FINAL FANTASY: POINT OF INTERSECTION
BOOK 1: THE APPROACHING STORM

CHAPTER 11
DISCLAIMER: Some graphic violence ahead.. Proceed at your own risk.


Squall held his gunblade ready as the black things swarmed toward himself and his companions. As the monstrous beings drew closer, he realized that their bodies weren't entirely solid, but instead a writhing mass of swirling shadows and inky black mist, with dark eyes so opaque they made the feeble glow of Quistis' flashlight seem like afternoon sunshine in comparison. The creatures' bodies constantly shifted and reformed as they moved, yet their faces remained hideously clear.

Each was different. Some grinned maliciously, knifelike teeth leering insanely at Squall and his team in a sort of deranged frenzy. Other faces, meanwhile, were frozen in macabre expressions of unspeakable horror, their tortured midnight eyes wide with fear and their mouths gaping open in soundless shrieks of incomprehensible pain and misery. And then there were those creatures that had no faces at all, that were little more than formless wraiths in the darkness.

From the creatures flowed an aura of bitter, numbing cold that seemed to freeze Squall's blood solid within his veins. The bitter chill of the grave probed beneath his skin with icy tendrils as the hellish beings drew near, and his fingers grew stiff as they gripped the hilt of his gunblade. Goosebumps rose on his arms, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as ripples of maniacal, high-pitched laughter echoed maddeningly through the shadowy chamber.

It was as though the darkness itself had suddenly come to nightmarish, unholy life.

"I think this would be a very good time for us to get the hell out of here," Seifer muttered darkly from where he stood beside Squall.

The SeeD commander nodded. "For once, Seifer, I agree with you. Let's go."

But before anyone could go further than a few steps, the monstrous beings were upon them. The malodorous scents of rot and blood rose sickly in the air, and Squall felt icy needles of pain pierce his shoulder as one of the hideous monsters sank knifelike teeth into his flesh. Almost at once, his upper left arm went numb with cold, and the blood seemed almost to freeze on his skin. He swiped with his gunblade at the creature, but to his disbelief the weapon passed harmlessly through the blackness of its body as though cutting through nothing but air.

Fiery waves of pain burned on his leg as talons sliced at the skin before he could recover his balance. Squall grimaced but stabbed again at his foe, straight through the chest this time as the creature sprang deftly at him. Yet once again the SeeD commander struck only empty shadows, his weapon whistling through the blackness where his enemy's body should have been. The thing was so damned fast, it seemed to be everywhere at once. Or maybe there was more than one confronting him now in the gloom. Suddenly he couldn't be entirely certain.

A piercing scream shattered his thoughts, and he whirled about to see the female SeeD from the exam team go down amidst a writhing mass of dark forms. Blood pooled onto the floor and spattered against the wall in a spray of red droplets as her agonized cries were abruptly cut off, to be replaced by the sickening sound of flesh being torn asunder like paper.

Marticia took a step toward them, hoisting her Flame Sabre as her blue eyes glared coldly at the monsters before her. "Layna! Come on, you sick bastards! Come here!"

"Gailey, not now!" Squall urged her, glancing warily about for more of the creatures. "We have to get out of here!"

"We can't just leave her!" she argued.

The young commander shook his head. "She's dead, Marticia, and we will be too if we don't leave now! Move! That's an order!"
She nodded and started to lower her blade, but then suddenly brought it up again and fired almost straight at Squall. He dove to the side instinctively, and only then did he become aware of the creature that had come up stealthily behind him. The bullet from Marticia's gunblade struck the horrid thing full in its hideous face, sending the monster staggering backwards momentarily before it deftly spun about and launched itself at her in a rapid blur of motion.

"Run!" Squall exclaimed, pulling Marticia quickly out of the thing's path, and together with their remaining companions they broke for the door.

