Summary: A single event can change the course of the future. If a single revelation have been given to Sephiroth before Nibelheim, what would have happened? AU of my own mostly-canon timeline. OCs, rated for lemons, mpreg. Ties in with past fics and oneshots.
Disclaimer: Akalara is mine, Kandi is Amazon's, Lily is Mystic's, canon characters are SE's... You get the basic idea.
Queen's Quornor: Is it just me, or does the Swamp seem like a poor excuse for a swamp? I'm not comparing it to a bayou or anything like that, but the scene when Cloud and Co. first try to cross it really makes me think "forest" rather than "swamp". Maybe I'm just being picky; the graphics weren't the best back then, so maybe that's just the best Square could do at the time. As for the various attacks in this chapter, all I can say is that I've been playing too much Dissidia and Crisis Core. It's fun trying to tie to new stuff in with the old from the original game!
Mine is the Swamp
The swamp did not look like a swamp.
Akalara tried to compare this swamp with all the pictures and descriptions of swamps she'd seen since Sephiroth had taught her how to read. It just seemed too barren for a swamp, too dry. Swamps were supposed to be filthy, soggy, and clouded with little bloodsuckers buzzing in their victims' ears. By Akalara's reckoning, this was more like a scraggly excuse for a forest than a swamp. The fact that the jeep was having no trouble whatsoever bouncing along the uneven road certainly supported her claim.
She slumped down in her seat, brushing some of her dark green hair out of her face for the umpteenth time with an irritated sigh. Sephiroth glanced over at her.
"I said no, and I meant it."
"Seph, you're exhausted. If you won't let me drive the entire way to the mines, at least let me get us halfway there so you can get some sleep."
"I'll sleep once we're out of this swamp. Of the two of us, I'm the only one who has been here before. I know the way to the mines." He rubbed at his eyes, blinking hard. "I drive. You watch for zoloms."
"I don't know whether that's your pride or your common sense talking, but it is exasperating as hell. You can barely keep your eyes open!" Seeing that he was studiously ignoring her, Akalara snorted and turned back to the window, or rather, what remained of it. The jeep had taken quite a beating during the Sweepers' attack before they reached Kalm, and the fact that it ran at all now was a testament to the mechanics who had fixed it up for the Turks' use. Not many engines would keep going after getting rammed that hard.
Staring out the mostly-absent window, the green-haired teen slowly found her thoughts turning to the child she carried. She still had roughly seven months left before her due date, so their child was neither very large nor possessed of many distinguishable features at this point. It was too early to even tell the sex yet. But by the time it was delivered, all of that would be concrete and obvious.
It could be a girl, with her father's molten hair and her mother's short stature. Perhaps a boy, green of eyes and hair. What if it took after neither of them? Akalara's mother had been a brunette, and her father a dark-eyed blond. Sephiroth had never known his parents, so anything was possible on his side of the equation. For all she knew, their baby could wind up with black hair and eyes just as easily as their unique characteristics.
She absently ran a hand over the small mound rising from her lower abdomen. Whatever it looked like, their child would be strong. That much, at least, was a given in her mind. Akalara always thought of herself as weak, but the truth was that she did possess a formidable measure of inner strength. The weak didn't last long on Midgar's dirty streets, and she'd managed to claw her way into a much better life, such as it was, long before she'd met her silver-haired love. Sephiroth himself was one of the strongest men on the entire Planet, a swordman without peer. It was more than physical ability that allowed him to wield the notoriously picky Masamune. On top of that, he had also survived more than a decade in Hojo's lab, and come out with his mind in one piece. It was impossible that their child wouldn't inherit the power of inner and physical strength from the two of them. Whatever they encountered in their self-imposed exile, their baby would survive, just as they had.
Akalara smiled, thinking about the warrior cradled inside her womb. Though tiny and helpless now, chances were that the entire world would be his or hers, someday.
Something caught her eye, and she looked quickly to a stand of trees just to the right behind them. A slight sheen of greyish scales flashed in her vision, and she inhaled sharply. "Seph, there's a zolom behind us!"
