Lightbringer- Chpt. 13- The Sound of Silence
Adalai- argh! IT'S THE THIRTEENTH CHAPPIE!!! (grabs garlic and crosses and goes to the church to get an exorcist) But oddly appropriate for the chappie. Anyway, Sephy, disclaimer!
(random crashing noises as Adalai rummages through stuff to find her bible) Latin! We need more Latin!
Sephiroth- Ellos does not own anything. Nuthin', zadda, zip, ziltch. And she never will, because the price tag on Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, ect, is in the millions. Ellos does not have millions.
...
Dawn came to Twilight Town, but precious few were still there to see it. Black clouds and white-blue lightning still covered most of the sky, but in places, the sunrise peaked through. At the sigh of the sunlight, the inhabitants shrank away. They would never look at light again in the same way. They would look upon it with fear of the mindless' power reflected in their eyes. It seemed blasphemy for the sun to ever again shine on this place, ravaged and tainted as it was, defiled with innocent blood. The land is foul, the water is foul, our beasts and ourselves defiled with blood. A rain of blood has blinded my eyes.
The early morning sunlight gleamed off navy-blue lenses, set in mirror-like glasses designed to do more than just dampen light. Noticing it out of the corner of it's eye, a flying wyvern swooped downward, looking for it's source. But the person wearing them took them off, replacing them with a pain black blindfold, the familiar feel of rough cloth over her eyes. Not seeing anything more, the wyvern swooped off again.
Outside the magic circle, it was quiet, the people silent with shock, silent lest they not hear what fate has in store for them, unable to affect their own destiny. They had nothing to say about it that they had not already said, in the past night of destruction. They had no choice but to wait, with the certainty of the damned in hell, for their destroyers to come and take their hearts.
We are soiled by a filth that we cannot clean, united to demons; it is not we alone, it is not the house, it is not the city that is defiled, but the World that is wholly foul.
...
from the bottom of the largest Icon, a door appeared, stairs extended. Rows upon rows of Heartless and mindless, white upon black upon white, stood, that from a distance blending into a middling grey. Stamping their feet and banging their weapons upon the floor in unison, their number was such that the ground beneath them shook; a testament to their ability to move Ages and shackle Fate. They parted, leaving a path from the door to the Senate. There the leaders of the Twilight System waited and Fate would be decided. They waited nervously, held under heartless guard. Some hoped to negotiate the best possible surrender terms for the system. Others hoped to work with the conquerors, harness the power of the Heartless and Mindless. Others, having seen the heartless before and knowing nothing good could come with fraternizing with them, only wanted to escape. None had conceived what their captors truly wanted.
The looked upon the Icon. The door opened, but no one came out. Then, a figure appeared. A Nobody. Like the figure of myth that he was, he advanced with a sort of reckless confidence of invulnerability that only those already dead could possess, wild red hair flying from his head, burning green eyes, which, unlike normal human eyes, had elegant triangular scars under them. His eyes seemed to shift and swirl, looking like a endless, fluid sea of green, every shade of green reflected off it like the many-hued light from the side of a flawless emerald. That he advanced without any guard, careless of any attempt that might be made on his semblance of life, was not lost on the onlookers. The fear that surrounded him was a palpable thing, pushing back the crowd as he passed.
Magnificent. The Second Nobody thought as she appeared, not in the normal black raincoat associated with the Nobody, but in a different coat, less well known but still a Nobody coat, seemingly made of strips of tattered black cloth sown together, with silver and black chains laced through it. And all mine. The chains wove downward from the hood, reaching the hem, where they trailed behind her, weaving themselves in a net, black and silver ornaments jangling from them as she descended the steps to stand at her partner's side, brushing the burst of energy from the teleportations of the other Nobody.
