2021-07-03: Sins Of The Father
- Log: Sins Of The Father
- Cast: Seymour Guado, Yuna, Lulu, Tidus, Paine, Rikku
- Where: Mount Gagazet
- Date: July 03, 2021
- Summary: Yuna's pilgrimage is about halfway up Mount Gagazet. Upon arriving, they remember recent events at the base of the mountain, but before they get much of a chance to rest, Seymour attacks, his mien and his words more monstrous than ever. And after they've driven him off yet again, Tidus admits a secret he's been carrying for a long time: Sin is Jecht.
==============================<* Mount Gagazet *>=============================== This snow-covered series of peaks is the northernmost location on Spira... save one, whose name is not to be mentioned. It represents the last settled land on a Summoner's Pilgrimage... and, for many Summoners, its end as well. Mount Gagazet has been christened as a holy place by Yevon, and as a holy land it has guardians in the form of the Ronso - fierce fur-clas Beastmen with powerful bodies and a single, spikelike horn atop their head. Ronso are known for three things - their raw power; a deep, abiding faith in Yevon's teachings; and strange techniques which allow them to copy the fiends' way of fighting. They also like Blitzball. Because who doesn't. BGM: Final Fantasy X - Servants of the Mountain
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Yuna and her Guardians have started the long trek up Gagazet.
It is a trek through the bitter cold. Mountain winds, ice and snow -- winter is a constant, at this height, with some months merely being colder than cold -- and heavy hearts have been their company. They arrived in Gagazet to speak with Kelk; to be barred entry, until Kimahri's duel with two other Ronso and Yuna's words to Kelk Ronso opened the way. Wounds were healed...
...but up high, they saw a grim sight: a Guado army, marching on the Ronso. Marching on the people who, not so long ago, saved Luca and Bevelle both.
They know a price is being paid for this pilgrimage. But... they've always known a price is being paid on this pilgrimage.
Now, they are near the summit. Not Gagazet's true summit, so steep and clouded with mist; no, they are at the highest icy overlook on the path northward. The Holy Path, some once called it; the path to Zanarkand. It is a misty day; the clouds cover the city to the north.
A moment to stop. A moment to breathe.
The last moment, before they begin their descent down the mountain... and to what lies at the end.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
EARLIER, BEFORE THE PILLARED GATES OF GAGAZET
Ronso bar the path forward, and they bar the path back to the Calm Lands. Yuna and her Guardians are completely surrounded by the only clan called guardian even more ancient and honorable than that of the profession itself.
The guardians of the sacred mountain...
At the fore is Kelk Ronso, Elder of his clan and Maester of Yevon, his mightiness of spirit more than outweighing any decrepitness of ancient flesh. Though, honestly, an old Ronso is a more impressive physical specimen than most young humans.
This point is driven home by the iconic representatives of Ronso manhood, Yenke and Biran Ronso, who flank him on either side. They loom over Kelk, which means that they positively tower over the group. Their shadows, cast by the sunlight above the mountain, fall across the entire group bunched together.
Kelk's voice booms like thunder.
"Summoner Yuna and guardians, leave here at once! Gagazet is Ronso land, sacred mountain of Yevon." His voice shakes with the intensity of his offense. "The mountain will not bear the footsteps of infidels!"
"Enemy of Yevon is enemy of Ronso!" chimes in Biran, though his eyes are more on Kimahri than the others.
Yuna swallows, but does not withdraw, not even between her own shoulderblades. She lifts her chin instead, and if her voice shakes a little, it is not because she is afraid of her own words -- it is because they are difficult to say.
"I have cast aside Yevon," she confirms. "I-- I follow the temple no more!"
"Then you will die by those words," declares Kelk.
Yuna's gaze is level, blue and green meeting his yellow dead on. "So be it," says the girl who would die for Spira. "Yevon has warped the teachings and betrayed us all -- we have no regrets."
Yenke growls. "Blasphemers!" he scoffs, glancing at his elder for the signal to begin violence. Kelk, however, looks slightly thoughtful.
"A summoner and her guardians," he muses...
NOW
Yuna has not looked back, not even once. She's ascending the peak with a quiet determination that in some ways truly speaks to the trials she's ALREADY endured. Unrecognizable is the soft little girl who tried to depart Besaid Isle with a suitcase of gifts too heavy for her to carry. She is hard now, hard with the muscles of her journey, feet and legs made strong from a path that has led not only across a continent but two worlds, all towards this place, towards this moment.
And then the next moment. And the next. And the next. Until she's out of them.
But of course she has not transformed completely. Despite everything that's happened, Yuna is still Yuna. And when the angle of the path causes her to see the Guado army, still facing ahead, her eyes turn huge and liquid with distress.
At the beginning of her journey she might have asked Kimahri if they should turn back. Now, though, the internal conflict plays across her face -- the agony of indecision, as her heart is pulled two directions at once.
"We should go back," she frets, from the stopping place, clearly about to turn this whole ship around all by herself, without hiding behind the excuse of someone else's choices. "We must go back."
But, her eyes know, as she stares around at her Guardians, they can't go back. They just can't.
She is finally learning how to let others sacrifice themselves in her stead. Is that hardness or softness? Yuna is wounded in the trying. Perhaps therefore it is both.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
A last moment...
EARLIER:
Lulu walked with Yuna, then. She did not hold back, did not hesitate, did not slow her steps in watching over Yuna at that time. Yuna was the first to speak... but not the last. Lulu, too, speaks up. She does not go for her spells immediately; instead, the woman in black simply takes a step forward to back up Yuna.
"Maester Kelk, if I may..."
Lulu raises her head, too, to look at him, speaking calmly and evenly. "Have not you yourself turned your back on the other Maesters? Yevon is divided; you moved to save Bevelle and Luca, but the other Maesters were not with you. You yourself act independently of the Grand Maester."
NOW
Lulu has not looked back, either. She walks with Yuna, and indeed--she sees that quiet determination, sees the soft little girl who she once sought to protect grown into something beyond her. She can only do her best to keep up. ...But her job, at least, is not finished. There is a hardness and a softness here... and the angle shows them the army.
Lulu does not answer Yuna's statement in words--she only looks into her eyes, and shakes her head.
They cannot, she does not have to say.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
EARLIER:
Tidus has zero patience for Yevon and its hypocrisy, and even less for bullies--like those two Ronso who flank Kelk. He knows how badly they've treated Kimahri, and while Tidus and Kimahri might not be *close*, that's something Tidus just can't abide by. So:
"Who cares what you think of us?! *We're* the ones doing something about Sin, not you!" he snaps. "Now move it! We've got a job to do, and we're gonna do it whether you like it or not!"
NOW:
It's mind-boggling to Tidus to think that Zanarkand, his summery, oceany, glitzy home city, could be even *farther* north than a place so barren and freezing. Even so, he makes the grim climb up with his friends and companions. He'd stopped to observe some graves--little more than weapons thrust into the rock and snow--and had it explained to him that Summoners and their guardians who make it this far have no one to Send them should they fall.
He'd talked a big game about doing something about Sin. He's still serious about that. But... now that they're at the peak of the last barrier before Zanarkand--now that he can just barely see the ruins from this height--it's settling in like a shroud that he still hasn't figured out a way to save Yuna. For all his thinking, for all his agonizing and ruminating... he has no idea how to make sure either that she doesn't need to use the Final Aeon, or to make sure she survives using it.
There's too much he still doesn't know. And while there are positive armies of Drifters around, willing and able to help, Sin has proven multiple times that thta's just not going to be enough. He cares about the Ronso, of course--is appalled that Yevon would send an army on them after the Ronsos saved Bevelle--but Yuna is his first priority.
So when Yuna says that they have to go back, Tidus is all too happy to agree--both to not let their sacrifice go to waste, and to buy a little more time to figure something out.
"We should!" he thus tells Yuna, and then, seeing Lulu shake her head, insists, "We *should*! Kimahri's people are down there fighting to keep our backs safe! Shouldn't we go help them out?!" He looks at Kimahri, semi-expectantly; Tidus is sure he has some opinion on this, but Kimahri's never been the chatty type.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
EARLIER
From the depths of a rumpled, dark grey hood, Paine's single sheet of silver bangs glints like a dagger peeking from a highwayman's belt. A scarf wraps her mouth against the cold, and the steam of her breath leaks from it in rhythmic trickles. She seems insensate to the pink burn where her fingerless gloves leave skin exposed. Though earlier she had kept her arms inside her cloak, now she carries her carbine with a forearm along its stock and a palm cupping its steel throat.
Kelk Ronso says Yuna will die by her words.
"Somebody will," Paine agrees.
NOW
It is difficult to ascertain the weight undealt violence leaves on Paine's shoulders. It always seems to make her quiet for a while. But Paine is not uncomfortable in silence, nor does she make her friends so.
Bringing up the rear, Paine has cause to look back frequently, but there is no sentiment in it. Bringing her eyes up the path again, she follows Yuna with them for a while, then drifts back along the party to Lulu and Tidus, who are discussing. She does not weigh in, this time. She will honor the decision of her summoner in this. So her eyes pass on along to Rikku.
"Holding up?" she asks of the girl with the tropical tan. "Not your sort of weather."
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
EARLIER
Rikku is... anxious. She still hasn't thought of any solution to how to ensure Yuna lives before they make it to the other side. Yet her anxiety at the moment is replaced by a different kind.
Rikku is tense as she is during the stand-off. Kelk Ronso is a formidable enough entity, moreso when he's flanked by many Ronso warriors. Their shadow falls across them in a way where she feels positively small.
Yet as Lulu and Tidus step up in the wake of Yuna's resolution, she steps up too, "Well I'm not holding back either... Yunie never failed Yevon... Yevon failed her. The fact that she's here now should be proof enough of that."
