Disclaimer: What makes you think it's going to change this chapter?
Thank you to Nikki of Spira, FinalFantasyAngel92, ThePirateJilt, Warui-Usagi, -lidOol.fantaSee.gurl-, sRoze, and Isumo 1489, as well as my anonymous reviewers, Hiya and anon, for the reviews and continuing support! I really appreciate it.
I apologize for the dialogue last chapter, I will try to improve. By nature, I am a very formal speaking person, and thus, the explanation of Schism is coming out like a textbook, but please try to get through it and I will try to make it more true to the character.
There really is nothing else I have to say here, except that this is sort of an explanation chapter, but it is not the explanation, that is still in the works.
I am sorry about the long wait, really I am. I was caught up in so many things I had no time to write. But I have been thinking about this story and now have the direction it is going firmly set.
For now know this: Things will come full circle and I have changed characters to make a legitimate point.
Please enjoy and please review.
Tears of a Forgotten Summoner
Chapter Ten: Schism Led
Yuna was speechless. Whatever she had expected, whatever she had prepared herself to hear, it wasn't that. Tidus was looking at her, his eyes boring into her soul, and suddenly she felt horribly exposed. Moments passed with no sound, no one dared even move, but, as with all things, the spell of silence ended and someone spoke up.
"You dare to tell me that this is Yuna's fault?" Paine stood up, her teeth clenched and eyes blazing. "None of us have anything to do with this Schism!"
Tidus sighed and looked calmly up at the woman, waiting for the tirade that was to follow. On a whim, his eyes traveled to Yuna.
Give me a reason, he wanted to say. Give me just one more reason and I'll be justified in taking your life.
"If anyone released that thing, it was you! You're the only who seems to know about it," she pointed a finger at him, her eyes narrowed. "Explain yourself before you try to attack our actions!"
The man rubbed his temples gently, they weren't going to believe him, he knew that now. No matter how long he spouted logic in their faces, they would always justify themselves by accusing him of lying. For this to work, for them to understand their own faults, he had to bring it into their world and show them the true extent of what they had done.
"Are you even listening to me?" the silver-haired woman demanded shortly. "I'm still talking to you!"
"No," Tidus stood, his voice commanding all the authority he could muster. "You are finished."
Paine seemed surprised, obviously unnerved by the sudden command. All eyes snapped to him, waiting for some inevitable explosion of rage from him. Maybe some act of violence. But Tidus only knew that that would justify them further in calling him some sort of monster.
Monster. Perhaps that was what he was. He had changed so many times and been forced to do so many things that he knew were wrong. But, beneath it all, he could remember a time when he was happy, when hope had a meaning, and when the world was not tangled in the huge web of lies it was steeped in now.
Deciding on his course, he suddenly changed his tact, turning to Rikku, "You were close to Vegnagun, were you not?"
Startled, she nodded.
"And, from what I've seen, you know quite a lot about machina."
She nodded again, biting her lip as she tentatively looked up at him.
"Tell me your opinion of Vegnagun."
"Vegnagun? It was a killing machine, something that shouldn't exist," she looked up, daring to look in his face.
Paine chose to interject at that moment, "Operated by that madman Shuyin."
There was a brief murmur of agreement attesting to his madness and lunacy. The man had to again force anger down and returned to concentrating on how to make them eat their words.
Tidus let his face lose some of the malice he had been exuding and looked back at Rikku, "Tell me your technical opinion, I mean. Was it a complicated machine?"
She seemed puzzled, but nonetheless answered truthfully, "Yes."
"Would you be able to operate it?"
Rikku almost jumped, "N-no, I wouldn't! Couldn't—!"
He cut her off with a wave of his hand, "I didn't mean that. Do you think you could operate it if you had to?"
A delicate frown crossed her face for a moment and she replied slowly, "I … think I would be able. But only after studying its make-up for a time."
"So you're saying that it would be hard to use?"
Again, she thought before answering, "Yes."
