Dead Fantasy Novella VII

Having landed just outside the city of Timber, Rinoa stood facing Rachel, who had gotten past Kairi when she meant to send everyone away to divide and conquer. But now that she was faced with fighting the Hunter herself, Rinoa had no intention of losing. And Rachel likewise prepared herself and readied her war hammer, eyeing the Sorceress as warily as if she were up an Archfiend, and then Rinoa made the first move.

Taking flight, the Sorceress flew around and circled Rachel many times before swooping in to attack at Rachel's right. The Hunter put up her hammer in defense, but was still knocked back by the attack. She put her feet back to the ground and grinded to a stop and then watched as Rinoa prepared and launched a fire spell. It was a low level spell, but Rinoa's Sorceress abilities made it large enough to swallow Rachel whole regardless. But instead of try to dodge, the Hunter fixed her stance and swung her hammer upwards with all her strength, shattering the fireball into a million harmless embers.

But as the fire spell was broken, the Sorceress appeared in its place and struck with her gunblade while Rachel was wide open, throwing her to the ground and sending her Pinwheel down on top of her. Rachel rolled out of the way of the Pinwheel, which burst with lightning magic as it hit the ground, and then got back to her feet while swinging her hammer as Rinoa made to attack with her gunblade again.

The Hunter deflected the blade and spun her hammer back around to strike Rinoa back, landing her first successful hit on the Sorceress. But Rinoa remained nearly unfazed as she used her wings to flip back to her feet before even hitting the ground and launching herself back at Rachel. The Hunter attacked again when she approached, but was countered and attacked several times, each strike of Rinoa's gunblade lifting her more and more off her feet until the Sorceress struck her overhead and then backed up before shooting her towards a cliff with another fire spell.

The Hunter yelled as she was thrown over the cliff and began falling towards the ocean below, but quickly recovered herself and used her Peluda Tail Whip to latch on to the cliffside and stop her descent and pulled on it to launch herself back up over the cliff's edge before spinning forward and bringing her war hammer crashing down, sending a shockwave blistering through the ground at Rinoa.

Rinoa shot herself into the air and then began charging a powerful Thunder spell, and Rachel charged her Blades of Ouroboros spell in reaction. Both released their attacks at the same time, and the torrent of lightning and ninpo all clashed between the fighters to cancel each other out in a brilliant flash that left thick smoke in its wake.

Rinoa watched and waited as the smoke began to lift and clear, and when she could just make out Rachel's form on the other side, set an aero spell to her Pinwheel and let it fly. Nearly invisible against the grey backdrop of smoke it came through, the Hunter almost didn't even notice the Pinwheel, but having wised up to the Sorceress's tactic of adding spells to disk, did not attempt to block it and instead dove to the side to avoid it and the subsequent twister before charging forward as the smoke cloud finally thinned enough to not obscure her line of sight.

Rinoa watched as the Hunter moved closer and held out her arm to retrieve her Pinwheel, but just then, the distant sound of an engine caught her attention and turned her head to see a fighter jet screeching straight for her. And as soon as she noticed it, the machine guns on the aircraft let loose a barrage of bullets that forced the Sorceress to take evasive action as bullets struck and shattered her pinwheel to pieces and grazed her arms and legs as she got out of its range.

As the fighter jet zoomed past the Sorceress, Rachel came to a stop and watched as the jet spun back around to begin firing at Rinoa yet again. She wasn't sure where the pilot had gotten her location from, but given how poorly she was doing against the Sorceress up to now, she could only be grateful for the assistance.

Rinoa moved again out of the way of the fighter jet's path and attempted to shoot it down with a thunder spell, but the pilot was skilled and preformed a barrel roll to avoid it before making its way back around again. And even worse, as it began to turn, Rinoa realized that this jet was not the only one coming to Rachel's aid, and saw dozens of jets beginning to close in from a distance.

"No way," The Sorceress muttered to herself in disbelief and climbed even higher into the air, not wanting to be anywhere near the range of Rachel's Ouroboros spell if she had to focus on taking down all of these jets.

