I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.
Chapter 30
"Oh," Squall responded, "I've a fair idea, I followed Shiva. I don't wear the boots I do for no reason after all."
Max looked to the ground, shaking his head, "Just my luck." Shrugging, Max stood up and leaned against the wall, "This will seem like a strange reference, but you do remember reading my file, right?"
Squall nodded, "Is there are particular reason you are telling just Shiva and myself?"
Max smirked, "Zell's in there, he's hearing, he'll tell everyone else."
Shiva's laughter crinkled through the air, "He's mildly offended at that, he's not half the gossip that certain others are."
"Maybe not," Max conceded, "but, he's more or less been given permission to blab, and we all know how well he keeps secrets under pressure."
Squall rolled his eyes, "He doesn't."
Shiva grinned through Zell's face, and it seemed like both of them were taking part in the expression, "What was that about your file?"
Nodding, Max continued, "I've been asked about my family so many times it isn't even funny. Back in Aura's time, I'd adopted her family, both sides, and other families of the descendants. Even then they asked who my birth family was. The best answer I'd give is the one that they could get out of me right after Esthar was sealed."
"Something about a brother?" Squall supplied, having had enough time to search through his mental files for the information.
"Yeah," Max rubbed the back of his neck, "The place I first called home makes up the fuzziest of memories in my mind. Like the Guardians fuzzing your minds. I think I didn't have the ability to warp time then. Upon my arrival here, somehow, I developed it, and paid in exchange the majority of my memories. The one thing I do remember clearly was the face of someone calling me brother. His hair was very pale, and his face was covered in blood. I get the feeling he was dying."
"How pale was his hair?" Squall seemed to be thinking a hole into the ground he was staring at.
"It doesn't make any sense here, but it was white," Max shrugged, "I'd say as white as a cloud, but there was another color in it, a little purple too, I think. But not enough to turn it a pale purple, just enough to show through the white."
Shaking his head, Squall muttered, "The white sounds like Fuujin, but the purple is right on out of the question. She remembers her family, and they all had white to silver hair."
Max shrugged again, "I don't even remember a name, so it's not like I'm going to argue that fact. Though, sometimes, I think I can remember another person. A blonde, younger, and he's still got the look of innocence about him, even though everything else about him tells you he's had to kill before."
"That sounds like Zell," Shiva smirked, "was this one hyperactive?"
"No," Max shook his head, "At least, not to my knowledge. But, like I said, this is all fuzzy."
"Why exactly is it," Shiva seemed to be asking a question from Zell, "That you and President Loire don't get along?"
"When he fought Adel, and got her sealed away," Max shifted his weight from one foot to the other, "he and his two friends, Kiros and Ward were hailed as heroes, and wasted no time in freeing those she'd imprisoned. In fact, they blindly freed all of the people who'd been incarcerated, and only later realized that some had been there because they were actually criminals. One of them had been convicted of murdering a house full of people, and the criminal decided to come after the sole witness who could get him put back."
"You?" Squall guessed.
Nodding, Max continued, "Thus, I'm not a fan of the idiot. As far as I can tell, most of the rest of his decisions have been like that. Jump in, and see if he can swim his way back out."
"What are we going to do about Eric?" Squall sighed as he asked.
With a sad smile, Max shook his head, "I'm not entirely sure. Technically, the problems have been solved. Rinoa's not on a rampage anymore, Caraway's no longer trying to take over the world, and we'll never change Odine, so there's no point in messing with him. The best we can do is find Eric's parents and ask them where they want to bury him."
The sound of footsteps preceding her voice "Hopefully," Quistis stared at Max reproachfully, "you'll have more tact than that when telling them."
"Hopefully, Caraway will do his job, and will tell them for us," Max stared back, "if he doesn't, then yes, I'll make sure they're sitting before we tell them that Caraway had him sent on a mission that was meant to kill him."
Looking up at the walkway, Shiva smirked, "How many of you are there, standing at the door, listening in?"
Unabashedly, Selphie grinned through the doorway, "Hey, hearing about Maxie's family is much more entertaining than watching poor Eric."
As Max winced at the nickname, Quistis reached the bottom of the stairs leading from the cockpit to the elevator panel leading to a storage area of the Ragnarok, "We can help you research your family you know."
"If there's anything to research," Seifer walked through the doorway, stared at the melting ice, and shook his head as he jumped to sit on the railing instead, "After all, the info we've got all points to him being from another time at the least. Another dimension at the worst. Like he said, he could find himself shunted to another time without warning. For all we'd know, he'd be popped off to another dimension too."
Groaning, Max scratched at his nose, "Must you remind me? I'm trying to forget all the ways this temporal disturbance ability I've been cursed with could malfunction."
"Wait, wait, wait," Selphie waved her hands wildly, "You said malfunction? That means you have no control over it?"
"Little to none," Max confirmed, "the best I've ever been able to do with it is slow time for others. An unintentional side effect of that seems to be my own lack of aging."
"So you really could keep on living," Seifer drawled, "long after we've all died of old age."
"I keep asking you all to not remind me of these things. I really am trying to forget it. It's what more or less happened when I came to this time. I lived among a family, until they started noticing that I still looked as old as I did when they first found me. Not a great way to keep people around you."
"So why are you letting us find out?" Selphie chirped.
"Who said anything about let?" Max snorted, "You've all figured this stuff out on your own, and I'm not that fast a thinker to come up with something completely off the cuff to dissuade you of it."
"Or you're leading us down a path of your choosing so we don't even fathom the realities you're hiding from us," Squall stared straight at Max, with the iciest glare he could pull off.
Feeling like his toes were freezing, Max smirked, "Well, there's that possibility too, but you'd just have to trust me to be telling you the truth, wouldn't you?"
"So this is how you would separate yourself, to prevent the pain of loss?" Shiva seemed disappointed, "Convincing them that you lie when you speak truly?"
"How do you know I haven't been-"
Diablos interrupted, harrumphing, "Because I can taste a lie, and you have no skill with telling them in the first place. You've not spoken a lie since you said your memories of before this world were fuzzy."
"Erk," Max paled, "Forgot about that one. Phoo," Max scratched at the back of his head, "You just like shooting down all my options, don't you?"
"Options or no options," Rinoa peeked through the door, "We're running out of time to deal with Eric. Could we please fly to his hometown?"
With a yelp of glee mixed with sorrow, though only she could pull that combination off, Selphie ran for the stairs, calling, "I'm flying! I'm flying! And don't anyone else even think of touching the controls!"
Still trying to figure out how this is going to end, but it doesn't seem like it will be happy.