9?

Nobody saw Sami or Mari again, not a trace. The fact that they couldn’t be found in the burned wreckage gave Fiona hope that they could still be alive out there somewhere, but after two years without contact that possibility had started to feel less likely by the day.

Mari… That priestess had seemed so sure that Sami’s death would somehow doom the world, but if that was really true, it still hadn’t happened yet. Fiona almost wished it would.

“Oi Boss, off in your own little world again?” the uncouth former assassin jeered as she entered the rough office.

Sadie had once been Sami’s sworn foe, but now she was one of Fiona’s most reliable allies. It was strange how these things worked out when there was a greater common enemy involved. “I guess so,” Fiona responded coolly, “Just thinking back to that day.”

“Ugh, again? I hope you don’t expect me to apologize any more than I already have,” Sadie said as she sat herself down on the end of Fiona’s desk, crossing one of her heavily armored legs over the other.

A lot had happened in those two years. Lea had dragged the crying Fiona all the way back to the base, and although they had failed their mission tremendously they were taken back in and supported. Commander Rosen knew full well what it felt like to lose someone like this.

After she had at least partially recovered, Fiona threw herself into her training and work for the Spira Alliance. After losing both Natalie and Sami, she had to be strong enough to ensure the same thing would never happen to her a third time.

When she had honed her skills, there was almost no one who could beat her in a one-on-one fight. No matter how much she was knocked down, she always got up again. And, even without her trademark claw-gauntlets, she could take down a Sand Gome with her bare hands... eventually.

Her unrelenting, unnatural stamina had even at one point spawned rumors that she was some kind of humanoid golem. They called her, out of respect but also with a small degree of derision, “The Machine.”

Between that endless stamina and Lea’s unmatchable speed, It was no wonder the two of them rose in the ranks so quickly. Anyone who had any objections with the fact that Fiona was a beastfolk, well, she knew how to deal with them.

However, one day, a certain former foe and a certain past friend had both returned with news that would shake the foundations of what they knew about the “war.”

“That Kait woman, or creature, rather… just plain awful, first she sets our countries against each other with those damn fake soldiers, and now she’s indiscriminately burning towns?” Sadie spat, as if following up on Fiona’s thoughts.

“Okay, maybe I don’t have the right to say this, what with having been an assassin and all, but even I would never go that far. If I had those freakish powers, I mean,” she added.

Jackson looked up from the records he had been sorting on the other side of the room, peering at Sadie through the spectacles he’d started wearing in recent months, “Naturally, you’d never want to have powers like that to begin with, trust me.”

He had experienced firsthand what that had been like. Now, separated from the “curse,” all the sword skills and uncanny strength he used to possess had dimmed from his mind and body. Without them, he was just an ordinary man with a talent for reading and dealing with paperwork.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it” Sadie waved a hand dismissively, uncrossing and recrossing her legs.

“Commander Ferwell,” a faint-voiced, silver haired woman stepped through the door.

“Lea, when it’s among us four, you don’t have to call me ‘Commander,’ just Fiona is fine,” Fiona sighed, having lost track of how many times she had told her this.

“Yes, Commander. Setting that matter aside, the soldiers are waiting on you and Sadie for our departure.”

That time already? Fiona must have been lost in thought for longer than she realized. She wasn’t looking forward to this mission at all, not that she would be looking forward to any other mission.

This one in particular would be rough: they would be defending a city in Alliance territory… not from Kait’s ethereal, faceless soldiers but from real, living ones—actual people from Loma.

After a while, Kait’s cheaply fabricated conflict on both sides of the border had become too much for Loma to take sitting down, and so they declared war officially. They had been completely fooled. There was no way to make them believe that the Alliance had never once actually set foot on their land, that it was all the work of a third party.

Fiona had asked Sadie why she didn’t choose to side with her home country. She had simply shrugged, and said, “Well, we worked for ‘em, killing whoever they told us to, but we weren’t exactly friends y’know? The people of Loma look down on us assassins just as much as anyone else does. Besides, they’re obviously in the wrong here, even more than I was.”

Commander Fiona Ferwell and Sadie both stood up from the desk. Jackson nodded to them as they followed Lea out of the room, then returned to his filing. He wished he could still help out on the frontlines, but for now he would do what he could do for them all from back here.

* * *

The situation was as expected, the Loma soldiers were already here in Spira City. Fiona led her company, giving the order to focus on self-defense and to keep any civilians out of danger before engaging in combat.

