Chapter XIV
Ice Rage
"You are a preacher. Mommy says never talk to preachers." - little girl in Icicle Inn
"Yes, I knew a woman named Ifalna. She lived in a cottage just outside of town. She was nice, but sad, until that scientist friend of hers came. Then one day some soldiers came and took her away. No one has seen her since."
Aeris thanked the aproned woman. The inn had a dark, almost romantic atmosphere, though John suspected it was because half the light bulbs were burnt out. The only bright area was the bar, where a group of hard bodied, tanned beach bums sat drinking and complaining.
"You see any strangers come through town?" John asked.
"Why yes. A silver haired man in a black cape. Cold, he was. No one wanted to go near him. He walked straight through town, down the north ski slope. Ever since, the run has been closed. Too dangerous, as if the land is angry. Blizzards whip up from nowhere."
"I can feel it," Aeris said. "The Planet is angry."
"Just like the Planet," John said. "Lash out at the nearest innocents."
Aeris waited until the server left before speaking. "John, the Planet feels pain, but it doesn't know the cause. It's the same when you or I have a mosquito bite. We can scratch it, but the mosquito is long gone."
"Or you can smack it. Why don't you tell the Planet about Sephiroth and be done with it?"
"It doesn't work like that. You remember what it feels like? All those voices at once? Concepts are hard to communicate."
"I just wish the Planet would do something useful. Where was the Planet back there in Pebble Creek when your people needed it? Sorry. I'm being a jerk."
"We're both tired. Let's find my mother's house."
It wasn't hard to find.
The locals had kept the place in good repair, even tending the pots of flowers growing in the windows. Aeris inspected a pot of miniature roses and smiled.
"My mother told me she was the village midwife and healer." She opened the door and led him inside.
"Seems she was popular here," John said, staring at the framed picture of Ifalna and half a dozen women at what he guessed was a church function. "And this. A video collection."
"Let me see," Aeris said. She pulled out a tape labeled, "Baby's First Days." She popped it into the player and waited while John thumbed through some of the other titles, such as "Prof. Gast's Study of Jenova and the Ancients."
The screen flickered to life.
Ifalna sat in that very room, cuddling a tiny baby on her lap. The camera zoomed in, catching the sleepy baby's cute round face.
"Say hello to the world," Ifalna said, taking the baby's tiny hand and waving it. "Darling little Aeris. you are so sleepy, after being cranky last night."
In the real room, Aeris reached out and stroked the baby's image.
On the video, a man in a white coat walked into view. But instead of the wild, spacey look of Hojo, this man radiated intelligence and dignity. Ifalna snuggled up to him.
"Come to hold your daughter, oh great professor Gast? It's a cruel world for a child these days."
"Don't worry, dear. I'll always be here to protect you."
The tape ended.
"My father," Aeris said. "I finally get to see him."
"He seems like a wonderful guy. I wonder what happened to him."
The next tape told the story. The new family was sharing another Kodak moment, only to have Hojo burst in and claim Ifalna and the baby as lab subjects. Aeris flinched when Hojo's guards shot Mr. Gast. John felt her stab of pain at Ifalna's scream.
"Goddamn Hojo." John scuffed his foot into the floor. "Next time I see that sorry sack of - "
"Don't," Aeris said, grasping his arm. "We can't allow ourselves to become distracted."
John was about to argue when he saw the tears running down her face. He held her while she wept into his shoulder. After several long minutes John pulled out the tape and put it away. He selected the Jenova study tape, thinking an intellectual interview would calm his spirits. Typical John mistake, he thought later.
"Tell me about the Crisis from the Sky," Mr. Gast was saying.
"It approached us as a friend. It appeared as our dead brothers, our dead mothers."
John moved toward the screen with a growing premonition of a hammer blow.
"Soon, Jenova revealed its true nature, for it infected the Cetra with a virus . . . those who weren't killed outright went mad and transformed into monsters."
John fell backward, striking the floor with his rump. Aeris looked concerned.
" . . . then Jenova approached other Cetra clans, and gave them the virus . . . "
A keening cry escaped his lips. He rolled to all fours, staggered up, hobbled across the room and nearly tumbled down a set of stairs. Aeris cut the video but the words kept pounding in his head. Infected, infected, infected. The images of feverish victims twisting in agony under the unforgiving sun. Jenova, Crisis from the Sky. And he was one of them. No wonder the dead Cetra at Pebble Creek had been so wary of him.