She held no formal military rank. She was not particularly a strong Nobody, not had she developed her powers to a great extent; she could not even manifest a mental body, the first rung of personal Nobody ability; yet her attention everyone sought. That she had chosen her Nobody mentor as her partner did not prevent others from trying to get into Lady Axel's favor...and elsewhere. This did not upset Axel; before her rise to power by his side, she had been ignored and looked down upon by those same people, so that even though she might smile warmly at them in public, secretly she reviled and scorned these people. Let them beg at her side with no return; she did not care. But he could understand their continued effort even in the face of her coldness and scorn. Having seen, or more appropriately, been exposed to Lady Axel, most men and even women could do little else in the face of her magnetic, sensual charm, coming off her like radiation from a potent, radioactive chemical. He had just seen this in her before most people did, when both she and he were just low-ranking, new Nobody.
Axel turned to his partner. Lady Axel had been the daughter of a Hispanic woman and a Black man; she had deep, honey colored skin the glowed with a bronze luster and darker olive undertones, dark brown-black eyes touched with gold, flickering like deep black pools or chips of black volcanic glass drawn from the surface of Yul. They where every color of brown, black, auburn, deep gold, bronze, copper, amber, bay, buff, burnt sienna, chestnut, chocolate, coca, coffee, fawn, ginger, hazel, henna, khaki, mahogany, nut, ochre, russet, sepia, sorrel, tan, umber, tawny, burnet, charcoal, ebon, ebony, obsidian, onyx, pitch, raven, sable, and slate imaginable. She had thick, black, tightly wound curls of hair, cut short and pulled back severely in a bun on the nape of her neck. She was short, shorter than Axel, but her thin, pencil-straight and flat figure made her look taller and gave her a look of cultivation, dignity, grace, refinement, and style. She moved with a confident, sensual, covert grace. She looked to be fifteen, maybe sixteen. Her short stature made her look younger than she really was.
He couldn't help but smile at his partner's complete disregard of her place in the procession, slipping with fluent grace by his side and twining around his arm. "Look at it." She said in a low, sensuous tone, passionate with expectation and as self-pleased as a cat with a bowl of cream. "How easy it is. Soon, all the ages will fall and we will be complete. To fulfill the mission we have been given."
He nodded, pleased with her eagerness, the recent victory and absence of his antagonist and co-worker putting him in a lenient mood. "Would you like to come see the surrender?" She smiled at him, a special smile shared only between them, full of honesty and candor and sunny charm. "I would love to." Placing her head on his shoulder, she spoke in the mind whisper only Nobody used when they spoke to each other. I will always be by your side, even beyond death, my love. Soon, I will stand by your side as an equal and fellow Commander. That is my place, by your side, together till Kingdom Hearts come and whatever lies beyond.
I don't, my love. Never. Raising his head, the doors of the Senate opened before the pair and their entourage. Unfurling from her accustomed and rightful place at Axel's arm, Lady Axel stood behind and slightly to the right, eyes never leaving her Lord, gazing in adoration. The time had come to increase the ranks.
Without any fear of interruption or hesitation, he began to speak. But his voice was not the same as before; it seemed to gain a sort of echo, as if something far more potent and primordial was using Axel as a conduit of it's power, the fervor and assurance drowning all other beliefs from the minds of the listeners like a flood. Imparting the truth upon the base metal of their weak hearts to turn it into something finer, stronger, worthier of the truth received, the Nobody needed no amplification to reach all corners of the room and the minds inside.
"Leaders of Twilight System! Too long has the universe lived without my song, the scream of purification of hearts ignored by the weak and divided! Life is a mistake, deviations from the true order! From the truth! Why, when any heart is born into a human body, must it die? The body sickens and age and impart the same diseases upon the heart? If the heart where meant to live inside a body, why would it's existence in a body cause that body to be destroyed by the ravages of time? For look at the Nobody, who have no hearts, do not age or wither, but live on unchanging, immortal. Endless. Why do our hearts live precariously balanced between darkness and light, with only a feather's push to bring it spiraling into too much darkness, too much light? The true state of the heart lives among us now!"
Axel threw his arms wide, his listeners looked around, unsure as to what he was indicating. Surely he didn't mean...The heartless? The Mindless?
As if on queue, the heartless and mindless around him began to stop their feet up and down. Jagged mouths never meant for speaking, opened and chanted...
Paradise. Take us to Paradise. To Kingdom Hearts.
