"This is gonna be fun." I said, looking at the scattered group of Cie'th ahead, cracking my knuckles.
"Glad someone's up for a fight. Anyone else?" Snow asked.
"Kill 'em all." Lightning said, rushing in, pulling out her gunblade and slicing the first on in half from right shoulder to left hip.
"I've got the next ones!" I said, rushing up, stopping in front of the skinny, shambling Cie'th and noticed the flying one coming at me. "Too easy." I smirked, leaning to the side to dodge its attack, but grabbing its feet, then smashing its head into the ground to knock it out. "I'll beat a motherfucker..." I said, looking at the other Cie'th and rushing in, swinging my unconscious weapon. "With another motherfucker!" I said, beating it to death and killing them both. "How was that?" I asked.
"Not bad. Certainly effective. I'm up next." Snow said, rushing in. He threw a haymaker and decked the big Cie'th, knocking it to the ground, then tried to throw a combo at the flying Cie'th, but it moved too much. Eventually, I shot it in the head, knocking it to the ground to make it easier for him to attack it.
"Better?" I asked.
"Yeah, I got this." He said, taking it down, then finishing the other Cie'th with a hand grenade.
"If I were you, I'd lead with those." I told him as we followed Lightning ahead.
We then entered a chamber that had to be where the actual Fal'Cie was. "So this is... The Fal'Cie." Hope said, confirming that notion.
"I'll be honest with you, it's not as impressive as you guys made it sound." I said, looking at it in disappointment. It looked like a big generator with no power coming from it. "I thought you guys were talking about a god, not a scrap heap." I said, kicking it once.
"Sai, quit it!" Snow snapped, to which I backed away, raising my hands in defense. Then he looked back at the Fal'Cie. "Serah's a crystal now. You gave her a focus and she did what you want! Now let her go!" He shouted at it.
"Snow, it's a machine, with no power. It can't hear you." I said. Sure enough, it didn't respond.
After about a minute pause, Snow dropped to his hands and knees. "Please! Turn her back!" He pleaded.
"Get up, man, you're embarrassing yourself." I said.
He then rose up onto his knees and put one hand on his chest. "I'll be your L'Cie instead!" He shouted.
"That's ballsy." I said with a considerate nod.
Still nothing happened. "Fine, you go on begging." Lightning said, pulling out her gunblade and walking forward. "Like this thing gives a damn about what WE want!" She said, striking it with all her power again and again until she hit it so hard it bounced off of it and caused her to stagger back, almost losing the gunblade... in my chest.
"Lightning!" Snow said concerned.
"Well, that was really close, huh?" I asked looking at the blade literally a centimeter away from my shirt.
Lightning was visibly tired, panting, but from the sound of it, she wouldn't give up soon. "It's this thing's fault the purge started. And it's people who are dying. Serah told us to save Cocoon. That means this thing needs to die!" She said.
"I can help with that." I said, holding up a bomb the size of a beach ball, made entirely from C4. "I don't know if you guys have C4 here, but I can tell you in my world, it's a lot better than a hand grenade." I said. Suddenly, the floor lit up and the machine began powering up. "You know, I THINK we made it made." I said, putting away the bomb.
Suddenly, two spinning, arm-like things rose up and the machine began to open, causing a blinding light, everyone shielding their eyes and me putting on sunglasses. It then revealed its true form on the inside as its arms still maneuvered and it completely took shape. "What the?" Sazh asked, Hope turning and running.
"You know, we need better teammates." I said, looking back at the retreating silver-haired boy and Vanille just standing there.
Hope continued to run, stopping briefly to observe the machines working around him, trying to figure out what was happening, then he turned and ran again. Suddenly, however, the Fal'Cie flashed and made a wall of energy Hope bounced off of and fell to the ground, Vanille running to his side. Sazh, at this moment, moved to Lightning's. "Come on, now. You really think you can kill a Fal'Cie?" He asked.
"If you've seen my track record, you'll know there's a lot of things I've killed and very little I HAVEN'T killed. I think I got this." I said, stepping up on Lightning's other side, getting in a fighting stance after doing the good, old-fashioned Bruce Lee nose-wipe thing.
"I'm doing this for Serah!" Lightning said, taking her stance.
