AN: Aaaand - here's book four!
Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter One ~ Wrong and Right
The sound of the wind, screaming as it whipped around Balamb Garden's structure, was clearly audible in the silence of the office. It was almost loud enough to be the cause of the nervous fidgeting of five people seated at the long conference table - but not quite.
They had lost the Galbadian Garden Fleet because of the wind's sudden increase in fury. The hurricane-strong winds pulling in opposite directions had caused most of the ships to flounder, and left the rest defenceless against the Sawfish that had been attacking.
Balamb Garden itself had sustained substantial damage when it was blown out of the pilot's control, mercifully into the sea rather than the Gaulg mountains. There had been four deaths - all in the initial chaos - but the toll might have been higher had Zell not come up with an ingenious plan to slow the Garden's speed before they crashed into FH. Of course, they had still crashed, but much slower, and structural damage was all that the Garden or FH had suffered.
"What's with the weather anyways?" Zell finally asked, addressing the only figure neither fidgeting nor seated.
"A magical imbalance." Squall explained concisely, turning from his observation of the clouded skies and leaning back against the window, arms folded.
"A what?" Mayor Dobe enquired, understanding the words, but not their meaning - or implications.
"Too much magic concentrated in one place." Xu clarified. "But how?" She frowned, thinking it through. "Unless..." Worried comprehension dawned on all the SeeDs at the same time.
"Unless...?" The Mayor of Balamb prompted, already feeling out of his depth.
"Kylari has been killing sorceresses and taking their powers." Quistis answered slowly. Zell frowned.
"Wait, shouldn't that mean the wind should be changing direction with her movements?" Now both Mayors looked lost. "Uh, think of a sheet of rubber." Zell resorted to the classroom explanation in an attempt to clarify what they were talking about. "Magic is like small lead weights that distort it - so sorceresses tend to spread themselves out." He rubbed the back of his neck in agitation. "The more power, the bigger the weight - the bigger the weight the greater the pull..."
Impressive, Seifer thought, watching Zell with a little more respect. Then again, he ~had~ simply repeated, almost word for word, what they told all SeeD cadets.
The Mayors nodded sagely, fooling no one into thinking that they actually understood. Mayors were for dealing with people and physical problems. In their minds SeeD were for dealing with sorceresses and magical problems.
"Edea mentioned that Kylari felt able to dispense of Rinoa - but we know she's still alive." Seifer began, praying that no one would ask ~how~ they knew. A sorcerer was one thing, but if it got out that 'sorcerer' was basically a nicer way of saying 'necromancer', half their allies were likely to commit mass suicide - or simply keel over in fear. "Kylari knows we can track her if she has the weather following her every move - it would act like a beacon." Plus it would make her magic harder to control, the results of even a simple spell unpredictable. "She doesn't want that."
Squall watched silently as Quistis, Zell and Xu put the pieces of information together to form a tentative conclusion.
"Rinoa is imprisoned in the Centra tower. She has the powers of all the sorceresses except Kylari herself." The brunette sorcerer quietly confirmed. There was a soft hiss of surprise from Xu, but otherwise silence.
"So...what now?" Quistis finally asked. "Do we try and free Rinoa? Maybe she'll help us now she knows better?" Xu noticed with alarm that both the Mayor of Balamb and Mayor Dobe had identical glazed expressions. But as she opened her mouth to say something, Seifer caught her gaze and shook his head. Xu paled and shot a sidelong glance at Squall, realising the brunette was responsible.
"I plan to lead a combined force against the Galbadian army. For them to have kept coming so long, Kylari must be driving and reinforcing them." Xu watched as the Mayor's gazes cleared, wondering what, if anything, they would remember from that brief period.
"FH can shelter the refugees from Galbadia and Balamb." Mayor Dobe admitted, almost grudgingly. "We can adapt the Sun Panel to hold several hundred people comfortably." The sad truth being, of course, that there were barely 150 refugees and non-combatants ~to~ shelter. Squall nodded.
