Woohoo, new chapter! And it only took nine months this time! Well, to be perfectly honest, it only took a few weeks, but it was eight or so months before I started writing it. Yeah…
Huge thanks to the loyal reviewers Kein Sylvan and SageQuill. As always, you guys are awesome. As usual, a big thanks to my beta, Shadow's Interceptor, who had the arduous job of constantly reminding me that this exists.
I don't own Final Fantasy or its characters, creatures, or places.
Chapter 8: The Villain Does Something Villainous
Figaro Castle's engine room –
Wedge eyed his opponent, and then looked at the cards in his hand. It was the end of the line, he cold either match the bet and reveal his hand, or fold and give up the game. His brow furrowed in frustration. "You know Phillip, studying your poker face would be much simpler if you weren't invisible," Wedge grumbled. Biggs, who had declined joining in the game and was currently standing watch over the engine's gauges, merely sighed and shook his head.
"I guess that would make things difficult…" the creature admitted. A silence ensued as Wedge continued to weigh his options.
Finally, the Figaro guard groaned and threw his hand of cards down. "You know what? I fold," he said. "I can't take the pressure." Phillip had begun to collect the winnings when suddenly the entire castle shuddered.
Afterwards, Biggs and Wedge heard Phillip bounding for the exit. A few moments later, the beast called out, "We're here! Would you mind staying here and powering down the engine? I have some other business to attend to before your friends get here."
"Sure thing," Wedge answered. Softer, he grumbled, "If you want to go out there and get eaten by a void wurm, that ain't my problem."
Biggs, who had already gone to the control panel to turn off the engines, turned to his companion with a look of annoyance on his face. "Hey, that's no way to speak to Phillip!" he scolded. "He has been absolutely nothing but kind to us!"
Wedge's eyebrow rose in question. "Really? You mean after he hijacked our castle?"
"Yes."
"And knocked us unconscious?"
"Yes."
"And promised to murder the heroes of our world?"
"Er… yes…"
"Which includes the king that we're sworn to protect?"
This made Biggs go silent momentarily. "Shut up Wedge."
At this, Wedge threw his head back and laughed. "Their he is, that's the Biggs that I know and love! Well, not love love… I mean, like, friendly and stuff."
His companion groaned in frustration. "Oh come on! Can you please just try to use the correct form of there/their/they're? You always screw it up. Always!"
Now it was Wedge's turn to be annoyed. "You and your stupid need to correct me," he spat. "How the hell would you even know which one of them I said?! They all sound the damn same!"
The outburst took Biggs aback. After a moment, he asked, "You… you've never seen it?"
"Seen what?!" Wedge shouted back. The other guard simply pointed above him. Wedge followed the finger to an enormous blue box that was floating above his head. How the guard had never seen this before, he had no idea, but it still didn't answer his earlier question. "Yeah, so? What does it have to do with… wait… Holy gods what is that?!" He was referring to the text that was now appearing in the box; text that mirrored whatever he said, as he was saying it. "W-when did that get there?"
"It's always been there," Biggs answered. "It follows us around. Everyone has one, but surprisingly few people actually realize that it's there."
"That's… really freaky," was all that Wedge could say. "But, it's kinda cool too. Heh, it even puts our names next to what we're saying so that people reading can know who's speaking!"
"Yes, we're actually two of the lucky few that the Great Blue Box gives names to," the guard explained. "Most people don't get that distinction. Important people even get a portrait of their face that appears next to their dialogue."
"Huh, you know, that's actually pretty neat!" It was then that something that Biggs had said hit him. "Wait, we don't have our portraits next to our names." The other guard shook his head. "So that means that we're not important?" A knowing look crossed his companion's face as he nodded.
Biggs winced as he saw the realization come to Wedge. His companion stumbled backwards until he reached a wall, then sat down hard. Staring blankly, Wedge said, "Well that's depressing." Once again, Biggs nodded.
The room was silent other than the sound of the castle's engines powering down. Biggs looked down at the deck of cards scattered across the floor, then looked to his companion and asked, "Hey, are you up for a round or two of poker?"
