A/N: No I don't know why I'm updating this story more than my other ones. I guess I'm just a little more inspired for this right now.
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Not for the first time, Squall wondered why on earth he had decided to wear a heavy fur coat when he knew he was going into a volcanic sauna. Shiva was practically shoulder to shoulder with him and he could still feel the effects of the heat.
The fire around them seemed a lot more active, occasionally spurting up in brief firespouts before lying dormant. Underneath the sound of their own footsteps, a slow rumbling could be heard throughout the cavern.
"The fiends seem strangely absent," said Wedge aloud after a few minutes of walking.
"Maybe they're scared," put in Zell, punching the air a couple times.
"Maybe they know something we don't. Stay on your guard."
Occasionally, they would come to a place in the path that had been overrun by the lava. When this happened, Shiva froze the ground so they could carefully cross over. As they moved deeper into the fire cavern, the path became narrower as the molten rock closed in.
"Something's wrong with this lava," said Siren suddenly, bringing the party to an abrupt halt.
"What is it?" It looked like regular lava to him.
"This place is on a downward slope going in that direction," said Siren pointing towards the entrance, "But this lava is flowing that way." She pointed in the opposite direction.
Squall took a closer look. "You're right, it's flowing," he paused while he looked for the source, "That way."
"He's gathering power," cut in Shiva. "Squall, we need to hurry. If this monster absorbs the full power of this volcano, nothing short of deep freezing him in the arctic is going to stop him."
"Well, that's why you're here," he said amusedly.
"I'm flattered Squall, but I'm a guardian, not a god."
A sudden rumble brought their conversation to a halt. The guardians and the humans formed a circle, drawing their weapons and readying their magic. For a few seconds, no one moved.
"False alarm?" asked Zell after a few more seconds.
His answer came in the form of several plumes of lava erupting all around them.
"Run for it!" shouted Squall, pushing Shiva ahead of him. Behind them, the ground started falling away, and the lava slowly creeped towards them.
"Head towards that cliff!" shouted Zell, quickly sprinting to the head of the group. With a leap, Zell grabbed on to the cliff face and scrambled up like a demented spider, Squall hot on his heals. When they got to the top, Squall reached down and pulled up Shiva and Siren up by one hand, while Zell helped Wedge to the top.
No sooner had Siren's foot touched the ground than a huge plume of lava erupted behind her, singing her heel.
"It seems that we were expected," said Squall in his usual monotone. The path they had followed in was essentially gone; all that remained was a gigantic pool of lava.
"And it doesn't seem they're done yet!" said Zell, suddenly on his feet. Around them the lava had begun to stir again, but this time instead of plumes, they released bombs. Squall reached for his gunblade but the fist fighter was already in action, darting around the cliff, punching the bombs back from their area of safety.
Zell may have been hot tempered and bull headed but above all else, he was an accomplished fist fighter. He had lined his gloves and boots with ice magic, giving a nasty hit to any bomb that approached their cliff. He was even beginning to knock the bombs into one another, causing them to explode on contact.
"What do we do now?" shouted Wedge over the deafening explosions.
"Go through that wall!" yelled Shiva, pointing to the rock face behind them. "Ifrit's behind there!"
Squall got to his feet. "Stand back."
Concentrating his battle aura, Squall let it flow into his gunblade. The weapon accepted his aura easily, absorbing it like a sponge. Then, in a samurai like fashion, Squall drew the blade and made four slashes in the cliff face, his aura parting the rocks easily. Shiva, Siren, and Wdge immediately ran through.
"Zell, come on!"
"We can't let these bombs follow us," replied Zell, not missing a beat in his furious game of dodge-bomb. "I'll stay here and guard our exit. Hurry up and kill that thing!"
Squall didn't even look back as he ran after the rest of the party. It was useless trying to persuade him otherwise. One of the perks of being as stubborn as Zell was that people eventually just stopped arguing with you. Not to mention, Zell was right. It would be incredibly hard to battle Ifrit with bombs flying around.
The new path that Squall had opened up led into a small passageway, with a harsh orange glow at the end of it.
"That's him!" shouted Shiva over the noise behind her. "Run for it!"