"Yes!" The voice spoke, as a teacher whose deadhead students had finally grasped multiplication. "These are true forms of the heart, purged from their venomous bodies! We are here to correct the mistake of life. And when all hearts, both living and dead, have been converted to their true forms...the Door to Kingdom Hearts will open, and all hearts will return to the place where they first came from. To Paradise."
Paradise. Take us to Paradise the Mindless and Heartless continued to chant, as if their immortal hearts depended on it. It was difficult to tell which was more unsettling; the volume and utter belief at which they thundered this statement, or the unanimity with which they all proclaimed it.
This was certainly not the assembled leaders of Twilight system anticipated hearing. They had expected talk of tribute, or a new governing system. Many from other ages that had been destroyed expected the heartless to simply massacre them when the doors where closed.
"NOW BOW!" Axel spoke. "And receive the truth, for both yourselves and you worlds. Let your people know the truth and the joy of Paradise that shall come after their death. To cast aside the body is a hard, painful decision, full of doubt. But the rewards are greater than anything that could be attained in life."
Hesitantly, the crowd looked at each other, questioning, trying to figure out what to do. Some looked as if they where about to bow, some wore expressions of defiance. But no one was brave enough to break the silence, to voice their opinions.
But Adeliaus, the true senator that he was, was never one to pass up a chance to speak when all others where silent. "You are mad. True, you may have conquered this world, but you cannot expect us to just surrender to these mad claims. Even though you may have all the leaders of Twilight System, you cannot expect to secure the surrender of the whole system! It's not within our power to give such a thing..."
Swiftly, a red specter stepped out of Axel, made of red mist covered inside and out with a net of liquid lightning. Unlike Ellos' astral self, it was a mirror image of Axel, and instead of broiling and constantly changing, it was solid. Racing with unthinkable speed, it reached straight into Adaliaus' chest, ripping out it's heart. Holding it in his hand, he seemed to squeeze it, liquid darkness dripping off it into the floor, coiling there in sable pools. Suddenly, a bright, searing light, complete with white acrid lightning that left a cold iron tang in the mouths of the assembled. It consumed the heart, turning into a long, thin Mindless with one white wing and long, thin claws. It hopped from Axel's side to take it's place in the Mindless ranks, the empty shell vanishing.
One by one, person by person, man and woman, they bowed before him. They had not been defeated by words. They had not been defeated by force. They had been defeated by one mere show of brutal display of mythical power. One cannot deny what has been revealed as true by your own senses. The surrender was final and complete. All of Twilight System bowed down to the greater evil. "See! Deny word, deny force, but you cannot deny what you see with your own eyes."
Scanning the bowed crowd, one person was still standing up, hiding in the shadows with a kind of skill she had only seen in a heartless. Oddly enough, this person hugged the wall as if blind. As the girl came into the light, Lady Axel saw why: she had a black blindfold over her eyes, covering her sight.
"I'm not really with them, you see." Ellos spoke from the shadows. "I can't really deny what I see with my eyes, but then again, I can't deny what I can't see, either. But the truth is I don't care. That not what I'm here for. I'm here for revenge."
"Against who?" Lady Axel asked.
"Not sure. He has long white hair, green glowing eyes, tanned skin, tall." Turning to Axel, she spoke. "Neat trick. Don't suppose you could teach me it, huh?"
Axel rolled his eyes. There was always one. One who refused to submit, to follow. Controlling his temper, he decided to humor the blind girl.
"The one you seek is not a man. He's a Jenova clone, one of the last of the full-blooded Certa."
"Then he won't have any trouble dispatching me."
Axel had never had a very long temper. Ellos had very quickly reached the end of it. He motioned to one of the Nobody. Drawing a battle ax, he crept up to the girl, careful not to make any noise to alert her of his presence. He felt no emotion or anything about her that would give him pause to kill the girl. It was only one target, unarmed. No challenge. In fact, she had something wrong with her eyes, and had to cover them with a strip of cloth; a blind maggot. He was not ashamed to slaughter a helpless girl.
