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Star Shadow: We have returned!
Dark Stratos: And someone is on a writing spree… ::makes a face at Star::
Star Shadow: I can't help when I get inspiration!
Dark Stratos: Yeah, I know… It depends on the reviews you get, but why are you posting since two of the reviews disappeared?
Star Shadow: I'm updating everything else, so why not?
Dark Stratos: Oh boy…
Disclaimer: ::holds up a multi-colored piece of paper:: This was the disclaimer telling everyone that we don't own FFVIII and that the only character we own in this story is Rachel, but me and Stratos kinda got into a paintball fight…
The Journal
Star Shadow and Dark Stratos
Chapter Eight: The Night
Seifer was exhausted and left with another sleepless night in bed. He and some of the other cadets had been given a mission to defend a small decrepitly old town from a newly developed nest of monsters, and he had been at it for three days with little rest. The monsters were hybrids, and they were violent.
For the past few days Seifer had been trying to figure out where they had some from, but for some reason, he couldn't. He knew that he should have known and something told him that somewhere in the back of his mind he did. This bothered him more than his lack of sleep and the monsters themselves.
There was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind that told him to leave the room. Slowly, quietly, he rose from his makeshift bed in the hotel and slipped on his white trench. He was happy he had gotten it repaired. Putting it on made him feel more protected than having any weapon, including Hyperion.
He wasn't surprised when he walked down the stairs and the two teens that were supposed to be guarding the door fast asleep on chairs on wither side of it. Amateurs, Seifer though, as he shook his head. Some of these guys really were rookies. No wonder Squall had wanted him to come. He didn't trust these guys by themselves.
The door swung open slightly, just enough for a person to walk through. It stayed open for a few seconds as Seifer prepared to fight another one of those bizarre monsters, but just as smoothly and quietly as it had opened, it closed. There was a nagging feeling yet again , and he followed it… Right out the door into the light of the full moon.
He knew that it was stupid to go out in the middle of the night all by himself. This was how guys got killed and mutilated beyond recognition except by their dental records. If he was to be subjected to that, he made sure that the others in the hotel wouldn't be by shutting the door tightly and locking it with the spare key the hotel manager had given him. Those two guys were gonna get the fright of their lives when he chewed them out the next morning.
He walked down the dusty streets of Winhill, surprised at the absence of the beasts he had gotten to know so well over the past few days. Maybe they went to sleep too. This didn't, however, keep him from staying on guard. The last thing he needed was for something to kill him because he was daydreaming about cotton candy clouds and rainbows. That would be stupid.
Something, a force of some sort, was leading him. It was disturbing, and he didn't like it. He didn't like not knowing what was going to happen next, and he was getting a nervous fake feeling of sick from it. If this kept up for too long he was going to throw-up. He wasn't ever this nervous, not even when he was sparing with Squall, and that was downright deadly. Why was this situation so different. He wasn't even this nauseous when he was under Ultimecia's control.
Seifer remembered most of what happened now. He wasn't even under his own control when he was fighting for her, and when he had first woken up he could barely remember what he had done. He had only told one person this too. That person was Squall, and he had only told him that because Squall had confided in him about his extreme dislike of Rinoa. That situation with her made him want to laugh. She acted like a princess and Squall was her knight in shining armor with a credit card. The image in his mind made him hold back a laugh.
His mind went back to the monsters. Something must have happened while he was out of it. What if he had helped cause the change in the monsters behavior when he was with the sorceress. The though sent a shiver down his spine in the cool night air. That wasn't what he needed to think about. He needed to concentrate on the here and now. The past was the past and that was that. Or was it?
Rachel. What about her. She was the past, wasn't she? Then why did things about her journal bug him so much? Why did that girl who was in the hall, the girl who fit her description, stick out in his mind so much? Why did he have that dream?
He scolded himself for zoning out again. He hadn't even been watching where he had been going. It one of those monsters had jumped out at him he would have never even noticed until it would have been too late. How stupid could he possibly get?
Fairly stupid, his mind retorted as he realized he was standing in the entryway to a church that he had never seen before. The townspeople hadn't told them about this, and he hadn't found it before when they had been patrolling the area. This could mean one of four things: One, no one knew it was here; Two, the townspeople were protecting it; Three, this was where the monsters were coming from; or Four, he was hallucinating from lack of sleep or he was dreaming.
Taking a deep breath, he touched the slightly rotten wood. He felt it. That meant that he wasn't dreaming, but there were still three other options. Making sure he was still ready for a battle, he pushed open the doors and light piano music danced through the air around him. It was a hauntingly sweet melody, both sad and sweet at the same time.
There was a piano at the far end of the hall bathed in moonlight that stopped just before the pews. The stained-glass window showering it with a blue-ish light, the once vibrant colors now faded away. The nagging came back to him again as he turned to walk away, and after a few steps, it forced him to turn around, and there was now something different about the room. Something that he didn't notice before.
There was a girl at the piano. He knew that someone had to be playing the instrument, but he was not expecting it to be a girl. Cautiously, he walked down the aisle, avoiding every piece of far too rotten wood and uprooted nails. He stopped right where the moonlight hit the ground and lit up the darkness, afraid to enter this girls sanctuary of light.
The music stopped and she looked up at him from behind a pair of glasses, messy brown hair falling around her face and down the back of her long black coat. She smiled as she turned on the bench, legs swinging in an immature fashion, hands between her legs. Wasn't this the girl he'd seen before?
"Hullo!" she said with a bright smile, her eyes closing, head tilted slightly to the side.
"Hi," he said, unsure of what to say to someone who seemed to strange and out of place. Not that he wasn't out of place. In fact, he shouldn't have even been out of the hotel.
"It's a nice night, huh Seifer?" she asked looking back at the moon over her shoulder.
"Yeah, it's nice, but I really should be getting back," he said looking over he shoulder and out the door. He could see the town from here. He meant to turn around and tell how sorry he was for being rude, but when he turned back to her, she and the beauty of the moonlight piano was gone.
What stood in it's place were broken windows, and an old piano with missing keys and broken strings. The only thing out of place, the only thing that showed anything had happened, was the pristine white sheet music standing where it could be read and played.
He took a step forward, the glass cracking further under his weight. He suddenly didn't care. When he stood before the piano's broken bench, he looked at the music, the melody she had been playing.
"Staff4 Ending Credits," he read aloud as he picked up the music.
He glanced at the pages. This wasn't children's music, this was the hard stuff. He doubted even Elone and Edea's ability to play it at a glance, but if this was the same song that girl had been playing…
The bottom on the last page caught his eye. There were a few drops of dark brown on the page. They were the color of dried blood.
It was still dark when Seifer went back to the town with the music.
Star Shadow: Yay! for an uber-strange chapter
Dark Stratos: ::sounds horrified:: Where the hell did this come from!?
Star Shadow: ::shrugs:: I dunno. I was hoping you could tell me that.
Dark Stratos: Oh dear God… Please… Just read and review. We want a lot of reviews. We actually want one of our stories to hit 100 reviews. We think that would be cool.
Star Shadow: Don't worry though, we're only waiting to hit 65 reviews before we update this one, so all you readers out there who haven't been reviewing, I hope you're up for a long wait 'cause you guys have been slacking.
Dark Stratos: We want reviews Damn it! And if you've stopped reading the story It would be great if you could tell us. Then we would expect a little less from you…
Star Shadow: But Stratos! Some of these people get alerts when we post new stuff! Why won't they review!?
Dark Stratos: I don't know Star. I don't know.
Star Shadow: We're giving our cookies to anyone who can guess what the music was from, but you have to guess in the review!! We love you all!