Lady Starlight Part 3:

Adel considered the rather irrational action that the girl had just committed, trying to keep her clinical, mechanical side in charge instead of the wild fury that was her personality approximation.

It was not an easy task. "I have your friend," Adel sent over the still active suit radio. "I have the ability to kill him with ease."

"That you do," Selphie replied. "But I refuse to give you the Ragnarok if you kill Irvine, and with the systems down, your viral program is dead. I want Irvine and you want freedom, correct?"

Adel pondered this for a minute in her terms, nanoseconds in Selphie's terms. "You wish to make a trade, then? Your friend for my access to the Ragnarok?"

Hearing this, Irvine went cold. Selphie, don't do it! There were too many ways that Adel could renege on the deal for Irvine's liking, too many opportunities for Adel to take advantage of the situation. He was strangely touched by the lengths that Selphie was willing to go to get him back, though. And here I wondered if she really loved me, he thought.

"Something like that. But it's gonna be tricky, wouldn't you say?" Irvine could almost see Selphie's smile. "I mean, if I have Irvine, I could just leave you here, couldn't I? And I'm certain that you would kill Irvine the moment that I reactivate the computer cores and use your control over the ship to kill me."

"You have summarized the situation perfectly," Adel pronounced. "How do we get out of this quandary?"

Aboard the Ragnarok, Selphie's mind raced. Well, Miss Tilmitt, you seem to have gotten yourself into something of a mess. How are you going to get out of this? She decided that the best way to do it was to plow straight ahead and hope for the best. "It'll have to be a matter of trust."

"You expect me to trust you to do the right thing, girl? I am Adel, Sorceress and ruler of Esthar! I do not care for your trust!"

"Then I guess you won't care to remain in space for eternity. Good bye."

Adel was in a mixture of fury and fear.

Her power sources were dwindling, ebbing to the point that she had perhaps an hour left before she died. If she let the girl sit there for mere minutes, it would end. The logic of the situation suggested to Adel that she was at the girl's mercy now. And, thankfully for Selphie and Irvine, the computing aspect of Adel's construct combined with her personality construct to result in a simple thought: I want to live. "So be it girl. You may board the station and retrieve the SeeD. However, I will send one of my remote apparatuses with you. If within five minutes of your arrival onboard the Ragnarok, you do not reactivate the systems, I will send an order detonating its cold fusion reactor. Do you understand me?"

Selphie smiled thinly. "Perfectly, Adel."

In the Airstation, Laguna, Kiros, and Tharling watched the screens with trepidation, the silence deafening. The fact that all off-line telemetry, systems that monitored the Ragnarok's condition that Adel could not use to send her signal to the planet, has suddenly switched off had been frightening. Laguna looked at Kiros and said "You don't suppose she destroyed the Ragnarok, do you?"

"That wasn't the way she was acting. Maybe she's trying something else?"

"But what?" Tharling wondered. In the course of the past few hours, he had become more than a little smitten with Selphie, and the thought that she was dead was not one he wanted to consider.

"Wish I knew," Laguna replied. He looked at the knot of CORE Group scientists clustered around Bruetel and swore an oath to himself. If Selphie and Irvine die because of this, I will make your life a living hell.

It was all a question of timing now, Selphie knew as she manually cycled the Ragnarok's inner airlock, glad she had remembered to leave those systems active when she had programmed the shutdown. She had not completely shut the Ragnarok down, but she had shut down enough of its systems to convince Adel that she was serious in her intent. She stepped into the airlock, one hand holding Strange Vision, and the door cycled shut behind her. She checked her gauntlet chronometer, thankful that Adel had capitulated so rapidly, and prepared to cycle the outer hatch. Selphie to the rescue, she thought, and grinned to herself.

In the laboratory, Adel made preparations as well.

She sent commands to her remotes, leaving three of them in the room with her and the SeeD, sending the fourth on a mission all its own. She monitored her power resources and adjusted her usage, knowing that she had approached the critical moment. I will be free!

Irvine had been allowed to stand, although one of the remotes still held onto his leg with a grip of iron. In one corner of the room he saw Exeter, thrown casually aside as he had been brought here. He wondered if little Sefie was maybe in over her head this time, and for her sake hoped that she wasn't. I won't let you hurt Selphie, he told Adel. All the players were now set for the final act to begin.

Selphie boarded the station remnant with a sense of almost fear. She knew that SeeDs were trained to suppress fear in the pursuit of their mission, but she also knew how impractical that was. Irvine, late one night, had confessed to her that his fears and anxieties sometimes found a voice on the battlefield, and it was something that he dealt with on a surprisingly regular basis. She hoped she would not fail here. She looked around and saw that the corridor she was in extended in both directions. "Which way do I do, Adel?" she called over her radio.

"Turn to your left. The laboratory is three bulkheads forward in that direction."