Rikku would never have argued like this before, in terms of their adherence to Yevon. She points a gloved finger in admonishment, "How many Summoners do you really think would go through all she's been through - and still come here huh?"
Her eyes fall upon Kelk, "You were there... you know just as well as the rest of us how wrong this is."
NOW
It is REALLY cold, and Rikku really doesn't seem like she's dressed appropriately for the journey??? About the only concession she's made to the cold is a pair of goggles on her face, and her insulated suit. Though there's a telltale gleam across that suit, a subtle sign of alchemical protection.. but still one might catch her shivering every now and then.
Every now and then on the way up, she tries to meet eyes with Tidus, a worried look as if to ask... 'What are we gonna do?'
She still had no answers.
When they turn the bend though...
Rikku looks down in horror, removing her snow rimed goggles from her face to get a better look, even as the frigid wind stings her eyes. "I think... you're right, we should turn back now!" She agrees with Yuna and Tidus, before catching the look between Yuna and Lulu. The look exchanged, is enough for her to doubt that perception... "... but..."
Doubt floods her mind. It's a whole army at their backs And not only that, the journey up has been long...
... what if all they do is get back, just in time for Yuna to perform another sending?
As she watches the army clash... it reminds her of the last time she saw the Guado army...
'Why can't they just leave us alone?' She thinks to herself.
It always feels like so many other people are suffering and dying for them...
... and her own people are certainly not exempted from that.
And that's when Paine says something that causes her face to scrunch up momentarily before she looks her way in disbelief. "Hey! What's that supposed to mean? You think because I grew up in a desert that I can't handle a little cold?"
Pause... Rikku gives a Paine this stare of intensity, before she breaks off into a more cheerful posture.
"Well you'd be right!" As she holds up a vial of some gleaming blue liquid, "If not for one of these beauties you'd be carrying a Rikkusicle up the mountain right now."
Honestly, given what she was thinking... Paine just did her a giant favor, though she doesn't realize that.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
The anxiety about those below is thick in the air. Nothing can dispel to it. But there is, to be certain, one thing that can certainly add to it.
"Jecht's son."
The voice rings out, everywhere and nowhere. High in the mountains and in thin air up here, voices can echo and carry in strange ways. But when it comes to Seymour Guado, one should not assume a natural phenomena. From the ice mist and snow flurries of Gagazet's high slopes, he steps out. Hundreds of pyreflies swirl -- a battlefield's worth of dead to give him form -- and he steps, robes swirling, onto the snowy field.
His pale eyes look. For once, they do not immediately fall upon Yuna. They fall upon Tidus, rich with the memory of their shared dream. "How did I not see it? A herald of the end, come from another Zanarkand... as Jecht claimed until he learned to not speak so freely. The closing of the circle."
He smiles. "Yes... you do deserve to see what is to pass. You deserve to witness this, before you die." Then, he looks around. Seymour's eyes regard Rikku, Lulu, and Paine; he is no fool (at least, not in this sense). But he doesn't address them.
But he also looks past Yuna. And that, in truth, is a cruelty. It is something very deliberate to this person he was wed to, but is not married to.
"Kimahri Ronso," he says. "The last of your people. You should know that I have done them a mercy. That I have sent them on, from this world... and as they fell, used their strength--" He holds the hand up that Tidus once cut in half. His fingers flicker, pyreflies briefly splitting and reforming, and prismatic light gleams. "--to set their friends and family free. Some Drifters came for them... and I've freed them, too."
Seymour smiles. "The few who fled will have graves to dig before they can chase after you."
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
BACK THEN
Kelk folds his hands in the sleeves of his long robes and listens to Lulu and Rikku's logic gravely, even going so far as to slightly incline his head. It is difficult to tell if he is reached; in this moment he seems almost as old as his mountain, a crag of a face, a crag of a person. And mountains do not move, do they? He takes Tidus' defiance in stride with but a flicker of his golden gaze, but Paine's open threat is the straw that breaks the Ronso's back. The two younger, flanking him, growl.
"Elder Kelk! Let Biran rend the heretics asunder!"
"No escape," chants Yenke after his brother's request, sing-song. "Not one!"
We'll never know how Kelk might have replied, because Yuna speaks first.
"No," she corrects Yenke, absolutely polite and gentle-voiced, shoulder-to-elbow with Kimahri, "We will not flee. We will fight, and continue on."
Kelk, whose expression has darkened further and further throughout these exchanges, finally shakes his head.
"You have been branded a traitor, but still you would fight Sin? Lost to the temple, hated by the people, yet you continue your pilgrimage? Everything lost!" He is incredulous. It is possible, just possible, in this moment, to imagine that he is DISAPPOINTED. Such potential destroyed. Such a waste of a summoner.
Frustration exits his mouth, but a thin vein of curiosity runs through him, too, a streak of gold in the dark.
"...what do you fight for?" he wonders aloud, the question escaping his lips on the wings of his better nature, which is not as one-dimensional as Yevon alone.
Yuna pauses to collect her words, as is her wont, but even in silence she is dignified. When she does speak, it is with a profoundly open forthrightness, a humble yet adamant resolve.
"I fight for Spira," Yuna says simply. Her voice warms to the topic immediately, as a parent who cannot help but be fond of their child whenever they're brought up in conversation. "The people long for the Calm. I can give it to them. It's all I can give. Defeating Sin, ending pain... this, I can do."
Kelk shakes his head. "Even sacrificing yourself?"
He looks over at Dame Lulu, former Yevonite, Guardian of three Pilgrimages, who points out that he himself acts independently of the increasingly unhinged Unsent Mika; that he acted independently, to save Spira.
Then to Rikku, the Al Bhed, survivor of a massacre that he did not ordain but was nevertheless done in the name of Yevon. An Al Bhed's words about Yevon should be meaningless. But somehow, from the mouths of babes, she is striking a chord that he cannot wholly ignore.
In Tidus he sees love, with the eyes of an elder; and therefore he sees tragedy. But there's no one to appreciate the beauty of tragedy like a Yevonite. The boy is reckless.
'We're the ones doing something about Sin, not you!'
The boy is right.
And in Paine he sees anger, anger and truth.
Somebody will die at the end of this journey.
It's up to him to decide who.
He looks back over at Yuna, facing him down despite being, in the full flower of her youth, perhaps a sixth of his age and his weight.
He bows his head.
"Ronso," he bellows, "Let them pass!"
And the sea of catmen part before their prophet.
"Summoner Yuna," he addresses the group -- though there's a keen sense that he is speaking as much or more to his people, and especially to the confused- and somewhat outraged-looking Biran and Yenke, "Your will is stronger than steel. Tempered steel that even the mightiest Ronso could not hope to bend. Yuna, we bend to your will!"
He steps aside, off the central path to the trailhead.
"Now go!" he declares. "The sacred heights of Gagazet welcome you."
Yuna bows deeply, her spine pliant even as her truth wills out.
"We thank you," she replies earnestly, as softly polite in victory as she was in imminent defeat.
NOW
Perhaps Tidus would have swayed her. Perhaps Lulu, whose trust in her resolve is almost the more painful of the two.
But, as she herself did to Kelk, Seymour's interruption takes the choice from her.
Yuna has only one possible response, and it is instantaneous, graceful, and deadly. His cruelty to her is irrelevant; and though she becomes white and lined with horror and rage at his cruelty to Kimahri, this does not cause hesitation.
Indeed, as he's demonstrated so succinctly, the two of them are quite out of things to say to one another.
She raises her summoner's rod and begins the Sending.
But Kimahri HAS hesitated, which is most unlike him.
In his eyes reflect the very last thing that happened before he left Mt. Gagazet.
BACK THEN
Biran and Yenke have challenged him, and Kimahri answers. Theirs is a dance of death; and he, their very willing partner. But the true victory -- the show of ultimate strength, the strength of the heart as well as of his martial prowess -- comes not in defeating them two on one, but rather in his doing so so skillfully that they are left alive. And with their horns on, at that.
Biran stares at him from the ground, then accepts a big fuzzy blue arm up.
"Strong is Kimahri," he rumbles, then smiles. "Biran is happy."
He raises his voice, as Kelk did, which calls into question just who Kelk really was addressing after all back then. Maybe it wasn't the summoning party OR the Ronso. There is another party whose honor had to be defended.
"Sacred Mount Gagazet!" he declares at the top of his lungs, which is a considerable, thundrous height. "I honor the name of the strong warrior who defeated Biran. Remember always, Gagazet! That name is Kimahri!"
"Mountain knows Kimahri strong," Yenke adds, getting up behind his brother. "Kimahri may pass."
"Summoner!" Biran barks, and Yuna narrowly avoids jumping six feet in the air, startled; concerned as she was over the fight, it was an unspoken and kind of awesome reprieve to not be the center of attention for five whole minutes. "We Ronso will stop pursuers. From temple, from Guado. Ronso will stop them all."
Yuna's eyes widen; it's much more than Kelk offered, much more than she could have asked for. Would have asked for. Yet she cannot deny them their right to stand with her, with Spira. She is awed that they will try. "Truly?"
"Penance for breaking Kimahri's horn, long ago," Biran explains, though the magnitude of the difference between the two things confuses her. Perhaps it is not so different to Ronso.
"We crush enemies following behind," Yenke says, with the open eagerness for a fight he shared with Paine.
"Kimahri crush enemies standing before," her Guardian adds. There is a weight lifted from him that intellectually she knew was there, but, since she'd never seen him without it, could not fully comprehend. She does now. He is the same height as ever, yet also, three times taller. And his movements are loose. His breath passes freely.
Yes -- he is finally free.
"You are most fortunate summoner," Biran points out, and Yuna agrees with all her heart.
