~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THIS FANFIC IS NOT TO BE USED IN ANYWAY WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE WRITER, PEPTUCK. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Foreshadows Prologue: The Nightmare It wasn't a dream. It was too clear to be a dream, too...real. She saw the sun, shining down on Balamb Garden drifting across the ocean, a huge red dragon-like craft docked at its side as it sailed away from Fisherman's Horizon. Then, the image suddenly flitted away like a petal in the wind. It was but a brief flash, a minute glimpse, yet that was all Ellone needed to know what was happening. Her powers, the mysterious ability to draw aside the veil of time and space and look where no normal person could, were being activated again while she slept. She did have the ability to control her mystical powers, but that was when she was concious and focusing. While sleeping, in the midst of her dreams, Ellone's powers took on a life of their own. Her mind wandered the paths of time, looking into the past of those she knew and loved, and often taking others along for the ride, whether they wished to or not. But what she was experiencing now was different from the power Ellone had called 'Connect.' That power allowed her to use someone else's mind to look into the past, through the eyes of others she had known. It was the one power Ellone could control, the only one she had practiced extensively. But aside from the ability to 'Connect,' Ellone's innate ability to look through time was as mysterious to her as it was to anyone else. Her other temporal powers would manifest randomly, sometimes giving her an alternate glimpse of the past for an instant, or, more rarely, give her a flash of what was to come. The glimpses of the future were sporadic and random at best, and they always happened when Ellone was asleep. Just brief, instant flashes people and places, like a picture that was waved in front of her face and then yanked away. They were often intermixed with her dreams, making any type of understanding or prediction nearly impossible. Still, the images, while random and disjointed, usually came in groups. As the vision of Garden flitted away, Ellone prepared herself for the next glimpse of the future. But just as the glimpses of the future were unlike the power to 'Connect,' the images that came next differed vastly from what Ellone had encountered in her dreams before. Instead of another individual flash of possibility, Ellone suddenly found herself in the midst of an explosion of futures, an intense kaleidoscope of sensations and emotions. Ellone gasped in her sleep and tried to maintain control, to bring some order to the whirlwind of possibility, whipping and spinning through her mind like a desert sandstorm. She caught a brief image, Squall and Rinoa, standing on a moonlit balcony in Garden, looking over the shining ocean. They were holding hands, and Ellone noticed Rinoa had a hand to her belly. Her swollen belly, as if she was pregnant... The image vanished, flying away into the whirlwind, even as another image rose up, of Zell leaping aside as a Blue Dragon slammed into the ground next to him. A SeeD sprayed the beast with gunfire from a heavy machinegun while Zell backed away from the dragon, which turned to face him, oblivious to the bullets... Then Ellone saw Irvine and Selphie, crouched behind a tree. She heard the sound of bullets flying, and caught a glimpse of Galbadian soldiers firing at them. A beared man nearby rose from behind a tree and fired a handgun at the Galbadians, and Irvine followed suit. Selphie began casting a spell, while Irvine shouted something to her, a question. "...Zell....still alive?" Selphie shook her head. Ellone couldn't tell whether it was a negative or that Selphie just didn't know, but the sad look on her normally carefree features hinted at tragedy. Suddenly Ellone heard a crashing sound, and the mechanical stomping of an immense war machine. It charged into view, a black spiderlike monstrosity, rampaging in the direction of Irvine and Selphie. The image of the spider machine was gone then, replaced by Quistis, standing at the balcony in Garden's 'secret area.' She was with someone, a young man about Ellone's own age, who had long, copper-colored hair and glowing purple-white feather tatoos running down his forearms. He leaned closer to Quistis, saying something with a smile on his face. Quistis smiled back. And that image was gone too, to be replaced by the sound of metal clanging against metal. Ellone saw Seifer, his long, slender gunblade turning aside a saber thrust by a man wearing all black. Beyond him were Fujin and Raijin, facing more of the black-clad men. Seifer riposted the thrust, causing his attacker to back away. Fujin cast a tornado, hurling a pair of the attackers over the edge of the walkway they were fighting on, into the water below. Ellone spotted another black-clad man on another walkway above the fighters, drawing a long-bladed, slender throwing knife. His hand twiched, and the daggar flew towards Seifer at an impossible angle, swooping toward his head... The image of the daggar vanished, and then, one final vision flashed in front of Ellone. Squall, tears in his eyes, crouched over the body of a slender, black haired woman, curled up in a circle of crimson snow. Rinoa. Ellone cried out in shock at the future being displayed to her. Unlike the previous futures that had been shown, however, this terrifying possibility did not flit away. To the