I don't own anything except the Takahari family, their Dragoon Spirits, Kenji Okamura, Victor d'Eltham, and Jeannette Delacroix


Following our flight from Bevelle, after we discovered just how much of a fraud Yevon really was, we made our way to Macalania Forest, where we would rest for a time, before moving on to the Calm Lands. Beyond that empty plain lay Mount Gagazet, home of the Ronso, and past the mountain lay our final destination: Zanarkand.

In the meantime, we spread out through a section of the forest, with Tidus, Yuna, and Kimahri disappearing near a large pond, most of the other Guardians congregating in a clearing, and Ryan, Karen, Rose, and Rikku joining me in another. We had a lot of catching up to do.

"So, niisan," Ryan asked after we had relaxed in various positions in the clearing. "Are you finally gonna explain just what you've been up to for the last while?"

"Yeah." I sat cross-legged in the center. "It's a long story, which began eight years ago, in 2001. You know, of course, that I was in Paris, chasing Francois Lafayette. What you don't know is that Lafayette was merely a stepping stone, a link in the chain leading to my true target, Ivan Tarkovsky."

Ryan blinked. "Tarkovsky? You don't mean the head of the Red Wolf Society, do you? I thought they were just art dealers and small-time environmentalists."

"Purely a cover." I snorted. "A pretty good one, too. The Clan didn't catch onto him until after I neutralized Mario Cambrelli in Venice. Tarkovsky was in reality a very nasty vampire, ex-Spetsnaz, and the Red Wolf Society was a gang of international art thieves and terrorists. It took me nearly two years to finally put an end to them." With a sigh, I looked up at the starry sky. "It was in that year that I met Jeannette Delacroix. She was an art thief, breaking into the Louvre..."


Flashback, to eight years earlier.


I was staking out the famous Louvre museum myself that night; I had it on good authority that Francois Lafayette was planning a major art theft that night, and I intended to eliminate him before he had the chance.

Using a sophisticated lock pick, I slipped into the darkened museum, one hand hovering near the hilt of my blade, Arashi-Jisan. I ghosted through the entry hall, using a set of thermal goggles to scope out the terrain. In my left hand I held a small infrared flashlight, emitting a beam invisible to the naked eye. I also kept a sharp eye out for infrared sensors, invisible trip wires that would sound alarms, ruining my mission.

On this mission I also carried a Beretta M9 autopistol, modified to fire tranquilizer darts. If I encountered anyone besides my target and his associates, I intended to trank them, not kill them. A ninja did not kill needlessly.

I moved silently through the dark, quiet museum, feeling decidedly uncomfortable; it was eerily quiet, like tomb. The various statues didn't help much, and in the dark, the paintings looked much like windows leading to shadowy realms.

To be frank, I was spooking myself pretty bad when I saw the figure crouching on one of the skylights outside. My attention was instantly focused on the newcomer, and I watched with professional approval as the stranger cut a neat hole in the glass, no larger than necessary, then replaced it once inside.

As the figure used a black cable to carefully lower itself to the ground, I hid in the shadows, waiting. As soon as the interloper had reached the floor and put away the cable, I stepped silently up behind, reached around, and put a hand over the mouth, preventing the stranger from crying out. "Relax," I said in a barely audible voice. "Don't make a sound." I carefully removed my hand. "Who are you?"

The newcomer turned, and whatever thoughts of violence the interloper might have entertained vanished when my sword became noticeable in the dim light. "Jeannette Delacroix," she said faintly. "And you... you are a ninja."

I nodded, impressed that she had made the connection so quickly. "Yes. Don't worry; if you're here to steal something, I won't stop you. I've got another target, a competitor of yours, by the name of Francois Lafayette." I glanced around. "I don't suppose you've seen any other thieves breaking in?"

She shook her head, still in something of a daze from having a stealth warrior of an almost mythical group ambush her in a museum and hold a casual conversation. "But I know of Lafayette; he and I are after the same display. If he is coming here tonight, I will gladly assist you; I dislike the competition."

Enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess, I thought. "Show me."

