Time.
The passage of time seems paranormal at times, something we slammed a scale on to measure. Hours? Days? Years? All superficial, trying to control something we don't understand.
Outside the raw fabric of the universe, there is no time.
At least, nothing that comes close to it. There is no growth, no passage, no change over a length of units that we can possibly come close to understanding.
The time I spent in the Engine is now only a blur to me, as long as I did. There was no measure of the length of time I spent in the machine, only a sense of time going on forever, a line into infinity.
Only me, and Alex. We floated in nonspace, no gravity or any other worthless little rule of physics to hold us down. We were both aware of the distance we were travelling, but we didn't really care.
The last time when we had been forcibly been removed from our home universe by use of a materia, it had been painful. Our bodies broken down into subatomic particles and reformed, it had been nothing short of pure agony. But this... travelling in a machine that was designed for me to control, through some subconcious means or whatever, I felt in complete control of everything.
Alex's hand in mine, we flew through space (or lack thereof) and headed for that glowing point on the horizon that was the universe codenamed Hades. I didn't even think about it - my body being linked to the Reality Engine, I knew beyond all conviction what the Window to Hades would be like.
After all, I was the Key. Me. Rain. A helpless, homeless orphan dreamer.
I could hardly tell the difference between my dreams and my reality, now. It was like everything I had been experienced in my dreams was the sum total of all I felt in the Engine. It was the focus and the reason for me to exist.
I was the Key.
f i n a l f a n t a s y : r e a l i t y
FINAL FANTASY REALITY:
an angelhawk studios production
original concept by redshadow
written by chaosrayne
disk two: 1ne: w3lc0me t0 h3ll
A pair of red-armored, blue-coated Imperial troopers heaved the slack body of a large man into a chair. Without any fuss, they quickly lasercuffed his hands and feet behind the chair, rendering him effectively immobile.
He was also naked from the waist, being stripped of his black O7 vest armor and all his various implements of death-dealing. But his eyes were still alight with the fire of defiance, glaring hatefully up at his captors. "What, no dental?" He joked, showing off the muscles on his bare chest.
The trooper on his left drew back a gauntleted fist and hit him hard, in the jaw.
Patch spat something that felt suspiciously like bloody teeth out his mouth and rotated his jaw experimentally. At least it wasn't broken. "Is beating on helpless people the new industry for the oh-so-great Imperial Empire now?"
The man hit him again.
"Dammit!" Patch swore, with the result that the man hit him, again.
"Enough." A voice spoke out of the darkness, distincly feminine. "We want him to be at least able to talk."
Patch, his face a bloody ruin, peered into the shadows, trying to distinguish faces he could put names to. Blood trickled into his line of sight, running down off his forehead. "Izzat you, 'Doctor' Shaw?" He laughed crazily, half-concussed. "Tha's funny." He continued, his speech slurring.
"What, I pray tell, is so hilarious that you can't stop laughing?" The shadow mage revealed her face, her voice dangerously low. "If you need me to remind you that you are now captured, helpless, and due for torture and interrogation, you are thicker than I thought."
"Wha'ss..." He continued, the tiniest glimmer of surprise appearing in his hardened visage. "...whass happening tuh me...?"
Catherine Shaw smiled, the first smile from her in over an hour. "The Ancients discovered and catalogued the various elements that made up this planet. They do come in all shapes or forms, you know." She laughed out loud, chillingly. "Sodium pentathol. Heard of it?"
Patch's mind locked up. Truth serum...!
"Should have taken effect by now." The nervous trooper flanking him on the right muttered. "Let's question him and get back to the City. There could be more of those goddamed Rebels."
"My friend here is right." Catherine said, offering a coy smile at the trooper who had spoken. The poor man went as red as his armor. "We are running out of time."
"Where have your friends gone? The children." She snapped, focusing the full force of her glare on the sole remaining member of the O7.
Patch laughed all the louder. "I'sh dunno!"
"I'll show you - " The trooper on the right, the one that had hit him before, raised his hand to hit the captive, only to have his fist caught by the scientist's palm.
