Final Fantasy VII (c) Square Enix. Character design by Nomura Tetsuya. No profit is being made out of this fanwork.

Special thanks to Sanctum Ukiyo! :) Please bear with the booooring chapter.

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Sojourners
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Chapter Twenty-Six
To be forgotten is worse than death.

When Cloud woke up, he panicked. Then immediately relaxed and pretended to be still unconscious.

The panic was due to the fact that there were currently a myriad of wires connected to his body - some with needles, others with non-invasive sensors.

It took all the self-control Cloud had not even known he had to stop himself from ripping the connections away from his body right there and then. The machine registering his heartbeat went slightly faster for a short moment before returning to a more normal monotone. So quickly, not even the most observant doctor could have noticed, unless they had been specifically looking out for it.

'I am so good at faking vital signs,' Cloud congratulated himself morosely. Then he turned his attention to what had made him pretend to be asleep in the first place.

There were voices above him. From what he could deduce, two people were having a heated conversation. There was probably also something like a wall between him and the discussion going on. The voices were close, but slightly muffled, as if the participants were speaking through water.

Of course, due to his enhancements, no wall or substance could stop him from listening into the conversation if he really tried, but the opponents did not need to know that.

"By all clinical signs, he is healthy and ready to be tested on," one voice was saying. Cloud fought against an urge to frown. They were obviously talking about him. And they obviously did not have something pleasant in store for him, if the needles and machines were any indication.

"Well, then why aren't we doing it already?" A calm but annoyed voice which Cloud recognised to be the Chancellor's asked. At once, memories returned to him. He had been on the way to retrieving the black and white materia as per the Seer's request, but had met with an ambush en route. They were doing a rather decent job of holding back the opponents, all things considered, but Cloud had lowered his guard in a moment of emotional vulnerability, and that was why he was here now, trapped and apparently about to be experimented on.

"Sir, it is established fact that the human body has stark differences in response when awake and asleep. And since I really do think you would rather be able to stay conscious when becoming immortal, my personal advice is that we should test his biological makeup when he is awake and aware first, before proceeding to other kinds of experimentation," the first voice answered the Chancellor's question, with an equal amount of annoyance.

A loud harrumph was the man's only response. Then, "How long will it take for him to wake up?"

"We don't know, sir, it really depends on how much of the drug you administered to him..."

"Well, I don't have all day! Get him to wake up right now!" The Chancellor snarled.

"With all due respect, sir, you don't necessarily have to be present when the tests are carried out..."

"Are you trying to tell me what to do?"

"Of course not, I was just..."

Sensing that the conversation was about to become a meaningless squabble, Cloud tuned the voices above him out to concentrate instead on crafting a plan for escape. No doubt, some amount of time must have passed between the scuffle at Coralissimo and him being dragged here. Sephiroth likely would have informed the others about him by now, or at least, Vincent would have noticed that the General had either returned without him, or not returned at all. In any case, he was sure help was on the way.

Not that he was going to wait for them like a silly little damsel in distress, of course.

Focusing his attention on his senses, Cloud tried to guess the dimensions of the room he was in. It was a rather small, round-shaped area and he was lying on a raised platform. Judging by the uncomfortable coldness he could feel through his clothing, it was probably a experiment table. Light assaulted his eyes even though his lids were down, telling him that the room was brightly lit. He risked a peek as the argument above him was still raging, and saw that some metres above was a glass ceiling. It acted like an observatory wall, for he could see the two quarreling men through the glass, and needless to say, they likely could see him as well. There were other men in the room besides the two, and although he could feel their presence, he could not see them through the glass ceiling.

They had removed his weapon, for obvious reasons. His materia pouch was also gone, but he could sense that they had placed it somewhere in the room above him. Thankfully, none of the wires connected to his body were transmitting anything dangerous into his body. Yet. What with the way the conversation above him was going, he wouldn't be surprised if they started jabbing him with something lethal soon - whether they thought he was awake and responsive or not.

"...don't care what you think because I want you to start the experiment now, and that's final," Cloud caught on to the ominous words of the Chancellor. He frowned, because the first man who had been arguing with the Chancellor merely sighed in response. It seemed like he was about to give in.

'No point pretending to be asleep, then,' Cloud decided, and sat up straight in a flash. He heard gasps above him, but ignored them and took a full look around the room he was in. He guessed rightly that it was a round-shaped area, and that he had been placed on an experiment table of sorts. The wires that were attached to him were plugged into the walls around him, and the built-in machines there displayed all kinds of strange statistics that almost made his head swirl. He did not want to know what those numbers meant.

In fact, he did not want to see those numbers at all, so he reached out for the wires that were all over his body, and ripped them all away methodically, ignoring the sharp stings he received from some of the disconnections. Once he was done, he hopped off the table and glanced upwards at the gawking men. He could see more of them now. The others had probably gathered when they noticed that something was happening down in the subject's room.

