[attr="class","staffpara"]
—A day before
Ives Monet disappears to become Lamia Viscourt, she finds an angry
sabine ruchbah at the foot of the statue.
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Not that
LANCE would recognize either of them, but oh well. So it goes.
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Maybe this is how all wars start—angry women, the foot of some man that they despise, and only that hate to tell them what to do. They start getting angry, and the
ILLUSION is easy to buy into—that they have chopped off the head of their enemy, that they've felt that release.
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And a part of it is real, of course. The spray paint is very real, and a chunk of the statue is, in fact, torn down by hammer and nail.
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Perhaps that part that's really not real is—
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"ARGH!" The man, dressed in ambiguously Cerberus-regalia, falls to the ground after being SHOT by Ives, and then the girls run from the reinforcements.
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—or, none of that actually happen.
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Should Ives think of herself as lucky? It's hard to tell.
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The Cerberus squadron gives chase and then vanishes after some time, but Lace stays watching the direction that the girls fled, his familiar following them to the end of her rope, and watching for a while longer.
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So, they're willing to shoot Cerberus officials?
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Lance picks up a stray can of spray paint and looks at the statue.
"Call Soraya," he says to the interface beside him, and a ring goes out. Just one, and then she picks up.
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"...It's midnight."[break][break]
"Where are you, So?"[break][break]
"Sir," she says, annoyed. "I'm convoy-bound to Camp Trishula."[break][break]
"I have a job for you."[break][break]
"I think assisting the Lancelot takes priority."[break][break]
A rare touch of sincerity goes into the next few words—"Nothing taks priority, you know this."—but the playful lilt is quick to return: "C'mon, what are you gonna do at Trishula. Play medic? There's a war brewing, you know."
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A pause, as she realizes.
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"...If you can get my authorization—"[break][break]
"I can do whatever you want."[break][break]
"Gross. I'll be there in an hour. And I'm heading to the Jairwood, as soon as it's done."[break][break]
Instead of a direct response, Soraya hears the noise of the spray paint can going off, and she hangs up soon after.
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By the next morning, the unthinkable has happened.
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On the ground, is written:
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CONTRA MUNDUM.
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DEATH TO COWARDS. DEATH TO TRAITORS. DEATH TO THE LEVIATHAN.
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HAIL HYDRA.[break][break]
It's a jarring revision of a popular war slogan (Contra Mundum. Death to cowards. Death to traitors. Long live the Leviathan. Hail Hydra), and seems to disturb just about everyone in the docks. It does not sit right with the residents, who have been both helped and plagued by Hydra for too long. It obviously doesn't sit right with city officials or Cerberus, and it makes no sense to Hydra, either.
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Of course, the defamation would have been erased—by Hydra OR Cerberus, surely, only—
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There is a wall. Clever abjuration work, creating a large and circular ward preventing entry. It's nothing that unremoveable or even complex to remove—it's just a ward that will take time. It cannot be done, even by a master, in a flash.
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It would be too easy to find out whoever undid the ward, what with the cat's eyes floating around the area. Meaning to remove it would be to expose yourself, meaning that the ward, curiously, stays.
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(During this time, there is too much tension—everyone is talking about the statue, everyone has an opinion about it. No one owns up to the madness, because, in truth, it was not one single person's work. Each side works with an incomplete story. Each side wants to be the hero.)
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For a while, the graffiti gets written off as some kid's awful idea for a prank. For a while, the residents of Old Delphi get a terrible rep—those strange poor idiots, that were taken advantage of by terrorists during the war. Just another lingering confusion, of a conflict that they still can't move on from.
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And then finally, after a month, after the events of Camp Trishula, the city sends someone to clean up the mess, and some poor Cerberus abjurers are jeered at while they work to undo the ward.
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The day the ward finally breaks, Alphonse Vaillantcourt comes to Delphi, and is shown the defaced statue of his ancestor, and a convoy of Cerberus witches comes into Old Delphi along with him, and they chatter and watch and witness and leave.
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The statue is fixed up, and enchanted to be difficult to remove or tamper with—
residents of Old Delphi are requested to submit a formal petition should they wish for the removal of a public monument, or so the notice goes.
