Kassi
2.9.2002, 1:16:36
Tämä nyt vaipui unohduksiin sinne edesmenneeseen Kirjoituskilpailu-threadiin, joten ajattelin suoda tälle oman threadin kunnian, koska sain tästä positiivista palautetta (!) eräällä toisella foorumilla.
Lähteet: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII
Joku saattaa pitää joitakin kohtauksia liian väkivaltaisina, mutta luulen että jos kielitaito riittää ymmärtämään ne niin on tarpeeksi vanha.
The Mission
The Moon hovered peacefully over the horizon. At the terminator, the separator of night and day, a teeming mass of red could be seen as the monsters inhabiting the celestial object escaped the
tormenting beams of light.
Seventeen years had passed since the last time they had had a chance to flee to the surface of the planet the moon was orbiting.
Squall sighed deeply, like every night, in his customary way and returned inside from the balcony. The door to his office was knocked on.
”Enter”, the Headmaster of the Garden said.
His aide, Nida, walked in, and noticed the open door and the telescope set up on a tripod at the balcony, and gave an almost scolding look at Squall.
He ignored the look and asked: ”You had something urgent?”
”A mission”, Nida said and handed over a couple of printouts. ”From Esthar.”
Squall flinched, hearing the name he had cursed so many times. He decided to forget the origin for the time being, calmed himself and read the briefing through quickly and couldn’t help to notice the sum at the bottom of the final sheet.
Nida saw his expression, smiled shortly and cleared: ”It is not an error.”
”This is exactly what we would need”, Squall replied. The times had been harsh on the Garden - SeeD salaries had been cut already twice, not to mention other expenses. The last time the Garden was airborne was over five years ago. He was a skilled tactician, not a book-keeper, but he could add the sums up. Garden at the recent pace, with the last major assigment being assisting Galbadia eliminate a rogue General over a decade ago, would soon be bankrupt.
”We had better send a team out immediately”, he continued and prompted Nida to open up his notepad. ”Who do we have on call at the moment? Raijin for instance?”
”Raijin is currently at the city of Balamb on leave.”
”Don’t tell me - fishing.”
Nida dismissed the remark, as correct as it was. ”It appears that we have no teams situated near Esthar - we will have to dispatch one from the Garden.”
”Which means I would be leading it”, Squall thought out loud. He hadn’t seen action for a long time. And the fact that this was indeed in Esthar, the country he wholeheartedly loathed, didn’t help the tension either. After the incident at the Lunar Base he had felt no need to fight. The retirement of Cid Kramer and the offering of the post of Headmaster at that time was perfect for him.
Nida nodded. ”Esthar will volunteer to arrange all transportation to the mission location. A hoverboat will arrive in three hours.”
”I must proceed with haste then.” I hope my old uniform still fits, he thought.
***
”No one knows his real name. Everyone calls him just President”, one of the cadets said, his voice almost blanketed by the hum of the craft’s engines.
Squall looked and grinned at his old gunblade. After cleaning the worst clutters of dust from it, it still had required a terrifying amount of oil for the drum of the revolver to operate. The armoury would have had better and more reliable weapons, but Squall felt more at home with this old one. He squinted and tried to make out whether a red spot on the blade was a reflection or a blood stain.
”And there’re no pictures of him either. Everyone in Esthar, however, knows him by his appearance.”
The headmaster scanned the passenger quarters, filled with his team of young soldiers. He knew personally none of them - he had kept himself rather secluded, and had only two people in the
Garden he could trust, Nida and Xu. His old comrades were long gone, having families, lives and careers of their own.
After travelling for an hour or two the hoverboat halted and the door was opened. In stepped an officer and a regular of the Esthar armed forces, their whole bodies covered in hi-tech suits. The officer greeted Squall.
”Welcome to Esthar, commander.”
”Thank you.”
”We have not approached the target yet, since we trusted that you would arrive in time. We are receiving satellite footage of the zone in a couple of hours, but wish that you could proceed at
once.”
”Understood”, Squall replied and started to give orders to his team.
”Commander”, the officer cut him. ”You are receiving an extraordinary amount of trust on your shoulders. We are inside the image-twisting field surrounding our nation. You will see things that no other outsider will probably see for years to come. We have our reasons for secrecy and wish that you will respect them.”
***
The SeeDs approached their target. As already had been speculated by eyewitness reports, it was indeed a space capsule of some kind. If it had not been for it’s unique shape and configuration, it would have been stated that it was debris from an old Esthar space project. It’s crash on the plateau had not been seen anywhere outside Esthar, since it was midnight and the sky was dark only here - when the request for SeeD had arrived, the sun had just set in Balamb.
Squall was not sure why specifically SeeD had been asked to come in. Esthar had enough spare forces to surround the object - it was probably the fact it may contain dangerous and strange
extra-terrestrials or monsters from the Moon. In any case, the capsule was reached, but no door or hatch was found on it. The SeeD fell back, set up shifts, and as the Esthar forces came in to assist, Squall went asleep.
Not many hours passed, as he was awakened - the pod had opened up itself, and out had emerged... a girl. A young woman, actually. She had staggered out and lost consciousness - she was taken to medical care while the insides of the pod were searched. Only a crude cryogenical cell and some of her clothes were found.
And while new questions were rising, a new pod fell down from the sky - this time to the desert southwest from the continent of Esthar.
This time, the Esthar forces decided to inspect it all by themselves, allowing the SeeD to be sent home with their due fee. Their journey was however interrupted by a new assigment. The second pod had opened on it’s own too - but with somewhat more dangerous results. Other news told that the girl from the first pod had mysteriously vanished - making Esthar also ask the SeeDs to begin searching for her. Squall, intrigued by the situation, would have looked for her on his own, so he was more then glad to accept the mission.
Back to the desert.
”He stepped out, and suddenly, there was this long sword in his, I think it was a man, hand. He started waving it around, and we got terrified and ran away.”
”No armed guards?”
”Until at our transport, yes, no guards.”
”He was left alone then”, Squall murmured. ”Well, let’s check it out anyhow”, he continued, though he strongly suspected that the mysterious man had gone the way of disappearance as well.
”Did he do anything else?”
”He did mutter something... about a woman... and someone called ’Boris’, I think it was...”
This time the SeeD went in with much more caution. A small robot trawler covered the terrain in front of them, shedding a pillar of light at the pod up ahead.
Since the hatch already had opened, in it’s closed form it was easily found with the seams clear of scorched remains. It had no operating console or switch to open it but a brave technician that had tagged along them grabbed a blowtorch and began his work. After a while, the door was so weakly supported by it’s hinges that a strong kick would break it. Squall ushered his team to take out canisters full of sleeping gas and gas masks, took a mask and canister himself, and with a quick set of movements crashed the hatch and threw the cylinder spewing the gas inside. He fell down on the ground and the soldiers around him readied their rifles in case the gas wouldn’t work.
But it did.
***
They had tried to ask questions from him but to no result. They had tried to ask him in any language known to them, including archaic Centra. He remained silent, yet conscious in his hospital bed he had been strapped in.
They had clothed him in a light green hospital dress, but his original clothes had been rather interesting - the long black cape did match his long silver hair and shimmering eyes. He was
apparently strong and muscular, and carried a very threatening and sharp sword. Squall had held it with fascination, but after almost slicing a crewmember of the ship in half had put it back behind a lock and key.
”What is your name?” Squall asked and held out a notepad and a pencil.
The man’s impression changed from resisting to pleading - he gestured towards the writing equipment as clearly as he could in his state. Squall raised an eyebrow - the man was not supposed
to be mute or deaf.
He carefully freed the man’s right arm and set the pencil and paper on his chest. Quickly he started to scribble something with them. Finally he handed over the result.
My name is Sephiroth
***
Squall after that left Sephiroth to write more and reported the situation to Esthar and to Balamb. The girl had been sighted on the Horizon Bridge heading west, but no one had been able to
apprehend her. Squall received a digitalized picture of the woman and printed it out.
Then he browsed through the items found in Sephiroth’s landing pod. A certain picture interested him in particular - he almost dropped his jaw when seeing it. He had to make sure out from the people who had emptied the pod if it was a bad joke - it wasn’t. He pocketed the picture and returned to Sephiroth’s room.
The handwriting was quite tense and almost impossible to read, but Squall managed to decrypt it.
I am unsure why I can not speak. I do not feel physically injured. Possibly the atmospheric pressure or somesuch is to blame. I hope I can regain my ability to speak as soon as possible. My aggressive behaviour, which I apologise, was because of a substance I was injected with to help me
recover from cryogenic sleep - it was apparently overdosed, and the adrenaline rush was too much to bear. Now, I would like to know - who are you, where am I, and is there someone else inside a similar pod like mine here also?
