"Transcending Reality" by Emerald Rose Blackthorn (aka~~ Emerald Eyes)
"Sometimes I only remember the days when I was young. Nowadays no one remembers when they were young and stupid (the way you like it)." --Adema
^_^_^
Chapter Fifteen: The Ethereal Project
They waited in the dank basement of the house. Hojo had not been back, although everyone knew he would come. He never abandoned any of his specimens.
Cid was waiting in the dungeon-like environment with Alex, patiently smoking a cigarette. Yuffie was back at the inn watching over Irvine. The boy had wanted to come too, but everyone had agreed that seeing Hojo wasn't the best thing for him at the moment. The incident may repress his recently recovered memories again. Reeve and Cait had gone back to the project they were working on before the Irvine debacle, although they promised to keep an eye out for anything unusual. Alex would have gone alone into the Professor's lair, but he had never used a weapon in his life-and God knows how dangerous the half-insane Professor could be. Cid handled the Venus Gospel well, and offered to come along in case his expertise was needed.
It wasn't actually long before they heard Hojo at the door. At first, Alex had thought he had already visited the house and discovered the empty specimen cage. No doubt the Professor would have fled as soon as possible with the knowledge that he'd been discovered. But all this information? A scientist wouldn't leave his experiments behind. Hojo would be back-and he was.
The emaciated Professor entered the basement carrying glass containers full of mako and other bizarre scientific paraphernalia. He stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted the two intruders standing in the basement.
"Why, hell, Professor. You look surprised," Cid remarked.
Hojo quickly countered with a vitriolic remark. "I don't even need to search for specimens. They just come waltzing in." He went about putting the canisters on the shelves on the wall, treating the intruders as if they were well known friends and expected guests.
"Cut the shit," Alex replied, "Why me? Why give this little invention of yours to ME?"
"Ah," Hojo replied, "I knew you'd ask sooner or later." He went around to a different shelf and started searching around for something. "Your world is very interesting, Alexander. There are lots of scientific wonders. I spent much time there doing research of my own. The people of your world invest so much time in meaningless experiments. I love it! To think that NASA used up billions and billions of dollars just to send a living human being to the moon." Cid stiffened at this remark. "Ah, meaningless inventions."
"Yes, but why me?!" Alex asked impatiently.
"So much like Midgar, your great cities," Hojo went on as if Alex hadn't even asked, "They're so much cleaner, though. A city that managed to become magnificent without the power of mako. the idea fascinates me!"
"What's he talking about?" Cid whispered ambiguously in Alex's ear while throwing unsure glances at the scientist.
"Earth," Alex whispered back, "the place where I come from." Cid stared at Hojo, no less baffled than he was a moment before.
The crazed Professor continued, "Alexander, your world is fascinating-so imaginative! It intrigued me to no end. That's why I decided to introduce my story there. It was just a little experiment of mine. I wanted to see how your people would interpret the theory of mako and materia, of Shin-Ra and Sephiroth." He smiled malevolently. "I heard it was incredibly popular, no?"
"All right, asshole," Cid started, "Give the kid the information he wants, or the Venus Gospel is gonna-"
"Captain Highwind," Hojo ingratiatingly sneered, "You would love to experience it. At every glance at the sky you'd catch a glimpse of an airplane. It's common to ride on one, nearly as common as riding in a car. They're not crude things like your Tiny Bronco. No, these are sophisticated. And the space program. like I mentioned earlier, they've already touched the moon."
Cid's attention was captured, and he was struggling in a limbo between fascination and mistrust. "What. is this all true?" He could have been addressing either Alex or Hojo, but the question wasn't answered.
"Ah," Hojo said, finally finding what he was looking for. "Here it is." Hojo had an exact copy of the old journal Alex had found in the basement of the Shinra Mansion. Alex wondered if it might have been the same book. The fading letters, "The Ethereal Project," were dusted and mangled in the exact same way.
"It's quite a remarkable device I've given you," the scientist continued, "It can do practically anything, I imagine." A bizarre smile played across the man's face. "Why, I suppose you could even watch Saturday Night Live tonight at 11:30 at your room in the Junon inn. if you know how to operate the device properly, that is."
Alex stared at Hojo with unfeigned suspicion. "Why are you doing this? Why'd you let me have the book?" Cid watched in mute perplexity, stunned by the odd discoveries.
"Perhaps I WANT you to know the magnitude of the experiment you're getting involved in." He shrugged. "It's no matter now. What's done is done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some business to attend to."
