maybe—"

"Shine," said Kaska, finally looking up at her from his stooped position, squinting against the one sliver of sunlight that had managed to pierce the gray-washed and dreary sky over Gustaberg.

Shine immediately ceased her chirping and became thoughtful in her countenance. "Yes, Kaska?" Here it comes, she thought.

"Have I ever mentioned my father to you?"

Brightening at finally being accepted into a conversation, Shine smiled, nodding. "Yes, several times."

"And what did I say?"

"That he was a war hero. That you didn't know him because he was lost fighting in the war."

As Shine said this, she didn't notice how Kaska's fingers dug into the railing, how his jaw tightened. Behind them, the creaking pulleys of the drawbridge announced an incoming airship before the distant whup-whup-whup of its propellers could be heard. As the airship came down in the bay, drizzle from the splash flew so far on the wind that Shine felt it wet the back of her neck.

In the silence that followed her answer, she felt her heart sink. Why was Kaska here on the high bridge? She'd presumed to find him here—it made sense to look for a Dragoon on the highest ground possible—but instead of him watching the airships come in and out, he was staring at the dirt hills and piled beams of an annex whose sole distinction was that it was unfinished and had been unfinished and would probably always be unfinished.

Kaska broke the silence, saying, "I grew up with my mother's stories about this place, about how they were going to expand the residences of Bastok and make affordable housing. She would stop on this bridge every time we passed by. She would stop right here and tell me, that this is what my father died for—that one day we would move out of the hole we were living in, and into a real house. She believed it, too," his voice quavered. "She died believing it."

Suddenly alarmed, Shine took a step forward just as Kaska dropped his head against his arms. "Kaska! What's wrong? What happened?" She dropped against his side, putting her arms around him as best she could with the mezraq strapped to his back.

Kaska did not lean into her, nor did he pull away. He felt frighteningly like a mannequin, sagging around her embrace, heavy but otherwise insubstantial. He was wearing the blue and gray aketon of the Republic and leaning this close, she could see the faint shadow of a beard on a face that was never unshaven.

Kaska reached into his aketon, fishing out an envelope that bore his name in a script that served to make her feel a thread of terror, as some primordial aspect of her brain recognized the work of an inhuman, alien hand.

Kaska slid the photograph from the envelope and, holding it by the corner, turned it out, glossy side up, so that Shine, who was leaning back as if he were offering her a snake, could look at it.

After a startled moment, the Bard leaned in, squinting her eyes as some of her initial fright was replaced by curiosity. "These are Black Talon raiders," she said. "I can tell by their jackcoats, black with the dragon's claw bangle on the right arm." She shook her head, perplexed. What in this picture had vexed him so? "What am I not seeing?"

"Take a look at the swordsman in the front. The one who's got a longcoat instead of a jackcoat."

Shine knew immediately who to focus on. It was he that had drawn her eyes from the get-go; a lean, muscular hume with light hair flying back from his forehead and pooling at his shoulders, tattoos of jagged black fangs climbing like ivy from his exposed collar to flank his neck. She went then to his eyes, and her own widened. She glanced up at Kaska, then down at the picture, then up at Kaska again.

He nodded, putting the picture and envelope back in his aketon as he turned back to the rail. "That's my old man, the hero. One of the Black Talon."

Shine gasped. "Kaska, how terrible! Are you really sure?"

Kaska thought about the pictures his mother kept on in the sill of their one window; about his choice to wear his hair short and wild. "I'm sure." He sank against the railing again.

"Well where did you get it?"

"From nowhere I know of," said Kaska. "The moogle wasn't in when it was delivered. No one was seen entering my place. So the guards claim."

Shine was quiet for a moment, and then said, "Have you tried asking anyone knowledgeable about the picture?"

"If you can think of someone I haven't, that person isn't on this continent."

That explains where you've been these last few days, Shine thought.

The idea of Kaska going from door to door in search of answers was somehow terrible to her. Seeing him now was to see how young he really was, under all those miles walked and battles fought; under that veneer of hard experience, there was a vulnerable human on the point of collapse, just another orphaned adventurer drifting down the lonely roads of Vana'diel on the tailwind of a mystery.

Kaska said, "Bastok claims to know nothing about my father. There's no record of him, Black Talon or otherwise. The only one I could possibly get the truth from is mom, and she died when I was young. It's almost funny. All I ever heard about from mom is what a great guy dad was, and how he was a hero who died in the war, who died so Bastok could be free, who died for this," he gestured at the perpetually unfinished construction site, "and what a great fighter he was. At first, these stories were what inspired me in my youth, to get big and strong and join the military...but then..." His voice dropped a decibel. He swallowed deeply and bared his teeth as he spoke, the emotions, anger and sadness growing on his face. "But then she got sick."