Squall showed the picture he had printed to Sephiroth. His eyes glared for a moment, then he ripped the picture from his hand, crushed it into a small ball with his clenched fist and threw it away.
***
The woman who arrived is dangerous. I must reach her. I might require assistance.
”In what way is she dangerous?” She hadn’t appeared too harmful to Squall. Just a girl.
She possesses potential power that may mean destruction to this world. She will seek a nexus of the spritiual energy of this planet. Is there a place on this planet where the inside veins of the planet appear on the surface? Or is there a meteor crater here anywhere?
”I might know a place. But it’s only an old wives tale - not to mention that it would probably be in the middle of the sea.”
We must get there before her. I see that you are a skilled warrior and a leader. We need a third
one. I will explain later.
Squall pondered. There really was only one person - but he didn’t want to trust a weapon on him. He shrugged. ”Well, I might know someone.” Though he too was already middle-aged and probably in bad physical shape.
He wondered for a moment, why he was engaging in all this - because of the picture that he had found probably. He had to know - the man dodged his questions regarding the image.
***
”Esthar will arrange all this... but are you sure about it?” the secretary of state asked.
”He might be our only solution to this riddle, and might lead us to that girl.” And I want to know why her face was emblazoned on that wall of stone. I want to know if she still lives
somewhere. I want to know if I can hear her voice again. I want to know if I might be able to forget everyone and continue with my life.
”Very well. We know the location you talk of - the crew there was partly from Esthar and we have monitored it with our satellites for some time now. Our former flagship will be at your disposal.”
Squall was impressed. The legendary Dragon Ship, the Ragnarok. They are probably as willing to sort this out as I am, he thought.
”We will be stopping by at Galbadia before that, though.”
***
”He has been to us nothing but a pain in the neck. He has incited riots and has injured to guards. We will be more then happy to give him away, as long as you can guarantee he will not escape.”
”Not from where we are heading”, Squall replied to the warden and watched as the crane hoisted the prison cell from the bowels of the D-District prison. A detachment of guards armed to teeth walked to face the causeway connecting the cell with the level Squall was standing on. A blond man walked quietly out, looked at the guards condescendingly and then saw Squall. He couldn’t quite make out the expression Seifer had on his face, but it was somewhere between surpise, perturbation and disgust.
He was in surprisingly good shape. Probably he had been exercising during his imprisonment - in hope of gaining vengeance or just for the sake of it, Squall wasn’t sure.
***
”And this lady, you say, is dangerous?”
”Very much so, at least according to him”, Squall said, gesturing towards Sephiroth sitting next to
him.
Sephiroth took out the notepad from his pocket and wrote:
She has paranormal abilities. She is carrying an organism that she hopes she will benefit melding with. But to accomplish this she needs unforeseen resources of spiritual or magical energy. She is the deadlies foe I have ever seen, and on my homeworld I was the General of Special Forces.
”You’re talking about the Deep Sea Deposit, aren’t you”, Seifer replied.
Squall nodded. ”I think so too. We will get transported there soon enough - we just need to know, will you help us?”
Seifer leaned back on his chair - and would’ve rested his hand on his crossed fingers had he not been handcuffed - and grinned. ”Is old Hyperion still intact?”
Squall shook his head. ”No weapons for you, at least not yet.”
”Spoilsport.”
***
For a ship several decades old, the spaceship, now strictly an airship, held a certain aura of prestige. It was still lightyears ahead of say, the best Galbadia could construct, in terms of technological progress and raw firepower.
Sephiroth was hunched in a corner - ’hunched’ in a metaphorical sense, silent and concentrated, as a man of his posture would probably be unable to hunch at all - reading documents and dossiers Squall had given him, regarding history of the world, the political situation and other common knowledge. His speed of digesting written text was incredibly fast, his eyes would merely glance and flicker at a single sheet and then move on to the next one in seconds.
Seifer was fast asleep in the crew quarters. The soft bunks were probably too much for him.
Squall strolled over to the cockpit. The ship had minimum crew, only two pilots.
”You must be ready to leave at all times. After twenty minutes of landing, take off for an hour and come back for another twenty minutes, then leave again. I will not risk you, or this ship.”
”Understood, sir”, the captain replied.
”And in case you will never hear of me again, transmit this message. The recipients and other information are in the file.”
”Roger”, the captain said and added the contents of the diskette he was given to the ship’s database.
***
Squall didn’t feel all too surprised to find the island right where it was supposed to be. A small boat had docked to a barely floating pier, apparently the girl had already made it here. Sephiroth wasn’t too fearful of the case but did become a notch agitated at the sight.
The landing platform had remained intact and Ragnarok could settle down to stable ground. Squall set the futuristic timepiece courtesy of Esthar on his wrist to count down from 20 minutes to zero. The trio descended to the ruins.
The first floor was vacant. The walls were covered in blank and broken viewscreens and monitors and the floor was scattered with broken and burnt pieces of computer consoles and desk chairs. In the middle of the apparent control room was a rectangluar hole surrounded by steel girders - obviously, the elevator shaft. A few wires were scretching down from the ceiling, the three used them to lower themselves all the way to the third level. The elevator had stopped on the fourth level, which was quickly reached through an openable pane on the top of the elevator.
”I wonder what happened”, Squall said, looking around holding a torch casting a circle of light on the walls.
”Maybe not what, more like who”, Seifer replied. ”This was to my recollect a mine or an excavation of sorts.”
Sephiroth made something as close to laughter as a mute man can do and wrote down:
A mere day on this world and I know more then the natives themselves. This is a research centre that was anchored above the ruins of an ancient civilization, much older then the Centra, over ten millennia ago. Apparently, they were in search of the ultimate weapon, a mechanoid constructed by the civilization. It’s thought that it was this very weapon that caused the demise of it’s builders in the first place. All that remains is this underwater tower and a strange shrine at the bottom of it.
”And this, ’Ultimate Weapon’, is supposedly the cause of this destruction?” Squall responded.
Sephiroth shrugged and walked to the only working computer console in the floor. After a moment he beckoned Squall to the controls, as if saying ”you know these things better then I do”. He was correct; Squall quickly made his way through the directories, albeit the operating system was somewhat arcane, and managed to run the diagnostic program.
63 % of memory capacity damaged.
37 % of auxiliary systems damaged.
12 % of core systems damaged.
Reboot central computer and restore auxiliary systems from backup?
Squall was hesitant.
Rebooting central computer.
1. Securing lockdown of emergency doors. To abort, press A key.
He got nervous. To abort lockdown or to abort rebooting? Finally he located the A key.
Lockdown aborted. Proceeding with reboot.
Squall let out a sigh of relief as the hydraulic pumps gave away and a door to the stairway opened. After a moment, all remaining sources of light and the last working consoles of the complex shut down.
”The system is rebooting”, Squall calmed the others down.
”You don’t look like a person who knows that much about computers.” A voice from the darkness.
Suddenly in front of them stood a woman - a brunette wearing a long red jacket and a pink dress stretching all the way down to her ankles.
”Aeris”, Sephiroth said, with his low voice now restored.
Squall waved his hand in the way characteristic to him and shouted: ”Hold it! I want explanations and I want them now!”
The woman, Aeris, giggled for a second or two in a very heartwarming manner.
Squall felt again hesitant - the she-devil, Death incarnate that Sephiroth was not what he thought he saw.
Sephiroth didn’t share Squall’s feelings - with a stern gaze he wielded his tall sword and breathed deeply. Seifer was bewildered of the sudden situation and had no idea what to do.
Aeris kept an innocent smile on her face and returned the gaze back to Sephiroth.
”I thought I had finished you in the City”, Sephiroth quietly said, clearly trying to find a way to vent his anger.
”Us Ancients - much more resilient then you thought. No wonder you wanted to be one of us”, Aeris continued with the smile fading away.
”You are not an Ancient”, Sephiroth continued. ”Ancients were kind, calm beings, not warmongerers that walked the Planet to spread destruction and hatred.”
Aeris laughed again - this time in a much more grim tone - and wiped away a stray lock of hair from covering her eyes with a gesture that was overtly emphasized. ”Oh Sephy, how could I be
evil?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. At this point, Squall felt overdosed of this pretentious cuteness and began to see the point in Sephiroth’s behaviour, as erratic as it had seemed.
”Hojo, Gast, they corrupted you”, Sephiroth breathed through his teeth.
”Gast was a fool. He had power but didn’t understand it’s purpose. Hojo - another fool. He tried to use power he did not possess. Jenova is everything, everything is Jenova, at least it will be. When the fusion is complete, I will be omnipotent, omniscient and... omni-lovable”, she playfully said.
Now it was Sephiroth’s turn to laugh, though his laughter was almost psychotic. He lifted his sword and prepared to strike when suddenly Seifer, completely out of the blue, darted between Sephiroth and Aeris and held out a gunblade that looked strangely like that of Squall.
