Post by Leon Loire on Jul 7, 2007 8:22:33 GMT 1
OOC: Folks, this one segment alone is DAMN long, so be ready for it. This is a warning ahead of time, I'm going all-out with this saga of Leon Loire's storyline. I'm going to be writing alot, so if you're interesting (and I sincerely hope you are) be ready to read a damn book. I'll probably end up posting this as a separate segment in the Artwork section someday.
The landscape was barren, not in the sense of a desert environment or an arid desolates, but literally nothing in view. The horizon was merely a line of difference between two shades of grey. The world itself was both dark and light, bringing the floating eyes of Leon Loire to both squint and stare. No landmarks, no objects, nothing; simply the endless universe of his subconscious mind.
It felt as if eternity was keeping the man from returning to reality, and the inevitable pointlessness of the dream was near. Eventually, the faint tap of music echoed through Loire's subconscious, the rhythm matching the chords of a piano. A slow, soft melody absorbed the attention of the man, and without hesitation, Leon Loire tread toward the beautiful sounds, barely detecting the designs of a metaphysical form, or even noticing the shift of the metauniverse into a warm scene of white clouds and crystal tiles.
The closer his boots stepped, the louder the piano’s notes became, not in a sense of annoyance or frustration, but far to the contrary; the notes soothed the sleeping man, acting as an invisible blanket, like the coming of a clear day’s rain storm that cleansed the land of darkness with its own twilight aura. The soft chords pat across the world with grace and confidence, striking the heart of a torn man, and symbolizing the warmth of a woman’s soul. Closing his imagined eyelids to his own mind, Leon Loire’s ears perked in longing for the calm melody of smooth texture, bringing back memories of a long lost day, many years ago, in a past that was no longer his own.
So when he opened his eyes, Loire found the scene around him to be the same, with a few key differences: the beautiful music had a source now, a stained piano that shown brightly in the already bright room, curtains hugging the edges of tall windows that basked in the morning sun, a couch and tables that were destined for a small audience, and a musician at the instrument’s bench: a woman garbed in a beige summer dress, sleeveless hands trickling down the keys, shimmering brown hair with golden hues shining through the lower threads, relaxed shoulders comfortable in the warmth of the day, legs pressing against the pegs underneath.
A small, nostalgic smile pressed over the lips of the worn “Knight”; the woman was someone he had loved, long ago, and a part of him still loved her with all its power. The part of the man that feared change, that desired to return to the past, before life had turned dark, before the world had fallen apart on him. Back then, before a scar was across his face and a wise frown replaced a naïve grin, Leon Loire had been known by another name, another identity: Alexander Thompson Junior of Sacramento, California.
“Jaina… it’s so good to see you… after all this time...” The man whispered, his eyes beginning to liquefy, his own mind wondering if his imaginary form would fall to his knees and give in to his depressive thoughts.
There was no response, so when Loire brought his hand forward to try and reach for the girl, his eyes caught something interesting: he wasn’t wearing his usual ‘white mane’ jacket. Taking a quick look at himself, Leon Loire realized that in this dream, this euphoric memory, he was no longer playing the part of his image; he was under the name he had been christened.
“It’s about time you showed up Alex,” a soft voice spoke out, sourcing back to the lips of the woman sitting in front of him. Leon Loire suddenly felt as if he was taking a back seat, as another part of him took control of his imaginary form. “I’ve been sitting here waiting for an hour! It’s not good for a boy to leave his girlfriend in boredom, now is it?”
“I’m sorry Jaina, Chris was holding me up; he had to read me an article about some political action committee or something like that. You know how he is.” The lips of Leon’s body spoke out, his voice sounding young, inexperienced, even a bit childish; the voice of A.J. Thompson. “But I’m here now! And all to hear my beautiful girl practice her music.”
The form gave a peck with his lips to the girl’s cheek, and she smiled, grateful, “Well, I’ll just have to say something to Chris then, I can’t have him holding you up whenever we need to spend time together. And his outlook on politics is starting to scare me; he’s always acting as if everything in the world is wrong, and he needs to change it!”
Alex frowned, “Meh, it’s nothing to be scared over babe. He’s just going through that young phase of political stuff. Remember what Mr. Odine told us about it last spring?”
‘I remember this,’ Leon Loire pondered, recognizing the transcript of the conversation, ‘this was on our first weekend of Junior year, back when Chris was just starting to get into politics more. He was talking to me about some friend of his uncle’s who worked with a Senator, and how he had been telling him a lot about some bill.’
Jaina Schaffen smiled, apparently deciding to take her boyfriend’s reply and forget it. “Well, so long as you’re here to listen, I suppose.”
She began to play, starting her song fresh, allowing Alex to watch her hands flow across the keys, twitching only at a tickle in her skin as the boy played with the hair above her right ear. In all honesty, the scene brought back a surge of emotion through Loire, who observed through the eyes of his former self.
