Futureloop
Chapter Ten - No Saint Indeed
By Devi Dee
Notes: Still in flashback mode... time to take a brief look where no man should ever dare tread; the mind of the clichéd videogame villain. No-oo-oo! Ultimecia makes her return, and we even get a teeny peek inside her... kowai, ne?
Futureloop
Chapter Ten - No Saint Indeed
By Devi Dee
They knew he was coming by the sound his steel-toed boots made on the metal flooring. 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 a very good day.
Everything was going exactly the way it was supposed to. The parade had been spectacular and had run like clockwork, right down to the bungled assassination attempt. The very selfsame bungled assassination attempt which had left him with Leonhart and all his little friends locked up here -- in D District Prison -- to rot for a while. Plot and plan and seethe. They wouldn't stay long, of course; they were the Good Guys, and an escape was inevitable. Preferably something death-defying and last minute; full of irritatingly close shaves and explosions and dry humour. Swashbuckling. Ultimecia... he liked that idea. They needed drama, needed to make a good story or this entire exercise would be one in barbaric futility. Hell, they may as well have just shot Leonhart's crew in the first place instead of locking them up, practically begging them to escape. Galbadia was, after all, more-or-less a dictatorship; who the hell was going to stop them?
Well... Seifer might have, and to hell with whatever role he was supposed to play, because it was damn rude to shoot the hero within the first few minutes of the Plot Development. Besides, Seifer didn't really want to die either, and that's what would have to happen. The six of them -- the kids from the orphanage he barely remembered anymore -- were linked. If they had to go, they all had to go together. Ultimecia had gone to great pains to explain it to him -- in depth, with helpful diagrams -- but trying to understand anything the Lady said was like trying to unravel a giant knot with one hand and your eyes closed. So he'd just nodded along and agreed; hell, it had sounded reasonable. If he was going to die, it might as well have been as romantic a death as simply wafting away into the continuum, falling through an endless loop of time until he lost all sense of self and simply became. Not so bad at all. Of course he doubted it, deep in the back of his mind. He wasn't supposed to survive; was supposed to believe in his mistress' plans to kill them all, effectively pressing Time's great big reset button, but... he didn't. And one look into her eyes told him she didn't either.
Which meant he was going to survive.
Which meant...
He didn't want to think about it. Now was not the time to dwell on the consequences of actions not yet taken. Ultimecia had assured him everything would work out fine eventually... But the doubt was there, both on 'fine' and 'eventually', since the Lady's definitions of those words tended to vary from those of your average thinking being.
So...
"Sir?"
The tentative query roused him from the uncharacteristic bout of introspection. Then again, he'd been doing a lot of 'uncharacteristic' things lately, so what was another on the pile?
"Mm?" He fixed the soldier in front of him with a piercingly inhuman gaze.
"Sir! The... the..." the soldier swallowed nervously and started again. "The Garden traitors are ready, sir. You can begin the... the..." he looked down at his feet.
It occurred to Seifer the soldier was even younger than he was. A prison was no place for a kid; especially not a godforsaken hell-hole like this one. The boy should be out skating and blushing over the porn his best friend found in the bottom of his father's cupboard; not here in the middle of nowhere supervising the torture and slow murder of people who, honestly, were all rather nice.
"Understood," he said, nodding at the young soldier coldly, walking towards the door to the laughably-named 'interrogation room'. He stopped before entering, hand resting on the jam lightly, glancing back at the other boy. "Kid?"
"S... sir?"
"Either go home or get a fuckin' transfer outta this shitheap. If I ever see you here again I'll kill you. Understand?"
"Sir!" A mere squeak; absolutely terrified. The boy scurried off, unsure as to when 'ever again' came into effect and Seifer narrowed his eyes, watching him go, before turning to face the task at hand.
So... 'Interrogation'. That generally implied questions. Or at least the pretence of questions because that's what this was going to have to be, as there was nothing he could think of to ask which Ultimecia didn't already know. Well, asides from the blindingly stupid, which -- while humorous -- would be altogether inappropriate for the situation. So... He picked something random he was almost positive Leonhart wouldn't be able to answer. Not yet, anyway. If there was one thing years of reading had taught him, it was the importance of foreshadowing. If he was going to do this at all, he might as well put in the effort to do it well; there was going to be hell to pay later no matter what he did. Might as well just get it over with.
Yeah... Right...
The winds in the desert howled, catching the dust and whipping it around hard enough to strip the flesh right off the two figures huddled down in the worst part of the unnatural storm, as if their very presence here was the source of the unrest.