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There was no fanfare, monologues, or posturing. One minute the circular room at the center of the volcano was quiet, and in the next, there were two humans and two Guardians viciously attacking the spot that Ifrit was standing, gathering power from the volcano.
The first barrage of ice and silence attacks hit him dead on, sending him hurtling into a wall, causing several rocks to fall on top of him.
Silence reined in the room for a few moments.
"Did we get it?" asked Wedge hopefully.
A loud roar sounded from the pile of rocks. With a mighty slash, Ifrit threw the rocks off of him, flinging several towards the party who separated to dodge.
"That was a cheep shot sister."
His voice seemed to shake the very earth. The volcano also seemed to match his tone as it rumbled warningly. Finally, he threw the last of the rocks off of him and Squall got his first look at Ifrit.
The first thing he noticed was that his skin was gone. His skeleton was showing, with dark flames licking at the blackened bones. Instead of his usual orange and red fire, he was surrounded by blue and black flames. He was crouched over on all fours, a sharp contrast to the lordly upright pose Squall was used to.
"I knew once Shiva was awakened that someone would eventually be coming for me. I still find it incredible that you were so easily tricked into coming though."
Squall raised an eyebrow. "So if this was to be a trap, why didn't you just take us out before we got here?"
"Because with your release confirmed, Omega's time has now come! Your world is doomed! Bow before the almighty power of-"
Siren's ball of silence detonated against his head with a soundless boom, abruptly cutting off his speech.
"I see your brother still hasn't lost his taste for monologue," said Siren casually.
Shiva sighed. "You said it cuz."
"FOOLS! Your powers are useless here! This is my home, and now it will be your tomb!"
With a mighty roar that echoed against the walls of the cave, the ground began to crumble away, revealing the lava underneath it. The seemingly solid rocks they were standing on were quickly melting into the magma beneath it.
"Shiva! Freeze the ground! Now!"
The ice guardian gave a quick nod before folding her hands and closing her eyes in concentration. Gradually, a thin film of ice covered the ground, halting the flow of lava. Granted, fighting on a slippery ground wasn't ideal, but it was better than a burning one.
Throwing off his coat, Squall ran towards Ifrit, hoping to distract him from Shiva's meditations. Simultaneously, Wedge approached his other side, thinking similar thoughts.
Ifrit's "heart" was visible behind his skeleton but as Squall quickly found out, the fire guardian's bones were as tough as steel. The SeeD quickly retreated before Ifrit could score a hit with his claws, instead causing him to deeply gouge the ice.
Seeing Squall's failed attempt at hacking through the ribs, Wedge began aiming for the head, hoping to cripple him somehow. Ifrit seemed to take offense to this though and parried with his claws, which also seemed to share the same toughness of his bones.
The two humans began darting around the fire guardian like flies, getting a hit in wherever they could while Siren put in a blast whenever she could. Despite the slippery ground, Wedge and Squall managed to avoid serious injury.
Finally, Squall landed a vicious cut on Ifrit's hand, causing him to roar out in pain. With a mighty leap, the guardian leaped to the other side of the room, well out of range of the gunblade users.
Gathering his power, Ifrit began launching his trademark meteor shots at them, forcing them to quickly dodge. It was only through serendipity that none of them came near Shiva.
Unfortunately, due to the slick ground, their forward progress was all but halted. Every time they tried to close in, they'd end up having to franticly dodge another meteor barrage. Siren also couldn't seem to get a shot off, because while she only required about four seconds to form and shoot a silence blast of considerable power, Ifrit was shooting about one blast every two seconds.
"Squall! Use your gunblade!"
The SeeD looked at Wedge confused. Did he want him to throw it?
As if in answer to his question, Wedge took the gunblade Squall had lent him and pressed a hidden switch in the pommel of the blade. Suddenly the blade detached, leaving him with just the gun.
"The hell?" Squall dodged another fireball before taking a precious few moments to examine the pommel of his gunblade. On the bottom, nearly invisible to the human eye, was a small hole.
"Get something long and thin to put in it!" shouted Wedge who was now returning fire in between dodging fireballs. The bullets only seemed to have minimal effect on the beast though.
