Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ sore kara... ❯ shuppatsu suru ( Chapter 5 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: awwaw 
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 02.11.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.8K | Visits: 229 | Status: Completed
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 02.11.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.8K | Visits: 229 | Status: Completed
Standard disclaimers apply.
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sore kara...
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shuppatsu suru
They stood in a row, in varied positions and poses - some with hands akimbo, others with hands folded, and even those with hands all over their hair. Although they were, in retrospect, doing different things, they were really, in actual fact, staring at the same thing.
The unidentifiable object loomed before them.
"Can someone," Cloud began, "just... gimme a rough estimate of how long we've been asleep or something?"
"..........................." went Squall, articulate as usual, "... ten days, maybe?"
Zidane was a little more helpful, but not by very much, saying, "I'd say somewhere near... ten years?"
"Actually," Kuja looked at his little pocket watch and shook his head, "it's only been less than ten hours."
"......................................................... " went all four.
"All right, all right," Cloud put his hands up and turned to face his three companions, "time aside and everything... does anybody wanna give me a LOGICAL explanation of what the heck happened to the poor house overnight? No complicated mathematical formulas or laws of enthropies, for goodness sake; I'm not exactly a rocket scientist. Just something simple and logical. Any takers?"
The first thing everybody did next was to turn and re-examine the house. As they did that, the hinge of the door to the house squeaked and broke, sending the large, termite-infested door to the ground with a splendid crash. Everybody winced. Good thing for them, that was the only big incident to occur for a while. Cloud tapped his foot impatiently, raising an eyebrow every now and then.
To say the house was in a state of disorderliness... would be an understatement, in itself. Just the night before, the house had been a simple, but beautiful accomodation for four strangers who had somehow found themselves bunking in with each other. Although it wasn't exactly luxurious or anything, at least it was clean and comfortable. Now, however, was a different story from just less than 10 hours ago; according to Kuja. Bricks had fallen out of it's place from the house's walls and cobwebs decorated every corner there was. The indoor chocobo stable was... in a poorly maintained condition. Cloud's gold chocobo was nowhere to be seen. The wooden staircase groaned uncomfortably to each's weight as they all went up to check out the top floor. Most of the books in the shelves had biodegraded beyond recognition, those which hadn't being covered with possibly a ton of dust and whatnots... and the fireplace was officially a breeding ground for the weirdest insects any of them had ever seen. Kuja was visibly disgusted at the mess, being a prim and proper person by nature and everything. Everybody else did pretty well to hide what they thought of the condition of the house, though.
"Well?" Cloud pressed on. "What do you think?"
"I don't know." Zidane replied. "This looks like a house nobody's stayed in for years, even though I'm pretty darn sure it looked just fine last night."
"Couldn't have been a monster attack, either..." Squall stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Hmmm..."
"Well, it appears that the house had just aged into a fine pile of dust, overnight." Kuja wrinkled his nose and dusted some of the books on the chair and table. "Look, here was the book I was reading last night. It's still on the same page I stopped, too." He peered weirdly at the book, trying to see beyond the thick dust. "That's a really old map of Gaia." He remarked to nobody in particular. Cloud noticed, however, but noted that down in his mind for later discussion, being more concerned about what was happening at the moment. He took the book, dusted it and threw it into his volumeless inventory for later perusal.
"So, what're we gonna do now?" Zidane threw the million dollar question to everybody on the floor.
"What else?" Cloud said, raising an eyebrow. "Clean the mess up, I suppose."
".........." went the three others. A bird cooed overhead.
"Um..." Squall was uncharacteristically nervous, "... didn't you say we were going to go to Midgar... ?"
"Y-Yeah!" Kuja agreed wholeheartedly. Suddenly, Midgar became the most attractive place in the planet, nevermind he didn't know where it was. "I'm kindda looking forward to going there, you know. It sounds like a really cool place."
Zidane burst out laughing, and Cloud simply smiled ominously. Talk about being subtle as a ton of bricks.
"You sure you guys wanna go Midgar?" Cloud raised an eyebrow deliberately and asked. He received nods all round, except for the laughing Zidane. "Even without the gold chocobo?" He pressed on, the tone in his voice spelling out fake concern. Again, everybody nodded. "I mean, Midgar is all over the other side of the ocean and everything... just checking if you guys were sure." He grinned, almost wickedly. Seeing that there were no grunts of disapproval, Cloud continued, "All right. That settles it. We'll leave the house as it is and travel to Midgar on the double. Glad you guys are all being so cooperative." He punched Zidane's shoulder in a friendly manner to get him to stop laughing and start listening. He then beckoned for the other two to a flat and grassy area nearby.