He cursed. "How close?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted. She'd never seen a real zolom before, so the section she'd spotted could be anywhere on the beast. "It was close, though."
Sephiroth nodded, and Akalara fully expected him to gun the engine. To her horror, he stopped the jeep entirely. "What are you doing?" she demanded.
"I can't push the engine much further in this swamp than I already am. You say here," he ordered, forcing his door open and climbing out.
Akalara wanted to protest, but her voice died when she caught sight of an enormous snout not twenty feet away, poking out from between some trees. She ducked down in her seat and just watched her love sprint away to a more open area.
The zolom was surprisingly fast for its size. It lunged for Sephiroth, who merely stood his ground, Masamune at the ready. The silver-haired man dodged at the last second and cut hard at its head. The katana sank deep, but all it did was cut a gaping hole into the zolom's jaw. The snake hissed its pain and retreated a short distance, rearing up to its full height. Akalara gawked up at it and wondered how Sephiroth didn't seem afraid. This zolom was taller than most of the buildings she'd ever seen.
Sephiroth wasn't cowering in fear, but he did seem to be having some trouble focusing. "I told you to get some sleep," the green-haired teen groaned desperately, watching him shake his head to try and clear the fuzziness. The zolom also seemed to know that its opponent wasn't in top form. It struck at him again, but when he moved to the side it became clear that the serpent was actually possessed of some real intelligence. It stopped just short of Masamune's range, and Akalara stifled a shriek as the tail whipped round and flicked him away.
Sephiroth slammed into a tree with bone-crunching force. Helpless and white-knuckled, the green-haired teen watched him crash through the sparse branches and hit the dirt, with the tree's knobby roots stealing whatever cushioning it might have provided . He managed to find his feet, standing shakily, in obvious pain. Masamune wobbled in his grip as the zolom slithered closer.
Akalara scrambled for their box of materia. At this range she would need a mastered Restore to heal him without attracting the snake's attention. She rifled through the colorful orbs, sending several bouncing to the floor. Seeing that the zolom was preparing to strike and Sephiroth was still shaking his head, the frantic teen accidentally grabbed a yellow sphere.
Knowledge flooded her brain the moment her fingers closed around the cool crystal. She knew how to attack, defend, weaken, and strengthen in specific ways normally available only to certain creatures. Big Guard, Chocobuckle, Aqualung, Magic Hammer... They were all there, ready within this materia at a moment's notice. But as intriguing and helpful as they were, there was only one Akalara wanted then.
"White Wind!" she cried, flinging a hand out at her silver-haired love.
From her fingertips issued a cool mist, heavy with dew. It sped towards the injured swordsman and wrapped around him, briefly obscuring him from view. The zolom paused, confused by the cloud enveloping its prey. It hissed and flicked its tongue, tasting the mist inquisitively.
The calm mist suddenly spun into a miniature cyclone, and as its spinning unravelled into nothingness Sephiroth stood tall once more, alert and seemingly uninjured. The zolom hissed its surprise and Akalara breathed a heartfelt sigh. The same knowledge that allowed her to cast the spell had also given her its limitations; there was no telling how much it would heal on any given occasion.
With a nod in her direction, the silver-haired man launched himself at the snake. The zolom contorted around Masamune's swings, though often the katana's tip sliced a thin line into the broad scales of its underbelly. Sephiroth danced around the fangs and tail, countering with strikes of his own that bit deep. The zolom's surprising quickness, however, always managed to remove its body from the blade before anything vital was hit. The dark scales ran with blood, but still the serpent lived.
The tail slapped at him again, sending Sephiroth somersaulting to the side. Akalara winced, seeing how deep a trench the tail left in the turf. Sephiroth, however, seemed to spot something else. The next swing of Masamune produced three streaks of pale blue light that cut deeply into the zolom's back, forcing it forward a few feet. The snake twisted around the tree Sephiroth had hit earlier, searching for its prey with pain-maddened eyes.
Off to the side, metal glinted.
