I think it's been something like a year since I started scribbling on this project when the mood struck me. In some ways, it's based on one of the first ideas I ever had for a fanfic, but one I'd put off for a longer while. I had this up on Superfics, before the site died, and it's up on my other regular haunt of a forum, but I figured - it's the one thing I have some chance of continuing and actually finishing (planned as a trilogy, two chapters done, third in the works) sometime this year ... yeah.
Besides, maybe Fosfor hasn't read this yet B)
---
Midgar
Shin-Ra Building
A peal of thunder shattered the rain drenched silence of the night, rolling clouds churning above like an ocean during a violent storm, which, in a way, they were.
The uniformed men in the front lobby of the building - or would complex be a more apt way to describe said place? - paid it no attention.
Uniformed ... that word does not, perhaps, convey the full import of the statement.
Standard issue though it was, the uniform was both effective and made to intimidate. A helmet and torso armor atop fatigues, complete with heavy combat boots and gauntlets that were underlined with armor as well. The cloth of the fatigues was exceedingly tough, and could only be cut by the sharpest implements, or pierced by the most potent of bullets.
It was the helmet that did it, though. Covering the upper portion of the face, the triclopean lenses of the standard issue image enhancement visor seemed to extrude malice in their own right.
The men wearing those uniforms were soldiers, trained by the largest military and industrial force of the world. They had focus, they had gear, they certainly had motivation.
At the moment, that focus was attracted by the figure standing in the midst of their half circle, seemingly ignorant of the submachine guns and assault rifles pointed its way.
Powerfully built and tall, his clothes resembled those of the soldiers. The fatigues and combat boots did, at least. He wore no armor save for a shoulder guard, and a sleeveless shirt covered his torso. His face was carefully kept blank, no emotion visible on it, but what drew most attention was the unearthly glow of unnaturally intense blue-green eyes.
Or, should that be, what drew the most attention about his face?
Certainly, what drew the most attention, in all, about the man was the way he effortlessly held in his hands a blade as long as he was tall, and wide enough to give the impression of being a slab of metal that somebody had slapped sharpened edges on for the sheer heck of it.
The smears of red that ran along said blade's length, drips of it falling down to stain the lush carpet along with the rainwater dripping from its wielders sodden form, as well as the dismembered bodies of several of the soldiers' comrades that lay haphazardly strewn around the glass-paned main entrance of the building, gave enough of an indication that it was far from being merely a tool of intimidation.
"SOLDIER, First Class ..." the voice had been cool, controlled, and used to command. It rang out throughout the expanse of the lobby, halting the melee that had been taking place not moments ago.
A SOLDIER, First Class, was never unarmed. Their bodies were the weapons they always had with them. Enhanced speed, agility, strength ... even if the huge sword _were_ merely a showpiece, anything in a SOLDIER's hands was a lethal weapon.
The men keeping him in their sights knew it well enough, since SOLDIERs were supposed to be their compatriots - the Elite Enforcement of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company.
"What you are doing is pointless," the voice continued, after the noise of the thunderclap had passed away.
Its owner, a lean, long faced and longer haired man in a plain black suit, black tie, and white dress shirt, stood on the small landing that the wide stairs at the back of the lobby led to, placing him in an overwatch position of the situation.
If Tseng, the head of the Investigation Sector of Shin-Ra's General Affairs Department, otherwise known as the Turks, were more arrogant, he'd be tempted to consider his relative position as befitting of his station. As things stood, though, in his mind it was merely a tactically advantageous position for him to take.
Balefully Mako-glowing eyes of the SOLDIER were firmly fixed upon the Turks' leader's face, though the men surrounding him were wary enough that they didn't mistake that for inattentiveness on his part.
"Maybe," the SOLDIER spoke, his voice a nearly violent hiss of breath that, nonetheless, carried well enough. Even against the backdrop of rainfall. "But it's a ..."
The impact was tremendous. In fact, it was powerful enough to not only warp and twist the metal of the Plate right outside the main entryway of the Shin-Ra Corporate Headquarters, where whatever it was had come down, but also to send cracks through the armored glass of the front of the lobby.
"... very good distraction! Cloud! Now!"
The SOLDIER moved, sword spinning ...
A fan of flaming projectiles shattered through the already weakened glass, tearing into the lobby from outside and turning it into a fiery abyss. At least for a moment.
***
Rain cut inside, soaking the floor of the laboratory, coming in through the jagged hole in one of its walls - which was also part of the building's outer wall.
He ignored it. Rain meant little to him these days.
The sound of armored boots hitting metal floor and weapon safeties being released was not so easily ignored ...
His attention, though, was elsewhere, seemingly riveted by the flashing skies beyond the rainfall.
In a moment, a decision was reached ... or perhaps merely affirmed. One hand tightened on the grip of the long barreled revolver it held, the other curled, appropriately, as if clawing at something.
Eyes narrowed.
A step turned into a jog, turned into a run, turned into a full out sprint ...
There was no hesitation as he made the leap.
The only thing the rushing guards got to see was a fleeting glimpse of a tattered red cloak, before even that was swallowed by the night's gloom.
From some sixty floors below, the echoes of an explosion could barely be heard over the staccato of raindrops against metal.
***
Cloud Strife, former Shin-Ra trooper, recent Shin-Ra guinea pig, and current ... well, whatever you'd call people who'd just done the mystical equivalent of blowing the hell out of the lobby of Shin-Ra's home office, lowered his hand.
The green glint of an orb of Materia, crystallized Mako energy, could be seen between his fingers.
Breathing heavily, the blond man returned the orb to its place in the stock of his rifle.
Materia made magic possible, accessible for humans ... but after whatever it was the experiments he'd only fully recovered from a few weeks ago had done to him, it seemed to respond to him more naturally than to anyone else he'd met.
Neither he nor his traveling companions knew exactly why this was so, though the theory was that the enhancement granted to a person by the SOLDIER process had something to do with it.
The irony being that Cloud hadn't been a SOLDIER before the experiments, and neither of his companions showed quite that level of affinity for magic, even though one had been a SOLDIER prior to the experimentation, and the other ...
... well, some things were best left unsaid.
The aftereffects of the blast of Fire he'd unleashed started to clear, even as whatever it was that had slammed down in front of the lobby started to visibly shift, despite both the fall and the result of having what amounted to passing through a wall of flame.
***
Whatever Works
presents
***
The air within the lobby was thick with smoke, dust, ash, and the smell of burned flesh.
Sound returned slowly, from the dull roar that was another thing to mark the passing of the flames to a ringing, finally resolving into a faint sound of raindrops on metal 'ground' and groans of the injured.
Tseng coughed, hauling himself upright from behind one of the heavy reception desks, eyes squinting against the acrid smoke.
The blurry shapes finally sharpened in his tearing eyes, resolving into a scene of destruction.
And an nearly unscratched Zack, ex-SOLDIER, First Class, the fading energies of a Barrier spell sparking around his form.
The Turk raised his sidearm.
***
a FINAL FANTASY VII altaverse story
inspired by FFVII: Last Order
***
The thing reared, tatters of clothing still clinging to its mishapped and burned form, flesh stretching and crawling across limbs as if wanting to ...
It recoiled as bullets struck it on the side, the barking of an automatic rifle suddenly oppressive even with the falling rain.
Turning, a forearm that suddenly became thicker than it had been just moments ago moving up to cover its head ... or what passed for it. It lacked hands, thick tentacles trailing from the wrists instead. The one not protecting the head rose up, curling back like a whip about to strike ...
A rolling, putrid greenish mass seemed to suddenly rush along the appendage's length ...
Cloud ducked, rolling aside as the creature lashed out, the tentacle smashing into the ground where he'd stood non moments ago and leaving the metal plating a corroded mess.
Even as more bullets suddenly rained down from above.
***
FINAL FANTASY VII:
Insomnia
***
He fell, body angled downwards for maximum velocity, the air rushing past him on the way.
Fifty floors, forty, thirty ...
Right into the bedlam below.
Not smooth. Not quiet. Certainly not like what he'd have preferred this to be like.
Then again, who ever said redemption was easy?
Ten floors.
His right arm came forward, the weight of the revolver in it a comfortable one. His thumb cocked the hammer.
Five floors.
Six shots, in rapid succession. Six high caliber bullets traveling straight down. Six jerks of the monster in his sights.
There was no more time to reload. He rolled, curling around his center, cloak snapping with the motion. Right hand replacing the revolver in its holster in the middle of it.
He felt the soles of his armored boots slam into the monster's body, its bulk buckling with the impact.
His left hand flashed from beneath his crimson cloak, the amber of mythril-admantine composite covering it.
The clawed metal gauntlet that adorned his left forearm and hand sunk its talons into the creature's neck.
***
by Griever
***
***
***
... verse, the first ...
... fire ...
Nibelheim
Three Months Ago
A sleeping mind wanders, bared to the shades floating below its surface, with thoughts streaming chaotically, twisting around in a manner not dissimilar to that of a whirlpool.
But when the waters calm, coming to a halt, and even the rippled disappear. When the surface is perfect in its stillness ...
... the mind delves deeper. Into the depths, on long neglected paths. The mind descends, the mind sees, and the mind remembers.
Or, one does, at least.
