The Loveless
Lt. Commander Richie
Disclaimer: Don't own it. It would be cool if I did, though, because then I could be all like "Hey, I own FFVII, stop writing bad fanfiction!" and you could all be like "No! I'm gonna write it anyway 'cause I wanna!" and I would be like "Well then I'll sue you and you can't write it anyway!" and you'd all be like "Okay, fine, we'll write better..." and then the world would be happy.
Chapter 20 (holy shit!)
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The WRO building looked like it had seen better days. Specifically days where it had either been a big expanse of Mako-drained land, and days when it had been a proud building. Now almost half of the building was nothing more than a crater, the other half only standing because the explosions hadn't gone as far as one would have thought. The half that Bahamut had hit was no more, only a pile of rubble with a few standing walls left. Above, that very dragon was being set upon by AVALANCHE. All around the big black creature airships fluttered, occasionally firing in an attempt to destroy it before it did more damage.
"Chyrin, help me here!" Eil was just barely struggling to lift a large slab of concrete off of a couple of buried WRO soldiers. His wiry and thin frame definitely didn't bely that amount of strength, but he still had it. Nodding in affirmation, Chyrin ducked under the slab and grabbed the two soldiers by their uniform collars in an attempt to pull them out from danger. When neither of them would move Eil gave a heave and sent the slab toppling over in the other direction.
"You have a Cure Materia?" The silver-haired girl asked, looking up at the boy with wide brown eyes full of worry. He nodded and drew his massive sword from the sheath on his back, hefting it with both hands before plunging the tip into the ground. One of the Materia slots that ran down the center of the sword began to glow a bright green, before the two soldiers began shining with purple, red and green light. As soon as it faded they both sat up, hands to their foreheads and groaning in confusion.
"Wha-" One of them began, but the other made a noise of surprise and slapped his fellow soldier on the shoulder, pointing up into the sky at the battle raging against the summoned Bahamut. They both stared for a moment before attempting to scramble to their feet and join the fray.
"Help us find survivors." Eil said firmly, and the two WRO members stopped before nodding resolutely. They began a slow trek across the rubble, jumping from piece to piece while listening carefully over the sounds and roars of battle raging above. Bullets would occasionally impact the ground around them, but nobody got hit.
Chyrin eventually resigned herself to the inevitable. The two WRO soldiers that they had rescued had been the lucky two that had probably been stationed as roof access guards. They may have been dropped a dozen floors, but they didn't have an entire building fall on top of them or Bahamut's original blast turn them to dust and then vaporize the dust in the explosion. Those two guys and AVALANCHE were probably the only survivors. The silver-haired teen sat herself down on a large chunk of cement that still had a door hanging from it and part of the metal siding still attached to it and drew her knees up to her chest and sat her chin on them. Her day, along with the days of quite a few people inside the building, had been ruined.
With a sigh she looked up into the air, watching the massive battle unfold like something straight out of Advent Children. Chyrin could make out Cloud, slashing at the beast's head. Yuffie, on an apparently borrowed hoverboard like the ones used during the assault on Midgar, was throwing things at the dragon's eyes and face with precision. Vincent and Barret were shooting it, Tifa was punching it, Nanaki was Limited Moon-ing it and Cid was stabbing it. Oddly enough, compared to some of the things she had seen before either on TV in Edge or in FFVII before she had been sucked into it, this almost looked like cake. In fact, it was almost boring to watch. It was just a bunch of people with weapons wailing on a dragon, after all.
"God dammit, Genesis. What the hell are you doing?" Chyrin muttered, burying her face into her crossed arms. Bahamut screeched loudly and something exploded, but the teen didn't move. She moaned loudly in frustration and hit the rubble she was sitting on with a clenched fist. Without warning the chunk of cement began to shift down the small hill of cement and plaster dust, and the teen jumped off and watched it as it picked up into a roll and finally came to a stop. Raising one fine silver eyebrow, the girl looked back at where the cement chunk had been to see why it was that it had fallen like that. It couldn't have been just her weight, right? She wasn't that heavy...