Seifer and Quistis flew past them and started up the stairs, the former knight firing off a few rounds from his gunblade back at the creatures as he did so. Most went wide of their mark, however, as the monsters flitted liquidly through the inky darkness much too quickly for him to get a clear target. Squall fired off a few shots of his own at the advancing horde but had no better luck.

He halted at the base of the stairs, urging Marticia on ahead as he waited for the last of the exam team members to reach him. She started to protest, wanting to wait with him for her friends, but a single angry glance from Squall silenced her almost at once and sent her hurrying up the stairs after the others. Squall sighed grimly and, although he knew it was probably useless, brought up this gunblade and fired at the monsters once again to give the remaining people in the room some cover as they raced toward him and the relative safety of the stairwell.

Elias, the sandy-haired youth with the broken arm, reached Squall a split second later and ran past him up the winding steps, holding his wounded limb close to his chest as he did so. Close behind him was the young female candidate, a dark-skinned girl with shoulder-length black hair streaming out behind her neck as she ran, and following her a ways back was the other candidate. Squall could see the sweat beading on the young man's forehead as he tried to catch up.

He never made it.

A clawed black hand of swirling mist suddenly grabbed the young man from behind, reaching over the top of his head to dig painfully into the underside of his jaw as he began to scream while other hands grasped his flailing arms. Squall stared, unable to move as the hideously grinning thing behind the doomed man suddenly pulled backwards with a great heave. There was a loud snap, like the breaking of a lead pencil in two, as the male candidate's head was brutally and forcibly ripped from his neck with a grotesque shattering of bone and tissue.

A great gout of blood from the mangled stump atop the dead man's shoulders sprayed out like water from a broken fire hydrant, splashing Squall in the face before he could react. Blinking rapidly and wiping the grisly fluid from his eyes, the young commander finally managed to break his paralysis as the creatures idly let the male candidate's body fall to the ground along with the sundered head. The young man's face was frozen in the midst of a terrified scream, and for a moment Squall stopped again, held fast by its horrified gaze, before at last managing to get himself in motion once more.

Squall hurried up the winding stairs, occasionally glancing back over his shoulders to see the shadowy creatures closing fast behind him. They scuttled along the walls and ceiling or floated through the darkness on misty wings. Some bore weapons, cruelly sharp scythes stained with blood clutched in the chill grasp of faceless wraiths, or used no tool of death at all save the sharpened claws that the frenzied, hideously grinning variety of the monsters possessed.

A keening, mournful wail of unimaginable torment and misery suddenly filled the air, and as he clapped his hands over his ears, Squall stumbled and the chill in his arm grew deeper. One of the lost ones, the creatures with the screaming faces, had given horrible voice to its anguish. The young commander felt his heart constrict inside his chest, and wetness seeped from one earlobe as a trickle of blood spilled down the side of his jaw. Gasping for breath which he suddenly seemed not to have, Squall staggered weakly a few steps before his knees finally gave way. As he collapsed in a heap, his back to the stairwell's outer wall, he looked a little ways above him and saw an unmoving form sprawled on the stairs.

The female candidate stared back at him with unseeing eyes, blood flowing from both ears and dripping over the edge of the step on which she lay.

Glancing back down the stairs, Squall watched as the dark, constantly shifting forms of the hideous creatures advanced up the curve of the stairs like a wave of blackness. Somewhere inside his head a voice was screaming at him to move, to get up and run, but his body stubbornly refused to listen. He could barely feel his left arm at all anymore, and the deathly cold within it, like ice in his veins, began to slowly stretch its frigid tendrils up into his shoulder.

Suddenly there was a real voice in his ear, a familiar one. "Yo, Squall! C'mon, man, we gotta get outta here like right now!"

"Zell… didn't I order you to stay upstairs…?" Squall frowned.

"The hell with that!" the young martial artist exclaimed, hauling Squall to his feet. "Everyone but me and Quistis is up on the entry level waitin' for you! When you didn't show up with the others, she and I came back down here to find you."

