A/N: I have recommended listening for this chapter. For the sequence from Lenne opening the portal to the end of the Executor, I recommend "Escape" from the Xenosaga Episode I OST.
Seven of Spira's fast-moving seabound transports roared past the Imperial blockade, heading directly for the beach that Bevelle rested upon. The eighth transport was still on the other side of the Imperial lines, slowly sinking beneath the waves. In the distance, explosions could be seen on the beaches as the destroyers that remained of New Yevon's naval force attempted to take out the Imperial positions on the beaches that would hinder their landing forces.
Six transports maneuvered to go around the sea wall that was exposed at the low tide, but the seventh transport continued forward at maximum speed, impacting the sea wall and smashing right through it, the skids on the underside of the ship sending it airborne for just a moment. Then it crashed back into the surf, still going forward.
Five of the transports diverted to other landing beaches, while the one that had crashed through the wall and one that had gone around beached themselves on the sands before them, their front hatches blossoming open like a flower and disgorging already-firing soldiers. The heavy machine guns mounted at the front of the transports opened fire on the Imperial troops on the beach, concentrating on E-web nests and other troops with heavy weapons.
Spira's soldiers advanced under the covering fire of the transports, quickly forcing the Imperials off the beach and into the lower reaches of the city.
-
The tempo of the music Shuyin was playing had once again changed, and Lenne could see the shadows vanishing as operational lights came on all around Vegnagun's main cannon. Behind her, the huge weapon began to pulse blue as it charged energy.
"The end now begins," Shuyin said, his eyes shut loosely as his hands danced gracefully over the controls.
-
On the deck of the approaching Celsius, a dozen speeder bikes had been mounted to the jury-rigged ramps built directly onto the deck. As Jecht stood atop the platform they had erected so that all the first wave could see when he gave the signal, he crossed his arms and stared out at the approaching city, which was sporadically attempting to fire on the fighters and transports currently buzzing over it.
The revving of the speeder bike engines drowned out the sounds of the wind as the airship rapidly closed on the insertion point. The deck of the ship still thrummed beneath his feet as the anti-aircraft batteries mounted on the ship continued to fire on the TIE fighters and Carrack cruisers.
Moments later, Jecht uncrossed his arms and lowered them to the side. He took a glance at all the red panels mounted to the sides of the ramps, that would change color to green to let the riders know it was time to depart. The time was at hand. Lifting his left arm up to his chest, he flung it out to his side.
The panels all flashed green.
All at once, the revving of the speeder bike engines soared into high gear as the heavy roar of the jetpack rockets was added to the mix. The four rockets mounted to each speeder bike produced a thick cloud of white smoke, which quickly mixed together and formed one huge cloud covering the deck of the airship.
All at once, the riders released their speed brakes, letting loose all the thrust energy they had been building up. With a roar that resembled a sonic boom, the dozen speeder bikes suddenly raced forward up the ramps, their riders steadily pouring on more and more throttle. As the bikes' repulsor fields left contact with the solid ramps, they dipped slightly, an act that was more than made up for by feeding more power into the rocket engines.
As they had been trained to do, the riders all stood up in their seats as they went airborne, the better to balance out the weight of themselves and their vehicles. For several long moments, as the rockets expended the last of their power, the riders of the speeder bikes enjoyed the sensation of flight in its pure and unadulterated form.
Then the empty rocket engines detached from the speeder bikes and continued to sail forward, as the bikes themselves began to arc down toward the Bevelle Highbridge. As they closed on their target, they each engaged their brakes to reduce possible harm to the fragile vehicles they were riding.
As the repulsor fields contacted with the upper wall of the Highbridge, the speeder bikes were all bounced skyward. To counter for this, they slammed their brakes on at full power, dropping them down onto the bridge itself and into the midst of the confused and scattered stormtroopers who had been tasked with guarding it.
As a single unit, all the speeder bikes turned toward the city and kicked their thrusters back in, impaling on their directional vanes what stormtroopers they didn't burn completely through with the blasters mounted on the front of the speeders.
Ahead of them, the gate in the city wall was still open. Three of the speeder-mounted riders lined up and roared straight toward the gates, firing their blasters to ensure that the Imperials wouldn't try to shut the gates on them. The leftmost rider gestured outward with a hand and a powerful blast of Firaga magic smashed into the gate, warping and deforming it, as well as fusing the hinges and effectively freezing that door in place.
