"It had been nearly three months since the slaughter at the city of the Ancients. Presently we are in the general area of Costa Del Sol." Yuffie Vincent and Chaos were standing on a beach. About a quarter mile off the coast were twenty black ships. On the horizon Yuffie could see another five approaching from the coast. "As an army we effectively killed off all human life on the Northern continent, Southern Islands, the area now know as Wutai and the Greater Western continent. Presently we are mobilizing to begin our invasion of the Eastern Continent."
"That's horrible." Yuffie commented.
"That's war." Chaos replied. "Earlier this morning those four ships in the distance were chasing after the human refugees that had survived. About one month ago Arthur, the second son of Alexander and Shiva, the younger brother to Odin, led his twelve nephews of similar age to this continent on a crusade to rescue all remaining human life. They came on one ship, but left in seven. As a force, those thirteen knights were unstoppable. That's why we were so desperate to fight them on the open sea. We hoped that we could catch them separated on the ships and kill them then and there. But none were on the one ship we caught."
Chaos stopped talking and turned around, the sea to his back, the second demon Chaos walked past their position. All about the beach there were monsters running back and forth loading boxes of supplies and weapons onto smaller rowboats that they would take out to their great ships. The three of them began to follow Chaos; he stopped on top of a small his a little ways off from the business. That's when they heard it, a great whooshing sound. Looking up Yuffie saw Bahamut descending vertically beating his wings at a pace as to slow his descent. All three went silent and began to listen when he finally touched down.
As soon as he had a chance Bahamut began, "I did not see them over our encampment. Its true then."
"I'm afraid so… Your brothers are dead." Chaos replied.
Bahamut's expression changed to sadness. "How did it happen?"
"The 13 knights. They used something we are calling the gravity trap. While the knights were gathering their refugees your brothers flew over their positions to begin their aerial bombardment. Then the knights activated the trap. We think it was constructed by Alexander. Before he joined the council, he was a great inventor. They were both sucked down to the surface, everything in their airspace was. When they hit the ground they were slightly wounded, the knights quickly finished them off before they could take to the air again."
Bahamut began to sob. It was quite a site, a greater dragon sobbing like that.
"I'm sorry, we were waiting for the first barrage to hit before we attacked on foot. After they were pulled down it was already too late. So I ordered a general withdrawal and had four ships present wait in ambush for their convoy."
Bahamut looked up. "Where was Leviathan during their flight?"
"We heard reports of a second crusade from the Northern sector of the Eastern continent. He is on patrol there. But I don't want you to worry about the knights. Hades has some plan in mind for them. And they are going to help." Chaos made a gesture to the captured ship coming in. The four black ships were in a square formation and in the middle was their prisoner ship. Manned by beasts with the humans trapped in the hull.
A few hours later when the ships had weighed anchor of the coast all the humans were brought to the beach. They looked on in horror up and down the beach. It was swarmed with beasts moving to and fro keeping busy. The captain of the guard who brought them ashore began speaking to captured humans. "As you can see we are in dire need of your vessel in order to transport our legions across the sea. But we can't allow you remain here now can we?" With that he and three others began to tear into the captured humans ranks. From a group of seventy they quickly dropped to twenty before an infuriated Hades stopped them. He stormed over the hillside onto the beach and ordered them to cease their reckless actions. Hades and the captain of the guards then got into an argument.
"Stop this reckless massacre!"
"NO! It's been too long since we've tasted fresh meat! All we have are these dried out rations! We need fresh meat!" The captain enunciated the word need, and a long smile appeared on his face. To the humans he looked like a blood thirsty beast, Hades was just worried he would break out laughing in the middle of this. Hard to imagine but this beast was the best actor he could arrange for on such short notice.
"Then feast on the flesh of their fallen! But leave these twenty to me!" Hades then moved in between the captain and the captured.
"High Lord Hades! Share with us your legion, what is it you have in mind for these humans?"
With and exaggerated stutter and voice of uncertainty he replied. "I will… We will use them… exchange their lives… for um… that of the 13 knights. YES! And exchange of lives."
"You think the 13 great knights would exchange their lives for these wretches?"
Hades met his gaze. "I know so."
"Take the remaining prisoners back to their ship, and lock them in the hold." As they were led away Hades made eye contact with as many of them as he could. All of them just stared back at him in amazement. They thought this being had saved their lives. Some were even staring back at him from the boats as they rowed out to the ship.
When they were all loaded into the hold the of ship the captain of the guards asked Hades, "What should we do with the bodies?"
