Disclaimer: Square-Enix Incorporated owns all copyrighted material this fanfiction may include. All other materials, such as characters, events, dialogue, et cetera, all belong to Zeshin-kun.
Author's Note: Hm, been a while, it would seem. Bugger fanfiction for not functioning properly. -_-;;; Well, the rest of these chapters should flow smoothly. Apologies for the lack of updates. I've been kept away quite a bit. That and potatoes. I could never get over the weird roots it sprouts. ^_^;;
haboo, as this is the final segment of this story, you'll figure out the spoilers I didn't reveal to you before. =p
Let's get right back into it! Now that we all know Sin and Yu Yevon have returned and has been the culprit since the beginning, what will the group do? How will they react? We last left them with Lulu finally waking and Shuyin revealing the horrible person that actually rendered her comatose. The chapter following it was only a return to the point Shuyin and Rikku's plan went into effect. In this chapter, we'll see just how they'll manage and what they expect to do next.
Spira: The Eternal Discord
Chapter 41: Machina War Resolution
Tidus
"Sin? Sin! Are you nuts? That can't be right!" If you were to ask me to hold it together, then please believe me that this was me holding it together.
"He's telling you the truth. I saw it for myself. I saw what they were planning." Lulu stammered, still pretty much out of it from what they did to her.
"How can this be? Sin was destroyed. We sacrificed all the Aeons so it could be so." Yuna muttered, the tone of voice she was using so weakened, so defeated, but there was nothing I could do for her.
"I know this is horrifying and unbearable. I don't want to put any of you through this, but we have no choice now. Sin is back and so is Yu Yevon. If we don't stop him now, everything you think was sacrificed would have been worthless." Shuyin told us in his usual cold fashion.
"Maybe it was worthless." Yuna started, making each of us turn to her, "What was the point of all of it? Two years ago? Two months ago? What did we ultimately accomplish?"
"Yuna, this isn't the time for that." Shuyin stated.
"I fought for the Eternal Calm because I believed there would be one someday. When I sacrificed my Aeons to stop Sin, it hurt so much, but I thought it would be worth it in the end to give the people of Spira a future. Now…"
"Now, there's just one more step, Yunie." Rikku interjected.
At that time, I took it upon myself to defend her since the others weren't getting it, "Rikku, Shuyin, I get it. You wanna keep up this fight, but just look around. We're battered and bruised and, let's face it, we're done. It took everything to stop Sin the last time and now he's ten times stronger. What's left for us to do?"
"So you'd rather sit back and watch the end happen in front of you?" Paine blurted, coming right up to my face.
"He's right, you know." Shuyin said, looking out of Wakka and Lulu's hut at the sky, "If this is all we are now, we're long done. Our spirit's been broken. Game over."
"Is that all you're going to say?" Lulu struggled, limping her way towards him.
Wakka quickly caught her when she was about to go down and got her into a seat, saying for her, "When it was tough and we were down during Yuna's pilgrimage, what did we do in the end, ya? We broke the rules and took on Yunalesca herself! I never thought, no way in this lifetime was I gonna be doing that, but we all made that choice and we beat Sin, ya? Just 'cause things look bad now don't mean you give in."
"That's all well and good, but this isn't like Yuna's first pilgrimage, now is it?" Shuyin replied, challenging Wakka's statement.
"Shuyin, we can't just give up now! Look how far we've come!" Rikku whined, jumping in front of him and shaking him by the shoulders.
"I think it's more we've gone too far. We didn't think. We kept marching onward like good little soldiers, but we didn't even know who the enemy's general was. Isn't that right, Yuna? What are we fighting for? It seems like such a lost cause."
I was about to clock him a good one, but Paine stopped me. She didn't say anything, but she gave me a look and I figured it out even though I knew not even she really had. Shuyin wasn't trying to give up. It was Yuna, it was me that was giving in. Good reasons or no, if we gave up then Spira was really done for. Shuyin was trying to convince her about her pilgrimage, what had happened then. He was trying to show that even when the odds are stacked like this, when even the good guys were rooting for the bad guys, you have to push on. He didn't know what she'd been through like I did. I was there the entire pilgrimage. I saw the changes in her after Bevelle. I saw how broken she was when she found out it was all a lie, that even getting as far as Zanarkand and finding the Final Aeon wasn't going to do anything but repeat history. We stopped Sin eventually, but the cost of it was great. Never mind me dying, Yuna was forced to watch each of her Aeons ripped from her soul and forced into battle against us, forced to die for us. To go from that to what Shuyin did to her later to what's going on now, really, did we actually still hope for an end?