contrary, it became clearer, and Ellone found herself immersed in the emotions and sensations of the tragedy. She smelled the blood, felt the chilled winter air, heard Squall's sobs, saw the jerking of his shoulders that accompanied each sound, and percieved the waves of greif and loss that the SeeD was exuding as he cradled the young woman's head in his hands. "No...no..." Ellone could hear him whisper over and over between sobs. Then Ellone heard the footsteps. Boots, hitting the snow calmly, rythmically. And they were accompanied by another sound, a quiet pat, pat, like water dripping from a leaky faucet. Ellone saw the figure approach Squall from behind. She could make out the booted feet, the long coat, the mocking smile... And a long, slender gunblade, dripping blood. Squall stopped sobbing at the sound of the steps. He turned his head back, looking the figure dead in the eyes. "You...." he said, his voice a mixture of anger, grief, and disbelief. "Squall," the murderer's voice was mocking, cold, and emotionless. "Absolutely pathetic. The mighty SeeD commander, the hero who saved the world, and yet you couldn't protect her from me. " Vicious laughter, without a hint of remorse or care, echoed throughout the darkened night air. Squall rose from his crouch, gunblade hissing from its sheath. "Murderer!" he screamed as he slashed madly at the figure. The killer calmly stepped back, laughing all the while. After a few powerful but innaccurate cuts, Squall stopped, panting, mostly with rage. "You...you murdered her, you goddamned-" Squall's curse was cut off by more of the mocking laughter. "Shut up," Squall growled. Not original or smooth, but Squall wasn't exactly concerned with that. "What?" the murderer responded, still keeping that mocking smile. "Shut. Up." Squall said again, on the edge of losing it again. The tip of his gunblade was quivering, a reflection of his unbridled rage. There was a long, tense moment as the pair stared into each other's eyes. "Suppose you're wondering why?" the murderer suddenly said. The tone was almost conversational. "No," Squall responded, biting out the words. "I'm just wondering what level of hell you'll be burning in after I kill you." The murderer laughed again. "How eloquent. It was nothing personal," the killer said, unperturbed by Squall's threat. "At least, not between me and her. It was-" the figure pointed the bloody gunblade at Squall. "-you. You, Headmaster Cid, all of SeeD. I killed her to get at them." "Revenge..." Squall whispered at the admission of motive. His grip tightened furthur, if that was possible. "Revenge?! You murdered her just to satisfy your taste for revenge?!" "I call it justice." "Justice?! You call murder justice?! No wonder you weren't cut to be a SeeD!" "SeeD? They're pathetic. Bunch of do-gooder 'mercanaries' who kill Sorceresses." The murderer paused for a moment, then grinned again. The cold eyes flicked toward the corpse for an instant. "Guess I just helped the cause," the figure remarked, nonchalantly. Squall shook his head in disbelief at the murderer's remark. It was all a game to this killer. A goddamned game. "I'll kill you," Squall promised. "Really?" The murderer settled into combat stance, slender gunblade pointing at Squall. "Then do it. Prove you're the warrior you say you are. Make up for your failure..." The murderer didn't finish the accusation. Squall's gunblade swooped in, slashing hard for his enemy's neck. His foe's blade snapped up to block the slash, and droplets of still-hot blood splattered onto Squall's white shirt. Her blood. Squall came on, swinging hard, his gunblade slashing and cutting, only to be intercepted everytime by the parrying blocks of his foe. His enemy would counter with measured thrusts or cuts, but as with Squall's slashes, the attacks were all blocked or dodged. Their blades rang continously, a song of death and hate that sounded clearly in the cold, moonlit winter night. As the give and take of the gunblade battle continued, the murderer began laughing. "This is pathetic Squall! You really are a failure!" Squall let loose an inarticulate roar and swung brutally hard. His enemy didn't even try to block, but opted to dodge back, barely avoiding the blow. The murderer then riposted the attack with an horizontal slash, aimed for Squall's face. Squall got his gunblade back into position to block the cut with milliseconds to spare, the bloody edge of the gunblade only inches from his face. They stood there, frozen in a clinch, locking eyes as they tested each other's strength. From Ellone's vantage point, she could see something glowing in the murderer's left hand, which was sheilded from Squall's vision by the killer's body. "Hey, Squall..." the killer said, grinning. "Remember this?" The killer's gunblade suddenly disengaged, as the left hand rose up, right in front of Squall's face. And a fireball erupted at Squall at point blank range. Squall was blasted backwards as the searing heat struck his face, burning his skin and hair. He'd managed to reflexively close his eyes as the spell went off, but he was still dazzled by the intense light the fireball had emmited. He was a SeeD, however, and a tough one at that, and he knew he could survive the cheap shot. He also knew, however, that the blinding Fire spell had bought the murderer all the time needed to add a second corpse to the ground. As Squall's eyes opened, he saw a malicious grin on the killer's face as the bloody gunblade dove for his head. And the image was gone as Ellone woke up screaming.