Suddenly the zolom's snout was pointing skyward, and Sephiroth hovered above it with Masamune raised high overhead. He chopped, and the zolom's hiss escalated into a hair-raising shriek as the naked tip of the tree's trunk pierced the soft flesh of its jaw. So great was the force of the blow that the snake continued down the trunk, snapping off limbs and sending bark plummeting until it came to a stop, with nearly a quarter of the trunk slick and bloody to mark its passing.
Akalara just stared. She had always known her love was powerful. But this...
If ever there was a reason to fear him, the reptillian corpse twitching on the tree was a fine one. But despite how terrifyingly strong he was, he didn't use it indisciminently. Sephiroth reserved his wrath for his enemies and protected those he found worthy; he never raised Masamune without reason, and never attacked an unarmed opponent. Despite his vast power, Sephiroth rarely lost control. Akalara knew this, and she did not fear him.
The swish of Masamune's swing broke her trance, and Akalara watched the zolom's blood splatter across the long grass of the swamp. Sephiroth put his spotless blade away and returned to the jeep. "Are you all right?"
She looked at him curiously. "Of course, Seph. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Just making sure." He pulled the door open and slid into the driver's side. "Thank you for healing me, Ak."
Akalara smiled. "No problem, Seph."
SASASASASASASASASASASASASASASA
The mines were wide enough for the jeep, surprisingly. Despite the invigorating effects of the White Wind spell, Sephiroth was soon rubbing his eyes and shaking his head within minutes of driving inside. Akalara had managed to convince him to pull over in a side tunnel, and it hadn't taken long for her silver-haired love to crawl into the back, curl up against her pack, and fall asleep. That had been several hours ago, and he was still back there, totally lost to the waking world. At the moment his patient lady-love was cleaning her guns, keeping watch while he rested.
Even in sleep he looks powerful, she mused. But at the same time, he seems so young and fragile, almost helpless. What a strange way to think about Sephiroth, of all people. But then again, she'd been pondering the many oddities and inconsistencies about him ever since she'd started getting to know him. This was just one of the many she'd noticed, though admittedly she rarely got the opportunity to observe him in sleep. He usually rose before she did, even when they had merely slept the night before. He tended to be an early riser, and Akalara preferred to sleep in.
She felt a pleased smile curl the corners of her lips. He trusted her, she knew that, but it was always thrilling to find little clues of that trust in their everyday life.
She finished cleaning the revolver in her lap and began loading it. This was the newest addition to her arsenal, a model 500 Smyth & Westron .50 calibur magnum. The gun was a little heavier than she liked, but the holes it could punch through targets was more than worth the added heft. It was a gift from Sephiroth, and he had gotten the gun engraved with his nickname in a stylized script before presenting it to her shortly after their return from Wutai. Akalara smirked as she ran her thumb over the letters and the katana underscoring them; only her man would consider the most powerful handgun available to the general public to be an appropriate baby gift.
Putting the gun back in its case, the green-haired teen leaned back against the seat and listened to Sephiroth breathe. It was very quiet in the mines, especially after the constant buzzing of the swamp's many insectoid inhabitants. She could hear water dripping somewhere deeper in the tunnels.
And it was starting to get to her.
She rubbed her thighs together restlessly, attempting to ignore the incessant dripping sound. It would be less stimulating if the water was merely splattering against the bluish rock of the floor. But of course there had to be a puddle involved, and certainly the winding tunnels and cavernous junctions had to rebound the sound waves, sending the echoing plip straight to her brain with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile. With each resonating impact of water droplet meeting puddle, Akalara felt her bladder contract a little further.
Leaky faucets had nothing on incubating spawn and drippy tunnels.
Akalara toyed with the idea of just holding it, but the pressure was starting to really hurt. Sephiroth barely stirred as she got out of the jeep, gently closing the door behind her. Not wanting to put much distance between herself and her sleeping man, the green-haired teen settled on kneeling at the jeep's side to relieve herself. With her head on her knuckles and her elbow on her naked thigh, she mused on this irritating facet of pregnancy. A growing baby put pressure on the other internal organs, cramming them out of the way until the uterus ran out of room.. Akalara wasn't having any problems with heartburn or breathing yet, but already there was an increased need for rest stops, much to her annoyance. She was dreading the day she'd have to start searching for a bathroom, latrine, or handy bush the moment she polished off a drink.
