Anabasis

Chapter 9: The Calamity


Cloud woke up slowly. The first thing he noticed was that he was in a dark room: the air was damp and heavy, the smell distressingly familiar, and a row of iron bars sat not too far in front of him. He was in the Daikangoku, the highest-security prison in Wutai. It wasn't the first time he'd sat in a cell here, but Cloud felt no sense of attachment or comfort.

Here, the only things that lingered in the shadows were memories; memories he would rather forget completely.

"It seems as though they remembered the cells we were in last time," Sephiroth's voice spoke out through the darkness. "Who do you think was the nostalgic one?"

"Beats me," Cloud said with a shrug, blinking a few times to jumpstart his eyes as they got used to the lack of light. "What do you think they did with Aeris? I can't see her anywhere."

Sephiroth leaned back against the wall of his cell and sighed, tilting his head up to where he could vaguely sense the Cetra's aura seeping through the layers of earth to reach him.

"No doubt Lord Kisaragi is keeping his most precious hostage somewhere safer than down here," he commented coolly. "We're valuable to Shinra, but in the end our deaths would be more useful to Wutai than keeping us alive. Aeris, however, is a different story altogether."

Cloud arched an eyebrow at his comrade's easy tone, surprised to hear Sephiroth so unmoved even by this trap they'd managed to blunder into.

"You think the Turks will watch over her?" he asked, and he heard the shoulder plates of Sephiroth's armor shift as the General shrugged.

"It would certainly be in their best interests to do so," Sephiroth answered after a moment. "But regardless, we can't let ourselves be distracted by her situation; Aeris is strong, Strife. Stronger than many people would give her credit for at first glance. She can handle herself.

"Right now, what we need to figure out is how to get out of here in one piece. Once that's taken care of, I'm going to have a nice long talk with Tseng about where exactly he stands in all of this."

"That sounds like a solid plan, General," a new man's voice broke in from off to the side, bringing the light of several torches along with it. "But of course, you know as well as any soldier that a plan is useless unless it can be executed. Do you honestly think we're about to let you waltz out of here, Sephiroth; Cloud?"

The two captives looked over towards the light to see a man they both knew well standing there, flanked by a small group of ninja holding torches. He was tall and muscled, but slight of figure and clearly reliant more on his natural speed than brute force. His unassuming figure only served to belie the look of authority in his dark eyes, forged by countless battles fought, won and lost.

"Lord Kumatora," Sephiroth greeted the Wutai soldier, inclining his head in a rare show of visible respect for one of his most tenacious opponents. "It's been a long time."

"Indeed it has been, General," Kumatora replied easily, running a hand through his short, spiky brown hair as he spoke, his voice heavy. "And although I must confess that it was my sincere desire we would never meet again, I regret that this reunion, such as it is, must be held in these squalid quarters."

Cloud huffed and finally broke his silence, his faintly glowing blue eyes still sharp.

"Enough with the pleasantries," he said lowly. "What are you doing down here, if you clearly have no intention of letting us go?"

Kumatora chuckled, the scar running down the right side of his face and over his eye contorting as he laughed.

"Still as impatient as ever, I see," the Wutai soldier said. "How many times will that have to cost you before you grow out of it, Cloud? But to answer your question, I just wanted to make sure I was down here to take up guard duty before Koshinuke grabbed it instead. If he had, I suspect the two of you would be dead already."

Cloud's anger relented at the explanation, but it was still far from extinguished. Koshinuke was a cowardly piece of shit, and the wound Cloud still carried in his shoulder from when he'd almost been backstabbed straight through the heart was lasting proof of how little the Wutai commander cared about honor. But the SOLDIER's mood was still black after hearing that Tifa had joined the Turks, and nothing about the current situation was doing anything to calm him down.

"Strife," Sephiroth's even voice sliced coldly through the troubled soldier's thoughts, "pull yourself together. If you want to pointlessly brood over what's troubling you, do it when you have the time to waste. As long as we still need to get out of here, however, that should be the one and only thing on your mind. Is that in any way unclear?"

Cloud was immobile at the words for a few heartbeats, before his resistance broke down and he sighed, slumping like his spine had been shattered into countless fragments.

"No, sir," he said hollowly. "I understand."