It keeps itself occupied. Keeps itself busy.
The shudder that went through the mind's physical extension was small. Diluted. Suppressed by stone and distance.
It was no different, in some ways, from similar ones that had come and gone at various times in the years prior.
In another time and place, which were the same time and place when viewed from a certain metaphysical point, the ripples it created would have faded without any noticeable effect, and the mind would have been lost in its reminiscences for some time to come.
Here, in the grander scheme of things, it mattered little.
Sort of like a pebble.
***
Panting.
Staggering.
Boot-clad feet on dirt ground, pressing forward with determination borne of desperation more than anything else.
Hope is a powerful motivator. Freedom, equally so. Combine the two, and ...
There were two figures, one supporting the other. Or, dragging, really.
Two figures, two sets of faintly glowing blue-green eyes, but where the blond one's gaze was distant, vacant, as if he were little more than a prisoner within the shell of his body, his dark haired companion's shone with more than just the results of Mako treatment.
His head was full of questions, his guts churning with a miasma of emotions from outright rage to fear strong enough to almost shake his determination.
He knew better than to let them actually come to the fore.
With dogged perseverance, step after step, all the while fighting against the pain just moving gave him.
It was the rule that had been pounded into his head repeatedly early on in his training. It was a rule that stuck, enough that it overshadowed all the fear and doubt he had. Even in a situation as bleak.
Survive.
And whatever else you said about them, First Class SOLDIERs were certainly survivors.
"C'mon, Cloud," Zack repeated for the n-th time, pulling the unresponsive blond man in the battered remains of a Shin-Ra trooper garb after him. His ears were still ringing, his words slightly slurred, since the aftermath of his breaking free of containment had been rather violently explosive. Enough that he'd need a bit more time to recover fully.
Not that he was likely to actually _get_ that time, but it was nice to dream a little.
There was light ahead, and although faint, it was also the only indication of a possible exit from this ... this nightmare.
The blond man tensed suddenly, eyes fluttering closed as muscles that had been cooperating with ... or at least not actively hindering
their trek flexed, veins shining through the pale skin for an instant. And shining with a pale blue-green color.
Zack moved, bringing his shoulder underneath the suddenly collapsing Cloud, hoisting him up ...
"Oh no you _don't_, buddy," his own flesh felt like it was moments away from melting off, but he gritted his teeth and barreled through the pain. "Still need to pay you back for the Reactor, so don't die on me now. Still need to make godsdamned Hojo pay for what he did to us ..."
The light, dim before, became brighter. Coming from above ... as Zack manhandled an unconscious Cloud into the bottom of a vertical shaft. A wooden walkway spiraled upwards, along the walls of the shaft, to terminate at what looked like the faint outline of a door.
A door which suddenly opened, bright light stabbing through the darkness from the other side.
The triclopean mask of a Shin-Ra trooper's helmet, or rather, the red glow of the optics thereof, was the only discernible thing .
"... right. What do you want to bet it was one of those damn bats the quack keeps as pets. _Again_. There's nothing else down there that'd have triggered the silent ..." the word 'alarm' died on the trooper's helmet-obscured lips as his optics adjusted to Low-Light ... and let him see down into the shaft.
It wasn't even a conscious thing. Zack merely went to one knee, depositing his companion on the ground and coiling to spring ...
... the trooper's surprise gave him a chance, and his muscles obeyed, even if they screamed in protest at the prospect. More so, when he unlimbered his sword, which he'd found, cast aside in the madman's laboratory, from its place across his back
A moment before he uncoiled in a leap that would have taken him a third of the way up the shaft, an unmistakable sound came from directly behind him.
The sound of a hammer being cocked.
Followed by the boom of a firearm discharging in a closed space.
The Shin-Ra trooper fell forward, and off the walkway, scarlet spraying behind him from a hole that gaped outwards from where the back of his neck had been.
Even before the noise of the discharge had passed, a crimson cloaked form threw itself past the startled SOLDIER, then upwards at one of the shaft's walls. The sound of metal on stone could be heard before the form shot upwards again, disappearing into the light of the doorway above ...
... Zack was brought out of his momentary pause by the head of the dead Shin-Ra trooper rolling to a stop against his boot.
***
He felt anger. Not just the hot, burning fury that called forth a rumble from deep within the recesses of his mind.
No. It also called an older, more familiar sort of anger.
Cold. Cold to the point of freezing.
And it had taken only one word.
Hojo.
One word, one name, had managed to sear past the apathy he'd shrouded himself in for the better part of the past three decades.
His hand had moved almost of its own volition, the motion as natural to him as pointing a finger was.
Then he was moving. Onwards. Upwards. Brushing past the two bedraggled ... escapees? Victims?
Both sounded accurate enough, in conjunction with that _name_.
He alighted at the top of the rickety stairway without as much as a sound, even with the armored boots on his feet, and was stepping over the target of his shot before the Shin-Ra trooper gave his final twitch.
It all came back.
The smell of gunpowder and liquid copper, heralded by thunderclaps and the clinking of brass.
Someone around the corner. The faint tinge of weapon oil, the sound of cloth against body armor.
Fast, efficient motion. Giving in to what the senses said, not what the mind could discern from them, and acting without thought.
Foot forward, a normal step with a slight twist. Lean into the turn, keeping momentum.
Always keep momentum.
Lead with the left, knock the gunbarrel aside. Press forward with the right, jabbing the extension of the hand until you feel resistance ...
... the bullet and muzzle gases tore through even the ballistic cloth, the only sound made by the discharge being muffled by flesh. The body falling back with the lead projectile coming out and pulling on it when the ballistic cloth kept it from penetrating back _out_.
He yanked the submachine-gun from the collapsing dead man, not even noticing when the bronze claws that adorned his left hand left deep gouges in the weapon's surface.
Vincent Valentine halted, and waited, in the room beyond, taking the anger and putting it away for later use.
Anger at the world, anger at the madman, and anger at himself.
Now that it had been awakened, though, it would not be put back wholly.
Restrained, yes. Delayed, yes.
Buried underneath the veil of apathy again?
No.
Not bloody likely.
Well, perhaps just bloody.
Some of the oldest life lessons he'd ever learned, all focused on one thing, came back to him.
When wronged, you don't get back at the person who wronged you. You get even with them.
Footsteps, staggering slightly with added weight and drag, could be heard coming up the stairs.
'Enemy of my enemy ...'
Red eyes glowed faintly in the gloom, the heralds of things to come.
***
High in the Nibel mountains, a lone pebble rested.
Shuddered slightly as the wind momentarily shifted.
Teetered.
And lost balance ...
... rolling downhill.
***
END first verse
---
---
Midgar
in front of the Shin-Ra Building
How something that big could be that quick and agile, he had no idea.
That he was seeing it was proof enough that it was possible, though, so the blond man merely swore, fighting the breech and loading mechanism of his weapon for a moment before clearing the jam with a few deft touches and a well applied slam of the weapon's butt into the ground.
Shin-Ra firearms were durable as all get-out - in the long run, it was actually cheaper to make them that way - but that also applied to their various quirks. If one of the Type-9 assault rifles went and jammed on you, you had to be pretty forceful about clearing said jam.
Fortunately, Cloud Stife had a lot of practice when it came to that.
_Un_fortunately, he'd committed a slight miscalculation in relying on old instincts in the there and then, as the jam was not only cleared ... the gun nearly came apart in his hands because he'd been a little too forceful.
In some ways, it was having to adapt to that sort of strength and other changes wrought on him by Hojo that had been the hardest part of these past months.
More acute senses meaning he was jumping at shadows, augmented strength that he needed to watch himself all the more ...
... sadly, things had gone and gotten screwed up in the least opportune moment - as they are wont to do.
Seeing the monster, and feeling a seemingly irrational hatred filling him at the sight.
One of the tentacles had reached up, winding its way forward in a motion so fast that the eye could barely follow, and swatted Valentine from its 'shoulders', the crimson clad form flying through the now window-less main entrance of the Shin-Ra Building's foyer.
Cloud could see the red-eyed man's clawed gauntlet rip free of the thing's body, black and green ichor spraying from the wound as it continued its motion, spinning around nearly entirely to face his position ...
Worst possible thing. Worst possible moment.
'Story of my life.'
Lightning flashed among the darkness of the churning skyscape overhead.
The blond man's right hand went up and across his body, and his left straightened to point at his deformed foe. The fingers of his right hand came to rest on the Lightning Materia set into his shoulder guard.
***
Glass crunched underneath as he rolled, tumbled, and finally screeched to a halt. The searing heat in his left arm was a familiar sensation, not to mean that it was a welcome one.
Vincent yanked the claws of his metal gauntlet from the paved ground of the foyer, ignoring the friction heat that was already bleeding off it as he'd ignored the sickly black slime that those same claws had drawn from his attacker.
The same sickly black slime that was smoking as it ate through the gun he'd cast aside. Despite his physiology being what it was, he'd not been all too keen on finding out how said substance dealt with organic matter.
It was oddly quiet within the ruined interior, the still swirling smoke giving what had only an hour ago been an admittedly majestic - if tasteless - decor an air of surreality.
If it weren't for the bodies and bodily fluids scattered and splattered across the ground and reception desks, it'd have looked like and oversized and overpriced avantgarde art display.
