Disclaimer: I no own, you no sue.
*`*`*`*`*`
Author's Note: Oh why is it we've just begun...? And now...the fan fic's almost
doooone....Pity me, for I can't see...why I have to end it so
sooooooooooonnnn......Me gusta? TE GUSTA!!! Yeah! Erm well, for real, please
forgive me on how short this story is...
Also, I don't remember exactly how they opened the portal to Memoria exactly
so I just made it so Kuja magically opened it with his magic, spooky, Kuja-style
powers, WHOOSH!
~NeoNaoNeo
*`*`*`*`*`
Chapter 8: Memoria
*`*`*`*`*`
"Robin...? Robin? A-are you okay?" Ipsen asked quickly, nudging Robin as she
lay on the cold stone floor of the castle in a heap. The waltz put his arm under
her head and pulled her up as she awoke, rubbing her eyes.
"Ugh...what happened?" she asked.
"You were unconscious when I found you here." Ipsen said and helped Robin to
her feet.
"H-hey! W-we're in! We're alive!" Robin exclaimed happily and embraced Ipsen.
The waltz gently returned it.
"Erm...okay, I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I'll take it," Ipsen said
merrily as Robin released her grip around his shoulders and looked around. The
high stone walls of Memoria were illuminated by the cloud filtered sunlight
through the open windows, their surface a beautiful dolphin gray. The ground
was tiled by several similarly colored stones, all in a repeating rectangular
pattern. They could see the path of the hallway leading down a stone bridge in
the gold and blue stormy skies. He sighed and picked up the mage's staff Vivi
had given him, looking to Robin. "Well, let's get on with it."
"Yeah, come on," Robin retorted bashfully. The two began walking down the
hallway which soon became a high outdoor bridge over a deep trench, the moss
covered stepping stones were loose and crumbling. Ipsen wrapped his arm
around Robin's waist, tensing his wings. "Hey! Get off!"
"W-what!?" Ipsen shot back. "This thing isn't very secure and I was just making
sure I'd be able to grab you in time just case it fell."
"Hmph, right," Robin grumbled playfully.
"What, I am..." Ipsen retorted, somewhat offended by Robin jumping to
conclusions. He forced his arm around her waist and kept his muscles tight as
Robin tried to pull him off. "Hah, I'm stronger than you now."
"Don't remind me squirt," she joked and yanked the brim of his hat. Ipsen sighed
and adjusted it with his free arm. A warm, pleasant breeze passed them up,
ruffling Robin's hair and Ipsen's feathers, causing the waltz to have a sudden
urge to fly. He ignored this small longing and put his chin on Robin's head in a
joking manner. She rolled her eyes and laughed. "Look, we're here to save Gaia.
Can you at least try to be serious?"
"Why? If we fail, at least we'll be able to think of some pleasant things while we
have our souls removed from our living bodies," Ipsen shrugged and wrapped his
other arm around Robin's waist, drawing her as close as possible, feeling very
giddy and carefree at that moment.
"You suck," Robin blurted with a laugh. She shoved him away, a goofy smile on
her face. "How about this? You can play Mr.Cuddly if we beat Kuja on the way
out and ONLY on the way out."
"Mr. Cuddly?" Ipsen asked, genuinely confused, slightly offended and
frightened.
"That's what Dad called it when he pulled the same come-from-behind hug on
Mom," Robin said, putting her hands on her hips. "And he told Mom the same
thing 'I'm only trying to protect you'. I can defend myself Ipsen."
"B-but you can't fly," Ipsen said. "And that's a pretty far fall."
"It's not gonna fall," Robin said, walking backwards as she talked.
"Robin...please at least look where you're going!" Ipsen said in a frightened tone,
spreading and closing his wings nervously. The genome girl laughed and
complied.
"Okay, but no more hugging," Robin ordered.
"You started it..." Ipsen retorted childishly, recalling the quick embrace Robin
had given him at the entrance.
"Yeah, and I'll end it." she huffed and walked ahead quickly. She turned back to
Ipsen and stopped, waiting. "Well, are we going ahead any time today?"
"I-I don't know...something doesn't feel right," Ipsen said, tinkering with his staff.
"Yeah, this whole place gives me the creeps," Robin said, looking further down
the bridge. "Hey, what's that?"
