Legacy Chapter 1
By Peptuck3
They say that those moments
that define your life always stay burned into your brain, like a mental brand.
Those critical scenes in your life, the ones that truly define who you are
and how you came to be at this point in life, are always there, as permanent
and indelibile as
stone.
I remember that time, months
ago, when I first encountered her. That woman, that illusion, the lie that
was Ultimecia, wrapped in a shroud of hopes, ambitions, and dreams. It was
those very ambitions that led me down that dark path, a path of destruction,
paved in the bodies of those whose blood still stains my
hands.
Even now, I still walk that
path, still traveling down that road of damnation. It is a road of sorrow,
of pain. This road is my
legacy.
--Seifer
Almasy
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He knew this place. Rain
stormed down around Seifer as he stood on a bridge. Next to him was parked
the car he had been driving, the driver's door open as if he'd just gotten
out. Fujin and Raijin were also out, and were walking across the bridge towards
a man whose truck was sitting in the middle of the road crossing over the
structure. The man wore a heavy jacket and had his hood raised up over the
top of his head, and he had hood of the truck up, and was bending down over
the engine, his silhouette shown in the truck's
headlights.
He looked up at Fujin and
Raijin as they
approached.
"Hey, can you help me?" he
called out to
them.
Seifer knew something was
wrong. The bridge, the rain, the man, the whole thing was fundamentally wrong.
Seifer knew something would happen, something serious, but
what?
Fujin and Raijin crossed
the bridge towards the man and his broken- down vehicle, and Seifer couldn't
help but follow. Fujin turned back towards Seifer, her gray hair pasted to
the sides of her head by the
rain.
"HELP?" she asked Seifer.
Seifer considered it for a moment, along with that feeling that something
was so very wrong
here.
"Yeah," Seifer said with
a shrug as he joined up with his posse. The trio approached the man, and
Seifer's feeling that something was wrong grew as he saw the man's face.
Recognition that he'd seen this person before rose into Seifer's mind, but
he couldn't recall
where.
"Thanks," the man said, turning
back to his truck's engine and cutting off Seifer's view of his face, a face
he knew from somewhere. "I don't know what happened, it just cut out and
I came to a
stop."
The man continued to explain
what was wrong with his truck, and though Seifer tried listening, that feeling
of utter wrongness was rising. The knight turned his head, looking around,
towards the edge of the bridge. The glimmer of a memory returned, a feeling
that something would be coming from that
direction-
-then, Seifer's SeeD-trained
reflexes reacted as the hooded man spun around, the shining metal of a blade
flashing towards Seifer's
head.
The knight ducked under the
slash and Hyperion was in his hands, drawn faster than the eye could see
and diving forward into his attacker's chest. At the edges of his vision,
Seifer could see two figures climbing up from the edge of the bridge nearest
Seifer. The truck's doors swung open and three more men piled out, and another
pair climbed up from the edge of the bridge opposite Seifer and his posse.
Every man weilded a blade of some kind, and each charged at the surprised
trio.
Or rather, one tried, having
come over the edge of the bridge, but was blasted away as Raijin's staff
slid off his back and smashed across the attacker's chest, tossing him off
the
bridge.
Seifer spun on the other,
gunblade working furiously to deflect the man's attacks as his mind caught
up with his
body.
Ambush.
Assassins.
Seifer now knew what he had
realized was wrong, but still there was something in the back of his mind,
a realization that this ambush in fact wasn't the thing he knew would happen.
That unknown event was still yet to
come.
The knight snapped his gunblade
into an opening the assassin had left in his defenses, and Hyperion bit into
the man's heart with an accompanying splurt of blood. Seifer spun to see
Fujin and Raijin engaged with the other five attackers, and he charged in
to provide
assistance.
But, halfway to his posse,
Seifer spotted two more assassins, coming around from behind the posse's
own vehicle, both weilding broadswords and charging at
Seifer.
The two men bore in, swords
swinging. Seifer ducked a slash, blocked a second, hopped a third, and backed
away as both opponents swung their blades, swords coming in like the snapping
jaws of an Anacondaur. The knight smiled as both men's blades nearly took
each other, an obvious sign that these two were not the brightest foes, which
also indicated whoever had come for Seifer and his friends, they were not
the best or the most
powerful.
