Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ sore kara... ❯ taikanshiki da ( Chapter 29 )
[ 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: 02.27.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.5K | Visits: 200 | Status: Completed
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 02.27.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.5K | Visits: 200 | Status: Completed
Standard disclaimers apply.
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sore kara...
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taikanshiki da
"Oookay, this is nooot looking gooood~~" Zidane fumbled around, trying to get his feet on firm ground. His arms flailed and he caught hold of a railing for support. That didn't last long, however, for soon the railing fell apart and he was without backing again. "GAAH! What's going on?!"
The metal arched, making the inwards of the Invincible cave in. "We're in biiig trouble!" Cloud sputtered.
"Tell me something I don't know!" Squall jibed, struggling with his own feet himself.
"It looks like the Invincible isn't going to be able to survive this sudden time race!" Kuja was desperately trying to get the decaying airship to obey. At that poignant moment in time a large chunk of the roof fell in and slammed a hole into the floor, attracting the attention of all four of them.
"We'd better get out of here!" Zidane, with great effort, leapt over the debris and joined his comrades.
"You think we can make it to the castle before we plummet into the darkness beneath it?" Squall pointed amidst the shaking and rumbling of the Invincible.
"Won't know until we try!" Cloud cleared away a hole in the wall with his massive sword and glanced outside. "Better than collapsing with the ship altogether!"
Without waiting for a response, he took a step on the hole and leapt outside.
"He's right, no point languishing around something that's going to die," Kuja shook his head, and quickly exited from where Cloud had.
Squall and Zidane turned to stare at one another. Squall shrugged, and Zidane sighed.
"Here goes nothing!" The tail boy shrieked and followed in the footsteps of his fellow warriors, stretching himself as much as possible as soon as he left the grounds of the dying airship. He knew Squall was hot on his heels, and could vaguely see the other two somewhere nearby, also on the same course he was.
Behind them, the Invincible held on for one second more, and then shattered into pieces to fall down as dust into the moat of obscurity.
As he fell, Zidane stared at the pitch darkness that was beneath his feet, finding himself magnetically pulled in by the awesome ambiance it was emitting. It was cool, and comfortable. Zidane never thought he would love the callous shade as much as he did, but he must admit that something inside him drew him to the darkness, which looked like it would welcome him as well.
Quickly he shook himself to his senses. "I can't believe myself!" He muttered and assessed his predicament. There was no way he was going to be able to reach the castle. He needed to do something and he needed to do something fast.
*I wish I could summon Ark!* He swore to himself. Then a dark feeling stirred from within, making him pay attention once more to the sharp pain he had now grown to associate with Necron. He blinked. *... Maybe I CAN summon Ark!* He dug around his own inventory, nervously hoping that the item was still there. A moment later his eyes flashed like he had touched gold - which was quite true in a sense. He fished out the Pumice from one of his hidden pockets and immediately began to concentrate like he had when he held the Ultima stone in his hand.
The effect was instantaneous. Zidane hadn't needed to really do much. The air around him stiffened and grew into balls of dark energy, swirling around his form, picking up speed as they completed a round. A queasy feeling at the bottom of his stomach drew Zidane to open his eyes, which he found to be a surmounting task.
When he did managed to open his eyes, all he could see was the blood he had coughed onto his hands.
"Chi!!" He wiped the blood first off his face, then off his hands. He felt like his entire body heat was moving to his brains and cooking it alive. Needless to say it was a very very uncomfortable experience. "Aaarrrgh!!" Zidane could only make a random noise as he held the Pumice with both his hands, determined to complete the summon which took even Garnet days to master. Subconsciously he decided that he would lay off any spell casting for the rest of his life should he survive this. Chuckling despite the torturous pain, he called upon the last of his reserves.
A rumbling came from the moat which seemed to stretch down forever.
It got progressively louder.
Until finally, an immense ship pierced through the thick darkness to approach the soft but ominous light the castle basked itself in.
Ark immediately drew near to the one who had summoned it, cushioning him even as he continued falling. Zidane sat down heavily, exhausted. The only thing that kept him going on was the adrenaline rush, and how excited he was at being able to summon something. "You're not so useless after all, Zidane!" He laughed at himself, then fell flat on his back to gain a bit of rest before the rest of his companions climbed aboard. He smiled, and turned to one side to try stop the internal pain from giving him any further problems.
