The Loveless
Lt. Commander Richie
Disclaimer: Owning an airship, or an Autobot, or an Autobot that transforms into an airship, would be cool. Alas I have none of the above, though my dad drives a semi truck that I have suspicions about. Especially what with that big Autobot symbol on the side of it. In fact, if that semi isn't freaking Grimlock then I'll eat my hat. Thank Primus I don't own any hats.
Chapter 21
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"You really didn't have to extend the invitation." Eil and Chyrin stood on the bridge of the Shera, Eil holding onto Chyrin's wrist with one hand. He looked a little green around the gills, so to speak, and with good reason. While Chyrin stood utterly enraptured with the view through the glass-bottomed part of the bridge, the blue-eyed blond with the sword on his back was trying very hard not to look down. Dr. Kreshent, who they had picked up just outside of Edge, had already given him a Tranquilizer but it hadn't had an effect.
"Of course I did. If I hadn't, who would save me from my own stupidity?" Chyrin shot the blond a light smirk as she spoke, watching as he gave up and simply screwed his eyes shut tightly and looked as though he was about to pass out.
"That Valentine guy would probably save you." The silver-haired girl laughed outright at that, resisting the urge to slap her friend- possibly boyfriend -on the back for fear of making him spew chunks because of his airsickness. "He would and you know it."
"That's because he's not a heartless creature devoid of all emotion... Like some people seem to think he is." Eil spared the girl a glance coupled with a raised eyebrow, as if daring her to implicate him in the crime. "It's true!"
"Lemme guess, there are people that think he doesn't use inflections in his grammar either." Chyrin broke into a smile and clapped the blond on the shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting and assuring manner.
"You'd be surprised at the mass idiocy of the general populace!" She chirped, sounding happy as a clam. At the sudden jarring she gave the poor boy's frame, though, Eil suddenly held a hand to his mouth and ran towards one of the doors leading from the bridge.
"You puke in or on the ship an' yer cleanin' it!" Cid yelled after him from his position at the Captain's wheel, a cigarette clenched between his teeth. "And don' think we're gonna stop while ya do it, either!" Leaning against the wall behind the pilot, Dr. Kreshent cleared his throat and shifted his grip on his massive hammer. "An' you shut yer mouth! I didn't even hafta pick yeh up, but I did anyway! If th' kid can't keep from throwin' up on mah ship he kin damn well clean it up himself, n'matter what his self-appointed doctor says!"
"You two are bickering like old women!" Cloud yelled across the bridge from his seat near the wall of the glass dome that encased the wide-open glass floor. Cid made a rude gesture at him with his free hand, the other holding the ship on a steady course. Free of an airsick maybe-boyfriend for the moment, Chyrin ventured out further across the glass bottom of the bridge. Her face split into a grin as she watched the clouds zip by beneath her, and spun around with a jingle of her Silence charm and laughed.
"You both sound like a couple of angry teenage girls!" The silver-haired girl chimed into the fight, getting the attention of both the pilot and the swordsman. "Cloud I can understand, but you, Cid? Don't you have to keep your eye on the sky or something?" No sooner had she finished did a series of whacks sound across the bridge. Chyrin looked up in surprise, her breath hitching in her throat for a moment. Five birds, in a V pattern, were steadily sliding up the dome from the force of forward motion against them.
"Somethin' like that, yeah." The pilot muttered, and hit a couple buttons on the console beside him. "'Ey, Morris!" He yelled into a speaker, not waiting for the person on the other end, presumably Morris, to answer before continuing. "Git yer gear on an' scrape some birds off th' dome! They're leavin' smears an' I jus' had it cleaned!"
Not particularly willing to listen to witty AVALANCHE banter, Chyrin stopped her gazing down towards the ground and made her way towards the same door that Eil had excused himself out of just a little while before. She followed the sounds of retching down one hallway after the next, the clinking of her sword becoming louder and louder in empty metal hallways as the noise of even the engines died away. She looked back at one point, and realized that she was horribly, horribly lost. Chyrin sighed and put a hand to her forehead, resisting the urge to smack her face into one of the metal walls. She had missed the sound of Eil retching, probably, since there was no way he could have made it this far. But then who was throwing up?