Kumatora was surprised by the defeated look on Cloud's face, but hid it and said nothing. He'd clashed with Sephiroth and his fierce subordinate more times than anyone else in Wutai's army, and had the scars to show for it, but not once had he ever seen Cloud look so beaten. A quick glance over to Sephiroth yielded nothing in the way of answers, so Kumatora gave up and turned to his ninja companions.

"Give us a minute, will you?" he said evenly, and the troops nodded in unison before turning and walking from the room, leaving one of their torches with their commander. Before they'd exited completely, Kumatora gave his soldiers one more order.

"If you see or hear anyone eavesdropping," he said coldly, "bring me their heads."

The ninja melted into the shadows without a word, leaving the Wutai general alone with his old rivals.

"What's this about?" Sephiroth asked after a moment, confused as to why a soldier of Wutai would be so dead-set on making sure he could share a few words in private with his sworn enemies. Kumatora sighed, suddenly looking decades older in the dim light of the lone flame.

"Something is rotten here, Sephiroth," he said after a moment, his weariness creeping into his tone. "I can't pin it down, but my instincts are howling at me that something is off and they've never been wrong yet. If I had to guess, it has something to do with Lord Kisaragi's new advisor. My scars ache every time I look at her, and that hasn't ever happened before. Not even when I fought you two. There's something unnatural about that woman, I know it—!"

Kumatora's words were cut off suddenly by a sharp gasp as pain spiked through the soldier's nerves. Looking down, he saw an inhuman claw made of some substance he couldn't recognize impaling his chest, already drenched in blackened blood.

"And that woman would very much appreciate you keeping your suspicions to yourself, Lord Kumatora," the serpentine voice of Godo Kisaragi's advisor whispered into Kumatora's ear as he coughed and spat up a spurt of blood, before the claw was retracted. The soldier quickly fell to the ground in a limp heap, blood continuing to flow from his gaping wound.

Sephiroth and Cloud could only stand and watch in mute horror as the woman who had just assassinated Kumatora walked slowly towards them, the claw her arm had been just seconds before transforming back into a human-looking arm with a sickening squelch. The freshly-shed blood clung to the transformed limb, and the woman took a few moments to lick some of it off before giving a satisfied sigh and looking once again at the captives.

"What… what the fuck are you?" Cloud managed to force out over his shock and nausea, eyes glimmering with fear now. The woman looked at him and smiled, her own brown eyes shining with unnatural bloodlust and insanity as her oddly-sharp teeth glinted in the faint light. Her long black hair framed her face in disheveled bangs, and both of the SOLDIERs could tell in an instant that this… thing, whatever she was, was like nothing either of them had ever faced before.

"You honestly don't know me, boy?" she crooned at last, advancing closer and closer to Cloud. He tried to back away, but the woman raised her hand and suddenly he felt himself rooted to the spot by terrible agony, feeling like every ounce of his blood was on fire.

"Don't try to run from me," the woman chided, her voice an unhinged combination of predatory and lustful. "You can't escape me, Cloud Strife. You cannot hope to escape yourself, after all. It is pointless."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Cloud forced out through his pain, the question only serving to make the woman's smile widen.

"So you're going to keep acting coy, are you?" she asked, not even pausing as she reached the bars of his cell. She simply walked through the gaps between them, her body contorting to slip through the barrier without effort. "Very well, then," the woman continued, finally stopping as she came to within arms-length of the paralyzed SOLDIER.

"Allow me to show you who I am, Cloud Strife."

Cloud hadn't drawn another breath before all of the air was driven from his lungs in an instant of blinding agony. The woman's hand had lashed out and penetrated his abdomen faster than any bullet could have, burying itself there. Before Cloud had any time to process what had happened to him, though, he felt the hand shift shape, becoming a tangle of small tentacles that entwined themselves with his internal organs.

"I am your patron saint, young one," the woman whispered into the blue-eyed warrior's ear as he struggled to breathe. Her facial features began to change before his eyes, the dark hair becoming long and white as her face became angular, the skin ashen-gray and her eyes a deep, bloody red.

"I am your goddess. I am Jenova."

Sephiroth had stood motionless as the unearthly woman had attacked his comrade, but the mention of her name shocked him back to himself and he spoke.

"What are you doing to him, you monster?" he said as evenly as he could, struggling to maintain his composure in the face of the alien. He could feel the Jenova cells in his body responding to their mistress' call, burning with the instinctual drive to reunite with their source.