Only one was conscious, and he held the other possessively in his lap, using his body as shelter from the howling winds. It wasn't working.
The winds; the products of a tortured soul twisted into something unrecognisable by a power so old and vast that its motivations were unclear to everything but itself, and perhaps not even that. A power who was, most likely, not even aware of the torment it had caused in the unconscious boy, whose body writhed and moaned but only rarely woke and when it did, the screams were almost worse than the winds themselves.
Like now.
"Sei... Sei-Sei, shh... Shh... it's okay, it's alright..." Gentle hands rocked him into painful awareness of his surrounds. The winds were stilling, the rage that fuelled them spent now that wakefulness had left him and he'd fallen back into the dream.
The dream...
"Squall!" Seifer lurched himself out of the comforting arms, sending himself backwards through the blood-red dust; away from the one he'd...
... he'd...
Oh Hyne.
"Seifer..."
Tears were streaking down his cheeks, the dust on his skin tainting them a bloody red. He put a shaking hand across his slack jaw. "What have I..."
Squall just looked at him sadly. Of all the reactions -- hate, anger, disgust or the desire for revenge -- somehow that was the worse. Of course, it wouldn't have been any other way. Not here.
"You... you knew I would..."
"Yes. I knew."
"Why didn't you tell me? Stop me? I could've... might have..." he curled in on himself, hands holding shaking sides.
Squall sighed. "No," he said, his voice heavy. "It wouldn't've made a difference. You can't change the past; I've already learnt that the hard way."
"But --" He looked up, eyes pleading. "What's happening to me?"
"I... I don't really know... And I'm not the one you should be asking."
Seifer moaned despairingly, jamming his eyes shut tightly, jamming out the world and everything in it, trying to retreat into the blackness of his mind... Except, this was. And here was no better than anywhere else. He felt warm arms embrace him again, not letting him shy away from the contact no matter how he might have wanted to. How could Squall...? But he'd known all along; like he knew everything else. All this time, and he hadn't said a single word. Not once. How...?
"It's... it's like a part of me just... turns off..." It was barely a whisper, and had Squall not been so close he would've missed it entirely between the sobs. "I don't... I can't..."
"Shh." The rocking began again, Squall gently rubbing Seifer's back. Twelve years in this place had taught him a lot of things, empathy being one of them. This wasn't the first time they'd had conversations like this, and -- if Squall's memory of the War was right -- it probably wouldn't be the last. "It'll be alright." Meaningless words, but soothing nevertheless; even if they were on the brink of being a lie. Squall really had no clue if things would ever be 'alright' again...
"What do I do?"
"Whatever you have to."
Another strangled sob was his only reply.
Numb realisation began creeping in, taking the warm feeling of being held in a gentle caress and replacing it with the harsh realities of the steel chair he'd fallen asleep in. Not that he deserved anything less, not after what he'd just done. Not after he'd taken Leonhart -- his rival, sibling, friend, lover, soul -- taken Leonhart and...
"Oh Hyne..."
He didn't want to think it, his traitorous mind trying to push the horrific memories aside before he could stop it, dragging them back to his consciousness, forcing himself to remember the sound of the electricity as it sizzled across delicate porcelain skin. Skin whose touch he knew -- in a strange, dream-like way, but knew all the same -- and intimately so.
What's happening to me?
It had all seemed so distant at the time; like watching a movie or playing a game. The actions, the consequences, didn't matter; only the Story. Always, only the Story. Had to make it good, had to make it dramatic enough so that history would remember. So easy to forget that this wasn't like watching a movie, made years hence. This was here. It was happening here and now and it was real. This wasn't being filmed in some set out in the backwoods of Trabia, where everyone was acting and the blinding blue-white bolts of electricity were put in later with computers. It was real; people
(Squall)
were hurt. People were dead. How many soldiers had he thoughtlessly cut down for the most trivial reasons, just so that tales of his infamy would spread far and wide, to be written down in the history books like he knew it would be? How many of them had families? How many orphans would there be because he had his head stuck too far up his arse to remember that what he was doing was real. It had consequences?
Except...
Except it didn't. Not really. He already knew how this story was going to end; what difference did it make, then, what he did along they way? When you thought about in terms of decades -- centuries -- what were a few small lives compared to a thousand years of peace, a bloom in technology and industry, a leap in living standards for everyone?
Two hundred years from now and nobody would have to worry about where their next meal was coming from.
What, then, was the smaller picture compared to the large?
