"Unlucky."
"But I had Paine as Black Mage, so I finished him off and healed Rikku. I mean, if Yuna had fainted, it wouldn't really have affected me, but Rikku's always my bloody healer so…"
When people first look at me and my sister, 'gamer' would be the last word to come to mind. For a start, we always wear our typical, dark blue or black skinny jeans and halter-neck tops. We like to dress smart-cas, so we always do our hair in interesting ways with simple makeup. We wear hooped earrings and gold jewellery. I'd like to say formal gansta, but then, that's a stereotype. Then there's the fact that we're both mixed race.
"What was Yuna?"
"Gunner. I never really do anything with her."
"Me neither."
I was at the computer and my sister was loading a game on the PS2. We share a room and we have no other siblings, so we have all our stuff up there. It was about six in the evening and summer but what should have been a great day of sunbathing had been wrecked by an unprecedented summer storm, so we'd confined ourselves to our room where Katie – that's my sister – was loading up Final Fantasy X-2 and I was tapping away at the keys, working on the chapter to my latest fanfiction.
My name is Jennifer Nkwocha – you don't pronounce the 'n'. I live in Australia, in a coastal town called Kiama in New South Wales. I know what you're thinking – Australian? Mixed Race? Video Games? Fanfiction? Is it all struggling to make sense? I like to think that Katie and I defy society and make people rethink their ideas of mixed race. To be fair, Katie's been involved in her fair share of trouble but she came out of that very strongly and has matured so much in the last couple of years. I hate to say it but it's helped me, having her there to watch over me; she's made sure I haven't gone the wrong way.
"Aww, crap!"
"What?"
Katie sighed, scratching her head. "I haven't played this in ages and now I've lost my memory card."
I looked over to the right side of the computer and flicked through the two small piles of memory cards we had sitting there. We're real geeks, Katie and I, and we have memory cards sifting about all over the place. I found one labelled in Katie's familiar scrawl and tossed it over to her, then checked my emails.
[FF New Chapter] Ch. 3 of story, Crimson Skies, by Yuna of Besaid
[FF New Chapter] Ch.6 of story, Ode to the sucky life of a student, by Yuna of Besaid
[FF New Story] Final Fantasy X-2: The Den, by Paine3
I grinned and clicked on the link to Paine3's, seeing as she hadn't been on for a long time. I liked Yuna of Besaid's stories a lot; they were generally well-written and she wrote about pairings I agreed with, though I never read her Barikku ones. Call it a personal preference. Katie was a little more open-minded than me and could stand some Barikku and PaineNooj – but only when written well. I'd written some Final Fantasy VIII too, but just oneshot conversations between characters, no pairings.
"What news from the mythical land of fandom?" Katie drawled in a bad English accent.
"Yuna of Besaid's updated two stories. Paine3's published a new one."
"Paine3? She hasn't been on in forever."
I loved fanfiction. I loved writing in general; where Katie had her sporting talent, I had my way with words and a little bit of scientific knowledge on the side. Katie was supportive of me there, too; she loved reading my stories, and those of other people. My pen name was Noojie's Little Helper; it's a legendary in-joke between us. I do like Nooj, though, and his are the only pairings I'm open about. I've published equal numbers of NoojLeblanc and NoojLucil; I just can't make up my mind. If only I could get into the game, you know, and find out first hand? That'd be totally wicked. I'd so join the Youth League and boss Yaibal around all day.
And I'd so punch Yuna in the face. I know Katie would do the same. Call it revenge for the time she fainted when we were trying to defeat Angra Mainyu.
As I waited for the link to load, a couple more thunderclaps sounded outside and the windows became almost impossible to see through due to the immense amount of rain.
"It's happening all around the world, you know." Katie told me as she fought a demon-like fiend.
I snorted. "You sound like something out of an apocalyptic film."
She laughed in reply. "I mean the storm. It's a worldwide phenomenon. Scientists are blaming it on global warming, but it's a weird one; there's no lightning."
I furrowed my eyebrows and stared out the window, waiting in vain to see a flash of yellow through the sky. It was the weirdest thing in the world, listening to thunderclap after thunderclap and with no streaks of lightning in between. Being a girl who was very interested in science and a bit of a geek at heart, I made plans to spend a while on the internet, watching as scientists debated why this was happening.
"Creepy."
"KATIE! PHONE!"
Katie groaned and threw the controller in my direction. I juggled it for a moment in surprise but then crossed over to the bed and took control. "Where are you going?" I asked, referring to the game.
"Where do you think?" Katie shouted back, annoyed.
She was in the Bevelle Underground and I was pretty sure it was Chapter 3, so she was off to see the Crimson Squad reunion. It was her favourite scene so I didn't want to actually get to the cutscene. I had mixed feelings about it; it was an awesome scene and had hints at Painalai, but then it also hinted at some PaineNooj so I didn't know what to make about it. It's bizarre; for a girl who loves the characters of Paine and Nooj so much, I hate the pairing a surprising amount.
