Note: Just a little shout-out to Keimichi whose review made me squeal. Thank you!
Published on: 12/16/2015.
Chapter 13
Dusk was darkening the sky as a nondescript military truck lumbered its way to the checkpoint at one of the entrances to above-Plate Midgar. As it stopped before the barrier, soldiers decked in the Deepground uniform gathered around it. Their manners were foreboding and brusque. One stepped up to the driver's window.
"ID," he barked.
The helmeted trooper wordlessly handed the required papers. The officer studied them. A scowl overtook his features at finding them in order. He peered in the driver's cabin and scowled even more when he saw a SOLDIER looking back at him from the passenger seat, his Mako eyes silently daring him to cause trouble.
Damn SOLDIERs couldn't seem to get it into their thick skulls that they were no longer the top dogs in Shinra. No Deepground grunt worth his salt missed a chance to take them down a peg or two. A quick slash of the hand had his men skirting to the back of the truck, but they only found standard equipment and two more troopers sitting on the side benches.
The Deepground officer reluctantly handed the papers back and waved them through.
"Hurry the hell up!" he shouted. "You should have been back hours ago. You get caught outside after curfew, SOLDIER or not, it's not gonna make a damn difference, you hear me? Outclassed, damn slackers."
His men snickered, both at the taunt and at Deepground's new nickname for SOLDIERs. "Outclassed", because all that was left of them was pathetic Second and Third Classes, their best and brightest slaughtered like harmless puppies by Deepground's elite.
The SOLDIER's eyes flashed, and for a second he felt a burst of wariness. For all his bravado, he was only a minor officer. He and his squad could probably take a SOLDIER down… probably.
But the man just grunted:
"And a good evening to you."
Still, there was a trace of steel in his voice that had the officer refrain from another jeer. The barrier lifted and the truck carried on its way.
Inside the vehicle, the driver allowed himself a smirk.
"I had my doubts at first, but you clean up surprisingly well," Genesis said.
In the passenger seat, Rain frowned and tugged at his SOLDIER uniform. The outfit was giving him déjà vu. It felt both completely natural and very uncomfortable, like it had ever since he had untangled his memories from Zack's and realized the truth of his past, so long ago. He was not a SOLDIER, but he had never had any trouble passing for one. It didn't exactly fill him with pride.
One of the troopers out back granted him an unimpressed look through his helmet.
"You find it unpleasant? Try these uniforms."
Rain very nearly rolled his eyes at him.
"I did, thank you. Some of us didn't get dumped in SOLDIER by default as soon as they could lift a sword."
It was a shot in the dark, but as Angeal snorted and Sephiroth only shrugged in answer, he couldn't have been far from the mark.
Sephiroth did look more awkward in grunt gear than Angeal and Genesis. There was a subtle tension in him that spoke of something like chafing pride. However, Rain was the only one of them who could pass for a SOLDIER squad leader without being immediately recognized. If all of them had worn a trooper helmet, it would have fostered suspicion.
"I still don't like that we had to split up," Angeal murmured. "Can we really trust the Turks?"
Sephiroth didn't move.
"If nothing else, have faith in your pupil. Personable he may be, but Zack knows better than to turn his back on Turks."
And Vincent was with them, Rain privately thought. They could have used his experience in infiltration, but with the girls to think of and the necessity to choose a small group with maximum firepower, splitting up had been a necessity. True to his word, Rain had refused to let Sephiroth out of his sight. That didn't mean he had to let Cloud, Zack, Tifa and Aerith go in the lion's den without someone he trusted to have their back. Last they had heard, they had been escorted by the Turk named Cissnei to Kalm where they were to stay until they could regroup.
Shinra HQ loomed above them through the windshield, closer by the minute. The sky up here was already dark, not so much from twilight than from pollution. Rain tugged at his gloves, nervous despite himself. All these years spent in Cloud's head, he had been detached, isolated from the world. If that period of time was to be put aside, this was his first time back to the foreboding building in… it seemed like forever since its destruction. Even crossing top-Plate Midgar felt alien. It actually reminded him of his first return to Nibelheim after it had burned to the ground: the place was similar to his memories… and yet it wasn't. The effect was chilling.
