Thank you for being so patient with me. I really need to try to get these chapters out faster. Enjoy chapter 4 of Chaos Rising.
Lightning, Vanille, and Fang's weapons were taken from them and they were roughly shoved into the back of an armored truck. Lightning saw the word Shadowfox stamped on the step into the back. The truck was a sealed case, no windows at all, just a steel container with a bench in the middle which they quietly sat on to wait for whatever was coming. They felt the truck rumble to life and start out of what Lightning assumed was Midgar, she wasn't certain but from the stories she heard the ruins couldn't be anything else. The truck ride was not very long and just as Fang said she was getting comfortable, the doors opened and soldiers climbed in to roughly get the Pulsians moving. Once out of the truck, the three women from Gran Pulse saw that they were in a sort of military base.
There were several identical trucks parked neatly around the one they climbed out of, at the far end of the base there was a large number of the scorpion robots neatly arranged and not moving. Lightning assumed that to be the maintenance area for the robots. Among the large number of small buildings, there were soldiers patrolling, doing exercises, and wandering about. The three women alien to Gaia saw that there were some soldiers with odd looking metal backpacks that looked like they could unfold and had cords connected to the strange looking guns they were holding. Some other soldiers had similar backpacks but they had a steel frame along their body, Lightning recognized it as a old style exoskeletal powerframe that the Sanctum had decades ago, and very large swords with multiple handles in the gargantuan blades. A hum in the air made Lightning look up and she saw someone with the strange gun and large skeletal metal wings descend and land softly, the wings folded and compacted until they formed the odd looking backpack other soldiers had. The three Pulsians were not impressed, as the Sanctum had jetpacks for a long time.
Lightning, Fang and Vanille were taken to a small building with no windows. Inside there was a holding cell to one side and three doors at the other side. Lightning immediately knew this building was used for interrogation. The three of them were ushered into one of the interrogation rooms and sat at the table inside, the soldiers that guided them took position around the room. A few minutes later the door banged open.
"What's going on here?" they heard a man bark at them. It was actually to the soldiers around the three.
"Sir! We caught these three inside the Midgar perimeter." The squad leader reply.
"What?" the blonde superior ranked soldier asked, he obviously couldn't believe what he heard then turned his gaze onto the three women "What kind of moron would break into the Midgar ruins?" All three were offended by that "What were you three doing inside a restricted zone anyways? Midgar is fenced off for a reason!"
Lightning was already sick of this soldier. Him and his superiority complex. She had several choice words for him but decided against using them. Wanting to avoid further trouble with the authorities of a foreign world. But she had no idea what to say, what would one say to an authority figure of a world they had never seen before.
"We wanted a look a' the Shinra building." Fang reply with a smile. The soldier's already confused stare turned into bewilderment.
"You're kidding right? Why in the hell would you go into a hazardous area for that?"
Fang shrugged "It's fun t' piss off bastards like you."
"Why you little bitch," The blonde soldier grabbed Fang's shirt and hauled her to her feet "Care to repeat that?"
"Lieutenant Almasy!" Another man barked, the women looked over and saw a tall pale man with long black hair pulled into a loose ponytail, sunglasses, and a tidy suit "You are dismissed." The blonde soldier turned his glare to the man and his glare vanished. He calmly and gently released Fang.
"Yes sir!" the lieutenant gave a salute and left the room. The man in the suit glanced at the other soldiers and they followed the lieutenant, closing the door behind them.
"Sorry about him," The man in the suit said. His voice was rough and raspy, as if he had routinely gargled gravel for a period of time "I have your weapons waiting in my car." He looked at the three women just staring at him "I'm supposed to give you three a ride to our field HQ. So let's get moving."
He turned and left the room, leading the three women outside to a wide four door black car with a long hood and trunk. It was parked haphazardly in front of the interrogation building which would prevent most attempts at boxing it in, Lightning observed. She took a moment to examine the vehicle. It's wheels were mostly metal with a reinforced rubber tread, it had nearly a foot of space between it's belly and the ground, the grill was almost entirely covered but she knew the airflow was exceptional, the headlights had steel cages over them, and the windows were tinted so dark she couldn't see inside. The suited man pushed a button on a small keychain remote and the doors popped open letting Lightning see just how thick the doors and windows were. The vehicle looked like a regular black luxury town car but it was built like a tank.
Fang and Vanille claimed the back seat leaving the passenger seat to Lightning, as she did not want to squeeze between the two native Pulsians. As she got into the car, the suited man buckled his seatbelt and ran his left hand up the left side of the steering wheel, stopping at the ten o'clock position, and placed his right hand on the shifter. Lightning caught a glimpse of a few buttons on the back of the steering wheel and on the shifter, right under the suited man's gloved fingers. The car roared to life and settled into a low rumble.
