[Day 16, 0930 Midgar Standard Time]
Tifa flexed her fingers as they climbed, stretching already-supple leather out of habit more than necessity. Nanaki padded just ahead of her, head low, tail-flame searing the dust on the floor. She could hear the gentle whirr of Barret's gun arm warming behind her. Too many close calls every time they closed in on a lead; if they were walking toward a fight, they would be prepared for it this time.
It was hard to imagine that they'd find anything new. For all the prickling paranoia across her shoulders, the structure seemed just as desolate as the ruins of Midgar above, just as eerily silent, except for the faint report of their footsteps.
They passed the elevator cage twice on their ascent before the ramp levelled out in front of a flimsy folding door and another short, broad corridor. A guard's office and a set of steel sliding doors made her pause.
"Shi-it," Barret said. "How we gonna get past that?"
Yuffie sidled up to the guard's office and pressed her face against the filthy window. Before Tifa could open her mouth to protest, the girl had an arm through the gap in the plexiglass and was groping around under the counter. When that yielded no results, she pressed her palms flat against the frame and whispered two words in quick succession.
Bullet-proof it might have been, but a well-applied Ice spell followed by a Quake was enough to shake it loose. Yuffie pulled herself up and through the window with ease, and twisted the knob of the perfectly ordinary door on the far side, Oritsuru held at the ready.
They waited. Tifa bit her tongue and reminded herself to breathe, feet shoulder-width apart, arms loose and ready at her sides. She resisted the urge to perform further warming exercises; there was no need to worry the rest of them.
"Incoming," Nanaki said, and crouched.
With a hiss and a low-grade whine, the steel doors cracked, and then parted. Yuffie stood behind them, sucking on singed fingers. She grinned. "I listen sometimes. No one tell Cid."
The dust clung to his pads and muffled the footfalls of the rest of his companions. Nanaki paused for a moment by Yuffie's side, rubbing his shoulder against her thigh and dashing dust from a paw before he moved past her into the gloom.
Large desks dominated the immediate area, complete with computer terminals and related paraphernalia that were as dust-coated as the floors. Ancient office chairs in shades that must once have been eye-watering sat abandoned, the foam cushions disintegrating in near-organic clumps. Cracked and rotting blackboard easels stood at intervals, chalk marks half-obscured by flakes from the plasterboard ceiling.
Beyond the desks, a staircase led down to long countertops that might once have been stainless steel, sinks, the dim outlines of large jars. Old specimens, Nanaki thought, tail twitching as he stalked along the guard rail. Some of the jars were damaged; the rank chemical scent was powerful, even on the landing.
To the left, the upper floor was dominated by rows of archive shelving, better-constructed than the shelves in Nibelheim had been. Nanaki supposed that within the Shinra building, even a scientist as absent-minded as Gast would have been held to some standard of tidiness. The beam of Tifa's torch played over the shelving for a moment, and she started toward them immediately.
"Red, help me figure out how these are organised? Elena, do you want to give the computers a shot?"
The Turk gave the dust-coated terminals a dubious look. "Honestly, we'd do better to carry them out and clean them up first. I doubt I even have anything that'll read them, might need Highwind to make a trip to Edge." She grimaced as she wiped down a case and spotted the model number. "…or Mideel."
"Think my grammaw had one of these," Barret muttered from behind her, and Elena nodded in absent agreement as she started to prise off the cover.
Despite the stronger shelving, the documents themselves were nearly as badly damaged as those in Nibelheim had been; there were too many broken pipes (or broken specimen jars, Nanaki thought) and too much humidity in the air to let them survive for long. Tifa's gloved fingertips came away coated in a paste of dust and mildew, and his nose did not fare better.
"Looks like the ones back here aren't as damp," Yuffie called from the far end of the room, and Tifa followed Nanaki to her.
"Start at this end," Tifa said, presumably to him, and moved to the far end of the bookcase to begin pulling books and boxes from the shelves for her perusal.
He stood on his hind legs to read the spines of the binders - large, heavy things labelled according to specimen number, as near as he could tell. He snorted when he spotted something misfiled, and nosed at it. "Take this one down, please. Notes on Baal do not belong in the specimen logs."
"Baal?" Yuffie rolled the word around in her mouth as she stretched to grasp the folder. She opened it as she knelt to place it before him, and he snorted and flipped it closed again. "Hey! I thought you wanted it."
