Why do we exist?
Is reality just a dream?
Do we even begin to question our existence in this universe that is our own?
Are we alone?
Do we believe that the impossible can happen, and lives can change forever?
I used to sit, staring out the window, watching the world pass me by, stuck in the monotonous day-to-day schedule of life at the academy, working hard to only prove a point.
But then, the impossible happened, and I discovered another reality, and through it, began to discover myself. Isn't life strange?
Do you believe? You may not, or think I'm just playing you like a badly tuned piano, but I am telling the truth. About the worlds. And the wars. And this story of hope, angst, war, hate, and love.
After all, it's not impossible. Whatever we choose to believe in is real in our eyes. After all, we can't see what we breathe, so we invent an explanation for it, and call it air. Who are we to believe and dub the invisible?
Will you take the trip, feel the passion, and join me? Or will you continue here, trying hard to fit in, striving to try for something in the far distant future? It's your choice. Whatever you choose, just remember this story, and hope that the world can change.
For this is my story. Believe it if you will.
f i n a l f a n t a s y : r e a l i t y
FINAL FANTASY REALITY
by chaosrayne
original concept by redshadow
disk 1ne: 1ne: the world as we see it
Dreams. Darkness. Shadows. A memory?
Panting, running blindly through the streets. A scream is heard somewhere behind.
Weeping and sobbing. Tears fall, human pain manifesting as drops of salt solution. And a baby begins to cry.
"no time, no time... "
The old woman kissed her charge one last time
"Time, space, bend... "
The ground opened up in a portal of darkness and lightning. The woman looked one last time at the baby, then, as another explosion was heard behind her, she draped a blue stone on a silver chain around his neck.
" Remove!!!"
The child was dropped into the portal, vanishing in an instant. It irised closed quickly. The woman collapsed on her knees as the spell drained her energies. The one known as the Dark Born walked up to the sobbing lady, silently.
The woman finally noticed, and crawled on her hands and knees to get away. But her exit was blocked, and she was forced up against a corner.
In that moment, she saw the face of her murderer. She screams, but too late.
The sword passed cleanly through her breast and exited out her back, still gleaming with the blood of its past victim.
She looked so surprised, there at the end.
Dreams. Darkness. Shadows. A memory.
It is finished.
A man walked through the deserted corridors of a bunker, casually loading his shotgun. Said man strode with all the clear-cut precision of a razor, every movement timed to perfection. Slamming the breech firmly on his gun, he slung it behind his back on top of a scarred and badly pitted set of vest armour with a small insignia on the left chest area that showed a number 7 in a silver circle.
His heavy frame bulged with ammo and guns - a walking arsenal. Running his hand through his shaven head, which was bare except for a single, dark dreadlock, he strapped on a bandolier of grenades diagonally along his chest, still moving quickly with the added weight. He wasn't a big believer in all that magic nonsense, although he could cast a spell if need be. Rely on things that go boom. Good, common sense.
Selecting another gun from the rack, he pulled a MiG assault rifle from its position on the wall and checked it throughly, lovingly cradling the weapon in the crook of one arm. Extra ammo packages hung from attached pockets. Finally, grabbing a small handheld computer from a table and fitting it into a belt compartment, he was ready.
Opposite from him stood a girl clad in a formfitting black bodysuit, with a loose belt equipped with a pair of combat knives and a few small pouches that held unknown objects. She also wore a pair of brown leather fingerless gloves with small round slots in the knuckles, where minuscule orbs of multicoloured hues resided. The woman rubbed them thoughtfully, lightly flicking her brown ponytail over her shoulder. The same logo of the 7 in the silver circle glinted on the right shoulder of her skin-tight outfit.
"Patch, you ready?"
The larger man nodded.
"Got the stuff?"
Another nod, this time accompanied by a small smile.
"I got the stuff. If the Commander finds out... we are SO screwed..."
The woman sniffed once in contempt. "He needs this job done anyway. We have the best chance of succeeding."
The man sighed in exasperation. "Kira, I took one of the only remaining handheld computer units. I don't think he's going to be too flippin' happy if we don't come back with it intact."
"I don't think he'll be happy if we don't come back. Period."
"Point taken. Let's go. Our mission is stealth - we're not going in there to trash everything, just to destroy the damn machine and get out. So, no Callings, alright?"
