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CHAPTER 2:
THE WAR LOCKED MOON AND THE LUNAR LION
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Within the Giant,' from FINAL FANTASY IV; and after this 'Antipyretic,' from the FINAL FANTASY TACTICS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after this 'Battle With the Four Fiends,' from FINAL FANTASY IV. All three of these pieces can be found on Zophar's Domain, the third under the name 'The Dreadful Fight.'
It was happening again.
If it weren't for him, your mother and father would still be alive.
"N-No, you're wrong!"
And you are a vile little insect. Birthed from the womb of a dragon's corpse you are!
"Stop… stop talking to me! No, you're wrong!"
All Golbez
he could never be anything more than Golbez
he would never even think his real name once again for every reverberating forever within endless imaginary time
had genuinely wanted that night of sanguine flames and dancing hatred was the power to keep Cecil alive, and as a result, he'd fallen into Zemus' snare and not just lost the chance to gain the power to avenge his parents' deaths, and protect Cecil; he'd lost even himself, and taken Cecil's last remaining family member from him; and even that hadn't been enough, because Zemus had further twisted his hatred and jealousy and coerced Golbez to take Cecil's foster father, and foster brother, from him, as well.
And now he'd done it all over once again.
He'd learned the switchback inversion of the photonegative of nothing from everything he'd brought about by giving into his hatred.
He should have deserted Chaos as soon as he'd discovered Cosmos had called Cecil here.
Golbez hadn't won enough battles yet, or lived to see enough purifications after Shinryu had undone his sole death at the partially as vengeful Vaan's hands, to regain enough of his memory to know precisely who Cecil was.
But he'd still remembered enough, this time.
Yet he'd been too terrified of abandoning his companions in Chaos who had at least a decent amount of scruples, and he'd clearly seen the same fixation on revenge driving Chaos as he'd learned, too late, from what may have been Zeromus' Malice's last words, had been driving Zemus.
If Golbez had attempted to understand Zemus, rather than give into hatred, perhaps he could have learned Zemus was driven by hatred for the Creator of the Crystals, and envy of the prosperous Blue Planet; so he'd sought the same power Golbez had in order to protect the surviving Lunarians, and avenge the ruination of his home planet.
Golbez might have been able to prevent all of it.
So this time, he'd been determined to reach Chaos.
And by attempting to atone for his past sins by seeking to be everything for everyone, he'd let it happen once more.
Whether or not Kain survived Tidus' wounds, or Shinryu was able to mend them if he didn't in most of the ways that mattered, Golbez' last hope for protecting Cecil, and atoning for his sins, was gone.
Golbez stood at the edge of the precipice facing the replica of the original Crystal present within the Southern Lufenia Gateway, barely aware he was looking at the source of all dimensional space time that now resided within the Omega Weapon known as Memoria, launched by the Creator's planet into what that Crystal would in time weave into the universal Lifestream when it had at last heaved out its final death rattle.
"Cecil has returned to you, I see. But that has changed nothing. This planet has completed its role. Its fate has not changed one bit… just as yours remains unchanged."
"You are free to choose how your death plays out. This is your final decision. I leave it up to you to make."
Had the Creator, the Maenad, and to a lesser extent, the Jenova fashioned from the fossilized Minerva of the original Crystal, known as Necron, Kefka, Exdeath, and the Cloud of Darkness, all been correct?
Was the sole choice left to anyone in this broken empty nightmare known as existing reality, nothing less, and nothing more, and nothing that hadn't been, and nil that couldn't everlasting fornever be, how to die?
"Fate is not something set in stone. If you want to change it, all you have to do is believe!"
Golbez suppressed the urge to grimace bitterly.
"Our lives are tied by the deepest of bonds… and no one shall tear them asunder?" Golbez repeated the words Cecil had spoken when the revitalized Crystals' effervescence had at last rekindled hope within the Creator for the future.
"That's not a belief.
"That's nothing more than a whimsical childish flight of fancy after flitting butterflies and fluffy dandelions; the fragile dream most indelibly destined of all to fade into day before the remorseless, brutal light of reality."
"You've got that right, particularly on a battlefield," Squall Leonhart's voice thrust labyrinthine jagged thorny serrated vines through what he wasn't, couldn't have been, was, and there was a Forsaken Null chance he could even be for Cecil, or anyone else, the most infinitesimal amount, for whatever time remained for existence.
"So why do you have your back turned, and why have you left yourself blindingly open to potential ambushes, to ramble to yourself about something as clueless as bonds?"
