[As Redd orders his crew to throw themselves to whatever fate awaits them in that evil red fog, he holds his breath, eyes bright and wide
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[Vincent blinks and it's Lucrecia. He blinks and it's Veld. Lucrecia, Veld, Lucrecia, Veld. Something in him is screaming no, no, don't, not this time--you killed them both once already you can't do it again!
And yet it takes all of a half second for him to raise his gun, take aim, clench his eyes shut and fire.
He barely even notices the way his body changes and warps over the keening in his head.]
[Her father, so recently dead before her arrival. Just. Just standing there. Looking at her in his shabby coat and tattered cardigan as if he didn't own half the planet. As if he were sorry for abandoning her.
As ....as if he...
Vincent's gun goes off beside her and it shocks Kim out of her stupefied horror and she remembers; this isn't real.]
Right.
[And she raises her little laser gun and fires, ignoring the way his shadow looms over her. Vincent's killed her before, and Kim holds no fear of Chaos. They are as kindred spirits, she and he, and some intuition knows that he won't hurt her, not now.]
[For a moment the WEAPON turns, tenses, levels Death Penalty on Kimiko--then something in him whispers "MEDIATOR" and he stops. Slowly, the oversized gun, an extension of Chaos itself, drops, and he surveys the little cyborg with cold, distant indifference.
WEAPONS don't destroy each other. They fight--and he and her have fought before--but it's never permanent. Petty squabbles among children in a family too close-knit to ever escape.
He turns away, and focuses his attention elsewhere.]
[Severing a tentacle and spinning to evade a second were child's play to the SOLDIER. Somehow, either due to the rapid breakdown of the vessel, or some other means, his speed had returned to him, and with it, the restrictions on his materia had been lifted. He was taking full advantage of the situation.
Something within him found an odd poetry at the thought: the destroyer of Gaia fighting the end of all things, but he didn't focus too much on the dramatics.
His father's transformation, closer to him than he'd thought, grabbed his attention from the thrill of battle. He turned...
...and faced the Beast. Behold Mighty Chaos... The inscription echoed through his mind. He didn't know what the Harbinger of the End of capable of, but he'd witnessed the power it bestowed upon Vincent, and that was enough to divert his course. The other passengers aboard this Damned ship had enough to contend with. It was only fitting the spawn of the Calamity would face the Squire of Oblivion. He readied his weapon, and squared off with the God.]
[Chaos whirls and hisses at Sephiroth, pulling up both legs and giving his wings a sharp beat. Kimiko, a short yard or two away, goes ignored in favor of this roiling mass of corrupted Lifestream before him.
Somewhere deep down Vincent tries to pull it back, tries to force down the transformation, tries not to move.
But it's far, far too deep.
With an echoing, ghostly roar, tinged with fury and panic and an amalgamation of negative emotions unlike any other on earth or in hell, the WEAPON raises his metal-plated left hand and lunges.
He could just shoot, but he wants to feel the Jenova leech into his fingers.]
[Braced as he is for the charge of the WEAPON, he doesn't have time to dodge. The beast's claws meet his bare chest with all the impact of a battering ram, lifting the General from his feet, leaving him dangling in the air, suspended from the claws of a creature borne from Planet's Ending.
Pain surged through his body, a burning sensation not unlike coursing lava.
[Chaos' fingers plunge deep into the Calamity's chest, scraping bone and rending muscle and tissue. Blood courses down his hand, scarlet pulsing every now and then with veins of weak blue-green, but where it should trail down his arm and fall, it doesn't.
The thick fluid clings to Chaos like liquid metal to a magnet, the pulsating green brightening, flares growing more frequent as the WEAPON takes a deep breath, tenses, pulls and digs and searches--]
THERE you are.
[The coil of Lifestream in Sephiroth is concentrated, twisted, and corrupted beyond belief, the pure green tainted with sparks of electric purple. Chaos bares his teeth, takes hold of those sparks, that infection, and he PULLS.]
[The scream is not one Sephiroth will later recall producing, so guttural, so primal, so raw, so filled with pain the word seems a petty imitation of the sensation.
The lava surging through his veins steadies to a gentle, almost comforting warmth. He wonders briefly if this is the peace of death, before AWARENESS bursts in his mind. His eyes spring open, shimmering with an intense, inner emerald fire. His pupils contract, then expand into cat-like slits, the two are engulfed in an inky blackness, a seething, tactile mist seething from Sephiroth's pores to pervade the surrounding air, making it thick and nearly impossible to breath, then it explodes in a burst of anti-light and black feathers.