The moment was broken, senses of all those who were in the area whited out by the peal and light.
The sickly green and mottled yellow carapace wreaking havoc right outside jerked, shuddered, and convulsed as bolts of lightning rained down onto it - cumulative effect of the storm's natural workings, and will augmented through Materia.
Thunder more than rolled as shockwaves of displaced superheated air blasted outwards, the temperature of the epicenter and immediate surrounds charring ground's surface.
Glass shards were thrown into the air again, and the display windows that adorned the storefronts in the Shin-Ra Building's ground floor proper cracked and caved at the momentary pressure increase.
Vincent's crimson cloak snapped and billowed as the man himself managed to retain his balance, despite his armored boots skidding on the ground as he slid backwards due to the concussive force.
***
Zack was first to regain his footing.
The Turks may have been self-trained, for the most part, but they were also superbly capable - that was what got them recruited in the first place. Situational awareness, split second decision making ability, physical and mental fortitude and a score of other traits were prerequisites.
For all of that, though, they were only human.
A SOLDIER was not, technically, different in that regard ... but even a Third Class member of that particular exclusive club was augmented to levels of performance that outclassed what regular humans were capable of by default. Be it by the Mako overload in their cells, the Jenova factor, or a combination of the two.
Zack had been a First Class ranked SOLDIER before the incident five years ago. Hojo's treatment afterward, aimed in part at further refining the process, had made him just a little bit better in some ways, than the first exposure had.
Meaning he had a second's worth of lead on Tseng, not counting the time it would take for un-augmented eyes to adjust to the aftereffects of the lightning strike right outside.
In combat conditions, it was pretty much equal to an eternity.
Perhaps fortunately for the somewhat concussed and still mostly blind and deafened Turk, a bit of a change of priorities had taken place during that little stretch of time.
Asked later, Zack couldn't really put his finger on how he'd managed to momentarily tell the inhuman _thing_ in front of the building was who it was. He wouldn't have changed his reaction even in retrospect, though.
Hefting his huge blade firmly, he wasted no time for thought before charging, taking the long flight of stairs he and Tseng had been thrown up and onto the top of by the concussive wave in a single leap.
Accompanied by short, viciously accurate burst from Valentine - who'd picked up one of the discarded Shin-Ra grunts' assault rifles and was making good use of it - on the inside and Cloud on the outside which tore into his target, keeping it off balance, he was soon close enough to brace himself, transfer what momentum he'd built up with the run into his arms, and swing ...
***
FINAL FANTASY 7:
Insomnia
***
... second verse ...
... shadows and dust ...
One month ago,
on another continent altogether
Most thought of it as obsolete, not-to-be-believed hocus pocus.
Who wouldn't, in an age of technology and a sort of magic that was refined, researched, and made - if not commonplace, then at least 'common'.
The days of the Ancients were long past, and the true mages and wise-men were long gone as well.
Those left ...
... he himself had no illusions of being anything more than a dabbler.
He researched, questioned, and experimented a bit with what had been found gathering dust between the pages of old tomes and partially incoherent verbal histories.
Still, these little tricks were, in their own way, more impressive than the massive discharges of refined Mako energy that were what most perceived as magic these days.
After all, there was a reason beyond the sanctity of Mako as to why the Ancients had not employed this so called 'modern' way.
It wasn't a visible light that flared up, gently at first, then rising in intensity, from the figure that lay on the bed in front of him.
Tracing limbs, twisting through the torso, the netting of light trailed and tranced its was along and around the whole of the body ...
The boy was a mess.
A sort of balance had been reached - if it hadn't, then he would have simply ceased, not merely 'died' - but it was hardly one he could consider natural. Rather, it was a collection of imbalances so precariously ordered and shifting in such a way that, somehow, it managed to persevere.
There were flows and eddies to the energy streamers, blocks, blanks spots, and other peculiarities that would either fade in time or remain with him forever. It did not seem to be affecting him adversely _at the moment_ though.
How that would change, he couldn't tell.
He could, however, nudge a bit here and there, trying to bring what little corrections he was certain of into the equation.
It was their way.
Those who came to Cosmo Canyon seeking help had always been welcome to it.
Despite the turmoil of recent days, this well worn routine helped ease his worries.
'Follow your beliefs, even in a world become corrupt.'
Bugenhagen continued his work.
***
The winds whispered.
It hadn't been something he'd noticed until well into the day, but when he had it was impossible to ignore.
Not that he could make any sense of what they were whispering about. For some reason, despite it not appearing to be any sort of gibberish, whatever words they carried were ones he couldn't hear ...
Echoing among the cliffs, tinted with the reddish dust from the stones, they just _were_. Not in a way that asked to be defined, or made him uneasy.
Zack supposed they were as much part of the surrounds as the landscape, the village, and the ever-burning light of the center of local folklore - the so called Cosmo Candle.
The light danced almost hypnotically before him, seeming to pulse to some unseen beat that was, if rumor were to be believed, the pulse of the planet itself.
It had taken them almost two weeks to get this far, with most of that time having been sacrificed to hiding away from Shin-Ra sweeps of the area.
Fortunately, Nibelheim and Cosmo Canyon were both fairly remote, and both he and Valentine had more than enough knowledge on matters of traveling covertly to avoid pursuit.
None of them had expected that they'd arrive at the village when a Shin-Ra military detail, Turks in command and all, was just leaving. Least of all the Shin-Ra, apparently.
A SOLDIER was, reputedly, a force of nature more than a combatant. A First Class more so than others. Still, Zack hadn't really put himself to the test since their escape from Nibelheim, and that one night was less a coherent memory and more a string of desperate images, no matter what he tried to tell himself.
He was more than up to his previous level of performance where pure power was concerned, at least according to the one Shin-Ra assault/transport chopper he'd gone after - or should that be, gone through? Literally.
Not that they'd intended to fight. They'd have been fully happy with not being noticed - which worked out just fine - but their hand was forced.
A large, orange-red feline beast being hauled away by Shin-Ra troops was worth notice in any circumstances. That in itself hadn't been motivation enough. However, when their ears ... well, more Valentine's than his, really - Zack's senses were enhanced to impressive levels, yes, but not to that extreme an extent - caught the supposed 'animal', in between trying to get loose, shouting for its grandfather, and they saw the soldiers keeping some of the village's inhabitants under guard ...
In normal circumstances, one to fifteen odds were suicide. That's what he and Valentine had encountered, though not including the two attack helicopters and the one transport VTOL.
He remembered saying as much.
Vincent's reply had been simple, to the point, and uncannily accurate.
"Don't think of it as being outnumbered," the red-eyed man had said. "Think of it as being in a target-rich environment."
A short trio of bursts from the Ice Materia Valentine had picked up on their way out of Nibelheim had immobilized the choppers' rotors for a brief while. Long enough, though, that when they'd been thawed - either by nature, or their own heating systems - one was a shattered wreck, the other rid of a pilot, and the last devoid of its tail assembly.
When the felinoid they'd caged was loosed, by virtue of the gunman shooting out the locks, things went from just a blitz to pure and simple slaughter.
Unfortunately, this left a clear and simple mark of where they'd been - Shin-Ra would eventually notice the lack of their retrieval team, and somebody with half a brain-cell would add two and two together.
Though there was a good side to it, as well. The abovementioned 'grandfather', one of the elders of the village, was a very knowledgeable man, and in thanks for his 'grandson's' freedom he'd offered to do what he could for their insensate companion.
Cloud, who hadn't snapped out of his catatonia since that one time back in the Mansion of their collective nightmares when he'd likely saved Zack's proverbial bacon, was getting better. Slowly, though.
Which was another thing that had forced a change in plans. Originally, they'd been intending to pick up a new Mako cell for the truck they'd 'liberated' on their way out of Nibelheim and get on the road as soon as they were able to.
Things weren't going to be quite so simple with the way things stood now, though the Shin-Ra transport chopper hadn't been damaged in the exchange and was a bit of a leg up from their badly battered means of travel.
It would let them make up the time they'd been letting tick by waiting for Cloud, but the simple reason for that was the fact that û although Valentine admitted to having flown a helicopter before, his knowledge was more than just a little dated, and he'd been the first to admit that, at the time, he didn't have the handicap of his left hand and forearm being quite so unwieldy. Zack could drive, true, but the SOLDIER realized it was Cloud among the three of them whom he remembered as having an uncanny ability with any sort of vehicle. Possibly due to the fact that his motion sickness didn't manifest when he was the one doing the driving, so he'd learned to handle pretty much anything he'd ever have the remotest chance of using. That, if nothing else, had been his ticket into the Shin-Ra military, though it hadn't been enough to qualify him for SOLDIER.
Everything else aside, though, even if they were to somehow leave tomorrow, the one place he wanted to go was the one place he couldn't show his face in.
There was no doubt that Shin-Ra had their dossiers, or at least his and Cloud's - the first thing they'd do would be to put somebody to wait for him in his old hometown.
He'd left Gongaga as young as Cloud had been when leaving Nibelheim, adventure and the great wide world on his mind. The path had him ending up in SOLDIER, and he'd made no more than two brief visits back home after that happened. Not that he hadn't meant to make more, but something had always seemed to detain him.
