Disclaimer:
Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time is the creation and property of Tri-Ace, who created this wonderful anime/video game series, and the publishers at SquareEnix. Anything not attributed to them belongs to their respective owners, such as references to Cowboy Bebop (the Swordfish II) that is a creation of Sunrise and Shinichiro Watanabe. This story is written purely just for fun, guys; please for God's sake, don't sue me! I'm just a high school student with too much free time on his hands! On the other hand, any specific author created characters I created for this fic (despite how unoriginal they may be at times) are mine. So without further adieu, let's get on with the show!
The Surgeon General's Warning:
Read at your own risk. This might take you on a trip to some happy lovey-dovey place.
Oh, and yes, there's a very high Fayt x Maria coupling possible here, or I could completely screw everybody over and do the unexpected, ja?
Fates Intertwined
Chapter 09:
Breakthrough
A Star Ocean 3 fanfic by James "Ray" Edwards
"Cliff, you're late!" Maria declared seemingly for the entire world to hear.
This immediately earned a double-take on the cool blonde machismo of one Cliff Fittir, age thirty-six, who is considered the most eligible bachelor on all of Klaus, second only to that red-headed "wanksta" Zelos the Third. Oh Lord, he was so going to mess up that punk for stepping on his turf when he got home. How could those executives at Universe GQ magazine possibly pass him aside for that wannabe, huh? He was Cliff Fittir, the most awesome stud to strut his greatness across the universe in years. Even the "Feddie" babes had it good for him!
Of course, all of the above has nothing to do with whether Maria was happy to see him.
"Well, hey now, I really do got a good excuse this time. You see, on my way bouncing across the UMN columns with Seiya-san's super deluxe gravitic warp drive here on Hawk's back when - HO-LY Sweet Begeezus!" the Klausian shouted becoming aware of the alarming racket his radar warning receivers and IFF was raising in his well-lit cockpit. There were an awful lot of not very nice people painting big bright targets on his beloved "hiney," which was a big "no-no!" in the man's book. He would have to do something drastic it seemed to rectify the situation. "Was I interrupting somethin' important, Maria? 'Cause I can just come back later, if it's nothing serious..."
Eight was having none of this foolish business. "Cliffy, start acting your own age already! This isn't the time to be kidding around!"
Silence.
Cliff balked, his jaw going utterly slack, as the Hurricane Hawk's white-gold form reared back with a mock swoon. The blonde-haired man was understandably a touch indignant for such an uncalled for jab at his highly fulfilling lifestyle (in his opinion at least). What greater good could there possibly to the noble cause of helping people, guys and gals alike, find their inner artiste, the "grand queen diva," and the "pimp mack daddy deluxe," eh? Kids these days were way too wound up in his opinion and really needed to loosen up more. So what if they were in a middle of a battlefield?
"Yeesh! Eight, honey-bun, you know I love ya, and there's really no - Whoa!"
Promptly, the Hurricane Hawk dodged to the side, with a burst of blue flames from its lateral retrorockets, in a zero gravity equivalent of a cartwheel. A column of the brightest blue came screaming through his previous position, causing the paint job on the arm slave to literally bubble and fester from the immense energy exuded by the blast. Down below, one of the surviving alien mecha, which Cliff quickly dubbed as "(Sharky) Skeletons," floated grudgingly in place with the barrel of its long black rifle split in half, still crackling with residue particles from the beam cannon-like attack. The Vendeeni apparently didn't like being ignored, and just to make that point perfectly clear, more of the skeletal humanoid war machines were materializing by the second, replacing the loses they had taken courtesy of the Hurricane Hawk's wrath.
Cliff raised an eyebrow, paused briefly to consider the overwhelming numbers (not to mention the other immediate concern of the two big giant fish-like blocks of orange, Vendeeni battleships, that were almost on top of them), and laughed. He broadcasted his hearty boisterous mirth freely over all known communication channels, an infectious and equally exasperating call that even wormed its way into the two glimmering green eyes upon the singed metallic face of the Hurricane Hawk. Though dwarfed in comparison to his larger cousins by a good six meters, the golden white arm slave confidently lifted its free armored hand up and waggled an admonishing index finger from side-to-side.
"Is that guy out of his mind?" Fayt choked aloud in astonishment at their rescuer's blatant bravado. The battle had ground down into a proverbial standoff with in minutes of that man's intervention, both sides at a tenuous cease-fire. Personally, he recognized the arm slave as an older command model that was being phased out gradually from the Pangalatic Federation military, the AG-02S LED Vanguard. The fact somebody still had the guts to use it was a testament to its rugged resilience or that person's utterly foolish bravery.