Poverty, war, disease; all unknown. All because of him. Because he'd started the war nobody wanted to start, forcing Esthar out of hiding and Galbadia into pacifism, setting the stage for the coming centuries of scientific development and social change.
Did the ends really justify the means?
Could he live with himself, every day from now until his sorry carcass was dead and buried, justifying the blood on his hands by saying it was for the greater good? Would history have taken the same course if he'd simply stayed at home?
If, if, if...
Except history was immutable. Everybody's future was somebody else's past. He'd seen that, firsthand. Time couldn't be changed from within; everything had already happened -- was happening, would happen -- and it was only perception which made people believe otherwise.
But that was just Ultimecia talking. Lofty theories which seemed all very well curled up in front of a fire, but to live them on the ground... to go through every day, living every action because you knew that you had no choice, that free will was mercilessly crushed in the face of fate...
Fate...
The Plan.
The Plan which said he'd rouse himself from this chair, taking the next few days to do to the others what he'd done to their leader while his army casually planned their next attack on the Gardens themselves. Eventually the other two would arrive, Rinoa and Irvine -- and what a strange young man he'd grown into -- and they'd catch those as easily as they caught the others; with the great Sorceress' Knight at the prison security was trebled. Finally, when he'd performed enough suitably villainous acts, he'd leave the prison, taking his guard with him to the missile base to watch the launch. Meanwhile, the others would escape -- using the route carefully cleared for them -- and arrive just in time to warn the Gardens and stop the launch. End of phase two.
Right?
Except...
Except that mean he'd have to return to that room -- over and over -- that room where he'd
(damnit, say it you fucking coward)
tortured the one person who ever understood him -- even loved him in a strange, cold way. Tortured him mercilessly and pointlessly, just to make a good story.
(One down. Five to go... starting with the little Chicken Wuss over in the corner. This should be sweet; let's hear you cluck for me, Chicken...)
It was too easy. And it was wrong; no matter how many fucking lives it saved two hundred fucking years hence it was wrong now. There had to be some other way; fuck not being able to change Destiny. Fuck verbose theories discussed in university sitting rooms, curled up around fires while sipping tea and nibbling sweet Centran shortbread. Fuck the over-intellectualisation of things which were just plain wrong. And, most importantly, fuck the ends justifying the means.
Fuck it all!
Something changed.
For the first time in forever, something changed.
Initially she hadn't believed it, taking it to be an instrument failure -- the siege had meant it was difficult for her to get new parts for her machines when they broke down, so she'd spent the last six months improvising, her ad hoc 'repairs' occasionally throwing her results. So she'd checked the instruments, then rechecked them again; no, not a failure. Everything was in working order. It was irrefutable then, she could see the evidence unfolding right in front of her; spreading out across Time like the ripples on the surface of a pond, drastic around the cause of the disturbance but gradually fading out as the inertia of Time pulled it back to where it should be. It was a small ripple, but it had happened.
Tracing back the source hadn't been hard; her Knight's temporal signature shining a brilliant pearly white amidst the surrounding grey-blue lifelines. He'd done it; he'd changed something. That arrogant, stubborn little brat had actually done it.
It was enough to bring tears of pride to her eyes.
But that meant it was possible; time could be changed. Not easily, though. She tried to trace back to the source of the change, trying to find out exactly how it was possible, how the boy had done it. What he had done was irrelevant, as were all such minor details. Only Time interested her, not the peons who inhabited it; irrelevant, all of them.
Well, most...
Deft fingers flew across instruments too complicated and too strange to appear real, sending things in motion, the hum of magical energy causing her hair to stand on end as it filled the observatory. Finally the humming changed, playing the same note over and over again like a record caught in a groove. She cursed, resetting the machine and trying again; the same. An infinity error. No matter how many times she tried it, an infinity error. She tried to debug; the error was coming from the boy. Coming from the boy and... and that soul-less little Commander brat. She shuddered; that one always gave her the creeps, no matter what form it took, his iridescent black line twining and looping through the time stream, twisting and pulling as it did so. Such violent disruption followed that one around, even more so than the others. She watched carefully, painstakingly... there; the line looped back and attached itself to her Knight's white strand, following it along to the point where they intersected, where it had began travelling back in the first place. This time it pulled out, continuing on, and it was the white strand's turn to loop back along the black one until it too emerged, continuing on its way. But not really so, because the loop was still there, splitting the two strands, merging and grafting, feeding from their own energy.
A temporal ouroboros.
She knew what it was, of course, the theory was well known. But that was just it; it was a theory, it shouldn't have actually been possible; Time was too old and too stubborn to allow such frivolities to exist within its reaches. But there it was, plain as day in front of her. She ran the model a few more times to check, but it was always the same. The same impossible loop confronting her.
