Update: Dissidere
Dissidere
Part 4. Reunion
Disclaimer still applies.
I’m... er... *shifty eyes* It’s my fic, and if I get to pair up Tidus and Yuna without protest in the last chapter, then I get this, too.
Ok, ok, seriously, the warning is that this be where the slash is. Nothing explicit, and nothing lovey-dovey because that would be horrifically out of character, but yup, warning. Also, I haven’t played Dirge of Cerberus, but I’ve picked up some details here and there and incorporated what I liked. :p
Kuja had turned out to be a surprisingly gracious houseguest, except for the time in which he’d broken the storeroom remote (Cloud kept some of the rarer weapons and materia shut away) with a little too much enthusiasm and attempted to blame Zidane for it.
Cloud hurried back towards their camp, the results of his hunt slung over his shoulder. They had reached the edge of the barren area surrounding Midgar (the more Cloud thought about the mutated monsters, the more the whole thing stunk of Midgar) by nightfall, mostly because Kuja had taken a look at the chocobos and flatly refused to touch one. Zidane had run off to collect fresh water, complaining that he was hungry enough to eat the monsters trundling around the area, and Cloud promised he would go kill something. The Devil Rides were nothing but metal, but he thought he’d seen a nest of Levikrons. They tasted of chicken, but then again, anything did to the hungry.
The jagged edges of what was left of the plate loomed ominously against the night sky, and he thought he saw Kuja speaking to Sephiroth. He started running.
He might have heard the words “lost your edge,” and “Strife’s bitch” before Sephiroth spun on Kuja, almost snarling, the Masamune gleaming.
“Hey!” he shouted, stepping in front of Sephiroth, close enough that the Soldier wouldn’t be able to get a good swing at him, and gripped his half-raised arm tightly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
A long moment passed before Sephiroth’s arm relaxed and dropped, and he turned away.
“Tch.”
“Really, Cloud,” Kuja said in a lazy drawl, “you should do something about that temper of his.”
Cloud stared at him. “I should do something? Like what?”
Kuja examined the nails on one hand before waving it vaguely. “I don’t know. Lay him. He certainly seems to need it.”
Cloud felt the air compress at Sephiroth’s leap, and he flinched, pushing Kuja away and drawing the Buster. Sephiroth descend from high above, Masamune plunging towards the earth point-first, and the Buster Sword blazed orange. He spun it in his fingers, bracing himself with a wide stance, and slashed forward. The force of the blades connecting blew the surrounding rocks outwards as if hit by a gale, tumbling across the uneven ground.
The Masamune had stopped his attack, but Sephiroth’s charge had been broken as well. Gathering himself, Cloud launched himself up, and the crash of their swords meeting sent vibrations down his arms.
The world narrowed to Sephiroth’s glaring eyes and the fluid movement of his blade, and Cloud revelled in the air whistling past his ears as he twisted and slashed.
Down below, he thought he heard Kuja click his tongue and mutter, “Or fight him. It seems to have the same effect.”
The gate to Sector Five hung forlornly on one hinge.
Cloud led the way, trying not to think about the way Sephiroth had paused to look at the church, something unreadable on his face. He thought the man might remember more than he was letting on, but Zidane had already called him paranoid for trying to make them wait by the gate while he scouted ahead.
There had been a Dark Dragon lying in wait amongst the rubbish heaps. It had rushed them, Mu bones crunching sharply under its claws, and Cloud had felt somewhat vindicated as he cut it down with the Buster.
They had just passed the playground, where the structure that looked like a mog (he had sat on it, didn’t he? With her) had been overturned, when the screech sounded behind him, and he spun around, sword ready in his hand. A Hell House bounced, engulfed in flames, and crumbled to ashes before it reached the ground again.
Kuja was heaving breaths indignantly, a hand still splayed out from casting.
“It’s a house!” he said. “What is wrong with this world, where houses attempt to leap upon your head?”
“You got it pretty good, though,” Zidane said, peering at the smouldering stain on the ground.
Kuja was still glaring at Cloud. “I think it is high time you told us where we are going, exactly.”
It was like being savaged by an irate chocobo: one of the gold ones that were strong and fast and knew it. He blinked, and raised a hand to point at the plate still intact over Sector Six. “Up there.” Reeve wanted to dismantle it, but it would have to wait until he’d managed to relocate everyone who would become homeless if he did.
“If the mutated monsters we have been fighting are the product of human interference, their creator will need the equipment located in the laboratories under the Shinra building, which, as you may have surmised, is above the plate,” Sephiroth said in what had to be a tone calculated to infuriate Kuja in its condescension.
Zidane managed to distract Kuja by chattering loudly about how awful it must be to live under a disc all the time and never see sunlight, and Sephiroth looked at Cloud as if daring him to comment.
He bit back a sigh and began walking. “There’s a place behind Wall Market where I was able to climb up to the plate a few years back. We should check to see if it’s still accessible.”
“And what if it isn’t?” Zidane said, folding his hands behind his head and peering up through a gap in the plate.
Cloud shrugged, opened his mouth to respond, and the blare of a siren cut him off.
“Is that because of us?” Zidane yelled, wincing at the noise.
“I think not,” said Kuja, looking back toward they way they had come. “I think it’s because of them.”
Monsters, malformed Custom Sweepers and Death Machines mixed in with rotten-looking 8-Eyes and Gremlins with sharp, spindly fingers filled the street behind them like a tide. They could hear the clanking above the noise of the siren now, and Gremlins raced ahead, chittering and screeching. One of them leapt, a claw-like hand raised up and ready to slash, and Cloud swung the Buster Sword forward to meet it.
It hit the ground with a sickening splash, and black ooze splattered back onto the monsters behind it. Five others took its place, hissing into Cloud’s face, and he jumped back to avoid a gouging swipe.
Sephiroth had spit an 8-Eye, he saw, which continued sliding forward, swallowing up the Masamune as it went. He flicked his wrist, almost too fast to see, and the monster slid off in shreds.
Zidane swooped high overhead, spinning like a razor-edged top. Sparks sprayed into the air when he slammed into a Death Machine, and metal groaned as a gun-arm was sliced off and crashed to the ground.
“Get out of the way, Zidane!”
A blur whirred out of the crushed pile of metal as Kuja threw his arms forward. Green light and the muted pressure-roar of Ultima rolled through the monsters, flattening and disintegrating anything caught in its path.
He listened absently as Zidane berated Kuja for attempting to kill him, and he watched as the light of the magic faded. Debris left on the ground crunched and squealed as the next wave of monsters clambered over the remains.
Cloud raised the glowing Buster and slashed hard downward, raising a shockwave of molten blue energy that barrelled though monsters and split outward like spray.
The black liquid coated the ground liberally, now, and a Custom Sweeper slid into another with the shriek of tortured metal.
“There are too many of them!” Zidane shouted from somewhere over Cloud’s head. “Where are they all coming from?”
Kuja bared his teeth, the glow of Trance enveloping him, and he rose up into the air. Lightning crackled between his hands and sheeted down.
Then, bullets sprayed into the wave of monsters. He heard shouts, and he saw the blue of a suit dart by in front of him before an explosion mushroomed just ahead of him and nearly knocked him flat. The Turks were walking forward, holding a steady line as they shot round after round and pausing only when a grenade rocked the earth.
Cloud touched his glove, and materia clicked as he slotted them into place. He followed behind the Turks and raised his arm into the air.
Comets streaked through the air farther off, thudding into monsters and buildings and leaving smoking craters in their wake.
There were more behind them. They began to charge, jostling and cutting into each other as they rushed toward the Turks.
“Cloud!”
He turned, and Reeve looked blearily back at him, a machine gun cradled in his arm.
“This way!”
They followed Reeve as he dashed toward Wall Market, Sephiroth turning once to cut down, with an efficient slash, a monster that had rushed too close, and the Turks brought up the rear, hastily reloading as one of them cast spell after spell into the wall of monsters as cover.
Mangled metal loomed high overhead like an enormous junk heap where the entrance to Wall Market had once been. Cloud slowed uncertainly, but Reeve grabbed hold of his arm and ran straight at the mounds.
“Open up!” he shouted.
Part of the wall of metal seemed to roll away, and Cloud saw the other openings now, the ones with firearms and eyes peering out of them. The siren was even louder here, and Cloud felt his hearing begin to shut down in defence. The monsters were following still, but they stumbled and veered, as if disoriented by the noise.
Cloud pushed Zidane in through the opening first, after Reeve, and then there were five Gremlins in midflight, leaping at him. He slashed up, neatly decapitating one before turning his sword and smashing three more with the flat of his blade into the wall beside him. He wasn’t going to be able to block the last one, he knew, and so he kept turning, manoeuvring himself until he would take the slash to his left shoulder and he would be able to keep fighting if need be.
The blow never came.
Something slammed into his back, and Cloud staggered, steadying himself with a hand on a twisted pipe. He looked back, and he saw Sephiroth flick black sludge off the tip of his blade. There was a thin, deep gash across his chest, white around the edges, but beginning to leak blood.
“Get in here!”
Cloud ducked into the opening when he head Reeve yelling. Sephiroth slipped in after him, and Reeve and a couple of Turks pushed what looked like a bank vault’s door back into place and bolted it shut.
“Okay, now! Now!”
Every weapon in the wall opened fire at once, shredding through the monsters outside. There were screeches, and thuds when something rammed into the wall, and slowly, the noises outside began to fade away.
He felt eyes boring into his skull, and Cloud glanced up. Sephiroth had a hand pressed to his chest, the glow of a Cure bright in the gloom, and he was looking at Cloud with an odd scowl on his face, as if something had confused him and he couldn’t figure out what it was so that he could attack it. Cloud wondered if he should thank him or tell him that that was a stupid move, but Reeve was shutting off the siren and turning to him with a weary sigh.
“Thank the Planet you’re safe, Cloud. I’ve managed to get into contact with the others, but all communications seem to be cut off from Kalm.”
“The monsters must have taken out the PHS towers there.”
“I’m glad you came here, then. We could certainly use the help.”
Cloud looked around at the pale faces clustered around them, realizing that contrary to his first thought, they weren’t soldiers at all. Here and there, MPs watched him stolidly, a hint of relief in their eyes, and the Turks were looking on almost indulgently (Reno waved his electro-mag rod at him), but the majority were civilians, their hands clenched tightly around their guns and their feet shifting restlessly, eagerly.
“Have you been barricaded here for long?”
“It’s been several weeks now. The monsters killed a lot of people, but we managed to round up everyone who survived and evacuate who we could. Then the monsters started amassing like that, and...” Reeve shrugged. “We haven’t been able to get anyone out since then.”
“What do you know about the monsters? Are they being made? Do they come from above the plate?”