But instead she was met with the sight of a squished cardboard box. It still had the remnants of what looked like evidence tape on it, and through a hole in the side she could see something glinting. Chyrin made her way to the box and pulled it from the plaster dust and rocks that it had been half-buried in, pulling the top open and looking inside after waving the cloud of plaster dust out of her face. Inside were Materia cases. More than that, they were full of a bunch of Summon and Magic Materia, and even a Command . Chyrin's eyes went wide as she pulled each one from the box and opened each case, and significantly wider yet as she realized just how powerful each one was. They were mastered Materia, every last one of them.
"Woah..." The silver-haired teen breathed, her fingers ghosting over each of the seven Materia in an effort to learn just what they were. There was a Knights of the Round, a BahamutZERO, a Phoenix, a Life2, a Quake and an unidentifiable lump of purple. As soon as she touched the purple one it flashed, and the power level simply vanished. Shit, this was someone else's Command Materia, they were dead now and it had adapted to one of her Limit Breaks. With a certain urgency, the teen grabbed the lump of Materia as hard as she could in an effort to see just which one it had assigned itself to. However, it seemed to come up blank in her mind despite her mental grasping.
Chyrin couldn't help it. Beyond the fact that the last several days had been shit, she was currently in the middle of a war zone and she really, really wanted to hit something. For the love of Minerva, wasn't there anything she could just beat within an inch of its life?! The silver haired teen slammed a closed fist filled with bright purple Materia against her leg, but the pain did absolutely nothing to ease her anger. Acting on impulse and with a glare that could burn through the head of an Ifrit summon, Chyrin grabbed each and every last piece of Materia there and stowed them in her pockets before taking the Knights of the Round Materia from the ground and clenching it in her free fist in a white-knuckled grip. She stood and turned, focusing her rage on something that could most definitely take it- the rampant Bahamut that had yet to even so much as falter under the joint attacks being done to it.
In a sudden and very angry movement, Chyrin threw her clenched fist with the Summon in it forward. From her hand spiraled circle after circle of bright light, forming lines upon lines of arcane letters and concentric circles that hung in the air like a targeting system. She drew in a breath as far as it seemed to go, the symbols growing more numerous with every passing second. Something was going to pay, it was going to pay dearly, and it was going to pay with its measly little life.
"Destroy Bahamut! ULTIMATE," Chyrin bellowed, her voice loud and angry in a way that attracted the attention of everyone that could still stand in the rubble. An idle thought appeared to the girl as she opened her mouth for the other half of the Summon spell, and that was that she probably didn't have enough magical power to complete the Summon, let alone continue to stand after she had finished it. Oh well, too late. "END!"
Then, the world shattered. In a massive burst of power that shot into the sky, the ground seemed to buckle downwards underneath the dragon until it screeched in protest and was sucked under. Every type of damage and magic burst forth in rapid succession, but the unfortunate caster couldn't watch the destruction she had wrought upon the enemy Summon. No, she was too busy falling over backwards in a dead faint from magical exhaustion.
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A dull roar reached her ears, filtering through a black dream that she couldn't remember for the life of her. It was becoming louder at a steady pace, individual sounds coming from the single mass of noise to distinguish themselves what seemed like minutes after the fact in her mind. There were sirens. There were yells and the sound of large WRO trucks and the occasional airship. She wasn't laying down, and her Silence charm jingled every time she seemed to jostle. The air was cold, and it was wet, a light rain falling in the aftermath of what she now remembered was a very angry summoning of Knights of the Round. But what she was held against was warm, and she snuggled into it to the best of her ability and twined a hand into the thin fabric.
Chyrin started awake, her hand coming away from the fabric it grasped as she looked up into the sky blue eyes of one Eil Allern, who was just a little red in the face and at the tops of his ears. His white blond hair was wet, slicked down onto his forehead and cheeks, and the scar over his eye was crinkled from his smile.