"Even then, you would have to concentrate hard to do it?"
"Yes," she blinked a few times. "I'd say that anyone who could hope to make it work would have to be very intelligent."
Tidus almost smiled; the trap was closing and she didn't even know it. It was obvious no one else had guessed what he was getting at either, none of them had had a fit of outrage, "Would you say then, that a person would have to be sane?"
"Sane? Frighteningly so," she said, a little confused at all these questions. "They'd have to be completely focused on what they were doing and what was happening around them."
At that point, Tidus really did smile, "So you're telling me that the madman who operated Vegnagun had to have been sane?"
Rikku started to speak, then choked a bit, thinking hard and fast.
Paine opened her mouth to speak out against him, but he silenced her with a look.
"And so, if Shuyin was sane, why did he choose to attack now?"
There was silence, exactly as he had predicted and the question hung in the air until Yuna opened her mouth.
"What are you getting at?"
Tidus rounded on her, but only gave logic not malice, "Shuyin lived and died a thousand years ago, if his spirit was only just put to rest last year, it stands to reason that he was waiting and planning his attack for a thousand years."
"But that has no bearing on anything!" Paine said defiantly, her eyes blazing.
"It does," the man sighed, thinking of how to word his next move. "If he were sane and determined to carry his plans through, he would try to grasp what was going on in the outside world so he would know when best to attack."
"That means nothing!" the silver-haired woman insisted heatedly.
"Yes, it does," Tidus rounded on her, allowing some of his anger to seep through the cool exterior he had had in place. "If you are half as powerful as you think, he would not have dared attack in your lifetime," he took a step forward, forcing the woman to back up. "If you are half as powerful as you seem to think, he wouldn't have even tried it. He would have known that he wouldn't have stood a chance."
Paine's eyes narrowed, "I think you're forgetting who we are. We're the Gullwings and we defeated him. We destroyed his plans for destruction. We are that strong."
Tidus didn't press the point, but, rather, pursued the one he was trying to drive in, "But if Shuyin was sane and aware, he could have just as easily attacked during the confusion and chaos of Sin's reign, or during some Calm when everyone was unsuspecting?"
She didn't speak again, perhaps she was starting to accept some of the logic, and, in the silence, Tidus answered his own question.
"Because Shuyin wasn't acting of his own accord."
Yuna was desparately trying to take all of it in, attempting to understand what the man was getting at when he turned to her.
"High Summoner Yuna."
She nearly flinched at the formal tone.
"From what I understand from rumors and accounts of your adventures, you and your Gullwings searched our world twice or even three times over?"
She nodded, looking up into his blue eyes.
"Did it ever seem that you were at a dead end? And then the next time you visited the same place, something was there, painfully obvious, that suggested where to look next?"
As silly as that sounded, when the woman thought about it, it was exactly as he had described. Every time they had run into a dead end, something had presented itself to them to show the way … almost as if they were being led…
Tidus's voice grew soft, "When you look back on it, do you ever think that if you didn't do anything that nothing would have happened in the first place?"
Yuna nearly jumped, her eyes widening a bit as she considered the possibility.
"This has nothing to do with the task at hand!" Paine insisted, the only one that was fighting the logic with anger.
"It does," the voice didn't come from Tidus, it was Auron who spoke.
All eyes left Tidus for the weathered man as he continued.
"Lenne and Shuyin died a thousand years ago during the Forgotten War," his voice was soft, reflective.
"A war?" Rikku's voice chimed in. "Between who?"
"Bevelle and Zanarkand," Auron said, and before the girl got a chance to say that there was no war between the cities a thousand years ago, he continued. "It's amazing what time can do, how the simply omitting some information and covering up other pieces of it will cause events in history to simply be forgotten."
Rikku's eyes were wide, but she said nothing.
