A/N: In case it's not clear from reading the story, this one-shot is told by Maester Kinoc. It starts in the part of FFX where Yuna is about to marry Seymour. As an aside, keep in mind this is a first-person fan-fiction, and Kinoc's often-repellant opinions certainly aren't mine.
To wrap things up, Final Fantasy isn't mine either. With that out of the way, enjoy the story!
This morning was beautiful here in Bevelle, but I hardly noticed. I was standing near Seymour—Maester Seymour, I should say, though I hate to admit his title. I glanced up at the lovely, white clouds in the sky. Bad enough that he was marrying Yuna in the first place, but that I should be the one marrying them to each other? By Yevon…
I suppose I should give a little background. I am Kinoc, Maester of Yevon, and this morning, I was marrying my fellow Maester, Seymour, to the summoner Yuna.
Yes, Seymour—the most recent addition to the small group of Maesters, and the one I trusted least.
It was minutes before I would start the vows, and I had firmly decided to use them thinking of anything but this travesty of a wedding. I looked at the guards, here as much to keep Yuna in check as to guard from intruders. I looked at Seymour, his comical hat topping his even more comical hair. The things topping his head always managed to amuse me, though nothing else about the half-breed son-of-a-shoopuf did.
"Nervous, Kinoc?" Seymour asked me, his smug grin in place.
"I should ask the same of you," I grunted back, hoping my dislike of him didn't show through.
"It won't be long before we start, will it?"
"Look, I'm the one doing the ceremony, it's my choice!" I practically yelled at him in irritation. Ah, Sin take it, I didn't care whether he knew it…the man made my skin crawl. Whenever he looked at me, I knew he was sizing me up for a fight. He had killed Jyscal, and he could try to kill me. Well, he could try… I'd never let him succeed, but he could try.
Seymour just grinned at my outburst. Well, he was always grinning, but more so right then. "Sorry," I muttered.
"Oh, no, I was at fault. My apologies."
Then came the vows, the long boring things that I recited with the precision and lack of thought you'd expect from a Machina. As I was getting near the end of them, I saw this thing in the sky. I mean, not like a fiend or an Aeon, just a…thing. A big, metal thing, just flying along. I ignored it and continued with the vows.
The thing got closer, and I could see it was some kind of Machina…Al Bhed, no doubt. This I couldn't ignore. A few metal chords snaked down from the thing, and I barked an order: "Men, fire!"
Yuna's guardians surfed down the cables coming from the Machina—if it had been anyone else doing that, I would have called it a miracle of Yevon.
"Kill them quickly," Seymour said to me. "I want to marry my bride as soon as possible."
"Do it yourself," I felt like saying, but I didn't, instead going with, "Of course, Maester Seymour."
The guardians cleared through all our Machina and Machina-wielding troops in surprising time. Another miracle, I mused. I pulled out a Machina weapon and aimed it at the guardians, trapping them.
"No!" Yuna cried.
"Don't," I warned, my gut silently crying in agony. Yuna was a traitor, but even she didn't deserve to be stuck with Seymour in 'holy matrimony'.
"Marry me," Seymour said, "and your friends…they will not be harmed."
I finished the vows, and Seymour and Yuna were married. At that point, Seymour gave the order—"Kill them." The son-of-a-shoopuf was a sneaky one, I had to admit.
What he didn't notice, and I refused to point out to him, was that Yuna had walked over to the edge of a balcony near us.
"Don't shoot!" she said, with feeling. "Don't shoot, or I'll jump!"
And she would, I could tell. "Yuna…" one of the guardians, the blond-haired young man, said.
"Don't worry," she said to him. "I…I can fly!"
Now this was just insane. I was torn here, I have to say, whether to be happy because this was so bad for Seymour or sad that things worked out so badly for Yuna, who apparently had lost her mind.
"Yuna, let's be reasonable," Seymour said, and approached her.
"No! Get back!"
He walked closer, and Yuna jumped off the balcony.
In moments, he was at the edge of the balcony, staring down. I was beside him. Who cared about the guardians now…this was exciting, horrifying!
Suddenly, a light appeared, and I knew I had seen it before. A silhouette of a giant bird appeared, and it came to me—this was an Aeon summon! Yuna had summoned an Aeon to save her. I looked back, but by now, the guardians had gotten away.
We caught them quickly…predictably, they had run to the Fayth. "What are you smirking at?" I said to Seymour, as we waited for them to arrive for trial.
"Oh, nothing," he replied. He was plotting something, I could tell, but there was nothing I could do.
Kelk Ronso began the trial with a winding speech. In honesty, I was nearly bored to tears, and I didn't pay much attention until his voice raised at the end: "Since you, Summoner Yuna, have done this disgraceful thing, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"I did what I did," Yuna began, "for the sake of Maester Jyscal!" Kelk Ronso grunted confusedly. "Maester Seymour killed his father!" Now Kelk Ronso looked quite confused, and I smiled. The Ronso was the only Maester who I knew wouldn't stab me in the back, if only because of his ignorance. He was the only Maester who hadn't known about that murder.
Yuna pushed on. "Maester Mika, Seymour is already dead. Let me send him!"
Now Mika laughed. "Send him? I suppose after that you'll have to send me." He let a few pyreflies appear around him.
Yuna gasped.
So they were sentenced and sent to the Via Purifico—a dungeon for traitors, which no one escapes alive. Seymour and I are walking now towards the exit to the dungeon, to guard against the unlikely event that the guardians escape.
"Ready for a fight?" Seymour asks me.
"They won't escape," I say.
I notice the knife in his hand and realize that he's talking about a fight between me and him. I always knew he was plotting something, I think, the blood escaping my side. And then I fall to a final sleep.
THE END.