Edge, Sunday, late-Afternoon through Evening
Rikku
The flames were dying down, and everything was quiet. It was over. The end. Fin.
Same old song and dance as always.
"I've been ... wondering something," she said, in a flat voice that didn't sound much like hers at all.
Rufus
The voice of the girl had cut into the silence that had settled over them, and Rufus found himself glancing at her.
Warily.
Her tone didn't strike him as an entirely pleasant one, all things considered.
"And that would be?"
Rikku
He was talking. The one that was all evil, not just mostly evil but kinda on Reno's side.
Still facing away from them, Rikku reached one hand to the small of her back, where her Glock was still tucked into the waistband of her shorts. Handy thing. Useful. She was examining it, almost detached.
"Everyone pays," she said. "Eventually. It's only fair, right?"
Tseng
From Turk in mourning to Turk on duty in all the time it took for a fireworks show to end.
Such, Tseng supposed, was life.
He was starting to suspect that life delighted in being horrifically unfair as he moved closer to the President. Much closer. His own hand was edging for his gun.
He didn't like the look of that Glock.
Rufus
Rufus didn't dare open his mouth to form a response until he was certain that Tseng was backing him up. The moment he saw the black suit edging closer from the corner of his eye, he quirked his head minutely to the side, hardly a twitch, really, and he raised an eyebrow.
"I'm afraid you'll find that very little in life is fair," he stated in a tone that suggested that a child with a gun worried him about as much as a moogle without a pompom.
Laughable.
Rikku
No. It wasn't. Life was never fair. Home burned and the good guys lost. Even if they won, there were huge body counts.
Unfair didn't seem like an acceptable answer, right now.
"He paid," she said, turning around slowly, nodding her head towards Tseng. "And that girl. They were both tortured. Reno and Rude ... have. Now." Couldn't say dead. Couldn't say it, even if it was true.
She lifted the gun, slowly, until it pointed at Rufus Shinra. The big boss. The one in charge. The one who handed out orders and never, ever got his hands dirty. So his hands had the most blood of all.
"When do you?"
Tseng
And that was when Tseng found himself moving like a man hasted, putting himself between Rikku and Rufus. Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice was scolding him for not simply shooting the girl. The rational part of him was telling him, quite calmly, that he was standing in front of a gun.
Some part of him argued, with little reason at all, that he couldn't simply shoot Rikku. His rational mind had grumbled a little, and then retreated entirely, leaving Tseng alone with Rikku, Rufus, and Rikku's gun.
In spite of all of it, he was calm. He couldn't afford to be anything but. Didn't have it in him.
"Rikku. Put the gun down. Now isn't the time."
Rikku
"Move," she said, frowning at him. "Or I shoot you both."
She'd rather not. Therefore, it was in his best interests to move. This was very simple, wasn't it?
Tseng
Perfectly.
Tseng still wasn't going to move.
"Then you shoot us both," Tseng said simply, causing that screaming voice of rationality to spin on its heel to deafen him in one ear for all of a moment. He choked it back and carried on, his hand still hovering over his own gun. "But doing so would be counterproductive."
He squared his jaw, furrowed his eyebrow. The voice of rationality was just going to love this next bit.
"We have two Turks to rescue."
Rikku
Rikku scowled at him. "Is that supposed to be funny? Or do you just think I'm an idiot?"
The whole fucking overpass had gone up in a fireball.
Typical Reno. Showy to the last.
Tseng
Tseng kept his gaze on her, evenly.
"You can stand here, and continue pointing that gun. Or you can shoot it, but you'll have to kill me to get to Rufus, and I have my doubts that you'll be alive long enough to pull the trigger twice."
He paused for a moment to let that threat sink in. He'd spent days suffering. One bullet, unless it was a very lucky one, was not going to stop him from shooting her in the face if need be.
"But I wouldn't recommend either. Turks are notoriously difficult to kill, but I imagine having to wait long enough would seriously put a damper on their chances of surviving."
