Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Retribution Nor Redemption ❯ Chapter 5

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

"Retribution Nor Redemption" and the general overall concept of "Retribution Nor Redemption" is completely copyright Orin Drake 2002-2003, as are the characters Kyrie Leonhart and Rodger Kinneas. The characters Seifer Almasy, Squall Leonhart, Quistis Trepe, Ellone (Leonhart?), Laguna Loire and Rinoa "The Great Big Bitch" Heartily (biased? me?) are copyright Squaresoft, as are the terms SeeD, gunblade, Trabia Garden, Griever, and probably a lot of other stuff I forgot to mention. Hell, if you played the game, you know. Enough said.
Background: Well. Here is the "anticipated" sequel to The Sins of Two Fathers. This won't be as much action as it will be psychological warfare, I think. Don't know what else to tell you. Beware bad language, sexuality and social outcasts having fun regardless of their status at the expense of others.

Vincent's metal hand lightly dropped from her wrist, but she didn't move away. She just didn't move. Her eyes were shut and her feet were set where they were. In a heartbeat, like a switch being turned off and on, there then not then there... What the living fuck had just happened?
Rodger's bruised wrist was in the care of his other hand as he cast his eyes downward. There had been no warning, not a clue given before those eyes--he remembered them. Sephiroth's. Her dream, that dream, Vincent's concern...
"No warning." The man confirmed as if it had been spoken. He didn't need to be told.
Kyrie's lips parted to ask a question... then pressed back together with a cold chatter of teeth. The world whirled and stopped, leaving her to fly off the surface or tumble to the ground--it was a good thing Vincent had been so close. She'd rather have not thought of what may have happened had he not been... Her teeth were clenched, unable, unwilling to ask or answer, to anyone, to anything. She sensed Cloud's eyes on her from the doorway, but didn't dare open her own to look his direction. Stillness. She just needed some stillness to collect herself, and then she could continue.
Vincent allowed her that much. But this... he caught Rodger's gaze and very lightly jerked his head to the side. With a painful swallow, the boy obeyed; he slowly lifted off the bed and walked out, letting Cloud be the one to close the door behind them.
Alone with her, Vincent took a moment to relax himself. This wouldn't be easy on either side. But this was beyond necessary, to do now. His voice was cautious, low. "Are you carrying Materia?"
Her heart skidded from a race to a stop. She knew what he meant to do, and it fucking hurt. Her voice was sleek and monotone, as she forced it to be. "Ultima and Fire. Rodger has Ice." Or had Ice... she was sure right now Cloud was getting that one back.
"Kyrie..." his voice was very gentle, but prodding. He knew he didn't need to voice it. He just waited.
With a deep breath, she finally opened her eyes. But she couldn't face him just yet. She reached inside of herself and felt the Materia that had been a part of her for so long, that she'd practiced with and learned quite well in training grounds... and held her palms out. Taking hold of them with her mind, their energy passed from the center of her chest to either hand until two glowing balls of green fire floated above her hands.
Empty. Hyne, she felt so... empty without them there. Even colder. They'd been a part of her for so long that the separation caused a pulsating pain that thrummed against her temples for several seconds. But she knew this was for the best in many respects. Painful though it was... she turned and offered them over, avoiding eye contact. Just one look might throw her into an emotional spiral. She didn't think that was best at the moment.
It was just as painful to need to accept the Materia again. He'd held Lightning already for so long, but when the other two absorbed into his palms, it was like trying to stop a train with your bare hands. She'd done very well with these, certainly. But even then... even then... It wasn't over yet. He gazed at her quietly, patiently.
There was a gut wrenching expression on her face as much as she tried to hide it. She unbuckled all of the straps from her leg, then the belt. Handing over her gunblade, her weapon of choice, the most treasured gift she'd ever received from her parents--Eleison... It proved a little too much for her. She could neither make eye contact, nor speak. Just held out the gunbelt and the whole shebang, waiting for him to take it.
It quite literally stung him to have to do this. Her precious weapon held out to him freely, not to mention his own gunbelt of centuries ago... She was so expert, so capable of using it; but that was why he had to take it away. He actually had to bite the inside of his cheek to retain a stony composure, biting harder just to keep his hand from shaking as he clasped it around her surrendered objects. So meek, she was forced to be. It was... pathetic. And it certainly wasn't her.
As her things were taken from her hands, she wrapped her arms around herself and backed away. That was also not like her, not at all. But she couldn't help it. She didn't want to help it. She'd never been so... open and exposed. So... fucking helpless, she felt. Cold, so utterly cold...
And so the watching and waiting was to begin. Already there was awkwardness--though they were both pretty well aware that it was the least of their problems. Vincent sighed inwardly and stepped toward her, placing his flesh and blood hand lightly on her shoulder. No words; no want of them, no need for them. They merely walked to the door.