"Gotcha," she said with a cheerfulness that she did not feel. She checked her chronometer again: she was cutting it close. Activating her magnetic boots, she began making her way forward, skirting debris and downed wiring.

Behind her, unnoticed, the fourth remote slid out of its hiding place in a duct opening, its sensors trained on the airlock door…

Selphie's journey forward was slowed by the amount of damage to the station and the fact that, despite her training in Esthar, she was still fairly new at all of this. Her calves ached from the effort of moving with the magnetic boots, and her face was sheened with sweat. Come on, girl, she thought, there are people who consider this a light workout. She reached the third bulkhead door, which was marked with a great many security clearance messages, and on whim she reached up and knocked on the door with a gauntlet. "Knock-knock," she called.

"Your humor is not appreciated," Adel said.

"Darn, and here I thought you really liked me."

The door slid open, and Selphie took in the room with one sweep of her eyes; the banks of mainframe hardware and workstation interfaces, the nearly insectile remotes, and, of course, Irvine. She waved casually, trying not to show the relief that coursed through every pore of her body. "I can't take you anywhere, can I?" she asked.

"Doesn't seem that way," he replied. She was tired looking and sweating, her face hidden behind a pressure suit's visor, yet Selphie had never looked more beautiful. My angel, he thought, unaccountably.

Selphie looked around the room again. "Okay, Adel, we're here. You ready to do this?"

"Of course I am," Adel said, her voice coming from speakers in the walls, echoing oddly in Selphie's radio. "We will begin now. You and the other SeeD will go to the Ragnarok. My remote will maintain its hold upon you, SeeD."

"I'm kinda attached to it," Irvine joked. It fell flat.

"Remember, any attempt to escape aboard the Ragnarok and I will kill you all. You value your lives too much to sacrifice them against me."

Selphie smiled. "Is that what you think, Adel?"

"Your presence here confirms this. Now let us go."

Selphie looked at her chronometer and her smile went wider-and, Irvine saw, became decidedly more evil. "I don't think so, Adel," she said. "I don't think so."

Selphie had programmed more than just the ability to access a few doors into the computers. She had also programmed the weapons system to light up and the main rail gun to charge, twenty minutes after she shut the mains down. By their design, the weapons systems were protected against viral attack, the better to keep from losing control of the weapons to an outside force. The rail gun charged, building electromagnetic power, and then discharged, the force of the blast shaking the station remnant. As a side effect, the spill over of electromagnetic force caused the electronic systems aboard the station to be jumbled. (Thankfully, the Esthar designed suits that she and Irvine wore were EMP-shielded, or she would not have tried this.) The three remotes seemed to dance up and down, their controls effected, and in that second Selphie struck, bringing Strange Vision down in an overhand strike that clove the remote holding Irvine in two. "MOVE!" she shouted at Irvine, but he was already moving, diving towards the corner where Exeter was. A remote rushed towards Selphie, but she stood her ground and prepared to tee off on it.

Irvine reached Exeter and grabbed the weapon as he heard Adel screaming incoherently from the speakers in the wall. A remote crawled his way, its manipulators moving in menacing fashion. He braced his back against the wall and hoped the Normal shot he had in Exeter would do the job. The round caught the remote high, tearing the top manipulator arms off; Irvine pumped another round into the chamber and fired again, this time driving the remote backwards in two pieces.

He reached into one of the pockets of the suit, one meant to hold tools for zero gravity work, and pulled out the rather special round that he had carried with him into space almost on a whim.

Selphie dodged aside, the remote rushing past, but as she did it turned and struck at her knee, nearly knocking her down. Hopping on one leg, she spun Strange Vision over head and cried out "That smarts!" The heavy alloy nunchaku tore through the remote as if it were made of paper. She knew that people looked at her and thought she was weak because of her size, but they did not take into account the power her junctions granted her. She turned as she saw Irvine load a shell into the breech of Exeter and raise the weapon at the central mainframe architecture. "Irvine! Careful!" she shouted.

Irvine squeezed the trigger of Exeter, and the single Pulse round that he had loaded smashed into the central mainframe, at once causing an impressive explosion and throwing him backwards, since he had not braced his feet. Selphie bounded into his path and tried to catch him, but they both fell to the ground, sliding into the nearest wall. "Nice job," she said as another explosion rocked the laboratory.

"It worked, didn't it," he replied, grinning. "Think we had better get the hell out of here, Selphie."

"Not a bad idea," she said, standing and realizing that her knee was in considerable agony. "Oh, damn," she groaned. "At least we're weightless…let's go!"

In her virtual dataspace, Adel screamed as her main core died, destroyed by the overkill round that the SeeD had fired into her mainframe. No other system in the station could hold her full memory needs, and for this version of Adel, it was over. But she was not finished yet…I will live, SeeDs, and I will dance upon your graves!