After unfolding the world map onto the grass and garnering three mystified expressions on his new-found friends, he explained, pointing his finger, "This is... a map of the world we going to travel on now." He then looked up, anticipating queries. Silence was the credit given to his having chosen his words carefully, and he was given space to continue.
"We're now at this continent up here; the Northern Continent." He moved the finger downwards. "This is our destination - Midgar. We usually wouldn't be able to make it there by foot, so I'm gonna need every ounce of your help and cooperation." He then circled the oceanic area between the Northern Continent and the Eastern Continent. "There are quite a number of jutting rocks and small islands in this area, all in quite close proximity. It should be close enough to leap and not drown during low tide, though it also means that monster encounters would be rather frequent. But if we work closely together, there's a high chance we'd all get to Midgar unscathe, dry and happy. What do you guys say? Are we up to nothing less than the perfect teamwork when it comes down to the nitty gritty?"
He swept his gaze around and thought there was a weird look of slight admiration and respect on Squall's face. Maybe Squall envied the fact that he could talk more than Squall ever would, though it was most probably something else. Zidane was tilting his head from side to side, obviously still attempting to absorb all of that information. His good friend Kuja was staring at the map like it was some oddity from outer space.
The first to speak was Squall. "It sounds like a workable plan. Who's going to lead the attack?" He proceeded to ask.
"We're not going to war, for goodness sake." Cloud gave Squall the evil eye. "The monsters around here don't usually attack unless they're provoked. As long as we stay out of their food, water and nests, I'm pretty sure they won't so much as bother to turn a head at us."
Squall and Kuja exchanged knowing looks. Even Zidane didn't look nearly half as convinced. He was about to say something when Kuja intervened, instead asking, "But still, we're going to need a formation. I wouldn't count accidentally angering some monsters out of this trip, personally. What do you say?" He asked generically.
"What formation?" Zidane immediately replied. "I say we just beat 'em when we see 'em! They won't even know what happened!" He grinned optimistically, clanging the Orihalcon thief daggers - which he had drawn out from nowhere, against each other.
"... I don't know what you guys are good at, or weak at, for that matter." Cloud gently countered. "So why not do this - today, we hold back. We play defensive and concentrate on just getting to the other continent instead of pummeling monsters into submission." He glanced briefly at Zidane. "Once we get to Midgar, I promise, we'll have to do a lot more than just keeping on our toes and defending ourselves from the occasional riled up monster..."
Nods slowly went round. Cloud gave a sigh of relief inwardly.
This meant he would finally be able to observe his unlikely comrades in all of their battling glory. Once he could ascertain their skill level, things might probably fall in place easier. Suddenly, he remembered something. He quickly threw his right hand into the air and excitedly exclaimed, "Item check, item check!" surprising everybody. He grinned. "We're going on a journey, right? Sometimes, a nice item'll be able to offset a terrible wound that a cure spell wouldn't be able to handle, so let's just have a brief item check. It'd be good to sort them out now, too."
He then reached into his volumeless inventory and started counting silently. While he did, everybody else also did the same. Soon, numbers were being ranted off and items were being surrendered and gathered. It was a hilarious sight watching the four of them bantering out with each other what should and should not be kept. Cloud, being the more outspoken one of the lot with all his know-how expertise naturally took the lead in eliminating what was unnecessary. Finally, after a valiant battle of words between all four, they were ready to go.
"And Squall," Cloud was saying, "remember to tell us about time compression once we reach Midgar."
Both Zidane and Kuja were puzzled, but decided against saying anything about that. Squall merely gave a curt nod and summoned his weapon from hammerspace.
"Let's go," he said, slowly but steadily walking towards the small tunnel at the bottom of the mountains which led to the outside.
Zidane sighed and shook his head. "Why do I get a bad feeling about this?" He then quietly followed the rest, who were trekking alongside Squall. Hanging around too much with depressed people wasn't doing Zidane any good at all. This he fully agreed with. But what could he do but follow now? He sighed again, shrugging carelessly.
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The trip was mostly uneventful. At low tide, the seabed was practically a beach. Even Cloud didn't hide his surprise at how much the water had receded, and merely trudged along quietly, keeping his senses for the expected monster or two. They met with a few bugs, flies and insects along the way, but otherwise, the absurd lack of king-sized behemoths and dragons were beginning to bother even Zidane; who had hoped for not a single enemy encounter to begin with.
Perhaps it was just a misled gut feeling. But hadn't anybody ever heard of the phrase 'the calm before the storm'?
"Yo guys!" The monkey called out from where he was, the rear of the motley little crew. "Can we stop for a while? I'm bushed!"
"We're almost there, you know." Cloud said.