‘I can see why I fell for her; she had an aura of beauty about her, both in body and personality. It was too difficult to ignore her; I was enthralled in her presence.’
The moment lasted throughout the entire song, and Leon himself found the hardships of his own life melt away as he felt himself temporarily reassert itself into the presence of the past. It felt good to embrace the dream for a time, to remember the past, to desire its return…
Then, as the song finally ended, another tune seemed to echo behind Leon, and the body of Alexander Thompson looked back towards the clouds of gray and white, witnessing a small fog of black and grey slowly entering the world of thought and instinct.
“I’ll be right back Jaina; I need to check something out.” Alex spoke to his girlfriend, before placing a kiss on her lips and standing up, and slowly strolling towards the local border that allowed exit from the dream.
“Well, come back soon!” the girl spoke out, as her fingers began a new melody, a calm, quiet tune that gave Leon a strange dread, regardless of its peace.
Alexander Thompson marched towards the blackened smog ahead with cocky determination, his clean blue jeans molding into his every step with a slight knowledge of its presence, shirt and overshirt flinging back and forth, hair crisp and dry, hugging the inner ring of his head. Alex’s form continued to march forward without fear, his resolve mostly in curiosity, and his fake authority. Every step brought a strange awakening to the man trapped inside, the more experienced figure, the one who knew what was to come for him, the one that had evolved where the younger had died. Every step brought more control back to Leon Loire, who felt the warmth of the air chilling at his fingertips, the slight burn of his legs as they pressed farther and farther, yet began to adapt to the stress, now under the control of someone who knew the path. Soon enough, the music that Jaina Schaffen played grew more powerful, more steadfast, almost as if it were ready to be absorbed by the echo far ahead, in the darkening grey.
Stopping, Alexander Thompson seemed to grow fearful, and turned his head back to gaze at the distance he had covered; he was still only a few dozen meters from his girlfriend. A bother passed over him; why had such a long, enduring trip turned out to be so difficult?
‘Because he hasn’t accepted the path he is taking; he hasn’t accepted the changes that are coming over him.’ Leon Loire pondered, recognizing the metaphorical symbolism of the scene. Soon enough, just like he had, the memory of Alex would come to realize the exact thing that would come to change him directly. Alas, turning around to face the bleak fog ahead, Alex Thompson comes to see a man in white standing just ahead of him, some sort of strange blade in his hand, a white trench coat connected to its sheathe.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Squall Leonhart.” Seifer Almasy stated, steel-grey eyes staring back with a ferocity of faith in himself, “It’s about time; I was expecting you’d charge forward right now, with that blind pride of yours.”
“Who are you?” Alexander demanded, his eyes shaking at a sudden shiver that began to run up his body. His clothes quickly changed, from white and blue to black and silver, a leather jacket engulfing his torso, a pair of combat boots and slacks overlapping his legs, gloves taking his hands, a mane of fake lion fur covering his neck. He was already on the verge of becoming the image that he had been built to become.
‘He was using this image to build me into a pawn.’ Leon Loire thought now, part realization, part recalling; he had known, for some time, that the project had been destined to turn him into a servant of the Corporal Punishment System, and it seemed now that this strange dream, in fact, was his mind attempting to collect all the data he had collected over the course of the three years and finally build the big picture; to help him realize the truth.
“There’s no need for this anymore, Alec.” Leon’s own voice spoke out through the lips of Alex, bringing a wave of control amongst the form, skipping the stressful and dramatic transfer between his naïveté and his maturity, knowing that it had been gained by combating Alec Domnovic as his symbol of Seifer Almasy, while Leon had covered the symbol of Squall Leonhart. Cracking his wrists and glaring at his old rival, Leon Loire’s eyes caught the sight of his old blade, the Revolver, pitched in the white ground before him, with the Griever strewn across the hilt. They were the symbols of the fake name, given to Loire as his own identity.
He was no longer Alexander Thompson Junior; through the play of Leonhart, he had become Leon Loire. The image of Liberty, Individualism, and Belief.
Strolling forward, Leon stared down his opponent, his left hand ready to take his Griever and place it across his heart, while his sheathe materialized across his hip, and his blade gripped in his hands. Taking notice that no music played in the background, no black or white land marks to be seen, only gray existence colliding together, melding and resisting and expanding and imploding, a massive nothingness.
“So you were hoping to turn me into the System’s pet by making me become obsessed with something I was not, right?” Leon proclaimed, standing still, holding the Revolver in his left hand, eyes like an icy fire, “You expected that, if you claimed I was Leonhart, I’d become him, and become obsessed with the rivalry between us, leading me to –“
“To fall back on the securities of the System to help you, and protect the life you love from the change I was trying to bring. Yes, that was the plan, in brief summary.” Alec Domnovic interrupted, the subconscious idea of him rather accurate to the ego of the real man, “That rivalry between us was supposed to create a good and evil scenario, and in that, it would invoke your attention away from the corruption of the System that your friend Chris was trying to bring attention to. With that, you’d become the perfect warrior of the Corporal Punishment System, with a politically conservative viewpoint that would perfectly match your socially conservative background.”