Behind them, the remainder of the first wave had all drawn their swords and were riding around the Highbridge area, concentrating on taking out the Imperial forces. Stormtroopers fell by the dozen as they were impaled, decapitated, and run down by the assaulting forces, while return fire merely sparked off the protective shields cast around the speeders and their riders.
-
After releasing its first-wave riders into the city itself, Airship swung around to the rear of Bevelle, where the palace and temple were located. As it came around and closed in to within thirty meters of the rear of the palace, the side panels that once housed the guided missile launchers slid open. The missile launchers had been stripped out, replaced with spacious hangars filled to capacity with more launch ramps and the Spiran paratroopers, equipped with the jetpacks salvaged from the Republic ships.
All at once, the paratroopers took running leaps out of the hangar area as more speeder bikes were frantically being loaded onto the launch ramps. Some of the paratroopers engaged their jetpacks right away, while others waited until they began to fall toward the sea. Either way, they all made their way quickly toward the rear of the palace and the huge picture windows that were to be their insertion points.
As they neared within ten meters, the paratroops armed and fired their grapple-guns, which were merely airguns that fired a length of strong cable with a grappler attached to the other end. The grappler had both magnetic and penetration systems to it, ensuring that it would secure itself to almost any surface and serve its user well.
The grapple-guns secured the paratroops to the wall not a moment too soon, as their rocket supplies began to cut off and recharge. Bracing themselves against impact with the wall with their heavy boots, the paratroops instantly began to rappel down the wall toward the windows.
The first man to reach them placed his boots securely on the windows, then drew his blaster pistol. He kicked off the window, fired three shots into it to weaken its durability, then slammed his boots hard into the glass, shattering it at the same time he let go of his grapple-gun and rolled forward into the room.
Standing up, the paratrooper drew his DC-15 rifle and quickly scanned the room, determining it to be free of Imperial forces. Waving forward his squad, he advanced in a crouch toward the door leading out into what he assumed was a corridor.
"Epsilon Squad reporting. We've breached the palace, no contact with Imperial forces yet."
Shouldering his rifle, the leader of Epsilon Squad pushed open the doorway and stepped out into the hall. No sooner had he stepped clearly away from the door than fifteen blaster bolts with the diameter of a blitzball burned completely through him, lifting him off the ground and hurling him another ten meters down the hall.
"Man down!" one of the other members of Epsilon Squad called, flattening himself up against the wall to see what had killed their leader.
At first glance, the paratrooper would have merely called it a stormtrooper wearing dark colored armor. Then he looked closer and noticed that the helmet was shaped differently and the armor was bulkier overall. The huge blaster cannon it held in its right hand, as well as the open tubes that seemed to launch rockets were also weapons that a normal stormtrooper wouldn't be seen carrying.
Before the man could shout a warning to his squad, three rockets shot into the doorway and exploded, instantly vaporizing the man and crumbling down the entire wall that he had been pressed up against.
"Requesting reinforcements!" the third man called out as he primed and threw a thermal detonator out into the hall. "We're facing down an enemy soldier armed with a series of rocket launchers and a heavy blaster cannon, and he's tearing us apart."
"Confirmed, Epsilon Squad. Reinforcements are on your way."
-
Lenne watched in slight discomfort as the darkness of the Farplane was quickly dispelled by the ever-growing cerulean glow of Vegnagun's main cannon. Before her, Shuyin continued to key commands into the control panel, his hands dancing over the controls as his body swayed to a rhythm only he could hear.
"All shall find rest."
-
Nooj stood on the bridge of the Airship, watching the battle in both the sky and on the ground unfold before him. Spiran starfighters and TIEs continued to race through the skies, their lasers burning fiery green and red trails in the air. He looked out across to the Dreadnaught, the biggest ship in the Imperial fleet, and the most heavily-armed.
"We've got to give the soldiers more time," he said, nodding to the Al Bhed at the communications station just as one of the Carrack cruisers on the far side of the Dreadnaught detonated spectacularly. "Concentrate all fire on that Dreadnaught cruiser."
-
A wingpair of Jedi starfighters that had been shooting past the bridge of the Dreadnaught heard the new order over the fleet comm system and immediately doubled back, angling in on the bulbous shield generator protruding from the side of the ship's hull.
