fic: imperfect tense (ff8) - ch.11
I think I may have a thing for zombies and their ilk.
Imperfect Tense
Chapter 11
Word Count: 2,500
FF7/8 || R - sexuality, battle violence, language || Squall/Seifer, Sephiroth/Cloud || crossover
Jenova's legacy, living on through the Sorceresses, is forcing Squall to deal with an unstable Seifer, Cloud Strife, and yet another potential end of the world. Maybe paperwork really wasn't so bad.
11.
There was a lull in the battle as the monsters finally backed off enough to allow the humans a chance to lick their wounds. Raijin was clasping a hand to the bloodied gash on his other arm as Seifer scowled and kicked at a monster carcass. Fujin and Vincent were looking over their weapons, the former cleaning the gore from her chakram and the latter cleaning his gun barrel, and when he’d sufficiently drawn out the silence Vincent stowed Death Penalty in the subspace under his cloak and looked out over the battlefield.
“This town’s gonna be a genocide if those fucking monsters - “ Seifer kicked the corpse again viciously, “ - don’t give up and run away.”
“DO NOW?”
“Why don’t we ask the vampire?” The pounding in Seifer’s head was slowly getting worse, exacerbated by so much exertion and the inability to use magic without feeling like his soul was being torn in half (or like an addict, the magic an intoxicating high).
“The monsters won’t give up until they’re all dead,” said Vincent, like the cheerful guy he was. “The only instinct they have now is to kill. Only someone with Jenova in his or her body can control them.”
Seifer eyed him. “What if you’re a horror sideshow?”
Fujin kicked him in the shin. Bitch.
“Uh, shouldn’t we have, like, a plan or something, yanno?” Raijin asked tentatively, automatically looking to Seifer, who crossed his arms, leaned against a bent iron fence, and raised a brow at Vincent to cover up the fact that the fence was only thing holding him upright at the moment. He blinked and he saw Valentine again, short hair and suit, lying on a laboratory floor with a bullet in his heart -
He was distantly thankful for his leather gloves when he nearly fell flat on his face and had to grab the fence to catch himself. A heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder and Raijin asked worriedly, “Seifer, you okay?”
“’M fine,” he muttered distractedly, absently pressing the fingers of his other hand against his forehead.
“Excuse me, sirs and ma’am,” came a stranger’s shaky voice, “th-the mayor’s declared this city under siege. We’ve sent messages to the Gardens for help, but until the SeeDs get here…what should we do?”
The speaker was a young fisherman carrying a bloodied spear, its wooden shaft well-worn and aged. Behind him were others with varying types of weapons, but only a few wore the uniforms of soldiers. Seifer huffed a laugh. Shrugging off Raijin’s hand, he glanced at his posse and found them all staring at him, and it took an embarrassingly long moment for him to realize that they were waiting for the guy who’d tried ambushing a president during a live broadcast surrounded by soldiers to come up with a damn plan. Once upon a time this dashing knight would indeed have taken up his sword and led his men to battle - except he’d tried that, hadn’t he? And he hadn’t been very successful, unless one considered ‘mass mayhem, near genocide, and chronic insanity’ as something to be listed on a person’s job history. Hell, he was more likely to get these men and women killed, he was still too much of that needy little boy with big dreams and no one that loved him.
But then Seifer happened to glance at Fujin and Raijin and the two were watching him patiently, as though he’d never abandoned or used them, and he thought of Leonhart, who had never believed in good or evil, only perspectives.
“Every person who knows a thing or two about killing shit, grab something pointy and prepare to haul ass,” he said loudly. “If you can’t, get all medical and food supplies plus all the kids to the safest area in this place. We’ll also need a squad out here to start collecting the dead - Hyne knows how long these fuckers’ll keep coming, and if we don’t get a start on burning this shit then we may as well kill ourselves.” Hey, he never claimed to be any sort of keynote speaker. “Raijin, help these bastards with the supplies, you know the most about that kind of shit. Fu, make sure they burn those bodies at the edge of town, we don’t need that ash getting everywhere.”
The two grinned and shot him smart salutes before setting off into the crowd and bullying the people into teams. Pretending he wasn’t getting the start of warm fuzzies on the inside, Seifer turned to Vincent with a smirk and gestured at the variety of kitchen and fishing tools.