Leon felt his frown deepen, realizing the point of the dream was to help him finally collect the pieces together, “But it didn’t work; the fact that you were endangering me only pulled away the curtain of naïveté, which helped me to notice the corruption of the System instead.”
The false Alec smirked, “Yes, it didn’t exactly work according to General Odine’s plan, now did it? Even though you had no time to begin resisting the System then, and your own efforts to resist the System would not truly begin until your time as Junior class Captain at Varron Academy, the fact was that a part of you was woken up; you, in essence, did not exactly become the image of Leon Loire anymore than you awoke to be Leon Loire.”
“He was always inside of me, it was only a matter of time before I could realize it…” Leon added, his sights beginning to trace the world around him, as scenes from his life began to unfold around him, the scenes that had involved Alec Domnovic: their first confrontation, the battle on the mountain, the attack on the Knight’s Guard headquarters, the fight in the Varron Forest, the battle of Varron Plaza No. 7, and their brief conversation together when Kira Karyuudo was in the hospital for the two men to end their rivalry at last by the beginning of July, that year.
And it was here; July the fourth, the day Alec had chosen, was only a week away.
“So why did you attack my school? Why did you have to kill Chris, kill everyone I knew?!” Leon finally returned to the attention of the scene, partly forgetting that the entire thing was in his head.
Domnovic frowned, and the body seemed to be unresponsive for a moment, “Loire, it seems you have not come across the answer or even the theory to that question yet in your travels. Perhaps you’ll have to ask me when we see each other soon.”
Leon snarled, not satisfied, “Then why'd you always try to kill me, huh? If Odine only wanted to just recapture me and erase my memories to bring back Alex, then why didn’t you try to capture me all those times instead?” A flash of memory flew past Leon’s mind now: the scene where Leon had realized the entire rivalry had been a hoax, only to keep him blinded as General Odine and Alec attempted to recover him for the continuation of “the project.”
Alec grinned, then laughed a small bit, “Well, perhaps I enjoyed the role I played too much! Or maybe there’s more to me than you know, Loire, perhaps those attempts were only meant to lead you on, to continue you down the path I desired…”
“Then what could path had been?” Leon questioned forcefully.
“You’ll have to find that out for yourself, since, I’m sure you can already recognize that there’s more to this than you know. After all, why would Odin not just have you killed when we realized you had become exactly the opposite of what we wanted? You were a Liberal! You desired change! Why not just start fresh, right? And then worse, what had we done to your dear Jaina? She calls herself a bloody ‘Sorceress’ now, what could that have to do with all this? And how far could this project really go? Could it be up to the echelons of the military, or higher? You’ll have to find that all out soon enough!”
Swinging his blade high, Alec Domnovic growled, eyes fierce, the sign that the time for talk was over, “But enough, Leon Loire! It’s time I wake you from this dream of our battle, so you may get ready for the real end! Soon enough, you will be dead, and my faults shall finally be clean!”
The mental figure charged, his Hyperion high and mighty in the air, preparing to bring the blunt force of his weapon down upon Leon Loire’s body. The Revolver denied it, swinging its own mass in the way, colliding the two blades with a great spark and cry, before the two men jumped away from the other, swinging their blades in preparation for the next strike. Charging forth, Leon slid across the earth on Domnovic’s right, intending to swing his weapon horizontally toward Alec’s chest. The attack was parried by a vertical poise, Alec’s right hand gripping his weapon’s hilt tightly as his left pressed the weapon forward to push his opponent back. Stepping back, each with a swing and counter, Leon Loire felt the pressure of his opponent’s blade reverberate through his bones, the nerves of his mental form giving sign that the fake Alec was increasing his power.
Slash after slash, Leon felt his weapon losing its durability. A diagonal block gave the clearest sign, as a ring in the blade’s structure gave hint to internal cracks. Several more slashes followed, before Leon ducked, rolled, and stood behind Domnovic, intending to skewer him from behind. Yet, without hesitation, Domnovic struck in an arc as he turned to face Loire again, the Hyperion colliding with the Revolver with such intensity that both blades shattered with a gleaming light in the foggy darkness.
Leon Loire stepped back, glaring at his opponent; it seemed they would have to engage in unarmed combat. Yet, a moment later, Alec Domnovic released a new hilt from his sheathe, revealing a scarlet blade of glowing darkness: the blade known as Hecate. Grinning, the man charged forth at Loire, knowing that he would win the contest without question. Striking high, then down in a vertical cut to slice Loire from the center, Leon found himself constantly moving, jumping back, rolling to his right, attempting at his best to escape his inevitable death. He didn’t even know why he continued to resist – it was a dream, after all, and without a weapon, he was already dead.
“Come now Leon Loire, accept defeat and go to your God willingly!” Domnovic roared, slashing his witch blade in a low arc near the earth, hoping to trip his Knightly opponent permanently.