Squall put his hand on his belt - in some miraculous way Seifer had freed himself and grabbed his weapon.
Seifer pointed the barrel and the blade at Sephiroth and armed the gun. Aeris behind him turned around and head for the stairs with Seifer covering her. He withdrew after Aeris had disappeared from their field of vision, but before entering the staircase he shot at a control panel on the side of the door, separating himself, Aeris and the rest of the complex from Sephiroth and Squall with a bulky steel wall several inches thick.
Squall ran to the closed door and felt it with his fingers. ”Explosives. The Ragnarok.” He glanced at his timepiece. ”We’ve got five minutes. We have to hurry!”
***
”Luckily you came in time. The President has been trying to contact you for some while now”, the captain informed.
”The President?”
”The one and only, for over forty years”, the captain gleefully said. ”There is a vidscreen at the passenger quarters.”
”Got it. By the way, I need a key for the ship’s armoury...”
The captain hesitated for a moment but then handed over a magnetic keycard and said: ”There’s some heavy ordinance there. If you decide to use them big guns, please read the manual first.”
***
The screen was already on, brandishing the Esthar national emblem, as Squall walked to it. He worked a small pad next to it and a face appeared on the screen. Sephiroth had taken the card and was off to the armoury. Whoever this enigmatic President was, he would face Squall’s wrath - what he did up there in space seventeen years ago was just unforgivable.
The man was in his sixties, but had grown old with grace - only traces of past years were a few wrinkled spots here and there in his face and a hair that was completely grey.
Squall recognised the man immediately and felt torn into pieces as a whole wave of different contradicting emotions swept through him. But what remained was his anger.
The President, noticing Squall’s now visual pain, closed his eyes and said: ”This was bound to happen. I just hoped it would happen at a better time then this.”
”Laguna”, Squall managed to say. He repeated, trying to add a tone of dispisement.
The legend. The man with the machine gun. Cooler then liquid oxygen.
”Squall, I - ”
”You were alive after all. All the time.”
”I couldn’t - ”
”You killed Rinoa!” Squall roared. If Laguna had been right there now, in front of him, his security guards would’ve had some work in separating his enclosing fingers around the President’s neck.
Laguna waited for a silent moment and sighed. ”If I hadn’t given that order, Adel would’ve been freed and thousands, maybe millions would’ve suffered. Is that what you wanted? Blood of
innocents staining your hands? Rinoa took risk, fully aware of the possible consequences. And... at that moment, the Sorceresses were gone. Rinoa was, indeed, Ultimecia, for she ceased to exist once Rinoa had been sent far away to space. It was a theory only Odine and I knew... and it turned out true.
”That’s not possible... we could have stopped it... killed Ultimecia in the future. With Odine... with Ellone - Ellone! You didn’t even attend her funeral!”
A single tear now on Laguna’s cheek. ”I know. I heard of her death at Winhill, but it was too late. I went there... you put her next to Raine. I... I appreciate that. Thank you.” Laguna shook his head and lifted his eyes to face Squall. ”I apologize for placing you in this situation. But - that island is dangerous. I wanted to talk to you, in case...”
”I understand.”
”I can not ask your forgiveness. But I do think what I did was the right thing.”
Silence.
”How are you faring?” Laguna finally asked.
”Seifer turned out a risk after all”, Squall sighed, trying to regain his composure. ”He lost it and allied with the woman, called Aeris.”
”And Sephiroth?”
”At the armoury. We have a security door to blast.”
”Fine. Good luck. And a word of advice - if you decide to use the big guns, and I mean big as in friggin’ monster-vaporising, sorceress’-butt-kickin’ big - read the manual first.”
***
Squall strolled to the armoury. Sephiroth appeared behind a rack of Esthar uniforms and showed him two grenades.
”Light, secure and destructive”, he said and tossed the other one at Squall.
He catched the grenade and looked at Sephiroth, scared and shocked.
”Don’t worry, they’re safe if you keep the pin in place”, he said.
Famous last words, Squall thought and rolled his eyes as he put the grenade in his pocket.
”What are in those?” Squall asked and pointed his finger at two large lockers.
Sephiroth opened them - the other one had a long, metallic sniper rifle with futuristic additions like a laser targeter, an infrared scope, a motion sensor, and what appeared to be a computer screen and a keypad - and a tall bazooka attached to an upper piece of rigid body armour that would be placed on the shoulders, that too with a keypad and a targeting scope.
”I can’t use either of those”, Squall exclaimed.
Sephiroth replied: ”Thought so”, and picked up a gunblade with shades of silver, black and white and a bluish jagged blade.
Squall took the gunblade, felt it’s weight and grip and said finally: ”I’ll take it.”
***
The grenades were their worth - the door was out of their way. The dark red-shaded space they entered felt suffocating, with the air growing thicker and hotter with every step.
”Why”, Squall asked.
”Huh?”
”Seifer. Why?”
Sephiroth pondered. ”He felt Aeris’ powers. He sensed that she was something akin to a sorceress.”
”His dream... Sorceress’ knight”, Squall breathed.
”That stench...”
”I can’t take it, I need air”, Squall muttered, and fainted.
***
When Squall woke up he faced Sephiroth, who had knelt next to him. Squall squinted his eyes trying to compensate the sudden brightness of the space he was in. It felt large, since the air around him was in slight continuous motion.
”About time”, Sephiroth said drily.
”How long was I out?” Squall asked. The last time he had fainted was when Ellone had sent his consciousness back in time - except this time the buzzing and the dream were gone, replaced by blank.
”No idea. Some way we ended down here with our weapons. My only guess is that she brought us here for the sheer fun of it”, Sephiroth said. He winced and motioned Squall to take a peek over the ledge of the stone platform they were on.
Aeris and Seifer were standing on the bottom of the large space they were in. It was round and tall, apparently the insides of a tower built under the ocean. There was water at the bottom, sparkling in turqoise colour. A large spiral staircase swirled from an opening in the ceiling all the way down, with platforms - like the one Squall was on - every now and then. The whole structure was supported by grey stone pillars with cryptic ancient writing.
Squall rubbed his eyes and took a closer look at the two standing. ”Aeris is tampering with some sort of a console. Seifer is just standing there.” Squall stood up and scanned the surroundings. ”The ancient city.”
”Not probably in it’s entirety. If all what is told is true, this existed before the people of Centra.”
”And the most dangerous beast ever to exist lies dormant here.”
”That we will soon find out”, Sephiroth said briskly. ”Can you walk?”
”Yeah. I’m fine”, Squall said and nodded after taking a few cautious steps.
”Good, I won’t have to go alone.”
”Why three?” Squall asked, curious.
Sephiroth sighed and smiled. ”An old legend I was told when I was a child. Three warriors race to meet a great evil - one of them succumbs to the seduction of the evil, and the other two face him and the opponent. Just call me superstitious.”
”Did the two warriors win?”
”That we will see. I never heard the rest of the tale” was the response.
***
Once they arrived to the lowest platform, Aeris giggled again, in a way that sent shivers through Squall’s spine - it was more like a cackle, not a giggle. He felt awkvard - there was something
familiar with that tone, that form, that sound.
She kept her look at the computer screen and said: ”It would have been awfully unfair to just off you right where you passed out.”
”I don’t need your mercy”, Sephiroth hissed. Again his calm composure was completely gone.
”Seifer, would you be so kind to kill them?”
With a glazed look, Seifer nodded and pulled out a gunblade, targeting it at Squall.
”You have been charmed, nothing else”, Squall said. ”Two against one. Don’t be a fool.”
”You are the fool here - underestimating me as usual”, he replied, and began mumbling something
to himself.
Suddenly, Squall was overtaken a chill - the air around him erupted to motion, and a cold whirlwind billowed right through his clothes, making him shiver and his ears and fingers freeze.
Sephiroth was dazed for a moment - then he returned his attention to Seifer. ”Magic. You can cast spells”, he stated the blindingly obvious.
His face darkened and he lifted his sword, poised for a strike. With all his strength he slashed - Seifer readied his gunblade to take the blow. Sephiroth knew this and made a quick move to strike him in his side - but the edge bounced from mid-air and a sphere around Seifer glowed green for a split second. He was protected by a magical barrier.
Meantime, the blizzard around Squall had settled down, and he was hopping and waving his hands to restore normal temperature to his body.
The recoiling bounce of the sword sent Sephiroth off balance, falling on the floor, allowing Seifer to concentrate on Squall. ”Too cold for you? Maybe this’ll help!” he bellowed and prepared to cast another spell. The ground below Squall shook and cracked open, shooting up gushes of hot gases. He coughed and cleared his throat, trying to cope in the furnace.