"Just out of the way," Nanaki said, muzzle crinkling. "Baal, or Bela'al, was an underwater volcano... or perhaps just a fault line. Indications of its worship as a sea and storm god have appeared in several island locations — small shrines, usually on promontories — but no true temple has ever been found. Some scholars believe the island on which Baal originated vanished centuries ago. Possibly devoured by the Baal fault line itself."
"Hmph." Yuffie moved it out of his way and crossed her arms. "He probably just realised that against Leviathan, he didn't stand a chance."
"Baal had multiple aspects, Yuffie, not all of them male," he said, tilting his head to focus. "These are all specimen logs. Why don't you check the lower floor for any interesting specimens? They should be labelled with numbers like these." He rested a paw on the spine of a binder. "Tifa and I will read until you find something."
Yuffie rolled her eyes and trotted down the stairs. Nanaki heard a tinkling sound, and Yuffie's soft ulp of disgust. "You owe me new shoes, Red," she said. "And maybe some bleach for my brain."
He curled his tail around his forefeet and crouched to read the spines of the binders at Tifa's feet. Neither noticed when, several minutes later, Yuffie broke into an interested trot.
"You got pockets, Valentine?" Meltzer held out a Summon materia, neatly split in two, with crystal fragments of the specimen's fingertips still clinging to its surface. Her jaw clenched tight as soon as she finished speaking, and he took the materia from her quickly to save her from asking again. His own stomach was less tender. He tucked the materia halves into his hip pocket, and moved on to the next pod without a word.
There were nearly two dozen pods in the chamber, but only three quarters of them were closed, dimly lit by the mako within. Over-preparation, he wondered, or merely the endless optimism of Gast? Or a predecessor? Impossible to tell. It was plain that they had not found as many Summons — or as many suitable specimens, perhaps — as they had hoped. He remembered a number of discoveries, verified and staged, from his distant childhood, but couldn't recall when the numbers of known Summon materia had gone from a handful to a dozen.
He would ask. When Cloud asked Yuffie to identify these split materia with children's fingers fused closed around them.
Perhaps his stomach was more tender than he thought. He shifted his feet, and frowned. Shifted again, and raised his claw to still Meltzer's fumbling in the pod, good hand on the butt of his rifle.
"Cloud."
Cid and Cloud both turned to watch him, falling silent as he listened. Chaos shifted, and a faint creaking sound slid down his vertebrae like ice.
"There."
"I heard." Cloud was already moving, sword at the ready. Together they closed in on the darkened pods at the end of the row, and together stopped short when they saw what awaited them.
This crystallised figure was not inside the pod; it was resting against the pod's wall, head tilted back as if in repose. One leg was bent, one hand cupped against its belly. The other rested lightly, touching the floor only with the thin points of its fingertips. Faint lines showed around the fingertips, and as they watched, the hand moved gradually forth, and then back. The claw tips rasped against steel.
"Breathing," Meltzer whispered, sounding sick. "He's still breathing."
He, Vincent thought, and realised too late that he recognised the face, the beard, the brow. Cid swore softly behind him. "Is that…?"
"Staniv," Vincent confirmed. He crouched, touched the crystallised shoulder. Cool and hard, but warmth still filtered through it. "Staniv. Lyh oui rayn? Lyh oui suja yd ymm?"
A slightly sharper respiration, punctuated by sharp cracks in the crystal that coated him. Cloud crouched at Vincent's side. "Is there anything we can do?"
"Lyh fa syga oui…" Make him what? Vincent wondered. Less likely to die? "…suna lusvundypma?"
Nothing. Staniv breathed, slower than Vincent would have thought possible for a living human, and for long moments, they watched.
Then, all at once, the crystal creaked. Tiny shards shot from Staniv's clawed hand, propelled by the force it had taken to move the overgrown fingers. Staniv clenched his left fist, or tried to, and the crystal shrieked and popped as the flesh it encased tried to break through. Then the whole arm lurched, sending hairline fractures out along the crystal along the arm's length.
Almost immediately, blood welled, and began to seep through the fractures. It spattered the floor beneath Staniv's outstretched hand, but the clawed fingers moved. Slowly and with great difficulty, but they moved.
Carefully, Staniv touched the point of his clawed finger to the steel, and etched a rough vertical line. Then a second horizontal line, beside it. A third—
"Yuffie," Vincent said, and Staniv stopped writing. "She's here; she's— cra caynlrac vun oui, yht vun Godo."
Staniv shifted. Glacial, limbs creaking, he carved one character at a time. Vincent read, memory straining.