Genesis drove along the tower side and turned into a parking lot entrance where they had to endure another Deepground check. These soldiers were a bit more thorough. Rain held his breath until they climbed back down from the truck's back and let them through. Genesis' lips were pinched in annoyance.
"Pretentious upstarts," he hissed while sliding in a parking space. "They really believe they have Shinra under their thumbs, don't they?"
"Let's prove them wrong," Sephiroth said, standing up and lifting a floorboard from where the three ex-SOLDIERs snatched their weapons, concealed in cases and lumpy packages.
They disembarked and crossed to the closest door where Rain slid the card Tseng had given him in the reader. He tried to look like he did this every day as he led his three make-believe subordinates through a maze of corridors his disorientated brain had all the trouble in the world figuring out through multiple sets of memories—his from his trooper days, then from Avalanche's incursion, Zack's, Cloud's…
Due to the late hour, they didn't see many people in the hallways, which at least allowed the others to discreetly nudge him in the right directions. The employees they did pass all looked exhausted and apprehensive, hurrying back home before they could be accused of breaking the curfew. Once they reached the huge lobby, it became obvious why: security had been entirely replaced by Deepground members. As their group ascended the stairs to the bank of elevators, Rain saw the guards nearby exchange whispers. One of the men stepped in the cabin with them.
"New security policy! All employees moving around HQ after dark must be escorted by a security detail."
Rain eyeballed him with enough fury that his smirk faltered and vanished like so much butter in a frying pan. Security policy, his ass. They were just being especially vile towards someone they perceived to be a SOLDIER. For the first time, he regretted that Tseng had been unable to get his hands on a Deepground uniform. His disguise was more attention-catching than expected. It was a hindrance.
Rain uncrossed an arm. The guard looked like he halfway expected him to punch him. Instead, his fist smashed the button for one of the trooper floors. The doors closed and the cabin set in motion. They rose thirty or so floors in complete silence, Rain staring the man down the whole time. He caught Genesis' lips twitching out of the corner of his eye. The elevator stopped and his three accomplices stepped off without a word. They had hoped to not have to split up, but the possibility had still been taken in account in their plans.
By the time Rain and his unwanted company reached floor 49, the SOLDIER floor, the guard had significantly wilted. He didn't even try to follow him as he exited. Rain pretended he knew where he was going until the elevator departed. Then he stopped and let out an inaudible sigh. Alright. Now, to find the staircase…
"Who are you?"
He didn't jump, but it was a near thing. He hadn't realized anyone was nearby, but here a SOLDIER Second stood across the lounge area, eyeing him with distrust.
"I don't recognize you, and I know every SOLDIER… Hey, wait. Cloud?!"
He twitched, unable to help it. Who was…? His voice was vaguely familiar, but from where… That's right, Zack's friend!
"Kunsel?" he exclaimed in surprise.
The man gaped.
"Cloud, you're really…"
Rain crossed the room before he could say another word.
"Is this room secure?" he whispered.
It was difficult to tell under the helmet, but Kunsel's face closed.
"Hum…"
"Where is the staircase?"
Unless Shinra had somehow decided to downgrade the security before AVALANCHE's infiltration in Rain's time, the staircase had never been under surveillance. (After all, what kind of freaks would manage to sneak into the building and choose to trudge up sixty damn floors of stairs when there were perfectly serviceable elevators nearby?) Kunsel seemed to understand.
"Follow me."
He guided him to a discreet door Rain would have mistaken for a cupboard. The sound of it closing behind them echoed in the bare, seemingly infinite stairwell. Rain immediately tapped a predefined rhythm on the metal guardrail. At his signal, footsteps resumed from far under them. Kunsel glanced down in alarm.
"What's happening, here?"
Rain turned back to him.
"I'm not Cloud, but his brother. Rain. You don't have to worry. Zack is safe and he is in in this plan."
Kunsel relaxed minutely.
"How do I know you're saying the truth? I don't know you. You can't be a SOLDIER. Is Zack even here?"
"He is not," another voice said.
