A/N: Hello again. I actually got a reviewer! Hooray! I didn't really expect feedback this early so thank you Jayliyah for your encouragement. As you might expect, this chapter picks up where the prologue left off so just pointing that out to avoid any confusion. I borrowed the ideas of phoenix downs being used as combat medicine from altol (who in turn borrowed it from xahra99 [both of whose boots I am not fit to lick) and just expounded on the specifics a little. I understand simplicity was necessary for the game mechanics of instantly going from dead to alive in one turn but I thought the process should be a bit more drastic and involved seeing as you'd be bringing someone back to life. Science + magic win!
Anyway…
Why can't Rinoa cast? Is Quistis dead? Where the hell are they? What happened to the others? Will Zell survive without any hotdogs to eat? Stay tuned to find out!
Disclaimer: Nothing's changed from last week. I still don't own FFVIII, its characters, or the company that created them. If I do somehow secure the rights you'll be the first to know.
Chapter 2: Revival
There was a loud ringing in her ears as Selphie slowly opened her eyes to the unwelcoming view of the Ragnarok's flight control panel. Lights flickered and a few sparks fell from some exposed wire above her head which quickly turned to ash and were carried away by the soft breeze. The young pilot's eyes went from squinting to saucer-like when realization of what happened hit. Her first instinct was to reach down around the awkward and twisted safety belt harness and grab her belly. Much to her relief nothing seemed wrong, however her second instinct did not prove to be as reassuring. Irvine was gone. A large piece of metal on the right side of the ship's "head" was missing along with her husband who she expected to be seated in the copilot's chair beside her. Panic overtook her and Selphie let out a muffled cry and frantically unbuckled her safety belts. Once freed, she stepped carefully across the center of the cockpit and across the other seat. Ducking her head out the gaping hole she called out, "Irvine!" No answer. With adrenaline now pumping through her veins she bit down on her lip and without hesitation jumped through the opening.
Selphie landed ungracefully on her feet from the sizeable drop and fell to her knees. No sane person would have just up and dashed through a jagged hole in the side of a crashed ship with a fifteen-foot drop, especially if said person was pregnant, but this was Selphie Tilmitt-Kinneas and she happily defied logic on a daily basis. She clenched her teeth through the initial pain of the impact on the surprisingly soft sand. Dizziness threatened to overtake her as the world around her started to spin but after a moment she gained her bearings and stood up. Selphie frantically looked around her at the debris and again called out the cowboy's name.
"IRVINE!!!!"
"Hyne, I heard you the first time," a pained voice came from behind her.
Selphie spun around and practically threw herself in the direction of the voice, knocking Irvine off balance for the second time that day. She threw her arms around him and squeezed with as much force as she could sobbing, "Oh Irvy… I thought I'd lost you."
Irvine wrapped his right arm around her back and stroked it gently after wincing briefly at the squeeze. He let out a hissing sound and said, "Easy, darlin'. Watch the arm."
Selphie quickly withdrew and looked at him with worry. He had taken off his duster and his left arm was in a makeshift sling from torn shirt fabric. "Baby, what happened? Are you alright?"
Irvine offered back a soft smile, his long unbound (and notably hatless) hair blowing in the breeze. "Well I was kinda thrown out that big hole up there," he said in his typical drawl, "and lucky for me my arm came between me and the ground. I think it's broken. Are you ok?" Placing his hand on his wife's stomach he continued with more than a little worry in his voice, "What about the baby? He didn't get jostled around too much in there did he?" Under normal circumstances Selphie would have found his paternal concern adorable and more than likely would have rewarded him with the act that rendered him paternal in the first place, however their dragon-shaped spaceship had just fallen out of the sky and crash landed on some island that appeared out of nowhere. Needless to say the circumstances were far from normal.
"We're fine, we're fine," Selphie said quickly. "Just a bit woozy is all. Have you seen the others?"
"I haven't seen or heard anyone, babe. I just got..."
Irvine's words were interrupted by a shout that could belong to no one else but Rinoa.
"SQUALL!!!"