Cid seemed to finally come out of his trancelike state. "Now wait just a damned minute!" In a flash his spear was at the throat of the mad Professor.
"Kill me, and you'll never know the truth," Hojo explained cryptically and calmly, "or how to stop it."
Smiling sadistically, Hojo disappeared in a flash of blinding light, the hand in his labcoat pocket surely working the controls of the device that was hidden there all along.
"Damn," Cid whispered.
"So what do we do now?" Alex asked. He tried to be the leader, he tried to take control. But he was no hero. He had just began to realize that he was scared out of his mind. //I'm stuck here with no way of getting home and I'm scared shitless!//
"We go to the others and read that fucking book of yours. That's what we do!" Cid exclaimed.
"And then?" Alex asked again.
Cid shrugged. "And then we wait."
They made their way out into the neglected back street of Junon where it was starting to rain.
^_^_^
Thunder shook the tiny hotel room as pellets of rain slammed against the lone window behind the cheap plastic table. The rain had not let up since Alex and Cid had returned form their excursion. In fact, it had gotten much worse. The electric lights flickered more than once, threatening to cease at the next flash of lightning.
By the soft glowing light of the lamp Alex strained to read the half- illegible handwriting, this time reading it fully, trying to understand the magnitude of the words written. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed reading the journal entries out loud and carefully turning the rotting pages.
Yawning, he looked around the cramped room.
Cid was sprawled out on the chair by the cheap plastic table smoking a cigarette. The blue smoke curled out of his open mouth and rose to the ceiling where it slowly collected into a small cloud.
On the opposite side of the room Irvine and Yuffie were sitting side by side on the second bed. Their faces were illuminated by the glow of the television. They were jointly watching a cheesy cartoon. Irvine was laughing at all the appropriate moments. Yuffie said he was doing better. He was telling her of where he came from and what it was like. The boy was almost back to normal. Almost. Irvine's eyes still shone an incandescent green in the shadows. Nothing would take away the tattoo on his arm, the roman numeral 16.
"Come on, kid," Cid interrupted rudely, "What's the damn thing say next?"
Alex started and looked back down at the yellowed pages.
"'April 8, 2012. I have a human specimen. It's the President's daughter,'" he read from the journal.
"Fuck," Cid cursed, "It's bad enough that the bastard had a son! I never knew he had another kid."
Alex shrugged in a perplexed manner and continued without spoken comment. "'The President's wife died giving birth, and Mr. Shinra blames her death on the baby. The man was most generous and gave the child to me for study.'"
Alex looked up from the book for a moment. "Jesus, that's sick!"
"No shit," Cid stated irascibly, "What did you really expect?" He gestured to the journal with his lit cigarette. "What's it say next?"
"Um." He tried to find the place where he left off. There. It was a new entry. There was nothing important in the handwriting he was deciphering now. Technical statistics that no one but the Professor himself would understand. It said little about the mysterious Shinra child.
Alex tired of it quickly. He turned to a random place farther into the journal. "'February 15, 2014,'" He began, reading aloud so Cid could hear, "'The experiment was a success! I have effectively transported a human being into the other realm that I have been studying. It was the Shinra child. I was tiring of her rather quickly. She was no longer very cooperative. I am glad to be rid of her.'
'The child was not harmed. She was, however, knocked unconscious in the process. This is one of many errors I tend to correct before I plan to visit this realm myself.'"
"It still doesn't answer the question, does it?" Cid asked. Alex was about to reply when Cid continued. "Ah, don't worry about it, kid. The guy's too damned intelligent to just GIVE the answer to you. The whole thing's like a game to him. You'll figure it out eventually."
"Yeah," Alex whispered. Why me? Why'd he give his little invention to ME?
^_^_^
Rinoa remembered vaguely that she had fallen asleep in Squall's arms. Squall's arms usually felt warm and comforting, but now they felt cold.
She pulled away gently from his grasp, sensing that something was terribly wrong. Squall's arms fell lifelessly to the ground. Squall was pale. A trickle of blood was dried at the corner of his gaping mouth. His eyes were open and glazed over in a masquerade of horror.
Fresh blood was still gushing from his slit throat, and it stained his white shirt and his jacket. The blood had collected in a pool of deep crimson beneath him.
It was all over the place-It stained the powder blue sweater Rinoa wore.
