A/N: I usually hate to whine about reviews and such, but … I’ll admit to feeling disappointment that even those who have put this fic on their fav and alert lists haven’t bothered to leave a line saying hey. Love it or loathe it, I’d still like to know what people think.

5. Spiralling Beyond Control

General Sephiroth of the Resplendia National Guard arrived in Radiant Garden as part of a political party sent to attend Lord Ansem’s yearly ball. The ball honoured those who’d fallen on all sides during the war, and was a glittering highlight of Radiant Garden’s rise to greatness following that violent time.

From the moment he arrived, rooted to his king’s side but eyes darting everywhere, it was clear Sephiroth was going to be trouble. As a high-ranking official Braig was part of the gathering that met the dignitaries, and was also the one who fielded the General when his king gave him permission to mingle.

“Where is Captain Fair?” Sephiroth asked after only a few minutes, just as inadequate at smalltalk as Braig.

“You know Captain Fair?”

“Zack and I know each other of old. We trained together when we were just cadets, before I departed for Resplendia.” Sephiroth’s eyes went to the line of boys and girls chosen from each training programme, all dressed in their uniforms and saluting like crazy until they were told to stop. The cadet versions of Air Force, Royal Guard and Law Enforcer were ranged side by side with Healer, Scientist and Tutor colours.

Of course Squall was in that line, as well as the Lockheart girl, who’d turned out to be extremely talented in hand-to-hand combat despite her slight frame and burgeoning female shape. She was top in her class, as well as the top-ranking female Royal Guard cadet overall, which had earned her this place in today’s ceremony. Highwind’s cadets were nearest Braig’s, though neither the boy nor the girl could compare. It was like holding candles against stars and expecting their shine to compete.

Highwind stood behind his choices, chewing on a toothpick because he wasn’t allowed to smoke at public functions. When he spotted Sephiroth and Braig standing together he came over, apparently glad to escape the gaze of the public eye. Highwind hated attention, and with god reason. Braig may have hated his dress uniform, but at least he didn’t look like a constipated chimp at a tea party.

“Hey, Seph,” said Highwind.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, then I’ll call you Shirley. How you been?”

“You two know each other as well?” Braig looked from one to the other disbelievingly. Sephiroth had been on the other side during the war. It was him whom Braig had kept in mind when developing Renzokuken.

“Sure we do.” Highwind spat his mangled toothpick onto the floor and pulled another from a pack like a pointy wooden cigarette.

“You know each other of old,” Braig guessed.

“You might say that. I tried to drop a bomb on him once and he threw it back onto my fucking ship. Then he pulled me and all my crew from the wreckage when we crashed into a mountain. Not one casualty, if you can believe it.”

It was rumoured that General Sephiroth wasn’t entirely human, or at least had non-human blood somewhere in his family tree, which accounted for his astounding fighting skills and cat-like eyes. he could lift things more than twice his own weight, hurl them great distances, jump higher and further than any man should be able to, and some said his senses were so good he could not only hear a mouse fart thirty miles away, he could also pick out what it had for lunch based on the smell. Braig wasn’t sure how much stock he put in all the stories, but reports of Sephiroth’s prowess during the war were rife – though they always came with the proviso that he abhorred killing and would only ever incapacitate enemies, even in mass battles.

“Have you seen Zack around? I had hoped to speak with him today.”

“Captain Fair?” Highwind frowned. “Not lately. Hey, that’s a point. Don’t he work with you?” Highwind jabbed a finger in Braig’s chest, then gurgled when Braig grabbed and twisted it back so far its owner was nearly bent double to avoid it breaking.

Braig released him suddenly. “Not recently. He’s been on leave in the Dazzle Islands.” Then he hurried away in case there were any more outbursts he couldn’t control while trapped in a large, influential crowd, with Xehanort glaring at him across the room.

He didn’t see the look that passed between Sephiroth and Highwind in his wake, or the grim set of the General’s eyebrows. It’s possible he would’ve been quicker to warn his co-conspirators if he had, but unlikely it would’ve made any difference.