It certainly hadn't been there before, and that was a contradiction in itself.
Time had changed. Not only that, but it had done so in a way which should have been impossible. So maybe...
Did that mean she had been right? Time couldn't be changed from within, but if she could get out of it; outside of time... Was that what this was, then? The meddling of something outside of time? Could it be... her meddling?
She had to see. Had to know. The models could only tell her so much, but to gather real evidence, she'd have to go to the source.
She needed to see the boy.
Now.
He'd spent the rest of the day making plans, moving out all the extraneous guards to leave only the prison's regular staff. They'd asked where they were going and he'd had to think of something quickly; it would Not Do to say they were leaving because he'd happened to have an attack of conscience at an inopportune time. So he'd sent half of them to Galbadia Garden with orders to rout the place out and get it flying again. They'd looked at him funny when he'd said that, but he gave explicit instructions and who were they to argue? He hadn't been wrong yet. The rest he sent to the missile base with orders to prepare for an early launch. The technicians would grumble and moan, but it was important to move things along. The script was just being altered; not changed entirely. He would go to the base to 'supervise'; really to wait until Leonhart had escaped to give the order to fire. Cutting it fine was definitely an art.
The transports were ready, and he was busy gathering up the last of his things when he realised he was no longer alone.
"My lady..." he was on his knees before she could even announce her presence, kissing the back of her proffered hand. It was a token deference, since he knew more about what was going on than she; was trusted more, perhaps. Matron -- he still couldn't bring himself to think of her as anything but -- was a pawn, more bait to throw at Leonhart when the time was right. Keep him coming... keep him playing to the script. Seifer didn't like it, wished they had no need for her at all. Watching her fight the others... remembering what it had been like when she'd cradled them all in her arms, read them stories, fixed their hurts... It was painful. Another thing he didn't like to add to the already long list.
She nodded at him coldly and he rose, waiting for instruction. "Our mistress wishes to... speak to you."
What? Now? Damn, not now. Not when...
"With respect, my lady, but -- "
She hissed angrily. "'But'? 'But' what, boy?" And there was more threat in that then he cared to think of.
(oh, Matron... I'm so sorry... just a little longer, I promise...)
He bit his lip. Damn damn damn.
"Nothing, my lady. I'm deeply sorry. I... I will attend the mistress as you command."
"Now, boy. No mincing words."
"No, my lady."
She opened the portal right then and there, fixing him with a glare which positively dared him to try and defy her. He didn't, instead bowing as he exited.
Damn! Why now? Was it because... because...
He felt the roaring in his being as the portal wrapped around him, sucking him through time and space; the throbbing in his temples pulling him towards his destination. It wasn't time travel, not exactly, because the destination wasn't mutable. Only the castle; something to do with Time begin weaker there, weak enough to allow him through. Others too, he supposed. The first time Matron had been with him, but after that it was always him and him alone. She resented him for it, he knew, but he absolutely flat-out refused to dig her in any deeper than she already was. And visiting the mistress was always digging in deeper.
He materialised straight into the laboratory, Ultimecia waiting for him, her hands full of frightening-looking equipment. She was going to start dissecting his soul again, he could feel it. Oh well, maybe he'd get some answers out of her in the meantime.
"Sit!" No greetings, just a command his legs obeyed before he'd had time to properly process it.
He flopped down in the large leather chair -- the sort of thing a dentist might have if said dentist had his practice in a demented gothic castle. Like all the furniture here, it was immensely comfortable. Ultimecia did not like discomfort.
She walked around behind him, flicking a switch as she did so and sending the machine humming. He gasped as his soul -- or something he'd always assumed to be his soul simply because he had no other words for it -- was pulled outside his body, floating in a hazy nimbus around his head. His eyes drifted shut as he felt Ultimecia go to work with her tools. Despite appearances, it was not an unpleasant experience. Sort of like massage -- slight pain every now and again giving way to spreading warmth and pleasure -- only much deeper.
She poked and prodded a little, before hissing in frustration. "Kurses, the deterioration has begun. Only slightly, but still..." She yanked something and his breath hitched, then released in a gentle rush. "Better?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Is not time for thanks. Is time to stop you going krazy. I do some algorithms while you back in your time; think kan maybe make Link better... put less stress on soul. But, not easy..." Something popped out sharply and she threw the gob of dying amorphous green stuff on a tray. Seifer studied it out of the corner of his eyes as it feebly tried to use fast-deteriorating tentacles to pull itself away. It was glowing and translucent, but fading fast. He didn't even want to think about what it really was.