The two fighters opened fire at the exact same instant, the barrage of laser fire burning through the weakened shields that had been diverted elsewhere. The generator dome exploded into flaming wreckage, creating a beacon of light for other ships of the Spiran fleet to be drawn to the wounded Imperial flagship.
-
The bridge of the Dreadnaught rocked violently from the explosion of the shield generator. A crewman leaned over the station of the weapons officer, then turned up to the captain. "Sir, we've lost our bridge deflector shields."
The captain calmly turned back to the man who had made his report and said, his tones even, "Intensify forward batteries. I don't want anything to get through."
Outside, in the starfield, the captain could see two Spiran starfighters approaching. The forward turbolasers on the Dreadnaught opened fire on them. The second starfighter exploded into flames, but the Jedi starfighter in the front was only clipped on one wing, and it began to spin out of control toward the bridge.
Seeing this, the captain quickly turned back around as his second in command pointed toward the out of control ship careening directly toward them. "Intensify forward firepower!"
By now, the wounded Jedi starfighter was less than a fifty meters from impact with the bridge. "Too late!" the second in command screamed before diving away from the viewports, followed quickly by the captain himself.
At full speed, the Jedi starfighter slammed into the cruiser's bridge, the transparisteel viewports unable to hold the force of the vehicle's explosion back. A huge gout of flame shot back out of the destroyed bridge as the cruiser suddenly lurched downward toward the planet's surface, succumbing to gravity and the lack of control over the engines required to keep it airborne.
The Dreadnaught fell down toward Bevelle, its bridge aflame and explosions belching out along its length. It impacted on the superlaser mounted in the middle of the city, resulting in a massive explosion that swept up and hid both the superlaser and the cruiser from sight.
When the mushroom-shaped cloud of fire finally cleared, nothing remained of the cruiser or the superlaser. Half of the palace had been completely destroyed by the combined explosion of the cruiser and the superlaser, which had been built near the palace. What remained of the palace was awash in flames.
-
Corporal Church of the Grand Spiran Army kicked open the door of the civilian house he was searching and threw in the concussion grenade that he had primed in his hand. The stunning grenade went off with a muffled boom, and then he and his squad charged into the room, bringing their blasters to bear on the Imperial anti-armor crew that had been slowing their advance into the city.
No order needed to be given. With three quick shots, the Imperial threat had been eliminated.
As his squad turned to leave the building and continue their march toward the center of the city, Church's comlink crackled. "Corporal, we're pinned down by an AT-ST. They've got complete cover from us but a perfect line of sight. See if you can do anything with that anti-armor crew you just took out."
"Copy that, Sarge," Church said into his comlink before waving his men back into the room.
Keeping low to avoid being spotted by this renegade Imperial walker, Church moved toward the blown out wall and looked down the street in the direction he could see heavy blasterfire coming from. After a few seconds, he spotted the twin barrels of an AT-ST's chin-mounted blasters protruding from a building face, but there was none of the rest of the walker.
Finally, it dawned on him. He keyed his comlink. "Negative, Sarge. Merr-Sonns won't do anything. It chewed its way into a building and must've had an engineering team drill it some places to stick its blasters out of. None of the rest of the walker is revealed, so they must be using some kind of spotter."
"Confirmed, Corporal. We'll see what we can do about that spotter. You go knock out that walker."
"Sir!" a private called from beside Church. "I see the spotter!"
Church turned toward where the man was pointing with his sniper rifle, and just barely caught sight of an Imperial scout trooper peeking over the top of a building across the street with a pair of macrobinoculars.
"Right," Church said. "You know what to do."
Nodding, the sniper settled down against the floor and stared through the scope of his rifle, aiming across the street toward the adjacent building. A few seconds later, the loud crack of the man's rifle echoed over the street, and the soldier sat up, grinning triumphantly.
"You got him?" Church asked.
"If I didn't, sir, he isn't going to be in too much of a hurry to go back to work."
Church nodded. "Good work. Now let's go take out that walker."
-
The LAAT/i transport carrying the shield generator assault team from the Thunder Plains roared directly through the middle of the aerial battlefield over Bevelle, green laser beams streaking out from every turret on the ship as the group's snipers attempted to pick off Imperial soldiers in the city below.