Xehanort had been feeding the Heartless. It was all there in the notes, as if the increased number of them, despite the lack of recent experiments with that damn Resplendian party around, wasn’t evidence enough. Living samples, non-living samples, self-propagation, consumption of matter – Braig only understood part of what he was reading, but he understood enough.

Things were starting to spiral. It was clear to him now that it was only a matter of time before everything blew wide open. No way could they keep all this secret for much longer, especially not with that tenacious bastard Sephiroth sniffing around. Braig had only just evaded him today to come down here, and the headway Xehanort and the others had made in his absence was staggering.

The weird thing was that he couldn’t actually bring himself to care; not when he’d spotted a familiar blond head amidst the fodder in the dungeons, which Xehanort had converted into modern holding cells and used to store his ‘living samples’ before tossing them in with the Heartless to see what happened.

“Why haven’t you killed that Strife kid? You’ve had hold of him for weeks.”

“An interesting case, that one,” Even said mildly, consulting his carefully catalogued notes. He was the only one around; otherwise Braig would’ve gone to someone less likely to make him want to rake his fingernails down the walls. “So much light within his heart that he can withstand ridiculous amounts of trauma, as well as exposure to pure darkness, without any of it corrupting him. His mental state has deteriorated as a result, but his heart has yet to rupture. Even Captain Fair wasn’t this strong. We were due to test the boy again, but other things came up and he was shelved.”

“Other things like what?” Braig asked in a dangerously soft voice.

Even heard it and squared his shoulders. “I don’t take orders from you.”

Instantly, Braig had the scientist in a chokehold, but Even surprised him by exhibiting the same level of strength plus the aptitude to use it. Braig stared into snakelike eyes, struggling for breath, his head ringing where it’d smack against the wall and his feet suspended above the floor.

“It appears brute force does have its merits after all.” Even laughed. It was a terrible sound, like he’d never practised before and knew what laughter was, but not how to do it.

Braig rolled his eyes and punted the guy in the stomach with both feet. Even shot away from him, but Braig followed and they rolled over and over, each trying to get the upper hand. Braig was trying to dig out the other man’s eyeballs with his thumbs when they were forcibly wrenched apart and dangled above the ground by an unseen energy.

Xehanort stood at the bottom of the staircase, a mixture of anger and joy warring for supremacy on his face. “We are verging on the most significant discovery of all time,” he hissed, “a discovery that will cement our places in history, and you two are rolling around on the floor like children.”

His arms were raised. When he clenched his fists, Braig felt like something was crushing the life out of him. He heard Even cry out in pain too, and when the sensation at last subsided they were both breathless and bruised.

“I’m s-sorry, my superior,” Even gasped obsequiously, but Xehanort ignored him.

“Tonight I have made what might be the most momentous breakthrough yet. At this very moment, those fool guests of Ansem’s are witnessing a meteor shower that they think is just a display of Nature’s beauty.” If possible, Xehanort’s laughter was even worse to hear than Even’s. “They have no idea what it is they’re looking at.”

“And what … are they looking at?” Even panted.

Xehanort’s gaze was unfocussed, as though he was looking back at a distant memory – but that couldn’t be it, because the guy had no memory of the time before Ansem found his broken body and brought him back to Radiant Garden for their healers to nurse back to health.

“The breaking of the barriers between worlds,” he said, as if in surprise that he knew such a thing.

Abruptly, he released Braig and Even, who tumbled to the floor and stayed there, aching too much to move.

“I have seen the heart of this entire world,” Xehanort whispered, more than a hint of madness in his voice. Braig recognised the sound of a man pushed to his limits, recalling the stark faces of soldiers he’d fought alongside until their minds snapped under the torment of war. Whatever Xehanort had seen tonight, it had done more damage to his mind than a dozen sessions in the heart-probing machine. “Surely only its true ruler should be able to witness such a thing. Surely only Ansem … Ansem is the ruler of Radiant Garden, the hub of progress on this world, so he should have … but he can’t be … no, he can’t be the true ruler; the true Ansem.”

Braig looked up to see Xehanort’s retreating form dash up the stairs and slam the door behind him.

