Notes:
This was written in response to the /r/fanfiction challenge yourself challenge over on reddit. The prompt I chose was Character Death/No Dialogue.
The premise is based on the idea that Terra is the best character to solo the entire Kefka battle with. I recorded SNES emulator gameplay footage of myself soloing the final battle with Terra (luckily I had a save right at the end) to get a feel of how such a battle would go.
My experience overall with this, be it the research in replaying the ending and even just flat out writing this, can be summed up with the alternate title.
As always, search for footnotes using ctrl+F.
UPDATE 4/26: Various bits have been changed either for clarity or my own personal amusement.
Cover art by Deejaymil: tinyurl*com/z2yyrsu
The End of the Longest Day (or The One Where the Final Boss is a Pushover)
It was atop the largest stone tower in the world where Terra finally came face to face with the mad clown himself, Kefka. Although, calling this tall monstrosity a stone tower was a bit of a misnomer. She thought of it more like Kefka had gathered all the technological remnants and human inhabitants of the former Gestahlian Empire and twisted them all into some form of a high-rise sky-piercer. The people of the world received this magical soul-sucking eyesore, despite not asking for it, all for the low, low price of their lives in twelve easy installments. It truly was a crazy and whacked out tower worthy of dedication to someone of Kefka's crazed and whacked out caliber. He had ruined lives, the world, and worst of all, corrupted the very gods themselves all for the glorious power of child-like destruction at a whim. This monument summed up those achievements very well.
One would do well to remember their dictator-god especially under the threat of having their arms used to make stairwell railings, soup ladles, or other rather frivolous mundane things. This was how Kefka executed his judgement and, unfortunately for everyone, the entire world was guilty. Guilt of what mattered not. Everyone had sinned in the eyes of God-Kefka. It only was a matter of time before one would be caught by his demons and made into a leather throw rug. Perhaps one would fancy being a comfy chair stuffed with phoenix down? How about dismembered and their rib cage turned into a dish rack? Have a preference? Suck it up, Princess. Only Kefka has that right to decide.
Terra and the rest of her companions had been rightfully disgusted upon entering the tower. Anyone would have been upon seeing the stone dead remains of those who had once been their adversaries. Adversaries who had been from a time when things had been easy. Returners versus the Empire. Rebels versus the Establishment. Freedom Fighters for Equal Treatment of Espers and Humans versus Emperor Gestahl Wants You! (As Slaves.) If the latter had been a slogan on a war time poster it would have been decorated with a painting of the Emperor pointing to the reader with an angry constipated look on his heavily bearded face. The margins would be littered with whatever it was that served as the dictator's symbol.[1] The slogan would be hanging out at the bottom like a couple of stoned loiterers in front of an item store. The second bit in parentheses would be written in teeny tiny text. When it had come to the Empire, one always had to read the fine print. It always spelled out how a night was going to be unpleasantly wined and dined without anything to help ease entry or stop the bleeding.
Despite the atrocities they had witnessed in the hallways, Terra and her group had pressed on. They had failed to prevent Kefka's rise to goddom, but they were going to be the ones to end it. They had fought dragons, more dragons, zombies, mechanical machinations, magic wielding lunatics who were mere shades of their former selves, and even more dragons. You name it, they had fought it, killed it, fought it a second time, then Vanish/Doomed it to get through it faster the third, fourth, and fifth times around. Kefka's tower had been like some kind of battle gauntlet that displayed no signs of stopping, a gauntlet that was proving to be taking a toll on the group.
By the time they had made it to the top, Terra had been the only one left standing. No one had died, mind you. They were just all buggered out. Not one of them had the amount of energy that Terra wielded. She was half-esper. She could go all night like a sugar-addled child hyped up on speed, cocaine, and a Haste spell. She stood just beyond the portal pad that had brought her to this desolate place shaped like a pie high in the sky. She realized with sadness that while there was no question of being high in the sky, this pie wasn't going to be tasty unless she kicked this jerk's face-painted clown ass herself.