No thought accompanies his relocation. He's simply there, suspended from Chaos' claw one moment, one black-feathered wing spread wide, every muscle trembling with pain and adrenaline, and then he is gone. Fully on the other side of the deck.]
[The Calamity is there, and he's screaming and it's brilliant and pleading and beautiful--then there's an explosion of power that sets Chaos' very cells screaming and the boy, monster spawn of Jenova, is gone.
Chaos growls and reaches out again, using the flavor lingering in the back of his throat, the resonating hum in his head, to find him.
A moment and he takes to the air, uncaring of any other possible targets. He wants this one, he needs this one more than anything. The part of him inside that's still Vincent struggles, reminds his fractured self that this isn't right, he has to stop, this is SEPHIROTH--and the monster in his head doesn't even bother to respond as he shoots across the deck at the silver-haired figure in the distance.]
[He can sense the god's approach, a suffocating pressure, an intense awareness that he doesn't BELONG. He rises from his crouch, wounds in his chest glittering the surrounding light, his own blood coursing over his coat and belts, making them shimmer. His sword...he'd dropped it.
But the god that wished to devour him still came. He raises a hand, that inky blackness seething from him again, coalescing before him for a brief instant before it goes transparent, solidifying before him in a solid wall.
Then he speaks, his voice carrying over the din around him, though it doesn't rise in volume.]
[Chaos is still careening forward, and he rams into the wall with full knowledge of what he's doing. There's a physical memory here, the sensation of breaking out the inside of a Pyramid, so he strikes and pushes--
And then Sephiroth speaks, and in an instant that low whimper of Vincent in him raises to a roar, overloading the monster with livid, agonized white noise.
He clamps both hands over his ears, fingers fitting into the mess of horns, and drops to the deck like he's made of lead.]
[Vincent, master of Chaos? That was like calling a materia master of Bahamut--the crystal wasn't in control, it was just a container. Just a vessel. A thin, brittle shell used to channel something infinitely more powerful than itself, something bright and burning. An outlet for the gods.
But...Sephiroth was right. Just as Bahamut couldn't manifest on the mortal plane without that materia, without human interjection, neither could Chaos manifest without Vincent. Take that away, somehow or another, and the gods were bound to their layer of existence.
Without Vincent's body, Chaos was trapped.
And that meant that Vincent, regardless of what he felt or how the whisperings in his head fed his nightmares, waking and sleeping, was the one in control
( ... )
[Eyes still gleaming emerald orbs, wing folded but unnoticed in the fray, Sephiroth lowers his hand, the seamless wall of energy dissolving as though it never were, and he kneels before his father.]
[Vincent swallows, wincing, forcing his lungs to function properly, willing his heart back to beating in some form of rhythm, although when it settles the beats are much too few and far between.
He hears Sephiroth's words, but doesn't really understand them at first. When they finally sink in he can't help but agree; while he'd like to collapse, while he'd like to pass out and wake up when everything is over, he knows he can't afford it. THEY can't afford it.
He raises his head, and in a rush of almost instinctive panic his eyes go wide. His response is automatic; a low, frantic hiss.]
Calamity.
[He takes a shaky breath, realizing what's happened, what he did--what Chaos did, the catalyst his attempted feeding became. His voice is distant, a whisper, hoarse and far away.]
[There was that word again, Calamity. Not from the throat of the beast, but from Vincent. He stepped back, squaring his stance, prepared for a second onslaught...but it didn't come.
He heaved a small sigh and extended a hand to the ex-Turk.]
I think it best we save apologies until after we ensure our continued existence.
And yet it takes all of a half second for him to raise his gun, take aim, clench his eyes shut and fire.
He barely even notices the way his body changes and warps over the keening in his head.]
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As ....as if he...
Vincent's gun goes off beside her and it shocks Kim out of her stupefied horror and she remembers; this isn't real.]
Right.
[And she raises her little laser gun and fires, ignoring the way his shadow looms over her. Vincent's killed her before, and Kim holds no fear of Chaos. They are as kindred spirits, she and he, and some intuition knows that he won't hurt her, not now.]
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WEAPONS don't destroy each other. They fight--and he and her have fought before--but it's never permanent. Petty squabbles among children in a family too close-knit to ever escape.
He turns away, and focuses his attention elsewhere.]
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Something within him found an odd poetry at the thought: the destroyer of Gaia fighting the end of all things, but he didn't focus too much on the dramatics.