Wedge looked up, still with a somewhat blank look on his face. Then he answered, "Y-yeah. I think I could go for that."
The deck of the Falcon –
Setzer stood at the helm of his beautiful airship, taking in everything as he guided her through the skies. Hundreds of feet below them was the ocean, just as violent and filled to the brim with deadly monsters as always, but the gambler was above them all. The clear skies, the whir of the engines, the wind blowing through his silver hair; this was all he needed. This was life. Here, Setzer was in his element. And right now, he was pissed. "Damn the gods, where is that island?!" he shouted.
He swore that he remembered the island being around this particular area… "Blasted island probably sank into the ocean and the God-Like Voice forgot to tell us," he muttered. The gambler realized that this was probably the appropriate time to pull out a map and figure out where the island actually was, but he was far too stubborn for that. "My memory's a better map than any stupid piece of paper will ever be!" is what Setzer told everyone, and it was a mantra that he would stick with to his grave.
Of course, he figured that eventually he would just go below deck and order someone else to take the helm: someone who hopefully would have the sense to use a map. Until then though, he would be flying in circles.
Figaro Castle courtyard –
The two Figaro guards stared in awe at the giant mass that was now being moved through the gates. Wedge looked to Biggs and asked, "So, should I ask Phillip why he's bringing a dead void wurm here? Or do we just let it slide like everything else that has happened in the past few weeks?"
"It's part of my plan," Phillip called out, apparently having heard the question. The carcass continued its journey through the gates as the invisible being pulled it.
"How?" Biggs asked. "Wouldn't a void wurm be better able to kill people while it was alive?"
"Well, yes," Phillip admitted, "but I don't need it to kill anyone. I just need to turn it inside-out."
Unsurprisingly, this did not alleviate the pair's confusion at all. After a minute or so, Biggs continued. "Um… so that's your grand plan? Turning a void wurm inside-out? I'm still not sure how that helps you."
Having finally finished pulling the enormous corpse within the castle walls, Phillip approached the guards, which they could tell by the dust that rose around the invisible creature's footsteps. They heard him sigh, and then he began to explain. "My enemies have defeated dozens of my people before, so I could never hope to win if I fought them myself. The same goes for the void wurms that now inhabit this island. Nothing on this island, and likely nothing in this world, could defeat them. But perhaps, if I could call upon something from outside of this world… That's where the wurm comes in. Because of this breed of wurm's unique digestive system, turning them inside-out creates an extra-planar portal from which ultra-powerful demons can be summoned. I plan to summon one or several of those to take on these false heroes and destroy them."
"The hell?!" Wedge exclaimed. There were many parts about this plan that he wasn't clear on, so he started by asking about the most obvious. "Where did you find out that void wurms did that?"
"It's in a book," he answered, "'A Comprehesive Guide To Turning Void Wurms Inside-Out In Order To Open Extra-Planar Portals and Summon Ultra-Powerful Demons To Destroy Your Enemies' by K. G. Palazzo."
After mulling over that momentarily, Biggs said, "That's an oddly specific title… Are you sure that they didn't just make up all of that information?"
"The book cites sources."
"Oh, okay then." Biggs appeared to be satisfied with this answer and had no further questions.
Wedge, however, was not entirely satisfied. "Alright, so let me get this straight," he said, "your entire grand plan basically boils down to defeating monsters by throwing bigger monsters at it?"
"Well, yes, essentially," Phillip replied uncertainly. "Is there something wrong with that?"
Wedge sighed and shook his head. "Actually, there's two things wrong with it," he said matter-of-factly. "First, throwing progressively bigger monsters at King Edgar, Prince Sabin, and their friends has been the exact plan of literally everyone who opposed them. Literally everyone, and they all obviously failed. What makes you think that it will work this time?"
"I have the moral high ground," Phillip retorted. "All of the others who opposed them were, surprisingly, more evil than they were, so the 'heroes' were favored by the gods. That is not the case this time."
"That brings me to my second point," Wedge continued. "How is it that you can claim to have the moral high ground if your plan involves summoning a freaking demon in order to brutally eviscerate anyone standing in your way? Emphasis on the FREAKING DEMON part."
