Cloud brought the motorcycle to a halt a few dozen feet from the mine's entrance. The source of the explosion had been the mine itself – someone had set a bunch of charges in the front and detonated them, collapsing the tunnel and filling it with debris.
That somebody was the reason Cloud had stopped the bike. A man was standing outside the entrance, and Cloud didn't need kànderén to know he was one of the Immaculate Swords.
He stood looking straight at Cloud, arms crossed. He had black hair that fell to his collar, tanned skin, blue eyes, and defined, strong features. He wore a form-fitting black special operations jumpsuit, just as Renbato had. Over the jumpsuit was a black leather trenchcoat, buttoned down to the waist and held closed with a belt.
Shoved into that belt were six sheathed longswords, three on each side. They were clustered together into groups, almost like missiles in a launcher, and Cloud wondered how the man could possibly fight with all of them. The swords had black lacquered sheaths and their handles were wrapped in black cloth.
"Not an outfit that'll help keep you cool," Cloud observed, getting off of the bike and pulling the First Tsurugi from his back. He detached one of the shortswords, holding it in his off-hand as he casually began to circle the stranger.
"I could say the same to you," the man replied, looking at Cloud's distinctive black clothing. His voice was mild, and he spoke with a clipped accent. "You will forgive my presumption, but you are Cloud Strife."
"Why'd you blow up the mine?" Cloud asked.
"We knew the outbreak would eventually attract either you, Vincent Valentine, or both of you. When I saw the two of you had arrived to contain it, I put the plan to lure at least one of you here into action."
"You've trapped innocent men in there."
"They will all die someday anyway. Who is to say that now is not their time?"
"Who're you to say when their time is?"
The man uncrossed his arms, lowering each of his hands onto the hilt of a longsword. "You and Vincent Valentine killed Renbato. By your logic, who were you to say that it was his day to die?"
"He attacked us. We wouldn't have killed him if he hadn't been a threat."
"Indeed?" The man's lips twitched. "Renbato, a threat? Hmph!" He drew a longsword in each hand and flipped them around so he was holding them in the forward grip. "I will show you what a threat is, Cloud Strife."
"We don't have to fight," Cloud said. "We can walk away from this."
"You say you would not have killed Renbato if he had not posed a threat. Right now, you and your partner pose a direct threat to the Immaculate Swords' ultimate goal, and we intend to see it carried out no matter what the cost." He leveled the longsword in his right hand at Cloud. "My name is Barachiel, and I will be your executioner."
Cloud catalogued the name for later and relaxed naturally into a combat stance, the First Tsurugi in a ready position, the shortsword in his off-hand held slightly lower to act as a guard or to bring around for a surprise strike.
Barachiel didn't charge or beckon for Cloud to attack. He simply stood there, gauging his opponent, his longswords held ready. Cloud narrowed his eyes and took a step forward, and Barachiel took a step back. He began to circle Barachiel, who in turn moved in the opposite direction, never breaking eye contact.
Finally, Cloud decided he'd had enough of the game. He exploded with a blast of spirit energy channeled into the blade of the First Tsurugi, which he then slammed down in a Blade Beam. The bright blue wave of energy erupted out at Barachiel, who didn't seem like he was trying to dodge at all.
The four remaining longswords suddenly slashed out of their sheaths and intercepted the Blade Beam in a simultaneous strike. Barachiel's attack disrupted the shape of the wave, making it explode a bare three feet from its target. Cloud stared, taken aback, as the longswords moved back into place, two on each side of Barachiel. He realized that thick tendrils of reddish-black liquid extended out of Barachiel's torso, straight through his jumpsuit, to wrap around each longsword's hilt. He made a note to mention to Vincent that the jumpsuits seemed to allow the free passage of whatever the liquid was in both Renbato's and Barachiel's cases.
"I see," Barachiel said. "You gather up spirit energy and charge your sword with agitated mako particles, which you then form into a cohesive wave using a strike. Intriguing." He began to ripple with the familiar bluish-green glow of mako. A horrible premonition hit Cloud a second before his enemy said, "My turn."
The blades of all six of his longswords shone with energy as he lashed out with them. Six Blade Beams rocketed at Cloud from different angles. He retorted with another one of his own, which sliced out and blew apart the four in the center, giving him an opening through which he charged to avoid the other two. With remarkable quickness, Barachiel began fading back from Cloud's charge, firing off individual Blade Beams with all of his longswords. As he pumped energy through it, the liquid extending from his torso twisted and shimmered.