Squall looked up to find Quistis standing nearby, her face pale but determined as she clutched her whip tightly in one hand and the flashlight in the other. "Let's go, Squall."

The young commander nodded wearily and started to follow his friends, but then he realized suddenly that the shadowy beings had slowed their pursuit. Squall could still sense them out there, hiding in the darkness, but for some reason that he didn't quite grasp at first, they halted. For a moment, all was quiet. A dropped pin might have seemed like thunder in the sudden stillness.

"Uh, Squall?" Zell whispered uneasily. "What're they doin' now?"
The SeeD commander was wondering the same thing himself, but then as he exchanged glances with Quistis, he finally understood. "They don't like the light…"

"It makes sense," Quistis agreed. She kept her flashlight steadily trained in the direction where the monsters waited in the gloom beyond the reach of its meager illumination.

"Well, that's good to know, but shouldn't we get going?" Zell urged nervously.

Squall nodded. "Right. Let's move, people."

His injured arm hanging heavily from his shoulder, Squall scrambled up the stairs with Zell and Quistis. He noted that the blond instructor made the ascent backwards, keeping the stairs immediately beneath her dimly lit as she carefully made her way up the steps. Though he could no longer see them, Squall could still sense the dangerous creatures lurking just out of sight in the dimness, waiting for the pale light Quistis bore to fail and make the darkness complete.

The stairs wound upwards in a seemingly endless spiral, and it was all Squall could to do keep going. His breathing grew labored, and the muscles in his thighs and calves began to burn with the strain of exertion. Squall knew he should have been in better physical shape than this, but his wounded arm and the deadly shriek from those creatures had begun to take their toll. Even now, the SeeD commander could still hear the tormented wailing of the lost ones, though it had grown more faint as Squall and his friends had put more distance between themselves and the monsters.

After what could have been hours or minutes or anything in between, Squall looked up and saw the small door at the top of the stairs. It stood open, and next to it Raijin gave a shout when he saw Squall and the others. Apparently the dark-skinned young man had been stuck with lookout duty while the rest of the team remained in the entry chamber.

"There you are, ya know?" he exclaimed. "You, like, had us worried there for a bit, ya know?"

"I'm fine," Squall responded, shrugging off the other man's concern.

He made his way slowly into the main chamber, taking care to step over the bodies and parts of bodies that lay scattered about the blood-slicked floor like so many broken dolls. The double doors at the front of the room stood tightly closed, an impervious steel barrier several inches thick between his team and their freedom, perhaps even their very survival.

Seifer raised an eyebrow as he strode haughtily from the closed entrance to meet him. "Damn, Leonhart, you look like shit…"

"Speak for yourself," Squall countered sourly. He was absolutely not in the mood for his old rival's pointless jibes right now.

"Squall, man," Zell stammered, pulling the small door shut behind him, "you're bleeding, like, all over your face. You okay?"

The young commander blinked as he suddenly remembered. "It's not mine, Zell. At least, not most of it… One of the candidates, he was killed right in front me…"

"It's his blood, isn't it?" Quistis surmised quietly.

Squall nodded and with a cloth he took from his pocket wiped the crimson fluid from his face as best he could. "Yeah. I can't feel my left arm, though. One of those… things… slashed it open just under my shoulder, and it's been like ice ever since."

"My goodness!" Quistis exclaimed. "We need to get to get you back to the infirmary!"

"We need to get out of here first, Instructor," Seifer noted pointedly.

Squall indicated the doors with a brisk motion of his head. "Any luck?"

"Hardly," Seifer quipped. "Otherwise they'd be wide open by now, genius. The Galbadians have us sealed in here pretty tight. Only way we're getting out of this mess is with a miracle."