Behind them, the propellers of the docked airship began to whirl to life as it prepared for takeoff. Another fine spray of sea mist carried up off the Bastore to dampen the air. Kaska ignored it, continued staring down toward the annex, but no longer at it. He was somewhere in his own past, like a time traveler. Shine could only listen.

"She got sick and I had to work harder just to take care of us both, and I was still a kid. I don't know if that's when I began to resent her stories, but it is when I began to realize I was coming in second to the memory of my old man. I would have thought her concerns would have been on me and my life and my future, but she kept talking about father, even as her condition worsened. Nothing I could do seemed to help her at all, but when she talked about him, she always felt a little better, a little stronger. That's when I began to really strive to become a soldier. That's what put me on the path to becoming an adventurer. I wanted to outshine my father, the hero. I wanted to get out from under his shadow and give mom the strength that her memories of my father—the hero—seemed to give her. But she died before I was old enough to join the army."

Shine swallowed against the dryness in her throat and touched Kaska's shoulder lightly. There was a knot of emotion in her chest, of sadness for her boss, but her minstrel instincts were taking over—the desire to hear every story worth hearing, every story worth telling. Those which were at the heart of any song worth singing. "What happened next?"

"There wasn't much left for me after mom died. I ended up joining the military when I was old enough. I left after my service ended, and started adventuring. I'd found a desire to travel and explore and to talk to people and help those in need. I put my training to use in that. All the while, I sought the path of the warrior with all of my heart. I guess I never forgot my desire to surpass my father. Because instead of forgetting him without mom to remind me, I thought of him more than ever. When times were tough, when they were dangerous, when I was scared or the training was hard, I always thought to myself, 'How would my dad have handled this?' or 'How would dad have felt about this?' or sometimes I would just stare at my surroundings, watch the tide coming in at sunset in Valkurm or a stampede of rams across the La Theine, and I'd wonder how my father felt when he'd seen those things in his journeys. It was always the idea of my father's presence, of following in his footsteps, of feeling closer to him, that gave me the strength to carry on."

He paused, straightening, his hands on the rail. Shine was awed by him now; even as he spoke through his pain, the idea of his father seemed to have a bolstering effect on Kaska.

"Through numerous sacrifices. Through arduous training. Through thousands of miles across snow and sand. Through countless battles. Joy and sorrow. Gain and loss. I followed the steps of my father. When I took on the mantle of the last Dragoon, I swore to carry the burden as well as any who had ever donned the armet. Because it was what my father would have done. But now," Kaska shook his head, the momentary gleam fading from his eyes, the disappointment returning. "Now it's like I don't even know who I am."

"Oh, Kaska." Shine frowned. "Don't you know this changes nothing about you?"

Kaska sighed, said nothing.

"Listen," she said, maneuvering around to his other side when he looked away from her. "I started out as nothing more than your secretary—your mule—and it was watching you come and go, listening to the stories of your adventures, and watching you change people's lives for the better, that inspired me to become an adventurer myself. Not your father, Kaska. You. You did all of that."

"But for what?" Kaska asked. "This picture…it was like losing them all over again. Worse, it was like losing myself. I can't trust my own history because it comes from the lies my mother told me."

Shine frowned fiercely at this. "Now you hold on there, Kaska! You don't know that she lied to you. You can't just give up because your father might have been on the wrong side for a time. That picture doesn't have to mean that he was bad. That picture might not even be real. How do you know? How can you possibly know?"

"You're right," Kaska said. "That's the worst part: How could I possibly know the story behind this picture? Bastok disavows all knowledge of the raiders. Especially of my father. Find the truth behind this picture? It's hopeless." Once again, he sank against the rail, as listless as ever.

"Nothing's ever hopeless 'til we're dead," Shine said, hating the hint of desperation in her voice.

Kaska remained silent, impassive.

Shine thought about it, hand clasping elbow, fist to chin as she paced behind him, unnoticed. "Bastok isn't talking, and there's probably a reason for that, a story for that," she said. "But more odd is that nobody who should know about your father does. But his story has to be out there somewhere. A group as infamous as the Black Talon… a lot of people are going to remember them. If your father was one of them, maybe someone will remember something about him."

What good will that do? thought Kaska. Yet another part of him answered, It will give you closure. Then you can move on. Then you can be free.

Shine slapped her fist into her palm, and then snapped her fingers. "I've got it, Kaska. Just you leave this to me. I'll find the story you need. I'm a Bard. Stories are my trade. Just you leave it to me. Just you sit tight and leave it to me."

Kaska made no sign of moving.

"Take care of yourself, boss! Shine is on the job!" With a nod, Shine produced her flute, and after a quick mazurka, she was off.