2021-07-24: Apostasy

• Log: Apostasy
• Cast: Yuna, Sheriff Star, Lulu, Rikku, Tidus, Yunalesca, Xenobia
• Where: Zanarkand Ruins
• Date: July 24, 2021
• Summary: Yuna and her Guardians commit the ultimate apostasy in the halls of Zanarkand. The warped tradition of the Final Aeon is ended forever.

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=============================<* Zanarkand Ruins *>==============================

Zanarkand was once a thriving metropolis on the northernmost point of Spira - now it is a testament to the folly of a people long since dead. It is also the source of Spira's only hope.

The ruins of Zanarkand are thousands of years old, yet much of the crumbling infrastructure still stands, laid out in an unusual, enduring stone. Pyreflies flock to the location, lighting up the area and dancing among the shallow waves. The greatest concentration can be found in the heart of the ruins, in a giant dome - the pyreflies are so strong there that the entire area is almost like a sphere. Memories thought buried can resurface, given voice and physical form, only to vanish a few moments later.

At the centre of the dome is said to lie the end of a Summoner's Pilgrimage - the means to obtain Final Aeon and slay Sin. 

BGM: Final Fantasy X - To Zanarkand

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

It has been, to say the least, a harrowing journey. The summoner's pilgrimage had a rather disturbing interruption -- sent into the mechanical city underneath Zanarkand, they had to climb out of New Kasim City... and then there was a final Cloister of Trials.

And now, gathered in a room at the end of that trial, there is one thing left. An elevator, which descends downward -- into the darkness. It is not a darkness of steel and forgotten city, built in a Spira before Sin. Before Yevon. This place is undeniably of Yevon -- a place of stone, stained by water and floods over the years. A place with cracks in the walls, and with Yevonite runes inscribed into the walls.

A place that is, even if so few eyes have seen it, undeniably of Yevon.

The Hall of the Final Summoning. The end of the pilgrimage.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna's last word, before she disappeared down the lift to the Hall of the Final Summoning, had been "yes."

It's hard to think of a more appropriate word. A more YUNAN word. That's just so perfect an encapsulation of who she is, isn't she? People ask of Yuna, and Yuna says yes. The world asks of Yuna, and Yuna says yes.

"Go," Auron had encouraged her.

"Yes," she'd said -- and bowed, that too perfectly herself in the moment -- and vanished.

But she comes back much too quickly, the ancient machina rumble presaging her arrival. "Sir Auron! Everyone!"

There's an urgency in her voice, undiluted dismay and confusion -- that is very, very unlike the increasing stillness she's shown, as she's shrouded and shrouded and shrouded herself in layers of resolve. It's how she endured the sights of past summoners, High and otherwise, including her onetime fiance and her own father. These pyrefly-born visions seemed to only strengthen her. Everything has strengthened her, from the moment she set foot on Mt. Gagazet; monsters and mayhem alike. Even when she had to force herself to turn Rikku down... who she was, afterwards, was stronger for the doing.

But now, for the first time in a long time -- she is truly at a loss.

Beckoning everyone on board, she hastens them into the Hall, and directs their attention to the stone carving embedded in the floor.

It is distinctly not aglow, as all visitors to Bahamut and Yojimbo's chambers (...caves...), and all saviors of Leviathan, might recall.

"This isn't a fayth," she says aloud, to herself as much to the others. Every word drips from her lips not like ice, but like glass. After everything she's gone through to get here, to not find what she expects... what a shock she must be going through. "It's just an empty statue."

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

The city was... many things. A ruin below a ruin, and perhaps some of Zanarkand's holiness rubbed off on the other; Lulu regarded it with care, perhaps even reverence. But she's been quiet overall; quiet before that, too, amidst the strange visions of former Summoners and Guardians both.

Her analytical mind is very useful when they have to deal with a lot of

  []
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and

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And other things too. They did finish eventually.

But Yuna said 'Yes' again. And then suddenly--the machina rumbles back up and Lulu looks with a blink to see Yuna there, in confusion, in dismay, in things she hasn't been showing. So of course Lulu steps forward immediately.

And once they're there...

"It's..."

Lulu stares at the statue. What a shock, indeed. Lulu too is shocked, to see it as it shouldn't be.

"Then what...?"

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
There were moments in the journey when Rikku considered kidnapping Yuna again. They were not serious enough to actually consider putting plan into action. She respects her far too much to actually entertain them in any actual capacity. Still though, the impulse is there. It's real. It's strong.
 
She doesn't want that moment to be a goodbye - to someone special. Someone who was in her life for far too short a time.
 
It's always been a selfish impulse, but then again, that's what she asks of Yuna too. Every single time she tries to tell her to turn back.
 
She feels stronger for rejecting those impulses, but still they're real. They're true.
 
Right now for example, watching Yuna go down that lift into the Hall of the Final Summoning?
 
It's incredibly strong, for that moment, as she feels something well up in her throat. It was strong upon seeing the visions of Past Summoners who walked this path.
 
And then she comes back. "Yunie?" Rikku says as her pose relaxes, a sense of relief and confusion about her... as she then sprints forward to the elevator to follow.
 
Upon arrival...
 
Yuna's words prompt a near immediate response as Rikku stares at the empty statue. "Wait... you mean... there's no Final Aeon!?"
 
Rikku says with a sense of incredulity, and a sort of nascent relief - like she doesn't dare to hope that this means anything positive. Her eyes darting from Yuna - to Lulu - as if seeking answers from the two of them that would know the subject best... before her eyes slowly move over ultimately to Auron, as if deciding that maybe that initial impulse is no longer true.
 

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    'I wanted to change the world too. But I changed nothing. That is my story.'
    
    Combined with the final approach on Zanarkand, the battle with Odessa and Solaris, and the climb up to the Cloister of Trials to the Hall of the Final Summoning within, Tidus is having a pretty miserable time right now. It's heart-wrenching to look at the woman he loves and know he's walking with her to her death with no more of a solution to save her than when he learned the truth and resolved to keep her from dying. He honestly thinks he understands Auron's feelings a lot better now. Honestly, it astounds him that the man would ever go on another pilgrimage as a Guardian again.
    
    Which isn't to say that Tidus has given up hope. Yuna hasn't summoned the Final Aeon *yet*. Maybe there's something still--something in these ancient halls, something in the Chamber of the Fayth, that'll give them a clue--something that will turn everything around--
    
    He's clenching and unclenching his fists when Yuna goes down into the elevator. He blinks rapidly when she returns an instant later, flustered in a way he hasn't seen in ages, declaring that--
    
    "What's wrong?" he wonders, then follows her with everyone into the elevator. When they all descend, it's apparent what the issue is. Yuna confirms it, and Tidus gawks. He can't lie: part of him is relieved, wondering if this means the problem's been solved for him. The rest of him is worried, wondering if this means that Sin--his old man--can't be put the rest for good after all. The rest of him, like Lulu and Rikku, is just confused.
    
    "It's not supposed to be like this, right? How'd it end up like this, anyway?" he wonders. A beat later, and he whirls on the others. "Wait--d'you guys think this might be a fake?! Like, someone stole the real fayth, like with Yojimbo, and replaced it with this statue to fake out anybody who, I don't know, dropped in to check on it?"
    
    It sounds stupid when he says it aloud. But maybe there's a seed of sense in there? Or maybe he's totally off-base. Tidus really has no idea.

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

"That statue lost its power..."

It is a voice that breaks through their confusion, coming from a portal in the wall. A quite literal portal, as there is a flash of blue light -- and then a figure steps through. Clad in ancient Yevonite robes, she is a tall woman; the robes are flowing and conceal much of her form, with intricate wovern cords. The reds, whites, and blacks do not quite match the common cut.

Her blonde hair and red eyes look about, thoughtfully; at the corners of her eyes are purple tattoos, highlighting them. She looks over them all in turn, before her eyes settle on Yuna. "...as a fayth long ago. It is Lord Zaon, the first fayth of the Final Summoning." She bows her head, and yet it isn't as respectful as it should be. "What you see... that's all that remains. Hm, hm... I fear his soul is gone."

She bows her head head, once. "I shall show you to Lady Yunalesca. I am her humble retainer, even now..." And there is a smile. "...Xenobia, you may call me."

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50StR0HVWcQ

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Lulu is shocked, Rikku's incredulous, Tidus is worried -- and EVERYONE but Yuna, whether or not they'd care to admit it, is probably at least a little bit relieved.

Well. Everyone but Yuna and Auron. But she doesn't even bother looking towards him for an explanation. She knows what he'd say. And he's right. Especially now, as everything she expected -- everything she thought she knew -- begins to tilt off its axis:

This is her story, too.

"I don't know," she tells them all, Tidus especially. The admission is given freely, as most aspects of herself are, but it is wrenching all the same. And it is fair to say that if Xenobia hadn't come in at that moment, Yuna might have started to freak out even harder.

Lucky for her that they're interrupted; she might emerge from this with some semblance of her dignity intact. Though, of course, everyone else is more concerned about her life.

Her first instinct is neither fight nor flight, though she's done enough of both in the past few months, and weeks, and even just a few minutes ago with the astonishing ghostly dragon, that either would be reasonable. But no, even set way back on her heels by this twist, she's still Yuna. And Yuna stands her ground. Yuna listens.

Yuna bows.

To Xenobia, and to the empty fayth of Lord Zaon; now that she knows what it is, a sense of awe moves in her that she hasn't felt since Seymour showed her that sphere of Zaon and Yunalesca, all those years ago. She knew to expect the latter; Auron warned her, much earlier.

'Nothing frightens me anymore,' she had told him, when he joked that she might be scared of the Lady Unsent.

That was true then. Will it stay true now?

Her voice doesn't tremble, but she does swallow a bit.

"Thank you," she tries on for size, and finds that it sticks, it feels right. Yes. Gratitude. And a return to a path long since prepared for her, it seems. "I am the summoner Yuna. I have come from the island of Besaid."

She isn't so relieved that she loses that sense of wonder, either. Again she is moved, softly but meaningfully, by what she hears. "A thousand years of service... I honor your dedication, ...Dame... Xenobia." A guess. But who else would serve the first High Summoner for an Age, but another, not-well-known, first Guardian?

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu is given something other than relief to consider: an actual theory of what might be going on. "...But who would do this?" she wonders to Tidus. "So few are capable of reaching this place to begin with..."

Ah, there--the voice. A flash of blue light, and a figure stepping through. Lulu recognizes her robes, but not her tattoos; she recognizes her words, but not her name. "Gone?" Lulu wonders, looking to Yuna, before she likewise bows. "...The... 'first' Fayth of..." Lulu murmurs to herself, but does not finish the thought. Instead she rises to her full height and nods to Xenobia.

She says nothing; she is here to talk to Yuna, after all. Lulu's role... is to guard her along the way. But the questions in her mind buzz wildly, a storm of wondering.

It feels like a deep secret she is learning, because probably it is.

A thousand years of service... yes, Lulu too can honor that. But what does it mean?

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Rikku starts as the woman appears. And just like that, whatever fledgling relief she felt dissipates. Not because she's threatening or anything mind you, but simply because the woman offers an explanation that feels like it leads to the same journey's end. A journey's end that will lead to another empty statue.
 
Rikku doesn't bow... doesn't greet her politely. Doesn't much of anything but watch as Yuna shows gratitude for offering answers to one mystery - and a new path.
 
It's unfair, and Rikku knows it's unfair, but she looks at Xenobia as if she were simply an unwelcome guest in a house that Rikku has less claim to than anyone. By all rights, her presence here would be sacrilege to anyone but Yuna and the other Guardians.
 
Suspicion flashes through her mind right now, while she's no scholar of Yevonite history... well, she'd be hard pressed to forget the name Yunalesca after Seymour's vivid perfromance. "Wait - really?! She's here?"
 
Rikku seems aghast, as it feels like there's only a few reasons how that could be so, and one of them sticks out in her mind.
 
Looking sideways at Auron, she gives him that look again.
 
Tidus may have said that he's right about not looking to others for answers but she's still a bit upset about the sheer amount of information he's been keeping from them.
 

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    It doesn't help that Yuna admits she doesn't know what might have happened. It does help, in a weird way, that Yuna looks like she's about to freak out; it helps Tidus get a grip on himself, remind himself that he needs to help her. However, before he can suggest they all stop to take a moment and think, a strange lady shows up, calling herself Xenobia, retainer of Yunalesca, and saying that the fayth statue *used* to contain the soul of Lord Zaon, but no longer does.
    
    "Lost its power...? How?" he asks. Silently, he does wonder if it somehow dried up, but... do souls even do that? *Can* souls do that? To Lulu, he gives a reluctant nod. "Yeah, there can't be a lot of trespassers here of all places... Plus--" He gives Xenobia a meaningful look, then falls silent to let Yuna say her piece. At this point, it's been made clear that statue-napping wasn't the issue, after all.
    
    She says that she'll take them to Yunalesca, though. Intuition flashes through Tidus's mind, though, and he says sharply, "Yuna, wait!" A frown Auron's way. "Auron, you knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"
    
    "Yes," he says simply. And, when someone (Rikku) inevitably demands to know why he hadn't told them: "If I had told you the truth, would that really have stopped you from coming?"
    
    Tidus's frown deepens, and he looks over at Yuna. Yunalesca's apparently an Unsent. Is she going to meet her? Is she going to *trust* her? Only Yuna can make that call. After all, she's the one who has to do the Summoning.

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

Xenobia's eyes turn towards Auron. There is a look -- an exchange of familiarity. It is not, perhaps, the first time these two have met. However, Xenobia is not such a well-known figure that every former Guardian of a summoner who comes this far knows her.