The more magically inclined of his companions, however, had already either Levitated or Floated towards the castel battlements. That did not stop them, however, from whipping around to gasp in awe when the imposing figure of Ark shot up from beneath the castle to poise itself regally in the air, waiting for something to happen.
"My goodness." Cloud gulped. "This is one big creature."
"Ark..." Kuja frowned, "... don't tell me... Zidane?"
As if on cue, Zidane's head popped out from one of the ledges of the helicopter-like structure of the massive summon creature. "Hey guys~~ !" He grinned like a cheshire cat, waving madly.
Ark slowly neared the turrets, sidling up until it had a close fit against the castle walls. After exchanging a few questioning glances with each other, the threesome then boarded the ship-summon thingie, to be warmly greeted by enigmatic genome, hopping around with obligation.
"I did it!" He was nearly squealing. "I can summon too!"
"Cool..." Squall blinked. He tested the floor. It was definitely wooden. "... and you can even make the summon listen to you, that's very very cool..."
A blast from aerial east forced them to save their pleasantries until a later time, for they had company. It was an unknown sorceress all decked out in robes and gear who had shot that spell. Of course, she was then quickly chased away with a strong Firaga, but that didn't stop her companions from then closing in upon the team after she went down. It looked like it would be a long battle.
"Forget them!" Squall's commanding voice burst into everybody's eardrums, no doubt going to make them ring for a week after this, "We have to return to that main turret just now and stop the coronation!"
Cloud would have loved to 'forget them', as Squall had said, but unfortunately he could not, for if he did then the ship would be roast and toast in no time. Kuja, however, stopped attacking and looked meaningfully at the flustered boy, who was currently too busy trying to locate the turret to notice anything else.
"Right on, sir!" Zidane was the only one who seemed to be really paying attention to Squall. He then put a foot atop one of the abandoned cannon barrels and pointed. "Onwards, Ark! Onwards to where Squall says there's a coronation going on!"
If Ark could sweatdrop, it very well would have.
Nevertheless the sentient object obeyed and rounded the colossal castle in search of their original spot of arrival. Cloud continued to fend off the sorceresses on their mission to protect the castle with Kuja, and Squall was too busy staring here and there to be of any real help. They were all happily doing their own thing until Zidane's voice sounded out over the air, "HAAALLLTT!!"
Ark screeched to a halt as instructed. Cloud and Kuja finished striking down the last of the sorceresses and quickly turned to join their companions. Squall had his classic look of suspended despair plastered all over his face as he locked his line of vision upon the coronation, which was still going on. At his obstinacy everybody also decided to revel in the situation, staring mindlessly at the event unfolding before their eyes.
"Time..." A quiet, lonely voice was saying, "... if I had time... if only I had time..." her shoulders trembled slightly, but her voice betrayed nothing, "... then he wouldn't... he wouldn't have left... he wouldn't have gone... gone without me... and now it's just me... in this big, friendless world..."
She paused.
"If only I had time..." she repeated, a tinge of despair evident in her voice, "... If only I had time..."
Although he was sure it was Rinoa who had just said that, Squall remained poker-faced. He knew it wasn't wise to act now when he didn't really have the full picture. As immensely worried as he was, Squall was unable to bring himself to intefere. "Rinoa..." he muttered under his breath with a deep frown, "... what happened... ?"
"I just want to be with him again!" The girl suddenly cried, taking everyone aback, "Isn't there anything I can do?"
"You poor, poor child..." it was the figure hooded in black, "... of course there is a way. You are a sorceress. Look into the powers inherent in you. Then tell me what you see."
For a while, they could hear nothing but the winds.
"Time does not wait for you..." the girl spoke out, almost in a whisper, "... but you can force it to..."
"Your time with the one you love is over," the hooded black figure continued, "... but is it truly over? Surely there must be something a powerful, ageless sorceress like yourself can do?"
"... time..." Rinoa mouthed, as ripples of dark energy cascaded outwards from the soles of her feet, chilling one to the bones by merely looking at how the dark fog embraced the foggy air, "... compression..." she finished.
