Zack and Cloud left the facility together. Hollander had slipped out a service hatch during the fight and evaded them, but there was only one way off the mountain, and it lead to the same place they were going. Modeoheim.
Tseng and the others had vanished as well, but footprints in the snow showed their path. An ice tunnel for bulldozers and transport mechs cut a passage through the mountains. Zack and Cloud started down it side by side, talking to pass the time.
"Who's messing with you? I want names! I'll go down there and straighten them out myself!" Zack fumed when Cloud told him about his run-in's with Security grunts in the lockerroom.
"Thanks but that'd probably only make it worse."
"Not if I do it! As soon as they see a black shirt, they'll go hide under their beds and never bother you again. Trust me."
Cloud looked over at him. Zack was pretty high-ranking, wasn't he? He seemed to give two damns about Cloud, who did potentially save his life from that Fira bolt back there. It didn't take Zack long to get Cloud talking.
Cloud said his mom had sent him to some ultra-strict proto-religious academy. An only child raised by a single mom, Cloud never had a "best friend" or anyone to confide in growing up. That bothered Zack a lot, in his mind everyone should have someone to call "bro." Life wasn't worth living without that!
Zack told him once he got into SOLDIER though, things would get better, which seemed to lift Cloud's spirits. He asked about what it was like working with the "Big Ones," did he ever get to work with Sephiroth? Zack laughed and said those guys were just kind of there. They were these illusive entities that strutted around SOLDIER wing out of uniform as a deranged form of performance incentive; like if they all just worked harder they could someday be that cool.
"Pfft," even Cloud wasn't buying that.
Zack started to talk about Angeal and how he wasn't like that though. He was one of the "Big Ones," so to say, and still wore the uniform and associated with the other SOLDIER's. He was Zack's mentor and best friend. He told Cloud about how he'd taken Zack on as a student, about all the things Angeal had done to keep him in line, about broken swords in the training room, about…
And Zack started to get quiet, a brining energy draining from his body. Cloud saw him phase, a sense of something heavy as they walked. Zack seemed much older than he had a moment ago, and Cloud sensed some unearthly burden weighing on his shoulders.
"You can vent about it if you want," he told Zack, not even sure if that was really what was up. He thought he'd hit it pretty close to on the money though when Zack started rubbing the back of his head.
"It's a long story."
Cloud looked around, just to make sure they weren't doing anything important…They were walking in the middle of an ice cave road that nobody used for anything important to go to a town that nobody important lived in, and it didn't look like they were going to get there anytime soon.
"…I've got time."
Zack smirked, and started talking.
He told him about the craziness that had been going on in SOLDIER, about Wutai and the events that followed, even about Aerith and why Zack was out there in the godforsaken mountains in the first place. There was no reason to hold anything back now. Cloud's mouth hung open in awe.
"Whoa…I'm sorry Zack."
The SOLDIER shrugged, hands in his pockets like there wasn't much he could do.
"You don't think he'd actually hurt her, do you?" asked Cloud.
Zack went silent for a long moment. "…Look, let's run okay?"
Cloud agreed, and they started off at a good pace heading for Modeoheim.
They reached the end of the tunnel with lungs burning. Cloud had kept pace with Zack the whole way. They stood out on a snowcapped plateau lined with rustic cabins, the mountain village of Modeoheim.
"Looks deserted," Cloud noted. Zack explained that it had once been a site considered for a reactor location, but once the plans were abandoned so was the village.
Now Zack and Cloud looked around on full-alert. The cabins were dilapidated and falling apart at the foundations. Signs posted along the main road pointed to several outlying areas, one reading "ICICLE INN" to the North.
They found the bathhouse where Genesis said it would be, a brownstone building on the outskirts of town. It had a door recently, judging by the freshly splintered frame.
They whipped around at the sound of footsteps behind them.
"Tseng!" Zack called to the Turk, who stood with his hands up. But he was alone. "Where are the others?"
"I sent them up the mountain to go find a cell spot. If they get reception we can call in an extraction team. Are you two okay?"
Zack flipped his sword onto his back and put a hand on Cloud's shoulder. "Yeah, we're good. We took care of the clone problem back at the facility."