She finished and stood back up, reaching for her discarded pants and the thigh holsters containing her .45s. Maybe I should start wearing skirts instead of jeans, she thought to herself. It would mean less protection if something goes for my legs, but at least I wouldn't have to take my pants off and on every time I have to piss.
She climbed back in the jeep. Sephiroth was still asleep in the back, though he had rolled over to face away from her. An affectionate smile grew on her face as she reached back to run her fingers through his hair. He didn't move, but her smile widened when she heard the contented purr from beyond his shoulder. She sometimes teased him about his feline grace and slitted pupils, and this unconscious purring was a favored target. Invariably he would respond to this teasing by rubbing up against her or slinking around her, murmuring about how cats always got what they wanted if they were hungry enough. She shivered lightly at the memories that followed such responses.
Akalara withdrew her hand, refusing to give into temptation and join him in the back. He needed to sleep, not satiate her sudden horniness.
A sigh escaped her. He could sleep. She had to make sure he stayed that way, no matter how boring it was.
Something crashed in the distance.
The green-haired teen started, feeling her pulse triple its pace at the unexpected noise. She listened carefully, hoping her mind was only playing tricks on her. There couldn't have been a glassy clink to that noise, right?
Now she heard voices, and her heart sank. It was difficult to tell with the echoes, but it sounded like there were three intruders, two men and a woman.
"Do you think the rumors are true?"
"Who knows? Sephiroth's always been the face of SOLDIER and Zack was the other big star. Doesn't seem possible that they just up and left the company."
"But the chances of their getting captured are even less! You've heard all the stories about how powerful they both are. Nobody would be able to hold them against their will."
"But there's no reason for them to just up and leave. Can you imagine how much gil they get paid in royalties each year? If I were them, I'd never dream of giving all that up!"
Akalara rolled her eyes. Sephiroth and Zack made respectable money, but they really weren't as rich as the average civilian seemed to think. Most of the royalties they earned from poster shoots, commercial appearances, and interviews went straight into Shinra's pockets with only a pittance left for the man in question. Being famous did not exactly pay well these days.
"Do you think there's any chance there's more to it? I heard something about three other people going missing at the same time. I think it was a cadet and two women." Akalara put her sarcasm aside and leaned closer to the gaping hole in her window, straining to catch the echoing conversation. "Actually, I think one of them was the girl Sephiroth's supposed to be dating right now."
"Harley, don't get started on that sappy crap. She probably got snatched by one of his fan clubs for daring to touch their great idol."
"It is a pretty weird coincidence, Jaeke. Maybe they did run away together."
"Marv's got a point."
"And what about Zack? How would he figure into this little scenerio?"
"Maybe they got in a fight over her, and one got killed so the others ran off."
"Are you so sure the chick was the one being fought over? What if she and Zack got into it over Sephiroth?"
"'Cause both of them are confirmed heteros. If there was a triangle going on, it had to be over her."
"Whatever. What about the other two? Are they mixed up in this little escape theory?"
"It's possible, Jaeke. They worked for Shinra, too."
Akalara listened to them a bit longer, convinced that they weren't as great a threat as she had initially feared and vaguely amused by their speculations. Sephiroth and Zack killing each other? That would never happen, especially not over her or any other woman. They were too close to ever come to genuine, murderous violence in a fight.
What really interested her was what this trio was doing there in the first place. The mines weren't exactly easy to access, and it seemed unlikely that they were searching for mithril. Allowing her curiosity to get the better of her, the green-haired teen cast a barrier on the jeep as she slipped out, just in case something decided to investigate the vehicle while she was gone. She trotted in the direction of the voices, a swift shadow in the dark tunnels, grateful for the additional stealth training she'd received from the Turks. Unless she made a horrible mistake, these kids would never spot her.
And kids they were, she realized, catching sight of them in an open area straight ahead. They looked no older than she was, maybe a little younger. Teenagers exploring an old mine, drinking where their parents couldn't find them. The girl, Harley, was passing out bottles of beer from a cardboard case and the two boys were joking about something while tipping the bottles back. Akalara saw a jacknife clipped to one of their belts and shook her head in wonder. She'd never had the luxury of teenage invincibility; she had never gone anywhere without a knife and at least one gun since...well, about as long as she could remember. How had these kids gotten past the zolom? A peasly little jacknife wouldn't do shit against anything that wasn't made of wood.