Reeve’s face darkened. “Is it that obvious? Yes. I saw him.”
“Saw who?” Zidane said when significant looks passed over his head without further clarification.
“Hojo. A former Shinra scientist who injected himself with Jenova cells. By the end, he was far less human than monster, not that he started out much human,” Reeve said.
Cloud clenched his fist as the old, familiar wave of revulsion swept over him. “We thought we killed him a few years ago. Guess we didn’t kill hard enough.”
“Hojo,” said Sephiroth softly. A grin crept over his face, black and feral with anticipation.
Reeve sighed and grimaced. “Right now, we can’t even get close to him. He’s making the monsters as if he’s stocking up for the winter. I doubt he can control them, but he drops them on us and stands back to watch.” He waved a hand around. “This is actually what’s left of the plate over Sector Eight. It twisted and swung over Sector Seven, came around and piled up, and I think it might reach up to the top of the plate. I’ve asked the Turks to search out a path for us, but it’s been a lot of dead ends and scouring through debris so far.”
“Supplies?”
“We’re rationing and should be alright for another week or so, but then...” Reeve nodded upwards. “Hojo has men with him. Mercenaries, I think, shot up with mako. We’ve been able to steal some food from their stores, but they’ve become more vigilant now, and the monsters are everywhere, and the last Turks who went on a raid never came back.” His voice had sped up by the end and taken on a hysterical tinge.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Cloud said, gripping Reeve’s shoulder. “We’ll get Hojo. We’ve done it before, and now we have even more help.” He nodded to his companions. “Zidane and Kuja are capable fighters, and Sephiroth...” He paused, a bit awkwardly. Reeve hadn’t known that Sephiroth had resurfaced.
“He fought them. There’s nothing else that I need to know.”
Cloud smiled crookedly. He sometimes forgot that Reeve knew Sephiroth, the sane one, anyway, from before... before.
“I’m sorry I’m late, but we’re here now, so put us to work. If you’re having trouble with pseudo-Soldiers during your outings, then you set another pseudo-Soldier on them. Simple.”
“That simple, huh?” Reeve reprimanded, but he was smiling. “Thank you. Let’s, er... mosey.”
The mercenaries had turned out to be a joke, their mako addictions taking them well on the way to breakdown. They were still strong as Soldiers on hypers, though, and after the first raid and Elena nearly having her neck broken, he’d insisted on running the missions without the Turks.
Cloud locked the blade of the broadsword Hojo’s mercenary was brandishing inexpertly by shoving the Buster upward until he hit the other man’s crossguard. Twisting, he disengaged and swung around, his sword biting deep into the man’s neck. There was a grunt behind him, and he rolled. The attacker had swung with enough force that the ground under the spot Cloud had just been standing had dented downward. He brought a knee up and punched forward into the narrow point of the man’s sword arm, and the crack of bone shattering was decidedly audible. The mercenary staggered back, his broadsword clanging to the ground, and Cloud stepped hard into the lunge.
“Are you quite finished?” Sephiroth drawled behind him.
Cloud shot him a glare before turning and rolling the dead man off his blade. He saw the severed arm lying in front of Sephiroth and the bloodied tips of his long hair and he scoffed under his breath. At least Cloud was neater than that.
He hit the switches that flipped open the tops of the storage bins lining the room, and he pulled out a couple of sacks of what felt like grains.
“Here, take these. I’ll grab that box, and let’s get back.”
He looked up when Sephiroth made no move to help.
He was doing it again. That weird, kind of inward, kind of puzzled look.
“Hey,” Cloud said, and mako-green eyes sharpened into focus.
“’Hey’ what?”
“Grab these sacks.”
“You don’t like to say my name, do you, Cloud?” Sephiroth drew out his name, round and almost malicious.
Cloud blinked in confusion. “What? Of course I can say your name.”
“You have not addressed me since the first night after I sought you out.”
He rolled his eyes. “Alright, Sephiroth. Now will you help me carry these?”
“Perhaps it bothers you, attempting to reconcile who I am with the person you thought I would be.”
“Save the armchair psychology for when we get back to base,” Cloud said sharply.
The smug smile he got back made his blood boil.
“Very well, Cloud.”
He knew Sephiroth was trying to provoke him. And he could, too. Cloud couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper and raised a blade against any other person. Maybe that’s what Sephiroth wanted, some kind of no-holds, glorious, cock-pit fight. It didn’t feel like that was it, though, and it didn’t explain why Sephiroth looked at him like that, like he was a problem to solve.
He couldn’t ask Zidane about it. There was something beautifully simple, not stupid, about Zidane. He wanted to keep that intact. Kuja would probably know, but Kuja... was definitely out of the question.
And so Cloud sat alone, watching, and his thoughts a confused jumble. He had thought he’d known who Sephiroth was, growing up, from the stories and accounts and frenetic hero worship. He saw a bit of himself in the boys behind the barricade. They’d been too young to understand Meteor when it happened, too young to know Sephiroth’s involvement in what had almost been the end of the world, and too young to let the cold, half-fearful attitudes of the older men around them interfere with the stories they’d grown up with about the Hero of the Wutai War.
And now, after the initial nerves had passed, they were beginning to approach Sephiroth, to ask for his advice, his stories about the war, but most of all his attention.
Sephiroth was brusque with them, but he stopped more often than not to listen.
He liked it, Cloud realized one night, when they were in the canteen and Sephiroth was looking on impatiently while a boy told a wild, gesticulation-rife story about fighting ninjas.
Sephiroth liked being a hero. Sephiroth wanted to be liked.
Cloud thought about the aloof, untouchable person he’d seen on the televised interviews, and he thought that maybe Sephiroth had been right during that mission, and that that might be a bit...
Maybe Sephiroth noticed what Cloud had figured out, after that. The weeks dragged by, and he still watched, still goaded him into fights (Cloud’s ears burned at the memory of Reeve’s disappointed frown after a stray Blade Beam had taken out one of the corner supports of an area behind the barricades), but he also seemed to genuinely want Cloud’s opinions. Like now.
Cloud tried to speculate on whether there was a passable route that would take them undetected above the plate, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid because he knew he didn’t have anything new to contribute that the others hadn’t already thought of. But he tried anyway, because he could see that Sephiroth was listening, taking in what he thought, as if they really were old war buddies.
Cloud got it, then, and he was shaken.
He didn’t say anything, mostly because he wouldn’t know what to say even if he tried.
Reeve had asked them to check out a new section of tunnel that Zidane had sniffed out (Zidane said he was good at finding things because of his time as a professional treasure hunter and actor extraordinaire), and Cloud had went without complaint.
He’d flinched too much when Sephiroth had nudged him with a knuckle and indicated that he was going to scout down the right fork, but if Sephiroth noticed, he hadn’t shown it.
The tunnel was tight, and it smelled of sewage.
Actually, it smelled kind of familiar, but Cloud couldn’t place it, exactly. It wasn’t until he spun around, right into the cloud of Abnormal Breath that the Unknown2 spewed out at him, that he remembered the Gelnika.
He always felt fudged and bemused when Confused, as if there was a bit of him on the inside looking out and screaming to take over, even though everything outside was fine. He took a slash at the enemy... blob... thing in front of him, and he was perplexed when his strike was blocked with a clang. Did his enemy use swords?
The voice inside was yelling itself hoarse, but all he could really make out were the words “Masamune”, “not enough room to manoeuvre”, and some furious cursing. He felt like giggling, and he looked up at the spiky blob leaning down at him. Something black got in the way.
There was an odd schk sound of needles piercing skin.
The haze lifted, and he was looking up at Sephiroth. He had his back to the monster, and he scowled at Cloud as the Unknown2 wrenched free from its bite. There were sick popping noises as a few needles pulled free and remained embedded in Sephiroth’s back.
Cloud caught Sephiroth when he staggered, and he dragged the man along awkwardly as he rolled out of the way of a second bite. Leaving Sephiroth bracing himself against the side of the tunnel, Cloud swung around and slashed up, shearing off most of the Unknown2’s spikes.
It screamed, reeling back, and Cloud stepped forward again, the orange burn of the Buster leaving lingering afterimages as he slashed down, across, and across again.
He’d managed to drag Sephiroth back to the base after the monster was dead.
The man had been almost delirious from the poison in the needles by the time they’d gotten back, and he’d called Cloud “Zack” a few times. Cloud had ignored him, and he told himself that he really needed to carry a Heal around with him from now on.
He’d dumped Sephiroth onto his cot face down and rummaged through Sephiroth’s pack until he found an antidote. Sephiroth had sighed and relaxed after he’d poured the stuff down the man’s throat, and now he was finally sitting still while Cloud plucked the poisoned needles out of his bare back.
Cloud tossed the last needle into the little pan he’d put on the makeshift table, and he felt the tension drain out, leaving him oddly hollow-feeling. He uncorked another bottle of antidote and started rubbing it into the cracked blisters on Sephiroth’s back with his fingertips.
Sephiroth’s skin felt inflamed and tight against his fingers, and Cloud made his decision.
“After Nibelheim,” he said, his voice hoarse with disuse. He paused, cleared his throat, and tried again. “After Nibelheim, Zack and I were left at the reactor until Hojo found us. We were declared killed in action, and he took us back to his lab under the Nibelheim manor. My memories of what happened in the lab are incoherent, but I remember Zack pressing himself against the wall of the mako tank next to mine, and he would talk for hours, telling me stories about his life in Gongaga, the best places to eat in Midgar, and he talked about you.”
Sephiroth sat very still, as if afraid that any sudden movements would cause Cloud to clam up.
“He broke us free four years later. He smashed through the mako tanks and pulled me out. After that... I’m not sure. He fought. He kept fighting. He beat Hollander, and then Genesis.”
His fingertips still lay against Sephiroth’s back, and he felt the flinch.
“And then he was going to take me to Midgar. We were going to leave Shinra, become mercenaries.” Cloud swallowed. “Shinra troops were there to meet us on the cliffs outside the city. They ambushed us, and Zack died defending me.” He wouldn’t tell Sephiroth about the ragged, bullet-torn chest. “I managed to make it into Midgar before the mako withdrawal incapacitated me, and for a long time after that-” Cloud frowned at the tense shoulders in front of him. “-for a long time, I thought Zack’s stories were my memories.”
Sephiroth’s arms twitched, as if he was clenching his fists.
After a moment, Sephiroth said, “Thank you for telling-“
“This is the second time you’ve taken a hit for me that wouldn’t have left me any worse off than you are now,” Cloud interrupted.
“I heal quickly,” Sephiroth said into the silence that followed. He spoke slowly, a hunted tinge to his voice.
“So do I. Zack said that you thought Soldiers were monsters.”
