As said before, this chapter will be in Yuna's POV. Please, before you read
this, go to http://thegia.com and read the FFX: International extra ending
before reading this chapter. ^_^; It might help a bit.
Chapter Ten: Quiet Reminiscing (Yuna)
I overheard the captain of the ship talking with an angry Ryuu. We weren't going straight to Zanarkand as the temperamental Crusader had planned. We were to stop at Luca and switch ships, or maybe hire a few airships to take us. Travel in the sky would be much faster than travel in the restless sea.
I had been made to lie down and rest after sending the dead that had been killed by the fiend. There were a total of ten casualties, and had it not been for Destiny's aeon, there would've been more. It had stayed only a second after killing the beast and then had disappeared in a flash of dazzling light and sparkles.
I puzzled over Destiny's strange abilities. She could summon, but it seemed as though she wasn't aware that she had the power to control it. It seemed to drain energy from her like gaining a new aeon had for me so many years ago. A few of the villagers said that she had stayed conscious until the dragon had been completely formed, and then she had fainted and her aeon had attacked.
Most aeons needed a summoner with them, or they would be unsure of what to do, or what their purpose was, but the dragon had attacked the fiend without hesitation, and then returned in spirit to its master, like it had been linked to her the whole time, and now Destiny slept peacefully on a little cot a ways away from me, her light blonde hair strewn everywhere and her mouth slightly open. She didn't look like a normal summoner; she looked like a lost little girl, scared and confused, and totally alone.
She was hungry for knowledge. She didn't like feeling empty and lost in the world, and she wanted to know everything. I suppose that's why I decided to tell her the story of my pilgrimage, from the moment I'd met Tidus to the moment he'd disappeared from my life forever. I hadn't cried, but I was glad that Destiny didn't have many questions, because I felt as though my mouth had dried, and that if I spoke the words would refuse to come.
I hadn't told her about our little journey into the halfway-rebuilt Zanarkand two years afterwards, either. It was depressing to think of how my hopes had soared when Rikku had shown me that sphere of Tidus in the cage. I should have known not to think that he would actually be there, but I had, and only to learn that the sphere had been older than we'd thought.
~*Eighteen Years Ago, in a lost section of Zanarkand, looking for an answer *~
I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't been right before my eyes. Here was what seemed to be an entire underground facility, almost as large as the ruined city itself. Almost all of the old machina were intact, with the few exceptions where time had taken its toll and deteriorated the metallic instruments and various other man-made creations, or the few machina that were ripped apart, as if shredded by some gigantic fiend on a mad rampage. It was like a whole new world.
Devices that I'd never before seen in my life were everywhere, some of them small, with many buttons and levers, and a few that were almost as large as the wall itself, with giant screens and many wires. I could hear Rikku beginning to tinker with one of them, and Wakka strode over to one, awestruck. This was what Zanarkand had once been like.
We traveled further into the laboratory, into what seemed like a deserted chamber after being around so many machina. Doors were dotted on each side, some of them with labeled with faded letters and others whose labels had disappeared completely. A few large gashes covered the walls and the floor, and in one area it looked as if it had burst into flame. Warily, we checked in every door, only to find nothing but more machina and papers strewn in various places. I felt my hopes deteriorating with each new door. We probably weren't even in the right place.
This had been where Kimahri had found the sphere showing Tidus trapped in a cage after he had fallen into the facility through the soft ground above the ceiling, which was wearing away. We had come here hoping beyond all hopes that somehow we would find something that indicated the he lived, but this place was older than Tidus himself, almost as old as the ancient metropolis, and just as ruined. I continued opening and closing doors, with Kimahri, Wakka, and Rikku shifting through piles of junk looking for something that would give us a clue.
"Nothing," Rikku said sadly, throwing a scrap of metal to the ground and shrugging.
"Kimahri not find anything," Kimahri said, "but we keep searching other rooms."
Rikku regained her normal cheerful composition. "Righto!"