"Eat them…" They both let out bellows of laughter for a moment. Even thought they were enemies several months ago the beasts and humans worked side by side. Eating them seemed… wrong…
"Ahh…. No seriously… what do we do with the bodies?"
"Take some men and bury them on the other side of the hill, I don't want to risk the humans seeing them." With that they separated and Hades approached Chaos and Bahamut. "So… what did you think of my act?"
Chaos began a slow clap, and Bahamut leisurely commented. "They'll follow you barefoot into the pits of hell after what you've done."
"Follow me they shall, then I'll have them usurpt the devil and name me king. That will be the depth of their loyalty to me… You're brothers will be avenged through them."
"What do you have in mind?" inquired Chaos.
"There are 13 maidens and 7 men aboard that ship. Lets just say that with the help of my chemistry set…" he patted the pouch hanging in his shoulder. Chaos was one of the few who knew that the satchel was filled with poisons and various chemicals. "The maidens will not be as… pure as they are now. And when they meet the 13 knights there will be an interesting reaction." Hades let out another laugh and began making his way down the beach again, where he would catch a ride to the humans ship. There he would begin his preparations for their arrival at the next continent.
"What do you think he's planning?" Bahamut asked.
"I think I know… and it's pretty bad." Chaos replied. They both began walking down the beach to help with the move.
"I don't like Hades summon anymore" Yuffie casually commented.
Chaos scoffed at her comment. "I never liked him when he was'nt a summon. Originally he was a cleric. Using natural herbs and minerals he would cure various diseases. But while creating various potions he also learned how to create certain diseases. As a cleric he was continuously exposed to the sick, and from his exposure he grew immune to all forms of disease and sickness. He even learned how to manipulate it to a degree. From what I understood it was his fame as a cleric that originally got him a place in the High council. While on the high council he focused greatly on civil rights and freedoms. You can't imagine how he felt when he learned that his life's works were all gone to nothing. So he became this… dark evil mage… guy…"
"A mage? So he used materia?" Vincent asked.
"Beasts can't use materia. However we can learn magic without materia."
"Sooo… whatever happened with those people?" asked Yuffie. Hades began to walk along the beach, they followed after him.
"Hades approached them on the ship and told them he wanted to defect, that he couldn't stand the war anymore and just wanted to leave it. So when they reached the next continent he would help them all escape if they took him with them. They eagerly agreed. When we were half way across the sea, he led the seven men on a staged hostile takeover on the boat, the using some flash-powder he tricked the humans on board into believing he stopped the wind in our sails, in reality we dropped anchor and gave him a one-hour head start. When we started again we nearly caught up with them, which would have been pretty bad, but we had to give chase to create the impression they had escaped. When they reached the coast they beached their ship, and unloaded some supplies as quickly as possible. Using the Chocobos stored on the vessel they made their way towards the second to last human city left. The 13 knights brought the refugees there first as a waypoint; afterwards they would have taken them under the mountain to their capital where Odin and Alexander had their city. The area would be somewhere between Kalm and the Chocobo ranch.
There was another bright flash, and they found themselves riding on the lower back of Bahamut yet again. Bahamut was slowly making circles in the air. The demon Chaos was standing near his head looking downwards. The other three moved to look over his side as well. A little off to the distance there was a makeshift city, with high wooden walls, the people looked like ants. Below them were 16 Chocobos, some holding two people some one. Hades was riding with them. They were riding towards the city. Quickly following behind them were eight leopards like creatures following closely, but still keeping a safe distance. Suddenly from the small wooden city there was a series of whoops and cheers, as its large gates swung open and thirteen slightly larger ants began riding towards the fleeing humans. A few minutes later they intercepted them, the leopard like creatures withdrew as they were ordered to do.
It was now noon, the sun was directly overhead. Bahamut began a sharp descent directly above the group of 34 so they would have a better look. The 13 knights between the refugees and the city. They dismounted to greet their fellows. The escapees with Hades began dismounting to thank their saviors as well. Hades feigned a cough and fell to the ground, and his hood came loose revealing his skinless, demonic face. The 13 knights quickly reacted. They unsheathed their swords and began to advance on their enemy. The thirteen women did just as Hades expected them to, they threw themselves at the knights, and the men made every attempt to put some distance between them and Hades. Bahamut was now low enough to where they could hear some of the vague cries; "He saved us from human eating monsters!" "When others would starve us he gave us food!" "He wishes to join us in a search for peace!" "He has done no wrong to you, why do you attack him so?!" The last comment made Chaos chuckle for a moment. If the three of them were on the ground they would see that Hades still had not moved from his position on the ground. He wasn't facing the knights so no one could see his face. His eyes were closed, and with his hands he was making various hand gestures, and as silently as he could he was repeating a spell he had memorized earlier that morning. Then he began to stand still making the still making the hand movements, and in a normal speaking voice reciting the spell. There was too much commotion, and no one noticed Hades' chanting until he was nearly screaming it. Even then the women and men turned in shock to stare at him. They never saw it coming. The knights tried to push through them, but it was too late. The men and women's bodies exploded, and the general area was covered with a dark green mist. Over the voyage Hades had fed them generously. Concealed in their food was a compacted poison gas and a highly unstable compound laced with magic to give Hades control over its.