And for her then, it ended.

The station remnant shook with explosions as Selphie and Irvine made their way back towards the airlock. Irvine was pulling Selphie behind him, his feet barely touching the deck, and Selphie felt as if she was flying. "You are crazy, know that, girl?" he called.

"You're welcome," she said.

"Okay, you did save my life. Thanks Selphie." He pulled her towards the airlock. "Now let's try to stay alive."

"Capital idea!"

They almost did not make it back to the Ragnarok.

A series of explosions ran down the side of the station just as they reached the inner airlock of the Ragnarok, and had they been outside during the blast, they probably would have been killed by the shock wave if nothing else. Selphie hopped to her feet and yelled "C'mon, Irvine! We’re running out of time. Practically hopping, Selphie made her way down to the bridge, Irvine close behind. She threw herself into the pilot's chair, ignoring the symphony of destruction that was exploding outside of the Ragnarok and hit a few manual toggle switches "Gotta reboot the system!" she shouted. "The virus rescue reset should deal with the Adel virus!"

Irvine piled into his chair as the control panels lit up across the board. "Selphie, I could kiss you!" he shouted.

"Please do later!" She took a hold of the controls and, giving a full throated shout, she pulled the Ragnarok away from the station, not caring about her course at present. As the Ragnarok boosted away, the station finally surrendered to the forces within it and exploded apart in a silent blast of light. Selphie rested her forehead against the controls and breathed "It's over," under her breath.

"Well that was pleasant," Irvine said. "Remind me not to volunteer for this kind of mission again, Sefie."

"I wasn't meaning to, either," she replied. "Guess we better call Esthar, huh? They're bound to be worried sick."

"Sure they are, but, Selphie, before you do that…" Irvine took a deep breath. "Thank you. For coming after me."

Selphie wondered if that had been all that he had wanted to say, then decided that that really did not matter at the moment. "Sure, Irvy. No problem."

Below, in the depths of the Ragnarok, the last remote moved down a corridor, looking for access to the ship's systems.

It had snuck aboard the ship as Selphie and Irvine had faced the Adel mainframe, propelled not by it's natural intelligence but by the last resort that Adel had used, downloading as much of her consciousness as she could into the CPU of the remote. It was almost as if she was still alive, crippled, not truly herself. The thoughts that blasted through the CPU were crude and simple, but they boiled down to basic needs: Survive. Destroy. The remote found an inspection testing station and set itself to working, opening access panels and making connections between itself and the testing circuits, knowing that it had very little time before someone discovered it. It made a connection and the feral code of Adel rushed in, hoping to reach whatever was left of itself in the system…when it discovered something that filled it with amazement and shock. Coursing through the systems of the Ragnarok was a repair system the implications of which amazed her…the ability to remake physical materials with microscopic machinery that worked at the molecular level. Nanotechnology, Adel thought. Hid from me/so I would not be reborn/but now I shall/BE FREE!!! It reached towards the nanomachines that ran like blood through the veins of the ship, rebuilding itself…rebuilding its destiny…

The alarm that went off terrified Selphie.

She read the alarm message and said "Oh…oh good lord, something's accessed the nanocore system! Second deck, Bulkhead 5!"

"What? Is it the virus?!" Irvine shouted.

"No, no, I isolated that, put it into quarantine! It's something physically accessing the ship!" Selphie cast a Curaga spell on herself, reknitting the injured fabric of her knee, and bounded to her feet. "Something got in, Irvine!"

"How did I know that was too easy?" Irvine asked himself, collecting Exeter and following his lady down into the belly of the ship.

Selphie and Irvine raced down the corridor below and rather quickly came across the intruder; the Ragnarok was only so big, after all. The problem was, determining exactly what the intruder was, or perhaps, more appropriately, what it had been before. Now it was a mass of machinery and slate grey flesh, writhing in what appeared to be agony. "What the hell?" Irvine wondered.

"I don't know, but we're in trouble!"

The mass of morphing materials swirled about, rising up into a vaguely human shape: although it did not seem to have feet, it had legs that were joined together into one form, a torso that was somewhat female, and arms and legs. It quickly resolved itself into a crude parody of Sorceress Adel, and Selphie thought dark thoughts about the end of her life. "You," it hissed through vocal cords that did not seem to make sounds right, "you will be destroyed!"

"I doubt that," Irvine said, raising Exeter to his shoulder. "Selphie, this thing does have escape pods, don't it?"

"Yes-you know that, Irvine!"

"Then get to them, fast. I'll be with you directly."

"Liar." Selphie gripped Strange Vision tighter. "Irvine, this thing is part machine, probably one of Adel's robots. It can learn to pilot the Ragnarok, or worse absorb it into its being. No, if we don't kill it now, it doesn't get killed." She grinned at him. "Appreciate the gesture though."