"Ronso will shine your statue brightest!" Yenke adds encouragingly, ignorant of how everyone in the group might take it. Or maybe just indifferent. They've come this far and she's seeing it through.
Yuna bows her gratitude. "Thank you... but I fear no one will make a statue for a traitor such as I am." She rarely speaks of her distress over her apostasy. It's not like she was in it for the fame. But she is, nevertheless, distressed, quietly, all the time, by what transpired at Bevelle.
Until now.
"Then Ronso will make!" Biran says.
"With grand horn on head!" Yenke brags.
When Yuna takes the first step up Mt. Gagazet, it is also with a weight lifted from her. Her smile, in that moment, was unforgettable to everyone who saw it.
"That would be wonderful," she beams.
How bittersweet for Kimahri. He has regained his people... just in time to lose his person.
NOW
"No..." Kimahri gasps, though in lungs of his magnitude it's more of a quake. An avalanche of air.
Yuna looks over to him; where Seymour cou
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
NOW
"No..." Kimahri gasps, though in lungs of his magnitude it's more of a quake. An avalanche of air.
Yuna looks over to him; where Seymour could not break her focus, her oldest Guardian's agony does instantly. "Kimahri..."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
BACK THEN
It is never a surprise, that Yuna is strong. It is no less amazing to see it. Lulu has her own words, yes--her own resolve. Her certainty. If it is necessary, she will fight even the Ronso to see Yuna over the mountain, and to her destination. But she is not the only one; Tidus's simple statement. Rikku's bold words. ...Paine's. She watches the others, but above all she watches Yuna, even as her attention must be wider for an inevitable attack. An inevitable attack... that does not come.
Once more, Yuna strides forward... and Lulu does her best to keep up.
NOW
"It is because they are down there fighting to keep us safe that we cannot go back," Lulu begins to answer Tidus. But she has little opportunity to speak more before Seymour interrupts--that voice, the way he steps out onto the snowy field... and his statements over what Tidus deserves.
There is nothing Lulu feels she needs to say or have said to Seymour at first.
Her eyes flash as Seymour speaks to them, and it is a reminder that Lulu is not cold, but hot. The things he says--the way he draws that breath from gentle, constant Kimahri. Yuna cannot Send him in that instant--
Lulu steps forward as she sees Yuna break focus, and immediately brings up her hand, flames whirling around her as a blast of fire erupts straight towards Seymour. "Kimahri! Yuna!" Lulu calls in alarm and warning, and seeks to keep Seymour's focus for the moment.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
THEN:
A statue with a great big horn on it... Tidus visualizes this in his mind and has to fake a cough to mask a laugh. ...He kind of wants to see it now.
But that'll have to wait 'til later.
NOW:
Tidus has of course caught that look Rikku's sent him. The worst part about it is that he doesn't have an answer for her. If only they could beat Auron up and make him cough up some answers... but then again, if he had an answer for *this* particular problem, surely he wouldn't sit on *that*, right? Auron's a jerk, but he's not *evil*. No, trying to rely on him isn't going to get them anywhere. But... Tidus can't think of anything else, same as Rikku.
Maybe in another timeline, the two of them would've fretted about it aloud together. Maybe in this timeline, Tidus would have happily gotten into an argument with Lulu about what the right thing to do right now is. In that timeline and in this, they're instead interrupted by the worst possible person.
'Jecht's son.'
Tidus whirls around, blue eyes widening, at the sound of his least favorite person's voice. The memory of that weird dream they shared does not improve his temper in the slightest.
"Seymour! What're *you* doing here?!" he demands. Seymour naturally goes in instead on Jecht and Tidus's ties to him and Spira. Tidus grits his teeth. Having Seymour's approval super doesn't make him happy. "Gee, thanks... *Jyscal's son*," he bites out as venomously as he possibly can. (Surprisingly venomously, as it turns out.)
Then Seymour gets back on his bullshit. This time it's Kimahri's turn for his dubious favors. For all that it's directed at him, though, Tidus's jaw drops in horror at what he says. "*No*!!" he shouts, infuriated, his sword in hand almost before he realizes it. Lulu beats him to the punch, but that's not going to stop him from joining in on the fight--to give Yuna the chance she needs to get rid of this slimeball once and for all.
Tidus is sick to *death* of Seymour Seymouring at him and his friends.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
THEN
"Yeah?" Paine asks Biran sharply, taking a step forward. It is her experience that Ronso respect strength even in their enemies. She's not so different herself. But she stops before her foot is even quite laid down, and after a moment, settles her weight, glancing alertly between Yuna and Kelk. Her eyes fall slightly when Yuna speaks of giving up her life. It is not something she protests the way some of the others do, but one does not gaze upon grief, whether it is one's own or another's.
When the Ronso allow them their passage, Paine gazes for a few seconds at Yuna's back. Then, letting her rifle drop back at parade rest on her shoulder, she follows the party. Perhaps she treads a little more lightly, the way one does in another's house.
NOW
"Incredible invention," Paine allows, eyes on the blue vial. "But have the Al Bhed considered inventing coats?"
But as the son of Jecht is greeted, Paine freezes, a foot pushing a furrow through the snow as her stance widens. When Seymour reveals himself, Paine does not hesitate to let her rifle swivel around and slap into her forepalm, sighting him down its barrel. This is an entirely different situation than with the Ronso.
The Ronso...
"You," Paine accuses him, for what he did, and for Kimahri. As Lulu opens the combat, Paine rushes to the opposite side of Yuna from Lulu, completing a pair of black bishops flanking the queen. She drops to a knee and skids the last two paces, a small mound of snow rising before her knee, and the moment she halts and the carbine barrel falls into line, she fires, sending a bullet after Lulu's flame.
"Yuna," Paine says curtly. "They did not fight to buy you a chance to stand there."
Even she can't bring herself to say it to Kimahri. Yet the fact remains that she said it near him.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
EARLIER
Rikku gives Kimahri a big pat on Kimahri's back after they're out of sight of the other Ronso. "Hey, you were great you know? You really showed them."
Yuna also was great, though Rikku is quieter about the image of Yuna with a giant horn... it is an image that would make her crack up normally... but the way Summoners earn statues is so engrained into her head that she can't even smile about that one.
NOW
"You bet we were! Last I heard, our research and development teams were looking into Cactuar based insulation. Say - since you're bringing it up, does that mean you'd volunteer for testing? As naturally prickly as you are... you'd make a pret-ty good test subject."
Rikku was still teasing Paine's way when she hears Seymour's address to Tidus, "Am I hearing thing-" Her head turns, and she's instantly alarmed, "-WHOA!"
...
Wary, she takes a few steps forward, getting herself ready for aggression, Seymour's presence is... smothering... but when he calls Tidus that, "He's not the herald of anything! He's just Tidus!"
Though she blanches again as Seymour looks past them. At... Kimahri...
"What... you..."
He killed all of them? Other than Kimahri? Even though some Al Bhed escaped the massacre at Home... Rikku can still believe it in this moment. She knows Seymour is capable of this.
It's so cruel. Kimahri's moment of triumph was still so fresh, and now it's become grief.
"... Kimahri..."
The way she says his name is so plaintive, like she's being forced to welcome him into being a comrade in grief against her will.
Lulu's flames dance out of the corner of her vision, as does Tidus' quick motion, and for now she feels just... sad... for Kimahri.
She wants to take the time to comfort him. Wakka and Lulu and Tidus sure did while she was experiencing one of the worst moment's of her life... yet with Seymour standing right there, she can't.
"... let's get this over with." She says, far too quiet now, as she takes a stand near the others.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"Yes," Seymour tells Kimahri. "Their blood waters Gagazet's stones as we speak. And now... I shall end your misery, too. I shall grant you the mercy that a warrior of your stature deserves!"
Lulu's flame rolls towards him. He throws a hand forward -- and a barrier of ice forms, flame breaking off it and roiling away. Paine's bullet slams into it, cracking the wall of ice. He turns his head, then, towards Yuna. "Ah, so you intend to Send me already. Don't you see? I will free him--of Spira, of both our worlds. Of the endless cycle. As I will free your father!"
He throws both arms out to his side. The ice barrier melts down, and he is untouched by Lulu's flame. "I shall do what is necessary... to shatter this cycle, by becoming Sin!"
He looks at Yuna. "Come with me, Yuna. Together--by making me into Sin--we shall shatter this world and all souls will be free of this hopeless spiral. Your father."
He looks at Tidus. "And his."
Something angry blazes in his pale eyes, as he looks at Tidus -- perhaps being reminded of his father proves, for all that Seymour styles himself a prophet of the death of two worlds, he is still driven by very human (or Guado) angers and failures. He is not the ascended, inhuman creature he would tell the world that he is.
"You would deny him the mercy that I offer?" Seymour asks Tidus. Then, he looks at Paine. He is silent -- regarding her with a modicrum of confusion, still. He doesn't know who she is.
Or why she is here. And yet...
"You choose to stand with them. You choose... to die." He turns, then, and looks back at Rikku. "As do you... if you are so eager... then COME!"
His arms held wide, he starts to scream. Pyreflies swirl around him -- even more dragged into him. With a glow of undulating, prismatic light, his body expands outward. His skin turns a pale, almost grey blue; his body is covered in purple armor, though the waist vanishes below chitin.
What emerges is a horrific monstrosity: something half insect and half profane altar, with Seymour's body merged with it. Two huge blades are mounted in the altar; spines erupt here and there, including two huge pincers. Seymour's head is in the center of it, and he looks down.
"Come... and be FREE!"
He throws both arms out. All across the mountainside, between them, tiny motes of darkness form. They crackle; purple lightning shoots outward, scorching snow and turning it to an ashen shade. Then, they erupt, in horrifying blasts of shadow that burns and chills to the touch at once. It erupts between all of them, Yuna and her Guardians, and leaves the air more chill and the light somehow dimmer.