Jenova looked over at Sephiroth and smiled; not the predatory smile she'd shown to Cloud, but a softer one, almost perversely maternal.

"I'm simply injecting more of my cells into his body," the alien answered. "Don't worry; he won't die. I just simply can't be having my pawns acting according to their own wills, now can I? Just be a good soldier and wait for a moment; you'll get your turn shortly."

Sephiroth's mind was racing even if his body was sluggish, and his eyes soon widened in horror at what he knew Jenova's true target would be.

"Where is Aeris?" he said with sharp defiance. "What have you done to her?"

Jenova said nothing at first, pulling her tentacled limb out of Cloud and reforming it into a normal arm as Cloud slumped to the floor, unconscious. The wound Jenova had given him was healed, but it was clear that irreparable damage had already been done.

"The Cetra?" she asked at last, voice gloating. "Nothing yet, my puppet. Rest assured, I'm going to tear her into countless bloody shreds in the end, but she has a role to play yet. If you do as you're told, maybe I'll let you be the one who ravages her when the time comes to end her pathetic life."

Sephiroth said nothing, his eyes smoldering with pure hatred and murderous rage. Jenova's smile just widened, changing from maternal back to the psychotic grin she'd been wearing as she butchered Kumatora and attacked Cloud.

"That's the look I've been waiting to see on your face again, Sephiroth," Jenova hummed, her eyes gleaming with amusement. "I'll strip you of everything you hold dear, until your hatred is all you have left to cling to. You are my finest scion, and I'm not about to let as pure a killer as you have his edge dulled by something as trivial and pointless as love or affection."

Jenova's arm shifted into a spear-like tentacle and shot out at Sephiroth from across the room, but the SOLDIER was ready for it and dodged to the side. He grabbed it firmly as it passed by, before using his considerable strength to tear the top part of the limb clean off. But Jenova seemed completely unfazed by her wound, and by the time Sephiroth had figured out why, it was too late. The flesh in his hands writhed on its own and twitched sharply, reforming its surface into countless tiny spikes that sunk into the flesh of Sephiroth's forearm and began to pulse. And as they did so, they sent more and more of Jenova's cells into the SOLDIER's body.

His will broke and he screamed as the pain became too much to bear, collapsing to the ground and quickly passing into unconsciousness as Jenova walked out of the room, returning her appearance to that of Godo Kisaragi's aide. The blackness clouded Sephiroth's vision at last and he gave into it, but not before a single word passed his lips in urgent warning.

"Aeris…"


The last of the Cetra bolted to her feet with a stifled gasp, struggling to catch her breath as she looked frantically around the room. Once she was sure she was alone, Aeris forced herself to calm down, but the unease in her stomach refused to go away. She had been meditating, trying to commune with the Planet, when that sickening sensation her mother had always warned her about flooded up into her awareness with frightening clarity. That feeling of an unnatural toxin poisoning the flow of the Planet's energy, devouring and destroying everything it touched.

The Calamity. Jenova.

She was here.

"Tseng!" Aeris called out, desperate for any kind of company. "Tseng!"

The Turk opened the room's only door and looked in, his features tense and alert as his other hand rested ready on the gun at his hip.

"Yes, Miss Gainsborough?" he asked tensely. "Is everything all right?"

Aeris sighed and walked over to the small bed she'd been given in the room, which was really nothing more than a particularly well-furnished cell.

"I'm not sure," she said, her voice wavering slightly with an edge of fear. "And please, just call me Aeris," she added with a small smile, trying to put both the Turk and herself at ease. "I'm not as old as my mother; not yet, anyway."

Tseng offered nothing more than a minute shrug at the words, stepping fully into the room and giving it a careful sweep with his trained eyes.

"What did you mean when you said you weren't sure if everything was all right?" the Turk asked seriously after a few moments of silence, and the Cetra suddenly became very intent on smoothing out the folds of her dirt-stained skirt.

"Tell me honestly," she said at last, her voice less frantic than it had been when she'd called out to him, but still strained. "Jenova… is she still locked up in Shinra's laboratories? And if you tell me I'm not party to classified information," Aeris added pointedly as Tseng made to reply, "so help me I will knock your teeth out. That thing is after me, and if she ever finds me—"

Tseng could see that his charge was becoming panicked, and resolved to do something about it. Walking over to the end of the bed, he took a seat next to Aeris and placed his hand on her shoulder in a silent gesture of support. She calmed down somewhat at the contact, and Tseng allowed himself a small, relieved smile; it had always upset him to see someone as innocent as Aeris distraught.