A large reptilian looking creature sat on the viaduct, his fat, fire red tail twined
around the pillar supporting the structure. It had four arms and in each of its
four clawed hands was a sword, long, sharp and dangerous. A forked tongue
darted out of its mouth and it turned to Robin and Ipsen, catching their scent in
the wind.
"What is it?" Ipsen asked.
"I don't know, but I don't think it's here to greet us," Robin said and continued
walking onward down the path.
"W-wait! Maybe there's another way..." Ipsen suggested.
"Come on, don't be such a wuss," Robin said, grabbing Ipsen's arm and giving
him a tug towards the monster.
Ipsen gulped and shifted a wing. He had never fought a real life battle before,
with the exception of Marlboros, Mus and Trick Sparrows, all of which he could
usually dispose of very easily. Any fights or skirmishes he had with Kuja usually
ended in his defeat, so this upcoming boss battle made the waltz slightly nervous.
"Yeah, okay." he murmured and began picking up his pace to match Robin's.
They both walked slowly and solemnly down the bridge, neither saying a word
as they got closer and closer to the towering beast. It glared at them with blood
red eyes from beneath a golden helmet, serpentine face angled and shadowed. Its
lips parted, two fangs unsheathed themselves and it spoke a challenge in a low,
hissing voice.
"I won't allow you to passsss," the creature snarled and swayed slightly,
uncoiling its tail from the pillar and raising to its full height. "And I, Garden, the
Flame Guardian, haven't failed at extinguissshing any tressspassersss livesss..."
"Let us through and we might not have to embarrass you," Robin challenged,
unsheathing her light, thin, mythril sword against the basilisk's large, heavy
four. Garden gave a loud, superior laugh and brought his swords down in a
sudden attach, barely missing Robin's tail. The girl narrowed her eyes and
charged, jumping at him and plunging her sword as deep into his lower arm as
possible. Black blood seeped from the wound, causing Garden to screech and
hiss, attacking in a frantic way. Robin gasped and quickly yanked her sword
from his arm, tumbling over and missing the brunt of a deadly swing.
Ipsen gave his wings several powerful flaps and took to air with the same
tenacious fervor he had at Lindblum. The waltz hissed the incantations of a
Blizzara spell and hurled it at the reptilian beast, slicing several cuts in his scaly
hide with the chilly blades. Garden snarled and lit his swords ablaze with blue
and black flames and drew himself even higher up on his tail. With a shriek, the
guardian swung his fiery blades at the airborne mage. Ipsen knew how to
immediately call upon his teleporting power, but it didn't work that time. The
milliseconds he wasted trying to teleport caused him a great deal of pain as the
flaming blade bore deep into his flesh and piercing his shoulder's bone,
automatically cauterizing the blood.
"You can't teleport here..." Garden chuckled as Ipsen hit the ground with a
sickening thud. "This dimension is sealed off from all others so you can't slip
between them."
"Ipsen!" Robin cried out as the waltz got up, glaring at the beast with angry,
orange-tinted eyes.
"Alittle help please," he requested, his voice coming out as a commanding growl.
Robin gave a mischievious smirk and cast Cura on the waltz, making his
shoulder heal to a certain extent. The guardian chuckled and swung his massive
tail at the two intruders, Robin and Ipsen both avoided it by jumping, but Ipsen
quickly reclaimed his position in the air, wings beating the warm, stagnant
atmosphere violently and aggressively. As soon as Robin began a descent
towards the ground, Garden grinned evilly and unleashed a tidal wave of
flames, heading right for Robin.
"Help!!!" Robin called as the spell charged towards her, uncontrolled and unruly.
Ipsen didn't reply as he countered the guardian's spell with one of his own
undulations, the white and blue water surging against the red and yellow flames.
The fire and water clashed violently in billows of steam and agonizing hisses.
Robin noticed Ipsen's spell was weakening as the waltz nonchalantly flapped
overhead, looking somewhat bored.
"Come on Ipsen! Wake up! Not all of us as safe up in the air!!!" Robin called
furiously.
The waltz turned his gaze down momentarily and chuckled. Ipsen narrowed his
eyes at Garden and allowed his controlled spell to come out in a frantic surge,
overwhelming the flames as if they had never been a match in the first place. The
tidal wave overcame the fire's caster, knocking the creature down in an
agonizing blow. He shrieked and howled, doubling over in horrible pain, steam
billowing from his burning scales. Ipsen suddenly stopped the flow of the water,
but before Garden could come to his senses, Robin quickly dealt a blow right
between the creature's eyes with a splatter of venomous blood. With one last
screech, the guardian vanished in a plume of Mist, leaving nothing but a few
scorch marks and puddles of blood.