"Where do you think they went, if they did run off somewhere?" one of the boys asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "I mean, Shinra's everywhere these days. You can't go anywhere without seeing 'em somewhere."
The other boy shrugged. "Cosmo Canyon? I hear that place is free, since there isn't much mako in the area."
"If I was them, I'd run up north. Who would care enough to chase you into sub-zero temps?"
"Actually, I'd think Mideel would be good. Nothing but old geezers there." Harley plopped down beside the taller boy and he slung an arm over her shoulders, his hand resting suspiciously close to her modest rack.
"Well, I don't care where they went. Shinra'll track 'em down sooner or later. Nobody can hide from them forever." The other boy tossed his empty bottle aside and pulled out the bottle-opener on his knife, fitting a fresh beer to it and bending the cap off with practiced ease.
"I still say it makes more sense for them to have been captured, and the other three are just coincidences," the naysayer declared.
"Even with that one Sephiroth's dating?" Harley asked, looking up at her apparent boyfriend. "If they really are chained up somewhere, how do you explained her disappearance, Jaeke?"
'Jaeke' snorted. "Weren't you listening, Harley? I said I bet she was kidnapped by a horde of Sephiroth fangirls. Some of those bitches are out of their frickin' minds when it comes to him, and I bet they don't appreciate some hussy coming in and snapping him up out of the blue."
Akalara bristled at his labelling her a "hussy", but said nothing. There was one thing to comfort her in this conversation, and that was the implication that the general public still didn't know much about the disappearance of two major celebrities and their three friends. Their mutual flight wasn't as obvious as she had feared.
She listened to the trio a little longer and decided she would learn nothing else from them, apart from their thoughts on various fan clubs and how Marv had never seen Harley's boobs. She had just turned to leave when she heard the flutter of wings. Akalara had seen a few bats up in the corners earlier, but these wings sounded too big and fast for a tiny flying mammal, or even a group of them. A sudden shriek confirmed it; that was a monster of some sort.
The green-haired teen hesitated, wanting to help but unwilling to reveal herself. If these kids survived, they could tell stories about seeing her in here. But she couldn't just leave them to die. She'd seen more than her fair share of young death on the streets, and caused some during her years with the Shade Wolves; she'd come too far in her life to just walk away and let something like that happen when she could do something to stop it.
There was a resounding clang of metal and the crunch of a body slamming against rock, and she was already reaching for her Disguise materia.
When she swung inside the cavern a moment later, she took in the scene with eyes shielded by a pair of safety goggles. One of the boys, Marv, lay helpless against the far wall, weakly coughing up blood. A mountain range seemed to have sprouted beneath his shirt, which was rapidly turning crimson. Harley was cowering behind Jaeke, who held a switchblade up like a shield. They were being advanced on by a pink monster swinging a wicked-looking metal ball overhead by a length of black chain. A yellowish, vaguely insectoid reptile hovered menacingly above it.
The first thing Akalara did was cast Big Guard on the three kids. The flying monster hissed at the bright light that flooded the cavern at the spell's manifestation, and the two standing teens stumbled backward. Akalara thumbed the safety on her .45s and shot at the pink monster, driving it back a few steps and away from the stunned pair. "Get out of here!" she yelled at them, casting a Fire at the flying thing.
The teens fled from the monsters and their unexpected savior, but instead of running away they crouched beside their injured friend in a weak attempt at protection. Akalara was too busy to command them again; the pink monster had recovered and was swinging its flail at her while its airborne sidekick dove for her head. She threw herself to the side, clear of the impact, and came up shooting. The flying monster was quicker than she expected, but the pink thing roared its pain as one bullet destroyed its shoulder. Unfortunately for Akalara, it was the wrong shoulder. The flail came at her again and shattered the case of beer, sending the golden substance and crystalline shards far and wide across the cavern. Great, she thought, coming out of her backflip with bloody knuckles and both guns blazing. As if I didn't have enough to worry about without broken glass...