Ahead of them, a squadron of TIE Interceptors formed up and maneuvered directly into their path, surrounding the transport with a hailstorm of destructive green energy. In the cockpit, the pilot flipped the switch to close the transport bay doors, throwing the transport into a hard roll to the right as soon as the doors were locked shut. The TIEs' laser bolts sparked off the transports Protect shields.
Arren's X-wing, leading a wedge of Jedi starfighters, roared into the middle of the TIE interceptor formation, destroying three outright and scattering the rest of the squadron. The survivors of the TIE squadron immediately broke off their attack on the transport and wheeled in pursuit of the X-wing and Jedi starfighters.
The transport banked away from the dogfight, angling in toward the city square. The scene that awaited them was utter chaos as Imperial and Spiran forces clashed in the square by the thousands. Blaster bolts were thick in the air as they shot back and forth throughout the square.
Yuna looked out through slats in the transport's doors at the battle below them. Along with the blaster bolts, magic rippled across the Imperial lines, wreaking the havoc of all four elements on the stormtroopers fighting to keep the Spirans from taking control of the city. As she watched, a Blizzaga spell exploded against an Imperial speeder bike, sending the rider flying fifty feet through the air as his speeder toppled over and skidded across the concrete, bowling over another stormtrooper and probably snapping that man's legs.
Nearby, she watched a New Yevon Praetorate Guardsman drive his sword through the chest armor of a stormtrooper, then pull his weapon free of the dead Imperial and stumble in the other direction, obviously wounded. As the Guardsman turned around, a nearby Imperial shot him point-blank in the chest with his blaster carbine, picking the Yevonite up and hurling him back several feet with a charred crater where his chest should have been.
Looking away from the gruesome battle, Yuna crossed the bay of the transport and pressed her thumb against the comlink switch into the cockpit. "Pilot! Set us down here!"
"Right away, Ma'am."
She immediately felt the LAAT/i bank to the right, coming around toward the area of the square that Spira controlled. As it came in to land, the bay doors slid back and locked into their open position as the Spirans inside readied their weapons in preparation to jump straight into a battle. Tidus and Yuna stood side-by-side at the right side edge of the bay, both holding on to the wires stretching across the ceiling.
As the LAAT/i lowered the last few meters until it was at an acceptable position to disembark its passengers, Yuna and Tidus looked into each others' eyes, acknowledging the fact that they were both going into a battle that they might not survive. Yuna smiled over at him and thumbed the ignition switch of her lightsaber in her free hand, causing the blue-green blade to flash into existence with the distinctive snap-hiss sound.
Tidus smiled in return, then was the first out of the LAAT/i's transport bay. Motion to his left caught his attention, and he saw an Imperial stormtrooper riding toward them on the back of a speeder bike, moving at relatively high speed.
Drawing the Brotherhood, the blitzer took the sword in both hands and brought it back over his shoulder, then ran forward in the direction of the Imperial trooper. The stormtrooper saw the blond blitzer running toward him, but was moving too fast to change his course in time.
Tidus swung his sword around, the sharp edge of the blade biting into the stormtrooper's armor just under his collar bone. The combined inertia of Tidus' swing and the stormtrooper's forward motion caused the blade to cut through the armor as though it were paper, slicing cleanly into the flesh and muscle beneath.
The stormtrooper collapsed backward off the speeder bike, blood spraying from the man's armor and pouring from inside his helmet. He hit the ground and rolled for a few feet before coming to a stop and laying limp. Ahead of him, the speeder bike careened forward and crashed into a park bench, its fuel system igniting and detonating spectacularly.
Yuna stepped off the transport behind him, spinning her lightsaber to deflect away the blaster bolts aimed toward the disembarking party. She turned a series of blaster bolts back toward the stormtrooper that had fired them, then lifted her left hand away from the lightsaber and gestured toward the wreckage of a Spiran TX-130S tank. The wreckage wobbled for a moment, then shot into the air and smashed down directly on top of the stormtroopers, crushing them flat in an instant.
As the rest of the commando team disembarked from the LAAT/i, she overheard a transmission over the short-range Spiran comlinks: "Lady Yuna has entered the battlefield!"
All around them, she heard a single sound rise up above the roar of blaster fire and the screaming of magical energy flooding the city square. It was a wordless cry of exhilaration rising from the throat of every Spiran soldier fighting for his or her freedom in Bevelle.