Still, the two men were
dangerous, forcing the knight back with their swings. Seifer viciously parried
and countered, one slice opening an assassin's upper arm, sending a long
line of blood trailing down. The man took a wild, enraged slash at Seifer,
who took another step back, then hopped up and
back.
Seifer's leap took him up
and on top of the bridge's narrow railing. Though the knight hadn't been
able to see the railing, he knew where the edge of the bridge was, and had
guessed (correctly, fortunately) its location. Balanced on the railing, Seifer
continued blocking and countering, and at one point hopping back along the
railing at a slice aimed for his left leg, the missed strike sending the
sword down and cutting into the metal
railing.
One of the men took a swipe
at Seifer's legs with his broadsword as the knight balanced on the railing.
Seifer hopped right over the sword, Hyperion blocking a swipe from his other
opponent, and the knight shifted his weight as he came back down, balancing
precisely. Hyperion dropped down in the path of the swiping blade, stopping
it. Them Seifer shifted his weight to balance on his left leg perfectly even
as his right rose and shot down, hitting the attacker's sword hand and knocking
the blade from his hand. Hyperion blocked another attack from the other assassin,
and then the gunblade came across, taking the disarmed man's
throat.
The knight swiped across
as he leaped down, forcing his remaining foe to block high. But Seifer wasn't
actually slashing, the man discovered, as Hyperion came back from the feint
and sliced into his chest, taking his heart and
lungs.
Upon dispatching his foes,
Seifer turned to the assassins his friends were fighting. Raijin took one
opponent out, his heavy staff crashing down on the man's skull, while Fujin
ducked, twisted, dodged, and parried with her shuriken against two other
men's attacks. The remaining pair of assassins were already charging Seifer's
way, and the knight met them, his gunblade whirling and clanging against
their own
swords.
Neither of the men were
particularily skilled, and neither were also any match for Seifer, as one
discovered upon his belly being sliced a second before Seifer grabbed him
by his shirt and used the assassin to trip up his partner. The other assassin
fell, though he didn't make it down alive, Seifer's gunblade swooping down
on his skull even as the assassin dropped. The other assassin, wounded and
prone, was an easy target for Hyperion, and Seifer drove his weapon down
into the man's back before charging to assist
Fujin.
But the knight came up short,
seeing that his posse had the last two assassins under control. Raijin had
backed one of Fujin's foes away from his sister and was pressing him back
against the railing, Raijin's staff and the assassin's sword clinched as
the two strained against each other. Fujin had her foe all but beaten, her
nimble body dodging and evading the assassin's attacks with ease. The silver
haired woman hopped back from her foe, performing the focusing gesture of
a spell before the assassin could follow her. A wild, sweeping, spinning
cyclone of wind enveloped the man, lifting him up while at the same time
kicking up dirt and small rocks which, caught in the Tornado spell, slashed
into the assassin. The numerous cuts hurt him, but not as much as the biting
wind or the subsequent fall to the ground when the winds dissipated. Before
the wounded assassin could recover, both a shuriken and a gunblade sliced
into his
body.
Seifer glanced up to Fujin,
grinning at how they had dispatched their foes. Fujin didn't mirror the knight's
smile, though she did give one of her rare grins. Behind her, a wet 'thunk'
accompanied Raijin's overhead swing of his staff and subsequent shortening
of his opponent as the assassin's skull was
flattened.
Then, before Seifer could
react, Fujin's one eye widened and she leaped forward, her hands striking
Seifer's chest and forcing him back and down to the ground. Before the kinght
could question Fujin's actions, he saw one, then two, knives flash into her
chest from behind Seifer. Fujin barely flinched from the blades, and with
only a slight grimace of pain, replied to the attack, her shuriken hurtling
past Seifer. The knight turned his head to see another assassin, at the far
end of the bridge, take the shuriken. A number of throwing knives he'd been
holding slid from his hands and clattered to the bridge, followed by their
now dead
weilder.
The knight shot to his feet
as Fujin swayed slightly, one hand going to her wounded
chest.
"Fuu, you okay?" he asked,
his question mirrored by Raijin's as he ran up to his
sister.