DC: Seymour Guado switches forms to Seymour Flux!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Multi-Darkra! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Multi-Darkra! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Paine with Multi-Darkra! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Multi-Darkra! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Multi-Darkra! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action. GS: Rikku fully evades Seymour Guado's Multi-Darkra for 0 hit points! GS: Lulu guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Darkra for 97 hit points! GS: Lulu activates Guard bonus! GS: Tidus takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Darkra for 83 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Paine takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Darkra for 239 hit points! GS: Lulu used Defend! She takes Seymour Guado's Multi-Darkra attack on Yuna on herself! GS: CRITICAL! Lulu takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Darkra for 115 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lulu gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna's Guardians assemble to protect her, Lulu first and fiercely. Tidus' venom is an effective reminder that Seymour has no business talking about ANYONE'S father. Rikku's grief for the Ronso is hers also, and she swells with it, painfully. And Paine's words... would also have been hers, if Seymour hadn't shown up.
They did not fight to buy her a chance to turn back.
She nods her agreement with a razor's sharpness, a gesture that Paine might also have shared. "Yes," she agrees quietly.
But she's run out of quiet for the day. That was it, quota reached, thanks to Seymour's rant, his demand, his rant.
She is not beyond shock or horror, but she does her very best to channel them both into rage. Seymour can see that his words have shaken her -- but right now, it's easier to be confused.
"I don't understand you!" she protests. Once upon a time such a statement would stir her empathy, but right now it's all at the bottom of the mountain, bleeding into the heart of the rock. She doesn't understand how Seymour can be so cruel. She doesn't understand why Seymour views death as liberation. And she doesn't understand what the heck he's talking about.
She doesn't have to, as the monstrosity before her -- every time he unfolds himself in this way he is more horrible than before -- unfolds herself. This isn't complicated. It doesn't have to be complicated. Things can still be simple.
She can still lay him to rest, and then move on to her own.
Right?
Bisecting her face with her staff, she begins summoning not an aeon but the even more personal power of her heart. The greater power, one might think, heretically, as motes of purest radiance rise around her like the opposite of pyreflies, swirling, circling, before pouring, plunging, surrounding Paine and Lulu, mending their wounds in her defense almost as quickly as they were wrought.
And so it is that the two dark Guardians come to know Yuna's own feelings -- since that is the way of her healing, a sacred sharing of self. As she counters Seymour's darkness with her light, they feel the usual embrace...
...but with it, her grief for the Ronso, the Al Bhed, and everyone else who's suffered because of her pilgrimage.
Rikku has it right. Let's get this over with.
GS: Yuna has attacked Lulu with Curaga! GS: Yuna has attacked Paine with Curaga! GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Yuna heals Lulu! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Lock State applied to Lulu! GS: Yuna heals Paine! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Lock State applied to Paine!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu is there, immediately. Seymour has a lot to say, but Lulu has less; what she has to say she says in magic. The ice barrier he uses meltds down, leaving him untouched, but she will not let it sway her. No, not yet. She spots the anger...
Purple lightning crackles forward, and Lulu is in motion already--she swings out a hand to bring magical force to partially block some of it even as she charges directly before Yuna to swing into the way. While neither blast hits her head-on, they hit with enough force even so to send her flying backward, hitting the snow and rock and sinking to one knee, her teeth gritted.
"You understand nothing of freedom," Lulu snaps at Seymour, and thinks of a time, not so long ago--of someone trapped in death as Seymour would claim they are all trapped in life. Trapped in suffering. Her fury builds, even as hr fire does. Even as Yuna's magic brings her her feelings and her power both....
Grief. Yes. Over with is right.
"You are an abomination, a thing that should not exist, a phantom cursing the living, and we will see you destroyed!"
Lulu sets down her doll, allowing Mog to step forward and mirror her movements as, suffused with Yuna's power, she uses the time she has to cast. Mist gathers all around her as she tries another tack; the sheer cold of Gagazet floods her environs, and Lulu channels that force forward. Her hands rise above her head, and--
Mist coalesces about Seymour's horrid form, and from within suddenly erupts a great glacial bludgeon hammering out of nothingness to try to envelop and crush Seymour's entire titanic, awful form.
GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Blizzaga! GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lulu assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Seymour Guado critically guards Lulu's Blizzaga for 33 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Lulu!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Tidus does appreciate Rikku's support--he does. He even appreciates Paine's no-nonsense push, sort of. But with Seymour here... well, Rikku's got the right of it in a lot of ways: there's no time for that. It's time to get this over with, instead. All the more so after Seymour's frankly *disgusting* transformation. How does he manage to get *even worse*, every single time??
"Oh, shut up! You don't care about my old man! You just wanna be Sin for yourself and wreck everything that makes you unhappy!" Tidus snaps back, unthinking of the secret he's spilling. "Well, I'm not gonna let you--so you can take your 'mercy' and stuff it! Nobody wants what you're selling!!"
Motes of darkness glitter blackly, then lance out with violet force and turning white to black in an instant. Tidus jumps into a sideways roll, avoiding total obliteration, but that power sears close enough to make his skin crackle. It's deeply unpleasant and VERY painful, like the worst sunburn you've ever had x10. It doesn't even come from the sun! That's BS!!
At their backs, Yuna takes the lead on mending the worst of the damage that Seymour's done--from these past ten seconds, anyway. Tidus's heart surges with love for her, with the knowledge that she'll always defend them just as they defend her--that he doesn't need to worry *too* much about Lulu and Paine after those hits they just took. It provides a much-needed counterbalance for the rage and hatred swelling monstrously in his chest, and gives him some needed clarity. They're not going to win this by just swinging wildly at this creep.
"Hey, Seymour! Here's what I think of YOU!" he shouts, gripping the hilt of his blade as noxious power rings around the swords. He swings it high and then low, and that technique flings itself off of Brotherhood and towards Seymour. If they land, they might make this terrible day a terrible one for Seymour, too.
GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Triple Foul! GS: Tidus has completed his action. GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tidus's Triple Foul for 37 hit points! GS: Disease and Disrupt applied to Seymour Guado! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
The lightning catches Paine before she can even curse, swinging her onto her back as one of her heels kicks up a neat arc of snow behind her. Coughing, Paine crosses her heels deeply and straightens them by flipping her body, pressing her chest into the snow for a moment while tongues of steam rise around her. She groans to herself as she drags one knee up, preparing for an unsteady trip to her feet. Normally that would not seem like a journey.
Yet the necessity of fighting a wounded body is stolen sweetly. Paine unclenches her teeth, her body giving a shiver as injury flees. What is it like to feel relief in body and pain in heart? Paine knows both at once, as though her aches were sinking back into her, like seawater into sand. She lifts her eyes for a moment to the young Summoner, shocked at the depths she feels beneath her paddling feet as she swims in Yuna's magic.
Then, with the metallic clatter of the carbine's action, she focuses in on the angle from which Lulu is NOT hammering at Seymour, and fires, the weapon rocking her shoulder with its recoil. As she chambers the next round, she calls ahead of her.
"Tidus! Don't get reckless!"
Then, at a lower volume to Lulu, "Any advice? I haven't had the pleasure of meeting the good Maester."
GS: Paine has attacked Seymour Guado with Ironsights! GS: Paine has completed her action. GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Paine's Ironsights for 74 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
"Stop." Rikku breathes out a whisper that comes out in a bit of a foggy wisp from her mouth, as Seymour speaks of them denying his mercy to Kimahri.
It's hoarse, barely audible in comparison to the scream of his unholytransfiguration. Rikku's eyes follow his light as he expands into a monstrosity. A baleful creation - more horrific than the last form he took on.
Rikku looks at the Unsent as a horror, suddenly dumbstruck.
A tiny mote of darkness forms, and Rikku looks at it. Then breaks into a run - diving through the arcs of purple lightning, as she lands in a pile of snow that's immediately scorched by it.
For the count of one, two, three, silence. Then an arm bursts out, just up to the elbow, brandishing an object that her visible joint flexes into a sudden extension to pitch it.
In mid-air, it bursts into this cloud of caustic inky blackness around Seymour's form that just clings in this oily layer to whatever it touches. She didn't like the look of those giant blade, those pincers. She's scared of what he might do with them if he gets a clean visual.
Shaking off snow as she recovers, what Tidus says strikes a chord in her, "Wait... Tidus is right isn't he? You're not in this for mercy at all... it's never really been about that to you!"
Still shaking the snow off of her limbs, she takes on an indignant pose as she surveys the rest of the Guardians to check on their state after Yuna's healing before focusing on Seymour anew... "If it was, you wouldn't enjoy hurting everyone who's experienced loss because of you as much as you do."
GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Use: Smoke Grenade! GS: Rikku has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado critically guards Rikku's Use: Smoke Grenade for 31 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Rikku bids that Seymour stop. He does not.
"You do not understand because you do not wish to see!" Seymour calls back to Yuna. "This world... is a terrible thing, ugly and brutal. I have seen that Filgaia is the same... and that those from other continents on our world are the same. They may not have Sin, but they too are trapped in a spiral of misery and death!"
The world is ugly, so become uglier, and highlight that ugliness. Or so the reasoning goes.
One of Seymour's human hands pushes out. A thick, noxious green mist fills the air around Yuna. It is like drowning, to breathe, though it burns terribly -- and bubbles of a vile, verdant fluid even rise up and pop around her. Yuna may well know the sort of spell, from Lulu's own repertoire.
"Freedom comes only when we leave this world!" Seymour answers Lulu. He sees the mist roiling around him, growing more and more chill. A light coating of frost starts to form on the altar stones. Then, it is whisked away -- as his own firestorm swirls up around him. Spell meets spell, flame blasting back ice.
