The Rebirth of a Dragoon
Based on: Final Fantasy Record Keeper
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy. The OCs featured in this fic belong to various friends. Note that while the characters belong to friends, I am the one writing the fic itself. Thank you to Tibby-san and MajoHikari for continued support of this little story.
Notes: You don't like this, don't read it. I'm not writing it for you. Also, name change!
Warnings: Eventually all this stuff on this list: Cursing, potential OOC, OC x Canon, incest, stupid fluffy romance, sex, angst, self-insert author avatar
FIC START!
Chapter Twenty-Six
School on Friday was a blur, and the next time Cantirena Highwind took a moment to gather her composure, it was all ready Saturday morning. She laid upon her bed, staring straight up at the ceiling, in the complete dark. She blinked a few times, not remembering literally anything that happened the entire day before. It was the day of the party, and the only thing she could think at that particular moment was how badly she didn't want it. It was Highwind tradition, and by having it, it meant she was accepted into the family for real. So, that on its own was a great thing, but at the same time, did they have to make such a big deal about it? Canti rolled over onto her side, staring at the My Little Chocobo poster taped up to the wall. Then she rolled over onto her other side, still uncomfortable. The window outside revealed the twinkling of a few stars in the distance, soon to fade out with the coming light of the sun. She didn't know how early it was. She didn't want to know.
Since there was no hope of being able to fall back to sleep, Canti climbed out of bed and changed from her pajamas into civilian clothes. She figured her Papa would help her change into something more appropriate before the party, so it's not like what she wore now mattered. As she walked out of her room, she heard Cid's snoring from his room. She smiled. That wasn't going away any time soon, now was it?
In the family room, she stopped to stare up at the shimmering weapon that belonged to her father, and she couldn't forget when she and Kain had come across the moogle at random that one morning. She stopped by the fridge, pulled out a bowl of leftover whatever-last-night's-supper-was, ate it quickly, and pulled her spear off the wall. If today was the day she'd be accepted as a dragoon in training… it was a perfect time to start some real training. Grabbing her purse and slipping on her shoes, she walked out of the house as quickly as she could, locking the front door with a quiet click.
She headed out to the nearby field, her spear held in her left hand. Canti had seen her father doing this several times back when he was training to enter the Warriors of the Water. She couldn't help but think that this would become a daily part of her routine, too. The morning air was crisp. It nipped at her skin as the wind brushed her curly blue hair around.
Canti looked up at the sky above her. A few clouds here and there. After a deep breath, she put her purse down on the ground, took a few steps away from it, and begun to practice the reps she had been doing in her Combat Basics class. She remembered when doing each motion over and over had worn her out, but she was able to make the moves quite a few times before she felt the burn in her muscles.
After a good hour or so, she stopped to take a break. Her body was sweaty, but she wasn't entirely tired. She thought about the moves she'd watched Cid do over and over years ago. He didn't just practice attacking with his spear, no, he made jumps. Canti hadn't been taught how to jump yet, as at Garden she hadn't been placed into programs to train Dragoons. From what she remembered, that didn't start at Garden until year 3, so not even Kain had gotten that far. But Kain was able to carry her mid jump the other day, as he'd been training to take his father's place as Grand Dragoon. Canti grunted at that. Oh, how he went on and on about that, that dutiful cousin of hers. Perfect prodigy, he was. So perfect in the eyes of the family with all his potential. She loved him, no question, but when he brought that kind of thing up, it was nothing short of annoying.
Canti once again held her spear between her two hands, placing her right hand below the head, and her left around the middle to control it better. She pointed it down, and tried to feel a sensation of a jump below her feet. She stood on her tip-toes, and nothing came of it. Where was the jump? She put the spear down, trying to lift her body up. Then she tried to jump. But all she managed to do was plant her face in the grass.
How'd he do it? How did he manage to pick his body off of the ground like that, while carrying her at the same time? That was the Dragoon's special technique. One could not call themselves a Dragoon without being able to Jump! She'd be a disgrace before the whole Highwind family if she couldn't bring herself to jump! Never mind not wanting the party, now there was no way she could be tragged to attend it! Not to fact that kind of humiliation!