Cloud looked up at Zack. He'd said we. But Zack's tone became serious. "Genesis is dead."
Tseng nodded. "Don't count on it. We saw Hollander flee the facility and trailed him here. He ran in there…"
They peered into the bathhouse. A breathing entryway leered at them like an open maw, inviting them into the black gullet of some dark monstrosity. They all three shot each other serious glances, drew their weapons, and proceeded on.
Inside was a dilapidated stone and wood foyer, caked with grime and black mold. Snowglare streamed in through half-boarded windows reflecting off broken glass. The bathhouse split into two separate sections, leading down to different parts of the building.
"Let's split up," said Tseng. Cloud looked over at Zack, who nodded for him to go with Tseng. He nodded back in understanding—their silent codespeak. They split off with Zack taking the left way down into a darker part of the building.
He went through a brick archway into the bathhouse proper, vaulted granite ceilings over a tiled marble bathing pool. The grime and grout was inches thick over sheets of factory windows, an old-world aesthetic poking through neo-noir grunge.
The glint of something silver caught Zack's eye—a low-walled wading fountain. He went over to it, something gleamed over the wall. A silver chain lay discarded in the bath. He picked it up—sterling forget-me-nots.
"AERITH!" he screamed, taking off running through the bathhouse in a mad panic. "AERITH!"
He dashed down a hallway, kicking in a door to his left. Empty. He ran on barreling through every door and calling out her name. Cold adrenaline coursed through his veins, the icy fingers of fear closing around his neck.
Gunfire sounded, and the echoing impact of fists on the other side of the bathhouse. Zack barreled back toward the baths, careened to the other wing up to a balcony. There, he found Cloud face-down on the ground.
"Cloud, talk to me!" he ran to him, turning him over gently.
Cloud coughed and sputtered in pain.
"Ngh…I threw up."
"It's alright."
Zack helped him sit up, leaning him forward on his knee. He rubbed his back trying to help him breathe. Cloud shook cringing.
"I'm sorry Zack—"
"No, no, don't try to talk," Zack shushed him. "You did great."
Zack moved in front of him, supporting his head. "You know what day it is Cloud?" He palpated his neck and jawline, feeling for abnormalities to indicate injury.
"…S-Sunday."
"Good man, how old are you?" He moved onto his chest, compressing with a hand on his back.
"Sixteen."
Quick pressure on four quadrants of his stomach, good. He moved onto his legs, quick clutches around his thighs and knees, Zack's strong hands providing calming pressure as well as assessment. Cloud stopped shaking.
No serious injuries, AVPU times four. He'd taken one hell of a hammer-punch to the solar-plexus plus a few other places. Zack helped him lean his head down on his arms.
"You just rest here a while, okay?"
Cloud nodded. Zack patted him on the back and got up even though he really didn't want to leave him alone.
Tseng lied propped up against the wall, struggling to breathe. Zack ran over to him and knelt down.
Meh,Tseng looked no worse for wear.
"Down that way…" the Turk pointed to an open doorway, "you have to catch Hollander…"
Zack beheld a squared archway stretching into darkness, a low brooding tunnel like an entrance unto Hell. Tseng looked straight on into nowhere.
"Angeal…is waiting for you."
Zack absorbed those words, giving a single somber nod in understanding. He rose to his feet, a prophetic tractor beam exuding from the dark doorway to reel him in. He strode through a sentient magnetic portal to another realm.
Zack felt his way along the walls to stairs that lead up. Up forever he tread, thinking about what he would do if he saw red eyes…oh God, please don't let him see red eyes…
He came out onto leveled ground and a lighted area, taking stock of his surroundings. Torn up parquet floors, the remains of rafters, a tattered curtain that blew in the wind where the rotted frame of a window hung on like a champion.
And there, in the center of the ruin and wreckage, he saw him…
A one-winged angel, standing stoic with his back to his student, gazing lost and listless out into nowhere.
…Zack went to him, to stand near him, just to be close to him. Hands in pockets, he shuffled his feet with eyes glued to his steel toes. A heaviness seemed to loom over both of their heads, a deepness lingering somewhere between uncertainty and shame.