"You've been saying that since half an hour ago!" Zidane complained, hopping from rock to rock until he finally reached the small island the rest of them were. "Can't we just sit down for a while? It's not like the high tide is gonna come engulf us in another hour or so, right? Come on! My legs are starting to give way already!" He moaned, and sat down on the grass massaging his leg muscles slowly. He was joined quickly by Kuja, who looked slightly grateful as he closed his eyes to enjoy the soft breeze. Squall merely turned to look at Cloud, who looked back and shrugged, before sitting down too.
In a short while, all four were sitting in various positions on the green grass, gazing beyond what was visible into a time and place only they had access to from their minds.
As the day progressed, Squall startled everybody by igniting a conversation.
"I don't suppose," he had suddenly said, literally making everybody jump, "anybody knows where Balamb Garden is?"
Everybody stared at him.
"I guessed as much." He went back to drawing circles on the ground, the rain cloud above his head slowly developing into a thunderstorm cloud. As Zidane and Kuja turned to look at one another, Cloud threw his head back and laughed loudly into the skies, earning him even weirder stares from the ones that had been given Squall.
"What's up with spike now?" Zidane mused, none too apathetically. Kuja shrugged, making twirling motions around his temple with his right index finger. To this, Zidane sniggered and slapped a hand against his thigh. Nobody noticed Squall's overhead cloud becoming a hailstorm.
"Hahahaha..." Cloud eventually stopped laughing so loudly and got his mood into check. The first thing he did was to swat Squall's dangerous looking blizzard cloud away, saying, "Hey, lighten up already, Mr. Angsty. You're gonna scare away all the monsters within 10 miles with that expression on your face."
"Not that it's not a good thing." Zidane immediately quipped, striking a pose with the Orihalcon, tail waving around ferociously. Cloud laughed a bit more.
"True, true... you know, guys? I never really got to ask you more about yourselves." The spikey headed mercenary tilted his head and smiled. "This may seem a little out of nowhere and totally off the course, if you may, but really, I'd like to hear from you guys. What do you do? Where are you from?"
"I don't know!" The monkey boy quickly put his hand into the air and grinned like a cheshire cat. "Honest! I swear I don't know!" He quickly said when he spotted all three of them give him the evil eye. Kuja sighed.
"Zidane over here," he said, "is an actor."
There was a little pause as the blond boy put his hand down and stared at Kuja with a gaping mouth. He hadn't expected to hear Kuja say anything about who he was to begin with. But hey, he wasn't complaining. He quietly listened as the silver-haired man continued with the small introduction.
"We both come from a planet called Te... um... Gaia." He flushed at the mistake and hoped nobody had noticed. "And, judging by the blank looks on all of your faces, including Zidane's," he raised an eyebrow and turned in Zidane's general direction, "I should be right in assuming nobody knows what the heck Gaia is."
"Um... okay." Cloud nodded, waving a hand to signify he was letting the matter pass for now. "Gaia, right. It sounds like a nice place, though I've never heard of it before... so... what do you do for a living, Kuja?"
*Destroy planets, start wars, build weapons, and things like that.* Kuja rolled his eyes and thought. Outwardly, he said, "Me? I'm your standard unemployed freak on the streets. I go around looking for monkeys to bully."
By the time he noticed Zidane, they were already engaged in a mini scruffle. Four blue lines slid down Cloud's left eye. He turned to the only other sane person on the island.
"................." went the moody Squall. "I'm a SeeD from Balamb Garden." He raised a hand, made a gesture, then went back to brooding, ignoring all the question marks growing out of Cloud's head.
"What do you mean, you're a seed from Balamb garden?" Cloud asked. "What do you do there? Plant seeds?"
"No," Squall quickly corrected, "I study there. The Garden is a school which trains SeeDs to defeat the sorceress. Otherwise, I guess you could call me a contracted mercenary."
"Ah." Was all Cloud could say. "Remind me to ask you about the sorceress at another time in the future." He managed to smile uncomfortably, but cheered up almost immediately. "Actually... I'm a mercenary too, you know." He punched Squall on the shoulder. "But unlike you, I'm freelance. Can't get tied up too much, otherwise I'll just become another salary-man in the crates they come in." He put a hand to his chin and thought for a while.
"Now may not be a good time, but it's really been bothering me for a while now," the tone of Cloud's voice changed for the serious, "we don't need to be Solomons to figure this out by now... I'm sure we've all noticed that... we're not exactly from the same planet... whatever that meant." He threw his hands into the air.
"The places are different." Squall agreed. "And the geography... I've travelled almost everywhere in the world, but I can't match a single location to any of the places I've walked past during this period..."
"Neither can I." Kuja nodded, then shifted his attention to what was bothering him the most. "And this time, it's not just me, but you guys have all noticed, right? We all cast magic, almost the same horde; but... through different methods."