She looks, instead, towards Yuna. She bows her head once. When she does, her hair slips -- and there, one can see them: long, elegantly pointed ears. She is no Unsent, like her mistress; she is an elf. Rare in Spira -- rare across two worlds -- and blessed with long life, though rarely ever this long.

"It is my honor, Summoner Yuna," she says. "And her Guardians. To have true friends... to serve someone, and have that honor repaid in honor." She smiles, and there's something truly genuine. "It is a precious thing. Cherish it."

Xenobia looks to Lulu, too. She is quiet, but she sees the questions on her face. Rikku asks that question and Xenobia, in turn, nods. "She is. She will instruct you in the Final Aeon... in the means to defeat Sin."

She turns on a heel, and those robes whirl after her. There is something commanding in her gait as she walks away. "Come."

And Xenobia leads them on -- up through a stairway. She walks, back turned to them. It is for the best -- for the expression on her face is one of hatred, naked and undisguised, even after a thousand years.

And that is why, for the briefest moment, there is uncertainty in the eyes of a thousand year-old Unsent. Yunalesca rises, clad in scant raiments, and smooths out long white hair in a ceremonial chamber that looks out onto the north of the Silver Star. The aurora borealis gleams, in the distance.

"Welcome to Zanarkand," Yunalesca says, softly. "You are at the end of your long road... and earned rich congratulations. Xenobia, would you...?"

"Of course," Xenobia says, with a bow. She turns -- and smiles, politely. Then, she starts to walk past. "I am glad we met, all of you."

And she exits.

Yunalesca watches her leave -- and exhales. It is not all that often that she draws breath, now. Then, she looks at Yuna. "The Final Summoning shall be yours. Now..."

And the next word, softly spoken, comes like a bell reverberating through all reality. "...Choose."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna feels a pang of guilt; she hadn't meant to keep the secret of Yunalesca's status from Rikku. Her private moment with Auron was, in the end, much less about the Unsent founder of the tradition of the Final Aeon, and much more about the Guardian, and herself, and who they are, together. She legitimately forgot. At that final leg of the journey to Zanarkand, they weren't often speaking, anyway, a group silence that was both only possible because of their profound companionhood, and deeply strained for exactly the same reason.

Unwilling to let Auron shoulder all the blame alone, she intercepts Rikku's glare and gives the tiniest bow of apology, one that mostly transmits through her hair. It swings forward like the curtains closing on the theater of her face, then back as she straightens, Besaid beads aclatter in a soft accompaniment. It did not disguise her lips, which mouthed the word, 'Sorry.'

Xenobia is ready to lead them on ('to have that honor repaid in honor' is something she'll remember for a long time, and Xenobia's smile infects her, and is shared on her own lips), but Tidus tells her to wait, and commanding as that elven gait is, it is the towheaded Guardian who commands her heart. She pauses for a moment, and listens to him, and to Auron's own response to Rikku's question.

Tidus' subsequent questions are all in his eyes, which is a very Yuna thing to do. He stares at her, and she stares back, first gazing into his with a sudden shock of love that parts her lips slightly in the rising, then to all the others, one at a time. She loves them all. Lulu, Rikku, Wakka and Auron are family; Paine is too, even if she chooses not to keep up with how quickly and rashly Yuna is willing to give herself away.

And Kimahri... was family first.

"Yuna," he rumbles, speaking for the first time since they hit the Dome.

Do not mistake the resummoning of her resolve as his fault. But his support -- its steadfastness, its constancy -- it is not crutch, but foundation. That, too, is who she is. Ward of Kimahri Ronso... last of his kind?

"I'm not going back," she declares. To him, to all the Guardians.

Shiva would be proud: there is no hint of apology in her voice, her expression, not even in the deepest wells of her eyes.

"Kimahri knows," says the Ronso. "Kimahri go first. Yuna is safe. Kimahri protect."

Just because she's totally committed doesn't mean that it's easy for her to disappoint them, hurt them, that way. And Kimahri's support, here, too, is an incomparable gift; the slightest bit of tension goes out of her shoulders. And she follows him, and Xenobia, to her fate.

They've all seen a vision of Yunalesca before, but the reality of her is breathtaking anyway; both the way that her will, her emotion, has held herself together for a thousand years (in a way an even more impressive feat than 'being an elf,' no offense Xenobia, that's cool too!!) -- and the way she is now in the presence of her namesake, her parents' inspiration, the unliving symbol who saved the world the very first time.

From Sin, anyway. If the city beneath Zanarkand taught her anything, it's how much of history has been lost. They already knew that Sin had taken much from even memory. How much more do they not even realize that they've forgotten?

She ALMOST misses Xenobia's departure, she is so taken aback by Yunalesca's soft greeting. At the last second, her head turns to follow the Guardian, and it may well be that she missed Yunalesca's exhalation because of it. But Xenobia got to see Yuna bid her farewell. Her smile is more than polite.

"Thank you," she repeats.

This does not long delay the occasion. Sapphire and emerald eyes rise to meet Yunalesca's gaze, and she finds herself held by them as much as she holds them right back. If not for her trials and tribulations at the hands of Althena's Guard and Yevon itself, Kelk and Mika and Seymour, would that have been entirely one-sided? Would she have been entirely unprepared, if not for a swim with Tidus in Macalania, an embrace on the mountainside with Rikku, a desperate reunion with Lulu at the Via Purifico, an immensely complex battle with Belize at same, a sunshine walk with Ida, a long-grass talk with Marivel, a single, simple moment of connection with Elly on Luca's battlefield, and many, much more complicated, with Leo at the same, a ride from Kaguya, a journey from darkness into darkness with Ghaleon, from darkness into light with Mariel, and from one world to another with Leon; and countless other single moments with the others, one at a time and all at once, which now drift through her mind like sand through her fingers -- every one of them, all of them, having led up to this moment?

Perhaps she is mesmerized, after all. Yuna has no answer for Yunalesca.

"..."

It's unclear. It is such a vulnerable instant in time and space. Two minutes ago she was adrift in the uncertainty of the empty fayth statue. Five, she was fighting for her life. Ten, she was solving ancient puzzles. An hour, she watched her own father declare his intention to kill grief itself.

(Yes, this implies that it took them like an hour to play musical tetris concentration. Don't be mean. They didn't have a GameFAQ guide. And since it resets whenever you screw up, that's a LOT of walking.)

A day, Seymour told her that he would become Sin... with her help.

Is Yuna's silence knowing or unknowing? Does she require clarification, or does she simply demand it -- does some part of her need Yunalesca to say it out loud, before it can become real? Or is it already real, and she insists that Yunalesca own it?

For once, only Yuna knows...

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Alive. Alive, and yet here in Zanarkand, for all this time. To live amidst death is normal in Spira, but to this degree? Lulu wonders further, and there are more questions in her still. But the things she says--to serve, true friends...

There is something there. But Lulu doesn't know what it is. She just nods again, as if in answer.

"...It would not," Lulu answers Auron, for once voicing what could go unsaid. And so she does. In time to see Xenobia lead them to Yunalesca, here after all these years. It is a beautiful chamber. Her voice is soft. They are at the end of their long road...

She nods to Xenobia, as she leaves, and looks to Yunalesca. Then, she says something strange. She says... Choose.

Lulu slowly blinks her eyes, opening and closing them. There is indeed so much that they have lost. But there is much here now. She watches Yunalesca, and watches Yuna. She looks between the two of them, and for--

No. It isn't 'for once', her knowledge fails anymore. Lulu feels incredibly out of her depth, small amidst giants despite her composure. She is here, at the end (what will become the end) (though it is not over yet), and she doesn't... understand.

One might imagine she could figure it out. One might imagine it would make sense; she has the pieces, after all. But her nerves are more fractured than she has let on. Yuna is silent. Lulu, too, is silent.

She feels on the verge of something, but cannot but wait for it.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Xenobia's words to Yuna are kind... and so she feels a bit bad.
 
"W-Wow... that's... that's great. It's... what we're here for!"
 
Rikku says towards Xenobia's answer in a tone that's trying not to be disrespectful, but it's hard for her to pretend to be all optimism right now.
 
Sure enough, Rikku absolutely demands that with a "Why didn't you tell us!?" on cue, as Tidus speaks to Auron.
 
And at his answer, she just seems so frustrated because Tidus and her have been trying so hard to figure out a way to save Yuna from her fate and this information might have been REALLY IMPORTANT to the two of them figuring that out.
 
Though Yuna then intercepts that glare and Rikku's expression kind of smooths out, and then... deflates. The last thing in the world she can be right now is mad at Yuna, so she isn't. She's just sad - sad at the looming inevitability of the situation.
 
'I'm not going back.' She says to Kimahri. To all of them.
 
I do want you to understand, why... I asked you not to...
I liked it, when you... talked like you did.
Apologizing for it... is like saying sorry for wanting me to live, Rikku.
 
She can't help but be upset over this situation, intensely upset. She won't apologize for clinging to her selfish desire... to Yuna's selfish desire... even now.
 
That the vision of Yunalesca lines up with the reality gives her pause. It's different when fast moving images flash around you, compared to actually speaking to her. Her eyes follow Xenobia's departure and...
 
... then back to Yunalesca as she offers the 'kindness' of what they came here for.
 
But Rikku's eyebrows shoot up and she looks stunned at the implications of 'Choose'. She has no idea what it means...
 
... except perhaps, to confirm yet again how little she actually knows. Save that she loves Yuna... and she doesn't regret being here at journey's end..
 

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Xenobia seems nice!
    
    Except is that something they can trust? Something about her seems a little off to Tidus. He can't put his finger on what or why, but his gut feelings are generally spot-on. Looking at Auron doesn't help, either; he's as stoic as always. Tidus shares a conversation with Yuna with their eyes alone, and she confirms she'll go. Which settles it. Wherever Yuna goes, Tidus will follow.
    
    Not that he doesn't know exactly how Rikku feels. Tidus shoots her a look like :S after she makes her demands of Auron and the older Guardian responds. At least Lulu takes it calmly--she might be quiet, but she's still a firecracker. Still, there had to have been some reason for Auron to have sat on it for this long, right? If he wanted to change the world, he wouldn't just guide Yuna to her death for no reason... right?
    
    As he thinks on this, they reach Yunalesca. Xenobia makes her leave, and the ancient, Unsent Summoner bids Yuna to choose.
    
    Tidus's brows scrunch up in confusion. Choose? Choose what? ...he almost says that aloud, but the moment is grave enough that he manages to keep his mouth shut.

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

Yunalesca doesn't flinch at Yuna's mismatched eyes. In truth, she doesn't flinch at much. It is said that an Unsent loses something of their empathy -- some dare say humanity -- and become a refined and reflected version of themselves. Nuance becomes lost in the base building blocks of their self, magnified more and more with time. Yunalesca, Unsent for a millennium, is that to its apex.

She is not something that feels emotions as humans do, much less expresses them the same way.

She looks at Yuna. She is silent and patient. She waits, because all Yunalesca does is wait. One can wonder, truly, if she exists between the times that summoners come calling upon her. She exists (but does not live) for these moments.

But it becomes clear that silence will not do.

Yunalesca seems perplexed -- as if she said the most obvious thing in the world and it went missed. As if someone stared at a bowl of rice with cooked fish and didn't understand what to do. "Choose the one who I will change. The one that shall become your Fayth -- to become the Aeon, called forth in the Final Summoning."

She doesn't wait for the shock. She speaks as if to children; she speaks as if she lectures them, not on matters of life and death, but simple dogma and doctrine. Like neophytes, who did not learn to make the sign properly and forgot the basic texts.

"There must be a bond, of course. A strong one, between the glorious chosen and the summoner. A bond of parent and child; between friends; of lovers united." She smiles, and she speaks without passion. "I chose, a thousand years ago, my husband Zaon. Our bond proved true -- and he proved my Final Aeon. You need not fear... as he did not fear. He was liberated from worry, from pain -- and so shall you, when your life ends."

She bows her head. "As your father did."

And Auron speaks, but it's not the Auron they know -- a younger one, his voice hotter than before. "It is not too late!" he cries. "Let us turn back!"

The next voice is familiar. It is Braska's, and a ghostly image takes form between them. "If I turn back... who will defeat Sin? Would some other poor soul go through this?"

"But--"

But Auron is cut off, by another figure. "This is the only we got, now." Jecht speaks as he steps into being; as his figure emerges from the mists of nonexistence. "My dream... it's back in Zanarkand. I was gonna show the runt the view from the top. Make him into a star blitzer. Maybe... maybe make him a better guy than me. But... I got no home I can go back to. My dream... I'm never gonna see him again. --" He speaks, but the noise is a screaming static. Yunalesca doesn't even blink at it. "--said I shouldn't come. So..."

"Jecht..." Auron hesitates. "That--that's not true--"

"--give my life meaning, again," Jecht says, more heatedly. "Make me useful. Make me matter again."

Braska's eyes close. "Jecht... sorry. I mean... thank you."

"Keep an eye on him, Auron." Jecht claps Auron roughly on the shoulder, and the Guardian stumbles. "Let's go."

"Jecht! This--this means nothing! The cycle will continue! Your deaths will mean nothing!"

Jecht hesitates. "I'll find a way. Trust me..." He fades as he speaks. "...I'll think of something."

They fade away. Yunalesca stares on -- then smiles again, as if it was an instructional video. "They made their choice, as all who came before and all who come after shall."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Seymour was, is, in so many ways, Yuna's opposite. The ways they are the same profoundly define the ways that they are different.

