Rin? Are you there? I can't -
-air split and thunder ran through the air where they connected. Magical fire versus a cold nothing tinted with blue, and where the two powers met the air twisted and buckled as Ifrit's flames fought to gain purchase on the nothingness and burn it, even as the Blue energy lanced around and through the red-and-gold sea searching for a place to cut. Neither side could find a way to kill the other and Imalia cursed as she danced backward as a stray gout flew over and above her and lanced down to where she was standing. The cobblestone smoked and melted where it touched and she caught a vague glimpse of something red and furred behind the flames, before something at the edge of her vision made her turn, and she barely got her glass windows onto the city below, the people walking the seaside streets and going on with their lives as sorceress cultists walked among them and their leader stewed in her own hate. With the exception of those who guarded her, the servants and soldiers refused to talk to her or even acknowledge her presence. They looked away or stood at a statue-like attention as she spoke at them and eventually she had simply stopped trying, contenting herself with her own company
I can't think, it's all so confused.
rather than try to squeeze blood from a stone. Her name and captive status went before her like a repelling shield she couldn't escape, and she travelled the halls of the massive building like a ghost, her feet beating a path between her room, the interior gardens and the dining hall. Days turned into weeks and before she realised it her walk back towards her sanctuary as the rest of her was drowned. Sometimes there was another force, a gray shape from the air that took even more from her, and she dreaded it even more then she dreaded the cold sea. Now she sat inside the sole room that remained, a white nothingness that extended both to infinity and barely to the tips of her fingers. She could hear the pounding of the waves against those imaginary walls. Once she had known the sea, given it a name. She even thought she might have known why it was doing it, trying
It's fine Squall.
single day before moving on. Zone and Watts had offered gratefully when he had come into the city and he had been too tired to argue the point. He'd barely recognised the two men. The old pair of teenage revolutionaries had been sanded down and smoothed over as they had found themselves roped into real governance after the Second War had ended and suddenly Timber had found itself free from the iron fist of Galbadia. Instead of floundered like so many old soldiers Squall could have named they had survived well, and when he had arrived
I'm here. Just follow my voice. I won't let go. I promise.
led and under them a disappointment and longing over something she couldn't quite describe. As if in the midst of all that chaos she had been able to glimpse the perfect world that her brother described, a smiling figure staring at her with love. But even as she tried to focus on it, grab it and hold it tight, it slipped away and she was left back in the world. The angel who had tried to make paradise real retched and moaned sometimes she would be listening as the woman spoke and suddenly she's freeze up, panicking at the sound of her own voice, speaking words she wasn't thinking and sounding like that. So much older, the weight of years and sadness on it. "I know." She glanced back at the wall of water, the images conjured up on it. When you got right down to it, Sorcery was about moving energy from one place to the other. With enough finesse or power you could what you wanted. She had plenty of power, and the other was teaching her finesse. She'd watched it all, as Timber had fallen and burned to the invasion. Had seen Quisty as she tore through
I can't think, there's too much. Where are you?
like. Boxes and containers and glass cabinets each with their own memories that she could take out and look at whenever she wanted. But now someone had walked in and strewn the boxes around, tipping their contents onto the floor and smashing the glass and sweeping the shards around until she couldn't think straight. Worse still she dared not clean out of their ornate holding places and examining them from every angle. Nothing new is created here and so I must look deeper and deeper into events that have already happened, to wrench out greater use of them. A conversation with a man long dead develops a thousand layers as I examine every move each of make, every word said and not said, every twitch of every muscle held up to the microscope to stare down and uncover some new meaning. Sometimes the memory is simple and cannot hold my attention. Other memories, my most precious, I can spend years watching, disassembling, teasing out new meaning from old memories. Sometimes with a single discovery, a twitch of a smile or a nervous gesture unnoticed at the time I can see a whole new
Everything's going back Squall. The way it should be.
matter how much shit was thrown at him. He hated the envious looks he got from women in the street as they passed. He hated the easy confidence that he seemed to throw off and only he could see through. He hated the admiration and adoration he received whenever he walked down the corridors of the palace. He hated the trust others showed in him even as he himself
Are we all here? I saw Quistis saw Xu saw Zell but-
Seifer snorted in amusement, but Squall couldn't see how it was funny. He could see the sideways glances and knew that sooner or later they would look to him for leadership. Even if he hadn't had the title they would have done it anyway, he knew. For some reason even during the Second War he'd found himself surrounded by people more skilful, smarter or stronger than he was, and they had all looked to him for orders. At first he had been cruel and dismissive. Then after the War he had been deathly afraid that he would let them down. Now somehow he had become that man for real, rather than only in people's minds. It no longer terrified him. He pushed off from the table he had been leaning against and addressed the room. Even Seifer was listening
Everyone but…I didn't see myself. I can't feel her in my head Squall, I don't think she came back with us.