The explosion didn't kill the knights, that job was reserved for the poison. All the Chocobos had scattered at the explosion, save one. The sons of Odin were all grounded, coughing and gagging. Their vision was gone, and they were quickly losing all feeling in their bodies. They felt as if their insides had turned to mush, and slowly their blood began to slow in flow. In a few hours the 12 sons of Odin would be dead. Normal humans would have died on the spot, but there was nothing normal about them, they were the grand children of a demi-god. One fourth of their blood came directly from Shiva. That is how Arthur survived. Arthur was the second son of Alexander and Shiva, younger brother to Odin, and leader of Odin's 12 sons. His blood was half demi-god.
During the explosion Arthur was thrown back like the rest, and poisonous fumes had their effect on him too, but it would take much longer for him to die of it. From above Chaos and Bahamut could see everything. They saw a lone figure amongst the strewn bodies slowly crawling towards Hades. Bahamut and Chaos tried to signal to him but there was nothing they could do, the layer of gaseous poison on the ground was still too thick, from the inside you probably couldn't see out. Hades himself was slightly out of it. The spell had taken a lot out of him, his eyes were somewhat bleary, and he could hear nothing save his heartbeat. He just sat on a rock catching his breath, and lone knight made his way towards him. Gently Arthur got up on his knees, and using his sword to support him then onto his feet. His vision was going in and out, and he attempted to make his way towards the figure in the mist. He began to stumble, but managed to stop himself from falling. Slowly but surely he made his way towards Hades.
This monstrous figure that had murdered his nephews and all those people was sitting before him. Arthur was facing his back. Hades was staring at the ground rubbing his temples with his hands waiting for his vision to clear up, and his heart beats to silence. With a great heave Arthur managed to bring the hilt of the blade to his chest, the blade was resting on his shoulder. He just stood still for a moment taking giant breaths, the effort had knocked the wind out of him.
Hades looked up, his vision had begun to clear… well it was as clear as it could be in this sea of him he had created. He really had to compliment himself, in one foul swoop he had managed to kill all 13 knights. 'That's why I will win this war, because of my extreme cunning. Who else could have created such a great strategy?' It was almost as brilliant as the position he had set Chaos into. 'Speaking of Chaos, after the humans in their city are captured I can use him to perform a similar strategy. We don't have the numbers to destroy Odin's city in the North, so we'll give him hostages in exchange for a match with Chaos. After Chaos is defeated with a little help…' Hades smiled to himself. 'and after Odin has returned to his city with all the bombs, err.. humans… I'll detonate them. There will be so many infected, that by the next morning when the poison has dissipated, we'll easily invade and kill off what ever managed to survive. Its brilliant! I'll get rid of Chaos, I've killed the 13 knights so Bahamut will be loyal to me, and then with the army's support I'll control the world…' Hades sat on his rock and contemplated a moment more before he realized he had recovered his hearing. Only turning his head slightly to the right when he heard a low whooshing sound, then a crash like metal into weak flesh.
Arthur lay on the ground, not yet dead but getting there. Getting up on his hands and knees he examined the figure next to him. Whatever it was, it was still alive, but judging from how deep his sword was embedded in its neck he guessed it only had a few minutes left. No healer or cleric could mend that would in time. With a great force of will Arthur got to his feet, and began a slow walk to the edge of the mist. 'For now I'll leave the sword.' He thought. 'I'll return for it and their bodies after I've been healed at Odin's city… If I'm healed at Odin's city.' When he reached the edge of the misty poison cloud, he gave out a shrill whistle. The one remaining Chocobo trotted up to him, and bent its knees down to its owner could more easily mount him. After Arthur had strapped himself in for a long journey he leaned forward and whispered in the Chocobo's ear, "Take me home, take me back to Odin's city." The Chocobo gave off a loud Wark!! Then began sprinting for the cave. It remembered there was a cave to the North he would have to pass through. He (the Chocobo) would have to be careful. 'I now have a rider' he thought to himself. Then he would have to cross the marsh and at the same time avoid the giant land worm that would chase after them. Then it would be a half-day's run to his home where the other Chocobos had probably already returned. Of all the species of beasts there are only two that retained their original capacities for knowledge, one was the fire dogs of the western continent (Red XIII) and the other were the Chocobos, which weren't very smart to begin with, but even after so many generations retained their strong will, culture, and loyalty
Chaos pointed the Chocobo out to Bahamut. "Should we go after them?" Bahamut asked.