But Yuna and Yunalesca are opposites too, aren't they? One is alive, and one is dead, but that is only the beginning of things. One is from the beginning of the cycle. And one is from...

...no matter what happens next, things in Spira have changed forever, irrevocably, by the arrival of the Otherworlders. The conflicts they have brought with them. The technology and magicks. The grief.

Well, maybe Spira will survive them after all.

Spira has an infinite capacity for grief, it seems.

And so does Yuna. Everyone sees it when Yunalesca explains. There is no ambiguity, none, in the paroxysm of agony that seizes her entire body; not to crumple to her knees and weep, but to stay standing, standing tall, even as her bones are hollowed out and filled with smoke; even as her fragile heart shatters in slow motion; even then, she does not turn away...

...not from Yunalesca; not from her Guardians; and not from the past.

There is something of Seymour's rhetoric in Yunalesca's words -- or perhaps, given the tiny child who they witnessed, it is something of the other way around. In a strange, out-of-her-own-body moment, Yuna suddenly understands fully and completely what Anima is, and why the dark aeon was so impossibly strong when summoned by... the fayth's own son.

A bond.

Yuna is bonded more tightly, more profoundly, to her beloveds, than many other summoners. Maybe even ANY other summoner.

What would her Final Aeon be like?

Could the world even withstand its might?

There's more than one way to break a cycle.

Beside her, Auron steps up with a snarl. Not at her, it turns out. He hastens the fading of the pyrefly show by brutally, viciously stabbing his sword through his younger self's head, again and again and again. If Yuna is pinned like a glass butterfly to this moment of horror, vulnerable in her openness -- even her emotion is dwarfed by Auron's raw, seething self-loathing. She is an open heart, and he is an open wound.

Yunalesca smiles in her explanation, and Auron's dark glasses cannot possibly disguise his hatred. She can take comfort in the knowledge that it is mostly directed inward.

They made their choice, she says.

"And the cycle goes on," he confirms, in a voice like chipped concrete.

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Silence... will not do. Lulu understands when Yunalesca speaks. She understands, suddenly, and it is all so simple, as if she should have comprehended it easily. What must happen becomes clear to her; she knows it, as Yunalesca speaks on; she speaks of her choice, and of what fear and worry and pain will end.

She watches the vision come of the others, but she already knows the truth. She watches as the three discuss it, and she remembers their youth, sees them as she remembers each of them except different, marked by the end of their journey. Jecht says it. Meaning.

The black mage is quiet through the vision, her painted lips pressed together. She waits. Yunalesca smiles, and she speaks of the choice. All who came before... all who come after. She can hope that there are no more. But here, and now--here, and now, there must--

"I volunteer."

Lulu says this calmly, loudly enough to be heard but not raising her voice. She is serenity itself, for the moment. She understands, now.

"..." She understands how Auron must feel, and yet... it is not Auron who she sees herself in now. He surges forward, and Lulu watches him, feeling for him. But as he stops, speaks of the cycle... Lulu walks to Yuna, her steps clicking softly on the stone.

"...If one of us has to become a Fayth," Lulu continues, looking to Yuna and Yuna alone. "Then I volunteer. Choose me."

She kneels down beside her, and offers both of her hands to Yuna, gentle, her mind writing this moment upon her heart.

Lulu says, 'Take me with you.' Lulu says, 'I love you.' Lulu says, 'Rely on me, one last time.'

Lulu says it all without speaking the words, as she looks upon Yuna with a final resolve.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Rikku and Tidus share that :S.
 
Rikku however undergoes this transformation as Yunalesca clarifies. From wallowing in ignorance, to being stunned, to growing increasingly upset. Agitated. She's just a fidgety bundle of nerves, weight bouncing from foot to foot as she listens to all of this.
 
As she learns what happened to Auron and Braska and Jecht.
 
As she understands the choice that Yuna is being faced with. It's maddening, to think of Yuna being forced to choose which of them is to become the Final Summoning.
 
And suddenly what happened - what she saw, about Seymour, starts to make a certain degree of sense.
 
Rikku feels repulsed by the idea that a child was put in the same position that Yuna is facing now, but she can't muster the same amount of anger for him, as she can for Yuna.
 
Auron steps forward and...
 
Rikku cringes a bit as his sword passes through his younger self's head. Even if she was upset, frustrated with him throughout their journey through Zanarkand... right now she feels this great pang of empathy for him - for being in the position of wanting the people she loves to turn back - but even more than that...
 
'I volunteer.'
 
"I hate this." Rikku so quietly, as to be nearly inaudible... as Lulu, who she admires for her maturity, for her devotion, for being there for Yuna for all those years when Rikku wasn't able to get to know her. Makes a choice out of love and devotion.
 
... what she empathizes with Auron most of all right now is his hatred.
 
She has no answers. She just watched a younger Auron tell them it's not too late to turn back, has seen the hopelessness of it, in this moment. So instead she looks sidelong to Tidus... a plaintive look as if to ask him.
 
'What do we do now?'
 
There isn't much time left for an answer.
 

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    As little as Tidus likes Yunalesca's weirdly schoolmarmy tone, he knows he needed her to spell it out for him. Spell *everything* out. Some things--a lot of things, especially for someone like him--can't be understood until you explain them. He doesn't make the connection that Yuna does of what Anima is, but he does hear something of Seymour in Yunalesca's words. Considering they saw memories of *him* in the dome too, he can see where Seymour might have gotten it from. And... for a moment, Tidus has it in him to feel a little sorry for him. Not the man he is now, who is literally a monster, but for the child he once was, and how horrible it must've been to lose his mother like that.
    
    Even with that memory of the pyreflies and the emotional echoes they act out, Tidus still double-takes when he hears Auron, younger than he's used to, and sees Jecht, almost exactly the same as the day he vanished. He's only seen Braska in pyrefly images, but he stares all the same at the three of them. At their final exchanges, and at what his old man decided to sacrifice. At... his dream...
    
    For a moment, Tidus can't breathe. It's caught in his throat. As his hands clench, his eyes burn. When Auron, the current-moment one, roars and 'beheads' his past self, Tidus discreetly wipes his face. That instant of static was strange, but honestly, he can't think about that right now. Some things just hit far too close to home. And Auron...
    
    Tidus has a hunch about him, now. He's not sure; it's just a feeling. But, well, Tidus and his gut feelings...
    
    You know.
    
    'The cycle goes on,' Auron states, anger and grief melted into one.
    
    'Trust me... I'll think of something,' Jecht had said, promising to find another way.
    
    'Maybe you are the dream that will end our dreaming at last,' Bahamut's fayth had hoped, in as many words deciding to bet everything on Tidus and his father.
    
    Maybe the cycle went on. But sometimes, to truly break the wheel, one needs first to alter its path just enough to weaken its struts.
    
    "We'll break it," he declares, as much an oath as he's ever spoken to anyone--to Yuna, to Marivel, to any and all of his friends. For the same reason, as much as part of him admires Lulu's love and resolve in immediately volunteering to be the fayth, he shakes his head. He meets Rikku's sidelong glance, sees her doubt and anxiety, and reflects back a newfound determination even as he insists to Lulu, "That still won't change anything, you know? You'd bring the Calm, and then what? That won't break the cycle!
    
    "Maybe it's childish of me to want everything. Maybe I don't have a chance. But I don't care! What've the adults been doing all this time? Giving up on the Summoners so everyone else gets to be happy? I'm not going along with that!" He looks at Yuna with ferocity, determination, and deep love in his eyes. "There's no way I'm letting Yuna just walk to her death! And what Auron said about there being a way... I think it's true."
    
    And so Tidus bores a stare at Yunalesca, challenge in his eyes. "So I'm gonna ask *you*. You've got to know something. And I'm not gonna take 'no' for an answer. This is *my* story. It'll go the way I want... or I'll end it here."

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

"It does," Yunalesca agrees with Auron. With a smile like he did not strike at his younger self; with a smile that does not and never has understood him or his pain.

She does not comment on Lulu's grave offer. She has seen many such offers. Some have wondered if, perhaps, Yunalesca views the moment as solemn; others wonder if she feels anything behind those eyes, watching impassively. The most important moment in many lives have passed before her.

All without comment. All without feeling.

And when she turns and looks at Tidus, she is still that sea of calm -- that unfeeling, matter-of-fact way of speaking -- but there is a hint of something else. A blaze of defiance; the look of someone ready to put someone in their place. "I know only that the Final Aeon is all that can kill Sin. I am the one who can give that gift..."

She falls quiet for a moment. "...Who can make Spira's hope, until the Calm ends. You may join them -- or join the souls who wonder Zanarkand."

Yunalesca smiles. Then, she turns, and looks back at Yuna. The placidity in her smile is porcelain and the furthest thing from human.

"Now. Who shall you choose, lady summoner?"

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Auron brought them all to this place, to this time, and his slip into rage and misery could have ruined everything. Certainly Yuna feels it profoundly; naked horror blooms in her eyes as she watches him obliterate his younger self. The own flower of her heart could have closed up in response, pulling itself into a tight bud, hard, impenetrable, in order to protect herself.

But she doesn't.

And one reason she doesn't is Lulu.

Lulu's immediate offer of sacrifice rocks her back on her heels a little bit; a tiny motion, not a dramatic one, but made more visible by the way it ripples through the still waters of her sleeves and obi and skirts.

She looks down at those coal-red eyes, and the love there washes over her, like the pillar of water when she Sends, like a little lap of wave on the sands. Like the sea. The sea, that lulled them both to sleep outside the window of their shared Besaid hut for so many years. The sea, which wears many faces. It can be so spectacularly dangerous... strange, unknowable... yet lovely, too. Sparkling. Gentle, in its embrace.

Yuna does not take her proferred hands. Her own float upwards, buoyed on the terrible loyalty and compassion rising from Lulu like a tide, to cover her rosebud 'oh' of a reaction.

This is so horrible. But it is beautiful, too.

And one reason it is beautiful is because the worm has finally turned, and Yuna is finally forced to understand what she's done to Lulu, done to them all, when SHE volunteered. When she chose. She's experienced through the refraction of their hearts, but this is direct. A true mirror.

A final resolve, that meets her own.

"Me too, Yuna!" calls Wakka, as is his wont. That's how their becoming Guardians went too, wasn't it? The first time, the only time they left her behind... to try to prevent this exact moment... me too. Wakka may not be as smart as Lulu, or as brave, and his brotherly love may pale in comparison to their connection, but... me too. Me too. He would do it. To the very end. Always.

'I hate this,' says Rikku. Yuna hears her, and turns her face from Lulu's. The comprehension lingers. And Rikku comes to know that Yuna hates this too. That, perhaps... she always did. It's not that she wants to die. It's just that she has to.

And Tidus... Yuna has barely processed the gift HE just received, the secret, too-little, too-late love of his father. And yet, despite being too, it was still... well, it was enough, right? HE, Tidus, is enough. And the momentary tears on his face fill Yuna's heart with another intersection of grief and gladness, a terrible, wonderful feeling.

What Tidus does AFTER... getting mad, confronting Lulu, and herself, and Yunalesca... fills her with something else.

And she does not like Yunalesca's response, and its implied violence, one bit.

"Wait," she says to them both, but more to Tidus. She sounds... different. Not like a person who might sadly allow him to say sweet things about not letting her die if it might comfort him momentarily, while keeping in her heart the knowledge that she will die anyway.

No. She sounds... firm, which is not unusual, and still soft-spoken, which is also the same, but... what invisible key is turning in the lock of her mind?

She addresses Tidus first. "You say it's your story, but it's my story too, you know?" And she smiles at him, all for him, as she adopts and accepts his framing from the campfire, from their entire adventure, and makes it her own, too.

Then she widens her stance, and words, to reach the rest of her Guardians. "It would be so easy... to let my fate just carry me away... following this same path my own life through. But, I know..." A familiar wistfulness, that sharpens to a needlepoint. "...I can't. What I do, I do with no regrets."

And, turning her back on the group, she steps in front of Tidus, DIRECTLY in front of Yunalesca, and spreads her arms wide in interposition, in beseechment. It is respectful but also... strong. She is a tiny, slender wall of humanity, facing down someone-- something-- that isn't. Not anymore. She does not resent Yunalesca for being what she is. Indeed, all teachings about Unsent suggest the opposite is much more likely to be true.

"Might I ask something first?" Sweet and polite to the bitter end. Both because that's the right way to address this old ghost effectively, and because Yuna is Yuna.

She leans forward slightly.

And she asks the question that her father didn't know to ask. Tidus' wheel starts to slip its track.

It is, admittedly, the question that Seymour has already answered.

Still; he is a much less reliable narrator than the ghost who has held herself together with her beliefs for a thousand years. This is Yuna's chance to know with absolute certainty. And nothing less will do. It's too important.

"Will Sin come back even should I use the Final Summoning?" the young summoner asks the first High Summoner, looking Yunalesca dead in the eye.

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

Yuna steps in front of her namesake. Standing before her, without fear. They make quite the pair: one standing before a figure of legend, directly and without fear; another looking down at her with a lack of understanding that belies a lack of humanity. Yuna asks her a question.

There is a momentary pause.

"No," Yunalesca says. The word is like a chord, ringing through the room -- through Spira -- through two worlds.

"Sin is eternal," she explains, patiently. As if that could be the only answer. She shakes her head, a sadness in her eyes. But, it isn't a sadness for Yuna or her Guardians. It is a sadness of accepting; a sadness imbued into her very being, as an Unsent. "Every Aeon that defeats Sin shall become Sin, in turn, in its place... and thus, Sin is reborn. An inevitable, never-ending thing -- the very destiny of Spira."

