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...
Chapter 27
Upon reaching her destination, Aura stopped, and whirled around. She glared at Max, who was still hobbling into the room, and then stalked up to him. She grabbed his right arm and yanked him further into the room at her pace, which more or less knocked him off his feet. When Aura reached her destination in the room, she dropped his arm and began fiddling with the straps and belts on the table.
While she did this, Max tried desperately to assess his arm for additional damage, pointless as it might have been. He also tried to figure out how in the world a girl of her build, trained or otherwise, could drag an unwilling body behind her so effortlessly. Then he remembered the crystal around her neck and chalked it up to the power in it giving her strength in at least partial exchange for stealing her sanity.
After a little bit, Aura pronounced her machine prepared, and turned to Max. Grinning she asked, "Well?"
"Well, what?" Max was again, puzzled, he'd never seen the room before, nor the machine, and had no idea what she wanted.
"I will need you to connect me to the machine, and then to connect yourself. So we can use your power to send me back."
"I'm not Ellone, Aura," Max winced as her glare darkened.
"I know that," Aura sat on the table/bed set up with the most belts and clips, "I just figured that with this machine modeled after her power, and yours, which is very similar, I should be able to go back in time and see what's going on. At the very least. I might even be able to DO something, if I'm lucky."
"Ellone's power required knowing the person," Max muttered, "and I had never heard of Odine managing to make the machine do any better."
"That's what your power is supposed to do," Aura grinned, "Now belt us in and get to work!"
Her bones ached blessed much in the winter, as mild as they were in Winhill. Thus it was with great complaint, and very slow movement, that Mrs. Nedar moved from her room, to her kitchen to make herself some tea. Her progress was steady though, and while she moved, even as she grumbled, she enjoyed the smell of the flowers throughout her house. That meant her daughter had been to visit already, and had perhaps even begun cooking, so that Mrs. Nedar wouldn't have to just have tea for the morning. Ever since Mr. Nedar had passed away, Mrs. Nedar- Patsy to her friends, had been thinking of selling the house, or moving somewhere smaller, somewhere she wouldn't have to climb up and down the stairs to get anywhere, and giving the house to her daughter. Poor girl was so alone, she'd left Winhill while growing up, and had visited Galbadia's capital, Deling City. What she saw there, she never said much about, but she didn't waste any time returning. Mrs. Nedar felt for her poor, lonely daughter, but also saw the event as something young Lena had needed to teach her the blessings of actually growing up.
All the same, when Mrs. Nedar reached her kitchen, it was with great anticipation for the possibility of scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, and orange juice fresh squeezed waiting for her on the table. To her surprise, her daughter was collapsed on the kitchen table itself, face-first into those same hash browns Mrs. Nedar was so looking forward to. Screaming, Mrs. Nedar attempted to pull her daughter out of the finely chopped, fried potatoes, and hoped her daughter was all right, even as she worried for her own heart, and her breakfast.
Several tries with the time jumping machine finally told Aura that her plans weren't working as she had hoped. For one thing, she kept taking on the body of some woman from a tiny little town in the Galbadian-controlled lands that no longer existed to her knowledge. For another, she was only able to inhabit the woman's body long enough to open her eyes to the world around her, and pass back out.
Unstrapping herself, Aura snapped, "Are you trying to sabotage my plans or are you that incompetent?" She stalked to her fellow occupant of the room, and glared into the dark-almost-black blue eyes that screamed in pain and exhaustion.
"I have told you repeatedly now, and while you grew up, that my powers aren't fine-tuned enough for things like this. The only one I can send with any real control is me," Max shuddered at the expression on Aura's face and tried to slip out of the bindings he'd become tangled in.
"Then we'll just have to send you, so you can be my link, won't we?" Aura asked with saccharine sweetness.
"It doesn't work like that either," Max sighed, "If I help you, I can send you, to a stranger, though we'll not know who they are. If you do this on your own, you'll be limited to someone you know, and won't be able to change a thing. With me there, I won't come back, and you'll be limited in that fashion for the rest of the time you want to attempt this madness."
Upon closing his mouth on those words, Max realized he never should have said the last part, as Aura swung out at him again, catching his now recently battered throat once more. Coughing and choking, he could do nothing as she began to fiddle with dials, readings and entered codes into the computer system.
"It's going to be okay," Aura smirked, "I have almost finished making the additions to the format of the machine, so that it better suits my needs. So when I get that done, I can send you backward, and still be able to do what I want to."
"You're tinkering with a machine that's been in existence for at least three hundred years," Max winced some more, curled in on himself, and resigned himself, "Don't blame me when it blows up, sends the wrong person, place, or thing, to just fails to work."
"Don't worry, I will," Aura rolled her eyes.
Another restart. Hopefully, this will be the last push. And perhaps, about now, the two timelines will begin tailing into one another.