Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.
Chapter IV
Irvine switched off the engine of the blue sedan he'd rented on his arrival at Timber. After three hours of driving through the drizzling rain, he was deep in the farmland of the Lanker Plains, with the gentle rising slope of Shenand Hill visible to the west under the angry gray clouds. The derelict temple he suspected Selphie had made into her base was another twenty minutes' drive away; this was the nearest farm.
He didn't have to look hard to find signs of its occupants. A boy, around ten years old by Irvine's reckoning, was huddled up in a too-large raincoat, kneeling by the sheepdog's kennel. He watched Irvine as he stepped out of the car and strode over to the fence.
Irvine folded his arms on top of the fence and gave the boy a lazy grin.
"Whassat that gun for?" asked the boy, pointing at the rifle strapped to Irvine's shoulder.
"Shootin' things. Your ma or pa around, kid?"
The boy shook his head. "My grandpa is, though."
"Great. Go'n get him for me?"
While the boy darted across the yard to the farmhouse, Irvine occupied himself with making faces at the sheepdog, who stared solemnly back at him. Guess I'm not a threat, he thought, when the dog didn't move a muscle.
A bearded, stocky man in black rain-boots and a waxed rain hat had emerged from the house, eyeing Irvine with an evident degree of suspicion. Irvine tipped his stetson as the farmer and his grandson walked over to his spot at the fence.
"Army, are you?" said the man gruffly.
Irvine reached into his pocket and flashed his expired G-Army ID card, providing enough time for the man to nod at Irvine's somber, hatless photo, but not quite long enough for his eyes to travel to the long-passed renewal date written in small print at the bottom.
"Sir, I heard there's been some trouble at the Temple of Hyne," Irvine said.
The boy looked up at him, interested. "You gonna shoot the she-demon, mister?"
She-demon? Hell's bells, Sefie. "I heard it was a girl."
The farmer scowled, his thick brown eyebrows knitting together. "That ain't no girl. Ain't never seen no girl lookin' like that."
"Like what?"
"You'll see soon enough, if you're goin' there. But you'd be a damn fool to go alone." He stomped back towards the house, pulling the boy by the sleeve of his raincoat.
Irvine watched them go. "What's my darlin' been up to?" he asked the sheepdog. Finding the response unsatisfactory, he sighed and went to start up the car.
The Temple of Hyne stood at the foot of Shenand Hill, facing east towards the sea that lashed at faraway cliffs. Its half-crumbling walls were built of the white-gray stone of Centran architecture, many centuries older than the Dolletian style that dominated the Galbadian continent. These rocks must have been brought here by boat from the South, Irvine mused. Why the ancient Centrans had seen fit to build a temple here was beyond him. There was nothing around for miles and miles.
It was an odd mix of feelings he had now, standing under the great arched entrance. On the one hand, if she was really in there, he was only seconds away from reuniting with Selphie. On the other... she might, Irvine conceded, not be overjoyed to see him.
But hey, he thought as the sound of his boots rang across the cracked flagstones. It's Selphie. I can talk her round.
"Sefie?" he called out, his voice resounding in the gloom.
A sphere of bright, blue-white light fizzed and popped, and he squinted to make out what was behind it, then he saw that she was holding it in her hand.
The ball of light winked away, and she was walking towards him. Except...
For once, Irvine was speechless.
She had cleavage, for a start. Selphie's breasts were pushed up impossibly high by the crimson bodice of a tight-fitting gown that was cut away at the front, six inches above her knees, and ballooned out long at the back. Her eyes were dark and smoky, and her hair, stripped of its usual bouncing curls, flowed wildly over her shoulders and trickled onto the curve of her bust. Then there were the boots. Selphie had always worn the kind of clumpy, sheepskin-lined snow boots beloved of Trabian girls: practical, but not at all alluring. These boots were laced, high-heeled, and made from shiny black leather, stretching enticingly up to her thighs.
"Sefie, uh..." he stammered, eventually. "You've gone all... sexy."
She came closer. "Have I? Do you like it, cowboy?"
It was not Selphie's voice. Those were Selphie's vocal cords, to be sure, but the voice had an odd inflection, some long-dead accent wholly unfamiliar to Irvine's ears.