She screamed and backed away, wiping furiously and unsuccessfully at the blood. Squall was dead. Squall was dead. Squall was dead.
She couldn't stop the thought and she couldn't stop the scream. He was dead and his dead eyes were gazing up at her.
She backed up as far away from him as she could.
Her senses perceived the landscape for the first time. There was absolutely no sign of life. Her surroundings were bare and monochrome, a dusty gray color. It was cold, like nuclear winter, but the sky was an angry red color, cast by an enormous meteor suspended in the hellish sky.
Everything was tinted in its crimson glow. The gray rocks and dust, Squall, and all the other dead bodies.
There WERE others. As far as the eye could see lied lifeless human corpses. Some of them she knew, and some of them she did not, but they were all dead. All of them. except for one.
He was alive in the physical sense, but that was all. His psyche had given up the fight long ago. It was useless to struggle now. She always wins. //Fight? What fight? Who is "she?"//
Suddenly this "she" appeared in front of him, his living body and his dead soul. She forced his tearful eyes to look upon her unholy face, the one who causes great suffering-Jenova.
"Jenova." Rinoa whispered the unfamiliar name, tasting the evil upon her lips. She always wins.
Suddenly her heart went out to the poor man standing in front of her, his platinum locks blowing in the wind, catching on the bloodied blade he held in his left hand. "She" had made him do that too. Kill the people. Kill them all. Mother is the only one that matters.
Rinoa walked closer. The two didn't seem to notice her.
One word escaped the beautiful crying man's lips: "Why?" Soft, barely a whisper, but said with suck conviction.
"Because you are my son," she responded with mock affection, "and you are but an expendable pawn in my game." She tore the sword from his grasp with acerbity and Rinoa gasped in surprise.
Rinoa could not let her fears stop her. There was something about the woman's silver hair that intrigued her. She had to move closer.
"I am stronger now," she continued, "I can not be stopped." She gestured to the gruesome scene around her. "Here, you see the results?"
The man looked up at her with raw emotion-anger, sorrow, horror, dread. ".hate.you." he tried to say. It was a whimper. "I HATE you!" he said again, stronger this time, with as much force behind the words as he could muster.
Jenova chuckled. "Ah, my son, Sephiroth. You have served me well, but my use for you has now run out."
Rinoa knew the silver hair now, where she could place it. Jenova was Ultimicia! It was her as clear as day. She wasn't full of pomp and costume like the last time she was seen at her castle, but rather plain. Plain, yet seductive and powerful looking.
"You.!" Rinoa uttered. This time Jenova noticed her.
"My sons and daughters," She said as she pulled Sephiroth towards her and held the sword to his throat, "You are all my puppets!"
Rinoa knew what this Sephiroth was going through. He was being controlled just like Edea used to be under her control. Rinoa was too, and Seifer at one point in time. They were all the same: victims of Jenova's terror.
Suddenly Jenova let loose Sephiroth's limp body and the bloodied sword sliced clean through his throat. Blood gushed out of the fatal wound and his eyes gazed at her pleadingly, like Squall's.
"Nooooooooooo!" Rinoa screamed and lunged at the sorceress Ultimicia. She conjured up her most powerful spell-ultima-and prepared to blast her rival into oblivion.
As the fatal green light spread from her hands and demolished everything, the beauty with the silver hair remained, a wry smirk on her face.
"My daughter, my daughter," she said, while ultima raged around her, "You can do nothing now. The game is over, and I have won!"
Rinoa threw herself into the fire of her own spell and screamed in anguish.
Whenever she woke up in Squall's arms later on that night, it felt as if Jenova's laughter was still ringing in her ears.
End Ch. 15 at 04.16.02.
EMERALD'S NOTES [July 14, 2002. 1:21 AM]: Okay, so it's pretty pitiful when one chapter takes me this long to complete and get posted. :::sigh::: It wasn't writer's block. well, not exactly. I had trouble with this chapter. I created this whole section and then deleted it because I didn't think it fit in. If you absolutely MUST know, it had hints of a Quitsis/Vincent relationship forming. I didn't like it, so it went bye-bye. As for the chapter, the only section I'm really happy with is Rinoa's dream. ~_^ I kinda feel bad for Sephy, Squall and the rest of the world, but hey, I liked it, okay? As for why it took me clost to 5 months to get this thing up? Well. I work just about every day now. I hardly ever get time off. It's okay. I need the $. But when school starts in the fall I should be able to pick up the pace a little more. I'll only be working on the weekends then. So. wish me luck and lots of writing time!
