Hey, guys! Firstly, I apologize for the delay, and for how short this chapter is :( It just seemed like a good place to end it. Secondly, so many people are reading this fic that it gives me warm fuzzies ^.^ Thanks guys.
Jennypen: And who doesn't love good Axel torture? XD Now we get to see Cloud torture!
NovaCRYSTALLIS: No no no, I love long reviews! They're fun to read :) And as for Cloudy, I love Cloud! I could never knowingly bash him! I am of the mind that he was probably a pretty meek, indecisive young man until something changed in him, so that's how I've been trying to portray him. But we do get to see that change, and we get to find out what Cloud's in store for in this chapter XD And thanks for the well-wishes :) My family and I appreciate them immensely.
Evil StormSister: Hahaha you were very right ^-^ And before I thought I was being vague :P Silly me. I'm glad you enjoyed it all, though! Sorry the fight scene wasn't more descriptive. I just find many fight scenes boring, so I tend to gloss over them. I'll have to watch myself on that from now on ;)
KMSaum: That's exactly what I thought when I wrote it! Lol And you do so much! You've been supportive and put up with me bouncing ideas off of you and the like! And I can't wait for your next update on that FFVIII fic ;)
Again, special thanks to KMSaum for editing and letting me talk out ideas with her. Thanks, dear :)
Squall paced the floor impatiently, every now and then raking a hand through his hair. Would she ever be done?
Getting Lea there had been no easy feat. The portal had opened in the backroom of an old tack shed by the chocobo corral. It looked like it had seen little use in the past few years. At least by the chocobo handlers. Lea, however, had made good use of the space, filling it with supplies, equipment, a sleeping cot, and various uniforms ranging from the castle gardener to Palace Guard.
By the time Squall had gotten him out the front door, he was unconscious and a dead weight in his arms. Squall had managed to carry him halfway across the grounds when Laguna and Irvine had spotted them. Laguna took the wounded man from Squall and sent Irvine to find Aeris. By the time they reached the barracks, Zack had arrived and directed them to his personal suite where Aeris waited with her medical supplies. They placed him on the small dining room table, then Squall, Laguna and Irvine were ushered out to wait in the kitchen area.
Zack and Aeris had been in there with Lea for an hour, at least. Squall's impatience was starting to get the best of him.
"Easy, Squall," Laguna said, placing a hand on his shoulder, but Squall shrugged it off and kept walking. Laguna continued despite Squall's behavior. "I'm sure he'll be alright. Zack said that Aeris is the best in the kingdom."
Zack believed that the sun rose and set on Aeris. Of course he would say she was the best. Squall almost said it aloud, but Zack had picked that moment to walk into the room. Squall tried to get a look inside the room behind the general and just made out a shock of red hair before Zack closed the door.
The brunet rubbed a hand over his face and gave Squall a tired look. "He's stable for now. Aeris said he lost a lot of…of blood. But it's not like she can do a transfusion. She's giving him fluids and has the wound cleaned and bandaged.
"I guess I'm going to have to ask you what happened," he said, walking over to the sink to wash away the strange black blood from his hands.
Squall crossed his arms. "We were looking into that base Sephiroth said he stationed Cloud at. It wasn't a military establishment of any kind."
Zack blinked. "What are you talking about? Of course it is! Sephiroth has been running it for two years!"
"I don't know what he's running over there, but it isn't military. When we got inside, we were ambushed by Xehanort and his crew. They said we could either volunteer for their sick experiments or die. We managed to get out, but not before Lea got stabbed."
Zack stepped over to a chair next to Irvine and sat down hard. "Sephiroth's been lying to me?" he asked no one in particular. Squall inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to know that Zack had nothing to do with Sephiroth's misdeeds. Zack's eyes refocused on Squall. "I need to know everything. Including who Lea is and what he has to do with all of this."
Squall ran through everything, from the first time he met Lea up until their arrival on castle grounds. He did his best to preserve Lea's secrets and abnormalities, since he himself couldn't explain them, and out of respect for the wounded man. He also included everything he could remember about Xehanort's control over the Heartless.
"Sounds like Lea's smarter than any of us," Zack commented in a subdued voice. "He knew something was up. I thought that the Mako thing was going to be the end of Sephiroth's obsessions."
"Mako thing?" Squall asked brusquely, pinning Zack with a glare. "What 'Mako thing'?"
Zack seemed to wither a bit under Squall's gaze. "Sephiroth came to me to a few years ago. He said that Xehanort had a method to make soldiers stronger. Back then I was a regular kid, wanting to be the strongest and the best. Naturally, I agreed.