Tseng himself wasn't convinced. He was flat-out lying. Nobody could survive that blast. They were d-- They weren't coming back. But if it would get her to lower the gun...
Rikku
Cruel of him, to hold out one tiny flicker of hope, to twist the knife in that much deeper.
"You're just trying to talk me out of this," she snapped. "You know what he is but you'll jump in front of the gun. He gives the orders and all of you die and he just gets new fucking Turks. No one else is going to stop him. You'll jump in front of him. Protect him. But you let them die."
She could unload enough bullets to get him and Rufus both. Someone had to. He'd never stop. Why was Tseng pretending not to see that?
Tseng
Tseng grit his teeth, then. Drew in a slow breath through his nose, and put both of his hands in the air.
Fine. Let her shoot. And she could kill them both in cold blood, and it would be all the better for Gaia anyhow, wouldn't it?
"Rufus will get what's coming to him," Tseng replied, and he could only imagine the President's expression behind him. "It's Rude and Reno who need our attention right now. Either they're in desperate need of help, or..."
He frowned deeply, then. Allowed himself that much.
"If nothing else, they deserve a proper burial."
Rikku
Burial. It hit her like a gutshot and took all of her air. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to swallow around that thick, burning lump that wanted to well up. Dammit. Dammit.
She could see it for herself. She could know. She could say goodbye. She could --
She hated that she was loosening her grip on the gun. Lowering it, if only a few inches. No. Dammit.
Tseng
A few inches was enough.
Tseng threw himself forward, then, stealing the only opportunity he might possibly get to take that gun and pull it from her hand.
No more deaths today.
"It's the least we can do."
No. The least they could do was what the Turks normally did. Let them sit under the rubble, and remember them while the rest of the world forgot.
Rikku
Least? The least she could do was nothing. Which she did. Which she was doing.
She'd failed. He had her gun. She wasn't going to shoot the Evil Mastermind Jerk-off. He was just going to rack up a higher bodycount and nobody would ever stop him. Weak. Too fucking weak to pull the trigger and end this.
It's never fair. It's never been fair. It'll never be fair. Seymour moving from the Al Bhed to the Ronso and never staying dead.
Rikku stared at the scaffolding under her feet. Tseng was talking, and she wasn't sure she heard any of it.
Tseng
Tseng opened the chamber of the gun, then, letting the bullets fall harmlessly to the scaffold before holding it back to her.
"Later," he said, again, because suddenly he needed to hear it just as much as maybe she did. "Rufus Shinra will get what's coming to him. Later."
And then, with a voice that edged from forced calm to pleading, he continued.
"Will you help me find them?"
Rikku
Something to bury. Something to cry over and say good-bye to.
Better that than standing here, with the bastard who was never going to get what was coming to him. Should've known. Should've figured it would go like this.
She nodded and followed. Wondering how many times you could feel this hollow before you stopped being able to feel it at all.
Rufus
Rufus stood there, watching the both of them as they walked away. Making a mental note to stick a bonus onto Tseng's next paycheck for talking the girl down. And then to reprimand him for taking an unnecessary risk by simply settling for talking her down.
Also, he took a seat. Right there on the scaffold. If he was going to have to wait around there alone, he wasn't going to do so standing up.
Kadaj
Kadaj let go of the ledge, falling back in a perfect swan dive, box clutched to his chest.
"My reunion," he called out to Cloud. "Bet you're dying to watch."
Cloud
Panicked, Cloud dove after Kadaj. He had the cells. He'd said reunion. No, no, no ...
Sephiroth
On the ground below, Kadaj flickered and was gone.
Sephiroth smiled, cruelly. "Good to see you, Cloud."
Rikku
Rikku was going to stare out the window. So this was Gaia. Lovely to see it. Hey, Reno, your world's pretty messed up, you know that?
And he'd stick his tongue out at her and say something flippant, like knew that one already, zoto.