"Sit." Catherine hissed. "It's working. Unless you doubt the power of the truth drug? I can have some arranged to be used on you."
The man mumbled something about women and resumed his position.
"I'm ssho gunna fockin' keel youuu when I getsh outta herrre...." Patch gurgled, his eyes vacant and staring.
"And how do you suppose you're going to do that?" Catherine turned her head to face him again. "You're in a heavily defended compound, held captive by unbreakable lasercuffs. What makes you think you can escape?"
Patch didn't hesitate to reply. "Weelll... yoush know thoshe bombsh I put around the buildingsh? They'rr about to go boooom!" He giggled happily.
Catherine's eyes grew as wide as dinner plates.
Outside the Reality Engine installation, five innoculous crates of C4, with detonators planted earlier by the O7 operative, went straight up.
The troopers to either side of him cursed as the shockwave, rumbling through the entire building, shook them off their feet and to the ground. Plasma rifles clattered across the floor.
"Shit!" Catherine flung open the door to the outside. If the Engine was destroyed after all this time and effort - ! She ran for the Engine room, black cloak flapping behind her.
"Damn." The weedy trooper to Patch's left spoke. "You smart sonovabitch!"
Patch laughed catching sight of movement behind him. "G'bye guys."
"Huh?" The trooper mumbled before a quick flash of silver whipped around his throat once, followed by a fountain of blood.
The other reached for his gun, but was only a year too late as a sai knife buried itself in his back. He cried out in pain.
"Whash took yooou sho long?" Patch muttered as he stood up, wiping blood from his chin with both cuffed hands. "Yoush let them fock me upsh!"
Tara didn't reply. If anyone had noticed the look on her face, they would have categorized it as something between despair and sadness.
"C'monsh. Let'sh get outta herre." Patch let the girl unlock his lasercuffs, and slammed open the door, picking up a plasma rifle from one of the fallen and pocketing his Desert Eagle. "That'll only hold them for sho long."
Tara followed, face set.
A beam of pure white light flashed down through the skies of Universe #666 Hades, dumping two individuals forcefully into an already existing crater with the emblem of a triangle within a perfect circle.
Rain got up, stretched, and helped Alex to her feet. "She's here all right. There was a Window already open here before - that's why it was so easy to get here."
Alex stood up, checking her knife was still at her belt, along with its stock of several green materia. The wooden box Tara had tossed her as a final gift was firmly in her pack, and her blonde hair was held out of her face with a single braid. "Let's do this. For Patch."
"For Patch." Rain echoed, checking his staff hadn't been damaged on the trip through the Engine.
"So... any ideas where to start?"
Rain didn't answer, choosing instead to look around him.
The putrid stench of rotting flesh and garbage lingered in the air thick with ozone. A sky lit by a dying, red sun revealed little more than Rain could already feel - even more so than the world they had just come from, this was a dead planet. Sighing, he picked up a rusty old sign that had caught his eye as he scanned the landscape.
Alex looked at the sign and at the desolate landscape dotted with occasional trash heaps. "I guess this is even farther ahead along the timeline of the last universe we were in."
"Either that, or really messed up." Rain replied, remembering his first words upon seeing the world that Patch had seen. His heart fell. How was he supposed to find the woman they were looking for in a place like this?
A rustling in the trash heap behind him caught his attention.
Alex and Rain both whirled, weapons at the ready, to face one of the strangest sights they had ever seen.
A featureless, humanoid black mass, that seemed to be made entirely of a shifting, constantly moving, black material that flowed like liquid but looked solid. Eyes that were little more than indents in the head, devoid of any expression whatsoever, gazed at the pair of SFMA cadets. It's upper body, supported by a thin torso, hunched over as if it was in pain, rose up straight to an impressive seven feet.
Alex stared.
Then it was moving, no, flowing towards them, inhumanly fast, as razor sharp, twisted black blades formed from 'arms' and it attacked.