"Which is funny, coz the spells do the same thing, they just look and are cast differently." Zidane commented, being an outsider to the realm of magic in general.
"What Zidane just said is something I can't figure out, and it's bothering me a lot." Kuja took it from where his friend left off. "In Gaia, there was another planet somewhere nearby, called Terra.
"There, although existing as two different planets, Gaia and Terra's magic casters used the same methods and held the same spells." He put a hand to his forehead in a mock position of thought. "Even if we truly are from different planets, why are the spells cast so differently? I can cast spells without a catalyst, it's an ability that's imbued in me. Cloud has to equip materia, draw on their power, so to speak. As for Squall..."
"... I draw spells from the people I fight, store them in my arsenal and use them at a later date, as and when." He explained. "... but... I've been thinking... what if we're not *exactly* from different planets? What if there's another plausible explanation for us being throw together like this?"
"Like time compression?" Cloud jokingly brought up the subject he had been discussing with Squall the previous night. Squall threw him a solemn look and nodded.
"Kuja said that even people from two different planets cast spells the same way," he pointed out, "although it could be because they were sibling planets. But how possible is that now? However, if we should look at it from the other angle discussed just now, then there's a second, more believable explanation for all this."
He closed his eyes, looking serene for a moment.
"Time compressed. We no longer live in the era we were born in."
There was a short silence.
"I'm no expert in the studies of magic and spells," Kuja spoke afterwards, in a small voice, "but I can testify to the fact that the art of casting spells does indeed go through a few refinements in the passage of time, even though the old methods STILL work along with the new..." He shook his head. "The books I've read never provided enough details. But I know... I THINK, that people a long time ago from my time cast spells entirely differently..."
Zidane's eyes were decidedly round. "I have no idea what you guys are yakking about," was all he had to say.
A faint rustling sound distracted the thinking crew for a while, as all eyes turned to Cloud. The blond was searching around the volumeless inventory for something. Finally, a look of delight flashed across his face and a dusty book was fished out from hammerspace. He thunked it onto the grass unceremoniously.
While Squall watched on passively and Kuja slithered away in disgust at the floating dust particles, Cloud began flipping the pages of the book like a possessed librarian looking for torn pages. Zidane remained where he was with a dreamy expression on his face, almost as if he was thinking of something else. Finally, Cloud seemed to have found the page he wanted to see. He looked up excitedly.
"Check this out, guys!" He beckoned for all to come closer. When he was sure they all had a decent view of the yellowed pages of the dusty book, he began the symposium.
"This was actually one of the books I got from Cosmo Canyon, just a few days before I found you guys." He paused. "I got it because there was an interesting variety of topics being covered. I noted geography, literature, science, language... and all that schmuck. What we're interested now, is probably going to be this," he put a finger on a faded picture of a short little person with his entire face covered by a large, pointy hat.
"This section is about 'History'."
Squall squinted and pointed a gloved finger at the page, saying, "The text is too faded to really be read, Cloud."
"No it's not!" Cloud made a face. He lightly brushed across the surface of the paper and took away a thick film of dust, rendering the page readable again. "See? It documents how people before MY time used magic. Some kind of a... job class system." He said, pronouncing the words as carefully as he could.
Kuja leaned over a little more to have a better look at the page.
He gasped at what he saw.
This promptly got everybody's attention, including Zidane's, as they wondered what had caused the sudden reaction. Their questioning glances only caused the petrified Kuja to take a few more steps back, until one more would have plunged him into the watery deeps of the oceans beyond. During this time, Zidane managed to steal a quick glance at the book.
And he, too, gasped.
"Vi... Vivi!"
Before either Cloud or Squall had the chance to convert the question marks above their heads into actual questions, a low rumbling shook the island from below them. Scrambling to their feet, doing some last minute packing up, everybody looked up just in time to see a towering reptile at least 10 storeys high rising to full height from the waters behind Kuja. The sorcerer turned around, snapping to attention immediately and nimbly retreating to join his advancing comrades.
"... did someone complain of boredom or something?" Zidane kept his playful attitude despite his unexpected outburst earlier. "I swear, the big ones only come when they think you need the entertainment."
"If they charge me, I'm going to complain," Kuja snorted, "about the quality."
A few dozen more baby versions of the same snake-like creature leapt from the waters onto land, hissing away.
"And the quantity." Kuja quickly added.
"I think it really depends on what kind of entertainment we're asking for." Squall laughed and drew Lion Heart.
And Cloud looked at the three of them exasperately, saying, "Then I sure hope you guys are properly equipped against fire elemental attacks... because although this guy feels a little different...
"... I don't think there's any doubt about it. We're talking about the legendary Midgar Zolom from my times."