Then, a second spell -- two motes of white, brilliant light appear near Lulu. The expand and explode outward, as brilliant, searing light (though it shouldn't be called holy) explode around the black mage.
He looks up at Tidus, then, the other man's voice carrying across the snow and granite. "What--" And then the rings of power slam into him, encircling him, and sink in. They bind him; he screams, then. "YOU!"
One of those claws sweeps out. A huge, bladed spine on it slams down, lashing across Tidus's midsection with one movement. It moves with stark speed, Seymour unfazed by the utterly inhuman anatomy.
Paine's rifle fires. The machina rifle sends a shot straight into Seymour's carapaced form, where it hits the chitin -- and leaves an ugly crack, then a puff of pyreflies that explode out of the exit wound and float off. The fiction of his monstrous form is made clear with the injury. Seymour turns to look at her. He throws his hand out.
Paine asks for Lulu's advice -- and he turns the same spell he cast at Lulu on Paine. Paine sees -- feels the heat from -- three little motes of white light. They crackle; they glimmer. Then, they expand into brilliant white and gold light, orbs of brilliance that leave afterimages in the vision... and burn if one is too nearby.
"Some gifts must be given with fury!" Seymour answers Rikku. Perhaps he is unwilling to admit to the depths of his anger and that this isn't just about ideals. His eyes turn up, and he spots grenade floating up into the air. Seymour throws a human hand up. Another ball of darkness appears -- intersects it -- and the grenade is absorbed into it. It explodes outward...
...and the grenade is gone, before smoke can explode outward.
Then, Seymour turns his head down towards Rikku. A smile spreads across his face. "Witness," he calls. "Witness how I will destroy... and HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU!"
His hand, gripping a crystalline spear, stabs out -- and that blue spear, ending in a red blade, plunges at Rikku. When it strikes, though, there is something wrong with it. It does not cause pain; it feels warm and invigorating, instead. The Lance of Atrophy's strike brings warmth, but it is the red-hot flush of fever. It is rot; it is decay; it a flush of death, infusing that sensation into Rikku.
And then Seymour raises his other hand.
There are rules with spellcraft in Lunar. The Althenans says that Althena grants her Blessing -- that one either casts Black or White, that they either are Althena's blade or her shield. Yevon teaches that spells either bind wounds and bring mercy -- or that they open wounds and bring a chance for rebirth. Never shall a person have both.
But Seymour is not a person.
He shatters those sacred rules. Whether it is Althena or Yevon, he does the unthinkable -- and the white light that rises up is healing. It purifies... by burning out the very impurity he inflicted upon Rikku.
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Biora! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Multi-Diara! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Spine Thrust! GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Paine with Multi-Diara! GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Lance of Atrophy! GS: Seymour Guado has launched an attack Link! GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Full-Life! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action. GS: Tidus takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Spine Thrust for 118 hit points! GS: Tidus activates Power Burst! GS: Seymour Guado heals Rikku! She gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Rikku fully evades Seymour Guado's Full-Life for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Lulu guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Diara for 85 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lulu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Lulu activates Guard bonus! GS: CRITICAL! Paine takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Diara for 105 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Paine gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Biora for 178 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Yuna! GS: Yuna activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna wonders, at Lulu's snap, if she knows anything of freedom herself. The path has felt so narrow for so long. She does not resent it; but perhaps it is better that her stubborn, independent Guardian be the one to lecture Seymour on this matter. There's no question in her heart that, bar Rikku, Lulu is the freest person she knows. Free to be who she is, free to do what she wants. Her major form of imprisonment is only... Yuna herself.
Tidus seems to confirm what Seymour's implying, and Yuna struggles to focus through the confusion -- Sin is Jecht? People are Sin? He so beautifully and physically (and physically beautifully, though this is an inappropriate tiem for such thoughts) communicates Yuna's feelings through Brotherhood.
Rikku makes an excellent point about empathy. Certainly Yuna herself is driven by loss to do good rather than bad... she nods in open agreement to her cousin's response, which sends her hairbead clattering about her neck.
And Seymour responds. "I wish to see everything!" she vows, and in that moment feels a pang of grief again for how that's never going to happen. There isn't much time left. She frowns through it, instead of smiling, which speaks perhaps to how upset her former fiancee has made her. "Misery and death are everywhere, but so are joy and life--!!"
Maybe she should have focused more on avoiding his SPELL, because she's cut off, choking and gasping on the layers of poison just applied to her. She looks up again just in time to catch Seymour utilizing holy magic in the most hideous way possible. Shell-shock compounds shell-shock.
Into this moment of astonishment, Kimahri plunges his halberd. (Remember him?) He had jumped. And now he's intersecting, blade first, with the Mortibody high above.
GS: Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with L1! GS: Yuna takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's L1 for 61 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
A firestorm consumes Lulu's ice, and then a second spell explodes around her--Lulu closes up her stance and covers her face against the brilliant explosions, letting the magic of her bangle deflect some of the harm but otherwise just having to more or less tank the spell outright.
"Then I hope we can free you soon," Lulu answers Seymour, still smouldering.
"Just be on your guard--he has powerful magic and usually a few dirty tricks," is Lulu's response to Paine's question, though she finds it punctuated by a repetition of that powerful magic. "--Paine!"
If Yuna is a binding, then she is one Lulu treasures. She looks to Yuna, who wishes to see everything--and will not. Because of her own choices. What she wants, and what she will do instead....
Lulu watches Kimahri rush back forward, and moves.
"We aren't interested in your gifts," Lulu assures Seymour, and stares at the magical trickery he has wrought. Rot, decay, and death... marked by purifying light. It's an awful perversion of the gift of magic. And Lulu narrows her eyes.
It is not lost on her--someone is Sin? Jecht is Sin? But this, too, must be set aside for now. Lulu focuses--and decides to change up her tactics.
"You have saved nothing," Lulu says, kneeling down and setting Mog on the snows. The doll toddles onward, rushing on rounded 'feet' towards Seymour, suddenly smoking with strange mystical power. Mog rears back its doll 'arm' and swings, leaping for Seymour to swing at his horrific chitinous form--
And with it brings a power that deadens magic.
"And when we destroy you..."
Still shielded and strengthened by Yuna's magic, Lulu speaks clearly, firmly.
GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Silence Attack! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Lulu's Silence Attack for 103 hit points! GS: Mute applied to Seymour Guado! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
"Yeah, ME! Not 'Jecht's son'! ME! *TIDUS*!" Tidus screams right back. Seymour arguably brings out the worst in him, *reflects* the worst in him--if there's anyone who understands the resentment of being a famous man/bad father's son, it's Seymour, like it or not--but he also exists as a way for Tidus to scream defiance against those worst parts of himself. He knows now, after everything he's learned, that Seymour isn't /entirely/ crazy--that there is a method to his madness. But he also rejects the so-called ideal he presents. Seymour's obsessed with his own pain. That's all there is to it.
Ignorant of the fact that Yuna and Lulu have clued in to the implications about Sin and Jecht (Auron will give him *such* a glower later), Tidus dives to one side to attempt to avoid that bladed spine. It's only partially successful, Seymour's speed matching if not exceeding Tidus's own, in that it slices only a shallow cut instead of slicing him in half. He hisses in pain, but even so, he jerks to one side when that spell of Seymour's slams into Yuna.
"Yuna!!" he calls, calves tensing just before he jumps and cartwheels mid-air to place himself between her and Seymour. He briefly admires her own verbal defiance, that insistence that even this ugly world has enough beauty to make it worthwhile, then snarls over at the horrific Unsent. It's of course not just Yuna, but Rikku, Paine, Lulu, even Kimahri, who rushes in now with his halberd to exact his vengeance.
"Get 'im, Kimahri! I got your back!!" Tidus shouts, concentrating on his own magic to boost his friends in their own movements. Seymour is crazy fast right now, as he's already witnessed. The solution, of course, is to make himself and his friends *even faster*. White light surges around him, and the sensation of a clock speeding forward suffuses Summoner and Guardians alike.
GS: Tidus has attacked Tidus with Hastega! GS: Tidus has attacked Yuna with Hastega! GS: Tidus has attacked Rikku with Hastega! GS: Tidus has attacked Paine with Hastega! GS: Tidus has attacked Lulu with Hastega! GS: Tidus has completed his action. GS: Rikku accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Rikku! GS: Lulu accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Lulu! GS: Yuna accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Yuna! GS: Yuna activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
"Yeah? Well you seem really mad all the time now!"
Rikku retorts at him. He just seems so different to her now than the calm, self-assured Maester ever since he became an Unsent. It's hard for her to really understand how much of this was the Seymour they saw before, and how much is a function of him passing on and becoming this.
And then Seymour turns and smiles at her, and she backpeddles as she squeaks out her response to his offer of salvation. "I don't want it...!" And that's when the Lance plunges down. Certainly she tries to raise her Targe, but the point of the lance slips in and makes contact with her shoulder.
"Aaa-aaa...!"
It's not pain, it's this strange, feverish euphoria. The flush of death seems to infuse her, casting her skin in this sickly pulsing green glow with a haze of dark aura about her.
And then Seymour raises a hand. Rikku of course, expects black magic from him. He has an aptitude for it that seems almost unholy. And so with the strange vigor, she suddenly seems to feint with a twitch of her knees to the left, before suddenly darting right.
The feel though of what's coming, it almost makes her think it was Yuna. It feels like whenever Yuna casts her healing magic, but by some strange instinct she feels danger. Intense danger at that.
Rushing out as the light appears - she feels this radiation of something that can unmake her. Like being close to a furnace, contemplating what would happen if you tipped inside. And as her eyes go wide, Rikku realizes where it came from.
"Oh man!" Her voice lowers, "I really could have died...!"