"Hello?" The silver-haired girl pushed open a door at the end of the hallway she was in, only to get a surprise buffet of wind to the face. Somehow she had made her way down to the open observation deck at the bottom of the ship. She peered around carefully, then raised an eyebrow at what appeared to be Vincent Valentine holding Yuffie Kisaragi's headband in his gold-clawed hand and the center of her fuuma-shuriken in the other. Then it dawned on the girl- that's who was horking it up over the side of the ship. As if on cue, the ninja walked up to the older gunman and took her headband back.
"Dr. Kreshent could give you a Tranquilizer, you know." With a yelp the ninja spun around, her headband half-tied and flapping in her face. Chyrin walked out onto the wooden deck, smiling brightly. This was the kind of place she just wanted to stand and watch the world go by.
"I was about to suggest the same thing." Vincent chimed in, holding out the large throwing star so that the ninja could take it. Yuffie nodded once, still looking a little green around the gills, and took the weapon before heading for the hallway. Chyrin moved out of the way of the ninja princess, then closed the door behind her and went to the rail so as to look down at the rapidly-passing landscape.
Then it hit her: Vincent hadn't left. In fact, that was his gold-plated left hand now wrapping around the top guard rail of the platform. The silver-haired teen tried to stay still and nonchalant, and her mind was winning over the matter at hand. At least she had enough self-control not to say anything stupid.
"How many times will you have killed him, now?" Scratch that. Stupidity was now officially Chyrin's strong suit. Vincent looked over at the girl, conspicuously missing an eyebrow that was no doubt raised above the level of his bandanna. "Hojo, I mean. I only know of two times, but you never know with creepy bastards like that."
"This will be the third time I've had to kill him in some form." Vincent replied, and the two of them sat in a slightly awkward silence for a little while with the wind whipping through their hair. His bright red cloak made a snapping noise like a flag when the wind hit it just right, and Chyrin couldn't help but giggle after a little while of listening to it. "What did he do to you that you hate him so much?" Vincent finally asked, and Chyrin pushed herself away from where she was leaning on the rail and into an upright standing position. She thought for a moment, unsure about how to really proceed. She could tell him the truth and everything she knew about Jenova, and Sephiroth, and the Nibelheim Incident, and Zack and Cloud and even about Lucrecia and the undeserving former Turk right in front of her. One thing was for sure, though, her good mood was officially soured.
"He hasn't done a single thing to me. At least not directly, that's for sure. He was involved in Sephiroth, yeah, and Project G was all Hollander's fault, but it's all ShinRa to me." Vincent looked like he didn't believe a word she said, like that simply wasn't conviction enough. There wasn't a deep enough meaning to her hatred at all. And he was right, she realized, and she continued. "And," Chyrin paused, if only for effect and to figure out her wording, "because a long time ago, there was a Turk. And he did horrible things to that Turk, and it wasn't fair. Neither was what he put a small child through, or what he did to a man who was fighting for what he believed in, or to an infantryman with a lot of heart and potential." The silver-haired girl paused and put a hand to her face, only just then realizing that she was crying in the slightest way, and her tears were being blown away by the wind on the open deck. "He only leaves a trail of death and destruction wherever he goes. Quite frankly I think he would be better off dead. That he'll go down with Weiss the Immaculate and Genesis Rhapsodos? Well that's just a plus." With steel in her eyes the teen looked away, out at the thin air of the high atmosphere above the clouds that were whizzing by. Her entire demeanor oozed anger now, anger and a little bit of sorrow.
