Chapter 25 - Starlight
"Zack."
He curled up tighter. "Go away. I won't watch. I won't."
"Zack!"
He smelled flowers. He hadn't smelled anything in this strange place before. Raising his head he saw a vision of floating pink and shining steal rush toward him. Green light drove back the darkness.
One delicate hand pressed against the invisible barrier holding him. She leaned forward before jerking back as if she heard something. Tendrils of darkness ate at the light she brought with her.
"No!" He pounded against the barrier. "Get out of here!"
"I won't." Light shot between her hands, forming a staff of green and red. A golden butterfly spread delicate wings at the head, topped with a ruby set in obsidian. "I'm not losing you again!"
She raised the staff and slammed the tip against the barrier. Green cracks spread like luminescent spiderwebs. He shielded his eyes against the coming explosion.
Pain flared in him for a moment before washing away like spring rain.
A terrible shriek echoed around them. The darkness retreated, leaving them at the center of a purified sphere.
She stood determined before him looking out at the darkness. "This is the planet's champion and my knight! You will not touch him!"
"Aerith?" He stood unsteadily at first, but strength quickly returned to him. "What's going on?"
She looked over her shoulder, a familiar teasing smile on her lips. "We're going home." With that she turned back to the darkness. "I am Cetra. I am human. This does not make me weak, it makes me strong. My knight is a human touched by calamity. We are young, inexperienced, and don't know how to listen, but we can learn. Minerva, grant us your power. Burn away the darkness and show us the path back to our friends."
The darkness hissed and tried to rush them. He acted without thinking, wrapping his arms around her as the last word left her mouth.
Golden light burst from her staff.
A power flowed through him that reminded him of singing crystals and a woman with golden hair.
The steal on her dress turned to gold, pink became blazing white. Her bracelets glowed and expanded into armored gloves. A gold and sapphire circlet sprouted under her bangs.
He gasped as the light wrapped around him. His belt turned gold, guards of midnight blue also trimmed in gold appeared on his shoulders. His boots and gloves shifted to match. The familiar weight of his sword appeared on his back but when he drew it the entire blade had changed to polished silver. The gold wings on the crossguard looked ready to take flight.
Her weapon also changed. Holes appeared in the butterfly wings as they lengthened up and down. The shaft turned silver. The ruby remained the same, but a golden spike grew from the top.
She swung her transformed staff to the left. "There!"
He grinned, spinning his sword. The darkness fell away like dust before his blade.
"When we get back, you've got to explain what just happened."
She smiled, her own weapon singing as it brought doom to the calamity. "It's a date."
*7*7*
Barret loomed over the back of yet another poor, unfortunate technician manning the various controls and sensors in the Highwind's control room. "Ya still haven't found 'em? This was s'posed to make lookin' faster! $&* ! Ya even tryin'?"
"Shut the $&^# up!" Cid nearly ground his cigarette in two at the way the other man was making his crew wet their trousers. "We've only been up here two hours, so either simmer down or you'll be lookin' for the kids from outside."
That put a lid on Barret's fuming, but didn't lock it down. The big man continued to mutter and curse from one end of the control room to the other. Cid let it go because at least he wasn't aiming any of it at his crew.
This continued for a long, increasingly tense, time. Cid would be lying if he didn't feel almost as frustrated as Barret obviously did. He didn't have any kids and gods willing never would, but the thought of the little brats in danger and Cloud acting strange again had him going through more than his usual three packs a day.
Finally, one of the techs jumped in his chair. "I think we've got something!"
The preemptive celebration was nipped in the bud by Cid's insistence they find out what the 'something' was first.
All thoughts of celebration evaporated when they saw the little procession below them. The children appeared safe and whole, though nearly dead on their feet from exhaustion. The reason being the figure bleeding through make-shift bandages on the torn piece of tarp they dragged along between them. They would have been completely invisible in the darkness of the plains if not for the little lamps the slum kids had jury rigged from a truck's head and tail lights.
Two things kept Barret from jumping straight down to hug Marlene. First, Cid ordered the crew not to help him into a parachute. Second, he didn't want Marlene's last view of him to be his bloody remains scattered across the countryside.
Cid had a safe landing site picked out by the time Barret came to his decision to stay aboard until they touched down. The worried father still ran for the nearest exit so he could rush out the instant the Highwind stopped moving, though.
Not soon enough, Barret's feet touched ground and he raced for his adopted daughter. "Marlene!"
"Papa!" The little girl jumped toward him then hesitated, looking back at the prone body on the tarp. "Cloud's hurt! You gotta carry him inside!"
And risk Cloud going nuts like last time? Barret actually had to think about that. On the one hand, it was a serious risk. On the other, Marlene was looking up at him with her biggest, most adorable eyes. Resistance was futile while he allowed himself to look at those eyes.
So he turned his head only to find himself looking at Cloud, bloody and ghostly pale in the Highwind's landing lights. Cloud's left sleeve had been torn away, possibly by one of the kids in an effort to bandage one of his many wounds, revealing the ugly blight of geostigma that had spread from his elbow up to his shoulder and on under his shirt.