Sephiroth must have gotten bored of the stairs. He sailed suddenly through the middle of the stairwell and Rain barely jerked aside in time to let him land on the railing. He glared at him, but of course Sephiroth paid him no heed. Kunsel gasped when the elite SOLDIER twisted his trooper helmet off, allowing silver hair to cascade down his back.
"Sir!"
He snapped a salute, and twitched when first Genesis, then Angeal followed Sephiroth's route.
"Who is this?" Genesis hissed in distrust.
"Zack's friend," Angeal answered, taking his own helmet off. "Hello, Kunsel. Zack will be happy to know you are well. He was very worried."
"Sir! You… you look alright yourself."
"I feel considerably better. Thank you for your help."
"No problem, sir. Is there… something more I can do to help you?" he asked, carefully edging around the reason for their presence.
"Keep out of trouble," Sephiroth said. "We won't need you today, nor hopefully afterwards. But stay low just in case."
"Sure thing."
"Here, I'll give you Zack's new number," Angeal added. "But don't call—"
"—from a Shinra PHS?" Kunsel's lips twitched. "I know the game, sir, don't worry. Not even Deepground will get a snitch on me."
The SOLDIER soon left, Zack's number safely memorised, and they resumed their climbing.
Two floors later, Rain slipped alone through the staircase door. Floor 51 was just as deserted as floor 49. The lights had been dimmed for the night, although just as they had hoped, the main office remained brightly illuminated.
Less welcome were the two Deepground grunts standing guard before the door. They perked up at his arrival, like hounds smelling blood.
" 'Bit late to hand over a report."
"Don't be so judgemental, pal. Maybe he's handing over something else."
"Can't begrudge a guy his late night company, uh?"
"That's what gets me about Outclassed, you know," one added, looking Rain up and down. "They're all so damn pretty."
"I know, right? Even the director!"
"No wonder they don't go after girls, they can just keep to themselves!"
They snickered. Rain pointedly stopped before them and waited until they shut up. When they looked up, wary, he said with a straight face:
"I'm glad you think I'm pretty."
Then he punched the less annoying one in the mouth, hard enough that he lost consciousness. He drew his weapon faster than the other one. That fight was over in seconds and a bit more messy.
The office door flew open.
"What is all this rac… Planet!"
At finding an unknown man standing at his door with two guards at his feet, one unconscious and one dead, Lazard Deusericus, director of SOLDIER, took a startled step back.
"Who in the world are you? You're not one of my men."
Rain stayed silent. Being constantly reminded of the fallacy of this uniform was already getting old.
"Dear director! What a pleasure to see you again."
Lazard's gaze flew behind him to his approaching companions. It landed on Genesis, leading the party with a winsome smile. The director paled.
"Y-you… That's impossible, you're…"
He was quick to draw a concealed handgun, but Rain was even quicker to strike it out of his grip. The weapon clattered to the ground on the opposite side of the office. Lazard closed his eyes, gulping. He lifted his hands in the air and let them in. Rain stayed by the door.
"What a cold welcome," Genesis said. "And here I thought you and I understood each other."
"You were supposed to be dead. And the two of you…"
His eyes flitted to Angeal and Sephiroth.
"What do you want from me?"
"Nothing you're not ready to offer, I'm sure. We're all friends here, Lazard."
"Friends? I wouldn't be so quick to use that word. I agreed to fund you and Hollander, and now it's only a matter of time before the good doctor rats me out. I'm sure he was only waiting for the best opportunity. But with Deepground in command, he'll talk whether he wants to or not. And yet I'm trapped here, unable to flee Midgar because every single one of my moves is under watch. A dead man walking has no friends."
The director sounded grim. His funding of Genesis' rebellion was news to Rain, but if his situation was so dire, it certainly explained the concealed weapon.
"And nothing to lose either," Sephiroth argued. "You want Deepground gone; so do we. Will you lie down and wait for your death or fight until the end?"
Lazard straightened. A calculating glint appeared in his eyes.
"What do you want?" he repeated.
"An executive's access card to the upper levels."
"Fine. But I'm coming with you. The three of you appear to be excessively good at beating the odds. You may well be my only chance to get out of this tower alive."
