Chapter Text
Investigate, but don't engage.
Orders were clear, but Noctis Lucis Caelum still felt a little bit of unease as the train drove from Altissia to Piztala Beach. He didn't generally like being out this close to midnight without some kind of backup, but Cor had insisted that Luna was tired and needed to rest, and that he needed Nyx and Crowe with him, to help with a murder investigation with suspected daemon elements in Cauthess. For Noctis, it was just a quick 'check this out.' Find out why there was an influx of daemons at the beach—but keep his distance so that they didn't see him—and then report back so that the whole team could go and check it out together the next night. Nothing serious. Nothing he couldn't handle.
Straightforward, but very much not at the same time. This was a new territory for Noctis. He'd never been this far away from Leide before, especially not by himself. He'd been to Altissia with Cor, with Luna, Nyx, or Crowe, or with his father back when he was alive. Back when he'd had a massive team of people to work with. Alone, though, the world at night was significantly scarier. Especially knowing what was on the way. Noctis lifted his head from where it rested in his hands and took a look around him. The train was surprisingly empty. Or maybe it wasn't really that surprising. For the most part, people didn't like to be out and about at this time of night. As soon as the sun crested over the horizon, the daemons started coming out, and as the night grew darker and darker, they grew more and more aggressive. Lethally aggressive.
Noctis' team (composed of himself, his childhood friend Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Luna's boyfriend Nyx Ulric, Nyx's dear friend Crowe Altius, and their coordinator—an old friend of Noctis' father, back when he was still alive—Cor Leonis) was in charge of slowing the daemon threat. The team used to be much larger; his dad, Regis Lucis Caelum, and his dad's closest friend, Clarus Amicitia, used to lead the charge. Alongside Clarus came his son, Gladiolus Amicitia, his daughter, Iris Amicitia, and Gladiolus' boyfriend, Ignis Scientia. But since Regis and Clarus passed away several months ago, the team had split in two. Gladio's team took orders from another of Noctis' father's friends, a man named Weskham Armaugh.
As far as Noctis knew, the two groups were the only people able to function in the time slip known as Hour Twenty-Five; a hidden hour between midnight and 12:01. Hour Twenty-Five was incredibly dangerous. Not only did the daemons reach their most vicious, but all sorts of technology—unless specifically developed by certain scientists in Gralea—stopped working. Humans who were unable to function turned into crystals, completely defenseless against the daemons.
The greatest concern, of course, were the daemons in general. Their senses were stronger—they could hear and see the slightest of movements from much, much further away than normal. Noctis was anxious about seeking this group out on his own, but he could do it, if he was quiet. If he stayed away. Standing, he walked toward the window. They'd passed Cartanica a few hours ago, so they had to be getting somewhat close to Piztala by now. He just hoped that they made it to the train station before Hour Twenty Five started, and the train stopped running for the hour.
Aside from that, though, there was very little that people knew about the mysterious hour. Not where it came from, not why they were the only ones who could function while time ticked away; nothing. There were researchers looking into it all around Eos, but given the fact that most people weren't even aware during the weird time-outside-time, Noctis suspected that they weren't going to make much headway on that anytime soon. Rather than thinking on that for too long, though, he turned around, casting his eyes out across the train again and taking stock of how many people would be turning to crystal.
There were two other people on board. Near the back of the train car sat an elderly woman, reading a book. Nearer to the front of the train car sat a boy around Noctis' age, with a messy mop of blond hair, clearly-visible freckles, dark-rimmed glasses, and a camera, looking every bit as anxious as Noctis felt. Maybe more, actually. His hands fumbled with the camera, and when the train hit a bump, it slipped through his fingers and to the floor, skittering and stopping right at Noctis' feet.
Noctis crouched down and picked it up. It didn't appear broken, but he didn't really know much about cameras. Crossing the short distance between himself and the blond boy, he offered it back out with a nod. "Here."