She had a ring on her right hand and nothing else left of him. Just like he'd always told her it would be.
Dork.
"How will we get there if the overpass is destroyed?"
She didn't really care. It seemed like something to say.
Tseng
"We circle the city. Midgar suffered the worst of the damage after Meteor. But Edge has the beginnings of roads laid down." Tseng had never in his wildest dreams thought that he'd pick up on Reno's habit of speaking in order to fill empty air. Now that Reno was probably dead, it seemed only fitting, somehow. "If that doesn't work, we get out and hike."
He was pretty much burying his foot into the floor, pushing the car past whatever limit it had been made for. Whoever said ShinRa had come up with the best technology had never attempted to drive a stolen car on a makeshift roadway during a Mako shortage in an emergency.
"Do you still have potions?"
Rikku
She nodded, then realized he was probably watching the road, not her.
"You bet," she said dully. "Plenty of potions, yoto."
Or are those words for just-you? she'd asked, at a picnic, when he was just a newbie in a sloppy suit and she was a cheerleader annoying the crap out of him. He'd smirked. You wanna pass 'em around, I'm not gonna stop you. But nobody's ever gonna make 'em sound as good as I do, yo.
Cocky bastard. Stupid jerk.
Dork.
"I can't believe I let you take my gun."
Tseng
Tseng had fallen silent again at the 'yoto.' It figured. She had taken Reno's heart and earned his loyalty. It was only fitting that she'd adopt his strange little verbal nuances, as well.
He didn't speak again until she gave him reason to.
"You wouldn't have shot it," he said, carefully. Not because he was fool enough to believe that she hadn't been entirely serious. But because he was Turk enough to know that if she had really wanted to shoot Rufus, she would have done so no matter who was standing in the way.
Or perhaps he was just that jaded.
Rikku
"I really thought I could," she said. And yet, when it came down to it, she hadn't been able to pull it off. She'd waited too long, hesitated, let him control the situation. Still one of the stupid, boring Good Guys. Reno would've shot the bastard and asked who was buying drinks.
The good guys sucked. No wonder evil won so often.
"So now he gets off scot-free."
Well. He was down two employees. What a nuisance.
Couldn't believe she hadn't shot him.
Tseng
"No. He doesn't." Tseng glanced away from the road for only a second, studying in that moment the face of the girl who Reno had learned to breathe again for. "But we have a priority, right now. Rude and Reno. Rufus will answer for this when the time is right."
It almost surprised him, speaking of retribution against, of all people, Rufus Shinra.
But even as a Turk, there was a line to toe. Tseng was starting to seriously consider where he was going to have to draw it.
Perhaps the line between bullet and stern words depended entirely on how mangled the corpses would be, if they ever found them.
Rikku
"You stepped in front of him," she snapped, finally looking away from the window and at her companion. "You would've let me shoot you, to get him. Not the President. Never the President. You're just his bitch. You're never gonna make him answer for anything."
Reno would probably be furious with her, for speaking to his boss like that.
Well, Reno was dead, so he could fuck right off.
Tseng
Never did make him answer for anything. A dozen Turks, missing without a trace. An ancient he'd been tracking for years, sitting at the bottom of a body of water. Midgar in pieces. The world in pieces. Reno and Rude, blown to bits, and the world was ending again.
And after all that, it was about time Tseng make Rufus answer for something, wasn't it?
"If you had fired that gun, you'd be dead less than a second after," Tseng replied, the coolness to his tone wavering only slightly at the guilt that was dancing through his head. "And as much as I'd love to loot your corpse for potions and then go digging alone, you're the only one involved in this who really belongs on this highway, looking for survivors."
He took the next turn a little too fast, spitting up rocks and dirt behind them from the ragged roadway. The sky above was growing dark. He was trying to ignore it.
Rikku
Survivors. Maybe he thought it was funny, to say it like that. Just a little humor between old friends. Which they weren't. She'd liked him better when he was dead.