Delacroix led me to one of the art exhibits, deeper within the building. Had she not been an experienced thief herself, I suspect she would have gasped aloud at the sight that greeted us: the Frenchman had beaten us to it, along with several of his henchmen. "That... that..." She proceeded to call him something that I didn't quite catch; I wasn't very good with French yet, but from her tone I suspected it meant something on the order of bastard. "He is already here!"

"Stay back; I'll handle this." I refrained from drawing any weapons as I advanced; the Louvre was not the best place to leave blood stains. Instead, I crept up behind the first man, suddenly gripped his chin and forehead, and twisted.

The crack as his neck snapped drew the attention of the other thieves, but they were no match for an experienced assassin. In a blur of hand-to-hand attacks, Lafayette's henchmen lay dead upon the floor, and the vampire himself stood amid the twisted wreckage, staring at me. "You... You are one of the Kyuuketsuki Ryoushi!"

"Correct." Before he could recover from his surprise, I lunged forward and slipped a dagger neatly between his ribs and into his heart. "And another one gone, and another one gone, and another one bites the dust," I murmured, retrieving my blade as the corpse disintegrated.

Delacroix uttered an oath, staring. "Who are you?" she blurted.

I smiled. "Come with me, and I'll tell you."


After dragging the bodies away, we stood on the roof of the museum. "My name is Ian Takahari," I told her, "son of Hirotaro Takahari, and heir to the leadership of the Kyuuketsuki Ryoushi Clan of ninja, in Japan."

"You don't look Japanese," she pointed out, "and your accent is American."

"As to the looks, we have quite a few Western ancestors in our family tree. As for my accent, I was educated in the United States." I shrugged. "Comes in handy, sometimes."

Delacroix nodded numbly. "But what was that thing? Why did Lafayette's body turn to ashes like that?"

"He was a vampire," I said softly. "For the past few centuries, my clan has fought them, trying to exterminate them. I was sent West three months ago, in order to take out some of the vampires that have recently been turning up in fairly prominent areas. My first target was in Venice, Mario Cambrelli."

Jeannette frowned. "Mario Cambrelli? The famous art dealer? I'd heard that he was missing, but you are saying...?"

"Yes, he was a vampire. He was also lowest on the ladder that I'm going up, systematically eliminating a criminal group with several other vampires in key positions." I raised an eyebrow. "No doubt you've heard of the Red Wolf Society."

She nodded. "Yes, they've been responsible for making my trade much more difficult of late, by supplying museums with better security systems. I've never even tried to steal anything from any of their private warehouses. What about them?"

"They supply the security systems so that they can more easily gain access later. That's how the Clan stumbled on the fact that the Red Wolf Society is in fact a cover organization for the Fox Syndicate, one of the deadliest and most efficient groups of art thieves and terrorists in the world." I looked up at the sky. "Their leader, Ivan Tarkovsky, is a vampire, as well as ex-Spetsnaz. He is my ultimate target. But first he has numerous undead lieutenants that I must deal with."

Jeannette grabbed my arm. "I'm coming with you!"

I glanced at her in surprise. "Why?"

"Because if that is true, than it has been a group of my competitors making my life difficult, not merely a legitimate business." She looked down at the roof beneath our feet. "And because one of Tarkovsky's Fox Syndicate men killed my parents. If I had known that the two organizations were one and the same, I would have gone after them myself. Please, take me with you."

"It won't be anything like breaking into museums," I warned. "This group knows its business."

"I know. But this is something I must do."

I nodded slowly. "All right. I hope you know what you're getting into." After a moment, I grinned. "We'd best get going then; our next stop is Costa Rica. And maybe along the way I'll convince you to get out of the art theft business!"


End flashback.


"So that's how we met," I said. "We just happened to be breaking into the same museum at the same time. Jeannette's skills did prove to be invaluable, during that mission."

"So, how, ah, close were you two?" Ryan asked.

I studied the cold night sky. "Very close," was all I said.

"So you went from Paris to this 'Costa Rica'?" Rikku said. "What did you find there?"

