By a Fraction of a Degree
A FFVII Fanfiction work by findthetiger129
Rated T for Violence and Language.
I do not own Final Fantasy VII, or any of the characters, trademarks or likenesses from Final Fantasy VII or its spinoffs. That honor goes to Square-Enix.
Part II: Reunion
Chapter 28, The Pieces Fall Into Place
December 25th [ ν ] – εуλ 0007
"Doctor? There's a woman out here who wants to speak to you." Rayleigh looked up from her desk as the young woman who usually worked at the front desk looked into her office.
"Is it urgent?" She asked.
The receptionist seemed a little nervous as she spoke. "I'm not sure, but she has a very strange man with her. He won't stop muttering."
Rayleigh stood, adjusting her glasses and walking to the door. "I'll be right there." She hurried down the hall past the treatment rooms up to the waiting area. She was greeted by the unusual sight of a woman with cold eyes and dust brown hair flowing down below her hips, and dressed as though she had come from somewhere that had very cold weather. Though she now wore a T-shirt, the down jacket whose sleeves were tied around her waist and the snow pants were a pretty obvious giveaway. The next thing that got her attention was the obviously malnourished man in a black cloak she was leading by handcuffs secured behind his back. "You must be Liz. Veld told me you were coming."
"That's correct," the former mercenary said. "Can you confirm that this… man… is what you were after?"
That was when Rayleigh heard the low muttering sounds from Liz's prisoner. "Must get… it… Sephiroth… Reunion…"
She looked around the room, hoping the receptionist wasn't within earshot yet. "Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere private."
The Turk nodded in understanding. "Lead the way." They walked past the receptionist and she gave them a wide berth, hurrying back to the front. Rayleigh considered where they were going. She wanted to make sure there was no chance Liz's quarry could escape, and the only way she could think of would be to secure him in one of the rooms for long-term patients. There were a couple of private rooms in the back, and she made for the one that was nearest her office, knowing it was currently unoccupied. Once there, she flipped the light switch and beckoned for Liz to bring the man inside. After they were through, she shut the door to ensure they wouldn't be disturbed.
"Was it hard to bring him here?" she asked once she was certain they were alone.
The Turk shook her head. "He did fight me a little when we tried to get on the plane, but I knocked him out with a tranquilizer for most of the ride, and he quit fussing once we were back on the ground."
"I see." Rayleigh looked the man over again, pulling back his dark hood and almost recoiling when she saw the reptilian green irises trained in her direction. She took a moment to compose herself before returning her attention to Liz. "I will want to examine him as soon as possible. I could use some help, but I'll understand if you want to get some rest first. I know you've come a long way. I'd ask the nurses here, but I'm not sure how far I can trust them with this. Is there anything I can do about compensating you? This couldn't have been easy."
"You couldn't afford it," Liz said. "But you work with Freya and Cissnei. What you're doing helps their goals. I will assist if you need me to."
"All right then. I'll get things ready to conduct the examination in a couple of hours. Wait here a moment." She stepped outside and walked over to one of the supply closets and located a set of cloth restraints. She knew better than to think anyone with SOLDIER enhancements, or at least SOLDIER-like enhancements could be contained by them, but given this man's weakened state, it would at the very least give them time to subdue him should he try to resist. She considered the situation, and then went back to her office to retrieve a vial of sedative. No sense taking chances. While she had no intention of harming the man, she also had no desire to end up with his hands around her neck either. Zack and Cloud, she'd been able to reason with, but she was fairly certain this man was not capable of such reason. 'Gaia, what are we becoming? Thinking like this?' she wondered.
Early that morning, Cissnei returned to the Gold Saucer, as promised. She regarded her former boss warily though she did offer him a strained smile when he entered their aircraft. It was starting to get slightly crowded in the back of the helicopter, but they managed. Zack watched the ocean ebb and flow underneath the helicopter and forced himself to try looking on the bright side. They knew where they were going, and maybe now they could get to the bottom of all this insanity. Even so, the uneasy, suspicious, and on some counts, downright hostile mood that had overtaken the passenger compartment was difficult to dispel.
