I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.
To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...
Forgive the extended vacation, if you will, I got caught up in classes. Really.
~
Chapter 25
Seifer held the cup of hot chocolate in his hands, wishing he dared drink it, but having been warned to warm back up slowly, and not as fast as humanly possible, he just held it. And listened.
"Now would you mind explaining what you meant by Aura? Who is she and what has she to do with any of this?" Irvine not so quietly yelped at Max.
"Aura's a young woman I knew... a long time ago," Max sighed deeply, and started to continue.
Seifer snorted, "Yeah right, she said something about wanting to investigate Ultimecia, and she spoke as if it was all ancient history. If you knew her a long time ago, you'd have met her before any of this happened."
Max winced, "I hadn't expected her to be so talkative. She must have really gotten tired of pretending."
Squall blinked, "Pretending what?"
"To be stupid," Seifer chuckled wryly, "She'd been behaving as Rinoa for quite a while, though she didn't say exactly how long. I figure that would be enough to drive anyone mad."
"She already is," Max had by now almost curled completely into himself. He stared blankly at a wall over Eric's head, not even registering that the skin stretching over his face was seemingly being pulled even tighter as he stared at the wall, "That blasted stone. If I'd known then, what the stone itself was..."
"What stone? What it was?" Quistis pounced on the only thing that made sense of what he said.
Maria blinked, "You couldn't possibly mean the stone we used to bind Sorceress powers permanently, could you?"
Max flinched, both suddenly realizing what was happening to Eric's corpse and Doomtrain, and at Maria's perceptiveness, "Actually, that's exactly what I was speaking of. When we threw it randomly, it was lodged into a stone growth, until a few hundred years from now, a random gunshot dislodges it, and it comes into Aura's possession, and possesses her," he shrugged, "If I'd known when I threw it, that it was the stone Aura had around her neck,"
Seifer blinked, "THAT was what she was talking about!?"
At the same time, Selphie yelped, "A few hundred years from now?!"
Max blinked at them both, "Um, yeah. She's from just before Ultimecia surfaced. I'm pretty sure that Ultimecia was only months from coming into power and eliminating all the SeeDs of the world when I left."
"Left?" Squall's quiet drawl was on the other end of the volume scale from the yelping that came before, but just as incredulous, "Explain that."
"I don't know that we have time," Max tried to talk his way out of it now that he realized he may have told them too much too quickly.
"Make the time," Xia hissed, while the others glared.
"He can't," Eric's body leaned forward, and the others could almost swear they heard flesh actually rip as he did so, "We are running out of time for this one. She will have to be dealt with now, so that there is something to bury of the man."
~~
When three dozen soldiers stepped out of their crafts at the entrance to the Tomb, they were shocked to see only a scientist muttering randomly about inventions that bound the powers of Guardians to a person's body, rather than the Guardian itself.
"Hasn't he already come up with things like that?" One soldier whispered to another.
"Dunno, I don't keep up on things like that," the other responded.
Their superior officer shushed them before the already volatile temper of General Caraway could get carried away. The General meanwhile was delivering a tirade to the preoccupied scientist.
"What in the world are you doing here? You should be in Balamb, keeping the SeeDs there in line!" Caraway was nearly spitting in Odine's face by this point, "The SeeDs of Galbadia AND Balamb have escaped, and the Trabians don't have a clue where that miscreant Almasy got off to, nor do they know where my daughter is! What do you have to say about all this?"
"That upstart," Odine muttered distractedly, "He haz a rather intriguing rapport vit ze Guardians. He used their strength somehow; to bring back ze SeeDs ve had shot down here, in this very entranceway. I wonder... I wonder if I could forcibly draw the Guardians from zose SeeDs anyway. I wonder if I could perhaps use him as an experiment."
"I don't care what experiments you're dreaming up now, you old bag of frills and ribbons," Caraway exploded, "I want to know where they all are!"