"A jungle lab; we never found out exactly what they were cooking up, but it seemed to be some kind of engineered virus." I snorted. "The hard drive with the virus data was destroyed by gunfire just after I copied the information, and the disk was wiped by some kind of experiment they were conducting involving electromagnetic fields. Doesn't really matter; the Fox Syndicate was wiped out in early 2003."

"In Kazakhstan?" Rose asked.

"Yeah." I paused, taking a deep breath. "We'd taken out their lab in Costa Rica, stopped a terrorist attack in Washington, neutralized a concealed weapons warehouse in New York, a base in Kazakhstan, and some kind of cathedral in Ukraine that they'd converted into a prison. Then we got word that Tarkovsky's people had found an intact R-9 Devyatka missile silo in Kazakhstan, under a warehouse district, and were preparing to launch it. We went in by chopper..."


Flashback, to six years earlier.


"You sure this is the right place, mon ami?" Jeannette asked me, shouting over the noise from the helicopter's rotors. "Looks like just a bunch of warehouses to me."

"Yeah, this is it." I scanned the area through a set of binoculars. "There's supposed to be an elevator leading down to the silo in one of those buildings. Warehouse... 15, I think." I stuffed the binoculars into a belt pouch, and turned to the cockpit. "Set her down! We'll go on foot from here!"

The pilot, Sakura Hideoshi, flashed a thumbs-up and bent to her task, bringing the chopper down on one of the rooftops. "Good luck, Ian. I'll wait here until you return."

As the rotors slowed to a stop, Jeannette and I checked our gear. She, too, wore a katana on her back; in the two years since we first met in Paris, I'd given her some ninjutsu training, enough to hold her own in a fight and avoid detection by most people. "Ready, Jeannette?"

She nodded. "Check, mon ami. Though I'd rather be back on the barge on the Seine, listening to Chopin and relaxing with a good book, or perhaps sparring."

I smiled; between operations, we'd stayed in a barge I'd bought in France. "I always preferred Richard Wagner, or maybe Edvard Grieg."

Jeannette shook her head, smiling tolerantly. "Ah, you never could appreciate a good French composer, could you, Ian?"

"Matter of taste, that's all. I'll admit that I don't approve of Wagner himself, though." Dropping to the roof, I looked up at the night sky. "And, yeah, I'd rather be back in France, too. Or back home. When all this is over, and we've iced Tarkovsky, I'll show you my native land, introduce you to my brother and sister. We should have plenty of time to relax; as far as we can determine, Tarkovsky is the last vampire in the world, aside from Matthias Cronqvist. And I don't think he's due to resurrect in our lifetimes." I couldn't know, of course, that Draco von Schneider and Cassius were still alive...


We moved silently through the warehouse compound, dealing with the various sentries Tarkovsky had posted with almost absurd ease. I wasn't fooled by their incompetence, of course: why should Tarkovsky waste his best guards on the surface, when as far as he knew his enemies had no idea the base even existed?

"This is it," I said, speaking for the first time in over an hour as we entered Warehouse 15. "The elevator should be behind that crate." With a grunt of exertion, I shoved it out of the way. "Ah, here it is."

My companion smiled. "I should know better than to doubt your Clan's intelligence network. I doubted the information about Ukraine, too, and I was wrong."

"Yeah," I said absently. "Draw your weapon; I think it's Ride of the Valkyries time." By this I meant that it was extremely unlikely we could avoid being spotted for long in the silo itself. "Guns, not blades." Even a ninja needed heavier firepower once in a while.

In answer, Jeannette hefted a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP40 submachine gun, essentially an MP5 in .40 caliber. Her other hand stroked the hilt of a combat knife, hidden in her left boot. "Ready."

I nodded, and pulled my own weapon of choice from its holster: a Colt Single Action Army revolver, chambered for .45 Long Colt. Only six bullets, and it would take too long to reload for it to practical for more than that, but each of those bullets would drop a man instantly, if hit in the right place. I had a backup gun, of course; a light-weight Fabrique Nationale P90 submachine gun, slung on my back.

Together, we made a lethal team.

"Let's go." I flipped the switch, and the elevator began to descend to the hidden missile silo.


My eyes narrowed as the enormous missile came into view. "We were right," I said quietly. "A live Devyatka, and it looks like they're getting ready to launch. We've got to stop them." Slipping my revolver from its holster, I glanced around. "See any targets?"