Sephiroth saw, as Seifer kept tormenting his prey, that his chance had presented itself. He saw a thin layer of dust on the ground. He took a fistful of it in his hand and threw it at the back of Seifer’s shield - there had to be a gap, otherwise the shield wouldn’t have worked. And he was right - the dust sprinkled all over the magic field and glittered for a second before falling - except for a small round hole couple of inches in diametre.
Sephiroth closed his eyes, breathed and pushed his blade through the gap. It pierced it’s way all through Seifer, killing him immediately after a cry of pain and bringing down the magical barrier.
Squall, who had dunked his head in the lake around the platform, lifted his head, stood up and brushed wet hair from his face, witnessing the corpse of Seifer. He was satisfied of the result, but wasn’t too comfortable of the fact that his role had been merely diversion.
”I see”, Aeris said after a pause. ”At least he stalled you well enough. Squall... that was your name, right, Squall?”
No response. ”I guess it is, then. Before you and Sephy proceed to disembowl me, a poor little girl, I assume you want to know why Sephy in his pocket had a picture of your presumably late
girlfriend.”
Squall felt his heart jump up his throat. His initial reaction was to deny that she was her girlfriend, but - he let it be. He had to know. Sephiroth took a fighting stance but Squall ushered him to wait.
”He will play with your mind”, Sephiroth warned him.
”I’ll take the risk”, Squall said and returned to face Aeris. ”Answers. Now.” He took a hold of his weapon and armed it as theatrically as possible.
Aeris looked at him back, feeling superiority. ”In the dimension Sephy and I are from, time passes quite differently then here. Your girl appeared there thousands of years ago, yet she left this dimension about seventeen years ago. When she arrived, down on our Planet, she was injured... cosmic radiation, burns, she looked like a bludgeoned stake - a slab of meat with a brain and some internal organs remaining inside. Somehow, her name was changed - probably Jenova is the Ancient pronounciation of Rinoa - anyway, my ancestors, the Ancients, nursed her to health. However, she gained strength from the energy they directed inside her, and some strange powers inside her woke up and decided to take advantage of the situation.
That ungrateful bitch became delusional, thought of herself as a god... managed to murder many Ancients, before they could seal
her off. I heard of this, and I am the last Ancient... and I decided that now it was my turn to take advantage of her. I decided to resurrect her and give her power again... together, after a fusion, my consciousness would gain the powers of me and Jenova, Rinoa, Ultimecia, whatever. Then Sephy tagged along and ruined everything!”
Squall thought of this. Sephiroth had, indeed, killed Jenova... and with it, anything that was left of Rinoa. But he didn’t feel like accusing him, he had done enough of that for the day.
”More likely, Sephy tried to ruin everything. I made my escape here, with a surviving fragment of Jenova with me."
”You mean... Jenova is there, in you, now?”
Aeris nodded. ”And once the drawing of powers is complete, I will become, indeed, a god... and once the protector of this city is aroused, it will serve me.”
”Hang on - how did you end up here in the first place?”
”A dimensional rift sucked Rinoa and sent her to our space... the only explanation might be that Adel was envious of another Sorceress in the same time and sent her away. Here the gateway has been open for fifteen years, which is several millennia in our time”, Sephiroth explained.
Squall held his head and tried to handle all this. It was too much to bear - too much information, too much revelations in a short period of time. Images flashed before him - friends, foes, locations. Emotions. Laguna, Rinoa - Ultimecia - Jenova, Ellone, Aeris, Sephiroth, Seifer - he felt almost crushed under the weight.
Finally, Squall managed to ignore all this and concentrated on the situation at hand. His eyes flickered in their sockets as he sought for a tactical advantage, a quirk, a weakness, a way to escape -
A switch.
A red button covered under plexi-glass. He made a quick decision - he had only one thing to lose. He held the gun and squeezed the trigger. Aeris lifted her barrier around her but for no purpose - the bullet sped to shatter the plastic cover over the switch. Squall sprinted to the button and slammed it with his elbow - at the same instant the lights went from pale green to dark red, and a klaxon somewhere high above started to wail.
The computer screen behind Aeris produced one line of text: The complex will collapse in two minutes.
”There’s no time to get out”, Squall shouted over the ruckus of the supporting structures starting to fail. He felt sorry for making this decision in behalf of Sephiroth - but Sephiroth just smiled and nodded approvingly, wielding his long sword. Luckily, Squall thought, Ragnarok was out in the air and would merely witness the event.
Sephiroth turned to face Aeris. Aeris raised her hand to lash out a destructive force of magic at him. But she made a tactical error and ignored Squall, who was standing behind her. He jerked the
gunblade and jammed it to the magical shield, making it appear permanently and vibrating in the air around Aeris in a blue shimmer. Sephiroth looked carefully at the shaking field as Aeris
struggled to keep it intact.
Aeris concentrated and bolts of magic shot out of her, striking both Squall and Sephiroth down on the floor. She rushed to the console and entered a few commands. A thundering roar echoed all over the complex, and beneath the pool of water - now coloured red like blood - rose a tall creature, a bizarre silver-winged lifeless knight, holding a long white sword with a bluish heart, riding a monstrosity that resembled a mechanized rhino. The creature climbed up from a pit under the surface of the water and thumped it’s way to a platform, breathing - or moving like something that is breathing - forcefully. The winged knight made a few swings with it’s sword.
”Weapon, destroy these -” Aeris began, but to her shock the Weapon growled and pushed it’s gigantic sword right at her, making the magical shield tremble. ”Creature, obey my command!” she yelled and gathered the rest of the field to resist the strike.
Sephiroth nodded - his moment had come.
”Help me, please”, Aeris begged while struggling against the Weapon’s might. She was not addressing the two men behind her preparing to strike her down, but the small embedment of
Jenova inside her abdomen. A blanket of flesh started to grow around her, forming a thick barrier against harm on her chest. The flesh started to wriggle and a flow of sparks started to fly as it gave it’s own magical powers to reinforce the shield and to send the Weapon against the wall in a backslash of energy.
But that was not all Jenova did. Squall felt a strong throbbing pain behind his eyes and fell down on his knees as it communicated with him, trying to possess him, to seduce him by using the Rinoa still left inside her.
”Are you Rinoa? But you can’t - you are helping her, supporting her...”
Squall gathered all his strength. Rinoa had changed - or had she been like this from the very beginning? A collaborator of the Sorceress? All just a charade, for one purpose, to make sure
Ultimecia succeeds?
Sephiroth saw Squall on the floor and sighed. Clearly, the man was so confused and entangled in his own emotional contradictions and delusions that he would be of no use.
Suddenly it all made sense to him - immature, a spoilt brat so to speak, trying to finally fight against his father, but only by joining a team of revolutionaries, risking her comrades’ lives just for the sake of infantile rebellion - trying to make control by seducing Seifer but to no avail - and then moving on to the next victim, him, like a bird of prey, ruthlessly manipulating his friends to reach her goal...
He was again full of anger - but not because of Laguna. He was mad at himself for falling for such a simple ploy. And he was mad at Rinoa... Jenova.
He regained his stature, stood up and glanced at Sephiroth who was finally ready to strike. They exchanged looks - smiles - nods - and rushed to the unprotected back of their target.
Their two sharp blades punctured her back simultainoisly, both slipping easily through the ribs and bursting out of her hip and chest. She screamed in agony and watched the blood flow out from the pierced wounds. Her concentration from fighting off the Weapon was shattered, and the knight managed to scantly slash her forehead. Squall withdrew his much wider blade that had caused very severe damage, while Sephiroth kept his still and started to make a downward motion to finish the
job. The symbiotic cells of Jenova hurried to the injuries, trying their best to heal them. The pain was increasing and made Aeris almost lose her concentration. Jenova started to numb her senses to keep itself alive.
Sephiroth made sharp movements with his own weapon, trying to snap Aeris’ spine, shredding her internal organs in the process.
Squall on the other hand, hoisted his gunblade, took a steady stance and decapitated her in one decisive strike.
She was gone. Even Jenova needed the host body to gain energy from. The magical barricade holding Weapon at bay collapsed at the same time and if Squall’s lethal blow hadn’t finished her off, then the trampling Weapon did.
”You took the honour”, Sephiroth shouted as the Weapon prepared to strike them both down.
”I apologise”, Squall replied blankly. No regrets, he thought.
”Don’t”, Sephiroth smiled, blood dripping on the floor and being swept away but the waves of water that rose when Weapon backed down to the pool. In a blink of an eye, it was gone.
”That’s odd”, Squall yelled over the noise of the thousands and thousands of tonnes of boulders.
”Squall - your pick. By crushing”, a rock came down, taking a part of the staircase down with it, ”by drowning”, he continued as water started to gush from cracks in the ceiling, ”or by the sword?”
