Chapter One
Withered SeeDs
I have to stay strong. I can't let them do this on their own.
The sky was a very dark grey that was quickly darkening to black, and it was twisted and distorted. The cause of this ruined sky was their foe; a woman covered in strange purple marks wearing a red dress that was way to revealing for any normal woman to be comfortable in. She looked like a cross between an angel and a demon, with black wings and her hair styled into devil-like horns.
Rinoa Heartilly felt her strength fading. Though the weapon was usually light-weight, Rinoa felt as if the Blaster Edge she used was getting heavier on her arm.
Rinoa was scared. She had a feeling that they couldn't do this -that they couldn't save their world. But just thinking about losing everything made Rinoa feel sick.
'Squall,' Rinoa wanted to say, but her voice had given away due to a lump in her throat.
Are we going to die here? she wondered.
Rinoa looked around at her surroundings. Squall Leonhart, her lover and knight, was trying to stand tall as he once again tried to wound their opponent. Zell Dincht was trying to use magic, but his Guardian Force didn't seem to be present. Quistis Trepe, Selphie Tillmit, and Irvine Kinneas were also attacking the enemy the old-fashion way (using only their weapons), but their attacks were doing nothing.
"Foolish SeeDs!" the enemy thundered. "I am a descendant of Hyne! I am a goddess! There's nothing you can do to cause my demise!"
Rinoa wasn't sure if they would survive this, but she knew there was one person that would comfort her.
Clumsily (due to all of their foe's magic weighing down on her), Rinoa walked to that person.
"Squall."
Her voice was heard this time as she touched Squall's shoulder, but it sounded hoarse and raspy.
"Squall, will we be okay?"
"Of course we will," Squall said firmly. "We've come so far… we've worked so hard to get to this moment, and now the whole world is in our hands. We can't let Ultimecia get to us."
Though Squall spoke strongly and supposedly surely, the young dark-haired sorceress could sense the uncertainty he felt. There was nothing that the seventeen-year-old boy could hide from her.
"You su-"
Rinoa must have irked Ultimecia by interrupting the battle, because before Rinoa could finish saying the word "sure", she shot silver-colored flames at both Rinoa and Squall.
Rinoa felt like all of her bones would fracture as she bellowed in pain. Squall got up immediately, but Rinoa was no where near as strong as him. The world spun and she heard her heart thumping in her ears as she stood, wobbling a bit before spreading out her legs to keeps her balance.
"There is nothing you can do, SeeDs!" Ultimecia sneered. "Your world is gone! Time will compress!"
Then, Ultimecia threw out her arms, and she was engulfed by an eerie purple aura. Then, the world around Rinoa began to morph, being twisted and torn. Rinoa felt like she was going to be torn in two as she once again fell to the ground.
By now, the world was spinning so fast that Rinoa swore she would puke. Rinoa could hear the thumping in her ears so loudly that she was sure the earth below her was vibrating. Rinoa tried her best to get back on her feet, but the pain was too great. Soon, Rinoa cried out one more time, not just in physical pain, but in the pain of knowing all she cherished would be lost. Then, she fell unconscious.
The phone began to ring as Tifa sat alone, tapping the table, waiting for Denzel and Marlene to return from running errands. Tifa stood up and went to answer it.
"Hello?" Tifa said, answering the phone.
"Tifa?" Cloud's voice came from the other end of the phone.
"Cloud?" Tifa said surprised. He was actually calling! "…Are you okay?"
"What?" he asked, not sure what Tifa was asking.
"Are you okay? You never call."
"Yes, I'm fine. But didn't you say you wanted to come with me next time I went to the church?"
"You actually remembered to call me!" Tifa laughed.
"…Yeah. I'm going to the church tonight."
"Oh. See you there?"
"Yeah."
They said they're goodbyes, and as Tifa hung up, Marlene and Denzel ran in through the back door, and placed the groceries on the counter.
"We're going to the church tonight," Tifa smiled at the two.
His entire body ached, and there was a loud ringing in his ears. His eyelids where too heavy to open, and not a single muscle in his body wanted to move but his slow-beating heart.