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shuppatsu shita
31/5/2001
http://cloud-is.ourfamily.com/
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sore kara...
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shuppatsu suru
They stood in a row, in varied positions and poses - some with hands akimbo, others with hands folded, and even those with hands all over their hair. Although they were, in retrospect, doing different things, they were really, in actual fact, staring at the same thing.
The unidentifiable object loomed before them.
"Can someone," Cloud began, "just... gimme a rough estimate of how long we've been asleep or something?"
"..........................." went Squall, articulate as usual, "... ten days, maybe?"
Zidane was a little more helpful, but not by very much, saying, "I'd say somewhere near... ten years?"
"Actually," Kuja looked at his little pocket watch and shook his head, "it's only been less than ten hours."
"......................................................... " went all four.
"All right, all right," Cloud put his hands up and turned to face his three companions, "time aside and everything... does anybody wanna give me a LOGICAL explanation of what the heck happened to the poor house overnight? No complicated mathematical formulas or laws of enthropies, for goodness sake; I'm not exactly a rocket scientist. Just something simple and logical. Any takers?"
The first thing everybody did next was to turn and re-examine the house. As they did that, the hinge of the door to the house squeaked and broke, sending the large, termite-infested door to the ground with a splendid crash. Everybody winced. Good thing for them, that was the only big incident to occur for a while. Cloud tapped his foot impatiently, raising an eyebrow every now and then.
To say the house was in a state of disorderliness... would be an understatement, in itself. Just the night before, the house had been a simple, but beautiful accomodation for four strangers who had somehow found themselves bunking in with each other. Although it wasn't exactly luxurious or anything, at least it was clean and comfortable. Now, however, was a different story from just less than 10 hours ago; according to Kuja. Bricks had fallen out of it's place from the house's walls and cobwebs decorated every corner there was. The indoor chocobo stable was... in a poorly maintained condition. Cloud's gold chocobo was nowhere to be seen. The wooden staircase groaned uncomfortably to each's weight as they all went up to check out the top floor. Most of the books in the shelves had biodegraded beyond recognition, those which hadn't being covered with possibly a ton of dust and whatnots... and the fireplace was officially a breeding ground for the weirdest insects any of them had ever seen. Kuja was visibly disgusted at the mess, being a prim and proper person by nature and everything. Everybody else did pretty well to hide what they thought of the condition of the house, though.
"Well?" Cloud pressed on. "What do you think?"
"I don't know." Zidane replied. "This looks like a house nobody's stayed in for years, even though I'm pretty darn sure it looked just fine last night."
"Couldn't have been a monster attack, either..." Squall stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Hmmm..."
"Well, it appears that the house had just aged into a fine pile of dust, overnight." Kuja wrinkled his nose and dusted some of the books on the chair and table. "Look, here was the book I was reading last night. It's still on the same page I stopped, too." He peered weirdly at the book, trying to see beyond the thick dust. "That's a really old map of Gaia." He remarked to nobody in particular. Cloud noticed, however, but noted that down in his mind for later discussion, being more concerned about what was happening at the moment. He took the book, dusted it and threw it into his volumeless inventory for later perusal.
"So, what're we gonna do now?" Zidane threw the million dollar question to everybody on the floor.
"What else?" Cloud said, raising an eyebrow. "Clean the mess up, I suppose."
".........." went the three others. A bird cooed overhead.
"Um..." Squall was uncharacteristically nervous, "... didn't you say we were going to go to Midgar... ?"
"Y-Yeah!" Kuja agreed wholeheartedly. Suddenly, Midgar became the most attractive place in the planet, nevermind he didn't know where it was. "I'm kindda looking forward to going there, you know. It sounds like a really cool place."
Zidane burst out laughing, and Cloud simply smiled ominously. Talk about being subtle as a ton of bricks.
"You sure you guys wanna go Midgar?" Cloud raised an eyebrow deliberately and asked. He received nods all round, except for the laughing Zidane. "Even without the gold chocobo?" He pressed on, the tone in his voice spelling out fake concern. Again, everybody nodded. "I mean, Midgar is all over the other side of the ocean and everything... just checking if you guys were sure." He grinned, almost wickedly. Seeing that there were no grunts of disapproval, Cloud continued, "All right. That settles it. We'll leave the house as it is and travel to Midgar on the double. Glad you guys are all being so cooperative." He punched Zidane's shoulder in a friendly manner to get him to stop laughing and start listening. He then beckoned for the other two to a flat and grassy area nearby.
After unfolding the world map onto the grass and garnering three mystified expressions on his new-found friends, he explained, pointing his finger, "This is... a map of the world we going to travel on now." He then looked up, anticipating queries. Silence was the credit given to his having chosen his words carefully, and he was given space to continue.