Yuna could not help but feel a rush of warmth as she realized that all those soldiers were cheering for her arrival. She had become a symbol for the Spirans, literally and figuratively, and her mere presence was a tremendous boost to the Spiran morale.
As the LAAT/i lifted and departed, she raised her lightsaber high in the air so that all around her could see, and then she began to run, charging directly for the Imperial lines.
The whole of the Spiran army rose and charged in her wake.
-
Far away from the battlefields of Bevelle, Lenne also felt a rush of exhilaration as Yuna's feelings washed over her. With Yuna directly leading them, she knew that the Spirans would ultimately prevail in their battle against the Empire. Like all great leaders in history, Yuna's presence would inspire the Spirans to great acts of heroism in the coming battle.
Closing her eyes, the songstress turned her attention toward the Bevelle palace, and the Imperial monstrosity that was slaughtering the Spiran soldiers that were attempting to take it.
Cupping her hands in front of her, Lenne focused her consciousness on the many aeons that existed within her spirit, finding the one that was most special to her, the one that would be most suited to eliminating that Dark Trooper. As she focused on the point of summoning within Bevelle's palace, she closed her left hand into a fist, raised it into the air, and then opened her hand, releasing the magical energy of the aeon toward the embattled city.
Behind her, she could still hear the musical notes of Shuyin keying in command sequences into Vegnagun. "There's no place to run."
-
In the same corridor that the Imperial Dark Trooper was camping, a black spot formed in midair in the center of the corridor, directly in front of the Dark Trooper. The Imperial ignored it for now, deciding that the Spiran troops that occupied the rooms along the corridor to be the greater danger.
Oh, how wrong it was.
Four sounds like that of fabric ripping echoed off the corridor as a quartet of tears shot out in the form of a cross from the black point in the center. Intrigued, the Dark Trooper now turned its attention toward the rip in space before it. The air continued to tear in a circular pattern outward from the points of the cross, as though being cut away with a pair of scissors. Finally, a full circle of torn space hung there in midair, and the space within the circle darkened into a black, swirling vortex.
From within the vortex emerged a pair of booted feet, clad in heavy plate armor. The figure continued to emerge from within the vortex, revealing a feminine form wearing dark blue full plate armor. She flowed from the vortex as though she were made partially of liquid, her body angling down until she came to be kneeling on the floor of the corridor. Her head was angled down, eyes closed, and her long red hair cascaded around her like a curtain of water.
She stood up slowly, rising to her feet, and rising, and rising. By the time she was fully upright, the Dark Trooper found itself looking up at this woman whose height had to exceed ten feet. Her eyes flashed open, the piercing grey orbs quickly focusing on the Dark Trooper and seeming to bore straight through to its nonexistent soul.
Her hands reached down to her right side, where hung a sickle and a long length of chain. The sickle she kept in her right hand as she coiled the chain around her left. She began to slowly advance on the Dark Trooper, holding the sickle loosely in her right hand. A cruel smile spread across her lips.
Recognizing her as an enemy, the Dark Trooper lifted the blaster cannon in its right hand and sighted it in on her. But before it could fire, the Dark Trooper suddenly heard the sound of metal clashing with metal, and looked down to find her sickle entangled around the barrels of the cannon. With a single hard tug, the blaster cannon flew free from his hands and sailed down the hallway.
The armored woman easily stepped aside, untangling her sickle from around the weapon with a flick of her wrist before turning back toward the Dark Trooper. Her cruel smile returned. "Shall we dance?"
-
"Mine is the power to crush Spira's despair!"
The hair on the back of Lenne's neck stood on end as a powerful charge of energy coursed along the length of Vegnagun's main cannon.
It was nearly time.
-
The tide of the Battle of Bevelle had definitely shifted in Spira's favor. What little that remained of the Empire's TIE forces were in full retreat, fleeing at maximum speed toward the shift in Spira's gravitational field that would allow them to escape up into space. The air forces of Spira were content to let them escape, and instead focused their attention on answering calls from the ground forces for air strikes, and escorting the remaining transports to deliver even more troops into battle against the rapidly-dwindling supply of stormtroopers.
On the ground, Yuna led the mass Spiran charge directly for the Imperial lines. Under normal circumstances, charging at the Imperials' well-fortified positions would have been suicide, but as the Empire was quickly discovering, the mass of Protect spells that had been cast upon those leading the charge was proving more than effective at keeping the Imperial blasters at bay.
