(I own the Valka, as I created them, and the characters who are of that race, I do not own Gundam, Phantasy Star Online, or anything else anything may have been borrowed from. Squall (the Valka one that is the main character in this story) is a character I developed before I even heard of Final Fantasy 8, so he is in no way connected to that OTHER guy, Squall Leonhart yes...I played the game, and I did not like the guy...at first...expect some parody of him later on)
(This story was put into the Phantasy Star section, as it will be mainly related to PSO by the next chapter, and contains referances in this one)
In the year 3429 AD...
A time of peace settled over the galaxy, long deserved after the destructive conflict that had raged for a hundred years.
The Terran Empire, exhasted after fending off a retalatory strike from the Unified Galactic Alliance (UGA) surrendered, and withdrew back into the territory they had once ocupied before their war for domanance. In an act of willingness to put aside old hatreds, various worlds offered to help the Humans rebuild their homeworld, devistated by the final strike of retaliation from the UGA.
Amidst these events, a solatairy ship drifted through space, in a place unaware of the events around them, unaware that more of them existed on another world, lightyears away in known space, unaware of a war that had raged for a hundred years around them.
This ship, known as the Pioneer 3, was sent from a planet called Coral, former home to a civilization that originated from yet another, now shattered world...a world forgotten but for shadows of memories that lived on in the genetic memory of the humans who had evolved and developed this genetic memory thousands of years before the migration to the lost world, from yet another world forgotten to them save for a faint dream of a blue orb shining in the deep, and a feeling of sadness forwhich there was no reasonable explanation, almost the feeling of hopelessness that comes from leaving the world your entire race came from, perhaps forever.
And in yet another place, in a field of long, waving grass on a faraway world, removed from the war of one hundred years, a young man lay, dreaming of staring at the night sky and wondering at what the flashes in the void between the distant stars could mean. He had a yearning for the unknown, which would evolve eventually into a yearning for the vastness of space, borne of nomadic instincts suppressed by civilization, the walls made by civilization would soon be torn down......
In the space around Earth, debris fell into the atmosphere, remains of a mecha used in the massive, violent combat that marked the final days of the one hundred year war. Meanwhile, as the melted emains fell into the sky and became stars for a brief time, a young man watched from the inside of his own mecha, awaiting the day Humans would no longer have to rely on other races for survival, after what one race in particular had done to his home town, and his family.....he brooded dark thoughts and bided his time.
War of Eternity
Phase 1
The fire from the sky
In the vast oceans of grassland that covered a majority of the mainland continent of the planet known by scientific surveys done by Pioneer 1 as it traveled along this path as XA-224, known to the native inhabitants as Elysium, a child stood, clawed feet ankle deep in soft, wet soil. The rain had been going on since daybreak, and the young one was wet and cold. He looked up at the dreary sky and shook his head before continuing along the path he had chosen to take today. His right leg sank up to the knee in what had looked to be wet soil, but had turned out to be a small pond at around mid thigh height, finding this fact out once he lost his balance and fell forward into it, going under. He sat up and found the water up to his neck, so he stood. He reached into his poket for something, and finding it gone, he paniced for a moment, turning around to see if it had fallen out during his fall. His right foot touched something, he wrapped it around the sphericle object and, balancing on his left leg, lifting his right leg up enough to see what he had grabbed. "...gata. there" he said in his native tounge, grasping it in his left hand and holding it for a moment.
A dim light of cyan hue eminated from the orb. He looked up to the west, and saw red, flowing hair, then a head, soon the entire body, of his father, the stargazer who had shown him the fire in the void the night before.
"Squall!!!! Roka gata! Stay there!" his father called.
Squall dutifully remained in the poll of water, now standing on both feet and holding the orb in his hand. He looked at it as he noticed it begining to vibrate oddly. "...hm?"
The orb turned blood red.
Squall looked back at his father, dread overcoming him with iron hands. Just then, as his father reached the pond, the older man went flying into the air, an explosion rocking the field behind him. Another one went off nearby, and another. Squall looked to the grey sky on insticnt, and saw it aflame. He saw a bright light burn down at him, just as his father fell atop him and both fell below the waters surface.
The light hit the water, and it turned searingly hot. Squall felt the air leave his lungs from the shock of sudden pain, and his father's mouth opened with air rushing from him, followed by blood. The water cooled, and Squall burst out of it, dragging his father out with him.
He took a deep breath, and nearly choughed out his lungs from the inhalation of smoke. Smoke comes from fire, he noted, and looked around them.
The field was aflame.
He looked at his father, and kneeled beside him, looking into already dead eyes. Squall looked him over, and saw that his father looked like he had been flashburned. "......harre, deci harnt ketos....yey arvos Ie jes ler....HARRE!!!!!!!!! ...no, please not now...your all I have left.....NO!" he exclaimed, clutching his deceased father in his arms, as fire rained down from the sky.
"HARRE!!!!!!"
The young Valka now in his late teens, Squall, shot upright, his long locks of red hair, much like his father who died on that tragic date fifteen years ago, falling into his eyes. He growled out of annoyance and brushed them aside.
He looked up at the clear night sky, seeing a shape move between the moon and he, leaving a shadow that was visable on the moon, the only real sign that anything had passed at all. "Jenos....Whatever..." he said with a shrug, before climbing to his bare feet and scraching at a persistant itch at his backside with his right hand. He cletched his left hand into a three fingered fist, uncletching it a moment later, and revieling a small ball of fire. He cast it into the ight sky, but made certain that it stayed close at hand, orbiting about his head slowly. He padded about aimlessly for a few minutes, having no real direction he needed to go.