Ipsen calmly landed with several flaps, drawing his wings gracefully up to his
shoulders in a showing-off way, looking to Robin for some kind of approval.
"That was amazing!" she obligated and ran up to the waltz, about to give him a
hug, but refrained.
"Well you could have been killed if I hadn't done that...." Ipsen shrugged.
"No really, you were getting into it," Robin said. "You've got the same look in
your eyes your dad did in a major battle like this."
"What?" Ipsen said, arching an eyebrow, his eyes slightly tinted red.
"My dad said that Vivi got the same little color change thing goin' on when he
was in a fight or angry or something," Robin chuckled. "Of course, your eyes do
that when you're sad too."
They began walking towards the door, side by side.
"What?" Ipsen asked again, completely confused.
"Your eyes get all pale and kinda blue," Robin said. "It's really cute. Especially
when you tried covering it up."
Ipsen chuckled and put his hand around the doorknob, yanking it open. Both
gasped at the scene that played before their eyes beyond the door.
Lindblum lay in ruins, hot flames rolled off bodies and rubble, polluting the air
with sickening black smoke. The only living things in the pessimistic streets were
the rats and flies that swarmed to the rotting bodies of fallen human and black
mage soldiers. Ipsen looked around at the carnage, horrorstruck.
"H-how'd we get here, where are we---?" he asked insecurely.
"I-I think it's Lindblum," Robin replied, looking to the castle on the horizon.
"W-what happened?" Ipsen asked and looked at the charred body of a black
mage, green overcoat covered in ashes and blood. Robin shook her head as Ipsen
bent over and picked up a feather off the ground.
"I did this, didn't I?" he asked.
Robin couldn't answer.
"How'd we get here?" Ipsen asked.
"We didn't go anywhere," Robin said. "We're still in Memoria."
"How---?"
"The rooms project memories, emotions, dreams, fears...anything that might
scare off an interloper," Robin mused, looking about the town as the walked.
Ipsen sighed.
"I can't wait to get out of here," he sighed as they walked through another door
to exit the chaotic war-worn town.
*`*`*`*`*`
*`*`*`*`*`
Author's Note: Oh why is it we've just begun...? And now...the fan fic's almost
doooone....Pity me, for I can't see...why I have to end it so
sooooooooooonnnn......Me gusta? TE GUSTA!!! Yeah! Erm well, for real, please
forgive me on how short this story is...
Also, I don't remember exactly how they opened the portal to Memoria exactly
so I just made it so Kuja magically opened it with his magic, spooky, Kuja-style
powers, WHOOSH!
~NeoNaoNeo
*`*`*`*`*`
Chapter 8: Memoria
*`*`*`*`*`
"Robin...? Robin? A-are you okay?" Ipsen asked quickly, nudging Robin as she
lay on the cold stone floor of the castle in a heap. The waltz put his arm under
her head and pulled her up as she awoke, rubbing her eyes.
"Ugh...what happened?" she asked.
"You were unconscious when I found you here." Ipsen said and helped Robin to
her feet.
"H-hey! W-we're in! We're alive!" Robin exclaimed happily and embraced Ipsen.
The waltz gently returned it.
"Erm...okay, I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I'll take it," Ipsen said
merrily as Robin released her grip around his shoulders and looked around. The
high stone walls of Memoria were illuminated by the cloud filtered sunlight
through the open windows, their surface a beautiful dolphin gray. The ground
was tiled by several similarly colored stones, all in a repeating rectangular
pattern. They could see the path of the hallway leading down a stone bridge in
the gold and blue stormy skies. He sighed and picked up the mage's staff Vivi
had given him, looking to Robin. "Well, let's get on with it."
"Yeah, come on," Robin retorted bashfully. The two began walking down the
hallway which soon became a high outdoor bridge over a deep trench, the moss
covered stepping stones were loose and crumbling. Ipsen wrapped his arm
around Robin's waist, tensing his wings. "Hey! Get off!"
"W-what!?" Ipsen shot back. "This thing isn't very secure and I was just making
sure I'd be able to grab you in time just case it fell."
"Hmph, right," Robin grumbled playfully.
"What, I am..." Ipsen retorted, somewhat offended by Robin jumping to
conclusions. He forced his arm around her waist and kept his muscles tight as
Robin tried to pull him off. "Hah, I'm stronger than you now."