Wakka steps back, his eyes widening. He looks stricken. "Neverending? But--but... if we atone for our crimes--" His breath catches. He sounds desperate. "Sin... Sin will stop coming back, ya? Someday... it'll be gone?" Then, quieter: "Ya?"

And Yunalesca shakes her head, with finality. "Will humanity ever attain such purity?"
r

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Breaking the cycle... it is a beautiful idea. But Lulu in this moment still believes that this is the way--especially now, as she looks to Yuna. Her difficulty, her waiting--it is difficult but also gratifying, in its way. Yes, what she has done--she takes no pleasure in the shoe being on the other foot, but she understands Yuna better now, in her choice.

But Tidus....

"If you want everything," Lulu cautions, "Then you'll end up with nothing."

But it is not a cruel statement; she believes perhaps that Tidus is being childish, but what he says... she sees something mature in it, something far less childish than she would have accounted him when they met.

Rikku hates this. Lulu can appreciate that. But Yuna says wait, and Lulu waits; there is nothing more she can do in this moment but wait. So she does. Yuna has a question, and that is fair. Lulu waits through the question and--ah. There is the key.

Hope sparks in her heart when Yunalesca answers first. Until--until the explanation. Sadness, yes--that is... one of the things Lulu feels in this moment.

"No!" Lulu cries, and it is the most raw emotion most of this room has ever heard in her voice. "This--this cannot be!"

Lulu steps forward, and stands beside Wakka, in the same question. Yunalesca shakes her head, but--

"The teachings state that if we atone, Sin will eventually be gone!"

Her resolve does not break. But her heart does. "It's--it's been our only hope for all these years!"

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Rikku does come to understand it, in Yuna's look. She already understands that Yuna liked... considering life, and had to suppress the urge to do so. It stands to reason then that moving towards death would be something one would hate. Yet... she didn't make the connection until now, at this moment, when Yuna has to consider losing Lulu too.
 
Rikku's look towards Tidus changes to a dumb-founded one as he says 'We'll break it,' and follows up, and even Rikku looks like she's a dying fish gasping for water on the shore for a few seconds. Before she gets swept up a bit in his enthusiasm. When he's like this, it's easy to believe he can actually do it. Though it doesn't actually quite cut through the hopelessness of the situation.
 
"'You'll think of something?'" Rikku says wryly, with only the barest hint of flippancy, which is still likely strikingly irreverent in these chambers. Which immediately becomes incredulity as he addresses...
 
"Wait - what makes you think she'll help-"
 
Her eyes grow wide as the exchange between them goes back and forth, and she suddenly feels... the threat, in Yunalesca's words... and while the implicit power of this being gives her... a shiver...
 
... she suddenly finds herself standing closer to Tidus, with a frown. Though as Yuna says it's her story too, she looks sideways, something welling up in her throat. She feels like she's beating back tears, tears she's trying not to cry for Yuna's sake. As Yuna says she does what she does with no regrets.
 
And asks a question, so polite that she almost does make it to tears
 
Rikku feels something like Shiva's ice jab into her heart at the answer, the tears feeling like frost that never quite formed from her eyelids. "That's our destiny? We're supposed to just accept that?"
 
Rikku thinks of all the Al Bhed who died at Operation Mi'ihen, all the Crusaders who died to try to defeat Sin without sacrificing a Summoner. To realize that they were vilified by Yevon because they tried to defy destiny.
 
"I never will."
 

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    'If you want everything, you'll get nothing,' Lulu says.
    
    "But I want everything!" Tidus replies sharply, fully aware of how childish that, and he, sounds. Rikku gives him a little sass, and he shoots back defiantly, "Yeah, I will! We just need to know more!" And thus, questioning Yunalesca. Even if she won't help, he has to try. He has his say, and though Yunalesca offers him a threat of anger, a threat of violence--maybe even death--Tidus doesn't back down. He opens his mouth to argue with her--
    
    'Wait!'
    
    But Yuna intercedes, and Tidus looks at her. He can't help but smile back at her when she states that this is her story too, and he nods, letting her spread her arms and step between him and Yunalesca. To ask her *own* question of the ancient Unsent.
    
    "Yuna..." he murmurs, soft enough that maybe only she'll hear. At the least, only she will hear the tenderness, the admiration, and the hope that the change he's just seen and heard in her while be enough.
    
    And so Yunalesca answers. It seems a hopeful enough answer, but it doesn't really track with everything Tidus has heard up until now. He's thus prepared to argue with *that*, too. Except...
    
    Except Yunalesca clarifies on her own. Clarifies with the ancient acceptance of a horror none of them could have realized. Tidus's jaw drops. But only momentarily; when that moment passes, he shakes his head in shock. "So that's why Jecht became Sin," he murmurs, that piece of the puzzle finally locking in place.
    
    But things are a lot rougher for Wakka and Lulu, who've been lifelong devotees of the teachings of Yevon. Tidus feels for them, and in feeling for them, his anger from earlier flares up again for their sakes. Yunalesca's jaded, dispassionate words... They can't help but make him furious, for *everyone's* sakes--for all the people who've had to suffer because of some crackpot destiny.
    
    Rikku voices her own anger with a simple eloquence. Tidus simplifies it further:
    
    "NO!"

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Auron -- the Auron that was, the young, healthy, vibrantly miserable Auron -- charges in, screaming in unison with Tidus.

"NO!"

He brandishes his sword at Yunalesca, who looks much the same then as she does now, of course. The pyrefly memory superimposes itself over her completely seamlessly.

"Where is the sense in all this?" a grieving Auron demands of her. "Braska believed in Yevon's teachings and died for them! Jecht believed in Braska, and gave his life for him!"

Yunalesca gazes down at Auron impassively. "They chose to die... because they had hope."

Auron makes a strangled yell not unlike the one the current edition did when he first saw and slaughtered the memory of his younger self. He is silent now, bearing witness with the others to what happened next: he leapt at Yunalesca, in a beautiful, miserable sweep of his gigantic sword, and... never made contact. A zap of magnificently powerful magic, extended from her ageless, indifferent palm, blasted him back across the room. He hit a wall, and crumpled.

In the present, the past fades away. Only Yunalesca remains.

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

"Hope is comforting. It allowed you to accept fate, for all these years. Is that comfort erased only because hope is a lie?" Yunalesca asks Lulu, placidly.

She looks at Rikku, then. "But it is not a thing to accept -- or refuse. It simply is. We are all roles, which we must fill. Surely, you know this?" Yunalesca sounds, somehow, perplexed at Rikku's insistence. Then, her eyes turn, looking back to Tidus for a moment. She stares at him -- something angry in her eyes -- at his refusal. Then she glances at the memory of the past -- at when she struck Auron down.

Tellingly, there is not even a flicker of emotion.

She looks back at Yuna then. "So... who shall become the next chosen?"

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
<SoundTracker> Have You Got In You? - Imogen Heap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbDVA5nJW2Y

Wakka and Lulu aren't the only ones having a crisis of faith.

Even being prepared for this answer, Yuna is horrified by the confirmation of not only Seymour, but Mika's, doctrine; that Sin is forever, and that summoners play a key role in that cycle. And their Guardians... even moreso.

Sir Jecht...
Sir Auron...

Rikku and Tidus are livid. And Yuna...

Don't mistake her composure for a lack of conviction.

Yuna, who lived for this her whole life...

Yuna, who always says yes...

'Who shall become the next chosen?'

"No one," says Yuna. She keeps talking, and her voice does not rise so much as intensify, as she is distilled into the most fundamental essence of herself. "I would have gladly died. I live for the people, and would have gladly died for them."

So, her objection is sacrificing one of her family?

"But no more!" Her palms, held open and wide, turn sideways into daggers, and one slashes across herself, trailing sakura ombre.

No more. Her objection goes far more deeply than that.

Her REjection.

Of everything she's ever known.

"The Final Summoning..."

When she pauses, she is not hesitating. She is letting the words form themselves on her tongue. She is speaking carefully. Precisely. Directly.

Yuna says exactly what she means.

"...is a false tradition, that should be thrown away."

And in this moment, the LAST summoner's heart opens to Yunalesca, too. To the incredible futility of her existence. What an awful thing. The others can see it reflected in green and blue, this compassion: compassion for a woman who sacrificed her own husband, and herself, for the common good... and then justified it to herself by leading others to repeat her path... for a thousand years.

She pre-empts Yunalesca; she knows before the ghost speaks through softly parting, long-dead lips, that she will speak of her father. That the Unsent will try to manipulate her that way, through that exact vector; because they've met, Yunalesca and Braska, and because that sort of bond -- father and daughter, in this case -- is the only thing that has any currency with her. They would never have done what Seymour's mother did, and become the light of hope that would conquer Sin.

But they could have. He swims before her eyes, recent memories and very old ones, both.

"My father... he wanted to make Spira's sorrow go away. Not just cover it up with lies! And I loved him. I loved him for living, and I let myself love him for dying, just like everyone else. But now I see that that was wrong. So I... I will live."

Yuna is unsmiling as she makes this announcement. Mika and Seymour and Yunalesca have all broken her heart, one after the next. But every time, she somehow keeps on standing. And every time... she is stronger.

She is strong.

Like Tidus... she is enough.

Her hand clenches into a fist. She holds it over her own heart. And a fiery resolve exits her on the wings of her voice, spreading through the room with warmth and light and LIFE. And grief, too, but not every wound in the world is a scar. Sometimes... one must become wounded, in order to heal properly.

"I will live with my sorrow. I will live my own life! I will defeat sorrow, in his place. I will stand my ground and be strong. And I don't know when it will be, but someday... I will conquer it."

She steps back, bringing herself inline with Tidus and the others.

"WE will conquer it."

She does not indulge in the extremely futile gesture of re-extending her hand to Yunalesca. She could offer and offer, but the Unsent CANNOT accept. Not without her own undoing. Instead, accepting this, she spreads her hands a final time, and therefore into Tidus' hand on one side, and Rikku's on the other.

Her palms are so hot, both the branded one and the pale one, as to be feverish. Her eyes are alight with it, too. But it isn't a disease.

Yuna knows that very well, now. Her apostacy is the cure.

And she commits the ultimate heresy in the halls of Zanarkand with her eyes wide open.

"And we will do it without... false hope."

This is OUR story.

DC: Yuna switches forms to Lady Summoner!
DC: Lulu switches forms to The Black Mage!
DC: Tidus switches forms to Star Player of the Zanarkand Abes!
DC: Yunalesca switches forms to Yunalesca - The Shrine Maiden at the End of the World!
DC: Rikku switches forms to The Merriest!

<Pose Tracker> Yunalesca has posed.

"No one," Yunalesca repeats.

But she does listen. She does not seek to interrupt -- and while she may be otherworldy and strangely placid, she has enough humanity to listen. Even as Yuna rejects her -- rejects everything she has built -- everything that her unlife has brought about.

She is preempted. She stays quiet through it.

"You poor creature... you would throw away tradition. But what else is there?"

She shakes her head, firmly. "You would throw away hope? You would throw away the only salvation that Spira has? So be it. I will free you, before you drown in your despair! Let me be your liberator!"

She holds a hand up. She is Yuna's namesake; she is the origin of the idea of the summoner. And, in a way, Yuna is the ideal summoner -- one she embodied. A creature of light. But, there is something aggressive in her -- and she uses spells that are far more aggressive than they were in life.

Light erupts -- beads of light that appear amidst all of them -- and then explode, in brilliant explosions of light, blinding and burning, and giving light to this shadowed, ruined room.

GS: Yunalesca has attacked Yuna with Diara!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Rikku with Diara!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Lulu with Diara!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Tidus with Diara!
GS: Yunalesca has completed his action.
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku fully evades Yunalesca's Diara for 0 hit points!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Yunalesca's Diara for 172 hit points!
GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Yunalesca's Diara for 177 hit points!
GS: Lulu activates Arcane Font!
GS: Rikku used Defend! She takes Yunalesca's Diara attack on Yuna on herself!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku guards a hit from Yunalesca's Diara for 121 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu has not only followed Yevon all her life, for all that she's had her issues with it--she has devoted that life to defeating Sin. She has gone on pilgrimage three times as a Guardian, only to find that at the end of those long journeys, this is what awaited. This is what would have awaited Ginnem, or Zuke. This... and the truth that the Calm can never be more than a temporary reprieve.

It is a raw, open wound in Lulu's heart. She has suffered them before, but this takes out the foundation on which she built her entire life. And in this darkness...

In this darkness there is one light. A light of green and blue, of compassion yes, but of certainty. Lulu has sought to be someone Yuna could rely on for most of her life. And now... now, she relies on Yuna.

"...Yes," Lulu answers Yunalesca, though her answer is late. How dare she. Lulu, a person who has worked so much in her life to live in the present, not fixated on the past but looking to the future... And it turns out that she has lived a lie.

She would have died for Yuna. She may yet die for Yuna. But not for Yevon. "Never again."

This is Lulu's story too, and she will not live in false hope. ...And neither will Wakka.

Yunalesca moves to strike, and Lulu takes a nasty blast all of a sudden, not quite fast enough to move out of the way this time of such an aggressive magic. Wakka is faster, jumping in front of her to forestall a second hit. But it is Auron who steps forward next, bringing up his blade once more, standing in front of the others and calling out. "Now! This is it!"

Auron's voice has a passion that is perhaps unseen in years, a certainty, an insistence.

"Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain, or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!"