"And if there's one thing I know: Don't fuck with overprotective older sisters." I said, nodding as Snow took up his stance, ready to fight.
"Dajh..." Sazh said, looking down, then raised his guns, ready to fight.
"What's that now?" I asked.
"Nothing, nevermind. I'm in. As long as you don't mind an amateur. I've got these things! Might as well use 'em." He said, holding up his guns when he mentioned them, then getting in his stance.
"Thanks." Lightning said.
"The more the merrier." I said as the fight began. I ran in and slammed my fist into the crystal face of the Fal'Cie itself, but my entire arm cracked and broke in a bloody explosion, like when Alucard ripped open Alhambra's arm, but my arm didn't get ripped open. Either way, that attack was less than successful. "Huh. That never happened before." I said nonchalantly as my hand repaired itself.
"Attack the manipulators first!" Lightning said, shooting and striking the right one, doing large amounts of damage, with help from the other two, easily destroying it.
"Now you tell me!" I said, grabbing the left one and literally ripping it apart. Suddenly, after I destroyed the left manipulator, the Fal'Cie looked as if it was changing and a notice appeared in front of it: Initiating regeneration. "You know, usually when that happens, it means you're screwed and all your hard work was for nothing." I said.
"Now's our chance! Hit it with everything you've got!" Snow said, attacking it.
"Okay!" I said, pulling out that bomb again, but then slowly turned to the 4th wall. "Too much? … Yeah, too much." I agreed, nodding, putting it away again, instead pulling out Sparda and attacking. "This! Is! SPARDA!" I said, striking the Fal'Cie with fierce power, doing great damage along with the others.
Back at DMC...
"I'm gonna kill him." Trish deadpanned, looking in the closet she keeps Sparda in, only to find it not there, slamming the door.
Back with us...
At that moment, the manipulators reformed and our attacks started barely scratching the Fal'Cie again. "Okay, I'm not fucking around no more!" I said, pulling out a huge rocket launcher, the ones that shoot multiple missiles, shooting the manipulators and the Fal'Cie, easily destroying the manipulators and damaging the Fal'Cie again. "Let's see how you like this!" I said, firing the rest of the missiles and doing another chunk of damage, but it didn't do quite as much as I hoped. "Damn. And I don't have a bigger gun than this." I said, throwing it over my shoulder. "Well, I think we all know what I'm best at." I said, lighting my hands and feet on fire, but at that moment, the Fal'Cie regenerated the manipulators again, to which I deadpanned. "Really?" I said, annoyed, melting them.
"You know, you don't have to do everything yourself!" Sazh said, shooting the Fal'Cie more.
"Yeah, leave a little for us!" Snow said, slamming his fist into it.
"As long as we kill it, right?" I said.
"I'd like to land the killing blow personally!" Lightning said, hacking and slashing.
"Whatever floats your boat and sinks his!" I said, throwing fireballs until the things regenerated.
And I thought that dark monster in DMC3 was persistent and hard to weaken.
[Certainly knows how to make itself difficult to kill, doesn't it?]
"Enough is enough! I've had it with these motherfuckin' manipulators from this motherfuckin' god!" I said, grabbing the manipulators and smashing the Fal'Cie with them repeatedly until they broke, at which point, the Fal'Cie had very little health left.
"Let's finish this!" Lightning shouted, rushing in as I jumped back and used her Blitz attack to finish it off.
"Nice. 5 gold stars." I said as the ranking appeared in front of us. Suddenly, the world flashed and we were all hovering in some weird black void, the only light coming form a crystal that looked like Kryptonite from the color and crystal shards were floating all around us. "Oh, god, I'm tripping balls again!" I said in fear.
"I don't think so. We can all see this!" Snow said.
"Where are we?" Lightning asked.
I then noticed Hope and Vanille here as well. "And what are you two doing here? You didn't even help with the fight?" I asked.
Final Fantasy ALWAYS needs at least 6 characters in a team. Without them, we'd only have 4 if we include Fang.
[Don't spoil it! She doesn't show up until later!]
"What's going on?" Snow asked.