The infiltrators exchanged glances. Finally, they shrugged. Lazard was his own man. Accompanying them could hardly put him in more danger than he already was and he knew better than to get in the way of SOLDIERs.
They dragged the Deepground troopers inside the director's office, the one still alive tied up and gagged, then returned to the elevators without meeting anyone. Lazard produced the card and Sephiroth pressed the button for the last floor. Rain saw Lazard gulp despite his best efforts to cling to his countenance.
"You know an access this late at night will already have set off all the security in the tower, don't you?"
"We do," Sephiroth said calmly.
It mattered little. The Turks had promised a distraction that would keep all the helicopters grounded. Shinra had no escape route.
Lazard nodded jerkily and said no more. The cabin rose. The anticipation within its walls rose with it. They unsheathed their weapons as one, let their disguises fall to the floor unheeded.
The elevator jerked and stopped. The doors opened to floor 69: the buffer area before President Shinra's floor, essentially one huge foyer whose only feature of note was the ostentatious double spiral staircase leading up. But before it stood three solitary figures. The stripes on their Mako suits glowed in the half-light.
"Tsviets," Rain whispered, stepping out with the others.
The woman dressed in red smirked at them, her two companions silent by her side.
"Oh?" she said in her rough accent. "It seems even the little mice have heard of us. Well, allow us to introduce ourselves properly! I am Rosso the Crimson, and these are Nero the Sable and Azul the Cerulean. We are President Shinra's new elite soldiers. An upgrade, if you will."
Although her words were meant to insult them, she didn't hesitate to rake appreciative eyes up and down Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal's forms. Then, as if an afterthought, she seemed to find Rain's SOLDIER uniform rather fetching as well. Rain found it disconcerting. He had fought Rosso before, but as a mature and grounded woman. Right now, she couldn't have been older than Zack.
"So there were traitors after all," the imposing Azul said, staring straight at Lazard. The director prudently stepped back behind Genesis.
"Brother will be pleased," Nero agreed. "He was right; this tower is indeed a den of snakes."
Behind them, the elevator closed with a final-sounding snap. The call button lit up a deep red. Before the cabin could go back to the lower floors and risk pouring reinforcements behind their backs, Angeal stabbed the doors' control panel. It shorted out in a shower of sparks. Rosso laughed.
"Burning the bridges behind you, are you? Very well. Shall we dance?"
She hefted her heavy double blade. Rain would have battled her since he already knew her fighting style, but he was warier of Nero. Azul exuded brute strength and appeared to be the more threatening of the three, but he remembered Vincent telling him about Nero's dangerous power. Vincent had been the one most heavily involved in the struggle against Deepground, back then. What little he had shared afterwards was precious intel.
He stepped forward to claim Nero as his opponent. Genesis strode confidently to Rosso, who hummed in approval.
"You are not wearing red today."
"My apologies. We would have made quite the dramatic sight in any other circumstances."
"Oh, that's alright. I will have you bathed in red… the red of your blood!"
She launched himself at him without any more ceremony and Angeal used the flat of the Buster Sword to counter the bullet rain that Azul's machine gun roared at him.
Nero dodged Rain's first swings. Although his arms remained trapped in the long sleeves of his straight-jacket Mako suit, the strange wings-like apparatus on his back whipped out two guns and fired at him with eerie accuracy. Rain ducked, rolled and followed as his enemy backed away to an empty part of the foyer. Nearby, he heard Rosso's throaty laugh and Angeal's battle cry.
Wisps of murky shadow caught the corner of his eye. Without thinking, he threw himself at Sephiroth. They collapsed and slid away, barely avoiding the orb of darkness that surged where, just a second before, the SOLDIER had been covertly making his way toward the stairs.
"Ah ha," Nero said as they picked themselves off the floor. "I think not, SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth. You would deprive us of the honour to do battle with you?"
"No matter what," Rain told Sephiroth, his heart beating a strange rhythm from the near miss, "don't let him catch you in his darkness."
He caught his eye to imprint upon him the severity of the warning. Sephiroth nodded and hefted Masamune in his usual fighting stance, for now forgoing his initial plan of creeping to the President's office while the Tsviets were distracted.
