The Reality Engine had been placed under maximum security conditions. This had involved digging it up from the original Imperial base where it had been housed and carted off to the Imperial City.
Actually, the Reality Engine could have been placed in a number of smaller bases and MEDUSA plants along the sparsely guarded industrial sectors outside the main Imperial City, but those areas had been suffering "terrorist attacks" from an "unknown source". The average citizen in the Imperial City would have been curious about exactly who, as according to the reports that were paraded night and day across the public screens and monitors, the small terrorist group known as the Zero-7 organisation had been utterly decimated in a full-scale attack from the Imperial Guard.
The average citizen (had he been highly observant) would also have noticed the increased number of Imperial Guard patrolling the streets after dark, and the small, elite group of Imperial Dragoons that had been posted on the city borders. Rezo Takada, his presidential highness himself, had looked nervous at his last press conference. What was up?
But surely nothing could happen. This was the hub of Imperial influence, their capital city, their stronghold! Nothing could happen here. The city was guarded by a wall of concrete and steel fifty feet high on all sides, with artillery and guard towers posted at adequate intervals. Virtually impenetrable.
What? What was that? An attack from another reality? Preposterous. President Rezo Takada had stated that the other realities housed people with technology far below the armaments that the Imperial army were armed with. Tribesmen with spears and wooden shields would find themselves up against tanks, MEDUSA, and plasma weaponry. There was no chance that sentient species from another reality would dare to attack them, no sirree. And the Engine couldn't be controlled as of yet anyway - apparently it needed some sort of "key" to function properly. Imperial scientists were working on that particular problem right now, and they expected success any day soon!
The Imperial Empire would reign victorious.
Which was also why the Reality Engine, secure in the heart of an Imperial military lab, was unguarded. This also explained why nobody noticed when a cylinder of light flickered to life in the middle of the Engine once more. This coincidentally also explained why nobody noticed when the cylinder of light snapped off, and three figures were left lying in the middle of the Engine.
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: 5ive: br3ak0ut
I came to slowly.
The Engine seemed almost a part of me. It hurt when I hurt, it felt what I felt... I began to think of it more as some sort of living being instead of just a machine. That was how I knew how the Anima were trying to break through.
We got there in time to stop them. Luckily.
I crawled to my feet, my strength returning even as I did so, and reached for the heavy personal terminal clipped to my side. "Durandal?"
"..ugh.... did someone get the plate number of that truck?" Kyrina muttered blearily, feeling for her belt holster and plasma pistol. "What happened?"
"Welcome to your world." I said, not really believing the words that came out of my own mouth. With a nod to Alex, I drew my ashandarei and powered it up. The blue glow from the weapon was comforting in the darkness. "Alex, get me Durandal?"
She flicked her blond hair back, and stared around us for a long moment, crystal blue eyes surveying the landscape, before tossing me the handheld computer. "This... this place... Rain, this isn't where we were when we left."
I sigh and thumb the power switch on the handheld as the Durandal test pattern appeared on the tinny screen. "Alex, I couldn't care less about where we are now, as long as we're in the right reality..."
"Whoa." Kyrina looked around the room - the steel walls and opaque glass windows, taking stock of the situation. "This your reality? Awfully small for one, innit?" She grinned cheerfully. Most likely her hangover had been lost in the timeless process of traveling via Reality Engine. Nothing discorporation into individual atoms wouldn't cure.
"Durandal?"
"I am listening, Rain. However, I have no idea where we are. Can you get me linked to any sort of surveillance system?" The smooth, regulated tones of the cyborg, although small, was a massive comfort. The light from my ashandarei made the room almost eerie, lit in a blue glow.
Alex drew her knife. "That should be no problem."
I nodded. "Follow my lead, guys - we're getting the hell out of here." I strode up to one of the glass mirrors, peering into a reflection of myself, having the bizarre feeling that I was watching myself watch myself watch myself watch myself...
Shake it off, man. This may be a battle situation, and you must NOT lose it... keep it together...
Taking a deep breath, hearing the 'click' of Kira loading her plasma pistol behind me and the whirr of air displacement on my other side as Alex spun her M41-A knife idly, I lunged, and slashed in a crescent motion, once, twice, three times.
A perfect circle of glass fell backwards into a surveillance room. A red-uniformed guard was there sleeping as a camera whirred, viewing us from the back of a screen. He awoke at the sound of the glass circle hitting the floor and shattering into about a million pieces, of course. But that was all he did, as Kyrina, moving like a shadow, ghosted behind him and broke his neck.