It did not look like the men were going to get over their shock anytime soon, so Cloud decided to break the ice.

"Greetings," he held a hand out. "Will you let me out of this room peacefully, or will I have to break out myself?"

The Chancellor was the first to regain his wits and composure. He sternly said, "You are a prisoner here, Cloud Strife, so you will listen to us if you know what's good for you."

"I know what's good for me all right," Cloud grumbled, checking his arms and finding tiny dots where the needles had been inserted, "and it sure isn't staying put in this bright little room for you to poke sharp stuff into me like I'm some human pincushion."

"We merely wish to find out how you are achieving your longevity so we can apply it and use it for the good of everyone!" The Chancellor yelled in indignation.

Cloud narrowed his eyes at the men through the ceiling glass. "I've told you countless times that it's not my secret to share. And besides," a few faces flashed by his mind, "you don't need to live as long as I did to really make a difference."

The Chancellor was silent for a while. Then he asked, "But what if I'm trying to make a difference to a Planet that will exist for eons even after I'm gone?"

Arching an eyebrow at the unexpected confession, Cloud had to collect his jaw. "You," he started, "...you're trying to make a difference to the /Planet/ herself? By going against her representatives?"

"The Seers are not her representatives!" The man yelled in indignation, slamming both hands on the glass ceiling and causing a muffled thud to echo throughout the room Cloud was in.

"I think she can be the judge of that," Cloud shrugged. "Look, I'm just a mercenary, and while I run odd jobs for the Seers, I have nothing to do with them at all. This longevity you speak of, it's not even something within my control. I can't tell you how you go about achieving this, but what I can tell you is that Gaia has a part in this. If you want to make a difference to the Planet, why not just ask her directly? Through her representatives of course," he paused. "Unless, you're just jealous that you weren't chosen to be part of the group of Seers?"

"Nothing of the sort," the Chancellor immediately replied and turned his nose up as if in disgust. "My old man is the Great Seer, and look what's happening to the Planet still! The old ways do not work anymore. The time has come for radical changes, and the Bazookas will spearhead that very movement. But for there to be real effect, we need to look at the long-term prospects. And by long-term, I mean hundreds, even thousands of years down the road! You hold the key to that knowledge, and yet you refuse to share! You leave us no choice but to force you to reveal the secret. There is no way to escape that room you are in, and even without the wire connections, we are able to..."

Cloud merely paid half a heed as the Chancellor enthusiastically explained how exactly he was going to harvest Cloud's cells and blood to run tests on them to see how he could alter his own body to resemble Cloud's current makeup. His mind had caught on to something the man had said, and he was half-heartedly ruminating on it.

Then it struck him.

"Wait, what..." Cloud exclaimed, pointing at the Chancellor. "The Great Seer is your father?"

The man sulked. "Unfortunately," he admitted.

"I don't believe this," Cloud groaned and mumbled into a hand. "So it was just an epic family feud all along?"

"I assure you, this is definitely more than a mere 'family feud', as you put it," the Chancellor sighed. "The fate of the Planet itself hangs in the balance!"

Cloud sighed. How many times had he heard that throughout his life now?

And how many times had it worked?

"You spoke of AVALANCHE," Cloud warily mentioned. "What do you know of them? Of us?"

The Chancellor was all too happy to reply. "You were a gang of freedom fighters that overturned an evil regime called Shinra that had been keeping the secrets of the Planet to themselves, bringing about peace and relief to the people of the land and the Planet herself. In return, you were granted the gift of immortality, and you continue to help the Planet weed out unsavoury types even now."

"No," Cloud shook his head, "we weren't freedom fighters. We were terrorists. Our actions caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Shinra wasn't an evil regime harbouring Planet secrets. They were a commercial company headed by people who thought they were doing everyone a favour by using the Planet to do what THEY thought was the best thing," he tilted his head to glance up at the man above. "Kinda reminds me of you."

The man was about to protest, but Cloud gave him no chance.

"We didn't bring peace or relief to the people. If anything, we destroyed their lives as they knew it and forced them to return to what they thought they had left - all for the sake of an ideal that was never eventually fulfilled. The Planet has never gotten better since our crusade. If anything, she keeps getting worse." He paused. "And as for that last part, you must have made it up, since it wasn't in the glorified history books at all."

"You dare tarnish the good name of the heroes who saved the world?" The Chancellor bellowed in immediate response.

"I'm one of those 'heroes', am I not?" Cloud smiled tiredly.

"And you have obviously gone mad," the man shook his head. It looked like he was ready to break the glass ceiling open with his own bare hands.

