MC Long Dark 03

She struggled to emerge from the soft cocoon that surrounded her. Murky, watery depths blurred her vision as warm brown eyes popped open, blinking dully, sluggish. Her limbs would not obey her, left drifting at her sides. Small patches, tendrils of alien technology, linked to her flesh, draining her lifeforce into the cubical that held her. Rinoa Heartilly wanted to breathe, but dare not. The gel-like liquid surrounding her would surely choke her lungs. Strangely, the urge to breathe was not a necessity so much as a whim. Where was she? How did she come here? Blurry, her surroundings were barely discernible outside the clear walls of her prison.

Something stirred at the back of her consciousness, a slithering, slimy sort of caress. Adel. The Sorceress resisted the urge to shudder, or even to acknowledge the touch. To do so would alert the other woman that she had awoken again, and it would mean a swift descent back into the darkness of slumber. So rarely she awoke, and never for long. Adel preferred her host to remain unaware. Rinoa closed her eyes again, concentrating, quietly and oh so carefully stretching out her mental hands across the spans of time and space. Cold prickles tickled her body, like tiny needles of ice pressed under her flesh. The world and all its senses rushed into her so quickly she nearly drowned as her real body tried to breathe.

Shocked silence filled the Quad. Everyone stared at Sorceress Rinoa, denial and disbelief coloring their expressions. Squall felt his blood run cold, and it was not because Irvine Kinneas stood beside him, placing the barrel of the powerful Exeter against his temple. Didn't they recover his shotgun at the scene? How did he have it now anyway? The questions went as unanswered as the changed appearance of Rinoa. So symbolic, he realized, the dipped angel wings, tipped with black. He openly gaped at the woman he once swore to love as she gracefully approached the stage, wisps of fabric trailing after her ethereally. How beautiful she was, even now, corrupted. A fallen angel.

"Squall Leonhart. The crippled Commander of Garden," Rinoa began, but it was not Rinoa's voice. Distorted, deeper, she sounded so unlike the soft soprano he remembered fondly. To the stage she ascended like a Queen taking her throne, reaching out toward Selphie as she passed the Headmistress in Zell's grip. Delicate fingers drifted over the small girl's cheek and made her shudder. A cryptic smile never left the Sorceress' lips, arrogant and frosty and so coldly beautiful that Squall simply couldn't take his eyes off of her. A dramatic pause thickened the atmosphere, as if a thousand breaths caught in their throats.

"Foolish SeeDs, created to fight the Sorceress. Well. I am a Sorceress. So now you will fight against me, won't you?" Rinoa snarled at the crowd gathered. "Or will you?" her tone suddenly turned rather sweet, like overly ripe fruit about to drip from the vine, "if it means risking your beloved, crippled Commander." For emphasis, Irvine pulled back on the safety of Exeter, the click somehow echoing through the Quad with the deafening silence that followed Rinoa's threats. Squall flicked gray eyes up toward the gunman, studying the taller man's features cautiously. He saw nothing but a blank stare, cornflower blue muted, as if the lights were on upstairs, but no one was actually home. Did Rinoa somehow have control over him? He'd never heard her mention mind control, but then again, he had no idea what sort of magicks Sorceresses had access to.

"Irvine, please, don't do this!" Selphie wailed, suddenly struggling against Zell's grip. The gunman never even looked at her, not even as Zell backhanded her to squelch her struggles. Quistis watched Rinoa's back, glancing between Zell and Irvine as she calculated and weighed the risks versus the consequences. No one would attempt to intervene, not knowing how good a shot Irvine was. If Rinoa has him and Zell under her thrall, then the ante was up, and she held all the cards.

Rinoa merely smiled at the dazed Selphie, reaching out to touch her cheek, "Shhh, it's all right, Headmistress Kinneas. Obey me as your husband does, and you too will know my glory." Back to the crowd she chuckled, a dark, horrible and twisted version of the girl they all knew and once adored. "And you all will serve me, for SeeD no longer fights against the Sorceress. You fight for her!"

Selphie's high pitched shriek rocketed through the Quad loud and shrill enough to draw everyone's eyes toward her. Even Rinoa's expression twisted from arrogantly pleased to honestly shocked as she saw Zell suddenly begin to melt, features and body blending together and fading away to reveal some sort of twisted clay creature beneath. The Headmistress shouted some explicative and kicked at the creature, drawing her arm free from it with a residue of yellowish slime on her arms.

"No! You brat!" the Sorceress hissed, falling to her knees as she grasped at her head. The figure resembling Irvine suddenly began to blur a second later, the Exeter merely an extension of its body. The White SeeDs at Ellone's side took the opportunity to jump toward it, someone jerking Squall's wheelchair backward, dragging him away from the scene even as he yelled for them to stop.