The boy looked up at Noctis, blue eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights. "O-oh. Th...thanks." He reached out with trembling hands and took the camera from Noctis, checking it over and then breathing a soft, slightly shaky, sigh of relief after he'd given it a once over and determined it to be okay.
Him, on the other hand... Noctis wasn't so sure about. "Are you okay?" Noctis asked. He looked... really nervous.
The boy nodded, a very abrupt gesture but a nod all the same. The speed and frantic nature of the nod suggested that he really wasn't. After a couple more seconds of looking at Noctis again, he quickly averted his eyes back down to his camera, turning the display off and sliding it into a black messenger bag that hung from his shoulder. "I'm... I'm fine," he nodded, not looking up at Noctis.
"Mind if I sit?"
Noctis asked the question before he really thought about it, but it was out there now. And before long, it wouldn't matter much. It was about a quarter to midnight, which meant that before long, the blond boy would be a crystal. Before he could answer, Noctis sat down. Not close enough to make it uncomfortable, but a foot or so away from the boy.
Blue eyes darted over to look at Noctis for a moment, then glanced back down at his messenger bag. His mind looked like it was working a million miles an hour, and his hands still shook nervously, even as he locked them together to try and calm them down. Pondering for a moment, before eventually deciding to speak up, Noctis tilted his head and asked, "are you sure you're okay?"
The blond nodded once. "I'm... I'm fine. Thank you." His voice was very stuttered, very quiet, and very nervous, completely contradicting his words. The fact that he wouldn't meet Noctis' eyes didn't help, either.
Maybe he didn't like having Noctis sitting so close to him. That made sense, of course. Noctis himself wasn't fond of uninvited people in his space. He stood from his spot, moving over to the other side of the train and glancing out the window behind him. Noctis couldn't see much. Darkness as far as the eye could see, aside from the occasional group of angry daemons. A pack of five Thunder Bombs floated around, illuminating a small area around them that faded into the distance as the train rolled along. An iron giant marched right outside the range of the lights that surrounded the train tracks.
Daemons upon daemons. That was literally all Noctis' eyes could make out against the darkness. No signs of animals, no signs of human life outside of this train. Turning his eyes inward again, he glanced down at his hands. But in his periphery, he couldn't help but notice that the blond boy sitting across from him was watching him closely. The nervousness that he'd expressed so far wasn't there anymore. Noctis glanced upward, meeting the boy's eyes for a moment, but as soon as the boy caught on, he sucked in a sharp gasp, pulled his lip into his mouth and looked away. Red dusted the top of his freckles, and he murmured what Noctis assumed was supposed to be an apology. He could barely pick it out through the stammered words, though. There were the nerves again.
"It's okay," Noctis answered, his lips twitching. Not into a smile, not really; but there was something kind of endearing about the way the blond stumbled over his words. "Was I bothering you?" he asked. "Is that why you were staring?"
The blond's attention snapped back to Noctis then, and he shook his head vehemently. "N-no! No," he stammered. "You, um... it just took me by surprise, is all."
Noctis nodded. "Sorry about that," he offered.
When the blond opened his mouth to answer, instead, the train conductor's voice came over the intercom, informing them that they were about five minutes out from Piztala Beach station. Noctis glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to midnight. Good. Five minutes meant that the train would be stopped when Hour Twenty Five started. He glanced across the train at the blond again, and asked, "do you live out this way?"
Wide eyes looked at him through glasses, and he shook his head no. "Um... no. No, I live in Leide. In... uh... in Hammerhead, actually." He worried his lip in his mouth as he glanced over his shoulder.
The blond boy didn't live out here, but he was out here so close to midnight. Noctis' dad used to comment that he didn't understand why trains still ran this late, and Noctis found himself wondering the same thing at the moment. He supposed that they probably kept them running for daemon hunters, but as far as Noctis was aware, he was the only daemon hunter on the whole train. Soon, he'd be surrounded by crystals, and these two—plus anyone else on the whole rest of the train—would be crystallized and vulnerable to the daemons. To be honest, he wasn't sure if people could be harmed in their crystal form. For the most part, he stayed away from them, ever since Clarus told him that waking a person in their crystal form could kill them; probably would kill them.