"Let's hurry," was all he had to say on the matter. "We are on a schedule."
"How rude," Nero lamented. "Brother and I had been so looking forward to meeting you."
That was another thing. Where was Weiss? Nero's brother was easily the strongest Tsviet, the strongest member of Deepground period. Was he waiting upstairs with the President? A foreboding feeling began to seize Rain. But it could just as easily have been caused by the idea of being cornered into fighting alone by Sephiroth's side, of entrusting his flank to him.
At Rain's next attack, Nero's form dissolved in three identical copies of himself. It became evident that they were all very corporeal as bullets grazed skin, tracing patterns of blood where he wasn't quick enough to run or parry. Sephiroth threw a Fire spell at one and rushed another, carving time for him to find his feet again.
Between the two of them, Nero was soon back to a single copy who disappeared in a portal of darkness. They swivelled back to back, searching every corner of the room for him. Bullets rained on them from above. Nero's "wings" apparently allowed him to free float as well. Masamune parried every shot in an intricate flashing dance. Rain crouched behind Sephiroth and launched himself at the nearest wall. He rebounded against it and surged against Nero's flank.
He had considerable experience fighting airborne foes. Soon, Nero cried in pain even as he pushed him away. A Bolt spell from below compounded the enemy's weakness. He drifted towards the upper level.
Rain tucked in a roll to soften his landing. He exchanged a nod with Sephiroth, on the other side of the foyer, and they each headed for one of the grand sets of carpeted stairs. On the way there, Rain bumped into Azul, diverting the canon blast that could have taken Angeal's head off. Sephiroth cut a pillar in two quick slashes of Masamune, caught it and swung it for Genesis to use as a springing board and launch himself back at Rosso.
They rushed in the huge office of their target. Nero hovered in the middle of the room, glaring at them, but Rain followed Sephiroth's line of sight. Someone was cowering behind the ridiculously big desk.
"Now!" Nero said. "Please allow me to unlock my true powers, that I may be allowed to serve my master proudly and dispose of these intruders!"
The words sounded worn and hollow, though maybe Rain was the only one to hear it. He knew that Nero's true loyalty went to Weiss and Weiss alone. This had to be the chip talking. The chip…
The shadow nodded after a long and careful second of deliberation, but by then Sephiroth had already crossed most of the room in one bound.
"Sephiroth, wait!" Rain shouted, his bad feeling from before surging up in a tidal wave.
Sephiroth froze at his voice, the response so immediate it would have left Rain breathless if he had had any time to consider it.
Instead, Genesis and Rosso suddenly barged in. Both Nero and Sephiroth jumped aside to avoid them. The Crimson Tsviet cried in pain as she was flung to the floor. Genesis landed gracefully. His eyes, bright with battle fire, assessed the situation in a single glance even as Nero's long sleeves unlocked.
"Why hesitate now, Sephiroth?" he crowed.
Before anyone could stop him, he appeared behind the desk, the Rapier poised to strike. The shadow uncoiled with great strength, throwing him aside with a slash that would have torn him apart if Genesis hadn't been so quick on his feet.
The fake President drew to their full height. It was a tall figure, dressed in formless black robes and a mask. Not a single patch of skin was visible.
"So this is a Restrictor," Sephiroth said.
The mask snapped in his direction.
"How do you know this name?" he said in a distinctly male voice.
"Where is the President?" Genesis retorted, getting to his feet with a thunderous frown.
"That is none of your concern, I am afraid."
It took too long for Rain to understand the unconcerned irony in these words. By then Nero's tattooed arms were already free and darkness swelled behind Genesis. Sephiroth's shouted his friend's name in alarm and dived for him.
"Sephiroth, no!"
Rain's scream was in vain. The shadows swallowed both men like a great gaping maw. It dissolved in poisonous mist, leaving bare the spot where they had been standing. A gasp signalled Angeal's presence at the top of the stairs. His fight won, he had been coming to help only to see both of his friends disappear before his eyes.
"What have you done with them?" he demanded of Nero, flashing teeth.
"They are lost to you. You will never see them again. Such is the price of standing against Shinra."