It occurred to her that that was a horrible, cruel thing to think, and it also occurred to her that she didn't care any more. Maybe she was finally jaded, herself.
About time, wasn't it?
"A routine mission," she said. "That's what he said. Come home, fly a chopper, be back in a couple of days. Dunno why you don't have pilots here. I freaked out. Told him something bad would happen. Sure love being right on that, zoto."
Tseng
"Whatever pilots aren't dead are afraid of using a mako-powered aircraft," Tseng replied, evenly. It was a chore to keep his tone even, now. Partly because of guilt. Mostly because Tseng had a temper.
But he was driving. And driving meant that he couldn't shoot the girl.
"You never know if the world will reach up and protest again."
It had plenty of creative ways of doing so. The flow of the lifestream had shifted entirely, so even if they wanted to refine more mako, it couldn't be found. And then there were monsters and Weapons and Holy...
"He's a Turk. He knew the risks."
They all did.
Rikku
"So did I," she said quietly, turning back to the window again. "Not like he hasn't said it from the start. 'Any minute, I could get called back. Any minute, someone could come after me. One day, I'm gonna stop answering your calls, and no one's gonna be able to tell you' --"
At least she was here. At least she knew. It didn't feel like comfort at all.
"Never really had a chance, did we?" she said under her breath.
Tseng
Tseng had fallen silent again, his gaze shifting from the road to the darkened sky and back again.
That did not look good. Not at all. They were fast approaching the overpass, but time was growing short in all regards. They'd find Reno and Rude buried in the rubble with just enough time to spare to look up and watch Meteor descend all over again, wouldn't they?
And that Blessed Gem was all the way the hell up at Healin, in the drawer of his desk. And they were running out of fuel. And road. And time.
"You were the best thing that ever happened to Reno," Tseng said at last, glancing from the road to Rikku again. "I think the only time he ever really lived was his time on that island with you."
Did it answer her question? No. But it was the best that Tseng could offer.
Rikku
She nodded, biting her lip. "I don't think ... there was much else in his life that made him want to bother," she said dully. "He went right from the slums to ... you know."
The Turks. Here, have a family for once, you just have to be a murderer for it. Small price, right? Just your soul.
She frowned at the growing stormclouds and turned around in her seat. Catching a glimpse of two figures leaping into the sky and clashing swords. One was Cloud, the other ... wasn't Yazoo. His hair was the right color, but it wasn't nearly that long, and he didn't have a long, thin sword that looked like that.
"Who's that guy?" she asked, her stomach sinking.
Tseng
Tseng's guts lurched up into his throat, and he wasn't entirely certain if it was his driving, Rikku's 'you know' statement about the Turks, or the sight of the dueling duo above them.
More likely than not, it was all of the above.
"That would be Sephiroth," Tseng said, managing only by some miracle to keep his tone calm and the car straight on course. By this point, he was anything but calm. "The end of the world in a long black coat."
Rikku
The end of the world. Okay. Pull it together, Rikku. If Yunie had lost Tidus before they'd finished off Yu Yevon?
... she would have held her head high and Sent the bastard. Through her tears.
Right, then.
Rikku swallowed and turned back around to face forward. "Okay," she nodded. "I've ... done this end-of-the-world thing before. Let's go."
Tseng
"We'd only get in Cloud's way," Tseng stated, pressing onward. He'd seen Sephiroth in action. He'd been on the wrong end of that Masamune in the past. He knew very well that he'd only get in the way. "If there's any hope for the planet now, it's in his hands."
They were all going to die.
"We're nearly to the overpass." Just ahead, he could make out the wreckage from the explosion, smoke and flame just adding to the blackness in the sky. It really helped accentuate the whole 'end of the world' feeling. "We'd be of better use, there."
Rikku
"I beat a god once," she said quietly, looking over at Tseng. "Not alone. But I did. And ..."