"It worked. I can do all kinds of stuff I couldn't dream of before. I wanted Seph to put all the soldiers through it, but he said the scientists decided it wasn't safe. It was only after that, though, I found out that the use of Mako in soldiers had been outlawed for years."
"Why did he want you to have it?" Squall asked.
"I never could figure it out," Zack shook his head. "I asked Seph about it, but he never has given me a straight answer." He frowned in thought. "Now I'm starting to think it was for Xehanort's experiments."
There was a long, tense pause before Laguna asked, "What can we do?" One of the few things Squall admired about Laguna was that he was a man of action.
"First things first. We have to find Cloud," Zack said, straightening up in his chair. "But this has to be brought to Ansem's attention. I need to speak with him."
"Will that do any good?" Irvine spoke up for the first time, tipping his hat back with his thumb to better view his audience. "From what I gather, he doesn't seem to really oppose Xehanort."
"He shut down the labs about five days ago," Zack informed. "He said that the experiments were getting out of hand. If this is going on, it's without his permission."
"So why don't we just take a taskforce and clean them out down there?" Laguna asked.
"If, by chance, they have the king's sanction, we'll be committing treason," Zack said. "We'll have to go through Ansem."
"Cloud may not have that kind of time," Squall said, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. "Xehanort said something about wanting more subjects for his final test tonight, to discover control over the human heart or something. I'm willing to bet he's using Cloud."
Zack rubbed the back of his neck. "Guess I don't have much choice, then," he sighed. "All right, I'll go call an emergency meeting with Ansem. That doesn't mean he'll see me any time soon, though. Squall, I'm giving you an official order, so if anyone takes the fall for this it'll be me. Take a squad and go down in that basement. Get Cloud, and try not to kill anyone, all right?"
Squall nodded. Of course, that all depended on what they had done to Cloud. He turned to Irvine. "Get Quistis, Zell and Selphie and meet me in the briefing room in twenty minutes."
Irvine nodded, getting to his feet and stepping out.
"I'm going with you," Laguna informed, looking Squall in the eyes.
Squall frowned. "I don't have the time to play babysitter. This is a cut-and-dry extraction mission, and it will go a lot smoother if I don't have to be constantly watching you."
"Is that what you think of me?" Laguna demanded. "Some pampered aristocrat that can't take care of himself?"
"No. I think you're a klutz that would sooner trip and shoot one of our own than an actual enemy," Squall shot back.
Laguna scowled, stepping up to Squall and pulling himself up to his full height. "I'm coming, whether you like it or not," he said, his voice hard and unwavering with authority.
It reminded Squall a lot of himself.
He glowered at the older man. "Have it your way. But don't come crying to me if you get yourself stabbed."
Laguna stared him down a moment more before turning and heading out the door after Irvine.
Squall sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. Laguna was going to get himself killed one of these days, despite how Squall tried to keep him out of the danger. The older man just wasn't cut out for battle.
Zack's voice interrupted his musings. "That could have been handled better."
Squall glared over his hand at his superior. "I realize."
The General just chuckled. "Just as long as you know," he said, propping his feet up on the chair Irvine had vacated.
Squall's gaze shifted to the closed door. "I don't guess there's any way I could see him…?"
"He won't be awake for a long time," Zack said with a shake of his head. "Aeris has him sedated so he rests easier."
Squall nodded and walked toward the door. "I guess I'll see you when this thing is done."
He heard Zack murmur "Godspeed," before he closed the door.
Cloud stared outside the walls of his glass prison, arms wrapped protectively around his broken, aching body. Everywhere he looked around the room he could see cages of black shadows with glowing eyes. All of them had been staring at him hungrily since the moment he had been thrown in here. Occasionally one of the scientists would walk by, sometimes to check some of the charts, sometimes to turn on a faucet that filled the tank with a sickening green vapor. The shadows would stare at them, too, but when they were gone, they once again focused on Cloud.
They made Cloud nervous.
He didn't know how long he had been down here. He remembered he was looking for Squall after he had realized he couldn't remember ever seeing the redheaded officer in his life. He had tracked them down to the old library, but when he didn't see them, turned to leave and tripped over a wrinkle in the rug on the floor. From there he had discovered a trap door that lead into the basement. As he descended the stairs, however, someone came up behind him and knocked him out.
When he came to, he was strapped into a chair with Xehanort hovering over him. They had taken all kinds of measurements and samples and tests. They took blood, pumped foreign substances into his veins, conducted biopsies and gauged his heart rate a hundred times before finally tossing him into the giant, circular tank he now occupied.
Even now one of the scientists came by, turning on the faucet again.