A red diamond was visible on his forehead, shaved bare.
Dammit.
Durandal beeped violently. "Imperial Guard! We are in a hostile environment - the Engine must have been held under surveillance here!" I had already come to the same conclusion about a second before. Now... a plan of action, a plan of action...
"Okay, this is what we do. We get out of here. Always assume we're outnumbered, so don't raise any alarms through stupidity." Kyrina 'hmphed', and Alex stifled a laugh. "We get our bearings, then hijack a vehicle and get out of here." I stopped there, mainly because I had no idea what to do after that.
Kyrina nodded, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and pulling her torn jacket closer around her shoulders. "I have no idea where we are, so you're the boss."
"Me?"
It was about then I noticed how I had been acting. A commander, a lieutenant telling the troops where to do what and when...
Screw this.
I sighed. "Ky, this is YOUR reality. Got that straight? You lived here and were part of a rebel organisation until you were sent to Tribe Omega via Reality Engine fault. You should be calling the shots, not me."
Alex was about to interject, but Kyrina beat her to it. "Assuming what you're talking about isn't complete and total bull, you seem on top of the situation. You should handle this."
I bit back a reply as Alex finally got a word in. "Now is not the time for arguing, now is the time to get out of here..."
Wordlessly, I agreed. No point stalling. I sliced the lock off the door with a quick slash of shimmering blue energy, and it was game time.
On a grimy, dirty bar on the outskirts of the city, three Dragoons were having a beer.
The general Dragoon is different to the Imperial Guard in several ways. Their uniform is black instead of the generic red, and they wear silver body armor on the outside of their uniform. They are also supremely proficient in the use of hand-to-hand weapons. As they were fond of saying, "Any idiot can pull a trigger, but it takes a particular type of idiot to want to charge against people with guns armed with nothing more than a sharp bit of metal."
Dragoons were the cream of the crop, acting as recon units, spies, and pretty much one-man armies. Rezo Takada had once boasted that one Imperial Dragoon was the equal of fifty armed Imperial Guards. It wasn't really all that surprising, as Dragoon training often involved taking on a large number of armed Imperial Guards at the same time.
"This is absolute bloody BALLS." One of the Dragoons swore. He was short and stocky, but the way he idly bounced the riot shockprod on his leg suggested he knew how to use it. An issue plasma pistol hung at his side. He was known as Biggs.
Wedge, his partner, nodded, staring moodily into the bottom of his glass, an antique Winchester shotgun propped over his right shoulder. "I know. We were promised a war, dammit! New land to conquer... and whaddaya get? Street patrol."
"You're not telling me you actually buy all of the 'other reality' crap that our Presidential Highness spews." The third Dragoon said, long black hair hanging loosely in strands around his face. "There is no such thing as another reality... this is just another fairy tale concocted to keep us happy while we wait for nothing."
"Wit' all due respect, Cap'n," Biggs muttered, taking another gulp of his beer, "I kinda wish those O7 terrorists were still 'round here. Then we'd have some REAL competition."
Kyle Swiftedge, 2nd Dragoon Lieutenant, sighed, drained his mug, and reached for his naginata, propped up against a wall. "We'd better get going, then. They may be paying us by the month, but I'm not going to just sit here. This is boring enough."
Twin calls of "Aye" from the other two, and the three Dragoons checked their gear, paid for their drinks, and stepped out into the streets of the city.
Alex clicked a Aero materia into her knife, filling one of the former vacancies, and words of power, drawing from the life force of the planet itself, flowed from her mouth. "Gusts of wind, come to me, swirl and gather gracefully! Aero!"
The resulting blast of wind knocked an Imperial Guard through a window. He fell, screaming, outward. Kyrina squeezed off three shots, two finding their mark in a stocky guard's chest and another clipping the scalp of another. Rain powered past the last one who turned to run, and let the trooper kill himself as he ran into the plasma blade of his ashandarei, the glowing blade punching clean through crimson uniform and body armor beneath. Blood spattered.
"Okay, we're in business." Alex pulled a jack plug from the underside of one of the control panels. "Durandal, get us a way out of here."
The AI replied promptly even through the inefficiencies of a direct data link. "There is a hangar bay in the north of this installation. This seems to be a science research facility of some sort..."
"Vehicles?" Rain asked, as Kyrina took up a post guarding the corridor to the small communications office we had taken over.
