Chapter 9: Part 2
"Seiphie, do you really want to do this, it's like two in the morning." Irvine complained.
"Were going to Ester in the morning, this is my only chance." Seiphie said in a pouting voice.
Zell yawned and folded his arms, he was so cold he could swear he could see his breathe. "Why am I here? Dose this take three people?"
"She said no." Irvine relayed.
Zell's voice raised angrily "So did I!"
Seiphie walked past him, brushing past his shoulder. "Well you should have kept saying no." she told him.
"You stood by my bed and asked like 30 times!"
"I was going to stop at 31."
Irvine quickly interrupted them, he didn't want to stand here and watch them argue, he was losing sleep here. "Can we get this over with!"
Seiphie dragged both of them out of bed because she heard that a GF was somewhere around the Centra ruins. From what source and how reliable it was, was unknown. She also heard it was Tonberry, not just any Tonberry, King Tonberry. Tonberrys were hard enough to beat on their own because their extremely high HP and endurance. It wasn't overly strong, but it did have some special attacks, one in particular that could be potentially deadly. For those reasons a King Tonberry sounded almost impossible.
"Alright, let's go!" Seiphie charged head first in to the ruins, more awake then any normal person at this hour.
"Even at 2 in the morning, still energetic as ever." Irvine ran after her, followed by Zell.
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
"Hey look! There's one!" Seiphie pointed to one walking around the stature of the sorceress's knight in the dark of night by light of lantern.
'This is so annoying.' Zell lifted his arms above his head, stretching out.
(I wasn't sleep anyway.) Carbuncle admitted him.
(………) Bahamut had no comment as always.
When it heard their voice and spotted them nearby it slowly turned and began to walk toward them, knife in one hand, lantern swinging in the other. "You think this one is it?" Seiphie looked over the small monster questioningly.
"Uh, you might not want to get to close Seiphie." Irvine warned, lifting his hand to stop her only to find that she was already out of reach.
Seiphie only threw a smile back, "I can handle my" she jumped back as it took a stab at her with the butcher knife.
"I'm sure you can." Irvine lifted his gun into both of his hands and fired a set of rounds at the small creature, though being stuck and it continued to slowly walked forward. Zell cast a Thundaga spell, the ground the creature cracked and broke in small scraps of dust and debris as a large bolt of lighting streamed down from the sky and electrocuted the little Tonberry. But persistent as ever, the little Tonberry kept walking toward them.
A bright light flashed, unleashing a huge burst of red energy over the Tonberry in an explosion as Seiphie cast a flare spell, managing to knock it over on to it's back. Using its tail to help the little creature rose to it's feet, and after a quick shake of it's head it started waving it's lantern.
Everything darkened, and red skull like figure appeared over Irvine's head. He look up, managing to utter out "Uh oh, this can't be good." Before his body was flushing with pain, enough to drop him to his knees.
"Hey!" Seiphie exclaimed angrily, casting another flare spell. Taking the attack in stride and dusting off it's clothing from the burn debris, it countered, using Everyone's Grudge again. "!" Seiphie flinched, waiting for the pain to come when she spotted the ominous red skull, but she only felt a small pinch. "Hey, that didn't hurt at all."
The little Tonberry finally got to Seiphie with it's slow pace, drawing back it's arm and stabbing her with knife. It was enough to make her stagger back a few steps, clinching the wound. "That hurt.." She groaned, countering with strong smash with her nun-chucks, then she finished it off with a quick summon of Cactuar following after.
The green creature came out of seemingly nowhere, Cactuar jumped in the air behind the group, flailing it's arms and sending a rain of needles on to the wincing Tonberry. The small monster fell back, dropping the lantern this time when it fell. It's body disappeared, but something else took it's place.
A considerably bigger Tonberry, taller then they were. Above it's head a small crown floated and rotated. Yup this fit the description, if this thing didn't nothing would.
"I think this is it." Irvine rubbed his head nervously, It did look rather ominous.
"Yeah, looks like it." Zell dropped his shoulders and let his head fall, he hadn't been expecting this, it had to be 10 times more powerful then a regular one. "I looks mad." It was easy to tell that it wasn't happy.
Zell's first thought was to use a Scan spell. 'Whoa, how we supposed to fight this thing?'
Carbuncle obviously thought about his answer. (Hit hard, it can't be that fast………? What do you think Bahamut?) Carbuncle asked.