"I wasn't going to withhold anything from you, Aeris," he said quietly after a few more moments of silence had passed between them. "You have more of a right to know about Jenova than anyone else on the Planet, after all. You don't have to worry about it hunting you down, though; what little remains of it is still locked away in the back of the big mako reactor in Nibelheim. I doubt Hojo would let his prized specimen go free, either."

"No," Aeris said, bitterness in her voice, "you're right. Hojo likes to keep his specimens locked up nice and tight, that's for sure."

Tseng winced, but the Cetra didn't seem to notice. He doubted she would ever put that part of her past behind her, and to be honest he didn't expect her to. It would stay in some corner of her heart forever, festering. Why the President had ever hired that sociopathic bastard of a scientist to work for him, Tseng would never know.

A knock at the door yanked the Turk abruptly out of his thoughts, and he rose cautiously to his feet.

"Who is it?" he called out, back on alert once more.

"Lord Kisaragi's aide, sir," a feminine voice replied from the other side of the door. "My lord requests your presence in the throne room, along with the rest of the Turks."

"And the reason for the summons?" Tseng prodded, remembering Rude and Reno's words of caution from earlier. He wasn't too trusting of Kisaragi's right hand either, and wasn't about to leave Aeris unguarded without a very good reason for doing so.

"There's been an attack on the two SOLDIER prisoners down in the Daikangoku, sir," came the reply, and Aeris was on her feet immediately. "Their guard detail was completely eradicated by an unknown assailant, including Lord General Kumatora. Lord Kisaragi requests that you take the rest of the Turks over to investigate the scene. Rude and Reno are already in the throne room, awaiting your arrival."

Tseng cursed harshly under his breath, hastily weighing his options. Any attack on Cloud and Sephiroth was a major issue that could threaten to upset the entire plan Rufus was engineering. But at the same time, leaving Aeris alone was also a huge risk…

"Go," he heard Aeris say softly, but insistently. "Please. If something happened to Sephiroth or Cloud, you have to go help them. Don't worry about me; I'll be fine here on my own."

Tseng hesitated for a moment, but cracked a heartbeat later and sighed.

"Very well," he said evenly, before turning and walking from the room without looking back. Aeris didn't mind; she knew he'd done it to keep from having second thoughts about the decision. For her part, Aeris sank back down onto her bed and looked up at the plain ceiling, her eyes drifting closed as she tried to keep herself together. Her life had been completely upturned in the past few days, and now she was languishing away in a cell in Wutai, far removed from any place she'd ever known.

And Sephiroth had been attacked.

She didn't want to think it was related to the surge of disgusting, poisonous energy she'd felt earlier, but Aeris knew full well that to ignore the possibility was dangerous denial.

"Quite right you are, young one."

The Cetra's eyes snapped open at the words, but before she could sit up a hand had pressed against her midsection, applying more than enough pressure to keep her pinned.

"Please, don't bother getting up on my account," the smooth, feminine voice continued, and Aeris looked over to see with shock that it was Lord Kisaragi's aide—and the arm she was using to pin her down was much longer and stronger than it had any right to be.

"Who… who are you?" the Cetra forced out, provoking a smugly amused chuckle from the woman above her, who had now walked up to the bedside to gloat down at her captive.

"I suppose you wouldn't remember me after all, Aeris," she said, "considering that I'd been dormant inside the Northern Crater for about two thousand years by the time you were regrettably born. I'd assumed the rest of your race would wither and die without reproducing as humans spread like the plague, but I was wrong."

Aeris' eyes widened slowly in horror as she realized just who was talking to her. The woman gave a huge, bloodthirsty grin as her features began to shift, her dark hair becoming white while her skin turned ashen-gray and her eyes became a dark, bloody red.

"Jenova…" the terrified Cetra gasped, before shaking her head frantically, as if to wish away the demon that had appeared in front of her. "No, no, this isn't possible," Aeris insisted. "You're in stasis in Nibelheim, Tseng told me so! You can't be here!"

A cruel light sprang into Jenova's eyes at the declaration. Aeris felt a searing burn in her heart as she realized her grave mistake, but it was too late to retract her words.