"One on a walkway checking the missile, two standing guard on the first floor." Jeannette pointed them out. "None of them Tarkovsky."

"Probably on the second level, prepping the computers." I glanced at my watch. "I think we've got about five minutes before launch; no time for anything fancy."

"Ride of the Valkyries," she replied with a smile. "On three?"

"On three." I raised the Colt, checked the cylinder, and readied myself for a deadly run. "Three... two.. one... Go!"

We exploded out of the elevator, already shooting. My first bullet caught the terrorist on the walkway in the neck; he dropped while his head catapulted across the room. Jeannette's .40 caliber rounds quickly scythed down the other two sentries, and then we were heading for the lift down to the next level...

We were almost to it when Jeannette screamed, jerked like a marionette, and collapsed to the floor, clutching her stomach.

I halted. "Jeannette!"

She managed to shake her head. "Go! It's not fatal. Finish the mission, then get me help. You know you must..." Jeannette moaned then, and mercifully lost consciousness.

I knelt by her side. "I'll be right back, Jeannette. I promise." Then I was up and running, a pair of quick shots from my Colt dispatching two terrorists foolish enough to get in my way.

And then it occurred to me to wonder who had shot my companion. I turned, and there was the Russian bastard, watching me from a higher level. "Tarkovsky!"

"You're too late, Takahari," he said, laughing. "In two minutes, the missile will launch, NATO will go to Defcon 1, and the world will be plunged into World War Three. You cannot stop it."

"Who's the target, Tarkovsky?" I demanded.

"Does it matter?" He turned and walked out of sight.

While I longed to go after him and finish him off right away, I knew that my first duty was to stop this World War before it could begin. Cursing the world in general, I hurried on.

Before I reached the control center, I was forced to switch to my P90; the last round in the Colt was reserved for someone else. Using the Belgian weapon, I cut a swath through the terrorists Tarkovsky had placed in my path. They may have been the best terrorists in the world, but even they stood less than no chance against an angry, desperate Kyuuketsuki Ryoushi ninja. By the time I was through, they all looked like someone had put them through a cheese grater.


I rushed into the control room, sprayed fire from my P90, and vaulted over to the Devyatka's control panel. "Come on, come on..." I muttered. "You've done this a hundred times in simulation, you can do this... Hit that button, then this..." After several frantic moments of keystrokes, I sighed in relief as the countdown died. "Did it. Now I go back to Jeannette."

I rushed even faster on the way back, now that I no longer had any opposition. But I was too late, and the sight that greeted me next to the massive missile horrified me. "No!"

Tarkovsky knelt beside her, fangs in her throat. After a long moment, he pulled away, mouth dripping blood. "Ahh, refreshment. It's the least she could do, after helping you destroy the plans of many years."

"You bastard!" Without conscious thought, the Colt was suddenly in my hand, and the world came down to the sight picture of a Colt Single Action Army revolver, centered on the head of Ivan Tarkovsky.

"What good do you think that will do?" he scoffed. "You cannot kill me that way-"

His voice was forever cut off as his head exploded. "That last bullet was silver," I choked out. "And now Jeannette Delacroix is avenged. You murdering bastard..." I collapsed to the floor, next to the corpses of a vile monster, and the woman who was most important to me. "Rot for eternity, you bastard!"

The radio I carried crackled. "Ian, Sakura here. What's your situation? Ian?"

I picked myself up. "Ian here, Sakura," I said in a voice like lead. "Mission accomplished. Inform Father that the R-9 Devyatka is disarmed, Tarkovsky is dead, and the Fox Syndicate is no more. And..." I added, voice shaking, "tell him to get a body bag out here. Jeannette didn't make it."

Sakura's voice softened. "I'm sorry, Ian." She was silent for a few moments before she continued. "Are you ready for pickup?"

I glanced around at the blood-spattered silo. "Yeah. There's nothing here but the dead now."


End of flashback.


"So that's the real reason you hate vampires so much?" Rose asked softly.