"Seventh Heaven." The man said and a light blue display appeared on the windshield. It had a distance and time estimation just above the dashboard and near the top of the windshield it said 'Reverse' in large capital letters.
The man turned the car around and the windshield displayed arrows in such a way that made it look like they were on the ground ahead of the car. Lightning was rather impressed by the display. As they left the WRO base behind Lightning looked back to Fang and Vanille who had the same expression as Lightning, a questioning one. Before the pinkette could ask anything, the suited man spoke.
"The gate in Midgar fell from the sky about a year ago and Cie'th have been pouring out of it since then. Fortunately we were able to push them back before it became too serious a threat. Genesis used his ability to use the corrupt lifestream to travel between Gran Pulse and Gaia and work with us, investigating the gate you came through. We lost contact with him three months ago but he left a note telling us when you would arrive and asking us to tell you the date, July thirteenth." they were approaching the border of Midgar soon after his speech, there was a stretch of the desert like badlands then the city of Edge.
So many questions went through the minds of the three from Gran Pulse and Vanille gave voice to the most pressing one "Who's 'we'?"
"A select handful of people Genesis trusted and I'm sure I don't need to tell you how important that is." the man did have a point "However, since the public knows Genesis to be dead, we can't let you carry his sword out in the open. Some would react badly to seeing it." It was obvious his statement was aimed at Vanille.
"So Genny knew wha' was happenin' fer a year." Fang chuckled "Guy liked his secrets."
"Why wouldn't he tell us about this though?" Lightning motioned to the window, meaning Gaia "We could have helped him out. I mean, after what we went through on Cocoon."
"Maybe he wanted to figure out where the gate came from first." Vanille suggested.
"He did say he wanted to know if the gate was connected to Jenova or the fal'Cie before calling in help." the suited man reply.
"Who are you anyways?" Fang asked, rather rudely. The man huffed in amusement.
"Genesis warned us about you Fang."
"Gonna answer the question?"
"Director of the Turks, Vincent Valentine." he stated just as they entered Edge, as said by the large roadside sign.
As the car rolled through an eerily silent part of Edge the three women saw vehicles pushed to the sides of the road, damaged and burned out buildings, and graffiti on just about every large intact wall. Vincent told the three from Gran Pulse that when the Cie'th initially attacked, they caused havoc in the city making it a war zone and pushing the border of Edge back a long way. Once the Cie'th were finally pushed back into Midgar, half of Edge had already evacuated and refused to return to the city. The story helped pass the time but as Vincent spoke they all spotted a large billboard that said 'JOIN THE W.R.O!' but the word JOIN had FUCK spray painted over it.
"Things not going well for the WRO?" Lightning asked, with a hint of venom in her tone.
"Many people disagree with the WRO's choice of making a contract with Shinra for weapons. Weapons we desperately needed to combat the Cie'th." Vincent said flatly.
"Made a deal with the devil to protect the world." Lightning said back.
"That's one way to look at it." Vincent said back.
The car approached a large wall running along a road through the city, a large door in the wall opened to allow the car through. Beyond the wall, the actual city of Edge was a depressing sight to the three from Gran Pulse, the entire city was dull, gray, and brown from dirt. Everything was made of concrete and steel making the entire city feel like a prison complex to Lightning. Even the sky was overcast and only added to the depressing grayscale colors of the city, with the exception of the beige WRO troops and occasional flash of red which marked WRO officers. There were banners and billboards about the WRO in many places but each one had graffiti on it cursing them. Fang and Vanille noticed the most unsettling thing about Edge while Lightning examined the buildings. There were no plants in Edge. None at all, not one speck of natural green. Vanille asked about the lack of plants and Vincent offered a brief explanation of how the Mako Reactors had killed the land. But it was healing. Slowly, but it is healing.
Vincent swung his car into a parking spot in front of a building with a sign that read 7th Heaven. The vehicle fell silent as he turned it off and motioned for the three to get out. Lightning immediately saw bright large red words SHINRA SLUT spray painted across the front of the building, across the door and front window. Vincent didn't take any notice of the graffiti and walked to the rear of the car, opening the trunk and retrieving Fang's folded up spear and Lightning's gunblade. He closed the trunk and said a quick apology about keeping Rapier away from Vanille as he approached and entered the building, removing his sunglasses, the three women tailing him.
At first glance, it was obvious that 7th Heaven was a bar, expectedly devoid of activity as it seemed too early in the day for a bar to be busy. That said, there was still a fair amount of patrons for early in the day. Recalling the stories of what happened to Gaia from Sephiroth and Genesis, Lightning couldn't blame some of the people for wanting to spend their day in a drunken haze. Vincent motioned for the three to follow him up the counter, where a rather small redheaded girl was busy cleaning glasses.