Tseng was the epitome of calm composure and confidence. He always had been, Zack recalled. Lucky for him too, considering the stares he received from the other non-Turks back here. As a safety precaution, they'd put him in a seat between Vincent, who as a fomer Turk seemed less likely to try hurting him, and Zack himself, since they were familiar with each other, but even so, no one was stupid enough to take the current director of the Turks at face value.
About four hours of this uncomfortable silence later, he spotted land up ahead out the window, and beyond the beach, there were signs of a vast forest spread out over the landmass they were approaching. It was approximately half an hour after that when they found a landing site near the coordinates Tseng had indicated and Cissnei brought the helicopter in for a landing. Without saying a word, everyone gathered just outside the vehicle, wary of any sign of an ambush. There was none. Instead, poking out from the forest blanketed in mists, stood the peak of an ancient pyramid, carved out of what looked like dark stones.
Almost as soon as Nanaki padded out onto the grass and sniffed the air, he growled.
"What is it?" Kunsel asked.
"Sephiroth is here, somewhere," Nanaki confirmed. "And not just him. Someone came with him. I think it was one of those strange people in cloaks."
Tseng checked the ammunition in his gun. "In that case, we should be ready for a fight."
"Don' get cocky jes' because yer the head Turk," Barret said.
"It's a state of fact," the director replied, his expression unchanged. He finished with his handgun and returned it to the holster concealed beneath his blazer.
Zack cleared his throat. "We should probably decide who goes where. We don't want to get caught with our guard down." There was a collective nod of assent from the regular party and they gathered in a circle near the helicopter. They had spent most of their time planning for a trap, so the arrangements for who would be going on the main expedition into the temple had been rather sketchy. Zack considered for a moment before speaking. "I think we ought to have at least a few people out here on lookout, just in case someone comes while we're inside."
"That would be wise," Nanaki agreed, "As interested as I would be in going in with you, it would be best if I remained out here. I should be able to catch the scent of anything that gets close."
"I also think either Cissnei or I should stay. Someone should be able to the fly the helicopter," Freya suggested.
"I'll do it," Cissnei said. "Your weapon packs more of a punch."
"I'll stay out here too." Yuffie said. "I don't care about stuffy old temples. Besides, there's probably ghosts in there!"
"Your loss," Freya said.
Zack faced Barret. "Do you mind staying out here to make sure the girls and Nanaki have some firepower to back them up?"
The man nodded, cocking his gun arm. "Any Shinra goons show up, they're gonna regret it."
He then looked at Cait. "You're staying with Cissnei. Don't try anything."
"I don't intend to," the deeper voice echoed over the speakers.
That finished, he asked "Is there anyone else who wants to stay behind?" No one volunteered. "All right then." He returned to speaking to the B group. "Sweep the area every now and then. We don't want to get caught by surprise here." There were more people going inside than there were remaining, but that couldn't be helped. Not only did they want to be ready for Sephiroth, and by extension, whatever he had brought with him, but no one aside from Freya and Cissnei had been willing to trust Tseng while in their midst, and even they were wary.
Finished with the meeting, he started towards the Temple with Aerith. Tseng walked next to them, though Cloud and Kunsel were both a few steps behind. Freya, Tifa, and Vincent brought up the rear as the party stepped through the tree line and into the jungle growth. It was barely ten minutes before they reached the entrance to the pyramid and Zack took in the landscape surrounding it with concern. This area, like many of the islands along the outer chains ringing the continents, was definitely volcanic, and he now realized that the mist he'd seen earlier wasn't mist at all, but steam billowing out of the ground. They circled around the temple until at last they came to a vast trench that was obviously created over one of the deeper steam vents. He could feel the heat on his face when he neared the rope bridge that had been strung across it.