"We're now at this continent up here; the Northern Continent." He moved the finger downwards. "This is our destination - Midgar. We usually wouldn't be able to make it there by foot, so I'm gonna need every ounce of your help and cooperation." He then circled the oceanic area between the Northern Continent and the Eastern Continent. "There are quite a number of jutting rocks and small islands in this area, all in quite close proximity. It should be close enough to leap and not drown during low tide, though it also means that monster encounters would be rather frequent. But if we work closely together, there's a high chance we'd all get to Midgar unscathe, dry and happy. What do you guys say? Are we up to nothing less than the perfect teamwork when it comes down to the nitty gritty?"
He swept his gaze around and thought there was a weird look of slight admiration and respect on Squall's face. Maybe Squall envied the fact that he could talk more than Squall ever would, though it was most probably something else. Zidane was tilting his head from side to side, obviously still attempting to absorb all of that information. His good friend Kuja was staring at the map like it was some oddity from outer space.
The first to speak was Squall. "It sounds like a workable plan. Who's going to lead the attack?" He proceeded to ask.
"We're not going to war, for goodness sake." Cloud gave Squall the evil eye. "The monsters around here don't usually attack unless they're provoked. As long as we stay out of their food, water and nests, I'm pretty sure they won't so much as bother to turn a head at us."
Squall and Kuja exchanged knowing looks. Even Zidane didn't look nearly half as convinced. He was about to say something when Kuja intervened, instead asking, "But still, we're going to need a formation. I wouldn't count accidentally angering some monsters out of this trip, personally. What do you say?" He asked generically.
"What formation?" Zidane immediately replied. "I say we just beat 'em when we see 'em! They won't even know what happened!" He grinned optimistically, clanging the Orihalcon thief daggers - which he had drawn out from nowhere, against each other.
"... I don't know what you guys are good at, or weak at, for that matter." Cloud gently countered. "So why not do this - today, we hold back. We play defensive and concentrate on just getting to the other continent instead of pummeling monsters into submission." He glanced briefly at Zidane. "Once we get to Midgar, I promise, we'll have to do a lot more than just keeping on our toes and defending ourselves from the occasional riled up monster..."
Nods slowly went round. Cloud gave a sigh of relief inwardly.
This meant he would finally be able to observe his unlikely comrades in all of their battling glory. Once he could ascertain their skill level, things might probably fall in place easier. Suddenly, he remembered something. He quickly threw his right hand into the air and excitedly exclaimed, "Item check, item check!" surprising everybody. He grinned. "We're going on a journey, right? Sometimes, a nice item'll be able to offset a terrible wound that a cure spell wouldn't be able to handle, so let's just have a brief item check. It'd be good to sort them out now, too."
He then reached into his volumeless inventory and started counting silently. While he did, everybody else also did the same. Soon, numbers were being ranted off and items were being surrendered and gathered. It was a hilarious sight watching the four of them bantering out with each other what should and should not be kept. Cloud, being the more outspoken one of the lot with all his know-how expertise naturally took the lead in eliminating what was unnecessary. Finally, after a valiant battle of words between all four, they were ready to go.
"And Squall," Cloud was saying, "remember to tell us about time compression once we reach Midgar."
Both Zidane and Kuja were puzzled, but decided against saying anything about that. Squall merely gave a curt nod and summoned his weapon from hammerspace.
"Let's go," he said, slowly but steadily walking towards the small tunnel at the bottom of the mountains which led to the outside.
Zidane sighed and shook his head. "Why do I get a bad feeling about this?" He then quietly followed the rest, who were trekking alongside Squall. Hanging around too much with depressed people wasn't doing Zidane any good at all. This he fully agreed with. But what could he do but follow now? He sighed again, shrugging carelessly.
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The trip was mostly uneventful. At low tide, the seabed was practically a beach. Even Cloud didn't hide his surprise at how much the water had receded, and merely trudged along quietly, keeping his senses for the expected monster or two. They met with a few bugs, flies and insects along the way, but otherwise, the absurd lack of king-sized behemoths and dragons were beginning to bother even Zidane; who had hoped for not a single enemy encounter to begin with.
Perhaps it was just a misled gut feeling. But hadn't anybody ever heard of the phrase 'the calm before the storm'?
"Yo guys!" The monkey called out from where he was, the rear of the motley little crew. "Can we stop for a while? I'm bushed!"
"We're almost there, you know." Cloud said.