Cloud shrugged. "Look, I'm not going to argue with you about this. But I thought you at least deserve to know the truth, since you seem to really look up to AVALANCHE. That said, you can do whatever you want with this knowledge. Now, back to my question: Are you going to let me out, or do I have to do this the hard way?"

It was interesting how one man could change the colour of his face so quickly, and so many times, within the span of a few seconds. Eventually, however, the Chancellor calmed himself down and managed to school his features. He turned towards the side to speak with one of the men - presumably a scientist under his employment - standing there.

They spoke in a soft undertone, but Cloud heard every word. The Chancellor was asking the scientist if there was any chance they had left any weapon or materia with the madman, and the scientist assured the other man they had done their job properly.

Cloud sighed to himself. He scanned through the materia they had taken hostage quickly with his mind, found a Sleep, and promptly put everyone under the strongest sleep spell he could muster at that point.

After the last body thudded loudly onto the floor, there was nothing but dead silence.

Alternating between a strong fire and ice spell, Cloud managed to make the glass ceiling brittle enough to shatter by itself. He then stepped on the examination table and hefted himself out of the little hole, taking care not to step on any fallen bodies. The Bazookas were long past persuading, he had figured, so there was no point squabbling with them any further. He did, however, want to find out where they were getting their funds, where their other hideouts were, and other pertinent details about the mysterious organisation that would help him stop them from aggravating the Planet any further.

And since the Chancellor was not in the mood to reveal, he would have to look for the information himself.

The room above was like a larger version of the examination room he had been in. A significant portion of the rounded walls housed rows upon rows of holographic screens displaying digital scans of ancient manuscripts Cloud knew was no longer in existence. He glanced through them briefly, noting that most of them were stories related to or based on the Meteor event that had happened thousands of years ago. Some of them were even written by Cloud himself. Feeling somewhat cross about that, Cloud kicked the wall.

The screens sputtered and fizzled out - something Cloud had not been expecting to happen. Nevermind, he thought to himself. And nothing of value was lost.

There was a window looking outside on the next portion of the wall, so Cloud strode over and glanced out. It was dark; very dark. Tiny sparkles of light dotted the inky skies. Cloud deduced that the building he was in had to be very high up in the air for the sky to be so clear. He was about to turn away when something caught his attention.

He returned his glance to the window and this time, peered out from a different angle, to make sure that he had not been hallucinating. The bright, beautiful form of the planet he had been born on greeted him most glowingly, confirming that he had not.

It would appear this building was located in outer space.

'Well,' Cloud reasoned with himself, his thoughts obviously not fully caught up with his senses yet, 'no wonder I haven't been hearing the Lifestream?'

Needless to say, this did present the problem of how he was going to get back to the Planet and resume living his (barely) normal life, but that probably had to wait.

There was a metal table just beside the window, where his sword and materia pouch had been placed. He reclaimed his possessions while peering at the panel that was next to the table.

Obviously, it was a control panel of sorts. What it controlled, however, was a big question mark at the moment. There was a high chance it was behind how the building was managing to stay in outer space, though, so once he was done rearranging his equipment, Cloud made himself comfortable in the only seat in front of the panel.

The blank space in front immediately sprang into life. Touchscreens sprang up in front of Cloud from seemingly nowhere, awaiting his input to proceed. A virtual visor locked into position over Cloud's eyes, where it was feeding him data according to what the brainwave sensors were detecting he required information about. This was nothing short of surprising for Cloud, who had never quite seen technology that reacted so quickly to the mere thoughts of its controller before. Nevertheless, he figured out quickly enough how to manipulate the system, and began searching for a way to drive the building back to ground zero.

After briefly looking through the architectural blueprints, Cloud concluded that it was not a building he was in, but a spaceship of sorts. The unnecessarily detailed plans spoke of weapons, engines, and infrastructure he was not sure he had ever seen before in his long life, and it puzzled him to no end. Where had the Bazookas gotten this machine, and if there was technology of this sort available, how had the manufacturer been able to stay under the radar of so many power hungry countries all this time?

Immediately, as if in reply to his unspoken question, images started flooding into his mind.

Cloud saw a lone figure seated where he was now sitting, piloting the ship with obvious ease and familiarity.

The figure was walking down the gangplank of the ship into the company of a horde of curious onlookers.

She (yes, it was a "she", Cloud decided) was engaged with animated conversation with another group of people.

The ship was slowly sinking into a large pool of mako.

She was touching the water surrounding the City of Ancients.

"To be forgotten is worse than death," she cried - the first and last time Cloud would hear her voice in the sequence of images - and the water turned black.

And the last thing the ship would show him, was her beautiful face framed with long, silver hair, contorted with anger and tinged with sorrow.

Cloud had to grip the edges of the seat to keep himself from falling off.

Little wonder no one else had ever heard of the technology found in here before.

This was, after all, the one and only chariot of the Calamity from the Sky.

2nov2010