Tseng stopped behind him as Aerith pulled ahead, kneeling on the bridge. To Zack's surprise, she put her ear to the boards, as though she was trying to hear something rising up through the clouds of steam. "This is… the Temple of the Ancients… I…I know… I feel it… The knowledge of the Ancients…floating…" Her voice became distant, as though she were speaking to someone else. "You could become one with the Planet, but you're stopping it with strength of will… For the future? For us?"
Zack knelt beside her. "You can hear something? What's it saying?"
"Shh…" Aerith whispered, and then she stood, walking through the archway leading into the grounds of the pyramid. Upon entering, she spoke again to whatever it was she seemed to hear. "You're uneasy… but happy? Because I'm here? I'm sorry… I don't understand." Zack and the others followed behind her until they were across the bridge and she turned to look at Zack, her expression blazing with determination. "I want to go inside!"
At that moment, Cloud joined them at the front, pointing up to the door leading inside the pyramid. "What's that up there?"
Zack looked where his friend was indicating and he immediately tensed at the sight of one of the cloaked figures shuffling out the door before falling on the highest step of the pyramid. Zack raced up the stairs with Cloud in hot pursuit and the others not far behind. When they reached the top, he knelt by the side of the man, who was obviously very weak from malnutrition, clearly on the brink of death. "Black…Materia…" he heard him wheeze.
Aerith sat down next to him, trying to ascertain what was wrong, and whether or not the Restore materia she had in her bangle would help him at all. She picked up the man's hand to check for a pulse when his hood fell from his face, revealing a pair of soulless green eyes and a head of lank white hair. "Look…"
Tifa was next to her, and she carefully moved the hair from where it obscured the back of the man's neck. "Number IX. Another man with a tattoo." Before their eyes, the man seized up and then collapsed before disappearing into tendrils of glowing green lifestream in front of them.
They stood there stunned for a moment before Kunsel spoke. "Maybe we ought to go inside."
Zack stood, joining the brown-haired SOLDIER in looking down the dark passageway, holding the Buster Sword ready in front of him just in case. "Yeah. Let's go." Cloud and Tseng were soon behind them and Vincent and the girls brought up the rear. It took them less than half a minute to reach a room that opened out, its walls filled with carvings and the vaulted ceiling supported by stone columns. An altar decorated the opposite end of the room on a dais flanked by a pair of torches, but the room seemed otherwise empty. The three SOLDIER enhanced members of the party made short work of checking the room for any threats before joining the others at the altar.
"It looks like we're clear," Zack said.
"I didn't notice any traps either," Kunsel added.
Freya and Vincent inspected the altar. "It looks like we need to stick the Keystone into this hole here." The lady Turk indicated the slot with her left hand."
Everyone gathered around and Kunsel handed Zack the keystone. Almost immediately, he gave it to Cloud.
"Why me?" Cloud asked.
"You won it. You get to do the honors," Zack said. Cloud held the small stone sphere in his hand for a moment before carefully sliding it into the groove on the altar. At first, Zack wasn't sure anything had happened, but then suddenly, he felt like he was falling. Before he could catch himself on anything, the floor, which had previously been quite solid, rushed past him and he soon found himself looking out at a vast forest of stairs and platforms. They had appeared on one such platform and Tseng stood next to him, taking in the view along with Freya and Vincent while he checked that Aerith was all right. The Cetra walked a few steps away from the group, still listening intently.
"Words… feelings… So many of them here," she muttered. It was clearly a difficult undertaking to make sense of what she was hearing.
"What a strange place," Tifa said. "Do you think we're welcome here?"
At that point Aerith returned her attention to the rest of the party. "I know it's going to be tough, but we can't give up! We can do it!"
Kunsel looked out across the vast expanse of stairs, vines, doors, and platforms, clearly not relishing the prospect. "It's like a maze in here," he said.
"That was probably the intent," Tseng commented.
That was when he heard Tifa suppress a gasp of surprise. "What's that over there?"
Far off, on a set of stairs, Zack could see a small figure in a purple cloak with a huge beard, though his face was obscured in the shadow of a hat. As though he had realized he'd been seen, the figure disappeared into a hole. Zack stared after him intently for a moment before checking his sword and leading the way forward. "Come on, there's no sense sitting around here. Maybe if we catch him we can figure out what's going on."
