Here's my attempt at making the story of a more mature FFXIV spinoff in response to FFXVI, based on an
OC submission I did for a contest:
Original link(because you can't view it there without making a Deviant Art account):
https://www.deviantart.com/haddad062/art/Vagrant-Automata-944978122
"Why do the gods betray the very values and standards they have set for mortals to abide by?" Many Hydaelynians never much considered such thorny questions until they learned of the Great Dragon King's involvement in tragedy most foul, bred on a planet far from their own. How long until the other Primals and other like beings of divine origin deign to follow in Fell Bahamut's wake? Some may move on from the Great Betrayer's crimes in light of their folly, but others will not. Among those would prefer to deny or even defend Bahamut’s atrocities are the Sons of DracoRex: A mighty warrior cult fresh off its conception a couple of years ago, their devotion to Bahamut burns as fiercely as the fires of Hell, and their rhetoric similarly so, even as the mark of his terrible deeds lays bare to all. They will not know respite until their patron DracoRex is restored to the height of his glory, and all the universe subject to his whims, even if they have to kill any and all who disagree with them.
The Republic of Garlemald is still licking its wounds from the consequences of Zenos Galvus and Fandaniel's actions not too long ago. Extensive repair work is being carried out all over the snowy region of Hydaelyn, with machina clearing fallen debris and such, and affected merchants and other small-time businessmen struggling to make ends meet and keeping their distance from looters and muggers. Somewhere in the main capital at night, the patrons of a local tavern, for the most part, seem to be in high spirits. Unlike other similar establishments in the Republic, at least, this tavern was decked out with a 7x7 grid of color changing tiles, a vertical chrome metal pole stuck in the middle tile, and a ludicrously advanced stereo system blaring loud imported music with suggestive connotations to its lyrics. "Earthling music", they called the song presently playing.
The patrons, with mugs of inebriating drink in their hands, cheered their heads off for the dancer parading around on the multicolored tiles. Scantily clad in black, she was a coffee-skinned young Miqo'te woman with a petite frame, medium bust size, yellow eyes, and black ears, fingernails, tail and hair and a silver choker. Catching one of the coins being tossed her way by a group of patrons sitting at the table closest to her, the dancer smiled as she pulled down the part of her upper garments concealing her breasts, much to the joy of her spectators. When the song reaches its end, the girl made herself presentable again, more or less, and seated herself the right end of the table next to a mustachioed black-haired fair skinned Hyur with two full beer mugs and a poster for a music band called the "Spoony Bards" pinned on the wall right behind him and his fellow barflies.
"That was amazing, Yukiko!" the man said, "I enjoyed every second of it!"
"I was certain y’all would!" Yukiko spoke with the accent of what is considered African American on Planet Earth, where the tavern-goers were told the music they were listening to had to have originated.
"Yeah yeah yeah," another barfly with a full beard interrupted, "now answer me this question if you please-"
"Look, she sat down with me, so I'm gonna ask her first!" said the first man, rubbing his left hand on Yukiko's left breast as she blushed.
"No, no, it's not what you think dude. Just listen!" Facing Yukiko, the bearded man asks excitedly, "Who do you think would win in a battle to the death: Bahamut or Yiazmat?"
"She doesn't know who you're talking about!" the mustachioed man retorts.
"Yeah, who are those guys?" Yukiko wanted to know.
So the bearded man answered, "Ok: so Yiazmat is a holy dragon from the world of Ivalice, and Bahamut is the motherf***in' king of the dragons."
"And, spoiler warning:" says a third barfly with some stubble, "No one can defeat the Great DracoRex!"
"Actually, I can think of fourteen beings who can!" added a fourth guy.
"Hey! This is strictly dragon on dragon here," the first guy shouts at his friend, "no summons allowed!"
"But Bahamut
is a summon too!" the fourth guy reminded his companions.
"The very f***in' best there is!" said the third guy, "He would totally wipe your ass out with Terra Flare if he wanted. I don't care if you got Anima, Eden, or the Knights of the Round to back you up!"
Suddenly Yukiko felt her own heart racing; she is clearly uncomfortable with that Terra Flare comment and what it entails. As the first guy who was touching her breast points out, "And no ultimate attacks with the power to wipe out planets are allowed either! Not that it matters: Bahamut is a literal f***ing god now, so the fight would be over in less than a minute anyway. Ten, tops!"