“Sorry Alec,” Leon gasped, finding his feet unable to cooperate as he fell backward, barely evading the attack, “I’m already dead; I’m trapped in Purgatory, and destroying you is my only chance to break free from the chains of Hell!”
Continuing to back farther away, Leon’s metaphysical form began to lose its focus, its substance. The obvious victor grew closer to gaining his triumph over Loire’s soul. Alec Domnovic, clad in white, wielding a blade of absolute darkness, continued to press Leon Loire backward, towards the infinite reaches of the metauniverse, seemingly hoping to trap him in his own mind forever.
“You’re no threat to me Alec! You’re just in my head! You’re a nightmare!” Leon yelled, ducking his head as the blade cut above him, then tucking backward to evade the following strike.
“You’re a threat to yourself!” Domnovic called back, charging after and attempting to stab the younger man, hoping to end him, “Your past wants you to give in, to be what we want you to be, while your current state of mind wants too many things. You want revenge, you want power, you want a purpose, you want love, but most of all, you want death. You want freedom Leon Loire, that is certain, and hidden deep in yourself, the ultimate escape is by this… sword… piercing your heart!”
Leon’s evasions were getting slower, more fatigued, and the evidence was proven when ]Hecate slit Loire’s right shoulder. A yelp of agony struck into the cosmos of the white void, and Leon found himself released by a painful tug away. Yet it was over; his body was beginning a shock of the wound, he was becoming immobile. And soon, he found himself repeating the thought that the mental Alec had brought up: was it true? Did he truly desire death? It made sense; it was suicide to do battle with someone as powerful as General Odine and Alec Domnovic. He was hoping to escape his sinful past, escape the life of falsehoods that Odine desired to make him live, yet at the same time, he may have subconsciously desired freedom from his responsibilities. He believed he had to cleanse his past, end the struggle that had begun, yet what was to come after? Perhaps it was easier.. . merely… to die…
A moment later, the metaphysical form of Leon Loire found its chest heaving forward, bloody spilling out from his lips and body, as the witch blade Hecate entered his body in a dramatic mess. On the receiving side of the ultimate end, Leon Loire stood leaning, his eyes staring back at the grin of the man who seemed to always desire his death.
It seemed to be over; it seemed to come to an end.
“Your death is finally mine, Leon Loire.” Alec Domnovic whispered, and began to pull the blade from its mortal wound.
For a few moments, Leon wondered if there really would be repercussions for the defeat. Would his mind collapse? Would he fall into a coma, and never wake up? Or would he merely continue living, yet without a will to do such a simple task as to breath? Would he find life meaningless, worthless to follow?
He heard a noise behind him, echoing in the world around him; the sound of a smooth, pure, beautiful metal slicing into soft, clean grass. A sway of weight bound from a wind, and the electrodes of the Lionheart called out to its master.
Leon Loire always had a weakness for the symbolic, and when he thought of the blade that a friend had constructed in his name long ago, the very same friend whose company helped create Alec Domnovic’s Hecate, he realized what it meant now. It was a sign of his purpose. He had to surpass the complex he had built to fight alone by defeating those that had placed it upon him, by using the abilities that had been given to him by those who loved him, those he had come to call friends and family after he had become the image of Leon Loire. And in thanks, once it was all over, he would finally be free of his past, cleansed of its dark chapters, and able to finally live as Leon Loire in peace, and play the part of the “selfless Knight” at long last. To fight for the Liberty of the world, and to work towards the unity of the people upon it.
Leon Loire smiled; if he was to die, it would come from the one person that truly deserved to kill him, and even then, it seemed his discovered purpose could potentially outweigh that.
‘My Sin of abandoning you is no longer so heavy after all… when compared to the need for others who need me… Selflessness over Selfishness…’
The blade of Hecate left Leon Loire’s form, and his body fell to the earth, but his knees bent in preparation to stand back up, crashing against the white world; his arms pressed next to them, ready to pull his weight to a stance once more; the wound attempting to anchor him down, bringing him to defeat, but it seemed the scars, the wounds, the pains he had dealt with for so many years had trained him to ignore this ultimate pain, and surpass it.
Pressing himself to stand, taking one step back, and finding his left hand gripping upon the warm hilt of the Lionheart, the man grinned in anticipation for the final war that was to come, and the end of the dream that he was about to gain.
“I’m done quarreling with myself, Alec. I’m not here to recover my old self, I’m here to end this once and for all.” Loire called out, pulling his blade into the air and aiming its beaming white-blue light towards the heart of his enemy, finding that his own wound had been healed, and no scar remaining.
“It’s about time you became a real man.” The metaphysical thought spoke, pulling up Hecate and smirking, “I certainly hope the real fight with me is worth much more than this. Time for you to take victory Leon Loire!”