"What the hell is it?" Rain yelled, more in shock than surprise. Then he was dodging a swipe that would have taken off his head. Knowing what to do in a battle situation even if he knew about nothing lese, he parried the next blow with the blunt end of his staff. "Alex?"
Alex was backing up already, as another one of the creatures forced her backward. It was much stronger than she was, and although she was faster, the way it moved very nearly took her off her guard. An attack she launched would not be dodged, but more like the thing flowed like liquid around the knife she held and reformed itself after the attack.
"A little help here?" She muttered grimly, as her M41-A Zero-Seven trooper knife slashed through the formless thing for the seventh time, the only evidence it had ever done any damage was a small trail of black ichor on the edge of her blade.
Rain was doing much better in comparison, as the single plasma blade of the ashandarei spear hissed every time it contacted alien flesh, obviously doing some harm. But he had still failed to land any solid blows, and the thing came a little closer to hitting him -
- a long, razor edge whipped toward him, he twisted away, only to have a bit shaved off the edge of his combat jacket -
Scratch that. Had hit him.
"I LIKED that jacket!" He cursed as he swung the blunt end of his spear up, over, and straight down, landing his first real hit on the thing's head,
Like a glass mask, the face shattered, and in its place, millions of razor sharp tentacles reached towards his flesh, ready to shred him like a Cuisinart on 'puree'.
They bounced off a magical barrier, courtesy of one very pissed off blonde.
"Like hell you will!" Alex grinned, reveling in her increased magical prowess. Behind her, a sticky black smear among the dirt was the only evidence the other one of the things had ever existed.
The thing pushed against the magic, but this was a fight it could not win. It shifted into a blob instead, and began to cover the expanse that the Barrier spell protected.
Alex let the magical forcefield drop, and released another spell, unaware of Rain behind her feeling incredibly useless. "Howling breath of winter, freeze the blood! Di-Ice!!!"
"Not bad." Rain muttered, tapping the side of the large Popsicle that had formerly been an attacker. Then he twirled his staff around in several glowing blue arcs, and somersaulted over the large black chunk of ice once, dividing it into various bite-sized chunks.
Alex smiled smugly. "It worked after all! I'm a mage!"
"Whoop de friggin doo." Rain replied, emotionless. "Where do we go now? Durandal?" Fishing the handheld out of one jacket pocket, he keyed the 'on' switch and watched the Durandal test pattern scroll across the screen, followed by a long string of binary.
Then the cyborg's voice pulsed out of the speakers. "Where are we?"
"Welcome to Hades." The teenager muttered, deactivating his staff and slinging it over one shoulder. "Or, as anyone who knows a thing about mythology would say, hell."
"Mythology..." Durandal was mystified. "What's mythology?"
Alex palmed her forehead, coincidentally mopping it of sweat. "I think its part of the history of the people they call Ancients in your world."
"Oh." Durandal replied, it being his day for short answers. He was still trying to get over the fact that there was marginally less filespace in the handheld computer than his original database: e.g. his own brain. Mental claustrophobia is not nice.
"So how do we find this 'Kira'?" Rain repeated. "I mean, don't they have dog tags or tracking devices on your world?"
"As a matter of fact, yes." The computer program that was all that was left of the human David J. Skye replied. "All troopers, Imperial nonexcepting, have an implant in their bodies that allow their own force to track them. Imperial attempts to find the Rebels in this way were unfruitful as the Rebels used a frequency unknown to them."
"...I... see." Rain lied. "So, are you saying we can find her?"
"Yes." Durandal answered, all one word answers again.
"Rain!"
"What is it, Alex?"
"I... think you should take a look at this."
The SFMA cadet whirled. "What? I'm trying to get the stupid computer to... to...."
He stared as the dark smear on the ground that had been one of the things that attacked them reformed itself into a humanoid shape. It flowed over to the one that was intermingled with large handfuls of crushed ice and became a bigger monster, the remains of two being able to merge.
"...I resent that..." Durandal muttered.
"I'll take it back if you have any bright ideas." Alex whispered. The earpiece comlink she still wore was whisper-sensitive, after all, and there was no real need to yell.
