A/W: Hey, guys! In the previous chapter, our heroes reached the statues of the Warring Triad, but they we too late: Kefka and Gestahl preceded them, and Kefka ordered Celes to kill the rest of the members of the Returners, who were with her. However, Celes chose to remain loyal to them and stabbed Kefka, who then killed Gestahl and moved the statues of Triad statues. Shadow returned to save Celes, and then everyone escaped as the Cataclysm, which Kefka caused by moving the statues, devastated the world, the Blackjack was destroyed and everyone was separated. What will happen to them? And in what state is the world? Let's find out!

WARNING: The themes in this chapter include decay, death, and suicide, and may offend your sensibility. Later chapters could also include themes like these. Reader discretion is recommended.

Chapter 26: Celes in the World of Ruin

A year later...

''A year passed since the Cataclysm. In this now unbalanced world, terrible monsters were everywhere, and Kefka had won. He had succeeded, and there was no one left to stop him. Or maybe yes, but people feared it now more than ever. My companions and I were alive, but we got separated. From here began our last stand against Kefka, and began with Celes...'' Mog recounted.

Because of the Cataclysm, it seemed as if everything had changed drastically. Birds seemed to have difficulty flying, as if the atmosphere had become thinner. The world looked reduced to a mass of archipelagos scattered here and there. One small island in the southwest, in particular, was in the middle of nowhere, with no other islands around. A short distance from the coast, there was a small dilapidated looking house. The walls were decadent and dirty, and the roof looked quite unsafe. A miserable shack, in short.

In the shack lived a man who survived the Apocalypse. It was Cid, but it seemed to have changed considerably, almost aged, despite the fact that only a year had passed. Some tufts of his reddish hair were slowly graying, his mustache was disheveled, his eyes were tired and heavy, his movements were weak and he did not look healthy at all, as if he had neglected his body and his needs: he had lost a considerable amount of weight because he did not eat enough and seemed noticeably thinner. His concerns were about something else, or rather, someone.

In the center of the room, there was a bed with a young woman on it. He was none other than Celes Chere. Awakening on that lonely island, Cid had found Celes unconscious and had taken her to the shack to check on her condition. After doing some tests, he discovered the terrible diagnosis: she was in a coma. So, he had placed her on the bed and attached her to machinery, leaving her dressed only with her underwear so that they could work properly, and months passed. He had attached the drip, tubes and various machines so that her vital functions were kept under control until she woke up, as if she were in the hospital in intensive care. Probably Celes would have already turned nineteen at that time. Not a day went by when the former scientist of the Gestahlian Empire did not keep an eye on her, spending endless sleepless nights hoping for her survival and praying, and with all his efforts, his own health was beginning to suffer.

(''Home- Undertale OST'')

Cid was not alone, at least for a while, as the island was inhabited by other survivors, but this was only temporary, and he found himself alone caring for the woman who was like a daughter to him, suffering both physically and mentally. He ate little, barely slept, did not leave the house and barely looked in the mirror. The few times he did, he completely ignored the big dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, almost not standing up more often than not and sometimes fainting from exhaustion, and as he did so, his physical state worsened. After several months like this, he began to feel unwell, and what seemed like a trivial cough or a cold worsened in a short time, with chills, fever and difficulty ingesting food. Because of his weight loss, he had to change his favorite yellow coat because it had become too thin, and as a result, the coat was too wide for him. He didn't give a damn though, he cared more about Celes' health than his own, and he checked Celes' state with paranoid frequency to see if she was alive, sighing with relief whenever he saw her chest rise and fall with her breath.

Three days after becoming ill, Cid began to lose hope, and had just disconnected everything from the unconscious body. Too tired to stand, he sat so heavily that he almost broke his chair, and rested his head on the desk, exhausted. Suddenly, he heard yawns, and groggy with exhaustion, he slowly looked up to his left and saw Celes. She had just woken up, and was putting on her clothes, which were on the opposite side of the bed. Relieved as never before in his life and strong again, he knelt on the bed. ''Oh, Celes! You woke up, finally!'' he exclaimed, and the two hugged tightly.