Eight sighed - cheerfully. "Gaou, there's a sixty-point-eight-three-three-three-in ad nauseum chance that Cliffy really did lose his mind this time. The odds aren't being really nice to us today."
It was either that, or Cliff Fittir had a brilliant trump card up his sleeve and laughing it up for all he was worth ahead of time.
Maria was betting on the latter. Arguably, her godfather was the most irresponsible adult she had ever encountered, even when he was still in charge of Quark. Taking things seriously with a grain of a salt was never the blonde Klausian's strong point, unless one of his hunches waltzed right up and bit him in the rear to sober up. However, there was never a better man to ask for to watch her back when the occasion arose to light.
"You know, guys, you really-really shouldn't interrupt a Man when he's settin' the record straight, yeah?" Cliff scolded the Vendeeni with a smile on his face. His cockpit was humming loudly with warning klaxons that he was being locked onto by more enemy sensors than he could count on his available extremities, but he was scarcely even breaking a sweat in his snug, pressurized flight suit. "The world has a funny way of trippin' up punks and since this is the last dance, I got one piece of old fashioned Earthling advice for you..."
He inhaled deeply, basking in the glory of the moment (in spite of the fact that his combat computer was raising hell about the multiple high-energy signatures below that were going to blast him into oblivion).
"...'You got served.'"
In a whirling instant, the proverbial tables of chance were turned quite righteously so in Cliff's exuberant favor. A frenzied carnival of explosions lit up the star lit seas of the Caribbean fields, as a hail of crackling red anti-matter and columns of brilliant light tore through the night. Eight cried out in wonder as a ragtag fleet of Federation warships suddenly jumped into the area, obliterating the three straggling Vendeeni battleships in their determined charge. Not one to spar a moment, the Klausian quickly jettisoned the cumbersome gravitic warp drive on his arm slave's back and fired off a burst from the mega particle beam cannon on the right arm.
A barrage of explosions marked the open path where the Skeletons once were, as Cliff hurried into the breach, blasting another path open in the midst of the confusion. He switched back to the private, heavily encoded channel used by Quark operatives in the field to address the "All right, that's our cue to get the frack out of Dodge! No time for questions, Maria; I'd love to talk about it all later, but just follow my lead for now, okay?"
"Understood," Maria nodded towards the "Sound Only" window that flickered briefly onto the main view screen before disappearing, as she rushed towards the helmsman station and anchored herself down beside an astonished Fayt Leingod. "Eight, arm whatever ordinance we have left, including the quantum torpedoes we've held back. You may fire at will. Helmsman, follow his lead, engines at full!"
The Swordfish II roared out of its prison with guns blazing, devastating the squadron of surprised Vendeeni mecha. They broke through the enemy formations and slipped past the occupied orange battleships that were weathering a punishing barrage from the Federation ships. A few Skeletons tried to give chase but were annihilated by a farewell gift in the form of a powerful quantum torpedo that enveloped them into white oblivion.
"Looking good, looking good!" the Klausian cheered over the comm-link, "at this rate, we ought to make good time before Captain El Loco Grande noticed I gave her the slip."
"Captain who?" Fayt said aloud curiously on the spur, only to catch himself "too little, too late, and a dime a dozen short," (according to Cliff's love for Earthling adages), much to his chagrin.
"Eh? Who was that?"
"Uhhh..."
"Hey, you sound kinda familiar, like this 'new hotness'gal I met on Gemini-Five once. She was this totally babe-potential intern chick at the university of..."
And that's how a long memorable relationship between one Cliff Fittir and one Fayt Leingod began. To say Fayt was mortified was an understatement, although the question of his masculinity had never come up before ever, to his recollection. Now, however, he felt bizarrely irritated and even a touch offended by such an offhand remark. He didn't want to raise a fit, and frankly, his vocabulary escaped the grasp his conscious logic, so instead he just opted for an aggravated growl.
"Oh! My bad, man. You must be that new guy. What was that dude's name again? Pate de fois gras? Pattie? Pete? Feet? Fatty?"
If he weren't in the middle of piloting a capable of starship that was escaping from a war zone, Fayt would've had the decency to look mortified.
"Oh, I got it now! You're that genius Leingod kid our client wants to meet. Pleased to meet'cha, man. I'm..." the blonde paused to clear his throat loudly,"...Fittir, Cliff Fittir. You dig?"
Maria silently thanked Cliff for remembering the cover story she opted on, instead of blowing everything out of the water.
"Okay, I think so..."
"Man, you're missin' my meaning completely. Haven't you watched a Bond movie before?"
"'A Bond movie?'"