Slowly Zell felt the drowsy warmth around him begin to fade, blue eyes slowly lifting open, staring through some odd gel-like substance that kept him in suspended animation. He turned his head, from left to right, startled to find himself submerged. How long had he been here? Why did he not feel the need to breathe? Glancing down, he realized his arms and legs were bound to this odd prison by frond-like tentacles that attached themselves to his body via pads at the ends of each tendril. He willed his muscles to obey him, and found himself able to twitch, but not much else.

He attempted again to make his arms move, and only twitched. Zell Dincht was not about to have some weird wires attached to his body, however. Putting his entire concentration behind it, he felt something snap. He glanced down, realizing several of the strange suckers that linked to his arm had popped off, leaving reddish pock marks behind. Blood oozed lazily into the gel surrounding him. Disgusted by it, he began slowly to move the arm around, further freeing it of the last remaining suckers. Then, reaching across his chest, he grabbed a handful of the tentacles and began to pull. In this manner he took his time to free himself of the ties that bound him, though there appeared to be a price. His lungs, deprived of air, began to constrict as the rest of his body awoke and oxygen was no longer provided to him via the umbilical tendrils. He swam toward the top and pounded on the metal there. It wouldn't budge. Winding up a fist, he struck at the front panel of the glass that encased him, slowed by the fluid that kept him from indulging his lungs. It impacted, but merely shattered a fist sized portion of it, though cracks radiated out from the center of the strike. Punching the same spot a second time, the glass finally shattered outward, the rush of liquid pouring forth to further the breakage. Wet and gasping, Zell struck the dirt unceremoniously... but he was free.

No reply. Either she'd been put back to sleep or when he'd pulled himself free, he'd lost the ability to keep the mindlink. He leapt to his feet immediately, wiping the gel from his face with a disgusted expression. It felt as if he'd been dipped in petroleum jelly or slimed with oozing tar. Gaping upward, he realized he was standing in Tear's Point, the cracked statues staring down at him with an ageless gaze. Turning, he glanced over the odd, square shaped cells they'd all come across once during the Second Sorceress War. No one understood them then anymore then Zell did now, but at least he saw something within them this time. Beside the shattered cell he'd once occupied he recognized both Rinoa Heartilly and Irvine Kinneas in similar circumstances, floating inside their glass prisons with those white, alien tentacles attached to their bodies. He rushed toward Rinoa's first, fists shattering the glass with much more ease this time. He caught her as she fell, gasping for air and wincing in pain as he ripped her free from the writhing alien technology that tried to hold onto her in vain.

"Get... Irvine... out," she gasped, clumsily getting to her feet. As the martial artist turned to obey her, she immediately cast a Cure spell on herself, ridding herself of the horrible sensation of her lifeforce being slowly suckled from her body. A crash of glass caught her attention and she turned in time to watch Zell manage to catch Irvine before he hit the ground and rushed over to help him pull the vampiric limbs off the gunman. She was free, finally. They all were.

Emerging from Tear's Point, Rinoa, Zell and Irvine said nary a word to one another. The strange, viscous fluid that clung to them began to dry in white flakes, left behind like trails of warm snow. Rinoa brushed it from her hair almost as vigorously as Irvine did. The plains that surrounded Esthar stretched out in front of them with no end in sight, even though all three knew that Esthar City itself was to the north. None of the dangerous creatures that roamed the hillsides bothered him, save for one torama, which quickly regretted challenging them when it exploded in a ball of fire. Rinoa wanted nothing more than to be safely inside the confines of a city again, back with friends. Maybe she would even see Squall again, if he wanted her anywhere near him. She had no patience to battle with random wildlife and when the torama leapt into their path, she gave it a swift and sudden death.

Irvine and Zell exchanged looks, a certain apprehensive tension tightening in their stances. Rinoa noticed how the pair seemed to drift away from her after that and inside it saddened her. Zell had described how they'd both been killed, and then returned to life by Adel in her body. The sorceress wasn't sure how to tell them it wasn't her, merely an illusion of her used by Adel. Would they even believe her? Would anyone believe her in Esthar either, or would they try to put her back in the Sorceress Memorial? If they did, she wouldn't stop them this time, and didn't expect that Squall would rescue her either. Not this time.

By nightfall, Esthar loomed before them, the grand and technological city only more glamorous since the end of the Second Sorceress War. Repairs had to be made after the Lunar Cry, but under President Loire, the city still prospered. Carried into the heart of the city by the elevator, Rinoa finally allowed herself to relax. Adel couldn't get to her here, not with so many minds surrounding her, it'd be like seeking a needle in a haystack. She had no idea where the spectral form of the former Sorceress lurked now, but she didn't feel her near, and that meant a little respite for the time being.

