Aren stood beside technological marvel that was the Shrane-class MachJumper. The runway was a thin rectangular pool of glowing substance, hundreds of meters long and some ten meters wide. Squarelike pillars stood at either side, and glowed a bright energy that hopped from one pillar to another. At the tops of the pillars were supports for another long pool, which ran the distance of the one on the ground, but was devoid of the slow-moving fluid. A team of two men, tall and pale-faced and dressed in military suits similar to Aren's, stood atop the long upper pool, where small buildings housed switchboards and computer equipment. A placid hum lightly vibrated the surroundings.
"You don't trust me," said Aren. "You think I'm crazy, don't you? You think I'll just flip out and hurt you."
Selphie stepped into the light of the pillars. "Aren...that's not...it's not what I meant."
"I told you," he said. "I told you from the start, I'm not worth it. And you made a mistake, and now it's coming back around." He placed his arms at his hips and stared at the liquid in the pool.
Selphie shuddered and hid a sob. "Aren...when I met you, I...I didn't know...I didn't know all these things. You just looked so hurt..."
"And now, you've got a little taste of why. What difference does it make why, Selphie?"
She dropped to the ground, dust clinging to her smooth bodysuit. "It scares me! I'm sorry...I'm so sorry, Aren! But...Hyne, it just does!"
Aren tightened his fists. "What do you want from me?" he coughed.
"Just...I don't know, just tell me! Tell me everything and get it over with!"
He spun about, and leaned to the spot where she sat. He pointed a finger at his scarred forehead. "See what you know now?" he shouted. "That's nothing, and it's got you breaking down! You think I'm unstable? Hyne, if I told you everything you'd run screaming from me!"
Selphie lifted her eyes, swollen red, and they met the grey pupils of his own. She blinked away tears, and heaved her breaths. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Aren, I'm sorry..."
Aren flipped down his visor. Tiny steel plates snapped out, and locked it in place. His voice came out garbled and hoarse, and made Selphie jump, as he turned his back.
"Set it off!" he called to the men above. "Let's go!"
Quistis stepped from the night's black, and knelt beside Selphie as Aren recieved a wave from one of the jumper's technicians. He pounded his fists anxiously, as the pillars' light grew immense. The upside-down pool over his head filled with the luminescent fluid, which hung suspended in its place.
Snap and his squadmates stepped onto the platform. Aren shouted hard above the hum, which grew to shocking intensity.
"Let the women go first, then Irvine, then you! Keep a man back to make sure we're not followed!"
The soldiers saluted and gave Aren space. He took a few steps back, and jumped high into the space between the pools. Fluid from both reservoirs flowed at his body and splashed together, suspending him in midair. His camoflauged armor nearly disappeared in the sea. The SeeDs watched in awe, as Aren's body was propelled down the runway at breakneck speed in a pulse of liquid and energy. As he reached the end of the reservoirs, the waters broke apart, and Aren was gone.
---
A flash of light registered on Aren's computerized visor, as he entered the Gate Four jumper. He leapt from the sea of liquid, which flowed in a single slick off his armor. The space around him was a massive cavern, littered with pointed rock formations as large as two-story homes. He could smell the moist air around him, and he noticed the artificial floodlamp light immediately.
Before him, standing hundreds of feet tall, were the thick steel gates of mighty Nebria. They stood between two plateaus high above the rocky ground, an impenitrable entrance to Aren's home city.
From the jumper's edge, Aren noticed a man approach. He was pale as Aren, and taller, with pointed blue hair and a tight black jumper uniform. His suit was turned off, but his body glowed an unsettling blue.
Aren unlocked his pistol holsters, as two Terran troopers jumped down from the upper reservoir with their beastly machineguns pointed the stranger's way. "This is a restricted military area!" called one, in a garbled shout. "Turn back immediately or face extreme force!"
The man turned his angular face to the soldiers. He raised an arm their way, as they sprinted the long distance toward him. From below the stone ground, a massive crunch echoed hard. An explosive fury of dew-wet rock filled the air as two spikes of ice, thick as treetrunks, blasted through like monstrous bullets and pounded through the armored bodies.
Sirens erupted all around the jumper and emergency messages filled the air. Aren flipped up his sidearms and ran from the jumper. The attacker had never stopped walking, and now stood at the end of the pools, facing Aren.
Aren unlocked his pistols and fired. Shots rang from the guns in immediate succession and dead on-target. But the stranger stood firm. A thick wall of ice formed before his body, and stopped the bullets with crackling whines.