More than a bit freaked out, she rushes away, Tidus' spell suddenly pushing her strides even further - as she tries not to contemplate whether she's breathing or not. "Holy Water-Holy Water-"
Rikku finally locates a phial. "Oh thank you Wantz - thank you - thank you!"
Rikku unstoppers the phial... and shakes it. Nothing comes out.
-=-=-
Back on the Mount Gagazet trail, Wantz counts his pile of gil.
"I knew bringing a full inventory up on the trail was a good idea... the customers depend on our services, but did he listen? No! 'Why are you bringing Holy Water up sodding Mount Gagazet? Noone will buy off frozen stock!' Pah... who's got the instincts for business now?"
-=-=-
Rikku holds up a fire gem and then unpturns the slushy contents of the phial into her mouth.
"Be... right over-... aha... aha..."
As that feeling of unholy vigor fades, and Rikku takes a deep breath, she issues the deepest sigh of relief.
GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with Holy Water! GS: Rikku has completed her action. GS: Rikku heals Rikku! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"Misery and death have the weight of ancient mountains. Joy and life... are but clouds and wind, Yuna! False things, to distract us from the hopelessness of this world!" Seymour answers her, angrily.
And Kimahri comes forward. He surges through their ranks, and the spear strikes upward. It slams into -- and through -- the chitinous hide of the Mortibody. Out flows pyreflies -- before it yanks back, tearing away from them. Then, it plunges into Seymour. The long, segmented portion that connects to Seymour's Unsent body pulses -- like it drains blood.
It drains of Seymour, nonetheless.
And he grunts, distracted -- letting Lulu send her Mog forward. The doll arm strikes, with a power belying its form. Chitin cracks and breaks -- and there is a shudder through Seymour's body as his grasp upon his magic is made dull, for a few precious moments. "You... I have saved many of you! I saved Father Zuke--the Ronso--and shall save you ALL!"
Seymour turns his head, looking to Tidus -- to where he's placed himself between him and Yuna. "I will end this quickly, then!"
He glances back at Rikku then. He seems that she has avoided his spell; he expected to find a corpse. He did not. He snarls, and then both of the large, clawed hands reach up over his body's shoulders. Two huge blades are drawn free; something between katana and cleaver, single-edged and wide, and with some splotches of rust and ruin on them. These, too, are made through his transformation.
Like it, they are quite real and quite sharp.
The right blade swings out. It lashes across the lot of them, leaving a red gash through the air that takes a moment too long to fade.
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seymour Guado with Mortibsorption! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado accepts Seymour Guado's Mortibsorption for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State and Poison applied to Seymour Guado! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seymour Guado with Seymour Watches... and Waits! GS: Seymour Guado assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Seymour Guado accepts Seymour Guado's Seymour Watches... and Waits for 0 hit points! Disease prevents the heal! GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado! GS: Mighty applied to Seymour Guado! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Blade Lash! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Blade Lash! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Blade Lash! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Blade Lash! GS: Seymour Guado takes 26 damage from Poison! GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action. GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Blade Lash for 200 hit points! GS: Rikku enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lulu takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Blade Lash for 100 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lulu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Tidus used Defend! He takes Seymour Guado's Blade Lash attack on Yuna on himself! GS: Tidus accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Tidus! GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Tidus takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Blade Lash for 104 hit points! GS: Tidus activates Evade bonus and Power Burst! GS: Tidus takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Blade Lash for 68 hit points! GS: Tidus activates Evade bonus and Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Tidus is so focused on casting his own magic that it takes him a moment to register what Seymour just did, magically speaking. People who have Althena's Blessing (though it's really *weird* to think of it in those terms when Spira and Althena's Guard were at war not too long ago) are supposed to be able to heal or hurt, not both. Seymour meanwhile did something exceedingly horrible to Rikku, and then tried to take her out with purifying magic. It's so unexpected that he honestly doesn't understand what he just saw until crucial seconds after the fact.
Good thing Rikku's got that Holy Water. Tidus breathes a belated sigh of relief when he realizes that she's safe from the immediate danger she was in. ...Trying to drink slushy Holy Water must have been heart-stopping, though. If in fact her heart was even beating in that moment.
Seymour meanwhile continues not so much spouting as vomiting his rhetoric. Tidus's sigh of relief changes into a sigh of disgust as his upper lip curls. "It's a waste of time even trying to talk to him," he grouses. He stands at the ready, blade held protectively in front of himself and Yuna as Seymour bares those massive blades of his own. When they swipe forward, Tidus leaps *towards* them in an attempt to kick off them and deflect them away. It works and it doesn't. His efforts ensure that neither of them come anywhere near Yuna. They also ensure that they slash across *him* very painfully, slicing open more cuts of bright scarlet.
"Ungh!!" he grunts as he lands, sneakers digging into loose rock before he drops to one knee. He shoots a glance over his shoulder at Yuna and smiles--warm, sincere, tender--when he sees her. It doesn't just have to be because she's all right, or at least not any worse off than before. It's just because he's looking at *her*. Yuna will see that for herself when their eyes fleetingly meet.
But as ever, Seymour's still an issue. Lulu has the right of it: them destroying him is a matter of *when*. They have to make it a matter of 'when.' And if time is what counts here, then Tidus has plenty more tricks left. "We'll end this quickly, all right!" he calls, another technique buzzing around the blade of Brotherhood as he darts forward and raises it. When he slices downwards, Seymour might feel his actions become momentarily more sluggish, even through his horrible Unsent transformed body.
GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Delay Buster! GS: Tidus has completed his action. GS: Seymour Guado critically guards Tidus's Delay Buster for 23 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Lulu is steadfast, Rikku impossibly quick, and Tidus increasingly upset -- until the sight of Yuna herself seems to calm him. He calms her also, but there's a floor to that, and everyone's suffering is it. He and her other Guardians defend her so completely that not a hair on her head is moved from that terrifying bladestrike. But something else in her is moved instead, of course.
White magic is surging within her. Everyone's seen it before -- everyone, Seymour included, has been the BENEFICIARY of what happens when Yuna's whole heart goes into something, someone. But this is a greater expression, somehow, a nuclear reaction of radiance, which explodes outwards in a shockwave to engulf all of them.
But she doesn't look at her loved ones, as her strength becomes their strength. She looks at Seymour, dead on, into the horror that he is, unflinching.
Now, maybe, she DOES understand. Because his angry protests have a certain familiar ring to them -- that of someone who protests TOO MUCH. She can't blame him for protesting TO HER; she is, after all, responsible for his condition.
But she chides him anyway, if a chiding is a staunch warning, as deadly as Tidus' blade, Lulu's magic, Rikku's creativity.
"You can't run from your fate."
And once again her summoner's rod bisects her face...
GS: Yuna spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Yuna has attacked Tidus with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Lulu with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Rikku with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Faith! GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo! GS: Yuna takes 27 damage from Poison! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Yuna heals Yuna! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Poison removed! GS: Yuna activates Yuna's Reload!! GS: Yuna heals Lulu! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Lulu activates Yuna's Reload!! GS: Yuna heals Rikku! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Rikku activates Yuna's Reload!! GS: Yuna heals Tidus! He gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Tidus activates Yuna's Reload!! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Tidus receives 50 temporary hit points. GS: Tidus enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu rises back up as she reclaims Mog, her red eyes locked in sudden fury on Seymour as he brings up a particular sin of his that she has neither forgotten nor forgiven. "Your 'salvation' is worse than worthless!"
The huge blades that crash free lash across her, even as Lulu sweeps out of the way and nevertheless is hit by the afterimage of the blade, the red line that carves through the air.
It must be a matter of when. Lulu feels Yuna's power flooding through her again, and steadfast is what she has to remain. But Tidus has the right of it--words are not what will defeat Seymour. Lulu lifts her shoulders again and raises up her hands. Mog moves with her on the ground, adopting a wide stance as Lulu does, as she begins to channel power again. She only has the Black side of magic, but she has it like few have seen before. The temperature around her Seymour drops again as her anger boosts her ability. She has no quip this time, no offering of words to go with her magic.
Instead, she simply finishes the spell, and the first of a great many bursts of flame erupts before Seymour. Ice and snow flash melt into rounded shapes under the force of the first fireball, and then the second, the third--Lulu starts advancing with her spells this time, casting over and over to try to batter Seymour down.
She thinks of Zuke. She thinks of Ginnem. She thinks of Yuna.
And she puts all of that into these spells.
GS: Lulu has activated a Force Action! GS: Lulu spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Formation! Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Firaga! GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lulu has launched an attack Link! GS: Lulu spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with F U R Y! GS: Lulu has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Lulu's Firaga for 234 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer! GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Lulu's F U R Y for 261 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Seymour withdraws a wicked Katana and Cleaver, and Rikku looks at it nervously. As he draws it across, Rikku is just a split second too slow, taking a long slash across her abdomen from the blade tip. The impact spinning her around and knocking her to the ground with an awful gasp as the air leaves her lungs.
Which is why it's a fortunate thing, that Yuna's white magic comes. This time when she feels white magic. It's a welcome thing - Yunie's conviction feels like a warm hug to her. A warm hug that immediately seems to ease the worst of those cuts.
"We don't want it! We don't want to be saved by you! Maybe if you had actually started looking for these 'distractions' then you would have changed your mind-! Most of us like living and looking forward to what comes next!"
Rikku suddenly leans over, her hands a blur as an aura of intensity surrounds her, as she improvises everything she can into creating an improvised explosive. Putting whatever she can get her hands on through her bags into the casing. Poison Fangs as Shrapnel. Silence Grenades.
Cobbling it altogether into one grandiose creation, which clicks into place in her hand, as she faces down the horror that Seymour's become.
Her voice softens audibly.
"... Keyakku sure did..."