But from what he'd been hearing about the history of the last five years, he wouldn't get much of a chance now either. Perhaps not ever. The village had gone through a momentary boom of activity when the Mako Reactor there was commissioned. Then a more literal boom happened, when said reactor malfunctioned and took most of his hometown with it when it blew.
These days, the place of his childhood memories was no more than a loose gathering of those who refused to surrender to the catastrophe, living off selling what they could salvage from both the surrounds and the reactor wreck ...
He didn't even know if his family still lived. It was all he could do to restrain himself to inactivity, and not take off to see for himself what had happened ... and likely fall right into waiting Shin-Ra hands again.
Zack sat, watching the ever burning flame of the Cosmo Candle which flickered in the center of the town.
Another day of peace and quiet.
Sometimes, nothing seemed like more of a curse.
***
Two weeks later
several hundred feet above the Junon plains
Rotor blades cut through rain filled air, all but inaudible among the splattering of falling water.
Inaudible, that is, to anything at a distance from the chopper.
Inside was a different story.
The H79 Cicada was fast, efficient, and had a more than adequate load capacity. Unfortunately for those having to use them, their designers had been the same people who'd come up with the Gelinka transports.
Hallmarks of Shin-Ra's air fleet, they were big, long ranged, but also awkward looking and not exactly made with stealth in mind. There was no real point, what with the lack of opposing forces to pose any sort of threat to that avenue of the company's global supremacy.
The Cicada was widely enough used that actual defensive capability was something that had been incorporated into the design fairly early on. The hull, cockpit and rotors could shrug off small-arms fire, and four hardpoints on the outriggers made for enough space for either weapons of its own, or a variety of other attachments ranging from extra fuel pods to observation equipment.
But as soon as you got on, you realized that passenger comfort hadn't been on the design specs. When you added in the rain and thunder, the ride became not only downright nasty but hair-raising as well.
The constant ping of the sensor station, its screen blinking with data transmitted from the underslung radar pod, was a sligth comfort û it meant that they weren't too likely to crash, after all û but after hours in the air it had become nerve wracking in its own right.
"How much longer?!" and one still had to shout to get through the din of the rain and rotors, even with the isolated earphones those inside were issued as standard gear.
"Quarter of an hour, best time," came from the phones as the pilot replied.
This, however, was not the answer the man at the sensor station expected, and he cursed briefly but viciously as a dot that they'd been chasing after disappeared from the display.
"Move, damn you," he spat at the shuddering machine around him. Tseng would have his hide if they messed this up.
***
Midgar,
several hours later
"Unfortunate," the Head of the Investigation Division of the General Affairs Department of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, also known as the Turks, leaned back in his chair shuffled the file folders on top of his desk out of the way for the moment.
He muted the receiver for a moment, heaved a heavy sigh, and turned it back on.
"Check with the Junon division again," he instructed the person on the other end.
There was a brief pause.
"Of course they missed something," he said, fingertips of one hand tapping on the wood of his desktop irritably. "Why do I even need to _tell_ you to do this? Leave Rude with two others and the grunts, on the off chance of a double feint, and get yourself back there to ask questions. Next time you call me, I'll be expecting you to tell me what was missed, and just where they've gone while you've been off gallivanting in the rain like a three year old. Did I make myself understood, Reno?"
Another brief pause.
"... yes," the man's tone was now noticeably strained. "This means no holiday bonus. Live with it."
He put the phone back onto its cradle, firmly, ignoring the loud protests coming from the other end.
Sometimes Tseng wondered why in the world someone like Reno hadn't been demoted already, and was taking up his valuable time with inane chit-chat that only led to commands which were both superfluous and should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain-cell.
Then he remembered that the infuriating redhead's aptness in certain fields compensated for those deficiencies. Though barely.
Sadly, they were already stretched thin - both by the search and by some bizarre dispatch of Professor Hojo's that had somehow gotten approved by the Chairman. They didn't even know what they were on the lookout for, and Hojo had been strutting around looking as smug as a pig in the muck for the better part of the last month, which was even harder to deal with than Reno's occasional gaffe and frequent attitude problems.
'Well,' he thought sardonically, 'at least we know what happened to the retrieval team sent to the Canyon.'
The chopper had come down in Junon yesterday, then taken off again before its registration number managed to ring any bells ... and with a full tank, to boot. Junon security had some serious explaining to do for letting this happen. By the time they'd caught on that the helicopter had belonged to a missing field operations team and had no right to be near Junon, much less that continent altogether, it was a dwindling speck on the horizon.
Reno _had_ shown initiative, then, since he and Rude had only just arrived when the airport turned into one frantic beehive of blame-shifting. They and their people commandeered a chopper themselves, strapped on a pair of tanks and a recon pod, and went in pursuit ...
... with the weather as it was, though, thing hadn't gone very well. The chopper had made it to its apparent destination before they could force it down, and was now cooling rotors in Fort Condor. Which, unfortunately, was currently occupied by a militant anti-Shin-Ra faction and under siege.
Adding insult to injury, and hour later an inside man of theirs called in, and - surprise, surprise - nobody on board of the chopper even resembled the two escapees, or their potential ally.
Meaning that, for all intents and purposes - at least with their current information, their targets could have just as well dissolved into thin air somewhere between the Western Continent and Junon without anyone being the wiser.
Tseng rubbed his forehead in exasperation.
Sometimes, this job really wasn't what it was cracked up to be.
***
Midgar Plains,
several days later
The ATV rolled to a stop, no dust trailing since the soil hadn't really had chance to absorb the recent rainfall quite yet.
It was an old-ish vehicle, and at first glance it had seen better days. Or perhaps even better decades. Still, everything that counted worked more than well enough, and the Mako fuel cells it ran off were plentiful enough to last it even a bit past their destination.
In addition to that, there was more than enough room inside - it had been meant for transportation of squads of up to twenty armed and armored troops, after all - that the three could drive in turns without much need for a stopover anywhere along the way.
Not that there were many places to do so.
The hatch opened, and one of the passengers levered himself out.
Desolate landscape greeted him, stretching all around ... it was, in truth, the first time he'd seen the scope of what Shin-Ra was doing. Both sides of the coin.
In the distance, the great agglomeration lay, like the ground zero of all this emptiness. Steel, glass, plastic, and Mako. Always Mako. Eight reactors glowing with emerald light, set around the circumference of the city.
Glorious and terrible at the same time.
Vincent had known the potential results of this kind of level of Mako usage, but knowing and seeing were often two different things. Back then, it had been something to worry about in the future. Cheap and available electric power was something to be pursued at all costs ... and if Shin-Ra managed to put everyone else out of business in the process, so much the better.
Not so now.
He shook his head, chasing away the grim thoughts ... ironically, he did so with thoughts grimmer still.
There was a sort of nervous energy he'd noticed, flowing through his veins over the past few days, with the realization that Hojo was finally coming into his reach.
He realized he was obsessed. Had been for a long time, in fact. Despite that, he also knew that if he stopped now, it wasn't likely he'd ever receive the needed motivation to pick himself back up again.
The need to keep moving which he'd slowly realized was something that had been instinctively grasped the moment he'd shot awake that night in Nibelheim, several months ago.
Not doing so would mean giving up to the futility of it all, and in spite of just how tempting that was there was a faint fragment deep inside of him that would not, could not allow that to happen.
The fragment that had kept him alive despite all odds, through Hojo's experiments, through the realization that his world - such as it had been - was irrevocably gone into the flow of time.
The fragment that had him shake off his brooding for a few crucial minutes here and there, as he worked to keep the three of them out of Shin-Ra hands.
Times, it seemed, could change all they wanted to. Human nature is far slower in that regard.
Both Zack and Cloud had been soldiers, and despite a grasp of tactics and strategy they both thought in certain ways.
Vincent, though, didn't. As the old - he supposed that now it was such, at least - saying went, 'once a Turk, always a Turk'.
They had never been simple hatchetmen, rumors to the contrary. Misdirection, obfuscation, espionage, sabotage, assassination ... those tasks required a degree of subtlety and familiarity with basic human nature that only practice could bring. And, despite all the rust he'd accumulated over the years of idleness, he'd been one of the best.
Getting rid of the helicopter had been almost embarrassingly easy; using it to set up a distraction had come naturally, by simple virtue of knowing who and where to sell to; the ATV they'd snatched from its way to the repair yard, for - off all the things - a new paint job.
He shook the musings off, leaping from the vehicle even as it backed into a shallow but wide gouge that was around fifty meters in length. Not quite enough to conceal the ATV on its own, but with the aid of the masking gear it still carried, that shouldn't be too hard to facilitate.
The other two former Shin-Ra 'employees' joined him in his work, and soon where there had once been an angular and armored top of a ATV hull there was a low, though substantial, mound of cracked and chipped rocks that didn't look at all out of place in these desolate environs.
Zack joined him first, the huge sword strapped to his back and his carry-on slung over one shoulder.
"Second thoughts?" Cloud asked, when he'd retrieved his own pack and gear from the hidden ATV.
Vincent gave him a dry look.
"Right, stupid question," the blond muttered.
Later would come. It always did. But there and then, there was no need to think of that. Despite the loss and hardship suffered, there was a goal in front of him. One he'd reach, or die trying.