The form charged forward, yelling in a battle cry, preparing for the final strike; Leon Loire awaited the attack, and strangely, without fear, blocked the attack with a simple horizontal defense, before parrying the dark weapon away and slicing the blue blade of Lionheart through the chest of the wielder of Hecate, disintegrating man, blade and all, and leaving Leon Loire alone – for now.
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The landscape was barren, not in the sense of a desert environment or an arid desolates, but literally nothing in view. The horizon was merely a line of difference between two shades of grey. The world itself was both dark and light, bringing the floating eyes of Leon Loire to both squint and stare. No landmarks, no objects, nothing; simply the endless universe of his subconscious mind.
It felt as if eternity was keeping the man from returning to reality, and the inevitable pointlessness of the dream was near. Eventually, the faint tap of music echoed through Loire's subconscious, the rhythm matching the chords of a piano. A slow, soft melody absorbed the attention of the man, and without hesitation, Leon Loire tread toward the beautiful sounds, barely detecting the designs of a metaphysical form, or even noticing the shift of the metauniverse into a warm scene of white clouds and crystal tiles.
The closer his boots stepped, the louder the piano’s notes became, not in a sense of annoyance or frustration, but far to the contrary; the notes soothed the sleeping man, acting as an invisible blanket, like the coming of a clear day’s rain storm that cleansed the land of darkness with its own twilight aura. The soft chords pat across the world with grace and confidence, striking the heart of a torn man, and symbolizing the warmth of a woman’s soul. Closing his imagined eyelids to his own mind, Leon Loire’s ears perked in longing for the calm melody of smooth texture, bringing back memories of a long lost day, many years ago, in a past that was no longer his own.
So when he opened his eyes, Loire found the scene around him to be the same, with a few key differences: the beautiful music had a source now, a stained piano that shown brightly in the already bright room, curtains hugging the edges of tall windows that basked in the morning sun, a couch and tables that were destined for a small audience, and a musician at the instrument’s bench: a woman garbed in a beige summer dress, sleeveless hands trickling down the keys, shimmering brown hair with golden hues shining through the lower threads, relaxed shoulders comfortable in the warmth of the day, legs pressing against the pegs underneath.
A small, nostalgic smile pressed over the lips of the worn “Knight”; the woman was someone he had loved, long ago, and a part of him still loved her with all its power. The part of the man that feared change, that desired to return to the past, before life had turned dark, before the world had fallen apart on him. Back then, before a scar was across his face and a wise frown replaced a naïve grin, Leon Loire had been known by another name, another identity: Alexander Thompson Junior of Sacramento, California.
“Jaina… it’s so good to see you… after all this time...” The man whispered, his eyes beginning to liquefy, his own mind wondering if his imaginary form would fall to his knees and give in to his depressive thoughts.
There was no response, so when Loire brought his hand forward to try and reach for the girl, his eyes caught something interesting: he wasn’t wearing his usual ‘white mane’ jacket. Taking a quick look at himself, Leon Loire realized that in this dream, this euphoric memory, he was no longer playing the part of his image; he was under the name he had been christened.
“It’s about time you showed up Alex,” a soft voice spoke out, sourcing back to the lips of the woman sitting in front of him. Leon Loire suddenly felt as if he was taking a back seat, as another part of him took control of his imaginary form. “I’ve been sitting here waiting for an hour! It’s not good for a boy to leave his girlfriend in boredom, now is it?”
“I’m sorry Jaina, Chris was holding me up; he had to read me an article about some political action committee or something like that. You know how he is.” The lips of Leon’s body spoke out, his voice sounding young, inexperienced, even a bit childish; the voice of A.J. Thompson. “But I’m here now! And all to hear my beautiful girl practice her music.”
The form gave a peck with his lips to the girl’s cheek, and she smiled, grateful, “Well, I’ll just have to say something to Chris then, I can’t have him holding you up whenever we need to spend time together. And his outlook on politics is starting to scare me; he’s always acting as if everything in the world is wrong, and he needs to change it!”
Alex frowned, “Meh, it’s nothing to be scared over babe. He’s just going through that young phase of political stuff. Remember what Mr. Odine told us about it last spring?”
‘I remember this,’ Leon Loire pondered, recognizing the transcript of the conversation, ‘this was on our first weekend of Junior year, back when Chris was just starting to get into politics more. He was talking to me about some friend of his uncle’s who worked with a Senator, and how he had been telling him a lot about some bill.’
Jaina Schaffen smiled, apparently deciding to take her boyfriend’s reply and forget it. “Well, so long as you’re here to listen, I suppose.”
She began to play, starting her song fresh, allowing Alex to watch her hands flow across the keys, twitching only at a tickle in her skin as the boy played with the hair above her right ear. In all honesty, the scene brought back a surge of emotion through Loire, who observed through the eyes of his former self.
‘I can see why I fell for her; she had an aura of beauty about her, both in body and personality. It was too difficult to ignore her; I was enthralled in her presence.’