Squall winced, armed his gunblade, and smiled as ferociously as he could. ”By the sword.”
*The End*
Lähteet: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII
Joku saattaa pitää joitakin kohtauksia liian väkivaltaisina, mutta luulen että jos kielitaito riittää ymmärtämään ne niin on tarpeeksi vanha.
The Mission
The Moon hovered peacefully over the horizon. At the terminator, the separator of night and day, a teeming mass of red could be seen as the monsters inhabiting the celestial object escaped the
tormenting beams of light.
Seventeen years had passed since the last time they had had a chance to flee to the surface of the planet the moon was orbiting.
Squall sighed deeply, like every night, in his customary way and returned inside from the balcony. The door to his office was knocked on.
”Enter”, the Headmaster of the Garden said.
His aide, Nida, walked in, and noticed the open door and the telescope set up on a tripod at the balcony, and gave an almost scolding look at Squall.
He ignored the look and asked: ”You had something urgent?”
”A mission”, Nida said and handed over a couple of printouts. ”From Esthar.”
Squall flinched, hearing the name he had cursed so many times. He decided to forget the origin for the time being, calmed himself and read the briefing through quickly and couldn’t help to notice the sum at the bottom of the final sheet.
Nida saw his expression, smiled shortly and cleared: ”It is not an error.”
”This is exactly what we would need”, Squall replied. The times had been harsh on the Garden - SeeD salaries had been cut already twice, not to mention other expenses. The last time the Garden was airborne was over five years ago. He was a skilled tactician, not a book-keeper, but he could add the sums up. Garden at the recent pace, with the last major assigment being assisting Galbadia eliminate a rogue General over a decade ago, would soon be bankrupt.
”We had better send a team out immediately”, he continued and prompted Nida to open up his notepad. ”Who do we have on call at the moment? Raijin for instance?”
”Raijin is currently at the city of Balamb on leave.”
”Don’t tell me - fishing.”
Nida dismissed the remark, as correct as it was. ”It appears that we have no teams situated near Esthar - we will have to dispatch one from the Garden.”
”Which means I would be leading it”, Squall thought out loud. He hadn’t seen action for a long time. And the fact that this was indeed in Esthar, the country he wholeheartedly loathed, didn’t help the tension either. After the incident at the Lunar Base he had felt no need to fight. The retirement of Cid Kramer and the offering of the post of Headmaster at that time was perfect for him.
Nida nodded. ”Esthar will volunteer to arrange all transportation to the mission location. A hoverboat will arrive in three hours.”
”I must proceed with haste then.” I hope my old uniform still fits, he thought.
***
”No one knows his real name. Everyone calls him just President”, one of the cadets said, his voice almost blanketed by the hum of the craft’s engines.
Squall looked and grinned at his old gunblade. After cleaning the worst clutters of dust from it, it still had required a terrifying amount of oil for the drum of the revolver to operate. The armoury would have had better and more reliable weapons, but Squall felt more at home with this old one. He squinted and tried to make out whether a red spot on the blade was a reflection or a blood stain.
”And there’re no pictures of him either. Everyone in Esthar, however, knows him by his appearance.”
The headmaster scanned the passenger quarters, filled with his team of young soldiers. He knew personally none of them - he had kept himself rather secluded, and had only two people in the
Garden he could trust, Nida and Xu. His old comrades were long gone, having families, lives and careers of their own.
After travelling for an hour or two the hoverboat halted and the door was opened. In stepped an officer and a regular of the Esthar armed forces, their whole bodies covered in hi-tech suits. The officer greeted Squall.
”Welcome to Esthar, commander.”
”Thank you.”
”We have not approached the target yet, since we trusted that you would arrive in time. We are receiving satellite footage of the zone in a couple of hours, but wish that you could proceed at
once.”
”Understood”, Squall replied and started to give orders to his team.
”Commander”, the officer cut him. ”You are receiving an extraordinary amount of trust on your shoulders. We are inside the image-twisting field surrounding our nation. You will see things that no other outsider will probably see for years to come. We have our reasons for secrecy and wish that you will respect them.”
***
The SeeDs approached their target. As already had been speculated by eyewitness reports, it was indeed a space capsule of some kind. If it had not been for it’s unique shape and configuration, it would have been stated that it was debris from an old Esthar space project. It’s crash on the plateau had not been seen anywhere outside Esthar, since it was midnight and the sky was dark only here - when the request for SeeD had arrived, the sun had just set in Balamb.
Squall was not sure why specifically SeeD had been asked to come in. Esthar had enough spare forces to surround the object - it was probably the fact it may contain dangerous and strange
extra-terrestrials or monsters from the Moon. In any case, the capsule was reached, but no door or hatch was found on it. The SeeD fell back, set up shifts, and as the Esthar forces came in to assist, Squall went asleep.
Not many hours passed, as he was awakened - the pod had opened up itself, and out had emerged... a girl. A young woman, actually. She had staggered out and lost consciousness - she was taken to medical care while the insides of the pod were searched. Only a crude cryogenical cell and some of her clothes were found.
And while new questions were rising, a new pod fell down from the sky - this time to the desert southwest from the continent of Esthar.
This time, the Esthar forces decided to inspect it all by themselves, allowing the SeeD to be sent home with their due fee. Their journey was however interrupted by a new assigment. The second pod had opened on it’s own too - but with somewhat more dangerous results. Other news told that the girl from the first pod had mysteriously vanished - making Esthar also ask the SeeDs to begin searching for her. Squall, intrigued by the situation, would have looked for her on his own, so he was more then glad to accept the mission.
Back to the desert.
”He stepped out, and suddenly, there was this long sword in his, I think it was a man, hand. He started waving it around, and we got terrified and ran away.”
”No armed guards?”
”Until at our transport, yes, no guards.”
”He was left alone then”, Squall murmured. ”Well, let’s check it out anyhow”, he continued, though he strongly suspected that the mysterious man had gone the way of disappearance as well.
”Did he do anything else?”
”He did mutter something... about a woman... and someone called ’Boris’, I think it was...”
This time the SeeD went in with much more caution. A small robot trawler covered the terrain in front of them, shedding a pillar of light at the pod up ahead.
Since the hatch already had opened, in it’s closed form it was easily found with the seams clear of scorched remains. It had no operating console or switch to open it but a brave technician that had tagged along them grabbed a blowtorch and began his work. After a while, the door was so weakly supported by it’s hinges that a strong kick would break it. Squall ushered his team to take out canisters full of sleeping gas and gas masks, took a mask and canister himself, and with a quick set of movements crashed the hatch and threw the cylinder spewing the gas inside. He fell down on the ground and the soldiers around him readied their rifles in case the gas wouldn’t work.
But it did.
***
They had tried to ask questions from him but to no result. They had tried to ask him in any language known to them, including archaic Centra. He remained silent, yet conscious in his hospital bed he had been strapped in.
They had clothed him in a light green hospital dress, but his original clothes had been rather interesting - the long black cape did match his long silver hair and shimmering eyes. He was
apparently strong and muscular, and carried a very threatening and sharp sword. Squall had held it with fascination, but after almost slicing a crewmember of the ship in half had put it back behind a lock and key.
”What is your name?” Squall asked and held out a notepad and a pencil.
The man’s impression changed from resisting to pleading - he gestured towards the writing equipment as clearly as he could in his state. Squall raised an eyebrow - the man was not supposed
to be mute or deaf.
He carefully freed the man’s right arm and set the pencil and paper on his chest. Quickly he started to scribble something with them. Finally he handed over the result.
My name is Sephiroth
***
Squall after that left Sephiroth to write more and reported the situation to Esthar and to Balamb. The girl had been sighted on the Horizon Bridge heading west, but no one had been able to
apprehend her. Squall received a digitalized picture of the woman and printed it out.
Then he browsed through the items found in Sephiroth’s landing pod. A certain picture interested him in particular - he almost dropped his jaw when seeing it. He had to make sure out from the people who had emptied the pod if it was a bad joke - it wasn’t. He pocketed the picture and returned to Sephiroth’s room.
The handwriting was quite tense and almost impossible to read, but Squall managed to decrypt it.
I am unsure why I can not speak. I do not feel physically injured. Possibly the atmospheric pressure or somesuch is to blame. I hope I can regain my ability to speak as soon as possible. My aggressive behaviour, which I apologise, was because of a substance I was injected with to help me
recover from cryogenic sleep - it was apparently overdosed, and the adrenaline rush was too much to bear. Now, I would like to know - who are you, where am I, and is there someone else inside a similar pod like mine here also?
Squall showed the picture he had printed to Sephiroth. His eyes glared for a moment, then he ripped the picture from his hand, crushed it into a small ball with his clenched fist and threw it away.
