Note: 1. These characters and this world are not mine. 2. The magic is the official name, NOT the original name.
"Hmm… how about this? You're even prettier than Maria." I turn away from his stupid words in disgust, only to find myself blushing. "I'll help you if Celes marries me."
I think about my options and remember Edgar bragging about a particular thing. For some reason he had seemed not to want Sabin to know what it was but that was irrelevant. I consider any other options but since I don't want to marry a disgusting man it seems like my best option.
"Fine," he smiles but I interrupt it with "but I have some precepts, Mr. Gambler. If you like gambling so much, why not flip a coin? If it lands on heads, you help us. If it's ails, I'll…" I search for the right words and not the ones I'm almost afraid to say. "I'll go with you," I determine.
"What!?" Locke outbursts, but I ignore him, and walk up to Edgar instead.
"You had a two-headed coin, didn't you?" I ask.
"Yeah," he responds, digging in some pocket and producing a golden coin.
I look at the silver coin, glistening in the sunlight, and flip it in my hand. And of course, the two heads are the Figaro twins: Edgar on one side and Sabin on the other.
"Well then." I look at Setzer pointedly.
"Celes, you can't!" Locke looks at me in shock. "Why would you even want to go with him!?"
"I don't," I say cooly, "that's the point."
"But-"
I hold up my hand to stop him and he listens for some reason. If I accidentally let Setzer know what I was doing, it really would be a 50-50 chance and that would be dumb so I have to keep silent. I flick the coin into the air. Locke's eyes follow it and, of course, watch it land on heads. He smiles slightly and I smirk.
"So, mister gambler, it seems it landed on heads." I step to pick it up, but Setzer is closer and takes it first.
I'm afraid he will make me flip a different coin, but then: "A double-headed coin? How interesting… fine." He says something I don't hear and glares at Locke.
A while later, I sit on the floor with my legs crossed waiting to land on the Southern Continent. I sigh and close my eyes.
Locke notices me and walks over, sitting next to me.
"You scared?"
"No… but to leave the only place you've ever been able to call home, and to come back a traitor…" I look at him. "…you've felt something a bit like that too, haven't you?"
"It's not quite the same."
"But how do you know? If you don't feel it yourself, how could you possibly say it's different?"
He does not respond to my question. I stand and walk to the wooden top of the airship, watching the Imperial Castle grow closer and closer until we arrive at Albrook.
We leave the airship and everyone decides to walk around and get a sense of their newly found surroundings of the Southern Continent. After walking around from when we got there and reaching Tzen, and from there reaching Maranda at dusk, we pay for an inn and go to bed. I can't sleep, so I walk outside, out of the city, and watch the ocean waves, glimmering slightly on the full moon. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of waves washing up to the shore, the seabreeze cooling my skin.
"…hey."
I turn my head to find the person to whom the familiar voice belonged standing behind me.
"Why do you keep looking for me?" I ask, a simple question.
Locke sighs and sits next to me. He looks at me for so long it feels like he's trying to stare into my soul or something. I edge away.
"What do you want? Surely you didn't come here in the middle of the night to stare at me."
He does not respond.
"If you don't want anything then I'd rather be alone," I murmur.
"You know…" he hesitates, looking away.
"What?"
"Never mind…" He sighs.
We just sit there for a few moments.
"Suppose you couldn't sleep either, mr. treasure hunter?"
He smiles a bit and gets up. "We should probably go back."
"Yeah." I look up at the shining moon and at the reflection in the water. It reminds me of something…
The next morning, I get up before anyone else and stand on the rock path at the edge of the town. It's a warm day, and for anyone else that might be great, but warmth makes me uncomfortable. I cross my arms and wait for the boys who are proving themselves to be very slow – it's almost mid-morning by the time they get up.
"It's- this light out already?" someone says behind me.
"Well, yes, sleepyheads, if you'd gotten up about two hours ago we could have left at a reasonable time, but no." I glare at them.
