Alchemy's Law
They missed out the part where ascending to seeD equates to the seeding of darkness in your heart.
AnonymousPOV.
Apply standard ffviii disclaimer here.
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You live your life in dreams and colors and flowers. Where you spend summers dreaming of flying kites and one day piloting an airship around your school. You dream of honeymoon romances spent elsewhere, of blue skies floating around in your head as you transcend time with your loved ones, and you dream of coming home each day with bouquet of roses in your hands to present to your family and friends.
It is a lovely dream---
Then it is not, when you watch all of those imaginary beautiful sandcastles crash before your eyes when you insert that sword into your belt, tug your gloves onto your fingers, cling tightly onto that silver blade shimmering in the sky, and pray to whomever in the sky to watch over you as you involve yourself fiercely in a fight as if you are readying for a three-thousand-year war. You spend hours convincing yourself this is merely temporary, that once it is over, you can revert back to your old lifestyle at night, laughing and whispering sweet nothings to your beloved. You wait—it does not happen. The war continues.
Everywhere you go, they eye you as if you are the enemy. The spotlight is not on you and your positive traits. It is on the knife that you hide behind your jacket as you parade around the towns and cities praying that the monsters and competent rivals on the opposing ends do not find you and rain on your parade. You patrol, you spy, you sneak around like you are on the wanted list; an S-Class criminal. At first, it makes you feel good. At first, the glory, the status, the elitism gets to you—it makes you feel light; higher than air itself. Like a balloon. Floating, floating.
Then it pierces:
When you enter into a pub to sit and merely wish for a jug of beer and nobody serves you because they are too frightened by the weapons sitting underneath your trenchcoat, hidden in sight. When you approach the pretty girl dancing out on the floor, and she screeches in fright and run away because you cannot ever get rid of that murderous look on the face trained on you since the day you ascended the ranks. When you realize one day you are becoming too hardened by fights and neverending rivalries established across continents, and in trying to soften and melt the armors around your heart, it hits you that they have established permanence around your body and mind and everywhere.
And all those fascinating fantasies you used to talk about when you were younger, the ones that involve daydreams, hours spent doodling hearts into your notebook, checking the cute-looking newcomer next door, sharing jokes with fellow classmates --- you don't recognize loss when you feel them dissipate between your fingers like a breath of thin air.
It all happens overnight, and so fast, you have barely time to breathe.
It doesn't take long before you realize in order to survive in this harsh world where you thrive these days, adaptation is vital to survival, and the only possible choice is to change in this new world; habitat; environment – the one that resembles a killing field, a warzone, a dog-eat-dog world where the strong survive and the weak die. Draw your sword from your sheath a second late, and you will diminish in no time, chewed away like bones made out of nothing.
Back then, you were sweet seventeen blowing seventeen candles on your ice-cream candied cake with your friends tossing pieces of icing into your face and having a blast of time. Pictures, photographs – these are your happiest memories.
Now, you are eighteen. You have money more than anybody else could want. You have a rank, you have status and recognition---things people around you would die for, and you know your old friends who left you today are jealous and envious like anything.
There is no cake, and you spend your birthday this year slicing eighteen strokes down on the enemy.
One, two, three... eighteen.
Happy birthday, you tell yourself.
You receive a beep from your handset that reports your accomplished task and your next upcoming mission. The sum of your paycheck flashes and something swirls within your chest. Pride, satisfaction ---and something else you cannot pinpoint, but are learning to eventually now.
...Thrill, adrenaline-pumping excitement.
Your life is changing, and it scared you at first how the bewildering speed this roller coaster ride is taking you places you never dreamt of—something beyond those summer flings, flirtatious girls on the beach strolling in bikinis, boy friends coming over to your place drinking and gaming the night away—
You spent your eighteenth birthday and that year a drastically different, disaparate lifestyle.
You learnt to kill, you learnt to live for the money, and you learnt that slowly inevitably growing feeling in your heart as you take your next enemy down is the sadistic satisfication to see yet another one die before your eyes, in front of your feet, by your sword.
You lost a heart, but you gained something rarer, something that will last you a lifetime and longer.
They say seeD can change you. You didn't use to believe all those rumors --- of how ascending to seeD is like the law of alchemy. It takes away your innocence, destroys your idealistic daydreams and your crazy ideals you used to have as a child. Forces you to grow up and be stronger until it pushes you beyond your limits and you discover the monster sleeping inside your heart for long years.
You didn't use to believe all that crap. You laughed at how seeD can't change what you stand for all your life thus far—friendship, love, emotions. Surely these are more important than anything else.
(Then you realize that doesn't explain how you've lost so many people in your life, and you didn't care.)
It hits you.
Ascendancy to the ranks brings about severe repercussions.
And you used to laugh when you say you wouldn't change.
...You already have.
End ---