"Sometimes I only remember the days when I was young. Nowadays no one remembers when they were young and stupid (the way you like it)." --Adema
^_^_^
Chapter Fifteen: The Ethereal Project
They waited in the dank basement of the house. Hojo had not been back, although everyone knew he would come. He never abandoned any of his specimens.
Cid was waiting in the dungeon-like environment with Alex, patiently smoking a cigarette. Yuffie was back at the inn watching over Irvine. The boy had wanted to come too, but everyone had agreed that seeing Hojo wasn't the best thing for him at the moment. The incident may repress his recently recovered memories again. Reeve and Cait had gone back to the project they were working on before the Irvine debacle, although they promised to keep an eye out for anything unusual. Alex would have gone alone into the Professor's lair, but he had never used a weapon in his life-and God knows how dangerous the half-insane Professor could be. Cid handled the Venus Gospel well, and offered to come along in case his expertise was needed.
It wasn't actually long before they heard Hojo at the door. At first, Alex had thought he had already visited the house and discovered the empty specimen cage. No doubt the Professor would have fled as soon as possible with the knowledge that he'd been discovered. But all this information? A scientist wouldn't leave his experiments behind. Hojo would be back-and he was.
The emaciated Professor entered the basement carrying glass containers full of mako and other bizarre scientific paraphernalia. He stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted the two intruders standing in the basement.
"Why, hell, Professor. You look surprised," Cid remarked.
Hojo quickly countered with a vitriolic remark. "I don't even need to search for specimens. They just come waltzing in." He went about putting the canisters on the shelves on the wall, treating the intruders as if they were well known friends and expected guests.
"Cut the shit," Alex replied, "Why me? Why give this little invention of yours to ME?"
"Ah," Hojo replied, "I knew you'd ask sooner or later." He went around to a different shelf and started searching around for something. "Your world is very interesting, Alexander. There are lots of scientific wonders. I spent much time there doing research of my own. The people of your world invest so much time in meaningless experiments. I love it! To think that NASA used up billions and billions of dollars just to send a living human being to the moon." Cid stiffened at this remark. "Ah, meaningless inventions."
"Yes, but why me?!" Alex asked impatiently.
"So much like Midgar, your great cities," Hojo went on as if Alex hadn't even asked, "They're so much cleaner, though. A city that managed to become magnificent without the power of mako. the idea fascinates me!"
"What's he talking about?" Cid whispered ambiguously in Alex's ear while throwing unsure glances at the scientist.
"Earth," Alex whispered back, "the place where I come from." Cid stared at Hojo, no less baffled than he was a moment before.
The crazed Professor continued, "Alexander, your world is fascinating-so imaginative! It intrigued me to no end. That's why I decided to introduce my story there. It was just a little experiment of mine. I wanted to see how your people would interpret the theory of mako and materia, of Shin-Ra and Sephiroth." He smiled malevolently. "I heard it was incredibly popular, no?"
"All right, asshole," Cid started, "Give the kid the information he wants, or the Venus Gospel is gonna-"
"Captain Highwind," Hojo ingratiatingly sneered, "You would love to experience it. At every glance at the sky you'd catch a glimpse of an airplane. It's common to ride on one, nearly as common as riding in a car. They're not crude things like your Tiny Bronco. No, these are sophisticated. And the space program. like I mentioned earlier, they've already touched the moon."
Cid's attention was captured, and he was struggling in a limbo between fascination and mistrust. "What. is this all true?" He could have been addressing either Alex or Hojo, but the question wasn't answered.
"Ah," Hojo said, finally finding what he was looking for. "Here it is." Hojo had an exact copy of the old journal Alex had found in the basement of the Shinra Mansion. Alex wondered if it might have been the same book. The fading letters, "The Ethereal Project," were dusted and mangled in the exact same way.
"It's quite a remarkable device I've given you," the scientist continued, "It can do practically anything, I imagine." A bizarre smile played across the man's face. "Why, I suppose you could even watch Saturday Night Live tonight at 11:30 at your room in the Junon inn. if you know how to operate the device properly, that is."
Alex stared at Hojo with unfeigned suspicion. "Why are you doing this? Why'd you let me have the book?" Cid watched in mute perplexity, stunned by the odd discoveries.
"Perhaps I WANT you to know the magnitude of the experiment you're getting involved in." He shrugged. "It's no matter now. What's done is done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some business to attend to."