Both Irvine and Selphie's heads turned in the direction of the sound, looked back at each other and started walking towards the noise. They would've ran but Selphie was still feeling quite dizzy and given her condition neither wanted to take any unnecessary risks more than they already have. They passed the mangled fuselage of the ship as they neared their destination and just ahead could see a determined Squall racing in front of them. They tried to get his attention with shouts and waves but he didn't seem to notice. He just ran over and knelt down beside Rinoa who was holding something in her arms. When Irvine and Selphie caught a glimpse of what that something was their pace quickened tenfold. A few moments after Squall arrived, Irvine and Selphie came running behind him.
Upon seeing his bloodied friend Irvine let out a poignant, "Oh shit, Quisty…" Selphie could only stare in shock while catching her breath.
Squall delicately reached to the blonde's neck and placed two fingers on her pale skin. Rinoa was still quietly sobbing yet holding her as still as she could. Squall grimaced as his hands failed to feel the subtle throbbing of a pulse.
Turning around to face the Kinneases he barked, "I need phoenix downs and any potions you can find! Go!"
The two brunettes nodded and quickly rushed off into the exposed cargo bay of the Ragnarok. They moved as fast as they could while avoiding the jagged metal from where the back portion of the ship was violently ripped from its front. Both began practically tearing through the wreckage searching every nook and cranny of the battered craft. Compartments in the cargo bay were torn open both by the crash and by the frantic Selphie and Irvine but nothing of use could be found other than pieces of their meager luggage they each packed which had been strewn about the beach. After wasting several precious moments scouring the cargo hold the couple left the severed back part of the ship and ran towards the other. I occurred to them that it probably would have been smarter to split up but they didn't have time for that kind of rational thought. When they came to the exposed passenger cabin they quickly climbed inside to find Zell with an open first aid kit gently pouring a Hi-Potion down his girlfriend's throat. The blonde's usual exuberance was gone and replaced with a grim determination that didn't suit him at all. He had a long slash down the right side of his face beginning at his eye and ending at his chin that was dripping an occasional droplet of blood onto Amelia's skirt as she lay across the half-dislodged bench seat.
"Zell!" Selphie shouted as they approached. "Oh Hyne, is she…?"
"She's knocked out but she's breathing," Zell responded in a deep and eerily dark voice.
To Selphie's relief the young librarian's chest was slowly rising and falling as Zell said though her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open, still dripping a small amount of the potion the martial artist gave her. Her dark brown hair was in now-tangled French braid in lieu of the usual pigtails but through it Irvine could see a large knot on her head where it had presumably made swift contact with the harsh metal siding.
"Glad to hear it," Irvine said. "Now I'm gonna need that first aid kit."
Zell's brow furrowed and he turned his head to glare at the hatless cowboy shouting, "The hell you do! For what, your arm? Amy could be really hurt!"
"Well at least she's breathing!" Irvine retorted stepping nearer to Zell. "If I don't take a phoenix down and some of those potions back to Quistis she could fucking die!"
Zell's expression went from anger to shock and then turned to sorrow as he realized the implications of what Irvine said. "Fuck me…" Zell muttered softly. "Here, take the whole thing."
"Thanks," Irvine said curtly as he closed the kit in front of the blonde after a quick look-over of its contents. Selphie gave Zell an apologetic smile before she followed Irvine out of the cabin.
"I gotta stay here with her… right? I mean I don't think I should move her in case…"
Zell's words trailed off as they exited the ship quickly and ran towards where Squall and Rinoa sat in the sand. Squall had since taken Quistis into his arms as Rinoa had started to shake slightly. Seeing their friends seriously wounded was not foreign to the group but in battle they were always prepared, always expecting the worst. This… was just chaos. They didn't have any time to react to whatever had happened and they weren't junctioned. Furthermore Rinoa didn't have the military conditioning the others did and could not be expected to get used to seeing her friend lay in a pool of her own blood. She couldn't look and kept her eyes closed tight as she hung onto Squall's shoulder sobbing. She felt powerless as one of her closest friends lay there possibly dying and in an all-too-real way she was. Typically in a situation like this she would have quickly calmed herself after the initial shock ran its course and quickly cast a Life spell followed by a series of Curaga variants after enough time had elapsed to avoid both harming herself and giving her friend enough time to recover from the effects of being yanked back onto the mortal coil. She had done it a dozen times before but as she said… she couldn't cast and she didn't know why.