I stopped at the Save Sphere, and waited. The banging of the rain on the window merged with the constant chatter of Katie on the phone downstairs as I felt the air go a little colder. I pulled the bed covers around my shoulders as I felt a chill go down my spine. "Mum, is the heating on?" I shouted, though I received no answer. I could hear the radiator at the side of the room rattling away, anyway.
Suddenly, the power cut out. I was plunged into instant darkness, with only the constant rain as my companion. It was only to be expected in such a heavy storm and I only panicked when I thought that I'd lost Katie's game, but thankfully I'd saved so it was no problem.
Everything flashed on again and I went to reboot the PS2, but then the image of where the game had ended flashed on again, with Yuna standing by the save sphere in the Bevelle Underground. I furrowed my eyebrows, confused. The game wasn't meant to do that, surely?
I tried to move Yuna about, wondering if the image was just frozen, and she did nothing. Rolling my eyes, I got up to reboot the game, but then something freaky happened.
Paine walked into shot.
My mouth fell open and the controller dropped to the floor as Paine stopped, looking out of view. After a couple of seconds Rikku, looking thoroughly tired out, slumped into view.
"Katie…" I called, but again no one answered.
I was scared now. This certainly wasn't a cutscene in the game. There were two games I knew off by heart and they were VII and X-2. The game was doing something really weird and suddenly, for some reason, everyone in my house had gone deaf. My shoulders stiffened. I looked behind me, making sure that this wasn't some trick Katie was playing on me.
The lights flashed on and off in the blink of an eye. This time the image didn't disappear but for a second, just for a millisecond, I could have sworn I saw another girl amongst them. She was a taller girl, wearing something a little like the Alchemist dressphere – I think.
Then they started to move. I jumped away from the controller, staring at the screen. My breathing quickened. Between flashes of static which revealed a millisecond of the other girl travelling with the Gullwings, Yuna, Rikku and Paine made their way to the Bevelle Underground. The cutscene started.
"Katie!" I shouted, my voice hoarse. No reply.
Several flashes of static crossed the screen and the picture changed. YRP suddenly became real, live people. The Bevelle Underground became concrete and stone in all its glory. The other girl came into being; a girl with darkened skin and black hair, standing at about 5'10". She turned to look back, confusedly, at YRP and I gasped.
Why was I there?
It was, without a doubt, me. It was the familiar frizzy hair that I always wore loose except for sports, the same straight eyebrows and strong jawline. The athletic figure, the brown skin, the roman nose, all was there; and I was looking straight at Rikku as if I'd known her for years.
The static continued to flash and suddenly the object of my curiosity appeared; another girl, about my age, had appeared at the same place that the Gullwings were meant to hide at. She had brown, curly hair and very pale skin, dressed in a suit of armour not unlike a Dark Knight's. All I knew was that she was not meant to be there. My breath started coming out in little gasps. My hands shook. The girl turned to me and YRP, and gestured for us to join her.
The lightning flashed outside.
Suddenly I was there, not in the scene but floating above and flying away, up and away through the air, up through the walls of Bevelle and into the temple and into the sky above. White lights flew beside me and I was surrounded by my own encasing of radiance. We soared into the air and into the stars, seeing flashes of action happening around us. Sometimes there were new characters, sometimes it was as normal. Sometimes there were scenes that were never meant to happen. Sometimes there were scenes from thousands of years ago. It all happened so fast.
My breath caught in my throat as I spiralled through darkness with pyreflies erupting either side of me and the blistering trails of white light keeping pace. We began to slow and the lights came closer, slowly materialising into other forms.
Spira reappeared down below as the creatures in the lights came into focus. I stared in shock as they became other girls who looked back at me, their expressions mirroring mine. There was barely enough time to take them in – a tartan miniskirt, one who could hardly be five foot, one wearing a hoodie – before the first girl fell to the earth.
We watched in amazement as Spira changed before our eyes, in lightning speed; wars, peace, festivals all happened in the blink of an eye. A gap of a few centuries went past in barely five seconds. Sin zipped around the globe before disappearing momentarily, then reappearing. The girl in the tartan miniskirt fell to the Earth, followed by a third girl. Sin materialised below, and then disappeared. Another girl fell, then another.
Then I was pulled downwards, down, down to Spira and then suddenly into darkness. Pyreflies raced past as vines of darkness surrounded me, smothering me. I gasped for air but something was around my neck. In flashes I saw blurred faces above me and a bright light, but all I could feel was the tendrils around my neck.
"Can you hear me?" "She's fading!" "Hold her down!"
"KATIE!" I screamed. It used all the air remaining in my lungs.
There was no reply, and I gave in to the darkness.
I'M SO SORRY this took so long to get up. I had a setback when I discovered that I was going to visit relatives a week earlier than I thought and then I didn't have enough computer time on Saturday to write this up and I couldn't access the computer on Sunday and it was all a nightmare. Sorry!
Anyway, here's the story-summer-project I've been promising you all. Jenny and her FanFiction persona are fictional, however, all the other girls – and I won't tell you who they are yet – are all real people, and you'll discover who.
Reviews aplenty would be nice, and for those who I've been contacting about this story, a review would be nice so I can see that you've actually noticed I've published the ruddy thing. XD
Cheers, m'dears!