Cid seemed to finally come out of his trancelike state. "Now wait just a damned minute!" In a flash his spear was at the throat of the mad Professor.
"Kill me, and you'll never know the truth," Hojo explained cryptically and calmly, "or how to stop it."
Smiling sadistically, Hojo disappeared in a flash of blinding light, the hand in his labcoat pocket surely working the controls of the device that was hidden there all along.
"Damn," Cid whispered.
"So what do we do now?" Alex asked. He tried to be the leader, he tried to take control. But he was no hero. He had just began to realize that he was scared out of his mind. //I'm stuck here with no way of getting home and I'm scared shitless!//
"We go to the others and read that fucking book of yours. That's what we do!" Cid exclaimed.
"And then?" Alex asked again.
Cid shrugged. "And then we wait."
They made their way out into the neglected back street of Junon where it was starting to rain.
^_^_^
Thunder shook the tiny hotel room as pellets of rain slammed against the lone window behind the cheap plastic table. The rain had not let up since Alex and Cid had returned form their excursion. In fact, it had gotten much worse. The electric lights flickered more than once, threatening to cease at the next flash of lightning.
By the soft glowing light of the lamp Alex strained to read the half- illegible handwriting, this time reading it fully, trying to understand the magnitude of the words written. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed reading the journal entries out loud and carefully turning the rotting pages.
Yawning, he looked around the cramped room.
Cid was sprawled out on the chair by the cheap plastic table smoking a cigarette. The blue smoke curled out of his open mouth and rose to the ceiling where it slowly collected into a small cloud.
On the opposite side of the room Irvine and Yuffie were sitting side by side on the second bed. Their faces were illuminated by the glow of the television. They were jointly watching a cheesy cartoon. Irvine was laughing at all the appropriate moments. Yuffie said he was doing better. He was telling her of where he came from and what it was like. The boy was almost back to normal. Almost. Irvine's eyes still shone an incandescent green in the shadows. Nothing would take away the tattoo on his arm, the roman numeral 16.
"Come on, kid," Cid interrupted rudely, "What's the damn thing say next?"
Alex started and looked back down at the yellowed pages.
"'April 8, 2012. I have a human specimen. It's the President's daughter,'" he read from the journal.
"Fuck," Cid cursed, "It's bad enough that the bastard had a son! I never knew he had another kid."
Alex shrugged in a perplexed manner and continued without spoken comment. "'The President's wife died giving birth, and Mr. Shinra blames her death on the baby. The man was most generous and gave the child to me for study.'"
Alex looked up from the book for a moment. "Jesus, that's sick!"
"No shit," Cid stated irascibly, "What did you really expect?" He gestured to the journal with his lit cigarette. "What's it say next?"
"Um." He tried to find the place where he left off. There. It was a new entry. There was nothing important in the handwriting he was deciphering now. Technical statistics that no one but the Professor himself would understand. It said little about the mysterious Shinra child.
Alex tired of it quickly. He turned to a random place farther into the journal. "'February 15, 2014,'" He began, reading aloud so Cid could hear, "'The experiment was a success! I have effectively transported a human being into the other realm that I have been studying. It was the Shinra child. I was tiring of her rather quickly. She was no longer very cooperative. I am glad to be rid of her.'
'The child was not harmed. She was, however, knocked unconscious in the process. This is one of many errors I tend to correct before I plan to visit this realm myself.'"
"It still doesn't answer the question, does it?" Cid asked. Alex was about to reply when Cid continued. "Ah, don't worry about it, kid. The guy's too damned intelligent to just GIVE the answer to you. The whole thing's like a game to him. You'll figure it out eventually."
"Yeah," Alex whispered. Why me? Why'd he give his little invention to ME?
^_^_^
Rinoa remembered vaguely that she had fallen asleep in Squall's arms. Squall's arms usually felt warm and comforting, but now they felt cold.
She pulled away gently from his grasp, sensing that something was terribly wrong. Squall's arms fell lifelessly to the ground. Squall was pale. A trickle of blood was dried at the corner of his gaping mouth. His eyes were open and glazed over in a masquerade of horror.
Fresh blood was still gushing from his slit throat, and it stained his white shirt and his jacket. The blood had collected in a pool of deep crimson beneath him.
It was all over the place-It stained the powder blue sweater Rinoa wore.
She screamed and backed away, wiping furiously and unsuccessfully at the blood. Squall was dead. Squall was dead. Squall was dead.