"Phooey. Just because the last time I summoned I nearly took out another O7 unit mech."
"Kira! We only have 6 freaking available mech units left! And that's compared to, what, several hundred Imperial MEDUSA mechs?"
"Relax, big guy," Kira laughed, wrapping her arms around him lightly. "Just take that stick out your ass every once in a while and you'd be fine!"
"Oh well." Patch sighed. His partner in mass destruction/reconnaissance was crazy, or so he thought. Too bad he loved her. "Let's go get ourselves killed, shall we?"
Mock bowing and offering an arm to her friend, Kira smiled. "Yes sir."
Hi, I'm Rain. Here is my pitiful attempt to tell you how this began. This is my story, after all, and I have to start somewhere.
Hmmm...
I really don't know how it first began.
But I have to start somewhere.
It was the dreams, first of all. The dreams that were so vivid real life seemed to pale by comparison. I find myself unable to concentrate in work, school, even battle situations - various instructors have marked me as a 'constant daydreamer', quote.
I guess it was part of the drop at not being accepted, when peers laugh at you and nobody cares, that it was a relief to just slip out of reality and see stars.
Literally. Stars. When I dream I see the universe.
If it were just a one-time thing I wouldn't feel so weird about it. But constantly, day in, day out, I see myself falling, falling through space and time, seeing the creation and death of stars, of planets, of universes...
When it's not about stars, I see only one thing.
A triangle within a circle, glowing white.
It's awful, actually. One minute I'm hearing the instructor talking about geometrical shapes and patterns and how they relate to battle strategy, the next I'm seeing a triangle within a circle blaze up in my field of vision and everything else is black.
At first I thought I was going crazy. After all, there was Steve, who had gone slightly insane after they punished him for stealing one of the Headmaster's award medals. They locked him in a cell with no source of light, food or water for three days. He was removed from the academy a few days later after developing acute schizophrenia.
Well, be the best, or get left in the dust. A military academy is a vicious place, what with everybody strangling and backstabbing each other just to get on top. Sucking up is not something you do when you feel like it, it's something you do regularly to senior officers.
I was determined to succeed, even with my dreaming problem. You see, daydreamers don't have a very good rep around here - the last dreamer in the academy had been staring off into space during a live ammo exercise and had not stopped dreaming when the bullet hit him. So I set out to prove differently, that I could be a good soldier after all, if one that dreams constantly. Soldiers are not supposed to dream. We're trained to be cold, emotionless killing machines. We are the elite. I was different. But I was determined not to be.
Since then, I've been training hard every day in my own free time in the gym. Weird, really. It's not like I enjoy it, punching and kicking sandbags until they threaten to burst. I guess it was the one thing that helped me concentrate. I find that I'm never dreaming when I'm training.
Weapons were good, too. No sharp bladed stuff for the junior cadets, but I practised beating stuff up with a wooden kendo staff. It feels a hell of a lot better than slamming bricks with your bare hands. Oh yeah.
The teachers never failed to notice that I disappeared during my spare time - one saw me practice, and helped my form. Not bad, since he took me out with a staff strike to the head while he sparred with me. Unarmed combat my ass.
All this talent was put to good use a few days later when a bunch of morons jumped me, presumably to try and flush my head in the toilet again. Fools.
They were in the hospital wing for weeks, in various states of pain. Oh well. They left me alone after that. The whole thing was basically ignored by the academy department... how bad is that? Well, I guess that's how things work in a battle academy. No strict discipline for bullying whatsoever.
Also, I'm an orphan. Ever mention that? Lived in an orphanage until I was 13, where I was accepted at the SFMA.
Oh. Well, if you don't know, I never knew my parents. I really hope I'll find home someday.
Because this isn't home. I'm not accepted here and probably never will be. I hear the others joking behind my back about people adopting me, but really. When you're a 17 year-old with no hope, life is a dull and dreary place. Except for the dreams.
The only thing which I can remember my parents by is this weird pendant they gave me. It's quite cool, really It's some sort of clear bluish stone set in a silver frame, in the shape of a teardrop. How friggin' symbolic.
The guard walked about on the upper levels of the Imperial Guard building that had been hastily erected to hide the fact that the Imperialists had discovered something large and incredible.