Why is my body not going up!? Canti screamed at herself. Why am I not going up any higher? She kept jumping and bouncing but nothing coming out of it but frustration. Get higher! Gotta get higher!
"Are you all right, baby girl?"
Suddenly she stopped to turn around and see Cid standing there with his arms crossed. "Papa!" she said, pushing her hair out of her face.
"Well?" Cid asked, cocking his head to the side. "You don't seem like yourself at all."
"At first I couldn't sleep," she said. "Nervous about Uncle Richard's party."
"It's not Richard's, it's yours."
"Well, I don't want to go!" Canti said loudly. "I fail at being a dragoon AND being a Highwind! I don't want to be humiliated in front of the whole family!" She breathed heavily. "I'm just some adopted nobody-"
"Explain."
She looked around nervously, shaking where she stood. "I… I've been trying, but I… I can't do the Jump technique! That's the dragoon's signature move! That's what we dragoons DO."
Cid nodded. "Not everyone can do the jump. Hell, without the family secret, no one's able to lift their body the way we do. It doesn't matter if you're adopted or you aren't. None of that matters." He smiled as he walked to her, wrapping his arms around her. "The whole point of the party, the get-together to announce a new dragoon in training for the family, is to teach them the secrets. You don't have to worry about not being able to make a jump."
"Really? Is that why Kain was able to carry me from rooftop to rooftop the other morning?" Canti asked curiously.
"He did what now?!"
"Kain carried me, easily. Even though we're about the same size."
"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Once you learn how to do it, it's pretty easy, and even kids yer sizes can easily jump small buildings with practice," Cid said. "Still. You have nothing to worry about. You're a Highwind, and that's all that matters. And if they want to disown you, well, then, they're gonna disown me, too. I don't need them if I don't have you."
She grasped around him tighter, and he returned the favor. "Do you know who all will be teaching me at the party?"
"All of us will give you something. My brother's head of the family at the moment, so I figure he'll be the one to give you the most important thing… the rest of it will all fall into place as things go along. You aren't intimidated by yer Uncle Richard, now are ya?"
"No, Papa, of course not."
"Nothing to be scared of, far as I'm concerned," Cid said, laughing. "So, let's getcha all cleaned up and get ya over to the Highwind Manor. Things start at lunchtime."
"...okay…"
…
Canti's friends were all dressed up in the nicest clothes they owned, with Minwu leading the way. He'd been to Highwind Manor before, but the others hadn't. They were walking through the richest area of the entire city. Chocobo-drawn carts were at every single house, which all seemed like they were the size of castles. There were no pedestrians out here, which seemed very strange to all of them. Transportation didn't really exist on the other side of the city. Could Canti and Cid really have come from this kind of money? Vivi, in particular, had a look of disdain in regards to this area of the city in his bright yellow eyes hidden by his hood-like over-sized hat.
"Hey, you okay, Vivi?" Tidus couldn't help but ask, as the young black mage usually seemed so peaceful. He wore a very nice blitzball uniform that he'd had set aside by Sir Jecht for his son being accepted onto his favorite local team. It was an inevitability, way Sir Jecht saw it, so Tidus just took advantage of the situation.
"I don't like this place," he said. "The Qu Clan have an estate out here. They're… overboard. Like. They buy the most lavish food in the whole world and… it's disgusting. They believe that's the way to finding the answer."
"The answer?" Crystal asked. She was wearing a dress, though her grandpa Tobul had to stitch a seam together this morning, and she felt incredibly under dressed at that very moment. It was about the same quality as her school uniform.
"The answer. You know, to everything. Why we even exist in the first place," Vivi answered. "They go out of the way to buy food they don't even need from people that could very well be starving."
"...you seem like you dislike them on a personal level," Hikari said, shaking her head. She was wearing a mage robe that had been altered to suit a red mage's sword practices from an Alexandrian Shoppe in the Center Square that her father, Auron, had bought for her last minute when she told him about being invited to this fancy thing. He'd always been able to pull strings due to his rank of guardian of a senator.
"My grandpa is from the Qu clan. A deserter, I guess. Trying to find the answer without indulging himself so much," Vivi explained. "Needless to say, I understand exactly where Canti comes from. I'm adopted, too."
"Yeah, me, too," Hikari nodded.