An unexpected sight met their eyes as Vincent swung the door open; at the other end of the main room was a huge television screen that had been hidden in the wall, towering above the three technicians that seemed to be slaving away at various connections and wires. Cloud stood off to the side, proudly supervising the operation. Rodger was crouched near the screen, going through a rolling book caddy that was filled with what appeared to be... video game cartridges.
Noting the questioning looks, Cloud turned and announced, "I thought we could use some distractions. And I'm going to kick all of your asses at the fighters."
Vincent let a slight smile lay across his face. Thoughtful, certainly. At least it would be a nice escape. He was well aware of Kyrie's slight video game addiction. Every once in a while she'd have little kids bawling at the Esthar Arcade Works downtown. Well, not literally. Except for that once, but that was a pretty ugly scene to begin with. He left the three of them for just a moment to be distracted by the "new toys" so he could store Kyrie's belongings away without being too obvious.
Rodger looked up with childish glee as he grasped one cartridge in particular, all previous events seemingly forgotten. "Ki Rin Saga!" he cried. "I found Ki Rin Saga!"
Kyrie couldn't help but be a little bit shocked. "Damn, that's... ten years old."
"And rare." Her boyfriend, overcome by video game bliss, breathed. "I lost mine a long time ago. Now I shall defeat you again, King Mesquer... you will die by the lightning sword and I will bathe in your blood..."
One of the techs stopped what he was doing to glance up, then back away. Obviously not much of the video game player, regardless of knowing how to hook them up.
"And that's just for the old system." Cloud was beginning to catch this game fever, having been forced to play them on only a hand-held device for far too long. "We've also got games for the new one coming."
"Sweet." Kyrie had begun to feel noticeably better about this whole situation. Hell, hours of video games? It made going insane seem like some nice long vacation. And she'd kick everyone's asses with the racing games.
"And..." Cloud added, indicating a small intercom device on the wrought iron and marble coffee table, "We've got the cafeteria on call."
"Okay." She steadied herself. "Okay." She said again, collecting her thoughts as she saw Vincent stroll back into the room. "Let me get this straight. We are going to be locked in here, for possibly days, with all the video games we could ever ask for, hot and cold running soda and snacks, and meals at whim." Why was she dreading this just a moment ago?
Vincent gave his old friend a momentary approving smile. Little was more important in these circumstances than proper distractions. And, hell, he'd enjoy this, too.
Finished, the lead tech gave everyone a nod, then got the hell out of there. All of the others were quick to follow, not sure what was going on and not wanting to know. The freaks could have their privacy.
Taking the whole damn world in stride, Kyrie walked over to Rodger's side and sat down, digging through the cartridges and disks with him. This was nice of them. This was a really pleasant thing to have done in the circumstances. She tried desperately to ignore the fact that these were mere distractions while the bigger things were possibly going to happen--that was a little matter compared with how much Gil she'd make on game bets. "Okay, Turbo Racer 4 is a four player game. Who's with me?"

Video games on a giant screen are akin to religious experiences. At least so said the players. Vincent sat out for the first couple of races, just watching. As the tracks became increasingly difficult (and Kyrie was holding back just enough to make her skill level appear less than it actually was) and the cars more stylish, they finally talked him into trying.
That was when Kyrie started the betting, and pulled out the big guns. Rodger was her perfect straight man, pretending expertly that she was not about to hustle her own friends. Imaginary Gil laid out and agreed upon, the race began. They peeled out at the same time, zooming down the track. Rodger took first, holding fast to the inside of the turns. Kyrie waited carefully in last place until the straightaway--then she hauled out with everything she had, having plenty of experience with the game, the cherry red sports car, and the track. In fact, Rodger knew she had named the car she used every time: Devastator. Turn after turn she took the road and even the three loops, shifting, turning, barely braking. The end was near.
And then the sleek black car that Vincent had selected came up next to her. At the cost of having a chunk of the winnings taken away, he bumped her at the very end to knock her into second place.
As the places were shown with fanfare and upbeat techno music, Kyrie simply stared at him for a number of seconds. "You just wait until track ten, when we get machine guns."
He took her advice to heart with a grin. "But track twenty gives you rocket launchers."
"Damn you." She halfway joked, using her second place game winnings to purchase a better engine.

