A/N: Warning: There is quite a bit OOC-ness on both Squall and Paine's part in this chapter. I couldn't find any other way to get them together while they were still acting like everyone would expect them to…just look at it as a post-game Squall and an OOC Paine…don't flame me…this part was tough. I didn't have much choice…
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Chapter 3: Arrival at the Farplane
The Ragnarok touched down on the Thunder Plains outside Guadosalam—after a bit of fancy flying to dodge all the lightning courtesy of Selphie. After disembarking, Squall walked a short distance out to one of the lightning towers. He was amazed at a place where lightning could strike almost perpetually. He was a bit concerned for the safety of his ship, though. He was sure it could take a hit from the lightning, but he didn't want to have to re-wire the entire ship if the strike burned out all the circuits. He had done more than his fair share of repairs on and modifications to the Ragnarok, but it was his ship, and he didn't mind all that much anyway.
Yuna approached Squall and tapped him on the shoulder, jarring him out of his thoughts. He turned and was greeted with a concerned look. He sighed inwardly;
'Oh, jeez…' Squall thought, 'Concerned looks are never good…' "What's up? You look like something's bothering you…"
"Umm…sort of…" she began, "I…I just wanted to say thank you… I never thought that Vegnagun would be so powerful…when this whole mess started, I was sure Paine, Rikku and I could take care of it."
Squall shrugged. "We're SeeD. This is what we do. You three needed our help, so we came. You don't really need to thank us for doing our job."
Yuna smiled a little. "Okay. I just wanted you to know that we appreciate it. There is one thing I think you should know, though. There is someone—and only one person—who can control Vegnagun."
Squall's eyes narrowed. He originally thought that Vegnagun was a machine that was thinking for itself. There was someone on this world that could control a weapon that powerful? 'We may have our work cut out for us…' "Okay…so it's not only a self-aware machine…who is this person that's able to control it?"
Yuna nodded, "Right, it can sort of think on its own, but it also answers to someone…and his name is Shuyin. He…he's dead set on destroying New Yevon—and Spira in the process. Apparently…the woman he loved was a summoner and she died on the pilgrimage…he wanted to use Vegnagun to kill Sin in order to save her. Summoners generally sacrifice themselves to destroy sin temporarily. Like him, I found another way and destroyed Sin for good. The only problem with Shuyin's plan is that he was imprisoned before he could do anything, mainly because Vegnagun was so powerful. From what I gather, he tried to escape with Leanne—she was the summoner—but was caught. He…ended up dying…but, somehow, it looks like he's back."
Squall furrowed his eyebrows. "Alright…we'll just have to take Shuyin out to get to Vegnagun then. It looks like that's the only way." He tried to sound confident, but he had no idea how to fight someone who was dead. Undead monsters were one thing, but if this Shuyin was a spirit…that was something else entirely.
"Thank you," Yuna smiled. She turned to go back into the Ragnarok, but then seemed to remember something. She turned to face him and looked a little mischievous, "Hey, can I ask you a question?"
'…?' Squall thought, "Uh…yeah, sure…?" Squall said, his statement coming out as a question.
"Well it's kinda about you." She said, her eyes dancing in amusement as she saw him grimace ever so slightly.
"Great. My least favorite subject…" Squall muttered. He had always hated talking about himself. His friends seemed to realize that, but he couldn't expect someone he had met only a few days ago to know that. 'Heh, well, I suppose I brought this one on myself…I could've said no. Oh well. I am a little different than I was a few years ago...'
"Well, it's kind of strange for me to say…I mean, we've only known you guys for a couple of days." Yuna voiced the same thing that Squall had been thinking. She hesitated for a second, trying to figure out how to word her question. "Are you seeing anyone?"
"Huh?" Squall asked, confused. He had only known these girls for a couple of days.'What kind of question is that? Ugh, this better not turn out like Garden...I don't need three more girls gawking at every move I make...you'd think that I was the only man in the universe with the way all these women look at me. At least I'm not a playboy like Irvine, though...'
Squall stayed quiet for a moment, trying to decide how to answer her. He finally replied; "No. I'm not. Why?"
"Oh, no reason. Hehe, okay, I'll see you later, Squall."
"O…kay…" Squall said, drawing out the word. "What's with girls and being weird?" He wondered aloud. Yuna heard him, giggled, and continued into Guadosalam.
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"You. Cannot. Go. In. There." The guard at the entrance to the Farplane had begun to get agitated with their repeated attempts to gain entry to the sacred ground. "It's become far too unstable. You go in, you die. It's that simple. Now, leave already!"