None at all.
"As a matter of fact, I do." The computer replied. "...Processing."
Rain sighed. "Does it take you that long to come up with a plan? I mean, here's one for a good plan. RUN!!!"
And he did, Durandal held firmly in one hand, his plasma spear in the other. Alex followed, scrabbling up and over the pile of trash.
Wow.
I guess they weren't really joking when they called this place Hades.
I mean, in the other universe we only got kidnapped by a small rebel force. That was bad enough - if we had to be kidnapped, I preferred to be on the winning side. In this one we get attacked by two... things within five minutes of landing - things that had the power to merge with each other and apparently were very concerned about making Alex and I into one very messy raw human salad.
Think about that for a minute.
Ew.
No, don't stop to think, just RUN!!!
I leapt up and over, just clearing the Big Pile o' Junk (tm), Alex seconds behind me, blonde hair flying from the chase.
But the thing was just behind, using that odd movement that could only be described as flowing. Because that was what it did. It just basically stated 'screw all the arms and legs and other things that humans need' and went liquid, crashing against the top of the pile of crap like a wave breaking over a stone.
I dashed down, frantically trying to clear some more ground, when I heard a yell behind me as Alex tripped and fell, caught on something.
Dammit. You have to be noble, don't you? You have to save the girl from the thing or whatever, and... screw it. I turned and struggled up the junk slope, just as the black flowing thing caught up to her.
Then two things happened.
One: the iridenscent blue slash and the zap of a plasma discharge hit me as about the same time a plasma bolt impaled the thing. The thing made a sort of keening sound that could only vaguely be described as screaming, as it had no mouth to scream out of. It was still a freakin' horrible noise.
Two: Alex turned on her heel, facing backwards, even as she was trapped, and let loose a spell that blasted a short-range bolt of ice at the thing.
Ice hit only a second before plasma bolt did.
I looked at the larger, holey Popsicle and fought down a bad joke.
Instead, I contined to Alex's side, and saw her ankle, cut open and swollen. The culprit was none other than a tin can.
"People shouldn't leave their junk out here. It's a health hazard." I said, watching her flick a short Cure spell into the leg. It healed instantly.
She grimaced, so I offered her a hand up. She took it gratefully. Then we both turned to look at the newcomer.
The newcomer was youthfully female, sporting a single-braided dusky brown ponytail and something that may or may not have been the remains of a bodysuit. A charging hip holster held a plasma pistol, and further along the midriff, a knife hung that could have been identical to Alex's M41-A but looked so modified it was hardly anything like the original. A short jacket, torn and ripped at the edges, added to the flair. A pair of slender hands ended in fingerless gloves with what looked like materia grooves. None of the small green orbs are present, however.
An artist with the 'wear and tear' idea of dressing.
"Who are you?" She called, in a clear voice that could be used to cut diamond. "Don't get anybody out here much often, in the Waste."
Alex pokes me in the ribs, but I still answer. "I'm... not from around here." I hope that answer was good enough, anyways. "We're looking for some woman called Kira Highwind. You heard of her?"
Something that could have been recognition flashed across the girl's face, but was quickly replaced with a look of casual indifference. "What's it to you?"
"The name's Rain. She's Alex." I do the honors of introduction, having a new resolution of being the 'nice guy'. Maybe my little trip into the Engine changed me more than I thought.
The woman doesn't answer. "You'd better come with me before it starts snowing. Once it gets cold out here, it gets cold. Been like that for years."
"Really?" Alex asks, unable to keep her curiousity down. "What's this place called?"
The girl flicks her braid over her shoulder. "This used to be some old Ancient city. Now its just a junkheap for the scavengers in Tribe Omega."
"Where...?" Alex continued, but I remember the sign. The sign written in a language I knew what looked like, but had no real knowledge of.
I can't stop myself from blurting it out. "Russia."
The girl laughs. Her accent is strange, something I can't really place.
"No. Close, though. This city... this mess... we call it Yahl Russa."