"So there you have it; Hail to the King, bitches! Case closed!" the third guy agrees jubilantly with his arms crossed in front, "...Hey where'd she go?"
Yukiko was wrapped up in her coat, racing across the frostbitten streets by the time the seedy gossipers realized she had already gone. "Such disregard fo’ other people's lives, all ‘cuz he a god? These mofos should be ashamed fo’ looking up to him!" Yukiko thought about Bahamut, "How can anyone in they right mind respect or admire such a-"
But Yukiko lost her train of thought, right as she bumped right into a squadron of Dragoons. Or at least that's what the girl thought they looked like. The five strangers surrounded her on the floor, sneering sinisterly. Yukiko could not see their faces, but she could sense the lust and malevolence from them all the same.
"Hehehe! A fine catch she is:" the leader spoke, "very ideal for our operation!"
At his orders, the strangers pinned Yukiko down, even as she scratched at the eyeslits on their helmets, poking one of their eyes. Face to the cobblestoned road, she could feel the ruffians pulling off her dress as one holds a vial to close her exposed lower orifices. With the utmost fury on her face as she hissed at her abusers, Yukiko shot concentrated urine from her crotch into the vial.
"Yes!" declared the stranger holding the vial containing Yukiko's forcibly discharged urine, "This is exactly what we need! You there, send this to the lab at once!"
One of his friends takes the vial off the holder's hand, sniffs it and hurries off in the opposite direction his group came from.
"What do we do with her now?" another of the assailants asks.
"Whatever we please!" the leader answers maliciously, "And when we're done, who knows? She may yet provide additional coin on the side for us!"
The remaining degenerates laughed maniacally at the thought of what sick pleasures they would use Yukiko to fulfill at her expense, only to be interrupted by the sound of a helmet rolling their way on the ground.
One of them exclaims in curiosity at first, then in complete horror upon realizing whom the helmet belonged to, "Gaaahh! WHAT THE F***!?"
Following the trail of blood dripping from the helmet of their fallen comrade, the villains saw the killer approaching them; a man in an open black coat with his bare chest exposed, and the hood overshadowing much of his face.
He hasn't a sword or any bladed weapon on him, but the clawed fingertips of his armored gloves made quickly plain to the miscreants how he killed their friend.
"What the hell do you want with us, you bastard?" the thug leader angrily demands.
The hooded figure chuckled mildly before responding, "Would you mind telling me what you want with this?” He holds up the vial his victim was carrying on his person just a short moment ago.
"The secret ingredient!" one of the crooks cried.
"For what?" the mystery man inquired.
"None of your gods-damned business!" All the thug leader knows is that the vial's contents were vital for his client's operation, and if they are who the interloper thinks they are, then they’ve just signed their death warrants! "Get him!"
They ruffians charged at their enemy, who throws the vial unto the ground, watching the contents spill out from the broken glass for a while before intercepting his opponents. Swift did the interloper remove his coat, wrapping it around the head of the assailant before disarming him at the elbow with a vertical downward swipe of his claws.
This is no ordinary man, the lead criminal thought. The metal attachments on the arms of the otherwise topless blonde-haired stranger suggested as much, and he struck the maimed man at the chin with his knee and swung him by the legs into the lit up window of a nearby house, crashing into a mess of blood, glass, and metal on impact.
The other two scoundrels were simultaneously cut down by a repeated tornado sweep of the stranger's claws slicing them to pieces with the deadly grace of a waterfowl. Yukiko was both parts shocked and astonished by what she just saw! "What a guy! Da hell is he!?"
Her last remaining aggressor attempts to close in, only for the shirtless stranger to firmly grasp the villain's arm in his metal hand. Blood gushed out from the punctures in his forearm from the metallic fingertips poking through the gauntlet, as the young man glared at him almost menacingly. The cultist unsheathes a sword with his free arm and runs it into the stranger's torso, but to no more effect than blood running down the stranger's body! "Who are you?!" The still living stranger pushes his prey to the ground and presses his metal boot onto the wrist of the hand that impaled him.