Searching around quickly, Squall immediately spotted a thin sliver of ice, possibly broken off from the ground where Ifrit's claws had impacted it. Rolling to avoid another magma blast, Squall snatched up the sliver of ice and jammed it into the whole. There was a loud click, and the blade suddenly fell away.
A sudden jolt traveled through Squall's body as the gun in his hand suddenly synchronized with his ki. He had been taught before that a weapon was nothing more than an extension of your body but this gun actually felt like part of his body. Taking aim at Ifrit, he fired.
Instead of the expected bullets, the gun released his ki instead. A bright blue light streaked towards Ifrit just below the speed of sound before impacting his skeleton, causing him to stumble back a bit. Seeing the stumble, Squall continued firing alongside Wedge and Siren.
The fight staggered on a like a demented game of dodgeball with projectiles flying all over the room. Even Shiva had to momentarily break her concentration a couple times to dodge some projectiles. The tide was slowly turning in the SeeD's favor though. Although Ifrit's fireballs were big and powerful, they were still relatively easy to dodge, even on the slick floor, and the small hits they scored were slowly but surely wearing him down.
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'Damn' thought Zell as he furiously beat back another wave of attackers, 'Just how many dead bodies are in this lava?'
At first, defending the ledge had been almost pathetically easy. Bombs had been trying to attack him from all sides but their assaults were poorly coordinated and easily thwarted. Even when the fire bats had joined the fray, things were still fairly manageable.
It was the fiery undead skeletons that were pushing his limits.
Granted, they weren't the most skilled fighters but they knew how to swing a sword, or bone, or rock, or whatever they could get their hands on really. While bombs and bats were easy to predict and intercept, the skeletons had just enough variation in their attack patterns to make things rather difficult.
A detached part of his mind wondered briefly how on earth bones, or metal swords for that matter, could survive the intense heat of the lava below him, but unfortunately the scientific impossibility didn't stop them from crawling out of the lava and up the cliff face three at a time.
He had briefly considered retreating into the tunnel Squall had gone down to force his enemies to come at him from one direction, but the idea was quickly rejected. The tunnel was Squall's only way out. A cave in triggered by fighting in it would spell certain death for all of them.
Zell dodged a blow from a bone club before shattering his attacker's skull and pushing him back into the lava. He'd probably just climb up the cliff again, even without his head, but it would give him a few moments reprieve.
'Whatever the hell you're fighting in there Squall, hurry up and kill it!'
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'This…is not working.' Ifrit finally conceded after one of the ki bullets narrowly missed his eye socket. Originally, his plan had been to corral them into the center of the volcano and destroy them instantly with his lava trap but Shiva had been able to keep the ground frozen much longer than he expected. Apparently, even though she was unaware of it, she had been drawing on Squall and Siren's stores of energy.
With a roar, Ifrit smashed the ground as hard as he could, sending ice shards flying everywhere. Some embedded in his skeleton but he shook the pain off, continuing to pound the ground. Finally, a satisfying crunch of ice gave way to the magma underneath. A few more hits and the hole was wide enough to fit him. With a leap, he submerged himself in the lava.
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The sudden lull in the fighting was a bit disorienting, Squall noted as he quickly reattached his gunblade. Shiva was still in a meditative posture, her entire concentration on maintaining the ice against the fury of the volcano.
"Where'd he go?" asked Wedge, reattaching the blade to his gun.
"Siren! Give me a location!"
The GF of silence nodded before closing her eyes and concentrating. Half a second later, they were open again.
"Shiva! Look out!"
The ice GF looked up briefly from her meditation, but the warning came a second too late. With a mighty crash, Ifrit erupted from the ice right underneath her. Turning in midair, Ifrit grabbed her around the middle and threw her down towards the ice, sending a meteor shot after her fall.
The resulting force created spider web cracks on the ice through the whole arena. The GF's body was nowhere to be seen.
"Shiva!"
Squall began sprinting over to the crater where Shiva had impacted, but was stopped with a sudden mental message.
'I'm okay Squall, I'm just…out of…energy. I'll need about a day…to recharge…before I can manifest…again. Can't…keep…talking…" The connection was abruptly cut off.
On one hand, he was relieved that Shiva was okay, but on the other hand, with her absence, the ground was starting to steam up in a clear sign of melting ice.