Unlike on the ground, the wind rushed past her at a strong speed. It had been the first time since the destruction of the world, nearly a year to be exact, that she had felt her hair or red dress whip around her by the wind alone. Usually, it was wild child Gau batting her green ponytail about like a cat attacking a ball of yarn. Other times, it was artist-girl Relm flipping Terra's dress up in an attempt to embarrass her in front of Edgar or Celes by way of exposed lacey knickers.
On the far side, she could see the blood red sun, still locked in its never ending sunset just above the horizon. Its light bathed the fluffy puffy clouds in the rose golden sky, letting them think they were filled with blood, liquid gold, or pink lemonade. They weren't, but Terra wasn't going to break the news. The sight was beautiful to behold, one that words did no justice. She wanted a moment to revel in this feeling, to regain the awed breath that it had stolen. It all came to a halt when she heard the cackling coming from that dark Kefka-like shadow etched in the sun's light. That god damned incessant crazed cackling. That god damned mother fucking incessant crazed psychotic cackling. She hated it and that said a lot. Terra didn't hate much of what was left in the world. She hated not the Tonberries and their one hit kills. Nor the imps with their backward ways of speaking. Not even the elemental dragons that had attempted to kill her earned her ire.
Terra saved her hate only for Kefka and his god damn never ending neurotic cackling.[2]
She kept her face neutral. To show emotion around Kefka was practically broadcasting your next move to that bastard and giving him the upper hand. She had learned that from the last time she had gone sword to sword with him. Last time, she had lost and the world had crumbled. This time would be different. She was prepared this time. She hoped anyway.
With haste, Terra went over the checklist of items, charms, and trinkets she'd need for the battle. Gengi Gloves for enhanced arm defense while dual wielding? Check. Box of Economizer Gems to help focus her magical abilities and reduce wasted magic energy? Check. Ribbon charmed with Esuna to protect against sleep and transformative magic? She touched the base of her ponytail to discover that it was indeed still where she had tied it days ago. Paladin Shield to absorb Fire, Ice, and Lightning magic tossed her way? Strapped to her back for decoration. Dragoon Boots to leap high in the air farther than physics should normally allow? She clicked her heels together and inwardly grinned. Newton would be spinning in his grave.
That appeared to be everything and in order. She topped off the ensemble by unsheathing her twin blades, Lightbringer the Holy Sword and Ragnarok the Fresh Flare Maker, before relaxing into a loose battle stance. She decided that she'd attempt to defeat the cackling Kefka with a death glare alone. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work. The general consensus of the group had been that her cuteness and adorableness levels were much too high to make anyone fear her, let alone die from a look. She was too much like an angry moogle in that she wasn't very intimidating at all. Unlike the moogle, she possessed magic enough to fry her enemies like crispy bacon, an ability that would be as useful in this battle as it was at breakfast time.
She took a step forward and immediately had to step back. She shielded herself from bright white light originating from everywhere, yet nowhere. Her ears rang from the thunderous explosion. The air adopted the stench of rain and ozone and crackled with the buzz of electricity. She knew what that had been. Kefka's Light of Judgement. He had just destroyed a town, which one she knew not, as if firing off a warning shot, as if warning her not to step closer.
How many more people had to die at his hands? How many more people had to die because she had been too weak to defeat him in the past? Because she had been too weak to break free from the slave crown he had used to control her? Because Celes had been too self-engrossed with her own insecurities to realize that Terra had been controlled by said slave crown? Because General Leo had been too blinded by loyalty to see the writing on the wall and the warning of things to come? Because Emperor Gestahl had been the power hungry zealot who had started this mess in the first place?
Gestahl had paid for his sins the moment Kefka had usurped the power of the gods from him. Stabbed, burnt to a furry crispy critter, and then discarded over the side of the floating island as if nothing more than bearded human garbage.
Leo had paid for his sins when Kefka had slaughtered him in Thamasa during a rampage for espers' magical powers, a nightmarish sight that Terra would take with her to her grave. Leo had been a good man, despite his flaws, and hadn't deserved being forced to paint the battlefield with his innards as he had.