"Well said my child," one could almost see the older person grin beneath the hood, "that shall be your destiny from now on... When the technology and age ripens you shall ride upon it and return to your time to compress it, only then, will you be able to get what you desire..."
"Time compression..." Rinoa repeated it like it was a chant, "... time compression..."
"It is the only way you can get back what you have lost," the older voice was unrelenting, "this shall be the ultimatum of your eternal time from now on."
She spread her palm over Rinoa's dark locks, and a burst of energy more sinister than any of the four onlookers had ever seen before surrounded the girl and slowly dissolved into her being. Squall began to grow agitated. No matter which time period they were now in, Rinoa would always be Rinoa, and there was no other more important person in his life. He didn't ask, or make any indication that he was going to jump. And he jumped.
"Wait!" Cloud was close to tearing his hair out in frustration at the loose cannon of the team. "What the heck do you think you're doing?!"
Even Zidane had this look of utter incomprehension on his face as he stared at the descending figure of Squall. Kuja merely sighed, saying, "He's as unpredictable as his name indicates... though I wonder which self-respecting parent would give his kid a name like 'Squall'... or 'Cloud' for that matter..." He put a finger to his chin and muttered softly to himself, oblivious to the fact that Cloud had supersonic hearing and had nearly choked when Kuja uttered those words.
Squall had landed onto the steeple roof by this time, and rushed to where Rinoa was still standing. "Rinoa!" He grabbed her hand and spun her around. "It's me, Rinoa! I-" He halted suddenly, rendered dumbstruck at what he saw. Rinoa stared up at the boy with irises rimmed with gold, and a soft curl of the lips mocking at everything, at everyone in her path.
"Rinoa?" She almost laughed, "I am the chosen of Hyne, the ultimate child!" and continued, "Nothing shall stop me from getting what I want!"
She put a hand on Squall, and sent him blasting to the other end of the tower roof. "Ri... Rinoa... !" He whimpered as he climbed painfully to his feet, realization slowly setting in, "... how... how can this be... ?? We were... we were fighting you - fighting you all along??!"
"No, indeed!" The dark cloaked figure jested, and placed a hand on Rinoa's shoulder. "You weren't fighting this child at all, you were all just pitting yourselves against the will of Hyne!"
"The will... of Hyne... ?" Squall barely managed to chime before coughing up blood where the blast had hit. Behind him, his companions had descended the Ark and were rushing to where he was now at.
"Squall!" His friends gathered around him and Cloud immediately began to administer curative processes. Only Zidane and Kuja turned to face the sorceresses as the older one continued her discourse.
"Hyne could see that her world would end in destruction, as a result of too much development, too much technology, and too many people..." she began, "... and so loved she her world that she would not see it fit to let it happen... Blessed with the gift of elongated life, and further blessed with the gift to pass her will to those who fit her requirements, Hyne saw that she had an eternity to try to bring her beautiful world back to her, for all ever..."
Slowly, but surely, the backdrop as well as the dark hooded being flickered and dissipitated into the atmosphere, thrusting all of them into a realm of contorted images, where there wasn't a ground but still they were standing on something of support, and where there weren't walls but still they found they couldn't even begin to feel their way out. With one of them down and three to go, it really looked like the oracle of Oeilvert was beginning to see it's fulfilment.
"Rinoa! Come back!" Squall cried out one last time before his comrades dragged him across the floor of the creepy dominion they had been sent to. The sorceress slowly gathered strength into her palms and readied her next spell.
"Maelstrom!!" She made it rain gravity and effectively sealed the movements of the foursome. Caught off guard, all of them sustained considerable damage as well. Cloud found it in himself to swear politely. He managed to lift the bracelet with some materia attached to it nevertheless.
"Shell!" He brought the barrier up and stopped the gravity from beating down on them. With his free hand he pointed the Ultima Weapon at the sorceress and took advantage of the recovery time the sorceress had to spend to gather his senses for what he hoped would be the final showdown. "Knights of the-... !!" A tight hand around his ankle jolted him from concentration and he stopped the summon. Glancing downward, he wasn't very surprised to find a heavily injured Squall hanging onto his foot with the last of his strength.
"Don't... no, don't do it!" The SeeD could hardly breath properly.
