Author's Notes: Flashback mode! Woo!

Futureloop

Chapter Seven - Everything Old is New Again

By Devi Dee

They knew he was coming by the sound his steel-toed boots made on the marble floor. Even his walking was angry, and they instantly flattened themselves into the shadows to avoid notice. He had been known to kill people for bumping into him, and that was just on a good day.

Today was not a good day.

They’d lost Galbadia Garden in the fight against Balamb. Not only that, but the Sorceress was also gone, into the hands of the enemy. And now, with the mistress lost, the entire command fell upon the broad shoulders of the boy who would be Knight.

And he was very, very angry.

He was still angry when he reached the room, deep underneath the Palace in Deling, hidden in an old forgotten bomb shelter. The centre contained what looked like a huge glass disc, suspended by fine golden wires which didn’t actually seem to connect to anything. It left no doubt in the mind of anyone who saw it that it was anything other than magical.

The guards around it didn’t even make pretence to stop him, or ask for security. They had families, and their shift was almost over. Just being in the same room as their boy-Knight made them nervous. He radiated a certain power - a feral, predatory anger - and suddenly they were like rabbits, caught in the headlights of on an oncoming bus.

The omens must have been good, however, as he ignored them, simply stepping up to the large, magic looking-glass. Then into it somehow, with a crackle and a pop as time and space folded in on itself. And when they next opened their eyes, the faint trace of ozone in the air, he was gone.

Their shift ended before he got back. Maybe Hyne was gracious after all.

The air in the castle was always heavy, as if there was too much of it all trying to fill up the one space, and it smelt like the end of a thunderstorm from the magic that kept this place together. Seifer liked it here; it was quiet and, yes, the architects had obviously been high at the time but it was kind of cool in that haunted-house-amusement-ride sort of way. The place had unnerved him at first, that was indeed true; back when he was new here and the things in the dark hadn’t yet learnt to respect him. But now it was like home.

Ultimecia was a lot of things, including a rabid collector of practically everything she could find, which meant there were rooms and rooms full of incredibly cool stuff to poke and pry at. Best of all was his mistress didn’t seem to mind so much if a few of them went missing every now and again; she might have been an evil psycho bitch, but at least she was generous. He liked the library, which seemed to stretch on into infinity - did, in fact, as far as he could tell - and the gallery with all its crazy old paintings. And everything here was a puzzle; he’d spent a good few days just working them all out, putting things together. It was like being inside a video game. Best of all, this was the future, so time here didn’t quite run in sync with the time back home. He’d spent weeks in here and it had only been a few hours when he returned. The relationships seemed arbitrary, however; sometimes it was longer, sometimes shorter. He wondered if Ultimecia could control it, but decided it was mostly irrelevant - for now, anyway. He thought it might be fun to have a bit of a holiday through time, but all such pleasantries would have to wait, because he had work to do.

As usual, she’d hidden herself in the very top tower of the castle. Poetic, but fucking annoying to get to, especially since it meant he had to walk out on in the open for a little while and they were still technically under siege by the SeeD forces of this time. There were magic barriers around the castle which usually deflected the attacks, but a few had gotten through, and Seifer himself had almost been taken out more than once.

When he reached the outside of the castle walls, he saw Tiamat sitting out on one of the turrets. He stopped and scratched her head affectionately, getting a deep dragon-purr for his efforts.

"Is the lady in?" he asked her.

"Yes." The reply boomed through his head, seemingly said by several disparate voices all speaking almost - but not quite - in sync with one another.

He made a face. "Is she angry?"

"She has been laughing," Tiamat told him. "And saying things like ‘Ha ha ha! Kurse you all!’"

Seifer rolled his eyes. His mistress seemed to be quite fond of ‘kursing’ things, though he never actually seen her do it for real. He gave Tiamat one last scratch before continuing the rest of the way to Ultimecia’s retreat. He steeled himself, glanced back at the dragon who gave him the equivalent of a smirk, and went in.