Sephiroth’s head turned, and he eyed him warily. “What of it?”
“If that’s the case, I’m no more human than any of you.”
Sephiroth still stared at him suspiciously, and Cloud sighed. He had decided. “I know that you and Zack were lovers during the war.”
Sephiroth flinched violently, and he rose, turning to face Cloud fully.
“I know what it’s like,” Cloud said, his voice rising to cut off Sephiroth’s snarl, “being stuck down here in this rathole without a clear way to get at Hojo or even a clear plan. I know what it’s like to be too strong, without anyone like you, and without any way to just let go.” He raised his arms a bit, tilting his palms out toward Sephiroth. “And I know why you look at me the way you do.”
Sephiroth stared at him, eyes flickering rapidly as he thought hard. “Are you...” He stopped and shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be right. Zack was... the only one there. This is different. Decorum states-“
Cloud snorted. “For the last time, Sephiroth, I’m not your Soldier. Maybe I’m your friend.”
Mako-green eyes gleamed in the heavy darkness, and he barely saw the movement before a body rammed into him and smashed him back against the wall behind him with the force of a burst dam. Rough hands tore at his clothes, and teeth sank harshly into the junction between his shoulder and his neck.
Cloud hissed in pain. He tangled his hands through the long, shadowy hair falling like a curtain around him, and he fought back.
Cloud was correcting one of the civilian kids’ hold on his rifle late the next afternoon, while Sephiroth made dry comments about the last time he’d held a firearm being before the kid was born, when Zidane leapt up at him with a wild whoop and mussed up his spikes.
“There’s a way up to the plate!” Zidane said jubilantly. “I’ve found a path I don’t think the monsters have ever been in! We can get up there any time! Holy Gaia, your hair really does make spikes like that naturally.”
“That’s excellent news!” Reeve said, and Cloud chose to ignore the thing about his hair.
“How accessible is it?” Reeve continued. “Can we bring the troops up quickly? Leaving small groups of people on any one side isn’t ideal.”
Zidane looked embarrassed. “Er, well, the thing is, it’s kind of a tight squeeze. And you really need to be able to climb.”
“What Zidane means,” Kuja said, smirking, “is that this is a path that a mountain goat would reject.”
“Oh shut up. It leads up, and there weren’t any signs of monsters.”
“I do wonder why.”
“That’s fine,” Cloud interrupted before the argument could continue. “If Hojo is still conducting experiments up there, the results wouldn’t be anything your troops could handle.”
“Yeah, exactly!” Zidane said. “Kuja and I can go, no problem. We’re good at climbing.” He waved his tail as if in emphasis.
“I’ll go, too,” Cloud said.
“I, as well.”
Cloud nodded at Sephiroth. “So that’s four of us. We’ll be more than enough to take down Hojo and his lackeys.”
Reeve looked unconvinced. “Are you sure? I can contact the others-”
“We don’t have time to wait for them to arrive,” Cloud said. “We’ll go now. Bring your best attack materia, but no fire-based spells, if Hojo’s anything like last time. Anything else you can think of?"
Zidane brandished a red summoning materia he didn’t remember giving to the boy (as if one Yuffie wasn’t enough), and Kuja hmphed, waving the materia studded bracelet on his wrist. Sephiroth’s hand closed over the hilt of the Masamune with a creak of tight leather. It occurred to Cloud that they hadn’t spoken about the previous night, but it was the calm, it-is-what-it-is kind of not-talking, and he put it out of his mind. No more dragging.
It was time to move forward.
“Looks like we’re all set, then.”
“Okay, follow me!” Zidane ran into the dark, his footsteps clanking against the metal panelling on the floor.
“Is that my Knights?” Cloud called after him as he followed.
There was an echoing “Heheh!” in response.
The tunnel up to the plate was as tight, vertical, and monotonous as promised. They came up out of a drain cover near the edge of the alley beside the husk of the Shinra building, and Cloud smothered a snort of laughter. This was where he and his friends had exited the tunnels and stormed the Shinra building a few years ago. History did seem adamant to repeat itself, sometimes.
A couple of mercenaries rushed out at them, broadswords waving above their heads, and Sephiroth cut through them effortlessly.
There had been a King Behemoth, too, but looking down the broken corpse left on the ground after the flashes of light, there really wasn’t any doubt as to which of the materia Zidane had filched.
The Shinra building was an empty, charred shell, the glass tubed elevators shattered. Sephiroth wordlessly took the lead, and they followed him to a heavy metal door set into the wall of a lower level half-buried with rubble.
It looked bolted shut, but the metal sheared like butter under Sephiroth’s assault.
Steps dropped away into the dark, farther than they could see.
At the bottom was another door, just as heavy, and sealed with a keypad at the side. Cloud pumped a Thundara through it, and as it fizzled and blew, the door slid half open, groaning. It stuck, and then chunks of it fell inward after a slash from the Masamune.
It was cold, this deep under the ground. Cloud could see wisps of his breath in front of him. The facility was silent as a tomb and sparsely lit, the light not so much illuminating as lending dimension to the shadows.
“Looks empty,” Zidane said quietly.
The room was barren, and there was another staircase leading down at the side of the room.
“How far down does it go?”
Sephiroth shook his head. “I have never entered the lowest levels.”
“Your Hojo character’s probably down there, though, right?” Zidane peered down at the winding stairs, flashing lights set into the walls signalling each level.
“It is probable.”
“Okay,” Zidane said. He hopped up onto the railing, and he leaped.
Cloud looked down after him. There were clunks as Zidane caught and swung from the landing of each flight of stairs in turn, descending in rapid increments. He caught Sephiroth’s eye. Well, it worked, he thought, and he swung himself over the banister.
He’d lost track of the amount of times he’d hurtled through the chilly air, and his throat was a bit raw from the rushing wind that swallowed him as he jumped, but they had reached the bottom. The door was standing half-open, and Cloud pushed it wider as he stepped through.
Hojo looked how he remembered from his cadet years, hunched back and greasy hair exactly in place. He held a clipboard, leafing through the pages as he hummed to himself, and when he looked up and saw his intruders, he looked genuinely startled.
“Sephiroth!” he said mildly. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise. The reports indicated that you were dead.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
“And you, young man.” He squinted at Cloud. “Oh, just a failure. I remember you.”
“You’ve been busy, Hojo,” Cloud said through gritted teeth.
Hojo waved a limp hand. “Oh, those. Mostly just failed creations. How we must suffer in the road to progress, hmm? Their bodies reject the Jenova cells and begin liquefying into a black substance in response while their rate of reproduction increases exponentially. Quite curious, really, but ultimately useless.”
“And the successes?”
Hojo smiled nastily. “Why don’t you see for yourself, hmm?”
Cloud spun around, raising the Buster as he turned. It wedged in between the claws of the shadowed figure slashing at his face, and while he watched, the claws extended slowly, as if oozing out of the thing’s hands.
It was a Bandersnatch, Cloud realized. It had a shortened muzzle, and it looked almost human in its shape. There was the green stain of mako around its disturbingly intelligent eyes.
And it was enormously strong. Cloud pulled back and ducked away before it bore him to the ground.
“That’s specimen 0089,” Hojo said. “It should be able to overpower even Sephiroth in terms of raw physical strength.”
Cloud found himself being pushed back, his sword twisting swiftly to deflect vicious slashes. It made no effort at hiding its attack pattern, though, and Cloud smiled grimly. He threw off another swipe and lunged forward and up, the Buster Sword glowing orange and cleaving cleanly through bone and fur as he sliced up through the monster’s skull.
“Alas, it has none of Sephiroth’s devious mind,” Hojo commented, making a note on the pad in his hand.
Another one had been frozen solid in a spray of ice, and Zidane yelled triumphantly and he dashed forward, blades twirling in his hands. The ice shattered to pieces, taking chunks of the monster with it.
“Specimen 0435, however...”
Cloud gasped, feeling the burn of ragged slashes just under his ribcage.
Sephiroth shot him a quick, impatient look as he took the head off another one of the Bandersnatches, but Cloud gritted his teeth and ignored him. He rolled, his sword coming up in one smooth movement as he rocked to his feet, and the monster fell backward, its torso gaping and pouring some kind of foul-smelling liquid.
It had probably been a Deathclaw once, Cloud thought. He rammed the Buster through another one.
Hojo was directing them, somehow. These monsters weren’t as mindless as the ones swarming below the plate.
“Oy,” Zidane shouted. “Leave the monsters to us and just go get him!”
Cloud nodded, his breath rasping in his throat, and he raised his sword to point at the watching scientist.
“Hmm,” Hojo said. “Tired, already?”
There were bangs and flashes of magic behind him, and Sephiroth stood beside him, black hatred roiling off of him in waves.
“Just tell me one thing before I kill you, Professor,” Sephiroth said, his sword gleaming in the dim light. “How did you come back from the dead?”
Hojo scowled, looking puzzled by the question and the threat. “I did not raise you to point at weapon at your-“
“You didn’t raise me at all,” Sephiroth cut him off. “Now tell me before I start slicing pieces off.”
“There was a dragon,” Hojo said stiffly, “biting its tail, and I suppose I was in the Lifestream. It did not notice me when I approached. It stood over a figure I did not see, lying on the ground, and it burst into flames, in which I was apparently caught up.”
“So it was an accident.”
“It was destiny,” Hojo spat. “I will not die before I finish my life’s work, even if it means destroying my finest creation!”
He must have had the gun hidden in his hand, already. Cloud jerked reflexively at the retort when it fired, bringing the Buster up to block. The bullet ricocheted.
Hojo looked shocked. He sagged at the knees first, and then slid down the wall behind him, the small red spot in his forehead beginning to blossom with blood.
His eyes were still open, staring blankly at the floor.
Cloud lowered his sword slowly, and he glanced at Sephiroth out of the corner of his eye. The Soldier’s eyes were fixed on Hojo’s body, narrowed and bright with anger.
“Hey, uh, a little help here?”
Cloud left Sephiroth standing over Hojo, leaping up and slicing through the Bandersnatch that had been trying to take Zidane’s head off from behind.
Kuja was hovering in Trance form over a mangled Deathclaw, bursts of magic slamming into it again and again.
Cloud thought he could hear Kuja muttering “Die, die, die, already,” under his breath, and he noticed that Kuja was right. The thing kept trying to get back up, despite the shattered shell on its back.
Kuja pointed a finger, and this time, the glow of magic started under the cracked exoskeleton of the monster instead of in his hand. It grew brighter, filling the cracks of the shell with white spears, and the monster shrieked long and high before it exploded in a flurry of shrapnel.
Zidane spun, shearing into the soft point of another Deathclaw’s neck, and it sprayed ichor into air.
He landed, panting, and looked around. “Is that all of them?”