The representatives from Wutai arrived after the Resplendians, and those of several other nations too. The ball hadn’t started yet and already a party atmosphere pervaded the castle.

The queen of the Dazzle Islands was fat and wreathed in exotic silks that had been artfully arranged across the throne that was carried down Radiant Garden’s streets. She brought jugglers and acrobats as well as the regular dignitaries that accompanied rulers to this occasion. Cadets fought for a better look out of their dorm windows when the pretty young veil dancers went past in their bikinis, and the female cadets blushed like regular teenage girls when the handsome sword swallower winked at them. It was more like a circus parade than a diplomatic convoy.

The Wutai group were much more demure, though their five year old princess had come along with them. She was the most precocious brat Braig had ever had the misfortune to have leap on him for a piggyback ride. Apparently she spent most of her time in Wutai escaping her bodyguards, so her father, King Godo, had brought her along in the vain hope she might behave herself more if not left alone in the royal palace.

“I blame the lack of motherly influence in her life,” he said to Lord Ansem when she was discovered trying to bury her crown in one of the rose gardens to grow a Treasure Tree. She’d flung mud at the cadets who found her and had to be fetched down from the top of a pagoda, where she’d climbed only to get her foot stuck.

“You’re a poopy-head,” the princess cheerfully informed Squall, the cadet who’d found her and was now holding her at arm’s length. “But it was way cool how you cut me free with that gunblade thingy. Daddy, I want a gunblade. I want a gunblade now.”

“Yuffie, you can’t have a gunbl-”

“I want a gunblade! Actually, wait, no I don’t. I want you to use your gunblade to shoot things when I tell you to, Squall.”

“I only take orders from my commanding officer, Highness.”

“Quit calling me Highness. I’m Yuffie. You don’t hear me calling you Cadet all the time, do you?”

Squall cast a helpless look at Braig, who rolled his eyes and said nothing, but allowed the kid to take shelter in his office when the princess decided the best way to get her own pet gunblader was to marry one, and started trailing Squall around the castle to convince him he should be betrothed to her.

On the day of the ball the castle was teeming. It seemed like Braig couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone or something designed to piss him off. He retreated to his quarters when he nearly stabbed a stilt-walker with his own stilts.

He was back to feeling restless and edgy, his skin too tight and his energy levels through the roof. What he needed was a good fight, or at least a spar to help him burn off some excess, but all classes and mentoring sessions were cancelled until after the ball. Even the shooting range was off-limits for him while he was needed to make polite smalltalk and pretend he didn’t want to put a crossbow bolt through every fucker in range.

Most people were glad for the break, but not Braig and the other ‘apprentices’, as they’d come to call themselves, since they followed Xehanort around like Ienzo used to follow Even. You noticed them immediately in a crowd, because they were the ones twitching.

Braig was twitchier than most. He knew Sephiroth was watching him, and the burn of the General’s eyes between his shoulder-blades was constant whenever they were in the same room. Captain Fair still hadn’t returned from the Dazzle Islands, and the Queen had no knowledge of him because he’d arrived there as a civilian. Under Sephiroth’s suspiciously bleak gaze, Zack had been officially listed as missing. Both Radiant Garden law enforcers and their Dazzle Island equivalents were working his case, but everyone presumed Captain Fair could take care of himself, so there wasn’t much motivation with the ball to concentrate on first.

Braig knew Sephiroth didn’t buy the story for an instant. It was only his lack of evidence and the delicate political balance he was forced to preserve that prevented him from openly accusing Braig of wrongdoing. Dignitaries, though always smiling, were notoriously over-sensitive. Everyone still remembered the war, when they’d each swapped sides so many times they often felt like they should just kill their own troops to save the bother of today’s allies doing it as tomorrow’s enemies.

Sometimes there had been rumours of another war going on alongside their own, between warriors so powerful they made eve General Sephiroth look like a kitten that’d been hit by a cart and was crawling along on three legs. However, nobody had ever produced any hard evidence to support these rumours, and everyone was so focussed on survival and predicting who they’d have to fight next that rumours remained just that.

Only Braig knew beyond doubt that they were true, since he’d actually met one of the warriors from the parallel war.