"Then I would ask that you do so." He responded, more ordering than requesting, but not quite demanding. His gaze switched to the Mayor of Balamb. "I leave it to you and..." He glanced a question at Xu.
"SeeD rank 28 Cera Dimante." She replied, not expecting the question and giving the rank as well as the name of her civilian coordinator in her surprise.
"You and Cera to coordinate the relocating of the refugees." The Mayor nodded. "Quistis, Xu, I'll leave you to detail your own arrangements for non-combatants in the Gardens." The two women nodded.
There was a long pause.
"As soon as possible." Squall hinted, just as Seifer cleared his throat and rolled his eyes towards the door.
***
"Why didn't you answer my question Squall?" Quistis asked, almost scowling at him in a mixture of irritation and confusion. "Morale is almost rock bottom - think what a boost it would be for them to know we're going after Rinoa, that we might stand a chance..." Squall and Seifer shared an unreadable look.
"It's like a see-saw." Seifer finally answered, slowly and carefully, for once thinking about his words before saying them. "If you promised a kid a puppy for their birthday, sure, they'd be over the moon. But if you had to break that promise? By not promising anything, even by implication, there's hope, but no one sets those hopes up for a fall."
"What are you saying?" Quistis whispered, her expression enough to tell everyone that she, like the others, already knew what Seifer was saying.
"We can't go after Rinoa - as an ally, or an enemy."
It was Squall who pronounced the final judgement, his back turned to them once more. He was leaning against the large window as if it was the only thing holding him up, his forehead and hands pressed to the glass. His right hand was clenched into a fist, giving the impression of someone on the edge of frustrated violence. Perhaps he was - no one else in the room, even Seifer, could tell.
"Why?" Xu asked, alert - ready to react on an instant's warning. The tension in the room built...and vanished with Squall's soft sigh. The brunette turned, standing at ease, reminding everyone for a second that Squall had never asked for - never wanted - the high-ranking position that had been thrust upon him. And he'd been bound by what he saw as his duty to remain as Commander when he could have stepped down - Seifer knew that much.
"At 04h00 this morning we received a message from the Shumi." Seifer wondered if the others felt any sense of guilt, listening to Squall slip so easily back into the mentality of a SeeD delivering a report to his superiors, but he doubted they even realised what the brunette was doing. After all, they had never really managed to pierce the numerous veils that concealed the true Squall - even he, Squall's knight and lover, hadn't managed that, despite his best efforts. They probably just thought that he was detaching himself from bad news, never realising that, as easily as slipping on an old pair of slippers, Squall had slipped into his old cadet personality.
"They've been monitoring magical events in the world for almost as long as their civilisation has existed." Squall continued. "And they've identified the creation of a Weapon." Only Xu, never having seen or fought a weapon, didn't immediately grasp the enormity of the brunette's words. Even so, everyone had heard the capital letter drop into place with a foreboding finality. But... The Ultima and Omega weapons had been defeated - even if the wildly exaggerated tales of how close-run the battle with Omega had been, weren't as exaggerated as many thought. The Phoenix GF had come close to achieving the status of deity after that battle. Memories were fickle though, and just as every summer of their childhood had been a golden idyll, every battle won had been a walkover, every battle survived merely 'tough'.
"So we bust the Weapon up and get Rinoa - or someone distracts the Weapon whilst someone else gets Rinoa." Zell shrugged, expression clearly one of 'how hard can it be?'.
"The Weapon is the Centra Weapon." Squall remarked, almost off-hand. Zell shrugged again, clearly not seeing the problem.
"It's the ~Island~ Chickenwuss!" Seifer burst out, tired of the way Squall was dancing around the point. "You want to go try beat a fucking ~rock~ into dust - feel free." Zell gaped, as did Quistis. Xu merely looked bewildered. "The only consolation is that no one can get to Rinoa - not even Kylari." Not yet anyway - but he wisely didn't add the false hope that they might beat Kylari in figuring out how to defeat, or outwit, the Centra Weapon.