Sighing grimly, Squall noticed Marticia standing alone on the far side of the chamber near Xu's body. The young SeeD was staring at the carnage around her in mute shock, probably trying vainly to comprehend the loss of so many of her comrades. Little showed on her face of what she must have been feeling, but Squall knew it would grow even worse once they made it outside. Marticia knelt for a moment next to Xu's unmoving form, passing her hand over the dead woman's face, and Squall realized somberly that she was quietly closing her commanding officer's unseeing eyes with unsteady fingers.

The sound of brisk footfalls hurrying toward him brought Squall's attention back to the problem at hand, and he saw Fujin moving intently in the direction of himself and Seifer. The gray-haired woman's face was pale, showing an uncharacteristic sense of unease that was reflected in the anxious gaze of her single cold blue eye. In her hand she grasped firmly her razor-tipped pinwheel, and Squall knew, almost before she spoke, what must have caused her distress.

"They're coming, aren't they?" he said. It wasn't exactly a question.

Fujin nodded, readying her weapon. "ENEMIES."

Even as she spoke, Squall suddenly became aware that the shadows were moving, that the dark shapes were coming right through the walls like bodiless spirits. Others swarmed down from the ceiling or emerged from the stairwell in a mass of shifting, writhing black forms. Claws, teeth, and curved steel glistened red with blood in the dimness as a macabre cacophony of tormented moans, gibbering laughter, and chill whispers in wordless voices filled Squall's ears.

Everyone huddled close together, backs against each other and weapons drawn as the creatures made their presence known. Yet the dark beings did not immediately attack, but rather waited just out of sight in the murky blackness. Squall was about to order everyone to the main doors when something happened then that caused his blood to run cold in his veins and a shiver to run up his spine.

Quistis' flashlight flickered fitfully and then suddenly died, plunging the room into utter darkness.

"What? No!" the blond instructor stammered nervously, banging the drained device repeatedly in frustration, but to no avail.

Squall sighed grimly. "Here they come…"

Staring intently into the darkness, the SeeD commander sensed the movement of the hellish creatures creeping toward them from all directions, their cackling and moaning and whispering strangely amplified in the lightless dark. Squall held his gunblade awkwardly in his good hand and wondered how well he'd be able to fight with just his one arm. He hoped he wouldn't have to find out, but knew it was unlikely that a battle could be avoided in their current situation.

A loud, explosive bang from outside suddenly split the air along with the whine of engines and the staccato impacts of gunfire. Bright sunlight shot into the room as the entry doors were forcibly ripped away with a screeching of metal by an immense mechanized arm of crimson steel. At almost the same moment, Squall's comlink abruptly crackled to life with a bouncy and, under the circumstances, welcome voice on the other end.

"Booyaka!" Selphie cheered.

Blinking his eyes as he adjusted to the sudden influx of light, Squall became aware that the demonic creatures had scurried swiftly back into the sheltering darkness within the bowels of the tower. They flitted back into shadowy corners out of the reach of the warm afternoon sunshine pouring inside the entry chamber through the gaping hole where the main doors lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. Without wasting a minute, Squall motioned to the others with his good arm.

"Back to the ship!" he ordered. "Let's go!"

Squall raced quickly through the opening, his companions close behind, and at last he was free of the tower. Never had open air seemed so sweet a thing, but he knew there was no time yet to savor it. The massive bulk of the Ragnarok loomed almost directly above him, and the cargo bay doors at the back slid open with a hiss of hydraulics. A familiar figure in a brown coat and cowboy hat beckoned to Squall while firing his rifle at the now revealed Galbadian troops from behind the cover of the ship's hull.

"Hurry it up, Squall! I can't hold 'em forever!" Irvine shouted above the din of gunfire.

The young swordsman nodded. "We're going as fast as we can! Just a little longer!"

His booted feet pounding on the concrete, Squall started to make his way toward where the lanky cowboy stood firing round after round of ammo at the Galbadians clustered on the curving ridge above the tower, but the SeeD leader suddenly lost his footing and banged his knee painfully against the concrete. His arm was a dead weight on his left side as he attempted to use his gunblade to brace himself and lift his unwilling body from the ground. The creature's wail must have been more weakening than he had thought at first, and he wondered briefly why it hadn't killed him like it had slain the female candidate who'd been there with him at the time.