This caused Phillip to go silent. "Huh," he finally responded, "you actually bring up a pretty good point." After a few more moments he said, "Maybe the demon that gets summoned will be a significantly-less-evil-than-usual-but-still-ultra-powerful demon?" At this, Wedge face-palmed. "Hey!" Phillip exclaimed irritably. "I've been working on this plan for years now, and I have absolutely no desire to change it now!"
The guard shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. "Just don't be surprised if things don't go as planned."
After that, there was no further conversation. The silence didn't last long though as it was replaced by the whirring of an airship's engine overhead. The guards' hearts seemed to stop in their chests. King Edgar, Prince Sabin, and their companions had arrived. It was time to end this.
The deck of the Falcon – above Triangle Island –
"There she is!" Edgar called out excitedly from the helm of the airship. "There's our wonderful engineering marvel! Sabin, it's like a home away from home! Er… actually, it is our home away from… nevermind. Anyways, we're landing!" Moments later, the airship touched down and the heroes all exited.
Once on solid ground, Cyan turned back to the ship and bowed low. "I thank thee Lady Falcon for escorting us safely to our destination. I vow to one day repay the favor."
Shadow looked over to the samurai with a confused expression in his eyes. "Are you feeling alright?" he asked.
"Yes, better than ever," Cyan responded. "I was merely thanking the Lady Falcon for her services." This did little to alleviate the assassin's confusion, but he did not press the matter any further. Cyan was curious about something however. "Er, Sir Shadow, might I ask what it is that thou art holding?"
Shadow paused, then looked down to the object in his hand. "It's a moogle plushie," he said simply. "His name is Maxwell."
"Ah… I, er, I see. I shall not ask."
"Good, because I'm not planning on explaining."
Meanwhile the rest of the group was off discussing their plans. "You know, after so long," Edgar began, "I was starting to doubt that we'd ever find the castle again. I kind of didn't plan for what to do once we actually made it." Setzer groaned loudly at this.
"Sneaking in to take them off guard is out of the question," Locke mentioned. "They probably already noticed our giant airship as it was flying above them, seeing as it's a giant airship."
"I figured that we'd go up to the castle and ask what was going on," Sabin said. "For all we know, this was just a big misunderstanding."
"I like that plan," Setzer piped in. "Simple, with a possible chance of us not having to deal with any more of this crap." Without any further consultation, the gambler strode off in the direction of the castle. After a number of castings of Protect and Reflect in case the enemies in the castle attacked at range, the rest of the party followed.
Figaro Castle loomed ahead, its gates mysteriously opened already. They were too far away to see anything inside clearly, but it seemed like there was something big in there. When they were closer, they noticed two people standing near the large mass. It wasn't until they were nearly at the gates when they were identified as Figaro guards.
"King Edgar!" one of the guards called out. "You made it!"
"And thank goodness," the other guard said, "the void wurm corpse was beginning to smell."
Edgar drew his spear and pointed it accusingly in the guards' direction. "What is the meaning of this!" Edgar shouted. "Do you have any idea what you've done?!"
The first guard was taken aback. "Us? What did we do?"
The other guard turned to him and said, "He thinks we hijacked the castle, Biggs. Not a bad assumption honestly."
"Oh, yeah. I guess I can see that," the guard named Biggs said.
"We're hostages you see."
The heroes were skeptical of this, noting a distinct lack of anything that would indicate that they were hostages. The rest of the party drew their weapons and began to approach.
"Wait, hold on!" Biggs exclaimed. "Wedge and I can explain."
Wedge laughed at this. "Ha! Go ahead and try. I just went over the facts in my head, and it pretty much looks like the most ridiculous lie in history."
Biggs shot his companion a nasty look and spat, "Fine, I will try to explain. We were guarding the engine room, when suddenly the alarms began to blare during the unauthorized dive. Then we were knocked out, and eventually ended up here. Our captor has paws for hands, so he couldn't tie us up, but left us alive so that we could help him with the engine. Our captor is also the one who killed the wurm and dragged it here."