***
The woman who arrived is dangerous. I must reach her. I might require assistance.
”In what way is she dangerous?” She hadn’t appeared too harmful to Squall. Just a girl.
She possesses potential power that may mean destruction to this world. She will seek a nexus of the spritiual energy of this planet. Is there a place on this planet where the inside veins of the planet appear on the surface? Or is there a meteor crater here anywhere?
”I might know a place. But it’s only an old wives tale - not to mention that it would probably be in the middle of the sea.”
We must get there before her. I see that you are a skilled warrior and a leader. We need a third
one. I will explain later.
Squall pondered. There really was only one person - but he didn’t want to trust a weapon on him. He shrugged. ”Well, I might know someone.” Though he too was already middle-aged and probably in bad physical shape.
He wondered for a moment, why he was engaging in all this - because of the picture that he had found probably. He had to know - the man dodged his questions regarding the image.
***
”Esthar will arrange all this... but are you sure about it?” the secretary of state asked.
”He might be our only solution to this riddle, and might lead us to that girl.” And I want to know why her face was emblazoned on that wall of stone. I want to know if she still lives
somewhere. I want to know if I can hear her voice again. I want to know if I might be able to forget everyone and continue with my life.
”Very well. We know the location you talk of - the crew there was partly from Esthar and we have monitored it with our satellites for some time now. Our former flagship will be at your disposal.”
Squall was impressed. The legendary Dragon Ship, the Ragnarok. They are probably as willing to sort this out as I am, he thought.
”We will be stopping by at Galbadia before that, though.”
***
”He has been to us nothing but a pain in the neck. He has incited riots and has injured to guards. We will be more then happy to give him away, as long as you can guarantee he will not escape.”
”Not from where we are heading”, Squall replied to the warden and watched as the crane hoisted the prison cell from the bowels of the D-District prison. A detachment of guards armed to teeth walked to face the causeway connecting the cell with the level Squall was standing on. A blond man walked quietly out, looked at the guards condescendingly and then saw Squall. He couldn’t quite make out the expression Seifer had on his face, but it was somewhere between surpise, perturbation and disgust.
He was in surprisingly good shape. Probably he had been exercising during his imprisonment - in hope of gaining vengeance or just for the sake of it, Squall wasn’t sure.
***
”And this lady, you say, is dangerous?”
”Very much so, at least according to him”, Squall said, gesturing towards Sephiroth sitting next to
him.
Sephiroth took out the notepad from his pocket and wrote:
She has paranormal abilities. She is carrying an organism that she hopes she will benefit melding with. But to accomplish this she needs unforeseen resources of spiritual or magical energy. She is the deadlies foe I have ever seen, and on my homeworld I was the General of Special Forces.
”You’re talking about the Deep Sea Deposit, aren’t you”, Seifer replied.
Squall nodded. ”I think so too. We will get transported there soon enough - we just need to know, will you help us?”
Seifer leaned back on his chair - and would’ve rested his hand on his crossed fingers had he not been handcuffed - and grinned. ”Is old Hyperion still intact?”
Squall shook his head. ”No weapons for you, at least not yet.”
”Spoilsport.”
***
For a ship several decades old, the spaceship, now strictly an airship, held a certain aura of prestige. It was still lightyears ahead of say, the best Galbadia could construct, in terms of technological progress and raw firepower.
Sephiroth was hunched in a corner - ’hunched’ in a metaphorical sense, silent and concentrated, as a man of his posture would probably be unable to hunch at all - reading documents and dossiers Squall had given him, regarding history of the world, the political situation and other common knowledge. His speed of digesting written text was incredibly fast, his eyes would merely glance and flicker at a single sheet and then move on to the next one in seconds.
Seifer was fast asleep in the crew quarters. The soft bunks were probably too much for him.
Squall strolled over to the cockpit. The ship had minimum crew, only two pilots.
”You must be ready to leave at all times. After twenty minutes of landing, take off for an hour and come back for another twenty minutes, then leave again. I will not risk you, or this ship.”
”Understood, sir”, the captain replied.
”And in case you will never hear of me again, transmit this message. The recipients and other information are in the file.”
”Roger”, the captain said and added the contents of the diskette he was given to the ship’s database.
***
Squall didn’t feel all too surprised to find the island right where it was supposed to be. A small boat had docked to a barely floating pier, apparently the girl had already made it here. Sephiroth wasn’t too fearful of the case but did become a notch agitated at the sight.
The landing platform had remained intact and Ragnarok could settle down to stable ground. Squall set the futuristic timepiece courtesy of Esthar on his wrist to count down from 20 minutes to zero. The trio descended to the ruins.
The first floor was vacant. The walls were covered in blank and broken viewscreens and monitors and the floor was scattered with broken and burnt pieces of computer consoles and desk chairs. In the middle of the apparent control room was a rectangluar hole surrounded by steel girders - obviously, the elevator shaft. A few wires were scretching down from the ceiling, the three used them to lower themselves all the way to the third level. The elevator had stopped on the fourth level, which was quickly reached through an openable pane on the top of the elevator.
”I wonder what happened”, Squall said, looking around holding a torch casting a circle of light on the walls.
”Maybe not what, more like who”, Seifer replied. ”This was to my recollect a mine or an excavation of sorts.”
Sephiroth made something as close to laughter as a mute man can do and wrote down:
A mere day on this world and I know more then the natives themselves. This is a research centre that was anchored above the ruins of an ancient civilization, much older then the Centra, over ten millennia ago. Apparently, they were in search of the ultimate weapon, a mechanoid constructed by the civilization. It’s thought that it was this very weapon that caused the demise of it’s builders in the first place. All that remains is this underwater tower and a strange shrine at the bottom of it.
”And this, ’Ultimate Weapon’, is supposedly the cause of this destruction?” Squall responded.
Sephiroth shrugged and walked to the only working computer console in the floor. After a moment he beckoned Squall to the controls, as if saying ”you know these things better then I do”. He was correct; Squall quickly made his way through the directories, albeit the operating system was somewhat arcane, and managed to run the diagnostic program.
63 % of memory capacity damaged.
37 % of auxiliary systems damaged.
12 % of core systems damaged.
Reboot central computer and restore auxiliary systems from backup?
Squall was hesitant.
Rebooting central computer.
1. Securing lockdown of emergency doors. To abort, press A key.
He got nervous. To abort lockdown or to abort rebooting? Finally he located the A key.
Lockdown aborted. Proceeding with reboot.
Squall let out a sigh of relief as the hydraulic pumps gave away and a door to the stairway opened. After a moment, all remaining sources of light and the last working consoles of the complex shut down.
”The system is rebooting”, Squall calmed the others down.
”You don’t look like a person who knows that much about computers.” A voice from the darkness.
Suddenly in front of them stood a woman - a brunette wearing a long red jacket and a pink dress stretching all the way down to her ankles.
”Aeris”, Sephiroth said, with his low voice now restored.
Squall waved his hand in the way characteristic to him and shouted: ”Hold it! I want explanations and I want them now!”
The woman, Aeris, giggled for a second or two in a very heartwarming manner.
Squall felt again hesitant - the she-devil, Death incarnate that Sephiroth was not what he thought he saw.
Sephiroth didn’t share Squall’s feelings - with a stern gaze he wielded his tall sword and breathed deeply. Seifer was bewildered of the sudden situation and had no idea what to do.
Aeris kept an innocent smile on her face and returned the gaze back to Sephiroth.
”I thought I had finished you in the City”, Sephiroth quietly said, clearly trying to find a way to vent his anger.
”Us Ancients - much more resilient then you thought. No wonder you wanted to be one of us”, Aeris continued with the smile fading away.
”You are not an Ancient”, Sephiroth continued. ”Ancients were kind, calm beings, not warmongerers that walked the Planet to spread destruction and hatred.”
Aeris laughed again - this time in a much more grim tone - and wiped away a stray lock of hair from covering her eyes with a gesture that was overtly emphasized. ”Oh Sephy, how could I be
evil?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. At this point, Squall felt overdosed of this pretentious cuteness and began to see the point in Sephiroth’s behaviour, as erratic as it had seemed.
”Hojo, Gast, they corrupted you”, Sephiroth breathed through his teeth.
”Gast was a fool. He had power but didn’t understand it’s purpose. Hojo - another fool. He tried to use power he did not possess. Jenova is everything, everything is Jenova, at least it will be. When the fusion is complete, I will be omnipotent, omniscient and... omni-lovable”, she playfully said.
Now it was Sephiroth’s turn to laugh, though his laughter was almost psychotic. He lifted his sword and prepared to strike when suddenly Seifer, completely out of the blue, darted between Sephiroth and Aeris and held out a gunblade that looked strangely like that of Squall.