Whatever she's feeling when she says it, it doesn't stop her from tossing a portable War Crime in her hand at Seymour. It detonates into a chain of explosions that she attempts to have ravage his Unsent form with caustic smoke - and awful shrapnel.
GS: Rikku spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with Overdrive: Mix! ! GS: Rikku has launched an attack Link! GS: Rikku enters the Avenger stance! GS: Rikku accepts Rikku's Overdrive: Mix! for 0 hit points! GS: Amplify and Hyper applied to Rikku! GS: Rikku has activated a Force Action! GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Rikku-Grade BOOM!! GS: Rikku has completed her action. GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Rikku's Rikku-Grade BOOM! for 129 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
There is a growl of frustration from Seymour's throat. So human, that; it seems that not being able to strike Yuna down has struck home with him.
Seymour still has those two enormous blades drawn. One swings up -- and Brotherhood strikes it, blades meeting with a flash of sparks between Seymour's and Tidus's faces. His face screws up into a grin. "My time... is not yet up! I have much to do--much to show this world!"
His head turns to look at the summoner, a wary glance at how her rod is held.
"I deny that fate, Yuna," Seymour says through gritted teeth. Seymour seems about to say more, but Lulu's storm of sorcery is upon him.
Fire rains down, one after another, blasts of flame pouring down into the Unsent. They slam into his body; unnatural flesh doesn't burn or bleed, but instead sloughs off in waves of pyreflies.
Rikku's improvised explosive flies -- and then it explodes, too, a chain of explosions born of alchemy instead of spells. They ripple across him, even as he crosses both set of arms to shield himself as best he can. In the aftermath, pyreflies waft from his form like trails of smoke from a desolate wasteland.
Seymour roars out: "ENOUGH!"
Both of those huge swords lift, this time. They gleam in the few rays of sun breaking through the cloud cover; they gleam in the light of the reflected snow. And then both lash out, slashing in a X-shape -- and leaving rocks split, snow cut, and striking at Guardian and Summoner alike.
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Cross Cleave! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Cross Cleave! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Cross Cleave! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Cross Cleave! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado takes 26 damage from Poison! GS: Disease and Disrupt expired! GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action. GS: Lulu takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Cross Cleave for 104 hit points! GS: Rikku critically guards Seymour Guado's Cross Cleave for 39 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Tidus takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Cross Cleave for 277 hit points! GS: Tidus activates Power Burst! GS: Rikku used Defend! She takes Seymour Guado's Cross Cleave attack on Yuna on herself! GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Cross Cleave for 198 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Sparks fly as blades clash, and Tidus gets a brief up-close-and-personal look at this thing that Seymour has made himself into. As Lulu's fireballs and Rikku's grenade sail it, he shoves himself away and does a backwards roll to get out of the way just in time. When he rises, he feels the healing energy that radiates from Yuna seep into him, like high-grade tea seeping into perfectly hot water, infusing into something warm and relaxing and perfect. He doesn't even need to look at Yuna, though he does anyway, his affectionate smile returning.
Then Seymour slashes forward with his sword arms, cleaving through ice and rock and Guardian alike. Tidus, momentarily distracted, is *flung* into the middle distance, landing hard on crunchy snow and bleeding quite thoroughly into it. It's such a forceful blow that it's like Yuna's healing had never happened at all--though it's good that it did, because otherwise Tidus might be dead right now.
He groans after a moment, struggling to his feet, stabbing Brotherhood into the dirt to help pull himself up to his feet. Breathing heavily, blood partially obscuring his vision, he grits his teeth in anger. He doesn't have a lot left in him, can feel his consciousness ebb and flow--so he'd better make his next move count.
"You're full of crap," is all he says, tone flat, before he leans down and launches himself forward into a sprint, slashing on one side of the hideous creature, skidding to a halt, launching himself at an angle to slash again from a different direction, skidding to a halt and launching in another direction for another differently-angled attack, over and over until finally he skids to a stop and stays there, panting from the exertion.
GS: Tidus spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Slice and Dice! GS: Tidus has launched an attack Link! GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Quick Hit! GS: Tidus has completed his action. GS: Seymour Guado critically guards Tidus's Slice and Dice for 40 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer! GS: Seymour Guado critically guards Tidus's Quick Hit for 26 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed. <SoundTracker> Apres Moi - Redux - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbeHq1CLqJ8
Yuna doesn't like violence, but she is warmed by Lulu and Rikku's firestorms all the same; she steps up, into the melted circle those explosions have created. Her booted feet walk out onto the tiniest layer of water there, that hasn't yet had time to refreeze, and they make no ripples.
She spins. Her pink-trimmed white cloak billows around her, then her raiment revealed beneath, sleeves and skirts alike. It is cold on Mt. Gagazet but Yuna embraces it, swallowing the clouds her breath creates almost as quickly as they're formed. Her arms spread wide. Her staff twirls.
Rikku takes those terrible cross strikes for her, and she dances for her cousin, she dances for Keyakku. She dances for the Ronso and the Al Bhed and the Baskar, for the Drifters captured at their false wedding, for everyone who ever got hurt, got killed, in the line of defense of her journey.
She dances for Seymour.
"Enough," she agrees simply, mid-step.
Frost forms on her eyelashes. She blinks, and it falls away, the tiniest, most delicate mini-snowfall.
But instead of hitting the ground, they hit one another, and when they collide they expand, massively, even as a Yevonite summoning rune freezes itself across the water.
This is a different mountain range; Macalania is not Gagazet.
But Shiva is at home all the same.
And there's power in her stare, agency; that of the reaper, of Seymour's executioner, who Yuna has brought back both in defiance of his ability to Banish her, as he did on Filgaia, and as a reminder of how they got here in the first place. They own it together, Yuna and Shiva, Seymour's fate.
If he's not careful, it will freeze him to the core.
And whatever Shiva freezes... can be shattered.
DC: You switch forms to Shiva! DC: Yuna switches forms to Shiva!
GS: Yuna spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with Glacial Shards! GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's Glacial Shards for 141 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
'ENOUGH!'
Seymour says, and he's so doggedly tried to take Yuna down again, and again, and again that she doesn't even need to see it coming for her, to know it can. Leaping in the way, one blade trail slashes into her Targe - which seems so small right now.
It seems so small because it only catches one of the slashes.
The other one plows into her, sending her sprawling.
It hurts. It hurts, but she forces herself to hurry back to her feet, trying to feign that she's fine, "Y-You're gonna have to do better than that-!"
It's a challenge she instantly regrets, because... she knows he can, and she realllyyy doesn't want him mad at her, but better focused on her than Yuna.
It doesn't stop her from stealing a look back at Yuna, while holding her side, and smiling her way.
Rikku suddenly hunches over again trying to not show her injured side Yuna's way right now, as she combines her knick nacks together. A Fire Gem. A Sphere. She sets the pyreflies within aglow, an eerie burnt orange light.
The act of Summoning is so impressive up close... as she sees Shiva, in all of her glory again. It takes her breath away in a way the cold mountain air can't.
"Anyways - I know you want so badly to show the world something - but I wanna go first-!"
Rikku lobs the cobbled together sphere Seymour's way, which glows hotter, and hotter - and brighter.
"Have a round of Rikku's surprise!"
When the sphere detonates - it covers his form in flame. Again. And again. And again.
Nine bursts of flame chain together to create a firestorm that try to consume Seymour in the awful heat of her alchemical fire.
GS: Rikku spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise!! GS: Rikku has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Keyakku did. Zuke did. So many did. So many whose lives Seymour cut short. And Lulu will not see more cut short today.
"This world will be better for being rid of you," Lulu assures their foe as her spells fade, as Rikku's explosive flies. But Seymour roars, and counterattacks. The blades glint, and Lulu dances back, quick on her feet, though it is not her speed but Yuna's power suffusing her that shields her from harm. She hits the ground on one knee some distance away, eyes still on Seymour for the moment, focused. Her fury is not yet spent.
...Not as she once more sees that familiar Aeon, the one so like her first Summoner's, and yet so different, as Yuna is different. Yuna dances...
Shiva comes, and Lulu does not smile, but she looks upon the Aeon for a moment. Just a moment. And then, she knows what she has to do. She draws up again, and draws out even more magic than she has before, pulling on power that would have been overwhelming at the beginning of this journey, when for so long she had let her talent lie. Not so now; she draws on the chill Shiva gives off, on the storm in the very air of Gagazet, and extends one hand towards Seymour.
"Enough," she agrees with Yuna, and into the firestorm RIkku has unleashed Lulu directs a sudden clap of thunder--and a terrible lightning bolt that cracks down from above, blindingly bright.
GS: Lulu has activated a Force Action! GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Thundaga! GS: Lulu has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Gamble: High! Seymour Guado critically guards Rikku's Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise! for 50 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer! GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lulu's Thundaga for 117 hit points! GS: Disrupt and Jam applied to Seymour Guado! GS: Seymour Guado activates Sufferer! GS: Seymour Guado enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Mute and Poison expired! GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"I see... not yet fallen. Your father's strength was passed onto you, wasn't it?" Seymour asks Tidus, as he forces himself to his feet. He lunges in -- and both spines and blades parry each slash. Blades and chitin meet, sparks flying, and a rain of them fall down onto the ice and granite.
Seymour looks up -- Yuna's word makes him agree -- and then he gasps, sharply, at seeing Shiva. There is some mimicry of a remembered fear reaction; a chill in a gut he doesn't have. He throws a hand out. Ice slams down into him, as light explodes off his hand. Ice rips and pierces through him, stone altar cracking apart and burst into pyreflies. Flesh tears, then turns to prismatic light.
"No!" Seymour shouts, raggedly. "No... not again! I will not--"
Down comes the sphere that Rikku throws. It explodes, into a chain of reactions, fire ripping across him. Then, the lightning Lulu summons strikes. Together, they explode into sparks and flame.
