Disclaimer:

All Final Fantasy 7 © characters, logo and locations found in this work belong to Square-Enix ™ Co. Ltd. Except those which you haven't heard about, hereby named Original Characters and Places, and which are the creation and property of Celeste Bloodrayne.

The 'Pillars of Destiny' story belongs to Celeste Bloodrayne. Events happening in this story are purely fictional and are the author's creations. Any resemblance to any other work of fiction previously published, real events or people, is purely coincidental.

'Pillars of Destiny' is not to be distributed under any circumstances in its full form or as quotation(s) without prior permission from the author of the work. Copyright infringement will be in direct violation of the author's rights.

WARNING: This story is a spin-off of the Final Fantasy 7 Compilation and may contain spoilers.

Hand of Fire

Utter darkness. But here and there, particles of Mako floated, piercing the thick shadows with their bright green glow.

It seemed to be completely empty... until something stirred. Something briefly illuminated by passing Mako particles, something dark or covered in dark things. A human form, shackled by dark ropes and chains of some indefinite material; those were the source of the disturbance, since they seemed to ...move? However, whatever it was they were retaining captive was totally immobile. It looked female, although she could not really be sure, not in this limited lighting. It was also looking very... dead.

Was it too late? Has she done all this only to come to yet another dead end? No! This was the only way left, so it had to work! She knew it had to!

So, she came closer to the dark, misshapen form, advancing slowly though the darkness. She reached out her hand, about to touch it...

/Who are you? How did you find me?/

The voice, raspy and breathless echoed like the voices of hundreds of tormented ghouls. Taken by surprise, she took a step back and tripped, falling down on her butt. When she looked up, she saw a pair of startling, glowing fuchsia eyes awash with energy watching her with displeasure.

It -she- was very much alive and she was pissed with her. What a great way to start a relationship.

/Hmmm./ The... woman chuckled, but it didn't make her feel any more comfortable.

/It does not really matter, does it?/

She felt herself blushing. She had been so taken aback, she had forgotten to answer and just stayed there gaping while her thoughts were running away with her. This was so embarrassing.

Another chuckle, but this time she thought she could hear some impatience in it. What the...woman said next sounded a bit, ah, condescending too.

/So, little one, what brings you to this wretched place? You must be very courageous indeed, to have braved all of these obstacles to find me. Or foolish. Tell me what you want of me, before I lose patience./

She quickly outlined her case after presenting herself. All the while, she kept her fingers crossed, nervously rubbing them together under the impassive and unnerving pink gaze.

/I see… But I fear that what you want from me is something that even I can't do. All I can share are memories… memories of a time before this, of a time before your very birth. Do you really wish to listen? You may never have heard of those involved and this is not at all what you have come here for./

Aerith Gainsborough quickly nodded. She was sure that this woman could help her but was unwilling to; after all, she had been in isolation for ages and probably had lost some of her humanity. Maybe if she listened to her story, she might be able to find a way to make her help her. She just had to!

/Very well, if you insist. Be warned though that it will not be easy for you. My memories: my nightmares, my sins. I relive them over and over again in here, as penance, as a reminder of my failures; I really don't think that you will find any way to profit from them. Take my hand… let me take you there, in my world. Mine, yes, because the world as you know it was a very different place then… /

A bullet went through the soft flesh of my right thigh and I dropped to my knees, a sharp gasp of pain escaping my lips.

But I was so not going down like this.

The heavy semi-automatic Browning HP was slick with my blood, but my grasp was still steady. It was not exactly a gun made for sniper shots and its weight was something of a liability but it was the only one I had on hand; it would have to do. I pulled myself to a nearby wall, shelter against the barrage of bullets coming my way.

Really, it was amazing that one of them hit me at all, the way those guys were firing. Were they drunk? They'd been wasting precious ammo ever since the gunfight started, splashing bullets around like water falling from a masterless high-pressure hose.

A drum filled with some unknown substance exploded some metres away from where I was, adding smoke to an already dark environment. For a moment, the firing stopped. Maybe the explosion had surprised them. I didn't know and neither did I particularly care.

What mattered was that all of this worked to my advantage. I dashed as quietly and quickly as possible under the screen provided by the smoke to another wall, further off, nearer to my unseen attackers.

I had barely reached my new shelter when I saw one of them step away from his shelter, out of the alley and into plain sight. He looked around and walked slowly to my previous location, batting at the smoke and peering through it. He was dressed entirely in black, from his army fatigues to the mask and the night goggles covering even his eyes, right down to his boots. From what I could see, he was more brawns than brains. Could I be charitable here I give him the benefit of doubt?

Just then the guy managed to gulp down a lungful of the acrid stuff, since he started to cough and rub at his eyes. Hmm. Maybe not then. Incredible. Simply incredible. What was the world coming to? Was this even worth my time?

'Idiot.' I sighed and pulled the trigger.

The man fell to the floor, twitching like a vermin-infested mongrel. Some of his companions shouted in fear or concern and shots exploded all around once again. I could imagine them, trying to guess where I could be, shooting around in the hopes that one of their bullets might hit me.

'Hope on, little boys... maybe the tooth fairy will bring you some sweets tonight too.'

And then, someone did something very stupid, the kind of stupid action that could earn him a medal at a stupidity contest somewhere or might result in an award for bravery in a better world.

A posthumous award, of course.