“And you and me, my dear vampire, are going to see just how bad this whole thing really is.”
…
One of the Dollet citizens was a young, unmarried man named Josephine Wiseley (but call him Joe, please, he hated his name, which had come from his long-dead grandmother and his mother’s burning wish to have a little girl) and the last few days of his life had been nothing less than nightmarish. Last surviving family slaughtered by monsters, clothes stained with a variety of bodily fluids, and his watercolor paintings long ripped to shreds, he stood in a sort of numbed shock with a crowd that had settled in Dollet’s main square near the fountain where Reno usually ran about. Joe distantly prayed that the poor dog had gotten away in time.
“Any of you poor bastards got any experience?” asked the big blond guy in the trenchcoat, gunblade resting on a shoulder. He was tall and lean and scarred and looked suspiciously like a certain Sorceress’ Knight.
There was a susurrus of mixed ‘yes’ and ‘no’ from the crowd. Joe had always considered himself a lover, not a fighter, that the pen was mightier than the sword and all that jazz, but he was starting to regret it even more than his unfortunate name.
“Well, fuck,” said the blond with cheerful cynicism. “All right then, folks, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m Seifer Almasy - yeah, that guy, but I’m also the guy that’s going to give you your best chance of survival, so you can suck it up and challenge me to a duel after all this is over. Me and Valentine here are going to try our best to make sure that at least you know which end of your weapon should be pointed at the monsters.”
“Do any of you not have a reason to fight?” said Valentine in this dark, ominous kind of voice that made Joe shudder a little. No one said anything, but hands tightened with grim determination around makeshift weapons, and that seemed to be enough. When Almasy started barking out orders like a boss and Vincent moved through the crowd with calm efficiency, Joe began to hope that maybe it wasn’t all as hopeless as it seemed.
…
“It’s fucking hopeless.”
Thursday morning. Vincent looked over at Seifer, who was watching the first grey beginnings of dawn spread over the town as they sat on the edge of a roof. The night had passed without incident, except maybe when someone dropped a spear on his foot, and Seifer and Vincent had finally sent the civilians to go rest while they could. Having spent a good portion of the previous evening and that night putting the civilians through their paces with the help of more experienced soldiers, Vincent had silently come to the same conclusion.
But at least the self-inflicted, accidental damage had been kept to a minimum, even with Seifer’s impatience and Vincent’s mild tendency towards perfectionism. The majority of the monster carcasses had been dragged just outside the town’s limits and set on fire both for sanitation and a deterrent to whatever was still alive and tentacled, although judging from the looks Fujin was sending Seifer, Vincent had a feeling he was going to find something squishy and possibly toxic in his boots at some point. Rough blockades of sandbags, concrete, and miscellaneous materials had been set up across as many roads and alleyways as they could manage.
(Vincent had caught himself unconsciously picking out those people more dangerous than the others, ones that had a Turk’s understated ruthlessness or a SOLDIER’s innovative strength. A possible strategy had occurred to him and, in the back of his mind, CHAOS smiled toothily.)
“There was something said about gardens and seeds,” said Vincent quietly. “What are they to these people?”
“Seriously?” said Seifer incredulously. “What crypt have you been living in?”
Vincent didn’t say anything. He certainly didn’t feel a pang of nostalgia or homesickness or something for sleepless nights on the Highwind playing cards and being passive-aggressive about Cid’s abominable taste in brandy.
“You know what Sorceresses are, right?”
“No.” If there was a note of sardonic amusement in his voice at Seifer’s bewilderment, it was entirely justified.
“Women with way too much power. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve known women with bigger balls than a lot of guys, but the Sorceresses.” He paused. “No one should have that much power. Gardens are the places where poor assholes are trained to be SeeDs to fight back.”
“Your hallucinations are connected to these Sorceresses.” It wasn’t really a question, and Seifer gave him a twisted smirk and said, “Yeah, I was a Knight, right-hand man to the big bad. Take my advice, Valentine - a chick offers to take you beyond the point of no return, she ain’t talking about a fucking blowjob.”
This story wasn’t sounding to start sound familiar, was it? At least it explained why Seifer was receiving messages from people who were nominally dead, why the rhythms of the Planet had woken Vincent in the first place.
