bart3

Who: Jesse Black, Bart Fatima
Date of Log: March 26th, 2001
Location: Balamb Town Docks.

Jesse.... oh heeeeeeeeeeeeere~ Jesse! Bart's actually been looking around for the Etone he's rather taken a liking to. Since that infamous night, he's already survived the wrath of Sigurd (or tis assumed, if his brother even found out about it), and since then has decided he's got plenty of questions to bombard Jesse with. If he can find him. Which leads us to the current scene. Having wandered the city, looking for wherever the Etone's been staying, the prince has been unsuccessful, and as such, has just about given up. Not wanting to go back home right away, he wanders the streets of Balamb alone, itching to -do- something, but not quite sure what. It's days like this that he really misses the Sand Pirates. Always mischief to get into with them.
So, the blonde braided prince comes wandering along the docks, finally, figuring he'll just sit and watch the world go by if nothing else. It's relatively peaceful out here, after all. That and if he feels like playing with newly found toys (i.e. the ether he knows is a part of him but can't control for the life of himself), he can, and probably won't hurt anyone. Yes, Bart's got a new toy, and he hasn't even gotten to show anyone yet. Sheesh. It's such a lovely day, after all, who wants to spend it indoors reading stuffy books and having all that princely education shoved down his throat?

Sunny, perfect days are all well and good most of the time, but every once in a while one wakes up secure in the knowledge that this particular daylit cycle can amount to little more than waiting for mealtimes and sunset and an evening that might not even include any decent carousing. Typically days like that happen when you're waiting for something, but this one has just sort of..snuck up on Jesse, and in a desperate bid to do something other than lounge about in his room all day, he's taken up the rod and reel and stands at the edge of an empty dock, dragging his lure through the gentle currents. Next to him is a bucket of bait, but it may be more than he actually wants to use in light of the fact that so far, this 'fishing' business is damned tedious. The peace and quiet were novel, the fresh breeze a blessing..for all of five minutes. Now the Etone wants a damn fish for all his trouble, and the scaly sonsabitches just aren't obliging him.
Except...ooh! A nibble! He feels the tug on his line, a faint thing to his augmented strength and subsequently altered perceptions of such things, but there nonetheless. Excited, and with no clue what he's doing, he begins to reel in his catch hurriedly! The beastie mounts a futile struggle as it's drawn into view, an appreciably sized specimen any competent Balambese angler would point out was an overly abundant 'trash fish' that gets thrown back by all but the most desperate. But Jesse doesn't care! It's a fish! Thirty-plus years old and he's never caught one before, and here it is....and there it goes, somehow having slipped free. He wastes no time, dropping the rod onto the dock as he frees a boxy Ether pistol from its hip holster and takes aim. The report isn't as vioent a sound as that of a conventional firearm, but the loud pop sends every gull within hearing range into the air in a mad flurry. The next five shots he unloads into the water are enough to coax people to peek out of windows and doors and see the mad gunman..shooting at a fish. To his credit, he's nailed the sucker, but it's not being very cooperative even in its death throes. It's..sinking. So he shoots it a few more times, just to vent his frustration. His arm is outstretched and he sights down his partly raised thumb, a vaguely perturbed look of concentration upon his scarred features, and doesn't so much as flinch as each ether-bullet pelts the water with tiny splashes. And then the shots cease and he stands there for a moment, with silence flooding back into the vaccum to lend an immediate and false impression of serene calm.
"Well...shit," he chuckles softly.

The sound of gunshots is actually what attracts the prince's attention, otherwise he'd have passed right on by and not even seen Jesse sitting there, attempting to catch a fish. Fishing isn't something Bart has ever done either, nor has he had much inclination for it. Too impatient to sit there that long and wait on some blatantly stupid fish to bite at the bait. Nope, this is one lad who prefers not to wait. The second shot is when he turns and the next few shots are when he starts down the dock itself. Does he know it's Jesse? Nope. Curiousity killed the cat... or so they say. Oh sure, several of the bystanders and onlookers peer at the blonde boy as he keeps on heading in that direction, boots sounding off the wooden planks without any attempt to mask his approach. Is he crazy? Yes.
"It's dead, Jess," he says as he grins, coming in close enough to realize who it is and though inside he's utterly thrilled to the point of hyperness, he tries to hold it in for the time being. "Beating dead fish, even. The least you can do is stick with the cliche and find a dead horse, instead." The grin holds after that, the prince pausing his step to stand there with his hands clasped behind his back, always maintaining that regal posture even if he isn't concious of it and really would rather drop it altogether.
The fishing pole becomes the focus of attention now, Bart flopping down on the edge of the dock to pick it up and look it over. "So, what happened? It get away?" He looks up, sapphire colored eyes squinting a bit in the sunlight that shines on his golden hair with a halo effect until he holds a hand up against his brow to provide a bit of makeshift shade. Angelic, har, but he sure is good at appearing so.