"You're awake." He said, his smile not loosing any wattage as he gently set the silver-haired girl on her feet. She wobbled a bit and grabbed onto his shoulder for support, but he looked like he didn't mind.
"Obviously." Chyrin said groggily, looking around. The area was set up with tents, WRO soldiers running in every direction from tent to tent in a massive effort. It seemed like everyone had been called in to duty after her neutralization of Bahamut, whether to help with search and rescue or to assist in relief aid to those already rescued. The largest tent, one with a large red cross on it, was directly ahead of the two. "How long was I out?" The girl asked, noting the completion of many of the tents and the thoroughly wet cracked pavement.
"No more than forty five minutes, I think. Maybe fifty. I just found you, and I was gonna take ya to the medical tent, but you woke up and-" Chyrin put two fingers to the blond's lips, effectively silencing him. She flushed a little pink at the action, so did he, but there was at least a pause.
"Where's AVALANCHE?" She asked, looking around at the mass of tents that were no doubt serving as the WRO's current Main Office. "We've got to get in an airship and head for Banora, and we gotta do it now." Without warning her fingers left his lips and had his wrist, and she was running full-tilt through the drizzle to a large tent with guards posted at the entrance. Eil pulled her to a stop, and the silver-haired girl spun around to face him with confusion in her eyes.
"What's going on, Chyrin?" He asked, confused. She blinked wide brown eyes in confusion, her silver bangs slowly slicking to her forehead in the light rain. "You're running everywhere and it's confusing me. Stop for a minute and explain some things! Banora's been a Lifestream pit for years, there's nothing there that could'a summoned a Bahamut." Eil looked at her in a pleading way, water droplets making a steady tok tok tok sound on the lenses of his goggles as they stood in silence. "Please, Chyrin. I wanna help."
"Genesis Rhapsodos is in Banora. I'm sure of it. He and Weiss the Immaculate, the leader of Deepground, the ones behind Omega, and subsequently ShinRa's Dr. Hojo since what's left of him is sharing a body with Weiss, are behind that Bahamut. They've also kidnapped my mother for Minerva-knows-what reason, and Lindsey Komlin too." Chyrin bit her lip and looked at the ground, a growing sense of futility spreading in her chest. "I'm just one girl. I've given AVALANCHE no reason to trust me and I've got no spine to call my own, I can't beat these guys." She flinched as a warm hand landed on her cheek, tilting her face back up so she looked Eil in the eyes.
"Hey. You've got me on your side, that's got to count for something." He smiled, and she couldn't help but want to as well. Tears threatened to spill out of her eyes, but she bit them back and stared, unblinking, hoping that they would simply go away. "Now let's think about this rationally. They've got their combined power and the power of the most powerful White Mage in the world, so what's their objective?"
"A monster's objective is usually world domination or revenge." Chyrin spat the word monster like a derogatory term, her hands clenching into fists at her sides in her anger. "And while wings don't make you a monster, they definitely don't make Genesis-fucking-Rhapsodos an angel. Never mind Weiss and Hojo." Chyrin grabbed the hand on her cheek with one hand, and began dragging Eil towards the tent again. "So we're gonna stop them!"
"That's not AVALANCHE's tent." Eil said calmly, letting himself get drug along as though it was an inevitability. Knowing Chyrin Renton, it most certainly was. "That's the armory. Their tent is that small one over there." He pointed with his free hand, and Chyrin's eyes followed the gesture to land on a rather small tent with a patch on the roof that looked like it couldn't fit every single member of the former terrorist organization and a table. She blinked several times in confusion, but then immediately changed her destination.