As Irvine and Selphie arrived on the scene they both plopped themselves down in the soft sand and the cowboy flipped open the first aid kit and fingered a large orange syringe. Selphie reached in and took the strongest potions she could find into her small hands and all three pairs of eyes focused on the shrapnel buried in Quistis' torso. All three were well-versed in the protocols of combat revival but putting what you learned into practice was something else entirely. No one ever got used to it.
"Alright," Squall said, all emotion gone from his voice, "first things first. We need to get this out before we do anything and it needs to be clean and quick. Selphie, once I pull it out I'm going to need you to immediately put pressure on the wound." She gave two rapid nods while placing the potions gently in the sand beside her. "Then Irvine you'll take the phoenix down and stick it into her chest. You know the spot, right?" Squall pointed with his left hand to the side of Quistis' left breast which was now only covered by her gray bra as he had had to cut away her peach top to allow access to the wound and heart. A life hanging in the balance was about the only thing that could trump Squall's sense of modesty. Irvine gulped and held up the syringe. The subtle orange glow of the tube reflected off his face as he stared at the strange liquid. A phoenix down is actually made with refined down "feathers" of the phoenixes kept by the peculiar Shumi tribe. That's what triggers the actual revival mixed with human adrenaline and the chemical compounds used to synthesize cure magic along with saline solution to dilute it. One ounce of pure phoenix down would be enough to cause any healthy adult male's heart to explode.
"Ready?" Squall asked. "Pulling in three… two… one… NOW!"
With a soft and wet tearing sound Squall quickly yanked the offending piece of metal from Quistis' abdomen. Blood began to flow immediately and quickly which was a good sign and Selphie was there with a thick strip of shirt material she had cut from the bottom of Irvine's borrowed tee. Her face grimaced as she pressed down as hard as she could to try and stay the rapid bleeding. "Irvine, go!" she said frantically as she looked across her fallen friend to her husband. The cowboy knelt thee wide-eyed with his hand shaking and in a wavering voice replied, "What… if I miss?" He never did perform well under pressure. "Hynedamnit, Irvine, now's not the time! Do it!" an angry Squall called out with flaring nostrils. In a panic Irvine raised the syringe, closed his eyes, and brought it down in one fluid motion. When he opened them he saw he had hit the mark, as he always did, and pressed down firmly on the pump. When the catalytic liquid entered the heart of the instructor her eyes immediately shot open and her back arched as her lungs desperately gasped for air. Her limbs shook as she started struggling involuntarily while the curaga-laced adrenaline ran its course.
"She's ok!" Rinoa exclaimed, her sobs turning to a mixture of crying and laughing. She let go of Squall's jacket and placed her hands under Quistis' head to keep it from moving.
"She's not out of the woods yet," Squall said. "Keep her steady and let her breathe."
Slowly but surely she stopped shaking and her body, once again, went limp though this time around she was breathing. Quistis' eyes shut in unconscious sleep and underneath Selphie's bloodstained hands the deep wound had all but closed. It would leave a nasty scar but she would live. The four friends let out a collective sigh of relief as Squall picked up one of the potions in his right hand, pinched the sleeping blonde's nose, and poured its contents down her throat. For a few moments they just sat there in complete silence. It was the first time any of them had a chance to fully absorb what had just happened. There were a thousand questions each without any answers to speak of but at the very least they were alive.
Their silence was broken as Zell emerged from the wreckage with a limping Amelia supporting herself with her arm over his shoulders. "Yo!" he said, sounding a bit more like himself. "I'm not getting any signal here… hey is Quisty ok?"
"She will be, right now she just needs to rest," Squall said in his monotone voice as the two approached their little huddle. Zell helped Amy sit herself down with the others before dropping to the ground himself. After another moment of silence he looked sheepishly over towards Irvine and offered, "Hey man, sorry for snapping at you before. I was just worried about Amy."
Amy leaned closer to her beau and Irvine just smiled replying, "Don't worry about it. Hyne knows I'd be a wreck if anything happened to my Sefie."