Oh great, the blue-haired young man truly shouldn't have gotten Cliff started on the subject of old Earthling pop culture icons. Maria and Eight inwardly rolled their eyes, knowing fully well of his fascination and love for the "classics," and he could go on for hours talking about one subject or another without tiring. It was nothing short of a miracle how Mirage managed to tolerate his idiosyncrasies on a daily basis.
"Yeah, James Bond! Probably one of the greatest movie franchises in..." the Klausian paused abruptly. A piercing alarm went off in his cockpit, one in particular that he really didn't want to hear now. He glanced over at his tactical multi-function display and discovered to his chagrin exactly the worse case scenario he'd been hoping to avoid. "Eight, you seein' what I'm seeing!"
"Roger, multiple gravitic anomalies detected dead ahead, warp signature count is rising higher: Five. Ten. Twenty. Forty vessels registered!" the A.I. confirmed, biting back her growing fears.
Something was definitely wrong here. How could the Vendeeni possibly pull off so many unauthorized gravitic warps without assistance from the U.M.N.? Normal space-time didn't have the capacity to handle so many simultaneous gate-outs/gate-ins and had to be boosted by the hyperspace columns under the jurisdiction of the U.M.N., but the aliens had some figured out a way to circumvent this altogether. What sort of monstrous technology did they possess that allow them to accomplish such a feat?
"Any contingency plans, Cliff?" Maria asked tentatively. Already her agile mind was fast at work on a solution to their dire predicament, but she still wanted to hear the man out first before she went ahead with her schemes. "Anything at all?"
Cliff snorted, rubbing the back of his helmet sheepishly. "Well, I never thought we'd be up against forty battleships between 'a rock and a hard place,' as the saying goes. It was already risky enough getting the 'Feds' involved, if you know what I mean, Maria. You could say my imagination kinda failed me for once."
Silence.
"Okay, I didn't think that far yet!" he confessed with a touch of embarrassment, "figured we'd just cross that burning bridge when we get to it, eh?"
Fayt sighed half-heartedly, not believing he was witnessing such an absurd act of irresponsibility from an adult. Steeling his resolve, he pressed on, "So what are we going to do about it? We can't take on forty ships and going back isn't an option either from what you implied."
"Well, the main thing is to escape beyond the Vendeeni E-C-M field to start up a jump. The 'Sharkheads' managed to figure out some way to scramble the gravitic warp systems on smaller ships. I wanted to make a break for the U-M-N gate column instead, so we can bounce around and then rendezvous with a lady friend of mine. Thing is, that probably isn't gonna happen, right, Maria?"
"Affirmative, Cliff," the light blue-haired young woman nodded, "so how far do we have to go?"
"Oh, about hundred thousand kilometers or so."
Again, an awkward silence settled over the group as the second Vendeeni materialized an odd fifty thousand kilometers away in the distant horizon. A horde of fighters and mecha were already disembarking from ships, ready for combat at a moment's notice.
"Vendeeni battle fleet approaching ahead at full. They're arming weapons and acquiring firing telemetry! Estimated time to first strike in ninety seconds and counting."
Things were just going from bad to worse today.
What are you waiting for?
Do it.
You know what needs to be done.
Forty?
Child's play, fuufuufuufuu!
One will be more than enough.
What are sixty thousand 'void' souls worth to you anyway?
Nothing.
"Eight, how many quantum torpedoes do we have left?" Maria asked in a deathly voice, bearing no emotion. She could feel the cold shivers that her voice elicited from her companions, but her mind was decided already. Today, she would bury another fragment of her ill, festering heart in the sea of stardust with sixty thousand stars to join it in evermore.
Eight had a distinctly bitter premonition about what was to happen, and was ambivalent to Cliff's less than tactful intervention. Clad in his black flight suit, he patched a transmission through the less secure video-communication link, appearing visibly in a window on the main screen, "Whoa, hold a sec here, Maria! You're not serious-"
The emotionless gaze in the violet-hued azure eyes of his goddaughter hurt him worse than any blow he had ever taken in his lifetime. She didn't see him, didn't hear him; she just didn't care anymore. What made it worse was that Maria was consciously doing it for once. In silent dismay, he could only watch, wondering what had to her since she left nearly over a week ago, as Eight confirmed the presence of the last remaining quantum torpedo.
Mirage was so going to kill him when they got back home.
However, little did the blonde Klausian know that the person most responsible was sitting in the same room with his "little girl." He vowed, nonetheless, to himself them if it was some other outside party responsible, he was going to break every one of their legs before giving them a nice heart-to-heart chat with "Mister Brass and Molotov."