Squall put his hand on his belt - in some miraculous way Seifer had freed himself and grabbed his weapon.
Seifer pointed the barrel and the blade at Sephiroth and armed the gun. Aeris behind him turned around and head for the stairs with Seifer covering her. He withdrew after Aeris had disappeared from their field of vision, but before entering the staircase he shot at a control panel on the side of the door, separating himself, Aeris and the rest of the complex from Sephiroth and Squall with a bulky steel wall several inches thick.
Squall ran to the closed door and felt it with his fingers. ”Explosives. The Ragnarok.” He glanced at his timepiece. ”We’ve got five minutes. We have to hurry!”
***
”Luckily you came in time. The President has been trying to contact you for some while now”, the captain informed.
”The President?”
”The one and only, for over forty years”, the captain gleefully said. ”There is a vidscreen at the passenger quarters.”
”Got it. By the way, I need a key for the ship’s armoury...”
The captain hesitated for a moment but then handed over a magnetic keycard and said: ”There’s some heavy ordinance there. If you decide to use them big guns, please read the manual first.”
***
The screen was already on, brandishing the Esthar national emblem, as Squall walked to it. He worked a small pad next to it and a face appeared on the screen. Sephiroth had taken the card and was off to the armoury. Whoever this enigmatic President was, he would face Squall’s wrath - what he did up there in space seventeen years ago was just unforgivable.
The man was in his sixties, but had grown old with grace - only traces of past years were a few wrinkled spots here and there in his face and a hair that was completely grey.
Squall recognised the man immediately and felt torn into pieces as a whole wave of different contradicting emotions swept through him. But what remained was his anger.
The President, noticing Squall’s now visual pain, closed his eyes and said: ”This was bound to happen. I just hoped it would happen at a better time then this.”
”Laguna”, Squall managed to say. He repeated, trying to add a tone of dispisement.
The legend. The man with the machine gun. Cooler then liquid oxygen.
”Squall, I - ”
”You were alive after all. All the time.”
”I couldn’t - ”
”You killed Rinoa!” Squall roared. If Laguna had been right there now, in front of him, his security guards would’ve had some work in separating his enclosing fingers around the President’s neck.
Laguna waited for a silent moment and sighed. ”If I hadn’t given that order, Adel would’ve been freed and thousands, maybe millions would’ve suffered. Is that what you wanted? Blood of
innocents staining your hands? Rinoa took risk, fully aware of the possible consequences. And... at that moment, the Sorceresses were gone. Rinoa was, indeed, Ultimecia, for she ceased to exist once Rinoa had been sent far away to space. It was a theory only Odine and I knew... and it turned out true.
”That’s not possible... we could have stopped it... killed Ultimecia in the future. With Odine... with Ellone - Ellone! You didn’t even attend her funeral!”
A single tear now on Laguna’s cheek. ”I know. I heard of her death at Winhill, but it was too late. I went there... you put her next to Raine. I... I appreciate that. Thank you.” Laguna shook his head and lifted his eyes to face Squall. ”I apologize for placing you in this situation. But - that island is dangerous. I wanted to talk to you, in case...”
”I understand.”
”I can not ask your forgiveness. But I do think what I did was the right thing.”
Silence.
”How are you faring?” Laguna finally asked.
”Seifer turned out a risk after all”, Squall sighed, trying to regain his composure. ”He lost it and allied with the woman, called Aeris.”
”And Sephiroth?”
”At the armoury. We have a security door to blast.”
”Fine. Good luck. And a word of advice - if you decide to use the big guns, and I mean big as in friggin’ monster-vaporising, sorceress’-butt-kickin’ big - read the manual first.”
***
Squall strolled to the armoury. Sephiroth appeared behind a rack of Esthar uniforms and showed him two grenades.
”Light, secure and destructive”, he said and tossed the other one at Squall.
He catched the grenade and looked at Sephiroth, scared and shocked.
”Don’t worry, they’re safe if you keep the pin in place”, he said.
Famous last words, Squall thought and rolled his eyes as he put the grenade in his pocket.
”What are in those?” Squall asked and pointed his finger at two large lockers.
Sephiroth opened them - the other one had a long, metallic sniper rifle with futuristic additions like a laser targeter, an infrared scope, a motion sensor, and what appeared to be a computer screen and a keypad - and a tall bazooka attached to an upper piece of rigid body armour that would be placed on the shoulders, that too with a keypad and a targeting scope.
”I can’t use either of those”, Squall exclaimed.
Sephiroth replied: ”Thought so”, and picked up a gunblade with shades of silver, black and white and a bluish jagged blade.
Squall took the gunblade, felt it’s weight and grip and said finally: ”I’ll take it.”
***
The grenades were their worth - the door was out of their way. The dark red-shaded space they entered felt suffocating, with the air growing thicker and hotter with every step.
”Why”, Squall asked.
”Huh?”
”Seifer. Why?”
Sephiroth pondered. ”He felt Aeris’ powers. He sensed that she was something akin to a sorceress.”
”His dream... Sorceress’ knight”, Squall breathed.
”That stench...”
”I can’t take it, I need air”, Squall muttered, and fainted.
***
When Squall woke up he faced Sephiroth, who had knelt next to him. Squall squinted his eyes trying to compensate the sudden brightness of the space he was in. It felt large, since the air around him was in slight continuous motion.
”About time”, Sephiroth said drily.
”How long was I out?” Squall asked. The last time he had fainted was when Ellone had sent his consciousness back in time - except this time the buzzing and the dream were gone, replaced by blank.
”No idea. Some way we ended down here with our weapons. My only guess is that she brought us here for the sheer fun of it”, Sephiroth said. He winced and motioned Squall to take a peek over the ledge of the stone platform they were on.
Aeris and Seifer were standing on the bottom of the large space they were in. It was round and tall, apparently the insides of a tower built under the ocean. There was water at the bottom, sparkling in turqoise colour. A large spiral staircase swirled from an opening in the ceiling all the way down, with platforms - like the one Squall was on - every now and then. The whole structure was supported by grey stone pillars with cryptic ancient writing.
Squall rubbed his eyes and took a closer look at the two standing. ”Aeris is tampering with some sort of a console. Seifer is just standing there.” Squall stood up and scanned the surroundings. ”The ancient city.”
”Not probably in it’s entirety. If all what is told is true, this existed before the people of Centra.”
”And the most dangerous beast ever to exist lies dormant here.”
”That we will soon find out”, Sephiroth said briskly. ”Can you walk?”
”Yeah. I’m fine”, Squall said and nodded after taking a few cautious steps.
”Good, I won’t have to go alone.”
”Why three?” Squall asked, curious.
Sephiroth sighed and smiled. ”An old legend I was told when I was a child. Three warriors race to meet a great evil - one of them succumbs to the seduction of the evil, and the other two face him and the opponent. Just call me superstitious.”
”Did the two warriors win?”
”That we will see. I never heard the rest of the tale” was the response.
***
Once they arrived to the lowest platform, Aeris giggled again, in a way that sent shivers through Squall’s spine - it was more like a cackle, not a giggle. He felt awkvard - there was something
familiar with that tone, that form, that sound.
She kept her look at the computer screen and said: ”It would have been awfully unfair to just off you right where you passed out.”
”I don’t need your mercy”, Sephiroth hissed. Again his calm composure was completely gone.
”Seifer, would you be so kind to kill them?”
With a glazed look, Seifer nodded and pulled out a gunblade, targeting it at Squall.
”You have been charmed, nothing else”, Squall said. ”Two against one. Don’t be a fool.”
”You are the fool here - underestimating me as usual”, he replied, and began mumbling something
to himself.
Suddenly, Squall was overtaken a chill - the air around him erupted to motion, and a cold whirlwind billowed right through his clothes, making him shiver and his ears and fingers freeze.
Sephiroth was dazed for a moment - then he returned his attention to Seifer. ”Magic. You can cast spells”, he stated the blindingly obvious.
His face darkened and he lifted his sword, poised for a strike. With all his strength he slashed - Seifer readied his gunblade to take the blow. Sephiroth knew this and made a quick move to strike him in his side - but the edge bounced from mid-air and a sphere around Seifer glowed green for a split second. He was protected by a magical barrier.
Meantime, the blizzard around Squall had settled down, and he was hopping and waving his hands to restore normal temperature to his body.
The recoiling bounce of the sword sent Sephiroth off balance, falling on the floor, allowing Seifer to concentrate on Squall. ”Too cold for you? Maybe this’ll help!” he bellowed and prepared to cast another spell. The ground below Squall shook and cracked open, shooting up gushes of hot gases. He coughed and cleared his throat, trying to cope in the furnace.