The moment lasted throughout the entire song, and Leon himself found the hardships of his own life melt away as he felt himself temporarily reassert itself into the presence of the past. It felt good to embrace the dream for a time, to remember the past, to desire its return…
Then, as the song finally ended, another tune seemed to echo behind Leon, and the body of Alexander Thompson looked back towards the clouds of gray and white, witnessing a small fog of black and grey slowly entering the world of thought and instinct.
“I’ll be right back Jaina; I need to check something out.” Alex spoke to his girlfriend, before placing a kiss on her lips and standing up, and slowly strolling towards the local border that allowed exit from the dream.
“Well, come back soon!” the girl spoke out, as her fingers began a new melody, a calm, quiet tune that gave Leon a strange dread, regardless of its peace.
Alexander Thompson marched towards the blackened smog ahead with cocky determination, his clean blue jeans molding into his every step with a slight knowledge of its presence, shirt and overshirt flinging back and forth, hair crisp and dry, hugging the inner ring of his head. Alex’s form continued to march forward without fear, his resolve mostly in curiosity, and his fake authority. Every step brought a strange awakening to the man trapped inside, the more experienced figure, the one who knew what was to come for him, the one that had evolved where the younger had died. Every step brought more control back to Leon Loire, who felt the warmth of the air chilling at his fingertips, the slight burn of his legs as they pressed farther and farther, yet began to adapt to the stress, now under the control of someone who knew the path. Soon enough, the music that Jaina Schaffen played grew more powerful, more steadfast, almost as if it were ready to be absorbed by the echo far ahead, in the darkening grey.
Stopping, Alexander Thompson seemed to grow fearful, and turned his head back to gaze at the distance he had covered; he was still only a few dozen meters from his girlfriend. A bother passed over him; why had such a long, enduring trip turned out to be so difficult?
‘Because he hasn’t accepted the path he is taking; he hasn’t accepted the changes that are coming over him.’ Leon Loire pondered, recognizing the metaphorical symbolism of the scene. Soon enough, just like he had, the memory of Alex would come to realize the exact thing that would come to change him directly. Alas, turning around to face the bleak fog ahead, Alex Thompson comes to see a man in white standing just ahead of him, some sort of strange blade in his hand, a white trench coat connected to its sheathe.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Squall Leonhart.” Seifer Almasy stated, steel-grey eyes staring back with a ferocity of faith in himself, “It’s about time; I was expecting you’d charge forward right now, with that blind pride of yours.”
“Who are you?” Alexander demanded, his eyes shaking at a sudden shiver that began to run up his body. His clothes quickly changed, from white and blue to black and silver, a leather jacket engulfing his torso, a pair of combat boots and slacks overlapping his legs, gloves taking his hands, a mane of fake lion fur covering his neck. He was already on the verge of becoming the image that he had been built to become.
‘He was using this image to build me into a pawn.’ Leon Loire thought now, part realization, part recalling; he had known, for some time, that the project had been destined to turn him into a servant of the Corporal Punishment System, and it seemed now that this strange dream, in fact, was his mind attempting to collect all the data he had collected over the course of the three years and finally build the big picture; to help him realize the truth.
“There’s no need for this anymore, Alec.” Leon’s own voice spoke out through the lips of Alex, bringing a wave of control amongst the form, skipping the stressful and dramatic transfer between his naïveté and his maturity, knowing that it had been gained by combating Alec Domnovic as his symbol of Seifer Almasy, while Leon had covered the symbol of Squall Leonhart. Cracking his wrists and glaring at his old rival, Leon Loire’s eyes caught the sight of his old blade, the Revolver, pitched in the white ground before him, with the Griever strewn across the hilt. They were the symbols of the fake name, given to Loire as his own identity.
He was no longer Alexander Thompson Junior; through the play of Leonhart, he had become Leon Loire. The image of Liberty, Individualism, and Belief.
Strolling forward, Leon stared down his opponent, his left hand ready to take his Griever and place it across his heart, while his sheathe materialized across his hip, and his blade gripped in his hands. Taking notice that no music played in the background, no black or white land marks to be seen, only gray existence colliding together, melding and resisting and expanding and imploding, a massive nothingness.
“So you were hoping to turn me into the System’s pet by making me become obsessed with something I was not, right?” Leon proclaimed, standing still, holding the Revolver in his left hand, eyes like an icy fire, “You expected that, if you claimed I was Leonhart, I’d become him, and become obsessed with the rivalry between us, leading me to –“
“To fall back on the securities of the System to help you, and protect the life you love from the change I was trying to bring. Yes, that was the plan, in brief summary.” Alec Domnovic interrupted, the subconscious idea of him rather accurate to the ego of the real man, “That rivalry between us was supposed to create a good and evil scenario, and in that, it would invoke your attention away from the corruption of the System that your friend Chris was trying to bring attention to. With that, you’d become the perfect warrior of the Corporal Punishment System, with a politically conservative viewpoint that would perfectly match your socially conservative background.”