Ellos stood with her hands folded across her back, giving no sign that she had heard his approach. He would make this interesting, making an example from the impertinent blind girl. He'd swing the blade across the neck, decapitating it and sending up an impressive spray of blood. Quick and imposing. He rushed forward, confident because his victim was blind, big, and muscular even for a woman, and therefore slow.
The axed sliced through...empty air. Pivoting on one foot with to great a speed for her size, she simultaneously brought both her gebo out from behind her back. He was in the most defenseless position possible; after and when you attacked with any weapon, you were vulnerable.
Ellos brought both blades down on his neck. First he looked surprised. Then he looked dead. Severed clean through the neck. Sent up an impressive blood spray.
The Senators gasped. The Nobody looked at the blind girl, disbelieving. They grabbed their weapons and started forward, intent on killing the viper in their den now that it had revealed it's true self. Seeing they weren't going to lead her to her man, she turned and began to stride out the Senate buildings. Suddenly, she felt another person teleport into the room, booming a single word.
"STAY."
...
Ellos stopped but did not turn. She waited for the figure to come to her, unafraid of any attack from her unprotected back. The approaching figure noticed this and its purpose; this woman, whoever she was, was not afraid. She knew how to handle herself if something happened. The figure stopped and looked her up and down, measuring and sizing her up. Ellos turned around slowly and did the same to him.
The speaker was a man, wrapped in belts and black and red bandages. One eye was covered with the buckle of a belt, the other was heartless yellow, but with the same glow she had seen in the white haired man's eyes. He was sitting in a wheelchair, pushed by a Nobody, the cowl pushed down, hiding it's face. But she could see the yellow glow of a heartless eye peaking from under the hem as it moved.
"He was fully trained, one of my best."
Ellos shrugged.
"You're a Forgotten, aren't you?" the figure asked.
Ellos merely shrugged again. "If you say so."
If bandages had not covered his mouth, he would have smiled. "Quite rare. To turn a man's strength into his weakness. That's a quality usually only found in machines and Nobody. Not humans."
He looked at her. Tall and slim, limbs that looked too long for her body, strong, toned muscles, an excellent figure that was just curvy enough while still being trim and thin, with thin, delicately formed hands and slender, long, tapering fingers and good bone structure on her face and body. She had the movements of a heartless, but instead of being jerky, she had a mercurial, smooth grace, now that she had abandoned the blind farce. She had long, waist-length hair an unusual and rare shade of ash brown, framing a narrow, oval face, with delicate, defined cheekbones and jaw, long and slightly sharp features. Basically, she was beautiful. And oddly familiar.
"It's been a long time since the word 'beautiful' entered my mind. And never about a woman."
Ellos said nothing. "What's your name?"
"Ellos."
"Ellos. You seem familiar to me, for some reason."
"I don't remember you. I think I would remember someone like you."
"I think I would too. There's an inkling of something I can't shake. You remind me of someone. An enemy close to me. I can't shake it, but I can place it either. In my business, I can't have ambiance."
"If you say so." She spoke, in the same rich, melodious voice, a tone and cadence like that of a song. It was high and lilting, a soprano but lower, more melodious than normal , with a rich, deep alto undertone which mellowed and softened the voice, adding emotion to it and a depth and range of tone and sound. Beautiful to listen to.
"Bring her before Sephiroth."
...
Ellos was instantly surrounded by Nobody, tension high in the air.
"Please, please." A woman came forth form the circle, about 15-16 years old. She had dark skin, brown-black eyes, thin, short, with dark black-brown curls pulled severely back in a tight bun. "Maybe she would come if you just asked."
Pulling Ellos to her side, whispering in her ear cattily, like they where both best friends sharing a particularly juicy piece of gossip. "Men. They just don't know how to behave themselves around two gorgeous girls like us." She whispered, envious of Ellos' figure, so much shapelier and taller than her own short, pencil-shaped figure. "It's a rare offer to fight Sephiroth. You should be honored. I just hope you know what you're doing."
Ellos didn't respond. They emerged form the Senate building, Lady Axel with her head held high and the dignity of a visiting queen and Ellos by her side, slinking along by her side like a heartless, but with her liquid, quicksilver grace. It looked like a child leading along a lion by it's paw.