And then the two opposing sides met, and became hopelessly intermingled as the clashing of swords and the scream of blaster fire increased twofold. Stormtroopers fell by the dozen, targeted by blasters, magic, and swords alike.
Yuna's rising lightsaber cleaved a stormtrooper's E-11 in half, and then she spun just as a blast of fiery magic shot past her and smashed into the stormtrooper, melting his armor away and incinerating the man beneath it. As she came back around, her lightsaber flashed before her, catching a red blaster bolt and sending it back through the black material of another stormtrooper's right eyeplate. The man twitched once and clattered against the pavement.
A third stormtrooper charged at Yuna in an attempt to burn her down at point-blank range, but a hail of blaster fire slammed into the man's torso before he could reach her. The shots lifted him bodily off the ground and threw him back into another stormtrooper whose blaster was tangled with a Spiran's sword.
Glancing beside her, she saw the soldier who had burned down the stormtrooper make an obscene gesture at the Imperial. "Get your ass up so I can kill you again!"
Yuna blinked at the crude nature of Spira's fighting forces, then shrugged it off and turned back to the battle at hand, catching a thrown thermal detonator in midair with the Force and throwing it back toward the stormtrooper who had thrown it. Whatever Spira's soldiers did or said after taking out an enemy was their prerogative, so long as they got the job done and eliminated the enemy.
By now, the Imperial lines were clearly shattered. One by one, stormtroopers began to come out from cover and retreat, running backwards so that they could still see where they were shooting as they left the square. Dozens more soldiers fell on both sides.
-
The armored aeon lifted her left hand up before her, forming a powerful protective shield of magic before her which easily absorbed and nullified the explosive damage from the spread of missiles the Dark Trooper had fired at her.
She grinned as she raised her hand higher in the air, and sent an answering wave of high-intensity fire back toward the Imperial soldier, intent on ending the battle quickly by rapid immolation.
But much to her surprise, the Dark Trooper ran directly through the field of fire, taking no significant damage in the process. It proceeded to lower its shoulder and smash directly into her, lifting her bodily and driving her through three consecutive walls. The Dark Trooper stepped back, causing an entire section of the wall and the floor above to collapse down on top of where it had smashed the woman.
The Dark Trooper paused for a moment, scanning over the pile of debris and wreckage before it. Determining that no human being could have survived such a cave-in, it turned and began to stalk away in search of more victims, its heavy bootsteps leaving craters in the tiled floor of the palace.
Behind it, the pile of debris shifted ever so slightly, and then a section toward the middle right side exploded outward, and a sickle attached to a chain shot out, arcing across the room and imbedding itself square in the back of the Dark Trooper. The Imperial soldier stumbled forward, then braced itself by leaning forward as the chain tightened and attempted to pull him backwards.
At the other end of the chain, the pile of debris suddenly burst out, and the armored woman stood up from within it, covered in grey dust, her armor just slightly dented. But a fire was burning deep in her cold grey eyes. "That hurt, you bitch!"
Wrapping the chain tightly around her left hand, she gripped it with both hands and then jerked backward with all her strength, ripping the Dark Trooper off his feet and sending him flying toward her. At the same time, she leapt up out of the debris and drew her right leg back. The two met halfway across the room, her heavy armored boot slamming into the side of the Dark Trooper's head with a tremendous crunching sound that could be heard from outside the palace. The Dark Trooper dropped like a sack full of tubers.
Standing up to her full height, she glanced down at her dully-throbbing foot, then over to the Dark Trooper, whose brains she had just kicked in. Upon seeing the gaping hole in the side of the helmet and all of the computerized circuits trailing out, she narrowed her eyes.
"A machina. Now it makes sense. The power, the immunity to fire, its strength… No wonder the Spirans were decimated by this thing." She jerked her head to both sides, the action accompanied by the sound of popping joints. "Still no match for me, though."
Coiling her chain back up and replacing both it and the sickle on her belt, she stepped out of the destroyed office and out into the corridor, following the sound of static. A few doors down, she nudged the corpse of a Spiran soldier with her boot, turning it over in time to hear a voice come out of the comlink. "We've captured the square."
-
Lenne looked up and behind her, toward the end of Vegnagun's cannon, raising both her hands in the air and spreading them outward as she closed her eyes. Out of the darkness shot a beam of light, which quickly spread open to reveal the Spiran skies above the western ocean. Far above, orbiting the planet serenely, the Super Star Destroyer Executor was visible.