Squall kept his gunblade at the ready, pushing away the misgivings born of pragmatism that told him he shouldn't have wasted time even saying a word to one of the most experienced and capable of all the warriors of Chaos, and he should have just gone for the kill while Golbez's guard was down.
However, as practiced a soldier as he had become, and distantly reminisced being on his homeworld, Squall loathed utilizing underhanded methods to defeat foes.
This was even more the case after Squall had been unable to do anything but lie on the floor of the World of Darkness and let Kuja almost murder Bartz and Zidane.
There was something black and frigidly fissured gripping Squall's heart now at the knowledge he hadn't been able to do anything more for Bartz and Zidane than leave them as alone as he his sole memories told him he'd been all of his life.
Ri
Si
Something Squall couldn't identify flickered through him, and then it was gone.
But this time, at the beginnings of the silhouette of the second name, Squall's heart twisted a little as he looked at Golbez's posture, although he couldn't tell what in it disturbed him.
Rinoa.
Ellone.
To Squall's shock, hotness pushed against the backs of his eyes for a minority of seconds.
However, whatever had brought it receded.
Yet, while whatever the first name meant to him remained a mystery, whatever it was in Golbez's posture that was bothering him brought further acute aching through his limbs at the second.
Warily, but without making any effort to raise his guard, or otherwise assume a battle ready posture, Golbez turned his closed visor in Squall's direction.
"Because I'm no longer sure there is a purpose in seeking to end this war, through victory or peace treaty, truce or surrender," was all Golbez said.
But there was something beneath the surface of his voice that caused thin sickness to close, and contort, inside Squall.
"Including returning home, where you're no longer bound to an oath of service to combat your own brother?" Squall questioned back, his words wary but unruffled.
Squall blinked as Golbez actually flinched.
"That would accomplish nothing more than to condemn him to another war," Golbez responded.
The undercurrent was still there, bringing a hot drawn pulse of memories of white stone walls and a green plant and grass strewn pathway, running down steps to search for someone who was out there, who knew were, stranded adrift and all alone and in pain and terrified, just as he was, but he could never find her never find her never find her never find her never find her never find her never take her pain and loneliness away and even if he waited in one place she never came back he was always waiting always waiting but she never came back never came back she was stranded adrift and all alone and in pain and frightened and it was his fault he didn't know what he'd said or done wrong but he'd left her stranded adrift and all alone and in pain and frightened and stranded adrift and all alone and in pain and frightened
But that was why Golbez was a lunatic.
Cecil, as well.
He had yet to remember his brother, yet for no greater reason than what his comrades in arms had told him, he had faith he could somehow avoid confronting him in combat.
Squall felt his stomach churn.
He was willing to tolerate the presence of airheaded gigglers such as Bartz, Zidane, Vaan, and Laguna; but Cecil was perhaps the sole person among the warriors of Cosmos Squall genuinely felt anything for, and that was deep dislike.
To live your life, and serve as a knight, or soldier, you needed spirit, and will.
It didn't make a difference whether it was cluelessly naïve optimism like Bartz's, and Zidane's, or Squall's own composed, practical spirit.
Squall was incredibly irritated in different ways by the optimistic kind
Rinoa
Whatever
but he could understand its merits very well, as enormously as he wished he didn't.
Cecil had none of this spirit and will.
Cecil had talent as a knight, but he had no idea how to walk on his own strong legs as a true soldier. He blindly followed Cosmos, and his companions, trusting in his ties to others to keep him on his feet when he should be holding his head high and believing in no one but himself. If not for the issue he had flesh and blood, he might as well have been as mindless a soldier as the new crystal manikins who kept irritating Squall, whose ranks Squall had become slightly irritated by now didn't appear to be thinning yet.
Squall liked comparing himself to a lion, and he associated animals such as monkeys with Zidane and wolves with the warrior of Chaos known as Cloud, but Cecil was nothing but a tapeworm who made a mockery of everything it was to be a knight, and soldier, in a war.
Perhaps what caused Squall's dislike for Cecil to border on genuine disgust was that, due to Squall's own experience fulfilling his oaths to a cause, he knew Cecil's devotion gave him the potential to develop the same kind of spirit people such as Bartz, Zidane, Vaan, and even Laguna, possessed.
But he refused to get up and develop that willful spirit.
Rinoa would be so disappointed in him.
Squall didn't know why, but that thought almost pushed his dislike wholly into disgust.
"Perhaps learning how to win, or forge a peace, in that one, will teach Cecil what it means to be a real knight," Squall said back, his voice unaltered.
"If you believe his war with me is not yet over, as Ultimecia tells me hers was with your army when she was convinced she was about to cast the spell that would win it, that's not what I'm referring to," Golbez answered, his words now neutral.