Kimahri hefts his spear, stepping up beside Auron. "Yuna needs Kimahri. Kimahri protect Yuna." Spinning his weapon he takes up a ready posture in front of her.

Wakka shakes his head, but knuckles down, adopting a ready stance with his Blitzball in hand, shoulders rising and falling. "Man... I can't believe we're fighting Lady Yunalesca!"

"...You could always run," Lulu offers as she works to get her feet under her, but Wakka is faster this time. "Hah! I'd never forgive myself--no way! Not if I ran away now. Even in--death, ya!"

"My thoughts exactly."

Lulu starts charging a spell as Wakka hurls his ball forward with a muscular arm, white smoke coiling around the weapon as it sails straight towards Yunalesca to interrupt her magic and prevent that power a second time.

GS: Wakka has attacked Yunalesca with Silence Attack!
GS: Wakka has completed her action.
GS: Yunalesca takes a solid hit from Lulu's Silence Attack for 85 hit points!
GS: Mute applied to Yunalesca!
GS: Yunalesca activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Rikku stands near Tidus, the two feeling on the same wavelength now even if they were asynchronous before. She seethes at Yunalesca's answer. "You-!" She bites back a feeling like bile in her throat, at the idea that Hope is a comforting lie to gloss over the fact that their feelings are irrelevant in the face of something so monumental as this system.
 
Rikku flinches as she sees that vision of Auron attacking Yunalesca, only to be indifferently swatted aside. Never has she felt more acutely like she doesn't belong here, an Al Bhed in one of Yevon's most sacred places - never has she felt more empathetic for Auron.
 
And then the question again.
 
Rikku's anger becomes this bovine sense of confusion as Yuna says 'No one.' and a sudden rising emotion. A feeling that she can't deny.
 
Despite the intensity of the situation, she undergoes a transformation, as it becomes happy, genuinely happy as she listens to her more and more. She'd never admit it, but her hope had been nearly quashed, crushed during this journey throughout Zanarkand. The optimism of 'the Merriest' resurges all at once... as Yuna keeps speaking, from the heart. Feelings learned from this journey. Strength achieved. A strength that culminates into an outpouring that's beyond all of Rikku's wildest imaginings, only saying at the end. "Yunie-!"
 
Rikku reaches out for Yuna's hand, feeling the heat. She's never been in so dangerous a situation, and been so giddy, so genuinely happy. Despite also feeling resolute in the face of this powerful ghost. A ghost who speaks on them throwing away hope in a way that really ticks her off. As light erupts, suddenly there's a flash of movement, as Rikku just isn't there as the first bead of light erupts on her position, because she's taken Yuna's hand, and twisted her around quickly to duck her down and cover her bodily. A shield raised up...
 
... and the fluttering of a fading, gauzy curtain of moonlight that interposed between her and the ancient Unsent... that only took the edge off her magical might just slightly. Rikku's whole form looks faintly bleached in the shine of the light, singed, though she finds a moment to grin at Yuna all the same as if to tell her she's fine. "Shows what you know!" Rikku takes that momentary closeness of the two to pass a tablet into Yuna's palm.
 
"I'm not throwing away hope at all! Yunie... what she did just now..."
 
Undraping herself from over Yuna, she brings herself up to standing, still holding Yuna's palm as she raises her up... only letting it go just then. "... that is my hope!"
 

GS: Rikku spends 1 Combo on Reload!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with Mana Tablet!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    There's a certain horror in watching the Auron of the past charge right at Yunalesca--to scream defiance and raise his blade in exactly the way Tidus would have just done had the memory of Auron not done it first--and to watch him get effortlessly cut down for it. Tidus stares down at the crumpled body of someone who's been a stand-in father for him for his entire adolescence and feels his guts clench.
    
    He could have died just now.
    
    Tidus stares at Auron--the real one, the one here in the present moment--and although he doesn't know for sure, something clicks.
    
    But there isn't any time to dwell on that. Yunalesca insists on her version of reality, and Yuna denies it. Tidus smiles at her, pride and love and relief swelling in him as she declares that Yunalesca's life (death) plan sucks and she's going to do better. She reaches her hands out, and he accepts what he offers her, slipping his fingers between hers and squeezing it in reassurance. With Yuna--with Rikku, and Lulu, and Auron and Wakka and Kimahri and Paine--Tidus stands against the institution of the Final Summoning with determination in his heart.
    
    Now is the time to choose, Auron declares, but the truth is that they've all already made their resolve. It's just a matter of seeing it through.
    
    "You said it, Rikku!" Tidus calls, then looks to his love. "Yuna! This is *our* story! Now let's see this through together!"
    
    One last squeeze of the hand, and Tidus lets Yuna go. He lets her go because he knows that she won't slip away, to sacrifice herself for the good of the world. He lets her go because he trusts her to live on, and he trusts his friends to keep her, and him, and each other, safe. They'll see this through, and get to the other side alive.
    
    Which is not to say that it'll be an *easy* fight by any means. Yunalesca calls up her immense power, then sears it into not just Tidus but the assembled warriors. He cries out in pain as the searing light crashes into him, knocking him down to the stony floor. Rikku has Yuna covered, and he gives her a pained but grateful nod before he peels himself up and back onto his feet.
    
    His own magic surges around him, but not to attack in return. Time has always been of the essence during their journey together, and it's of the essence now. If Yunalesca is so immensely powerful she could have struck *Auron* down in one blow, then they're all just going to have to outpace her.
    
    White light shimmers around Tidus, then flows out towards and into his friends to speed up their movements.

GS: Tidus has attacked Yuna with Hastega!
GS: Tidus has attacked Lulu with Hastega!
GS: Tidus has attacked Rikku with Hastega!
GS: Tidus has attacked Tidus with Hastega!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Tidus accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Tidus!
GS: Rikku accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Rikku!
GS: Yuna accepts Rikku's Mana Tablet for 0 hit points!
GS: Yuna activates Rikku's Reload!!
GS: Yuna accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Yuna!
GS: Lulu accepts Tidus's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Lock State and Quick applied to Lulu!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

The fayth have been SILENT throughout all this. Since the moment Yuna set foot into Zanarkand Dome.

They never leave her -- she is never alone -- but she hadn't made much of their quiet because it is typical. In one another's halls, they hold themselves in abeyance. It is a matter of etiquette, and also of practicality; each time Yuna merges with another fayth, opening herself to them and vice versa, becoming less and greater than before, becoming MORE, it is deeply personal to the two of them performing the act. It would be both rude and distracting to interfere.

But there is no fayth here.

There hasn't been for a thousand years.

And as Yunalesca obeys her nature and attacks -- no, before that -- as Yuna asked the critical question, and then came to her critical conclusion --

-- it isn't that they were just staying tidily out of the way of some unison that could never, would never be.

This was the silence of a held breath.

They collectively exhale, Yuna and the fayth.

The others stand with her. Even Wakka and Lulu and Kimahri, faithful Yevonites all once, each in their own way. She expected nothing less, but every time she's blown away by it; it is impossible to take for granted just how far they've come with her. Every step is another sacrifice. Every step is another miracle.

Auron shouts, and Yuna understands why he held his peace, but also what this MEANS to him. This is why he came. This is why he is here. She will not let him down.

She will not let any of them down.

"Yes!" she calls to Tidus and Rikku both, to Lulu, to all of them. Yes! This is our hope! Yes! This is our story! Yes! We will not run away!

Yes! We will live!

Not if Yunalesca has anything to say about it. This is self-defense, but if someone accused Yuna of adding ANOTHER notch to her murder belt she might not gainsay them very hard. Because it was also inexorable. She was given a choice: accept the Final Summoning, or die.

They're taking a third option.

Together, the united souls intake breath again.

DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION
DETERMINATION

Rikku lifts her to her feet, a mana tablet's power pouring into her, and holds her palm up high. HERETIC. Tidus' magic washes over her, along with his love. Wakka strikes first, buying time for Lulu to summon her power.

And Kimahri and Auron do too.

On the left: the mighty Ronso's jaws gape open, and he expels a tremendous blast of Overdrive-fueled power that he obtained on Kitty's Worst Day Ever, maybe even worse than Bevelle, because DARK EVIL CREATURES live in the Calm Lands. Well. GREEN evil creatures. The noxious brew of Bad Breath overflows Yunalesca, and through its opaque horrible smell...

...the IMMUNE octohedron shines through.

Auron takes a page from Hiro's book, as he sweeps in from the right.

"Dodge this."

GS: Yuna has attacked Yunalesca with L1!
GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Yunalesca has posed.

Wakka's ball slams into Yunalesca, knocking her backward. She had been preparing another spell -- this one stronger -- and it bursts away from her, a flash of light erupting as the blitzball bounces away from her and back to Wakka.

She throws an open palm out, towards Wakka and Lulu both. Yunalesca uses a shorter spell, instead: a point blank flash of light that explodes out, a shockwave that rolls towards Wakka and Lulu both.

She turns her head, seeing the way that fabric flutters between Rikku and her. Yunalesca scowls at her, then at Tidus, as she sees them use their abilities to bolster themselves. She throws a hand out. Darkness swirls around their heads -- a swirl of inky blackness about each, obscuring their vision. Auron rushes in after -- and Kimahri, too -- and a blast of noxiousness shots for Yunalesca.

She rushes, ducking to the side. She ducks right into Auron, and his blade slashes into her. It cuts deep; pyreflies explode out.

She throws a hand out. A blast of noxious, ugly green -- bubbles, that churn -- spew out over Auron, Kimahri, and Yuna. It burns to breath. And Yunalesca's form shimmers -- and she lifts off the ground, as a cloak rises behind her, and her hair rises into terrible serpentine strands. The cloak lifts her off the ground, and fuses at the bottom -- to become fleshy tendrils, spreading out every which way.

A monster, to be sure.

GS: Yunalesca takes a solid hit from Yuna's L1 for 88 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Yunalesca activates Sufferer!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Lulu with Brilliant Blast!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Tidus with Blind!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Rikku with Blind!
GS: Yunalesca spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Yuna with Virus!
GS: Yunalesca has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Yunalesca with Metamorphosis!
GS: Yunalesca has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yunalesca has completed her action.
GS: Yunalesca accepts Yunalesca's Metamorphosis for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Amplify, Hyper, Shield, and Surge applied to Yunalesca!
GS: Rikku fully evades Yunalesca's Blind for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Tidus takes a glancing hit from Yunalesca's Blind for 0 hit points!
GS: Blind applied to Tidus!
GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Yunalesca's Virus for 0 hit points!
GS: Disease and Poison applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna activates Sufferer!
GS: CRITICAL! Lulu takes a solid hit from Yunalesca's Brilliant Blast for 169 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lulu gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mighty applied to Yunalesca!
GS: Lulu activates Arcane Font!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Auron fell. Tidus could have. But here, now, they are forging their own story, and Lulu does not know whether they can overcome a being this ancient and powerful. She only knows that they will fight. That she will give all she has in this.

Tidus's magic floods through Lulu and speeds her up, letting her get her spell together that much more quickly. Kimahri and Auron move ahead--but Lulu does not need to strike first.

Yunalesca's blast of light slams into both Wakka and Lulu, hitting hard, knocking her from her feet again and to one knee immediately--it would seem that she might die for Yuna sooner than she thought. But not yet. No, not yet.

"Wakka! Cover me!"

"Ya!" He rushes out next and this time blocks the next attack at Lulu as she rises up and extends her hand, doll under her arm extending its too as flames rush from Lulu's position towards the now-transformed Yunalesca. This is her answer.

GS: Lulu has attacked Yunalesca with Rising Fira!
GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Yunalesca critically guards Lulu's Rising Fira for 24 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Rikku isn't far from Tidus, and gives him this little grin as he says it's his and Yuna's story. And Yuna says the same. "I'm definitely not running either! I'm fighting! I want to see what happens next!" A sudden surge of Tidus' magic moves throughout her, and Rikku suddenly starts moving back and forth in this hyperactive stance that's probably mostly the magic.
 
The sudden blur of darkness from Yunalesca has her instinctually dart to the side, a blur from the magic Tidus had imbued her with. Hitting the ground just as the inky blackness takes form into a slide just as she sees Auron rush forward. Her hands gripping a shape.
 
Promptly she rises to her feet, pitching back her arm. And then faces...
 
"Again!?" She blanches, as she's still remembering Seymour's latest transfiguration vividly. Quite vividly. It nearly killed her. "Why does this keep happening?"
 
Rikku seems to look like she's second guessing her choice of weapon, as if it might not be good enough. However ultimately she pitches it forward anyway.
 
Even if she is a monster, Rikku has yet to find a monster problem that can't be solved with grenades.
 

GS: Rikku has attacked Yunalesca with Use: Grenade!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Yunalesca critically guards Rikku's Use: Grenade for 36 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Even with everyone sped up, Yunalesca's not an easy foe; she still manages to keep up, and it's frightening to think how badly things might have gone if that Hastega *hadn't* been immediately set in place. Tidus doesn't think about that, even as she casts Blind on him and Rikku, obscuring their vision and making it more difficult to get a hit in on her. He doesn't think about how it also makes it harder for him to keep a track on his allies, to keep track of their movements so he can sync with them. He'll rely on his gut. It's led him well so far.
    
    So in the wake of Auron's heavy slash, Kimahri's Bad Breath, and Lulu's aggressive magic assaults, Tidus dashes in with a defiant roar, sweeping his blade up and around as he charges; then he leaps, twirls, somersaults, and brings that blade down HARD on the horrifically transformed Unsent. He saw what happened when Auron tried a straightforward attack; if he's going to go aggressive, Tidus is *at least* going to bring in some acrobatics to make it harder for Yunalesca to counterattack. ...Whether it's successful or not is another story. But it's still *his* story--his and Yuna's.
    