"Are you crazy, Squall?!" Zidane was shocked beyond imagination. Throughout their travels, he had always thought of the sombre teenager to be a rational, emotionless boy. The sight of him getting agitated over a girl - a SORCERESS no less, who was trying to destroy them, was sorely out of Zidane's grasp.
"NO! I'm not!" Squall let go of Cloud's ankle and struggled to his feet. He looked straight into the sorceress Rinoa's eye and instantly his face softened with pity and regret. "It's not her!" His voice was near breaking. "It's not her fault! She doesn't know! She doesn't know what she's doing!" He gritted his teeth before continuing, "It's not wrong to want to turn back time! It's not wrong to want to go back to your happiest moment in life!"
"But what's wrong is that she's trying to destroy the happy moments of other people to regain her own!" Zidane shouted back above the roaring winds and the intensive exchange of spells and dispels. Kuja was standing by as Cloud single-handedly attempted to tackle the powerful attacks of the sorceress, but he also had a listening ear on the conversation between the two teenagers. "Do you think she's the only person in the world who deserves to be happy?!" Zidane empathetically stretched his arms in a questioning pose.
"Of course not!" Squall shook his head angrily. "But you just can't kill her!" He stubbornly insisted.
"Why you-" Zidane had a fist balled up and was more than ready to smack the silly boy upside down. He found that he could not bring the fist down, and turned to see who was it that was obstructing him. "Kuja!" He then shook his hand free from Kuja's clench. "Let me teach this stubborn prick a lesson!" He growled, and was about to return to beating the crap out of the already injured Squall when he was stopped again.
"Squall's right, Zidane," Kuja quietly offered.
"What?! Not you too?!" The monkey boy's tail was now moving in 90 degree curves as a form of his indignation. "What's wrong with all of you today?!"
"Cut down with the screams and shouts," the older genome looked at them both, dead serious, "I meant he was right in that there's no point wasting anymore time to attack the sorceress now, especially when she's in the peak of her sorcery," he stared at Squall as he continued, "I didn't mean that we shouldn't give up on fighting her if we had the time, of course."
That seemed to calm both Squall and Zidane down. The latter then kicked an imaginary object on the ground and looked to a side in frustration.
"What we should do now is get out of this realm," Kuja explained, "and then use that gigantic force inside you, Zidane, to jar time enough to at least send us back to our respective epochs." Zidane started at that, turning to stare at Kuja with saucers for eyes. "Don't look at me like that, I know a lot more than you think I do..." He rewarded the shocked Zidane with a feline wink.
"Well whatever you're doing, hurry up already!" Cloud's disgruntled voice was heard over a clash of Firaga and Blizzaga.
"You won't be able to escape from this dimension," the sorceress' voice came straight after, "for this is a realm which is beyond time compression. You will not be able to find your way out."
"We won't know until we try!" Kuja's cheery voice sent more chills up the spines of his comrades than the sorceress' spells would have. He spun around and pointed at Zidane, who saluted. "On the count of three, Zidane! Summon Ark!" He ordered.
"Yes sir!" Zidane quickly grabbed hold onto the Pumice and readied himself. As he concentrated, however, he began to grow more and more worried. He stared at the back of Kuja, unable to see what the older genome's expressions were. Still that did not stop him from fretting.
What if what Necron said was true?
What if the dimming lifeforce he wanted to claim was Kuja's?
What if this was the last chance he had to keep Necron trapped within himself?
"Don't worry about me, stupid boy," Kuja suddenly turned his head to offer Zidane a know-it-all smile.
"I know a lot more than you think I do."
Zidane's eyes widened, not for the first time already that day. It was as if Kuja could read his mind.
"Ready Squall? Ready Zidane?" Kuja lifted his hands up in mock conduct of an orchestra.
"Anytime..." Squall held onto his wound and managed to say.
"Yup yup!" Zidane smiled in agreement, although something else was troubling him.
Kuja had obviously asked Squall to do something as well, but Zidane completely missed that while being drowned out in his own thoughts. He didn't think it should be of any big concern, but something just tugged at the back of his mind, telling him that perhaps it truly should be a big concern.
He had no more time to think, for Kuja's voice told him that he had better let his mind dwell in real life than in itself.