Now Angeal stared across the landscape, a sentient wing wafting in the wind like a torn veil.
"It should have been me who dealt with Genesis," he spoke from far away, a soft voice that was both solid and sad. Zack looked out across the farscape with him, a distance of the soul exchanged as they stood near one another. With a voice that came from the same far off place that Angeal's had, Zack replied to his mentor.
"Then why'd you send me?"
Angeal turned, and Zack gasped in relief. Blue eyes, deep and brooding as oceans, clear as acrylic skies. His mentor had not betrayed him…or so he thought before Angeal's sword came up.
"To prepare you for your next fight."
And he slashed at Zack in a fury.
"Stop!" But another slice careened at him, forcing him back, goading him to fight for his life. Zack held his hand out to halt him, his sword hand hung helpless at his side.
"...Angeal if you raise your sword to me you're going to kill me, and do it now! Kill me then, because you know I won't raise mine to you!"
Angeal's sword remained steady, poised at Zack for the kill, but his hand shook like for want of drink. After a long moment and a frustrated harrumph, he let his blade fall. Zack breathed, but it brought him no comfort…If Angeal's aim wasn't to kill Zack, why was he trying to fight him?
"There's no way out Zack. You're my student no longer, I have nothing left to teach you. You're a 1st like me now, and my time is done."
Zack reached for him, both arms dying to get a hold of this absolute disaster they'd both slammed head-on into.
"Angeal, we'll go to other doctors."
"There are no other doctors!"
"Then we'll go to Sorceresses! We'll do whatever we have to do. I'll do whatever it takes, remember?"
"You don't understand, Zack. I'm bound to this scientist as Genesis was! The transfusion, a fate I saved my youngest brother from."
Zack gasped…Sephiroth?
"Please! Come with me. Let's run away. Leave this all behind."
"And where would we run to, Zack? Where would we go!"
"I don't know Angeal! Anywhere away from this Hell!"
Angeal threw his arms out wide. "You said you wanted to be a hero, well here's your chance! What are you waiting for?"
He slammed his fist against his heart, marking the place for Zack to pierce his blade. But when the boy that was once his student stood locked in fear, Angeal lowered his arms.
"...Or does someone wait for you?"
Zack couldn't help it, he froze. A darkness so austere fell over his heart, an urgency more than a million years old. Angeal knew how to force Zack's hand.
"…Don't do this…" Zack warned, a dark laserbeam gaze painting a new target for the young SOLDIER. Something stirred deep in his core, an emotion primal and feral, culminating in a distal, tempered rage.
They circled like lions, Zack's hand edging toward his sword. He drew it like a low threatening growl. Someone had tread on his territory. Angeal saw the phase, the transition from hunter…to killer. Now Zack finally knew what it meant to grow up.
The flash of steel, both swords slammed together throwing scraping sparks in whirling arcs. Crossed blades, Angeal forced Zack's down, and they glared at each other as mortal enemies. How had it come to this?
Hands. Clapping. Hollander appeared from the shadows.
"Very good, Angeal! It is time to exact vengeance for our family's suffering!"
"Family?" Zack peered at the squat man and back at his mentor. But Angeal flew into a rage.
"No! My father is dead!" He flung Zack out of the way with a vicious swipe, eyes transfixed on another enemy.
"Then do it for your mother," leered Hollander, driving Angeal over the edge.
"My mother's shame…made her take her own life!"
Zack gasped at Angeal. The flash of his mother lying dead on the floor, the image of Angeal standing like a living shadow over her body, the impact of Zack's fist straight to his face. He hadn't fought back. Now Angeal stood blurry against the sky, fading from Zack's semblance of life. A million pieces seemed to square in a single rushing moment, reaching for Angeal with eyes that shook from side to side in disbelief.
Zack had misjudged him, and furthermore…
You let me.
Hollander leered like a leprechaun at the dark angel, teeth flashing like fangs against lips that curled into a conniving grin.
"Your mother should have been proud that she was the namesake for our experiment. Project G, Or should I say, Project Gillian."
Then Angeal's sword left Zack to point at Hollander, and Zack found his own blade following, not caring what it was pointing at as long as it pointed in the same direction as Angeal's.