Angeal roared in rage and charged him. Rain only had a second to pull him out of the way of another darkness orb. The Restrictor glanced out of the window.
"Enough," he said suddenly. "We are done here."
"What?" Rosso protested from where she was struggling to stand. "No! That inferior being shamed me. I want my reven—"
She cut off mid-word with a strangled gasp and clutched her head. The Restrictor had barely turned to look at her.
"I said we go. Now."
Rosso snarled but threw herself at the nearest window. It shattered under her weight.
"This isn't over," she said, glaring at Rain and Angeal, just before plummeting down.
Another crash of glass echoed as Azul copied her from the level below. Rain and Angeal tried to intercept the Restrictor before he joined them, but Nero laid cover fire for his ally, forcing them to duck. Only when his companions were long gone did the man retreat in one of his darkness portals.
Lazard ran up the stairs to join them.
"What happened? The President?"
"Long gone," Rain ground out. "And we'll be the same in a much more metaphorical sense if we don't get out of here."
He could already hear the painful pitch of Deepground aerial troops' jet packs. They were all around the tower and coming up fast, and every single damned wall in this room was a window. There was no defensible position.
"But Sephiroth and Genesis…" Angeal tried to argue.
"There is no time!"
Rain jerked Lazard from his feet, throwing the director over his shoulder despite his shout of protest. He took a running leap out of the broken window just as dozens of soldiers appeared all around the floor. There was a split moment of thundering silence before all of their guns fired simultaneously, shattering glass, pelting into the expensive carpets, ripping the gigantic desk to shreds.
Meanwhile, Rain aimed his fall with deadly accuracy and smashed into a dumbfounded infantryman. The grunt's gun went spiralling down as he fought against the vice-like arm looped around his neck. The jet pack whined under their combined weight and spiralled out of control. They fell forty stories in a sputtering smoke trail before the grunt went slack, unconscious.
Lazard's white-knuckled fingers were digging in Rain's shoulders. He took the risk to let the director go so he could stretch himself to the jet pack's controls. However they were still heavily unbalanced.
To Rain's great relief, Angeal choose this moment to appear by their sides, wearing a pack he had to have wrestled from another unfortunate soldier. He took Lazard's weight from Rain, allowing him to divest his victim of the precious gear to claim it for himself. The motor complained, but managed to lift him up just before he smashed into the first roofs below.
By the time Deepground realised the room they were destroying was empty, their targets were tearing down the streets towards the shadows of under-Plate Midgar.
Rain's jet pack failed as they were crossing the sector 6 slums. They found an abandoned warehouse in which to lay low and find their breaths again.
Restless, Rain toured the facilities to check the layout and the exit points. There were plenty of hiding places here: stacks of moulding crates, rusting catwalks, pieces of useless machinery. Yet it did little to quell the paranoia and anger simmering under his skin. He felt laid bare, raw in a way only one man had ever managed to make him feel. His gloves creaked from how tightly he was clenching his fists.
Angeal was waiting for him when he made his way back to the dark little corner they had claimed as their shelter.
"What's the plan?" he asked immediately.
Rain blinked tiredly at him.
"The plan?"
"To rescue Genesis and Sephiroth. You know what happened to them, right?"
He stared at the SOLDIER for a long, uncomfortable moment. When he turned away, there was no denying the burden coiling around his limbs and weighting his shoulders down.
"There's no plan. They're gone."
Angeal was on him in the next breath, gripping his arms and staring furiously in his eyes.
"What do you mean, 'there's no plan'? You always have a plan!" he shouted.
Lazard rose in alarm from his exhausted slump.
"Angeal, stop! Now is not the time for infighting…"
He tried to interfere, but Angeal pushed him away.
"I just got Genesis back," he barked. "I did my very best to support Sephiroth, just like you asked. We went through hell and back, the three of us, but we're finally finding our feet again. After all this time, we stand together again! And now you're telling me it's over? I refuse to accept this! However ready you are to give up on them, I am not!"