And once the fighter jets all got close enough to start attacking her, Rinoa stopped climbing and began returning fire with her magic. While trying to stay out of the jets immediate flight paths, Rinoa cast spell after spell at the incoming aircraft in hopes of taking them down quickly, but the pilots showed they wouldn't be caught so easily, and all made virtually effortless maneuvers to avoid the attacks as they began passing her by and swarming around one another as they began turning back her way.
And back on the ground, Rachel could barely tell what was happening in the air, but at least saw that the fighter jets were holding their own against the Sorceress. But when she heard an engine suddenly get closer to her, she turned to see a lone jet flying low over the ground to make its way past her. Understanding the intent almost immediately, Rachel smiled with satisfaction and shot her tail whip out in front of the jet so that it would snag onto the aircraft as it flew by and pull her off her feet.

With one good yank of the whip, the Hunter reeled herself in and planted her feet firmly on top of the jet while keeping hold it with her whip as if riding a bronco to keep from flying off as the pilot took the jet higher into the air so that they could join the battle.

And meanwhile, once Rinoa understood just how great the fighter jets' mobility was, the Sorceress cast Triple on herself and turned back around to face them once again. As the jets began circling Rinoa like vultures, one group broke off and began firing their guns again, but she was ready now. Instead of only dodging the bullet rain of the fighter jets, she returned their charge and held out her free hand to cast a strong thunder spell that - thanks to the added Triple effect - sprayed out in multiple directions at once, catching the pilots off guard and managing to strike one of the jet's wings, causing it to begin falling down, incapable of staying airborne.

And as the remaining aircraft flew past her, the Sorceress spread her wings wide to bring herself to a half before turning straight back around and giving chase to the fighter jets before they could turn back on her to continue attacking. She continued with her strategy and cast more fire and lightning spells at the aircraft as they hurried to avoid the less predictable barrage of tripled spells and scattered so she couldn't go after all of them. But instead of continuing after the group that now hurried to escape her, Rinoa continued straight forward at the encircling wall of fighter jets waiting their turn and this time stretched out her gunblade while beginning to spin and shield her body with her wings to become a human drill that pierced straight through another fighter jet to completely destroy it in mid air while also breaking free of the encirclement.

But as she stopped her spinning and attempted to put a little distance between her and the fighter jets, she looked forward and saw one last aircraft flying at her, and was even more surprised to see Rachel standing on top of it, holding herself in place with her tail whip in one hand and wielding her war hammer in the other as if prepared to joust.

Rachel held her hammer off to the side, but instead of meeting her challenge, Rinoa chose to make a dive for the ground and flip over to look up as almost all of the fighter jets began chasing after her again. Including the one Rachel rode on, the few jets closest to the Sorceress began firing their guns again, and this time the Sorceress curled herself up behind her wings to protect herself while simply allowing herself to continue backwards in freefall while she began to charge a more powerful spell that would surely be far more effective than the fire and thunder ones she'd used to far.

Once ready, Rinoa spread her wings and arm wide to cast a tripled Holy spell that sent dozens of shining lights shooting out in all directions before turning back in to attack the fighter jets from every angle and give them almost no place to run. Despite that however, as the fighter jets once again scrambled to avoid being blown to bits, the pilots truly showed just how skilled they were by soaring through even the narrowest of openings to get away from the rain of holy fire, all without bumping into one another as well, leaving only a select few that weren't fast enough or didn't have enough room to get out of the way being turned to rubble by Rinoa's spell.

Beginning to somewhat panic, Rinoa turned away from the jets to face the fast approaching ground beneath her and hastened her fall with her wings, only to alter her path at the last possible second to fly just over the ground. This time however, she was not surprised when none of the remaining pilots failed to pull their fighter jets out of their nosedives before crashing and continued after her, continuing their onslaught of machine fire.

And finally, one of the jets farther back managed to get a proper lock on the Sorceress and let loose one of the larger missiles attached to its wings, beginning to burn its own fuel and flying ahead of the other jets to close in on Rinoa. But when she took notice of the missile, Rinoa once again altered her flight path and climbed back into the sky, only for the large explosive to seek her out and alter its own course to continue after her.

Charging a powerful fire spell, Rinoa spun herself around to face the missile and blasted it apart before returning her focus to the fighter jets as they began to scatter in an attempt to surround her again. Not planning to let them have their way, the Sorceress directed herself back at one of the jets on her left and cast a tripled thunder spell at it, mentally directing each charge of lightning so that when the jet attempted to back away from the attack, it couldn't avoid the whole attack and one stream of lightning struck the missile it had under its right wing, causing it to detonate and blow the aircraft to smithereens.