Celes broke away and uttered a new, loud yawn. ''Cid... What happened?'' he asked.

''Celes... I thought you would never wake up again.'' said Cid.

''I feel like I've slept for centuries.'' said Celes, looking around confusedly.

''One year. I found myself here after the destruction of the world, and I found you unconscious. You were in a coma for a whole year.'' Cid corrected her.

''A whole year? And have you spent all this time looking after me?'' asked Celes, and Cid nodded.

Seeing that Cid seemed to barely stand up, Celes got out of bed abruptly. She immediately looked at him, noticing the very bad condition in which he was. ''Cid, tell me a thing. Why are you looking like that? What happened to you?'' she asked him, worried.

"You were in a coma for so long that I began to lose hope. All year long I had been looking after you while you fainted, and I feared the worst. To tell the truth, I spent so much time keeping an eye on you that I didn't think about myself.'' replied Cid.

The girl looked at him as if he were a hundred years old, astonished. ''Where are we?''

''We are on a small desert island.''

Celes had a bad feeling in her stomach. ''Where is Locke? What happened to others? Do you have any news about from my friends?'' she asked.

(''Home- Undertale OST-s'')

Cid sighed. ''I'm sorry, but I haven't heard from them since you guys left Thamasa last year. As far as I know, this is the only island that hasn't sunk below sea level, and maybe we're alone in this cruel world.'' he said. ''Since that fateful day, the world is now sinking into ruin, day after day. The grass no longer grows. Plants dry out and wither. Animals are agonizing and dying or mutated. The sun is less bright during the day, and the moon barely emits light to illuminate the night. Horrible and powerful monsters are everywhere, and many have been mutated. For a while, I wasn't the only one here, but the people who were with us lost hope and threw themselves one after the other off the cliff to the north in madness after suffering hunger, thirst and loneliness. One of them was a merchant who had been shipwrecked here and had a map, he gave it to me before making the same end as the others. I didn't look at itbecause I had other things to think about, take it yourself.'' he said.

Hearing these words, Celes shivered and had a lump in her throat. All of her friends, including Locke, were who knows where, missing, and maybe they weren't even alive. ''So, they could all be already...'' she murmured.

Cid approached Celes and placed one hand on her shoulder and the other hand in hers. ''Come on, Celes, don't take it so badly. We can still live here, together, in peace. I raised you as if I were your daughter, we are family now.'' he told her.

''I guess so, Cid.'' said Celes. ''Or should I say... Granddad? Is it okay if I call you that?''

Cid burst out laughing. ''Oh, Celes, you make me blush! All of a sudden I have a granddaughter!'' he exclaimed with laughter, and Celes laughed too. However, he began to cough heavily.

''Granddad, what's up? Are you sick?'' asked Celes, worried.

''I don't feel soo good. Three days ago, I got sick while continuing to take care of you, and I haven't eaten anything since I got sick.'' replied Cid.

''Do you want me to bring you something to eat?''

''Bring me some fish, there is nothing else we can eat. And not many fish come in this period. Go to the beach, it's close by, and fish should swim next to the shore.''

''Ok, I'll take care of you. Hold on, okay?''

(''Credits- Conker's Bad Fur Day OST'')

(Objective: Get some fish for Cid.)

Characters:

Celes

Celes didn't want to believe Cid's words, but when she stepped out of the shack, she was horrified at what she saw and realized she was right. In the meadows there was no more green grass, leaving them a horrible persimmon color, the soil looked like in a desert, there were no more flowers, wild animals like rodents looked dying and agonizing, the trees were dead and devoid of most of the branches, looking as if they had been burned by a huge fire, and the vegetation was wilted and dead. He also noticed that the sky was orange and red. Normally, it should be like that during a sunset or sunrise, but there was something strange. She could see the sun, but his light seemed dimmer, weaker. But the thing that froze the blood in her veins was water. The water was no longer clear and crystal clear, but it was red as blood, and in addition, it smelled terrible, as if it were polluted and dirty. Some fish lay on the shore, as well as their skeletons.