Then came the day that a strange airship appeared in the sky over Radiant Garden, and a dignitary emerged who hadn’t been invited to the ball because nobody had even known he, his nation, or indeed his world even existed.

Braig had heard of lands where animals had evolved alongside humans, but he’d never seen a citizen of one before. Anxious to distance himself from Sephiroth’s stare, he lurked outside Lord Ansem’s study, trying to get Captain Leonhart to let him eavesdrop. Braig wanted another look at the strange guest that had even Xehanort’s interest piqued.

What the mouse-man said made Xehanort see this as an opportunity to explain recent events by revealing his brilliance at the expense of only a few measly lives. Yet where Xehanort concerned himself with trying to finally let Lord Ansem know of the inroads they’d made in understanding the nature of the heart, Braig was caught by only one word: keyblade.

… A sword shaped like a giant key, clutched in a gold warrior’s hand …

In the end Xehanort failed to tell Lord Ansem what they’d been up to – not because he lost his nerve, but because the old man wouldn’t listen to what he had to say. Lord Ansem let Xehanort get into his office while the mouse-man was there, but no further than the threshold, and didn’t even give Xehanort the opportunity to begin before cutting him off in his typical self-righteous way. Xehanort stalked away, blazing with that special energy of his. Marble busts exploded in his wake, plant pots overturned, and the stained glass in several windows melted into bubbling goo that slid down the walls.

Braig, however, remained outside the study, and when Ansem and his guest emerged he was about to launch himself upon them, Royal Guards or no Royal Guards. He was going to shake the knowledge he wanted from the mouse-man (“How do I travel between worlds to find a warrior wearing golden armour who carries a keyblade? Tell me, or I’ll turn your ears into rice paper, you freak!”) When a hand clamped over his mouth and dragged him backwards into the shadows.

“What are you doing?” Dilan hissed.

Braig twisted his face free. “None of your fucking business.”

“Xehanort wants to see all of us. Right now. In the lab.”

Braig was about to tell him where he could stick the snubbed Xehanort’s summons, but Ansem and the mouse had already entered the elevator. There would be no opportunity to confront them once they reached the swarm of other dignitaries, all eager to hear where the mouse had come from and why he was there. Sephiroth was downstairs, and some sixth sense told Braig that no matter how much stronger he was now, General Sephiroth possessed powers that could crush him without even breaking a sweat.

He went with Dilan and stood grudgingly in a lab beneath the dungeons and holding cells, awaiting Xehanort’s latest lecture on how they were going to change history. Braig was nearing his threshold on how much bullshit rhetoric he could stomach, even if it was Xehanort doing the talking.

Or rather Ansem, as he revealed he wanted to be known now.

“Only the true ruler should be destined to do what I’m doing, and only the true ruler should’ve been able to achieve what I’ve achieved. Ansem is the true ruler, and I have achieved the true ruler’s goals, therefore I must be him, or at least a new form of an old model.”

It was loony. He had clearly lost it. Yet despite his twisted identity crisis, Xehanort had never been more lucid – or more forceful. The air crackled with his telekinesis and the promise of even more intimidating powers that he hadn’t yet shown them. The combination of charisma and threat was so compelling that they fell into line without much of a fight – changing his name and calling himself the ‘true ruler’ of this world was crazy, but not the craziest thing they’d ever come across. Going into the heart-probing machine more than once had to rate at the top of that pyramid, closely followed by what he said they were going to do next.

“You want to release the Heartless we’ve collected at the ball?” Dilan said, aghast not because of what the creatures would do to the guests there, but because he couldn’t bear the thought of just letting all their hard work run free. He’d risked a lot, pulling felons from their cells and forging paperwork to make it appear they’d been released without charge.

“Those fools have no concept of what I plan for this world. They’re all narrow-minded idiots who would stand in the way of progress simply because it affects their tiny lives badly in the short-term.”

He launched into another diatribe, but Braig had already stopped listening, mind wandering back to the word ‘keyblade’, and how he was going to get the little mouse-man alone to force the answers he wanted from him.

To Be Continued …