There and then, for the first time in a long while, Vincent Valentine felt a spark. The shadow of a memory of what it meant to be alive.
***
END second verse
---
tbc
-Griever
ETA:editsu
Besides, maybe Fosfor hasn't read this yet B)
---
Midgar
Shin-Ra Building
A peal of thunder shattered the rain drenched silence of the night, rolling clouds churning above like an ocean during a violent storm, which, in a way, they were.
The uniformed men in the front lobby of the building - or would complex be a more apt way to describe said place? - paid it no attention.
Uniformed ... that word does not, perhaps, convey the full import of the statement.
Standard issue though it was, the uniform was both effective and made to intimidate. A helmet and torso armor atop fatigues, complete with heavy combat boots and gauntlets that were underlined with armor as well. The cloth of the fatigues was exceedingly tough, and could only be cut by the sharpest implements, or pierced by the most potent of bullets.
It was the helmet that did it, though. Covering the upper portion of the face, the triclopean lenses of the standard issue image enhancement visor seemed to extrude malice in their own right.
The men wearing those uniforms were soldiers, trained by the largest military and industrial force of the world. They had focus, they had gear, they certainly had motivation.
At the moment, that focus was attracted by the figure standing in the midst of their half circle, seemingly ignorant of the submachine guns and assault rifles pointed its way.
Powerfully built and tall, his clothes resembled those of the soldiers. The fatigues and combat boots did, at least. He wore no armor save for a shoulder guard, and a sleeveless shirt covered his torso. His face was carefully kept blank, no emotion visible on it, but what drew most attention was the unearthly glow of unnaturally intense blue-green eyes.
Or, should that be, what drew the most attention about his face?
Certainly, what drew the most attention, in all, about the man was the way he effortlessly held in his hands a blade as long as he was tall, and wide enough to give the impression of being a slab of metal that somebody had slapped sharpened edges on for the sheer heck of it.
The smears of red that ran along said blade's length, drips of it falling down to stain the lush carpet along with the rainwater dripping from its wielders sodden form, as well as the dismembered bodies of several of the soldiers' comrades that lay haphazardly strewn around the glass-paned main entrance of the building, gave enough of an indication that it was far from being merely a tool of intimidation.
"SOLDIER, First Class ..." the voice had been cool, controlled, and used to command. It rang out throughout the expanse of the lobby, halting the melee that had been taking place not moments ago.
A SOLDIER, First Class, was never unarmed. Their bodies were the weapons they always had with them. Enhanced speed, agility, strength ... even if the huge sword _were_ merely a showpiece, anything in a SOLDIER's hands was a lethal weapon.
The men keeping him in their sights knew it well enough, since SOLDIERs were supposed to be their compatriots - the Elite Enforcement of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company.
"What you are doing is pointless," the voice continued, after the noise of the thunderclap had passed away.
Its owner, a lean, long faced and longer haired man in a plain black suit, black tie, and white dress shirt, stood on the small landing that the wide stairs at the back of the lobby led to, placing him in an overwatch position of the situation.
If Tseng, the head of the Investigation Sector of Shin-Ra's General Affairs Department, otherwise known as the Turks, were more arrogant, he'd be tempted to consider his relative position as befitting of his station. As things stood, though, in his mind it was merely a tactically advantageous position for him to take.
Balefully Mako-glowing eyes of the SOLDIER were firmly fixed upon the Turks' leader's face, though the men surrounding him were wary enough that they didn't mistake that for inattentiveness on his part.
"Maybe," the SOLDIER spoke, his voice a nearly violent hiss of breath that, nonetheless, carried well enough. Even against the backdrop of rainfall. "But it's a ..."
The impact was tremendous. In fact, it was powerful enough to not only warp and twist the metal of the Plate right outside the main entryway of the Shin-Ra Corporate Headquarters, where whatever it was had come down, but also to send cracks through the armored glass of the front of the lobby.
"... very good distraction! Cloud! Now!"
The SOLDIER moved, sword spinning ...
A fan of flaming projectiles shattered through the already weakened glass, tearing into the lobby from outside and turning it into a fiery abyss. At least for a moment.
***
Rain cut inside, soaking the floor of the laboratory, coming in through the jagged hole in one of its walls - which was also part of the building's outer wall.
He ignored it. Rain meant little to him these days.
The sound of armored boots hitting metal floor and weapon safeties being released was not so easily ignored ...
His attention, though, was elsewhere, seemingly riveted by the flashing skies beyond the rainfall.
In a moment, a decision was reached ... or perhaps merely affirmed. One hand tightened on the grip of the long barreled revolver it held, the other curled, appropriately, as if clawing at something.
Eyes narrowed.
A step turned into a jog, turned into a run, turned into a full out sprint ...
There was no hesitation as he made the leap.
The only thing the rushing guards got to see was a fleeting glimpse of a tattered red cloak, before even that was swallowed by the night's gloom.
From some sixty floors below, the echoes of an explosion could barely be heard over the staccato of raindrops against metal.
***
Cloud Strife, former Shin-Ra trooper, recent Shin-Ra guinea pig, and current ... well, whatever you'd call people who'd just done the mystical equivalent of blowing the hell out of the lobby of Shin-Ra's home office, lowered his hand.
The green glint of an orb of Materia, crystallized Mako energy, could be seen between his fingers.
Breathing heavily, the blond man returned the orb to its place in the stock of his rifle.
Materia made magic possible, accessible for humans ... but after whatever it was the experiments he'd only fully recovered from a few weeks ago had done to him, it seemed to respond to him more naturally than to anyone else he'd met.
Neither he nor his traveling companions knew exactly why this was so, though the theory was that the enhancement granted to a person by the SOLDIER process had something to do with it.
The irony being that Cloud hadn't been a SOLDIER before the experiments, and neither of his companions showed quite that level of affinity for magic, even though one had been a SOLDIER prior to the experimentation, and the other ...
... well, some things were best left unsaid.
The aftereffects of the blast of Fire he'd unleashed started to clear, even as whatever it was that had slammed down in front of the lobby started to visibly shift, despite both the fall and the result of having what amounted to passing through a wall of flame.
***
Whatever Works
presents
***
The air within the lobby was thick with smoke, dust, ash, and the smell of burned flesh.
Sound returned slowly, from the dull roar that was another thing to mark the passing of the flames to a ringing, finally resolving into a faint sound of raindrops on metal 'ground' and groans of the injured.
Tseng coughed, hauling himself upright from behind one of the heavy reception desks, eyes squinting against the acrid smoke.
The blurry shapes finally sharpened in his tearing eyes, resolving into a scene of destruction.
And an nearly unscratched Zack, ex-SOLDIER, First Class, the fading energies of a Barrier spell sparking around his form.
The Turk raised his sidearm.
***
a FINAL FANTASY VII altaverse story
inspired by FFVII: Last Order
***
The thing reared, tatters of clothing still clinging to its mishapped and burned form, flesh stretching and crawling across limbs as if wanting to ...
It recoiled as bullets struck it on the side, the barking of an automatic rifle suddenly oppressive even with the falling rain.
Turning, a forearm that suddenly became thicker than it had been just moments ago moving up to cover its head ... or what passed for it. It lacked hands, thick tentacles trailing from the wrists instead. The one not protecting the head rose up, curling back like a whip about to strike ...
A rolling, putrid greenish mass seemed to suddenly rush along the appendage's length ...
Cloud ducked, rolling aside as the creature lashed out, the tentacle smashing into the ground where he'd stood non moments ago and leaving the metal plating a corroded mess.
Even as more bullets suddenly rained down from above.
***
FINAL FANTASY VII:
Insomnia
***
He fell, body angled downwards for maximum velocity, the air rushing past him on the way.
Fifty floors, forty, thirty ...
Right into the bedlam below.
Not smooth. Not quiet. Certainly not like what he'd have preferred this to be like.
Then again, who ever said redemption was easy?
Ten floors.
His right arm came forward, the weight of the revolver in it a comfortable one. His thumb cocked the hammer.
Five floors.
Six shots, in rapid succession. Six high caliber bullets traveling straight down. Six jerks of the monster in his sights.
There was no more time to reload. He rolled, curling around his center, cloak snapping with the motion. Right hand replacing the revolver in its holster in the middle of it.
He felt the soles of his armored boots slam into the monster's body, its bulk buckling with the impact.
His left hand flashed from beneath his crimson cloak, the amber of mythril-admantine composite covering it.
The clawed metal gauntlet that adorned his left forearm and hand sunk its talons into the creature's neck.
***
by Griever
***
***
***
... verse, the first ...
... fire ...
Nibelheim
Three Months Ago
A sleeping mind wanders, bared to the shades floating below its surface, with thoughts streaming chaotically, twisting around in a manner not dissimilar to that of a whirlpool.
But when the waters calm, coming to a halt, and even the rippled disappear. When the surface is perfect in its stillness ...
... the mind delves deeper. Into the depths, on long neglected paths. The mind descends, the mind sees, and the mind remembers.
Or, one does, at least.
It keeps itself occupied. Keeps itself busy.
The shudder that went through the mind's physical extension was small. Diluted. Suppressed by stone and distance.
It was no different, in some ways, from similar ones that had come and gone at various times in the years prior.