With a burst of speed, Cloud caught up and swung the First Tsurugi in a powerful horizontal chop at Barachiel's head. Simultaneously, he stabbed out with the shortsword at his foe's gut. Barachiel ducked underneath the horizontal sweep, blocked the thrust with the longswords he wielded in his hands, and cut at Cloud with his four other swords. Just before the strikes landed, Cloud pushed himself backward. The attacks sang through the air inches from where he had been standing.
The longswords being manipulated by the strange liquid came to a sudden halt in midair, creating the four corners of a square in front of Barachiel's torso, blades pointing diagonally inward toward what would be the square's center. The swords made a kind of elongated cannon. "Now what if I apply your technique to this formation?" Barachiel wondered.
Energy raced up and down the blades of the longswords and exploded out of their square configuration, not as a beam but instead as a projectile. Cloud brought up the First Tsurugi to block the shot, but it exploded into a gout of blue flame and sent him stumbling. Exploiting the opening with ease, Barachiel fired off a pair of Blade Beams with the longswords to his right, and the Beams ripped through the ground toward Cloud. He stabbed out with the longswords to his left, the liquid elongating to almost six feet, and kept the longswords in his hands close to his body.
Cloud leaped into the air to avoid the Blade Beams, forcing himself into a twirling spiral as he did so. He battered away the two thrusting longswords with the First Tsurugi and hurled the shortsword with pinpoint accuracy at the tendrils of liquid that held the two longswords on the right. It sheared through them without difficulty. However, the liquid regrew itself and reached out to snatch the fallen longswords back up before Cloud could take decisive action.
He decided on a different tactic as he landed, driving Barachiel back with another heavy swipe of the First Tsurugi. A tumbling roll brought him up on the other side of the man. In order to give himself breathing room, he lashed out backwards with the First Tsurugi, which enabled him to grab his shortsword from where it had fallen. A sudden, biting pain erupted in his back as Barachiel managed to score him with the two longswords on his right, but Cloud whirled around, gathering spirit energy into a massive, razor-edged tornado that he hurled at his enemy with a slash.
Barachiel sent the four liquid-manipulated longswords into furious motion, spinning in the opposite direction of Cloud's Finishing Touch, and then sent four miniature versions of the technique roaring toward Cloud's much larger one. The storms of wind collided and reduced one another to nothing. For a moment, Cloud stared in dismay; then he recovered the presence of mind to throw himself out of the way of another pair of Blade Beams.
"Don't you grasp it by now, Cloud Strife?" Barachiel asked. "Any technique that I see, I can duplicate and counter instantly. This is a skill I have honed for years, something you cannot dream of. In addition, I can use these techniques from six directions at once. It used to be four, but…" His eyes glittered in an extremely unsettling manner. "Omnislash."
Cloud took a moment to catch his breath. "What about it? It's just me swinging my sword really fast."
"Not that Omnislash," Barachiel said. "That is a paltry shadow of the true technique. I speak of the one you used to kill Sephiroth, forty-eight years ago." He looked at the First Tsurugi. "The one that requires you to have your First Tsurugi completely assembled, the one that requires all six pieces of the true blade." He gave Cloud an insane grin. "All six."
"Sorry to disappoint you," Cloud said, "but I've only ever been able to do it once. You'll just have to come back again another day."
"You performed the technique when you were pushed to the absolute brink," Barachiel continued. "I intend to get you back there, Cloud Strife, to the edge of the valley of death, and see what you do when you are confronted with that abyss."
He fired off more Blade Beams at Cloud, charging in their wake. Cloud leaped over them, landed, and charged as well, spirit energy percolating around and through him. Barachiel lanced out with his longswords, managing to score several hits that drew blood from Cloud's chest and shoulders. However, Cloud plunged the First Tsurugi into the man's abdomen, gathered his spirit energy into his legs, and then leaped twenty feet into the air, tearing the blade up through Barachiel's chest and shoulder in a Climhazzard. As dark red blood spewed everywhere in his wake, Cloud managed to avoid being splattered. He landed in a crouch some five feet away, got to his feet, and turned around.
The massive wound he had inflicted was gone. The last bit of it was filling up with the same liquid Barachiel used to manipulate his swords, which solidified and reformed into flesh beneath the torn jumpsuit.
"An interesting technique," Barachiel said. "The damage it can cause is quite extraordinary."
His legs burned bright blue with spirit energy. Crossing the distance between himself and Cloud in a flash, too fast for Cloud to bring up the First Tsurugi to block his attacks, he stabbed the shortswords he was holding in his hands into Cloud's legs, one in each. The other four swords glowed bright blue as well. The energy in Barachiel's legs exploded outward and he propelled himself high into the air, his swords ripping up and through Cloud's legs in twin Climhazzards. Cloud bit back a scream as he felt blood gushing out of the wounds. He got the First Tsurugi up, only to realize that Barachiel wasn't done. In midair, the four liquid-held longswords arranged themselves in the square cannon formation, pointing straight down. Out of the cannon erupted another projectile-based Blade Beam.