"I wanted to save Spira. That was a worthy cause." Yuna slowly began to mumble.
"Save Spira? And for how long is that going to last? We've tried fighting head on. That ends in failure." Shuyin grunted.
Yuna took in a deep breath, "Shuyin, I know you don't want anybody else to die like we saw your friends die in the war. I know you don't want anybody else to feel all the pain, but there's nothing we can do about it. Sin is overwhelming us and all we can do is try to hold off this ending for as long as we can." She said softly.
"Looks like mission accomplished." Rikku exclaimed with a smile.
"What?" Yuna still didn't get it.
"Shuyin wanted to get you fired up. Looks like he did a good job. So, does that mean we're going after Yu Yevon?" I said.
"How did you know that was going to work?" Paine asked him.
Shuyin smiled, "Because I said all that before to Lenne, but to try and get her not to fight. It only pushed her further. I figured Yuna would do likewise."
"Shuyin, this story won't end like that one. I give you my word." Yuna declared, her eyes burning with hope just like before.
Rikku jumped in right after with a hug to her cousin, saying, "No way! We'll get it right this time! The Eternal Calm is here- to- stay!"
And that was that. Somehow, our ragtag band of worn out soldiers were going to pick ourselves back up and save the world one more time. It sounded like such a fantasy, but why can't we live the fantasy? Maybe it's that people stopped believing in the fairytale ending that we stopped getting them all through that Age of Sin. It took Yuna to go out on a limb and hope there would be a perfecting ending somewhere down the line for us to get that one hundred percent complete fantasy and start this Eternal Calm.
But now we had a big problem. Sure it was great to think about getting your perfect fairytale ending, but how to go about getting it was a real issue. We had to take out Sin, and not just regular old Sin whose core was my dad and somebody rooting for our team. This Sin was gonna be trouble. This one had already shown it was capable of putting huge sinkholes all across Spira without so much as giving anybody a sign it was actually around. Just thinking about what it could do with its full strength was enough for me to want a plan.
"That's all well and good, guys, but how comes to mind, ya? What you got up your sleeves this time?" Wakka said in a nod to Shuyin's words earlier.
"Yea, what's next for us?" I added, "We can't just go in there guns blazing."
"Because that's what this was all about, right hotshot?" Paine sarcastically replied.
"Do you have a plan, Shuyin?" Yuna asked, walking up to him.
Shuyin took in a breath and looked at me, "Zanarkand."
"Zanarkand?" I said in confusion.
"That's what ties us all together. He'll make a move there… Fix the problem."
"The problem?" Rikku asked, curious enough for all of us.
"Me."
We left right then and there, the common opinion being that Yu Yevon was ready and waiting and any more time we gave him only let that Sin get stronger. Wakka kept watch over Lulu despite how much she wanted to come and help. There was no way either of them were ready for this. They'd been out of the game for over two years and Lulu just recovered from being sent into a coma. We also decided against sending for any help outside our group, basically realizing that we were just the first wave. Spira would need to be on red alert if we failed. The Fahrenheit's crew scrambled to get us on course to Zanarkand, which would take us a while from Besaid. After they got us there, Rikku told her dad to get the word out to the leaders immediately that Sin was back and worse than ever.
In the meantime, we all started talking about what plan we were going to use on the monster this time. Shuyin was unapproachable, hiding back up on the roof as always. Not even Rikku bothered to go after him this time. Without him there to ask, none of us could figure out how he planned to get Yu Yevon's attention in Zanarkand. Paine guessed that Sin was already parked there just like we found Shuyin waiting for us at Mt. Gagazet. She said that it would be as good a plan as any. We'd charge in full speed and catch him by surprise. It was true we were shorthanded from the days of Yuna's pilgrimage and the Fahrenheit's weapons hadn't been upgraded, but the three of them had their new Special Dresspheres this time, each of them a powerhouse on their own. Also, me and Shuyin were at the top of our game, more than likely better than we were two years ago.
Yuna had a better idea. She considered how meticulous Shuyin had been about this whole endeavour so a full on sortie didn't seem like him. That was closer to what we'd be thinking since all of us were holding out for when this would all be over. She told us that it felt like he was going to bait Sin in Zanarkand so we wouldn't have to find it when we were ready.
"The ruins tie all of you together." She said to me, "We did use the hymn to summon it before."