Celes had atoned for her sins by painstakingly searching for the entire group over the last year. Her goal had been to bring them together for this one final moment. The words had never been spoken, but Terra knew that Celes felt horrible for never rescuing her from that slave crown. She had only played the part of the MagiTek Knight in shining armor for her after the fact. The words had never been spoken, but Terra had forgiven her a long time ago. Maybe after all this was said and done, she'd rectify that and tell her just what their friendship meant.
And then there was Terra and her continual neutral glaring at Kefka. Her sins demanded revenge and Kefka's retribution served to him on a silver platter. She'd do it even if she had to die in the process. He was the sole reminder of the childhood and innocence that had been stolen from her. She needed to file that reminder away, preferably six feet under the ground and in a multitude of pieces.
Speaking of… She wondered in silence if Kefka had always hovered high above the ground. In fact, did he always have large feathered wings growing from his back? Was he always the size of…Figaro Castle? And had muscles that put Sabin's to shame?
She swallowed hard and took a nervous step back. He had powerful alteration magic at his disposal. It was going to take a lot to knock him down and doubt was high that her favored combo of Vanish and Doom would do the trick. She didn't even have faith in the lesser used alternative of Vanish and X-Zone.
No! She had come this far! She couldn't give up now! The others, no, the world was counting on her!
And thus, the final battle had begun.
As the angelic-like Kefka cackled his trademark cackle, Terra could have used that moment to make the first blow. She decided against it. She surrounded herself with the spinning clocks and red light of a Haste spell to improve her speed and reflexes. Kefka, however, made no move to attack. He just floated there, wings flapping with powerful strokes, almost as if he were mocking her. In actuality, he had. The fact that he raised a hand and motioned for her to come at him with his fingers told her so.
Terra wasn't going to disappoint. She ran across the cobblestones, her feet teasing the ground with light feathered touches. A battle plan formed in her head. Once she reached the halfway point, she'd leap high to the sky and come down with her blades. Her hope was that would bring her close enough to-
Her thoughts were cut off when a demonic cherub collided with her. It screeched and attacked her with claws, horns, and teeth the likes she had never seen before on any sort of child-like creature. Time to react was nonexistent as it exploded in a ball of noxious flame that sent her careening across the battlefield. She came skidding to a stop near the edge.
Under normal circumstances, Terra would have peered over the edge to reflect on how close she had come to her end. There was no time for reflection at this moment. She did, however, marvel at the notion that she had managed to hold on to both her blades. She rose to her feet and ignored the screaming pain in her chest, the bloody scratches on her arms, and the pungent smell of melted hair.
She took off running at the speed of a greased and frightened cat once again. This time, she kept her eye on Kefka and was ready when he sent a pillar of flames her way. Thanks to the Paladin Shield on her back, she passed through without harm and even felt a tad refreshed from the act.
She reached her mark and leapt ridiculously high into the air, courtesy of her Dragoon Boots. Once again, Kefka attempted to strike her, this time with his hands, like a child trying to swat an annoying buzzing fly. He soon found himself distracted by a series of fireballs shot at him from the tips of her blades. Two of the three were swatted away, but the third one connected, setting his wings on fire.
The heartless angel cackled with lunacy before surrounding himself with crackling red and white light in an attempt to hit Terra. Unfortunately for him, she had been too far in the air and out of his range. Unfortunately for her, she was quickly falling into it. Its energy made the hair on her arms and back of her neck stand on end. She started to feel its burning coldness.
She forced herself through it and, as she fell faster and faster, readied herself for the blow. She struck gold, hard and fast, by embedding the blades into his broadside of the barn-sized chest. Kefka bellowed in pain and managed to swat her away with the force of a freight train.
As Terra hit the ground with a roll, she heard the familiar sounds of her enchanted swords triggering their spells. She looked up in time to watch Lightbringer bathe Kefka in the pearly light and angelic choirs of Holy. This was soon followed by Ragnarok setting fire to him with nuclear-like explosions.
Kefka bellowed once again in what Terra calculated to be an immeasurable amount of pain. His scream was so loud that it and its subsequent echoes shook the entire tower they were fighting on. He gripped his billowing hair as if to pull it out and wavered from side to side like a large drunken angel.
Terra was about to claim a victory until the sky began to darken. Her surroundings were being blocked out by some form of black oppressive energy. She felt it in her head, weaseling its way in and forcing her inner fears to the forefront of her consciousness; her fear of death, her fear of Kefka. She rose to her feet once again, this time with a pain hitched huff. As much as she wanted it to be over right now, it wasn't. She began charging her next spell in her hands, the tingle of energy bringing her comfort and subsiding her fears.
Her friends and the children she had adopted had all taught her to stand for what she believed in. She believed in a world free of Kefka. She believed in the warmth and strength of her magic. She believed in herself. She believed that there was someone who could show her the meaning of love. She believed that if she continued this train of thought any longer that she'd start sounding like a self-help book.
With an unintelligible war cry, Terra took off running in Kefka's direction once again. He cackled his piercing laugh and held a palm out in her direction. Terra only vaguely noticed the ball of red light hovering there. She was keeping her eyes on her goals; the swords still embedded in Kefka's bourbon barreled chest.
She leapt into the air once more, but this time straight for her swords. She passed through the same hot and cold spell as earlier and cried out as her hands collided with the hilts. She fought to hang on as Kefka attempted to shake her off. No, it wasn't going to end here! She glared up at his large and bulbous head but found that he wasn't even looking at her. He was silently cackling. The pupils of his eyes were completely gone. There was no noise coming from his mouth. It was if he were just going through the motions.
The blackness now hung about the air like a mist of sour pea soup.
A niggling in the back of Terra's mind told her that it was time. Her ultimate destruction spell was now ready for use. She ripped her twin blades from bloody flesh, once again triggering the Holy and Flare enchantments. This time, there was a twist. As she fell to the ground, she unleashed her own charged spell, Ultima.
A green ball of light formed at Kefka's chest and expanded outwards in a slow, yet alarmingly destructive rate. He somehow managed to scream and laugh at the same time, a feat Terra had never seen before. Her hands shook as she willed the energy to expand and generate the power of all the elements and their anti-counterparts in one destructive spell. Fire, Lightning, Ice, Gravity, Holy, Earth, Wind, Water, Warp; none were ignored. All were called upon.[3]
Tears welled in her eyes as she poured her entire being into her task. She ignored the searing pain. She ignored the subharmonics of low rumbling as well as the high pitched sounds of nails dragged along concrete. She closed her eyes to lessen the pain from the bright flashing green and yellow light.
It sounded as if the world had exploded and then reassembled itself into the drip of a drop of water from a stalactite. Of course, it goes without saying that this also smelled of carbon, ozone, and pine as if it had been mixed in a large bucket and left to rot in the sun.
Terra laid on her back and stared up at the pale pink sky. She was still alive and sore all over. The black mist had lifted, leaving the world crystal clear. The wind had died. All noise was completely gone. Silent. Save for one. Labored breathing followed by weak psychotic cackling. Okay, make that two.
She rose up to her feet with the gentleness of a turtle and attempted not to wobble to her face. It was then she discovered Kefka lying on the cobblestones not too far away. He had reverted to his normal self. Standard human size, no wings, a scrawny little man who was more arms and legs with a body than a body with arms and legs.
He laid on his back. His breathing was labored as if his lungs had been frozen. His hair and jester's robes smoldered and smoked, in some places heat-fused with his skin. A pool of dark blood spread out around him and covered his chest and face.
Terra looked down at the broken man at her feet. Part of her wanted to feel sorry for him, especially now that he was powerless and bested in battle. He was sick and needed some sort of special care and attention, but… She couldn't shake the feeling of contempt. He had known all along what he had been doing, from keeping her as a slave, to the poisoning of the Kingdom of Doma, to his ascension to goddom.
He had taken most of everything away from them.
There was one exception, especially now, that he couldn't take away. One thing precious to her that would forever be hers; the ability to end his life.
Keeping her emotions in check, Terra made eye contact with him. She could see it in his eyes. He was cursing her. He was screaming his hate in silence. This was speculation, of course. Whether he was or not didn't matter. She no longer cared.