"Godo… nejan… no, Water God. Hold — rumtehk? Tadyehehk?" Staniv kept writing, without the tap that signified a correct guess, and Vincent cursed the lapse in his skills. "Raen. Raenmuus. No— E ys cunno. E femm nasaspan, yht fneda ed uid vun ran."
Staniv tapped once, and left a drop of blood in the wake of his claw tip. The final character was half etching, half smear, and Vincent recognised it at once, though he did not know if he could translate, or articulate its connotations for Cloud.
"Cloud," he said, reaching back as if to grab their attention, as if they were not all spellbound with horror at the Wutaian's fate. "Watch, and remember."
The hand that had lain cupped against Staniv's stomach cracked, twisted, until they could see that it cupped a dull red materia, flawed and chipped, but not quite parted into hemispheres. Staniv's jaw lurched open with a sharp pop, and glittering shards rained down on his collar bone. As the hand he had written with rose slowly to hover over the other palm, air hissed from his mouth in short, staccato bursts.
"Is he… trying to summon?" Meltzer murmured, mystified. But as the demons woke, one by one, and fixed his gaze on Staniv's blank crystal eyes, Vincent felt his marrow freeze in understanding.
"Not summoning."
Red light seeped between — through — the crystal fingers. Almost as he watched, the colour leached from the crystal encasing Staniv; the blood that had leaked into the cracks along his forearms dulled and turned to black. Careful not to disturb the preserved corpse, Vincent worked the materia out from between Staniv's hands.
It glinted restfully in the gloved palm of his hand, luminous, flawless, and whole.
There were specimens down here, sure, but her eyes wanted to skate right over most of them, and her stomach was inclined to agree. Especially since her sneaker treads where still squidgy with whatever she'd stood in by the stairs. She really didn't want to know.
She did want to know why this lab had safes, though. Old-fashioned safes, with tumblers, like the poor suckers who'd worked here had never even heard of keycards. They weren't very big safes, but Yuffie wasn't one to turn down an opportunity, even if they probably just had chemicals or the good scalpels in them.
She righted one of the disintegrating stools, and decided to crouch instead, then closed her eyes to focus on her fingers, her ears. Up above, she could hear Barret's heavy tread, the scratch of Red's claws on the archive shelving. Tifa, flipping pages, faster and faster as her frustration grew.
She tuned it out; rested her forehead against the cool, slightly grimy metal, and listened as her fingers worked the dial.
There was nothing in the first safe but a few scraps of paper and what might once have been an elastic band; whoever it had belonged to had cleared out and taken everything with them. She moved to the next workbench, which had a wooden stool that was the perfect height for a ninja to sit on while she broke into an ancient Shinra safe.
Feeling a little like Goldilocks and the Three Chocobos, she rested her head against the second safe and set to work, edging it slowly, smoothly clockwise.
Click.
She eyed the dial. Thirty-six. Continue clockwise? Or anti-clockwise? She went with clockwise, and after a few slow circles without any luck, set the dial back to zero, then to thirty-six again.
This time, she'd hardly turned it before the second hollow click. Ten. Back clockwise.
Long, slow breaths. Tiny, subtle movements.
Click.
Fifty-nine. Memory stirred, and before she thought it through completely, she turned clockwise in one swift movement, and stopped on ninety-seven.
Click. But no satisfying thunk, like the last safe had given when it opened, and the handle didn't budge when she tried it. Did this one have a longer combination? Or…
Turning it back to zero, she turned the dial again, faster this time.
THUNK.
Her mouth went dry. She twisted the safe's handle with one finger firmly on her Haste materia, and tried not to sound too audibly relieved when no monsters fell out to bite her thieving fingers.
Instead of fiends, this safe held… paperwork. Requisition forms, budget reports, all with a big red CLASSIFIED at the top, and none of them particularly interesting to her.
At least until she spotted the other thing in the safe.
The case was only small, maybe three inches deep, and only half that high. The base and vertices were brass or something like it, the glass panes set in them mostly free of dust thanks to the airtight environment of the safe. Someone had gotten a little over-enthusiastic about being in possession of a label gun, and a black strip was plastered across the front, white letters embossed across its surface.
DA CHA O
And below that, on red tape:
REF. 00917266 SHI
Inside the case were two neatly-sheared materia halves, so dull that they barely had a colour.