The group walked a short distance away from the guard and all turned to face Squall, whom everyone looked to as the leader again. They had been trying to get the guard to let them in for the better part of an hour now, but he wouldn't listen to any of their explanations. All he would say is that the Farplane had 'grown unstable'. Squall had finally given up after the last conversation got him nowhere.
"So, Squall, what do we do now?" Zell asked, looking over at the guard with a scowl, "That bastard isn't gonna let us in."
"Well, duh, Zell. What could've given you that idea?" Seifer asked, rolling his eyes. Zell turned his glare on Seifer now. In his characteristic gesture, he swung in Seifer's direction. When that didn't have the desired effect, he resorted to flipping Seifer the bird. Rikku giggled, Paine shook her head and Squall growled.
"Quit bickering." Squall growled, his voice icy. Seifer looked sheepish and Zell made a 'tch' noise. Squall's tone told them plainly that he wasn't messing around. Both stopped and Squall continued; "Well, we obviously need to find another way into the Farplane. Yuna, Rikku, Paine, do any of you have any suggestions?" Squall asked, while at the same time stepping between Seifer and Zell to forestall any possibility of more arguing. Seifer may have been acting differently toward everyone else, but he was still acting like a jerk to Zell.
"Ooh, ooh! Yunie! What about those holes in the temples? The aeons we fought did kinda look like shadows, didn't they? Maybe they really came from the Farplane!" Rikku jumped up and down, waving her free hand in the air. Squall looked down at her other hand, wondering why she seemed to be anchored in the spot and realized that she was holding Zell's hand now.
'Ah, so that's why Zell shut up. Whatever...it works.'
"Yeah, they defiantly weren't normal aeons. It's a possibility that they came from the Farplane." Paine agreed.
"Holes? Temples? Aeons? Hold on…what are you talking about?" Squall asked, trying—and failing—to take it all in.
"You want to field this one, Paine?" Yuna asked, eyes dancing again. Something was obviously going on between the two women, and Squall had a sinking feeling that he was going to be involved somehow. Just what he needed…
"Alright, let's see…temples are where summoners once went to pray for strength. Aeons were the answer to those prayers. The Aeons are entities that are summoned into existence by a summoner to aid him or her in battle. They also give summoners abilities that they normally wouldn't possess. After Yuna here destroyed Sin completely, she and all the other summoners decided to dispatch the Aeons forever, thinking that it was wrong to keep them here after their primary objective was completed. We didn't know where the Aeons went, but apparently they went to the Farplane. Recently, we had to fight all the old Aeons again. After all those battles, there were giant holes in the Chambers of the Fayth…it could be possible that they lead to the Farplane, since no one except the original builders know all the secrets."
"Okay, so that means that we're off to one of these Temples then, right?. But then what, jump ourselves into one of those holes? What if it doesn't go to the Farplane? It could be all of our deaths. Why don't we send a scout—no, Zell, I don't mean a person—to find out what is down there. We have probes on the Ragnarok. Let's use 'em."
Back on board the Ragnarok, Squall had Selphie fly the Ragnarok to Djose following Yuna's suggestion. After the Ragnarok touched down, Irvine set up two of the seven probes onboard to shoot down the hole in the Djose Chamber of the Fayth.
"I don't exactly know how far the signal will reach, Squall…" Irvine said, squinting at the probe launcher's display.
"Well… just do what you can, okay Irvine?" Squall said.
"Yeah…" Irvine said, tapping away on the keyboard.
The first of three probes programmed to fly down the hole in the Djose Temple took off from the Ragnarok's docking bay. The first was programmed to take a direct course down the hole. It flew straight down, transmitting its signal back to Irvine. Roughly ten minutes after it took off, the signal started to cut out.
"Squall," Irvine called, "We've got some activity here. Looks like that hole goes directly into the Farplane Glen. According to Yuna, the Farplane Glen is where all the memories of the dead come to life. That could be a problem… who knows if these memories can actually do anything…hell, this Shuyin guy sounds bad enough….I don't want to have to tango with a whole hoard of pissed off memories."
"First off, I don't even know that that can happen. Besides, we don't have much of a choice, do we? Vegnagun is down in the Farplane—most likely tucked away in the bottom most depths of it—and we need to go there to fight it. Pulling the thing out onto the surface could mean innocent lives being lost. I don't want that on my conscience. There isn't any other choice; we've got to jump in. How far is it down, Irvine?"
"Well… at last transmission, it was approximately two miles down."