    Either way, as he moves away from Yunalesca to not get caught in his friends' attacks on her, he calls to Rikku, "You think it's just something Unsent can do?" After all, as she says, it *does* keep happening with a certain crowd.

GS: Tidus has attacked Yunalesca with Spiral Cut!
GS: Tidus assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Yunalesca takes a glancing hit from Tidus's Spiral Cut for 72 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Auron smiles a small but extremely memorable smile as he lands on the far side of his blow to Yunalesca, a slash of a smile for a slash of a sword, a sword for Braska, for Jecht. It makes what happens to him and Kimahri -- something of a tit-for-tat to Kimahri's own distraction -- totally worth it.

It's a good thing Yuna and the fayth took that deep breath. It is their last of fresh air; their last that comes easy. After enduring Yunalesca's infectious, fell green fog, every inhalation is like a knife.

They are close around her now. There is no question that they support this action. She knows nothing of Tidus' experience with the Gagazet Fayth but what she witnessed, which was not nearly enough to even begin to guess. But she is heartened, enormously, by their collective approval. She's always fought for Spira, but as they have been added to her whole, she's fought for them too, as much as she's fought with them.

They are so much more than daughter and soldier and fisherman and nun and son and sailor and mercenary.

Yunalesca begins to unfold from the embodiment of a tragedy in the form of a woman, into the embodiment of a tragedy in the form of a tragedy. She was, Yuna thinks, more monstrous when she appeared human. How many summoners did she lure with legend and sweet words? How many died because no one realized they were the engineers of their own destruction?

Althena's Guard, Yuna reflects, was right.

Much moreso than Grand Maester Mika, this is the true rot that lies at the heart of Yevon.

And... she died doing the right thing. She's still trying, Yunalesca. They're all just trying.

It's unbelievably sad.

But also unbelievably upsetting.

Their FATHERS--! BELIZE--!!

But she is not alone. In her sadness, or her rage.

A sister is with her.
A brother is with her.
A father is with her.
A mother is with her.
A war prisoner is with her.
A cousin is with her.
A bodyguard is with her.

And they make her all of those things too, equally as much as her Guardians do; sister and daughter and comrade and cousin and ward.

They know what Yunalesca will do to them if they defy her directly.

They do not care.

Fire blossoms, then lingers, in each step of Yuna's dance, as she demonstrates to the Shrine Maiden at the End of the World -- the Guardian of Eternity -- the long road she has traveled. The worthiness of her pilgrimage. She has not stepped off that path because it was not EARNED.

And perhaps no one has earned it along with her more than the fayth whose home was mutilated by dark powers, by the will of the Goddess Althena -- or the God Zophar, depending on who you ask. The group hasn't seen him since they freed Kilika Temple; whereas it used to be a common tactic to play Yuna's aeons as a trump card, their own strength, as Guardians, as people, has grown and grown, to the point where they're less necessary. They can hold their own, on their own, against four-armed giants, and Behemoths, and Dark Flans. Yuna herself, infamously, can field strip combat machina to bits in a split second.

But that does not mean that the aeons have not grown too.

Especially this one.

<SoundTracker> Burn My Dread ~ Last Battle ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE_EAsV52rw

IFRIT explodes out of the stone floor of this star-strewn space with absolute indifference for the pretty carvings he's mutilating, and nothing at all like he once did. There is no solid piece of rock for him to explode; there is no catching Yuna in midair, not this time. He is still gentle with her -- with all of them -- by declining to incinerate them all with the heat that accompanies his simple presence, which glows not red but blue, the hottest blue at the core of the flame, at the heart of a star.

He'll only be allowed to take form for a second; he makes it count.

"No," Yuna says, over the roar of the meteor he becomes, crashing azure and furious towards Yunalesca with superheated claws ready to rip and tear her magical wards to pieces, to make a hole in HER world RIGHT BACK to the one she has drilled, endlessly, into theirs.

"It isn't something they can do. It is something they are."

METEOR STRIKE

DC: Yuna switches forms to Ifrit!

GS: Yuna has attacked Yunalesca with Meteor Strike!
GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yuna takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Yunalesca guards a hit from Yuna's Meteor Strike for 164 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Dispel! Amplify, Hyper, and Mighty removed!
GS: Yunalesca activates Guard bonus!

<Pose Tracker> Yunalesca has posed.

Flame erupts off Lulu's hand. The fires swirl and converge onto Yunalesca, but slam into a barrier made of interlocked green hexagons of light. They wash off it, heat striking into Yunalesca, but the flames do not breach it. A few pyreflies waft from her body from the effort.

She thrusts another hand out at Lulu. This time, white flashes all around Lulu -- in bright circles, lined with black, then fading.

Lulu finds her magic briefly lessened -- briefly harder to grasp -- unless she breaks free of the effect.

Rikku's grenade comes flying at her. Yunalesca turns a hand out, throwing out a blast of light. It intercepts it, then explodes in a brilliant, fiery flash of light. She scowls, then hurls another bead of light that explodes in a brilliant white flash.

Tidus rushes in after. His blade slashes down hard, but she swings up a pair of snake heads. They are slashed through -- falling down then bursting apart into pyreflies -- and she backs up.

Then, she flicks a hand at Tidus. He feels a wave of fatigue trying to grip him -- a bone-tired exhaustion, that threatens to drag his mind down into a lack of clarity.

Yunalesca looks back towards Yuna. She knows of summoning, of course; helping create Aeons is, simply, what she does. And yet, she only summoned once -- and paid for it with her life and her husband's.

Ifrit rises, and draws a gasp from Yunalesca. Yes, she can still feel surprise. "You would turn them against me? They, who could have been Spira's hope? How sad..."

But then superheated claws strike, and pyreflies explode off her with the impact. Bursts of incandescence explode out from Yunalesca, as she is driven back -- and screams -- before throwing a hand out. A bigger, brighter orb of light explodes off.

She knows about summoning. And, much like Seymour, she can send an Aeon away. A powerful blast of light throws Ifrit back from whence he came.

And continues on, crashing down for Yuna.

GS: Yunalesca has attacked Lulu with Mute!
GS: Yunalesca has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Yunalesca enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Rikku with Diara!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Tidus with Sleep!
GS: Yunalesca spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Yuna with Diaga!
GS: Yunalesca has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yunalesca has completed her action.
GS: Tidus critically guards Yunalesca's Sleep for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tidus gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku critically guards Yunalesca's Diara for 42 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Rikku activates Guard bonus!
GS: Rikku enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Lulu takes a glancing hit from Yunalesca's Mute for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lulu gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mute applied to Lulu!
GS: Lulu activates Evade bonus and Arcane Font!
GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Tidus used Defend! He takes Yunalesca's Diaga attack on Yuna on himself!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Yunalesca's Diaga for 226 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tidus gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo!

GS: Lulu has activated a Force Action!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu recovers a bit of herself as she answers Tidus and Rikku both, "I don't know. It might be."

It's something she doesn't know; there's so much now that she doesn't know, but rather than being a hopeless situation, it is one that brings possibility with it. Her heart pounds as she channels the ancient magic of this place--the heat still in the air, the power in the ground and in the stones.

It is rage and it is exultation, seeing Auron's small, memorable smile. Yunalesca has become what perhaps she has been for a long time. Lulu reflects on much, her mind working overtime. But she sees Ifrit, so briefly. Sad, Yunalesca calls it.

Lulu has no words for her; she blocked the first spell, but that's not going to stop this mage. Not from using the magic she has learned since childhood, using it for Yuna. Yunalesca screams...

Tidus is working on defense, so Lulu presents the offense.

"Never again!" Lulu shouts, setting down Mog and working through the motions of channeling ambient magic again in time with her doll. Power radiates off of her as she channels it, and the temperature abrubtly drops. Cold settles in, to the point that frost touches the ground all around her feet.

And then there is light.

The first flames swirl into being before the monstrous Unsent, spiraling wildly until they erupt into a conflagration that engulfs much of the chamber. But that is only the first. The second flame comes next, a half-heartbeat after, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth.

"NOW!"

Lulu's spells do not touch the friends who she hopes to enable here. But they burn. It is harder to grasp her spell, but she pushes through on sheer fury.

GS: Lulu spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Formation! Lulu has attacked Yunalesca with Firaga!
GS: Lulu has launched an attack Link!
GS: Lulu spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Formation! Lulu has attacked Yunalesca with F U R Y!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Yunalesca guards a hit from Lulu's Firaga for 140 hit points!
GS: Yunalesca fully evades Lulu's F U R Y for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Tidus asks a question, and Lulu's answer... "Don't look at me! It's not like I was going to ask Belize about it!" Rikku answers back both their ways, as if it feels impolite to ask the Unsent Summoner 'Hey can you turn into a TERRIFYING monster like Seymour?'
 
Rikku suddenly is there and gone though as she sees Yunalesca intercept the blast of her grenade. Deciding she needs to keep moving. Quickly. Though seeing that she isn't going to be quick enough. She suddenly stops and huddles behind her Targe as she suddenly hurls a gem out from behind it.
 
A sudden eruption of fire takes the light head on, dampening it such that it rocks her back on her feet.
 
The fire glare of Ifrit's strike comes out of the corner of her eyes.
 
And Yuna's answer...
 
"Oh." Well that explains it. Though despite that sudden moment, she quickly recovers with an elated, "-go Yunie go-!" As if she were cheering on Tidus at a game, rather than Yuna attacking the very system that Yevon is based upon.
 
And then the quick moving Al Bhed suddenly moves across the room the room at such a fast speed that it's like she's everywhere at once.
 
"You're not offering for them to become hope at all! You're just another snake providing a false bill of goods-!"
 
And suddenly... all of the Guardians, and Yuna just find, a very familiar potion in their hands.
 
"And I HATE snakes!"
 

GS: Rikku has activated a Force Action!
GS: Rikku spends 1 Combo on Reload!
GS: Rikku has attacked Lulu with Use: Al Bhed Potion!
GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with Use: Al Bhed Potion!
GS: Rikku has attacked Tidus with Use: Al Bhed Potion!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with Use: Al Bhed Potion!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Rikku heals Lulu! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Mute removed!
GS: Lulu activates Rikku's Reload!!
GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Yuna accepts Rikku's Use: Al Bhed Potion for 0 hit points! Disease prevents the heal!
GS: Restore! Disease and Poison removed!
GS: Yuna activates Rikku's Reload!!
GS: Rikku heals Tidus! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Blind removed!
GS: Tidus activates Rikku's Reload!!

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    It's not something they do, but something they are.
    
    Tidus hadn't ever thought of it like that before. But if that's true, then why hasn't--?
    
    No. That's not something to think about right now. Instead, he just gives Lulu a curt nod. "Maybe," he agrees/prevaricates, as much to her as to Yuna, glancing briefly towards Auron, while still thinking on Yuna's assertion. (For the record, Rikku, Belize probably could. But they've never tried, and they don't have reason to try, either.) Tidus then focuses back in on Yunalesca. She's casting another spell, and he feels his eyelids grow heavy, his movements grow slugging as it enfolds him like a blanket--
    
    'It's not that you're dreaming. You ARE the dream.'
    
    "No!!" he shouts, breaking through both the memory and the spell as it would have lured him into a dreamlike state. Perhaps knowing his true nature now makes him better able to resist it. After all, he's supposedly more than a dream now.
    
    But even as he shouts defiance, he sees Yunalesca open fire on Ifrit--sees that enormous orb of light reduce him and his gentle, ferocious heat to nothing more than a cloud of pyreflies and continue on towards Yuna. Tidus has already made his defiance known. So despite having primed himself for the offense, he cartwheels to the side to make a defense.
    
    It's not the best decision he's ever made. But he doesn't regret making it.
    
    Crumpled to the ground, Tidus coughs. His body spasms from the impact of the spell--but he's not dead yet. Quaking, he pushes himself up with the help of his sword. "Gotta... gotta give it everything we've got," he rasps, glancing back briefly at Yuna. As Lulu calls up her fury of Firaga spells, as Rikku hurls a barrage of Al Bhed Potions, Tidus adjusts his footing to better defend himself and his friends. The potion knits together some of his wounds and clears away the cloud of darkness, and feeling somewhat refreshed, he lashes a sharp blow down, around, and upwards through the air. Water follows the edge of his water-sword, then rushes forward like a literal liquid blade along the ground to slice through Yunalesca.

GS: Formation! Tidus has attacked Yunalesca with Riptide Cutter!
GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Tidus's Avenger stance ends. He enters the Stoic stance!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Yunalesca critically guards Tidus's Riptide Cutter for 36 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
<SoundTracker> Now Or Never Now - Metric - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7DUOcCgmpU

Ifrit explodes into pyreflies. On Filgaia -- when it was Shiva -- this was a major calamity. Since then, the fayth have encouraged Yuna to risk it strategically. And she has grown accustomed to the feedback, the rubber-band snap of her soul and the fayth's, as their child, the aeon, is rent from existence by the will of the dead.

But there's just one difference, this time.

Yunalesca is what she is, because of what Unsent are.

But their battlefield is an extraordinary one.

And it isn't only the home base of the First Summoner.

This is Zanarkand.

A galaxy of pyreflies swirls around both women, the living and the dead.

Yuna and Yunalesca.

The shrine maiden at the end of this world -- and the shrine maiden at the beginning of the next.