The blue-faced man pulled back a fist, and punched into the wall. It shattered instantly, but the thousands of shards stood still in midair. The man waved a nonchalant hand. The glasslike pieces rocketed Aren's way in a fleeting instant.
Leaping hard, Aren dove behind a wide stalagmite as the shards stuck hard into the stone. A few caught his legs, pounding away on his armor. Aren fought panic and reloaded his pistols. I'm fine, he thought, as long as...
The jumper came alive, and Selphie and Quistis shot from a sea of liquid and light.
The stranger turned quickly to the jumper. A smile crossed his angular face. He stretched his hands forth, and a flurry of sickle-shaped ice blades launched away.
---
Selphie swam to the side of the jumper pool, breathing heavily, with Quistis at her side. They emerged and watched the liquid retreat from their bodies. They quickly hopped from the water, and watched it retreat away. But the sight and sound of emergency alarms stole away their attentions.
An ear-piercing scream filled their heads. They fell backwards, heaved away by a powerful force, and scores of blue blades flew past above them.
Quistis struggled her head from the grip of the semiliquid flow, and pulled Selphie up with her. "Stay down!" she whispered, and peered over the edge.
---
A stalagmite burst in front of Aren. Chunks of rock slammed him hard and sent him to the ground, half-buried in rubble. The strange young man stood over Aren, and peered down with steely blue eyes.
The man's black-coated heel struck Aren's helmet, shattering through the face shield with ease and pushing shards of glass against his face. Aren reeled deeper into the pile of rock. His arms, legs and chest were gone under the mess.
"I'm alive, Bowes," came the stranger's raspy voice. He knelt at Aren's side, and touched his spread hand on the rocks that covered the armored chest. "And I remember everything."
His hand grew stiff and a darker blue. Around his palm and fingers formed layer upon layer of clear ice, until his hand was a weapon of razor-sharp prongs. He slowly scratched; the rock crunching away instantly.
"I remember my chest splitting, Bowes. I remember the shell ripping through me...and falling, and bleeding...back when I bled red..."
Aren's chest armor appeared under the crunching rock. He watched and struggled, as the stranger cut thin lines right through the bulletproof plates, and scraped his flesh.
"Look closer, Bowes," said the man. "You remember me. You had a long look before you left me on the field."
Aren stared at the thin face, the pointed nose, and the cold eyes. His grey pupils thinned to nothing.
"Mikael...!"
The stranger screamed and raised his bladed arm high. He swooped down for a stabbing blow. Aren quickly strained, and broke free his legs. He kicked Mikael hard in the chest, and sent him sprawling back. The ice blades shattered against a pillar of rock.
Aren broke his arms free. His loaded pistols were at hand. He fired successive rounds from both sidearms point-blank. The bullets buried into Mikael as he stumbled away, bashing against a miniature plateau. The shots pinned him against the wall as he choked and convulsed.
---
Selphie watched the shooting with harrowed eyes. "Hyne!" she cried. "Oh Hyne, he's dead! Hyne, what's going on?!"
Quistis grimaced in disgust. The cracks of gunfire continued their echo. But the echo was drowned, as the jumper's hum grew steadier and louder again.
"Quick!" shouted Quistis. "Get out!"
---
Aren's guns clicked empty. He lowered them and backed away, as the bullet-riddled Mikael slumped to the ground. He lay motionless. He did not bleed.
Guns went back to their holsters, and Aren slowly approached. "Hyne..." he whispered. "Hyne...Mikael, was it you?"
Mikael's eyes snapped alive.
He lunged forward and raised his hands above his head. A boulder of ice froze and floated, and launched into Aren with deadly force. Aren felt the armor crack and bend as he flew to the ground.
Mikael skidded to a halt beside him. He lifted Aren by the neck, formed a knife of ice, and slashed across Aren's midsection. Armor seared off, and the impact barely cut at Aren's stomach. Mikael bashed his elbow to the side of Aren's head, and spun a kick into the soldier's back.
The jumper blasted to life. Mikael let Aren fall, and strode menacingly for the machine. Selphie and Quistis were running from the bright shockwave of a new entry.
Mikael stretched a hand toward the two. "Blizzaga!" he screamed.
---
Quistis felt a rush of icy air whip about her. She snapped up her head to the stranger before them. Ice attack! she thought. Selphie has to...
It was too late; Selphie was still at her side and too close to leave proximity. Quistis grabbed Selphie by the back of her overalls and pulled her close. She threw her hand to the cavern ceiling hundreds of meters above her.
"Firaga!" she cried.
A prison of frozen blocks raised around them, closing in split-second time. Quistis felt her body grow frigid and stiff from a thick coating of ice. She could not breathe; her body panicked, and she tensed and chocked and prayed that her spell was in time.