Whistling to himself, he lit up a cigarette, breathing in the fresh aroma of tar, nicotine, and other assorted chemicals. Too bad he didn't notice the wire hanging down from the roof.
His neck broke with a wet crack as Kira hung upside down from her pocket mesh titanium wire and made a spinning movement with her hands. Smiling at a job well done, the spy operative dropped down silently. Patch followed, with considerably more noise.
"Patch, can you get me a map of this place?" Kira whispered, taking mental note of all the white-robed scientists hurrying about on the lower level with the Imperial diamond insignia tattooed on their foreheads.
"Nope, smartass. You're on your own."
"So... a distraction?"
"Yep... the bigger it is, the better."
"No problem..." Kira mumbled as she searched her belt pouches for any suitable materia. Grasping a yellow orb, she slipped it quickly into an empty slot on her glove, where it began to glow. "Phantasms that dwell in the mind of man, images of life and love which we so covet, be unreal and yet seen! Illusion!"
Instantly, a platoon of about 10 O7 Chaos Mech units appeared outside the building.
Kira counted nearly five seconds before the alarm sounded among the Imperial Guard. Men rushed to battle stations. Mobile guns were loaded and locked.
The single Imperial MEDUSA mech was prepped and launched. Troops vacated the building in droves, eager to battle the Rebellion O7 foe.
Which left behind a skeleton guard of about two dozen Imperials.
Patch smirked as he vaulted the railing between the upper floor and the lower floor. Whirling to face a group of three of the guard, the O7 officer let rip with his MiG, mowing them down in a hail of bullets. Two fell with small red holes punctured in their crisp blue Imperial uniforms. The third pulled a plasma weapon and returned fire. Streams of tracer zoomed past the hulking man's form as the guard shot again and again, nervousness making him a poor shot.
Which was just too bad, since it meant that he wasn't watching his back.
Kira retrieved her knife from where it had embedded itself into the guard's back, smirking. Turning him around and finishing him off with a slash to the throat in a spray of blood, she stole his weapon and shot up another guard who had sneaked up behind Patch.
"That's a nice gun." Kira smiled wickedly. "I think I'll keep it."
"C'mon, we gotta get to the machine and set the bomb!"
"Alright, alright." The girl rejoined her partner, but not before grabbing the plasma gun and holstering it on her belt. Rubbing one of her Materia gently, she began a clairmancy spell.
A small orb of light formed before her as she invoked the magic. Seekers were one of the most basic forms of Light magic, summoning a small globe of light that would lead you to anything.
The Seeker zoomed off down the corridor, a veritable comet. The two took off after it, running quickly.
"...W-why are those things always so damn fast?" Patch grunted, clutching a stitch in his side as he struggled to keep up.
Life really has strange ways of getting to you, huh?
I was about to hit 18, finally getting out of the SFMA junior section and graduating with awards, staff combat commendation among them. I was an awful student otherwise, because of my daydreaming problem, so I didn't get into university either. So I found myself out on the streets with no work and no cash. The only opening was back into the SFMA - senior section and eventually full elite army duty.
But that's not important. Because here we see another major player in this story - Alex.
Alexandria, or Alex as she liked to be called, was a cool character. She was one of the most popular females in the academy, voted prom queen, and one of the famous academy track team members.
Not all of the SFMA graduates go to work in the army. It's known for its militant structure and strict training regimen, and that's probably why some good athletes have come from the SFMA. This would have probably been her future, had she not been in this tangled web that is this story.
No, that's not what I'm implying. If you think this is just another one of my fantasies, go away. She's not a love interest to me.
Well, can't you see the difference? She's like, royalty, or that far away. Compared to her, I'm just Rain the lowly stable boy. Blah.
So, it was the last day of cadethood and onto graduation, a.k.a. academy field day.
If this were your school, you would have one of two reactions. Either 1) COOL! Where do I sign up? Or, even 2) boring.
But a sports day at the toughest military academy in the world cannot be boring. You might not even recognise it if it was not painted on the big sign at the academy gates.
First, you have the shooting events - paintballing in teams, sharpshooting, and then the combat events - unarmed combat, bladed combat, fencing, and staff combat and along with ALLLLLL of that stuff, you get the track events.