She looked back at the two viciously dueling in the blackened sky. It didn't look like Cloud had things covered. It looked like he was losing. Except ... except he was on fire. He wasn't going to give up, even if it killed him.
Okay. Let him take on Sephiroth, then. And if that didn't work, then ... then she'd grab anybody else that could hold a weapon and go after him next.
Because Reno was lying under that burning overpass to try to stop this guy. Because it may not her world, but it was his. And Tseng's. Elena's. Tifa's. Because saving the world wasn't Someone Else's Problem. Not if you were a Guardian.
"You know," she said softly, still watching the two fight, "something I learned in Fandom ... there are multiple worlds out there. Parallel ones, where things are similar but not ... exactly the same. Where maybe you turned left instead of right and things were entirely different."
Tseng
Tseng glanced sidelong at Rikku, tearing his eyes off the wreckage and his mind off the battle above for just that moment.
"The entire island is a multidimensional nexus," he replied, not entirely certain where Rikku was headed with this. "That's why we took an interest in it, in the first place."
Rikku
"I was just there to learn about machina," she admitted, turning back around. "I just meant ... I dunno. Maybe ... it wasn't hopeless, not everywhere. Me, and him, and Ruba. We ... s-somewhere, we got our forever. Just ... you know."
Just wasn't here. Yeah. Okay. Burning wreckage and little chunks of concrete zooming into view and ... made that nice and clear, didn't it?
She was going to look out the window again. Not so she could wipe her eyes. For other, entirely valid reasons she couldn't think of just yet.
Tseng
"Ruba," Tseng repeated, pulling the car to a stop near the rubble. He had to take a moment to just sit and stare at the damage in shock.
Even Tseng could have a moment of shock. The wall of shattered concrete was worth that moment. And then he was opening the door of the car.
"Ruba?" Their other forever had someone named Ruba in it. There weren't really many scenarios Tseng could come up with that involved a third party. "A child?"
His feet made an earthy sort of crunch against the gravel at the edge of the wreckage. Somehow, things had seemed less hopeless while he and Elena were being tortured relentlessy than they did right now.
Rikku
He hadn't ... told Tseng? But Tseng knew about Rede. He'd never ... mentioned Ruba?
Maybe he'd known very well that Ruba would never happen.
Rikku pulled out her phone and began flipping through the pictures she kept saved on it. Oh, look, more of him. Them, goofing off. Other friends. This wasn't difficult, at all.
She stopped on one picture before finally getting out of the car, and she had to walk a little faster to catch up with Tseng. "Here," she said, handing it to him, and it was a little like saying good-bye. To Reno. To Ruba. To the future that would never be.
The picture was of a young girl with mismatched eyes, sitting on the shoulders of a red-haired Turk. She had her hands clasped on his face, just under his eyes, and she was looking down as he looked up, her hair spilling down to cover some of his face. Both were laughing as though they hadn't a care in the world.
She'd never shown Reno that picture. It had seemed ... naked, somehow. And now, standing on this mangled pile of concrete ...
She walked away from Tseng, towards the burning fires and smoke and debris. Hopeless. It seemed like the right word to her.
Tseng
And now there was that picture to stare at. A smile on Reno's face that Tseng had never seen the likes of, a child with red hair, and the smell of smoke in his nose, jarring him back to reality.
There, right in front of him, was the reason Turks didn't keep family names, anymore. The reason they never bothered with families.
He shut the phone and he walked after Rikku, staring at the rubble for something- anything at all that might serve as an indication that Rude and Reno were nearby.
"Look for pieces of the helicopter," he said, "they shouldn't be far from it."
Easier said than done.
Sephiroth
Cloud fell back against the ledge, gasping for breath. Sephiroth's masamune pierced his shoulder, holding him in place.
"Tell me what you cherish most," Sephiroth said. "Give me the pleasure of taking it away."
Cloud
Images flashed through Cloud's mind. Aerith. Zack. Tifa. Denzel. Marlene. Their house in Edge. Everyone he loved.