The new guy ran to his downed comrade, trying to lift him up while his 'friends' were still firing in the background. Did he really have a death wish? Probably. His goodbye note was probably lying somewhere, or in a more dramatic gesture, on him. Let me put an end to his suffering then. I aimed at him...

And he fired his goddessdamned gun straight at me.

I ducked to the right just in time, discharging a couple of bullets in return. My first hit him in the leg; the other ripped his gun away from his grasp. The man screamed as he fell on top of the other guy's body.

Shots exploded forth from the guns of my opponents, some of them hitting the downed men, eliciting more screams, more blood from them.

Great, thanks to that punk-kamikaze, they knew where I was now.

I huddled further into the shadow of the wall, loading my gun again as a shower of mortar and pieces of brick fell on me from the continuous impact of bullets. A particularly big piece clonked me hard on the head and I rubbed the sore spot, swearing under my breath. What kind of gun were those dudes using? Nothing I knew could fire so many bullets so quickly and with such power... In fact, the wall I was using as a shelter was disintegrating alarmingly quickly into rubble.

I had to do something, and soon. But I couldn't retaliate from here, not if I wanted to walk home tonight. With my injured leg, I couldn't climb up on the rooftop either. Nor could I move quickly enough to gain another shelter, far off to my left.

From the example of those two guys, I didn't think that any more of them would step forward this time. Too bad, nicking them off one by one would have been fun. So what could I do to end this?

I was considering my options when Mr. I'm-A-Stupid-Hero-Wannabe-Who's-Got-Dreams-Of-Martyrdom had another bright idea. Too bad I saw him reach for the hidden gun. Too bad I was the quicker one this time... He had barely drawn the gun out that his hand dropped down; he never had the time to aim.

Amidst the geyser of blood, something sparkled with a bright green glow, piercing the darkness and making the red drops shimmer like priceless rubies as they fell into the slowly widening pool of wasted life.

Materia. Loaded on a sawn-off shotgun. Mastered.

A slow grin of victory stretched my lips. Time to get this show on the road, hotstuff.

Ignoring the pain, I dove out of my crumbling shelter and ran to the two downed men. Or rather, I zigzagged, snap rolled, dodged and jumped my way to the coveted prize. Snatching it away from the man's still warm fingers, I back flipped, putting more distance between them and me, even while their bullets trailed me like hungry dogs. However I wasn't worried about being hit again. With their aiming, not really. I just concentrated on the task on hand and ignored all other concerns, all factors exterior to this fight for supremacy, for survival.

My wounds were screaming, but I didn't exactly feel their agony, not in the conventional sense. I hurt, but that hurting was different... like the throes of passion, almost; see, I was high on the adrenaline pumping in my veins, as pure as the cleansing fires of the Goddess and as addictive as their heat in the midst of a snowstorm, sharpening my senses to supernatural heights, slowing time, burning in me like a raging inferno and turning my pain into a strange kind of ecstasy.

And this is what I do when that particular feeling surfaces:

Use the ecstasy, the pain, the wicked buzzing of it in the nervous system. Heed the beat of blood as it runs from the veins into the wound into open air, thudding as if in cadence with the warfare beat of some primitive drums; absorb it, all of it, compress it in a tight core. Until it morphs into power, power on which to feed, to become drunk on.

The call for power... so sweet, so destructive. Reach out for more. Use the feelings trapped inside to ignite the dynamo that will create more power, more energy: forget all the careful restraints, call up all the dark things buried deep down in memory and use them, turn fear, humiliation, past agony into resentment; and resentment into anger; and anger into burning hatred. And hatred... into bloodlust.

Use it to let out the killer inside, the merciless, savage side that takes control with a single purpose: death and destruction.

It was here, I could feel it, and I let go. It became me, and I became it; we were one and I was unstoppable. Immune to everything. Lethal. My Hand of Fire.

I fired before reaching the ground, and fire exploded from the gun. Aiming was accessory here, for with this type of discharge, under these conditions, my aim was always true.

I watched the most brilliant ball of orange fly away from me, scorching the air, a burning supernova of destruction, before the recoil threw me to the ground.

The men screamed.

And light exploded.

Author's notes:

Welcome to the first chapter of 'Pillars of Destiny'!

Those of you familiar with my work probably know that I usually do prologues; for once I have eschewed this revered tradition and stepped straight into the heart of the matter.

The next thing on my agenda is the identity of most of the protagonists: well, wait for the next chapter(s)! Lol, I know, it's mean of me, but this is the way it is. I like blurring lines... in fact, why don't you tell ME who those people are? XD

Ok, what all of this meant up there in the disclaimer is that I wrote this story. No one else did it for me. Don't worry; I won't repeat this kind of disclaimer at every chapter. At least, not all of it:-p

As for the plot, it was a long, painful construction and correlation of ideas, divine illuminations, insights and lucky guesses. As such, some aspects MIGHT look like stuff already published here. Just remember that as you read more of the story.

MIGHT, as in 'I-don't-know', for I haven't got the time to read each and every story that happens to be published. So that you know that I think that what I'm writing here is original. And that you don't think that I am bigheaded enough to think that some other author hasn't come up with the same conclusion(s) as I.

Oh, since you're still reading this (might I express my sincerest admiration here?), there's a special surprise if you browse MyOtaku portfolio…. So, go on my profile page and follow the link posted there! (Psst ... manga!)

I also hope that you will like what I have done. Please open your heart to this story when you read it and let it speak to it, as it has spoken to mine.

Makoto no kokoro… R&R!