~* The first clue, cages *~
We had come to the last door of the hall, which was labeled 'Holding Room'.
"Holding Room? I wonder what that means," Rikku said curiously, opening the door slightly and peeking in furtively. "Wow! Look at all of them!"
Giant cages lined each side of a musty, narrow corridor, which extended into the next room and the room beyond that. A few tables that had been knocked over were strewn here and there, and you had to look where you were walking, for the pointy instruments that had once rested on them had fallen everywhere. There were signs that this place hadn't ended by natural cause. It looked as if it had been attacked. That explained the large gashes that had covered the floor and walls of the hallway with the many doors.
"Kimahri no like smell," my Ronso guardian said, wrinkling his nose and looking at the skull of one of the dead creatures. It was horrifying, holes filled the skull and a horn protruded from the middle, as if it had been a Ronso, but it had a canine look about it, with a long slender snout and claws longer than my entire upper section. It looked as if it had been painfully packed into the cell, and one of its finger bones protruded from the opening between the bars, as if it had been looking for a way out.
"What were they all doing here?" Rikku asked, gripping the rusty bars and peering at what looked like a drake skeleton. (Drakes are dragons that aren't much bigger than a domestic dog. They're rare, it was extremely surprising to see one, even the skeleton of one, confined.)
Wakka grimaced as he tripped over a fallen piece of metal. "Whatever it was, those people had to be nuts to keep all these things in one place, ya?"
"Agreed!" Rikku said, pulling away from the cage and helping Wakka up.
"What kind of clue do you think we could find in here?" I asked and was a second later coughing uncontrollably. The dust that had gathered in this ancient place had settled on all parts of my body and had made its way into my lungs.
"Ya never know," Wakka said, walking into the next room with Rikku skipping after him.
1
The next room wasn't much different than the first, aside from a burst open cage in the middle, with the door of it lying in the middle of the room, twisted and mangled as if something had wrenched it open with extreme force.
"Looks like somethin' escaped from that one, ya?" Wakka said, trotting over to it and looking inside. I followed. Sure enough, the cell was completely devoid of a skeleton or some reminder that one of the fiends had ever dwelled within it. "Musta been pretty strong," Wakka commented.
Rikku had wandered away from the opened cage and into the next room, where a huge shelf of video spheres leaned against the far wall. They too were labeled, things like 'Year 01, Project: Carnage'.
"Hey! Maybe these will help!" Rikku called to us, waving one in the air.
"Whatcha got there?" Wakka asked, snatching it quickly and peering at the lettering. "Year 15, Final Project: Guardian, Part: Seventeen.. wonder what that means, eh?" Rikku sighed and grabbed it back.
"We won't know unless you PLAY IT!" she said, touching the surface and waiting for it to start up. "Huh?
The sphere began to vibrate in her hands. She squealed and dropped it quickly. "It's a trap! A bomb!" The sphere had begun to glow a bright orange, and was making strange noises. Everyone took a step away from it.
"Strange sphere," Kimahri commented impassively. He nudged it with his Spirit Lance and it began to glow brighter.
"Kimahri! Don't touch it!" Rikku berated, punching him lightly in his arm. He glared at her and nudged it again. She stuck out her tongue. "Fine! If you want it to blow up, then go right ahead!"
Kimahri sighed and walked away from the sphere, which had begun to shoot shaky images into the air.
"I don't think it's a bomb," Wakka said, smirking slightly at the fuming Al Bhed girl.
"Well, I was just trying to be safe!" she said, crossing her arms. "Let's just watch it, okay?"
~* The second clue, a sphere *~
The shaky image of a man appeared in the air. He was donning a messy white coat and a large pair of glasses that covered his tired gray eyes. He reached a hand up to push his glasses up his nose and an exasperated sigh escaped him, barely audible through the crackling that the old sphere was making. The man ran his hand through his brown hair and began to speak.