Sephiroth saw, as Seifer kept tormenting his prey, that his chance had presented itself. He saw a thin layer of dust on the ground. He took a fistful of it in his hand and threw it at the back of Seifer’s shield - there had to be a gap, otherwise the shield wouldn’t have worked. And he was right - the dust sprinkled all over the magic field and glittered for a second before falling - except for a small round hole couple of inches in diametre.
Sephiroth closed his eyes, breathed and pushed his blade through the gap. It pierced it’s way all through Seifer, killing him immediately after a cry of pain and bringing down the magical barrier.
Squall, who had dunked his head in the lake around the platform, lifted his head, stood up and brushed wet hair from his face, witnessing the corpse of Seifer. He was satisfied of the result, but wasn’t too comfortable of the fact that his role had been merely diversion.
”I see”, Aeris said after a pause. ”At least he stalled you well enough. Squall... that was your name, right, Squall?”
No response. ”I guess it is, then. Before you and Sephy proceed to disembowl me, a poor little girl, I assume you want to know why Sephy in his pocket had a picture of your presumably late
girlfriend.”
Squall felt his heart jump up his throat. His initial reaction was to deny that she was her girlfriend, but - he let it be. He had to know. Sephiroth took a fighting stance but Squall ushered him to wait.
”He will play with your mind”, Sephiroth warned him.
”I’ll take the risk”, Squall said and returned to face Aeris. ”Answers. Now.” He took a hold of his weapon and armed it as theatrically as possible.
Aeris looked at him back, feeling superiority. ”In the dimension Sephy and I are from, time passes quite differently then here. Your girl appeared there thousands of years ago, yet she left this dimension about seventeen years ago. When she arrived, down on our Planet, she was injured... cosmic radiation, burns, she looked like a bludgeoned stake - a slab of meat with a brain and some internal organs remaining inside. Somehow, her name was changed - probably Jenova is the Ancient pronounciation of Rinoa - anyway, my ancestors, the Ancients, nursed her to health. However, she gained strength from the energy they directed inside her, and some strange powers inside her woke up and decided to take advantage of the situation.
That ungrateful bitch became delusional, thought of herself as a god... managed to murder many Ancients, before they could seal
her off. I heard of this, and I am the last Ancient... and I decided that now it was my turn to take advantage of her. I decided to resurrect her and give her power again... together, after a fusion, my consciousness would gain the powers of me and Jenova, Rinoa, Ultimecia, whatever. Then Sephy tagged along and ruined everything!”
Squall thought of this. Sephiroth had, indeed, killed Jenova... and with it, anything that was left of Rinoa. But he didn’t feel like accusing him, he had done enough of that for the day.
”More likely, Sephy tried to ruin everything. I made my escape here, with a surviving fragment of Jenova with me."
”You mean... Jenova is there, in you, now?”
Aeris nodded. ”And once the drawing of powers is complete, I will become, indeed, a god... and once the protector of this city is aroused, it will serve me.”
”Hang on - how did you end up here in the first place?”
”A dimensional rift sucked Rinoa and sent her to our space... the only explanation might be that Adel was envious of another Sorceress in the same time and sent her away. Here the gateway has been open for fifteen years, which is several millennia in our time”, Sephiroth explained.
Squall held his head and tried to handle all this. It was too much to bear - too much information, too much revelations in a short period of time. Images flashed before him - friends, foes, locations. Emotions. Laguna, Rinoa - Ultimecia - Jenova, Ellone, Aeris, Sephiroth, Seifer - he felt almost crushed under the weight.
Finally, Squall managed to ignore all this and concentrated on the situation at hand. His eyes flickered in their sockets as he sought for a tactical advantage, a quirk, a weakness, a way to escape -
A switch.
A red button covered under plexi-glass. He made a quick decision - he had only one thing to lose. He held the gun and squeezed the trigger. Aeris lifted her barrier around her but for no purpose - the bullet sped to shatter the plastic cover over the switch. Squall sprinted to the button and slammed it with his elbow - at the same instant the lights went from pale green to dark red, and a klaxon somewhere high above started to wail.
The computer screen behind Aeris produced one line of text: The complex will collapse in two minutes.
”There’s no time to get out”, Squall shouted over the ruckus of the supporting structures starting to fail. He felt sorry for making this decision in behalf of Sephiroth - but Sephiroth just smiled and nodded approvingly, wielding his long sword. Luckily, Squall thought, Ragnarok was out in the air and would merely witness the event.
Sephiroth turned to face Aeris. Aeris raised her hand to lash out a destructive force of magic at him. But she made a tactical error and ignored Squall, who was standing behind her. He jerked the
gunblade and jammed it to the magical shield, making it appear permanently and vibrating in the air around Aeris in a blue shimmer. Sephiroth looked carefully at the shaking field as Aeris
struggled to keep it intact.
Aeris concentrated and bolts of magic shot out of her, striking both Squall and Sephiroth down on the floor. She rushed to the console and entered a few commands. A thundering roar echoed all over the complex, and beneath the pool of water - now coloured red like blood - rose a tall creature, a bizarre silver-winged lifeless knight, holding a long white sword with a bluish heart, riding a monstrosity that resembled a mechanized rhino. The creature climbed up from a pit under the surface of the water and thumped it’s way to a platform, breathing - or moving like something that is breathing - forcefully. The winged knight made a few swings with it’s sword.
”Weapon, destroy these -” Aeris began, but to her shock the Weapon growled and pushed it’s gigantic sword right at her, making the magical shield tremble. ”Creature, obey my command!” she yelled and gathered the rest of the field to resist the strike.
Sephiroth nodded - his moment had come.
”Help me, please”, Aeris begged while struggling against the Weapon’s might. She was not addressing the two men behind her preparing to strike her down, but the small embedment of
Jenova inside her abdomen. A blanket of flesh started to grow around her, forming a thick barrier against harm on her chest. The flesh started to wriggle and a flow of sparks started to fly as it gave it’s own magical powers to reinforce the shield and to send the Weapon against the wall in a backslash of energy.
But that was not all Jenova did. Squall felt a strong throbbing pain behind his eyes and fell down on his knees as it communicated with him, trying to possess him, to seduce him by using the Rinoa still left inside her.
”Are you Rinoa? But you can’t - you are helping her, supporting her...”
Squall gathered all his strength. Rinoa had changed - or had she been like this from the very beginning? A collaborator of the Sorceress? All just a charade, for one purpose, to make sure
Ultimecia succeeds?
Sephiroth saw Squall on the floor and sighed. Clearly, the man was so confused and entangled in his own emotional contradictions and delusions that he would be of no use.
Suddenly it all made sense to him - immature, a spoilt brat so to speak, trying to finally fight against his father, but only by joining a team of revolutionaries, risking her comrades’ lives just for the sake of infantile rebellion - trying to make control by seducing Seifer but to no avail - and then moving on to the next victim, him, like a bird of prey, ruthlessly manipulating his friends to reach her goal...
He was again full of anger - but not because of Laguna. He was mad at himself for falling for such a simple ploy. And he was mad at Rinoa... Jenova.
He regained his stature, stood up and glanced at Sephiroth who was finally ready to strike. They exchanged looks - smiles - nods - and rushed to the unprotected back of their target.
Their two sharp blades punctured her back simultainoisly, both slipping easily through the ribs and bursting out of her hip and chest. She screamed in agony and watched the blood flow out from the pierced wounds. Her concentration from fighting off the Weapon was shattered, and the knight managed to scantly slash her forehead. Squall withdrew his much wider blade that had caused very severe damage, while Sephiroth kept his still and started to make a downward motion to finish the
job. The symbiotic cells of Jenova hurried to the injuries, trying their best to heal them. The pain was increasing and made Aeris almost lose her concentration. Jenova started to numb her senses to keep itself alive.
Sephiroth made sharp movements with his own weapon, trying to snap Aeris’ spine, shredding her internal organs in the process.
Squall on the other hand, hoisted his gunblade, took a steady stance and decapitated her in one decisive strike.
She was gone. Even Jenova needed the host body to gain energy from. The magical barricade holding Weapon at bay collapsed at the same time and if Squall’s lethal blow hadn’t finished her off, then the trampling Weapon did.
”You took the honour”, Sephiroth shouted as the Weapon prepared to strike them both down.
”I apologise”, Squall replied blankly. No regrets, he thought.
”Don’t”, Sephiroth smiled, blood dripping on the floor and being swept away but the waves of water that rose when Weapon backed down to the pool. In a blink of an eye, it was gone.
”That’s odd”, Squall yelled over the noise of the thousands and thousands of tonnes of boulders.
”Squall - your pick. By crushing”, a rock came down, taking a part of the staircase down with it, ”by drowning”, he continued as water started to gush from cracks in the ceiling, ”or by the sword?”
Squall winced, armed his gunblade, and smiled as ferociously as he could. ”By the sword.”
*The End*