"Hurts . . ." Fujin said
weakly, stumbling and almost losing her balance. "Burns . . .
Poiso-"
Then she
fell.
* * * *
*
"They're all dead," Khales
said to his brother, Khali. The pair were identical twins, both tall, with
black hair, brown eyes, black beards and mustaches, and perpeptual sneers.
After all, the two brothers were brutal and vicious assassins, and the joint
leaders of the troupe of assassins who had answered to the price on the head
of Seifer
Almasy.
Khali leaned back in his
chair, legs up on his desk, absently swirling a glass of expensive Dollet
wine.
"All eleven?" he asked, sounding
dissappointed.
"Indeed, brother. All of
the men with Telan were
killed."
"Damn," Khali hissed. Khales
only
smiled.
"But . .
."
"But?" Khali sensed something
in his brother's demeanor, that seemed to indicate that the loss of their
team meant nothing. His feet dropped from their perch and he leaned forward
in his
chair.
"We have tracked them. To
a hospital in a town near
Timber."
"A team is en route?" Khali
knew his brother's response before he'd even
spoken.
"Of course. Four of our best,
one an ex-Galbadian special officer. They will arrive shortly. Almasy will
not run from us, and he will not survive this
battle."
"Excellent."
With that, the two assassin
brothers shared a cruel laugh. Indeed, Almasy would soon be very dead, and
they would have the very large sum of money that his death would
entail.
* * * *
*
"Dammit!" Seifer hissed,
punching the drink machine angrily, venting the feelings of frustration and
helplessness that another nightmare had imparted. In his other hand, the
knight squeezed the can of
soda.
His fault. Those daggars
had been meant for him. He should be in that bed, half-dead, not Fujin. Those
assassins had come for Seifer's head, for his wrongs. And Fujin had suffered
for
them.
Nothing Seifer had ever done,
no pain he had experienced, not the fires nor cold nor shocks of magic, nor
the stinging blasts of enemy gunfire, nor even the sharpened edges of Squall
Leonhart's own gunblade hurt as much as the wound he felt now. It was a gripping
pain, deep inside, not within his body, but in his very core, his
soul.
It was the heavy, weighted
pain of
guilt.
Seifer stared at his own
twisted reflection in the plastic cover of the drink machine. In that reflection,
seifer saw himself again, and he was sent back to that moment, that other
nightmare where he had proclaimed himself the cause of all the suffering
around him. The dream where Seifer's dark side, the one Ultimecia had brought
out and grown, had risen up to haunt him and destroy those few things that
were truly important to
Seifer.
"No," Seifer hissed in impotent
denial. Though in the reflection, his distorted face mirrored the pained
look on Seifer's own face, the knight still saw the grinning, leering visage
of his dark side, the mockery of what he had dreamed
of.
"No."
Seifer focused, and suddenly
his muscles surged. The knight's fist shot forward, proppelled with the power
of a Guardian Force and the magic of Flare behind it. The hand buried into
Seifer's reflection, into the mirrored, twisted face, and blew right through
it, smashing in and striking at the hideous
apparition.
The knight blinked and his
vision cleared, and then realized to his sudden surprise that he had just
dented the soda machine. Then, to his further surprise, Seifer realized he
had squeezed the soda can in his other hand so hard it had popped, and now
fizzing soda bubbled over his
hand.
Shaking his head, and looking
back up at the soda machine, Seifer tossed his can away and headed back to
the room where Fujin
lay.
He stepped in through the
door and quietly closed it behind him, then sat down next to Fujin. Raijin
was still sleeping, next to the door, keeping a drowsy if not dedicated vigil
for his sister; he hadn't moved from that spot except to use the bathroom
and to eat, and even then he'd returned to the spot as quickly as he
could.
Seifer looked Fujin over.
He noticed how peaceful and content she looked, so different from her stone
cold outer shell when awake, masking a semi-controlled fury underneath that
often was revealed as she lashed out at her brother. The knight slowly reached
over and brushed some of her gray hair out of Fujin's face. Then, Seifer
let out a breath and sat back in his chair, wandering the paths of
memory.
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Alone I read Until the day was gone And I sat in regret Of all the things
I've done For all that I've blessed And all that I wronged And dreams until
my death....
~From "Like a Stone" by Audioslave
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