"And where is this captor?" Edgar asked, clearly not convinced, but willing to give them a chance.
"I don't know," Biggs replied. "None of us can see him because he's invisible." After a moment's pause, he turned to his companion and added, "Huh, you were right. That does sound ridiculous."
Looking around nervously, Wedge said, "Hey Phillip? Now would be a wonderful time to show-"
A loud thump and a thin cloud of dust that appeared between the heroes and the guards interrupted him. "I am the one who took this castle," a rasping voice said. "These two had no part in it. I am the one that you seek, yet also the one who has sought you for years. I am Phillip, the last of the intangir!"
"Intangir?" Strago mused aloud. "Aren't those them invisible cousins of behemoths?"
"Oh yeah!" Terra remembered. "They helped us to learn magic really quickly, didn't they?"
"I had no idea that they were sentient though…" Sabin added.
The wurm corpse suddenly jerked, and they heard Phillip yell, "Well we were! You trespassed on our home and we retaliated, then you turned slaying us into some sort of game! Finally, you helped Kefka rise to power, and his monsters devoured the rest of us."
"We did not aid Kefka!" Cyan retorted angrily. "We merely… failed to stop him in time…"
"We did kill Kefka though," Celes mentioned. "Surely that must count for something?"
The wurm jerked again as its mouth was forced open. "You killed Kefka for the same reason that you slew my people," Phillip accused, "to make yourselves stronger! You call yourselves 'heroes,' yet all you desire is power!"
Wedge looked over to the mouth of the wurm corpse and said, "To be fair, you call yourself a hero, yet you're the one in the process of summoning an archdemon or something."
Setzer gaped at this. "What?! An archdemon?!" he shouted with more than a hint of panic in his voice. "Why aren't you two doing anything to stop this!"
Wedge shrugged. "Meh. We're not important. It's not like we could do anything useful."
"He's right you know," Biggs agreed. "You guys are the ones that the universe has declared to be important."
"Goddammit, someone put those celestriads to use and shoot an ultima or something!" the gambler cried out.
"You're too late!" Phillip screamed. "The deed is done!" The wurm's body spasmed violently, and then shifted. It eventually began to cave in on itself, and soon, all that was left was a gaping hole in the air.
Somewhere in Hell
It had been a relatively normal day in the life of Larry, the demon tour guide. It was his third tour of the day, which meant that afterwards he would get a short break. He hadn't quite chosen whether he would use that break to bet on the jousters in the Fourth Circle or head to the river Phlegethon and shoot arrows with the centaurs at the violent sinners, but he still had some time to decide.
"If you look to your left," Larry told his tour group, "you can see two of Hell's most dastardly villains in an eternal battle for dominance. The six-winged clown freak is Kefka Palazzo, while the pretty-boy with the silver hair is Sephiroth. Now this is only part of their punishment. Every other week-"
"Excuse me?" interrupted Albert, who was one of the sinners on the tour.
Larry always hated being interrupted when he was describing the punishments of the damned, and this particular sinner had done so three times already. He frowned slightly and said, "Yes Albert, what is it?"
"What's that giant floating disk in the middle of the arena?"
Larry hadn't actually noticed any giant disk and turned to look. "Oh, huh, that's not supposed to be there," he said nonchalantly. "It looks like a one-way portal to another plane of existence. Nothing to concern yourselves with."
This was around the time that the two figures in the arena noticed the portal. Kefka cocked his head as he looked at the floating disk. "You know, that reminds me a lot of the Esper Gate back on my world," he said. "I'm going to ignore you and investigate this."
"Hey! Don't ignore me!" Sephiroth shouted, flying after him. He refrained from attacking though, since he was also curious.
The pair flew around the portal for a short amount of time, and then finally stopped. "This is relieving," Kefka said to no one in particular, "after all these years of the same old routine, finally something different happens. Oh! I wonder if there's another world on the other side of this? I haven't had anything good to destroy for far too long!"
"I don't know," Sephiroth said, "I've never seen-"
"Oh shut up lady-boy," Kefka butted in, "I never asked you!"