There was a roar from behind him, and Cloud turned to see Hojo’s body stand and ripple. It distended, extra limbs growing from its chest and neck as it ballooned rapidly in size.
There was a smaller blaze in front of the thing that used to be Hojo, and Cloud watched Sephiroth raise the glowing Masamune, holding it parallel to the ground. He tensed, and he sprung upward, the sword’s motion leaving afterimages so that it looked like several slashes hit Hojo at once. Octaslash, Cloud recognized.
Hojo keened, and he seemed to dissolve entirely, puddling to the floor.
A Tornado spell roared by, ripping up tiles from the floor as it travelled. It swooped up the liquefied mess on the ground and splattered it against the walls with enough speed that some of it seemed to gouge into the concrete.
Cloud raised his head carefully, having thrown himself flat on the floor to avoid the spray. He met Zidane’s wary gaze, and they both turned to eye Kuja.
Kuja shrugged nonchalantly. “It would have been a shame to waste a prepared spell.”
Zidane growled.
Cloud had begun to stand when the pressure came, and it pressed him into the ground like a giant hand.
He gasped for air, his fingers digging grooves into the ground, and his vision wavered. The lab in front of his eyes jolted once, and then it jolted again even harder, as if he was seeing it on a screen afflicted by angry static.
And then it blinked, and it was gone.
Luneth was exhausted. He’d almost forgotten how huge the Syrcus Tower was.
He slashed at the soft belly of a Red Dragon rapidly as it turned its head to snap at Squall, who was striking down from above, and he jumped back out of reach as it gnashed its fangs and clawed at him. A Flare exploded in the monster’s face.
There was that odd little shifting feeling inside him as he switched to Dragoon class and leaped up high over its head, equipping the Gungnir as he went. Air rushed by him as he descended, spear first. He let himself enjoy the feeling of flying for a moment, but he fixed his eyes on the head of the dragon down below.
He smashed right through its skull as the point of the Gungnir stabbed into the floor below, and he knew he was grinning in triumph.
Luneth sighed, slinging the spear over his shoulder and submitting to Terra’s Curaga. The ripped feeling in his muscles subsided.
Bartz groaned beside him, cracking his neck audibly and grinning sheepishly when Luneth winced. “Are we there, yet?” he asked.
Luneth nodded, setting his teeth. “Just through there.”
“Are you afraid?” Terra said softly, and she placed a gentle hand on his elbow.
“A little,” Luneth admitted.
“Me, too,” Terra said.
She walked by, her slight form dwarfed by Exdeath, who was waiting silently near the door, and Luneth wondered if this was what she felt every time she looked at his back like he was doing now.
He shifted, exchanged the spear for the Excalibur and the Ragnarok, and he stepped forward.
It was dark in there, especially after the glowing white of the rest of the tower.
The portal was still there, Luneth saw, sitting there malevolently and occasionally spitting out twists of black and purple fire. He couldn’t see anything else.
“We knew you would come.”
The dry, cracked voice seemed to come from all around them.
Fog roiled, and it collected, twisting and coalescing into the form he remembered, all floating, sticklike hair and snapping tentacles.
“You never learn, do you, little boy?” The Cloud of Darkness stared down at him, face as empty as ever.
“Maybe not,” Luneth said, “but this time, it’s I who has a lesson to teach you.”
“Oh? And what could you have to teach us, little boy? We, who are older than time.”
“Simple.” Luneth paused, raising his weapons and crouching down. “You do not have a place here.” And he leaped.
The Cloud of Darkness snarled, throwing a tentacle forward to meet him, and he blocked with the Excalibur while he hacked down with the Ragnarok, and the head of the tentacle flew off into the gloom while black smoke steamed out of the cut. Another thudded into his belly, knocking his breath out in a whoosh, and he tumbled to the ground, rolling while he landed.
Squall launched a quick flurry of blows to its other side before he jumped back, ducking under the volley of Holy spells that rammed into the Cloud of Darkness’s face.
It shrieked, throwing out stinging balls of black fire that Bartz weaved through as if he was dancing around raindrops. The Cloud of Darkness launched its other tentacle at him, and Bartz whirled away under it, bringing the Brave Blade up and through it with both hands.
Luneth had almost reached it when it spun around and saw him, and he managed to slash it heavily under one eye before the Particle Beam engulfed him.
He probably screamed. His skin felt like it was peeling off his body strip by strip.
A Flare slammed into the Cloud of Darkness from the side, and Luneth dropped to the ground when its attack faltered.
Frantic hands were patting his cheeks, trying to keep him awake long enough to pour an elixir down his throat. Gradually, he became aware of the tears dripping onto his face.
“Please don’t cry,” he said.
Terra scrubbed at her face hurriedly. “No, no, I won’t cry.”
“We’re stronger than it, right?”
A wave of magic-laced fire bore down on them, several projectiles bouncing along with it, and Terra raised a hand. Barrier sprung up at her fingers, parting the fire around them like water around a rock. Luneth struck, his swords nearly whirring in his hands, and he deflected each projectile away.
“Yes,” Terra said.
The Cloud of Darkness couldn’t see out of one eye, now, Luneth saw, and it kept whipping around, trying to keep them all in view.
“Exdeath!” it screeched. “Why are you with them? Who sent you?”
Exdeath didn’t respond beyond pointing his sword at it.
Luneth helped Terra up, squeezing her hand tightly before letting it go. A sword in each hand, he looked at her, and then he caught Bartz’s eye. Squall nodded at him.
“We will not be defeated by children and traitors!” the Cloud of Darkness roared, glimmering blackly as it prepared to cast another Particle Beam.
Luneth was faster. He jumped into the air, swords at ready, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bartz and Squall doing the same. Exdeath floated behind Bartz. Terra’s Trance glowed brightly, the blaze of Holy compressed in her hands as she fed it more power.
She yelled, sending it blasting forward into the Cloud of Darkness just before five swords, bright flashes of colour against the darkness, plunged down into its body.
It screamed long and loud, cracking and fading into smoke, and the ground shook.
Luneth thought it was the earthquake, at first, when he landed and couldn’t stand. He sank to his knees, and it was then that he realized the pressure was choking him.
He gasped, trying to fill his lungs, as he slid down further. His vision shook and blurred, and as he peered around blearily, he thought he saw Cloud’s face staring back at him in surprise through a grimace of pain.
The vision blinked out with the rest of the world.
Cecil was watching out for him, Tidus knew. He was engaging the puppet soldiers before they could reach Tidus, cutting them down quickly with his Dark Sword. Tidus was pathetically grateful, but he was here to fight, too, yeah?
Firion’s arrows whipped past his shoulder, and he jumped and somersaulted, the Caladbolg a blur of movement.
The Emperor dodged easily, setting a few more flashing mines in place. He slashed his staff at Jecht, who was swinging his massive sword and flying by with wild yells of “Come on, you pansy sucker!”
There was a helmet on the ground, rolling to a stop by his feet, and Tidus sent it flying with a kick.
It sailed over the Emperor’s head as he ducked, but Tidus grinned.
There was a chain of explosion, ringing the Emperor, triggered by the helmet smashing into one of the mines.
The Emperor flew out of the cloud of smoke and sent a Flare flying at Tidus. He leaped back, ducking and weaving, hopping over fallen puppet soldiers as it loomed closer and closer.
When it finally dissipated, Tidus was a long way away from the others.
He ducked under a soldier’s slash at his head, and his sword cut forward into the man’s gut. He jumped up, planting his feet against another soldier, pushing himself up and away while his sword bit down into the man’s helmet and cut through half of his face.
He ran, crouching to lunge up into a thrust against another soldier that had gotten close enough.
Tidus saw Jecht send the Emperor flying with a heavy slash, straight into a hanging ball of Gravity magic that Golbez had planted. A flicker, and Golbez was floating over the Emperor, sword crashing down and sending purple flames arcing into the ground.
Blood was running down the Emperor’s arm, staining his gold armour, and he dashed away, putting space between himself and the others before raising his staff in the air. It flashed gold as he poured power into his attack.
Cecil was behind him in a bright blur of movement, slashing hard and fast. Tidus hadn’t even seen him move. He used his momentum to propel himself further in the air, and there was a black burst. Cecil dropped like a stone out of it, flipping and driving the Emperor into the ground as he dove.
Cecil was caught full in the chest with a fiery orange blast that pushed him back and pinned him to a wall, and the Emperor took the opportunity to shoot off another Flare at him.
Yelling, Tidus hacked down and through the spell, shielding his head as it blew and tossed debris into the air.
“You okay?” he shouted to Cecil.
The paladin nodded, breathing hard. “We’ve almost got him. He’s moving slower now.”
“Yeah,” Tidus said. “You ready?”
Cecil was off in a rush of white. He slashed across and up, sending the Emperor leaping back. Jecht’s sword cut deeply into his arm, knocking the staff to the ground, and he dodged, snarling, spinning in midair, to avoid a pillar of dark flames that Golbez had set under him.
Hah! Tidus hit him in the face with a barrelling energy ball projectile, and the impact sent the Emperor flying back straight into the blazing arrow from Firion’s bow.
It pierced through the Emperor’s head with a muted thump, and he jerked, tumbling through the air and folding in on himself as he fell, like a marionette ripped free from its strings.
Tidus grinned widely. The puppet soldiers that still surrounded them had sagged, too, and collapsed to the ground limply.
Jecht raised a broad hand, and Tidus slapped his palm against his father’s almost instinctively.
He had jumped up into the high-five, and the pressure, when it came, knocked him off his feet.
Cloud groaned, pushing his fingers into one temple to try to alleviate the pain.
Grass was green and damp under his hand, and a gentle breeze drifted around him. Cautiously, he looked up, and he stood.
Squall was staring at him, and Tidus looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head. Chatter burst out, then, as Bartz pounced on Zidane with an excited laugh. Cecil smiled at Terra, who had reached out with glowing hands to cure him as soon as she’d seen the blood on his chin. Luneth greeted Firion happily, and the Chaos warriors eyed each other suspiciously.
Then, Jecht harrumphed and told Kuja that he looked as ridiculous as ever, and Kuja launched into an irate diatribe about Jecht’s appearance, insulting everything from his ripped trousers to his dead mother, and Jecht laughed loudly the entire time.
Cloud looked around. A castle sat at the bottom of the rolling hills, pennants fluttering on its spires.
“Where are we?” he said, mostly to himself.
Sephiroth shook his head. It probably looked like a page out of a fairytale to him, too.
“This is Cornelia.”
Behind them, the Warrior of Light was silhouetted black against the bright sky.
TBC.
There are only two parts after this. Mostly because I don’t have the attention span necessary for anything longer.
Also, I will finally purchase a PS3 of my own today, and I am wired.