In another time and place, which were the same time and place when viewed from a certain metaphysical point, the ripples it created would have faded without any noticeable effect, and the mind would have been lost in its reminiscences for some time to come.
Here, in the grander scheme of things, it mattered little.
Sort of like a pebble.
***
Panting.
Staggering.
Boot-clad feet on dirt ground, pressing forward with determination borne of desperation more than anything else.
Hope is a powerful motivator. Freedom, equally so. Combine the two, and ...
There were two figures, one supporting the other. Or, dragging, really.
Two figures, two sets of faintly glowing blue-green eyes, but where the blond one's gaze was distant, vacant, as if he were little more than a prisoner within the shell of his body, his dark haired companion's shone with more than just the results of Mako treatment.
His head was full of questions, his guts churning with a miasma of emotions from outright rage to fear strong enough to almost shake his determination.
He knew better than to let them actually come to the fore.
With dogged perseverance, step after step, all the while fighting against the pain just moving gave him.
It was the rule that had been pounded into his head repeatedly early on in his training. It was a rule that stuck, enough that it overshadowed all the fear and doubt he had. Even in a situation as bleak.
Survive.
And whatever else you said about them, First Class SOLDIERs were certainly survivors.
"C'mon, Cloud," Zack repeated for the n-th time, pulling the unresponsive blond man in the battered remains of a Shin-Ra trooper garb after him. His ears were still ringing, his words slightly slurred, since the aftermath of his breaking free of containment had been rather violently explosive. Enough that he'd need a bit more time to recover fully.
Not that he was likely to actually _get_ that time, but it was nice to dream a little.
There was light ahead, and although faint, it was also the only indication of a possible exit from this ... this nightmare.
The blond man tensed suddenly, eyes fluttering closed as muscles that had been cooperating with ... or at least not actively hindering
their trek flexed, veins shining through the pale skin for an instant. And shining with a pale blue-green color.
Zack moved, bringing his shoulder underneath the suddenly collapsing Cloud, hoisting him up ...
"Oh no you _don't_, buddy," his own flesh felt like it was moments away from melting off, but he gritted his teeth and barreled through the pain. "Still need to pay you back for the Reactor, so don't die on me now. Still need to make godsdamned Hojo pay for what he did to us ..."
The light, dim before, became brighter. Coming from above ... as Zack manhandled an unconscious Cloud into the bottom of a vertical shaft. A wooden walkway spiraled upwards, along the walls of the shaft, to terminate at what looked like the faint outline of a door.
A door which suddenly opened, bright light stabbing through the darkness from the other side.
The triclopean mask of a Shin-Ra trooper's helmet, or rather, the red glow of the optics thereof, was the only discernible thing .
"... right. What do you want to bet it was one of those damn bats the quack keeps as pets. _Again_. There's nothing else down there that'd have triggered the silent ..." the word 'alarm' died on the trooper's helmet-obscured lips as his optics adjusted to Low-Light ... and let him see down into the shaft.
It wasn't even a conscious thing. Zack merely went to one knee, depositing his companion on the ground and coiling to spring ...
... the trooper's surprise gave him a chance, and his muscles obeyed, even if they screamed in protest at the prospect. More so, when he unlimbered his sword, which he'd found, cast aside in the madman's laboratory, from its place across his back
A moment before he uncoiled in a leap that would have taken him a third of the way up the shaft, an unmistakable sound came from directly behind him.
The sound of a hammer being cocked.
Followed by the boom of a firearm discharging in a closed space.
The Shin-Ra trooper fell forward, and off the walkway, scarlet spraying behind him from a hole that gaped outwards from where the back of his neck had been.
Even before the noise of the discharge had passed, a crimson cloaked form threw itself past the startled SOLDIER, then upwards at one of the shaft's walls. The sound of metal on stone could be heard before the form shot upwards again, disappearing into the light of the doorway above ...
... Zack was brought out of his momentary pause by the head of the dead Shin-Ra trooper rolling to a stop against his boot.
***
He felt anger. Not just the hot, burning fury that called forth a rumble from deep within the recesses of his mind.
No. It also called an older, more familiar sort of anger.
Cold. Cold to the point of freezing.
And it had taken only one word.
Hojo.
One word, one name, had managed to sear past the apathy he'd shrouded himself in for the better part of the past three decades.
His hand had moved almost of its own volition, the motion as natural to him as pointing a finger was.
Then he was moving. Onwards. Upwards. Brushing past the two bedraggled ... escapees? Victims?
Both sounded accurate enough, in conjunction with that _name_.
He alighted at the top of the rickety stairway without as much as a sound, even with the armored boots on his feet, and was stepping over the target of his shot before the Shin-Ra trooper gave his final twitch.
It all came back.
The smell of gunpowder and liquid copper, heralded by thunderclaps and the clinking of brass.
Someone around the corner. The faint tinge of weapon oil, the sound of cloth against body armor.
Fast, efficient motion. Giving in to what the senses said, not what the mind could discern from them, and acting without thought.
Foot forward, a normal step with a slight twist. Lean into the turn, keeping momentum.
Always keep momentum.
Lead with the left, knock the gunbarrel aside. Press forward with the right, jabbing the extension of the hand until you feel resistance ...
... the bullet and muzzle gases tore through even the ballistic cloth, the only sound made by the discharge being muffled by flesh. The body falling back with the lead projectile coming out and pulling on it when the ballistic cloth kept it from penetrating back _out_.
He yanked the submachine-gun from the collapsing dead man, not even noticing when the bronze claws that adorned his left hand left deep gouges in the weapon's surface.
Vincent Valentine halted, and waited, in the room beyond, taking the anger and putting it away for later use.
Anger at the world, anger at the madman, and anger at himself.
Now that it had been awakened, though, it would not be put back wholly.
Restrained, yes. Delayed, yes.
Buried underneath the veil of apathy again?
No.
Not bloody likely.
Well, perhaps just bloody.
Some of the oldest life lessons he'd ever learned, all focused on one thing, came back to him.
When wronged, you don't get back at the person who wronged you. You get even with them.
Footsteps, staggering slightly with added weight and drag, could be heard coming up the stairs.
'Enemy of my enemy ...'
Red eyes glowed faintly in the gloom, the heralds of things to come.
***
High in the Nibel mountains, a lone pebble rested.
Shuddered slightly as the wind momentarily shifted.
Teetered.
And lost balance ...
... rolling downhill.
***
END first verse
---
---
Midgar
in front of the Shin-Ra Building
How something that big could be that quick and agile, he had no idea.
That he was seeing it was proof enough that it was possible, though, so the blond man merely swore, fighting the breech and loading mechanism of his weapon for a moment before clearing the jam with a few deft touches and a well applied slam of the weapon's butt into the ground.
Shin-Ra firearms were durable as all get-out - in the long run, it was actually cheaper to make them that way - but that also applied to their various quirks. If one of the Type-9 assault rifles went and jammed on you, you had to be pretty forceful about clearing said jam.
Fortunately, Cloud Stife had a lot of practice when it came to that.
_Un_fortunately, he'd committed a slight miscalculation in relying on old instincts in the there and then, as the jam was not only cleared ... the gun nearly came apart in his hands because he'd been a little too forceful.
In some ways, it was having to adapt to that sort of strength and other changes wrought on him by Hojo that had been the hardest part of these past months.
More acute senses meaning he was jumping at shadows, augmented strength that he needed to watch himself all the more ...
... sadly, things had gone and gotten screwed up in the least opportune moment - as they are wont to do.
Seeing the monster, and feeling a seemingly irrational hatred filling him at the sight.
One of the tentacles had reached up, winding its way forward in a motion so fast that the eye could barely follow, and swatted Valentine from its 'shoulders', the crimson clad form flying through the now window-less main entrance of the Shin-Ra Building's foyer.
Cloud could see the red-eyed man's clawed gauntlet rip free of the thing's body, black and green ichor spraying from the wound as it continued its motion, spinning around nearly entirely to face his position ...
Worst possible thing. Worst possible moment.
'Story of my life.'
Lightning flashed among the darkness of the churning skyscape overhead.
The blond man's right hand went up and across his body, and his left straightened to point at his deformed foe. The fingers of his right hand came to rest on the Lightning Materia set into his shoulder guard.
***
Glass crunched underneath as he rolled, tumbled, and finally screeched to a halt. The searing heat in his left arm was a familiar sensation, not to mean that it was a welcome one.
Vincent yanked the claws of his metal gauntlet from the paved ground of the foyer, ignoring the friction heat that was already bleeding off it as he'd ignored the sickly black slime that those same claws had drawn from his attacker.
The same sickly black slime that was smoking as it ate through the gun he'd cast aside. Despite his physiology being what it was, he'd not been all too keen on finding out how said substance dealt with organic matter.
It was oddly quiet within the ruined interior, the still swirling smoke giving what had only an hour ago been an admittedly majestic - if tasteless - decor an air of surreality.
If it weren't for the bodies and bodily fluids scattered and splattered across the ground and reception desks, it'd have looked like and oversized and overpriced avantgarde art display.
The moment was broken, senses of all those who were in the area whited out by the peal and light.