"This is the final recording. What we deemed to be the perfect specimen, entitled Guardian, has escaped his cage and was killed by the monks of Bevelle as he fled. It took an hour and a half for this entire project to fail horribly. We are giving up, there is no hope other than the sacrificing of summoners for our world. We saw the pyreflies of Guardian returning here. We knew it would be so. We made a mistake in keeping him so human, it was only natural that his unsent, semi-conscious being would return to the place of its birth. It wasn't right, I suppose, but it was done. We tried to create our own live aeon."
I felt my throat go into a knot. Creating an aeon? To do that you needed a fayth. To obtain a fayth, you needed a human soul.
"The rest of the projects, our failures, will be left here to perish. We have no need for them; it would be better if it were as though they'd never existed."
The foggy image sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose once more.
"We fear, more than anything now, excommunication, as is the punishment for such a 'dishonorable' experiment, but we did it because of our friend, Jubaya the summoner, who couldn't bring himself to sacrifice his dearest friend along with himself, as the Lady Yunalesca tried to make him do so. He brought back the tale of their meeting, and appalled, we began to create the aeon to end them all, which resulted in our best try yet, Guardian."
The picture flashed briefly to a wild looking dragon, who slammed his head violently against the bars of his cage and whispered in a ragged voice, "Freedom, out!"
The man reappeared and said with a sigh, "That was an earlier recording of our Final Aeon. He was very hostile in his youth, but as time wore on he mellowed, or at least we thought he had, but he pulled the wool over our eyes and managed his great escape, which ended off in his death, and what will be our downfall, we expect."
"So now you've heard what became of us, and how we reached our demise. We hope that you won't make the same mistakes as we have, but we beg of you, if this is ever seen, please stop the pilgrimages. My daughter aspires to be a Summoner, and I cannot watch her go off and die. Please stop all of this nonsense!"
The man's image shimmered and faded, leaving me, the Summoner who had ended them all, with a feeling of apprehension and depression.
Where did Tidus come into all of this?
~ End Reminisce ~
I hope I did okay on this chapter. It was hard to write in Yuna's POV, and ever harder to get down all of the facts and points I wanted to.
Anyways, the story's gonna start twisting and turning pretty soon, so be prepared. ^_~
Chapter Ten: Quiet Reminiscing (Yuna)
I overheard the captain of the ship talking with an angry Ryuu. We weren't going straight to Zanarkand as the temperamental Crusader had planned. We were to stop at Luca and switch ships, or maybe hire a few airships to take us. Travel in the sky would be much faster than travel in the restless sea.
I had been made to lie down and rest after sending the dead that had been killed by the fiend. There were a total of ten casualties, and had it not been for Destiny's aeon, there would've been more. It had stayed only a second after killing the beast and then had disappeared in a flash of dazzling light and sparkles.
I puzzled over Destiny's strange abilities. She could summon, but it seemed as though she wasn't aware that she had the power to control it. It seemed to drain energy from her like gaining a new aeon had for me so many years ago. A few of the villagers said that she had stayed conscious until the dragon had been completely formed, and then she had fainted and her aeon had attacked.
Most aeons needed a summoner with them, or they would be unsure of what to do, or what their purpose was, but the dragon had attacked the fiend without hesitation, and then returned in spirit to its master, like it had been linked to her the whole time, and now Destiny slept peacefully on a little cot a ways away from me, her light blonde hair strewn everywhere and her mouth slightly open. She didn't look like a normal summoner; she looked like a lost little girl, scared and confused, and totally alone.
She was hungry for knowledge. She didn't like feeling empty and lost in the world, and she wanted to know everything. I suppose that's why I decided to tell her the story of my pilgrimage, from the moment I'd met Tidus to the moment he'd disappeared from my life forever. I hadn't cried, but I was glad that Destiny didn't have many questions, because I felt as though my mouth had dried, and that if I spoke the words would refuse to come.
I hadn't told her about our little journey into the halfway-rebuilt Zanarkand two years afterwards, either. It was depressing to think of how my hopes had soared when Rikku had shown me that sphere of Tidus in the cage. I should have known not to think that he would actually be there, but I had, and only to learn that the sphere had been older than we'd thought.