Esthar guards, in their pearly uniforms, greeted the trio, and then did a double-take as they realized just who they were greeting. Immediately they were escorted to the Presidential Palace, and asked to wait until President Loire could be contacted. Much to their irony, Garden was holding a memorial for Zell and Irvine that day, and the President was in attendance, as were both his aides and his neice, Ellone. Zell started pacing immediately, then shadow-boxing near the wall. Irvine slouched down on one of the couches, tipping his hat low over his brow and stretching out long legs. Rinoa sighed heavily in the still silence and watched the two boys, idly realizing that neither were really boys anymore, and she was no longer a little girl. How long had she been trapped at Tear's Point? What had happened to everyone while she languished in that prison?

Rinoa felt a familiar flutter in her chest at the mere idea of Squall still loving her. She reached up, touching the twin rings still worn on the chain around her throat. Greiver next to her late mother's wedding band. Zell's question required a moment of thought, memories of the day she left

Rinoa blinked, staring at Irvine as if he were insane. A year? An entire year? No wonder Zell and Irvine seemed so much older. They really were. The shock colored her features, turning her pale. How much has she missed? So much could happen in a year, so much changed. The boys exchanged looks between one another, again.

"I don't know, I assume that entire year, I never made it to Timber," Rinoa replied, having to get up now, rubbing her arms for warmth. How very cold she felt, and it had nothing to do with Adel's touch, or the familiar brush of the dead Sorceress' mind reaching for hers. "I don't remember when Adel came for me, the last I recall, I was on the train, going home."

Wedding? Rinoa spun around, glad to latch onto a new topic. "Irvine? You married Selphie?" She smiled then, the color beginning to return to her features. Once upon a time, she thought she would marry Squall, too. Was it too late for them? The gunman merely grinned, folding his hands behind his head and kicking his boots up on the coffee table in front of him. That was all the answer she needed, but for emphasis he held up a hand, the left one, to show her the wedding band there.

The martial artist just blushed and shrugged his shoulders, admitting rather shyly, "Well, I got engaged to Jasia. You know, the girl from the library? No kid for us though. Irvine and Selphie had a bit of a shotgun wedding. No pun intended." The latter said with a snort as Zell glanced at Irvine, who couldn't help but laugh. Rinoa smiled at them both, but it was wistful. Everyone was changing, and none of them even realized it, except for her. All because she had lost an entire year.

Squall frowned at the infant in his lap, though Vaniel merely gazed back at him with those startling, cornflower blue eyes. Babies were loud and smelly and the Commander just didn't like them, no matter that this one seemed to be the exception to the rule. Rinoa wanted children, once. She nearly had him convinced that maybe someday they'd have one. Now, this just reminded him how vacant his world was without her, even if she'd changed.

In the aftermath of the memorial disaster, cleanup crews mopped up the mess left behind. The golem creatures easily succumbed to fire attacks. Selphie personally took offense at the one who imitated her late husband and fried it to ashes on the stage. Zell's clone tried to flee, but the crowd in the Quad literally pounced on it and by the time the smoke cleared, it too had been reduced to dust. Rinoa remained a mystery. She merely evaporated into a stream of smoke before anyone could touch her. No one knew if she were alive or dead, nor did anyone understand what happened to cause everything to shift.

Squall had been removed from the scene entirely by Quistis and Ellone and whisked away to his office on the third floor. This was now where everyone gathered. Selphie placed her son in the Commander's lap and paced in front of his desk. Quistis and Ellone talked quietly to one another and Laguna looked both tired and weary, conferring quietly with Kiros with Ward standing by silently.

"Do you think," Selphie mused aloud and everyone paused to look at her, "that maybe they're still alive?" Green eyes wide and hopeful, she wanted very much to believe that her cowboy wasn't really dead. A prisoner somewhere, maybe, but not dead. The last few months flew by in a haze, kept busy by caring for Vaniel. Quistis' presence saved her sanity as well, and the former instructor often watched over the infant so his poor mother could sleep. After all the tension between the two women previously, Selphie was very grateful they'd been able to put their differences aside. She needed her friends in times like this, very badly.

Crestfallen, Selphie flopped down on a chair, holding her head in her hands. She hated having her hopes dashed like that and it only made Laguna suddenly feel bad for being so blunt. Kiros elbowed him in the ribs for it and Ward tried comforting the Headmistress by patting her shoulder mutely. Silence now permeated the office and if somehow Laguna could have gone back in time to kick himself before talking, he'd have done it. Luckily, the commlink blipped on Squall's desk, saving all of them from the awkward moment.