"It's not our fault, Sabin is a heavy sleeper."
"Well then, abandon Sabin in a town. I thought you said he claimed to be a bear, Edgar."
"Compared to the monsters here, I'd rather be an esper or something," Sabin decides.
"Too late, you already made your choice," I tell them as I walk away. They run to catch up with me but I don't stop for them since I can already kill the monsters with a swing of my sword or, in desperate cases, a cast of Blizzard.
"H-hey! Where're you going?"
I look backwards, exasperated, as the boys race to catch up to me.
"You need to wake up or I may very well leave without you." I smirk. "And I don't think anyone wants me to do that so you need to speed up."
They don't lag behind after that.
"So this is… the Empire?" Locke looks at me, asking the question with an obvious answer once we arrive in Vector.
"No, surprise, we're actually on the moon," I retort, rolling my eyes. "Are you scared?"
"Are you scared?" is more of an inside joke now than an actual question.
He smothers a laugh.
"Well why don't you two lovebirds-"
I interrupt Edgar by smacking him in the face.
"There's no point trying to do anything right now because it's almost dusk. We may as well find somewhere to sleep – not the inn, half the time he just steals about a thousand gil from you," I growl at him. "And you have nobody to blame but yourselves so don't try to say anything, because I'm not going to bother listening."
I could swear the research facility next to the castle is glowing with a red light.
Someone eventually finds some quietish corner in the cramped town of Imperial soldiers and oppressed townspeople trying to find one positive thing to say. There is a woman in the room, but after asking us if we support the Empire and two weak soldiers attacking us for our answer of no, she heals us and leaves. I settle toward the door, pulling my legs as close as I can to my body because the room is so small and I know at least one of the boys is going to try to lay down in the tiny room. I sigh, leaning my head against the wall and looking at the ceiling. I close my eyes.
"You know," I say for no particular reason, "Kefka always ends up tricking you into hurting yourself."
"How so?" Locke asks.
"Different ways, none of which are very fun – I can't really help you with it except to tell you to be careful, which probably isn't much help at all."
"What's one of-"
I raise my hand to stop him from continuing the question. "I don't want to think about it."
"But-"
"I said, I don't want to think about it."
Nobody says anything after that, as far as I know, because I drift to sleep within an hour of awkward silence – my new personal record for quickly naturally falling asleep.
Somehow, the boys manage to wake up before me because I wake up alone. I get up, but they're nowhere to be found.
"Hey-" I stop talking, seeing an Imperial soldier out of the corner of my eye.
He laughs evilly. "I have been notified you are to be arrested, for a prize."
"Well, I apologize, but I don't care if the world wants to arrest me. You can't do anything," I taunt him. He immediately grabs my arm. I cast Blizzard on him and he shrieks in pain. I punch him in the head and he falls unconscious. I walk away, looking for the boys – maybe I should have questioned him but it seems unlikely this is anything more than a strange coincidence.
I hear something that sounds like banging on wood. I search for the sound and find them on top of a large crate. I walk over.
"What the heck are you doing?" I hiss.
Locke nods in the direction of three soldiers and a man who looks sick. "That guy's helping us – he said he was a 'Returner sympathizer' or something."
"Well, okay, but it would probably be more effective just to fight them." Edgar and Sabin climb onto a rectangular metal pole that goes on to pass the soldiers and I attempt to get on the crate. Locke tries to grab me but I shove him off. "I can get on a crate by myself," I growl at him, rolling my eyes.
He carefully walks along the pole, me following. When we reach the edge of the pole where we can jump off without the guards noticing, Edgar and Sabin are standing on the ground waiting for us. Locke attempts to jump down but somehow slips, grabbing the pole, and appears to bite his lip – probably because if he yelped in surprise, we'd be noticed and sent back to the beginning, and this time without help from the man who apparently had claimed to be a "Returner sympathizer."
