The Mystery of Obel Lake.
By Lakyan.
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy 8. True, I own a copy, hence the reason for this fic, but I, in no way own the rights to the game yada yada yada…
Squall sat on the edge of the lake; it's crystal clear water reflecting the mountains that separated the lake from the Monsterasu Plains of the bordering country, Galbadia.
He sighed, and skipped another stone across the water, the flat rock kicking up droplets of water and shattering the image of those mountains.
Everyone else was in Timber, getting some much needed supplies, before they were to head off for the Lunatic Pandora, with was floating menacingly over Tears point.
Squall started humming without even realizing it; some tune from a very distant memory. He gazed out at the waters of the lake, which were now still from the disturbance of Squalls rock. He noticed a black swirl rise to the surface and move closer. He raised his eyebrow, as the shadow began to form a shape.
"Hello." It said.
"Uh… Hello?" Squall replied, too stupidly for his liking.
"I was wondering if you could help me find my friend?" The shadow asked.
"Friend?" Squalls eyebrow shot up again.
"I think Mr Monkey is in a forest around here, just keep walking and you'll find him,"
"Forest?" Squall was not going to leave without more information, such as, why was a mysterious shadow in a lake looking for a monkey, not to mention why was the shadow in the lake to begin with.
"From here hitch a train to Dollet." The shadow offered.
Squall looked up at a very distant train station, then returned his gaze to the lake, but the shadow was gone.
'Odd' Squall thought, and before long, he found himself striding to the train station.
"I can't believe I'm actually doing this!" He cursed himself.
'Oh well, the way Selphie and Rinoa love shopping, they could be there for a few days.' He sighed and he climbed up the moss covered concrete steps.
'This'll pass the time.' He said as he sat down to wait for the next train.
Soon a train rumbled up to the station with a clackety clack sound. He caught that train and got off at the Dollet station.
"Hmmm…" Squall thought and he started walking towards the small town that was the heart and soul of the Dukedom of Dollet.
He walked through the wide canyon and looked up at the Dollet Communications Tower, which had been reopened by the Galbabian soldiers, earlier in the year. He thought of the monsters breeding there, and felt a pang of sympathy for the Elvoret that used to reside there, before Squall and his friends had shown up.
He sighed as he walked past the small sign notifying him that he was 'Now Entering Dollet'.
He walked into the bar, and recognizing only one person there, the cross-dresser, he decided to head upstairs to see the manager.
"Hey there, young man, ready for a rematch?" The owner of the bar challenged.
Squall nodded, although he already had the Shiva card. He couldn't resist a good game of Triple Triad.
After a couple of games, naturally winning, he asked the manager to direct him to the nearest forest.
The owner raised an eyebrow, but told him anyway.
And so Squall found himself back in the canyon, walking away from the small town of Dollet.
He found a forest, obscured from his earlier view by a rocky crag. There he found a few Funguars, annoying little creatures.
He knelt down by a creek, and gave his face a wash, as it was slick with sweat. He started singing to himself. Squall heard a noise, looked up, and saw a monkey.
"You suck." The monkey said casually as it bent down to drink.
Squall didn't know what to think. A talking monkey certainly caught him off guard. So he did the only thing he could think of as an answer to that remark, he threw a rock at it. And missed.
"Ahahaha, you missed! You suck! I can skip stones as many times as I want! Your mum wears a shell suit!" and with that the monkey ran off.
Squall did a double take at that statement.
'Skip stones?' he thought, 'Where'd that come from?' A memory floated back then, he was skipping stones on Obel Lake. The stone skipped so many times, he lost count. Squall smiled slightly, and tore off after the monkey.
He saw flashes of brown amongst the trees from time to time. He threw rocks at those brown flashes, sometimes he hit the monkey, and it would shout some obscenity at him, but mostly he missed, which caused the monkey to let out even longer strings of obscenities.
Finally the monkey had had enough. He threw a rock at Squall, and hit him right between the eyes. Squall blacked out.
The first thing Squall thought when he came to, was 'Where is that flaming monkey!?' Well, something along those lines anyway. He picked up the monkey's rock and was about to hurl it at a nearby tree, when he noticed there was writing on it.
"U-R-H-A-E-O" he spelt out to himself.
He forgot all about the monkey, was this stone why he had to find the stupid thing anyway?
Squall dashed from the forest, and back to the train station. He took the train back to Obel Lake, and presented the stone to the shadow in the lake.
"There are strange symbols on it," The shadow stated the obvious. "I wonder what they could mean?"
Squall just about kicked himself, as the shadow didn't know either.
"I hear something sometimes was up on the beach in Balamb." The shadow offered.
Squall rolled his eyes, and wondered just how he was gonna get to Balamb. The train? No he'd had enough of taking the train. He remembered the Ragnarok was parked nearby, but he shouldn't fly it without Selphie.
'What she doesn't know won't kill her.' He thought, and set off for the Ragnarok.
Soon he landed just behind the sand dunes on the island continent of Balamb.
"Am I looking for another of these stones?" Squall asked himself, as he strode onto the beach.
He walked up and down the beach for hours, and as the sun dropped low on the horizon, he saw something shine. He bent over and picked up a rock with similar markings to the first.
"EASNPD" he said out loud.
He returned to the Ragnarok, and flew back to the Lake. The shadow didn't know what this one meant either. All Squall got was another clue.
"You'll find something on and island east of Timber too."
So Squall again got on the Ragnarok, and flew around the archipelago the surrounded the Horizon Bridge.