It was as if the moon had crashed(1), and seeing that crap, Celes immediately compared that world to a post-apocalyptic world. He tried to focus on catching the fish for Cid, but touching the water was too much to bear, let alone the smell. It smelled of putrescein, cadaverine, rotten eggs... in short, for her it seemed the equivalent of the most disgusting thing ever, even more disgusting than Kefka when he raped her the day she rebelled against him. Ignoring that horrible feeling, he took the nearest fish and took them to Cid. ''Grandpa, I got you some fish. Hold, eat.'' he told him.

''Thank you, Celes.'' said Cid, taking the cutlery and beginning to boneless and eat a moderately long fish.

A few days passed, but despite Celes' care, Cid's condition showed no sign of improving. He coughed more and more heavily, more and more often, and showed more and more difficulty breathing. A difficult situation for Celes, who sometimes also had to live divide search for food with defending himself from mutated monsters, including dragons reduced to skeletons due to lack of food. She couldn't even figure out what had happened to him, as Cid could barely finish a sentence without a cough, and the young woman didn't know if he had gotten bronchitis, pneumonia, lung cancer, or other respiratory diseases, and she still didn't have the medical knowledge to know. At one point, Cid refused to eat.

When she wasn't getting food or fighting monsters, Celes thought of her lost friends. She looked at the list with the members of the Returners and had to mark Banon and Leo as dead. As for the others, she marked them with a pencil with the inscription ''Missing'' or ''Presumed Dead'', since from what she knew, they were all dead. She also looked for the first time at the map that Cid had given her, and what she saw made her hair stand up. The three main continents no longer existed. There was only one main continent in the southern part of the map, and Vector was completely absent. There were also no Sabre Mountains and Mount Koltz, now submerged, and the Serpent Trench that connected Mobliz and Nikeah was above sea level. As he had seen outside, the water was blood red. She was trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere, alone, with friends missing and possibly dead and with no way out.

(''Credits- Conker's Bad Fur Day OST-s'')

''Celes... thanks for what you did for me...'' cid coughed. He could barely speak.

''I couldn't do anything else.'' said Celes. ''Go ahead, you have to eat.''

''Listen to me, I have to tell you something. I'm afraid I won't live much longer.'' said Cid.

Celes opened his eyes wide in shock. ''Granddad... what do you mean?'' he asked.

''I'm sick. I... I have... I have lung cancer. At first I thought it was just coughing, but then it got worse right away. Soon, I will die, and my ever-so-slim hopes of seeing Kefka defeated and the world return to peace will die alongside me.'' admitted Cid.

''Cid...?''

''I can't bear this any longer...''

Cid's vision began to become increasingly blurred. He could not even move a muscle, as if the whole body had stiffened. ''You can't do this to me...'' said Celes.

''Don't look at me like this, Celes... I'm not long for this cruel new world...'' said Cid, coughing for the umpteenth time.

''Don't talk, spare your strength.'' said Celes.

''My girl, don't think of me... think of you... My worst nightmare is to think of you, lost in this cursed island... As long as I can speak, I... I want to thank you...'' murmured Cid, his voice chocked.

''No, Cid, don't die... there is nothing more and no one here, I don't want to lose you too...'' the woman murmured, with a liquid that stung her eyes.

''Goodbye...''

Cid's body no longer moved. His eyes were open, and his empty gaze was directed toward the ceiling above the bed on which he was lying.

''Granddad...? What's wrong? Come on, open your eyes, this isn't funny!'' said Celes.

But there was no answer. ''Cid...'' The woman shook Cid's body, which did not react.

(''Celes' Theme- Final Fantasy VI OST'')

''No! NO! You promised you'd stay with me! Granddad, answer me! Tell me you're just joking!'' shouted Celes, tears in her eyes. The silence in the room was proof that the man who raised her as a father had died. Unable to look at him again, she ran away crying. She paid absolutely no attention to the environment around her, but ran seemingly blindly, not knowing where she was going. His legs looked as if they were going on autopilot, and when he opened his eyes again, he realized that he was on the cliff Cid was talking about, the one on the north side of the island.