"Squall, use your own power. Shiva should have the memory of how to do it."
Quickly searching her recent memories, Squall found the pattern Shiva had been using to weave her ice and thrust his own energy into it. Immediately, the pattern latched onto his power like a leech.
'At this rate I'll last about another three minutes. Maybe less if I have to keep fighting like this.'
Readying his gunblade, Squall ran over to where Wedge had once again engaged Ifrit in close combat. His movements were slightly sluggish, like a computer with a second or two of delay after each command imputed. By himself, he probably would have already been toasted, but with Wedge running interference, they were able to keep Ifrit on the defensive. Siren had also procured her own weapon, and was also starting to move in close to engage.
Even though he wasn't making any attacks though, all Ifrit had to do was wait for the ice to melt, then it would be game over.
"LOOK OUT!"
CRASH!
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Zell wiped the sweat off his brow as the last skeleton shattered under the combined pressure of ice and fist. While the monsters were numerous, they weren't infinite, and the fire cavern seemed to have used up all of its ammo.
"I need to get to Squall," he muttered to himself, trying to catch his second wind. He needed to hurry, but he also knew that it'd be useless if he ran to the "big" fight in his current condition.
A minute passed, and then two. Slowly, Zell stood up, nursing some bruises and stretching some muscles.
A sound which could only be described as a scream rang throughout the cavern, immediately turning Zell from relaxed to full alert in an instant. Beneath him, the lava began to bubble and erupt. Another scream echoed off the cavern walls, shaking Zell's bones.
With a final plume of lava, the cavern revealed its final monstrosity. The flaming skeleton of a gigantic T-Rexaur.
"Oh fuck this."
Zell had fought the good fight and had weathered the fire cavern's assault but he wasn't going to stick around and see its deathblow. As he ran through the makeshift tunnel towards Squall, he could feel the heat of the skeletonized T-Rexaur behind him as it caved in the passage in his wake.
Spotting the opening ahead, the fist fighter put on a burst of speed and leapt into the clearing a hairs breadth ahead of the monster behind him
"LOOK OUT!"
CRASH!
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If the situation hadn't previously been so grim, Squall probably would have laughed (if he was in the habit of laughing that is). When Zell had made his dramatic entrance with the T-Rexaur hot on his heels, bouncing off of Ifrit's head in the fall from the opening, he had given them the perfect distraction needed to cripple the corrupted guardian via cutting off his skeletonized hand at the weaker joint.
But it hadn't ended there.
The T-Rexaur who had previously been running on solid ground suddenly found himself trying, and failing, to run on air. With no choice but to obey gravity, he had gone straight down and fell…straight on Ifrit. The force of the impact had partially broken through the ice, but had quickly re-frozen, further confining the corrupted Guardian Force. Burried under a pile of bone and frozen in ice with only one claw available, the fire guardian wasn't going anywhere.
Taking a firm grip on his gunblade, Squall half walked half staggered over to Ifrit's prison along with Wedge and Siren. Ifrit attempted to make a half-hearted swipe but was quickly stopped by the ex-Galbadia soldier, his appendage pinned to the ice via Wedge's gunblade.
"He knows. Omega Weapon knows, and he's coming for you." The Guardian grinned, "And then you're all going to die!"
"Hopefully by then you'll be playing for the right team," said Squall, fierce determination in his eyes. Without further ceremony, he embedded his ice enchanted gunblade into the corrupted Guardian's core.
If it hadn't been for Shiva's protection, Squall probably would have been roasted alive from the backlash of power Ifrit's core released. As it was, the heat wave still knocked him on his back.
Wedge and Siren immediately darted forward, grabbing their commander's arms and dragging him away from the hurricane of fire that was rapidly growing. With a final bang and a wave of heat that knocked everyone off their feet, Ifrit emerged.
"It's about time you came and freed me, sister. I was beginning to think that you'd forgotten about me."
Even when he wasn't in dark mode, Ifrit still spoke with a voice that commanded attention and respect. His booming tone echoed off of the cavern walls and the steady rumbling of the fire cavern added to his commanding presence.
"You're welcome bro," said Siren quickly, "But we need an exit, and fast!"
"Very well. I suppose the pleasantries can wait."