"At last, Spira will be cleansed," Shuyin said behind her, playing the final programming keys in preparation to fire Vegnagun's main cannon.
-
The bridge of the Super Star Destroyer was already a riot of activity. Comm channels from the ship to the surface were jammed with requests for reinforcements, coordinates for orbital strikes, and the panicked reports of stormtroopers being overrun at every turn.
Admiral Piett, standing at the bridge viewport, stared down at the planet beyond the prow of the eight kilometer long ship, the flagship of the Imperial Navy. Through the clouds shrouding its surface, he could see the rebel fighters buzzing the capital city. Every now and again, he could see a flash of light that marked a tremendous explosion.
"Admiral!" a bridge officer called out over the racket. "Something's happening over the western ocean!"
Piett turned his glance in that direction to see a void. Forming over the ocean was a void of pure blackness at least a kilometer wide and growing. As the void grew and expanded, he could see something within it. A rich indigo blue color, glowing from deep within the void. It seemed to take on a distinctive shape, illuminating and silhouetting something. Something roughly cylindrical, with pulses of blue light emanating out from standardized points…
He realized exactly what he was looking at exactly as the sensor officer called, "Weapons painting from below!"
-
"Now. Vegnagun, fire!"
-
At the same moment, all across Spira, the ground rumbled as one. At first, it was unnoticeable to the warring soldiers fighting across Bevelle. Then as the tremors grew, one by one, Imperial stormtroopers and Spiran soldiers alike stopped fighting, all turning their eyes toward the west, toward where the sound of the rumbling was the most powerful.
Orbiting high above the city from within the Airship, Nooj watched in amazement as the black portal that had formed over the western ocean changed color. Now the darkness had been replaced by an azure blue rivaling that of the eyes of God. Silence reigned over the bridge of Airship as everyone waited for what they knew was coming.
All at once, a gigantic beam of blue energy shot out of the portal, the intensity of the light it put off blinding everyone who had their eyes turned toward it. The beam was easily a kilometer and a half wide, and continued to pour endlessly from within the portal. It shot directly toward space, angling up toward the Super Star Destroyer that was desperately attempting to pull out of the beam's path. But it was too little, too late.
The beam smashed directly into the aft end of the Super Star Destroyer. For a split-second, the shields of the mighty ship glowed a brilliant blue as the energy of the beam played over them, then the three shield generators mounted on the ship exploded, physically signifying the collapse of the shields.
Now without resistance, the beam plowed directly into the ship, melting away the ship's hull in seconds. Atmosphere began to vent into space as the beam continued, eating through bulkhead after bulkhead on deck after deck. Crewmen caught in its path were vaporized before they ever realized the danger they were in. On the far end of the ship, escape pods began to blossom from the dagger-shaped prow of the Star Destroyer like mold spores.
The glowing light of the ship's engines flickered, then faded, then came back on at full power for just a moment. Then there was an explosion along the bottom of the Star Destroyer and the light of the engines went out entirely. Now without its primary method of fighting the gravity of Spira, the Super Star Destroyer angled down and began to plunge toward the atmosphere.
This only brought the ship even further into the path of the beam, which continued to rise along the ship's sides, melting and burning away more of the ship with each passing second. Those escape pods that managed to escape the beam itself began to plunge into the atmosphere in a less-violent parody of the fate that was befalling the pride of the Imperial Navy.
Finally, the beam hit and ruptured the massive power cores of the Super Star Destroyer and the ship exploded tremendously, producing a bright nova of light that overpowered even the light produced by Spira's sun. Much of the rest of the ship was incinerated by that explosion; what fragments were left either drifted out into orbit or disintegrated in Spira's atmosphere.
Slowly, the beam that had been fired from Vegnagun shrunk, more than halving its size with every second. Finally, the beam shrunk down into nothing and vanished entirely. On the surface of the ocean below, the portal that had allowed the beam to fire from within the Farplane slowly irised shut.
A/N: Come on guys, I really shouldn't have to put in the surviving stormies surrendering. You KNOW that's what happens. Seriously. Besides, I think it's much cooler to end of Vegnagun's beam going byebye. ;
Well, that's the end of the climactic final battle. Personally, I think it sucked:D It was nowhere near as long or expansive as I had wanted it to be, but I totally ran dry on ideas. Hope you enjoyed it, and we're not done yet! There's one more chapter and maybe even an epilogue afterwards.
