Ever since birth, the two friends Strawberry Zanuba and Vanessa Broyer were inseparable. They could often be seen in the fields trying to summon Moogle, the simplest summon of them all. Continuously, they studied the texts in the Zanuba household library until they finally could do it. At ages five and six, Strawberry and Vanessa could call a summon creature. They were hailed throughout Lionel Castle Town for their accomplishments in the job of summoner. Everyone said how good they were.
This was the reason why Vanessa turned into such a spoiled brat. Once one is a child prodigy, the people around them spoil him or her. Strawberry took this treatment quite modestly, but Vanessa became spoiled rotten. The relatively adult Strawberry watched the scenes of her friend yelling at and hitting and firing her assistants for nothing more than the wrong amount of pulp in her orange juice.
"Yup, and that's the reason I'm still here and not hangin' out with the angels," Vanessa's voice came from behind her. Strawberry turned around. There she was, her old childhood friend. Her chestnut brown hair glistened in the light produced by the sun in her vision, held back by her red Summoner's Horn. She wore the traditional robes of a summoner with one subtle difference: the sleeveless dress she wore under her green robe was silver and not black. Her friend also had a penchant for high heels, and these were jet black and complimented her outfit nicely, if Strawberry did say so herself. Strawberry's outfit was similar, yet different. It was the traditional summoner's garb, with the crest of Bart Co. on the front. She had meant to retire it after she quit and joined Ramza, but never got around to it.
"What are you doing here?" Strawberry asked, a little harsher than her upbeat personality liked. "Weren't you killed?"
"Well, yes," Vanessa said. "But not the way you think. I survived that final battle against you, but just barely. I held on long enough to meet a strange group of people who called themselves the 'Acolytes of Ajora' or something."
"Ajora?" Strawberry asked, tossing her golden hair out of her eyes. "Like Ajora Glabados or Altima? I was never really clear on the difference between the two."
"Neither was I." Vanessa shrugged. "Either. Or maybe both. Or maybe there's no difference between them. Who can say? What you need to remember is that spat we had a while back. You remember what it was over, don't you?"
"I remember you tried to kill me," Strawberry answered. "I remember that you were going to kill my family, and I wouldn't let you, so you attacked."
The scene moved ahead ten years. Strawberry was fifteen. Now she had mastered Ramuh and Shiva, two much more difficult summons, but Vanessa had shot ahead and had already mastered most of the summons available, including the elusive Lich. She truly was a prodigy. But all that power, mostly that of the Lich itself, poisoned her with its evil.
"You had begun to behave irrationally," Strawberry recounted. "You weren't acting yourself. You had become a servant of the summons, instead of the other way around. The way it's supposed to be."
"Oh give me a break," Vanessa bellowed. "You were just as much a 'servant of the summons' as I was. As every summoner is."
"Summoning is a difficult task to master," Strawberry replied.
"Not for all of us," Vanessa crowed. "Some it just comes naturally to. Like you and being a bitch!"
"That's it!" Strawberry yelled, and lunged at Vanessa. However, she only passed right through.
"What part about 'spirit guide' are you not getting? Hello, incorporeal over here? Know much about ghosts?"
"More than you'd think," Strawberry said. "I pray my father's finds rest every night."
"Guess what?" Vanessa said, then thought for a bit. "Nah, I'll tell you after we watch our final fire fight."
Strawberry watched as her younger self faced off against Vanessa.
"You attacked my parents!"
"They had it coming," Vanessa spat. "All pompous and telling me my power was weak and misused. Self-righteous bastards!"
"Feel the fury of Ramuh!" Strawberry yelled and sent the lightning deity after her former friend. Vanessa easily countered with her own Ramuh summon.
"Let's see how you like not being able to cast magic," she said, throwing her head back. "Silf, come forward!"
"The most underrated of all summons," the spirit Vanessa said, watching her younger self with pride. The fairy-like summon hit Strawberry head on while she was trying to cast Shiva.
Strawberry opened her mouth to speak, but the incantation wasn't coming out. She tried to speak, but Vanessa's Silf summon had silenced her spell casting. So she did what most anyone would have done in that situation: she panicked and ran. On the way, she reached into her item pack and searched around for an Echo Grass to cure her silence. She pulled one out and swallowed the bitter tasting plant. Making a face and sticking out her tongue, she stopped and turned around. Unfortunately, her back was to a cliff overlooking the ocean.
"Now I'm not silenced anymore," she said back to her adversary.
"Fine by me," Vanessa replied. "It's almost over anyway. Titan!" The enormous giant came out of the ground behind her and brought it's mighty hands down. The ground began to split apart under the two girls' feet.
Then, it happened. The ground collapsed in patches. Titan disappeared and it was just the two of them. Strawberry yelled out hurriedly for Shiva to save her, and Shiva appeared and caught her under the arms. The feeling was chilling, Strawberry remembered, like having ice under your armpits. Summoning Titan had used up all the remaining magic power Vanessa had, so she couldn't summon anything. Strawberry watched as the body of her best friend hit the water.
"I survived that fall," Vanessa said. "And I pulled out one of my spare Ethers and healed myself with Moogle. Then I summoned Leviathan, and it took me to land where I checked into a hospital under a fake name. Then, a few years later, I wandered into the wrong temple and got killed by Ajora's Acolytes. Watch out for them. They're dangerous."
"Okay," Strawberry agreed. "Oh, before you showed me this you said something about… something. You never did finish the thought."
"Oh, right," Vanessa said guiltily. "I, um, killed your father."
"My father the Shrine Knight?" Strawberry said, amazed.
"No, your father the garbage man," Vanessa replied sarcastically. "Yes your father the Shrine Knight. Jorge Zanuba was one of my targets from my Kamyuja days."
"Where? How? Why?" Strawberry asked, but it was too late. A white light filled the entire space.
A/N: Well, that's Strawberry. Due to the rather tragic nature of this chapter, I didn't get to play on the less depressed side of her. Anyway, back to the plot. Who are these 'Acolytes of Ajora'? And why did Vanessa warn Strawberry about them more than once? Will I ever get to the end of this book? Find out the answers to these and more questions later. But for now, Rafa Galthana is up next.