"Okay… we've got the equipment to make that possible." Squall turned back to the group that had gathered in the cockpit. "Looks like we're going to jump down that hole tomorrow and see what we find. Try and get some rest, everyone…it's going to be a long day." Squall said, and turned to leave, but Irvine called out to him before he could;
"Oh, wait, Squall… can you go check out the engine room? The probe launcher is acting up again…I can't fire off the last two probes to get life readings at the bottom of the hole."
"Yeah, alright. Keep the comm. channel open in case I need you to shut the power off again."
"Gotcha."
Squall walked over to the lift and punched the button for the lowest level: the engine room. Just as the lift was beginning to close, Paine ran up and slipped herself into the lift next to Squall.
"Hey, Leonhart." She said. "What brings you here? That cowboy-looking guy wanted me to check out the engine room. He said something about the probe launcher."
'Irvine, why would you have her come too?' Squall thought, mildly irritated but somewhat curious. He chuckled and said,
"Strange… I didn't think Irvine would need two people to check the probe launcher…" Squall smirked and Paine just laughed.
The lift descended to the lowest level of the ship. Squall and Paine walked out of the lift and Squall operated the mechanism for the blast door leading to the engine room.
The engine room was the largest room on the entire Ragnarok, aside from the hanger. The main engine was a Pulse-powered hyperdrive core, so the bulkhead had to be quite thick, in case of a meltdown. Squall and Paine entered the room, triggering the automatic door which slid shut behind them. They walked over to the probe launcher and Squall took off the access panel, exposing the circuitry. The random jumble of wires took a second to decipher, but Squall had experience with this: the probe launcher was an aftermarket piece of crap.
Shortly after the Ragnarok was licensed under Squall, Cid opted to have several modifications made. One of which was the purchase of an expensive—but horrible—probe launcher. The launcher constantly broke down and had to be tinkered with…and it was always being tinkered with by Squall. The whole thing was jimmy-rigged into the Ragnarok's control system, anyway. It never surprised anyone to find the launcher on the fritz.
"Just let me take care of the installation. It may come in handy sometime, wouldn't you agree, Squall?" Cid had said. Squall read the specifics on the launcher, but kept his mouth shut.
"Piece of crap…" Squall muttered, and shed his jacket so he could slip under the base of the launcher, where the firing mechanism was located. He had a feeling that the launcher door was stuck again.
"Do this often?" Paine asked. Squall chuckled and nodded as he continued to climb under the launcher. He could feel her eyes on him as he did so.
"What's that on your arm?" She gestured to his right bicep.
"Oh, this? It's a gift from my ex…She thought I would look cooler if I had a tattoo." Squall explained, grimacing slightly at the mention of Rinoa. He hadn't thought about her once throughout this whole trip, and he almost liked it better that way.
"What is it?" Paine asked, moving closer to peer at the tattoo.
"What, the tattoo or the grimace? The tattoo's a lion. The same one as this," he gestured toward his necklace, "and just so you know, his name is Griever. And the grimace was a memory of my crazy ex. Sorry."
"It's okay, but you named your necklace?" Paine asked, eyes dancing slightly in amusement.
"Yeah…why, is that unusual?" Squall asked.
"No, not really," Paine replied, laughing.
"Uh-huh," Squall muttered and went back to work. He crawled under the base again. She leaned against the wall and waited, still watching Squall with a gentile look in her eyes. She tried to mask it before he saw, though.
Squall peered up through the tangle of wires. He hated this part. Even though he had done this upwards of seven times, it didn't make his task any more enjoyable. He had been wrong: it wasn't the launch door mechanism, but the power coupler between the launcher and the control panel nearly three floors up was disconnected again. Squall groaned. The reattaching procedure could be tricky: he needed to reattach the coupler without shocking himself. The first time he tried to fix this particular problem he was stupid enough to grab both wires and just jam them together. That brilliant idea had put him up in the infirmary for three days. That much energy was not something to be taken lightly, he had learned. Squall pushed himself out of the repair hatch, wiped a couple beads of sweat off his forehead activated the comm. system to call the cockpit.
"Irvine, power down all the systems and subsystems… I need to reconnect the power coupler…again…"
"Alright, hang on… I'll leave the comm. system operational, so if you run into any problems…" Irvine trailed off.
"Nah, it'll be alright… Shut all the systems down, but make sure to save the navi-computer settings… We don't want to try and fly back home manually." Squall told him.