(I agree.)
"Alright, let's get this over with."
Irvine summoned Cerberus for a quick Triple spell, while Zell summoned Bahamut. Using their junction to boost his power as high has he possibly could as he waited in the sub-dimension. The large dragon appeared, through the clouds, firing a powerful Mega-Flare on to the Tonberry after 5 or so smaller recessive shots.
In retaliation, the heavy King Tonberry started jumping and pounding his tail, sending down a rain of misalliances junk that crashed down on their heads. It was surprisingly painful, very painful. Seiphie had to use a Phoenix down on Irvine, who reached Limit break as soon as he got up.
He opened the chamber, sliding in ammunition in to both barrels by the pairs until it reached it's capacity and he snapped it closed and lifted it with both hands toward his enemy. With a pull of the slide he fired 12 shots of pulse ammo at it with streams of light trailing behind each one, but it was only enough to slow it down. That was never a good sign. The Tonberry king held up the small butcher knife that seemed to gleam, and he rushed at Zell considerably faster then would be expected for something of that size, slashing him across the stomach.
(Zell, are you alright?)
(You ok?) Both of his GF asked at the same time.
'Fine.' Zell nodded with a small wince, scowling at the rip in his shirt. 'This isn't working, we'll be dead before we kill this thing!'
(Try using gravity.) Bahamut suggested.(It's a powerful force, it always seems to work well on Tonberryies)
With the tipple still in effect, Zell took Bahamut's advice and reluctantly cast the first Demi spell. Sending a shockwave oppressive black energy pressing down heavily on the Tonberry King. The second and third waves were enough to halve it's energy. The results could be seen by the next scan spell. 'It works.'
Seiphie and Irvine seeing the results themselves followed his lead, Irvine casting set of three Demis (all of them drawn from Odin this evening). While Seiphie cast Haste on everyone to expedite the process.
Tonberry started to look nervous, swinging it's lantern to using 'Everyone's Grudge' on Zell. An intense pain came over the boy's body, making him fall back and tremble on to the ground, holding his torso with a cry of pain.
"You ok Zell?" Seiphie turned to him, casting a set of three Cureaga spell on him to bring him to near full heath.
"Thanks."
Irvine cast another series of Demi spells, weakening the Tonberry even farther. It knew if it kept fighting at this rate, it was done for.
Another wave of Demi spells from Seiphie hit him, knocking it back to the ground and making his crown fall from it's head. The Tonberry scurried to it's feet with a nervous sweat, looking around frantically and fearfully.
"I'm sorry!" He quickly apologized for his actions, Picking up the crown, and quickly running over to the nearest person (Irvine) and handed it to him as a peace offering. "Here, take this!"
"Uh, thanks?" Irvine looked over the solid gold hypno crown, then down at the Tonberry. Confusing.
"Aww! He is so cute!" Seiphie yelled, knelling down to give the even more nervous Tonberry giving him a big hug.
"You can't be serious! He was just kicking our asses, now your hugging him!" Zell yelled, notably getting in more attacks then mentioned.
"He's still cute." Seiphie looked back at Irvine with an interesting look "And he's sorry Ok." The Tonberry nodded hastily in agreement, not wanting to end up the other Tonberry before him.
"Well, we did beat up the rest of his friends, so I guess that make's it even." Irvine said with a shrug, this was so confusing.
"He still has the knife in his hand." Zell warned untrustingly, Tonberry quickly dropped it.
"Forget it! Let's just go, this place is starting to creep me out." Seiphie picked up Tonberry and carried him back with them under her arm, and it didn't seem to mind.
Zell followed with another deep sigh.
Needless to say, Tonberry joined them.
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
Zell closed the door to his dark room only illumined by faint strands of moon light through close blinds, carrying the unjunction Carbuncle sleeping in his arms. Carbuncle woke up before he realized it, jumping out of his arms and walking to a nearby chair sitting beneath Zell's desk and finished sleeping there.
' I guess he's really sleepy...' Zell retreated back to his bed, laying horizontally across the covers with enough height for his feet not to leave the ground. His eyes inanely drifted to the blinds outlined in moon light, that silver moonlight reminded him of Bahamut. 'Hey Bahamut? Why don't you come out once in awhile?' Zell asked unexpectedly. 'Come on...'
Hmm...(………) Bahamut slowly appeared in his room as if out of the sub-dimension, luckily in a smaller size then normal, that was about 6 inches taller then Zell.