"You've got a big heart." His voice was closer than it had been before, but Chyrin didn't bother looking in his direction. "But you care too much about the people around you, and it's hurting you. It makes you angry." Suddenly Chyrin was enveloped in a pair of strong arms and the smell of gunpowder, leather, and the musty smell of old mouldering cloth. She blinked once, twice, three times in surprise, standing perfectly still and not returning what she now figured to be an attempt at a hug. "Don't mourn for me." His chin was digging into the top of her head, and at her little less than six feet that was saying something. But specifically, it was a little uncomfortable. "I do enough of that myself."
"At least you admit it." Chyrin said, but her words were carried away by the wind. There was no doubt in her mind that Vincent had heard them, though. She finally gave in and returned the hug, her arms wrapping around his chest and her face burying into the old red cloak. "Saves me the trouble of telling you." The hug lasted only a little bit longer before he pulled awkwardly away, adjusting crumpled bits and pieces of clothing back to the way they should be. The teen looked around awkwardly, and settled for sniffing her shoulder. It smelled kinda like old lady house. Splendid. "I won't tell anyone about this whole thing if you don't." Chyrin blurted out, trying to look impasse and absolutely failing. Every time she even so much as looked in Vincent's direction, now, she nearly giggled at his smelling like old lady house.
"Quite." There was the raised eyebrow again, and the silver-haired girl finally let out a titter of a giggle. Vincent nodded to her once, and then headed for the hallway door off the open deck. His cloak swept up to his side, snapping like a flag in a particularly nasty gust of wind that even knocked the lanky man forward a few steps. Chyrin finally laughed out loud, grinning and smiling as the ex-Turk wrenched the door open and went inside the ship. After a while she paused, turning back to the guard rail and leaning on it to watch the clouds go by.
"Well that was like a really horrible piece of romance fanfiction." She finally said out loud, giggling at her own realization. "I think I've actually written stuff that bad, too." The girl continued to muse, a small smile lighting up her features yet again. "I should get a computer when we get back to Edge."
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It was much warmer inside the Shera once Chyrin had been outside on the open deck for so long. Her skin was paler than it usually was, covered in goosebumps even though she rubbed at it angrily with her bare hands. With a huff the teen sat herself down on a convenient-looking box with several pipes making their way out of the bottom, more than likely a breaker box of some sort, in an area near the engine room. It had to be at least eighty degrees in the cargo space she had found, and she pulled her knees to her chest and itched at the ice that had formed in her hair after they had gone through that cloud. Stupid condensation.
The sound of something rolling and bouncing on the floor, a rhythmic tok tok tok like it was made of a hard substance, filled the room. More of the sounds followed, like a series of things falling to the floor through a hole in the bottom of a box. More importantly, though, Chyrin knew that sound like the back of her hand. She heard it at least three times a week for the better part of a year. That was the unmistakable sound of Materia bouncing. With a moan of protest against what she knew must have already happened, the teen patted down her pants pockets with cold hands. They were completely empty, devoid of the seven Materia she had found in the wreckage of the WRO building. She groaned again, but with creaking cold joints she got up from her warm breaker box and stood on the metal floor of the cargo area. Chyrin's hand quickly darted out and snatched the Command Materia out of the air in the apex of its bounce, stuffing it in her pocket before going on to snatch up the BahamutZERO. She reached for the Life2, but it bounced from her hand and went rolling across the floor. She ran after it, trying to pull it up off the floor before she couldn't find it anymore.
"Come back here you little bugger!" She ordered, but the lifeless little sphere surprisingly didn't listen. With a lunge Chyrin grabbed the little sphere and slid to a stop on the metal floor, before stuffing it in a pocket and getting up. She couldn't hear the bouncing of Materia anymore, and with a resigned huff the silver-haired girl began her search for the remaining four Summons and Magics. She found the Quake stuck between two boxes, and the Phoenix under a work bench. By then she was feeling warmed up, and her arms were no longer covered in goosebumps and her hair wasn't standing on end. A glint of something shiny between two boxes caught her eye suddenly, and the teen made her way over and reached between the wooden slats. Something scraped her arm and she grunted at the stinging sensation, but wrapped her fingers around the object and pulled it out.