Part 4. Reunion
Disclaimer still applies.
I’m... er... *shifty eyes* It’s my fic, and if I get to pair up Tidus and Yuna without protest in the last chapter, then I get this, too.
Ok, ok, seriously, the warning is that this be where the slash is. Nothing explicit, and nothing lovey-dovey because that would be horrifically out of character, but yup, warning. Also, I haven’t played Dirge of Cerberus, but I’ve picked up some details here and there and incorporated what I liked. :p
Kuja had turned out to be a surprisingly gracious houseguest, except for the time in which he’d broken the storeroom remote (Cloud kept some of the rarer weapons and materia shut away) with a little too much enthusiasm and attempted to blame Zidane for it.
Cloud hurried back towards their camp, the results of his hunt slung over his shoulder. They had reached the edge of the barren area surrounding Midgar (the more Cloud thought about the mutated monsters, the more the whole thing stunk of Midgar) by nightfall, mostly because Kuja had taken a look at the chocobos and flatly refused to touch one. Zidane had run off to collect fresh water, complaining that he was hungry enough to eat the monsters trundling around the area, and Cloud promised he would go kill something. The Devil Rides were nothing but metal, but he thought he’d seen a nest of Levikrons. They tasted of chicken, but then again, anything did to the hungry.
The jagged edges of what was left of the plate loomed ominously against the night sky, and he thought he saw Kuja speaking to Sephiroth. He started running.
He might have heard the words “lost your edge,” and “Strife’s bitch” before Sephiroth spun on Kuja, almost snarling, the Masamune gleaming.
“Hey!” he shouted, stepping in front of Sephiroth, close enough that the Soldier wouldn’t be able to get a good swing at him, and gripped his half-raised arm tightly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
A long moment passed before Sephiroth’s arm relaxed and dropped, and he turned away.
“Tch.”
“Really, Cloud,” Kuja said in a lazy drawl, “you should do something about that temper of his.”
Cloud stared at him. “I should do something? Like what?”
Kuja examined the nails on one hand before waving it vaguely. “I don’t know. Lay him. He certainly seems to need it.”
Cloud felt the air compress at Sephiroth’s leap, and he flinched, pushing Kuja away and drawing the Buster. Sephiroth descend from high above, Masamune plunging towards the earth point-first, and the Buster Sword blazed orange. He spun it in his fingers, bracing himself with a wide stance, and slashed forward. The force of the blades connecting blew the surrounding rocks outwards as if hit by a gale, tumbling across the uneven ground.
The Masamune had stopped his attack, but Sephiroth’s charge had been broken as well. Gathering himself, Cloud launched himself up, and the crash of their swords meeting sent vibrations down his arms.
The world narrowed to Sephiroth’s glaring eyes and the fluid movement of his blade, and Cloud revelled in the air whistling past his ears as he twisted and slashed.
Down below, he thought he heard Kuja click his tongue and mutter, “Or fight him. It seems to have the same effect.”
The gate to Sector Five hung forlornly on one hinge.
Cloud led the way, trying not to think about the way Sephiroth had paused to look at the church, something unreadable on his face. He thought the man might remember more than he was letting on, but Zidane had already called him paranoid for trying to make them wait by the gate while he scouted ahead.
There had been a Dark Dragon lying in wait amongst the rubbish heaps. It had rushed them, Mu bones crunching sharply under its claws, and Cloud had felt somewhat vindicated as he cut it down with the Buster.
They had just passed the playground, where the structure that looked like a mog (he had sat on it, didn’t he? With her) had been overturned, when the screech sounded behind him, and he spun around, sword ready in his hand. A Hell House bounced, engulfed in flames, and crumbled to ashes before it reached the ground again.
Kuja was heaving breaths indignantly, a hand still splayed out from casting.
“It’s a house!” he said. “What is wrong with this world, where houses attempt to leap upon your head?”
“You got it pretty good, though,” Zidane said, peering at the smouldering stain on the ground.
Kuja was still glaring at Cloud. “I think it is high time you told us where we are going, exactly.”
It was like being savaged by an irate chocobo: one of the gold ones that were strong and fast and knew it. He blinked, and raised a hand to point at the plate still intact over Sector Six. “Up there.” Reeve wanted to dismantle it, but it would have to wait until he’d managed to relocate everyone who would become homeless if he did.
“If the mutated monsters we have been fighting are the product of human interference, their creator will need the equipment located in the laboratories under the Shinra building, which, as you may have surmised, is above the plate,” Sephiroth said in what had to be a tone calculated to infuriate Kuja in its condescension.
Zidane managed to distract Kuja by chattering loudly about how awful it must be to live under a disc all the time and never see sunlight, and Sephiroth looked at Cloud as if daring him to comment.
He bit back a sigh and began walking. “There’s a place behind Wall Market where I was able to climb up to the plate a few years back. We should check to see if it’s still accessible.”
“And what if it isn’t?” Zidane said, folding his hands behind his head and peering up through a gap in the plate.
Cloud shrugged, opened his mouth to respond, and the blare of a siren cut him off.
“Is that because of us?” Zidane yelled, wincing at the noise.
“I think not,” said Kuja, looking back toward they way they had come. “I think it’s because of them.”
Monsters, malformed Custom Sweepers and Death Machines mixed in with rotten-looking 8-Eyes and Gremlins with sharp, spindly fingers filled the street behind them like a tide. They could hear the clanking above the noise of the siren now, and Gremlins raced ahead, chittering and screeching. One of them leapt, a claw-like hand raised up and ready to slash, and Cloud swung the Buster Sword forward to meet it.
It hit the ground with a sickening splash, and black ooze splattered back onto the monsters behind it. Five others took its place, hissing into Cloud’s face, and he jumped back to avoid a gouging swipe.
Sephiroth had spit an 8-Eye, he saw, which continued sliding forward, swallowing up the Masamune as it went. He flicked his wrist, almost too fast to see, and the monster slid off in shreds.
Zidane swooped high overhead, spinning like a razor-edged top. Sparks sprayed into the air when he slammed into a Death Machine, and metal groaned as a gun-arm was sliced off and crashed to the ground.
“Get out of the way, Zidane!”
A blur whirred out of the crushed pile of metal as Kuja threw his arms forward. Green light and the muted pressure-roar of Ultima rolled through the monsters, flattening and disintegrating anything caught in its path.
He listened absently as Zidane berated Kuja for attempting to kill him, and he watched as the light of the magic faded. Debris left on the ground crunched and squealed as the next wave of monsters clambered over the remains.
Cloud raised the glowing Buster and slashed hard downward, raising a shockwave of molten blue energy that barrelled though monsters and split outward like spray.
The black liquid coated the ground liberally, now, and a Custom Sweeper slid into another with the shriek of tortured metal.
“There are too many of them!” Zidane shouted from somewhere over Cloud’s head. “Where are they all coming from?”
Kuja bared his teeth, the glow of Trance enveloping him, and he rose up into the air. Lightning crackled between his hands and sheeted down.
Then, bullets sprayed into the wave of monsters. He heard shouts, and he saw the blue of a suit dart by in front of him before an explosion mushroomed just ahead of him and nearly knocked him flat. The Turks were walking forward, holding a steady line as they shot round after round and pausing only when a grenade rocked the earth.
Cloud touched his glove, and materia clicked as he slotted them into place. He followed behind the Turks and raised his arm into the air.
Comets streaked through the air farther off, thudding into monsters and buildings and leaving smoking craters in their wake.
There were more behind them. They began to charge, jostling and cutting into each other as they rushed toward the Turks.
“Cloud!”
He turned, and Reeve looked blearily back at him, a machine gun cradled in his arm.
“This way!”
They followed Reeve as he dashed toward Wall Market, Sephiroth turning once to cut down, with an efficient slash, a monster that had rushed too close, and the Turks brought up the rear, hastily reloading as one of them cast spell after spell into the wall of monsters as cover.
Mangled metal loomed high overhead like an enormous junk heap where the entrance to Wall Market had once been. Cloud slowed uncertainly, but Reeve grabbed hold of his arm and ran straight at the mounds.
“Open up!” he shouted.
Part of the wall of metal seemed to roll away, and Cloud saw the other openings now, the ones with firearms and eyes peering out of them. The siren was even louder here, and Cloud felt his hearing begin to shut down in defence. The monsters were following still, but they stumbled and veered, as if disoriented by the noise.
Cloud pushed Zidane in through the opening first, after Reeve, and then there were five Gremlins in midflight, leaping at him. He slashed up, neatly decapitating one before turning his sword and smashing three more with the flat of his blade into the wall beside him. He wasn’t going to be able to block the last one, he knew, and so he kept turning, manoeuvring himself until he would take the slash to his left shoulder and he would be able to keep fighting if need be.
The blow never came.
Something slammed into his back, and Cloud staggered, steadying himself with a hand on a twisted pipe. He looked back, and he saw Sephiroth flick black sludge off the tip of his blade. There was a thin, deep gash across his chest, white around the edges, but beginning to leak blood.
“Get in here!”
Cloud ducked into the opening when he head Reeve yelling. Sephiroth slipped in after him, and Reeve and a couple of Turks pushed what looked like a bank vault’s door back into place and bolted it shut.
“Okay, now! Now!”
Every weapon in the wall opened fire at once, shredding through the monsters outside. There were screeches, and thuds when something rammed into the wall, and slowly, the noises outside began to fade away.
He felt eyes boring into his skull, and Cloud glanced up. Sephiroth had a hand pressed to his chest, the glow of a Cure bright in the gloom, and he was looking at Cloud with an odd scowl on his face, as if something had confused him and he couldn’t figure out what it was so that he could attack it. Cloud wondered if he should thank him or tell him that that was a stupid move, but Reeve was shutting off the siren and turning to him with a weary sigh.
“Thank the Planet you’re safe, Cloud. I’ve managed to get into contact with the others, but all communications seem to be cut off from Kalm.”
“The monsters must have taken out the PHS towers there.”
“I’m glad you came here, then. We could certainly use the help.”
Cloud looked around at the pale faces clustered around them, realizing that contrary to his first thought, they weren’t soldiers at all. Here and there, MPs watched him stolidly, a hint of relief in their eyes, and the Turks were looking on almost indulgently (Reno waved his electro-mag rod at him), but the majority were civilians, their hands clenched tightly around their guns and their feet shifting restlessly, eagerly.
“Have you been barricaded here for long?”
“It’s been several weeks now. The monsters killed a lot of people, but we managed to round up everyone who survived and evacuate who we could. Then the monsters started amassing like that, and...” Reeve shrugged. “We haven’t been able to get anyone out since then.”
“What do you know about the monsters? Are they being made? Do they come from above the plate?”