"Shelke." Vincent said, getting the girl's attention "Can you get Tifa?" the girl nodded and went through the door leading to the bar's kitchen.
"Isn't she a little young to be working in a bar?" Lightning asked Vincent.
"She's twenty-four, just small for her age." Vincent reply casually.
"Doesn' look a day over fifteen." Fang commented.
The four stood awkwardly for several minutes before Shelke returned and said Tifa would be down had to wait a while longer for Tifa, long enough for Lightning to observe Shelke finish washing the glasses and deliver the next round of drinks to an occupied table. One of the four in the bar. Finally the door to the kitchen opened again and through it came a woman with long dark hair and wearing a black vest, the three Pulsians had not looked in time to see the rest of her outfit. But they remembered her from that trial Minerva put them through during their l'Cie journey.
"Sorry Vincent, Aerith was being a fuss." Tifa swept her gaze over the three flanking her friend and she smirked "Three women now? Seriously, how do you do it?" Fang chuckled at the joke.
"Tifa, it's July thirteenth. These are the three." Vincent stated, Tifa's smirk faded into a look of realization. Lightning was getting frustrated with their cryptic messages.
"Tifa Lockheart, " She said as she reached over the counter to shake the Pulsians hands, none of them missed the gold band on her ring finger "You must be Lightning, Vanille, and Fang." she said as she shook each of their respective hands "Genesis told us about you."
"Well I'm glad you were given a heads up about all of this." Lightning grumbled in response to Tifa's warm welcome.
"You mean-?"
"Genny didn't tell us anything about what's goin' on." Fang reply, cutting off Tifa.
Vincent and Tifa shared a look at Fang's statement. The three from Pulse shared a look after seeing the other two glance at each other.
"So why is today so special?" Vanille asked.
A siren started blaring outside the bar before anyone could respond. Vincent reached into his coat and pulled out a handgun, a regular military grade clip fed handgun. Tifa pulled black leather gloves and an armlet of sorts with several green crystalline orbs in it out of a pocket, slipped them on, and rounded the bar to head outside. As the dark haired woman came around, the three from Pulse were surprised. Tifa was wearing knee length black shorts that had a waist cape and apron-like front panel attached, but that wasn't the surprise. They were surprised by Tifa's mechanical right leg, at least from the knee down as they couldn't see the upper part of her leg. Shelke was on their heels a moment later, with two weapons that looked like batons with vicious handguards linked by some manner of cable attached to the end of both hilts. The former l'Cie drew their weapons and followed the three outside, Fang telling Vanille to stay inside as she lacked a weapon.
They were met with the sight of several soldiers pouring into the area with vehicles that had large quad-guns mounted on them. All the vehicles with mounted guns deployed feet to hold them steady and their guns pointed to the sky in the direction of Midgar. Lightning followed where they
were aiming and saw a dark cloud approaching. She knew if her hunch was right, and she had no reason to doubt it at this point, the dark cloud was all flying Cie'th. Minutes of watching the swarm approach slipped by and the alarm sirens fell silent once the WRO decided they had given the populace enough warning.
"Cover your ears." Vincent told the three women.
Moments later, the massive mounted guns thundered to life. Large empty shells rained down to the ground as tiny explosions peppered the air, killing the flying Cie'th by the dozens. The former l'Cie watched in wonder as the WRO guns put the vast majority of the highly advanced former Sanctum equipment to shame. Guns all over the city fired up into the sky reducing the cloud of Cie'th down to specks all over the sky, down to hundreds from thousands or more. The guns fired nonstop for minutes on end, stopping only to reload as large robot scorpions were lead into the area by soldiers with the exoskeletal suits and others with the wingpacks. One WRO soldier, a young man with brown hair ran over to Vincent and Tifa from the vehicle with the gun, carefully stepping around the scattered shells.
"Sir!" He yelled to be heard over the large quad-barreled flak cannon "The guns are almost out of ammo!" Lightning could tell the young man was starting to panic and concluded he must be a new recruit.
"Stay calm private!" Vincent commanded him.
"Stay here with us and you'll be fine!" Tifa told him. A second later, the large gun fell silent followed by all the turrets in Edge going quiet.
"Here they come." Vincent stated as the Cie'th scream could be heard far above them.
The horde of flying Cie'th descended on the city below mindlessly aiming to kill. After a year of fighting them the WRO had learned much about the Cie'th and just how mindless they were and they used that to their advantage. They were able to effectively control the attention and movements of the Cie'th with minimum casualties. More often than not, the few casualties they did have when fighting Cie'th was a new recruit that cracked under the pressure of being in an actual combat zone. But other than those rare events, the WRO was a highly effective and nearly impenetrable defense against the Cie'th. The former l'Cie marveled at the organization and lethal strategy of the squads of the soldiers. What had started as a volunteer militia force had become something that could easily overtake any military force from Cocoon. The people of Gaia had been through so much they had become a hard people that would kill anything that threatened their world further.