Maybe I'm already dying, little by little, the cold freezing its way toward my heart…

A hand came to rest gently on Squall's right shoulder, the one he could still feel, and he looked up to see Quistis looking at him in concern. "Squall, are you alright?"

"I… I think so… Go on, Quis. I'll be right behind you." he replied.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

He nodded firmly, slowly dragging himself to his feet as Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin raced past him and into the Ragnarok's cargo bay. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. Now go."

The blue mage flinched back as a few shots from the Galbadians sparked nearby, then without another word, she turned and headed quickly toward the ship, looking back only once as she did so. Quistis disappeared within a few moments into the vessel's cargo bay.

Squall pushed himself onward despite his body's sluggishness, but stumbled and would have fallen again had Zell not suddenly caught up to him and hauled him to his feet. Marticia was there, too, her blue eyes hard as she took in the attacking Galbadians. What would happen to those eyes, Squall thought, when they saw the devastation in the dead city that had once been her hometown?

A crack of gunfire jerked Squall from his thoughts, and he saw Irvine bringing up the rear along with Elias, firing off a few parting shots at the Galbadians as he did so. The sharpshooter's long coat trailed out behind him along with his reddish ponytail, and more than a few of the troops he fired at failed to get back up again. His rifle punctuated the air with a series of loud explosions as he launched a last salvo before ducking around the corner of the ship.

"Whew!" he grinned. "What a workout, eh?"

"Let's just get out of here," Squall sighed. He'd had about enough of Dollet for today.

Irvine glanced about in confusion as Zell and Marticia helped Elias into the ship's hold and from there to the med lab. "Is this it? Where's everyone else, Squall?"

"They're dead," he explained wearily. "I'll tell you and Selphie about it once we're on board and heading away from here."
The color slowly drained from the cowboy's face. "Shit… even Xu… Rinoa…?"

Squall sighed heavily as he and Irvine hurried into the ship. "Xu's dead, along with everyone that was on the exam team except for Marticia and Elias… and Rinoa. Those goddamned Galbadians took her…"

"We'll get her back, Squall," Irvine murmured, yet his voice wavered, "and make those sons of bitches wish they were never even born…"

"Count on it," Squall growled, his eyes narrowing fiercely.

He made a mental note to finish debriefing Marticia after they were safely away from Dollet. She hadn't gotten the chance earlier to tell him what exactly had happened to Rinoa before those creatures had suddenly swarmed out of the satellite assembly and nearly killed them all There might not be much he could do for Ellone right now, much as it pained him to finally admit it, but he might still be able to figure out a way to save Rin. He swore he would.

"Selphie," he ordered as the lift deposited himself and Irvine onto the bridge, "bring us around."

"Alrighty! Here we go!" the coppery-haired girl replied brightly as the sharpshooter quickly sat down in the copilot's seat next to her.

The deck tilted slightly to the port side as Selphie brought the ship slowly about with a groaning of metal and the steady thrumming of the jet engines. Squall gazed intently out the forward cockpit windows and saw the communications tower slide into view directly ahead. Afternoon sunlight reflected off the sides of the structure and glittered across the tops of the waves in the sea far below the cliff.

Squall grimaced, hating what he had to do yet knowing he had no choice. "Quistis, ready the weapons and prepare to fire on my mark."

"What?" she stared at him unbelievingly, her jaw dropping.

"We can't let those creatures inside the tower escape," he explained, "or they'll kill even more people. Dollet isn't the only city around here, you know."

Irvine frowned darkly. "We're just gonna leave the bodies of our friends in there? Not try and bring 'em home for a proper burial?"