Sephiroth's brow furrowed in annoyance. "Well I wasn't answering you!"
"Hey! You two!" Larry called out. "Stay away from there. I don't think that you're supposed to go through that."
Kefka's smile suddenly widened to a frightening degree. "So it is a portal?"
Without a word, Sephiroth immediately propelled himself towards the portal's opening, intent on finally escaping this mad clown for good.
"No fair!" Kefka shrieked, also immediately heading to the opening. "I call dibs on the escape route!" Though Sephiroth had started first, his single wing could not out speed Kefka's six. There was a sudden flash, and then the portal, as well as both of the arena's combatants.
Larry blinked, and muttered, "Well that's going to be inconvenient for whoever's on the other side." Then he turned to his tour group and said, "Anyways, on to the Frozen Lake of Traitors!"
The Nega-Plane – Office building 792 – Floor 67 –
Carol was exhausted. When she had volunteered to take on the project to clean up the specifics on the hydrogen dioxide compound (which had been codenamed "water") she had expected to fix a couple of typos and be done with it. This was not the case. It turned out that the intern who had been given responsibility over water had no idea how to create and manage a new compound, so it now functioned completely differently than every single other compound. Then they argued that these changes were fine due to "creative license." So much was just completely wrong about this compound that it would take Carol an eternity to sort it out, so her plan was just to make sure that the compound didn't break physics entirely, and then leave the rest of the wonkiness alone. However, even just that was a monumental task. The only comfort that Carol had was that this intern had been fired, and then rehired just so that the manager could fire him a second time.
There was also had her normal workload, which involved monitoring usable energy levels in the Delta and Sigma Sector universes, both of which were completely out of control at the time. Because of course, she had to be assigned both universes where there were space creatures that released massive amounts of energy by turning people into witches. On top of all of this, due to her overwhelming workload, she had been forced to turn down an offer to help with a planar development project, which would have been great for her, seeing as planar development was the thing that she had actually gone to school for. Needless to say, Carol could use a vacation.
A notification appeared on the screen in front of Carol, causing her to curse under her breath. In fifteen minutes there was the god-like voices budget meeting, and she had forgotten to prepare anything for it. She'd have to do that now if she wanted to do it at all.
"Um, excuse me Carol?" said a voice behind her. "We have a situation concerning extraplanar transit."
Carol turned to see Joe from Floor 85. She sighed and said, "Can't you ask James? He manages extraplanar transit in our building's sectors."
"James is out sick."
"Ah." When James was absent, extraplanar transit issues were technically supposed to be taken care of by her. However, Carol knew nothing of extraplanar transit, so she generally just hoped that James was never absent. "What is it then?"
"Well, we have a one-way wormhole from Alpha B34 to Theta F6," Joe explained, "and two specimens passed through it at the exact same time."
"The exact same time? Down to how many fractions of a second?" Carol asked.
"All of them. They literally passed through at the exact same time." That was extremely inconvenient. "We have some advanced analytics documents if you'd like to take a look at them," Joe mentioned as he held out a frighteningly tall stack of paperwork in Carol's direction.
"I'm sorry, I don't really have time for this right now," she said, exasperated. "Can you let them both through?"
"Er, no, we can't. One of the Grand Rules for this wormhole is that only one can exit it."
Carol groaned. "I don't know then, merge the specimens together. That way, only one specimen actually gets transported."
Joe thought the suggestion over for a moment. "Actually, that would probably work," he said. "Excellent idea Carol! Thanks." With that, Joe bowed his head and left.
Carol was pleased with herself. Sure, the method was probably a little bit unorthodox, but what was the worst that could happen?
Figaro Castle courtyard –
There was a sudden flash of light and smoke, followed by silence. As the smoke began to clear, there was a tall humanoid figure where the portal used to be. Seven wings then unfolded from the humanoid's back, and it rose into the air. With a voice that was somehow the combination of a screeching lunatic and the sexiest man alive, it shouted, "I am Sephka!"
The shark has officially been jumped. There should only be one or two chapters left of this. I can't promise a date, but hopefully soonish.
Please leave a review if you have the time.