There wasn't a single guard posted outside the flap of the tent, not even a 'Keep Out' sign hung anywhere. A few feet from the flap Chyrin let Eil's hand go and brushed her way inside on her own, leaving him to follow her at a slower pace. Inside the tent was much like the outside, patched and a little leaky-looking. There was a tupperware with a little water in it in the center of the small table, the remains of what looked like chicken curry floating in it. A drip fell into it in the silence that heralded the silver-haired girl's arrival, then another. The rain got a little heavier on the outside of the tent.
"That was a stupid stunt you pulled out there." Cloud finally said, his arms crossed on the table as he leaned onto it with the demeanor of someone that was just too plain tired. Chyrin nodded her agreement, and wedged herself between Nanaki and Cid at the edge of the table. "You could have killed all of us."
"First Law of Summons, they will not cause collateral damage unless uninstructed. I told the Knights of the Round to destroy Bahamut, and that's all it did. I may be impulsive and angrier than Heidegger on a bad day at times, but I can assure you that I know what I'm doing when hokey Planet magic stuff is involved." The teen wiggled her fingers in the air as she finished talking, garnering a few funny looks from the people around her.
"You also broke several major laws in the process, including Summoning Knights of the Round inside city limits." Reeve added, an eyebrow raising. Chyrin raised one back, then crossed her arms. Behind her, Eil stayed silent in an effort not to draw attention to himself.
"Genesis broke them first, I was just fighting Fire with Fire Three. A little overkill, yes, but that's the point I was trying to put across to him. Now, are we getting on an airship to Banora or am I going to have to do this the hard way?" The silver haired girl brushed some wet hair from her face before setting her hands on the table and leaning down.
"What would the hard way entail?" Vincent Valentine chimed in from where he stood by a corner tent pole with his arms crossed. He had an eyebrow raised, and from behind the silver-haired girl Eil was fixing the taller man with one of his own.
"Getting a few more party members, possibly Lareth Kingsley and Dr. Richard Kreshent, commandeering some form of transportation unless Lareth already has one in her vast arsenal of random crap she impulse-buys, heading to Banora and hoping the combined might of a medic with a large hammer, a packrat with a gunblade and two teenagers will be able to take down two nutcases and a Goddess." Raising her own silver eyebrow at the ones already raised at her, she huffed and continued. "I suppose you have a right to raise your eyebrows at me. The fact of the matter, however, still stands that two rather dangerous men have one of the world's best White Mages and my mother, and one of those men is obsessed with Minerva, who just so happens to probably have the power to destroy the Planet. We stop them, we save the Planet. That's what, the fourth time for you guys? I know it's getting boring by now but don't you have some sort of moral obligation?"
The silence between the teenagers and the assembled group of adventurers seemed to stretch on for what seemed like hours. The longer it stretched, the more uncomfortable it seemed to become. Eil coughed to relieve the tension, but it only seemed to make it a little more awkward than it already was.
"Who ever said we weren't going or that you weren't coming?" Tifa finally asked, a small smile playing at her lips. Chyrin's face broke out into a wide grin full of teeth, her brown eyes nearly disappearing in the smile. She didn't notice the look Cloud was giving the woman, or the far worse one she returned to him. But then the girl's smile died down, and though laugh lines were still creased into the skin of her cheeks she looked deadly serious.
"If I'm going," she began, her voice a decidedly level tone, "then Eil is coming too."
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HOLY CRAP, GUYS. CHAPTER TWENTY. I never thought I'd make it this far. In fact, when I started this I didn't have the slightest as to a plot and just started writing. But now look at it, more than a year later and twenty chapters of awesome.
After this story is done, though, I'm foraying into Transformers and probably never returning. The glorious awesomeness that is giant robots and their battles beckon. Of course I'm still playing Final Fantasy VII, and I might write a one-shot or two if the urge ever strikes me, but that's about the extent of my involvement in this fandom after this story is done, methinks.
I remember back in the first chapter I said that someday this story would be longer than Penance? I think I'll end up being right. There's no way this is ending in six chapters.
Lt. Commander Richie, out.