Two wishy washies. Joy.
"My brother, and I, made peace years ago.
"But that this war ended, and how this war still rages, means nothing when the universe itself hates the concept of bonds.
"Look at the Crystal behind me.
"Billions of years ago, it let a magnificent peaceful planetary civilization, brought about after millennia of growth from warfare and other exploitation, bask in its light. That culture harnessed the energy of the Crystal, and the living font that surged throughout the planet out of its glimmering facets, not for warfare or oppression, but to plumb the depths of both the astral and the scientific in the spirit of inquisitive discovery. It wove together a society with a reduced military, present to do nothing more than dissuade smaller nations around it from seeking to invade, and it provided the comforts of prosperity and laughter filled homes to the majority of its people.
"However, the Crystal, and the Lifestream that fountained forth from it, was the source and end of all memory, and while this society ended much of the adversity caused by nature, living beings themselves are imperfect, so they remained able to cause pain. Energy cannot be created, or destroyed, and solely changed, but the pain the souls and hearts of the people were afflicted by, or inflicted, in time, caused the light of the Crystal, and the Lifestream trickling from it, to cascade over an event horizon into decay.
"The people of the culture, and the smaller nations, discovered what was happening, but it was too late. The decay could not be stopped, and the planet was fated to die.
"So this one culture cooperated even further, forging a union bonded with all the realms of the planet to create a fleet of Moon sized spacecraft to search for a new home. They escaped their planet. The Crystal itself, in a last effort to preserve its own form of life, forged an entity known as an Omega Weapon, and called the remains of its depleted Lifestream to itself to set out on an interstellar journey of its own.
"Now separate from its home planet, believing it had learned from its error, that Crystal cast off much of its own astral essence to send a new Lifestream throughout all of the universes of space and time, giving innumerable other planets the ability to sustain life.
"Still the darkness persisted within this Crystal, however. The Crystal had once had a primitive mind of its own, the coagulation of many of the most potent memories it brought to it from the dead, known as Minerva. Now isolated in the vacuum of space, this mind itself began to decay into an entity that named itself Necron, and later cultures would refer to by the names of Archfiend, Jenova, Chaos, or Fiend.
"The Crystal had by now concealed itself in a dimension of space time known as Memoria, fashioned from the planetoid the Omega Weapon had decayed into, so Necron itself would have remained no threat to anyone if unprovoked.
"The space fleet, though, had other ideas.
"Or, should I say, the sole survivor, for its artificial environment proved unable to sustain many, and could do no more than keep one alive in one remaining craft the size of a Moon larger than the average planet."
stranded adrift and all alone and in pain and terrified
For a number of seconds, Squall couldn't breathe.
Rinoa.
Sis'.
He could breathe again, but he didn't understand why he both wanted to cast desperately in any direction for what those memories meant, and run as far away as possible from them, and hide somewhere in a dark corner as remote from everything and anyone as possible where the knowledge of the kind of loneliness this survivor must have endured could never touch him.
If Golbez knew about him, that meant the survivor had had the spirited will to take care of himself for however long it took to reach one of the planets in this new cosmic network of life, and then live believing in no one but himself, herself, itself, and his, her, or its, duties, there, correct?
Nothing else made sense.
Nothing else could make sense.
Then why was Squall almost hysterically seeking to deny the knowledge clawing wildly and cacophonously at the walls around himself?
"With all hope lost, this survivor then created minor Crystals beyond counting, from the kinds these manikins you have encountered spring to devices known as Spheres to crystal statues and magicite to a crystal pillar you may or may not recall from your own world, from which I believe you were brought here. He sent them out to the planets he located throughout all of the dimensions of reality that could develop life, or had developed primitive life already, with the task of nurturing it in order to record its evolutionary processes through its memory storing abilities.
"This, he hoped, would enable him to learn how his own civilization could have averted the cataclysm that claimed his people.
"He learned nothing, though.
"All he discovered was that the majority of these civilizations didn't even survive the periods of warfare that his own civilization had mostly grown out of. Many infected their Crystals, or Lifestreams, or both, much faster, causing planet after planet to launch its own Omega Weapon along a path of the new universal Lifestream in search of a new home. A good number of these Omega Weapons discovered other planets with life, researched by the castaway or not, yet by the time they did, all of the Minervas of the Omega Weapons had invariably decayed into Archfiends, or Jenovas. When they landed on the other planets, they did nothing more than attempt to infect them with the genetic material preserved within the Archfiends, leading to even more war, and torment, this time between the legacy of one planet, and the people living on the current planet.
