Faith
Chained, dirty and alone, Seifer Almasy hears Sorceress Ultimecia die. A tired smile flickers briefly across his face.
Fujin Kazeno and Raijin Hefty run up the main stairway of the Sorceresses's castle calling their leader's name urgently.
"Fuu, is Seifer here? He might be in Balamb, ya know?"
"SEIFER, HERE."
"Fujin, Fuu, you don't know that ya know?"
"I KNOW!" She exploded turning around pinning him in place with her single eye, now slitted in anger. An unearthly scream resounded through the castle. Chandeliers exploded, doors flew off their ancient hinges and the clocks simultaneously chimed.
"Fujin! FUJIN! We're moving apart, ya know?"
"FOOL." But when she did look, she saw he was right. When they had run through it, the main hall was about the size of Balamb Garden's ballroom had grown to twice the size of Galbadia Garden's ice hockey pitch. Slender white tendrils had snaked up Fujin's legs and, with her distressed eye could see that it had almost obscured Raijin.
"RAIJIN! FIGHT IT!!" While shouting at him to move, the tendrils had taken advantage of her, spiralling up and around her tiny body. Raijin stood frozen watching his beloved Fujin fighting desperately, terrified. Her terror infected him, in all their time in the Almasy Posse he had never seen her scared. Anxious yes, when you ran with Seifer you ran to beat the devil. Now swallowed by the white light, they running towards and away from the light. It reminded him of the time when he and Fujin, 3 and 4 then, had been dumped in Deling City train station. The noise of the trains bewildered them both, simultaneously rising and falling not revealing the train's location until it barrelled perilously close by to the frightened children. He…he was…
…Ultimecia's captive. Sitting on the floor bound by heavy manacles pinioning his arms under him behind his back in the waterway. The white tendrils drifted down to him, merging past and present in their wake. Pulling himself as far forward as the unwilling manacles would let him, he saw Puberty Boy, Chicken Wuss and the Instructor run across the bridge. He closed his eyes.
Some while later he shifted slowly against something against his leg. Ducking briefly under the water, he saw the Rosetta stone. Smiling slightly, he said "I'll give this-"
"-AWAY!" Fujin found herself lying on white in white and around white. She sat up slowly, looking around for either Raijin or Seifer. Standing up gingerly, she saw her location had changed to a dry, sunblasted desert. Fujin gasped when a slightly bigger thing bumped into her. The other yelled back. You'd really be in for it if it wasn't so damn hot. Fujin thought hoping it was Raijin so she could bite, kick and yell at him all she wanted. He was good that way. Turning around she saw Quistis. Irked, Fujin started walking off.
"Fujin?" Quistis started, walking after her.
"INSTRUCTOR" Quistis flinched back at the volume. "Well," she started again. "Where are you going?"
"HOME, BALAMB. FIND SEIFER." With that, Fujin walked off again leaving the other girl to digest what she had just said.
"Wait!" She called frantically, even in that short period of time; Fujin had managed to cover a lot of ground.
As a surprise to both of them, Fujin stopped. However, once moving Quistis found herself frantically racking her brain for conversation. She eventually, or maybe it was instantly decided upon a 'safe' question; "What are you going to do when you find Seifer?" Not looking around, Fujin answered in her usual manner; "FIND RAIJIN." Quistis sighed. What a conversation stopped. "Are you going to come back to Garden?"
"IF SEIFER WISHES IT."
"Would you like to?" Fujin didn't even slow down, or speed up. Quistis kind of wished she had, at least she'd know if Fujin didn't want to talk about something.
"You and Squall should get together." Fujin looked around at the blond, eyebrows raised. "I'm being serious; I've never met anyone else who can kill a conversation so quickly." Fujin walked off looking slightly hurt. But only for a split second – her face pulled itself into its normal intimidating expression.
Quistis suddenly found herself running in a white room with Zell, Selphie and Rinoa, each other's exact location unknown until they crashed into each other. With a gasp she found herself nose-to-nose with Fujin in the barren wasteland. Fujin looked a little surprised then walked around the other girl. Quistis found her respect and caution for the petite albino growing, she felt she could almost understand Raijin's all-year-round perplexed facial expression he seemed to wear when he was around her.
"WHY NO LONGER INSTRUCTOR?" Asked Fujin, jerking Quistis out of her thoughts. Quistis looked up and straight into Fujin's curious red eye. Well, I might as well tell her. First time anybody's shown an interest.
"The Garden faculty thought my method of saving Commander Leonhart was rash, costly and dangerous." How easily my failure sums up.
"METHOD?" Fujin looked back at Quistis again, no mockery in her white face. Why didn't Seifer tell her? Oh, he was already in the vessel at that point.
"A robot X-ATOMO92 was dispatched to kill Squad B. Zell and Selphie were almost inside the vessel but Squall had somehow managed to lag behind. Using the guns on-board the ship I shot the robot killing it but causing millions of gil in damage."
"SAVED CANDIDATE."
"Yes. Not that he thanked me." Fujin looked around and saw no real difference in the landscape despite feeling like she'd walked for hours. With a heavy heart she looked back at the spot where Quistis had been. She felt very small and weak. The desert began to fade out to white, she supposed she wasn't
There. Raijin leaned against the platform sign and watched a bleach-skinned girl and a tall, dark-skinned boy walk hand-in-hand through Deling City train station. He pushed himself off the sign, knowing he was doomed to see the following events again. The young Fujin and Raijin walk out of the train station after being dumped by their foster parents, Fujin holding 'her' screwdriver and Raijin in the other. The young Raijin tries to wrestle it away from her but is kicked. Hard. Even then, Fuu always got her way.