"But those ruins have been sitting there the whole time. Why would Sin attack it now?" Rikku questioned her, putting a finger to her chin.
"It's not just the ruins to us." I started, my eyes staring ahead, "To Yu Yevon, Shuyin, and me, that used to be home. Looks like Shuyin's trying to remind him of that."
When we were over Bevelle, Paine decided she'd still do a check to make sure we didn't end up crashing right into it, and as Yuna said, Sin wasn't anywhere around there. Still the pressure was being felt even if it wasn't in front of our eyes. It was almost like two years ago when none of us wanted to fight anymore, but we each knew there was no way to protect what we cared about without pushing forward.
I took a look at the navigations HUD, at the mountain coming up over the horizon and remembered when I decided I'd do whatever was necessary to save Yuna. Fayth told me I was just a dream and stopping Sin meant I'd disappear. Auron told me it was my dad up there and if we were going to take down Sin, that meant killing him along with it. Then, dad told me the rest. He told me, even if he didn't say it to me direct, that this was it. After that bug version of Yu Yevon disappeared, I felt it, that my body was cracked. I was hoping for a miracle to make what I said before the fight untrue, but I saved her so it didn't really matter.
That's how I got my miracle. Two years and another adventure later, she gave me my miracle. There was no chance I was letting Sin take that away from me now. I wouldn't disappear this time for that thing. I made myself believe that that would be enough to stay even if it was foolish. Maybe it had nothing to do with me how Shuyin and the rest of those guys came back after I did, but it was unnatural that I was back. I outlasted my welcome from that miracle, pretended it could just stay this way. Yuna deserved more than this spiraling war.
"When this is over, we're gonna set it right." I said to nobody in particular.
"Hey, T-" Rikku was just about to say when we were caught in a hail of debris.
"Multiple concussions." Paine announced, "Looks like… meteors?"
As the alarms rang, Rikku rushed over to the scanners and said she was getting a tiny blip. Cid had the airship drop for an emergency landing in the Calm Lands, but the hits were getting harder the closer we came. The hail of rocks made it impossible to drop without crashing so he had to take us back up and try to clear them, which obviously sounded ridiculous until the rocks actually did stop hitting us.
"Everyone okay?" Cid asked us before going over to check the crew for a damage report.
The intercom came on, with Shuyin saying, "Guys, you might want to join me on the roof."
Looking at each other, we all nodded to confirm nobody was hurt and slowly made our way to the lift. Shuyin had his back to us when we arrived and he had his sword at his side. When we got closer to him, we saw who he had his attention to.
"Sorry about the rain. Hope I didn't spoil anything." Areth's twisted voice purred.
"Was wondering when you'd show. Can't imagine you'd let a loose end like me hang around this long." Shuyin told him, shifting his grip on his weapon.
Taking it as a sign, I got Brotherhood ready and stood next to him, "So what? You're appetizers?"
"He's the stooge." Shuyin mused, putting his sword back in its sheath and walking a few steps up.
"Depends on your point of view. I prefer to think of myself as a free agent now."
"You can't be a free agent when you're still playing for a team."
"Must there really be a team to want to rip you to pieces?"
"I'm captain." Paine blurted out, raising her hand.
"See, there is a team." Shuyin said, taking a few more steps forward while looking around the sky, "So you gonna tell us why we're here or do I beat it out of you?"
And just like that, the whole area around the airship changed. The sky went dark and there was a thick smell of mortar and blood. The surface of the Fahrenheit crumpled and smoldered, broken bodies coming into view. From where Areth was standing, searchlights shot out at us, blinding us. On our end, a few groups of spellcasters running out to them with their Flare spells blazing made it bright enough to let us see they were taking on machina. A few winged creatures soared overhead and used Sonic Wings on them, but couldn't hold their own and were blasted by the cannons.
"Calm Lands front, eh?" Shuyin asked, probably remembering it from somewhere since it wasn't ringing any bells for any of us.
Areth didn't answer us, though. No, this time he was very different. He looked to be burning with anger and the pyreflies that were making the airship look like one night in the Calm Lands during the infamous Machina War bent around him. They literally turned tail when they got near him and made it look like he was walking in some extra-dimensional space around us. I looked at Shuyin and from his eyes I could tell this was new. Shuyin had trouble gauging the guy even with all their history. For what seemed like hours, we just watched the war happening around us. A few times Rikku would try to ignore it and rush him, but she'd only end up stopping herself because none of us were budging with her. In fact, if it wasn't for Paine at her usual poise, none of us were even readying for a fight. The explosions of Aeons destroying machina lit up the sky and deepened the contrast of the shadows falling on Areth's face, but he didn't make a move either.