He searched the two smaller islands, and found nothing, and after walking round on the big island for most of the night, he found another stone.
"REAIDR"
He flew back to the lake, and again asked the shadow if he understood the stones, and again he only got a clue as to where another one was.
"There's also something on top of a mountain with a lake and cavern."
Squall knew where this was. If they made it out of the Lunatic Pandora alive, he was gonna take Rinoa to the nearby resort. He flew straight there, but he only found a Thrustaevis on it's nest. They don't like people near them while they were nesting, and this was no exception.
It flew up out of the loosely woven structure, and dove at Squall, it's talons forward. He dove to the side and saw two eggs in the nest. Thrustaevis, he knew, only ever laid one egg every breeding season. He grabbed the smaller one, and saw that it wasn't an egg. It was another stone. Squall dashed away from the nest as fast as his legs would carry him.
He soon returned to the lake and presented the stones to the shadow in the lake. The shadow chuckled when he saw all the stones together.
"Oh yes, I remember now…" It said vaguely.
"What?" Squall asked.
"Have a look and figure it out for yourself." The shadow advised.
So Squall looked at the stones, and after about half and hour, he finally got their meaning.
"Mordred Plains has treasure…" And his already roused curiosity, burst into flame like a phoenix, as he dashed to the Ragnarok and flew towards the vast plains north of Esthar City.
He landed near the center of the plains, and all that he could see when he got out, were coloured stones, far as the eye could see. He ambled on for a bit, wondering just how he was gonna find treasure on these plains. He couldn't even see the two mountain ranges to the north and south.
"Psst hey!" Squall heard a voice from the ground.
He looked down and saw nothing but the strange coloured stones.
"Would you mind getting off my face?" the white rock he was standing on said.
Squall jumped six foot into the air.
"Did that rock just talk?" He asked himself.
"Yeah I did, the treasures west." The white rock said.
"The treasure is to the south!" A red rock said angrily.
"The treasure is in the direction of the North Star." A black rock told him.
Squall didn't know what to make of it, did all the rocks talk?
"People call us the Liar rocks. Some of us say the same thing over and over, some of us say nonsense, while others say the opposite of what we mean." A blue rock explained.
"Now who do I believe?" Squall asked the blue rock, but it lay quiet.
Instead all the other rocks piped up, and started talking to him all at once. He ran around and by the time it was noon, the stones were driving him nuts!
He'd had no sleep, so he was pretty grouchy.
"QUIET!!!" He shouted at the rocks.
All went silent. He pointed to a black rock.
"The treasure is in the direction of the North Star." It said, just like all the other black rocks.
"You repeat it." Squall said, and so he pointed to a red rock.
The red rock shouted a direction angrily at him.
"I can ignore you." Squall smirked.
The blue rocks just repeated what the first one had told him.
The white rocks just calmly pointed him in a direction. So he guessed that he should do the opposite of what the white rocks said. And so he set off ignoring all rocks bar the white ones, and then going in the opposite direction.
Finally the white rock said something different, "The treasures not here."
Squall was not gonna fall for this. He looked around a little, and sure enough, there was a little box tucked under the white rock.
"Gotcha." He said, opening the chest, revealing a Three Stars.
"Cool." He said and flew back to the lake, hoping for some R&R before the girls got back from their shopping expedition.
The shadow was still there; apparently he had not finished with Squall yet.
"Take time off at Eldbeak Peninsula, I hear it's nice this time of year."
Squall gripped the bridge of his nose; a technique he found stopped him from exploding with frustration.
He flew to the cooler climate of Trabia, and with the aid of the world map, he found Eldbeak Peninsula.
He got off the Ragnarok, and found himself on the top of some cliffs in the middle of a snow flurry.
"Dammit!" He said as he struggled to see. He saw a figure in the storm and made his way to it, discovering a small stone pillar.
He waited until the storm passed, then read the writing on the pillar.
"TRETIMEASUREATMINOFFDEISLE" he wrote the letters on his arm with a pen that he found in his jacket pocket.
"Time off?" he said to himself..
He then clicked as to what the shadow was on about, and then he crossed out the relevant letters.
"Treasure at Minde Isle."
So when Squall got back to the Ragnarok, out came the world map, and Minde Island located.
Squall flew south, making a detour around the Lunatic Pandora, still settled over its kill, the now ruined Tear's point. He felt evil radiating from the massive structure, but continued to fly south. He reached a small island, slightly north of the Kashkabald Desert. He landed and immediately started up his search.
After many long hours he came across a box, containing a Luck-J Scroll.
"Score!" Squall tucked the box under his arm and made his way back to the Ragnarok.
When he got to the lake, the shadow remained still.
"Back in the day, south of here, there used to be a small but beautiful village, surrounded by forests. Everyone lived a happy life there." It said.
Squall had had enough.
"If this is another treasure hunt, count me out!" And with that said, he threw the stones into the lake and the shadow disappeared. He sat down heavily on the grass; exhausted after the long trip he'd just been on. No sooner he'd he closed his eyes, he heard a voice.
"Hey Squall, did you have a nice rest?" Selphie asked.
Squall grunted, annoyed at being brought away from sleep.
Selphie rolled her eyes.
"Hey, we were talking in town, and we want to go treasure hunting before we go the Esthar. One last adventure…"
"Not this time." Squall said simply, his decision made.
The End.
A/N: Well that was shorter than expected, but meh, its also kinda silly, but if you guys like it, or if it helps you with the game any, then feel free to comment, that little purple button down there ain't going anywhere!