Rain clamped down hard on the fury that surged in him and would have had him respond to Angeal's wrath in kind. Lazard was right. This wasn't the time and place, and they would have just been lashing out at each other in the absence of a true culprit. He pried Angeal's fingers off his arms, already feeling the bruises they had dug in his flesh.
"Nero's darkness is absolute. It smothers a soul until there's nothing left of it. We can't enter it without him swallowing us in, and even if we did, we'd just doom two more people to the same fate. Once you're in, you don't get out."
Angeal's eyes roved over his expression, looking for a lie or an omission.
In truth, there was one person who could have accomplished such a miracle. However, Vincent and CHAOS, the essence of corrupted Lifestream he carried, were out of their reach. By the time they could put the ex-Turk and Nero in presence, it would be far too late for Genesis and Sephiroth. Rain remembered what few Yuffie had been able to tell him about her short spell in Nero's darkness. The usually happy-going girl had been shaking and listless with fright. If Vincent hadn't rescued her, her psyche would have shattered in minutes.
Sephiroth and Genesis were gone, and they'd all have to accept this.
Angeal stepped back. His face was a study in desolation.
"No," he whispered brokenly.
He bent in two and clutched at his head with a desperate moan. He staggered away, disappearing between forsaken rows of crates. Lazard stared after him in indecision. When he glanced at him, Rain averted his eyes. After a moment more, the director's footsteps moved away and faded in the empty space of the warehouse.
His jaws felt welded together from how hard he was grinding his teeth. The part of him that would always be Zack longed to trail after his friend and mentor, to share his grief and cry with him. But that wasn't him. Rain was a stranger to Angeal, and his own tears weren't something he shared with anyone, even should he have felt the need to spill them today.
And he didn't, he told himself, even as his eyes tingled unpleasantly, but remained dry. He didn't feel like crying. He felt like hitting something, like slashing away at monsters in the desolate Midgar plains. Like screaming his frustration to the wind. Like punching someone.
Punching Sephiroth would have felt really good right now.
He leaned his forehead against a cold and damp wall and focused on breathing deeply. He wasn't so much grieving as he was furious.
How dare he? How dare Sephiroth confound him, twist him around, tie him up in knots like this, only to vanish in the blink of an eye while he was still reeling in confusion? How dare him make all his doubts and his half-confessed hopes moot when he was still struggling to make sense of them?
He had been slowly reforming himself around a new centre, he realised it now. He had been moulding himself in a new shape, stretching his life around Sephiroth because to his thrice-cursed subconscious, Sephiroth was unshakable, something he would always have to watch and watch out for. Only that indestructible pillar was gone and he was left like a sail whose ropes had snapped, twisting around in the sky with no ground in sight.
Sephiroth being gone made no sense to him. He had hoped for it for so long, yet here it was and he had never been so afraid of the void. Without him, half of his soul was suddenly useless remnants of a past long forgotten. Why fear when Fear itself had faded away? Why these walls when no one remained to batter them?
He picked at them with shaking mental fingers. His mind had been through a lot, but where Zack's remnants were a bitter-sweet and guilty treasure, he would have given a lot to be able to forget the thick barrier that lurked at the back of his thoughts. Yet he knew the price of negligence. These walls had been forged out of pain and tragedy, and every time he so much as brushed against them, memories of blood and failure rose unbidden.
He knew the price they had come at. But against the too fresh emptiness in his heart…
He didn't allow time to second-guess himself. He tore the walls down.
Genesis screamed. His voice was nearly drowned by the harsh whispers and echoing silence of the darkness, but it still cut off a new part of Sephiroth's soul. The shadows ate away at their essences, a phantom agony made all the more biting by the absence of wounds to focus on and cradle. Sephiroth endured a new wave of pain with gritted teeth. His hand clutched Genesis' so hard they both felt bones shifting under the strain, yet even that did nothing to grant them reprieve.
"You shouldn't have come for me, my friend," Genesis panted when he could find the breath to form the words.
Sephiroth grunted, unwilling to unsolder his jaws to answer such an asinine remark. Enough of his contempt filtered through the sound that Genesis attempted a pale smile. Sephiroth jerked as another seizure shook him to the core. He allowed Genesis to lean his head against his shoulder, too wrung out to feel anything but relief at the contact.