Since I couldn't feel any dangers despite our enemy standing right there only twenty or so feet away, I decided to really watch what he was showing us and, as it turned out, that was the plan. Looking at Shuyin, I could see even he was wondering just why we were being shown a scene from the war, but that's when we both realized that this was exactly what we needed to gauge the coming battle.
The moment he turned his own eyes to mine, I felt we both remembered how Areth as an unsent worked. He created illusions built from what he wanted us to experience. What he wanted us to experience had been everything he saw wrong with Spira in life. Most of it had been about his nemesis, but what we were all failing to see so far was that it was all what Shuyin has done to him. The first had been a vision of his brother being killed. After he took Yuna, he tried to show me what Shuyin had done to his girlfriend. But the key to those visions he created was that it was all about him. We had the shadow to deal with for so long that everything went back to Shuyin, but Areth was too self-centered for that. It only worked for their plan that a lot of what Areth hated just happened to involve him, but it was really just coincidental. Areth actually hated Spira and went along with Yu Yevon's plan because he hated Spira. He hated losing his brother. He hated how his brother's murderer ended up being a star. He hated that he could never get his revenge. He hated that his girlfriend couldn't help him get that revenge either. He hated failing at practically every turn and he never bothered to get it through his head why he kept failing.
"This is the night Trista died, isn't it?" Shuyin finally said, piecing it all together.
Yuna turned to me with a surprised look, but I nodded to her reassuringly and motioned to keep watching how it would play out. Voices were suddenly heard from behind Rikku and two women ran past her toward Shuyin's side.
"Lenne!" I heard Yuna gasp.
When I turned my attention to Shuyin, I could see he was shaken. At the moment, I could feel how much he wanted to be by her side like I had two years ago when I was fading away. Unconsciously, I pulled Yuna closer to me as we continued to watch and, for the while, I couldn't help but see this scene like it was back then, on this same airship. She was so close to him, just like Yuna was, but I was disappearing and I could barely even keep myself together let alone hold her like I wanted. It pained me to sense just how much he wanted to reach out to her, knowing she wasn't really there, but just holding to the hope that being near her made it real enough.
Instead, as the pyreflies distorted around his own stunned frame, he forced himself to stand with a deep breath and in a whisper said, "This is the night we all died, isn't it?"
As he said those words, Areth's image shook and another Areth entered the view in front of him, his hand clasped to Trista, her Yojimbo steadily sauntering up from behind them. Lenne, her companion, and Shuyin all grimaced as more explosions rained around them. Shuyin began taking it all in, nodding to us and explaining that this was the attack on the Calm Lands on the last night of the Machina War.
"That's not even you. He's just your girl's entourage." He growled.
"My worthless clone." Areth retorted, hacking away the image with his sword.
This surprised Shuyin again, though we would soon find out why Areth had been acting so different this time. As the battle started, the image of Areth reformed and was pitifully outmatched by the girls. Lenne brought out this Yunalesca look-alike Aeon, calling her Elumina, while her companion called out the Magus Sisters. Yojimbo was handling those three pretty easily, but all the taunting by Trista and Areth took a toll on Lenne's concentration. Apparently, they had killed Shuyin earlier, mangled up his body, and told her she could find him out there hanging on Bevelle's walls. Larea, who was named during the conversation, tried to convince Lenne that they were just messing with her, but Lenne was starting to act much different than how Yuna and Rikku had been describing her to me before.
"I need to end this." She said, floating off the ground.
Within two or three minutes, she'd completely destroyed the "worthless clone" of Areth, her constant Holy spells effectively annihilating the guy's body. With him gone, it was just Yojimbo and Trista left. The samurai had actually gotten the better of the sisters, the Zanmato taking all three down in one clean stroke, but then it came to Elumina and, unlike Yunalesca, the Aeon just evaporated him with a bright light. Trista left defenseless, Lenne rushed right towards her, even pushing Larea aside when she tried to hold her back.
"Lenne?" Shuyin gasped in horror.
I could tell not even he had seen this side to Lenne, but the scene kept playing forward. Lenne rushed Trista, who pulled up her, apparently, diamond-studded summoning staff in defence, and tackled her to the ground. She then wrenched the staff from her hands, inadvertently slicing open her throat with the jagged diamond tip during the struggle. At first, she panicked and Larea tried to heal her, but by the time Trista's blood formed a pool around them, Lenne stopped the other summoner and shook her head.