Before she realised she'd removed the lid, she was plucking the dead materia free, brushing her skin against it and calling for its essence with her own, trying to wake its magic with hers. But there was nothing. Not-quite-there impressions of many faces… many voices… even less than the smell of salt and scales in her Leviathan.
And it was cold. It was freezing.
"N'naki," she said, and was surprised to find her eyes stinging, voice cracked and dry, as if reaching for the dead materia had taken longer than she'd thought. "I've got. I think I've got something."
"What is it? Does it have a number?" The glow of his tail flame made looking at him almost painful as he blazed suddenly with interest.
"It's materia," she said, getting to her feet, fingers already slipping into her materia pouch. "It says it's Da Chao, I mean, Da Cha O, and it's split, like Leviathan." Words, spilling out of her. Red had asked something. "It's got a number. 'Ref. Zero zero nine…'"
The hair on her neck rose, and an instant later, Nanaki's hackles did the same. "Yuffie! Get back!" An explosive snarl, barely even words.
She was already moving.
Glass shattered, sending up waves of chemical fumes that dizzied her, stung her throat and nose; she backed hastily, one arm raised to protect her face, trying not to breathe too deeply. The man in a brown robe collected himself, flicked his fingers. Liquid preservatives that had gushed from broken specimen jars rippled aside, as if driven by the prow of an invisible boat.
"Git down!" Barret's gun arm clunked and whirred as he raised it, and Tifa flung herself at him, hauled it down again.
"No! Barret, you'll ignite the whole floor—"
Brown robe straightened, drew his right hand back past his shoulder, his left, forward to hip level, fingers soft, almost pliable. The air around him shifted, condensed, and then—
Yuffie watched the shade of Leviathan twine about the man in the brown robe — the Imbued, Leviathan-Imbued — and felt her panic subside in the wake of a rage so deep, so cold, that for a moment, she felt nothing at all.
Chaos burned in Vincent's fingertips as he handed the fused materia off to Cloud, clouding his vision momentarily. Vincent closed his eyes for a moment, hoping to dispel the effects of the demon's wakefulness, but nothing had changed when he opened them again. Cloud's brow puckered with his frown as he turned the materia in his hands.
"I can't get a fix on it," he said. "Whatever Staniv did, it's like it put the Summon too deep. We'll give it to Yuffie or Aeris when we get topside."
"Yuffie," Vincent said, and Cid made an assenting grumble. Staniv was her father's retainer, as dear to her as an uncle; the materia would go to her.
Meltzer cleared her throat, asked the hard question. "What do we do with the body?"
Together, they stared at Staniv, as if he might want to comment on the matter.
"We don't have the equipment to haul him up today," Cid said at last. "Maybe we can get some winches from Sierra, come back for him." He stopped, scratching at his chin, and muttered, "Reckon he'll keep."
"Reckon he will," Cloud agreed, though he didn't sound happy about it.
Their conversation continued, but Vincent couldn't latch on to the words; whatever the demon focused on, it was pulling his own attention with it. Their eyes drew upward, until finally he found himself staring at the ceiling with Cid's hand rough on his shoulder.
"You all right, Vince?"
The words were language again. "I think… there may be some kind of problem."
"Congratulations," said a voice, young, male. "You think right."
He was fast; he was so fast, but she was faster, faster, faster, feet on the counter top and push away, spin and strike and knees tucked to chest—
Water whipped around her, each tendril striking with a waterfall's power, but never where he intended; still, she wished she'd brought the Water Bangle instead of swapping it for a Bolt Ring. With so many chemicals around, electricity could very easily give rise to fire — useless! Oritsuru soared left; she feinted right, then launched herself as soon as the Imbued's head tilted to trace the shuriken's flight. Her kick landed, solid, but her opponent seemed to melt sideways, spinning her off-balance and putting her on the wrong side of the room for Oritsuru's landing point.
Manipulate was second nature, even at this distance; she pulled—
—the Leviathan-Imbued's hands spread wide, head cocked back, mouth pulling to the right in a smile she almost—
—Oritsuru back in her hand, trailing blood and cloth behind—
—and her father's face, with the hint of a smile.
Neither Vincent nor Meltzer hesitated; the man too closely resembled the fire-wielding Imbued who had attacked Elena in Nibelheim for comfort, though the eyes were a surprise. Blue-green crystal, blank and cold, had covered the whites completely, tiny chips edging over each lid, sending tiny stalactites running down each cheek.
It didn't make him one whit less dangerous.