"You've been saying that since half an hour ago!" Zidane complained, hopping from rock to rock until he finally reached the small island the rest of them were. "Can't we just sit down for a while? It's not like the high tide is gonna come engulf us in another hour or so, right? Come on! My legs are starting to give way already!" He moaned, and sat down on the grass massaging his leg muscles slowly. He was joined quickly by Kuja, who looked slightly grateful as he closed his eyes to enjoy the soft breeze. Squall merely turned to look at Cloud, who looked back and shrugged, before sitting down too.
In a short while, all four were sitting in various positions on the green grass, gazing beyond what was visible into a time and place only they had access to from their minds.
As the day progressed, Squall startled everybody by igniting a conversation.
"I don't suppose," he had suddenly said, literally making everybody jump, "anybody knows where Balamb Garden is?"
Everybody stared at him.
"I guessed as much." He went back to drawing circles on the ground, the rain cloud above his head slowly developing into a thunderstorm cloud. As Zidane and Kuja turned to look at one another, Cloud threw his head back and laughed loudly into the skies, earning him even weirder stares from the ones that had been given Squall.
"What's up with spike now?" Zidane mused, none too apathetically. Kuja shrugged, making twirling motions around his temple with his right index finger. To this, Zidane sniggered and slapped a hand against his thigh. Nobody noticed Squall's overhead cloud becoming a hailstorm.
"Hahahaha..." Cloud eventually stopped laughing so loudly and got his mood into check. The first thing he did was to swat Squall's dangerous looking blizzard cloud away, saying, "Hey, lighten up already, Mr. Angsty. You're gonna scare away all the monsters within 10 miles with that expression on your face."
"Not that it's not a good thing." Zidane immediately quipped, striking a pose with the Orihalcon, tail waving around ferociously. Cloud laughed a bit more.
"True, true... you know, guys? I never really got to ask you more about yourselves." The spikey headed mercenary tilted his head and smiled. "This may seem a little out of nowhere and totally off the course, if you may, but really, I'd like to hear from you guys. What do you do? Where are you from?"
"I don't know!" The monkey boy quickly put his hand into the air and grinned like a cheshire cat. "Honest! I swear I don't know!" He quickly said when he spotted all three of them give him the evil eye. Kuja sighed.
"Zidane over here," he said, "is an actor."
There was a little pause as the blond boy put his hand down and stared at Kuja with a gaping mouth. He hadn't expected to hear Kuja say anything about who he was to begin with. But hey, he wasn't complaining. He quietly listened as the silver-haired man continued with the small introduction.
"We both come from a planet called Te... um... Gaia." He flushed at the mistake and hoped nobody had noticed. "And, judging by the blank looks on all of your faces, including Zidane's," he raised an eyebrow and turned in Zidane's general direction, "I should be right in assuming nobody knows what the heck Gaia is."
"Um... okay." Cloud nodded, waving a hand to signify he was letting the matter pass for now. "Gaia, right. It sounds like a nice place, though I've never heard of it before... so... what do you do for a living, Kuja?"
*Destroy planets, start wars, build weapons, and things like that.* Kuja rolled his eyes and thought. Outwardly, he said, "Me? I'm your standard unemployed freak on the streets. I go around looking for monkeys to bully."
By the time he noticed Zidane, they were already engaged in a mini scruffle. Four blue lines slid down Cloud's left eye. He turned to the only other sane person on the island.
"................." went the moody Squall. "I'm a SeeD from Balamb Garden." He raised a hand, made a gesture, then went back to brooding, ignoring all the question marks growing out of Cloud's head.
"What do you mean, you're a seed from Balamb garden?" Cloud asked. "What do you do there? Plant seeds?"
"No," Squall quickly corrected, "I study there. The Garden is a school which trains SeeDs to defeat the sorceress. Otherwise, I guess you could call me a contracted mercenary."
"Ah." Was all Cloud could say. "Remind me to ask you about the sorceress at another time in the future." He managed to smile uncomfortably, but cheered up almost immediately. "Actually... I'm a mercenary too, you know." He punched Squall on the shoulder. "But unlike you, I'm freelance. Can't get tied up too much, otherwise I'll just become another salary-man in the crates they come in." He put a hand to his chin and thought for a while.
"Now may not be a good time, but it's really been bothering me for a while now," the tone of Cloud's voice changed for the serious, "we don't need to be Solomons to figure this out by now... I'm sure we've all noticed that... we're not exactly from the same planet... whatever that meant." He threw his hands into the air.
"The places are different." Squall agreed. "And the geography... I've travelled almost everywhere in the world, but I can't match a single location to any of the places I've walked past during this period..."
"Neither can I." Kuja nodded, then shifted his attention to what was bothering him the most. "And this time, it's not just me, but you guys have all noticed, right? We all cast magic, almost the same horde; but... through different methods."
"Which is funny, coz the spells do the same thing, they just look and are cast differently." Zidane commented, being an outsider to the realm of magic in general.