"She's already gone. I have to get to Bevelle." Lenne told her.
"What do you mean? You'll never get past the line." Larea replied.
"You heard what they said. All of their forces are here in the Calm Lands. I've got a chance and I have to know that he's alive."
"I understand. Stay safe, Lenne."
"Hold the line. I'll be back when I can." Lenne said, calling back Elumina to summon Bahamut and taking off out of the range of the illusion.
Larea shook her head, "No… You won't."
"They left her to rot out here." Areth grumbled, his blade shifting in his grasp.
"What did you make her do?" Shuyin seethed, "You forced her to kill in vengeance. My Lenne."
I saw that this was leading to nowhere good so I got Brotherhood back in a ready position, shouting, "Alright, show and tell time is over Areth!"
"Yeah, time to kick butt!" Rikku added, getting out her daggers.
"I couldn't agree more." Areth said lowly, vanishing into the night.
"Keep on your guard. He isn't that crafty." Shuyin told us, getting back to back with Paine.
I covered those two while Yuna and Rikku took point. The illusion only got darker and more images of soldiers and machina began to appear. Shuyin and Paine warned us Areth was going to take the shape of one of them that seemed the most mundane so we wouldn't consider him, but since we had been watching the war for a while now, all of them looked mundane.
"On second thought…" I started to say, noticing that one particular soldier wasn't marching around with the rest of them.
Unfortunately for me, I had to go and signal the others and, before Yuna could even get a shot out, he leaped out of the crowd and kicked Paine away. Shuyin twisted quickly enough to clash swords with him, but the illusion suddenly shrank until it was just around the two of them and we couldn't get back in. A barrier formed right along the edge of it, but some of the soldiers were still on the outside with us.
"These guys are fighting harder than the usual dirt bags." Rikku complained, having been cornered by Areth's imitation soldiers.
Yuna was having her own problems trying to pierce through their thick armour with her bullets and Paine had her hands full trying to cut through row after row that were still pouring out of the illusion. Their numbers started to grow a little too fast and there was an air of intimidation going around. The soldiers were looking tough and well-organized and we were scattered, isolated, and outnumbered. At first, I was caught by it, too, but then I started paying attention to how the others were reacting to our targets, the doubt they started showing, and I realized even that was just another illusion. Seeing how Shuyin was having some trouble with his own fight, I knew it was…
"Time for a little Slice & Dice!" I shouted, charging up for it and running through a whole line of them.
Anything I came across was cut, but instead of my usual back and forth, this time I made a b line for the illusion. I used the last bit of strength on it and managed to shatter the barrier, coming in on them just in time to break another clash. I think I also said something corny because in the middle of the fight, both of them just stopped and looked at me with a slanted glance. I shrugged and we kept going, Areth getting out another meteor shower like the one that hit the Fahrenheit before.
"Areth's Overdrive! He calls it 'Doom'. Just brace yourself and try to dodge!" Shuyin told me, blocking an overhead strike.
He wasn't kidding either because the meteors came faster than even the worst that a Behemoth King was capable of and they almost seemed to be targeting us. As they landed, copies of Areth walked out of the craters and started attacking, except they were also illusions and it was making fighting him a lot harder.
"Huh, well that's a new trick." I heard Shuyin say as he sliced through a few of them only to miss since they were nothing more than images.
The two of us got back to back and waited for something to catch our eye about them. That wasn't happening. They just kept getting closer until they were so close that we had to react to them. Then it occurred to me that Shuyin was supposed to be empowered by his old pyreflies and should've been able to negate anything Areth was doing.
"So why aren't you?" I asked him after he growled about it himself.
Shuyin pulled me hard to face him, "I'm sorry if you don't agree to this, but I'm not trying to take him down. I need to make good on a promise. I need to save Areth from all of this."
"Look, I get that you have a lot of demons to work out in there, but really? Right now? Can't you just write a tell-all autobiography about it like regular celebrities?" I said, trying to get out of his grip.
But he was firm about this, "This has everything to do with what we're about to attempt. You just have to trust me on it."
"I understand you, I do, but I can't help you with Areth if I can't even find him."
Shuyin thought for a moment before noticing the images surrounding us and nodded, saying, "You're right. I'll do what I can."
"And I'll take him down." Shuyin nodded.