Turbo Racer 4 was literally played for hours. The four of them raced for so long that the game system had begun to overheat and flashed a small warning on the screen that if they didn't save and shut down, that the game cartridge could melt. Frankly that was the only thing that saved them from an all-out all or nothing racing war. They'd even gone beyond rocket launchers to get homing missiles and land mines, having spent millions of imaginary Gil on imaginary engine repair; not to mention how much imaginary Gil they'd bet against one another. Hell, Cloud and Rodger were actually giving the two resident experts a run for it by the end, taking some pretty good portions of the winnings for themselves.
At the game system's warning, however, they were all pretty much forced to save and drop their controllers or suffer total meltdown. That was quite alright, though. They all had hand cramps by that time, not to mention circulation in their legs cut off from sitting on the floor, and there had been a lot of soda passed around.
Kyrie was utterly blunt. "Is it okay to take a leak by myself?"
"I don't think we need to observe that." Vincent joked.
"Good." She responded with a grin.
Rodger waited until he heard the bathroom door close. "What happened?" he asked quietly without looking up from unplugging the game console.
Vincent knew he was talking about the incident that he himself had interrupted hours before just by the tone of the boy's voice. He took a deep breath, trying to collect his own thoughts. "Momentary loss of control." He began simply.
"To what?" Rodger interrupted softly.
A glance passed between the two old friends again, Cloud feeling his heart sink too much to recover by another soda alone. The head of palace security could almost feel that chill that Kyrie had been suffering from fall over himself. "I'm not... entirely certain. But if you have any information to offer, I'd be grateful."