Suddenly, the Fal'Cie rose up in a new, much bigger, badass form, surprising all of us. "No fair! I thought we won!" I said. Suddenly, a bunch of tentacles of energy lashed out from it and grabbed all of us. "Hey! I don't go down for hentai! Keep those things off me!" I said, struggling. Suddenly, bursts of energy shot from the Fal'Cie into the tentacles to us, hitting Sazh and lightning in the chest, Snow on the left forearm, Hope on the right wrist and me on the left hand. Then, we all began falling, fading into unconsciousness. In our unconscious sleep, we saw images of a monstrous creature attacking what had to be Cocoon as the Fal'Cie around us started to fall apart,breaking apart and blowing up like the Ray Sphere explosion from inFAMOUS, falling into the sea below and freezing it.
(Is... Is this the end... How? So much I wanted to do... So much I could've done. And if there's one thing I'd want... It's to see everyone again. Especially... Lady.) I thought in my unconscious.
Flashback...
It was the 3rd anniversary of the day we met and the day Arkham and the Temin Ni Gru were brought down. We were throwing our own little party complete with fireworks and Lady was standing and watching them intently while I leaned back against the rail of the roof I installed for that purpose, looking at the fireworks over my shoulder. "It seems weird. Celebrating the day I killed my father." Lady said.
"Maybe, but that was a big win for everyone. Humanity wouldn't suffer at the hands of the demons, you finally completed your little vendetta, Dante and I got kick-ass powers we never knew we had... And I met you. That was definitely a win for me." I said, smirking and leaning in towards her.
"When you put it like that, maybe it wasn't such a bad day." She said, wrapping her arms around the back of my neck.
"Maybe?" I said, holding onto her, leaning forward and sweeping her off her feet. We made out at that moment and my fire spun around us non-threateningly, shooting up into the sky like crazy fireworks, WAY better than the ones the others were firing off.
"I take that back. Definitely." She said as we kissed again.
End flashback...
"What I wouldn't give to be back there right now..." I said, slowly drifting awake again.
"Serah!" Snow shouted beside me, jolting up and reaching out to the sky, jolting me up as well.
"Ah! What the hell, man?! I was just dreaming about my girlfriend back home and how the hell I'm gonna get back there." I said angrily.
"Sorry, I was just dreaming about the last night I spent with my fiancee'." He said, also with a bit of attitude.
"You, know, no one likes the people that just try to one-up everyone else." I said, doing the martial arts get up.
Everyone else was now awake and was slowly getting up, except for Hope, who was already awake, just in that normal position where he's sitting down with one knee propped up with his head and hands on that knee. We all started looking around our surroundings at that moment. "Is this... For real?" Snow asked, looking at the crystallized lake.
"I hope so! Look at all the crystals! I can't even BEGIN to imagine how much these will be worth back in my dimension!" I said, breaking off as many crystals as I could and put them in my trench coat pockets. "This is gonna make some jeweler very happy and make me very ri~ich~!" I said in sing-song.
"This must be... Lake Bresha?" Sazh asked, looking around, then up to the sky. "I guess we fell from up there... And the lake turned to crystal?" He theorized.
"A whole lake of this stuff! I can't imagine pockets deep enough to buy that much from me! You'd have to be at least as rich as Bruce Wayne!" I smirked, collecting more crystals.
"Who?" Lightning asked.
"Thick-chinned billionaire playboy who I hear is kind of a douchebag that gets more ass than I do and smells like he wears a rubber suit all the time." I said spitefully.
"Someone help me out here! I mean, did the Fal'Cie do this?! How in the world did we get here?!" Sazh demanded, looking to Lightning.
"How should I know?" She asked, not exactly caring.
"I don't even know how I ended up in YOUR world. How would I know how in the world we got here?" I asked.
Vanille dropped to her knees, looking like she was praying. "We're alive. How?" She said.
"Serah!" Snow said, drawing everyone's attention. "No one survives a fall like that, not without a miracle! Serah saved us!" He said.
"Look, I know you're kind of attached to her, but she's a crystal, man. Hard to do anything, let alone save 6 people from a couple mile drop in that kind of state." I said.
"Serah? Listen to yourself! It's your fault she's-" Lightning started, but suddenly a Cie'th came up from behind her.