"On the count of three, then!"
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taikanshiki datta
21/12/2002
[XD fanfics!] http://www.tougenkyou.net/xd/
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sore kara...
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taikanshiki da
"Oookay, this is nooot looking gooood~~" Zidane fumbled around, trying to get his feet on firm ground. His arms flailed and he caught hold of a railing for support. That didn't last long, however, for soon the railing fell apart and he was without backing again. "GAAH! What's going on?!"
The metal arched, making the inwards of the Invincible cave in. "We're in biiig trouble!" Cloud sputtered.
"Tell me something I don't know!" Squall jibed, struggling with his own feet himself.
"It looks like the Invincible isn't going to be able to survive this sudden time race!" Kuja was desperately trying to get the decaying airship to obey. At that poignant moment in time a large chunk of the roof fell in and slammed a hole into the floor, attracting the attention of all four of them.
"We'd better get out of here!" Zidane, with great effort, leapt over the debris and joined his comrades.
"You think we can make it to the castle before we plummet into the darkness beneath it?" Squall pointed amidst the shaking and rumbling of the Invincible.
"Won't know until we try!" Cloud cleared away a hole in the wall with his massive sword and glanced outside. "Better than collapsing with the ship altogether!"
Without waiting for a response, he took a step on the hole and leapt outside.
"He's right, no point languishing around something that's going to die," Kuja shook his head, and quickly exited from where Cloud had.
Squall and Zidane turned to stare at one another. Squall shrugged, and Zidane sighed.
"Here goes nothing!" The tail boy shrieked and followed in the footsteps of his fellow warriors, stretching himself as much as possible as soon as he left the grounds of the dying airship. He knew Squall was hot on his heels, and could vaguely see the other two somewhere nearby, also on the same course he was.
Behind them, the Invincible held on for one second more, and then shattered into pieces to fall down as dust into the moat of obscurity.
As he fell, Zidane stared at the pitch darkness that was beneath his feet, finding himself magnetically pulled in by the awesome ambiance it was emitting. It was cool, and comfortable. Zidane never thought he would love the callous shade as much as he did, but he must admit that something inside him drew him to the darkness, which looked like it would welcome him as well.
Quickly he shook himself to his senses. "I can't believe myself!" He muttered and assessed his predicament. There was no way he was going to be able to reach the castle. He needed to do something and he needed to do something fast.
*I wish I could summon Ark!* He swore to himself. Then a dark feeling stirred from within, making him pay attention once more to the sharp pain he had now grown to associate with Necron. He blinked. *... Maybe I CAN summon Ark!* He dug around his own inventory, nervously hoping that the item was still there. A moment later his eyes flashed like he had touched gold - which was quite true in a sense. He fished out the Pumice from one of his hidden pockets and immediately began to concentrate like he had when he held the Ultima stone in his hand.
The effect was instantaneous. Zidane hadn't needed to really do much. The air around him stiffened and grew into balls of dark energy, swirling around his form, picking up speed as they completed a round. A queasy feeling at the bottom of his stomach drew Zidane to open his eyes, which he found to be a surmounting task.
When he did managed to open his eyes, all he could see was the blood he had coughed onto his hands.
"Chi!!" He wiped the blood first off his face, then off his hands. He felt like his entire body heat was moving to his brains and cooking it alive. Needless to say it was a very very uncomfortable experience. "Aaarrrgh!!" Zidane could only make a random noise as he held the Pumice with both his hands, determined to complete the summon which took even Garnet days to master. Subconsciously he decided that he would lay off any spell casting for the rest of his life should he survive this. Chuckling despite the torturous pain, he called upon the last of his reserves.
A rumbling came from the moat which seemed to stretch down forever.
It got progressively louder.
Until finally, an immense ship pierced through the thick darkness to approach the soft but ominous light the castle basked itself in.
Ark immediately drew near to the one who had summoned it, cushioning him even as he continued falling. Zidane sat down heavily, exhausted. The only thing that kept him going on was the adrenaline rush, and how excited he was at being able to summon something. "You're not so useless after all, Zidane!" He laughed at himself, then fell flat on his back to gain a bit of rest before the rest of his companions climbed aboard. He smiled, and turned to one side to try stop the internal pain from giving him any further problems.