As usual, I joined the staff combat and paintballing. No point in going if you weren't going to do anything. Shot up a couple of guys, got shot, tried to get the paint off myself but failed until I got blasted with a hose it was fun. I lost in staff combat, though, since some of the senior pupils decided to join and triple-teamed me into submission.
After it's all over, I hang around a bit, in some hope of finding someone to talk to. No luck there. So I just sit there like an idiot, and fall into a dream.
You see my problem now?
It was the stars again. Falling in some weird direction through space, a human satellite. But this time, somehow, I seemed to be falling in a particular direction. First come the universes. Then, a galaxy among the others I manage to pick out - our very own Milky Way. Then stars, dying and being reborn, and there! A healthy star, seeming to glow among the rest, relatively small. Around it swing nine planets, and I seem to be falling towards the third planet from the sun -
I awake, to the shock of the cold night air hitting my face like an iron bar. Shivering lightly with the cold, I make my way out of the track stadium the school rented for the afternoon and find the fence locked.
No problem for a cadet fresh from graduation. I grab a few handfuls of lattice, and in a few seconds, I have scaled the fence and stand precariously on the top of it, balancing.
Then I hear the yell.
"Get OFF me, you BASTARDS!"
It is a sound vaguely familiar, of one I hear at the academy, and what I see, perching atop the fence, is criminal.
Our SFMA high's very own Alexandria is being pinned down by a trio of thugs, obviously transfixed by her body for some reason. As I watch, she breaks away, only to be caught by a fourth person rounding her off.
Even from here I could smell the bitterness of alcohol in the air. I can see the thugs, getting ready to -
- Oh my god.
Alex screams.
I had to stop it, so I did the valiant thing, and leapt off the fence like an idiot. Landing and nearly stumbling on unsteady feet, I talk in slow, measured tones.
"Get off her."
Even the morons currently pinning down the girl are grinning at me as I make the statement which sounds like the dumbest of my life. They grin, and the ones not holding Ms. Track Star pull knives and sharpened thumbscrews from their pockets.
Some small part of my brain poses a question - why aren't the guys all flat out and KO'ed by now? Alex is a SFMA cadet as well although she isn't a graduate yet
The nearest fathead rushes me, moving with the disturbing speed of the obese. A fist narrowly misses me as I dodge, grab the offending pudgy hand, pull, overbalance, and kick. The heavy man is thrown backwards, but he lunges again, knife upraised in his hand. I kick it, grab the falling weapon and throw it into the nearest tree. My fist slams into his jaw as I disarm him, again and again, until I finish with a low kick that sweeps his feet out from under him. Jumping up, I land on his chest. I hear a series of wet cracks as I step off.
I see my training has paid off.
"Damn, lookit what the little shite did to Keith! Let's get 'im!"
The other three look at each other, then two of them lunge for me at once. Big mistake - that meant they let go of Alex. In a flash, she spins, kicking one towards me with a powerful blow. Grabbing the other and twisting his arm behind his back in a classic police manuever, she disarms him of his knife and holds it to his throat.
The one I am faced with is dazed - perfect. I leap over him, slamming a palm strike onto his cranium, causing instant concussion and sending him into the floor. As he falls, I grab him in a roll and fling him into the nearest tree. KO. 50 points, Rain scores.
There was only one left, and a sweeping punch combo took care of him.
The dense thug that Alex held realized he was hopelessly outclassed, and began to beg for mercy. Alex, seemingly annoyed, presses the knife deeper into the skin of his neck, drawing a tiny trickle of blood.
" oh shit... I don't wanna die, man! I was jus' playin'... " A large dark wet stain spreads out from his crotch and starts to drip on the grass. Distastefully, Alex lets him go, and he runs, but too late - in the blink of an eye, the knife sprouts from the small of his back.
I sigh and turn to the girl. She has suffered no harm, except for her clothing, which is hanging off her in places. I look away, feeling my face burn with the unfamiliar feeling of a blush.
After a few seconds in which she redressed herself (literally), she continued.
"Good work! Thanks for helping out."
I turn away, and begin to stalk off.
"Geez, can't you take a compliment?" Her words sting me with the shock of truth.
"Why do you care?" My retort is just as barbed. I continue to walk away.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't really know."
Actually, I'm just off to the large field the park has in one area. It's one of the places I can be alone and think. About my dreams. Alex followed.