//By Julie (yaoifantasy) and Wonderful Failure
//rated R for horror, gore, death, and cussing
// yaoi hints
//Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy 8 (not the characters/world/etc) -- I wish, but it just isn't happening. And the movie "Pitch Black" - don't own that either. Just ~borrowing~ for creative out-lets.
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Prologue --// Squall's POV
They say most of your brain shuts down in cryo-sleep.
All but the primitive side. The animal side.
No wonder I'm still awake.
Transporting me with civilians. 50. 50 plus.
I heard a Miko voice. Some kami ni sasagerareta woman. Probably on her way to the Hyne temple in the Soft Square galaxy. But what rout? What rout?
Smelled a woman. Sweat, boots, tool-belt, leather. Prospector type. Free settlers. And they only take the back roads.
And then there's my real problem: Mr. Almasy. The blue-eyed devil. Planning on taking me back to the Desert Prison of Gaia. Only this time he picked a ghost lane.
A long time between stops. A long for something to go wrong...
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// Author Note: Miko = Priestess -- "kami ni
sasagerareta" = dedicated to god
---
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
The cargo-ship gliding through the deep space. The void darkness between the stars. Peacefully heading towards its unsuspecting, final destination.
Buzzing alarms woke Zell from his cryo-sleep. His eyes groggily opened, seeing the flashing red-lights beeping around him.
Standing up-right in the cryo-locker, he blinked, trying to regain his mind-set. To remember where he was and what he was supposed to be doing right then.
The ship was in emergency mode: The three cryo-lockers for the skeleton crew of the cargo-ship turned off, waking the Captain, Docking Pilot, and Nav Officer.
Zell's eyes focused then went wide, realizing the state of the cargo-ship. He looked across the cabin to where the Captain was slowly waking.
Relief started to wash over the young blonde. Then, all too suddenly, small particles of Hyne-knows-what ripped through the outside hull, straight into the cabin, straight through the Captain's chest.
Blood splattered over the cracked glass case of the cryo-locker.
Fear swept through Zell. He quickly reached up to the red-handle inside the locker, pulling it as hard as he could.
The glass-case around his cryo-locker opened, allowing Zell to tumbled forward, right onto the ground. His legs weren't working quiet right yet, and he felt incredibly dizzy. Not to mention he was slightly sick from watching the Captain's chest being ripped apart.
A body fell on top of Zell's back, but forced itself up and away.
"Why'd I fall on you?!" Xu, Nav Officer of the ship, asked in a frantic voice.
"He's dead!" Zell replied. "Captain's dead. ... I was lookin' right at 'im!"
Xu pushed up onto her knees, looking at her wrist band. "Chrono shows we're 17 weeks out, so gravity wasn't supposed to kick in for another 23 weeks... I mean! Why'd I fall at all?!"
"Did ya hear what I said?!" Zell asked, pushing up himself, looking at the dark-haired woman. "Captain's dead."
Xu frowned at Zell before jumping up to her feet, frantically looking around for the appropriate thing she was supposed to be doing.
Zell stood slowly, taking another look at the shredded Captain.
"I'm on com, you go to the pilot room," Xu ordered, hurrying away from the cryo-room into the next room.
Zell mechanically headed in the opposite direction of Xu, entering the pilot room, taking the main chair.
He could barely breath. The fucking Captain was dead. And the alarms, sirens, blinking red lights.
Flipping a few buttons, trying to focus on the job of saving his own ass, Zell forced himself to remember how to pilot the old, rusty cargo-ship.
The blonde docking pilot pulled on a head-set, controlling his panic as adrenaline pumped acid through his veins.
"Dropping 20 MB per minute," Zell recited, looking around the different screens, flipping a few more switches. "... We're... hemorrhaging air! Oh shit! ... Sometin took a fuckin' swipe at us!"
Xu's voice pounded in Zell's ears from the head-set he wore. "Just tell me we're in the shipping lane! Tell me you see all those stars... Dincht? ... Dincht?!"
Zell blinked, looking in the monitor. No bright stars. No void of darkness. Only one giant, red planet getting larger and larger. They were going to fucking crash.
"Hyne above..." Zell mumbled through his chapped lips.
Xu looked over the com station. Looking over the numbers on the screen quickly, she choose a wide-distress beacon.
"We're headin' straight towards a fuckin' planet!" Zell's voice yelled in complete fear over the in-ship com system, boring into Xu's head. "We're so fuckin' dead!"
"They trained you for this, right, Dincht?" Xu asked.
No reply from Zell.
Xu shrugged it off. He'd sure as shit better have been trained for this.