"Whoa, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, HEY!" Sazh said, staggering and falling, to which I brought up my arms like "what?".
"How could you fall just like that?" I criticized.
Lightning was too surprised to move as the Cie'th moved in, raising its arm to attack. "Look out!" Snow said, gently pushing her to the side as he rushed in, cross-blocking the giant arm above his head, pushing it back, throwing the Cie'th off balance. Then, he did something no one expected, the strange marking on his arm began to glow blue like the crystals as he brought his hand back, ducking under the monster's arm, then uppercutting it, sending it flying.
"Damn, that bus driver doesn't got shit on you." I said.
"What?" Lightning asked, looking at me.
"Nothing. Long story short: Back in my world, a bus driver uppercutted some woman for complaining on his bus or something." I said.
"What did I... Just do?" Snow asked, holding his arm, which finally stopped glowing.
"You used magic!" Hope said, standing up. "You used the power of a L'Cie! The Fal'Cie cursed us! We're L'Cie now!" He said, panicked.
I lifted up my left hand, noticing the marking similar to Snow's on it, electricity sparking from it.
The placement reminds me of the demon that lives in D's hand.
[… You didn't notice the lightning sparking from it?]
"Oh-ho-ho, I wouldn't call this a curse, Hope. I'd call this a new way to kick ass!" I smirked, rushing in. I did a palm heel on the first one, electrocuting it, then ducking under the strike from the next one, which knocked down the first one, surrounded my first with wind and uppercutted the Cie'th into the air, then freezing it in midair, causing it to shatter when it hit the ground. Lastly, before the first one could get up, I punched the ground, sending a pillar of earth (or technically, crystal) up through the Cie'th's chest. "I think I like being a L'Cie." I said.
"Whoa. So we really are L'Cie." Snow said as everyone looked at their brands.
"Looks like it." Sazh said, bitterly.
"Oh, come on, guys! Am I the only one seeing the fun side to this?" I asked.
"If we fail our focus, we turn into those monsters! If we succeed, we turn into crystals like Serah!" Lightning snapped, grabbing me by the collar, then pushing me back.
"...Killjoy." I said.
"You, too?" Snow asked Vanille.
"Yup." She said, turning to her side a little and lifting up the side of her... skirt... thing a bit, revealing it. "Right here." She said, then lowered it.
"Okay." He said, turning to the rest of us.
"Show me that again. I didn't get a good look at that." I said as Sazh pulled me away.
As long as we're in another dimension, Lady will NEVER KNOW.
[My gods, we have a chance to chase tail again!]
"L'Cie to the last." Lightning said in her usual tone, Hope dropping to his knees again.
"Really?" I asked him.
"Why me..." He asked, then looked up at Lightning. "I don't even know you! But you have to go and attack that thing!?" He demanded.
"Why not? We were running out of things we COULD attack." I said.
"Just leave me alone!" He screamed.
"Something tells me he's gonna be the character we have to drag along for the most of the journey until he mans up about halfway through it." I said to Lightning.
"It's your fault! It's your fault..." Hope said.
"Are you still blaming him for the mother thing? I saved your mom, so just relax." I said without much care.
"But now I have another reason to blame him! He turned me into a L'Cie!" He said.
"To be fair, you chased us into the Fal'Cie. You're just trying to blame someone to make it easier on yourself." I said.
"Still! All this is yours and Serah's fault!" Hope snapped at Snow.
"Watch it!" Snow snapped, scaring Hope and causing him to fall back, backing up into Lightning.
"We have A LOT of work to do with this kid. By the way, best NOT to insult or put down someone who has two people siding with them." I said, pointing back and forth between Snow and Lightning, who also looked down at him with not the happiest look in the world, causing him to crawl to the side and get on his knees again, holding his head again, to which I rolled my eyes.
"Sorry." Snow apologized, sighing.
Vanille then went to his side. "Everything is gonna be alright. You'll see." She said, helping him up. "Come on. Off we go." She said, leading him off as Snow and Sazh followed.
I walked up beside Lightning, who was still just standing there. "Well, at least our little adventure just got more interesting." I said, tapping my palm and following them with her close behind, one thing on my mind.
(Damion, you are no longer the most badass person in the group.) I smirked in my mind.