Yunalesca's wall of white advances, her perversion of sacred power, same as Seymour's. THAT might be a thing Unsent 'can do'. Or maybe it too is what they are?

But her Guardians are what THEY are, too.

Yuna screams in response to Tidus' sacrifice -- the pain in his voice, the look in his eyes when he glances at her. She screams with sheer effort -- the swordsman's scream, the magi's -- the youthful Yuna, bountiful in her vitality even if she is slight in stature compared to all of her Guardians but Rikku. If Yunalesca WERE alive she'd considerably outclass Yuna in a wrestling match; everyone's story may be a part of her tragedy, but Yuna's still hasn't even reached its main chapter, she is an apostate and a summoner and a white mage and a CHILD. She is still, by the reckoning of man, not even quite full grown. At least Yunalesca had that much, before she chose to die.

She screams and the dispersing pyreflies that were Ifrit pause, then bob in midair, and then rush back towards her, drawing others with them, the dead of Zanarkand entering her like a thousand thousand shooting stars.

Entering her dance.

Belize saw it first. Then the others, when they went to rescue Leviathan. They were carried by these claws, embraced by these wings.

If the fayth have a leader, it is the one from Zanarkand. The one beneath Bevelle.

And NO ONE tells HIM what to do. His very presence here, as he shatters the skies and his consecutive Yevonite -- Zanarkandian -- runes -- defies Yunalesca's words directly.

Yuna lets him speak for himself.

B A H A M U T brings with him a poignancy in his absolute lack of hesitation to confront Yunalesca. Also violence. He brings that too.

He lands with a titanic crash -- more chunks of floor go flying, Yuna, even knowing this was coming, stumbles a bit -- and immediately gets down on all fours. His claws dig into the stone. The crown on his back, which is also a wheel, which is also an engine, which is also a catalyst -- begins to spin, then crackle.

His maw gapes open to reveal a pinprick. The heart of a newborn star. Infinite mass, in a single point in space.

Power is power, it is destruction and it is creation and this raw expression of it is both.

It is growing.

Now it's the size of a Besaid peach.

Rikku slams a potion into Yuna's hand and she rips out the cork with her lips and guzzles the whole thing without a word.

(A beach ball.)

Yuna shimmers with her cousin's strength.

(Taller than Yuna, and second and third pulses of light are drawing INTO it, violet and black...)

Last time it took a countdown to do this. More than enough time for Yunalesca to send him the way of Ifrit.

This time, both Yunalesca and the others can learn the lesson that Belize did in the Via Purifico: if Yuna had confronted Seymour as the summoner she is today...

...he would have survived.

She has grown so much since Macalania Temple. Not just in power, but in control...

...Bahamut's M E G A F L A R E, greater by magnitudes than the absolute zero that Yuna (via Shiva) shot so hard through Anima that it inadvertantly pierced Seymour as well, a risk she was desperate enough to take...

...it PARTS around the party as it passes through the battlespace, that which threatens them. They stand in a vast, scintillating tunnel, surrounded on all sides by light of all wavelengths and none. It is beautiful and it is terrible. Bahamut's power is titanic, as appalling as it is breathtaking.

But Yuna's power will not harm them.

She will not allow it.

Never again.

Yunalesca, on the other hand...

DC: Yuna switches forms to B A H A M U T!
GS: Yuna has activated a Force Action!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Snipe!
GS: Yuna spends 3 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Formation! Yuna has attacked Yunalesca with ! ! ! M E G A F L A R E ! ! !!
GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Lock state expired!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Yunalesca guards a hit from Yuna's ! ! ! M E G A F L A R E ! ! ! for 181 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Yunalesca has posed.

Yunalesca may be ancient -- and, in truth, unpracticed in combat -- but she remembers enough to realize that Lulu is a powerful mage. She cannot produce a barrier in time to block the first flames. They slam into her, striking her body, and pyreflies burst off the Unsent.

But then the snake heads all rise, sliding together, and form a wall against the next set of blasts. Those slam into them, and they hold against them -- shielding her from the follow-up spells that Lulu unleashes upon Yunalesca.

Rikku moves faster than the eye can see. Yunalesca can't track her -- but she can see the potions that end up in her foes' hands. "Are the Calms not a hope? Is there not respite? A falsehood, perhaps... but still a good! Better than rank uncertainty -- than the doom your actions would provide."

Tidus comes for him -- his sword slashing down, with a flash of water. It slashes into her, pyreflies flying, and then the water stops on a barrier of interlocked golden hexagons at Yunalesca's command. It holds the blade and rush of water at bay, for a moment.

Yunalesca looks up, through the matrix of golden light. A Protect spell, made to shield her from physical attacks. Her eyes catch Bahamut. They widen.

And the Megaflare explodes through the barrier with ease, the spell vanishing as raw magical force assails it. It slams into Yunalesca, burning through her, pyreflies exploding out. She is ragged; she hangs in the air, shuddering. She draws pyreflies into her.

Her body arches backward, as snakes wind together -- and form a monstrous, scaled head. An enlarged version of hers, but locked in a scream, and with a tongue that is a violet serpent. Wriggling snakes make her hair now.

Light hurtles towards Bahamut, banishing him away.

And then an orb of darkness explodes into terrific being in the center of the room. Rimmed violet, crackling with white lightning, it expands outward -- sapping at life, sapping at energy, and sapping at consciousness in a terrific assault. It leaves stones untouched -- even as it seeks to engulf all of them.

GS: Yunalesca has attacked Yunalesca with Metamorphosis!
GS: Yunalesca accepts Yunalesca's Metamorphosis for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Burst, Hyper, Shield, and Surge applied to Yunalesca!
GS: Yunalesca enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Yuna with Mega Death!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Lulu with Mega Death!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Rikku with Mega Death!
GS: Yunalesca has attacked Tidus with Mega Death!
GS: Yunalesca has completed her action.
GS: Rikku heals Rikku! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Rikku activates Rikku's Reload!!
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Moderate! Gamble: Low! Rikku takes a glancing hit from Yunalesca's Mega Death for 78 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Poison applied to Rikku!
GS: Lulu has activated a Force Action!
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Gamble: Low! Lulu takes a glancing hit from Yunalesca's Mega Death for 110 hit points!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Disease applied to Lulu!
GS: Lulu activates Arcane Font!
GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Gamble: Moderate! Yuna takes a solid hit from Yunalesca's Mega Death for 286 hit
points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yuna gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Poison applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna activates Sufferer!
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Catastrophic! Gamble: Very High! Tidus takes a glancing hit from Yunalesca's Mega Death for 163 hit
points!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Shieldbreak applied to Tidus!
GS: Tidus activates Evade bonus!
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Tidus receives 50 temporary hit points.
GS: Tidus enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Hope. A snake. Yuna's assertion registers for Lulu now, and she imagines that she's right. But another set of spells comes... Lulu watches as Yunalesca shields herself from the rest of her magic, yet again strong enough to withstand her flames. That makes her imagine something.

But it comes not next. First, first comes Bahamut and his titanic crash. Lulu too stumbles back, looking to the newborn star that comes. What Bahamut does... she can feel it, feel the magic of it as it charges. She recognizes the sheer control Yuna has as it goes around her, but she also recognizes the nature of the spell. She imagines it, as she catches Rikku's potion and downs it all at once, quickly, alongside Wakka again.

"Better that Spira knows the truth than continues to labor under a delusion! I would rather accept uncertainty than base my life on a falsehood!"

Light hurtles forward, and Lulu sees by it; she sees the nature of Yunalesca now, and she feels a magic coming that she understands well. Raw darkness comes at her, and violet and lightning both crash outward. Lulu moves, sped by Tidus's spell and by a burst of adrenaline, and the spell's terrible lances go a fraction from hitting her heart. Her shoulder is battered instead, and she is knocked aside, hitting the ground one more time--

...But alive. Alive, even if she feels the enervation of that darkness sapping at her consciousness even now, coaxing her to a sleep from which she would not wake. ...But it is not enough. Not yet.

Lulu rises, and once more Mog rises with her. She puts up both of her hands, and light begins to gather between them, light that remains and gleams with arcane power as she stretches her fingertips forward, painted nails glinting in its radiance. Heat builds again, and there is a moment where a roar of invisible power begins to build.

"Know pain," Lulu intones, and lifts her hands to the sky. A flicker of flame ghosts into being about Yunalesca, growing into a whirl that intensifies and grows, becoming a sudden explosion that is too bright to look upon without stars in the vision, an ignition, the single greatest spell Lulu has yet cast.

And its heat melts stone.

GS: Lulu has activated a Force Action!
GS: Lulu has attacked Yunalesca with Flare!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Yunalesca takes a solid hit from Lulu's Flare for 209 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
"Who are you to tell us what's good for us!?" Rikku shouts back at Yunalesca with her own brand of Al Bhed defiance, sacrilige to be expected of her to be sure - even if today is a day of sacrilege for them all, "For anyone! You're just like that old Maester in Bevelle! So puffed up on your own importance that you can't imagine us living without you!"
 
Rikku has to shield her eyes from the glare of Yuna's Megaflare as it slides around her, the auroral glow of its mass destruction blinding her for just a moment with it's beauty.
 
"It still impresses me... every time."
 
Not just Bahamut though. Yuna never fails to impress... in every way, and today she impresses more than she ever has.
 
Yunalesca though then suddenly arches backwards, and Rikku looks upon the sudden transformation blanching, feeling herself trembling slightly. It's not the same as lightning, the fear, but she does hate snakes, and this being that defies death causes an instinctual fear even worse than that.
 
The orb of darkness is not one she can truly get away from.
 
The violent orb touches her, and Rikku feels her very life-force being attacked. With a defiant scream, she tries to push through it.
 
She wasn't kidding what she said earlier. She never wanted to see what happened past this moment before... but she does now, as she lurches out of the way of the orb before it fully consumes her and strikes a vital source of her life source.
 
Still quivering with the brush with death, Rikku forces herself to move. To move. Her hands move so fast there's a blur of an aura surrounding her.
 
And then with a loud cry, she throws an object Yunalesca's way. Bright orange and red glowing pyreflies swirling within a sphere.
 
The thin eggshell evaporates, the pyreflies spread out...
 
"Besides... W-What's wrong with a little uncertainty anyway-? For example..."
 
And a Firestorm is born, blossoming outwards into nine separate blossoming eruptions of flame that try to burn away parts of this serpent like effigy of a head as if a lesser attempt to follow up and support Lulu's spellcasting..
 
"I wasn't really sure what that would do!"
 

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 spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yunalesca with Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise!!
GS: Rikku takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Gamble: Moderate! Yunalesca takes a solid hit from Rikku's Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise! for 205 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yunalesca gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Yuna's scream pierces Tidus through the heart. He hates hearing her suffer, hearing her in agony... but in a way, it's better than seeing her suffer in silence, knowing that she's hiding it behind smile. These things *are* messed up. They *are* horrible. One should react to them appropriately instead of pretending everything is okay. So while he hates that she's screaming over him--at least it's her honest feelings.
    
    He just needs to do better and make sure she doesn't have cause to scream like that again. To make sure her decision to put everything she has, everything she is, into the offense--into sending Bahamut forth to tear through reality and rend Yunalesca with the power of the very stars--is the right one.
    
    A hard decision to live up to, with Yunalesca immediately banishing Yuna's Aeon and then casting that horrible deathly spell on them all. Tidus is only back on his feet when he staggers again in its wake, as he feels it suck away his energy like some kind of dark kingdom's monster. Even so, he doesn't die. Even so, he remains on his feet... if also his last legs.
    
    "Lulu's right! It's not real hope if it's a lie! YOU might be satisfied with perpetuating that lie... but we're not," he croaks at Yunalesca. "We'll find Spira a *new* hope. One that'll put an end to this awful cycle for good!"
    
    With that, he rushes towards Yunalesca again--but with a plan. That shield she cast upon herself, protecting herself from physical attacks? He takes advantage of it by jumping up and rebounding off it, leaping up into the air at an angle as energy swirls in to collect around his sword. Time seems to slow as he attempts to lock eyes with the ancient Unsent.
    
    Then he lashes his blade *down*, sending a barrage of energy projectiles down towards her. Enough of them, and maybe they'll smash right through that damn shield of hers, along with Lulu's collossal magic and Rikku's overwhelming chemistry.
    
    "Yuna!" Tidus calls, still in midair. "End it!!"

GS: Tidus spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Tidus enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Tidus has attacked Yunalesca with Energy Rain!
GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Yunalesca takes a solid hit from Tidus's Energy Rain for 158 hit points!
GS: Yunalesca has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
<SoundTracker> Silence

Bahamut goes the way of Ifrit; willingly, even eagerly. He spreads his wings wide to protect his summoner from any follow-up attack. Even in his final moments in this battle, he is trying to protect Yuna, and the others.

It doesn't work.

He is long gone, his pyreflies and therefore, terrifyingly, perhaps some measure of Yuna's own power, having been drawn directly into Yunalesca's greater form, when she strikes back.

Yunalesca's human body is just another hair now, a sort of vestigial thing flapping amid the serpents of the giant head that has replaced her. There was little of her that was human before, and now she has abandoned it entirely.

Spira's false savior has bargained for the Calms, but what she unleashes is the opposite.

This is not Sin's gravity magic that assails them, but it is reminiscent all the same. As lifeforce leeches from Yuna's body, dragged into violet-laced Mega Death, she is reminded not only of her chosen enemy but of the enemies who've chosen HER.