He gazed at the stars, figuring out the direction of a town he had heard about by navigating by the stars, a trick he learned from his late father. one of the talons on his left foot clicked against something before he outright tripped over it. He looked down and saw a blade jutting from the ground. An image came unbidden of what would have happened had he brought his right foot down on it, and he shuddered before kneeling down to get a closer look.
"E Shar. A sword" he said, surprised. People of his race rarely used swords, preferring spears and halberds over them, as a spear can be used for many things besides hunting and warfare. He dug into the cool, dry dirt with his hands, his claws churning the soil up and his cupped hands scooping it away. He nicked a finger on the edge of the blade, and brought the damaged hand to his face and licked the blood and dirt out with his tounge. He continued to dig, finally finding the hilt of the weapon.
He grabbed the hilt, and a skeletonous hand came with it, falling away as he shook it off.
He looked down, and saw another hand, well preserved in the salty soil. It was a pale brown, the light shade due to lack of any blood in it. He normally preferred not to take anything from the fallen, but he found he had no choice but to use it as he found his person surrounded by shadowy forms that lashed out at him with sharp tipped tails.
He danced around the attacks, and sliced the next tail to come his way clean off about halfway down the appendage. Blood the color of the night sprayed out from it and disolved the ground as it touched it. "Hellos! Shadow!" he spat in disgust as he realized the identity of his enemies.
He ran up to one of th shadow and lept atop it, digging the claws on his feet into it's back before stabbing his new sword into its head, driving it deep into the fiends brain. The foul thing fell and Squall had already lept off, now running across the grassy plain, knowing that Shadow continue to respawn until the sun rises.
He heard foul voices roar his name in chalenge. Shadow could read into your mind to an extend, and knew your worst fears. Every secret in your mind was unsafe from them. They even could know of your name. He merely reached his right hand back and held aloft only the middle finger.
He kept running, until the sun began to rise, and he knew he would be safe.
He sat down, and slid his legs out infront of him, heels scrapping on the dry soil. He fell onto his back from there, and the back of his head hit the feet of someone behind him. He looked up and found himself treated to a great view up a short, Hunter's Kilt. But he looked away, already knowing who this was.
He rolled onto his front, and rose to his feet from there.
"Gree esta harar, Kyla. Greetings this day, Kyla" he said to her. "Gree, Squall es verdi das. Greetings, Squall of green fields" Huntress Kyla said to him, using the name all refered to him by, as no one knew where he had come from, and he never said where he came from...or what any surname he may have was.
He scratched at the dirt with his left foot in boredom. She stood next to him, and watched a heard of Vissep pass slowly, unaware of a skilled Huntress watching them, searching for a weak place in the heard where she could strike. She without a word readied an arrow in her bow and let it fly.
The arrow tipped with lightweight Mythril and feathered with raven feathers found the eye of an old Vissep, killing it instantly as it drove deep into the skull, giving it no time for suffering. She made sure that all her shots were instantly fatal, to make it as painless as possible. The Valka hunted, as they were carnivores by nature, but they disliked fighting unless there was no choice left. Hunting, nessasary for their survival, they made the death of their prey as merciful as killing could be.
There were some that were abberant and loved to kill for the sake of death. They loved seing things die, and suffer greatly in their death, and these were ususally hunted as readily as prey for eating were, to prevent them from harming others for their sick amusment. Kyla had taken part in several of these Hunts, and knew the pain of having to hunt her own brother, who was lethally aberant, and having to end his life.
She looked at Squall with a signifigant look, before dashing down into the confused crowd of Vissep, spear at the ready, incase any should decide that they would avenge the fallen, she wasn't stupid, she knew that Vissep were inteligent enought to know if something was a threat the the heard, and were very likely to attack. She hearded them back from her kill., using magic to ward them away with a wall of fire that has them running full tilt in a stampede away from it. She extinguished the flames, and went to work on the kill. Squall came down from the hill overlooking the site and helped her by hefting her spear, with a banner now attached to it, to alert the others in her party that she had gotten a kill.
Ten other Hunters and Huntresses soon came together in the location, and and they slavaged the body of the dead Vissep, having prepared it for transport by lifting it onto a litter that had been efficiently and solidly constructed around and at time benieth it. Squall turned toward the direction of a sound, and felt the vibrations of the heavy plodding of a large beast of burden under the soles of his feet.
"Squall, hasa de tarec tes tio ror. Squall, come along with us for now" Kyla said to him, welcomeing him into their group. "Warre. Fora dir kata...priva? Roger. Can we talk...privately?" Squall asked her. She nodded, and as the main group began forward after attaching the wheeled litter at a harness the plodding hauler wore, Kyla and Squall fell behind a bit, staying within visual range of the group, but out of their earshot.
"Wasi? What?" Kyla asked. Squall looked into her eyes, before grabbing her head in his hands and pulling her face into his, kissing her hard. She responded by wrapping her long arms around his waist, and pulling his body against her own, kissing him back as she held him close.
A year before, when he was nineteen, and she twenty, they had mated, and within five months, she had felt the pain of labor with him at her side. They had had a child, a boy, who tragically only lived until his name day. They named him Nova, as his live had been a shining star in the cosmos, tragically short but full of love and light and life. They had soon after been drawn apart from one another for months, Squall hearing the winds call his name, and the mates parted with a promise that they would wait for the day of their reunion.
They stopped embracing when they could not hear the Hunters any longer, and turned toward the group, still able to see them, and followed lazily, weapons sheathed and holding hands, as if one let go, the other would vanish into dust and never return.