The fireball he sent in their direction would surely have melted flesh had it connected. Vincent rolled, began firing, but the intense heat distorting the air around the man discharged the shells before they had a chance to connect.
Chaos was struggling, fighting to get free, but in a space this confined — he could not allow it. Cloud was waving, urging them toward the door; they were not the Imbued's target. He felt Meltzer's grip hauling him to his feet, saw her flinch, and knew that his control was slipping.
So be it.
Get out, he tried, but the words blew away from him, emerging only in a guttural roar.
They reached the Imbued long before Cloud and the others; they gripped him through the fire, heedless of the pain, and dashed him against the molten wreckage he had made of the mako pods. And again, as their would-be family fled past them both. And again, until they were satisfied he was still.
Tifa saw the face as it fell, started moving before the words had even found their way out of her mouth, hand on the handrail, eyes on the girl.
"Yuffie, look at me. Look at me, Yuffie, up here, don't look, don't—"
Oritsuru clattered against hard linoleum as the ninja's fingers uncurled, her entire body sagging like wet paper. Barret reached her first, snarl lines on either side of his nose as he recognised the corpse, aim shifting from the body to the cloud above it.
Mist coiled in the air, dragged at her skin like scales rubbed backward. She edged along the wall, trying not to breathe it in, trying not to see the Water God's shape filling out, getting stronger.
"Yuffie. Yuffie, sweetheart, can you hear me?" Blank eyes, grey as mist; no response to Tifa's leathers on her pale cheeks.
"Teef, we gotta move."
She moved her hands to Yuffie's shoulders, squeezed. "Yuffie, look at me. Are you hurt?" She found Yuffie's hand, put her fingertips in the palm. "Can you squeeze my hand?"
"Get her up." Elena, shrill and echoing through the chamber. Barret shifted and swore softly behind her and Tifa felt her jaw clench.
"Give her a minute, all right—"
"Honey, we don't have no minute," Barret said, and there was cold water on her knee, through the worn toe of her boot.
Leviathan's bulk shifted, scales rasping against the rotting wood. Water poured down his sides, seeping from the dorsal fin, cascading from open jaws with a thousand thousand slender silver teeth and the pounding roar of waves against rocks.
Barret heaved Yuffie up and over his broad shoulders and backed hastily for the stairs. Tifa groped frantically for Oritsuru in the salty cold, water seeping into her gloves, swelling the leather, dulling her touch. Her hand fell on a wing and she twisted. Elena covered her from the top of the staircase; Tifa sloshed and waded and hauled herself up by the handrail, boots sodden, leggings soaked to the thigh.
She paused by Elena, raking hair back from her face. The water strained and twisted away from the staircase, gathering beneath Leviathan, undertow so strong It sucked the jars from the workbenches, back toward the water god. Leviathan tipped back its head to roar to an invisible sky, and surged.
"Go," Elena whispered, screamed; Tifa couldn't tell.
Cid wheezed to a halt by the elevator cage, coughing and choking and cursing every cig he'd ever smoked. If he pressed any harder on the stitch under his ribs, his hand'd go straight through. Meltzer pounded past after Cloud, braids smacking against her shoulder guard. He took a deep breath to follow, but Nanaki's roar of warning stopped him dead.
The cat was at full-pelt, chips of paint and polish scattering in his wake. "Back aboveground!" Blasts of sound, unmodulated. Cid straightened up, eyes narrowing. "Leviathan — flooding the upper floors!"
Hell in a handbag. He was shambling into a run before he'd properly processed what a large volume of water would do to the paper-and-wire innards of the Shinra building. Nanaki loped behind, beside, ahead of him, lean body coiling and extending, barely pausing as he leapt to the upper edge of the elevator, hauled himself through the gap, and vanished from sight, taking his tail flame with him.
Cid's progress was a little less graceful. He vaulted up easy enough, but pulled up short to avoid braining himself and had to scoot and scramble the rest of the way forward. Meltzer wasn't much better; he gave her a hand up.
"Hurry!" Nanaki barked from above, too anxious even to pace. Cid crouched to watch the corridor, gave a shrug to Meltzer.
"After you."
Cloud rounded the corner, fumbling at his wrist. Cid's eyes narrowed, and he ran his fingers over his own materia; nothing very likely to slow down a water god, let alone halt a rampage.
"What's the plan, Spike?"
"Ice?" Cloud demanded tersely, and swore when Cid shook his head. "Meltzer, Ice materia?"