His father's transformation, closer to him than he'd thought, grabbed his attention from the thrill of battle. He turned...
...and faced the Beast. Behold Mighty Chaos... The inscription echoed through his mind. He didn't know what the Harbinger of the End of capable of, but he'd witnessed the power it bestowed upon Vincent, and that was enough to divert his course. The other passengers aboard this Damned ship had enough to contend with. It was only fitting the spawn of the Calamity would face the Squire of Oblivion. He readied his weapon, and squared off with the God.]
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Somewhere deep down Vincent tries to pull it back, tries to force down the transformation, tries not to move.
But it's far, far too deep.
With an echoing, ghostly roar, tinged with fury and panic and an amalgamation of negative emotions unlike any other on earth or in hell, the WEAPON raises his metal-plated left hand and lunges.
He could just shoot, but he wants to feel the Jenova leech into his fingers.]
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Pain surged through his body, a burning sensation not unlike coursing lava.
Something was wrong.]
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The thick fluid clings to Chaos like liquid metal to a magnet, the pulsating green brightening, flares growing more frequent as the WEAPON takes a deep breath, tenses, pulls and digs and searches--]
THERE you are.
[The coil of Lifestream in Sephiroth is concentrated, twisted, and corrupted beyond belief, the pure green tainted with sparks of electric purple. Chaos bares his teeth, takes hold of those sparks, that infection, and he PULLS.]
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The lava surging through his veins steadies to a gentle, almost comforting warmth. He wonders briefly if this is the peace of death, before AWARENESS bursts in his mind. His eyes spring open, shimmering with an intense, inner emerald fire. His pupils contract, then expand into cat-like slits, the two are engulfed in an inky blackness, a seething, tactile mist seething from Sephiroth's pores to pervade the surrounding air, making it thick and nearly impossible to breath, then it explodes in a burst of anti-light and black feathers.
No thought accompanies his relocation. He's simply there, suspended from Chaos' claw one moment, one black-feathered wing spread wide, every muscle trembling with pain and adrenaline, and then he is gone. Fully on the other side of the deck.]
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Chaos growls and reaches out again, using the flavor lingering in the back of his throat, the resonating hum in his head, to find him.
A moment and he takes to the air, uncaring of any other possible targets. He wants this one, he needs this one more than anything. The part of him inside that's still Vincent struggles, reminds his fractured self that this isn't right, he has to stop, this is SEPHIROTH--and the monster in his head doesn't even bother to respond as he shoots across the deck at the silver-haired figure in the distance.]
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But the god that wished to devour him still came. He raises a hand, that inky blackness seething from him again, coalescing before him for a brief instant before it goes transparent, solidifying before him in a solid wall.
Then he speaks, his voice carrying over the din around him, though it doesn't rise in volume.]
Father. Stop. Please.
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And then Sephiroth speaks, and in an instant that low whimper of Vincent in him raises to a roar, overloading the monster with livid, agonized white noise.
He clamps both hands over his ears, fingers fitting into the mess of horns, and drops to the deck like he's made of lead.]
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He stood, braced for the creature's resurgence, but continued to speak. Something had gotten through.]
Fight, Father. It needs you to have a presence here. You are it's master.
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But...Sephiroth was right. Just as Bahamut couldn't manifest on the mortal plane without that materia, without human interjection, neither could Chaos manifest without Vincent. Take that away, somehow or another, and the gods were bound to their layer of existence.
Without Vincent's body, Chaos was trapped.
And that meant that Vincent, regardless of what he felt or how the whisperings in his head fed his nightmares, waking and sleeping, was the one in control ( ... )
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Rise. Our work here isn't finished.
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He hears Sephiroth's words, but doesn't really understand them at first. When they finally sink in he can't help but agree; while he'd like to collapse, while he'd like to pass out and wake up when everything is over, he knows he can't afford it. THEY can't afford it.
He raises his head, and in a rush of almost instinctive panic his eyes go wide. His response is automatic; a low, frantic hiss.]
Calamity.
[He takes a shaky breath, realizing what's happened, what he did--what Chaos did, the catalyst his attempted feeding became. His voice is distant, a whisper, hoarse and far away.]
Minerva--Sephiroth.
Sephiroth.
[He gives his head the slightest of shakes.]
I'm so sorry.
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He heaved a small sigh and extended a hand to the ex-Turk.]
I think it best we save apologies until after we ensure our continued existence.
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