Looking over at the blond boy, Noctis examined him closely while his attention was diverted. Though he wasn't looking at Noctis, showing any of those signs of nervousness, Noctis could still clearly see it in his posture. His leg fidgeted, his fingers tapped together, his teeth worried at his lip...
Before Noctis realized what was happening, the blond turned and looked back at him. "U-um..." he jumped to attention, nervously looking Noctis over, then asked, "what about you? Are you from around here?"
Noctis shook his head no. "I'm from Insomnia. The Capital City," he explained, peering out his own window and noticing that the Piztala station was appearing in the distance. "But I haven't been there in a long time. I'm surprised to see anyone else on this train, honestly. Not many people travel around at night, especially not in this part of Eos." Niflheim was among the least 'friendly' countries. Daemons were especially active, all the way from dusk until dawn. Noctis pressed his arm against his expandable sword where it rested beneath his leather jacket; just a security measure, just making sure it was still there and ready to protect him when he left this train.
"Yeah," was the other boy's only answer at first. "I don't... I don't really want to be. But my dad told me to come to Piztala Beach. To get some crystal or something. So... so, I don't really have a whole lot of choice in the matter..." He laughed nervously, glancing down at his feet. "I'm never even up this late, honestly. I have a sleep disorder, so my dad makes me take medicine to make sure that I fall asleep before m-" He stopped sharply. "I-I'm sorry. You didn't ask for my life story. I... I'm... I'm sorry."
His dad made him? "How old are you?" he questioned. He looked like he was the same age as Noctis, but maybe Noctis was wrong.
The boy looked surprised. "Uh. I'm twenty. Why?" he asked.
Noctis shrugged. "Just curious." So, they were the same age. Honestly, Noctis probably couldn't say that his dad wouldn't be the same way if he was still alive. He'd always been sort of protective. Maybe not to the point that he would have tried to make Noctis take medication at this age, but to the point that sometimes he sent Noctis on some of the less dangerous missions, while giving some of the harder ones to Crowe and Nyx. Or to the point that he occasionally kept Noctis behind on missions that were said to be more dangerous.
Shaking that thought off as the train slowed to a stop in Piztala Station, Noctis stepped out into the night alongside the blond boy. The elderly woman stayed in place, her eyes only raising long enough to see the two boys step off the train. The cool night air should have been relaxing as it hit Noctis' skin, but really, it was more unsettling than anything. The beach—which Noctis was sure was beautiful during the day—looked eerie. Shrouded in a cloudy, starless, night sky, with daemons marching back and forth like they owned the place, it looked like something out of a horror movie. Noctis might have been shaken, if he wasn't desensitized to it.
The blond fished through his messenger bag for a small piece of paper, looked it over, and then started for the stairs down to the beach. Noctis was on high alert all of a sudden. With all of the daemons just outside of where the light didn't reach, he was walking to his death! Rushing forward, Noctis grabbed his shoulder and stopped him in place. "What do you think you're doing?!" he asked incredulously.
"Huh?"
"The daemons!" Noctis pointed down to the bottom of the stairs, to where a pair of Arachne and a group of four goblins, danced around each other. "You step outside of that light and they'll tear you apart."
Blinking in surprise, the boy looked at Noctis, pondering his words carefully before finally saying, "I... I have guns. I know how to shoot. I'm supposed to..." He reached into his messenger bag again, pulled out a small piece of paper and started to read from it, "go to a small cave on the other side of the beach and get... uh... some kind of gem that he needs for a research project. He's some kind of researcher and-"
Noctis shook his head vehemently. "I don't care what's over there! There's nothing there that can't wait until morning, right? There's no reason for you to go through all those daemons to get to some crystal, no matter how special it is," he insisted.