"Adoptions aren't a bad thing," Minwu said calmly. "It means that someone had a big enough heart to take care of you, when no one else wanted you."
"I just wonder about who it was that didn't want me," Hikari confessed quietly.
"Maybe they did. But they didn't have the chance to keep you," Minwu said distantly, trying just to concentrate on leading them where they were supposed to go. The less he thought about it, the easier all of this would be. "You could have been separated because of circumstances. No way of knowing."
"...Minwu?" Crystal asked, turning to look at him.
"I'm just trying to comfort Hikari. There's no reason to sit and think on who your original family was, because there's no way of knowing about it. Those kinds of records are taken care of by the government. Where we all come from," Minwu explained. "Concentrate on what's important. The now. That's what matters." He sighed.
Minwu stopped in front of a large metal gate with the Highwind family emblem emblazoned on it and pressed a button. It buzzed, but didn't open. Instead, the group saw Kain coming out of the front door wearing a very formal set of armor with a dragon motif from the helmet down to his boots.
"You took long enough," he said, opening the gate long enough for everyone to come inside. "Minwu, why didn't you wear that outfit you wore last year?"
"I told you last night that I'm not wearing that again."
"But Canti would love it! You looked like a movie star in that outfit."
"...you're being ridiculous. You can't keep doing this… this nonsense. Especially when the person you're doing it do would rather not participate."
Everyone else was just confused by their exchange and waited for Kain to lead them into the manor. The front yard was extravagant, with shrubberies pruned into the shape of dragons along the fence. The family emblem was engraved into the very sidewalk they stood on, which caught Crystal's attention once she got a really good look on it.
"Canti has to like you, Minwu!"
"No, she doesn't!"
Crystal knelt down to get a closer look at the Highwind emblem. It was a circle with the letters H and W on either side of a red slash between them. "Hey Kain," she said, causing the two best friends to stop their bickering.
"What?"
"What's up with your family crest?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"It looks like a 'no' sign. A circle with a line straight through it, diagonal like that?" Crystal asked again.
"Oh. I don't know why it is the way it is. It's just like that. Not important." Kain said dismissively. "Come on. Canti's ceremony starts in a bit and since she invited all of you, you're going to be present. I promised to make sure you'd be here to support her. Last thing I want is her upset that she's not feeling supported by the people she chose to support her."
"What if we didn't wanna come out here to your fancy-shmancy estate to support your stuffy family traditions?" Tidus asked.
"Canti chose you to be here. I'd make sure you were."
"You'd force it?"
Kain gave Tidus a very hard glare, as if to put him in his place for daring to question him, especially in his own house. His authority here was at its peak and his tone of voice commanded respect. "You'd be here." That was the voice of the eventual replacement of the Grand Dragoon coming through him.
"All right, that's enough," Minwu said, pulling Kain and putting him in the direction of the front door of the manor.
"You can eat. There's a table full of food in the foyer. Though because I know where it came from, I'm not gonna bother with any no matter how good it is! We'll let everyone know when it's time to start. As you're Canti's guests, you have special seating," Kain explained, leading them inside. "Do your best to not embarrass her."
"...Kain, seriously, stop being such an ass," Minwu said, rolling his eyes. "There's no reason to be so uptight-"
"I'll have the maids put you in something more flattering than the Mysidian formal outfit you wore last year," Kain snapped at him. "Don't tempt me."
"Don't threaten me with utterly pointless things," Minwu grunted at him.
"If you keep being defiant, it isn't a threat. It's a promise."
"If it weren't for the fact that Canti invited me, I would leave right this instant. I've no need for your family legacy, Kain."
"But you know that she needs you."
"Not like that."
"Oh shut up!" Hikari and Crystal said to them both at the same time. "Both of you!"
"You bicker like an old married couple!" Crystal said, crossing her arms. That only made Kain blush and Minwu look away.
"Doesn't Canti get a say in her own affairs? Don't make decisions for her. Geez. Last thing I want to see are the two of you arranging a marriage before she makes the promotion to Dragoon." Hikari sighed.
Kain instantly felt as if he had to defend himself. What an accusation! He didn't deserve such slander! "I would never stoop to-"
"Just shut up and lead us to where we have to go."
"Come on, then."