"It was in the war that Schism emerged," Auron closed his eyes, as if thinking of something that had happened long ago, but still was fresh enough to cause pain. "They were caught up in the greed of the Schism Led," his teeth gritted a bit, "the Sinners that unwittingly helped Schism emerge. They were thrust into the middle of it all and Schism was acting through and around them, thus binding itself to them and their actions, even having a little influence, but they resisted and were able to stay free of his control until their death.
"But even as their mortal bodies perished, their attachment to both Schism and Vegnagun remained. You see, the lies and cover-ups were designed to diminish Schism's power in this world and to keep it bound. After a thousand years, the Sinners were finally able to sever most of its influence, but it is a precarious balance, easily broken," he sighed a bit.
Tidus picked up the thread with not a beat in between, "When you found your spheres, they were isolated occurrences, or so they seemed to be. More than likely, those artifacts were linked in some way to Schism, whether it actually was in contact with them, or they showed images of those it had manipulated, the effect was the same: Schism could act through them again."
He took a breath, looking at Yuna, "Those clues you found were planted by Schism, you were following a rope as it was being braided. To counteract the lies the Sinners had made to seal it, Schism twisted the truth of Lenne and Shuyin until it was just fodder for you to continue your senseless crusade!"
All three Gullwings and the others in the room all looked shocked at his sudden abandon of the fairly calm exterior he had been displaying.
"Schism led you in upsetting the balance, it led you to free it and you didn't know the difference! You just wanted an adventure so damn bad that you abandoned all your duties to the world you just saved! I had hoped that all the rumors and stories I heard were false, but no, I see they are all true."
The room was speechless, even Auron raised an eyebrow at Tidus's continuing tirade … but he didn't move to stop it either.
"Sphere hunters? How could the savior of Spira be so reckless? How?"
Rikku stepped up, "We are not reckless! We try our best!"
"'Your best'? Tell me, your best at what? What have you done? What have you done to make Spira better?"
"We destroyed Vegnagun!"
"No, you destroyed two souls and released Schism. You are Schism led! You have damned us all!"
Yuna's eyes were wide, her body starting to shake.
Paine joined in, "Everything she does, does not have to be for the betterment of Spira."
"Yes," Tidus said vehemently. "But it shouldn't destroy Spira either. Did you not realize that you were pushing too hard at what you were doing? Did you not know that you were dabbling in what was forbidden?"
Auron stood, "That is quite enough. Now, I think they understand at least a little more." With that he took Tidus aside, leaving the room full of the bewildered people.
Tidus's train of thought broken, he latched onto the new question and gave a quick answer to the other man, "We have to keep Schism from forming the circle."
Auron rubbed his temples, "Then we need not worry yet, it took Schism decades to form the circle last time."
"I wouldn't be so sure, it has the three original Sinners, it can still form the circle, it's just a matter of getting all three close enough to make it work," Tidus bowed his head. "It will try to use what it already has. If I were Schism, I'd be using the two that have the least control over where they go, Jecht and Yu Yevon, then give up on you and try to get another Sinner to join it."
Auron seemed to accept this as truth, "Then we need to lure Yu away from Jecht, that should buy us enough time to find out what to do."
Tidus nodded in agreement, waiting for the other man to say more, which he undoubtedly would.
"We need bait," he mused. "As it is now, Yu has no control over what he does, Schism has more of a hold than his own mind. He will act only on instinct, anger perhaps."
"You're asking me to be the bait."
Auron couldn't help but smirk, "Of course."
The young man considered for a moment then nodded, "Very well, but know that I will do this in my own way, you have no power over me."
With that, he swept past the man, trusting that Auron would take care of their direction, just wanting to be alone now. He had told them, he had shared some of his anger … but yet, why did he feel so empty?
Unseen by Tidus, Auron smiled a bit to himself, "I would not have it any other way."
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Author's Notes: Well… that was hard to write. I knew what to say but I just couldn't seem to get it on paper. Another short one, I apologize. I hope it was alright. As always, constructive criticism and comments are greatly appreciated.
Next Chapter: The Forgotten Summoner
I'll look forward to hearing from you.
Rose Northe