"There are fifteen MEDUSA without pilots in the hangar, as well as four of what appear to be armored personnel carriers." Durandal spoke out once more. Rain felt a flash of gratitude for the thing once known as the human David J. Skye, mind compressed into nothing more than a data file.
Rain cricked his neck, yawning. "Se we hijack a APC, as none of us know how to pilot one of those MEDUSA things."
"MEDUSA?" Kyrina paused. "I remember that name..."
"You remember the name because you were from this reality." Alex snapped. Rain shoots her a look, not understanding why she was being so snappish all of a sudden.
But Rain had no time to dwell on that thought. They were possibly deep in hostile territory, where life expectancy stretched to minutes in an optimistic situation. "Okay, guys. Let's go."
The words had scarcely left his mouth when the shrill whine of an alarm sounded. The rush of booted feet could be heard in the corridor, right as Kyrina yelled, "We've got company!"
The teenager grabbed one of the fallen plasma rifles and tossed it to Kyrina in exchange for her plasma pistol. The brown haired girl accepted the heavier weapon gratefully, racking the slide back and checking the plasma magazine was fully charged before returning fire down the short corridor.
"We're pinned down!" Kyrina ducked around the corner as plasma bolts tore holes in the wall opposite the door. "We need a way out!"
Alex ripped the jack plug from the console before drawing her knife. "We can fight our way out..." She turned to Rain. "Rain?"
Rain wasn't there. He had thrown himself out the window a few seconds earlier.
The SFMA cadet dropped and rolled as he hit the floor. Thankfully, it had been only a eight-foot drop, enough to hurt but not enough to break anything, at least, not seriously. It must have been the person Alex blasted out the window that set off the alarm then, Rain thought.
He backed away, seeing the blue slash of plasma fire from the window that he had just dropped out of. "Get down here!" He yelled, hoping that the other two would hear him.... a second of pure gut instinct told him to turn around, and as it was, the member of the Imperial Guard who had been sneaking up behind him hit air as Rain dropped to one knee, slashed horizontally across, relieving the guard of both his legs. He screamed, attracting the attention of a few more of the Guard, who opened fire with plasma weapons.
Rain, thinking fast, rolled, snagged the screaming guard up to chest height, and used him as a human shield. Blue plasma scarred holes in the man even as Rain held him up protectively. Whipping out Kyrina's plasma pistol from a jacket pocket, he ducked low and fired out beneath the man's legs.
Three of the men dropped as plasma fire knifed them in the chest. Another sprouted a hissing plasma hole in his skull and fell like his lights had been cut. Rain grabbed the dead man he was using as a shield, twirled, shifted his weight to one leg, and let fly - the body hit two more of the men and sent them down in a heap of arms, legs, and plasma weapons.
A cry of "DiBolt!" came from behind him, and the few men that still remained on their feet went down, twitching with the residual electricity charge. Rain swung around to see Alex next to him, flaxen hair framing her pale face, arms stretched out in a caster's stance, and Kyrina dealing with another group of men that flooded from another door.
The brown-haired girl was having a hell of a time. It had been a while since she had had the chance to kill anything that didn't regenerate when you whacked it around and carried firearms as a nice bonus, too. The first man through the door of TechDiv Imperial Laboratory 2B was victim of a haymaker punch that sent him reeling, giving Kyrina time to frisk him and slam a dual kick into his midsection that knocked him flying back out the door where three more of the Imperial Guard waited.
"Missing something?" Kyrina grinned, holding up two grenade pullrings in a fingerless-gloved hand.
The guard looked at her, getting up, and looked at the two grenades that were attached to his belt and now beeping rapidly. "...Shit." He remarked, a split second before the door and the men behind it vanished in a fireball. Kyrina easily shifted around the shockwave, and she poked her head around the flaming wreck of the doorway before yelling "Clear!"
Alex and Rain joined her, Durandal held in Rain's left hand, the right carrying Kira's very own plasma pistol and the ashandarei across his back. Alex grinned maniacally as she dispatched another guard, short knife hamstringing him as she danced around him, the man flailing out wildly with a similar knife but only contacting air. A swift kick, and the man's own knife flew out of his grasp, allowing Alex to dash in, then out, as the diamond-edged M-41A trooper knife severed neck.
The group joined back together and ran through the corridors, looking for all the world as if they'd never split up.
But still the alarm rang....
"Durandal," I yelled, almost in frustration, "What's the most direct path to the hangar?"