Leon felt his frown deepen, realizing the point of the dream was to help him finally collect the pieces together, “But it didn’t work; the fact that you were endangering me only pulled away the curtain of naïveté, which helped me to notice the corruption of the System instead.”
The false Alec smirked, “Yes, it didn’t exactly work according to General Odine’s plan, now did it? Even though you had no time to begin resisting the System then, and your own efforts to resist the System would not truly begin until your time as Junior class Captain at Varron Academy, the fact was that a part of you was woken up; you, in essence, did not exactly become the image of Leon Loire anymore than you awoke to be Leon Loire.”
“He was always inside of me, it was only a matter of time before I could realize it…” Leon added, his sights beginning to trace the world around him, as scenes from his life began to unfold around him, the scenes that had involved Alec Domnovic: their first confrontation, the battle on the mountain, the attack on the Knight’s Guard headquarters, the fight in the Varron Forest, the battle of Varron Plaza No. 7, and their brief conversation together when Kira Karyuudo was in the hospital for the two men to end their rivalry at last by the beginning of July, that year.
And it was here; July the fourth, the day Alec had chosen, was only a week away.
“So why did you attack my school? Why did you have to kill Chris, kill everyone I knew?!” Leon finally returned to the attention of the scene, partly forgetting that the entire thing was in his head.
Domnovic frowned, and the body seemed to be unresponsive for a moment, “Loire, it seems you have not come across the answer or even the theory to that question yet in your travels. Perhaps you’ll have to ask me when we see each other soon.”
Leon snarled, not satisfied, “Then why'd you always try to kill me, huh? If Odine only wanted to just recapture me and erase my memories to bring back Alex, then why didn’t you try to capture me all those times instead?” A flash of memory flew past Leon’s mind now: the scene where Leon had realized the entire rivalry had been a hoax, only to keep him blinded as General Odine and Alec attempted to recover him for the continuation of “the project.”
Alec grinned, then laughed a small bit, “Well, perhaps I enjoyed the role I played too much! Or maybe there’s more to me than you know, Loire, perhaps those attempts were only meant to lead you on, to continue you down the path I desired…”
“Then what could path had been?” Leon questioned forcefully.
“You’ll have to find that out for yourself, since, I’m sure you can already recognize that there’s more to this than you know. After all, why would Odin not just have you killed when we realized you had become exactly the opposite of what we wanted? You were a Liberal! You desired change! Why not just start fresh, right? And then worse, what had we done to your dear Jaina? She calls herself a bloody ‘Sorceress’ now, what could that have to do with all this? And how far could this project really go? Could it be up to the echelons of the military, or higher? You’ll have to find that all out soon enough!”
Swinging his blade high, Alec Domnovic growled, eyes fierce, the sign that the time for talk was over, “But enough, Leon Loire! It’s time I wake you from this dream of our battle, so you may get ready for the real end! Soon enough, you will be dead, and my faults shall finally be clean!”
The mental figure charged, his Hyperion high and mighty in the air, preparing to bring the blunt force of his weapon down upon Leon Loire’s body. The Revolver denied it, swinging its own mass in the way, colliding the two blades with a great spark and cry, before the two men jumped away from the other, swinging their blades in preparation for the next strike. Charging forth, Leon slid across the earth on Domnovic’s right, intending to swing his weapon horizontally toward Alec’s chest. The attack was parried by a vertical poise, Alec’s right hand gripping his weapon’s hilt tightly as his left pressed the weapon forward to push his opponent back. Stepping back, each with a swing and counter, Leon Loire felt the pressure of his opponent’s blade reverberate through his bones, the nerves of his mental form giving sign that the fake Alec was increasing his power.
Slash after slash, Leon felt his weapon losing its durability. A diagonal block gave the clearest sign, as a ring in the blade’s structure gave hint to internal cracks. Several more slashes followed, before Leon ducked, rolled, and stood behind Domnovic, intending to skewer him from behind. Yet, without hesitation, Domnovic struck in an arc as he turned to face Loire again, the Hyperion colliding with the Revolver with such intensity that both blades shattered with a gleaming light in the foggy darkness.
Leon Loire stepped back, glaring at his opponent; it seemed they would have to engage in unarmed combat. Yet, a moment later, Alec Domnovic released a new hilt from his sheathe, revealing a scarlet blade of glowing darkness: the blade known as Hecate. Grinning, the man charged forth at Loire, knowing that he would win the contest without question. Striking high, then down in a vertical cut to slice Loire from the center, Leon found himself constantly moving, jumping back, rolling to his right, attempting at his best to escape his inevitable death. He didn’t even know why he continued to resist – it was a dream, after all, and without a weapon, he was already dead.
“Come now Leon Loire, accept defeat and go to your God willingly!” Domnovic roared, slashing his witch blade in a low arc near the earth, hoping to trip his Knightly opponent permanently.
“Sorry Alec,” Leon gasped, finding his feet unable to cooperate as he fell backward, barely evading the attack, “I’m already dead; I’m trapped in Purgatory, and destroying you is my only chance to break free from the chains of Hell!”