Well, a successful bathroom break without incident. The thought forced a deep smirk on her face as she washed her hands. This sucked all the way around. As she grasped the towel, her entire being locked up. She usually looked in the mirror when she left the bathroom, making sure she looked presentable. But this time... she really didn't want to. It was ridiculous, of course, but...
She took a deep breath and hung the towel back up, steadying herself. It was silly. It had happened once, and that was probably just her imagination anyway. That dream had been... entirely too real. She closed her eyes with the mere memory of it, trying to banish it from her head long enough to have a little more fun with her friends without the need for this shit. Almost in defiance, she opened her eyes.
Just her image. Though her heart pounded, it was just her image in the mirror. Silly of her to have worried. She brought her hand up to delicately sweep some hair out of her face--but sort of lost it along the way. She actually felt the moment of the loss of control this time around. It was numb and cold, bitter pin-prick pain across her knuckles. Or maybe that was because she'd just punched the mirror. She tried to pull her hand back, but her muscles would not respond. Instead, like she was watching the moments of another person, the mirror image--fuck, it was her!--took one of the larger shards from the spider web breaks.
Before panic had the opportunity to intrude, a voice fell over her mind. In truth it was more a presence wrapping itself around her than a voice, but it spoke to her just the same. Go ahead. Make a mess. Make a scene.
Regardless of having lost complete control of one hand, Kyrie hissed viciously in her own head, Whatever you are: fuck, off.
She felt the presence constrict on her very consciousness as it burst into a grating sound she barely recognized as laughter. Her hand flexed on its own, grasping the shard only tightly enough to feel the sharp edges. You tempt me.
Then just kill me and get it over with. She responded.
I won't let you die. The voice hissed, forcing her hand to ride the puppet strings and place the shard of glass against her own neck. It's not pleasant to lay there, bleeding dry.
What the fuck would you know about it? Kyrie growled, trying desperately to escape the hold of her own hand. It was impossible. Her body would not respond to her commands. A completely random thought crossed her mind: Is this what happened to Sephiroth?
The voice responded in a laughing way, forcing just the tip of the glass into the flesh, bringing a single drop of blood to the surface. He was already quite willing by the time I got to him. The voice changed all of a sudden, into one all too familiar to her. Maybe this is better?
The response only confirmed that this presence was Jenova. But it was hearing the perfect Squall impersonation that chilled her further. I know that's not Squall.
You know now. The perfect mimic of her dad's voice cackled. But not when I'm done.
The shard was thrust deep into her neck, but Kyrie was unable to cry out. She could control nothing of her body any longer, but could certainly feel the pain. Blood gushed in hot streams and the wound burned fiercely.
Not enough? the sadistic creature still shrieked in Squall's voice. Maybe you'd like me there with you, little girl.
Kyrie felt as if her mind went completely numb for a moment--as though all things ceased and started up again. But when they did, she saw Squall in front of her instead of the shattered remnants of the mirror. The shard was in his hand, now, and his face was twisted into an evil she knew her real dad could never be capable of. In control of her own limbs at last, she tried to push him away. It was no use. There was only resistance and cold. She was beginning to realize the full extent of Jenova's control; that beast could make anyone believe anything with enough time, illusions, and pain.
The fake Squall shoved her downward, tearing the shard away from her throat and landing on top of her, hard. She felt her shoulders connect with ground underneath. She felt all of his weight on top of her, the jarring of landing so quickly. She could fucking smell his subtle cologne. How this could be just an illusion--
She looked into those godawful predatory eyes. They were the color of Squall's, but they certainly were not his. Convincing, but not enough. Hyne, but the use of her father as this insane monster's mask was enough of a mind fuck--and it must have been able to read that. There were no prisoners to be taken, nothing to be spared or barred; Jenova aimed to shatter her mind as well as her senses. The Squall-thing clasped a hand tightly around her throat, slowing the flow of blood but choking off the air. It laughed like a grainy, stretched cassette tape at her weakening efforts to fight.
And she did fight. This was no "lady" situation; she slammed the toe of her boot between its legs--and hit something resembling steel wrapped in flesh. It hurt, and that intensified the fear. She used her hands to claw at its face, her body writhing and twisting to escape its hold, but there wasn't so much as a mark left behind when the world began to fizzle out at the edges. Just that scratching, unreal laughter and the choking; the cooling spill of her own blood in a sticky puddle underneath her that she could smell. The fight was being wrung from her, bled from her, and another kick barely managed to connect let alone carry any force.
At that moment, she witnessed those false blue eyes change--false no longer. Green. Unnatural, bright, silted green. She could do nothing but gasp, nothing but panic in the reaches of the sheer color that was coming closer, enveloping her entirely--
The creature with her dad's body and Sephiroth's eyes mockingly pressed its lips against hers. She didn't even have the physical strength to resist against the satirically passionate kiss she was receiving...
A shattering mind fuck? Oh yes, that was achieved. With absolutely no way to get out of the situation, she ultimately was forced to accept it. Forced to lay back, stop fighting, and fucking accept it.
As suddenly as it had come, it vanished. The illusion, the voice, the blood, the puppet that looked like Squall--everything. So that's how it works... she thought through the wooziness. It stops when you accept it...
She was left completely alone in the bathroom, still standing, staring into a cracked mirror. Not wanting to but being unable to stop her morbid curiosity, she looked down. Her hand lightly grasped a glass shard with a single smudge of blood at the sharpest end. Only that much had been real. But damn, the rest of it was... beyond imagined. Jenova... Jenova had a great deal of power over her.
"Wouldn't it be better this way..." she whispered to herself, slowly drawing the glass across her already healed neck. If there were no more life in her to control, then all problems would be solved. She'd be mourned, of course, but they'd get over it eventually. It would save them all one hell of a lot of trouble.
A bunch of other thoughts popped through her head like bubbles. What if she couldn't die? What if her body could be used just as easily with or without "her" present? What if Jenova wanted her to do just that? It had left her with the glass in her hand, ready to do so, hadn't it? But what if that was just simplistic reverse psychology?
She moaned louder than she'd expected to, placing the shard on the far corner of the sink. Too many options. She hated her goddamn over-analyzing brain.
A knock at the door. Of course. What the hell would she say? She swallowed, knowing this may mean... further change. It was more than obvious she was no longer completely in control. "Yes?" she creaked.
"How long does it take a young lady to take a leak?" Cloud asked.
She wanted to smile. She really did. But she couldn't. With another steadying breath, she slowly turned the knob and stepped out, keeping the door mostly shut behind her. No eye contact; she didn't think she could possibly make eye contact. She knew without seeing that Vincent and Rodger were only a few feet behind him, waiting. They'd more than likely heard the sharp punch that had broken the glass, but she wondered what else they may have been witness to from the outside. "You might want to call someone to come fix the mirror."
Silence. Not a breath or a heartbeat interrupted it for several seconds. Vincent's eyes passed over her, seeing no signs of harm on her at all. Right now that was most important; the hows and whys could be handled at another time. Regardless... "Did you injure yourself?"
"No. I'm okay." She tried to be assertive.
But everyone heard that waver in her voice. The very way she spoke was distant, aloof. She was clearly trying to set herself so that she could bear a little more of the burden alone. And she didn't want to speak of what she'd just been through. That was... that was beyond a simple nightmare. She could almost taste those imaginary lips that had been far too real, and that alone made her stomach quiver.
Cloud was possibly struck most of all. Being controlled by something you've got no fucking idea what is, let alone where it came from or why... well, he understood that pretty damn well. Just thinking about it caused a bunch of old shards of memories to catch light. It seemed so long ago--it was so long ago. He closed his eyes for a moment from the onslaught of bits and pieces, enough only to wrack his stomach and make him wish that he hadn't eaten at all.
Rodger... was numb. Cold and numb like he'd been out in the snow without a coat. So soon, it was escalating far too soon. Too much too quickly, and he found he didn't even have a reaction yet.
Regardless of the looks, the worry, she walked past them and sat back down where she'd been before this whole mess, taking hold of the still warm controller. "Now, rematch or what?"