"So, Nibelheim is where they're keeping the rest of me?" she said. "Thank you for the information, Cetra. In exchange, I suppose I can at least tell you how it is I came to be here, since you seem to believe that it's impossible. I assume your mother told you about me, did she not?" Aeris nodded mutely, despair choking words off in her throat.

"Good," the alien continued. "Then you must know about the Reunion phenomenon. Every one of my cells is connected, barring being placed in some kind of special containment like Hojo's accursed stasis. And you must also know that the elite members of the SOLDIER program were all injected with my cells to enhance their strength, like your friend Sephiroth and his fellow SOLDIER Cloud Strife.

"My cells ran through the body and blood of every SOLDIER, Aeris. And when these warriors died here in Wutai, when their blood spilled into the Planet, what do you think spilled out with it? Once the War had gone on long enough, my free cells were great enough in number that they could reconvene to establish a sentient, independent organism. That which you see before you now.

"After my rebirth, it was a simple matter to take the shape of a Wutai woman and work my way up through the ranks, all the way to Godo Kisaragi's right hand."

Aeris looked up at her mortal enemy unblinking, resolved not to give Jenova the satisfaction of showing her any more fear.

"So what does any of that have to do with me, or Sephiroth or Cloud?" she spat harshly. "Why did you attack them? And what do you want with me?"

Jenova laughed, changing her fingers into claws just long enough to stab Aeris in the chest before she turned around and walked towards the door.

"Don't be afraid, little Cetra," she said as Aeris scrambled to heal her wound, "that won't kill you; not even close. Think of it as a warning, nothing more. And as to what I want from the three of you, puppets and pawns all have their roles to play. That's all you need to know."

"He's not your pawn, you bitch!" Aeris snarled as her rage and despair finally overwhelmed her. "He won't follow your orders!"

Jenova's laughter continued to reach her ears from the doorway, and the alien spoke one final parting shot.

"He's beyond your salvation, Cetra. He's been beyond it since the day I entered his bloodstream, and now it's time to pay the piper."

The door slammed shut and Aeris let out a stricken scream, getting nothing in return but a twisted echo as it bounced off of the room's walls. Jenova had returned, and the Calamity had done something terrible to Sephiroth and Cloud. The last of the Cetra felt beaten and she felt hopeless, but worst of all, she felt alone. Forsaken.

My child, a gentle, comforting voice spoke to Aeris from deep within her mind, you are never alone. We are always with you, in suffering as well as in joy. Call upon us, and we will help you in whatever way we can.

"Then please, tell me," she said as calmly as she could, ignoring the small tears trickling down her face. "Tell me what I should do. How can I ever fix this?"

The Planet's voice was silent for a few moments, and when it spoke again it was gravely serious.

Jenova has strengthened her hold on your friends considerably, child, it said. There is a way to purge them of her influence, but it carries with it a terrible risk. If you do not succeed in time, they could become completely overwhelmed by the will of Jenova, cut off from their former selves forever. And even if you succeed…

The voice trailed off, and Aeris' eyes narrowed in irritation.

"What happens if I succeed?" she prompted, not liking the implication of the Planet's sudden silence.

Even if you succeed, the voice continued after a moment, there is still a chance that the purification process will kill them both.

Aeris took in a deep, ragged breath at the revelation, steeling herself for what was to come.

"What do I have to do?"

Go to where the energy of the Planet is strongest in this kingdom, the voice counseled, and there, make a plea for its assistance. If your heart is strong enough, you may be able to call out the great Weapons. Only they can help you purge the stain of Jenova from this place forever. But they are wild things, and require great will to be controlled.

"I can take that risk," Aeris said firmly. "Just tell me where I need to go, and I'll handle the rest."

The voice seemed to chuckle warmly at her stubbornness before it spoke again.

Look to your instincts, my child, it said, and they will guide you true.

Aeris nodded and exhaled slowly as the connection faded away, coming back to herself. There was no time to waste lamenting anything, not with Sephiroth and Cloud's lives hanging in the balance. She had to find these 'Weapons' and convince them to help her, or the Planet was screwed beyond all hope. And as its last daughter, its last guardian, she couldn't let that happen.