Reeve’s face darkened. “Is it that obvious? Yes. I saw him.”
“Saw who?” Zidane said when significant looks passed over his head without further clarification.
“Hojo. A former Shinra scientist who injected himself with Jenova cells. By the end, he was far less human than monster, not that he started out much human,” Reeve said.
Cloud clenched his fist as the old, familiar wave of revulsion swept over him. “We thought we killed him a few years ago. Guess we didn’t kill hard enough.”
“Hojo,” said Sephiroth softly. A grin crept over his face, black and feral with anticipation.
Reeve sighed and grimaced. “Right now, we can’t even get close to him. He’s making the monsters as if he’s stocking up for the winter. I doubt he can control them, but he drops them on us and stands back to watch.” He waved a hand around. “This is actually what’s left of the plate over Sector Eight. It twisted and swung over Sector Seven, came around and piled up, and I think it might reach up to the top of the plate. I’ve asked the Turks to search out a path for us, but it’s been a lot of dead ends and scouring through debris so far.”
“Supplies?”
“We’re rationing and should be alright for another week or so, but then...” Reeve nodded upwards. “Hojo has men with him. Mercenaries, I think, shot up with mako. We’ve been able to steal some food from their stores, but they’ve become more vigilant now, and the monsters are everywhere, and the last Turks who went on a raid never came back.” His voice had sped up by the end and taken on a hysterical tinge.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Cloud said, gripping Reeve’s shoulder. “We’ll get Hojo. We’ve done it before, and now we have even more help.” He nodded to his companions. “Zidane and Kuja are capable fighters, and Sephiroth...” He paused, a bit awkwardly. Reeve hadn’t known that Sephiroth had resurfaced.
“He fought them. There’s nothing else that I need to know.”
Cloud smiled crookedly. He sometimes forgot that Reeve knew Sephiroth, the sane one, anyway, from before... before.
“I’m sorry I’m late, but we’re here now, so put us to work. If you’re having trouble with pseudo-Soldiers during your outings, then you set another pseudo-Soldier on them. Simple.”
“That simple, huh?” Reeve reprimanded, but he was smiling. “Thank you. Let’s, er... mosey.”
The mercenaries had turned out to be a joke, their mako addictions taking them well on the way to breakdown. They were still strong as Soldiers on hypers, though, and after the first raid and Elena nearly having her neck broken, he’d insisted on running the missions without the Turks.
Cloud locked the blade of the broadsword Hojo’s mercenary was brandishing inexpertly by shoving the Buster upward until he hit the other man’s crossguard. Twisting, he disengaged and swung around, his sword biting deep into the man’s neck. There was a grunt behind him, and he rolled. The attacker had swung with enough force that the ground under the spot Cloud had just been standing had dented downward. He brought a knee up and punched forward into the narrow point of the man’s sword arm, and the crack of bone shattering was decidedly audible. The mercenary staggered back, his broadsword clanging to the ground, and Cloud stepped hard into the lunge.
“Are you quite finished?” Sephiroth drawled behind him.
Cloud shot him a glare before turning and rolling the dead man off his blade. He saw the severed arm lying in front of Sephiroth and the bloodied tips of his long hair and he scoffed under his breath. At least Cloud was neater than that.
He hit the switches that flipped open the tops of the storage bins lining the room, and he pulled out a couple of sacks of what felt like grains.
“Here, take these. I’ll grab that box, and let’s get back.”
He looked up when Sephiroth made no move to help.
He was doing it again. That weird, kind of inward, kind of puzzled look.
“Hey,” Cloud said, and mako-green eyes sharpened into focus.
“’Hey’ what?”
“Grab these sacks.”
“You don’t like to say my name, do you, Cloud?” Sephiroth drew out his name, round and almost malicious.
Cloud blinked in confusion. “What? Of course I can say your name.”
“You have not addressed me since the first night after I sought you out.”
He rolled his eyes. “Alright, Sephiroth. Now will you help me carry these?”
“Perhaps it bothers you, attempting to reconcile who I am with the person you thought I would be.”
“Save the armchair psychology for when we get back to base,” Cloud said sharply.
The smug smile he got back made his blood boil.
“Very well, Cloud.”
He knew Sephiroth was trying to provoke him. And he could, too. Cloud couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper and raised a blade against any other person. Maybe that’s what Sephiroth wanted, some kind of no-holds, glorious, cock-pit fight. It didn’t feel like that was it, though, and it didn’t explain why Sephiroth looked at him like that, like he was a problem to solve.
He couldn’t ask Zidane about it. There was something beautifully simple, not stupid, about Zidane. He wanted to keep that intact. Kuja would probably know, but Kuja... was definitely out of the question.
And so Cloud sat alone, watching, and his thoughts a confused jumble. He had thought he’d known who Sephiroth was, growing up, from the stories and accounts and frenetic hero worship. He saw a bit of himself in the boys behind the barricade. They’d been too young to understand Meteor when it happened, too young to know Sephiroth’s involvement in what had almost been the end of the world, and too young to let the cold, half-fearful attitudes of the older men around them interfere with the stories they’d grown up with about the Hero of the Wutai War.
And now, after the initial nerves had passed, they were beginning to approach Sephiroth, to ask for his advice, his stories about the war, but most of all his attention.
Sephiroth was brusque with them, but he stopped more often than not to listen.
He liked it, Cloud realized one night, when they were in the canteen and Sephiroth was looking on impatiently while a boy told a wild, gesticulation-rife story about fighting ninjas.
Sephiroth liked being a hero. Sephiroth wanted to be liked.
Cloud thought about the aloof, untouchable person he’d seen on the televised interviews, and he thought that maybe Sephiroth had been right during that mission, and that that might be a bit...
Maybe Sephiroth noticed what Cloud had figured out, after that. The weeks dragged by, and he still watched, still goaded him into fights (Cloud’s ears burned at the memory of Reeve’s disappointed frown after a stray Blade Beam had taken out one of the corner supports of an area behind the barricades), but he also seemed to genuinely want Cloud’s opinions. Like now.
Cloud tried to speculate on whether there was a passable route that would take them undetected above the plate, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid because he knew he didn’t have anything new to contribute that the others hadn’t already thought of. But he tried anyway, because he could see that Sephiroth was listening, taking in what he thought, as if they really were old war buddies.
Cloud got it, then, and he was shaken.
He didn’t say anything, mostly because he wouldn’t know what to say even if he tried.
Reeve had asked them to check out a new section of tunnel that Zidane had sniffed out (Zidane said he was good at finding things because of his time as a professional treasure hunter and actor extraordinaire), and Cloud had went without complaint.
He’d flinched too much when Sephiroth had nudged him with a knuckle and indicated that he was going to scout down the right fork, but if Sephiroth noticed, he hadn’t shown it.
The tunnel was tight, and it smelled of sewage.
Actually, it smelled kind of familiar, but Cloud couldn’t place it, exactly. It wasn’t until he spun around, right into the cloud of Abnormal Breath that the Unknown2 spewed out at him, that he remembered the Gelnika.
He always felt fudged and bemused when Confused, as if there was a bit of him on the inside looking out and screaming to take over, even though everything outside was fine. He took a slash at the enemy... blob... thing in front of him, and he was perplexed when his strike was blocked with a clang. Did his enemy use swords?
The voice inside was yelling itself hoarse, but all he could really make out were the words “Masamune”, “not enough room to manoeuvre”, and some furious cursing. He felt like giggling, and he looked up at the spiky blob leaning down at him. Something black got in the way.
There was an odd schk sound of needles piercing skin.
The haze lifted, and he was looking up at Sephiroth. He had his back to the monster, and he scowled at Cloud as the Unknown2 wrenched free from its bite. There were sick popping noises as a few needles pulled free and remained embedded in Sephiroth’s back.
Cloud caught Sephiroth when he staggered, and he dragged the man along awkwardly as he rolled out of the way of a second bite. Leaving Sephiroth bracing himself against the side of the tunnel, Cloud swung around and slashed up, shearing off most of the Unknown2’s spikes.
It screamed, reeling back, and Cloud stepped forward again, the orange burn of the Buster leaving lingering afterimages as he slashed down, across, and across again.
He’d managed to drag Sephiroth back to the base after the monster was dead.
The man had been almost delirious from the poison in the needles by the time they’d gotten back, and he’d called Cloud “Zack” a few times. Cloud had ignored him, and he told himself that he really needed to carry a Heal around with him from now on.
He’d dumped Sephiroth onto his cot face down and rummaged through Sephiroth’s pack until he found an antidote. Sephiroth had sighed and relaxed after he’d poured the stuff down the man’s throat, and now he was finally sitting still while Cloud plucked the poisoned needles out of his bare back.
Cloud tossed the last needle into the little pan he’d put on the makeshift table, and he felt the tension drain out, leaving him oddly hollow-feeling. He uncorked another bottle of antidote and started rubbing it into the cracked blisters on Sephiroth’s back with his fingertips.
Sephiroth’s skin felt inflamed and tight against his fingers, and Cloud made his decision.
“After Nibelheim,” he said, his voice hoarse with disuse. He paused, cleared his throat, and tried again. “After Nibelheim, Zack and I were left at the reactor until Hojo found us. We were declared killed in action, and he took us back to his lab under the Nibelheim manor. My memories of what happened in the lab are incoherent, but I remember Zack pressing himself against the wall of the mako tank next to mine, and he would talk for hours, telling me stories about his life in Gongaga, the best places to eat in Midgar, and he talked about you.”
Sephiroth sat very still, as if afraid that any sudden movements would cause Cloud to clam up.
“He broke us free four years later. He smashed through the mako tanks and pulled me out. After that... I’m not sure. He fought. He kept fighting. He beat Hollander, and then Genesis.”
His fingertips still lay against Sephiroth’s back, and he felt the flinch.
“And then he was going to take me to Midgar. We were going to leave Shinra, become mercenaries.” Cloud swallowed. “Shinra troops were there to meet us on the cliffs outside the city. They ambushed us, and Zack died defending me.” He wouldn’t tell Sephiroth about the ragged, bullet-torn chest. “I managed to make it into Midgar before the mako withdrawal incapacitated me, and for a long time after that-” Cloud frowned at the tense shoulders in front of him. “-for a long time, I thought Zack’s stories were my memories.”
Sephiroth’s arms twitched, as if he was clenching his fists.
After a moment, Sephiroth said, “Thank you for telling-“
“This is the second time you’ve taken a hit for me that wouldn’t have left me any worse off than you are now,” Cloud interrupted.
“I heal quickly,” Sephiroth said into the silence that followed. He spoke slowly, a hunted tinge to his voice.
“So do I. Zack said that you thought Soldiers were monsters.”
Sephiroth’s head turned, and he eyed him warily. “What of it?”