Zell sat up, his hands resting in his lap and his head tilted up at Bahamut. "You must be really tired, I don't think you got any sleep."
"I'm fine." Bahamut said.
Zell pulled off his shirt, tossing it carelessly aside to the floor in a messy Zell like manner. "Hey, remember when you told me 'Human's are capable of beautiful dreams and horrible nightmares'?"
Bahamut nodded "Yes."
"I been thinking on that a lot lately." The boy admitted, bending enough to pull off his shoes. "I still don't know what you meant."
"………Humans have built things capable of saving this world, and things that could destroy it. They have cultivated amazing things and help each other, but also fight, war and kill each other. I want to know why?"
Zell laughed lightly, removing his gloves which were the only thing he set aside carefully. "You're the humanist thing that's not a human I've ever seen." Zell pulled off his shorts, kicking them off, then laying back on his bed again in nothing but his boxers.
"What do you mean?" Bahamut asked.
"Think about it, you may not look like one, but you think the same way. There are a whole bunch of people in the world trying figure out the same stuff, you could be a psychologist."
Psychologist? "What's that?" Bahamut asked.
Zell admired the questingly look on Bahamut face, it was always funny to watch the dragon try to figure out things. "A Person that study's people."
"Ironic huh?" Again Zell laughed.
Bahamut's face contorted in even more confusion. "What's so funny?" He asked, almost angry.
Zell couldn't help but laugh. "You."
Zell pushed himself off the bead, walking behind the dragon and pushing him forward. "Your like a statue, loosen up."
Bahamut couldn't help but admire his initiative, he never met a human like this before, especially one that treated him like this. "………"
"Well I like you, and I'm going to find someway to get you to relax." Zell promised, he stood Bahamut and looked up to him. "Do you like me?"
"What?" "
You know, as somebody you can Junction with?" Zell asked, "Because your always so uncomfortable around me."
"Yes…and I'm not uncomfortable…" This time Bahamut asked a question. "What was it like before I met you? What was you past like."
Zell seemed happy he asked, Bahamut was asking him things. "Hey, your finally relaxing." Zell smiled "Well anyway, I don't remember much, 'cuse of junctioning and all."
Junction did cause memory loss, Bahamut didn't like that prospect. "Hmm……… I'm going to find something different."
"What do you mean?"
"To junction, what's the point of having a partner if they can't remember you."
"Hey, you called me partner." Zell gave him an unexpected hug. "You really do like me." He said in a teasing manner.
"Well,yes."
"Don't worry about that, I could never forget you, no matter what."
"I never met anybody like you, your different." Bahamut glanced over to the window. "Everyone else just wanted to fight me."
"Did they win?"
"No."
"You are so cool." Zell still held on to the dragon, but the boy opened his eyes and the happy expression faded.
"I got a bad feeling about all of this, the sorceress and all. I don't have any clue about what's going on, I mean a sorceress from the future. How can we stop that? What's to keep her from manipulating anybody, even GFs."
Bahamut began thinking, searching for words to comfort him. He couldn't find any, what could he say? What could he do?
Zell felt two strong arms wrap around him, knowing Bahamut sensed his current apprehensiveness and he wasn't just feeling a normal nervousness that came when undertaking an endeavor this large. "I'm alright." He said. "I just wanna stay like this………"
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
"Hey Zell wake up!" Carbuncle jumped on to Zell's chest in his usual manner, shouting at him to wake up as he always did when he wanted Zell to wake up.
After a few moments of this and a few head butts from Carbuncle, Zell finally opened his eyes to the dimly lit room only scarcely illuminated by the green glow of his digital alarm clock and the impression of sunlight against the closed blinds. He was suddenly flooded with a blinding light when Carbuncle open the blinds by pulling the draw string with mouth, Damn sunlight. Well actually the light shining in his room itself was pretty dim, it just seemed bright for the moment "Awwwww..." He found that he was still in Bahamut's arms with the cover wrapped around him. It had only been a few hours, the sun wasn't even up. Damn Seiphie, keeping him awake at all hours of the night. "What?"
Carbuncle climbed on to Zell's chest again, jumping once to rouse the sleeping dragon he was laying on top of. "Time to go, Remember, Edea wants an escort."
Zell blinked, looking up at him with a clueless expression.
"To Esthar."
"Oh………Yeah that."