The more magically inclined of his companions, however, had already either Levitated or Floated towards the castel battlements. That did not stop them, however, from whipping around to gasp in awe when the imposing figure of Ark shot up from beneath the castle to poise itself regally in the air, waiting for something to happen.
"My goodness." Cloud gulped. "This is one big creature."
"Ark..." Kuja frowned, "... don't tell me... Zidane?"
As if on cue, Zidane's head popped out from one of the ledges of the helicopter-like structure of the massive summon creature. "Hey guys~~ !" He grinned like a cheshire cat, waving madly.
Ark slowly neared the turrets, sidling up until it had a close fit against the castle walls. After exchanging a few questioning glances with each other, the threesome then boarded the ship-summon thingie, to be warmly greeted by enigmatic genome, hopping around with obligation.
"I did it!" He was nearly squealing. "I can summon too!"
"Cool..." Squall blinked. He tested the floor. It was definitely wooden. "... and you can even make the summon listen to you, that's very very cool..."
A blast from aerial east forced them to save their pleasantries until a later time, for they had company. It was an unknown sorceress all decked out in robes and gear who had shot that spell. Of course, she was then quickly chased away with a strong Firaga, but that didn't stop her companions from then closing in upon the team after she went down. It looked like it would be a long battle.
"Forget them!" Squall's commanding voice burst into everybody's eardrums, no doubt going to make them ring for a week after this, "We have to return to that main turret just now and stop the coronation!"
Cloud would have loved to 'forget them', as Squall had said, but unfortunately he could not, for if he did then the ship would be roast and toast in no time. Kuja, however, stopped attacking and looked meaningfully at the flustered boy, who was currently too busy trying to locate the turret to notice anything else.
"Right on, sir!" Zidane was the only one who seemed to be really paying attention to Squall. He then put a foot atop one of the abandoned cannon barrels and pointed. "Onwards, Ark! Onwards to where Squall says there's a coronation going on!"
If Ark could sweatdrop, it very well would have.
Nevertheless the sentient object obeyed and rounded the colossal castle in search of their original spot of arrival. Cloud continued to fend off the sorceresses on their mission to protect the castle with Kuja, and Squall was too busy staring here and there to be of any real help. They were all happily doing their own thing until Zidane's voice sounded out over the air, "HAAALLLTT!!"
Ark screeched to a halt as instructed. Cloud and Kuja finished striking down the last of the sorceresses and quickly turned to join their companions. Squall had his classic look of suspended despair plastered all over his face as he locked his line of vision upon the coronation, which was still going on. At his obstinacy everybody also decided to revel in the situation, staring mindlessly at the event unfolding before their eyes.
"Time..." A quiet, lonely voice was saying, "... if I had time... if only I had time..." her shoulders trembled slightly, but her voice betrayed nothing, "... then he wouldn't... he wouldn't have left... he wouldn't have gone... gone without me... and now it's just me... in this big, friendless world..."
She paused.
"If only I had time..." she repeated, a tinge of despair evident in her voice, "... If only I had time..."
Although he was sure it was Rinoa who had just said that, Squall remained poker-faced. He knew it wasn't wise to act now when he didn't really have the full picture. As immensely worried as he was, Squall was unable to bring himself to intefere. "Rinoa..." he muttered under his breath with a deep frown, "... what happened... ?"
"I just want to be with him again!" The girl suddenly cried, taking everyone aback, "Isn't there anything I can do?"
"You poor, poor child..." it was the figure hooded in black, "... of course there is a way. You are a sorceress. Look into the powers inherent in you. Then tell me what you see."
For a while, they could hear nothing but the winds.
"Time does not wait for you..." the girl spoke out, almost in a whisper, "... but you can force it to..."
"Your time with the one you love is over," the hooded black figure continued, "... but is it truly over? Surely there must be something a powerful, ageless sorceress like yourself can do?"
"... time..." Rinoa mouthed, as ripples of dark energy cascaded outwards from the soles of her feet, chilling one to the bones by merely looking at how the dark fog embraced the foggy air, "... compression..." she finished.