Accomplishing that, Rinoa allowed the following fighter jets to fly past her without attacking, but when they had and their engine noise gone from right next to her, realized there was another approaching from the side, and only turned in time to see Rachel as she swung her hammer from atop a fighter jet and crashed the blunt weapon into the Sorceress with unimaginable power tucked behind it from Rachel's already inhuman brute strength combined with the speed of the jet racing forward, and Rinoa found it impossible to breath as the hammer smashed into her center and Rachel chucked her down towards the ground with her gunblade leaving her hand and falling down separately.

Unable to stop herself for lack of strength and breath, Rinoa curled herself up in her wings again to brace for impact as she crashed into ground and hit like a meteor, leaving a trail of razed rock in her wake. The instant Rinoa felt herself stop, she cast multiple cures on herself and only afterwards managed to gasp for air and cough from the damage she had taken.

Turning onto her hands and knees, Rinoa wheezed as she gather air into her oxygen deprived body and used whatever time she had at the moment to cast a more powerful tripled cure spell, and finally felt a fair amount of her strength return to her body.

Stumbling to her feet, Rinoa steadied herself despite her still shaking limbs and looked up at the fighter jets that appeared to have been waiting to see if she would actually recover from that attack at all. Still breathing heavily, Rinoa sneered up at her enemies and focused on her magic, casting Regen on herself, and then Haste. Once done, the Sorceress pointed a hand to the sky and began charging the Meltdown spell, and launched, with the Triple effect sending three huge spheres of energy flying up at the fighter jets, but didn't even wait for them to close the distance before flying back into action herself, and with haste boosting her speed two-fold, she in fact bypassed her own spells and rushed the jets ahead of them.

Without her pinwheel or her gunblade, Rinoa used blizzard to forge two spears of ice and held them forward to once again directly cleave through one of the jets before stopping in the middle of the buzzing jets that remained and launching multiple volleys of fire spells in every direction as the previous three meltdown spells finally closed in.

The fighter jets scattered yet again, but Rinoa used their evasive action against them with her speed and charged at each jet in turn while the number of fire and meltdown spells flew between them all and destroyed two more with point blank thunder spells. The Sorceress then heard the sound of missiles launching and turned to find two explosives trailing towards her, but didn't miss a beat and raced directly at them while creating more ice spears and flew right passed each missile with her enhanced speed and stabbing into them with ice before continuing immediately on and getting well out of the way before the damage caused them to detonate.

For a second, Rinoa came to a stop to take in exactly how many fighter jets remained, and saw she hadn't even halved the numbers yet, still more than a dozen of them left around her. And as she took that in, the jet that Rachel flew on approached again, but being well acquainted with the damage her hammer could deal out from there, the Sorceress had no intention of letting her get in another hit.

Casting a tripled fire spell, Rinoa force Rachel's fighter jet to dive down to avoid her magic, and then immediately pursued them from behind, catching up with them just before her haste spell wore off, Rinoa grabbed hold of Rachel's war hammer and fired another volley of fire spells into the aircraft she rode as she flew back, forcing the Hunter to let go of her weapon and jump to avoid being caught in her fighter jet's explosion.

Rinoa then left Rachel to freefall and dropped the hammer as she lacked the physical strength to wield it properly. The Sorceress then turned back as a few more fighter jets flew at her again with machine guns blazing, but hose hardly scared her anymore. She flew directly at the fighter jets and prepared to launch more spells at them, but before she could even do that, the fighter jets dispersed and started to circle her again while one of the other aircraft flew down below Rachel and allowed her to latch onto it with her tail whip like the first one and avoid crashing into the ground.

Rachel's fighter jet joined the remaining forces in their encirclement of the Sorceress, and then, one after another, the fighter jets turned in on Rinoa from multiple directions instead of just one and went straight for launching their missiles at her before turning away.