The sickly green and mottled yellow carapace wreaking havoc right outside jerked, shuddered, and convulsed as bolts of lightning rained down onto it - cumulative effect of the storm's natural workings, and will augmented through Materia.
Thunder more than rolled as shockwaves of displaced superheated air blasted outwards, the temperature of the epicenter and immediate surrounds charring ground's surface.
Glass shards were thrown into the air again, and the display windows that adorned the storefronts in the Shin-Ra Building's ground floor proper cracked and caved at the momentary pressure increase.
Vincent's crimson cloak snapped and billowed as the man himself managed to retain his balance, despite his armored boots skidding on the ground as he slid backwards due to the concussive force.
***
Zack was first to regain his footing.
The Turks may have been self-trained, for the most part, but they were also superbly capable - that was what got them recruited in the first place. Situational awareness, split second decision making ability, physical and mental fortitude and a score of other traits were prerequisites.
For all of that, though, they were only human.
A SOLDIER was not, technically, different in that regard ... but even a Third Class member of that particular exclusive club was augmented to levels of performance that outclassed what regular humans were capable of by default. Be it by the Mako overload in their cells, the Jenova factor, or a combination of the two.
Zack had been a First Class ranked SOLDIER before the incident five years ago. Hojo's treatment afterward, aimed in part at further refining the process, had made him just a little bit better in some ways, than the first exposure had.
Meaning he had a second's worth of lead on Tseng, not counting the time it would take for un-augmented eyes to adjust to the aftereffects of the lightning strike right outside.
In combat conditions, it was pretty much equal to an eternity.
Perhaps fortunately for the somewhat concussed and still mostly blind and deafened Turk, a bit of a change of priorities had taken place during that little stretch of time.
Asked later, Zack couldn't really put his finger on how he'd managed to momentarily tell the inhuman _thing_ in front of the building was who it was. He wouldn't have changed his reaction even in retrospect, though.
Hefting his huge blade firmly, he wasted no time for thought before charging, taking the long flight of stairs he and Tseng had been thrown up and onto the top of by the concussive wave in a single leap.
Accompanied by short, viciously accurate burst from Valentine - who'd picked up one of the discarded Shin-Ra grunts' assault rifles and was making good use of it - on the inside and Cloud on the outside which tore into his target, keeping it off balance, he was soon close enough to brace himself, transfer what momentum he'd built up with the run into his arms, and swing ...
***
FINAL FANTASY 7:
Insomnia
***
... second verse ...
... shadows and dust ...
One month ago,
on another continent altogether
Most thought of it as obsolete, not-to-be-believed hocus pocus.
Who wouldn't, in an age of technology and a sort of magic that was refined, researched, and made - if not commonplace, then at least 'common'.
The days of the Ancients were long past, and the true mages and wise-men were long gone as well.
Those left ...
... he himself had no illusions of being anything more than a dabbler.
He researched, questioned, and experimented a bit with what had been found gathering dust between the pages of old tomes and partially incoherent verbal histories.
Still, these little tricks were, in their own way, more impressive than the massive discharges of refined Mako energy that were what most perceived as magic these days.
After all, there was a reason beyond the sanctity of Mako as to why the Ancients had not employed this so called 'modern' way.
It wasn't a visible light that flared up, gently at first, then rising in intensity, from the figure that lay on the bed in front of him.
Tracing limbs, twisting through the torso, the netting of light trailed and tranced its was along and around the whole of the body ...
The boy was a mess.
A sort of balance had been reached - if it hadn't, then he would have simply ceased, not merely 'died' - but it was hardly one he could consider natural. Rather, it was a collection of imbalances so precariously ordered and shifting in such a way that, somehow, it managed to persevere.
There were flows and eddies to the energy streamers, blocks, blanks spots, and other peculiarities that would either fade in time or remain with him forever. It did not seem to be affecting him adversely _at the moment_ though.
How that would change, he couldn't tell.
He could, however, nudge a bit here and there, trying to bring what little corrections he was certain of into the equation.
It was their way.
Those who came to Cosmo Canyon seeking help had always been welcome to it.
Despite the turmoil of recent days, this well worn routine helped ease his worries.
'Follow your beliefs, even in a world become corrupt.'
Bugenhagen continued his work.
***
The winds whispered.
It hadn't been something he'd noticed until well into the day, but when he had it was impossible to ignore.
Not that he could make any sense of what they were whispering about. For some reason, despite it not appearing to be any sort of gibberish, whatever words they carried were ones he couldn't hear ...
Echoing among the cliffs, tinted with the reddish dust from the stones, they just _were_. Not in a way that asked to be defined, or made him uneasy.
Zack supposed they were as much part of the surrounds as the landscape, the village, and the ever-burning light of the center of local folklore - the so called Cosmo Candle.
The light danced almost hypnotically before him, seeming to pulse to some unseen beat that was, if rumor were to be believed, the pulse of the planet itself.
It had taken them almost two weeks to get this far, with most of that time having been sacrificed to hiding away from Shin-Ra sweeps of the area.
Fortunately, Nibelheim and Cosmo Canyon were both fairly remote, and both he and Valentine had more than enough knowledge on matters of traveling covertly to avoid pursuit.
None of them had expected that they'd arrive at the village when a Shin-Ra military detail, Turks in command and all, was just leaving. Least of all the Shin-Ra, apparently.
A SOLDIER was, reputedly, a force of nature more than a combatant. A First Class more so than others. Still, Zack hadn't really put himself to the test since their escape from Nibelheim, and that one night was less a coherent memory and more a string of desperate images, no matter what he tried to tell himself.
He was more than up to his previous level of performance where pure power was concerned, at least according to the one Shin-Ra assault/transport chopper he'd gone after - or should that be, gone through? Literally.
Not that they'd intended to fight. They'd have been fully happy with not being noticed - which worked out just fine - but their hand was forced.
A large, orange-red feline beast being hauled away by Shin-Ra troops was worth notice in any circumstances. That in itself hadn't been motivation enough. However, when their ears ... well, more Valentine's than his, really - Zack's senses were enhanced to impressive levels, yes, but not to that extreme an extent - caught the supposed 'animal', in between trying to get loose, shouting for its grandfather, and they saw the soldiers keeping some of the village's inhabitants under guard ...
In normal circumstances, one to fifteen odds were suicide. That's what he and Valentine had encountered, though not including the two attack helicopters and the one transport VTOL.
He remembered saying as much.
Vincent's reply had been simple, to the point, and uncannily accurate.
"Don't think of it as being outnumbered," the red-eyed man had said. "Think of it as being in a target-rich environment."
A short trio of bursts from the Ice Materia Valentine had picked up on their way out of Nibelheim had immobilized the choppers' rotors for a brief while. Long enough, though, that when they'd been thawed - either by nature, or their own heating systems - one was a shattered wreck, the other rid of a pilot, and the last devoid of its tail assembly.
When the felinoid they'd caged was loosed, by virtue of the gunman shooting out the locks, things went from just a blitz to pure and simple slaughter.
Unfortunately, this left a clear and simple mark of where they'd been - Shin-Ra would eventually notice the lack of their retrieval team, and somebody with half a brain-cell would add two and two together.
Though there was a good side to it, as well. The abovementioned 'grandfather', one of the elders of the village, was a very knowledgeable man, and in thanks for his 'grandson's' freedom he'd offered to do what he could for their insensate companion.
Cloud, who hadn't snapped out of his catatonia since that one time back in the Mansion of their collective nightmares when he'd likely saved Zack's proverbial bacon, was getting better. Slowly, though.
Which was another thing that had forced a change in plans. Originally, they'd been intending to pick up a new Mako cell for the truck they'd 'liberated' on their way out of Nibelheim and get on the road as soon as they were able to.
Things weren't going to be quite so simple with the way things stood now, though the Shin-Ra transport chopper hadn't been damaged in the exchange and was a bit of a leg up from their badly battered means of travel.
It would let them make up the time they'd been letting tick by waiting for Cloud, but the simple reason for that was the fact that û although Valentine admitted to having flown a helicopter before, his knowledge was more than just a little dated, and he'd been the first to admit that, at the time, he didn't have the handicap of his left hand and forearm being quite so unwieldy. Zack could drive, true, but the SOLDIER realized it was Cloud among the three of them whom he remembered as having an uncanny ability with any sort of vehicle. Possibly due to the fact that his motion sickness didn't manifest when he was the one doing the driving, so he'd learned to handle pretty much anything he'd ever have the remotest chance of using. That, if nothing else, had been his ticket into the Shin-Ra military, though it hadn't been enough to qualify him for SOLDIER.
Everything else aside, though, even if they were to somehow leave tomorrow, the one place he wanted to go was the one place he couldn't show his face in.
There was no doubt that Shin-Ra had their dossiers, or at least his and Cloud's - the first thing they'd do would be to put somebody to wait for him in his old hometown.
He'd left Gongaga as young as Cloud had been when leaving Nibelheim, adventure and the great wide world on his mind. The path had him ending up in SOLDIER, and he'd made no more than two brief visits back home after that happened. Not that he hadn't meant to make more, but something had always seemed to detain him.
But from what he'd been hearing about the history of the last five years, he wouldn't get much of a chance now either. Perhaps not ever. The village had gone through a momentary boom of activity when the Mako Reactor there was commissioned. Then a more literal boom happened, when said reactor malfunctioned and took most of his hometown with it when it blew.
