f i n a l f a n t a s y : r e a l i t y
FINAL FANTASY REALITY
disk intermission: memories one
written by chaosrayne
original concept redshadow
Dreams. Darkness. Shadows. A memory?
Two people, one male, one female, faced each other across the remains of Old New York.
People ran screaming in fear as the city burned. Explosions rang through the air. Cars swerved to avoid other cars - disregarding pedestrians. A rusted, battle-scarred hovertaxi, travelling low, ran over a small girl. She screamed uselessly to no avail, as she was crushed under the gravity drives of the vehicle.
Every man for himself.
But the two people facing off did not so much as twitch. Even the fleeing people didn't get in their way.
"We're all gonna die! We're all gonna fucking DIE!!!"
Well, except for the occasional dumbass.
The man's face twisted in distaste as the slightly drunk, most possibly drop-dead stoned raver clung to his cloak. Pulling his cloak away from the raver's grasp, he raised one hand. The raver immediately blossomed into a screaming human torch, running blindly into walls until the stampede of people tipped him over and trampled underfoot.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "I think he stole your wallet while you weren't looking."
The man laughed. "You really think money is going to be worth much now that the War has started? All that matters is food, beer, and weapons. The elements of life."
The woman sighed, raising a gloved hand to her chin and tossing her long brown hair over one shoulder. "Stop being such a male chauvinist pig, and let's begin already."
"As you wish." He reached for the Dragon Edge sword at his side. It slid silently out of the scabbard, and as he held it up, it caught the light of the fires behind him, giving the illusion he was holding a weapon of glittering flame.
"Showoff." The woman muttered, and her caster's staff appeared in midair as if by magic. (okay, it probably was) A flash of energy shimmered around her as she drew it in a series of glittering arcs, drawing silver trails in midair.
"Less talk, more fight." Said the man, and he lunged.
The action was quick and furious, a series of blindingly fast swipes that were blocked, parried, or dodged. Twin flashes of silver met and met again, occasionally glancing off each other in small bursts of orange sparks.
The female ducked backward, a foot sweep flooring the male, as the other countered with a jump, an elbow jutted into the woman's side, the man allowing the woman to jump inside his guard, counter again, a kick from the woman dazing him leaving him open for a staff strike to the ribs, knocked back, and...
"Tri-Fire!"
"Oh-ho. Resorting to spells again, are you?" The man grinned wildy as he jumped and rolled away from the colossal inferno that blazed out on the point of impact. He brought the woman to close combat again, their silhouettes dueling fiercely with each other as New York, the city of cities that hailed back to times when the first gravity drive was a nonexistent dream, when combustion engines and animals pulling carts were standard, continued to burn. A sign with the words 'America was born in the streets' lay in the dirt, trodden on by countless pairs of feet.
A backflip, a switch-staff thrust, a flash of steel there to cut a body part that wasn't there, in his face, in her stomach, a blade caught between two palms...
-his blade caught between two palms?
The woman grinned, the deadly Ryuusabre held firmly between her palms. "You're slipping. Don't tell me you're going soft."
"Not a chance." The man stood stock still, trying to force the blade down with every inch of his strength.
"You're not concentrating hard enough." The woman kept the smile on her face, keeping the blade in her hands, and twisted her body so that she was leaning in close to the man, her back pressing against his chest.
It was the opportunity that every trained hand-to-hand master looks for when fighting someone with a bladed weapon. The woman was one of those, so she did what came naturally - she leaned into the force of the blow, flicked her wrists up, and almost casually popped the Ryuusabre loose.
The legendary sword flew several yards through the air to stick nearly half a foot into the ground.
The woman sighed. "I win again."
"So do it." The man glared at her, eyes glittering coldly. "Pay me back for what I've done."
"You know I can't do that." The woman looked at him. "I still love you, you know? After all you've done. You've probably doomed the world. But I can't bring myself to kill you because I know who you really are."
"Shut up and kill me." The man stared. "Will you hold me from my fate?"