A burning wave rose from the ground. It blasted the ice from her body and scorched the rocks around her. She fell forward and gasped, shaking from the shock and the painful singes around her legs.
She quickly glanced to her right. Selphie was doing the same, still alive.
The attacker growled hard and stood where he was. He waved his hand at Selphie. A block of ice blasted from the ground below her, and threw her several meters away. The ice master pointed at Quistis.
"Attack me!" he sneered, heaving breaths like a ravaged beast. "Come on, do it again!"
Quistis swallowed. She stumbled to her feet and raised her arms, and cast a firaga upon the blue stranger. A wave of fire blasted his way. He quickly ducked down and grabbed the rocks before him, and pulled hard. A giant layer of rock stripped off in his hands, and he lifted it with ease. The firewall reflected back to Quistis.
It slammed her hard, and she felt the firaga's heat tear away. She struggled to run from the burning that surrounded her. But her opponent was controlling the firaga with a circular wall of ice, and as it melted down, he built another up.
She raised her hand once more. "Float!" she cried. She lifted from the firaga, and the icy cage, and landed in a cloud of smoke beside Selphie. Quistis was weak; she had casted only three spells, and she could barely stand.
Her opponent, however, stood firm. He readied for a spell, and Quistis winced, and prayed. Selphie rolled beside her with her head in her hands; she was no help. Quistis struggled to move. She slipped about on the moist rocks, and fell.
---
Aren felt the energy coarsing through him. He reached back and threw a mighty punch. A sonic wave left his hand and split through the air. It pounded Mikael and knocked him senseless.
Aren readied another wave of energy and held it Mikael's way. But Mikael jumped to his feet, and held his palm up.
"Hold it!" he called. Streams of blue blood ran from his mouth as he panted. A shaky hand pointed to the rocky ground a few meters from the jumper. Selphie stood, and walked with slow, weary steps towards Mikael. Her eyes gazed distantly nothing, and her dust-spattered mouth hung open. As she grew closer, a ring of ice began to form around her neck. Her methodical breathing began to shorten, and although she wheezed, she still walked hypnotically to Mikael.
Aren watched Mikael's fist tighten, and he heard Selphie cough weakly. His grey pupils grew giant, until they filled his thin sockets completely. Tiny white crosses appeared amid them. Aren shouted, and charged at Mikael. His hands coarsed with sonic energy.
Mikael raised a wall before him; he bashed through. Mikael speared at him with long picks of ice; he ducked and dodged them all. With freight-train force he met Mikael, swinging his hands into the black-suited midsection. Crunch, his charged fists followed through, and Mikael toppled to the rocks in a heap.
Aren toppled with him. His hands were caught inside Mikael's chest, wrapped in live wires and steel conduit. Zaps of deadly electricity jolted him as Mikael squirmed about.
Aren screamed and pulled, and tore the wires free. He lay on the rocks, tangled in melted armor and sparking wires. He could barely move, but he felt the whip of cold air rush about him.
Blizzaga! he thought.
He rolled to the side as far as he could. The wave of cold barely scraped at his leg as it passed.
---
Quistis pressed her arms against the rocks, and lifted a few inches off the ground. Just enough to turn her head, to get a glimpse of the jumper behind her. Irvine climbed from the waters in the pool in confusion. He flipped open a comlink to speak a message, but stopped short, as a cold wind passed over him.
"Ir...Ir-vine..." Quistis breathed in panic. "Loo-look..."
Irvine's body was encased in a towering block of ice. Quistis screamed, and fell again. She closed her eyes and focused; tried to concentrate for one last spell. But a dizzying force seemed to lift her off the ground. Her eyes reopened; she was within the blackened sphere of a Demi spell. She felt her body shake in pain as space warped about her, and finally dissipated, letting her collapse on her back.
A face peered down on her, a face she recognized. The peering blue eyes, thin-set frown, and blonde locks of Seifer Almasy. The edge of his dull grey trench coat blew about as he stared into her.
Seifer reached down, and placed a black glove lightly on her cheek. A powerful vibration racked through Quistis' skull; she coiled away in pain. His footsteps grew distant from her place and she once again turned his way, to see him beside the Terran-built jumper. Mikael's body dragged behind under Seifer's arm. Messy chunks were torn through his chest and stomach and wires whipped about from within. Seifer threw the young man into the waters of the jumper.
He turned to the block of ice that held Irvine Kinneas. His right hand clenched into a fist, and he brought it hard into the frozen Blizzaga. The glasslike ice burst to tiny bits.
---