“Almasy, Valentine!” a voice cried from the street below, and Seifer leaned over the edge of the roof all suave and as though he were totally in control. It was a youth named Joe, who threw a sloppy salute and yelled, “Someone saw some movement outside the city!”
“Time to play,” Seifer shouted back, leaping off the roof. His boots thudded solidly on the cobblestone.
“But what about the SeeDs?” the boy demanded frantically. “They haven’t arrived yet - “
“Except a monster took out the receiver, dumbass, so we don’t know if they even got the message. If they did, it’s gonna take time to be approved, if it’s approved, and by the time the SeeDs get off their asses you’ll already be something’s chew toy. So move your ass.”
The kid scuttled off as Vincent landed lightly next to Seifer.
“Moron,” Seifer muttered, hefting Hyperion. CHAOS stirred again, restless.
…
One of the questions that were probably plaguing people’s minds was, Where the hell were all these monsters coming from?
Good question, too. They came in droves of wriggling limbs and dripping fangs and contorted bodies like something out of those B-grade horror movies Yuffie had loved so much, but it was the sheer scale of them that was the most mind-boggling. If the first two days of Dollet being under siege (again) was bad, the third was practically a slaughter.
“Where are they coming from?” Seifer demanded, yelling over the roar of weird howls and screams as his bullets splattered brain matter in a rather artistic manner over the pavement.
“JENOVA,” Fujin yelled back, her chakram spinning out long spirals of blood. Vincent’s claw was beginning to stiffen with all the gore choking up the jointed plates and Death Penalty’s bullets - nicked from an unsuspecting outdoorsman on the coast outside the city - weren’t exactly in endless supply. He retreated to the top of a building to snipe at what he could, as quickly and efficiently as he could, to save who he could.
(“Every life is precious,” Lucrecia said quietly as she fiddled with some flasks, her back to Vincent so she didn’t have to see his expression of horror and disbelief.
(“They why - how could you - “)
(“Please understand, Vincent, the Ancients’ power could be what saves the Planet. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few.”)
Vincent very much disliked that saying, if ‘dislike’ in this instance were a synonym for the sensation of drowning while a mob held him under. (“What you’re doing to an unborn child- “) But down the sight of Death Penalty’s barrel there were people and monsters dying, makeshift weapons and hurriedly-built barricades not quite enough to stem the tide, and as much as he preferred the role of the Uncaring Stoic Gunman even Vincent had a line drawn in the sand. He stripped out of clothes that weren’t his and folded them neatly, setting them aside near a ventilation pipe with Death Penalty lying neatly on top. He felt wrung out, used, and very, very old as he closed his eyes, turned inward to CHAOS, and said yes.
Skin and muscle shredded and great dark wings exploded from his back, oily blackness spreading over his body like poison. Fingernails turned to talons that scraped and cracked the roof tiles as Vincent curled over himself in shivering pain.
…
“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” Zell called back from the cockpit, and continued in a suddenly panicked voice, “Holy shit, Squall, Quisty, look!”
Squall, Quistis, and Cloud immediately pressed their noses against the windows, squinting against the reflection of sunlight glittering over the ocean. It took a long moment to realize what they seeing.
“Holy shit,” Quistis echoed faintly. Squall’s hand tightened around Lion Heart’s hilt. “We’d know if there was another Lunatic Pandora incident, right?”
“Here we go again,” Cloud sighed.
“Welcome to Dollet,” Zell muttered dryly.
Quistis pointed at a creature larger than the others, black with scarlet wings and enormous horns and a roar that shook the Ragnarok even as high in the air as they were. It wreaked havoc among the monsters like a kid kicking over all his toy dinosaurs, only bloodier and with more death.
“Maybe someone switched Dollet and Hell when we weren’t looking.” Zell looked a little green.
Squall was instead watching Cloud, the way his unnaturally vivid eyes narrowed, then widened.
“What is it?”
“CHAOS,” said Cloud with a slightly unhinged smile that made Squall wonder, not for the first time, if the guy was actually playing with a full Triple Triad deck. As long as Cloud could swing that sword in the direction of their enemies, however, then Squall wasn’t going to give a shit, especially not when Rinoa (or Seifer) might be trapped below. A commander had to have priorities.
chapter 10 || main post || ...