Another, similar, thing was pulled out of a jar and snapped back into his head, sending a tingling rush down his limbs. He gasped again.
"Feel good?"
"Yes."
She nodded curtly. "Should do. Will make faster, so use carefully. Sometimes fast not so good."
"Okay." He felt like a piece of machinery being upgraded by a fanatical owner.
"How this feel?" She pushed something, and suddenly his vision turned purple...
"Et'cha... nath? K'asyo?" ...and he was speaking in ancient Estharian. The pressure released and his vision returned. "...the hell?" Along with his language.
"Hm, maybe not that... is past life, don't need that..."
Great. Seifer Almasy, Sorceress' Lab Rat. Though his past life might have been fun to explore...
It became apparent that she was no longer fixing things, instead searching. "Mistress?"
"Eh?"
"What are you looking for?"
"Loop," she said. "You broke yourself with infinity error. Need find source."
"Oh." Sure, those pesky infinity errors, duh! "Anything I can help with?"
"Maybe. Dream much?"
"No..." He stopped the instinctive answer as he felt a pressure he didn't know was there release. It was like the first time, when she'd fixed the damage left by the GF and given him his memories back, only these memories weren't memories, they were dreams.
"Now?"
"Yes," he said, his mind filled with a dusty desert and a familiar figure in black, the most enjoyable dreams instantly rushing to the surface; of silky skin and a knowing touch, hot wet lips suckling on his most sensitive parts as thighs were spread and --
Ultimecia's voice brought him snapping back to the present. "Ahem. Different, or all same?" She sounded slightly amused. Well, he supposed she was poking around in his mind...
He sighed. "Different dreams, but the same setting."
"Has Kommander-brat in, yes?"
"Yes..."
"Eh. Thought so," the pressure returned and the details of the dreams began slipping away again. He wondered how long it would take him to forget he even had any, and hastily grabbed onto a few of the more... pleasant experiences before they vanished entirely.
"Is source of loop. Thought so, but kan't find where is koming from..." she continued, mostly to herself. Seifer found she did that a lot; seemed to just talk around him, explaining things far beyond his understanding.
"This 'loop', is a... bad thing?"
She held out a hand, palm down, and rocked it back and forth. "Too good too bad. Is like random variable..."
There was more, hanging unspoken in the air. Something she wasn't telling him... He decided not to press it. If she didn't want to be chatty she didn't have to be, especially not while poking around in what was arguably his most important part.
She poked and prodded a little more, easing pressures and replacing things which were deemed 'broken'. Finally satisfied, she shut down the machine, returning Seifer's soul to wherever it came from.
He rose and stretched, feeling immeasurably rested, his mind certainly a hell of a lot clearer than it had been this morning. He noticed the thick haze of rage he'd been toting around for a while had more-or-less dissipated, leaving him only mildly pissed off as opposed to bloody furious. The army would indeed be pleased. His guilt was gone as well; unnecessary and inconvenient as it was. He felt like a new man.
She noticed him, grinning like an idiot, and gave her own cracked smile. "Is good, yes?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
She nodded. "Is okay. Kan't have you making any more... slips."
He froze, expecting more, and not sure whether to be relieved or afraid when it didn't. She knew; well, of course she knew. He'd disobeyed orders, but she seemed intent on letting the incident slide. He decided not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.
"No, my Lady."
"Good boy." A hand ruffled his hair, a strangely motherly gesture. "Anyway, first stage of plan is kompleted, yes?"
He nodded. This was more familiar territory. "Yes, my Lady. What will you have me do now?"
She seemed about to say something when she stopped herself, a strangely satisfied smile curling over her lips. "Why, whatever you want, boy."
He blinked. This was... new.
"You have already disobeyed my orders once. Konsider this punishment. Kommanding armies is not so easy." He grin twisted, almost cruelly, but not quite.
Seifer narrowed his eyes, looking for tricks, before nodding curtly. "As you wish, my Lady."
"Good. Now go."
13th March 2004 :: Well, that's it. That's all of Futureloop that is sequentially written. This chapter is only partial, there's about one more paragraph after Seifer leaves which is the beginning of another Ultimecia scene, but I have no idea where I was going with it (it's been a long time), so you'll all have to live without. The only reason this is getting posted at this late date is that I actually read the story last night on ffnet and got a jonesin' to find out what happened afterwards (I knew I had at least one more partial chapter, ie. this). Dont' get your hopes up that this will mean I will continue. Yet...
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