Xu started the distress call. "This is Merchant-Vessel Balamb en-rout to Gaia. We have been knocked out of out-"
Static. The com was gone. Which could only mean they'd hit he atmosphere and the com-set was ripped off the ship hull.
"Hyne save us..." Xu said softly, turning to do something else useful.
The ship was dropping altitude fast. Too fast. And Zell knew he had to straighten the ship out or... they'd have an unpleasant meeting with the ground in a few minutes.
"Planet looks survivable. Oxygen, no major water bodies, land terrain stable..." Xu's voice filled Zell's head-set.
Zell pulled on handles, opening break-shutters on the outside hull, catching wind, forcing the rusty cargo-ship to slow some of its speed.
But still, the ship wasn't leveling out.
Sinking his teeth into his lower lip, Zell turned to close the hall doors of the last compartment. Purge load. Drop some weight off the butt-end of the ship, then maybe the nose would begin to turn down.
Zell near ripped the handle off as he got rid of a cargo-cabin.
"What the fuc - ...Was that a purge, Dincht?!" Xu yelled into Zell's head.
"To heavy in da ass!" Zell replied, moving his chair to purge another cabin. "Can't get my fuckin' nose down!"
Xu frowned, but let Zell continue. Dropping cargo to save lives wasn't a bad thing.
The old cargo-ship tumbled in its burning decent towards the ground. Fire encapsulated the ship, its speed hardly slowing at all from the little help the breaks and purges gave.
Zell looked with wide eyes at the screen in front of him.
"Center of Gravity too far aft. Recommended purging cabins now." the screen read.
Zell nodded, moving to close the main cabin doors.
"Purge all?" the screen read.
The doors behind Xu closed, sealing the main cabin off from the rest of the ship.
Xu turned and looked at the doors saying into the mic "Dincht, what the hell are you doing?" her voice was empty of emotion, but fear and horror filled her eyes.
"I gotta drop more load," Zell replied plainly.
Silence filled in the panic-stricken ship.
"Look," Zell continued. "I've tried everything. I'm still riding high."
"You try everything again!" Xu replied angrily. "No way do we just drop out-"
"If you know sometin I ain't seen, then get your ass up here," Zell snapped.
"SeeD says we are responsible for every single person back there!" Xu replied.
"What? We both die out o' sure fuckin' nobility?!" Zell mocked back.
"Don't you touch that handle, Dincht!!" Xu screamed, jumping up from her chair.
Zell moved his hand away from the red handle that would send 50 people to their deaths with one light pull.
Zell breathed, staring at the handle, going over the consequences in his head.
The passengers cryo-lockers began to open. People blinking their eyes, waking up from the forced sleep.
Seifer Almasy reached the red-handle in his private cryo-locker, pulling it. He fell forward, onto his knees in the dark room.
The ship shook, sirens going off, beeping and blinking everywhere.
"Don't you touch that handle, Dincht!" a woman's voice screamed.
Seifer slowly stood up in the unstable cabin.
Xu forced the cabin doors open with a manual override. Then she shoved a large metal bar between the doors, forcing them to stay open.
Sparks flew next to Xu as she jumped back.
Zell swallowed, glaring at the red handle. In a split-second decision, he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the bar.
"I ain't gonna die for dem," Zell muttered into the com, then he pulled the handle.
"Air-lock doors open. Air-lock doors open." the computer screen read, signaling an error.
Zell's eyes widened as he screamed "Xu!"
"70 seconds, Dincht. You've still got 70 seconds to level this beast out," Xu replied.
Zell screamed to himself, turning to frantically look for something else to do. Something else to bring the nose down. He slammed his hands down on a jarred button. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
The ship shook, its speed slowing down greatly as more break-shutters opened.
That was it. All Zell could do.
He breathed, looking over the screens, watching the ship level slightly, but they were still going down in a free-for-all.
Seifer looked across the dark, red-light lit cabin.
Thank Hyne above, Leonhart was still in his prison-issue cryo-locker. Shut tightly and securely. The glass labeled "Lock-Out protocol in effect. Absolutely no early release."
Seifer straightened his trench-coat, the bright-silver badge on the front shinning even in the red-light.
Other passengers were beginning to leave their cryo-lockers themselves.
Then a tremor that threw Seifer from his feet rippled through the ship.
Xu sat in the chair at the com station as the ripple hit. She was strapped into her chair, but that didn't help. The chair ripped from the posts in the floor, throwing the poor woman across the room.
Zell covered his head a second before the ship hit ground. All he could do was sit there until the ship stopped its skipping over the dirk and settled.
It was a long fucking wait when adrenaline was pumping acid through your heart. And your breath wasn't flowing any further then the top of your throat.
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