AN: A strangely inspired musing...
Disclaimers: I don't own any ff8 characters, they are © Squaresoft, and I am making no money for this fic :( so don't bother suing me cause you ain't gonna get much...
Rated PG for suggestion
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A few decades have passed now. I and my beast rider wait, patiently, for someone to find us. I feel the emotions of the world around me. I know there is a sorceress attempting to take back what is hers. But it would seem the time of the daughters of Hyne has gone forever. Though it is a select few who fight openly against her. Intrigued, I have followed them, and I find myself beginning to feel attracted to one mind amongst them. A mind that shines like an icy blade, a mind that reminds me of my own. Beneath the ice rages a fire and an iron will that, perhaps, I could see as an equal. For I have grown to know my limits, and to know that so much has, indeed, changed.
I no longer have the desire to take the world, instead, my days are empty, and I find myself longing for a purpose, any purpose. Even to become the partner of a mortal against a daughter of Hyne. But I will not join a weakling, however great their mind. I will never give myself willingly to an inferior.
I know instantly when Bahamut accedes to the intruders. I follow their progress down the ancient stairway with interest. They cannot see me, hidden in the shadows, sending monster after monster forth to test them. Finally the girl in blue becomes tired enough that her control slips, and her sorceress side pushes its way to the fore. There is little point sending monsters against them now, and so I cease to do so.
Only the scarred gunblade warrior seems suspicious. He is the one whose mind attracted my attention in the first place. Full of flaws and frailties, but powerful despite them. I suppress a smile. He could easily wield as much power as I have to offer.
They reach the bottom, and the blond fighter immediately begins poking at the carcass of the excavation machines. I signal my beast rider, and, as it appears, I quietly render both the sorceress and the blond unconscious. The gunblade warrior notes his fallen comrades, but it doesn't seem to faze him. Good, he remains calm in dangerous situations, but can he fight?
A few minutes later I have my answer. He and the beast rider are locked in a stalemate. Several times the brunette has barely escaped a lethal strike, but each time he has managed to strike back almost before the beast rider can defend.
Both are circling warily. The rider has found that his beast gives him no advantage, as the two are fused together and cannot attack separately. The brunette has found that his 'GF', Ifrit, gives him no advantage, as my beast riders were designed to repel Centra attacks.
Finally the brunette backs up, standing straighter, and looking as though he is about to summon Ifrit again. The beast rider waits, and I frown, disapproving. Obviously a reaction that needs tweaking in the logic system. Perhaps the organic brain believes its mechanical body requires respite, however brief, from the prolonged combat.
A light begins to shine from the gunblade as the boy concentrates. I stare in wonder. Does he know what he is doing? I had thought they had all died out, but perhaps... If he is, then that would go some way to explaining the conflicting fire and ice of his mind...
Fascinated, I watch as the scarred fighter controls the energy and leaps at the beast rider, unleashing a barrage of devastating blows. I watch the mortally wounded beast rider slowly crumple to the ground and die. The boy stands, leaning lightly on his gunblade, sweat shining on his face. He is too tired, for the moment, to worry about his fallen comrades. There is no danger, he has time to recover himself first.
Slowly I step forwards out of the shadows. His eyes narrow, and he draws the gunblade up in a guard position, but he does not attack. I am trying to appear human, but one glance at his mind shows me that he sees the truth. I let my useless illusion fade with a sigh.
"What are you?" He asks, wary, but curious. What am I? A good question.
"I suppose I'm a GF. But I wasn't always." He frowns.
"So what were you?" There is little chance that he will know my name.
"I was a Centra." Nothing in his eyes or his mind to show that he knows what I am talking about. "An Eternal One." Still nothing. I shrug, or at least, I think I do. What my body actually does I don't know, but he seems to get the idea.
"Are you going to fight me?" I laugh and shake my head in the negative.
"You have already proven yourself worthy." I point at the dead beast rider. "Not many can defeat a beast rider." He frowns. "Only a select few in fact. Even in my time." The frown deepens, and I can see the questions running through his mind. He says nothing though. "Are there many gunblade fighters in this time?" There is suddenly a startlingly clear mental picture of a blond with jade-green eyes, and a scar the mirror image of the brunettes. The blond is smirking, and I can feel his charisma, even through the thought.
"Just two." The brunette finally replies. I sift deeper through his mind, and stumble across the cause of his reticence.
"You don't want to fight him... You don't want to hurt him..." Shock and fury darken the brunette's face, and his eyes become two shards of ice, piercing my very being. He shifts the gunblade slightly, meaningfully.
"Get out of my mind." I shrug again. Already I am looking for the mind of the blond in the world around me. I find it, eventually, and although it takes only seconds it seems much longer. I missed it the first time, as it is held in thrall to another. To a daughter of Hyne.
I switch all my concentration to the imprisoned mind. Cautiously I worm my way between the sorceress's control and into the mind of the blond himself. His thoughts are in turmoil, constantly stirred by the sorceress. That is how she is controlling him, by not letting him understand himself. But there is a core of stability, sanity. The only thing that stands between the sorceress and complete control. I am unsurprised to find that it is icy cold, and an image of the brunette in front of me.
The two are meant to be together, I can see that. Both with minds of fire and ice, one with ice dominant, and the other with fire dominant. I find myself filled with a desire to get the two where they should be. Of course, it's quite coincidental that to do so, I'll have to crush a daughter of Hyne...
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AN: It's quite clear in the game that Eden is no ordinary GF, so this was a musing on where Eden might have come from. Funny, cause its inspiration was how I was standing on the bus as I went home :) It started out as an original fic, a sorceress who had been defeated and imprisoned, and then got free to find the world had moved on, and there was no longer a place for her kind. Only, somewhere along the line my ff8 muse hijacked the plot and refused to give it back :p