Retaliation: Aureate Finale
by Joker Loire of the Turks
Author's Note:Final Fantasy VIII, all of it's characters, places, weapons, etc. All belong to Squaresoft INC. The original characterisations, the previous events that took place in “Retaliation” and ”Retaliation:Afterpiece Noir” belong to me, including the new model gunblades and the original characters.
Prologue
The piece of music echoing through the place brought it's own sorrow to my funeral.
Rain was slapping down on the glass, on the edges of my late grave. I felt calmness, and yet, I knew this was the end. When you lived a careless, reckless life, it was bound to get to you.
And they were all dead. Love had killed them, just like love had prepared this grave for both of us.
I had lost too many friends along the way. The memories I had were fading away from me, as their voices fell away from me. The memories I never thought would fade had faded and blown away. The faces I had seen along my life, the faces of my friends had turned old and gray.
Because they killed you in the end. When nothing mattered, nothing weighed on your mind, you should've known, it was the end. And they killed you in the end. You could count on that.
I did.
The dark corridor was lying there like the final mile I had to walk, dark and viscious like her. I looked up to her. We were both losers in this battle. No victors had came out alive. The only two players were me and her, the knight and the queen. Like the chessboard was only a battle area with some blood smeared across it to spell ”revenge”.
”What do you see with those eyes?” she asked as she got out a gunblade, ”With your puppy-dog eyes?”
”You.” I replied, ”Only you as you are. Only you as what you had always been.”
”Don't forget your own role. You destroyed everything I had, in return of my simple act of duty.”
Act of duty. A sick irony was making it's way back into the picture. We had both done nothing but the 'act of duty's we had been ordered to do. Like a demon serving Diablos. A soldier in Hell's Army.
”How does this end?” I asked.
”Through you.” She replied, as I bitterly smiled to this metaphor.
But the forgotten words of our friendly hate was taking us nowhere.
”I named this 'Laguna'.” she told me.
”And this is named as 'Raine'” I replied.
”How ironic...” she told me, smiling the bitter smile of a stone-cold killer, ”Lovers meet again.”
”For the last time.” I told her.
”For the last time.”
The rain picked up it's pace. I started to run towards her, with my trenchcoat flying around. My steps made an echo, a strange Hyne's Eve chime came to my ears as the song went on and on and on like the darkness that had came on to me.
As the distance closed in on us, as the burden of the showdown, the true retaliation pushed all of us down, I thought about them.
Rinoa. Zell. Selphie. Quistis. Irvine. Even Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin. Xu and Nida were at the corners of my mind, hiding from me.
They were here with me. And it was the only thing I could count on.
I swung Raine, and in return, she swung Laguna from the opposite direction. The gunblades met as our trenchcoats flew around like our fallen wings. Jets of flame came out of the gunblades like they were the core of stars.
The first scene of the finale...
The retaliation had began.