"Wait a minute, what are you going to do with just one quantum torpedo? We should be trying to escape through the asteroid field!" Fayt protested. He, too, had an eerie feeling in his gut, as if something - unnatural - was about to happen. Every instinct in his body was telling him to flee now, but he refused to go because...well, truthfully he didn't even understand why. "This is crazy. We can't take on forty battleships by ourselves."
Cliff sighed, working the kinks out of his shoulder with audible cracks. "Hate to say it, but going back to team up with the Feds wouldn't do much good at all for any of us. Captain El Loco's got some pretty fine ships, mostly destroyers and light cruisers, but in a face-to-face brawl, it wouldn't even be funny, if you know what I mean."
"But-!"
"All final checks complete," Eight interjected solemnly. They could never be more ready than now. "Estimated time to fleet barrage in thirty seconds. The Federation fleet is deploying perimeter space-time material shields and taking cover. It's all up to you know, Captain."
The leader of Quark nodded simply without question, and stepped back away from the helmsman's station. "Understood, lower gravity to twenty five percent on the bridge and shut down all system to silent running mode. You may fire on my command"
The Swordfish II groaned audibly, powering down its systems to the bare minimum needed to defend itself, while keeping its gravitic warp array on stand-by mode. Only the familiar hum of the life support systems remained, much to Fayt's anxiety as his console lost all power. This left alone with his strange companions to watch the conclusion that awaited on the main view screen. He heard the rapport Maria's lithe footsteps kick off gently against the floor and he glanced about only to be caught dumbstruck, an unseen wind suddenly ruffling his hair from nowhere.
She was glowing, an aura of power that shone with divine majesty, growing greater by the second. At its epicenter was Maria: beautiful and power, her azure hair and billowing white greatcoat arrayed about her. Her hands were clasped if in prayer once more, eyes closed in deep concentration within the eternal serenity. She crossed the vast plains, passed the woods of evergreen, passed the sandy white beaches, and dove into the blue depths of her soul, crashing beneath the turbulent waves, deeper into a void world without light.
The shining aura blazed white-hot, forcing Fayt to shield his eyes. He could hear it in his bones, an ethereal hymn championed mightily by its choir, as ancient foreign sigils and runes, words of power, swirled about into the air. Maria's power grew greater, enveloping all in white divinity. The Swordfish II, now a vibrant beacon of light in the darkness of space, shined brighter than any star. Runes materialize into pure energy, flowing together in harmony that shaped many rings and great halos around the ship.
"Massive energy discharge detected. The Vendeeni fleet is firing. Estimated time to contact: fifteen seconds."
So the die was cast as the grand choir erupted into a rousing crescendo. The corvette-class ship loosed her last quantum torpedo, sending a blazing blue sphere of fury hurtling through space. Trails of zigzagging energy ribbons twisted and twirled in concert with spiraling sigils in the wake of the sphere. The torpedo shot ahead faster, ever faster, leaving behind great energy shockwaves intermittently as its entire form elongated into a near-invisible arrow of judgment.
The distant horizon abruptly flashed a blinding white for an instant when the "blessed" torpedo struck the flood of golden death that was here and yet was not here all at once. An explosive chain reaction flashed, but instead of being destroyed, the blue arrow instantly absorbed the destructive energy, taking the brilliant light with it. Now, it disappeared completely, the trail of ribbons and sigils ending their pursuit as well.
"What the-? Where'd it go?" Cliff blurted out over the communications link, a look of genuine bewilderment on his face.
"Unable to track. The energy magnitude has exceeded-!"
It was right about then, as Cliff Fittir would later recall in the many years to come, when one of the first "Grand Daddy of all Explosions" happened. Like a Hollywood movie moment, all existence suddenly stopped. It wad dead quiet, the bittersweet tension building in the air as all eyes watched with maddening intensity, and then a flicker of light, so small, so miniscule. A silvery halo expanded swiftly outwards from the white-hot flame, disintegrating anything in its path, a roaring flood that shook the world to the core.
Most of all, he remembered the screaming.
Author's Notes:
Phew, I'm finally done. I was starting to wonder if I'd ever get done. Anyways, I'd like to thank all the guys and gals reading this little ficcie and dropping me some reviews. Without you guys, this wouldn't be as fun of an experiment. Now remember, I take it with the good and the bad, so if you got something to say (constructive or otherwise) go ahead and drop a review; I'm always looking for ways to improve.
Oh, and Millia, thanks for the pointers. I'll have to make a note to put up a revised edition of Chappie 01 with the grammar fixes in the future.
Peace out, and look forward to the next chapter, guys! (The Crash)