Oddly enough, it wasn't Materia. In fact, it wasn't even a magical item. A gold loop sat in her hands, holes for insetting Materia around the outside of it. There were only four, but they were in linked sets of two. With a grin Chyrin pulled four of what Materia she had found from her pocket and inset them. The Quake, Life2, BahamutZERO and Phoenix were all carefully secured before she opened the armlet up at its latch and fastened it around her upper right arm. Every time she touched the metal it got a little brighter, dust coming off from the friction. The latch clicked, and it stayed exactly where she put it. With a happy smile on her face, Chyrin jumped to her feet and looked back around the cargo space. She could just barely see a red glow in the opposite corner, and though she wondered just how it was that one of the Summons got over there she still made note of it. Still smiling she looked down at the crates she had just pried the Gold Armlet out from between, and raised an eyebrow at the peeling paint that spelled out OBSOLETE ARMOR.
In a split-second decision Chyrin hooked her fingers under the lid and pulled up, easily separating the top of the crate from the rest. The insides glinted like treasure, golds and silvers and bronzes reflecting the low running lights in the cargo area. With deft fingers the silver-haired girl reached in and plucked out another Gold Armlet, then closed the lid and tamped it down with a well-placed axe kick. She slotted her remaining Materia into it, the unassigned Command, and then went to find the remaining two. First she made a beeline for the red glow in the corner, jumping over boxes and sliding across the metal floor in her haste to get there before the dang thing rolled somewhere else. It was with relief that she finally reached down and snatched up the Knights of the Round, slotting it into the Gold Armlet with the Command.
"Figures the one I can't find is the one I never had the time to figure out what it was." Chyrin muttered, watching carefully in the semi-dark of the cargo area for a green glow. That last one had been a nice bright green, a good ol' dependable Magic Materia. She just didn't know what the heck it was. In a stroke of genius the teen clambered up on top of several boxes until her head nearly brushed the twelve-foot ceiling. Her eyes, muddy brown, pierced the gloom with a sharpness brought on by months upon months of looking for missing stock that had fallen from shelves or had been snatched by a shoplifter she couldn't catch. In the corner of her eye she thought she spotted something, a little green in a sea of brown wood, but without warning the entire ship shifted about twenty feet down and to the left. Boxes toppled and rocked, and with a screech Chyrin fell from her perch.
On the cold metal floor and groaning, Chyrin rolled over. Boxes were still shifting, sliding across the smooth cargo area floor since they weren't strapped down. One box had completely smashed, spilling old uniforms everywhere. As if taunting her, a little sphere of green rolled merrily across the teen's field of vision, maybe six inches from her nose. She growled and scrabbled to catch it, but it bounced out of her fingers as the ship jerked again. Scrambling to her feet Chyrin dove for it again, but it just barely managed a daring escape. With a cry of frustration the girl finally ran forward and stomped on the annoying little mastered Magic. It stopped short, wedged between the sole and heel of her old ShinRa SOLDIER boots. Giggling a little at her genius, Chyrin hopped on one foot and pulled the other up to unwedge the Materia from her shoe. It sparked a little at her bare touch, and she held it gingerly before securing it into the Gold Armlet. Finally, with it secured, she pressed her thumb to the exposed crystalline Mako and concentrated.
Sweet spawn of Sephiroth. It was a mastered Ultima. A nice big fat sparkly green death-causing rock. Just as she let out a triumphant "Yes!" the ship shifted again. This time it tilted, boxes sliding towards one wall due to the siren song of gravity. Chyrin dodged a large crate that was headed straight for her knees with a vengeance, and ran for the door. She grabbed the handle just as the ship tilted farther, and held on with both hands as her feet nearly left the ground. Behind her, crates smashed into piles of splinters and old clothes, old weapons and old armor as they collided in a pile on the opposite wall. The Shera suddenly righted and everything hit the ground, spilling across the floor like a washing machine opened prematurely. Without further goading Chyrin promptly threw the door open and ran for the bridge.