For a while, he couldn't remember who he was, and he seemed to have lost the ability to care. Honestly, he just wanted to sleep, and never wake up.
He heard voices that said otherwise.
They where hazy and distant, but they were there, and they sounded afraid. They spoke slowly, softly, and scared.
He took a long deep breath, then forced his reluctant, agonized body to move as he rolled himself onto his back and slowly opened his eyes.
The room was bright, and he was blinded for a few moments. When his vision returned, it was blurry, and everything was merged into a mess of colors. He only managed to make out the figures of the two people standing over him due to their voices.
"Squall?" a woman's voice gasped in relief. It took him a few seconds to remember that "Squall" was his name, but when he did, he remembered that he knew the voice, as well.
"Ellone..."
Marlene laughed and ran into the church happily, Denzel walking in behind her. Tifa and Cloud entered together, Tifa catching up with the things going on with Cloud's job.
Marlene ran to the flowerbed full of daffodils and lilies, stopped, then turned around and ran back to the adults, fear and concern in her eyes.
"What?" Tifa asked her.
"There's a girl sleeping in the flowers!" she cried.
"What!?" Cloud asked, walking to the flowerbed.
There was an unconscious girl laying in those flowers. She had dark hair that flowed down to her shoulder blades, and was wearing a blue vest that's long in the back. Cloud couldn't see the shirt she was wearing under it, because she was lying stomach-down. The things that caught his attention the most in her appearance were the white angel wings imprinted on her back.
Cloud carefully nudged her with his foot, turning her slightly towards him before she fell back to her original position.
"Is she alive?" Tifa asked, kneeling down and rolling the girl over. Now, Cloud could see the girl's face. She looked young -seventeen or eighteen years old- and wore a black shirt under her vest. She wore a button up denim skirt and black zip-up biker shorts on her legs, and combat boots on her feet.
Tifa grasped the mystery girl's wrist and held it, sighing with relief when she felt a pulse.
"Cloud," she said, looking at the blonde man, "we have to help her. We can't-"
"We don't have enough room for anymore people living with us," Cloud interrupted.
"Only until we know she's fi-"
"I want to help her us much as you do but-"
"Cloud, we can't just leave her here to die! I know you want to bring her home somewhere inside you. Please. Just until we know she's fine."
"…Fine."
Cloud then picked up the mystery girl and carried her out of the church, gave the girl to Tifa as he got onto his motorbike, then said, "I'll take her with me."
Tifa smiled, then hoisted the girl onto Cloud's bike. Cloud let the girl lean onto his back, and held one of her hands, the other on the handlebars.
"See you at the bar," he then said, then drove off.
Where am I? Rinoa wondered. She wasn't in her world, that's for sure. But where was she? All she knew was that she was in a small village.
Before she had time to think more about it, she heard a piercing scream, then she saw smoke in the air. A warm light came from the same area as the smoke, telling her that a house was on fire. Rinoa was worried, so she darted toward the burning house.
As she neared the house, something made her stop in her tracks. There was man with long silver hair walking with a torch from the house. His eyes glowed green stared at Rinoa, his eyes looking into her soul. Then, he began walking towards her.
Rinoa swallowed her nervousness, then said awkwardly, "Hello?"
The man didn't seem to hear Rinoa, or notice her in fact. He strode right past her to thehouse behind her, and soon, that house was being devoured by flames as well.
Rinoa tried to stop the man, but it was no use. He ignored her, acting as if she wasn't there. So Rinoa was forced to stand and watch lives being taken.
As continued wrecking the village, another man went around gathering the injured.
Soon, there was only a few houses spared from the flames. The silver-haired man then turned and left, heading toward a mountain near the village. Rinoa was about to go after him, but someone else did before her, so Rinoa decided not to. She turned back and sat down next to the man who gathered the wounded.
'Do you know who that person was?' Rinoa tried to ask, but her voice wouldn't come out.
"Master!" Rinoa then heard a voice cry. As she looked up see be who the voice belonged to, her sight began to fade, and her head hurt. She barely able to see young woman that looked just a bit older than her with long brown hair and brown eyes towards them before she fell unconscious.