He held his side as he descended, trying to keep his guts inside where they wouldn't stain the furniture.
"John? What's wrong?"
At least she didn't ask if he was all right. John limped between the beds. He picked up a picture of Ifalna and Gast, shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said, gently placing the photo back on the end table. He brushed past Aeris and grabbed her Princess Guard.
"John, what are you doing?"
"Stay back! Please. I don't want to infect you."
"Nonsense. You don't carry the - " She broke off in a scream when John struck himself with her weapon.
He hit himself again, relishing the sharp gash of pain against his scalp. He felt the blood trickle down his forehead into his eye. Aeris screamed again. John fled upstairs and out into the snowy wind.
"John, Stop!"
John doubled his speed, slipping and bumping his way into the village.
People dodged out of the way as he bumbled into the town square.
"I am Jenova! Crisis from the Sky! Bringer of death! You must destroy - "
A snowball popped him in the ear. A girl giggled.
"You are a preacher. Mommy says never talk to preachers."
"No. Listen. You aren't safe here. No one is safe around - arrgh! Why me!" He shouted at the sky. "Why me, of all people!"
"Pipe down, you crazy brat," a man shouted from an upstairs window.
John screamed at that, tearing off his coat and holding the Princess Guard aloft. He swung it around and banged himself between the shoulder blades.
"See me? I'm not safe! I'm not. I'm not."
A crack. A gunshot, and something hot grazed his shoulder. John turned toward the entrance to town, seeing a woman in a blue Turk's uniform, flanked by two Shinra guards. John's rage instantly turned outward. He lifted the staff high above his head and charged.
Somewhere, dimly, he heard Aeris shouting at him to stop. Reality finally squeezing into his skull? He supposed he would have stopped had the guards not been firing at him. The bullets bounced off a mental wall in front of him. Or perhaps Aeris had cast a Barrier spell. Either way, they didn't slow him, though he felt the sting of concussion.
The Turk woman, a better shot with a better gun, shot a round that punched through his barrier and smacked against his ribs. A glancing shot, John hoped, feeling the pain rip along his side as he imagined the bullet scraping along his rib. It sent him down to one knee, the staff slipping from his grasp as he whirled his arms in rage.
"Eat that!" The woman made to fire again.
John felt his fury congeal into living energy.
Freeze Please.
An icy wind whipped snow and daggers of ice in a funnel cloud around the soldiers. The guards threw their arms over their faces as they sailed into nearby drifts. The gun flew from the woman's hand, and she nearly bent in a backward hoop under the onslaught.
"Now I'm mad!" She picked an ice shard from her bleeding cheek. "Take this." She pulled out a long gray rod, larger than Reno's shock stick. "Shattering Pulse!"
The medicine ball of gray energy struck him straight in the stomach. He felt himself fly back several meters. His head spinning like a neutron star, a red fury flared again. He forced himself to his feet, even on legs like rubbery lead. He saw the woman groping in the snow for her gun.
"Oh no you don't," John said. He flung his arms and spun full circle.
Twine Time.
Tendrils of earth burst through the snow pack and wrapped themselves up the legs and bodies of the soldiers. The Turk woman was caught by her arms as well. She cried as her body bent at a painful angle.
"Stop!"
His concentration broken, John turned to see a red-faced Aeris. The woman in blue moaned in relief as the earth tendrils flaked away. John sank to his knees, spent, prompting the Turk to launch herself at him.
"I said, stop!"
Aeris bowed her head. As in Battle Square, the warm rain and circling angels bathed the group, including the baffled guards, in a yellow glow.
John felt his wounds close and his energy soar. He slithered from beneath the Turk woman. She made a grab for his leg and he kicked at her, finally striking her in the side.
"Enough!"
John found himself sprawled in the snow, looking up at a flushed Aeris, who held her Princess Guard in an 'anyone else want a piece of me?' stance.
She had hit him. Hard. He felt no pain (the yellow glow conferring a strong protective field). He had to laugh though; she had clocked him a good one.
"Hey," the Turk said. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
"You mean Aeris?" John said, winded, his anger now evaporating like a summer mist. "She decided she'd rather live." He paused, panting. "You have no idea how stubborn she is."
"I'm Elena, of the Turks." The woman had blonde, TV anchorwoman hair.
"I'm John Philip Sorea, part time folk-rock singer, part time Crisis from the Sky."