Cloud grabbed Sephiroth's blade and shoved it away, freeing himself and slamming the edge into the wall behind him. He lifted his own sword to clash against Sephiroth's again.
"I pity you. You just don't get it at all."
Sephiroth
Sephiroth shrugged and resumed his attacks, running furiously at Cloud.
Cloud
Cloud leaped into the air, sword held high.
"There's not a thing I don't cherish."
Romeo
Romeo had taken a break from feeding potions to children to sit, nurse his arm, and smoke.
His first thought when the rain started to fall, then, was that there went his smoke if he didn't find some better shelter.
His second was that his shoulder didn't hurt nearly as much.
He rose to his feet, feeling the green water wash over him, and went to find the others.
Dōjima
Yurika was still working her way through the injured, doing her best to ignore the radio-active looking rain that kept getting on her face in favor of those who still needed attention.
Really. That's why she kept rubbing at her eyes.
She looked up as she heard the footsteps and smiled at him tiredly, brushing her hair out of the way. "Hey, you," she said, "We're going to look like a pair of drowned rats if this keeps up."
Romeo
Yurika. She got something that would have been a smile if Romeo'd had any energy to put behind it, but was mostly just tired and sad.
"Hey," he returned, stubbing out the cigarette on the damp pavement. "I think I already do." He jerked his head up, staring past her at the children.
They weren't ... getting up, were they?
Elena
The rain looked to have a strange greenish cast. Her mind couldn't help returning to that fateful day, when Meteor had crushed Midgar, and the Lifestream itself had poured out of the ground in a tidal wave to save Gaia. The Lifestream, where all souls returned, surging forward in an ocean of green.
She was overtired, Elena decided. She was seeing things. The Lifestream flowed under the planet's surface; it never came down mixed in drops of rain.
She was setting a splint for a young boy's leg when she noticed his arm bandage had fallen off. The boy had a long, black open sore the length of his forearm: Geostigma, an advanced case.
A few droplets of rain fell onto the sore, and the dying skin sizzled. Elena reached hurriedly to brush the rain away -- was it stinging him? -- but the skin under her fingers was already turning a rosy pink.
Elena and the child stared at one another for a few seconds, both too shocked to speak. Then she was on her feet, looking around for Reno's friends. Were they seeing this?
Dōjima
What was he - ? Yurika turned her head to follow his gaze, eyes widening as she saw people she knew shouldn't be able to move were standing up and walking around as if they were fine.
"Hey! Turk-girl!" she called. What? She was bad with names. "What the hell is going on?"
Rikku's potions were good, but they weren't this good, and Yurika knew she hadn't even gotten to half the injured yet.
Elena
Elena shook her head, dazed. "Something in the rain," she said. "It just cleared up someone's Geostigma. There is no cure for that."
Not even an accepted treatment. You were sick, you got worse, and then you died. Yet now, somehow, this strange rain was wiping it away as if it had never been there at all.
"We need to tell the WRO workers," she said, nodding to the makeshift hospital that Reeve's group had set up for the injured children. How many of those inside had the stigma? The rain could stop at any moment; someone should be out here with buckets, collecting it as it fell. "And the President."
Dōjima
"You deal with your president, then," Dōjima answered, already heading in the direction Elena had indicated. As far as she was concerned, That Man was not her problem. "I'll try and talk with the WRO people."
Romeo
Romeo nodded, following behind his girlfriend. "And I think I'm with her," he explained to Elena. "I can help get the patients outside."
Elena
"Go, please," she said. "Thank you."
They'd lost two of their own today, but so many could be saved. Saving people wasn't usually on the list of Turk duties. It was a nice change.
[NFI, NFB, BYOB, LMNOP, FBI, BBQ, preplayed with the_merriest, fair_montague, dojima_hime, and sarcasm_guy, who are all awesome like awesome things. OOC, of course, is welcome, and may or may not be eaten with a nice curry sauce overtop.]