"Don't remind me squirt," she joked and yanked the brim of his hat. Ipsen sighed
and adjusted it with his free arm. A warm, pleasant breeze passed them up,
ruffling Robin's hair and Ipsen's feathers, causing the waltz to have a sudden
urge to fly. He ignored this small longing and put his chin on Robin's head in a
joking manner. She rolled her eyes and laughed. "Look, we're here to save Gaia.
Can you at least try to be serious?"
"Why? If we fail, at least we'll be able to think of some pleasant things while we
have our souls removed from our living bodies," Ipsen shrugged and wrapped his
other arm around Robin's waist, drawing her as close as possible, feeling very
giddy and carefree at that moment.
"You suck," Robin blurted with a laugh. She shoved him away, a goofy smile on
her face. "How about this? You can play Mr.Cuddly if we beat Kuja on the way
out and ONLY on the way out."
"Mr. Cuddly?" Ipsen asked, genuinely confused, slightly offended and
frightened.
"That's what Dad called it when he pulled the same come-from-behind hug on
Mom," Robin said, putting her hands on her hips. "And he told Mom the same
thing 'I'm only trying to protect you'. I can defend myself Ipsen."
"B-but you can't fly," Ipsen said. "And that's a pretty far fall."
"It's not gonna fall," Robin said, walking backwards as she talked.
"Robin...please at least look where you're going!" Ipsen said in a frightened tone,
spreading and closing his wings nervously. The genome girl laughed and
complied.
"Okay, but no more hugging," Robin ordered.
"You started it..." Ipsen retorted childishly, recalling the quick embrace Robin
had given him at the entrance.
"Yeah, and I'll end it." she huffed and walked ahead quickly. She turned back to
Ipsen and stopped, waiting. "Well, are we going ahead any time today?"
"I-I don't know...something doesn't feel right," Ipsen said, tinkering with his staff.
"Yeah, this whole place gives me the creeps," Robin said, looking further down
the bridge. "Hey, what's that?"
A large reptilian looking creature sat on the viaduct, his fat, fire red tail twined
around the pillar supporting the structure. It had four arms and in each of its
four clawed hands was a sword, long, sharp and dangerous. A forked tongue
darted out of its mouth and it turned to Robin and Ipsen, catching their scent in
the wind.
"What is it?" Ipsen asked.
"I don't know, but I don't think it's here to greet us," Robin said and continued
walking onward down the path.
"W-wait! Maybe there's another way..." Ipsen suggested.
"Come on, don't be such a wuss," Robin said, grabbing Ipsen's arm and giving
him a tug towards the monster.
Ipsen gulped and shifted a wing. He had never fought a real life battle before,
with the exception of Marlboros, Mus and Trick Sparrows, all of which he could
usually dispose of very easily. Any fights or skirmishes he had with Kuja usually
ended in his defeat, so this upcoming boss battle made the waltz slightly nervous.
"Yeah, okay." he murmured and began picking up his pace to match Robin's.
They both walked slowly and solemnly down the bridge, neither saying a word
as they got closer and closer to the towering beast. It glared at them with blood
red eyes from beneath a golden helmet, serpentine face angled and shadowed. Its
lips parted, two fangs unsheathed themselves and it spoke a challenge in a low,
hissing voice.
"I won't allow you to passsss," the creature snarled and swayed slightly,
uncoiling its tail from the pillar and raising to its full height. "And I, Garden, the
Flame Guardian, haven't failed at extinguissshing any tressspassersss livesss..."
"Let us through and we might not have to embarrass you," Robin challenged,
unsheathing her light, thin, mythril sword against the basilisk's large, heavy
four. Garden gave a loud, superior laugh and brought his swords down in a
sudden attach, barely missing Robin's tail. The girl narrowed her eyes and
charged, jumping at him and plunging her sword as deep into his lower arm as
possible. Black blood seeped from the wound, causing Garden to screech and
hiss, attacking in a frantic way. Robin gasped and quickly yanked her sword
from his arm, tumbling over and missing the brunt of a deadly swing.