"I have yet to confirm this, but I believe Sephiroth is one of Chaos' most capable warriors because he's actually a fusion of genetic material from the humans of a planet contaminated by one of these Minerva Archfiends, and the genetic material of the fossilized Archfiend itself.
"He's something exceptionally unique, not even just an Archfiend in human form, but a human Archfiend with a stable form."
Squall filed that away for future reference.
While ignoring how much this story was increasingly causing him to ache all over.
This was ridiculous.
These were the words of an enemy.
Squall had no reason to believe it was anything but propaganda meant to demoralize him.
"Yet, rather than utilize his unique cultural heritage to bridge the differences between two planets, from what I gather from what he can remember, he is another person who seeks to utilize power to end the cycle of predator and prey, and not cooperation and tolerance.
"Which thus turned him into one of the most lethal predators in all the stars, with the capacity to create much more prey than many other predators.
"Making matters still worse, after discovering many of his efforts to assist the evolution of life led to nothing more than further death and torment, the castaway began assaulting, and obliterating, the civilizations of planets himself, to prevent them from contaminating his overall experiment.
"I remember enough," Golbez's voice cracked enough Squall could tell there was something Golbez was honestly keeping from him, now, "to know that Chaos brought me here when I was en route back to a Moon sized spacecraft I spent years of my life on after Cecil and I were forced to defend our own homeworld by ending billions of years of nothing but lonely despair and futility with his death."
Squall couldn't perceive anything past the edges of his perception.
Rinoa.
Sis'.
Don't leave me here.
"Say you win this war.
"What then?
"You return home, and die in pain and terror in another unknown ditch in another war, abandoned and forgotten without warmth or home. If it's to a time before Cecil and I defeated the castaway who named himself the Creator, perhaps it's even in one of the very wars he launched, or perhaps he'll strike millennia after your time.
"With all this in mind, what hope do I have for Cecil to live knowing warmth and kindness, regardless of which side wins this war; regardless of if he lives, or dies, with, or without me?"
Another unknown thing seared within Squall, shrieking with everything that he was that he answer this; whether this was misinformation meant to demoralize, or not.
Then Golbez sagged forward, as though the weight of his own armor was almost too much for him to carry now.
"So long as people are flawed, and possess both darkness and light, no matter how bright the Crystal or the rocks of the Moon, no matter how beautiful the flower or the tree, they'll inevitably be fractured, fragmented, incinerated, or blown to shards.
"I've lived long enough alternately believing power, and cooperation, can protect Cecil.
"In the end, both shatter all bonds, all hopes, as cleanly and indelibly as the other.
"Both aren't just fragile, there isn't even any difference between light and darkness, power or bonds. It doesn't matter whether you dream of strength or connection, both sweet dreams are no better than inviting conflagrations that lure moths to be ruined to ash in the brutal candlelight.
"Just end it.
"Cut me down, here and now, and do it very well, because Chaos, and an ally of his whose presence is information too sensitive for you to know, are a lot better than you're aware of at mending the wounds of the fertilizer they call soldiers."
Squall couldn't even tell whether or not he was breathing.
"He's the sweetest guy… a great listener. Right now, he's seriously thinking about what I said. He's shy and doesn't say anything, but I know. So, what do you think? None of our business?"
"Oh please, you can't be serious? For a grown man, that's kind of naïve. If it's not forever, there's no point in getting close to anyone."
"Gosh, you're such a pessimist. There are no guarantees in the future. That's why today, the time we have now, is important. Squall, we wanna' help you, as much as we can, for as long as we can. We all l
"There, I said it. Please don't freak out. We just wanna' live, y'know, live through this time with you, together."
"Listen. Even if we lived in the same world, there'd come a time when life would pull us apart. S'not a reason to avoid people. Even if it's someone you love more than life itself, that time will come. There's no guarantee you'll even get to say goodbye. But before that happens, you get to be together, right?"
"Keep it in the back of your mind. Call on us whenever you need to. We'll be waiting."
"I can fight if I'm with you! That's why I'm here!"
The amalgamation of ruined broken longing and blinding incandescent black fury that cleared through Squall was so contorted labyrinthine inside out switchback and clangorous taloned jagged serrated Squall couldn't even believe he had lungs.
However, he no longer cared he clearly remembered the wool headed Laguna saying a number of those words, and that the female voice who had said the others was the person named Rinoa, and this mattered to him even more than the mysterious reason Golbez reminded him of someone who was clearly his own older sister.
Solely two things were crystalline sharp in Squall's mind now.