"So now what do we do?" Selphie asked as if on queue. All eyes fell upon Squall. It was the story of his life: everyone would unconsciously look to him to make decisions for them whether he offered to or not. It was something he never could understand, he always thought he was a terrible leader. To him a leader was charismatic, empathetic, and commanded a sense of loyalty by his very presence. Well one out of three isn't terrible but to Squall it was less than ideal. Squall Leonhart didn't feel like a leader, he felt like a soldier.
"We wait," he said calmly. "I'm sure by this time tomorrow my father will have realized we never made it and will have every available vessel out looking for us. Until then all we can do is sit tight and wait to be rescued."
The five of them simply stared back at him with wide eyes. They weren't surprised by his answer, but rather by his affirmation of his blood ties to Laguna Loire who he had always referred to as either Laguna or "that man".
"We should make a signal fire closer to the tree line and set up some temporary shelters since it's likely we'll be stuck here for a few nights. Salvage anything you can from the Ragnarok. Rinoa, can you watch over Quistis for a while?"
The raven-haired sorceress nodded as Squall stood up and dusted himself off.
"Let's get to work."
The next couple of hours went by much slower than they should have for all that was being done, but the way Squall figured if they kept busy it would take their mind off of what happened and where they were which was, for all intents and purposes, completely unknown. Irvine and Zell had volunteered to go and find firewood in the surrounding jungle which proved to be much more difficult than they had anticipated. Most of what they found was vines and other exotic plant life and dry wood seemed to be something of a rarity. Squall, Selphie, and Amelia did their best to sort through the wreckage and managed to recover most all of their luggage as well as some supplies that hadn't been destroyed such as tarps, rope, food, water, and anything else that might have been useful. They even managed to pull apart the cushioned seats to use as bedding.
Before long the sun was beginning to set and a decent size fire had been lit a ways away from the wreckage sending its black smoke billowing into the orange-blue sky. Quistis still had not woken up though her breathing had evened out completely and she looked almost peaceful sleeping under the lean-to Rinoa had set up for her. Each of the seven had rather respectable-looking shelters, with the obvious exception of Selphie and Irvine, by the time the sun had passed the horizon made out of tree limbs, palm leaves, tarps, and anything else they could find. If anything could be said about SeeDs it was that they were survivors. They were trained for this. Not much was said the rest of the night. No one really knew what to say so they all stared at the fire in silence. Eventually they all retired to their respective makeshift tents one by one. Squall was the last to move, lost in his thoughts as he always was. He always had preferred solitude but this was a bit extreme. The commander shifted in his seat in the sand and poked the dying fire with a stick. Why had this happened? To his knowledge the Ragnarok had never just lost power before. Even when it was floating for years out in space and populated by those bizarre propagators it retained most of its functionality. Why did this island suddenly appear out of nowhere? Why couldn't Rinoa use her sorceress abilities? Why was any signal from their satellite phones not registering? There were too many questions but Squall did his best not to focus on the why but on the here and now and right now he had to worry about getting his friends out of this place. It would only be a matter of time, right? The world is too small for someone like Squall Leonhart to disappear.
Squall awoke startled as a noise caught his attention outside of his tent. He slowly reached for his knife that he had placed beneath his "mattress" of seat cushions while keeping the appearance of sleep. The noise grew closer and closer and the sound of footprints in the sand stopped just outside the flap separating him from the beach. Slowly it was pulled back and through the darkness Squall could barely make out the face of Rinoa. She had been crying. He couldn't see her tears but he knew all the same. Call it knight's intuition. Neither of them said a word but then they didn't need to. Squall removed his hand from beneath his mattress and propped himself up on his elbows to face her. Slowly she knelt down and crawled beside him on his bedding. Without even a whisper she wedged herself between his open arms, her back resting against his bare chest. Squall pulled her closer and gave her more room on the mattress. They just laid there in a spooning position, Squall with his arms wrapped around Rinoa as if he was sheltering her from whatever unknown entities lied behind the trees. It was their silent apology and forgiveness wrapped into one moment.
Rinoa sniffled softly and smiled as she cuddled closer to the man lying beside her. Maybe everything would be alright after all.