The young man needed medical attention yesterday.
Swallowing the remains of his hesitation, Barret scooped up Cloud, tarp and all, as best he could. He grunted at the effort, not only because of how awkward carrying a limp body was for a man with only one hand, but at the unexpected weight of his passenger.
By this time, Cid and a couple crew members with more than basic first-aid knowledge jogged down the gang-plank. Cid's string of curses were just barely cut short by a glare from Barret, though the pilot returned the glare rather than look properly shamed.
"Right. Everyone, inside! Now! Hank, make sure none of the kids're about to keel over on the way to the bunks. Get Cloud to the infirmary. No dawdlin'!"
His crew sprang into action, though the ease with which they managed the kids had more to do with the youngsters being smart enough to realize that if they cooperated they could finally go to bed. The most difficult ones were Cole and Denzel. Though the boys were mobile, they hadn't quite reached the level of 'responsive' yet.
The moment the kids were out of earshot, Cid's impressive knowledge of expletives came to the fore once again. "What the hell happened?" Several more choice words. "Kid looks like he's been run over by a #&* tank."
"How the hell'd I know? All's I can figure is he had trouble with whoever nabbed the kids."
Cid lit another cigarette, knowing full well he'd have to put it out once they reached the infirmary. "So the kidnappers had a pet dragon or somethin'?" He squinted at the few wounds mostly visible. "Let's hope he stays unconscious for a few more hours."
He did, mostly. Cid's field medic had great difficulty maintaining a steady hand every time Cloud moved or groaned. Making matters worse, the medic had to almost lean on the scalpel in order to reach the bullet imbedded an inch below the young warrior's skin. And that was the arm afflicted with geostigma. For the other bullet wounds, the medic abandoned the delicate blade and found the sharpest mythril dagger onboard.
Barret banged on the door to the infirmary as the medic finished up the last of the bandages. "How's the spiky-haired punk doin'?"
"Better than anyone should be after being shot, stabbed, and who knows what else so many times." The medic leaned back and ran a towel over his face. "I'm just glad he apparently doesn't need stitches. I'd hate to have to push a needle through that tough hide of his."
"Yeah, he's a tough li'l bastard. Guess I owe him one for savin' Marlene. Ya hear that, Spiky? Ya better wake up soon so's I can pay ya back. Don't like bein' in debt ta y're sorry ass." Barret glanced over at the medic, who was helping himself to a bottle of whiskey he'd hidden away somewhere. "Cid says we're gonna be landin' any minute now, so get 'im ready to move somewhere more comf'table."
The medic gulped down another mouthful of whiskey. "Wouldn't take much. Mind helping with that? The boy's heavier than he looks."
Barret snorted. "Don' hav'ta tell me that. I'm the one who dragged his sorry ass up here."
Between them, they easily moved Cloud to a stretcher and carried him down to the hatch. The sight that welcomed them left their jaws on the ground.
Somehow, the entire village had become a field hospital. A gang of women lead by Tifa accosted them seconds after their feet touched the ground. They were led to the house that sometimes served as an inn, and now served as a medical ward, apparently. Once they had Cloud on a bed Barret was shooed out.
Cid leaned against the wall next to the door with a cigarette hanging from his smirking mouth. "A hundred gil says this was all Shera's idea."
"Where's Marlene?"
"Fair house, I'm guessing. Least wise, it was Mis'us Fair who came and herded her and the rest of the waist-high crowd off." Cid tapped a bit of ash off his cigarette. "Don't envy her the next few hours trying to get those kids to sleep."
"Wha'chu talkin' about? They all looked ready to fall over last I saw 'em."
Cid barked a humorless laugh. "Sure, they'll go to bed just fine. And then the nightmares'll start. Bad enough when the kids goin' to war are in their teens. This bunch?" A cloud of smoke escaped his mouth as he sighed. "Ya saw the state Cloud was in. How much more do ya figure they saw?"
Barret went about as pale as his natural skin tone allowed and ran for the Fair house.
Moments later, Cid felt a drop of rain fall on his nose.
"$&^# perfect." Another drop fell in his eye as he looked up. His swearing got much more colorful before he yawned and slumped, still muttering obscenities, against the side of of the inn.
The rain continued as a sleepy patter despite the lack of clouds. Nothing seemed to move until the inn door slid open.
*7*7*
Zack took one last look to make sure Cid's cigarette hadn't fallen on anything painfully burnable before closing the door. "He is not going to be happy when he wakes up."
"So no change then?" Aerith smiled up at her husband of barely four hours. "It's for his own safety, just in case something goes wrong."
"I'm almost afraid to ask what could go wrong that everyone being asleep will protect them from."
"Probably best you don't ask." Aerith held her staff in front of her, forehead resting on the shaft, as she called upon the planet to grant peaceful sleep to all inside.
All except two, one who was already unconscious and another who tended him.
References! The first scene contains at least two related to what Aerith and then Zack are wearing. There might be a third. I say 'might' because Aerith's supplication to Minerva sounded awfully familiar as I wrote it. I just can't figure out why.