From: "His Dark Lordship" To: "ffml" ; "Hillion Dynasty" Subject: [ffml] [HD] Holy shit. Now *THAT* is one big motherfucking tree... Date: Thursday, July 19, 2001 12:58 PM The area was scorched. "What on earth happened here..." muttered Aaron. "Whatever it was, it's still happening." responded Geshtar. "Look." The three of them looked. Where the scorched earth ended and the grasslands once again begun, a horrible sight was occuring. The grass was withing up and dying at a rather exponential rate. "Holy shit..." muttered Brian. "You know..." cut in Aaron. "It would probably be in our best interests to vacate. This doesn't strike me as the kinda event that Godzilla would leave unnoticed." "Godzilla..." grumbled Geshtar. Slowly, from over the landscape, a loud moan was heard. Aaron blinked. "What on earth was that?" "Godzilla?" guessed Geshtar. "No." said Brian. "Sounds bigger." They both proceeded to kick him in the gut. Brian then fell over. "Geeze, we didn't kick you *that* hard..." muttered Aaron, already regreting his choice of actions. Then, they both noticed WHY Brian had fell. Where he was standing, a huge, black root had just torn out of the ground. "What the..." Brian shook his head, and then pointed at something. All three of them stared. Before them stood probably the largest, and ugliest, tree they had ever seen. A huge black trunk, with some black leaves to boot. It towered, taller than any castle, and it continued to grow. "Holy shit..." muttered Brian. "Now *THAT* is one big motherfucking tree..." "Not even the Mana Tree is this immense..." muttered Geshtar. "Mana Tree!?!" asked Aaron and Brian at once. "There's a Mana Tree in Sornos. No biggie." muttered Geshtar. A loud roar was heard over the horizon. "Godzilla?" suggested Geshtar again. "No..." said Brian. "Sounds smaller." They both kicked him in the gut again. Brian once again fell over. "Now why are you falling over?" asked Aaron. "Geeze, I'm sorry." "Don't be." cut in Geshtar. "Just get under one of those roots now." Aaron didn't quit get what he meant but did so anyways. Almost on cue, a large reptilian figure landed. It was immense. Stood fairly upright, and carried one wicked looking sword. It had a pair of leathery wings, and... several heads with long necks. On all fours, it walked up to the gigantic tree. Aaron felt the tree booming in his mind. It caused his cranium to ache. "WHO DARES TO DISTURB THE ASCENTION OF DRASANDIN?" The large beast replied in turn. "I am Gleeok, warrior of Godzilla." With that, it swung it's sword downward, cutting a root clear in two. Aaron grabbed his forehead in utter agony as Drasandin let out a roar of rage. From aside Gleeok, a root sprouted and lunged at him. He jumped back and sliced it in two with his sword. A second root wrapped around his leg. Gleeok roared in agony as it severed his foot off. He slashed the root and began to flap his wings to gain air. In desperation, he swung his sword at the trunk. Huge chunks of bark began to spill onto the ground, exposing a vein of a metal of some sort. Branches wrapped around Gleeok's wings. Gleeok roared in anger and began to breath flames at the tree, which once again knocked off parts of bark. The branches began to consume his body. His legs, torso... neck. Finally, in the last second, his last head flew off. "What the fuck?" asked Brian before Geshtar motioned for him to shut up. The remaining head of the Gleeok snarled. "You may have succeeded over me, but the might of Godzilla is enough to smite anything." It then flew off. The area fell silent again as the tree continued to expand. "Let's go..." growled Geshtar. Aaron sat there, fixiated on the flowing vien of metal that was quickly begin covered up by more bark. "Druim..." muttered Aaron. -- The eternal lord of darkness... The past week had been a rather odd week. In that time, those hentai pics that David Owe had posted to the list ages ago had turned up in his pocket, and he had flashed them around. He had never done such before in his life. Cyan, before he went berserk, mistook him for one of his old characters, Kat. How on earth Aaron could remind anyone of Kat was beyond him, however. The most recent thing that bothered him was his repeated kicking of Brian. Brian hadn't seemed to care, but at the same time, he was a pacifist by nature. He would never harm another living thing unless it was dead set on ending his life... He had earlier considered that this was someone messing up his character, most likely Eric, who had a tendency to royally screw up other people's characters. This once again bothered him immensely. If he was being written for by DLE... No, that couldn't be. If he was, then he wouldn't be considering all this, would he? Maybe right now he was being written for by himself, but then, if he was writing for himself, how could he be here? It couldn't be the case. Too complicated. Aaron chuckled at the mere thought that he could be merely a puppet, at the beck and call of his typing overlor-. Wait a minute... maybe he was. "Aaron... are you okay?" asked Brian. "YES!" he snapped. "I mean NO! I mean.... raaagh!" he ran ahead. "What the hell is with him?" asked Brian to Geshtar. Geshtar shrugged and they continued on. Aaron grabbed his head and shook himself. 'Raagh'? He never said 'Raagh'. That was a DLE type scream. DLE... DLE Must be writing for him! Aaron looked up to the skies. "ERIC! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" No answer. Aaron tried to regain himself. He was being silly. Eric wasn't controlling him. No, Eric's a nice guy, with a loving family, and a listserv he maintains his facist doctrine over. Much like the story of Hillion Dy- Then, if Eric controls everything else, why wouldn't he be controlling Aaron? And what was his hint that Cyan mistook him for Kat. Why? WHY!?! This was too much. Aaron reached for his tranquilizers. Wait a minute, Aaron didn't take tranquilizers! He must be being controlled! No he isn't. Aaron chuckled at his paranoia. Eric wouldn't do cruel things like that. Geshtar and Brian caught up. "You alright?" asked Brian. "Yes. I am fine." Aaron said rather monotonely. "Eric is a nice guy." They both looked at each other rather oddly. Aaron shook his head. "Sorry, I'm just have some problems with some horror from my youth." he hated to lie, but if the truth he understood ever truely got out, it would destroy this world at the seams. "You want to talk about it?" asked Brian. "No, no." said Aaron. "Let's get to this sanctuary... quickly." Maybe some answers awaited him then. But what was Eric hinting at with the Kat incident... One other thing that bothered Aaron was what happened to the Moogletaurs? Aaron and DLE had planned on a race of Bovine-Moogle hybrids descended from Kat's prized cow, Bessie. Hmm.. must have been dumped. Elsewhere... Mog had never seen such a strange looking bunch of Moogles before... -- The eternal lord of darkness... "That's it!" said Aaron. "What's that?" said Brian. "Brian, what has happened in Lance Henriksenia in the last one thousand, three hundred years?" "I wouldn't know. I was off in outer space for most of that time." "Oh right, I forgot. Hey, how about you, Geshtar?" "I've never heard of the place. I was only born a few months ago, you know." "Oh, I didn't know that, sorry..." Aaron reached in his pocket and fingered the piece of Drium that found on that tree root before they ran away from Drasandin. Looking back, he was glad that Geshtar had decided that they run from Drasandin rather that stay to fight him. Even with Aaron's new sword skills, he did not feel ready to take on a powerful arch villain, even if he had Geshtar on his side. He was fairly confident that they would make it to sanctuary safely and once there, Geshtar could use his God powers to stop the geomancy chaos that they could still see signs of even this far away from that evil tree. But the Drium piece, it was the one that Nemmers's character, E'ris found in Moogle War III, the one that was bat-shaped and read "Morte ex Machina." Aaron never knew what language that was supposed to be, if any, or what the inscription meant, but he did know that Nemmers had intended for that Drium piece to be significant later in the story, but never followed through. Aaron himself had planned to make it have a role in the final post of Moogle War III, but Eric finished the post and posted it before Aaron had a chance to write the part he had in mind for Ash getting sent back to his own world. Aaron had a strong feeling that it was no accident that he found this Drium piece. Another thing that happened recently that he took to be a sign was Cyan briefly mistaking him for General Kat, his main character from Moogle War III. When it first happened, it only seemed a little strange to him that Cyan would mistake a male, with a beard no less, for a female, but he soon dismissed it as Cyan's cybernetic brain associating Aaron's facial contours with Cyan's memories of Kat. But after they had run from Drasandin, Aaron began to think about it more, and he thought it was some sort of omen sent to him from his home world from Dark Lord Eric. By this time, he could not understand why he thought something so insignificant was a sign, or why he was fixated on the notion that it was from Eric. If Eric was sending him omens, that would mean that Eric knew that he was trapped in this other world. How could he know that? It seemed to Aaron that once he disappeared, Hillion Dynasty probably went on without his characters. But then again, maybe Eric picked up where Aaron left off. Maybe it was Eric's idea to bring Aaron Ackerson into Hillion Dynasty. He remember once having a conversation with Eric about ideas he had for a fourth Moogle War, and one of the ideas was that the writers bring themselves into the story as characters, and their characters get sent into the real world. Now he was again seriously wondering if Eric really was some sort of god, whether he knew it or not. Oh well, Aaron thought, I'm not going to figure out this craziness any time soon. His thoughts returned to Lance Henriksenia. If God, or Eric, or somebody, or something was trying to send him a message, it almost definitely had something to do with Lance Henriksenia. But what exactly? Would he become commander of their army? That didn't seem right to him, because there was no war going on. But then again, it just might be a good idea to use an army to fight an arch villain. Just because in games, this type of villain was usually defeated by a small group of unlikely heroes does not mean that they could not be defeated by a whole army. In fact, it seemed to make more sense to fight them with an army. But at any rate, neither the Drium or Lance Henriksenia would do him much good right now. Perhaps it would all fall into place after they got to Sanctuary... Aaron Ackerson ----------- My original music: http://www.mp3.com/Aaron_Ackerson The Snowbank Seven: http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/266/the_snowbank_seven.html Radio Free Spacecat, with live broadcasts every Saturday night and over 170 of my favorite tracks streaming all week: http://www.live365.com/stations/42602 Spacecat's Moogle War Homepage: http://spacecat2.tripod.com "The things we touch have no permanence...there is nothing we can hold onto in this world. Only by letting go can we truly possess what is real." -Li Mu Bai, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon