"Thank you." She raised her arms in a high arc and closed her eyes and concentrated. A flame seemed to surround her then engulf her body, then in a flaring swirl, arced out across all the corpses and towards Laguna and his party.
Thinking the flame was misdirected, Laguna braced himself and prepared to be fried, but to his surprise, all he felt was a warm sensation, no burning. Then he looked across the floor, and an anagram of the Phoenix in flames that didn't burn formed across the lifeless party.
A white light shone through the darkness on the party, and, as if they had awoken from a deep sleep, one by one, they arose.
"Ooh, my head..." Delita rubbed his forehead ruefully, "One minute we were fighting Omega, then I felt like I was getting pounded, I remember the gash that thing cut me with and now.....nothing?"
"Yaaawwwwwn," Zidane smacked his lips as if getting up from a nap, "I had this really cool dream and.....you guys were all.....in it? Waitaminit! Was I dead!?"
Ramza checked his sword and sure enough, the black blood of Omega was still caked on his Chaos Blade. "We....were dead, but someone brought us back....to fight again."
"But if we fought Omega, who survived? It wasn't me...." Alma said, she had used her Auto-Life spell up already during the battle.
"Couldn't've been me, even though I had a GF," Seifer said, "Griever's not quite strong enough to take that kind of pounding.
"Not us," Cloud nodded and thumbed at Sephiroth, "we were in the thick of the fight just like Seifer."
"It couldn't have been me," Garnet said, "I ran out of Phoenix Pinions a long time ago."
Agrias only shook her head, and Aeris said simply, "Not me."
Beowulf speculated through the course of events, "During the fight with Omega, I saw Reis jump.....," he thought, "But unless Omega was weakened enough by us...she couldn't have survived all by herself?"
"I did," Reis said with a smile, "I was injured, but I managed to get back up to the surface," she continued, "I fainted, but Laguna found me, I was treated back to health, and went to look for another Phoenix Pinion, but I couldn't find one...."
"Then....how...?" Delita stammered.
"After a battle with a Zuu, we found a Phoenix Down, only good to resurrect one of you, so I touched the down to my Zodiac stone..."
Alma caught on quickly, "And the amplified powers of both the down feather and the stone were enough to summon Phoenix."
"Not only that," Reis grinned, "but the Phoenix gave me the power to heal and resurrect my allies should the need arise."
"Which it DID." Ramza concluded.
After the brief explanation of what happened, the party prepared to time jump again, during which time, Beowulf turned aside to Reis.
"You really saved us this time, Reis," he held her, "I'll always be grateful. And don't think I won't do my best to protect you either, you're more valuable to me now than ever."
Reis's eyes narrowed, "I hope it's not just cause' I can revive you, cause if it is you can forget it."
Beowulf's eyes widened, "How could you say that? You know what I mean!"
She smiled again. Beowulf knew she was testing his love. He had passed when he said, "Doesn't matter if I die, so long as you live in my heart."
Once the party had cleaned themselves up from the mess that was Omega, they set out again for the Time Gate, each warrior standing on his or her respective glyph platform, 11 symbols in all this time, with Delita standing resolute in the middle.
"Take care of Griever, Seifer, it's family to me." Laguna smiled.
Seifer smirked his now famous smirk and said, "Not without a few scratches to prove we fought though." He swung his gunblade upward in a pseudo-salute. Laguna for some reason, trusted him.
"Wherever we go next," Delita said, Legend in his hand, "I'm glad I'm going with you guys." With that he drove the silver glyph sword into the ancient anvil. Blue waves of energy flashed out, and the party was gone.
Zidane was the first to realize where they were.
Taking a step forward, he nearly took a tumble down a massive cliff into an abyss.
"..w-w-whoa..." he backed up.
Looking around, Delita saw peals of lighting, a foul greenish color, dark clouds swirling about. Chaos to say the least.
"...Where...are we?" Ramza asked.
"Something tells me we're nowhere near Ivalice anymore..." Delita said.
It seemed they were standing on the remains of a massive pillar of stone, with a crumbled spiral staircase that went down to deep darkness.
"...Somebody tell me I'm dreaming...please...this is our future?" Zidane said, frightened out of his wits.
"Do you really wish to know the truth?"
"Who's that?" Delita said, ready to behead the source of the voice.
"Welcome........to the Zero World." Said a voice, ancient and familiar behind them.
The party whirled, weapons drawn to find the ancient face of...
"Bugenhagen?" Ramza said, in shock.
"That is correct, my friends, you have perceived of this place as the future, but what future exactly this one is, I cannot be certain."
"But why are you here? We thought you were dead?" Delita said.