"Don't say her name," Angeal growled, tears welling in his ocean eyes. The squat man laughed, flinging spittle as he spoke.
"Gillian, the woman implanted with Jenova Cells. Genesis, who had her genes mapped onto him during the fetal stage. Yes, Genesis was a failure, I'll admit it. But you, Angeal..." He waved his arms out like the unveiling of an Ark. "You were actually bred inside Gillian's body. You were my success, my life's work, my golden child. You…are…perfection!"
Angeal rushed forward, forearm slamming against the fat man. He picked him up and threw him from the edge of the building. Hollander screamed before landing in a snowbank unconscious, or very possibly dead. Good riddance, thought Zack, at least he was out of their lives. Now, once again, it was him and Angeal, holding their swords along with their hearts in their hands.
Angeal paced in a mad rush to the other side of the room, desperate eyes pleading panicked at something that couldn't be seen with eyes alone. He turned to Zack in a flash.
"Zack, I am perfect. A perfect...monster. My cells can absorb genetic traits, and pass them along to others. Do you remember what I said about our enemy being all that creates suffering?"
Zack shook his head, refusing Angeal's words.
"I can create suffering. And now, I am a two-way conduit. Her power has passed onto me completely."
"What are you talking about? Whose power?"
"Zack, let me show you."
He touched two fingers to his brow, and a dawning radiance emanated from his feet all the way up to his eyes. Billowing waves of sheerlight swept in black tendrils around Angeal's glowing body, Zack never knew darkness could be so bright. Angeal cried out in pain and agony, his body was changing, transfiguring, transforming. A mutant manifestation emerged from where there was once a man, and Zack beheld with horror a gargantuan, daemonic centaur. A horned vestige crowned a face that vaguely resembled Angeal's, and in a clawed hand rested a massive partisan lance. With a harrowing roar and a stomping hoof, the monster reeled at Zack, who stood back aghast.
"Angeal," Zack whispered to himself. "What happened to honor?"
The monster answered in a deadening roar and an overhead downbash of a partisan. Zack leapt away, diverolling under heavy swipes that buffeted the air behind him. He counterslashed in a terrified blur as his blade bashed off the lance head. Slashing with everything he had now, holding his hilt in the Way of the Rising Sun just like Angeal had taught him, he flashed back to his mentor instructing him in fencing, teaching him how to hold the sword—his first lesson in sword fighting.
Now he leapt out of the way as a lance bashed into the floor at his feet, a guttural roar and the stampeding of hooves blaring in its wake. Zack dash-parried the massive weapon careening for another slice at him, he barely whisked it over his head as he darted away. The demon centaur charged him in a bull rage, and Zack remembered gentler notes of wisdom.
He sat cross-legged with Angeal in the training room as he showed Zack how to clean his blade, polishing it with cloth and diamond paste.
"In circles, not lines. If you wouldn't put your hand on a woman that way, why would you do it to your sword?"
Zack corrected his motion by copying Angeal, who had inadvertently taught him something about girls as well.
A syphoning fury-crash ripped the rest of the roof down, the partisan slamming against the floor again and again as Zack ducked and dodged out of the way. He kept his eyes fixated on his target, his life depended on him not losing focus.
"Concentrate,"Angeal had said to him sitting in the lotus pose. But as Zack sat there in quarter-lotus—seeing as the last time he'd tried to get into full lotus he'd almost killed himself—his thoughts banged around in his head like a shattered jar of marbles. He groaned in frustration. Angeal stopped him, holding two fingers in front of his eyes, and bid him follow them. He moved his fingers from side to side, up and down, in diagonal crosses and circles, then made Zack close his eyes. He touched his two fingers between Zack's eyes, and there it was, in the midst of hyperactivity his mom had tried to stick him on meds for when he was a kid, the first time he'd ever felt it in his life…pure calm.
So this is what it's like.
Angeal, the only person who could hold Zack's attention for an iota of time, the only one who understood.
One more slam into the floor made Zack strafe back with tears in his eyes. He couldn't do this.
He remembered being late, carrying the massive punching bag up the sand dune as Angeal yelled beside him.