Now with multiple seeker missiles locked onto her, Rinoa had to return to evasive action while firing spells to destroy each missile as they approached. But as she continued, each missile she destroyed got closer to her than the last, and to make it worse for her, Rachel's fighter jet flew her ahead of Rinoa's path and she let loose another Blades of Ouroboros spell to put her directly between two different devastating attacks.

The Sorceress appeared to get worried again, but instead of panicking and getting caught in the two sided barrage, came to a complete stop and relaxed her wings to let herself freefall again, which resulted in Rachel's Blades of Ouroboros continuing forward to strike down a majority of the remaining missiles behind her, leaving only a couple more that the Sorceress had an easy time dispatching.

Once again, Rinoa came to a stop and looked around at the fighter jets circling around her, but could feel herself getting low on stamina despite her previous injuries being almost completely healed up. There were still more than a dozen fighter jets though, and Rinoa wasn't sure how much longer she could keep this up.

But just as she was beginning to think she might be beat here, a voice suddenly echoed out to her from the distance. "I'm here; Rinoa, fly up!"

At the voice's instruction, Rinoa didn't waste any time and flew straight up without stopping while looking to her right to see something white approaching the spot she'd just left behind. Recognizing the half-Esper Terra, she saw the girl launch a spell forward into the center of the fighter jets where it quickly began to expand with devastating brilliance and suck the surrounding aircraft in.

"Get away from that thing!" Realizing what was about to happen, Rachel screamed at her fighter jet's pilot and fly away as Terra's powerful Ultima spell grew to swallow up the surrounding enemies, with only a few lucky ones managing to escape the danger zone as the spell dissipated. But with the pilots now in the position to panic, Rinoa and Terra needed only share a single nod before flying around and rendering the remaining few scrap with their powerful magic before meeting up in the air and getting in behind the final fighter jet nearing the ground that had Rachel standing on top.

In one last desperate move, the Hunter charged her Blades of Ouroboros spell and fired it at the approaching magic users. But Terra moved ahead of Rinoa and used her own Riot Blades attack to stop the Hunter's attack and allow Rinoa to fly straight through the resulting smoke cloud and close the distance completely.

With one final thunder spell, the Sorceress destroyed the final fighter jet while Rachel once again jumped off and hit the ground close below, not even needing to tuck and roll at that height to avoid taking any damage. And having told her pilot where to go, Rachel skidded across the ground right past her war hammer, which she grabbed hold of to give her powerful opponent one last round.

But she had barely been able to hold her own against Rinoa one-on-one, so the two magic users knew they would make short work of her now. Dodging her attack as she got close, Terra struck the Hunter with her arms and continued past her as Rinoa advanced from the side with her gunblade back in hand and made a second hit before Rachel could recover.

Turning around, Terra then blasted the Hunter with her fire magic, and Rachel was thrown off her feet, skipping over the ground like a stone on water and lost hold of her hammer again. Finally feeling the pain of the battle up to now, Rachel slowly tried to get back up, but stopped when Rinoa's gunblade appeared in the corner of her eye.

Very slowly, the Hunter turned her head to look up at the women that had defeated her, and finally, the Sorceress took her gunblade and smashed the butt of the hilt into her temple, knocking her out cold.

At last able to relax, Rinoa took a deep breath and looked back at Terra, who reverted out of her Esper form. "Thanks for that. For a moment there I really thought I was a goner."

"When I noticed your magic, I knew I had to come and help." Terra replied. "Now what's going on exactly?"

"I'll explain later." Rinoa told her. "Right now we need to find a safe place to hide."


She had no idea how much time had passed since her fight, but when Tifa woke up, she was alone in an empty room, lying on a bed in the middle. She felt incredibly sore, but that much should have been expected after how many arrows had been in her body. And yet despite that her wounds seemed to be completely healed. Fighting the pain in every part her body, Tifa pulled herself to a sitting position and took a second look around the room she was in, and noticed a cabinet that appeared to be full of meds that seemed to indicate this was some kind of infirmary or hospital.

But that only confused the Monk. Her enemies had beaten her to the point of death, and yet they had healed her up immediately afterwards? From the very start, the motive behind their enemies' attack was unknown, but this development only seemed to call them into question even more.

"So, your awake?" But Tifa's thoughts were interrupted when she heard a voice speak up and looked to see Hitomi leaning against the now open door. "Good, then we can finally get down to business."