...
"And this is the main room on the Nobody portion of the ship." Lady Axel said. "Lovely, isn't it?"
Ellos looked around. It was completely done up, like the rest of the ship, in white and black. Everything was white and black, here, with very little decoration except in places where they wanted it to impress people, and then, it was a dark, baroque style of art, all strait, stern lines and too heavy on exaggerated detail for Ellos' taste. "I would have gone with something a little more colorful." She said.
Lady Axel liked the darkly baroque style of architecture, but decided to humor her guest. "Other parts are more colorful."
Ellos nodded, guided into a side room from the main one by Lady Axel. This one was exclusively black, greenish light coming from a crystal in the center of a network of branches carved into the stone in the ceiling. The rest of the room was decorated in a less extravagant, more art nouveau-ish style of décor, with balconies covered with screens in the top half of the room. Standing in the center of the room, she looked at crystal, wondering as to what its purpose was.
Lady Axel stood at the door of the room. "Try not to resist. It only makes the damage greater. And Ansem wants you whole." She shut the door and slid the heavy iron bolt shut.
Ellos assumed a battle stance, not surprised but only mildly miffed at the fact that she had been careless enough to be led here. What really worried her was what Lady Axel had meant when she spoke of not resisting and who the hell Ansem was.
She meant don't resist when I look inside your mind. He wants to know why you are familiar to him, but he also wants you whole, as a warrior to the cause, among other things.
Suddenly Ellos lost control of her body. She tried to move, but just stood stock still, unable to do anything.
Then she saw a man emerge form the crystal, eyes glowing the same color that the crystal gave off. He leaped down, standing in front of Ellos.
Now my little puppet, he said, Let's see what's inside that mind of yours.
...
Ellos gasped and would have flinched if she still had control of her body. Finally inside the woman's mind, Sephiroth prowled around in her thoughts, searching for something, anything of interest.
You take too many chances. You may be more than human, but Riona is not. I don't trust you to remember that. Not with the one person I love the most. And even if they did survive, what kind of life would she lead with you? Constant wandering, fighting to survive, no home or family, forgetting a piece of yourself day by day?
Ellos shivered slightly, recalling the scene with Leon and Riona, a vexing wound not yet healed over. Disappointed, Sephiroth dug deeper, coming across Ellos' memories of the past few days.
"We've forgotten the true story over time, but we still remember it; Adam and Eve, Pandora's box, the story of the Keyblades, Kairi's story.
Stories of mankind's first sin.
Intriged at the mention of Sora, who he remembered well from their fight in the coliseum, Sephiroth pushed hard, capturing that memory and pulling it into closer scrutiny. He had to be careful now; the closer inward you got, the more chance of damage. So while he searched he mind, he also moderated his intrusion.
Ellos struggled with him mentally, trying to find a way, any way, to throw him off our drive him out of her mind.
Ansem, connected to Sephiroth by a link between their similar minds, also recognized the name of Sora.
Thinking of escape now. Sephiroth spoke to Ansem. A unique mind, but a still a human mind, organic, unable to hide from us. Looking for an opening, patient...
Regress. Ansem said. Reposition. We'll go back to Sora later. We need to know how she's connected to him. Seek a clarification. Seek link. But be gentle.
Sephiroth drew back, bringing out other memories.
"Ellos, you lived in Kingdom Hearts. Tell me...did you ever come across someone called Riku?"
"Nope. Why do you ask?"
And the Endless Worlds. Ellos stopped. She didn't want to talk about that dream she had last night.
New mindscape. Sephiroth said, pausing. About Endless. Something about a dream.
...
Lady Axel studied the man seated on the wheelchair across from them. She spoke to Axel, using a mind-whisper. Curious. The way he's looking at her. Unusually intense. Have you ever seen him look at another in that way?
What way is that?
Nothing. She spoke. The look on Ansem's face was almost that of affection. Odd.
...
"I you kill him, then you'll never know why we brought you here."
"I already know. You want me to find this Sora character."