“If that’s the case, I’m no more human than any of you.”
Sephiroth still stared at him suspiciously, and Cloud sighed. He had decided. “I know that you and Zack were lovers during the war.”
Sephiroth flinched violently, and he rose, turning to face Cloud fully.
“I know what it’s like,” Cloud said, his voice rising to cut off Sephiroth’s snarl, “being stuck down here in this rathole without a clear way to get at Hojo or even a clear plan. I know what it’s like to be too strong, without anyone like you, and without any way to just let go.” He raised his arms a bit, tilting his palms out toward Sephiroth. “And I know why you look at me the way you do.”
Sephiroth stared at him, eyes flickering rapidly as he thought hard. “Are you...” He stopped and shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be right. Zack was... the only one there. This is different. Decorum states-“
Cloud snorted. “For the last time, Sephiroth, I’m not your Soldier. Maybe I’m your friend.”
Mako-green eyes gleamed in the heavy darkness, and he barely saw the movement before a body rammed into him and smashed him back against the wall behind him with the force of a burst dam. Rough hands tore at his clothes, and teeth sank harshly into the junction between his shoulder and his neck.
Cloud hissed in pain. He tangled his hands through the long, shadowy hair falling like a curtain around him, and he fought back.
Cloud was correcting one of the civilian kids’ hold on his rifle late the next afternoon, while Sephiroth made dry comments about the last time he’d held a firearm being before the kid was born, when Zidane leapt up at him with a wild whoop and mussed up his spikes.
“There’s a way up to the plate!” Zidane said jubilantly. “I’ve found a path I don’t think the monsters have ever been in! We can get up there any time! Holy Gaia, your hair really does make spikes like that naturally.”
“That’s excellent news!” Reeve said, and Cloud chose to ignore the thing about his hair.
“How accessible is it?” Reeve continued. “Can we bring the troops up quickly? Leaving small groups of people on any one side isn’t ideal.”
Zidane looked embarrassed. “Er, well, the thing is, it’s kind of a tight squeeze. And you really need to be able to climb.”
“What Zidane means,” Kuja said, smirking, “is that this is a path that a mountain goat would reject.”
“Oh shut up. It leads up, and there weren’t any signs of monsters.”
“I do wonder why.”
“That’s fine,” Cloud interrupted before the argument could continue. “If Hojo is still conducting experiments up there, the results wouldn’t be anything your troops could handle.”
“Yeah, exactly!” Zidane said. “Kuja and I can go, no problem. We’re good at climbing.” He waved his tail as if in emphasis.
“I’ll go, too,” Cloud said.
“I, as well.”
Cloud nodded at Sephiroth. “So that’s four of us. We’ll be more than enough to take down Hojo and his lackeys.”
Reeve looked unconvinced. “Are you sure? I can contact the others-”
“We don’t have time to wait for them to arrive,” Cloud said. “We’ll go now. Bring your best attack materia, but no fire-based spells, if Hojo’s anything like last time. Anything else you can think of?"
Zidane brandished a red summoning materia he didn’t remember giving to the boy (as if one Yuffie wasn’t enough), and Kuja hmphed, waving the materia studded bracelet on his wrist. Sephiroth’s hand closed over the hilt of the Masamune with a creak of tight leather. It occurred to Cloud that they hadn’t spoken about the previous night, but it was the calm, it-is-what-it-is kind of not-talking, and he put it out of his mind. No more dragging.
It was time to move forward.
“Looks like we’re all set, then.”
“Okay, follow me!” Zidane ran into the dark, his footsteps clanking against the metal panelling on the floor.
“Is that my Knights?” Cloud called after him as he followed.
There was an echoing “Heheh!” in response.
The tunnel up to the plate was as tight, vertical, and monotonous as promised. They came up out of a drain cover near the edge of the alley beside the husk of the Shinra building, and Cloud smothered a snort of laughter. This was where he and his friends had exited the tunnels and stormed the Shinra building a few years ago. History did seem adamant to repeat itself, sometimes.
A couple of mercenaries rushed out at them, broadswords waving above their heads, and Sephiroth cut through them effortlessly.
There had been a King Behemoth, too, but looking down the broken corpse left on the ground after the flashes of light, there really wasn’t any doubt as to which of the materia Zidane had filched.
The Shinra building was an empty, charred shell, the glass tubed elevators shattered. Sephiroth wordlessly took the lead, and they followed him to a heavy metal door set into the wall of a lower level half-buried with rubble.
It looked bolted shut, but the metal sheared like butter under Sephiroth’s assault.
Steps dropped away into the dark, farther than they could see.
At the bottom was another door, just as heavy, and sealed with a keypad at the side. Cloud pumped a Thundara through it, and as it fizzled and blew, the door slid half open, groaning. It stuck, and then chunks of it fell inward after a slash from the Masamune.
It was cold, this deep under the ground. Cloud could see wisps of his breath in front of him. The facility was silent as a tomb and sparsely lit, the light not so much illuminating as lending dimension to the shadows.
“Looks empty,” Zidane said quietly.
The room was barren, and there was another staircase leading down at the side of the room.
“How far down does it go?”
Sephiroth shook his head. “I have never entered the lowest levels.”
“Your Hojo character’s probably down there, though, right?” Zidane peered down at the winding stairs, flashing lights set into the walls signalling each level.
“It is probable.”
“Okay,” Zidane said. He hopped up onto the railing, and he leaped.
Cloud looked down after him. There were clunks as Zidane caught and swung from the landing of each flight of stairs in turn, descending in rapid increments. He caught Sephiroth’s eye. Well, it worked, he thought, and he swung himself over the banister.
He’d lost track of the amount of times he’d hurtled through the chilly air, and his throat was a bit raw from the rushing wind that swallowed him as he jumped, but they had reached the bottom. The door was standing half-open, and Cloud pushed it wider as he stepped through.
Hojo looked how he remembered from his cadet years, hunched back and greasy hair exactly in place. He held a clipboard, leafing through the pages as he hummed to himself, and when he looked up and saw his intruders, he looked genuinely startled.
“Sephiroth!” he said mildly. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise. The reports indicated that you were dead.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
“And you, young man.” He squinted at Cloud. “Oh, just a failure. I remember you.”
“You’ve been busy, Hojo,” Cloud said through gritted teeth.
Hojo waved a limp hand. “Oh, those. Mostly just failed creations. How we must suffer in the road to progress, hmm? Their bodies reject the Jenova cells and begin liquefying into a black substance in response while their rate of reproduction increases exponentially. Quite curious, really, but ultimately useless.”
“And the successes?”
Hojo smiled nastily. “Why don’t you see for yourself, hmm?”
Cloud spun around, raising the Buster as he turned. It wedged in between the claws of the shadowed figure slashing at his face, and while he watched, the claws extended slowly, as if oozing out of the thing’s hands.
It was a Bandersnatch, Cloud realized. It had a shortened muzzle, and it looked almost human in its shape. There was the green stain of mako around its disturbingly intelligent eyes.
And it was enormously strong. Cloud pulled back and ducked away before it bore him to the ground.
“That’s specimen 0089,” Hojo said. “It should be able to overpower even Sephiroth in terms of raw physical strength.”
Cloud found himself being pushed back, his sword twisting swiftly to deflect vicious slashes. It made no effort at hiding its attack pattern, though, and Cloud smiled grimly. He threw off another swipe and lunged forward and up, the Buster Sword glowing orange and cleaving cleanly through bone and fur as he sliced up through the monster’s skull.
“Alas, it has none of Sephiroth’s devious mind,” Hojo commented, making a note on the pad in his hand.
Another one had been frozen solid in a spray of ice, and Zidane yelled triumphantly and he dashed forward, blades twirling in his hands. The ice shattered to pieces, taking chunks of the monster with it.
“Specimen 0435, however...”
Cloud gasped, feeling the burn of ragged slashes just under his ribcage.
Sephiroth shot him a quick, impatient look as he took the head off another one of the Bandersnatches, but Cloud gritted his teeth and ignored him. He rolled, his sword coming up in one smooth movement as he rocked to his feet, and the monster fell backward, its torso gaping and pouring some kind of foul-smelling liquid.
It had probably been a Deathclaw once, Cloud thought. He rammed the Buster through another one.
Hojo was directing them, somehow. These monsters weren’t as mindless as the ones swarming below the plate.
“Oy,” Zidane shouted. “Leave the monsters to us and just go get him!”
Cloud nodded, his breath rasping in his throat, and he raised his sword to point at the watching scientist.
“Hmm,” Hojo said. “Tired, already?”
There were bangs and flashes of magic behind him, and Sephiroth stood beside him, black hatred roiling off of him in waves.
“Just tell me one thing before I kill you, Professor,” Sephiroth said, his sword gleaming in the dim light. “How did you come back from the dead?”
Hojo scowled, looking puzzled by the question and the threat. “I did not raise you to point at weapon at your-“
“You didn’t raise me at all,” Sephiroth cut him off. “Now tell me before I start slicing pieces off.”
“There was a dragon,” Hojo said stiffly, “biting its tail, and I suppose I was in the Lifestream. It did not notice me when I approached. It stood over a figure I did not see, lying on the ground, and it burst into flames, in which I was apparently caught up.”
“So it was an accident.”
“It was destiny,” Hojo spat. “I will not die before I finish my life’s work, even if it means destroying my finest creation!”
He must have had the gun hidden in his hand, already. Cloud jerked reflexively at the retort when it fired, bringing the Buster up to block. The bullet ricocheted.
Hojo looked shocked. He sagged at the knees first, and then slid down the wall behind him, the small red spot in his forehead beginning to blossom with blood.
His eyes were still open, staring blankly at the floor.
Cloud lowered his sword slowly, and he glanced at Sephiroth out of the corner of his eye. The Soldier’s eyes were fixed on Hojo’s body, narrowed and bright with anger.
“Hey, uh, a little help here?”
Cloud left Sephiroth standing over Hojo, leaping up and slicing through the Bandersnatch that had been trying to take Zidane’s head off from behind.
Kuja was hovering in Trance form over a mangled Deathclaw, bursts of magic slamming into it again and again.
Cloud thought he could hear Kuja muttering “Die, die, die, already,” under his breath, and he noticed that Kuja was right. The thing kept trying to get back up, despite the shattered shell on its back.
Kuja pointed a finger, and this time, the glow of magic started under the cracked exoskeleton of the monster instead of in his hand. It grew brighter, filling the cracks of the shell with white spears, and the monster shrieked long and high before it exploded in a flurry of shrapnel.
Zidane spun, shearing into the soft point of another Deathclaw’s neck, and it sprayed ichor into air.
He landed, panting, and looked around. “Is that all of them?”