"You motherf***er!" the armored thug evilly spat, "How dare you presume to spill the blood of the Sons of DracoRex! You think us the aggressors from your short-sighted perspective, but all that we do, we do in the grand scheme of-"
"Grand scheme?!" the stranger retorts as he pulls off his captive's helmet, graven in the image of the disgraced Dragon King, "You and your brood lie and kill in service of the Great Betrayer who so recklessly made himself God at the expense of guilty and innocent alike! In how many hearts have you planted the seeds of pointless vengeance? How many will your actions spurn into hating you and your god before you stop? "
The struggling scoundrel snarls back at his attacker, "Believe what you wish at your own peril, infidelic scum! The Sons of Great DracoRex will suffer your hatred, but we will NOT capitulate to admonishment from commonfolk so petulant and squeamish! No matter how many enemies we face, no matter how many of us fall, we must achieve the will unfaltering of Bahamut Almighty, even if it means-" "SPARE ME YOUR SANCTIMONY!" "EVEN IF IT MEANS, the ones we love will die!"
The young vigilante was incensed! What audacious self-righteousness! "You wish to die for what you misguidedly believe in? So be it...!" He rips off the cultist's chest armor like paper, pulls out the sword still lodged into his body, infuses it with fire magic and rams it into the downed enemy's heart, setting him ablaze. He turns his back on the burning fiend in human skin, who furiously cursed and screamed his last as the smell of cooking flesh filled the air.
Having got her clothes back on, Yukiko is helped back on her feet by the man who killed her assailants. "I dunno know who you is, but thanks fo’ saving my T n’ A back there."
"Don't thank me," Her savior tells her, his right hand covering the bloody impalement wound after his claws had receded, that his hands are like a normal person's again, "Those DracoRex worshipping bastards are guilty of ruining my life too, and they're all gonna get what's coming. But what the hell would they want with your body fluid anyway?"
"I dunno... but if they' looking to get into da market fo’ dat new drug people is paying shit-tons of gil fo‘ to put in they beer or whatever," Yukiko answers with a shudder as she paces around, "...I'm not sure I wanna know what kinda weapons of mass destruction or dangerous shit they can afford to build. What’re yo’ thoughts, Mr.-"
But the young man was already gone...
Somewhere in the city outskirts, a young female with short silvery hair, garbed entirely in white with her thighs, stomach, shoulders and upper arms exposed, stood out patiently beside a tent she had pitched earlier. One arm wrapped around her chest with the hand resting on the opposite shoulder, she stared into the stars in the night sky with many things on her mind. In due time, the woman saw a man approaching her from the distance, the partially-armored blond-haired man, to whom she ran with a relieved look on her face. And he afforded her to embrace him in her arms, caressing him tenderly.
Noticing the wound from earlier, the woman steps back and asks, "How bad is it?"
"It will heal just shortly," the man reassured her, "but it’s nothing compared to the twisted experiment that made me what I am today..."
By this, he meant a gruesome operation that stripped him of his natural arms and legs, now replaced with mechanical prosthetics made with the latest magiteknology. The performers were none other than the Sons of DracoRex themselves, who turned an ordinary young man into a living weapon against his will; all for wanting to impart unto his partner, an android in the guise of a beautiful woman, the gift of love.
Just thinking about it made the android woman cry, an unusual occurrence for her kind indeed. "Every day I wish I could have saved you in time!" She thought to herself.
But her friend wipes the the tears off her face, and gently he presses his lips against hers. In wrapping her arms around him, does she return the affection, and they are locked in an embrace of physical intimacy. Laying her lover down, the female retreats briefly into the tent with damp lukewarm cloths and other tools to start cleaning his wounds and prosthetics. Once the work is done, she undresses herself entirely, lays beside her partner and presses her breast onto his, they lock each others' hands and they make love under the stars until daybreak. By then, the partners are back in their usual garments, observing the sunrise in all its beauty.
"The longer the Sons of DracoRex are free to do as they please," the man started, "the more hatred they will breed in the hearts of others who will wreak unnecessary violence until nothing is left!"
"That is why we have to stop them and expose every evil thing they have ever done, whatever happens to us." the woman agrees, holding her companion's hand, "No one deserves to suffer as we do, because what they did to us, is wrong."
The two vigilantes make for their next destination, that they may one day end the Sons of DracoRex's secret war against all the Great Betrayer seeks to destroy, against the wishes of those who want only to live life to its fullest.
How is the story of the
Vagrant Automata to end? No one may really know…