"No, if he was in the poison cloud he'll be dead soon enough." Chaos replied. "We need to find Hades, I lost sight of him a while back. Bring us down lower and begin flapping your wings into the mist. It will take hours to thin on its own."
Bahamut carefully dropped to a lower altitude and began flapping his wings into the cloud, the misty green air flew in all directions and slowly the mist disappeared entirely. Afterwards Bahamut quickly flew down and landed with a thump. The two of them began searching through the bodies for Hades. They found him not far from where they had lost sight of him. He was dead. Arthur's sword was embedded halfway through his neck. They left the bodies and looked over fields towards the city. There were close to 500 people… 500 more casualties of this war.
On of the army's generals approached them. While Hades was enacting his plan for killing the Knights, Chaos had the generals move the remaining beast legions into strategic position unseen from the city.
"Sir, all units are in position. We believe the humans are unaware of our position."
'Not that anyone from the city would have noticed.' Chaos thought to himself. 'First thing their 13 saviors ride out to help some refugees, then the entire group is enveloped in a green mist, shortly afterwards one of the knights rides out of the mist in the wrong direction, finally a large dragon and demon clear the mist and reveal that 12 of their knights are dead.' Chaos sighed once as he looked out over the plain. 'It must hurt how scared they are. Time to bring that fear to rest' "Begin the siege. Remember conservation of life is a priority." Chaos turned around and walked back to look at the various bodies. With his bear hands he began to dig their graves.
The host Chaos was still standing on the hilltop staring out at the city. "We laid siege to that city for two days before it fell. We didn't loose a single solider. However 117 beasts went insane during that campaign." Chaos spread his arms out to his sides and drew in a great breath, then slowly let it out. "Its nearly over.."
Well it is nearly over now... the section on Chaos anyways. I still have a couple chapters left until i finishe the entire thing. Gosh today has been busy. Stay up till about 4am, trying to start my second fic, wake up at 8 to call my boss. We bitch at eachother. Around 12 i go to work and turn in my stuff. Lay around the house till about 5 when i get a call from my friend mary. Seems my good friend who was going to get back from japan after one year is arriving six hours earlier than any of us expected. So quick as we can we organize our old high school rabble and rush to the air-port to greet him. Only two of us actually made it. Afterwards we all go back home. I get bored, Dan and I start drivng around randomly visitin people. We start with our mutual friend Zach who was workin at Crescent City Bengnis (however you spell it.) and end with Lauren, whose mom was kind enough to feed us dinner. Then in a large group of 7 we visit mary in her new house, and hang out there for like three hours. Now its like 12.30 and i'm dropping lauren back at her house. We talk for like half an hour more then i go back to another friend's house and we play halo till 2am when my parents finally call me on my cell and say its too late to be screwing around.
For the record though the loss of my job really doesn't bother me. Along with about 400$ of free cutlery i took much more out of that place than i put in. Anyways, any experience you can walk away from is a good one. Making conversation (building rapport as they callled it.) is now much more easier.
Neko-Yuff16: Thanks for the support, really appreciate it!
Ezri-Candi: Thanks for your comment. The last paragraph i came up with right before i updated. I thought it lacked a proper ending and that just seemed to pop into my head, glad you liked it! Playing around with Chaos's character was pretty fun. At first i just wanted him to look down on everybody and make his attitude like; I'm better than you all, and i can make lame jokes to show it. But as i was writing the story and trying to establish Chaos's purpose, I just seemed to drop the superiority thing and make him more into a wise-cracking jaded old soul. Originally i wanted a huge showdown between Vincent and Chaos, and maybe i can still do that. Could be fun... But you won't know until like chapter 18 or 19 maybe...
SR: Its always interesting to think of character's origins, what caused them to be as they are, what events changed their lives, just how did things work out that way for them. When you already have a general idea on how things went down, it can make it alot easier than writing a epilogue sometimes.
Eva: Thanks! I appreciate the compliment.
Pixie: heh heh thanks!
Felichel: Things get slightly sadder for Chaos in the end, but things brighten up... Kinda...
Cattiebrie393: Why should you feel like a freak? Thanks for the Support!
Hotaru170: Glad to hear it! Thanks again!
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