Imperfect Tense
Chapter 11
Word Count: 2,500
FF7/8 || R - sexuality, battle violence, language || Squall/Seifer, Sephiroth/Cloud || crossover
Jenova's legacy, living on through the Sorceresses, is forcing Squall to deal with an unstable Seifer, Cloud Strife, and yet another potential end of the world. Maybe paperwork really wasn't so bad.
11.
There was a lull in the battle as the monsters finally backed off enough to allow the humans a chance to lick their wounds. Raijin was clasping a hand to the bloodied gash on his other arm as Seifer scowled and kicked at a monster carcass. Fujin and Vincent were looking over their weapons, the former cleaning the gore from her chakram and the latter cleaning his gun barrel, and when he’d sufficiently drawn out the silence Vincent stowed Death Penalty in the subspace under his cloak and looked out over the battlefield.
“This town’s gonna be a genocide if those fucking monsters - “ Seifer kicked the corpse again viciously, “ - don’t give up and run away.”
“DO NOW?”
“Why don’t we ask the vampire?” The pounding in Seifer’s head was slowly getting worse, exacerbated by so much exertion and the inability to use magic without feeling like his soul was being torn in half (or like an addict, the magic an intoxicating high).
“The monsters won’t give up until they’re all dead,” said Vincent, like the cheerful guy he was. “The only instinct they have now is to kill. Only someone with Jenova in his or her body can control them.”
Seifer eyed him. “What if you’re a horror sideshow?”
Fujin kicked him in the shin. Bitch.
“Uh, shouldn’t we have, like, a plan or something, yanno?” Raijin asked tentatively, automatically looking to Seifer, who crossed his arms, leaned against a bent iron fence, and raised a brow at Vincent to cover up the fact that the fence was only thing holding him upright at the moment. He blinked and he saw Valentine again, short hair and suit, lying on a laboratory floor with a bullet in his heart -
He was distantly thankful for his leather gloves when he nearly fell flat on his face and had to grab the fence to catch himself. A heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder and Raijin asked worriedly, “Seifer, you okay?”
“’M fine,” he muttered distractedly, absently pressing the fingers of his other hand against his forehead.
“Excuse me, sirs and ma’am,” came a stranger’s shaky voice, “th-the mayor’s declared this city under siege. We’ve sent messages to the Gardens for help, but until the SeeDs get here…what should we do?”
The speaker was a young fisherman carrying a bloodied spear, its wooden shaft well-worn and aged. Behind him were others with varying types of weapons, but only a few wore the uniforms of soldiers. Seifer huffed a laugh. Shrugging off Raijin’s hand, he glanced at his posse and found them all staring at him, and it took an embarrassingly long moment for him to realize that they were waiting for the guy who’d tried ambushing a president during a live broadcast surrounded by soldiers to come up with a damn plan. Once upon a time this dashing knight would indeed have taken up his sword and led his men to battle - except he’d tried that, hadn’t he? And he hadn’t been very successful, unless one considered ‘mass mayhem, near genocide, and chronic insanity’ as something to be listed on a person’s job history. Hell, he was more likely to get these men and women killed, he was still too much of that needy little boy with big dreams and no one that loved him.
But then Seifer happened to glance at Fujin and Raijin and the two were watching him patiently, as though he’d never abandoned or used them, and he thought of Leonhart, who had never believed in good or evil, only perspectives.
“Every person who knows a thing or two about killing shit, grab something pointy and prepare to haul ass,” he said loudly. “If you can’t, get all medical and food supplies plus all the kids to the safest area in this place. We’ll also need a squad out here to start collecting the dead - Hyne knows how long these fuckers’ll keep coming, and if we don’t get a start on burning this shit then we may as well kill ourselves.” Hey, he never claimed to be any sort of keynote speaker. “Raijin, help these bastards with the supplies, you know the most about that kind of shit. Fu, make sure they burn those bodies at the edge of town, we don’t need that ash getting everywhere.”
The two grinned and shot him smart salutes before setting off into the crowd and bullying the people into teams. Pretending he wasn’t getting the start of warm fuzzies on the inside, Seifer turned to Vincent with a smirk and gestured at the variety of kitchen and fishing tools.