~*Eighteen Years Ago, in a lost section of Zanarkand, looking for an answer *~
I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't been right before my eyes. Here was what seemed to be an entire underground facility, almost as large as the ruined city itself. Almost all of the old machina were intact, with the few exceptions where time had taken its toll and deteriorated the metallic instruments and various other man-made creations, or the few machina that were ripped apart, as if shredded by some gigantic fiend on a mad rampage. It was like a whole new world.
Devices that I'd never before seen in my life were everywhere, some of them small, with many buttons and levers, and a few that were almost as large as the wall itself, with giant screens and many wires. I could hear Rikku beginning to tinker with one of them, and Wakka strode over to one, awestruck. This was what Zanarkand had once been like.
We traveled further into the laboratory, into what seemed like a deserted chamber after being around so many machina. Doors were dotted on each side, some of them with labeled with faded letters and others whose labels had disappeared completely. A few large gashes covered the walls and the floor, and in one area it looked as if it had burst into flame. Warily, we checked in every door, only to find nothing but more machina and papers strewn in various places. I felt my hopes deteriorating with each new door. We probably weren't even in the right place.
This had been where Kimahri had found the sphere showing Tidus trapped in a cage after he had fallen into the facility through the soft ground above the ceiling, which was wearing away. We had come here hoping beyond all hopes that somehow we would find something that indicated the he lived, but this place was older than Tidus himself, almost as old as the ancient metropolis, and just as ruined. I continued opening and closing doors, with Kimahri, Wakka, and Rikku shifting through piles of junk looking for something that would give us a clue.
"Nothing," Rikku said sadly, throwing a scrap of metal to the ground and shrugging.
"Kimahri not find anything," Kimahri said, "but we keep searching other rooms."
Rikku regained her normal cheerful composition. "Righto!"
~* The first clue, cages *~
We had come to the last door of the hall, which was labeled 'Holding Room'.
"Holding Room? I wonder what that means," Rikku said curiously, opening the door slightly and peeking in furtively. "Wow! Look at all of them!"
Giant cages lined each side of a musty, narrow corridor, which extended into the next room and the room beyond that. A few tables that had been knocked over were strewn here and there, and you had to look where you were walking, for the pointy instruments that had once rested on them had fallen everywhere. There were signs that this place hadn't ended by natural cause. It looked as if it had been attacked. That explained the large gashes that had covered the floor and walls of the hallway with the many doors.
"Kimahri no like smell," my Ronso guardian said, wrinkling his nose and looking at the skull of one of the dead creatures. It was horrifying, holes filled the skull and a horn protruded from the middle, as if it had been a Ronso, but it had a canine look about it, with a long slender snout and claws longer than my entire upper section. It looked as if it had been painfully packed into the cell, and one of its finger bones protruded from the opening between the bars, as if it had been looking for a way out.
"What were they all doing here?" Rikku asked, gripping the rusty bars and peering at what looked like a drake skeleton. (Drakes are dragons that aren't much bigger than a domestic dog. They're rare, it was extremely surprising to see one, even the skeleton of one, confined.)
Wakka grimaced as he tripped over a fallen piece of metal. "Whatever it was, those people had to be nuts to keep all these things in one place, ya?"
"Agreed!" Rikku said, pulling away from the cage and helping Wakka up.
"What kind of clue do you think we could find in here?" I asked and was a second later coughing uncontrollably. The dust that had gathered in this ancient place had settled on all parts of my body and had made its way into my lungs.
"Ya never know," Wakka said, walking into the next room with Rikku skipping after him.
1
The next room wasn't much different than the first, aside from a burst open cage in the middle, with the door of it lying in the middle of the room, twisted and mangled as if something had wrenched it open with extreme force.
"Looks like somethin' escaped from that one, ya?" Wakka said, trotting over to it and looking inside. I followed. Sure enough, the cell was completely devoid of a skeleton or some reminder that one of the fiends had ever dwelled within it. "Musta been pretty strong," Wakka commented.