Jesse ran out of 'angelic' a decade ago, and has backslid toward the opposite end of the spectrum considerably. Even so, when a bright grin erupts across his face, it's a very powerful, contagious thing. "Sent that one to the bottom full of holes, as a warning to his friends," the gunman asserts as he swats back a coat flap to holster his pistol. "They'll know better next time." Know better than to what? Who cares! He spares a glance past Bart and waves companionably to the small crowd of lookie-loos, now dispersing, and owning up to the distantly voiced accusations of madness directed toward him. Oh, yes, he's quite crazy..but in a good way.
"So," Jesse declares, as though that syllable held the weight of a thousand greeting pleasantries, "What's the prince of Aveh doing with himself today? Kicked any ass yet?"

Blue eyes flicker around the docks briefly at that greeting, but there's no one around to have really heard that. All the same, his voice lowers a bit, "Byakko's fur, Jess, careful where you say that. Sig hears you greet me like that and he'll have kittens. I'm officially dead, you know." Then again, Bart never told him all that stuff that happened at Yggridsil with Sigurd and Squall and dying and all that. So... how would he know? The fishing pole is put down, having officially lost the prince's fleeting interest. He gets to his feet and brushes the white chaps off of whatever sort of crud clings to the docks. "Nah, not today, but I wanted to ask you about that kinda thing." Nothing like getting to the point, eh? He looks up at you again and gets a little more of a serious look on his face now. Uh oh, look out, Jesse, when that face becomes sincere, beware. "Jesse, what element do you... you know, like Sigurd. I know his is fire." This is something the kid never got a chance to talk about before, for he was rather distracted.

Evidently Jesse didn't know that part. He recoils just a bit in incomprehension before he takes the claim at face value with a blink. There's a story there, but it's probably something that was taken care of while he was away, or else Bart would have been suffering more pressing concerns than bullies at Garden, and probably would have mentioned them. "Officially dead," he repeats, filing that away with a nod. "Duly noted." He'd apologize, but for the fact that there's no one about. Instead, his eyes take on a bright, anticipatory light and a faintly visible grin settles into his features. "Aaaah, yes. 'That kinda thing'." He bobs his grey-maned head slowly, affecting a lazily half-hooded look to his eyes. "I was the Earth point..although not all of our powers worked as blatantly to classify us as Siggy's. I'm not sure whether his empathy was an offshoot of his pyrokinesis, or if it worked the other way around. Even the official documentation on it was guesswork pretending to be fact..." He takes a moment to scratch his chin and ponder aloud, "..although that was the same for most of us. Except Kahr, who was classified.." He shrugs, and hasn't yet made his way back to addressing the original spirit of Bart's question which will seem, once he gets there, to have been 'what can -you- do, Uncle Jesse?'..although he's not aware of the familial assignation just yet, he's started to assume the role anyway. "But Hyuuga's power didn't have much to do with water beyond abstract similarities..he had some control over all sorts of elemental properties. But we had the other three and just needed Water, so.." His thoughts finally meander back to himself, and he shrugs to the youngster as he concedes, "I took the Earth point because I've got a head like a rock." Grinning widely, he adds, "..Well, and a few other things. I don't do anything flashy like your brother though. No special effects here..That's what the guns are for, y'know."

Oh yeah, even if Bart hasn't officially referred to Jesse as 'Uncle' yet, he might as well. The boy doesn't have much in the way of family anymore and Maison's the only person besides Sigurd and Margie that Bart actually minds himself around. Everyone else bows and scrapes and calls him 'Young Master' or 'Your Majesty' and generally earns his contempt rather quickly. So, finding Jesse is kinda like finding a treasure chest, and Bart is utterly giddy to hang around with him. Hands clasped behind his back again, he listens with Fatima eyes slightly widened, rapt fascination over here, Jesse. Of course, half of what is said goes right over his blonde head, as he doesn't know who he means by Hyuuga or Kahr. Oh the names have been mentioned before, but Bart's been swimming to remember all of it and make sense of it all. It's a lot to learn, after all, about what his brother did while 'missing'. "Did you have an Air point?" So far, Air's the one thing that has manifested, though fire did once. So, Bart is a bit confused, and that shows, golden brows furrowing as he sits on the dock again, clutching his knees to his chest, "Did all of you just have one element or more than one?"