“And you and me, my dear vampire, are going to see just how bad this whole thing really is.”
…
One of the Dollet citizens was a young, unmarried man named Josephine Wiseley (but call him Joe, please, he hated his name, which had come from his long-dead grandmother and his mother’s burning wish to have a little girl) and the last few days of his life had been nothing less than nightmarish. Last surviving family slaughtered by monsters, clothes stained with a variety of bodily fluids, and his watercolor paintings long ripped to shreds, he stood in a sort of numbed shock with a crowd that had settled in Dollet’s main square near the fountain where Reno usually ran about. Joe distantly prayed that the poor dog had gotten away in time.
“Any of you poor bastards got any experience?” asked the big blond guy in the trenchcoat, gunblade resting on a shoulder. He was tall and lean and scarred and looked suspiciously like a certain Sorceress’ Knight.
There was a susurrus of mixed ‘yes’ and ‘no’ from the crowd. Joe had always considered himself a lover, not a fighter, that the pen was mightier than the sword and all that jazz, but he was starting to regret it even more than his unfortunate name.
“Well, fuck,” said the blond with cheerful cynicism. “All right then, folks, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m Seifer Almasy - yeah, that guy, but I’m also the guy that’s going to give you your best chance of survival, so you can suck it up and challenge me to a duel after all this is over. Me and Valentine here are going to try our best to make sure that at least you know which end of your weapon should be pointed at the monsters.”
“Do any of you not have a reason to fight?” said Valentine in this dark, ominous kind of voice that made Joe shudder a little. No one said anything, but hands tightened with grim determination around makeshift weapons, and that seemed to be enough. When Almasy started barking out orders like a boss and Vincent moved through the crowd with calm efficiency, Joe began to hope that maybe it wasn’t all as hopeless as it seemed.
…
“It’s fucking hopeless.”
Thursday morning. Vincent looked over at Seifer, who was watching the first grey beginnings of dawn spread over the town as they sat on the edge of a roof. The night had passed without incident, except maybe when someone dropped a spear on his foot, and Seifer and Vincent had finally sent the civilians to go rest while they could. Having spent a good portion of the previous evening and that night putting the civilians through their paces with the help of more experienced soldiers, Vincent had silently come to the same conclusion.
But at least the self-inflicted, accidental damage had been kept to a minimum, even with Seifer’s impatience and Vincent’s mild tendency towards perfectionism. The majority of the monster carcasses had been dragged just outside the town’s limits and set on fire both for sanitation and a deterrent to whatever was still alive and tentacled, although judging from the looks Fujin was sending Seifer, Vincent had a feeling he was going to find something squishy and possibly toxic in his boots at some point. Rough blockades of sandbags, concrete, and miscellaneous materials had been set up across as many roads and alleyways as they could manage.
(Vincent had caught himself unconsciously picking out those people more dangerous than the others, ones that had a Turk’s understated ruthlessness or a SOLDIER’s innovative strength. A possible strategy had occurred to him and, in the back of his mind, CHAOS smiled toothily.)
“There was something said about gardens and seeds,” said Vincent quietly. “What are they to these people?”
“Seriously?” said Seifer incredulously. “What crypt have you been living in?”
Vincent didn’t say anything. He certainly didn’t feel a pang of nostalgia or homesickness or something for sleepless nights on the Highwind playing cards and being passive-aggressive about Cid’s abominable taste in brandy.
“You know what Sorceresses are, right?”
“No.” If there was a note of sardonic amusement in his voice at Seifer’s bewilderment, it was entirely justified.
“Women with way too much power. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve known women with bigger balls than a lot of guys, but the Sorceresses.” He paused. “No one should have that much power. Gardens are the places where poor assholes are trained to be SeeDs to fight back.”
“Your hallucinations are connected to these Sorceresses.” It wasn’t really a question, and Seifer gave him a twisted smirk and said, “Yeah, I was a Knight, right-hand man to the big bad. Take my advice, Valentine - a chick offers to take you beyond the point of no return, she ain’t talking about a fucking blowjob.”
This story wasn’t sounding to start sound familiar, was it? At least it explained why Seifer was receiving messages from people who were nominally dead, why the rhythms of the Planet had woken Vincent in the first place.
