The Enemy of My Enemy is Hardly My Friend [Bertha | Kitten]

Reconstruction was on the mind of nearly every man and woman in Fiore. They scoured like ants, working endlessly to fix the destruction caused by the war. They played with tools to repair their infrastructure, dug in the dirt to bury their dead, and wielded swords in their manhunts for the defeated. The newspapers told tales every day of built monuments and fixed hospitals, of the capture of war criminals and the funeral of war heroes. Perhaps that is why everyone seemed oblivious of a rather mundane "lost and found" request within the newspapers. At the corner of the last page in every major newspaper in every town read a few simple sentences: "Missing Kitty. If found, return her to the Drunkard's Lullaby tavern in Hargeon Town. -Big B." It was a very silly message to post in a bunch of papers given the state of the world; at least, it seemed that way to the common man...

The war hit Hargeon Town hard, the dark guild Behemoth having razed its ports and obliterated its protector guild, Lamia Scale. Despite this, a sense of relief loomed in the town's ambiance. The war had come to a close just a short time ago. People could safely walk down the streets without fear for their lives, a luxury they had not possessed for some time. It is why, as they pounded against nails with their hammers, it was with a whistling tune rather than a sorrowful gloom. Those that had lost relatively little were obviously the most thankful, especially the owner of the Drunkard's Lullaby - a tavern that seemed completely untouched from the harsh reality. Regardless of the weak wooden beams that held the two-story structure up, the tavern stoop proud and tall not far from a neighborhood that had suffered a much worse fate.

The sign at the front door of the tavern read, "Sorry, we're closed." Suspicion couldn't be bothered as it made perfectly good sense to close the place down whilst the town occupied reconstruction, but there more to it. The tavern owner worked the bar, that day, arbitrarily cleaning the same glass over and over to masquerade the appearance of busy work. The tavern's only other occupant, a dark-haired woman in scandalous clothing, sat at one of the corner tables next to a brightly-lit fireplace. Whilst enjoying the soothing heat, she nonchalantly paced through a newspaper, examining the funny "lost and found" column. The request for a missing "Kitty" caught her eye, for she hoped it would help her find an elusive acquaintance, one whose status after the war was unknown.

Bertha Bordeaux had trouble pinning down "Kitty" of Animus Sin. She suspected former ways of contact had been compromised by that point, leaving Bertha to find a more creative way of getting in touch with master tactician: the crypt newspaper message. It seemed strange enough that no one would pay any mind, none accept the ones who knew what it meant.

A meeting of the leaders of Animus Sin and Tartaros: the prospect of the two guild masters being in the same room as each other would have horrified the legal guilds, both before and during the war. It never meant good news for the men and women who claimed to be the "good guys." In the war, it meant trouble, death, and shock was abound. Now, though, it was a complete mystery what a meeting between them would produce, if anything other than danger; danger for the people in the town, danger for the two women, and danger for the continent's new, fragile peace.

Bertha flippantly tossed the newspaper into the growing fire, slowly burning the stack of articles it into forgettable ash. A perverse smile flattered Bertha's lips as if she saw the future in the burning paper.

"If she doesn't follow the clue, I'll hunt her down."

Behind that strange, unsettling smile, a rage was brewing.