It wasn't a dream. It was
too clear to be a dream, too...real. She saw the sun, shining down on Balamb
Garden drifting across the ocean, a huge red dragon-like craft docked at
its side as it sailed away from Fisherman's Horizon. Then, the image suddenly
flitted away like a petal in the
wind.
It was but a brief flash,
a minute glimpse, yet that was all Ellone needed to know what was happening.
Her powers, the mysterious ability to draw aside the veil of time and space
and look where no normal person could, were being activated again while she
slept.
She did have the ability
to control her mystical powers, but that was when she was concious and focusing.
While sleeping, in the midst of her dreams, Ellone's powers took on a life
of their own. Her mind wandered the paths of time, looking into the past
of those she knew and loved, and often taking others along for the ride,
whether they wished to or
not.
But what she was experiencing
now was different from the power Ellone had called 'Connect.' That power
allowed her to use someone else's mind to look into the past, through the
eyes of others she had known. It was the one power Ellone could control,
the only one she had practiced extensively. But aside from the ability to
'Connect,' Ellone's innate ability to look through time was as mysterious
to her as it was to anyone else. Her other temporal powers would manifest
randomly, sometimes giving her an alternate glimpse of the past for an instant,
or, more rarely, give her a flash of what was to
come.
The glimpses of the future
were sporadic and random at best, and they always happened when Ellone was
asleep. Just brief, instant flashes people and places, like a picture that
was waved in front of her face and then yanked away. They were often intermixed
with her dreams, making any type of understanding or prediction nearly
impossible. Still, the images, while random and disjointed, usually came
in groups. As the vision of Garden flitted away, Ellone prepared herself
for the next glimpse of the
future.
But just as the glimpses
of the future were unlike the power to 'Connect,' the images that came next
differed vastly from what Ellone had encountered in her dreams
before.
Instead of another individual
flash of possibility, Ellone suddenly found herself in the midst of an explosion
of futures, an intense kaleidoscope of sensations and emotions. Ellone gasped
in her sleep and tried to maintain control, to bring some order to the whirlwind
of possibility, whipping and spinning through her mind like a desert
sandstorm.
She caught a brief image,
Squall and Rinoa, standing on a moonlit balcony in Garden, looking over the
shining ocean. They were holding hands, and Ellone noticed Rinoa had a hand
to her belly. Her swollen belly, as if she was pregnant . .
.
The image vanished, flying
away into the whirlwind, even as another image rose up, of Irvine leaping
aside as a Blue Dragon slammed into the ground next to him. The SeeD sprayed
the beast with gunfire from his gun while he backed away from the dragon,
which turned to face him, oblivious to the barrage . .
.
Then Ellone saw Zell standing
across from a small, thin man with short white hair. The man hopped forward,
ducking and weaving, while Zell snapped his hands up into a guard. The small
man suddenly came forward in a rush. Zell snapped a jab toward the oncoming
man, who abruptly halted his advance. The white-haired man ducked down and
to the right, then rose up, snapping a pair of quick chops into Zell's chest
before backing away. Zell charged after his retreating opponent, and quickly
closed the distance. One of his fists shot forward again, but the white-haired
man again stepped aside, and sent a spinning kick into Zell's side. The spikey
haired martial artist backed away, even as the white-haired man advanced,
his hands and feet flowing in a rapid barrage of strikes that thudded against
Zell's chest and stomach . .
.
The image of the battle was
gone then, replaced by Quistis, standing at the balcony in Garden's 'secret
area.' She was with someone, a young man about Ellone's own age, who had
long, copper-colored hair and glowing purple-white feather tatoos running
down his forearms. He leaned closer to Quistis, saying something with a smile
on his face. Quistis smiled
back.
The image of Quistis vanished,
and a final vision flashed before
Ellone.
Squall lay on his back, his
shirt bloodied from a slash across his chest. His gunblade, the blue-glowing
Lionheart, lay several feet above his head, on the edge of the rusted iron
catwalk Squall lay on. Lionheart's glow was readily apparent in the deep,
darkened night. Over a hundred feet below, Ellone heard the sound of roaring
ocean waves, although she couldn't see the water in the blackness of
night.
The SeeD began rolling over
slowly, and curled up somewhat. He coughed suddenly, blood coming up and
splattering the catwalk in front of his mouth. He inclined his head, so he
could see Lionheart laying above him, then Squall finished rolling over onto
his stomach. He began crawling forward, trying to get at his weapon, when
a darkened figure dropped down in front of
him.
The figure hooked a foot
under Lionheart and kicked it away. The gunblade clattered off the edge of
the catwalk and dropped out of view. Squall saw this, and his shoulders slumped
in defeat. His arms stopped supporting him, and he dropped back down on his
stomach on the catwalk. Squall's head too, dropped, his cheek resting against
the rusted
metal.
A cold peal of laughter cut
through the night
air.
"Pathetic, aren't you?" the
figure asked as it took a step towards Squall. Ellone had a hard time making
out the figure, but she knew that whoever it was wore a long coat of some
kind. Then, Ellone heard the hissing sound of metal against leather, and
she saw the figure draw a long, slender blade from a sheath. She noticed
that the blade's hilt was unusual, the handle apparently curving back at
an angle to the rest of the
blade.
A
gunblade.
"Come on, Leonhart, I expected
more out of you," the figure said with another laugh as it crouched in front
of the prone Squall. "Or at least from you and your
Sorceress."
Squall's eyes flashed and
his head rose up to glare at the
figure.
"Oh, my, did I say something
to get you riled?" the figure asked, laughing some more. Squall growled something
and began to push himself up, but the figure would have none of that. It
quickly stood up and moved a foot back, then kicked out. The booted foot
slammed Squall in the jaw, lifting the risin SeeD up and depositing him on
his back several feet
away.
The figure advanced calmly,
until it had reached Squall's dazed and prone body. The figure crouched again,
straddling Squall's
form.
"Perhaps I should just put
you out of your misery," the figure remarked. The figure's gunblade rose
up beside its head, the trigger finger tapping its temple thoughtfully. "Or
I could just let you lie here and bleed to death. In fact, I think I'd like
to watch you die slowly, in great pain, and every second of it, you'll know
it was me who did it to you." The figure laughed
again.
"But I think I don't have
time to sit here and watch you die from this," the figure hissed, sticking
its free hand right into the slash across Squall's torso. The SeeD groaned
in pain. "However enjoyable it may be for you to suffer every remaining second
of your life, I do have more important things to do. Such as securing your
girlfriend's power for my own
ends."
"....Rinoa...." Squall moaned,
and began to sit up. He didn't make it far, as the figure whipped him across
the face with the pistol grip of its gunblade. Squall's head dropped back
to the catwalk, stunned by the
blow.
"Pathetic," the figure whispered.
It stood up and pointed a hand at Squall's face. "You really don't deserve
this mercy, Leonhart, but I don't have time and I won't risk the possibility
of you recovering. Say hello to Hyne on the other
side."
Ellone was blinded by a furious
flash of magical
energy.
And the image of Squall and
the dark figure was gone as Ellone woke up screaming.