"Yeah." I drew a shaky breath. "Ever since that day, I've devote my existence to destroying the menace that deprived me of the one person who meant the most to me. I thought I'd avenged her death, until she returned as that cyborg, and sent me on a journey home for the first time in years."

"What did you find out?" Karen asked.

"Bad things." I chuckled in bitter amusement. "Turns out one member of the Hideoshi family still lives: Sakura, the same woman who dropped us in on the Kazakhstan silo."

Ryan started in surprise, and even looked slightly stricken. "Sakura? But we positively ID'd her body after Sandora's attack... How can she...?"

I looked at him sympathetically; years before, Sakura Hideoshi had been Ryan's girlfriend, and he'd been pretty bad off for awhile, once he could afford to face the loss. That had been after the Second Dragon Campaign ended, of course. "According to Sakura, that was a clone," I told him, revulsion in my voice. "I knew Hideoshi Industries was working on cloning limbs for transplant, but cloning an entire person, especially for something like this...!" I shuddered. "I'm sorry, Brother. I know how close you two were. But Sakura is not who she was. I think she snapped when the Deep Mountain clan wiped out the rest of her family. That last year or so, and the years since..."

"Wait a minute," Rikku interrupted. "You actually talked to her in person?"

"Yeah. I'd infiltrated the labs, managed to steal this prototype exoskeleton, and got myself fitted for a bionic arm." I grinned. "That's the problem with having so much automation. It didn't occur to the computers that I might not be authorized for that procedure. Anyway, I got all the way up Sakura's penthouse office, where I confronted her. She seemed as surprised as I was; I thought at first she had simply assumed me dead six years ago. But she didn't bother lying. Sakura admitted she'd faked her own death, then told me the truth behind Jeannette's reappearance." My face twisted in anger and remembered pain. "After I was extracted from the missile base, Sakura returned and retrieved Jeannette's body, bringing it back to Hideoshi Labs, where she revived her, used a vaccine similar to the one Ryan developed to cure her vampirism, and kept her alive for the next six years in that exoskeleton, while she experimented on her like a plaything." I clenched my bionic fist.

"Is Sakura still alive?" Ryan asked, looking almost as pained. "Did you kill her?"

I shook my head. "No. But I'll be honest with you, Ryan; it wasn't because of your past with her that I stayed my hand. If it weren't for the big nasty robot guards she sicced on me, I would have killed her, for what she's done. It turns out she deliberately set Jeannette on my trail, apparently expecting the cybernetic implants to keep her in line. That's why she was so surprised when I turned up in her office: she honestly hadn't expected me to survive Jeannette's attack. She didn't count on her trying to lose."

Rose leaned forward. "Did that disk Jeannette left you explain why she destroyed your ring?"

I nodded. "Yes, it seems Sakura did some research of Endiness on her own; how, I'm not quite sure yet, but she did. And in the download she gave Jeannette's implants about Endiness, she included a little fact about that ring: it was cursed. Melbu Frahma ordered Faust to create it as a trap: it gave the wearer immortality, and effective invincibility, but the cost was the bearer's soul. The longer you possessed it, the more under the influence of it you became. Frahma evidently hoped that it would find its way into the possession of one of the Dragoons. It did, but about eleven thousand years after he expected." I shrugged. "When Jeannette accessed the data, she decided to do something about it. She hadn't intended to cut off my arm; it was just the only way she could get rid of it, since the cybernetics still held sway over most of her movements. The best she could do was direct the attack toward the place where it would be most useful, and then give me an opening when next we fought."

I stood and stared into the sky, where perhaps Jeannette Delacroix's spirit roamed. "And now you know my story."


Author's note: Another chapter out faster than expected. I trust this explains things in a satisfactory manner.

Songwind, I evidently wasn't as clear as I thought; what I meant to indicate was that Ian freed them at the entrance to the Via Purifico, not in their cells. I will endeavor to be more clear in the future.

Seriyu-the-ice-dragon, I was wondering when someone would notice the recent trend in my chapter titles. I confess that I've only actually played one of them, but the titles tend to be fitting, especially given the vampire-hunting aspects of the story.

That about covers everything; read it and let me know what you think. -Solid Shark