I've been getting reports that the last chapter of this fic was evil. That's good! EVIL IS GOOD!! I'm hoping to make this chapter even EVILLER (by a guest appearance by someone very evil)! And on we go!

 Nate was at North Corel. The jet car had ran out of fuel. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And that was not a pleasant place to be stuck.

 "Really. You guys have loads of petrol. Won't you let me buy some?" Nate tried bargaining, but it really was of no use.

 "NO! We need that petrol to heat our homes. Ever since we got back on our feet when the Shinra collapsed, we've had to conserve. Deal with it!" Nate walked away from the man, and sat down on his folding camp seat he bought a while ago.

 "What am I going to do?" Without the jet car, Nate had no hopes of going anywhere.

 "Excuse me, young man, I see you are in need of petrol for your vehicle, no?" Nate jerked his head up and saw a man he did not recognize. He had brown hair, green eyes, and wore all black.

 "Yes, I do, actually. You have some?" The man pulled up a red can. Nate's eyes bugged out. "Wow! Thanks! Say, who are you, anyway?"

 "No need for me to introduce myself. Just a person who helps those in need." The man in black turned, and walked away.

 "I have a feeling I'm going to see him again..." Nate thought. He took the can of petrol and filled the tank. He strapped the can to the car, and started it. Surprisingly, it worked. The car ran on the ground until it got enough speed to take off, which it did, and Nate continued his search.

 Murdoc was evil. He sat in a lawn chair, wearing sunglasses, laughing maniacally. Ramza was standing in front of him, her back turned to him, looking at a house. A certain house.

 "Go, Ramza!" Ramza extended her lightsaber, and jumped towards the door, and hacked it in several directions, making a hole in the wall for her. She walked in, lightsaber extended. A TV and stereo were running in the den. She walked over to the den, and opened the door. She found a person. She found Reno. Reno was eating popcorn, and had a drink in his hand, watching the baseball game where Marc MacQuiar was going to hit a record home run. He took a swig from the drink, and turned his head to the opened door.

 "Ah! Ramza!" He jumped up immediately. "How did you get home? I missed you!" He saw that her eyes were closed. She opened them. Reno gasped, dropped the drink, and walked back a few feet. Ramza's eyes were blood red. "It's.. this isn't possible! Ramza! It's me! Your dad! Remember? Reno! Remember me?" Ramza grinned and laughed a certain maniacal laugh. Reno's eyes went wide, and backed up. He began walking backwards.

 "Ramza... it's me... daddy... come on! What's gotten into you?" Now, walking was no use. Reno turned tail and ran, but Ramza was faster. She took her lightsaber, ran after him. She hacked it down. Ramza laughed.

 Ramza awoke in a cold sweat. It was that dream again. That damned dream. Over, and over. She had it for the past few days. She kept thinking of Reno and Elena. Murdoc killed Elena when he blew the Highwind apart. She never forgave him for that. She remembered crying at Elena's deathbed. She didn't know what her dad was doing. She got out of bed. Her nightgown was sweaty and hot. She went into the living room and turned on the fan, and the stereo. She kept the volume down at low as not to awake the neighboring people in Murdoc's complex. She saw her lightsaber on the table. She picked it up, fondled it. She looked down at it, and then back up again. She set it down and went into her room.

 Ramza emerged a few minutes later, in pants and shirt. She picked up the lightsaber and put it on her belt. She took her light jacket, and put it on. Ramza walked out of the room, and locked the door. Just so she wouldn't get killed, she left a note, saying she would return. She walked out of the Junon complex, into the streets. She looked onto the ocean, the moonlight sparkling over it. She thought of her friends. Nate. Jack. Erik. Her friends from school. She thought of Cid, whom married Shera quite some time ago, and had a bustling baby daughter they had to take care of. It was so awkward with kids now. Seeing as she still was technically one.

 Ramza remembered when she was in Kefka's tower. It seemed like such a long time ago, though it wasn't.

 "Great! The fetcher is a complete success! Now just time to rework these pitiful excuses for my future slaves." Kefka was walking the prison blocks, where he stored the captured children. He stopped at one cell in particular. There was a young girl. She had blonde hair, and dark black-green eyes. She was on the bed, crying.

 "God, she looks familiar. I want to experiment on her first." He opened the cell, and picked the girl up. She immediately shut up. Kefka brought her through an express elevator, to the main chamber at the top of the tower. He set her down on the ground, in the middle of some metallic thing. Kefka walked over, and went to some sort of control panel. He pressed a button, and a force field surrounded the metal thing that contained the girl. The girl stood up, and pressed her hand against the force field, and took it back immediately. A mild shock.

 Kefka pressed more buttons on the control panel. A few robotic hands came down, and one held a hypodermic needle. "Now this isn't going to hurt one bit. Well, maybe it will, but only for a while." The needle went into the girl's arm, and injected something into her body. It withdrew the needle after injecting all the serum, and the hands withdrew. Suddenly, the girl's eyes wandered.

 "I feel woozy..." she said. Ramza sat down. She looked at herself. She looked different. Her hands looked bigger, and so did her feet. She all around looked bigger. She stood back up, and tried to walk over. Kefka was watching intently as the process was going on. Ramza tried to take a step, but it resulted with her falling flat on her face. "Ow..." She said. Her shoes felt tight, and so did her clothes. She sat up again, and she looked even more different than before. Her hair was longer. Her shoes and clothes now felt like vises.