The Blade Beam hit Cloud right over the head, exploding and throwing him to the ground. He lost his grip on both his swords. The tang of blood was heavy in his mouth; the world swam, his vision blurring.
Barachiel landed a short distance away and stretched. "Get up, Cloud Strife. Show me Omnislash before you die. I want to add it to my collection."
"What collection?" Cloud gasped, grabbing the First Tsurugi and his shortsword and stumbling back to his feet despite the immense pain in his legs and head. "All I've seen you do is throw my own techniques back at me."
"But that is the point," Barachiel said, turning around to face Cloud. "When a warrior fights me, he uses every trick he has, every ace in the hole he possesses, and they all become mine. Then, when I kill him with those same abilities, I am the only one left who knows those tricks and holds those cards, and I keep them to myself so nobody else can ever know them again. I am a collector, Cloud Strife – the same as a man who collects novelty items that serve no practical value. I keep my foes' techniques – and continue to win fight after fight without needing to use them. That is the final insult to their memories: I do not even need the moves I glean from them to win against other fighters. After all… I am destroying you, using nothing but your own moves."
"You're using my moves with the ability to wield six weapons at once. It doesn't seem fair."
"I never said it was fair," Barachiel pointed out with a leer.
"What is that liquid, anyway?"
"I'm sure Renbato's death gave you all the answers you wanted about our natures. The liquid is what results when JENOVA cells are mixed with the disease that has been ravaging this planet for forty-five years. It is a substance that makes up our bodies and transcends the normal states of matter. We can use it to execute a variety of special techniques. Renbato used his to duplicate himself up to five times, as your partner may have told you." Barachiel shook his head. "That technique left him far too vulnerable. I find it much easier and safer to use only the necessary amount of liquid, and to use weapons that do not depend upon my life-force to kill." He shrugged. "But this carrying on is useless. You are, after all, about to die. Show me Omnislash before you do and I will make it quick."
Cloud grinned. "Well. If you really insist, fine." He reattached the shortsword to the main blade of the First Tsurugi, holding the complete sword in a two-handed grip. "Die."
The sword glowed a vivid blue. The blades unfolded and detached themselves of their own accord, rising up into an elevated circle around Barachiel, the blade with the handle in its hollow base rising higher above the rest. Cloud rocketed forward, moving so fast that he left afterimages of himself in the air, and took Barachiel from underneath the chin with a solid uppercut that launched him into the sky. He leaped up after the man and cut him across the chest with the main blade of the First Tsurugi, then left it to hang in midair, leaping off of Barachiel's pinwheeling form to snatch another one of his blades before doubling back and delivering another slash.
Cloud did this three more times, each time with a different blade, his strikes leaving deep, gaping wounds in Barachiel's body, until he leaped up to grab the last blade of the First Tsurugi. He took it by the handle, shooting downward like an avenging force of nature, and buried the blade between Barachiel's eyes.
He dropped back down to the ground and caught the main blade of the First Tsurugi as it and all the other blades plummeted to earth. Barachiel fell as well, landing with a thump next to him.
His wounds were already closing up. He reached up to his head and pulled the sword out of it. However, Cloud noted that the longswords that Barachiel had been manipulating with the liquid had been dropped, no longer wrapped in red-black tendrils.
"That was magnificent," Barachiel said, getting to his feet. "Absolutely magnificent. You took a lot out of me with that attack, Cloud Strife – so much that I can't even use the JENOVA-disease hybrid matter to control my extra swords any longer for fear of endangering myself. However…" He began to glow with spirit energy. So did his fallen swords, which rose up into a circle above Cloud's head. "It was not enough." He met Cloud's gaze with a smug smile. "Do you have any last words?"
"Actually, yes, I do," Cloud said, and he leveled his hand at Barachiel, a fully charged incineration technique roiling in his palm. "Go to hell."
Barachiel had just enough time to look surprised before Cloud annihilated him. The incinerating blast roared out from Cloud's hand, a pure white destructive force, reducing Barachiel to less than ash. The longswords that had been hovering around Cloud's head stopped glowing and fell back to earth.
Cloud held his pose for two long seconds before he allowed himself to slowly tip over and land roughly on his back, exhaustion overcoming him. He closed his eyes, focusing on breathing, sure that he would live and somebody would show up soon with a Restore Materia.
Despite himself, he grinned. It had only him taken twenty-eight seconds to charge up the incineration technique this time.