"That Day of Infamy"
Author's Note: I own nothing but the characters I introduce, who I may or may not use in my original projects. That Day of Infamy (named after an Arditi song) marks the end of the Third Sorceress War series, now retitled "The Five Wars Period" both in canon and in name. The reading order, including side stories, goes: Estranged, Cold Metal, The Few Remaining Strands, Ashes, The Third Sorceress War (Parts I-III), The Fated Children, Until There's Nothing Left of Us, Elegy and That Day of Infamy. The final installment starts between chapters 16 and 17 of Elegy and moves on beyond its end. In a general sense, the events of this story take place roughly 25 years after the end of the original game. If you have read so far, I salute you.
Prologue
(The First Three Hours.)
(Day -2)
Brea stepped out onto the front entrance and lit up a cigarette. She pressed her back to the wall. Under the bright spotlights of the Ragnarok, she felt slighted, humbled. Beyond the light, just as small silhouettes, she could see a few curious, but still cautious, civilians glaring her way. She ignored them. They looked like background decorations to her. Just a parade, an endless parade, in this very city, twenty-five years ago, where the dancers had heralded the opening salvos of a war quarter of a century old now... a war that had consumed everyone, engulfing all in the unending barrage of death and destruction that it had wrought, that they had wrought.
The memory of the parade was still fresh in her mind, and Brea knew that this was a residual effect. The pooled past of the Sorceress, a chaotic whirlpool of memories, between King Zebalga's tent and now, the Presidential Palace of the city Brea had seen destroyed once already was coming alive inside her. Her head was already throbbing, and the first cigarette wasn't helping. Maybe the second would. She lit it, cigarette-to-cigarette and felt her throat burn.
Before her eyes, she saw Deling City burned to ashes, unraveled brick by brick in the sweeping wave of pure destruction, unrestrained. A flash and the vision was gone in the smoke, swirling into the air, as if it had been an illusion. An echo of a war gone by, not the promise of one over the horizon.
There was a warning in the back of her mind that SeeD was the enemy. All understood and all agreed, all except Brea, who knew that her uniform separated her from the rest of them. She wasn't a power-hungry tyrant... yet, anyway. There was that aspect of being a Sorceress and the need of a Knight – the longevity, the power of pure magic, it all made too much sense to not corrupt. As Brea smoked, she thought about the bystanders, and already there was her apprehension towards them, a sense of detached chill.
She was no longer one of them.
She glanced at the double doors. One was standing ajar. Inside, Jacen Onesson was writing his confession. Once it was done, he'd be locked up in solitary confinement in the Garen brig. They would notify his vice. Olga Sevron, if Brea remembered. A stocky woman with brilliant blue eyes and a pixie haircut. A humanitarian at heart. A rarity in this world.
But the night wouldn't be over with that. Brea knew that she was just in the first three hours of what promised to be a long, protracted epitaph. A war of attrition with existence itself.
It would all start with their next step. The Last Will and Testament of Squall Leonhart, which would most likely contain his last command.
"Well..." she said to herself, "Here's to his last command."
There was completeness in that. Peace. Ephemeral, but in that moment, all Brea wanted to do was sleep. The only thing keeping her where she was the small vid-disk in the side pocket of her jacket, the last gift of her predecessor.