 "What's going on?" She said. In her mind, she thought she sounded different, but it was probably nothing. She shook her head, and now found her hair around her middle back. Ramza looked down and saw he shirt starting to stretch, and her stomach was exposed. She took off her shoes and socks. Her feet were much larger now than they were. There was a mirror over on a wall, and Ramza positioned herself so she could see herself. She looked about 13 years old.

 "Oh yeah, I suppose you might want these, too." A hatch opened, and some clothes fell into the place where Ramza was. She picked them up, looked at them. She turned around and looked at Kefka.

 "Yeah, I know what you're thinking. I suppose I can let this go..." Kefka turned around, and held a magazine, "Evil Villain's Digest," and began to read it. Ramza began to strip, and then to redress in the new clothing. Not that great. The pants were too big, and the shirt still showed her stomach, although it was better than what now seemed to be a tiny thing next to her.

 "Done? Good. I'm waiting to act evil, so if this would hurry up... let's see..." Kefka sat down on a chair, and started typing into a terminal. He found Ramza's new file, and put in some figures.

 "After this fiasco is over, you'll look somewhere around... 22. An ideal age, if I do say so myself. You'll be in your 'prime.' Hee hee!" Ramza turned around, and looked in the mirror again. She looked bigger, and her hair was even longer, somewhere around her waist. The pants and shirt now started to feel less baggy, and more of a clean fit. Her stomach was still exposed.

 "What do you want?" After saying that sentence, Ramza shut up. Her voice had changed. It was a tad deeper, less than the "young" voice she had just an hour ago. She stood up, and looked around. She looked down. She couldn't see her feet. She bent down, and saw that her old shoes were about half as big as her feet were now.

 "There we go... now you're about 22. Hope you enjoy yourself." Kefka pressed a button, and the force field disappeared. Ramza walked out, and found it hard to control her balance. She wobbled, and wavered. She grabbed a hold of a pipe.

 "Now, you're going to be the first for this to be done, but you have a lot to learn, literally!" Kefka took a jar, and took a pill from it. "Concentrated knowledge, level 13 ½. Contains: High school math, basic sexuality, High school history, foreign languages, high school grammar, famous music artists, high school science, high school geography, high school reading, high school computer apps, college civics, and basic home economics. You should feel like a genius after taking this." Kefka handed the pill, and a glass of water, to Ramza. She shrugged and took it. A few minutes later, her eyes started wandering, and started speaking gibberish. Soon, she started forming complete sentences, talking about fish mating rituals to factoring polynomials.

 "Hey! It worked! Now come with me, and we'll destroy some pitiful little hamlet. Mwha ha ha!" Ramza was still talking as Kefka dragged her away.

 Ramza looked at herself. She was told she was at the epitome of her health. She had no defects, she was normal height, normal weight. She plucked at the shirt she was wearing. She still couldn't see her feet. Her hair was still to her waist. First thing to do when she got back was a haircut; she put it on her mental list of things to do. The Junon streets were illuminated by the lampposts. Ramza turned around and returned to the complex, and went back to her room. She took off her jacket, and put it in her closet. She sat down.. It was about 4 AM, so she sat down to watch the reruns of game shows.

 Reno was watching TV, holding a bottle of booze. Ever since Elena died and Ramza was kidnapped, his house went to hell in a handbag. Clothes were strewn on the floor, empty beer bottles and cans lying on the floor. He had promised himself to limit drinking to parties, and then only a glass of champagne. He had promised to give it up when Elena was pregnant, so she wouldn't decide to binge and go out and drink herself, possibly hurting unborn Ramza. Setting a good example was not what he was doing right now. Old newspapers were strewn on the coffee table. A knock was heard on the door.

 "It's open," he said. The door opened, and Rude walked in. "Hey Rude." Reno didn't give his normal head bang greeting.

 "You look down. I heard what happened to Elena. I wanted to bring these to you." He brought out a sympathy card, with a bottle of brandy and some flowers attached.

 "No thanks. I gotta try to stop drinking."

 "Where's Ramza? I haven't seen the little tyke in ages."

 "She's not here. She's been kidnapped by Murdoc. Heard of him yet?" Rude shook his head. "You must have been locked away from society. He's been terrorizing the world. And Ramza's not a little tyke any more. Look." Reno took out his wallet, and took out his new picture of Ramza. She was a little bit shorter than Reno, and was hugging him, smiling. Rude took down his sunglasses to examine it further, and his eyes went wide.

 "Woah, what did you do, feed her growth hormones?"

 "It's too long of a story. Ever since she and Elena have been gone, my life is in the rat's hole. Look at me." Reno's Hard Cliff Cafe shirt was sweaty and smelly, and his jeans were wrinkled and stained. His red hair was drooping, from lack of hairspray. His teeth hadn't been brushed, and his eyes were sleep deprived. Rude shook his head, and walked out. Reno flopped onto the couch, watching the record breaking home run Marc MacQuiar made.

Author's Notes

 Looky here, new chapter. I hate school so much. Hopefully you caught the Mark McGwire and Hard Rock Cafe references. Umm.. I have no more to say. :)