"Yes, but there are other people who could just as easily track him down, using heart entanglement. There is much more at stake than such trivialities as bounties and revenge."
"Then start explaining. I'm tired of being kept in the dark."
"What do you know about your childhood, Ellos? Before you came to Kingdom Hearts? Your family? Your parents? Your ancestry? Your upbringing?
"Do you remember your home age? It's appearance, location? It's people; your people? Why your family abandoned you in Kingdom Hearts? What happened to it?"
"have you met any others?" Scion said with urgency.
"Others like yourself? Cousins, siblings?" the second Nobody said.
"My people didn't even know what to do with one of me. They threw me into Kingdom Hearts before I could walk. What makes you think there are others?"
Sephiroth paused. Why was this girl of such importance to the Nobody? Struggling, he pressed onward. Ellos' resistance was becoming more and more marked. It was becoming difficult to focus.
"Ellos, if you tell me you could have taken them down by yourself, I will break your legs and leave you for the heartless."
"Well, I suppose that's an answer."
"Let me go. Why? Why a Nobody? Why one of them? Why these stupid games, this messing with people's lives, hiding you identity from me like this? Why bring me?"
Strife let go and spoke, sadness in his voice at the sight of Ellos' hurt. "Would you believe...I'm trying to do the right thing, for all the wrong reasons? Would you believe that I was a Nobody even before I met you?"
Strife turned, walking back towards the Bell Tower, shoulders slumped. He always walked like that when he didn't think anyone was looking; like he was carrying some terrible burden of guilt for a sin which he was afraid of being forgiven.
Better than doing the wrong thing, for all the right reasons.
Ansem paused. He knew this 'Strife' character; it was Riku. It appeared that he hadn't told Ellos about his involvement with the heartless and Ansem. And he was apparently a Nobody now, and working with them.
Except for one. Hanging on from the hand's thumb, was one of the creatures, in the form of a young women, only a few years old than Ellos, with vivid green eyes and gray skin and black hair. Screaming for revenge. Screaming against the End which had destroyed her home. Screaming against the Nobody, who had abandoned them to their fate. Screaming, Screaming...
Sephiroth managed to catch just the end of the dream. He knew that woman. So did Ansem.
What is this place?
This is the answer you've been looking for.
This is the worlds as we meant them to be. A place so strange it must be called by another name than age. Call it what could have been instead. This is the world in its true form.
Who are you? What are you trying to tell me?
We are Endless. And we are not trying to tell you anything. We only seek for you to understand.
Endless seemed to be a reoccurring theme in these dreams of hers. He wondered briefly why.
She was not alone.
"I though your face would look more familiar. The chin and nose are different; they must have been broken and healed differently, when you were in Kingdom Hearts. Less heart-shaped, more finely and noticeably sculpted, the cheekbones more prominent; from your father. The face isn't the right color; the features lengthened and sharpened, the face too narrow and long; Marfan's syndrome. Your face is too lean, too; it doesn't have enough flesh to fill it out. No, there is almost no resemblance. But that is what Kingdom Hearts does to one, does it not? Makes you forget the past, physically and mentally. You eyes..."
The woman paused, waiting for Ellos to take off her glasses. When she realized Ellos wasn't going to cooperate, she gave a snort of disapproval and continued.
"Think of this as a dream, if you must. Until you know better."
"And once you know, you will never forget."
He was sure of the identity of this woman, now. But what her connection was with Ellos, he couldn't fathom. What didn't make sense was that these memories where of things from Ellos' youth, and shouldn't be this clearly remembered. Some of her memories where of things that happened before Ellos was born; so how did she have dreams about them?
Go back. Ansem said. Not hours or days, but years back. Find out why she remembers these things.
Sephiroth nodded. He pulled himself downward, using memories as ladder rungs on an ever-spiraling path downward. As he went deeper, her memories became more patchy, disconnected, and disjointed. Like she had forgotten things and patched them over with other, made up memories to give a sort of sense to her life. Finally, around the age of 7, he hit what was the mental equivalent of a brick wall. Confused, he felt it mentally, trying to get around it. It separated her unconscious and a large part of her conscious from the rest of her mind. The mind beyond it seemed ancient and powerful, not like that of a 19 year old girl, but something more complex and alien.