These days, the place of his childhood memories was no more than a loose gathering of those who refused to surrender to the catastrophe, living off selling what they could salvage from both the surrounds and the reactor wreck ...
He didn't even know if his family still lived. It was all he could do to restrain himself to inactivity, and not take off to see for himself what had happened ... and likely fall right into waiting Shin-Ra hands again.
Zack sat, watching the ever burning flame of the Cosmo Candle which flickered in the center of the town.
Another day of peace and quiet.
Sometimes, nothing seemed like more of a curse.
***
Two weeks later
several hundred feet above the Junon plains
Rotor blades cut through rain filled air, all but inaudible among the splattering of falling water.
Inaudible, that is, to anything at a distance from the chopper.
Inside was a different story.
The H79 Cicada was fast, efficient, and had a more than adequate load capacity. Unfortunately for those having to use them, their designers had been the same people who'd come up with the Gelinka transports.
Hallmarks of Shin-Ra's air fleet, they were big, long ranged, but also awkward looking and not exactly made with stealth in mind. There was no real point, what with the lack of opposing forces to pose any sort of threat to that avenue of the company's global supremacy.
The Cicada was widely enough used that actual defensive capability was something that had been incorporated into the design fairly early on. The hull, cockpit and rotors could shrug off small-arms fire, and four hardpoints on the outriggers made for enough space for either weapons of its own, or a variety of other attachments ranging from extra fuel pods to observation equipment.
But as soon as you got on, you realized that passenger comfort hadn't been on the design specs. When you added in the rain and thunder, the ride became not only downright nasty but hair-raising as well.
The constant ping of the sensor station, its screen blinking with data transmitted from the underslung radar pod, was a sligth comfort û it meant that they weren't too likely to crash, after all û but after hours in the air it had become nerve wracking in its own right.
"How much longer?!" and one still had to shout to get through the din of the rain and rotors, even with the isolated earphones those inside were issued as standard gear.
"Quarter of an hour, best time," came from the phones as the pilot replied.
This, however, was not the answer the man at the sensor station expected, and he cursed briefly but viciously as a dot that they'd been chasing after disappeared from the display.
"Move, damn you," he spat at the shuddering machine around him. Tseng would have his hide if they messed this up.
***
Midgar,
several hours later
"Unfortunate," the Head of the Investigation Division of the General Affairs Department of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, also known as the Turks, leaned back in his chair shuffled the file folders on top of his desk out of the way for the moment.
He muted the receiver for a moment, heaved a heavy sigh, and turned it back on.
"Check with the Junon division again," he instructed the person on the other end.
There was a brief pause.
"Of course they missed something," he said, fingertips of one hand tapping on the wood of his desktop irritably. "Why do I even need to _tell_ you to do this? Leave Rude with two others and the grunts, on the off chance of a double feint, and get yourself back there to ask questions. Next time you call me, I'll be expecting you to tell me what was missed, and just where they've gone while you've been off gallivanting in the rain like a three year old. Did I make myself understood, Reno?"
Another brief pause.
"... yes," the man's tone was now noticeably strained. "This means no holiday bonus. Live with it."
He put the phone back onto its cradle, firmly, ignoring the loud protests coming from the other end.
Sometimes Tseng wondered why in the world someone like Reno hadn't been demoted already, and was taking up his valuable time with inane chit-chat that only led to commands which were both superfluous and should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain-cell.
Then he remembered that the infuriating redhead's aptness in certain fields compensated for those deficiencies. Though barely.
Sadly, they were already stretched thin - both by the search and by some bizarre dispatch of Professor Hojo's that had somehow gotten approved by the Chairman. They didn't even know what they were on the lookout for, and Hojo had been strutting around looking as smug as a pig in the muck for the better part of the last month, which was even harder to deal with than Reno's occasional gaffe and frequent attitude problems.
'Well,' he thought sardonically, 'at least we know what happened to the retrieval team sent to the Canyon.'
The chopper had come down in Junon yesterday, then taken off again before its registration number managed to ring any bells ... and with a full tank, to boot. Junon security had some serious explaining to do for letting this happen. By the time they'd caught on that the helicopter had belonged to a missing field operations team and had no right to be near Junon, much less that continent altogether, it was a dwindling speck on the horizon.
Reno _had_ shown initiative, then, since he and Rude had only just arrived when the airport turned into one frantic beehive of blame-shifting. They and their people commandeered a chopper themselves, strapped on a pair of tanks and a recon pod, and went in pursuit ...
... with the weather as it was, though, thing hadn't gone very well. The chopper had made it to its apparent destination before they could force it down, and was now cooling rotors in Fort Condor. Which, unfortunately, was currently occupied by a militant anti-Shin-Ra faction and under siege.
Adding insult to injury, and hour later an inside man of theirs called in, and - surprise, surprise - nobody on board of the chopper even resembled the two escapees, or their potential ally.
Meaning that, for all intents and purposes - at least with their current information, their targets could have just as well dissolved into thin air somewhere between the Western Continent and Junon without anyone being the wiser.
Tseng rubbed his forehead in exasperation.
Sometimes, this job really wasn't what it was cracked up to be.
***
Midgar Plains,
several days later
The ATV rolled to a stop, no dust trailing since the soil hadn't really had chance to absorb the recent rainfall quite yet.
It was an old-ish vehicle, and at first glance it had seen better days. Or perhaps even better decades. Still, everything that counted worked more than well enough, and the Mako fuel cells it ran off were plentiful enough to last it even a bit past their destination.
In addition to that, there was more than enough room inside - it had been meant for transportation of squads of up to twenty armed and armored troops, after all - that the three could drive in turns without much need for a stopover anywhere along the way.
Not that there were many places to do so.
The hatch opened, and one of the passengers levered himself out.
Desolate landscape greeted him, stretching all around ... it was, in truth, the first time he'd seen the scope of what Shin-Ra was doing. Both sides of the coin.
In the distance, the great agglomeration lay, like the ground zero of all this emptiness. Steel, glass, plastic, and Mako. Always Mako. Eight reactors glowing with emerald light, set around the circumference of the city.
Glorious and terrible at the same time.
Vincent had known the potential results of this kind of level of Mako usage, but knowing and seeing were often two different things. Back then, it had been something to worry about in the future. Cheap and available electric power was something to be pursued at all costs ... and if Shin-Ra managed to put everyone else out of business in the process, so much the better.
Not so now.
He shook his head, chasing away the grim thoughts ... ironically, he did so with thoughts grimmer still.
There was a sort of nervous energy he'd noticed, flowing through his veins over the past few days, with the realization that Hojo was finally coming into his reach.
He realized he was obsessed. Had been for a long time, in fact. Despite that, he also knew that if he stopped now, it wasn't likely he'd ever receive the needed motivation to pick himself back up again.
The need to keep moving which he'd slowly realized was something that had been instinctively grasped the moment he'd shot awake that night in Nibelheim, several months ago.
Not doing so would mean giving up to the futility of it all, and in spite of just how tempting that was there was a faint fragment deep inside of him that would not, could not allow that to happen.
The fragment that had kept him alive despite all odds, through Hojo's experiments, through the realization that his world - such as it had been - was irrevocably gone into the flow of time.
The fragment that had him shake off his brooding for a few crucial minutes here and there, as he worked to keep the three of them out of Shin-Ra hands.
Times, it seemed, could change all they wanted to. Human nature is far slower in that regard.
Both Zack and Cloud had been soldiers, and despite a grasp of tactics and strategy they both thought in certain ways.
Vincent, though, didn't. As the old - he supposed that now it was such, at least - saying went, 'once a Turk, always a Turk'.
They had never been simple hatchetmen, rumors to the contrary. Misdirection, obfuscation, espionage, sabotage, assassination ... those tasks required a degree of subtlety and familiarity with basic human nature that only practice could bring. And, despite all the rust he'd accumulated over the years of idleness, he'd been one of the best.
Getting rid of the helicopter had been almost embarrassingly easy; using it to set up a distraction had come naturally, by simple virtue of knowing who and where to sell to; the ATV they'd snatched from its way to the repair yard, for - off all the things - a new paint job.
He shook the musings off, leaping from the vehicle even as it backed into a shallow but wide gouge that was around fifty meters in length. Not quite enough to conceal the ATV on its own, but with the aid of the masking gear it still carried, that shouldn't be too hard to facilitate.
The other two former Shin-Ra 'employees' joined him in his work, and soon where there had once been an angular and armored top of a ATV hull there was a low, though substantial, mound of cracked and chipped rocks that didn't look at all out of place in these desolate environs.
Zack joined him first, the huge sword strapped to his back and his carry-on slung over one shoulder.
"Second thoughts?" Cloud asked, when he'd retrieved his own pack and gear from the hidden ATV.
Vincent gave him a dry look.
"Right, stupid question," the blond muttered.
Later would come. It always did. But there and then, there was no need to think of that. Despite the loss and hardship suffered, there was a goal in front of him. One he'd reach, or die trying.
There and then, for the first time in a long while, Vincent Valentine felt a spark. The shadow of a memory of what it meant to be alive.
***
END second verse
---
tbc
-Griever
ETA:editsu