"What are you doing?" Cloud demanded yet again, glaring at the scientist. The silver haired boy looked up at him from beneath his bangs. He was probably younger than Cloud was, with cold eyes and a look of indifference permanently fixed on his face.
Ienzo looked back down at the chart in his hands and wrote something down. "I told you. We're preparing your body for the test," he said, his voice muffled through the glass.
"What test?" Cloud asked quickly, glancing at the vents that poured in the vapor. He knew that soon he'd be too sick to ask questions.
"To find out if two hearts can be combined."
Combined? That was impossible, not to mention pointless. What would someone do with a combined heart?
More importantly, were their efforts going to kill him?
Already the green mist was descending on him, making his eyes and lungs burn and his skin prickle and crawl. Bile rose in his throat as he gagged and tears streamed down his face.
He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be anywhere but here, retching on the floor and feeling sick and hurt, with scientists walking by, pointing and casually conversing to each other while they took notes on Cloud's misery. What right did they have to do this? Why were they doing any of this? It was pointless and unfair, and Cloud didn't want to die here in the name of their stupid experiments.
He tried to think positively. Zack would come find him, or maybe Squall. He tried to remember what Zack had said, about honor and being strong.
"It's okay to cry, just don't let them see you do it."
Well, Cloud had already screwed that one up, but it wasn't really his fault the green mist burned so.
He heard the faint sound of the door to the room opening, but didn't bother to look up. They were probably just here to take more notes on how much he could vomit in ten minutes.
"Cloud Strife."
The voice was a resonating baritone that jarred Cloud from his thoughts with its authority. The blond uncurled himself from his place on the floor, wiping his mouth on his bare arm before he looked up.
Sephiroth's icy green eyes stared back.
"S-sephiroth?" Cloud choked out, staggering to his feet and trying to blink the tears out of his eyes. Was he there to help him? "Get me out of here! We need to tell Ansem what's going on!"
A faint smile touched the General's lips, but it wasn't reassuring. Instead, it sent a shiver down Cloud's spine. "I'm not here to help you, Cloud."
Cloud's muddled mind took a long second to decipher the statement. "You're not?" he asked stupidly.
"I'm merely here to see the puppet that will be given a piece of my heart."
"Puppet?" Cloud repeated. What was he talking about? Combining hearts, and now puppets?
"Don't you see, Cloud?" Sephiroth asked with the same unnerving smile on his face. "Xehanort has given me the means to put a piece of my heart into yours, linking us together. You will be my puppet, to do as I will you to. Though it would have been nicer if they could have found me a more…impressive subject," he said, his eyes casting a disapproving look at Cloud's body, and Cloud immediately wished they had given him more than a pair of white shorts to wear. "Unfortunately, they claimed Zack's heart is too strong for the process. Yours, on the other hand, may just be pliable enough to survive it without shattering."
"You were going to use Zack?" That got Cloud's temper up. That was the only reason he had befriended Zack in the first place? To try to take over his mind?
"Come now, Cloud," Sephiroth chuckled as he began to pace around the tank, making Cloud have to turn constantly to keep him in sight. "We can't have you getting angry. That would only complicate the process. In the future, though, that will make you much easier to manipulate."
"I don't want your heart in mine," he snapped. "I won't be your puppet."
"I'm afraid you won't have any choice," the silver haired General said. "With any luck, the Mako will have your body strong enough to undergo the procedure in a few hours. Hopefully with only minimal damage to your heart."
"Minimal damage? What do you mean?" Cloud demanded. He was sure now that they weren't talking about the physical organ.
"Mako has been known to harm the heart, and sometimes change a person entirely. I'm not too worried about that, though. None of that will matter, once your only desire is to do my bidding. But even if your heart doesn't survive, we should be able to glean all the information we need to perfect the next puppet before it shatters."
Cloud's breathing stopped. They were going to kill him after all. Maybe not physically, but this…this would destroy his very soul. "I won't do it!" he screamed, smashing his fist against the wall. It didn't give in the least. He hit it again and again, the blows not doing damage to the glass or his own hands, but Cloud kept hitting. He couldn't just roll over and let them ruin his life!
Eventually, though, the exertion combined with the Mako had him heaving again. He kneeled on the floor, no longer able to keep standing as his empty stomach worked to purge itself of the poison in his body.
"A pathetic puppet," Sephiroth murmured. By the time Cloud was able to raise his head to look, he was gone.
Sephy is such a meany ;-;
Well, now we know what's in store for Cloud...and Lea lives thus far! So, next time, let's bust Cloud out of this place XD
Hope everyone has a wonderful week, and I shall see you all next chapter :)
God Bless,
-RainFlame