With a roar, Ifrit manifested a meteor shot before pounding it into the mountainside, blowing the collapsed rock away from the tunnel.
"Leader Squall."
Squall staggered to his feet, meeting Ifrit's eyes.
"I will fly us out of here, but you must shield them with your ice magic while I do so."
The SeeD nodded in affirmation before closing his eyes and concentrating. A faint blue Aura appeared around him, Wedge, and Zell.
"It will be easier for us if you return to your astral form," said Squall. Siren nodded before disappearing in a flash of light. The three fighters climbed onto the Guardian's back. The heat was mildly annoying but Squall's ice aura was making it bearable. Beneath him the makeshift ice ground was beginning to crack and melt into the rising lava.
"Hang on little ones!"
"To what?" Shouted Zell frantically, but Ifrit had already taken off.
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"You know I have to admit," said Cid to Squall as the medical team patched up his wounds. "You may not be much for grace or subtlety but you certainly have style."
On the outside, it had seemed like one minute everything was quiet and peaceful, and then in the next minute, the volcano was erupting and Balamb's commander was riding a demon out of the fiery depths of hell itself.
Needless to say, Ifrit's sudden appearance and flight path had nearly provoked an armed response. If it hadn't been for the lookouts spotting Squall on its back, things probably would have gotten real hot real quick.
Ifrit had dumped them in the center of the medical camp before disappearing in a flash of fire. Squall couldn't sense him in his mind directly but he could still feel his presence.
Surprisingly, none of them were seriously injured, aside from Shiva who was still unconscious. Zell had several small burns that needed to be attended, Wedge was also nursing his share of burns and bruises and Squall was suffering from severe ki depletion, but that was to be expected after the strain of holding the icy floor for so long. His consciousness was probably only going to last as long as the adrenaline in his body did.
'Or at least until I stop feeding you healing energy,' Put in Siren.
Squall grimaced. He was probably going to be out for a while.
'Nonsense. With my help you'll probably only have to sleep for a day or two at most. It does give me some time to search through all your embarrassing memories though.'
The SeeD commander was quickly starting to realize just how pointless it was trying to hide thoughts from someone who could read your mind. Trying not to think about something only made you think of it more and…
'Oh my Squall, I never knew you were into p-"
Cid's eyes widened in surprise as Squall suddenly hit himself on the side of his head. "Um, are you okay?"
"Just peachy."
'You know, that doesn't hurt me at all.'
'Just shut up.'
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"Your mind is small human, but compared to my former prison, I suppose anything would be more agreeable."
Zell jumped at the voice in his head, causing the medic treating his wounds to scold him.
"Where are you?" asked Zell, slightly confused.
"I'm standing right in front of you," said the medic. "And if you want me to treat these burns then stay still!"
"Foolish human. Do you wish people to think you are crazy? Talk with your mind, not your mouth."
"How am I supposed to do that?"
"By sitting still and shutting up," said the irritated medic. "Now let me treat those."
Zell turned as if just noticing the medic for the first time. "Um, actually they're not that bad. You can go help someone else."
"I should hope that my container on Gaia would be a little fire resistant." Said the voice smugly.
Zell looked at the burns on his skin curiously. They were fading right before his eyes, he couldn't even feel the sting anymore. Finally, his mind put two and two together.
"Wait a sec…you're Ifrit right?"
"Took you long enough. Yes, I am Ifrit, the true Guardian of Fire."
"Oh." There was a moment's pause. "So…why are you in my head and not in Squalls?"
"I still hold a connection with our leader, but you hold my consciousness. I determined that it would be best for Squall if he did not have to contest with three separate consciences. Such a thing might prove to be too mentally taxing for a human."
Zell snickered. "More like you don't want to be that close to your sister 24/7. It'd probably drive Squall insane."
"…Nevertheless, I hereby charge you with holding my conscious, with holding my bond to this world. Take care you do not "screw it up" as you humans would say."
The fist fighter sweatdropped. "You're a real great motivational speaker you know that?"
"You try speaking after hundreds of years of solitude."
"That does sound kinda hard."
"Humph."
"…So what was it like in eternal solitude?"
"Boring."
"That's it? Boring?"