But the first thing was first, Aeris told herself as she got up and walked from the room, being careful not to alert any nearby ninja as she moved. She was going to need Materia, and probably a weapon, if she was going to survive a trek through Wutai's wilderness on her own.

Aeris was so caught up in her own thoughts that she turned into the next hallway without looking to see where she was going, and smacked right into someone walking the opposite way down the corridor.

"Ouch!" came the shout, accompanied by the sound of orbs of Materia clinking down onto the floor. "What gives? Watch where you're goin', lady!"

"I'm sorry!" Aeris said apologetically as she got back up, wincing through the soreness that radiated from where she'd landed on her hip. By the time she remembered that she was supposed to be avoiding any and all contact with the people in the building during her escape attempt, Aeris was already being stared hard in the face by the person she'd bumped into. The other person in question was a girl who looked to be about Aeris' age, if not a bit younger. She had short black hair, and a tomboyishly energetic look in her dark eyes.

"Wait a sec, don't I know you?" she said after a few beats, a faint catlike smile playing around the edges of her lips. Aeris felt her heart clench at the question: if she was reported as having tried to escape, Lord Kisaragi would no doubt double her guard. That would make future attempts impossible, and Aeris couldn't afford that.

"Um… no?" she volunteered, cringing inwardly at how lame it sounded. "I certainly don't know who you are, at any rate."

That seemed to offend the other girl deeply, and her face turned a shade of red that would have been amusing in any other circumstance.

"You… you don't know who I am?" she said lowly, her voice gradually gaining force and volume. "That's unforgivable! I'm the princess Yuffie Kisaragi, the great ninja of Wutai! And one day, after my old man pulls his head out of his ass and acknowledges me as his heir, I'm gonna rule over this whole kingdom!"

"That sounds like a great goal to have," Aeris said warily, more than a little thrown off by the sudden outburst, "and I wish you luck, your Highness. But if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere I really need to be."

The Cetra had gotten no more than a few steps past Yuffie and down the hall when a kunai flew by her, the point of small knife digging itself into the wooden floor just inches from her left foot and sticking there.

"Waaaait a minute," Yuffie's voice spoke out from behind her, "I remember now. You're that 'Aeris' girl, the one the Turks brought here. Aren't you supposed to be a prisoner, or something?"

Aeris froze, her mind racing for some kind of excuse. Finding one she prayed would work, the Cetra drew herself up and turned back around to face Yuffie.

"Yes, I was being held as a hostage," she answered with as much composure and wounded pride as she could muster, "but there was a change of circumstances. The other two people that were brought here just came down with a fatal illness, and your father's aide gave me permission to go out and seek the cure for it.

"The Turks can't leave their posts, after all, and I doubt your father is willing to risk sending any of his own troops out into the wilds on a mission to save two of his worst enemies. So that just leaves me, and I would appreciate it if you'd let me do my job!"

Yuffie was silent for a few tense heartbeats, before she grinned and said the last thing Aeris had been expecting.

"Can you take me with you?"

The Cetra raised her eyebrows at the question in surprise, unable to believe her luck.

"Pardon?"

"I want you to take me with you!" Yuffie repeated, the tone of her voice clearly implying she wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer. "My father almost never lets me get out of the palace; I'm starting to get cabin fever again. And if you're going out on official business, it's the perfect excuse for me to tag along… I can be your guide, or whatever!"

Aeris didn't know whether to laugh or cry tears of joy at her good fortune, so she split the difference and smiled wide.

"Well, what are you waiting for, then?" she asked. "Come on!"


…...

A/N: First thing's first. A thousand apologies to anyone and everyone who I've kept waiting for so long for this chapter! I had an absolutely crippling case of Writer's Block for the longest time, and then school work started getting serious and kicking my ass and I lost the rhythm of this story almost completely.

But thanks to a superlatively awesome anonymous review I got a few days ago from 'xandria' I was inspired to really start thinking about it again, and I finally got this chapter finished up. So I hope it's worth it after such a long wait; I tried making it as tense and action-packed as possible without rushing the plot.

I realize looking at the dates now that it's taken me almost an entire semester between updates, and that's absolutely absurd. But I hope you all will do me the favor of reviewing all the same; it's a truly awesome feeling to know that people are reading and enjoying your stories. I can't make any promises as to when the next update will be rolling around, but I'm fairly sure it won't take five months again.

Again, I truly hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and thanks for reading this far!