"Well said my child," one could almost see the older person grin beneath the hood, "that shall be your destiny from now on... When the technology and age ripens you shall ride upon it and return to your time to compress it, only then, will you be able to get what you desire..."
"Time compression..." Rinoa repeated it like it was a chant, "... time compression..."
"It is the only way you can get back what you have lost," the older voice was unrelenting, "this shall be the ultimatum of your eternal time from now on."
She spread her palm over Rinoa's dark locks, and a burst of energy more sinister than any of the four onlookers had ever seen before surrounded the girl and slowly dissolved into her being. Squall began to grow agitated. No matter which time period they were now in, Rinoa would always be Rinoa, and there was no other more important person in his life. He didn't ask, or make any indication that he was going to jump. And he jumped.
"Wait!" Cloud was close to tearing his hair out in frustration at the loose cannon of the team. "What the heck do you think you're doing?!"
Even Zidane had this look of utter incomprehension on his face as he stared at the descending figure of Squall. Kuja merely sighed, saying, "He's as unpredictable as his name indicates... though I wonder which self-respecting parent would give his kid a name like 'Squall'... or 'Cloud' for that matter..." He put a finger to his chin and muttered softly to himself, oblivious to the fact that Cloud had supersonic hearing and had nearly choked when Kuja uttered those words.
Squall had landed onto the steeple roof by this time, and rushed to where Rinoa was still standing. "Rinoa!" He grabbed her hand and spun her around. "It's me, Rinoa! I-" He halted suddenly, rendered dumbstruck at what he saw. Rinoa stared up at the boy with irises rimmed with gold, and a soft curl of the lips mocking at everything, at everyone in her path.
"Rinoa?" She almost laughed, "I am the chosen of Hyne, the ultimate child!" and continued, "Nothing shall stop me from getting what I want!"
She put a hand on Squall, and sent him blasting to the other end of the tower roof. "Ri... Rinoa... !" He whimpered as he climbed painfully to his feet, realization slowly setting in, "... how... how can this be... ?? We were... we were fighting you - fighting you all along??!"
"No, indeed!" The dark cloaked figure jested, and placed a hand on Rinoa's shoulder. "You weren't fighting this child at all, you were all just pitting yourselves against the will of Hyne!"
"The will... of Hyne... ?" Squall barely managed to chime before coughing up blood where the blast had hit. Behind him, his companions had descended the Ark and were rushing to where he was now at.
"Squall!" His friends gathered around him and Cloud immediately began to administer curative processes. Only Zidane and Kuja turned to face the sorceresses as the older one continued her discourse.
"Hyne could see that her world would end in destruction, as a result of too much development, too much technology, and too many people..." she began, "... and so loved she her world that she would not see it fit to let it happen... Blessed with the gift of elongated life, and further blessed with the gift to pass her will to those who fit her requirements, Hyne saw that she had an eternity to try to bring her beautiful world back to her, for all ever..."
Slowly, but surely, the backdrop as well as the dark hooded being flickered and dissipitated into the atmosphere, thrusting all of them into a realm of contorted images, where there wasn't a ground but still they were standing on something of support, and where there weren't walls but still they found they couldn't even begin to feel their way out. With one of them down and three to go, it really looked like the oracle of Oeilvert was beginning to see it's fulfilment.
"Rinoa! Come back!" Squall cried out one last time before his comrades dragged him across the floor of the creepy dominion they had been sent to. The sorceress slowly gathered strength into her palms and readied her next spell.
"Maelstrom!!" She made it rain gravity and effectively sealed the movements of the foursome. Caught off guard, all of them sustained considerable damage as well. Cloud found it in himself to swear politely. He managed to lift the bracelet with some materia attached to it nevertheless.
"Shell!" He brought the barrier up and stopped the gravity from beating down on them. With his free hand he pointed the Ultima Weapon at the sorceress and took advantage of the recovery time the sorceress had to spend to gather his senses for what he hoped would be the final showdown. "Knights of the-... !!" A tight hand around his ankle jolted him from concentration and he stopped the summon. Glancing downward, he wasn't very surprised to find a heavily injured Squall hanging onto his foot with the last of his strength.
"Don't... no, don't do it!" The SeeD could hardly breath properly.