really. He kept to himself and we didn't, ah-ha, exactly mind. We're more of the hard sciences in this department and unfortunately Sorcery isn't really compatible with anything hard." The way his eyes flicked across to Rinoa, however, told her he'd very much like to make it so. She'd seen it in the years after the Second War. She was a curiosity to be studied, categorised, written about, awards won for the study thereof. The fact that she was a living breathing person was aside the point. "I believe he was studying the effects of Time Compression. The release of all points back to their respective origin points, rather than the Compression itself. He thought that the poor victims of the event must have somehow had their minds taken away when it ended, to some other point of history." The man laughed, an unpleasant braying. He wondered whether
It's all colours. My God that's me back in Galbadia. I remember that office. I can-
continued to pummel down onto the streets below, reducing the once-pristine white snow to a sloppy grey mush that made travel treacherous and made obscene slurping sounds at the feet of those who walked in it. The end of the year approached and the dry winter weather was beginning to sense the approach of a wet spring. Even though they should have been months away the cloudbanks of the western continent had come home, and were making their presence felt with a downpour that had started and seemed endless. Xu looked out and saw people rushing back and forth, trying to find a balance between going as fast as they could to get out of the rain and slow enough to avoid tripping in the slippery mire. A delicate act and even
Just think of Garden. Think of me. Think of everyone waiting for us there. Don't let lost.
Squall had sighed when he had read Zell's half-embarrassed half-professional summary of his and Nida's little escapade and his reply had been short and to the point. The four of them were the sole sources of information they had from the coastal city and he didn't want them risking themselves. They had two missions and two missions only, and neither involved combat of any sort. Squall had written that order himself and made damn sure it was underlined twice. He knew he should have worried about it more. Knew he should be keeping a closer eye on the city, but Rinoa's absence left a hole that seemed to have erased them. He'd woken up from his half-sleep half-coma she had put him in and seen Seifer's eyes and knew without being told
I'd never leave you. What good's a Sorceress without her Knight?
darkness they looked like geometrically-arranged fireflies, caught in some bizarre cubist spider-web. Here and there he could see patches of the web where no light shined, or where the hot orange glow gave way to cool blue and white lines as Esthar's technology gave light to the areas of the city that Dollet's guns had rained destruction on. Even from this distance and at this time of night he could see and hear the headlights of Galbadian APCs as they patrolled the perimeters of the city to proclaim that Galbadian soldiers still defended Galbadian territory
We're going home Squall.
take Squall aside and shout when were you going to let me know. It was only later he realised that they didn't know. He could have stood there with them and said don't you remember? but he knew they would simply have wondered what was wrong with him. One more nonsense action from the gunman who had failed the one job he'd had. They'd pieced it all together later, in that snow-covered basketball court in Selphie's ruined could see the rest of the town, Balamb spread out across the plains in an undulating wave of greenery and houses, not stopping until they hit the surface of the Shell that jutted out of the island's centre like skeletal remains of some giant clam. He could look that street and know the name of every face behind those doors. Delicious scent wafted through the air metal made the connection jumpy as hell but the last lines had come through loud and clear. Xu Tyynes prayed for many things, varying them on what aspect of the world was troubling her that day, and today she prayed Odine would stop fiddling around with whatever project had diverted his time and turn the clunky wardrobe-sized communicator into a real working technology. Her one tour of the Esthar facilities after the Second War had told her that for all Esthar's technological sophistication, far too much f it balanced inside the mind of that tiny unhinged man. And now this. "Do we know where he-" she stopped herself. "I'm sorry
We're all going home.
turned away. Fujin had seen blood and death, up close and personal and at a distance. She had watched as G- and B-Gardens had clashed and seen from a distance the flashes of red-on-blue that blood made against the SeeD uniform. She had dragged the body of a comrade out of a filthy sewer as he bled out over her clothes. She had felt her own eye as it had been ruined by a child's thoughtless cruelty, and the retribution he had received for it. But now she couldn't watch as one more wailing cry came out and for one half-second turned into a cough
Why didn't she come with us?
