Chaos fell out of the sky.
Behind him rose clouds of black smoke. Beneath him lay slagged earth. He touched down lightly, shook back his ragged wings, and allowed himself a moment's deep satisfaction.
Deepground had been purged. Its bunkers, laboratories, and training grounds torn to pieces, blasted wide open, exposing their ugly secrets; its denizens slaughtered or scattered, its military and civilians even now being sorted out by the troops of the WRO.
Most gratifying of all, the Restrictors - those soulless, mindless puppets of the alien parasite called Jenova - were dead. He'd snapped their necks himself, grinding their bones to powder in his borrowed hands. Their bodies, he left lying, mute testimony to justice.
He was done here. It was over, but for the mopping up, and that wasn't his task. His host could only take so much, despite his many physical modifications. The human's anger at being so used simmered at the back of his mind. Outrage, indignation, touched with horror and pity, roiled like acid in his stomach. Amused, sated, Chaos gathered himself and fled. He'd earned his rest, and would not be needed again, with any luck, for many millennia.
Left standing in his place, hollowed out and exhausted to the bone, Vincent Valentine dropped to his hands and knees, retched violently, and passed out cold.
ooo
"Found 'im, Chief!"
Veld pushed past the barriers that had been hastily thrown together around the crater formerly known as Deepground. A few thin streamers of smoke still rose lazily, almost transparent in the light of dawn. Skirting the charred, crumbling edges of the pit, he found Tseng, Rude and a couple of WRO personnel beside a man's long, narrow body.
"Yep, that's Valentine." A little of the tension went out of Veld. It had been a very long night.
The WRO medic crouched beside Vincent looked up at Veld, his face pale. "Sir, it...doesn't look good."
Veld got down on one knee, reaching out a gloved hand to brush ash off of Vincent's face. He pushed one eyelid up, exposing the dark red iris; there was no gleam of Chaos' gold.
"Sir," the medic said again. "There's no heartbeat."
Veld laid his flesh hand on Vincent's chest, just over the place where his heart should be.
Beneath his palm, the materia pulsed once, so gently he nearly missed it. Some irrational corner of his mind wondered if Vincent had somehow recognized his touch.
No, of course not. That was nonsense. He rose, brushing the grit from his trouser leg.
"He's to be taken to the WRO medical wing. NOT to the morgue. Give him a regular bed."
"But, sir, he's dead!"
"At the moment, yes, but he'll be fine."
The medic looked at Vincent, at Veld, and finally at Tseng, who merely nodded.
"Just put him in the van," Veld said, as a WRO ambulance rolled up and stopped nearby. "Make sure he's monitored. I want to know the moment he comes to."
He watched as they lifted Vincent onto a gurney and loaded him into the van.
"I assume you intend to debrief him yourself," said Tseng.
"Damn right," said Veld.