"No. But I can't kill you."
The man sneered, helpless as he was, the end of the Ultima Caster Staff in his face. "You know what they called me, when I was still in the government business? The Dark Born. Inhuman, they called me. Demonspawn. And I live up to the name. Just end my life, it's not hard... You useless bitch. You haven't got the heart to kill me. You're too good even for that."
The woman sighed, let her weapon vanish to wherever it had come from, and turned away. "I know. And I hate myself for it."
"Well... too bad, because I have no compulsions about killing you."
The woman whirled, but she was too late. In that second she realised how badly she had been duped. The fate of the worlds, the fate of millions of lives that had been and the lives to come, had been dumped in her hands, and she had lost it.
"Yesss." The man hissed, the Dragon Edge sword at her throat, drawing a thin trickle of blood. "You've lost this time, Evita. Tell me... where is our son?"
The woman struggled. "I'm not going to tell you, you heartless bastard. You'll just kill him as well. I can't let that happen."
The dark haired man sighed. "Eve, Eve, Eve. Why would we want to save the universe? It's such a messed up place, anyway. Look at our world. People, every one of them screaming for their own thoughts and dreams, every one of them knowing, that the world will inevitably end."
An impossibly white streak of light appeared on the night horizon, followed by two more. People running began screaming in fear. They knew what those points of lights meant, and feared them even more for it.
"Look." The man said, pulling her head up roughly to face the night sky. "Isn't it beautiful? It's begun. The nuclear weapons are descending. The war to end all wars has begun."
Tears streamed down the woman's face as she looked into the sky, on humanity's own weapons turned against itself - the ultimate irony. "Stop it. You have to stop them."
"Why? Is your baby boy still in the city? Awwww... too bad he's about to be obliterated with what's left of this stinking city." The man cackled, running a hand through the woman's silky brown hair. "Good night." He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers.
The Dragon Edge's blade jerked backward and across, and with that, the woman known as Evita Starborn, one of the most powerful mages in the history of the world, breathed her last, her throat torn open and bleeding.
The man laughed in his imminent victory, laughed and laughed. Humankind. They were destroying themselves. This was all going to end. End. Forever. And the universe would trouble him no more.
He rose to his feet, dumping the body of Evita facedown in the dirt, and sheathed the still bloody Ryuusabre. It was the end of the world, after all - what was he doing worrying about a clean sword?
He then became aware of a silent sobbing.
For the man, time seemed to run in slow motion, as everybody continued to run past him, running nowhere, knowing they couldn't escape from the incoming nuclear death.
But the sobbing was there. Despite all the screaming, all the explosions, he could still hear that crying.
He swiveled to the source of the voice, moving faster than all the people around him, and his eyes grew wide and shocked. Michael J. Stevens, the man known as the Dark Born, stood afraid in the face of one crying old woman, holding the cloth-wrapped form of the child in her arms.
She ran.
The man followed, hurrying.
Panting, running blindly through the streets. A scream is heard somewhere behind.
Weeping and sobbing. Tears fall, human pain manifesting as drops of salt solution. And a baby begins to cry.
"No time, no time..."
The old woman kissed her charge one last time.
"Time, space, bend..."
The ground opened up in a portal of darkness and lightning. The woman looked one last time at the baby, then, as another explosion was heard behind her, she draped a blue stone on a silver chain around his neck.
"...Remove!!!"
The child was dropped into the portal, vanishing in an instant. It irised closed quickly. The woman collapsed on her knees as the spell drained her energies. The one known as the Dark Born walked up to the sobbing lady, silently.
The woman finally notices, and crawls on her hands and knees to get away. But her exit is blocked, and she is forced up against a corner.
In that moment, she sees the face of her murderer. She screams, but too late.
The sword passes cleanly through her breast and comes out her back, still gleaming with the blood of its past victim.
She looked so surprised, there at the end.
Dreams. Darkness. Shadows. A memory.
It is finished.
Author's Ramblings:
Flashback sequence.