There was a roar from behind him, and Cloud turned to see Hojo’s body stand and ripple. It distended, extra limbs growing from its chest and neck as it ballooned rapidly in size.
There was a smaller blaze in front of the thing that used to be Hojo, and Cloud watched Sephiroth raise the glowing Masamune, holding it parallel to the ground. He tensed, and he sprung upward, the sword’s motion leaving afterimages so that it looked like several slashes hit Hojo at once. Octaslash, Cloud recognized.
Hojo keened, and he seemed to dissolve entirely, puddling to the floor.
A Tornado spell roared by, ripping up tiles from the floor as it travelled. It swooped up the liquefied mess on the ground and splattered it against the walls with enough speed that some of it seemed to gouge into the concrete.
Cloud raised his head carefully, having thrown himself flat on the floor to avoid the spray. He met Zidane’s wary gaze, and they both turned to eye Kuja.
Kuja shrugged nonchalantly. “It would have been a shame to waste a prepared spell.”
Zidane growled.
Cloud had begun to stand when the pressure came, and it pressed him into the ground like a giant hand.
He gasped for air, his fingers digging grooves into the ground, and his vision wavered. The lab in front of his eyes jolted once, and then it jolted again even harder, as if he was seeing it on a screen afflicted by angry static.
And then it blinked, and it was gone.
Luneth was exhausted. He’d almost forgotten how huge the Syrcus Tower was.
He slashed at the soft belly of a Red Dragon rapidly as it turned its head to snap at Squall, who was striking down from above, and he jumped back out of reach as it gnashed its fangs and clawed at him. A Flare exploded in the monster’s face.
There was that odd little shifting feeling inside him as he switched to Dragoon class and leaped up high over its head, equipping the Gungnir as he went. Air rushed by him as he descended, spear first. He let himself enjoy the feeling of flying for a moment, but he fixed his eyes on the head of the dragon down below.
He smashed right through its skull as the point of the Gungnir stabbed into the floor below, and he knew he was grinning in triumph.
Luneth sighed, slinging the spear over his shoulder and submitting to Terra’s Curaga. The ripped feeling in his muscles subsided.
Bartz groaned beside him, cracking his neck audibly and grinning sheepishly when Luneth winced. “Are we there, yet?” he asked.
Luneth nodded, setting his teeth. “Just through there.”
“Are you afraid?” Terra said softly, and she placed a gentle hand on his elbow.
“A little,” Luneth admitted.
“Me, too,” Terra said.
She walked by, her slight form dwarfed by Exdeath, who was waiting silently near the door, and Luneth wondered if this was what she felt every time she looked at his back like he was doing now.
He shifted, exchanged the spear for the Excalibur and the Ragnarok, and he stepped forward.
It was dark in there, especially after the glowing white of the rest of the tower.
The portal was still there, Luneth saw, sitting there malevolently and occasionally spitting out twists of black and purple fire. He couldn’t see anything else.
“We knew you would come.”
The dry, cracked voice seemed to come from all around them.
Fog roiled, and it collected, twisting and coalescing into the form he remembered, all floating, sticklike hair and snapping tentacles.
“You never learn, do you, little boy?” The Cloud of Darkness stared down at him, face as empty as ever.
“Maybe not,” Luneth said, “but this time, it’s I who has a lesson to teach you.”
“Oh? And what could you have to teach us, little boy? We, who are older than time.”
“Simple.” Luneth paused, raising his weapons and crouching down. “You do not have a place here.” And he leaped.
The Cloud of Darkness snarled, throwing a tentacle forward to meet him, and he blocked with the Excalibur while he hacked down with the Ragnarok, and the head of the tentacle flew off into the gloom while black smoke steamed out of the cut. Another thudded into his belly, knocking his breath out in a whoosh, and he tumbled to the ground, rolling while he landed.
Squall launched a quick flurry of blows to its other side before he jumped back, ducking under the volley of Holy spells that rammed into the Cloud of Darkness’s face.
It shrieked, throwing out stinging balls of black fire that Bartz weaved through as if he was dancing around raindrops. The Cloud of Darkness launched its other tentacle at him, and Bartz whirled away under it, bringing the Brave Blade up and through it with both hands.
Luneth had almost reached it when it spun around and saw him, and he managed to slash it heavily under one eye before the Particle Beam engulfed him.
He probably screamed. His skin felt like it was peeling off his body strip by strip.
A Flare slammed into the Cloud of Darkness from the side, and Luneth dropped to the ground when its attack faltered.
Frantic hands were patting his cheeks, trying to keep him awake long enough to pour an elixir down his throat. Gradually, he became aware of the tears dripping onto his face.
“Please don’t cry,” he said.
Terra scrubbed at her face hurriedly. “No, no, I won’t cry.”
“We’re stronger than it, right?”
A wave of magic-laced fire bore down on them, several projectiles bouncing along with it, and Terra raised a hand. Barrier sprung up at her fingers, parting the fire around them like water around a rock. Luneth struck, his swords nearly whirring in his hands, and he deflected each projectile away.
“Yes,” Terra said.
The Cloud of Darkness couldn’t see out of one eye, now, Luneth saw, and it kept whipping around, trying to keep them all in view.
“Exdeath!” it screeched. “Why are you with them? Who sent you?”
Exdeath didn’t respond beyond pointing his sword at it.
Luneth helped Terra up, squeezing her hand tightly before letting it go. A sword in each hand, he looked at her, and then he caught Bartz’s eye. Squall nodded at him.
“We will not be defeated by children and traitors!” the Cloud of Darkness roared, glimmering blackly as it prepared to cast another Particle Beam.
Luneth was faster. He jumped into the air, swords at ready, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bartz and Squall doing the same. Exdeath floated behind Bartz. Terra’s Trance glowed brightly, the blaze of Holy compressed in her hands as she fed it more power.
She yelled, sending it blasting forward into the Cloud of Darkness just before five swords, bright flashes of colour against the darkness, plunged down into its body.
It screamed long and loud, cracking and fading into smoke, and the ground shook.
Luneth thought it was the earthquake, at first, when he landed and couldn’t stand. He sank to his knees, and it was then that he realized the pressure was choking him.
He gasped, trying to fill his lungs, as he slid down further. His vision shook and blurred, and as he peered around blearily, he thought he saw Cloud’s face staring back at him in surprise through a grimace of pain.
The vision blinked out with the rest of the world.
Cecil was watching out for him, Tidus knew. He was engaging the puppet soldiers before they could reach Tidus, cutting them down quickly with his Dark Sword. Tidus was pathetically grateful, but he was here to fight, too, yeah?
Firion’s arrows whipped past his shoulder, and he jumped and somersaulted, the Caladbolg a blur of movement.
The Emperor dodged easily, setting a few more flashing mines in place. He slashed his staff at Jecht, who was swinging his massive sword and flying by with wild yells of “Come on, you pansy sucker!”
There was a helmet on the ground, rolling to a stop by his feet, and Tidus sent it flying with a kick.
It sailed over the Emperor’s head as he ducked, but Tidus grinned.
There was a chain of explosion, ringing the Emperor, triggered by the helmet smashing into one of the mines.
The Emperor flew out of the cloud of smoke and sent a Flare flying at Tidus. He leaped back, ducking and weaving, hopping over fallen puppet soldiers as it loomed closer and closer.
When it finally dissipated, Tidus was a long way away from the others.
He ducked under a soldier’s slash at his head, and his sword cut forward into the man’s gut. He jumped up, planting his feet against another soldier, pushing himself up and away while his sword bit down into the man’s helmet and cut through half of his face.
He ran, crouching to lunge up into a thrust against another soldier that had gotten close enough.
Tidus saw Jecht send the Emperor flying with a heavy slash, straight into a hanging ball of Gravity magic that Golbez had planted. A flicker, and Golbez was floating over the Emperor, sword crashing down and sending purple flames arcing into the ground.
Blood was running down the Emperor’s arm, staining his gold armour, and he dashed away, putting space between himself and the others before raising his staff in the air. It flashed gold as he poured power into his attack.
Cecil was behind him in a bright blur of movement, slashing hard and fast. Tidus hadn’t even seen him move. He used his momentum to propel himself further in the air, and there was a black burst. Cecil dropped like a stone out of it, flipping and driving the Emperor into the ground as he dove.
Cecil was caught full in the chest with a fiery orange blast that pushed him back and pinned him to a wall, and the Emperor took the opportunity to shoot off another Flare at him.
Yelling, Tidus hacked down and through the spell, shielding his head as it blew and tossed debris into the air.
“You okay?” he shouted to Cecil.
The paladin nodded, breathing hard. “We’ve almost got him. He’s moving slower now.”
“Yeah,” Tidus said. “You ready?”
Cecil was off in a rush of white. He slashed across and up, sending the Emperor leaping back. Jecht’s sword cut deeply into his arm, knocking the staff to the ground, and he dodged, snarling, spinning in midair, to avoid a pillar of dark flames that Golbez had set under him.
Hah! Tidus hit him in the face with a barrelling energy ball projectile, and the impact sent the Emperor flying back straight into the blazing arrow from Firion’s bow.
It pierced through the Emperor’s head with a muted thump, and he jerked, tumbling through the air and folding in on himself as he fell, like a marionette ripped free from its strings.
Tidus grinned widely. The puppet soldiers that still surrounded them had sagged, too, and collapsed to the ground limply.
Jecht raised a broad hand, and Tidus slapped his palm against his father’s almost instinctively.
He had jumped up into the high-five, and the pressure, when it came, knocked him off his feet.
Cloud groaned, pushing his fingers into one temple to try to alleviate the pain.
Grass was green and damp under his hand, and a gentle breeze drifted around him. Cautiously, he looked up, and he stood.
Squall was staring at him, and Tidus looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head. Chatter burst out, then, as Bartz pounced on Zidane with an excited laugh. Cecil smiled at Terra, who had reached out with glowing hands to cure him as soon as she’d seen the blood on his chin. Luneth greeted Firion happily, and the Chaos warriors eyed each other suspiciously.
Then, Jecht harrumphed and told Kuja that he looked as ridiculous as ever, and Kuja launched into an irate diatribe about Jecht’s appearance, insulting everything from his ripped trousers to his dead mother, and Jecht laughed loudly the entire time.
Cloud looked around. A castle sat at the bottom of the rolling hills, pennants fluttering on its spires.
“Where are we?” he said, mostly to himself.
Sephiroth shook his head. It probably looked like a page out of a fairytale to him, too.
“This is Cornelia.”
Behind them, the Warrior of Light was silhouetted black against the bright sky.
TBC.
There are only two parts after this. Mostly because I don’t have the attention span necessary for anything longer.
Also, I will finally purchase a PS3 of my own today, and I am wired.