"If there was a way, I'd do it," Squall sighed, "but it's too dangerous to go back in there right now, and we don't have time to wait for Garden to send us reinforcements. Once the sun goes down, you can bet those monsters will slip out of there as soon as they can. I don't know about you guys, but I've seen enough death already today."

Zell scratched his head in thought. "But if we blow up the tower, won't that, uh, knock out all the radio and video communications too?"

The communications tower in Dollet was normally used to broadcast the radio signals with which the different television and audio stations, located mainly in Timber, brought their various programs and information to the world at large. Since the reemergence of Esthar from its long isolation, radio and video contact between nations had once more been possible. As yet, however, the Dollet tower was the only functioning structure of its kind in the world. Half a dozen similar facilities were currently being constructed in Balamb, Deling City, and FH among other places, but none were yet operational.

"I know, but it's already been deactivated anyway, and we don't have any means of powering it back up again," Squall replied wearily.

Selphie glanced over her shoulder at him, her small lips pursing in thought. "Can't we just, you know, turn it back on or something? Flip a switch somewhere, maybe?"

"Not without bringing in repair crews from Esthar or FH—the main and secondary power generators are both shot to hell. I saw them for a moment down in the assembly room just before we were attacked."

"It was the Galbadians, wasn't it?" Quistis surmised.

Squall nodded. "I'm almost certain of it. Who else would it have been? For whatever reason, they didn't want anyone to be able to use the tower."

"And if we destroy it, we'll be playing right into their hands," Seifer growled.

"We don't have a choice," Squall countered angrily. "I'm not going to let those things in there get away and kill anyone else. Is that understood?"

The former sorceress' knight simply shrugged indifferently. "It's your funeral, Leonhart. But don't expect your popularity to be very high when we get back to Garden."

"Whatever. Quistis, are the weapons online?"

The blue mage's fingers flew rapidly over her computer console as she manipulated the controls. "Yes, commander. Mass drivers, missiles, and particle beams armed and ready, sir."

Marticia gazed quietly through the forward viewports at the tower looming just ahead. "Are… are you sure this the only way…?"

"I'm sorry," Squall answered softly.

Rising to his feet, Irvine sighed and came around behind Selphie, gently laying his hands upon her shoulders as he glanced uncertainly at Squall. "I hope you know what you're doing, man. I really do."

"So do I, Irvine. So do I."

Squall swallowed heavily and nodded to Quistis. "Fire at will."

The blond woman depressed several buttons on her console, and streaks of bright yellow energy lanced out from the ship and began pummeling the communications tower along with a constant barrage of gunfire from the mass driver cannons. As the Ragnarok continued to circle the beleaguered facility, a pair of missiles sped away from the vessel's underbelly and slammed into the side of the building, followed by another set immediately afterward.

With a great rumbling like thunder, the tower crumpled inward and exploded into an angry ball of orange flame. Debris flew like deadly hail in all directions, and smoke billowed up from the building's shattered husk in thick gray clouds. Under the Ragnarok's relentless assault, what was left of the Dollet communications tower erupted into a series of blinding explosions that seared the afternoon sky with a livid tapestry of fire, ash, and smoke.

Squall didn't look away, but instead let the flaring brightness of the tower's fiery death temporarily blind him. Blinking his eyes to adjust his vision, he became aware that Irvine had removed his hat and quietly bowed his head. A single tear ran unnoticed down Quistis' cheek, and even Selphie remained uncharacteristically silent. Marticia gazed solemnly out the port side of the bridge, away from the devastation, while Zell slumped dejectedly against the side of the navigation console.

Grunting in disgust, Seifer spun around and strode angrily from the bridge, the thudding of his black boots jarringly loud in the uneasy stillness. Raijin and Fujin trailed along behind in his wake, their expressions downcast but determined. The posse disappeared a moment later as the lift carried them down into the ship's main deck with a hiss of machinery.

Squall sighed and turned quietly to Selphie. "Take us home."