I laugh slightly and smirk. "Sure you're light enough on your feet to be 'the world's premiere adventurer'? Stop playing around and fall a foot."
He looks down and slightly blushes, or something along those lines, and lets go of the pole. And, of course, falls a foot to the ground. I jump down after him.
"Are you so afraid of falling? You should have already known it was only like six feet off the ground."
"Is that why you came with us, Celes? To criticize me?" I hear the laughter in his voice as he asks an obviously rhetorical question.
So I retort with "Is that why you came, Locke? To do things I could criticize you for?" He rolls his eyes. "Anyways, aren't we supposed to be inconspicuously breaking into a science facility?" I ask as I briskly walk towards the esper power-sucking plant. The boys run after me, obviously not wanting to be left behind, because they know I would definitely leave them behind… probably.
After walking, or maybe running, through the maze of the Magitek Research Facility, we reach what seems to be a point of no return. The boys automatically walk straight towards it, but I grab someone's arm and pull him back, and the other two seem to notice just in time, and we all hide behind a usefully-placed crate, just as manic laughter fills the room.
"The idiot Cid might want you but you're useless! You can rot in that weird storage room for all anyone cares. I already have all your magic and your magic was wasted on those dead guys Biggs and Wedge!" Kefka screams at the two espers, a green male-looking one first, and then a stony bluish-gray female-looking one with some sort of lavender-colored cape. He then shoves them down into the point of no return and disappears.
I look at the men who seem like they're itching to go and nod, and they immediately run toward the roller things that apparently lead to a storage room. I look down, and the Empire apparently bothered to light the room, so I can see that there isn't really anything down there except for two doors. The two espers Kefka threw down are practically frozen still, only faintly breathing and probably regretting bothering to. I follow the others down to actually enter the room, which doesn't really look like a storage room, which might be why Kefka said it was a weird storage room. Sabin taps the female-looking one on the shoulder, to no avail. He then looks confused.
"Why won't she say anything?" he stupidly asks.
"Maybe," I retort, "because she's almost dead and doesn't care about you."
He looks at the other one, the male-looking one, and taps it on the shoulder. It lets out a roar like a lion or tiger, then fires scalds our legs. I wince and cast Cure on everyone. Locke looks at me.
"Are you-" He is interrupted by the esper's smoldering fist colliding with his face.
Assuming Locke wanted to ask if I was okay, I nod and cast Blizzard on the esper. He then disappears, and the female appears in his stead. Edgar pulls out his chainsaw.
I scream at him, "Don't use that stupid thing 'till you know how! You might behead yourself." He ignores me and I roll my eyes. We stab the esper, only in self defense, and Edgar eventually puts away his chainsaw. The two espers keep trading places, which means I'm injured more than everyone else by the male's fire, but healed by the female's ice, so it balances out.
"Ramuh's power..?" The female looks at the male. "If he gave them his power… we're wrong to attack them." The espers end their assault on us.
"Why did they attack us, Celes?" Sabin asks me.
"Maybe because all the humans they encountered before us have tortured them almost to death?" I scoff.
"…Our apologies… We did not know you could be trusted until we felt Ramuh's presence." The female esper looks at the ground. "And the other fate we could suffer is worse than his. So we will do the same."
"You don't need to sacrifice yourself," Locke tells them.
"Perhaps we do not need to. But it would be better to help people with a good cause than to stay in this room for the rest of eternity." The female esper looks at the male, who had been silent this whole time. He nods. "We will give you our power. Please, use it well." She closes her eyes, as does the other. There is a flash of light, and where they were standing just a moment before, there are magicites.
I reach to pick one, the female's, up.
"Celes, what are you doing?" Locke asks.
"It's what they wanted. Or do you have a better idea?" I pick it up. It seems her name was Shiva. Because, strangely, we can tell their names simply by holding the magicite. I take the other one, named Ifrit, and put both of them in the pocket dimension. I turn back to the rest of the group. "We should go. We're almost there."