"An Island? A Weapon? The ~whole~ Island?" Zell looked almost as bewildered as Xu, and sounded more than slightly disbelieving.
"~Yes~, Chickenwuss. The whole Island - including the 90% that you can't see. It draws its energy straight from the core of the world, meaning if you want to destroy it, you have to blow up the world. Now, maybe it's just me, but I ~like~ living, and that's gonna be hard if there's nowhere to live." Seifer huffed impatiently, watching as his sarcastic words slowly sank in. "Can't approach by sea because of tsunamis. Can't approach by air because of volcanoes. If we did make it onto the Island we'd face earthquakes, chasms opening beneath us without warning, volcanoes erupting under our feet - not to mention all the monsters we'd have to fight on a ~normal~ day." He muttered, pre-empting Zell's protests and watching with satisfaction as the blond's mouth snapped shut in irritation.
"How would Rinoa know how to make a Weapon though?" Quistis mused thoughtfully, as much thinking out loud as asking a question. "I mean, I know she saw Ultima and Omega, but an entire Island? Not exactly similar." Xu, by this point, had a fair idea of the problem.
"There must be records...somewhere." The Galbadian Commander decided. "After all, Ultemecia knew how to create Omega." It was a sound theory, and it made sense, but Seifer frowned.
"Yeah, but think, the Centra Weapon is unassailable - the Omega Weapon was avoidable..." Xu frowned, not missing the embarrassed blush that spread across Zell's face. It wasn't common knowledge that the blond had been the one to summon the Omega Weapon on the unsuspecting Squall, Irvine and Rinoa, but...there were rumours. "If Ultemecia could have made an Island Weapon she would have done - and probably sooner..." Seifer's frown deepened, and he glanced at Squall. "Edea?" He queried. Squall nodded with a sigh.
"The timing's right, and she has lived there for a long time. But the question remains - where would Edea get that sort of information?"
"Esthar's been closed off to the world for centuries..." Zell spoke slowly, following the thoughts as they unravelled in his mind. "So they won't have lost so much of their tradition, their knowledge, or their fears." Squall knew that was true from his memories of Esthar just prior to their first retreat from the world. "What if the sorceresses of Esthar were afraid that they might come under attack, and decided to create a weapon that fitted their xenophobia?"
"They'd have the resources to do it." Quistis agreed. "And if Adel had Odine and his predecessor working on it..." Everyone knew Odine's reputation for boasting. If Edea had asked, he would have told her. No one offered any objections, the loudest seal of approval the theory could receive.
"So what ~do~ we do?" Xu asked, already dimly aware of what the answer would be.
"We go after Kylari, in Galbadia."
***
Squall was thankful no one had thought to ask about the possibility of teleporting in and out. Not that it ~was~ possible - but there was another way that sorcerers could travel. The same way they could circumvent iron doors barring their path, or cell doors with iron bars... Still, even though it could be done, it could not. There was more at stake here than anyone yet realised - not the existence of the world, some form of that would continue, but the future of humanity. A long, long time ago - so long that he was the only one, with his genetic memories, who still knew the truth - a grave wrong had been done to humanity. Oh, it had been done with the best intentions of course, but still... To right that wrong and restore balance - at least temporarily - another wrong had been done to humanity, but this with no illusions as to where the road of the future would lead. Two wrongs didn't make a right, but...if the death of one person was a tragedy, whilst the death of a million people was simply a statistic, couldn't a bigger wrong, a wrong so great that no one was untouched by it, become a right?
AN:Uh... not as long as I thought... Plans for the end of this fic have taken a not-completely unexpected twist evil grin I swore I'd never do what I'm going to do as well - but you'll have to wait and find out what that is smirksAnyway, consider this a sort of 'teaser' for book four ;p
RxR!