Ellos winced even more. That was a door she didn't want to unlock. Only bad things could come from it. She fought Sephiroth as hard as she could, but she was not going to be allowed privacy of herself. Sephiroth's question thoughts ripped at tore at her past, until the door between human and ancient gave way.
Sephiroth only saw darkness. And then he saw something come out of that darkness, that emptiness. A third person. The third person.
A third enemy; Nobody.
Change; the third key.
Point Three; Paradise.
What is this place?
The End of the World
This is the answer you've been searching for.
This is the world in it's true form.
Maybe our journey meant nothing after all.
The world of darkness
The world of light.
And, the world in-between
A creation born of ignorance.
Behind the Darkness (does not equal) Door to the Light.
A world between = A forgotten World.
An existence neither of darkness or of light.
An in-between existence.
A power other than darkness; Light, darkness, a third power...
In her heart, lie memories of us
Memories...they are growing...don't you think?
My name is Axel. Commit it to memory.
This mystery cannot be easily solved.
However, the importance of the future will be written with your hand
You will forget everything you knew and will have to search for it again.
It must be hard...being trapped for such a long time
Well done, you don't give up that easily!
A fragmented Tale.
You are not complete.
In your present state, you probably cannot understand.
That door, through which we cannot pass...
Here for that purpose...
Maybe it has already begun.
One destiny.
Maybe it was fate.
...
Abruptly, Ellos' eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, slumping forward.
Panicked, Ansem spoke to Sephiroth. Bring her back. there is too much I need to know. His restless curiousity getting the better of him. Where did she come from? Her family? Her home age? What her connection to Sora, to Riku, to the Endless, to the Nobody?
Ansem paused. Sephiroth wasn't answering him. Something was wrong.
Something new. Sephiroth said, uneasily. Feedback. Coming forth. The disquiet in his voice grew. Need to stop. Stop the feedback before...before...something terrible comes out.
Keep her out. Keep her out of me! Keep her away from me! Just keep her...
Ansem paused. This could not be happening. Ellos was reading Sephiroth's mind.
Kill the Nobody. Kill the Endless. Kill Ellos!! KILL HER! KILL HER!
Sephiroth was jerking back and forth, face contorting, mouth wide, eyes empty. In an instinctual reaction, he withdrew his mind completely from Ellos. She shuddered and lifted herself up, shaking as her mind reconnected with her body.
Sephiroth also stood, drawing his sword. To hell with Ansem. He would kill the Forgotten.
...
After
The heartless above tucked it's limbs into it's side, falling faster to catch up with her. Mouth open wide, it bore down on Ellos, ready to swallow her with one gulp. Ellos drew her S-shaped weapons, getting ready for it's approach.
The monster came at her, only inches away from her foot. Levering herself up, she slashed at it's head, stabbing into it's eyes. The heartless howled in pain.
Throwing her legs and arms out the slow down her descent, she stabbed at its sides and back until it dissolved into black mist. She plunged her weapon into the released heart, the blade absorbing it. She could extract the Nobody heart latter.
She felt herself connect sharply with something solid, knocking the wind out of her. Getting up on it's slightly slippery surface, she realized that Strife had caught her using the gummi ship they had made. She opened the hatch and slipped inside.
"You okay?" Strife asked.
"Fine. A little winded, that's all."
"Good. Do you have it?"
Ellos nodded. She placed her hand along the flat of the blade, feeling the heart contained within, still a Nobody heart despite having been consumed by a Heartless. It would work. But the blade would be a heartless blade once it was made.
Strife sighed and drove onward, back to Yul.
...
Adalai- wootage! Done. (finishes with a florish) the second when Sephiroth is inside the deepest part of Ellos' mind is from the thirteen points, CoM translations, script for the extra scenes in Final Mis, and Ansem reports. And now...
Sephiroth- Yah! I chappie about me! All me! R&R about it!
...
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. And tenement halls." And whisper'd in the sounds of silence.
- Paul Simons, The Sound of Silence