I lead them through the rightmost door. We walk up stairs, five or so pairs of them. Eventually we reach the top, although everyone but me is out of breath. We walk through a door which leads through a hallway lined with large empty capsules.
"What-" Locke pauses to catch his breath. "What are these?"
"I think they're…" I wait a moment, trying to recall the one time I've been here before, eight years ago. "They're supposed to hold espers and drain their magic." I turn toward the group.
Locke looks up at the capsules in confusion.
"Shall we go?" I ask. For some reason, I have a sense of foreboding, but I ignore it.
We continue down the small hallway to a door. We walk through the door into a room with another door, which we also walk through. The room we enter is a hallway, similar to the one before, that has six capsules, each with an esper in it. At the end of the room opposite to us, there is some kind of switch thing.
"...We're here," I say, just because it feels like someone should say something amidst the silence.
We go to the switch at the end of the room and flip it downward.
An echoey voice fills the room. "You wish to aid us… but we shan't survive much longer. We will do what the others have done… we entrust you with our powers…" The six espers transform into magicite.
Cid, a middle-aged man in a yellow hooded coat with red lining, comes running from an elevator machine. The said machine is only large enough for maybe four people, has no walls, and is kind of rusty. "What are you doing?" He looks at us, and then at the capsules, or more likely, the magicite pieces the capsules contain. "Wh-hat are those?" He runs next to each of them and looks at the shards. "They… died? So… they can leave their magic… in its purest form..?" He stares at the one to my left. "The power must be hundreds of times stronger than we could ever extract…"
The pieces of magicite swiftly float upward in the capsules, shattering the capsules, and fly to us, encircling us, and stacking on top of each other. Sabin takes them. Cid walks up and looks at us. We walk down to him.
"Professor Cid-" I start, walking up next to a capsule and in front of him.
"General Celes! Who might these shady people be? Your servants?" he interrupts me.
I guess I shouldn't have ignored my sense of foreboding.
"No, they're-"
"Are the rumors true? Did you join the Returners as a spy?"
Locke looks shocked and rushes up next to me. I look at him. "Celes..!?"
We hear Kefka's faint laugh, and look toward the door we came from. Kefka comes up to stand in front of us. "Magicite! Cid, you idiot, how did you not find this before?" He then steps to the side, facing me specifically. "General Celes! You don't have to pretend you're on their side anymore. Bring me the magicite!"
Locke looks shocked again and turns to me. I do the same but vice versa. "Celes! Why did you trick us?"
I sigh. "Would you forget so easily what I told you before about Kefka tricking you? Please trust me…"
Kefka jumps to the side and turns away from us. He laughs maniacally again. "The sweet taste of betrayal! Celes, that's… so… you!" He seems to be trying to figure out what to say at this point.
I walk over to the edge of the floor, where there is an abyss, the capsule floating above it (as with all the other capsules). I look down into the darkness. "Locke, please don't be stupid. Please… believe me…"
"I…" Locke hesitates.
"Get them! NOW!" Kefka screeches at the door. He then turns to us and raises one arm.
Two soldiers in red armor and magitek armor come marching to us.
"Kill them!" he screams.
Cid jumps to the side, I jump into the abyss and grab onto the railing, the magitek soldiers speed toward the three men, and the men in question are shoved into the machinery behind them and fall unconscious. And here I thought they could take more hits than that.
I begin to cast a spell and a purple glow fills the room. I begin whispering to myself, "Locke… I don't need your protection. But If I protect you… will you believe me?" I pull myself over the railing and walk toward Kefka. I raise my arms, casting a teleportation spell.
"NO! Don't cast that!" Kefka yells at me.
I continue casting the spell. The glow in the room changes to red, then blue, then green, then orange, then shifts through every color so fast it's amazing it doesn't just look brown. I look at the floor for no particular reason, and finish the spell, warping Kefka, the two red magitek soldiers, and myself to the throne room of the Imperial Castle.