Terra kneeled in the puddle of liquid copper and regarded Kefka once more. She had two options: speed his death along quickly or walk away, never looking back, never returning. If she chose the second, then there was always the chance he could recover despite the injuries and seek revenge upon herself and those she held dear. The first he didn't deserve, but it was the only way to know for certain.
She reached out with her tiny trembling hands and wrapped them around his neck. She squeezed as if she were squeezing juice from an orange. She took great care to force her thumbs into his Adams apple. She watched with a mixture of amusement and horror as he began thrashing about and making noises like a voiceless buffoon. He choked blood all over her arms, chest, face, and hair. He was trying to laugh, but finally, he couldn't. That stupid laugh was quiet and finally silenced! She kept her face emotionless throughout. She didn't want to give him the pleasure of knowing that she was enjoying his final silent moments, no matter how bloody they were. She didn't want him to know that she was just as equally appalled at the fact that she was taking a life with her own hands.
She continued squeezing even long after he had gone still and silent. Long after the light had faded from his eyes. Long after his struggled wheezing breaths had ceased. Long after her fingers started to ache. For extra measure, she set him on fire and bashed his head on the cobblestones until all that was left was a charred, bloody mess.
It was over.
And it had been painfully easy.
Terra stood and regarded her bloody hands and clothes. It was over. It was finally over. She had taken his life, and it had been so ridiculously easy. She had killed a god. She tearfully laughed more as a stress relief than because of happiness. In all honesty, she still felt empty inside. There had been no fanfare to announce her victory. No post-battle dance. No bigger and badder reincarnated forms of Kefka to fight. Just silence.
Her childhood hadn't been returned to her nor was Doma back on the maps and populated once more. Her human mother, her esper father and the other espers with him remained causalities. Mobliz was still destroyed, the children the only survivors. The world was still withered, dead, and a post-apocalyptic wasteland. None of that changed. She had hoped to feel something, anything other than this overwhelming emptiness upon her victory. But nothing had changed.
No, she stood corrected. The sun. The sun was in a different position than it had been over the last year and a bit. It was actually moving in the sky! It was setting! Could this mean…?
Was the world finally back on its way to recovery?
She felt the slender hand on her shoulder before she saw the person it belonged to. Celes. A bruised and injured Celes. Somehow, seeing a bright and beautiful smile from someone who rarely smiled was comforting, lifting. Perhaps Terra, like the rest of the world, needed to stop focusing on what had been and instead focus on what was to come.
Tears fell from her eyes as she felt herself pulled into a warm, comforting hug to ease her trembling. The world's longest day was finally coming to an end. The dawn of a new day was finally on its way. Until that moment came, she decided she needed something new to focus on. She'd focus on who was with her in the now. She'd focus on how they were now free to live their lives as they chose. Not just the two of them, but all of them, the entire world.
Terra looked up into eyes of blue and opened her mouth to speak, to tell all that was on her mind. Instead, she shook her head and abandoned the action. Not now. She wanted to enjoy this moment, the silent acknowledgement of a new beginning. She clutched tighter the fabric of Celes' cape and buried her face in the warm arms around her. There would be plenty of time for talking later. She chose, for the first time in a long time, to spend the rest of the day with her best friend and silently watch the sun disappear behind the horizon.
[1] No one had any idea what it was. A black rose? A screaming dog with a deformed ear? A woman with a deformed neck looking into a microphone? A heart swallowed alive by a shapeless black void? The South Figarian rich man who had betrayed his town to the Empire? With all the major Imperial players dead, except for Terra (who was clueless), Celes (who cared less), and Kefka (whom no one was on good speaking terms with), the world would forever be curious.
[2] There was also Humbaba for attacking her children in Mobliz, but she had taken care of that. Oh, yes. Ancient demon or not, he had found out the hard way not to cross with Terra Branford or her young charges.
[3] There was also a lesser known element known as heart. No MagiTek Knight, or even esper for that matter, in their right mind specialized in such an element. For starters, it wasn't one of the cool elements. Enemies didn't burst into flames or get frozen into ice blocks. Wounds didn't heal. Enemies just became friendly and wounds would still be there. Where's the fun in that? This school of magic also required one to have a pet monkey and to worship an effeminate blue humanoid esper known only as "El Capitán Planeta."