"Yeah, yeah, I know…I have done this before, remember? I was the one in the cockpit the last time you had to fix that piece of junk." Squall could almost see Irvine roll his eyes, "Alright, everything but the comm. system's been shut down. I'm turning it off now." Just at that moment Squall remembered why he told Irvine to leave the comm. systems operational: the auto door locks. Whenever power was cut to the all the systems, the auto-locks engaged, preventing any potential leaks from the engine room and the reactor core.
"Shit! Irvine!" Squall yelled, but the comm. system was already shut down along with every other system and subsystem on the Ragnarok. "Dammit! I knew I told him to leave it operational when I was upstairs for a reason!" He pounded his fist on the wall next to the comm. system.
"What's wrong?" Paine asked, after Squall's outburst was over.
"…We're locked in…" Squall muttered. 'I might as well go and reconnect the power to the control panel...' He slipped under the panel again and reconnected the power. After he had replaced the access panel, he turned to Paine. "Uh, well… looks like both Irvine and I are morons and we've got to wait until he realizes that the auto locks initiate on all the doors whenever the power gets shut off. He does this all the time… Last time, I was stuck in here for three hours before he realized it, granted this time I'm partially at fault. I'm sorry…I'm sure this isn't how you intended to spend your day…"
"Actually… there's something I've been meaning to tell you, Squall. Um… I really don't know how to say it though…" Paine was actually blushing now.
Squall raised one eyebrow. Paine had something to tell him that would cause her to blush? She didn't seem like that kind of girl. "What's up?"
Paine hesitated for another second. "I can't seem to get you out of my head…" Paine blushed even deeper.
"…" Squall waited a moment for her to continue. When she didn't, he moved a step closer to her. She matched his step and looked up at him. His eyes stared straight into hers for a moment before she closed them. Their faces seemed to be unconsciously moving closer together. Their noses touched, followed by their lips as Paine stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Time seemed to stop for the two of them as they kissed. They remained locked together for a full two minutes before finally parting for a breath. Paine smiled and looked up into Squall's eyes.
"Now I know why your ex didn't want to break up with you. You're more amazing than I thought. Maybe it's a good thing that we got locked in here." She said, and Squall just smiled, pulling her into another kiss.
Irvine had been watching the whole thing from the closed circuit cameras that were placed around the ship. So he had lied to Squall a little…he didn't shut down every system on the Ragnarok. Yuna walked up behind Irvine and peered at the video monitor.
"Did it happen yet?" She asked.
"Yep. Just like I told you. Squall may not always say a lot, but he isn't totally oblivious anymore. Two years ago, that was another story. Well," He said, swiveling in his chair to face Yuna, "shall I let the two love birds out now?"
Squall and Paine were still holding each other when the power to the blast door came back on. The comm. unit crackled,
"Hey, Squall, sorry man. I forgot about the auto locks. Power's restored, you can get out now."
"Thanks, Irvine," Squall said as he took Paine's hand. They walked in comfortable silence to the elevator and took it to the cockpit, where they found the remainder of the group already assembled. The first thing that everyone seemed to notice was that Squall and Paine's hands were twined together. Zell, lacking tact as usual blurted out,
"Yo, Squall, when…" Squall's look cut him off.
"For everyone who cares…a couple minutes ago." He looked over at Paine, but she was already looking over at Yuna and Rikku, both whom were giving her a thumbs-up sign.
'Paine starting to like me must have been what Yuna was talking about...makes sense now.' Squall thought. He turned to the rest of the group.
"Alright. The probe launcher's fixed…what're the readings on life at the bottom of this hole?"
"It looks good, man." Irvine said, still tapping away on the keyboard and trying to decipher all the readings that were showing up on his screen. "The bottom looks like it should support all of us."
"Okay, that settles it. We're going in tomorrow. Make sure you're all ready for anything. I don't know what we'll find down there. Okay, dismissed." Squall looked at Paine, whose amused look plainly told him that Yuna and Rikku wanted 'girl talk time'. Squall pulled her in close one last time and laid a kiss on her forehead, then motioned for her to go with her friends. When the three girls had left the bridge, he turned and made his way to his own cabin. Squall stared at his ceiling…things had a funny way of happening.
'Well, this was definitely an interesting day. I just hope tomorrow goes as well as today...Vegnagun's going to be a pain in the ass...oh well. You've just got to do it, Leonhart. Now, get some sleep and stop thinking.'
The sleep was easier said than done, but somewhere along the way, it overtook him.
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Well. That took a while. School and work and preparing for transfer all take up a lot of time, but I'll try and update more often…I promise. Hope you enjoyed it; R&R please…but remember the disclaimer at the top…
--Kyle-Leonhart