"I know how to fight daemons," Prompto insisted.
That wasn't the point. Midnight was rapidly approaching, and if he got down there and crystallized, and the daemons still attacked him, he'd be a sitting duck. He'd be dead. Toast. And Noctis would not be able to do anything to help him. Noctis glanced down at his watch. It was 11:56 now. If he could keep the boy talking for another couple of minutes, then maybe... maybe, he'd be safe. Safer, at least.
He pulled in a sigh. "Listen. What's your name?" he asked.
Bright blue eyes looked at him in question. "Uh... I'm... I'm Prompto... why?" The question faded to confusion, and Noctis glanced down at the beach again.
"Prompto. I'm Noctis," he introduced himself. "There are a lot of daemons down there, Prompto. I know you don't know me at all. I know you have absolutely no reason whatsoever to trust me. But I need you to. Whatever is on the other side of that stretch of beach is not worth running through all of those daemons. Maybe you can fight daemons, but there are a lot of them down there. Way, way too many for one person to take on by himself."
Prompto looked at him in question. "M-maybe. But I have to. It's what I was sent here for," he explained, the nervousness very clearly back in his expression.
While Noctis had meant to scare him a little, probably, this wasn't what he'd had in mind, but maybe he could work that angle a bit. Anything to keep him from crystallizing down there in the middle of those daemons. "Your dad wouldn't want you not to come back at all, would he?" he asked.
That took Prompto by surprise, and he turned his head down toward the group of daemons closest to them. "I don't think so," he answered. "But he really needs that crystal. I don't... I don't want to let him down." There was a loaded layer to his tone there, and Noctis was going to ask about it, but his 11:58 alarm beeped, warning him that Hour Twenty Five was close.
"Don't you think it'd be letting him down more if you didn't come home at all?" Pausing, Noctis flashed Prompto a smile. "I have an idea. Why don't I get you the crystal? If it's that important... I can get it for you. All I need is to know what it looks like and I'll grab it and bring it back."
Prompto blinked, his brows furrowing as he looked up at Noctis. "But if it's dangerous for me... doesn't that mean that it's dangerous for you, too?" he pointed out, eyes questioning.
Noctis chuckled. It was. But he knew how to evade daemons, and if it meant that it kept a body out of the ground, then he was more than happy to evade them and get the crystal himself. "It is. But you let me worry about that, okay? I'm sort of trained in stuff like this," he answered.
"So am I," Prompto revealed.
That took Noctis by surprise. Of course, he knew that there were people who fought daemons outside of Hour Twenty Five. There were a lot of them, actually. Still, for this boy, this shy, nervous, blond boy, to be one of them? That took him by surprise. He'd said that he could shoot, but that didn't mean that he was trained. He scratched the back of his neck and looked Prompto over. "You said you fight with guns?"
Prompto reached into his messenger bag and showed Noctis a gold-plated, engraved pistol. A second pistol still lay in the bag. Blinking twice, Noctis turned to look up at Prompto's face again. "My friend Cindy taught me to fire them when I was in high school," he explained. "I know how to fight daemons." He'd said that before, but there was more confidence in his tone now. "I do it for a living."
It wouldn't matter, in the grand scheme of things. Because in the distance, Noctis turned his head at the sound of the train station's bells ringing to announce that it was midnight. As he looked at the sky, he noticed that everything around had grown dark... but had also green-shifted. The sky had a green tint to it, as did all of the clouds in the distance. It wasn't like fog or anything... it was more like an atmospheric change. All of the daemon-protection lights were out now, no electricity whirred, there were no artificial lights of any kind.
When Noctis turned to look at where Prompto had been standing, he expected to be face to face with a blue crystal. But he wasn't. Prompto still stood there, blue eyes wide with terror at the shift in the atmosphere around them. "W-what?" Noctis asked, too stunned to come up with a proper question. It was Hour Twenty Five. And Prompto was still awake.
What in the hell was going on?