She cast another Fire at the winged critter and cursed as it shot through the fiery sphere, completely devoid of burns. Its swiping claws missed her chest by inches, and as Akalara ducked the swinging flail of the other monster she caught sight of the materia in her left gun's slot, an orb she had completely forgotten. Activating it, she whipped around in a tight circle, squeezing the triggers of her guns as she spun. At the end of the spin the pink monster toppled over, riddled with holes. The flying thing chittered and zipped into a high corner of the ceiling. Akalara exchanged the empty clip in her right gun for a fresh one and watched its movements, noting the sizable wound in its abdomen. It was already as good as dead. Why was it so intent on attacking?
She moved closer to the kids, careful of the distance. It didn't surprise her when the monster shot forward and fire billowed from its mouth. The kids screamed and pressed against the wall, terrified but otherwise uninjured by the attack. There had been just enough space between her and them for the flames to stop just short of their position, and Akalara was wearing a ring that kept her from getting scorched. Sephiroth had insisted she wear it when they first entered the swamp, all but jamming it on her finger when she pointed out that he would need it more if they ran into any zoloms; she made a mental note to thank him for it later.
The moment the flames stopped coming at her, she snapped her guns up and squeezed off two shots, both bullets disappearing inside the monster's gaping maw. Gore sprayed from the back of its neck and sprayed across the wall and floor as the creature dropped, its wings ruined by her next shots. Akalara approached it warily, and its body twitched violently a moment later, when she put one last bullet in its skull.
Breathing hard, she turned to face the kids. They were staring at her, and she reached up to pull her goggles off as she went to them, letting them dangle around her neck by their elastic band. "Are you kids all right?" she asked, dropping to her knees beside them.
Jaeke nodded, his eyes wide and scared. Harley's teeth worried at her lower lip, but she plucked up her courage. "Th-thank you, ma'am."
"No problem," Akalara said, probing for a pulse on Marv's neck. She frowned, prompting Jaeke to speech.
"Is he okay?" he asked, his voice quavering.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But maybe... Yes, he's still alive." The pulse was very weak, but it was still present and accounted for. Akalara brushed her fingers over a materia in her pocket, and the two kids gasped as their friend's crushed side suddenly resumed into its usual smooth curve. Jaeke dared to lift Marv's shirt, revealing skin unmarred by bruises or broken ribs erupting through the flesh. The blood remained, but it was obvious that no more would be spilling from horrific wounds anytime soon. "He'll be okay. But you kids should get out of here," Akalara urged.
"Can you carry him, Jaeke?" Harley asked, rising and vainly brushing at the blood caking her knees.
"Yeah." He pulled Marv up and slung him over his neck in a fireman's carry. "Thanks again, ma'am. You really saved our asses there."
Akalara felt a smile creep into existence. She had never been thanked for killing something before. "Don't worry about it. Just go home, and start drinking somewhere a little closer to it. You'll live longer that way."
"Wait!" Harley's call stopped her before she vanished back into the gloom of the tunnels. "Can we get your name, please? I mean, you did save us and all. Heroes should have names."
Akalara just looked at her, surprised. Hero? She was a hero? All she had done was keep them from getting eaten. That wasn't heroic, was it? "Uh, okay. My name's Lennette," she replied. "Now get going, before you wind up running into something else."
"Why don't you come with us?" Jaeke asked. "We could use the help, if we do."
"Sorry, but I have to get back to work. I have a quota to meet." She opened her arms, indicating her dusty, bloody miner's garb. "Saving lives doesn't exactly put bread on the table, y'know."
The kids seemed to take that as reasonable explanation. They left after one more round of "thank you's" and Akalara sighed deeply, ducking back into her tunnel before they could change their minds. If they were dumb enough to come into these mines without any real weapons, hopefully they were stupid enough not to wonder why a female miner would be running around with guns and materia in the tunnels, alone. At least she was assured of one thing: they couldn't possibly make a connection between a missing green-haired woman and a lone blonde miner.