"What do you want from me, a haiku? I was completely alone in a grey, empty, prison. It was really REALLY boring. And you really should stop talking out loud. People are starting to stare."
Zell briefly looked around at the medics who were starting at him with raised brows.
"It's okay," he reassured. "I'm just talking to the voices in my head."
Ifrit mentally slapped his forehead in frustration. 'It's still better than eternal solitude,' he repeated to himself like a mantra.
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-Squall's Mindscape-
"So, Ifrit is going to be staying in Zell's mind?" asked Squall, sitting comfortably on one of the chairs in his "reading room" mindscape. "I give him three days before he tries coming over here."
"That would be rather difficult I'm afraid. The human conscious of a single man is usually too small to even bond with one guardian, let alone two. You and your friends are the exceptions since you've been holding Guardians in your mind for about three years now."
Siren continued. "If you trained yourself, you could probably handle three, perhaps even four, but four would be your absolute limit. Any more and your body would probably explode, or some nasty equivalent."
Squall sighed. "If you guys knew that I would eventually need to recruit help to hold all of the guardians, why did I need to keep this from my friends?"
"We needed time to determine which of your friends we could trust."
That perturbed him a bit. "I can vouch for them."
"But we can't," replied Siren, steadfast. "And as much as you would like to trust them, we are completely clueless as to who the enemies real agents are. As we speak Ifrit is sifting through Zell's memories, making sure that he can be trusted with our secret."
"That seems a little extreme."
"Nevertheless. The Omega Weapon has spies everywhere, put in place long before even you were born. Anyone, including your friends, could be an agent."
"What about Cid then? Why didn't you go through his memories?"
"We did. We also went through Wedge's as well."
"How?"
"A Guardian ability. If any of them had a trace of Omega Weapon in them, we would have eliminated them immediately."
Squall sighed. "Look, can you just- I dunno, perhaps give me a heads up before you go off killing someone please?"
"What if one of the agents were one of your friends? What then? Would you really have the courage to fight against them? Would you really be able to eliminate them for the good of the world?"
Squall didn't respond, but Siren didn't seem like she was expecting one.
"Our mission comes first Squall, before anything. Failure to send Omega Weapon back to the void means there won't be any of your friends left, regardless of whom we have to eliminate."
"And failure to adhere to my one simple request of one god damn minor forewarning means that this quest might stop right here and now!"
A silence fell over Squall's mindscape as the shout echoed around the room.
"You'd forsake the entire world for your friends wouldn't you?"
"I did once, I'd probably do it again."
Siren was silent for a whole minute this time. "Alright Squall, you win. We'll tell you who the agents are before we take action. But you, in return, have to help in neutralizing them. Agreed?"
"Agreed. And Siren?"
The Guardian of Silence looked up.
"If it's any reassurance, I don't want the world to be destroyed either."
Siren laughed. "And if it's any reassurance to you, I don't exactly like the fact we may have to the eliminate some of the very people we were created to protect."
Squall held out his hand. "Still friends?"
"Of course." Siren took his hand, but took it one step further, pulling him into a hug. "For the time being," she whispered teasingly into his ear.
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A/N: At five thousand words, this is the longest GF chapter to date. I honestly couldn't think of a better stopping point than this one right here. Man I'm good! And yes, many of you may think that Chapter 7 was pointless with the card games and all, but it will serve a purpose later!
Reviews are appreciated but not necessary. Any questions you have I can answer as long as you leave a signed review or provide an e-mail address. I'll try to respond to all my reviews, as they are really the only thing I'm getting from writing this (aside from self-satisfaction of course).
Last but not least, I have a poll going on in my profile. If it's not too much trouble, stop by and vote. The poll will most likely have an impact to future updates.
And now, it's Omake Time:
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The Guardian Room
Squall looked around confused at the room in his mindscape. Instead of his regular comfy chairs and fireplace, it appeared to be the interior of a fancy car. At one end sat Shiva and Ifrit, the latter with his hands folded in front of his face.
"Welcome, to the velvet room."
"Huh?"
"Do not be alarmed, you are fast asleep in the real world."
Squall sweatdropped. "Have you guys been getting into my Persona memories again?"
"Do you believe in destiny?"
"Ugh, not again."
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