Seymour, Mika and Yunalesca would all rather kill her, kill them all, than allow their truths to be revealed. Seymour is, in a way, set apart from the others by making that decision while he was still alive.

But for Mika and especially Yunalesca, this isn't about CHOICE at all. She made her last choice a lifetime ago. And again, even as she's dying -- even as her friends are dying -- Yuna feels a little sorry for her.

A lot sorry, actually.

Spira is trapped in a spiral of death, and its center is here. Not a storm's eye but the opposite. Grief pours through her, that of the dead and that of the living, until Yunalesca's and Yuna's own are indistinguishable from one another.

From the ground, she hears voices.

Lulu answers.
Rikku answers.
Tidus answers...

Yuna's eyes reopen.

She, the least fit among them by a mile, has survived, but at what cost?

When life streamed out of Yuna's soul and into the maelstrom of Mega Death, it was the color of wings, and of hooves, and of hair, and of scales, and of kimono. Not all at once, but one at a time.

The fayth's power is spent for today.

She will call no more aeons in Zanarkand.

She's an incredible summoner, at the height of her powers, but without them... without them, she's an incredible healer, but the buck stops there. All of her Guardians know the VALUE that provides, the bulwark of having Yuna's prodigial white magic at their backs. The comfort, astonishingly, unusually literal, of being embraced by her will that they BE SAVED, that they BE WELL, that they SURVIVE.

And certainly they are wounded -- they're all wounded, from Yunalesca's escalating magicks, up to the abomination she just detonated in their midst.

But there is a sense that even if Yuna did cast, it would not be enough; that with Yunalesca now fully unfurled in her monstrousness, she and Rikku combined, even, might not possibly be able to keep up. All the Unsent has to do, is to do what she just did again. That's all. Thus Rikku calls the Firestorm.

And Yuna...

...gets back to her feet. She doesn't require a summoner's rod anymore, not for those arts, not since her flight at Bevelle, but she's acquired one anyway, on the way up Mt. Gagazet. It was left in the wake of a fiend. It felt left for her, so she kept it.

She grasps it in front of her, in both hands. Its length bisects her face and neck; its ornate top is as a crown, when looking at her straight on.

Yuna's magic operates on feelings, on intention. And she certainly has enough of that here. But it's never occurred to her to try to use white magic to harm someone; it is literally impossible, both because of the archaic, invisible and mighty rules that govern magic, and because she has never wanted to use her heart to do HARM before. Not like this.

They've survived, somehow. Everyone is still alive.

For them to stay that way...

...she, too, must act...

...not through the proxy of her soul...

...but only as herself.

Power wells within her, and the will to use it. There are no pink, purple and blue sparkles here; only the one color that is all colors, without the nicety of rainbow prismatics. It casts her body in black silhouette against her flowing raiments. It casts shadows across Zanarkand that are not shadows at all -- a light so pure and strong that it is incapable of creating darkness; it can only reveal it. And it does, around Yunalesca's awful form, a writhing veil of Death much larger than even her current embodiment should be able to produce. It falls across all of them. They've been in it all along.

Yuna answers with the opposite.

But not a desperation Phoenix Down and not her own Life or even Full-Life. The opposite of war isn't peace...

It's creation.

Sapphire and emerald alike are blotted out by the radiance pouring out of her tear ducts, her ears, even her nostrils. When she opens her mouth, it emerges from there too, along with a single word.

Some impulse in her which will never fully disappear wanted it to be 'sorry.' But Shiva's fayth and Belize, combined, have beaten that out of her. And also she isn't sorry, not really, not in that way. She is not sorry to join her friends in saving one another's lives. She is not sorry to break the cycle.

But she isn't happy, either.

Her grief is grief no longer; it is something infinitely more powerful. It is kind, but not gentle, and in its presence her Guardians recognize Yuna's heart, but not her power. This is different. This is impossible.

It pours out of her in all directions, like and unlike Yunalesca's serpentine hair; closer to feathers, if the light was anything physical at all. But it isn't really.

It is compassion taken form.

Like the pyreflies they fought over, it soars away...

...and then pauses...

...and then turns inward.

It is not Yuna at the center this time. It is Yunalesca.

They streak towards the Unsent, and where they pass over Death's shadow, it is banished. Where they meet, at Death's head -- they detonate.

And the word she said, the sad, heartfelt little word, which she meant with every fiber of her soul, in the vastness of its meaning, was "Sayonara."

DC: Yuna switches forms to Lady Summoner!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

CUTSCENE: Yuna used H
CUTSCENE: Yuna used O
CUTSCENE: Yuna used L
CUTSCENE: Yuna used Y
CUTSCENE: Yuna used !

<Pose Tracker> Yunalesca has posed.

"Then your life will end!" Yunalesca answers Lulu.

She sends forth flame, which grows from a tiny ember to a terrific explosion. The huge, fiery blast slams into her, blowing her backward. Chunks of her face are burnt away; snake-like hair is shattered. Pyreflies rise up from her in great streams and flows, joining into the huge constellation of them that permeate Zanarkand.

Those pyreflies grow greater and greater, when the firestorm that Rikku hurls strikes her. Flame assails her again, burning away more flesh. It scorches through her, hair falling away; she has holes torn through her. Her body is ragged in a familiar way -- the same way that Seymour, when badly hurt enough, begins to fall apart.

"What hope is there? There is no hope... no hope beyond the one we found!" Yunalesca cries back to Tidus. He comes down -- and a volley of energy arrows slash through her, one after the other. They cut through through. She is stuck in the air for a moment.

And then Yuna does something -- something Yunalesca has not seen before. Something she doesn't understand. By the time her eyes widen, she realizes she is undone. Light pours into her, assailing her from all around, and then she screams as they explode. "You... you kill Spira's only hope! Even if you destroy Sin, Yu Yevon--the immortal--will only create him anew! Zaon--"

She screams once more. "Forgive me! All that remains is sorrow!"

The pyreflies explode outward.

And Yunalesca is gone.

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

"If that's what it takes."

Lulu answers Yunalesca with words, but also with her spell. They all fight. They all give what they can. Lulu sees it; she sees Rikku's gamble, the hope that her work will be enough. She sees Tidus's certainty, his belief that there can be another way. And she sees Yuna...

She seees creation. She sees wonder. It is something she has not seen before, but something she will live to understand. Her analytical mind sees it, but her heart knows it.

...Her heart, too, understands; Yunalesca believed in what she did. Or perhaps she could not help but believe, anymore. The very foundation of a thousand years... And yet. And yet.

"...I..."

She looks at Yuna in wonder, and the question in her eyes is obvious. She has done that which Lulu thought impossible. But Lulu does not ask. Not now. Not at this moment.

"...We've..."

They have done something momentous. Something that for better or worse will change Spira forever.

But Lulu somehow does not believe what Yunalesca says, in her final words. Not because she questions what 'Yu Yevon' means, though she does. But because somehow...

Somehow. It's different. Somehow...

Lulu looks to the others, and sees them again as if for the first time.

"What remains..." She starts to say something, but she will not be the one to finish it. It is not a question.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

 
Rikku watches the assault from the other Guardians shred Yunalesca's form, watches the pieces go missing. She expects her to run. After all, she's someone who in Rikku's eyes holds Spira hostage with her twisted ideals. Why would she give up and accept an end when she believes what she's doing is right?
 
And then Yuna's radiance pours outward descending. Detonating. "What... what Aeon did..."
 
Rikku looks at Yuna... "... that?"
 
Rikku doesn't know so much about magic as to discern an impossibility to it. She just knows that Yuna did it, even if she's never seen her do it before.
 
And Yunalesca... falls. "Not her only hope." Rikku whispers, her eyes still upon Yuna. "Not her only hope by half."
 
The weight of the enormity of what they're done settles in. As wrong as Yunalesca is, she's right. They just killed the only way they know of to stop Sin, even if it's only for a short while.
 
Rikku finds herself thinking about it for a while, looking at Lulu as she repeats that, her eyes full of sympathy. Rikku knows how hard this must have been for Lulu. And after a moment, she walks up to her, and raises a hand... making this small shy wave in order to get her attention, though not... demand it.
 
"What remains is you." Rikku says to her, the thought of her becoming the final Summoning... becoming Sin, is something she never wants to think about again, "You..." She just looks across the room at her, "...and Yunie."
 
There's a pause, and something wells in her throat. "And... I just can't bring myself to be sad about that."
 
She didn't think when Tidus said 'We'll break it!' that it would turn out like this... but she finds herself... so happy that it did.
 

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Tidus is still mid-air, just at the precipice between rising and falling, when Yuna unleashes the power of Holy upon an unholy being. He doesn't know how she did that, but he easily accepts that she did. It's just like her, after all. Her emotions are thick in the air, and he can feel them: her sympathy, her grief, her compassion for an ancient being who sacrificed not just herself but the one she loved to bring about a temporary respite. For a moment, even though Yunalesca has been trying her damnedest to kill them all, Tidus feels it too. It might be a lie, but it's a lie the ancient Unsent clearly believes in judging by the way she talks. To be so caught up in the one broken way that barely works that one would refuse to try to search for any other way at all... Maybe it's the only way she could find to justify what she did, not just to Zaon but to herself. Either way, it's incredibly sad.
    
    But just because it's sad doesn't mean he'll let her have her way. They WILL find another way. Including and especially if they have to walk over Yunalesca's pyreflies to find it.
    
    Tidus lands, hard, at the same instant that Yunalesca crumples. "Yu Yevon?! he utters as he wobbles upright. He watches as she bursts apart into her component pyreflies. Then he looks around at his companions.
    
    It's not often that Lulu's left at a loss. Tidus can't blame her, after the past, what--five? Ten minutes? Has it even been that long? Rikku seems not nearly so shaken by far; by contrast, she seems bolstered. Figures, considering how their beliefs diverge. He watches as she walks over to Lulu, gives her what comfort she can. He smiles a little at it. Yeah--he sure can't be sad that Lulu and Yuna are still here.
    
    "Now it's Sin's turn," he states, quiet but firm and resolute. "We'll find a way to take it out--for good, and without the Final Aeon. I don't know how yet. But we'll figure something out."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yunalesca says her last words, and Yuna listens to them. At the calmest of times, she's a very good listener. A very open listener, most of all. Now each and every syllable engraves itself on her heart. It's her burden to bear. She chose this. She did.

Then she stares at her empty hands. That rod has fallen out of them, released by nerveless fingers.

Lulu finds her eyes somehow, but there are no answers there to the Black Mage's silent question. Yuna herself does not seem to know what she just did. At least, not in the execution of the execution.

That she just obliterated Yunalesca from existence -- deliberately, knowingly -- a mercy-kill, but a kill all the same, her mercy meant for the Unsent and Spira both -- that, she knows.

Rikku's admiration is uncomfortable in the face of this uncertainty. But she finds it familiar, too. She is accustomed to the expectations of others. They expect her to save the world. Everything has changed. And, at the same time, maybe nothing has, too. She smiles, carefully, trying on the expression, wanting to give something to her cousin in return for that shared happiness. Never mind that her own actions are the source. Her own survival, and Lulu's.

Tidus joins them, and she looks up and over to him, looks him OVER, makes sure he's not about to die of Poison or the like. Satisfied by his continued existence, she lets his words wash over her like Rikku's expression. He sounds like her, in a way, and yet he also sounds like himself. He was always so totally sure that they could do this. So that, too, is the same as ever.

Only now, they actually have to go through with it.

Somehow.

Bending over, she reclaims her weapon. Normally it is her hands that look delicate, but right now, the rod is what's slender between them.

She exhales a shaky breath.

"Not quite yet," she decides. "I want to... perform the Sending."

Whatever she did to Yunalesca, it may have obviated the need. But doing the right thing isn't about need at all. It's about choice.

"Honor... repaid in honor. She deserves it."

<Pose Tracker> Sheriff Star has posed.

Yunalesca is gone.

For a short time, they can talk amongst themselves. It is quiet in a room that, once, served as the living quarters of an embodiment of faith. That embodiment is gone, now. It might seem only the Guardians are here to hear the declarations -- the relief -- and the uncertainty. There is, even, time to perform the Sending.

It is after the deed is done -- Yunalesca's pyreflies winking out of existence -- that a voice cuts through the solemn moment.

It might sound unfamiliar. They could be forgiven; Xenobia had only spoken with them briefly. She only talked with them under pretenses. Her scream, now, is fury and frustration -- a rage they have not heard before. "What have you DONE!?"

She screams it and demands it.

She stands behind them, until there is a flash of blue -- and then she stands to their side. Kimahri grunts, as a large piece of rock lifts from the floor at her magic's command -- and slams into him, brutally. Then, she looks at Auron. Her hands are clutching a staff that, suddenly, doesn't seem ceremonial.

"I'll start with you," she says. And it's something familiar, but it comes fast. The swirl of the staff, the movements that look like a dance, are a Sending. Auron gasps, his breath shuddering -- and pyreflies begin to rip from him.

While Wakka's faith has not been rewarded, today, it is rewarding -- for he sees it first. "I don't think so!" he yells. He hurls his blitzball, and mid-spin of her staff, Xenobia is hit. The staff is knocked aside. Xenobia hits the wall, hard, and snarls.

"I'll kill you--" She screams again, as lightning begins to dance over her body. Her eyes crackle with light, as she starts to summon some sorcery. "Trapped in this miserable, stinking land for a thousand years! All... all to end like this!"

"Yuna!" Auron shouts, providing no explanation for how the pyreflies are drifting off him. He says, perhaps, one of the most concerning things he has ever uttered: "I don't know who she is! We need to run! NOW!"