The AI didn't miss a beat. "Take the next left, then take down the four guards waiting around the corner at the door labeled '3D'. Then go through the door and..."
"How do you know all of this?" Alex yelled.
"Direct data download from camera feeds." Durandal replied smugly. "There are advantages to having a purely electronic existence."
Kyrina missed a step, looking at the palmtop. "Who the hell IS that?"
"Long story." I muttered, reaching the door marked 3D, sliding low around the corner, twisting my body up in a kick. I felt the 'snap-click' of the jaw I hit snapping and getting crushed into the skull all through my leg.
Not even letting the other two guards recover from the shock of seeing a teenager appearing from nowhere and rise up to slam a colleague in the mouth, I punched out with one arm sideways, splintering the femur with pure force. I felt something give, anyway, and the man fell, howling in agony. The other ate a barrage of plasma bolts courtesy Kyrina, who was cheerfully unloading a full magazine of plasma ammo into the body on the floor.
"That's enough, we need to conserve ammo..." I said, just as she grinned and picked up a fresh plasma rifle from one of the bodies. "Never mind." I myself picked up another plasma clip and reloaded Kyrina's own plasma pistol. "We're getting out of here."
"Straight ahead, to the right this time, and through the double doors." Durandal chirped, sounding remarkably chipper for someone who had been cyborged by the empire he had worked for and then condensed into pure data memory.
Sighing, I cocked the plasma pistol. I was going to have a few words with the human-turned-AI once I got out of this mess... I nabbed a few fragmentation grenades off one of the guards' belts (they wouldn't be needing them, anyway) and kept moving.
The door was guarded by two BlackOps with heavily modified UMP submachine guns - laser sight, heavy bore, most probably subsonic teflon-coated rounds... I told the other two to wait behind me... but Alex was there. Stupid mistake.
I guess she does like to take the lead. Great, good, whatever. Now I could piss off back home and let her save the bloody world.
What could I do in a situation like this? Go around the corner.
I heard the near-silent whiffle of subsonic ammo as I slid home around the edge, bouncing up as Alex flung up a magical shield close-range to block the shots. Teflon-coated rounds span apart like tiny cocoons at subsonic range, creating shrapnel that flew in all directions. I cursed as the rounds tore apart the ground in front of me as the BlackOp fired wildly; I had no such magical protection.
Hand-to-hand, then.
I dropped both the palmtop and the plasma pistol, and let out a leg sweep that probably would have floored the BlackOp. He jumped over it, and countered with a kick that I caught just in time and twisted. He span with the move, and let out a frenzy of jabs that I blocked - well, mostly. My forearms felt a mass of bruises, though - this guy was taller than me, and man, did he hit hard.
So, trained in physical combat, then. So how about this?
I repeated the leg sweep move. As predicted, he jumped over the move and tried to counter -
-but not before I broke out of the leg sweep mid-attack and rose up, slamming one knuckle home in the BlackOp's crotch. He doubled over, allowing me to knee him in the face and knock him out.
I raised an eyebrow and looked at Alex. She was armed - in this confined space, I had no chance to use my ashandarei. She had no such problem - her knife flashed out, glittering silver. The BlackOp charged her again, and she countered, spinning a web of steel in front of her that pretty much shredded the poor guy.
He fell, and I saw my fellow SFMA cadet grin at me. She too was enjoying the rush of combat.
I looked at the BlackOp. For some reason, I couldn't resist a jibe.
The fool was wearing a pair of sunglasses. Nice ones too, by the look of them. Ray-Bans. A quick, solid swipe across his nose, and the sunglasses lay in my hand. The BlackOp stared me back in the face, sweating heavily, clearly scared.
Brushing my hair back with one hand, I donned the sunglasses. The area was bright enough for the use of them to be applicable rather than merely for show. The BlackOp stared down my newly acquired Matrix-style sunglasses and the barrel of his own UMP that I had picked up off the floor, and shuddered.
"Tell Renaku that the boy who met him in a fair fight last time wants a rematch." I muttered, then snapped the barrel of the rifle up sideways, knocking the man out. He would be out of it for a few hours at most, but he would be alive to tell the tale.
Alex looked at me curiously. "Surprising."
"What?" I hissed. I was in no mood for jokes.
"You look awesome with sunglasses."
I sighed as Kyrina caught up (having been caught in some random battle from the rear). "Let's blow this door. Alex, do the honors?"
She did an over-exaggerated bow. Kyrina, for some reason, cracked up. "As you command."