Pyreflies erupt upward, by the hundreds. The thousands.
And Seymour falls back over the precipice. He plunges down, with a shout -- and then vanishes from sight as he hits the mists, thousands of feet below.
And then it falls silent.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
'Your father's strength was passed onto you, wasn't it?'
"Now you're just being obnoxious on purpose," Tidus sneers--but even though his contempt, it's a little bit of a joke. Seymour's *always* been obnoxious on purpose, after all.
And while Tidus might not have recreated that moment where he sliced Seymour's arm in half (a shock for both of them at the time), Shiva rises in her frozen glory to strike Seymour down once and for all. Tidus, having served his purpose, leaps back to give Lulu and Rikku room to finish the Unsent off in a paired explosion.
It's a beautiful sight. Pyreflies always have been beautiful, which has always made combat against fiends and Unsent an emotionally mixed business. Right now, Tidus can appreciate it fully as they explode away from Seymour--all the lives he's devoured to make himself stronger, to try to claw himself towards being strong enough to literally end the world--and send him falling down a frozen precipice until he's gone from sight.
Tidus pants a moment longer. Then he limps over to the edge, leans over, and yells, "AND *STAY* DOWN!!"
Then he hobbles over to Yuna and the others with a smile--a grim and bloodied smile, but a smile all the same. "Guess... we'd better take five, huh?"
After all, they don't just need to heal physically from the battle. They also need a moment of silence for Kimahri's people.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna joins Tidus and the others at the edge of the precipice to watch Seymour's explosive departure.
Then she turns her back on it, but not before holding Kimahri's shaking hand for a long moment. His quivers shake her, or maybe vice versa, or maybe it's just one long loop of sorrow.
Lifting her head, she gazes at the immediate past, replaying what was said.
"He will become Sin...with my help."
A blue gear and a green gear spin slowly, silently, inside her pretty face.
Auron stumps over from a snowdrift he was knocked into recently and tries to interrupt their rotation. "Lies. Forget them," he snaps with absolute firmness.
But Yuna's gaze is growing more focused, not less, and since he invited it, it's DIRECTLY on him.
"When he becomes Sin," she repeats, "Sir Jecht will be saved."
"We're leaving," barks Auron. But he doesn't move, and neither does Yuna, who -- for the first time in a long time, maybe ever -- raises her voice at her most Legendary Guardian.
"You know something!" she cries. "Tell me!"
Stony silence is Auron's response, and after it's clear that no more will be forthcoming, she shakes her head again with more of that bead-clattering noise, and turns to Tidus instead. She brings the full force of her expression upon her beloved boyfriend instead: all the frustration, the confusion, the worry, especially for Tidus himself.
"Tell me," she begs him, not with gears in her eyes anymore but with pools, twin pools of love and of loss. "Please."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu looks down into the chasm, where Seymour falls. Tidus's sneer is fair enough, but as he shouts down, Lulu does not feel the catharsis of doing the same. Her fury banks, for now, but does not abate.
"...For now," she says, and turns to look at the others. Hobbling, moving carefully... and then...
She looks upon Kimahri. She watches Yuna and Auron. She wonders. What does it mean? 'Become' Sin? Save Sir Jecht?
Lulu does not watch Yuna's frustration and confusion for long. She watches Auron for a long few moments, instead.
Then she looks, in silence, out to the snow again.
There is too much to say, and too little, at the same time. Lulu cannot demand answers in the same way, just now.
"..."
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku almost says that Seymour is always obnoxious on purpose but she understands that Tidus is making a joke.
In the end, all she feels as Seymour falls over the cliff is... intense relief, it floods her body, making her feel briefly weak-kneed.
"Yeah... five sounds nice."
She agrees.
"Maybe even ten."
Though... Yuna starts to repeat things, and Rikku turns to look at her, puzzled. One could often accuse Rikku of not thinking, but it's more her getting swept up in the moment.
And part of her just wanted to believe... Seymour is crazy.
It's easier to think that, of a guy who says he wants to be Sin.
But... Rikku at a loss, tries to follow...
"But..."
... her appeal to Auron. Then to Tidus.
And she realizes in this moment, she's the last person who should be asking Tidus anything, given what they all couldn't say before...
Now though, seeing the tears in Yuna's eyes...
... the look she gives Tidus perhaps equates to 'Please tell her.'
Even if she can't bring herself to say those words...
... and even though she's terrified of what answers they might receive...
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
That smile was never going to last long--not with the reality of what's happened at the foot of Mt. Gagazet looming over them. It lasts a little longer than expected thanks to Rikku, and Tidus's eyes crinkle at her as they both feel relief that this battle's over; it fades a little at Lulu's grim reminder that Seymour will probably be back all the same. Yuna technically didn't Send him, after all.
But when Yuna repeats what Seymour had said about Sin, Tidus stiffens, his expression wiping clean. He glances over at Auron as the Legendary Guardian attempts to take control of the situation, but... it's clear that there's no hiding this from Yuna anymore.
For a moment, guilt washes over him. He'd been so upset when he'd learned the truth of the Summoners, not just by the truth itself but the knowledge that his friends had kept it from him. It might have been at Auron's behest, but he's been keeping a terrible truth from them too. So while he might remain silent as Summoner and Guardian battle wills, when Yuna finally faces him... he blinks once, expression dismayed. He doesn't need to look around to feel the weight of Lulu's own stare, of Rikku's, of Kimahri's and Wakka's and Paine's and *not* Auron's--but then, Auron was the one who told him in the first place. He's been keeping this secret for--what? Ten years? Who knows how long?
As for Tidus, he can't keep this particular secret any longer.
"Sin is... my old man. Sin is Jecht," he admits reluctantly, meeting Yuna's eyes and reflecting the love and loss within them. Though he keeps his gaze on her, this explanation is for everyone present, and while his voice lowers, it's still loud enough for everyone to hear clearly. "I don't know how or why it happened, but it's true. On the beach at Mi'ihen, after the battle at Macalania, off the shore of Bikanel... I felt him inside of... of *that*. Though it took me a while to accept it."
He hangs his head in palpable shame. "I'm sorry," he murmurs--not just for keeping this from her and everyone, but for all the death--all the destruction, all the anger and sorrow and loss--that Sin, *his father*, has inflicted on this world.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna feels the warmth of Lulu and Rikku's presences -- much more than just their body heat -- as they join the cluster around Tidus.
She feels nothing from Auron. He just feels cold.
But from Tidus himself... it's so much. His dismay, his guilt, his shame.
That, at least, is a wound that perhaps she can heal.
"No," she insists, urgently, wrapping one of his hands in both of hers. "No. This is not your fault. NONE of this is your fault."
Bold words from the girl who strives to shoulder the sins of the world, but she means every last one of them.
Trouble is on the horizon of her face, though, as the full implications slowly fill her; she their little vessel, and they themselves quite large. Tidus can feel her grow uncomfortable straight through her palms, which clench with her own round of dismay, not just his.
"But, you know... even though Sin is your father, I have to... I must..."
It is the closest anyone but Tidus himself has ever come to hearing her waver from her path to defeat and destroy Sin. No wonder Seymour didn't want them to date, and Rikku did.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu does not belabor that reminder; she says it the once, and that is all, and then she is there. She does watch Tidus; and his admission...
"He is..."
Lulu does not doubt Tidus's words, despite their plain impossibility. It is not something that could be true, and yet, it is clearly true. Auron's silence confirms it, if nothing else. And so she looks to Tidus, again, watching his face, seeing his shame and his explanation....
Hearing Yuna. Lulu's attention goes to her, for now, though there is no demand in her expression.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
"Wait... what? Huh?"
Rikku would like to believe that Tidus is just... mistaken... when he says that. That he's under some misconception.
That he hit his head! She thought as much the first time they met - then as he told her everything he went through, that he'd just been exposed to the Toxin.
It's the simplest explanation.
But after everything they've been through, she just can't accept the simplest explanation anymore. Too many strange things are happening, too many things are lining up.
And suddenly Seymour doesn't seem so crazy anymore. Even if he's killed so many people. Even if he was behind so many of her own people dying.
Maybe... there's some truth shaping him.
Some shared truth.
Rikku takes a deep breath, and lets Yuna speak how she feels...
There's something there in her words. That... it reminds her of a moment the two shared themselves in the Calm Lands.
And for just a moment... Rikku finds herself holding her breath, closing her eyes and hoping against hope.
When she expels it though... something has changed, but maybe nothing has changed.
Still though, for the moment, she doesn't say anything else... her once again open eyes moving between him and Yuna as if uncertain of... what happens next.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Tidus hangs his head, and almost immediately, Yuna takes one of his hands in both of hers and grips it, as if she could infuse as much reassurance through her palms as she does through her words. He looks up, lips parted, but unable to speak for a moment. He can feel her discomfort; can feel her agony. Auron had been right, he reflects suddenly; if Yuna had known this truth sooner, known it before they'd admitted their feelings for one another and become a couple, it probably would have made her distance herself from him. For that much, however selfish it is, Tidus can be glad he left it in silence until now.
He can feel her hesitation, too. Maybe if he pressed--if they all pressed--they could convince her to give up her pilgrimage after all. Lulu seems to believe him, for all her surprise; Rikku takes a moment longer, lost in her bafflement; but both of them would support him. If he did try to talk Yuna down.
But if her reason for quitting were because of Jecht being Sin, then--
"It's okay," he reassures Yuna quietly, raising his other hand and pressing it over hers. "I know. Let's get him. I think..."
He remembers the vision of Zanarkand he'd felt from him. The way Sin--Jecht--had listened peacefully to the Hymn of the Fayth of Leviathan. However Jecht became Sin...
"...I think my old man would want that."