From the top of the rocky cliff, Celes could hear the sound of the rough sea, with the waves hitting the rock with force. Suddenly, she stopped when she heard a sudden sound, as if something had been crushed. She raised her foot and retreated to see what she had stepped on.

It was a dove. Its wings were broken, and in addition, its was dead. The pure white bird symbol of peace that lay lifeless on the cliff was the symbol of a now barren and destroyed world, where life was dying, where all hope was lost and where humans had been exterminated, including perhaps her friends, of whom she had no news, and also Locke, the one who... was she really thinking this? Had she really fallen in love with him?

Upon reaching the top of the cliff, Celes thought back to what Cid had said about it, how all those who had given up had thrown themselves from there. She approached the edge, thinking of everyone. Locke will no longer be able to protect her. Terra, who she cared like a sister, will no longer be able help saving the world. Mog will no longer be able to be by her side. Edgar will no longer be able to flirt with women or make jokes with Locke. Sabin will no longer be able to take Master Duncan's teachings with him, nor help his brother. Cyan, who finally fully accepted her, will no longer be able to fight. Gau will no longer be able to have a normal life apart from that in the Veldt. Setzer will no longer be able to bet on anything. Relm will no longer be able to live the rest of her childhood, nor become a professional painter. Strago will never be able to return to Thamasa. Shadow will no longer be able to settle things with Kefka. Arvis was probably dead too, leaving the decimated remnants of the Returners without a leader for the second time in two weeks. Even Umaro, in the unlikely hypothesis of his survival, would return to being a ruthless and feral yeti without Mog to keep him at bay, since he was the only one who could make him docile, and she doubted that he had survived. Banon and Leo had long since died. She could have escaped from that island that felt like a prison to her, if only she had wings, but she did not have them. ''Everyone's gone... Even Locke, who promised to protect me... I can't go on like this anymore... In this cruel world, my life is pointless...'' she murmured.

Unable to cope with or tolerate the situation, Celes came even closer to the edge of the cliff from which all those who were on that island threw themselves, taking their own lives. She was now convinced that it was not worth continuing to live alone in such a cruel world. She thought of Locke once again and realized that she could no longer hide her love for him. Living without him like this was like the night without stars, as if instead of spring, autumn, scratch that, winter, had arrived, the cold, hostile winter in which the world seemed abandoned, forsaken. She also thought of Cid, the one who for years had been like a father to her and who had now died, wondering if he could have survived if she had done more.(2) With a deep breath, she threw herself off the cliff. As soon as she touched the water, silence.

(''Celes' Theme- Final Fantasy VI OST-s'')

(''Zelda's Lullaby- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker OST'')

When Celes heard the sounds of the waves, she realized that she had failed. She opened his eyes. Was back on the beach than before. Defeated, she sat down groaning, and in her clouded view, she saw a bird. A seagull was on the sand, next to her, chirping as it removed the algae from her face. Sighing loudly, she looked at him. ''Were you watching over me? Why would you waste your efforts helping someone like me? I have already lost all hope...'' he murmured in a broken voice. He wanted to cry, but he felt he couldn't.

The seagull gently nibbled on her ear with its beak and rested on her arm, but then made a sound that sounded like a cry of pain. Celes looked up and understood why. Its right wing looked in an abnormal angle and was bandaged. She also noticed something else that shocked her. Above the bandage was a blue bandana tied around the wing, and she recognized it perfectly. ''This bandana... it can't be..'' she said in a low voice. ''Hey, little bird, where are you from? Is the person who bandaged your wound still alive?'' she asked the bird, untying the bandana. The seagull leaned on her finger and chirped again, then flew away into the unknown.

Although she could not understand what the seagull meant, Celes only had to look at the bandana to realize one thing. It was Locke's bandana. This meant it was still out there, somewhere. ''He's alive... Locke is alive!'' she said to herself, happy to know that she was not alone in this world. She stood up as the water caressed her feet, under the soft sunlight just below the horizon, and when she touched the bandana with her lips, she could smell Locke. He had to look for him, but he knew that being on an island, there was only water, so he had to plan.