Before she herself was caught up in the struggle, Fiona had a brief moment to ponder. It had been two years since she lost Natalie on a trip to this very city, and now Fiona was finally here for the first time. She wondered, if her sister could see her now, from across the Spiral Strip where she could—supposedly—still be alive in another Fate, would she be proud of all the lives Fiona had been able to save as Commander?

That was enough time for thinking, for now. Fiona rushed to the aid of a citizen with a wounded leg, who had been struggling to make it out of the zone of conflict.

* * *

Just as everything started to look like it was nearly under control, it got worse. It always had to, didn’t it?

Several faceless soldiers had hidden themselves among the real ones, and began torching buildings with reckless abandon. Even the actual Loma soldiers were shocked by this, but if it looked like a way to turn things around in their favor they would take it. The fighting and destruction in the streets began anew.

Fiona had mostly held back when it came to flesh-and-blood foes, only engaging if necessary, but it was a different matter with these faceless creatures. She rushed through a small group of them who had been focusing their fire on a family store, slicing them to tatters with her claw-gauntlets and sliding to a stop on the other side.

But then, she saw her, exactly as Jackson had described: white face, inhumanly long and slick black hair that pooled at her feet, stained white priestess robe. Kait’s stark black and white colors stood out even against the bright flickering blue of the Loma pyromancy flames on either side of the street. Why was she here?!

As if to answer Fiona’s unspoken question Kait tilted her head and narrowed her glowing black eyes with glee, “I’ve finally found you, Fiona. Do you understand how many times I’ve tried and failed to lure you out by now? Surely you understand. Lie down and accept this, it’s for the good of all who still persistently live on in this broken Fate.”

A dark tendril lifted from behind Kait, holding a single-edged sword that gleamed with the same color as her eyes. It had been a long time since she had last seen it, but she knew that this was the sword that Jackson had once carried, unwittingly delivering it across the country to its original owner.

The blade sliced through the air and crashed to a halt, embedded in the spot on the cobblestone road that Fiona had stood moments before. She thought she had managed to dodge it, but a black flash struck her all the same. That’s right, Jackson had made use of this property of the blade, too…

Still reeling from the pain of the fresh wound, Fiona didn’t have the time to regret her mistake any longer as the sword was yanked free from the ground and swung again. This time Fiona was sure to dodge the path of the cutting ray of darkness, but the pain caused her to stumble and lose her footing.

A rock the size of a person’s head suddenly soared towards Kait from behind. Without even looking at it, another of her tendrils dexterously snatched it out of the air and crushed it. Then, she turned her head and glared in the direction of the new attacker.

“Over here, ya nasty freak!”

Sadie kicked into the ground, dislodging another stone from the pavement and into the air. She twirled on the spot and struck it full-force with an armored leg, launching it at her target. Unfortunately, that too was caught and crushed.

Fiona heard sounds of hurrying boots along the pavement behind her, then a silver blur streaked over her head where she lay, struggling to stand, on the street. Lea rained blow after blow down on Kait with her longsword, but even her speed wasn’t enough. Each strike was parried by the cursed sword, the ethereal gleam on its metallic surface growing in intensity.

Sadie knew better than to approach that thing without a weapon, so she kept launching rocks and flaming pieces of debris into the fray from a distance, hunting for even one single exploitable opening or blind spot in the tendrils.

Kait sighed. While her inhuman hair-appendages did all the work, she had yet to even lift a finger or take a single step from that spot. “I think that’s enough, now” she pouted.

A heavy strike sent Lea sliding backwards, and then Kait made her first true move: holding her sword pointed towards herself, she reached over and pressed her palm into the sharp edge. The gleam on the blade’s surface suddenly flared up, escaping outside the form of the metal itself and distorting the air around it.

No amount of speed or reflexes could have prepared Lea for what happened next. Kait swung the sword in a lazy arc, and then a massive horizontal column of black light smashed into Lea, carrying her all the way to the side of the street and slamming into the side of a building.

In the brief moment of awareness Lea had left, she recognized that technique: it was the same one she had seen Mari use to decisively beat down the Hydro two years ago. As an ordinary human, she didn’t stand a chance against that force.

Fiona watched numbly as Lea’s broken body fell to the ground. She couldn’t take much more of this. Sadie gaped silently from behind Kait, the next object she had planned to launch dropping uselessly.

Kait smiled and spread her arms wide, as if preparing for an embrace with an invisible partner. “You shouldn’t be worried about all this, Fiona,” she said gently, “your part in this Fate ended long ago. You did your best, but it’s time for you to move on, for all our sakes.”

Fiona didn’t even feel the impact of the next blast of inverted light, which crushed her instantly.