"What Zidane just said is something I can't figure out, and it's bothering me a lot." Kuja took it from where his friend left off. "In Gaia, there was another planet somewhere nearby, called Terra.
"There, although existing as two different planets, Gaia and Terra's magic casters used the same methods and held the same spells." He put a hand to his forehead in a mock position of thought. "Even if we truly are from different planets, why are the spells cast so differently? I can cast spells without a catalyst, it's an ability that's imbued in me. Cloud has to equip materia, draw on their power, so to speak. As for Squall..."
"... I draw spells from the people I fight, store them in my arsenal and use them at a later date, as and when." He explained. "... but... I've been thinking... what if we're not *exactly* from different planets? What if there's another plausible explanation for us being throw together like this?"
"Like time compression?" Cloud jokingly brought up the subject he had been discussing with Squall the previous night. Squall threw him a solemn look and nodded.
"Kuja said that even people from two different planets cast spells the same way," he pointed out, "although it could be because they were sibling planets. But how possible is that now? However, if we should look at it from the other angle discussed just now, then there's a second, more believable explanation for all this."
He closed his eyes, looking serene for a moment.
"Time compressed. We no longer live in the era we were born in."
There was a short silence.
"I'm no expert in the studies of magic and spells," Kuja spoke afterwards, in a small voice, "but I can testify to the fact that the art of casting spells does indeed go through a few refinements in the passage of time, even though the old methods STILL work along with the new..." He shook his head. "The books I've read never provided enough details. But I know... I THINK, that people a long time ago from my time cast spells entirely differently..."
Zidane's eyes were decidedly round. "I have no idea what you guys are yakking about," was all he had to say.
A faint rustling sound distracted the thinking crew for a while, as all eyes turned to Cloud. The blond was searching around the volumeless inventory for something. Finally, a look of delight flashed across his face and a dusty book was fished out from hammerspace. He thunked it onto the grass unceremoniously.
While Squall watched on passively and Kuja slithered away in disgust at the floating dust particles, Cloud began flipping the pages of the book like a possessed librarian looking for torn pages. Zidane remained where he was with a dreamy expression on his face, almost as if he was thinking of something else. Finally, Cloud seemed to have found the page he wanted to see. He looked up excitedly.
"Check this out, guys!" He beckoned for all to come closer. When he was sure they all had a decent view of the yellowed pages of the dusty book, he began the symposium.
"This was actually one of the books I got from Cosmo Canyon, just a few days before I found you guys." He paused. "I got it because there was an interesting variety of topics being covered. I noted geography, literature, science, language... and all that schmuck. What we're interested now, is probably going to be this," he put a finger on a faded picture of a short little person with his entire face covered by a large, pointy hat.
"This section is about 'History'."
Squall squinted and pointed a gloved finger at the page, saying, "The text is too faded to really be read, Cloud."
"No it's not!" Cloud made a face. He lightly brushed across the surface of the paper and took away a thick film of dust, rendering the page readable again. "See? It documents how people before MY time used magic. Some kind of a... job class system." He said, pronouncing the words as carefully as he could.
Kuja leaned over a little more to have a better look at the page.
He gasped at what he saw.
This promptly got everybody's attention, including Zidane's, as they wondered what had caused the sudden reaction. Their questioning glances only caused the petrified Kuja to take a few more steps back, until one more would have plunged him into the watery deeps of the oceans beyond. During this time, Zidane managed to steal a quick glance at the book.
And he, too, gasped.
"Vi... Vivi!"
Before either Cloud or Squall had the chance to convert the question marks above their heads into actual questions, a low rumbling shook the island from below them. Scrambling to their feet, doing some last minute packing up, everybody looked up just in time to see a towering reptile at least 10 storeys high rising to full height from the waters behind Kuja. The sorcerer turned around, snapping to attention immediately and nimbly retreating to join his advancing comrades.
"... did someone complain of boredom or something?" Zidane kept his playful attitude despite his unexpected outburst earlier. "I swear, the big ones only come when they think you need the entertainment."
"If they charge me, I'm going to complain," Kuja snorted, "about the quality."
A few dozen more baby versions of the same snake-like creature leapt from the waters onto land, hissing away.
"And the quantity." Kuja quickly added.
"I think it really depends on what kind of entertainment we're asking for." Squall laughed and drew Lion Heart.
And Cloud looked at the three of them exasperately, saying, "Then I sure hope you guys are properly equipped against fire elemental attacks... because although this guy feels a little different...
"... I don't think there's any doubt about it. We're talking about the legendary Midgar Zolom from my times."
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shuppatsu shita
31/5/2001
http://cloud-is.ourfamily.com/