And now, for everyone's favorite section: the shout-outs!
MegIvanParagon: Thanks for the support. It really was grinding the hell out of me. xx
JinYuy: You were saying?
Morgaine of the Fairies: Actually, I did have to come up with more ways of killing people. :D Notice Ele'sear's kick to the Dark Trooper's head? Haven't seen that before, have you? XD Nor have you seen an über-beam of death and destruction wipe out some 80k+ crewmen (not counting combat personnel) in under a minute. XD
Neon-Ronin: I bet all of "Into the Trap" made you cry. XD As well as the death of the Dreadnaught and superlaser in this chapter.
SevenTowers: Your husband's probably going to think you're even more crazy if you run around your house screaming "We won! We won!" after reading this chapter. XD And/or try to have an Ewok-esque bonfire celebration in your backyard after the next one... -sweat-
ChaosShaman: Hold onto your horses, kiddo. We ain't done yet!
xx I just realized that I haven't done shout-outs since like...chapter 11. Fuuuuuuuuuck. Back-log time!
snowecat (Ch. 11): I haven't heard of 'Knight of Spira' yet. I'll check that one out. Also, I've been hearing a lot about Ashbear from like...my IDOL, Peptuck, who wrote "The Gunblade Saga." It is the awesomest motherfucking novelization of FF8 in EXISTENCE. His Battle of Centra made my pants happy. :3
Wolfy16 (Ch. 11): I really have no idea about someone calling "Airship" "Highwind." It makes no sense to me. I mean, can the people not READ? Seriously. If you're confusing "Airship" and "Highwind" it's time for you to return to kindergarten. :D
Furitarus (Ch. 11): Hah, someone who is interested in the stories of Jake and Stev. Don't worry, there's a place for them in the New Spira. The next chapter will be 3 parts celebration, 1 part discussion of the way Spira will be set up in the future. And by future, they mean like..next week. XD
Morgaine of the Fairies (Ch. 11): My battle scenes are good, but Peptuck's are much better. :3 BLATANT ADVERTISEMENT! Hah, I owe it to him since I've influenced him into using so much shit from Star Wars in his novelization. XD
SevenTowers (Ch. 11): Actually, the practical joke was going to be something Lenne got Yuna and Tidus to play on Jecht. But I left that one on the cutting room floor because I had no real place for it.
JinYuy (Ch. 10): This is an important one, also didn't get posted before my series of "no shout-out chapters" If you recall, Vader had a bit of an inkling that she was still alive, but as I've said to others, the Yuna vs. Vader encounter was meant to fan that spark of light in Vader that Luke plays on in Return of the Jedi. Speaking of Luke, you notice that it took an Imperial probe droid to find the Rebel base on Hoth, and that Vader couldn't sense Luke when Luke was on a shuttle hovering right outside his viewport:3 It's not a big stretch to say he didn't sense Yuna either.
And for everyone who told me to use the character I had wanted to use in chapter 12(?), I think there's been a misunderstanding. The character did not belong to me. It was someone else's character, made to compliment a character of mine in a completely different RP, and that's why she didn't want me to use it; because the character was designed for an FF8 setting, not an FFX setting.
But after I explained my idea for how the character could appear in both the FF8 RP and the FFX RP, using her own history that said character is cursed with eternal reincarnation into the same form, she was perfectly cool with me using the character, even though by putting it here and not in chapter 12, you miss a bit of backstory on the character.
The character in question was Ele'sear, the badass armored aeon that Lenne summoned to kill the Dark Trooper. The backstory is that, after finally dying off in the FF8 RP, Ele'sear, who was a guardian spirit there, was reincarnated a thousand years before FFX, before the outbreak of the Machina War. She was reborn as Lenne's sister, and was just as opposed to Lenne going to the front as Shuyin was, but instead of trying to steal a machina superweapon and destroy the world, Ele'sear volunteered to become an aeon, on the condition that only Lenne could acquire her aeon. Thus she became the armored death-bringer you see killing Imperial war droids.
xx Shiiiiiiiit. Now that my shout-outs and informational section is longer than the actual story itself, I'll leave you people salivating over the victory of the Spiran forces.