left Almas at the wreckage of the Ragnarok to find just this person, to find some kind of closure of what lone book of her old self, hoping to tear it out of her once and for all. Instead she'd arrived too late, the job that should have been hers left to Kettil. Instead of finishing it right there and then she'd looked down at the dying woman, this Xu Tyynes who had loved her false self and who her false self had, apparently, loved back. Instead of using her power to end the woman's misery she'd used it to bring her to their home, and now watched as the
She just wanted it over, I guess. When she realised her perfect world wasn't so perfect after all.
feel his muscles tense and his grip harden on the stonework as he thought of it. Instead of running back to their master the Dincht boy and the other one had instead dug in, and no amount of effort by his men had been able to uncover and extract them from the bolt-hole the two SeeDs had thrown themselves into. Nerva's reassurances had rang hollow even as he said them and he had been forced to admit that they weren't likely to be found. Aimsland could only reassure himself that he had already gotten everything he wanted out of the pair, their tame ice goddess now in his possession and already put to work. He had what he wanted
At least this way maybe she'll find some peace. Compression unravelling around her and nowhere to call home.
teardrops contained some kind of soothing balm the beginning of winter had brought a measure of calm to the Galbadian city, calm that it had desperately needed. Those civilians and patrols that had driven along the boulevards had abandoned them as the cold had raced over the plains and descended onto the city, and the long roads had been given over to pedestrians. He could look down the street from the covered sidewalk and see two small children building a snowman in the middle of the street as amused Esthar checkpoint guards looked on, the lights on their armour casting a blue light that made the snow shimmer in the midday sun. He could hear laughter in the distance from the direction he had came; an impromptu ice-rink formed over a park's pond and hi-jacked by young adults looking for a good time. He wished he could
She'll just…drift away.
was well known, but he doesn't know why the instructor reacts this way. Maybe some bad experience with one. He'd read the literature when he joined SeeD, fascinated along with half the planet about the things. Elemental beings born out of the dreams and personifications of mankind, allowing magic itself to course through their host's bodies and granting abilities beyond that of mere mortals. He had never spoken with one but sometimes, during the Second War when the Gang – hard not to think of them that way sometimes with the legend already firmly in the world's mind – had been recovering between sorties he would see them occasionally wondering the halls. Sometimes they would just…stop…and stare at the sky. Or a single word said into the air, as if listening responding to something only they could hear. They'd seemed larger than life back then, all six of them. The teenagers that walked like gods among them
Tired of living…
soon as she could. She didn't speak, just stared at Quistis with those dead gray eyes that gave away nothing and let nothing in. They had run into each other less than a handful of times since Quistis' had been locked up in the depths of the palace, the only times they met chance meetings in hallways. There was something otherworldly about the duchess' bodyguard, like a part of the slim killer was elsewhere, and only her physical body was present. Some women could turn an aura like that into an irresistible mystique or enticing aloofness. On the woman in front of her – woman, Hyne she must be younger than me - it went the other way, like trying to have a conversation with a body already dead and embalmed. She felt herself backing away and chastised herself as she knew why. Where the lithe silent ghost went, her other half would be close. While Quistis had no love for Almas Jordin, she had no particular hate either. Whatever pain or event had made her into
But scared of dying.
as if angry the pair had escaped and desperate to get inside and drag them back out. Xu shook of the stolen cloak and stood there in the dark corridor, alert for anything louder than a pinprick. She glanced across at Nida, who had done the same thing. Neither of them had brought anything bigger than a butterknife in with them. Xu had left most of her knives with Fujin, and Nida had a small pistol. Whether either would be useful if they were found inside a building
There, I see it.
there, and that was why. Squall felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and almost stopped walking. He forced himself to go on, walking down the hill that the lone gravestone should have been at. He could think back, what seemed like years ago but had barely been a single one. The question Rinoa had asked him had been pushed away as the mad cult and this whole insane war had arisen from nothing. It had stayed in his heart though, dancing around in there and refusing to be ejected. Then one night in Galbadia they had visited a hospital chasing up a lead on that murder and it had pushed its way to the front again and shouted
Come on, everyone.
white light hovering in the air directing the torrent at them. Irvine could see shadows flitting across his vision as the other SeeDs moved up into the city and with a stab of pride thought that's my training. Laguna had asked for a full assault but he had talked and cajoled and wheedled the man around to something quieter and a lot less bloody. Finally the Estharian president had just nodded and said; whatever you think is best. His best was with him now, and the small group had landed without hope, if not without bloodshed. Several-
We're going home.