"This is the end," Genesis whispered, and as he glanced down, Sephiroth acknowledged that he was right. The shadows had started gnawing at their forms, dissolving their outlines in hazy mist.
"It's been an honour, Genesis," he found the strength to say.
A squeeze of his hand was the only answer he needed.
But as he waited for the next attack, it wasn't pain that came to him.
His lurch dislodged Genesis, who snapped his head up and gasped. Sephiroth's eyes had gone wide and unseeing. His slit pupils had contracted to slim lines in a sea of searing, pulsing blue-green.
Sephiroth didn't hear his unnerved friend calling his name. There was another voice here, a sliver of a sound slipping through the back of his thoughts, pleading, imploring. He turned, searching for it. He stumbled on a direction in which it seemed a fraction louder. He wrenched forward, pulling Genesis after him.
"What?" his friend gasped. "What is it? What are you doing?"
"It's calling for me."
His eyes remained too vibrant, colour shifting in them in a way Genesis had never seen before. He thought about stopping him, about snapping him out of whatever spell he was under. This was probably a trap, another weapon of this Planet forsaken place.
But agony tore through him once more and the intention was lost. What use would that be? They would die either way. If this was a trap, then maybe their suffering would end sooner.
Over here, whispered the voice in Sephiroth's mind, steadily growing stronger. It faded in and out of his hearing range, allowing him to snatch bits and pieces of its words. I'm here. Please! Sephiroth. You can't let it be the end. You're worth so much more than this. I'm here… I'll always be here…
It felt like a prayer.
Angeal was lost in a heavy shroud of sorrow, his thoughts turned inward. That's why Lazard was the first to hear engines approaching the warehouse. He touched a hand to the shoulder of his once subordinate.
"Do you hear that?"
To his relief, Angeal's head lifted. The listlessness vanished from his face, replaced by a frown.
"Vehicles. We've been found already?"
He turned away, hurrying back in his tracks with Lazard sticking close behind him.
"Rain! We've got to mo…"
Angeal froze, so suddenly that Lazard collided with him.
"What? What is it?"
The strange blond man wearing a stolen SOLDIER uniform stood where they had left him. There was nothing unusual with him at first glance, except for the fact his eyes were closed and he had not stirred at their arrival. Angeal tilted his head.
"Rain?"
When he received no answer, he tentatively stepped forward. Rain's eyes opened. Lazard and Angeal gasped in unison. Green merged brilliantly with Rain's usual blue, pulsing to an unknown beat, and the pupils had become narrow black slits.
He ignored them, staring into empty space. His hand lifted as if to reach for someone who was not there. It was held out, open in invitation.
"I'm here." It passed through his lips in a barely audible whisper.
A long suspended moment of silence echoed in its wake.
Then purple shadows swelled around his fingers, twining furiously.
Just as Lazard stepped back and Angeal forward in horror, a gloved hand surged from their midst and clasped Rain's. The darkness inflated until it was tall enough to spit out two well-known figures, then clamped down and disappeared like a sullen mouth.
Genesis immediately staggered to the floor, his legs too weak to carry him. He was drenched in sweat. His eyes, too wide in a gaunt and livid face, stared in incomprehension at the friend whose other hand he clutched like a lifeline.
Sephiroth and Rain didn't move, their worlds seemingly reduced to each other. The spell broke when Rain blinked, long and slow like a man waking from a dream. His eyelids unveiled unadulterated blue circling round pupils. He gasped, went white as a sheet and collapsed, unconscious. Sephiroth snapped out of it in time to make a fumbled recovery, but only managed to stop him from cracking his head on the ground as his own limbs failed him.
Before anyone could do a thing more, Tseng appeared in the half-light a broken window cast on the cement floor. In the confusion, no one had heard the warehouse doors open. The Turk gave no outward reaction to whatever sight they must have presented.
"There you all are. We must be going now, before Deepground finds your tracks. Follow me."
(Can you believe there is no cliffhanger in this chapter? I can't believe there is no cliffhanger in this chapter. See you all on January 16th. Joyeux Noël et bonnes fêtes de fin d'année !)