caughtinanetwork | [Dream] Be careful what you wish for

[All Rinoa had wanted was to just take a nap. But really, seeing all these dreams being broadcasted on the network suddenly should have been a warning not to.

She was just... tired. She wanted to sleep, was all.

And so she did, curling up on her bed at her house to doze off. It wasn't going to be a nice nap, though. Oh no. Today, she was going to pay for that nap.

Her dream opens up to an auditorium. Up above on the podium is a woman in a deep black and purple feathery outfit, looking dazed. Down below, laying on the ground unconscious is a boy in a long gray coat.

The woman above suddenly collapses, but not before releasing all of her magic power. It's not an attack, but a "dying" sorceress passing on her powers before death.

Down below next to the KO-ed boy are five other teenagers, along with Rinoa. Vatheonites would recognize Squall and Selphie standing not far from where Rinoa is. Another one of the teenagers, a blonde girl with a whip suddenly shouts something, but Rinoa can't hear it. One moment she's trying to get to her feet, exhausted from the battle, and then she looks up and...

Nothing. For a long moment, everything's just white.

Rinoa then stands up, but something is clearly wrong. She's moving more like a marionette, with someone pulling on her strings. Her thoughts are blank, but she can still feel. She's terrified and panicked as her body moves without her command over towards the boy on the ground.

When she reaches him, she kneels down next to him and lifts up his torso and brings her head down next to his ear. What comes out of her mouth isn't her voice:

"Oh, my loyal knight, Seifer. The sorceress is alive. The sorceress demands."

Someone else is speaking through her, someone much more dangerous and powerful than the sorceress they had just dealt with.

"Find the legendary Lunatic Pandora, said to be hidden beneath the ocean. Only then shall the sorceress provide you with dreams again."

The boy sits up, partly in thanks to words and magic Rinoa - or more correctly the Sorceress inside of her - administers to him. As he gets up and walks away, he says, "As you wish, Ultimecia."

And then, for one last moment, Rinoa is left kneeling there, her eyes empty but slowly widening as, not normally visible to the naked eye but visible in this dream, the spirit - or consciousness if you will - of another woman exiting her body.

In that long moment, Rinoa realizes what has happened to her - what she's become - and manages one single thought:

Squall... I'm scared.

And then she collapses and everything goes dark.

[Upon waking, Rinoa lets out a terrified, blood-curdling scream as she jolts up from her bed. In her panic she knocks her SFC/Dreamberry hybrid thing off of her bed, where it had been laying next to her. It skitters across the floor, bouncing before it has a nasty face to face meeting with the opposite wall.

The last thing it records is Rinoa sobbing as she collapses to the floor, curled up into a ball before the feed cuts.]

((OOC: Rinoa is having something of a panic attack so her responses probably wouldn't be immediate and likely not entirely intelligible at first.

Also, I guess I should credit Square-Enix for this scene and the scene in Disc 3 in which Squall is sent back to watch the scene in Disc 2, since most of the dialogue that happens there is revealed only when he goes back. But yeah, credit to them since I pretty much ripped everything straight from the scenes in the game, including the dialogue. There's a wee bit of interpretation/headcanon in there, but not much.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's not your fault. He would have gotten away anyway.

[He saw them all unconscious on the floor there, deep in enemy territory. Chances are the next thing that happens is they get apprehended by Galbadian forces.]

Maybe. But I made it a lot worse.

[Of course there's also the fact that she's now a sorceress. What would that spell for her, and for everyone else?]

...I can't get that woman's voice out of my head. And now I can feel it and -

[She's referring to her powers, which she hadn't really noticed before. Now that she actually knows they're there, she can feel them. Subdued, but they're there.]

...what do I do?

[What. What. Shit. This is about a thousand times worse than he thought it might be.]

Do you think you're in danger?

[It takes her a moment to figure out why he's asking that. She was being pretty vague, though not on purpose.]

I don't - I didn't mean her. She's not here. [A big mercy.] The powers I inherited, I meant. I feel those.

I see.

[That's better than having a crazy Sorceress in her head.]

...wait, does that make you a Sorceress now?

[Yes, she's definitely not complaining about that part.

...Oh crud, this part was gonna be rough.]

...yeah. I swear, I didn't want them! It just, I looked up and then they came and I took them in without realizing it and then she came into my head and - and -

[Oooooh crap the tears are coming back and she can't stop them. Although it's on video so luckily he can't see her crying, it's still slightly audible over the DreamBerry.]

[He believes her. No one wants to be a Sorceress...right?]

It's okay. You'll be fine. Both here and in our world.

[She wishes she could believe that, but she can't.]

Everyone's going to be afraid of me, aren't they? Sorceress Edea had everyone terrified. If everyone knows I'm a sorceress, too, then they'll be afraid of me as well. What kind of life is that...?

[It's true. Aside from a few Sorceress worshiping cults, they were widely feared. Tough times await Rinoa when she goes back.]

We'll just have to show them there's nothing to be afraid of.

[And crap only gets worse before it gets better. Poor girl.

But she catches that, that "we", and while she can't seem to bring out a smile, her tone's more hopeful than it has been the entire conversation.]

You mean that?

I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it.

[And that's... that's what she needed to hear. That she wasn't going to be alone, that she wouldn't have to struggle alone.]

Thank you, Squall. I...

[She can't even form the right words to show how grateful she is. If he was there in person, she'd be hugging him.]

Thank you.

[He said it and he meant it. Rinoa isn't just a client anymore. And he's sure that it's not just him - he's willing to bet the rest of their little group would stand with her too.]

...you're welcome.

Sorry about... all of this. I don't know what's gonna happen to me, although Selphie...

[Now that she's thinking about it, Selphie did say everything would work out in the end. Rinoa isn't sure how right now, but maybe it would be best to trust her friend's word on it.]

She said it'd be okay in the end. That's something, right?

Now if I could just get rid of that dream in my head, I'd be okay. Would, uh, would drinking copious amounts of alcohol be totally irresponsible?

Selphie seems to know what she's talking about.

Drinking that much would be, but I'm not going to stop you if that's what you want to do.

[Though, he probably would go check up on her in a few hours if she actually does do that.]

Selphie's lucky enough to have seen everything that happens.

I don't know. I just want to get her voice and that dream and everything out of my head. Don't know how else to do it effectively, short of knocking myself out and that would hurt...

Just don't hurt yourself.

I probably won't do anything. Maybe binge on ice cream or something. Besides, I've worried you enough, and probably made a few people jump out of their skin.