"I'm Aeris, a flower girl from the slums."
Elena snorted. "You're handy with that staff."
"Not everyone in the slums wants flowers."
"And you," she turned to John, "have some nasty little tricks."
John felt his ribs, now healed, but still sensitive where Elena's bullet had indeed grazed him.
Aeris said, "It's the first time I've seen him fight effectively."
"I can't fight if I'm sane."
Elena gave John a long look. "Believe it or not," she said, "I'm not after the two of you. I want the leader of your terrorist group, Cloud Strife."
"Whatever for?" Aeris asked.
Elena hung her head. "He killed Tseng."
"Elena, he didn't. I was there. Sephiroth killed him."
"You lie!"
"No Elena. He met us at the temple entrance, barely alive, where he gave us the keystone. He had already been stabbed by then."
"From what I've seen of Cloud Strife," John said, "Anyone cut up by Spike's sword does not wiggle around and get back up. They stay chopped into tiny pieces."
"Tseng was stabbed with a long, thin sword, Elena."
"And believe me. Aeris knows that sword." He shuddered at the memory. Aeris gave him an unflattering look. John blushed.
"You're just saying that to protect Cloud," Elena said.
John shrugged. Sooner this meeting was over, the better.
"I have to leave now. Cloud will be arriving within a day. "Though why you aren't with him," she said to Aeris, "is a mystery to me. And why did all my sources say you were dead?"
"Must have been some other Aeris," John said.
Elena snorted, motioning to her two guards who gulped down their drinks, and left the restaurant.
John held out his hands. "See? Even when I tell the truth they don't believe me."
Aeris shook her head, but smiled. "What do you think Elena's going to do? With Cloud?"
"Probably slap him. She's not as dumb as she acts."
"Should we wait for the others?"
"I think we should try to catch Sephiroth. Maybe slow him down. Of course, I'm crazy, so don't believe anything I say."
"You're not crazy, John."
"Yea? Ask anyone in this town."
"Maybe a little crazy. Remember what I told you?"
"What, after you hit me with your stick?"
"Like you didn't deserve it? Anyway, I watched the rest of the tapes. The virus, the virus that killed my people, it was something manufactured. Not something you carry. Understand? And this was two thousand years ago."
John hung his head, but nodded. Aeris clasped his hand.
"So next time you feel a breakdown coming on, talk to me, okay? Don't start pounding yourself with my staff."
John took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm sorry. Just this whole thing - one atrocity after another. I feel so sick."
"That's okay. It's natural. It's human."
"Not that either of us are."
"Human is not just the species. It's the feeling, the caring. All else is appearance. Take Nanaki. No one would confuse him for a human outright, but once you get to know him, you realize inside he's no different from us."
"His Stardust Ray packs a mean punch," John said.
"He felt bad about that. He told me. Anyway - "
"I got it!" John stood so suddenly Aeris snatched her staff out of his reach.
"What?"
"How could I be so stupid!"
The restaurant patrons were staring at him.
"Do you want an answer?" Aeris asked.
John sat. "Nestor. That creep Nestor."
"Who?"
"Remember in the lab? When I first met you?"
"A lot of things happened."
"A guy in a suit. He walked in, demanding to see the Cetra?"
"Oh. I remember."
"He thought I was a Cetra because I shot off your Healing Wind."
"You fooled all of us. By the way, how did you - "
"In his briefcase he had three drug vials. One of them he tried to inject into me. I dodged, and he injected the table. The other vials - after I got a vision off them, I chucked them into the incinerator. Aeris, those vials. They contained the Cetra disease. Nestor is trying to bring back the Cetra plague."
Aeris stared at him. "The bringer of death."
"Yes. And I'll bet he's right here in town."
"That's what Mother meant. Death awaits in Icicle Inn. But why, why start the Cetra plague? When I'm the only Cetra?"
"Perhaps you aren't. Perhaps, Shinra and the Turks missed some."
"And Nestor's trying to finish the job. How could he? Haven't my people suffered enough?"
"We need to leave town. Now."
"I agree." She stood, then put her hand to her forehead and gripped the table for support.
"What's wrong?"
"Feeling a little faint. All this talk about the plague. Don't worry. It's not that. It'll pass. I'm just tired. That's all."
John could not read anything wrong as he helped her to the door. She soon recovered, and John turned his thoughts to finding a way out of town.