The soldiers with the massive swords charged the Cie'th that touched down killing most of the weaker Cie'th in one slash. For those that resisted the massive blades, the soldiers jumped back and did something Lightning couldn't see to make their off hand gain a green mist. They then pulled a smaller, but still large, sword out of the giant blade and jumped back into the fight with the Cie'th that survived. Lightning knew she had seen something similar but was unable to recall when or where. Looking up, the pinkette saw the wingpack soldiers soaring around with the airborne Cie'th firing strange black and white beams out of the guns attached to the wingpacks. The beams created a small eruption when they impacted a Cie'th which would cause whatever targeted limb to be blown off. Lightning wanted to know where they had gotten that kind of technology and flicked her gaze back down the ground to make sure no Cie'th were attempting to ambush her.
Lightning saw Tifa standing in a defensive stance watching and waiting for a Cie'th to approach 7th Heaven from any angle. In contrast, Vincent stood calmly watching the battle unfold as if it was any other day. Only one Cie'th had ignored all the WRO squads luring them into kill boxes and went for the group near 7th Heaven. But as it flew down to attack them, Tifa's armlet started to glow and she launched off the ground with her mechanical leg up at the Cie'th. The martial artist's materia charged fist connected with the Cie'th, making it burst into flame and throwing it back upwards. It faded into the black smoke that all the Cie'th became when they died and Tifa landed with a soft thud from her robotic leg. She turned and headed back to 7th Heaven and Vincent commanded the troops in the area to mop up the area. The three former l'Cie and Shelke followed Tifa back inside the bar. Back inside Tifa lead them through the kitchen to a foyer like room, then up the stairs in the foyer. They heard a baby crying as they entered the apartment over the bar and immediately saw a brown haired teenager in a summer dress holding a crying infant with yellow blond hair, which Tifa ran over to and took.
"Sorry Tifa, the guns woke her up." the teenage girl said.
"I'd be amazed if anyone could sleep through that," Tifa commented as she gently rocked the child "Shh, Aerith, mommy's here." Tifa cooed in an attempt to silence the crying child. Lightning glanced back at Fang and Vanille after learning the little girl's name. The teenager turned to the three from Pulse, gave a sunny smile and held out her hand to shake.
"Marlene Wallace."
Vanille jumped at the chance to meet someone new "Oerba Dia Vanille," the redhead said excitedly as she shook Marlene's hand.
"Oerba Yun Fang," Fang stated as she shook Marlene's hand after Vanille let it go.
"Or just Vanille and Fang," Lightning commented from beside them "Lightning Farron." she said with a nod to Marlene, who returned the nod.
"Nice to meet you, Lightning." the girl said to Lightning, making no effort to initiate physical contact which impressed the pinkette.
Some movement on the other end of the room caught Lightning's attention and she snapped her gaze to it. She spotted another child, possibly about four years old, hiding behind a door frame. Not hiding very well, but enough for Lightning to see they were hiding out of shyness and not fear. The child had dark hair, blue eyes, and plain clothes. Mostly because of their hair, Lightning assumed the child to be another of Tifa's. Marlene noticed the pinkette staring over her shoulder and followed her gaze, noticing the child as well.
"C'mere Zack," Marlene called gently, the little boy hesitantly obeying. But before he reached Marlene and the three former l'Cie he stopped and walked over to his mother and hugged her leg, pressing his face into her thigh. Marlene smiled fondly "He's shy."
"He's adorable," Fang commented "Eh, Sunshine?"
"Yeah, cute." Lightning agreed absent mindedly. She was focused on the little boy, he reminded her of someone but she couldn't think of who exactly.
When Aerith, the blond infant, finally stopped crying all the occupants of the room heard someone climbing the stairs. The door opened shortly after revealing spiky blond hair, shining blue eyes all too similar to the other SOLDIERs the Pulsians knew, a navy blue vest with a black leather pauldron on the left side with a steel wolf head and a black sleeve, black leather gloves, black cargo pants half covered by a waist cape wrapped around the left side, and combat boots. The man that just entered had been about to say something but the words stuck in his throat as he examined the three women. He gingerly stepped into the room examining them but Lightning noticed he was paying closer attention to her and began walking closer to her. She saw his eyes light up with an emotion as his expression changed to shock.
"Cloud, this is-" Tifa started.
She was cut off by shock as Cloud did something Tifa, or Marlene, would never expect of him when it came to a stranger, and most of his friends. Fang and Vanille were just as surprised as Tifa when Cloud threw his arms around Lightning and pulled her into a tight hug. The pinkette was too stunned by the act to push him away and was near horrified by what he said.
"I can't believe it's you, Claire."
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