A group of drunken men jeered and nudged each other, pointing at the tall boy and his albino friend.
"Ahh! It's the Beast and the Beast!" One of them yelled in mock horror. This idiot had long hair dragged back into a ponytail. Him and his mates brayed drunken laughter at this witticism. Raijin pulled a transfixed Fujin away from them as older Raijin follows shaking his head, predicting the guy's next action.
"Hey girl!" He calls, standing up, Fuu turns, eyes unfortunately wide. Everything appears to slow down starting with the moan from elder Raijin's throat as he watches the missile hit Fujin square in the eye. He sees Fujin grip Raijin and her screwdriver first in nerves them in pain. Ponytail has lobbed a stone straight at Fuu who is leaning against Raijin's once white shirt.
"Hey, Laguna, that was way uncool." Someone says making Raijin freeze. Laguna. As in President Laguna Loire? The timing's al wrong, he should be Esthar's President now, not blinding people.
Little Raijin has run from the Hotel Galbadia to the Caraway estate where a woman in a red dress is playing with a little girl in a paddling pool. He runs round the back of the house and whirls Fujin around to face him. He grips her screwdriver and levers it under the stone, pushing down hard. She screams like a scalded cat, batting at his arm frantically. With the stone out, he decides to scrape the ruin of her eyeball out too, it coming out looking like grape skins that have been turned inside out with a consistency of snot. Fujin is semi-conscious by this point, her other eye rolling up.
"Rai…jin. Raijin…RAGE!" With that, he gets kicked again.
Headlights of a car, Julia Heartilly's car, the car in which she will die one year later. Fujin and Raijin run to somewhere that he can't remember, leaving the screwdriver that will be presented to SeeD's, identified as the object which severed the brake fluid pipe, the man in charge mistaking dried blood for dried brake fluid.
In the waterway of Ultimecia's castle, Seifer regains consciousness. The water is now inhospitable. His teeth are chattering together and his reflection, he sees, has blue lips. Where are they? Where is she? She's always got me out of trouble. Maybe this was the straw that broke the chocobo's back. He tries to drift back into whatever state he was in before.
Fujin clutches herself and looks around, finding herself in Ultimecia's art gallery.
"Raijin?" She asks timidly, not sure if she wants to be heard.
"Ahh! Fuuuuj! I'm being attacked by a picture, ya know?" After jumping out of her skin, she turned and saw Raijin waving his arms around, trying to protect himself from a moth.
"RAIJIN!" She flew up the stairs, took aim and killed the moth, leaving Raijin to stupidly watch her Shruiken fly back to her outstretched hand.
Seifer heard a big clattering coming from in front of him.
"Raijin! Fujin!" She was here! He licked his scaly lips, hoping they weren't going to leave.
"Fujin! Jinny!" He tries to get up, forgetting the manacles sending himself back into the water, reminding himself how cold he is. He started thrashing with his painfully numb legs hoping the noise will carry to wherever they are. He looks up and sees Jinny and Rai jumping off the overhead bridge.
"All right! Jinny, Rai, how'd you guys get in here? Never mind that, get me out!" Fuu takes his left wrist, picking it with a hairpin, Quistis's actually, and Raijin picked the right with his eyebrow bar.
"Oh, man, you guys are so -"
"SILENCE." He shuts his mouth with an audible snap. "PATROL OUTSIDE." She said to Raijin who had freed Seifer's right arm.
"What for?"
"FIENDS." Raijin looks blankly at Seifer who mouths 'monsters' at him. Rai nodded and ran off, spraying Seifer with more water on his drying face.
"DONE." She announces, dragging the cuffs off his wrists.
He stared at his hands, flexing them to try and get some feeling back into them, then at Fujin who he felt looking at him. He remembered the Rosetta Stone.
"Here." He said gruffly, not coming out like he wanted it to. She shoved the stone in her pocket without looking at it.
"Hey! I got you that as a gift! Ain't you gonna look at it!"
"Well the way you snapped at me, I thought you wanted me to look after it for you." She said unhappily, pulling it back out of her pocket, reading it's abilities. "GF X4 ability slot. Thanks."
"Yeah."
"Problem."
"What?"
"No Pandemona."
"Huh?! Where'd it go?"
"Puberty boy."
"Oh." He shrugged and pulled her until she was leaning against him. "Jinny…" are in love with me is what he wanted to add.
"Mmm?" She looked up at him, lynx like, ready to kill in an instant.
"Let's go!"
Back in the entrance hall, Raijin was fighting a Vysage. With a little help from the rest of the Almasy Posse, he defeated it.
"OHHH YEEAAHH!"
"I think Zell's found the hot dogs." Quistis chuckled.
"Yeah, where's Rinoa?"
"Balcony." Squall walked off. Quistis accepted a drink and thought about who she was with in Time Compression. Fujin. She hoped she was ok wherever she was.
"I've got one!" Seifer! Jinny! I've got one!" Seifer threw his rod down, winking slightly at Jinny who disposed of Mr. Hefty into the water via her foot. Seifer laughed one of those genuine laughs that turned heads and made everyone else smile. Even the sight of Balamb Garden didn't affect his mood. Fujin walked up behind him and put her arms around him, surprising Raijin.
"Faith." She whispered.
The End