She couldn't stop the thought and she couldn't stop the scream. He was dead and his dead eyes were gazing up at her.
She backed up as far away from him as she could.
Her senses perceived the landscape for the first time. There was absolutely no sign of life. Her surroundings were bare and monochrome, a dusty gray color. It was cold, like nuclear winter, but the sky was an angry red color, cast by an enormous meteor suspended in the hellish sky.
Everything was tinted in its crimson glow. The gray rocks and dust, Squall, and all the other dead bodies.
There WERE others. As far as the eye could see lied lifeless human corpses. Some of them she knew, and some of them she did not, but they were all dead. All of them. except for one.
He was alive in the physical sense, but that was all. His psyche had given up the fight long ago. It was useless to struggle now. She always wins. //Fight? What fight? Who is "she?"//
Suddenly this "she" appeared in front of him, his living body and his dead soul. She forced his tearful eyes to look upon her unholy face, the one who causes great suffering-Jenova.
"Jenova." Rinoa whispered the unfamiliar name, tasting the evil upon her lips. She always wins.
Suddenly her heart went out to the poor man standing in front of her, his platinum locks blowing in the wind, catching on the bloodied blade he held in his left hand. "She" had made him do that too. Kill the people. Kill them all. Mother is the only one that matters.
Rinoa walked closer. The two didn't seem to notice her.
One word escaped the beautiful crying man's lips: "Why?" Soft, barely a whisper, but said with suck conviction.
"Because you are my son," she responded with mock affection, "and you are but an expendable pawn in my game." She tore the sword from his grasp with acerbity and Rinoa gasped in surprise.
Rinoa could not let her fears stop her. There was something about the woman's silver hair that intrigued her. She had to move closer.
"I am stronger now," she continued, "I can not be stopped." She gestured to the gruesome scene around her. "Here, you see the results?"
The man looked up at her with raw emotion-anger, sorrow, horror, dread. ".hate.you." he tried to say. It was a whimper. "I HATE you!" he said again, stronger this time, with as much force behind the words as he could muster.
Jenova chuckled. "Ah, my son, Sephiroth. You have served me well, but my use for you has now run out."
Rinoa knew the silver hair now, where she could place it. Jenova was Ultimicia! It was her as clear as day. She wasn't full of pomp and costume like the last time she was seen at her castle, but rather plain. Plain, yet seductive and powerful looking.
"You.!" Rinoa uttered. This time Jenova noticed her.
"My sons and daughters," She said as she pulled Sephiroth towards her and held the sword to his throat, "You are all my puppets!"
Rinoa knew what this Sephiroth was going through. He was being controlled just like Edea used to be under her control. Rinoa was too, and Seifer at one point in time. They were all the same: victims of Jenova's terror.
Suddenly Jenova let loose Sephiroth's limp body and the bloodied sword sliced clean through his throat. Blood gushed out of the fatal wound and his eyes gazed at her pleadingly, like Squall's.
"Nooooooooooo!" Rinoa screamed and lunged at the sorceress Ultimicia. She conjured up her most powerful spell-ultima-and prepared to blast her rival into oblivion.
As the fatal green light spread from her hands and demolished everything, the beauty with the silver hair remained, a wry smirk on her face.
"My daughter, my daughter," she said, while ultima raged around her, "You can do nothing now. The game is over, and I have won!"
Rinoa threw herself into the fire of her own spell and screamed in anguish.
Whenever she woke up in Squall's arms later on that night, it felt as if Jenova's laughter was still ringing in her ears.
End Ch. 15 at 04.16.02.
EMERALD'S NOTES [July 14, 2002. 1:21 AM]: Okay, so it's pretty pitiful when one chapter takes me this long to complete and get posted. :::sigh::: It wasn't writer's block. well, not exactly. I had trouble with this chapter. I created this whole section and then deleted it because I didn't think it fit in. If you absolutely MUST know, it had hints of a Quitsis/Vincent relationship forming. I didn't like it, so it went bye-bye. As for the chapter, the only section I'm really happy with is Rinoa's dream. ~_^ I kinda feel bad for Sephy, Squall and the rest of the world, but hey, I liked it, okay? As for why it took me clost to 5 months to get this thing up? Well. I work just about every day now. I hardly ever get time off. It's okay. I need the $. But when school starts in the fall I should be able to pick up the pace a little more. I'll only be working on the weekends then. So. wish me luck and lots of writing time!