Meltzer, dangling several meters above Cid's head, gave a huff that was one third exasperation, two thirds effort. "Little busy, Strife."
"Do you have it or not?"
"Kid, Ice ain't gonna be much use against—"
"Sooner or later, Vincent is coming up that ramp," Cloud ground out. "He might not be human when he does. Do the math in your head and tell me you have an Ice materia."
Cid did the math.
The bottom fell out of his stomach.
Behind Cloud, Elena and Tifa rounded the corner just ahead of an ankle-deep wash of water and foam. The body of it plunged onward down the ramp, but enough spun off after the girls to form a strong swell, momentum carrying it halfway up the far wall before it started to spread down the hall after them.
Cloud gestured, urging them on. Tifa was soaked to the thigh, wet hair bunching oddly at her back; the Turk moved quickly and carefully, like she didn't trust her shoes on a wet floor.
Barret came into view, the kid slung over one shoulder, his good arm out for balance. (What the hell had happened? Who did Cid have to give some lumps?) Barret turned. He leaned against the weight of the water. Too far.
He went down under four feet of water, and disappeared from view.
They ran from the flames that wouldn't go out, shoulders hunched, hands clutched to their chest. No amount of pressure stilled their searing. They stumbled, lurched, one shoulder to the wall.
Chill water relieved the overheated flesh of feet and calves, but as they went, it rose, stinging and clawing its way along cuts and jagged seams. They fell. Their hands plunged into the water, and the pain was so great that they roared and lurched upright as the water sparked and steamed. They staggered a few more steps, and then the girl's body wrapped around their knees.
They lifted her, rumbling a warning to the burning water, and cradled her awkwardly against them. She did not cough; she did not move. They could not hear her.
Inside them, something cracked.
Tifa was halfway back to the ramp screaming for Barret when Cloud grabbed her arm, wrestled her to a halt. "Get up top," he said, shouting to be heard over the water. Her fist clenched in his shirt.
"If you think for one minute—"
"Do you have an Ice materia?"
"What? No, Barret had—"
The howl froze her marrow, turned Cloud's face pale as ash.
"Out of the water. Now."
He all but threw her back toward the elevator, keeping hold of her arm and pushing her ahead of him. He boosted her through the gap onto the stuck elevator, and as she turned to help him through, she saw Barret fight his way back up the ramp and into the corridor, wild-eyed and dripping.
Cloud saw the relief on her face, turned, shouted, "Barret! Ice wall, behind you! Now!"
Tifa hauled Cloud up beside her, and froze at another roar, a series of crashes and clangs. At the far end of the corridor, sparks leapt across the lattice of the service elevator shaft. Her stomach dropped into her boots as she understood.
"Go," she said. "Find something to pull us up." To his credit, Cloud didn't argue. "Barret, all the way—"
He was running, stumbling through the water, but he paused long enough focus a blast of ice behind him. Swirls and eddies froze in place; a wall of spiked crystals formed above them.
Beyond, Death Gigas grabbed scrunched handfuls of the wire cage as if it were netting.
"Get ready," she called to Cloud, hoping, praying, and she hauled with all her might to get Barret onto the elevator beside her. "Another wall—"
"Ice, ice, ice," Barret hissed, already freezing over the way that he had come, his breath coming in clouds. "Spike, get us the fuck out of—"
"Shoot the cable," Tifa half-shrieked, grabbing hold, and they kicked off just as Death Gigas smashed an arm through the ice, and then through the rest of the wall. They clawed and kicked their way up higher as Cloud, Cid, and Elena dragged them, foot by foot, but it wasn't going to be enough, couldn't be enough.
Blue sparks wreathed the Gigas' arm as he brought it down on the elevator, crumpling it inward like an aluminium can. Once, twice, and Tifa shrieked as loud as the elevator as its brakes gave in.
A moment of weightlessness; Nanaki's shoulder knocked all the air from her diaphragm and she couldn't breathe to curse when something pierced her arm, her collarbone, with bruising impact.
A thud, a crunch, and the Gigas stood over them, crackling, buzzing in a strange, ululating keen over the still, pale figure folded in its arms.
In the darkness beneath Midgar, water laps at ash: all that remains of the Phoenix-Imbued's corpse.
Every so often, the flames re-ignite, the water steams and bubbles, and an infant with materia-encrusted eyes kicks, strangles, drowns. The water is everywhere, and the current is strong.
Eventually, there is not enough ash to revive him.
Everything goes back to the ocean.