Pulling off the helmet and running her gloved fingers across her scalp, she found her gaze drawn to the dead critters, in particular the winged one. Monsters usually weren't that persistant, especially when greviously wounded. What had made it so unwilling to retreat?
She plopped her helmet back atop her head. It wouldn't take too long to figure out why. Sephiroth should still be asleep when she got back.
SASASASASASASASASASASASASASA
He felt his dreamy haze begining to lift, his body informing him that it had gotten enough rest and it was time to wake up. He grumbled and rolled over, reaching out for the sleep-softened form that lay beside him in the bed, eager to bury his face against her silky hair and return to his dreams.
His groping hand smacked into a sharp corner. Sephiroth came fully awake with a pained snarl, cradling his injured hand against his chest and glaring at the offending potions box. The box, of course, was not reduced to a quivering mass of fearful jelly; the silver-haired man grumbled again and sat up, remembering where they were now that he was awake. "How long was I out, Ak?" he muttered, shaking out his hand before rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
No reply came to his inquiry, and Sephiroth twisted around to look at the jeep's front. Had she fallen asleep too? He crawled over the boxes and bags to poke his head around the passenger's seat.
The empty passenger's seat.
Panic surged and he hauled himself fully into the front half of the jeep, opening the driver's side so he could get out and look around. He dashed around the exterior of the vehicle, driven by an irrational hope that she had simply gotten out and hadn't gone off by herself, but it was clear that this side-tunnel was devoid of pregnant, green-haired teenage females.
He called Masamune to his hand, ignoring the frantic rhythm of the heart that had moved to the base of his throat. Wherever she had gone, he would find her, he vowed, jogging into the darkness of the hollowed-out earth. He would prowl through every tunnel, search every nook and cranny until he found her. Any creature that dared cross his path would die before it had the chance to hinder his progress. And woe to any monster that had harmed her, or stolen her away. He would tear this place apart with his bare hands if that was what it took to find her. He had to get to her, had to return her to his side, where she belonged.
In his mind's eye he saw an image of his love, his heart, lying helpless and bloody at the feet of some shadowy monster, her torso ripped open and gore-tipped claws shredding her womb into thin slivers. The vision enraged him, spurring him into a run. His sight slowly became tinged with red and his lips pulled back in a murderous snarl. If some mindless beast had destroyed his woman and child, his world, while he slept he would annihilate the creature, and all its kind. Every last one...
His thoughts of genocide were interrupted when he rounded a corner and tripped over a form crouched over a hole in the floor. "Hey, watch where you're... Seph?"
He rose and turned, staring at a short miner with unruly yellow hair tied back in a rough braid. Her eyes, a familiar and distinctive shade reminiscent of ripe cranberries, met his gaze with utter shock and a fair measure of contrition. Sephiroth glared down at her and tried to decide if he wanted to strangle her or snatch her up and hold her so close that their flesh melded as one. On the one hand he was furious that she had gone off alone. But he was also so relieved she was safe, it was taking every ounce of his willpower to remain standing. "What are you doing?" he finally ground out.
"I'm doing a favor for a fellow mother."
That made him blink. "Elaborate."
Akalara held up a somewhat crushed and lopsided beer case. Nestled inside, amongst the folds of cloth that was the shirt she had been wearing beneath her vest, were three cylindrical eggs. "I killed their mother, so they'll die if I don't keep them."
Sephiroth dismissed Masamune to cross his arms over his chest. "Why were you outside the jeep in the first place?" He desperately wanted to know why she had been killing dragons, but he would get to that in a second.
She shrugged as though it was of no concern. "I heard some kids talking about us and went to see what they were doing here. Turns out they had snuck in here to drink themselves stupid and managed to attract a few monsters. I had to step in and save them."
He felt his eyes start from his head. "You left the jeep, and endangered your life and our baby's, for teenage gossip?"