(Objective: Look for a way to leave the island.)

Night fell, and the moon was the only source of light, but it looked reddish and didn't give off much light. After some unsuccessful plans, Celes again entered the shack and closed Cid's eyes, then she saw a letter. It was intended for her, and it was Cid who wrote it. Judging by how difficult the handwriting was to comprehend, it was as if it had been written in a hurry or with enormous difficulty. She began to read it.

''Dear Celes, I don't know you're still alive, or if you woke up from your coma. If you see this letter it probably means that I'm not here anymore. I don't know what you'll think of me. I want you to know that you are too young to be trapped like a bird in a cage. You and your friend Terra have freed yourselves from the chains of Kefka and the Empire, but I fear that now you are trapped in a prison that not even the lockpick of a certain friend of yours will be able to open. You must leave this island. Your friends are probably out there, somewhere. Go look for them. There is a secret staircase next to the table. Move it and go down the stairs to get to the basement. There you will find a raft, with which you can finally get out of here and start your search. After my death I want you to cremate my body and carry my ashes with you until you and your friends defeat Kefka once and for all and save the world. When the world returns to normal, let my ashes fly away in the wind. Freedom awaits you, out there. Good luck.- Love, Granddad''

Using candles and the Fire spell to get light, began to make a private funeral for Cid. ''I'm sorry I'll have to do that, Cid. Goodbye.'' she hought. He took some wood, cast Fire on it to light the fire, and put his body on it, which cremated a few minutes. With a sad look, she took his ashes and put them in her pocket.

Celes approached the table and saw a small space beyond which there was a well-hidden staircase. Lowering her head, she went through the other side and went down the stairs, reaching the basement, where she found the raft mentioned in the letter. She looked at her surrogate father for the last time and went out carrying the raft, pushing it into the water and climbing on it.

The water was no longer furious, but the sea seemed calm, gently making the raft float. The former soldier looked at the island for the last time as it walked away until it disappeared from her sight. She didn't know where she was going to go, but better everywhere than there. Exhausted, she fell asleep with new hopes for the future.

''Celes woke up after a year in a coma, during which her mentor and surrogate father, Cid, had taken care of her, at the cost of getting lung cancer. She tried to cure him by feeding him fish, but Cid died. Devastated by the fact that her friends were missing and the one who was a father to her had died, she became convinced that it was no longer worth continuing to live, a conception symbolized by a dead dove, leading her to attempt suicide by throwing herself off a cliff. But when she woke up, she came across a wounded seagull, and around its wing, she found Locke's bandana. And it would be this bandana that made her understand that her friends, including me, were still there, somewhere. She took a raft and left the island in the middle of nowhere where she had woken up, leaving with new hopes...'' Mog recounted.

(''Zelda's Lullaby- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker OST-s'')

A/N: And we've completed the chapter! Celes has had a bad time with coma and everything else, but she has overcome it, and finding Locke's bandana, she is now sure that her friends are alive, somewhere. Will he be able to find them? Which place will you visit first? And who will be the first to be reunited with? Find out in the next chapter! See you soon!

(1): In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the plot has to do with Link finding himself in a parallel world, Termina, where the Skull Kid, who is possessed by a mask full of dark powers, Majora's Mask, is pulling the moon out of its orbit to cause it to crash into Termina within three days, destroying it, and Link must repeatedly live the three-day cycle and free the four giants to stop the moon and save Termina.

(2): The possibility of Cid surviving was added late in development, but it's very difficult to save him. In this section of the game, there is a hidden timer that starts at 120 and drops by 1 every second if the player is not in the menu or in a battle. If it drops below 30, Cid will die, but if the player manages to bring it to 255, he will recover and survive. His dialogue when you talk to him changes according to the timer, and the time in the timer increases or decreases according to the speed of the fish: the slow ones reduce it by 16, those of average speed are either rotten fish that reduce it by 4 or normal fish that fill it by 16 and the fast fish are delicious and increase the timer by 32. According to Dissidia Final Fantasy, Cid's death is considered canon.