“Almasy, Valentine!” a voice cried from the street below, and Seifer leaned over the edge of the roof all suave and as though he were totally in control. It was a youth named Joe, who threw a sloppy salute and yelled, “Someone saw some movement outside the city!”
“Time to play,” Seifer shouted back, leaping off the roof. His boots thudded solidly on the cobblestone.
“But what about the SeeDs?” the boy demanded frantically. “They haven’t arrived yet - “
“Except a monster took out the receiver, dumbass, so we don’t know if they even got the message. If they did, it’s gonna take time to be approved, if it’s approved, and by the time the SeeDs get off their asses you’ll already be something’s chew toy. So move your ass.”
The kid scuttled off as Vincent landed lightly next to Seifer.
“Moron,” Seifer muttered, hefting Hyperion. CHAOS stirred again, restless.
…
One of the questions that were probably plaguing people’s minds was, Where the hell were all these monsters coming from?
Good question, too. They came in droves of wriggling limbs and dripping fangs and contorted bodies like something out of those B-grade horror movies Yuffie had loved so much, but it was the sheer scale of them that was the most mind-boggling. If the first two days of Dollet being under siege (again) was bad, the third was practically a slaughter.
“Where are they coming from?” Seifer demanded, yelling over the roar of weird howls and screams as his bullets splattered brain matter in a rather artistic manner over the pavement.
“JENOVA,” Fujin yelled back, her chakram spinning out long spirals of blood. Vincent’s claw was beginning to stiffen with all the gore choking up the jointed plates and Death Penalty’s bullets - nicked from an unsuspecting outdoorsman on the coast outside the city - weren’t exactly in endless supply. He retreated to the top of a building to snipe at what he could, as quickly and efficiently as he could, to save who he could.
(“Every life is precious,” Lucrecia said quietly as she fiddled with some flasks, her back to Vincent so she didn’t have to see his expression of horror and disbelief.
(“They why - how could you - “)
(“Please understand, Vincent, the Ancients’ power could be what saves the Planet. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few.”)
Vincent very much disliked that saying, if ‘dislike’ in this instance were a synonym for the sensation of drowning while a mob held him under. (“What you’re doing to an unborn child- “) But down the sight of Death Penalty’s barrel there were people and monsters dying, makeshift weapons and hurriedly-built barricades not quite enough to stem the tide, and as much as he preferred the role of the Uncaring Stoic Gunman even Vincent had a line drawn in the sand. He stripped out of clothes that weren’t his and folded them neatly, setting them aside near a ventilation pipe with Death Penalty lying neatly on top. He felt wrung out, used, and very, very old as he closed his eyes, turned inward to CHAOS, and said yes.
Skin and muscle shredded and great dark wings exploded from his back, oily blackness spreading over his body like poison. Fingernails turned to talons that scraped and cracked the roof tiles as Vincent curled over himself in shivering pain.
…
“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” Zell called back from the cockpit, and continued in a suddenly panicked voice, “Holy shit, Squall, Quisty, look!”
Squall, Quistis, and Cloud immediately pressed their noses against the windows, squinting against the reflection of sunlight glittering over the ocean. It took a long moment to realize what they seeing.
“Holy shit,” Quistis echoed faintly. Squall’s hand tightened around Lion Heart’s hilt. “We’d know if there was another Lunatic Pandora incident, right?”
“Here we go again,” Cloud sighed.
“Welcome to Dollet,” Zell muttered dryly.
Quistis pointed at a creature larger than the others, black with scarlet wings and enormous horns and a roar that shook the Ragnarok even as high in the air as they were. It wreaked havoc among the monsters like a kid kicking over all his toy dinosaurs, only bloodier and with more death.
“Maybe someone switched Dollet and Hell when we weren’t looking.” Zell looked a little green.
Squall was instead watching Cloud, the way his unnaturally vivid eyes narrowed, then widened.
“What is it?”
“CHAOS,” said Cloud with a slightly unhinged smile that made Squall wonder, not for the first time, if the guy was actually playing with a full Triple Triad deck. As long as Cloud could swing that sword in the direction of their enemies, however, then Squall wasn’t going to give a shit, especially not when Rinoa (or Seifer) might be trapped below. A commander had to have priorities.
chapter 10 || main post || ...