She finally got the Gold Armlet fastened around her opposite arm as she made her way onto the bridge. Panting from her run, the teen swiped unkempt silver hair from her eyes and looked out of the massive dome that should have been filled with bright sunlight.
"What the hell's going on, old man? I thought you could fly this thing!" She asked, whirling around to face a stony-faced Cid. His teeth were gritted and he was fighting the wheel, the remains of a cigarette long since bitten through still between his lips.
"I'm a lil' busy here kid!" He snapped, finally getting his weight under the wheel and turning it the way he wanted to. "Damn storm appeared right outta damn nowhere!" And an impressive storm it was. Roiling masses of clouds filled the bridge's many windows, dark and angry and swirling. Lightning crackled from one cloud to the next, making entire clouds light up in terrifying if not amazing displays.
"It's White Mage work." From the back wall, Dr. Kreshent spoke up. "I know this kind of storm anywhere. We're in the wrong hemisphere for something like this, and those cloud-to-cloud strikes are in a pattern. Lindsey conjured this." The redhead looked hurt, but the white-knuckled grip he had around the handle of his war hammer betrayed the no doubt limitless anger he was feeling towards the true perpetrator of the entire calamity. There was an audible gasp from the fore of the bridge, where Yuffie and Tifa were standing out on the glass floor. Chyrin whirled around once again, blowing fine silver hair out of her eyes so she could see better. What she saw stopped her in her tracks, her mouth slowly falling open at the sight before her.
The clouds were all swirling, downward in a massive spiral that looked as though it meant to swallow up the ship. The Shera was tiny compared to the size of the eye of the storm. In the center something was beginning, a glow that was becoming steadily brighter. The kind of glow that came from one thing and one thing only, the bright green of Mako. The Lifestream.
"Shit! I gotta land 'er, we ain't flyin' straight into that!" Cid pulled at the wheel again, this time in the opposite direction, and yanked at a lever on the console next to him. "Barret, c'mere an' lend me a hand!" The hulking mountain of a man ran to his teammate's aid, using both his human and metal hands to pull the wheel in the direction it needed to go. The nose of the Shera slowly began to tilt towards the ground, quickly gaining speed before beginning to drift in the direction of the massive gusts of wind that spun the clouds.
"Hold on to your respective asses!" Chyrin yelled, grabbing hold of something protruding from the wall that looked like a rail. The ship began to buck, and alarms began to blare with the kind of urgency that made you worry about your ability to stay in the air. A massive bolt of lightning crackled in the clouds, and then another shot up and connected with one of the propellers. The Shera began to drop, puttering along at barely half-speed and falling quickly into the swirling mass of clouds. Cid swore loudly and shouted something into the intercom beside him, still struggling with the wheel. A particularly strong gust hit the side of the ship and the old pilot suddenly lost his grip on the wheel, a surprised Barret letting go as well. It caught him in the chin and he went stumbling backwards, the wheel spinning erratically between them as the Shera went into a spiraling fall.
Chyrin promptly sent a prayer to the Planet as she screamed at the top of her lungs.
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If it's any consolation, I had this done yesterday but I was having too much fun immersing myself in Green Lantern comics to post. Quite frankly I actually FORGOT that I had finished this. So yeah, here you go. I hope you enjoy it as much as I snerked and snorted and giggled at it as I was writing it.
I don't have much else to say, besides that I finally have the rest of this planned out. Just not by chapter. So you might get a chapter with a plot point, a chapter with two plot points, a chapter with only fighting (oh god oh god I'm dreading that I can't write good fighting to save my life) and then some OHMAIGAWDEXPOSAY~
So later, comrades, though I doubt any of you are actually comrades. Review this like you've never reviewed before.