Well, since they're a vital part of Sigurd's story and Jesiah's own, the Etone spares a moment to elaborate in plainer terms and hopes to avoid the digression that makes him hard to follow sometimes. "Like I said," he begins, raising a hand to count off fingers, "I was the Earth point, Siggy was Fire, Kahr was Air and Hyuuga was Water. I based the group on the classical concept of four elements, but in reality only Sigurd strictly fell into his role the way you might expect him to. Kahr had control of powers we didn't really understand.." A declarative finger is raised as Jesse half-turns toward Balamb and his thoughts are clouded by images of the past. "Kahran Ramsus was the Air point because of the things I saw him do with a sword, when I first met him. There were certain other metaphors that earned him the title, but the man -was- the wind..Hyuuga had a personality and a bearing about him that just seemed to flow through a crisis, whatever it was. His ether abilities weren't tied to any one element though. The titles were just for show, really. They didn't restrict us as much as define what we were like." He hunkers down then, so as to not be talking down to his audience, and will probably be seated eventually. "It was an idea I had when I was a kid. Just a little older than you are..we were an example of the best Jugend could produce. Like a banner. It's what saved us when things got bad."

Leaning back on his palms, Bart cants his head to the side to regard Jesse with continued curiosity. In all actuality, he's been dually distracted from his own questions. Too absorbed in hearing about what Sigurd and Jesse did back in the days of Jugend. "Ah," he says eventually, "I get it. So it wasn't really an elemental thing. It does sound like a nifty concept though." As the Etone crouches down, the prince's gaze is far more level, no longer craning his neck to look up. One hand reaches for the pommel of the dual whips he has coiled on one hip. "I asked 'cause... well, I don't know how to control it at all, 'less I'm using my whips. It gets sorta strange, and just -happens- to me sometimes." There's a touch of pink on the boy's cheeks as he admits this, remembering a few times things got out of control and he had no idea how to stop it. "I blew that kid who dunked me to the other side of the Atrium... and got in huge trouble for it. And before that, when we were out on a training run, I nearly set a brush fire. I -couldn't- stop it either." This isn't easy for him to admit either, not a kid who really really wants to do things on his own for once. "I haven't really told Sigurd yet... but I think he knows."
Jesse takes all of this in with an attentive, open expression and registers it all as though he doesn't seem entirely surprised. History repeats itself, is all..except this time there's no Tiphares to visit its horrors upon the young man in question. "If Sigurd doesn't understand, you have him find me..I can remind him of a few things.." The man bobs his head thoughtfully, reflecting upon any number of instances that come to mind. "As for learning to control it, I have a feeling that practice will do wonders toward that end. That, and a few little tricks we had to learn in Jugend, to best put to use the things the Tipharean labmonkeys made us able to do.." Now, for all anyone on the surface knows, Jesse might be talking about actual monkeys, but he doesn't give it another thought. "Have you told anybody at Garden about what you can do yet?" As far as he knows, they might be able to teach the prince a thing or two as well, given the kind of power his classmates must have at their disposal.

Bart shakes his head at the question regarding Garden, "They think I'm a freak as it is... they get their powers from spirits in their heads. And none of them have 'em yet. So I'm the only one who can do that kinda thing." He taps a temple then, grinning a little. He knows Sigurd has one of those spirits too, and so does Squall, and thinks the two are just -nuts- to allow that sort of thing. Shoulders shrug after that, the hand that tapped earlier now returning to holding him up as he continues to lean on his palms. "They don't know much about ether. Guess it's a Fatima thing..." he trails off then, giving the Etone a scrutinizing look, "They did that in a lab, with monkeys? To you guys? W-why? To make you all knights like they did my aniki?" Gotta remember the level of technology Bart's accustomed to... which is to say, trains were totally alien to him till he came to Balamb.

"Yes," Jesse replies with utter sobriety. "The monkeys were there to make us all into knights, like your aniki." The word is unfamiliar to him but easy enough to interpret. The mask crumbles just a bit and he shakes his head to elaborate. "They were scientists, and they studied those of us with inborn levels of detectable ether, and prodded those of us without it until they either manifest or burnt out. But even some of the candidates had some special gifts prior to their time in the laboratories. I'm given to understand that Sigurd was one of those, which is why it doesn't surprise me that you're starting to develop similar abilities. Must've been what they nabbed him from the surface for..both he and Hyuuga were slaves before they were put into Jugend to become knights." As for Garden, he's never actually set foot in the place when there was time to learn anything about it, and he doesn't trouble Sig for the details of his work. His understanding of what they do and don't teach, then, is limited. He shrugs, and finally rearranges himself to sit beside Bart at the edge of the pier, letting his legs dangle. "Anyway, I guess there's not much point in talking to your instructors, then. I'd suggest you ask Sigurd, but I'd rather take care of this myself. Maybe I'll drag you along sometime, when I go to the mainland. I find enough trouble as an Etone to give you plenty of practice.."