As soon as he let me go, I rolled through the images. Pyreflies burst out of Shuyin and swarmed the illusion, melting it all away. Areth, knowing his work was being undone, which would expose him to a fair fight, revealed himself and lunged for him. That was all I needed to catch up and catch him in the back with the Brotherhood. He turned fast enough to block, but I was already on my next move, sweeping him with my leg and kicking him with my other foot as I came around. Since Shuyin was working his magic, Areth was stuck on solid and that meant I could kick and punch and stab and slash to my heart's content. Areth rolled a few feet away before recovering and getting back on his feet, but by that time I was again right on top of him, slamming down my sword with a hard-hitting Spiral Cut. He was ready for me this time, though, and ducked out of the way to a good position for kicking me in the face. I stumbled back a few steps and found him firing a few rounds at me. Shuyin leaped in to block them and caught Areth's sword in a parry before he could get to me, but it was awkward on his end and the lack of footing let Areth plant a knee into his back, sending him into the ground. On Areth's recovery, though, I managed to lay a straight punch right to his jaw, tumbling forward right after so I could clip him again with my heel.
"Ready?" I asked my mirror.
With Areth still seeing stars, both me and Shuyin got another overdrive surge up, charging after him with our Energy Rains. He ran forward and flip kicked off Areth, but instead of firing the bolts at the ground, he shot them down to me while I was still charging. Once I was done, I lifted the Brotherhood over my head and spun it, collecting each of the bolts and forming a spiral out of them. I released my own energy into it, letting it take up the center in the shape of a twisting orb. With a sharp cut in Areth's direction, I shot the winding vortex of force at him and he was taken for a ride. However, the move took too long and he actually got in a block, holding it off as his sword looked like it was absorbing it.
"Time to DIE!" He screamed, tracing two fingers along the other edge of his weapon, "Zantetsuken!"
The vortex melted into his blade as it burned with white fire, changing shape into a newer, much more threatening sword. Before I knew what was going on, Shuyin tossed me back and took the full impact of the hit. It completely scattered his pyreflies and in the aftermath, all of them just floated around, finding it hard to come back together. For a few seconds, I worried that that was it for him, but I realized that Areth must have thought the same thing. It was a trick and Areth was falling for it, which gave me the opening I needed. From the pyreflies, I could feel some of that energy returning to me, enough so that I only needed a little bit more of a stamina recharge to execute one more overdrive. Quickly, I jumped toward him and started swinging wildly, knowing that I did catch him off guard. I cleaved a good chunk out of his shoulder guard and landed a hit on his middle, tearing through his shirt before he finally made a counter, going for a spinning horizontal slash at my neck. Ducking down, my fist landed hard on his gut to send him reeling into a back tumble, and even after he got back up, I swung down with an overhead strike. He caught it, but the force of it sent him on one knee and cut a little into his sword. Using it as a groove, I managed to wrench the sword from him then leaped into a backflip to kick him in the chin. That threw him back a few more steps and got him in a daze, a perfect setup for my blitz.
Building it up, I roared and ran straight for him, slicing at him left and right. Since he was unarmed and I just knocked him for a loop, there was no way he could dodge or block any of them, the Brotherhood landing clean strikes everywhere. Now, barely able to keep on his feet, I stepped off him and sent myself into the air. Shuyin reformed himself by then, his right hand spinning the World Champion. Once I was in position, he tossed it to me in a pass and I flipped back, kicking it hard right back down into Areth. It struck home and exploded, leaving behind his battered and broken body, struggling to stay on his feet and fading fast.
"It's over." Shuyin said to him once I landed, "Time to let go."
"No, that time hasn't come. You knew when I could finally let it go and you took that from me. So now that time is impossible." Areth told him, his body disappearing into a cloud of pyreflies, "It is not over, Shuyin, and it never will be."
The last of him melted away into the cloud and Shuyin walked right into them, letting them flow through his hands. Then, he turned into the distance a second before all the pyreflies shot out in the same direction, streaming away from the Fahrenheit.
"You're wrong, Areth." He muttered, taking a look at each of us, "That time is coming."
Author's Note: So Areth's finally been taken by Yu Yevon into Sin. This leaves them to deal with their one final enemy, though it's a sure bet Areth will be active on the inside. Will they be ready for him? Will they be ready for all the challenges to come? Just how do they plan on fighting this time? It is doubtful they could organise another planetwide Hymn of the Fayth and that Yu Yevon would be as affected as Jecht by it. How do they expect to lure Sin to the surface? Can they ever be ready for it once it arrives? Find out next time!