Odine seemed to snap back into reality, "Zat is a good question. Vere are zey, do you know?"
~~
"The blasted fool is just locking them away in trinkets," Max muttered under his breath as he glared at the map in front of him, "He's not even using them to augment his strength. All he ever wanted them for was the prestige."
"Fine, Max. Rant, but don't forget to point us to where you think Rinoa's body may be," Kiros drawled as the auburn-haired man kept muttering under his breath as he tried to locate said building.
"This is the most I've ever heard him talk," Laguna seemed mildly surprised, "I almost wondered if he didn't have a strict word quota."
After giving the Estharian President a strange look, Squall looked back to where Max kept absently circling his finger around one point while he stared at a wholly different area of the map. Wondering if Max meant something by it, he asked, "What's under your finger?"
Max looked down, and blinked, "Nothing that I know of," And went back to staring at the rest of the map. After a few minutes, his finger went back to the center of where he'd been circling before, and stayed, until Squall figured that either Max was trying to tell him without the old men knowing, that he didn't realize he was pointing to that spot, or that Max was looking at the wrong map.
"Could you perhaps be looking at a map of our time, when you should be looking at one from yours?" Quistis summed up what Squall had decided must be true, as she took Max's finger from that spot on the map again, and made him look at it closely, "Now there is nothing but ocean according to the map, but as we learned in the Deep Sea Research Center, that's not always true."
Max blinked, and then stared at that point of the map, trying to think if that area would have land at any point in the future that Aura might find a use for. It was near a fairly northernmost point in one of the Centran peninsulas, perhaps... "It's a lead at least. I don't remember ever seeing anything there, but then again, I wasn't in the best of shape when she made me come here anyway, so that might not be saying much," he shrugged, "I suppose the least we can do is investigate."
~
It feels like it might finally be getting close to over. Not like many people are even paying attention anymore. Heh. My fault, I fried my brains because of classes. Ah well. Maybe I'll get this done before the semester's over.
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.
To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...
Forgive the extended vacation, if you will, I got caught up in classes. Really.
~
Chapter 25
Seifer held the cup of hot chocolate in his hands, wishing he dared drink it, but having been warned to warm back up slowly, and not as fast as humanly possible, he just held it. And listened.
"Now would you mind explaining what you meant by Aura? Who is she and what has she to do with any of this?" Irvine not so quietly yelped at Max.
"Aura's a young woman I knew... a long time ago," Max sighed deeply, and started to continue.
Seifer snorted, "Yeah right, she said something about wanting to investigate Ultimecia, and she spoke as if it was all ancient history. If you knew her a long time ago, you'd have met her before any of this happened."
Max winced, "I hadn't expected her to be so talkative. She must have really gotten tired of pretending."
Squall blinked, "Pretending what?"
"To be stupid," Seifer chuckled wryly, "She'd been behaving as Rinoa for quite a while, though she didn't say exactly how long. I figure that would be enough to drive anyone mad."
"She already is," Max had by now almost curled completely into himself. He stared blankly at a wall over Eric's head, not even registering that the skin stretching over his face was seemingly being pulled even tighter as he stared at the wall, "That blasted stone. If I'd known then, what the stone itself was..."
"What stone? What it was?" Quistis pounced on the only thing that made sense of what he said.
Maria blinked, "You couldn't possibly mean the stone we used to bind Sorceress powers permanently, could you?"
Max flinched, both suddenly realizing what was happening to Eric's corpse and Doomtrain, and at Maria's perceptiveness, "Actually, that's exactly what I was speaking of. When we threw it randomly, it was lodged into a stone growth, until a few hundred years from now, a random gunshot dislodges it, and it comes into Aura's possession, and possesses her," he shrugged, "If I'd known when I threw it, that it was the stone Aura had around her neck,"
Seifer blinked, "THAT was what she was talking about!?"
At the same time, Selphie yelped, "A few hundred years from now?!"