Ipsen gave his wings several powerful flaps and took to air with the same
tenacious fervor he had at Lindblum. The waltz hissed the incantations of a
Blizzara spell and hurled it at the reptilian beast, slicing several cuts in his scaly
hide with the chilly blades. Garden snarled and lit his swords ablaze with blue
and black flames and drew himself even higher up on his tail. With a shriek, the
guardian swung his fiery blades at the airborne mage. Ipsen knew how to
immediately call upon his teleporting power, but it didn't work that time. The
milliseconds he wasted trying to teleport caused him a great deal of pain as the
flaming blade bore deep into his flesh and piercing his shoulder's bone,
automatically cauterizing the blood.
"You can't teleport here..." Garden chuckled as Ipsen hit the ground with a
sickening thud. "This dimension is sealed off from all others so you can't slip
between them."
"Ipsen!" Robin cried out as the waltz got up, glaring at the beast with angry,
orange-tinted eyes.
"Alittle help please," he requested, his voice coming out as a commanding growl.
Robin gave a mischievious smirk and cast Cura on the waltz, making his
shoulder heal to a certain extent. The guardian chuckled and swung his massive
tail at the two intruders, Robin and Ipsen both avoided it by jumping, but Ipsen
quickly reclaimed his position in the air, wings beating the warm, stagnant
atmosphere violently and aggressively. As soon as Robin began a descent
towards the ground, Garden grinned evilly and unleashed a tidal wave of
flames, heading right for Robin.
"Help!!!" Robin called as the spell charged towards her, uncontrolled and unruly.
Ipsen didn't reply as he countered the guardian's spell with one of his own
undulations, the white and blue water surging against the red and yellow flames.
The fire and water clashed violently in billows of steam and agonizing hisses.
Robin noticed Ipsen's spell was weakening as the waltz nonchalantly flapped
overhead, looking somewhat bored.
"Come on Ipsen! Wake up! Not all of us as safe up in the air!!!" Robin called
furiously.
The waltz turned his gaze down momentarily and chuckled. Ipsen narrowed his
eyes at Garden and allowed his controlled spell to come out in a frantic surge,
overwhelming the flames as if they had never been a match in the first place. The
tidal wave overcame the fire's caster, knocking the creature down in an
agonizing blow. He shrieked and howled, doubling over in horrible pain, steam
billowing from his burning scales. Ipsen suddenly stopped the flow of the water,
but before Garden could come to his senses, Robin quickly dealt a blow right
between the creature's eyes with a splatter of venomous blood. With one last
screech, the guardian vanished in a plume of Mist, leaving nothing but a few
scorch marks and puddles of blood.
Ipsen calmly landed with several flaps, drawing his wings gracefully up to his
shoulders in a showing-off way, looking to Robin for some kind of approval.
"That was amazing!" she obligated and ran up to the waltz, about to give him a
hug, but refrained.
"Well you could have been killed if I hadn't done that...." Ipsen shrugged.
"No really, you were getting into it," Robin said. "You've got the same look in
your eyes your dad did in a major battle like this."
"What?" Ipsen said, arching an eyebrow, his eyes slightly tinted red.
"My dad said that Vivi got the same little color change thing goin' on when he
was in a fight or angry or something," Robin chuckled. "Of course, your eyes do
that when you're sad too."
They began walking towards the door, side by side.
"What?" Ipsen asked again, completely confused.
"Your eyes get all pale and kinda blue," Robin said. "It's really cute. Especially
when you tried covering it up."
Ipsen chuckled and put his hand around the doorknob, yanking it open. Both
gasped at the scene that played before their eyes beyond the door.
Lindblum lay in ruins, hot flames rolled off bodies and rubble, polluting the air
with sickening black smoke. The only living things in the pessimistic streets were
the rats and flies that swarmed to the rotting bodies of fallen human and black
mage soldiers. Ipsen looked around at the carnage, horrorstruck.
"H-how'd we get here, where are we---?" he asked insecurely.
"I-I think it's Lindblum," Robin replied, looking to the castle on the horizon.
"W-what happened?" Ipsen asked and looked at the charred body of a black
mage, green overcoat covered in ashes and blood. Robin shook her head as Ipsen
bent over and picked up a feather off the ground.
"I did this, didn't I?" he asked.
Robin couldn't answer.
"How'd we get here?" Ipsen asked.
"We didn't go anywhere," Robin said. "We're still in Memoria."
"How---?"
"The rooms project memories, emotions, dreams, fears...anything that might
scare off an interloper," Robin mused, looking about the town as the walked.
Ipsen sighed.
"I can't wait to get out of here," he sighed as they walked through another door
to exit the chaotic war-worn town.
*`*`*`*`*`