Chapter IV

"Combat Worthy"

Ragnarok, Boarding Ramp.

Selphie anxiously twisted her nunchaku, wincing with every clumsy maneuver the Ragnarok's new pilot performed as they neared the drop point. She missed the days when it was just the six of them, flying wherever they pleased, catching Chocobos, looking for the Queen of Cards...

"Gear up, people! We've got two minutes to the drop point!"

Quistis was returning from the cockpit, having briefed the gunner on emergency protocols - should they fall, the crew was authorized to saturate the area with laser fire until everything stopped moving - Tonberrys included. Zell, Selphie, and the backup crew were all taking sensor equipment with them, and planned a slow descent using Aero spells - except for Pilo. Nervous at the thought of relying on nothing more than his magic skill to survive the drop, Zell lent him his T-board to help stabilize his descent.

Strapping on the backpack that carried their radio transmitter, Zell gave Quistis a thumbs up and hit the ramp switch.

Field Commander Trepe, like the rest, wore her modified SeeD uniform, now fitted with light armor plating instead of the more aesthetically-pleasing high collars and gold trim. Whip wound around her waist, she clipped a thermal scanner onto her boot and ran down the boarding ramp as it swung open to reveal the Centra plains below. Leading the dive, Quistis spread her arms and flew out of the Ragnarok, propelled by her feet and the natural winds for as long as she could manage. Joined by the rest soon after, they coasted across the sky until coming up on the target cliff, and began the barrage of safety spells.

"Triple-Protect!"

"Triple-Float!"

"Aero!"

"Aero!"

"Aer-"

Quistis danced between gusts, using Float and Aero to redirect her momentum from a fall into a full-on run, and landed perfectly mid-stride atop a nearby plateau. Zell and Selphie's descents were less elegant, but efficient, as the pair dropped ahead of Quistis by a good thirty meters. Pilo skidded to a halt beside them, trashing the turbine board to Zell's dismay.

"Aw, damn! I just got that fixed, Pilo."

"I'm sorry! It's these gusts! By Hyne, it's like the damn wind is possessed!"

"Duh - we were using wind magic." Selphie chirped, bringing up their position on her datapad.

"No, he has a point." Quistis admitted, taking a quick thermal reading. "Aero aside, there's something else at work here. Something resisting our magics. A defense screen."

"Who needs it? Let's just get down there and find Rinoa!"

Despite his remarkable progess in the years since the Centran orphans reunited, Zell Dincht remained the most...difficult member of the group other than Squall. Unable, or unwilling, to control his emotional outbursts would have earned him a Fail on the SeeD trials under any normal circumstances. Fortunately, SeeDs weren't typically hired under normal circumstances, and his zeal had served him well on many a mission...but here, now, it seemed out of place.

"We shouldn't hope for much, Zell. If I'm right and there is some kind of anti-magic field at work here, then Rin- the Sorceress is probably able to track us within it."

"No magic, then?" Selphie asked, her meticulously-planned casting strategy rendered moot.

"Not until we find Blue Heaven. How close are we, Selphie?"

"The map has us twenty kilometers south of an old waystation. It's likely they've set up a surveillance post there. That's what I'd do, anyway."

If there had been a time before Adel, before Ultimecia, when Selphie Tilmitt's tactical assessments were treated as anything other than the word of Hyne himself, the world had forgotten it. Second only to Xu in her combat theory expertise, Selphie had made a name for herself applying the same quick, effective decision-making skills from her Garden Festival days to the battlefield.

"Very well. We'll approach the waystation to the north on foot. Pilo, station your team on low ground to avoid detection. Do not radio us. In the event of an emergency, you are to contact the Ragnarok - and only the Ragnarok - to carry out the failsafe. Keep an eye on the sky - if we have to, we'll send up a signal."

"I thought you said no magic."

"If it gets bad enough to bring the Ragnarok in, it won't matter."

UNKNOWN.

Irvine awoke in a convulsion as a weak Thunder spell ran down the metal stretcher he found himself bound to. The raw, nerve-searing stimulus forced his eyes open, but he saw nothing at first...and then, her. The one called matron - whispy, ethereal now, as perhaps she'd always been. Out there, by the wreck, she had looked so alive - so human - but he could see now she was no more a woman than Ifrit was a man.

"Do you like Matron?" Traline giggled, drawing her Guardian Force back into the darkest parts of her mind.

"Who are you?"

"I think she knew you in a past life. The other guy, too. Weird, huh?"