"This is your passage into manhood. If you can't do this then you're a disgrace to the SOLDIER name. GET. UP. THIS. HILL!"
Zack cried and coughed and struggled, sweat pooling down his face and arms, one foot after the other. His boots sunk into the sand like every step he took was the equivalent of three steps back, and his shoulders burned like liquid hot knives being jammed and twisted around in his flesh. Finally, flat ground, the top of the sand dune. Zack threw the punching bag down as Angeal threw his arms around him.
"Would you believe me if I told you this isn't the hardest thing you'll ever do in life?"
One last life-altering blow that sent splintered floorboards flying like flechette darts, and one final flash of a man Zack once knew in a dream.
Angeal stormed toward Zack in SOLDIER wing as the kid pulled out his cell phone clock, insisting that he wasn't late. Angeal wrapped a huge paw around Zack's head, pulling him into his chest and holding him there like that for a long moment. Zack could feel him shaking.
"You be good, kid."
And then he let go of him, whisking off to Lazard's office. Zack watched him go with a confused and bewildered expression, head cocked sideways like a puppy. He was too young to understand, some things weren't for him, some things were private.
Now the monster reared up, and Zack saw the opening, the concave indentation over its heart marking the place for his blade to pierce, making it easy for him. He had to take it. Zack slashed with all he was in life, screaming the name of his best friend.
"ANGEAL!" His voice echoed like a call in deep water as his sword pierced flesh, sending black blood and a mottled roar spewing across their rotted parquet arena.
The creature staggered, snorted, stumbled about in a mad frenzy before the black light returned to envelope it. Harrowing beams of eifel luminescence throttled the monster in a tangle of silver tentacles, beaming straylight surges that dissolved the form of the unholy centaur, leaving a man with a Buster Sword lying on the ground against the sky.
Zack threw his sword away, like he used to throw it across the training room during bouts of frustration, and ran to Angeal. He knelt down next to his fallen form, hurrying to him, to help, to do something, but the horror registered like falling snow that all the potions and elixirs in the world would be useless now.
Angeal laid there in a dusted blue pallor, the degradation finally gaining a foothold in a war that had been being waged since before Zack entered this man's life. His wing fanned out like a dirty carpet, no longer sentient, all life seeming to rush from its dull feathers. Amid the ruined bathhouse and the biting razorwind cold, he smiled up at Zack like he'd never been happier in his life.
"Zack, you have my thanks," he struggled to form weak words. Like a relic, he offered his sword to his student. "This…is for you."
Zack gazed with whirling eyes that looked to the sword and to the man, but Angeal was grinning. Hesitating, holding back the urge to fall over him, to curl up with him and go wherever he was headed, Zack reached out his hands to the hilt. He took it as a sacred gesture, knowing it was for him, the deepest expression of respect he could manage to muster. The sword wasn't heavy for him, Angeal had trained him to carry it, all this time.
The fading vestige of Angeal smiled up at him, everything he'd always wanted to say to Zack swirling in his star-crossed gaze, all revealed now in the stillness of ocean eyes. He struggled to draw breath, and spoke up at Zack with great and proud effort.
"Protect your honor, always. It's the one thing you have that no one can ever take away."
And Angeal laid his head back on the parquet floor, closing his eyes. A radiant peace seemed to settle on him like a silk veil being drawn over his face, and Zack gasped. Unable to grasp the reality in front of him, unwilling to accept that he was really gone, Zack held the sword hard to his brow, like he'd seen someone do once, a long time ago. Amid falling tears and shaking wrists, he made a promise to himself right then and there that resounded deep in his core, a sacred oath binding him in brotherhood and death. He never got to tell Angeal the only thing he'd ever wanted to say.
For a moment, just a moment, he felt strong hands on his shoulders, and a voice speaking to him deep in his heart.
Embrace your dreams.
But it faded, flying away to someplace Zack couldn't follow, that he would never be able to reach in this semblance of life.
The sun was fading fast now, setting in a crimson hue over the nautilus of arctic steppes. A break in the clouds amid verga-strewn storm cells opened a gateway to a higher realm. The skies turned red, and far away a blood-ringed sun set one more time over Midgar.
.
[Received Buster Sword]