Rikku had wandered away from the opened cage and into the next room, where a huge shelf of video spheres leaned against the far wall. They too were labeled, things like 'Year 01, Project: Carnage'.
"Hey! Maybe these will help!" Rikku called to us, waving one in the air.
"Whatcha got there?" Wakka asked, snatching it quickly and peering at the lettering. "Year 15, Final Project: Guardian, Part: Seventeen.. wonder what that means, eh?" Rikku sighed and grabbed it back.
"We won't know unless you PLAY IT!" she said, touching the surface and waiting for it to start up. "Huh?
The sphere began to vibrate in her hands. She squealed and dropped it quickly. "It's a trap! A bomb!" The sphere had begun to glow a bright orange, and was making strange noises. Everyone took a step away from it.
"Strange sphere," Kimahri commented impassively. He nudged it with his Spirit Lance and it began to glow brighter.
"Kimahri! Don't touch it!" Rikku berated, punching him lightly in his arm. He glared at her and nudged it again. She stuck out her tongue. "Fine! If you want it to blow up, then go right ahead!"
Kimahri sighed and walked away from the sphere, which had begun to shoot shaky images into the air.
"I don't think it's a bomb," Wakka said, smirking slightly at the fuming Al Bhed girl.
"Well, I was just trying to be safe!" she said, crossing her arms. "Let's just watch it, okay?"
~* The second clue, a sphere *~
The shaky image of a man appeared in the air. He was donning a messy white coat and a large pair of glasses that covered his tired gray eyes. He reached a hand up to push his glasses up his nose and an exasperated sigh escaped him, barely audible through the crackling that the old sphere was making. The man ran his hand through his brown hair and began to speak.
"This is the final recording. What we deemed to be the perfect specimen, entitled Guardian, has escaped his cage and was killed by the monks of Bevelle as he fled. It took an hour and a half for this entire project to fail horribly. We are giving up, there is no hope other than the sacrificing of summoners for our world. We saw the pyreflies of Guardian returning here. We knew it would be so. We made a mistake in keeping him so human, it was only natural that his unsent, semi-conscious being would return to the place of its birth. It wasn't right, I suppose, but it was done. We tried to create our own live aeon."
I felt my throat go into a knot. Creating an aeon? To do that you needed a fayth. To obtain a fayth, you needed a human soul.
"The rest of the projects, our failures, will be left here to perish. We have no need for them; it would be better if it were as though they'd never existed."
The foggy image sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose once more.
"We fear, more than anything now, excommunication, as is the punishment for such a 'dishonorable' experiment, but we did it because of our friend, Jubaya the summoner, who couldn't bring himself to sacrifice his dearest friend along with himself, as the Lady Yunalesca tried to make him do so. He brought back the tale of their meeting, and appalled, we began to create the aeon to end them all, which resulted in our best try yet, Guardian."
The picture flashed briefly to a wild looking dragon, who slammed his head violently against the bars of his cage and whispered in a ragged voice, "Freedom, out!"
The man reappeared and said with a sigh, "That was an earlier recording of our Final Aeon. He was very hostile in his youth, but as time wore on he mellowed, or at least we thought he had, but he pulled the wool over our eyes and managed his great escape, which ended off in his death, and what will be our downfall, we expect."
"So now you've heard what became of us, and how we reached our demise. We hope that you won't make the same mistakes as we have, but we beg of you, if this is ever seen, please stop the pilgrimages. My daughter aspires to be a Summoner, and I cannot watch her go off and die. Please stop all of this nonsense!"
The man's image shimmered and faded, leaving me, the Summoner who had ended them all, with a feeling of apprehension and depression.
Where did Tidus come into all of this?
~ End Reminisce ~
I hope I did okay on this chapter. It was hard to write in Yuna's POV, and ever harder to get down all of the facts and points I wanted to.
Anyways, the story's gonna start twisting and turning pretty soon, so be prepared. ^_~