The Adel-thing howled and charged them, driving them apart. Irvine fired at the creature and was rewarded with a satisfying gout of blue-green circulatory fluids…that quickly closed. Well, crap, he thought, it can repair itself. How do we kill it?

Selphie took a sizable risk, but one she thought justifiable; she cast Thundaga on the creature, hoping it would interfere with the operation of the machinery. The deck shook as the bolt of lightning crashed into the creature, which howled in rage and pain, whirling on Selphie. The thin slits that were its eyes glowed, and a force that she had not felt in long months threw her into the bulkhead of the corridor. This is sorceress power, she thought, Adel was learning fast. The thing focused its power on Selphie, and it was as if someone had slapped her across the face with an iron glove. She swooned, barely conscious, as it reached for her with a taloned hand…

Irvine fired Exeter as fast as he could, four times in a row, causing the monster to turn on him. "Come on, you bitch," he snapped. "I won't let you kill my Sefie!"

The Adel thing raised an arm, and it stretched at him, talons impaling his shoulder and causing him to scream in pain. He dropped Exeter as it drew him closer to itself, his world filled with pain and agony. I can't die, this thing will kill Selphie if I do!

The power that had held her up was gone now, and Selphie slid to the floor, dizzy, blood running down her cheek. She managed to focus her eyes on the battle and saw that Irvine was about to die, and that was the last thing that she wanted to see. He can't die…I love him! In her fear, in her rage and need, Selphie accessed the wild talent that served her as her limit break, the series of skills that an instructor at Trabia Garden had dubbed Slot simply because it was so unpredictable it was like gambling, trying to guess what it would do. Basically, it was a wild talent that granted her access to magical attacks that she normally did not possess, and while sometimes it was next to useless, sometimes, in dire need, it was almost as if she could guide it…control it…usually in times such as this. Irvine's life was about to end, and hers after that. She did not need Adel slowed, or stopped for a second…she needed it to be over.

She needed The End.

Power exploded from Selphie's very soul, surrounding Adel and Adel alone, power that ripped at the fabric of reality, drawing the howling monstrosity into the gyre of Selphie's attack. If anyone had been watching this, they might have fancied that they saw Adel being taken to a peaceful field of flowers, where she was laid to rest. Some had theorized that all that was was Selphie's way of visualizing the effects of her spell, a consensual hallucination that was shared by all those in the range of the spell. Selphie found that she did not care as the image of the Adel-thing faded away. Still in the grip of Slot, she had the good fortune to be able to access Full-cure, which she cast on Irvine. The wounds caused by Adel healed, looking almost like a time-lapse film, as she reached him, lifting his head so it was in her lap. His eyes were closed, and Selphie wondered if she had acted too late.

Then Irvine coughed, and opened his eyes. "Hey, baby. Did we get her?"

Selphie hugged Irvine to her, so hard that he had trouble breathing. "We got her, Irvy," she said, tears in her eyes, "we got her." She released him, his head still in her lap. "Thank you for saving me, Irvine."

"I should say the same thing, honey." Irvine looked up at Selphie, whose face, he saw, was framed by an observation port in the wall that would close during re-entry. The stars surrounded her, bathing her in starlight that only made her more beautiful. "Selphie," he began, "I…I want to tell you…"

" I love you too," she told him, and kissed him, slow and sweet, on the lips. She touched his shoulder, where his wound had been. "You're hurt. Want me to kiss it and make it better?"

Irvine sat up, a little puzzled. "You already healed me, Sefie."

Selphie smiled coyly at him. "Well, if you're gonna let a little thing like that stop you…"

Irvine was never one to refuse a lady.

Epilogue:

Bruetel entered his office in the CORE Group headquarters twelve hours later, tired beyond words.

The Ragnarok had returned to Balamb Garden, its pilots, the Tilmitt girl and the Kinneas fellow, currently under observation for possible concussions that no Cure spell could deal with, Bruetel thought as he sat down behind his desk and booted up his desktop workstation. Preliminary investigations revealed no trace of the nano-creature that the two had destroyed or any lasting effects of the virus within the Ragnarok, which was good, Bruetel knew.

His desktop interface came up, on it the image of a woman, her features cold and familiar. "Dr. Bruetel," it said. "How may I help you?"

"Busy day. The President wants a full report on the testing on the Adel beta ROM construct ASAP, seems to think it is important. Guess we can feed him a line or two to keep him on course, eh. Delete all mentions of the Adel-alpha ROM construct, please, and have the report on ready in, oh, ten minutes. There's no rush."

"Indeed. Thank you, Dr. Bruetel."

"Thank you…Adel." Bruetel leaned back in his chair, and thought again about the day when, aided by the mechanical soul of a sorceress, he and his own would rise up to take over the world.

The End