"Well, you look very nice," he said truthfully, keenly aware of a sudden increase in circulation due south of his belt buckle. "You just... you don't look like my Sefie, that's all."
"Yours?" she spat with contempt. "Whoever said I was yours, boy? Such arrogance!" Selphie turned and walked to the stone altar in the center of the chamber, and Irvine followed helplessly.
"Why here? What is there for you in this place?" he asked.
She placed her hands on the altar, without turning to look at him. "I told you I see the world in a different way, now. Where the magic leads, I follow. Magic calls to magic, did you know that?"
The temple seemed darker, somehow, and Irvine slowly realized that there was a visible cloud of dark-colored magic swirling around her. It moved faster, in a vortex, and it took his brain several moments to register what he was looking at: a Draw point. An unimaginably huge Draw point that encompassed the entire inner chamber of the temple.
This was not good. Black flecked with streaks of red, it looked like no Draw point he'd ever seen.
"What the hell is this? Ultima? Meteor?"
"Nothing so limited. This is raw magic. The purest form. No man could ever Draw it. But I..."
She turned to face him then, zeal and passion in her eyes, and he'd have marveled at her beauty if he wasn't so damn freaked out.
"...I am the blood of Hyne."
Strands of the magic seeped away from the Draw point and flowed into Selphie's fingers, visibly coursing through her until her eyes flashed reddish black, and ragged gray wings fought their way free from her bare shoulders.
"Sefie," he protested weakly.
"Hyne provides for all His Daughters. Even after His temples have been abandoned, he never abandons those of His blood." Her voice had changed again; it sounded like five, ten or twenty women were speaking at the same time.
He started to back away from her, and then something strange happened. She fell to her knees, gasping, and when she looked up at him in horror, her eyes were green again.
Irvine ran to her, and she clutched at his hands.
"Irvy, you've got to leave. Just go."
"No way in hell am I gonna-"
Selphie screwed up her eyes. "I think I'm her," she whispered.
"What? Who?"
"Ultimecia. I think I stay like this and end up becoming her. That's how she came to be. It's the only explanation."
He would have laughed if she hadn't looked so terrified. "That's ridiculous, Sefie. You aren't Ultimecia. Not in a month of Sundays. You're nothin' like her."
"Nothing?" she echoed blankly, and her eyes swam with color, the cruelty returning to her face. "You would doubt me?" she barked, and Selphie's voice was gone now. "What do you know of my true power? I am more than you will ever know. I am all, and I am nothingness. I am the End! I am the End of Days!"
The wings carried her aloft, and she was glaring down at him from above, the black-red magic massing at her hands, her head, her eyes.
"The End of all your days has come!"
He was no longer in the temple. He was kneeling in a picture-perfect field of flowers, yellow butterflies swarming against his neck and mouth, the pollen-filled sky choking him, and he could not fight it. The flowers and the ground beneath were swallowing him up, and he could feel the bonds between the atoms of his body straining to tear apart from each other. This... was it. Every fragment of reality that made up Irvine Kinneas was preparing to disintegrate.
"Sefie... My darlin'..." he croaked.
It took the last of his strength, but he had to get through to her. Not to stop her from killing him; it was almost certainly too late for that. No, she needed to know that he loved her. That he forgave her. If that was the final thing he would ever do, it'd be worth it.
Then Selphie was there, her face in front of his, horrified, tear-streaked, the smoky eye make-up running down her cheeks.
"No... No! Irvy!"
A huge blast followed her scream, and he was thrown back in the air, his body smashing hard against the flagstones, and he crawled towards the light, unthinking, uncomprehending, knowing only that he was still clinging onto his life, and goddammit, he'd cling on until he couldn't.
The light was around him now, the cold raindrops on his face. He tried to move, to breathe, and was dismayed to find that he could do neither. Unfamiliar hands were dragging his legs, and another pair of hands were pumping at his chest. Lips pressed against his - not a woman's, he thought with disappointment - and another compression. Lips again, hot breath forcing its way into him, and-
He spluttered, gasped, and the compressions stopped.
By the skin of his teeth, Irvine was alive.
A/N: Places I never thought I'd go with a fic #1: the S=U theory. And yet here it is. (Allegedly).
*Disclaimer: I love Selphie and she's totally not Ultimecia