"It wasn't gossip, Seph! It was about us!" she snapped, scrambling to her feet. "I wanted to know what they knew, so I went to eavesdrop on them! If they hadn't been attacked, I would have been sitting in that jeep when you woke up and they might have heard an engine starting up in supposedly-abandoned mines. Don't you think that would have been more dangerous than me disguising myself and kicking ass to save their sorry skins? And before you get started on them recognizing me or some bullshit like that, look at what I'm wearing!" She planted her hands on her hips and matched his brightly-glowing glare with one of her own. "All they know is that some miner saved them from certain death. They don't know you and I are anywhere near these damned mines. Hell, they don't even know we ran off together! They think you and Zack got captured by some nameless menace to society and I was kidnapped by one of your lunatic fan clubs for daring to touch their dream-beau lover boy!"
Sephiroth continued to stare her down, but he felt the corner of his lips twitch.
"And for the record, I'm apparently some great hero now, too. You wanna know why? Because I saved their fucking lives! They would have been flying lizard-bug food - "
"Ark dragon," he interrupted.
"Huh?"
"Those flying lizard-bugs are known as ark dragons," he explained, biting the inside of his cheek.
"Fine. They would have been ark dragon food if I hadn't blasted its ass full of holes! I even kept one of them from fucking dying, Seph! That little bastard's ribs were poking right through his skin, and I healed him up! I'm fine, our baby is fine, you're fine, those idiots are fine, and hopefully these little fuckers will be fine, too!" She nudged the beer case with her foot, careful of the eggs inside. "So don't you fucking yell at me, Sephiroth, 'cause I saved six - count 'em, six - lives while you slept the day away!"
As much as he wished to retain his righteous indignation at her disappearance and the foolish risks she had taken, the silver-haired man could not help himself. He looked down at the fuming, disguised woman he had knocked up and fallen in love with, and began to laugh. This only made Akalara madder. "What's so fucking funny?" she growled as he collapsed against the wall, weak with the force of his mirth.
Sephiroth tried to speak, but all that emerged was a hoarse wheeze, a strange and ridiculous sound that amused him to no end, with inevitable results. It had started to taper off again when he opened his teary eyes, just in time to catch sight of her illusionary disguise melting away. The enraged mask of her miner's face hovered just above her real face, creating a sort of weirdly warped ghost between them. When the laughter had degenerated into guffaws, with snorts on the inhale, Akalara's anger morphed into confusion and concern. "Seph?"
He gasped for air and shook his head, closing his eyes to block out the sight of her. If he looked at her right now, he would just lose it all over again. Leaning against the wall, he tried to collect himself.
"Are you quite finished?"
Another chuckle bubbled up, but this time he managed to keep it under control. Opening his eyes, he reached out and pulled her against him before she could voice her dissension of the unexpected embrace. "Oh, how I love you, Akalara. You have no idea how much I love you."
"Fine. I'm a brainless fool who has no idea how much her man adores her. Now would you care to explain why you were busting a gut there?"
"No reason." She would probably get offended if he told her how funny she was when she was angry, and he didn't want to let her go just yet. "I'm simply relieved to find you safe and unharmed. Do you have any idea how worried I was?"
"Obviously enough to go on a rampage, from the looks of it. I don't think I've ever seen you that mad, Seph, not even when Razor was doing all that shit to us."
"I had thought some monster had dragged you away from me." He lifted her enough for her to wrap her legs about his waist, and pressed a kiss to her head. "The idea that you were hurt, maybe dying - "
She pressed her lips to his, effectively cutting off the rest of his sentence. "Now you know how I felt every time you went out on a mission," she explained softly when they broke apart, leaning her forehead against his. "But I'm fine, and so is our baby. I'm sorry that I scared you, but everything turned out for the best. And we even have some dragon eggs to sell! Isn't that worth something, Seph?"
He smiled and kissed her again. "Ark dragons are the weakest breed of wyrm. You won't get more than a few hundred gil for these eggs, Ak. Still, I salute your efforts."
"Maybe next time I'll put down a bigger mama-dragon," she teased.
"I think you should leave the dragon-slaying to me," he returned, reaching down to pick up the beer case and its delicate cargo. "Along with any other form of heroics."
"If you think I'm going to settle for the 'damsel-in-distress' role, you're crazy," she murmured against his neck.
"Crazy in love," he replied with a smirk, walking in the direction of their abandoned jeep.