It didn't matter if the rest of reality did abandon people, and fragment all bonds. Squall himself knew how much it hurt to be alone, and that had taught him that little to nothing hurt people worse than abandoning them, or betraying them.
And Squall fought to fulfill his oaths with everything he knew and was.
But he did not blindly cling to the beliefs of others as he did it. He was his own person, and he believed in himself, and he fought with his spirited will.
Squall was shocked and astonished at how much fury he was restraining as he spoke.
But he ignored it as he did most things, with the exception of how Golbez may or may not be lying about Chaos having exceptional healing abilities, and a mysterious ally of his who had the same.
"I see you're even worse than Cecil," Squall snarled.
Golbez started.
"You're just going to give up and abandon your brother for good, then, is that it?" Squall didn't snarl now, but he made no effort to keep any of his contained, focused fury out of his voice.
"You can't keep him in a reality of laughter and kindness forever, so you're going to take even more of it away from him, is that what you're telling me?
"I don't know if I can believe anything you told me, or if you're just attempting to demoralize me with misinformation or propaganda, but I don't care.
"Even if you're lying, you're reminding me so much of Cecil and his cowering refusal to believe in himself that you just irritated me a lot more than he does.
"I have no reason to believe I can trust the two sources who told me this at this time have their hearts and heads on straight, but they do have a point.
"No matter how many times the Crystals or Moon rocks get fragmented or broken, no matter how many times the flowers or trees get incinerated or blown to shreds, someone will inevitably construct them, erode them, plant them, or seed them again."
Golbez started violently this time.
But he still made no move to defend himself.
Fine, then.
Golbez was willing to abandon a knight?
Knights proved things with their blades.
"I'll cut you down, all right," Squall went on.
He readied his gunblade.
Golbez spread his arms wide, and relaxed his stance.
"However, before I do, you ought to know I could care less what the rest of space and time believes in regards to warfare.
"Because this is what I believe, on my own.
"I don't know whether or not to believe what you just told me.
"I don't know whether or not to believe war can end, or even for long enough Cecil can live the rest of his life in a home with a hearth.
"If we win this war, through treaty or victory, maybe he will lose that hearth and home one day; temporarily once more, or for good that time.
"Maybe it is all for nothing.
"Maybe all paths do lead nowhere, no matter how you decide to try, no matter how long you strive, and there's no hope in anything but death.
"Maybe there's no such things as fragile bonds that can be torn asunder to leave you on your own in the first place.
"Maybe there isn't any such thing as a reality of warmth or kindness to begin with.
"But right here, right now, as much as he hides behind your cloak while he does it, Cecil needs his brother.
"He needs him not to leave him when he still can look out for him.
"He needs to live in that reality of warmth and kindness for as long as he can, through power or peace, conflict or connection.
"And he can't do that without his brother, whether he's a foe, or true family.
"It's that simple, and that complex.
"He can fight if you're his foe!
"That's why he hasn't totally given up, and he's still fighting on, to live, not to die, together with you in the world we're in here and now!"
Golbez jolted violently, and his head whipped up.
"So I'll cut you down…
"…as a prisoner of war!"
Squall snarled in sincere disgust as Golbez shifted into a defensive stance with movements so broken it was clear he wasn't doing it because he didn't want to be taken captive by an enemy, he was about to assault Squall to attempt to force Squall to defeat him through murder.
Then Squall felt warmth pulse through him, and beams with differing incandescent gray light the color of lunar seas began to surge in haphazard darting individual arcs out from his torso.
The voice of Emperor Mateus interjected from behind Squall, his words mildly and dismissively condescendingly arrogant and triumphant.
"A crystal comprised of both light and darkness, and Sephiroth is a Crystal with a stable human form.
"Both are boons I didn't believe within the grasp of making mine when We made the sole decision from the sole belief that matters, the one of the sole war hero of Chaos destined to lead all life and culture to plenty through power by the glory of his heritage, not power or cooperation by scientific specimen or soulful study, and We chose to investigate why Golbez was spying on My sentence by Imperial edict to Cloud."
The next second, Golbez was hurling himself at Squall and curling his body as though to shield the unarmored combatant, and something large and spherical and scalding hot brushed rotating against Squall's back before he could recover from the double surprise to his guard.
The colors of the cold and dark Moon, and the warm and bright variation of the Crystal World, congealed into black.
.
"So, please, promise me that you will give her a life without war, and there will be no mobile suits or knives or anything else to do with death! Take her back to a world with kindness, a world with warmth!"-Shinn Asuka
GUNDAM SEED DESTINY:
Phase 30: A FLEETING DREAM