Other guy?

Squall. He'd been looking for Squall when the girl ambushed him.

"Where is he? What did you do to him?"

"He's fine, silly! Matron just thought you'd want to be alone to rest. That other guy's real mad. He's been pretty loud the whole trip. We had to Sleep him."

Great, he thought. I'm chained to a stainless steel bedframe, the fearless leader is napping in the next room, and we're both being held hostage by a little schoolgirl.

"I'm kinda bored, now, though. Wanna play some cards?"

A schoolgirl with a Triple Triad addiction.

"Uh..."

Make this work, Irvine. Make it work.

"Sure. But I need my hands free to play, okay?"

The girl seemed to mull it over for about a second, tilting her head, biting her lip, copying a younger Selphie Tilmitt's mannerisms with such disturbing accuracy as to make him think she was some sort of doppleganger, a dark twin from another world...and then, she nodded.

"Okay! Let's play!"

Team A, Centra Plains.

Forty minutes into their trek, Selphie noticed a strange shift in the color of the clouds. Quistis' thermal scans came up hotter, too, as if the whole Centran territory had moved a few inches closer to the sun.

"Something's happening to the field. Zell, prepare to signal. Selphie - it's time."

The ever-reddening clouds merged in the sky, forming a single pillar of crimson fog that poured down onto the plains in the seconds after Quistis' order. The red mist carried a hiss through their ears, an undead drone amplified and sped up - the chant of a marching army. Swords clanged, sparked as they dragged along the rocky plain, and Team A knew at once what they were dealing with.

Forbidden.

"Light 'em up!" Zell screamed, inching back as Selphie took point. A jagged, crown-shaped light grew out of her chest, climbed to her forehead, and exploded into the brilliant silver-steel of Alexander's metal frame. Channeled through Selphie, he mowed down the first wave of undead swordsmen like a shimmering-white cousin of Doomtrain, washing the second wave in holy light strong enough to cleanse the plains of fiendish beasts.

Team B, Centra Plains.

"What in Hyne's holy head was that?" Pilo shrieked, raising his binoculars a half-second too late to catch the fading shape of Alexander's silhouette.

"Was that the signal?" the team's spearman asked, as eager to leave now as he was to join the mission in the first place.

"Damn it, Arnel, you know it's not!" the rifleman grunted, raising his weapon as if he could somehow join the fight from so far away. "We're supposed to wait here unless we see a- "

"Fira! One o'clock!"

Sure enough, Pilo had spotted this one - struggling to rise, already half-faded, the exploding fireball shone just enough to stand out through a rushing wave of red haze.

"What the heck is that smoke, Pilo?"

"I don't know. It's...it's coming this way."

"Wha-"

"It's coming this way! Get down!"

Above the field of operations, the Ragnarok's skeleton crew could make little sense of what went on below. A reddish-brown whirlwind was sweeping over the plains, obscuring any signal flares or magic beacons, but the radio silence remained unbroken - an assurance to them, that despite appearances, everything was going according to plan.

UNKNOWN.

If Irvine was going to figure anything out, it was going to be through Traline Saltera, the spritely little girl that had captured two veteran SeeDs and had them locked up in a can sailing Hyne knows where.

"You seem to know rules unfamiliar to this region. Let's play a game with Shumi Village's rules and ours."

"Sure, sure...but, just out of curiosity, whose rules do you know?"

"Why, Esthar's, of course. Duh."

Esthar? We're going...to Laguna?

"Wait. Esthar...Esthar uses Random, right? That's a bit unfair. I don't want to lose any good cards on our first game!"

The game of cards was more than just a diversion from the abduction and his injuries; it was now part of Irvine's plan to reconnoiter. If Esthar had planned this attack, it meant Laguna was no longer in control, and he had no reason to expect any more backup beyond the guy locked up in the next room.

"What do you say we make a little wager? Make it worth my while to risk my good cards?"

"Ooh, a bet. Okay! What're we betting?"

"How about...if I win, you let me talk to the other guy you've got locked up, and- "

" - if I win?"

"...if you win," Kinneas began, mining that silly-but-charming drawl that won over so many hearts in G-Garden as he retrieved one last precious card from his front shirt pocket, "I'll give you this."

Less worn than the rest of Irvine's deck (he rarely played it), and awash in a peculiar shimmer that marked a custom Level 10 card, Selphie's card was almost too much for Traline to handle.

"How's that for stakes?"

"You're on!"