She was there, of course, sitting on her throne, laughing maniacally. Seifer had always felt he was fairly good at laughing maniacally - it was, after all, one of the reasons he’d been chosen for this job - but he looked positively amateurish compared to Ultimecia. She was the only person he’d ever met who actually laughed by saying "Mwahahaha!"; not deliberately, but just because she did. It was kind of funny.

He walked in nervously, acutely aware of the fact that he had failed. Again. She’d caught him on the D-District Prison incident but had let it slide, so he was worried about what she would do this time.

"Aah! The Knight komes krawling home!" That was another thing, she tended to add exclamation points to the ends of all her sentences. Despite all her B-grade failings, however, she could be ruthless.

"Yes mistress," he bowed on one knee. "I’m deeply sorry..."

"For what?"

That wasn’t expected. He snapped his head up. "Huh?"

"What you apologise for?" She actually looked kind of... jovial.

"For failing to destroy Leonhart and his Garden. For losing Matron. For the destruction of Galbadia Garden..."

She waved a hand to silence him. "Good good good! All is well then!"

"I... I don’t understand." His knees were starting to hurt, so he rose slowly.

"Everything is going akkording to plan. To history!" she made a grand, sweeping gesture. "Everything good. Your Matron is safe again, as is your home. And I have mind of whiney brat -"

"Rinoa?"

"Yes yes; you all look same anyway. Don’t interrupt! Where was I? Oh, yes, the brat. Soon Leonhart will bring her to Esthar to find out why she is like vegetable, then space, Adel, Ellone..." - she listed them off one by one as if the dot points should mean anything to him - "And then, finally: Time Kompression! Then they will kome to this place and we shall battle and I shall destroy them all! Ahahahahahahaha!"

Seifer was still getting used to his mistress’ overly elaborate plans, but this just seemed stupid. Why all this fuss and bother? Garden should have been in smoking ruins by now; they’d had about a million and one opportunities to destroy it and Leonhart’s little crew but hadn’t. As far as he could see, if she really wanted to kill them she should have just ordered them all shot when they’d been captured the first time. All this dicking about was just stupid; not to mention unprofessional.

He though of a way to phrase this nicely, eventually coming up with. "Why?"

"Bekause! This is the way History must go! These are trials that bind them together and bring them to me! Ahahahahaha!"

"History? But it hasn’t happened yet..."

"Where are you, boy?"

"In your castle." He wondered if she’d gone senile as well as crazy.

"Which is when?"

"In the fu - " he cut himself off. "Oh."

She just smiled at him. The same sort of smile Matron used to give when he’d just figured out the blindingly obvious.

Of course, when you thought about it like that, it made perfect sense. Nobody could change the past, and the future was always uncertain. Ultimecia had once told him that the true art of predicting the future was looking at all the possible outcomes and simply choosing that which was most likely. All you could really do to change it was limit your options. She knew she couldn’t beat Leonhart in the past because that was all just written history - immutable and unchanging. So instead she had to bring them here and fight them in her own time; the outcome of which was shrouded in the veil of her own future. Hence Time Compression, though he still didn’t know why she wanted to kill them - and ‘them’, he knew, included him as well - only that it had something to do with some actions yet untaken which wound up badly. Badly for whom he also didn’t know; but it must have been fairly large, whatever it was, because this world was very different to the one he knew and not all of that was Ultimecia’s fault.

He also became aware, in that brief instant of clarity, that she was almost certain that she would fail. There were still too many variables, because according to the history of this time, she had failed and they had survived; which meant that she was either desperate enough to try it anyway, or had something else entirely planned. This made him feel a little better with his role because if there was one thing the D-District Prison had taught him, it was that he didn’t really want the others to die. It was easy for him to forget that - easy to forget a lot of things - but there it was.

(I’m not a bad guy, I just play one on TV.)

So, enough revelations for one day. Back to work.

"Mistress?"

"Yes?"

"What shall I do next?"

"Tell me, boy," she smirked, glad to be putting the next phase of her overly convoluted plan into action. "Do you know of a thing kalled the ‘Lunar Kry’?"

The Futureloop Cycle, part 1 : Futureloop

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