Continuing to back farther away, Leon’s metaphysical form began to lose its focus, its substance. The obvious victor grew closer to gaining his triumph over Loire’s soul. Alec Domnovic, clad in white, wielding a blade of absolute darkness, continued to press Leon Loire backward, towards the infinite reaches of the metauniverse, seemingly hoping to trap him in his own mind forever.
“You’re no threat to me Alec! You’re just in my head! You’re a nightmare!” Leon yelled, ducking his head as the blade cut above him, then tucking backward to evade the following strike.
“You’re a threat to yourself!” Domnovic called back, charging after and attempting to stab the younger man, hoping to end him, “Your past wants you to give in, to be what we want you to be, while your current state of mind wants too many things. You want revenge, you want power, you want a purpose, you want love, but most of all, you want death. You want freedom Leon Loire, that is certain, and hidden deep in yourself, the ultimate escape is by this… sword… piercing your heart!”
Leon’s evasions were getting slower, more fatigued, and the evidence was proven when ]Hecate slit Loire’s right shoulder. A yelp of agony struck into the cosmos of the white void, and Leon found himself released by a painful tug away. Yet it was over; his body was beginning a shock of the wound, he was becoming immobile. And soon, he found himself repeating the thought that the mental Alec had brought up: was it true? Did he truly desire death? It made sense; it was suicide to do battle with someone as powerful as General Odine and Alec Domnovic. He was hoping to escape his sinful past, escape the life of falsehoods that Odine desired to make him live, yet at the same time, he may have subconsciously desired freedom from his responsibilities. He believed he had to cleanse his past, end the struggle that had begun, yet what was to come after? Perhaps it was easier.. . merely… to die…
A moment later, the metaphysical form of Leon Loire found its chest heaving forward, bloody spilling out from his lips and body, as the witch blade Hecate entered his body in a dramatic mess. On the receiving side of the ultimate end, Leon Loire stood leaning, his eyes staring back at the grin of the man who seemed to always desire his death.
It seemed to be over; it seemed to come to an end.
“Your death is finally mine, Leon Loire.” Alec Domnovic whispered, and began to pull the blade from its mortal wound.
For a few moments, Leon wondered if there really would be repercussions for the defeat. Would his mind collapse? Would he fall into a coma, and never wake up? Or would he merely continue living, yet without a will to do such a simple task as to breath? Would he find life meaningless, worthless to follow?
He heard a noise behind him, echoing in the world around him; the sound of a smooth, pure, beautiful metal slicing into soft, clean grass. A sway of weight bound from a wind, and the electrodes of the Lionheart called out to its master.
Leon Loire always had a weakness for the symbolic, and when he thought of the blade that a friend had constructed in his name long ago, the very same friend whose company helped create Alec Domnovic’s Hecate, he realized what it meant now. It was a sign of his purpose. He had to surpass the complex he had built to fight alone by defeating those that had placed it upon him, by using the abilities that had been given to him by those who loved him, those he had come to call friends and family after he had become the image of Leon Loire. And in thanks, once it was all over, he would finally be free of his past, cleansed of its dark chapters, and able to finally live as Leon Loire in peace, and play the part of the “selfless Knight” at long last. To fight for the Liberty of the world, and to work towards the unity of the people upon it.
Leon Loire smiled; if he was to die, it would come from the one person that truly deserved to kill him, and even then, it seemed his discovered purpose could potentially outweigh that.
‘My Sin of abandoning you is no longer so heavy after all… when compared to the need for others who need me… Selflessness over Selfishness…’
The blade of Hecate left Leon Loire’s form, and his body fell to the earth, but his knees bent in preparation to stand back up, crashing against the white world; his arms pressed next to them, ready to pull his weight to a stance once more; the wound attempting to anchor him down, bringing him to defeat, but it seemed the scars, the wounds, the pains he had dealt with for so many years had trained him to ignore this ultimate pain, and surpass it.
Pressing himself to stand, taking one step back, and finding his left hand gripping upon the warm hilt of the Lionheart, the man grinned in anticipation for the final war that was to come, and the end of the dream that he was about to gain.
“I’m done quarreling with myself, Alec. I’m not here to recover my old self, I’m here to end this once and for all.” Loire called out, pulling his blade into the air and aiming its beaming white-blue light towards the heart of his enemy, finding that his own wound had been healed, and no scar remaining.
“It’s about time you became a real man.” The metaphysical thought spoke, pulling up Hecate and smirking, “I certainly hope the real fight with me is worth much more than this. Time for you to take victory Leon Loire!”
The form charged forward, yelling in a battle cry, preparing for the final strike; Leon Loire awaited the attack, and strangely, without fear, blocked the attack with a simple horizontal defense, before parrying the dark weapon away and slicing the blue blade of Lionheart through the chest of the wielder of Hecate, disintegrating man, blade and all, and leaving Leon Loire alone – for now.