Max blinked at them both, "Um, yeah. She's from just before Ultimecia surfaced. I'm pretty sure that Ultimecia was only months from coming into power and eliminating all the SeeDs of the world when I left."
"Left?" Squall's quiet drawl was on the other end of the volume scale from the yelping that came before, but just as incredulous, "Explain that."
"I don't know that we have time," Max tried to talk his way out of it now that he realized he may have told them too much too quickly.
"Make the time," Xia hissed, while the others glared.
"He can't," Eric's body leaned forward, and the others could almost swear they heard flesh actually rip as he did so, "We are running out of time for this one. She will have to be dealt with now, so that there is something to bury of the man."
~~
When three dozen soldiers stepped out of their crafts at the entrance to the Tomb, they were shocked to see only a scientist muttering randomly about inventions that bound the powers of Guardians to a person's body, rather than the Guardian itself.
"Hasn't he already come up with things like that?" One soldier whispered to another.
"Dunno, I don't keep up on things like that," the other responded.
Their superior officer shushed them before the already volatile temper of General Caraway could get carried away. The General meanwhile was delivering a tirade to the preoccupied scientist.
"What in the world are you doing here? You should be in Balamb, keeping the SeeDs there in line!" Caraway was nearly spitting in Odine's face by this point, "The SeeDs of Galbadia AND Balamb have escaped, and the Trabians don't have a clue where that miscreant Almasy got off to, nor do they know where my daughter is! What do you have to say about all this?"
"That upstart," Odine muttered distractedly, "He haz a rather intriguing rapport vit ze Guardians. He used their strength somehow; to bring back ze SeeDs ve had shot down here, in this very entranceway. I wonder... I wonder if I could forcibly draw the Guardians from zose SeeDs anyway. I wonder if I could perhaps use him as an experiment."
"I don't care what experiments you're dreaming up now, you old bag of frills and ribbons," Caraway exploded, "I want to know where they all are!"
Odine seemed to snap back into reality, "Zat is a good question. Vere are zey, do you know?"
~~
"The blasted fool is just locking them away in trinkets," Max muttered under his breath as he glared at the map in front of him, "He's not even using them to augment his strength. All he ever wanted them for was the prestige."
"Fine, Max. Rant, but don't forget to point us to where you think Rinoa's body may be," Kiros drawled as the auburn-haired man kept muttering under his breath as he tried to locate said building.
"This is the most I've ever heard him talk," Laguna seemed mildly surprised, "I almost wondered if he didn't have a strict word quota."
After giving the Estharian President a strange look, Squall looked back to where Max kept absently circling his finger around one point while he stared at a wholly different area of the map. Wondering if Max meant something by it, he asked, "What's under your finger?"
Max looked down, and blinked, "Nothing that I know of," And went back to staring at the rest of the map. After a few minutes, his finger went back to the center of where he'd been circling before, and stayed, until Squall figured that either Max was trying to tell him without the old men knowing, that he didn't realize he was pointing to that spot, or that Max was looking at the wrong map.
"Could you perhaps be looking at a map of our time, when you should be looking at one from yours?" Quistis summed up what Squall had decided must be true, as she took Max's finger from that spot on the map again, and made him look at it closely, "Now there is nothing but ocean according to the map, but as we learned in the Deep Sea Research Center, that's not always true."
Max blinked, and then stared at that point of the map, trying to think if that area would have land at any point in the future that Aura might find a use for. It was near a fairly northernmost point in one of the Centran peninsulas, perhaps... "It's a lead at least. I don't remember ever seeing anything there, but then again, I wasn't in the best of shape when she made me come here anyway, so that might not be saying much," he shrugged, "I suppose the least we can do is investigate."
~
It feels like it might finally be getting close to over. Not like many people are even paying attention anymore. Heh. My fault, I fried my brains because of classes. Ah well. Maybe I'll get this done before the semester's over.