"Are you crazy, Squall?!" Zidane was shocked beyond imagination. Throughout their travels, he had always thought of the sombre teenager to be a rational, emotionless boy. The sight of him getting agitated over a girl - a SORCERESS no less, who was trying to destroy them, was sorely out of Zidane's grasp.
"NO! I'm not!" Squall let go of Cloud's ankle and struggled to his feet. He looked straight into the sorceress Rinoa's eye and instantly his face softened with pity and regret. "It's not her!" His voice was near breaking. "It's not her fault! She doesn't know! She doesn't know what she's doing!" He gritted his teeth before continuing, "It's not wrong to want to turn back time! It's not wrong to want to go back to your happiest moment in life!"
"But what's wrong is that she's trying to destroy the happy moments of other people to regain her own!" Zidane shouted back above the roaring winds and the intensive exchange of spells and dispels. Kuja was standing by as Cloud single-handedly attempted to tackle the powerful attacks of the sorceress, but he also had a listening ear on the conversation between the two teenagers. "Do you think she's the only person in the world who deserves to be happy?!" Zidane empathetically stretched his arms in a questioning pose.
"Of course not!" Squall shook his head angrily. "But you just can't kill her!" He stubbornly insisted.
"Why you-" Zidane had a fist balled up and was more than ready to smack the silly boy upside down. He found that he could not bring the fist down, and turned to see who was it that was obstructing him. "Kuja!" He then shook his hand free from Kuja's clench. "Let me teach this stubborn prick a lesson!" He growled, and was about to return to beating the crap out of the already injured Squall when he was stopped again.
"Squall's right, Zidane," Kuja quietly offered.
"What?! Not you too?!" The monkey boy's tail was now moving in 90 degree curves as a form of his indignation. "What's wrong with all of you today?!"
"Cut down with the screams and shouts," the older genome looked at them both, dead serious, "I meant he was right in that there's no point wasting anymore time to attack the sorceress now, especially when she's in the peak of her sorcery," he stared at Squall as he continued, "I didn't mean that we shouldn't give up on fighting her if we had the time, of course."
That seemed to calm both Squall and Zidane down. The latter then kicked an imaginary object on the ground and looked to a side in frustration.
"What we should do now is get out of this realm," Kuja explained, "and then use that gigantic force inside you, Zidane, to jar time enough to at least send us back to our respective epochs." Zidane started at that, turning to stare at Kuja with saucers for eyes. "Don't look at me like that, I know a lot more than you think I do..." He rewarded the shocked Zidane with a feline wink.
"Well whatever you're doing, hurry up already!" Cloud's disgruntled voice was heard over a clash of Firaga and Blizzaga.
"You won't be able to escape from this dimension," the sorceress' voice came straight after, "for this is a realm which is beyond time compression. You will not be able to find your way out."
"We won't know until we try!" Kuja's cheery voice sent more chills up the spines of his comrades than the sorceress' spells would have. He spun around and pointed at Zidane, who saluted. "On the count of three, Zidane! Summon Ark!" He ordered.
"Yes sir!" Zidane quickly grabbed hold onto the Pumice and readied himself. As he concentrated, however, he began to grow more and more worried. He stared at the back of Kuja, unable to see what the older genome's expressions were. Still that did not stop him from fretting.
What if what Necron said was true?
What if the dimming lifeforce he wanted to claim was Kuja's?
What if this was the last chance he had to keep Necron trapped within himself?
"Don't worry about me, stupid boy," Kuja suddenly turned his head to offer Zidane a know-it-all smile.
"I know a lot more than you think I do."
Zidane's eyes widened, not for the first time already that day. It was as if Kuja could read his mind.
"Ready Squall? Ready Zidane?" Kuja lifted his hands up in mock conduct of an orchestra.
"Anytime..." Squall held onto his wound and managed to say.
"Yup yup!" Zidane smiled in agreement, although something else was troubling him.
Kuja had obviously asked Squall to do something as well, but Zidane completely missed that while being drowned out in his own thoughts. He didn't think it should be of any big concern, but something just tugged at the back of his mind, telling him that perhaps it truly should be a big concern.
He had no more time to think, for Kuja's voice told him that he had better let his mind dwell in real life than in itself.
"On the count of three, then!"
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taikanshiki datta
21/12/2002
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