What was up with her? Something weird was sure as all heck going on...
"North wind, bring the chill of the winter storm! Ice!" The freezing mist spread outwards, encasing the door, and for a split second Tara attacking the original form of Durandal, the massive DA-00001A prototype tank, sprung to memory. Alex paused, then followed it up with another spell. "Out of the ground, raze all the greenery with flame! Fire!"
The admittedly honest-sized fireball erupted around the door, and extreme cold met extreme heat. The door cracked and shattered. I turned my face slightly to the side as metal and ice fragments exploded past me. Kyrina looked on in amazement.
"You can do THAT with magic?"
I shook my head. "You really don't remember anything, do you? You're a high level mage. You have to remember something."
"Maybe something could jog her memory..." Alex then yelled out. "DUCK!" A small platoon of the Imperial Guard had noticed that the door had been blown open, and returned fire. But that wasn't important - the thing that was was that a few pilots had immediately scrambled to MEDUSA cockpits upon our forced entry.
I holstered the palmtop computer and dragged the second UMP rifle to me, one in each hand. "I'm sure the sight of Patch would, if they were as close as Patch said they were."
"But Patch is dead." Alex muttered softly, only just audible over the shouts of men and the low whine of plasma discharge.
To my surprise, a voice answered. "Negative."
"What?" I said, a second before Alex did. "Patch is alive...?"
"Correct." The smooth voice that we both knew as the voice of Durandal spoke from my holstered palmtop. "Each trooper has an implant that allows them to be tracked; did I not tell you before?"
"Meaning?" Alex yelled over the sounds of gunfire.
Durandal paused. "The implant tells me that the host is moving. Alive."
"Patch is alive?" I near-yelled. "Great - that's the first place we're heading after we get out of here..."
"If we get out of here." Durandal replied wryly. "Our present condition indicates that MEDUSA are about to launched against us."
"Great, plan of action number six hundred and seventy." I said to myself. "Kyrina...?"
She was gone.
"COME AND GET IT!!!" Kyrina screamed in manic joy as the plasma rifle in her arms blazed repeatedly, the weapon rapidly heating up as it maintained a rate of fire it was never meant to hold. Men died in droves; the stupid few who didn't immediately seek cover had been the first to die.
The plasma fire suddenly stopped, and Kyrina ducked back behind one of the inert MEDUSA, cursing as the OVERHEAT light on the weapon came on. She dropped it and drew her own modded M41-A trooper knife. There was shouting going on, screams of the wounded... with any luck, they'd come behind here and check, come within range so that she could launch into close combat...
The MEDUSA she was hiding behind moved.
...Her cover was moving...!
The large dragonlike frame unfolded itself and turned around, the pilot inside grinning as twin gatling guns appeared from formerly hidden shoulder compartments and began to rotate...
"Untamed ferocity, drawn from the limitless skies above! DiBolt!" A voice yelled, and roughly 100,000 volts of raw electricity hit the MEDUSA. The pilot shuddered as the power coursed around him and through him. The MEDUSA itself packed up and refused to move.
But the men that had been taking advantage of the lull in sustained plasma fire were closing in, firing, and she had no ranged weapon...
Kyrina then caught sight of Rain sliding along the floor on his back having kicked off a wall for momentum, sunglasses still on, twin UMP rifles blazing away in his hands, the steady whiffle of subsonic ammo carving down the men where they stood.
She had to admit, Rain looked damned COOL.
"Hi." Alex said, as she popped up next to Kyrina. "This a private party, or can anyone join?" She quipped, ripping a pin out of a grenade with her teeth and letting it fly.
The MEDUSA pilot had been smart and cocky. He had believed what they had said in the Imperial Mecha's Pilot Guidebook - that anyone in a mecha was virtually guaranteed safety from any other enemy units excepting enemy mecha. Conventional weapons were useless against them, so the book said. The Imperial MEDUSA pilot had felt so safe in his war machine that he had even left the cockpit open, so he could see the face of his enemy in real-time instead of data display screens as he made his kill.
Pity.
The small high-explosive, fragmentation grenade that the BlackOps were so fond of clunked solidly into the bottom of the cockpit, as Alex had made a perfect throw, right on target.
Ideally, all was not lost. The pilot could have dropped out of his seat by releasing the harness catches, picked up the grenade, and thrown it back, but he was still reeling from the aftereffects of the Bolt spell. He got as far as dropping of his seat before the grenade went off and the MEDUSA went up in a budget-busting boom.