They had been wandering around for several minutes when at long last, they followed the figure inside a dark tunnel. At first, Zack thought the person had just gotten too far ahead of them, but he soon realized the figure had disappeared entirely. Instead, what greeted them was a raised walkway, along which there rolled a parade of oddly shaped boulders. They watched this sight for a few moments before Freya said "They look like if we ran and ducked at the right moment we might be able to shelter under them."
"You think so?" Cloud said.
The renegade Turk nodded. "We might be able to get through relatively quickly if we went in twos. Do you want to try it?"
"Don't see what else we can do." Zack looked around the group. "Me and Cloud'll go first, in case there's anything nasty on the other end. "Freya, you'll go with Tifa. Vincent, you're with Tseng. Kunsel, you take care of Aerith, all right?" Everyone nodded and Zack and Cloud took their positions at the front. "You ready Cloud?" Zack asked. His friend nodded. "Okay… go!" The two of them bolted forward to duck just under the oddly shaped depression in the first boulder. Zack felt his muscles tense as the other side of their small shelter rose, revealing the next boulder and the next space where they needed to duck. Cloud was alert and ready next to him and no words were necessary when they both bolted towards the next spot. They were there in a matter of moments, though Zack pulled Cloud back a few inches when he realized his friend was slightly too close to the margin.
A few more agonizing seconds passed before light began to creep under the boulder and it too rolled away. A third one rolled in their direction and they repeated the maneuver. Two more later, and Cloud returned the favor by pushing him forward when he was too far back and his sword might have been smashed behind him. Finally, they were almost to the end. As the last boulder lifted over them, they raced forward. They were almost to a point where the corridor turned right, when a bright light flashed and Zack glanced up just in time to see the next boulder that would have crashed onto the walkway vanish into thin air. Cloud stopped a few steps ahead of him once he also noticed the sudden absence of dangerous rocks.
"Zack? Are you two all right?" He heard Aerith's voice echoing down the path. "We don't see any boulders anymore!"
"We're fine!" he called back. "I don't see them up here either!"
"Well in that case, we'll catch up with you!" the flower girl replied. He heard the sound of several pairs of footsteps in the darkness for a few moments, but then they stopped and Aerith called out again "Zack! Cloud! Come quick!" The two of them hurried towards the sound of her voice and soon found the rest of the group looking down a different corridor they had not spotted on the way in.
Zack walked past the others to join Tseng and Tifa at the end of the side passage. When he looked in, he saw that Aerith had walked around to the opposite side of what appeared to be a shallow pool filled with a luminous liquid of some kind. Right in front of her stood the small bearded figure in the purple cloak and he gestured that she come closer, though Zack heard something that he could swear sounded like "Nyum nyum."
"Ah, we finally found you," Aerith said gently. "I'm sorry. You waited for me." She turned back to the onlookers. "These are the spirit bodies of the Ancients. They've been away from the Planet for a very long time to protect this temple. Over the years they've lost the ability to talk. Though actually, they didn't need words from the beginning because there was only one objective for those left in the temple."
"I would assume that would be to protect it," Tseng said.
Aerith nodded and turned her attention back to the Ancient spirit. "Please, talk to me!" The Ancient leaned forward as though attempting to tell her something but Zack couldn't make out what it was, and it seemed like Aerith didn't either. "No good, I don't understand the rest. Are you afraid…? Is Sephiroth here? Or is it something else?"
With a final 'Nyum nyum!" the spirit gestured towards the pool and Aerith knelt to inspect it. It lit up at her approach and she seemed to stare at it for several moments as though trying to understand. Zack walked over to her, wondering if there was anything he could do to help.
He was halfway around the pool when she spoke again. "It's full of the knowledge of the Ancients." She paused, rethinking what she'd just said. "No…not knowledge… consciousness… a living soul… It's trying to say something." She knelt down at the edge of the pool. "I'm sorry, I don't understand." She leaned in closer, as though listening intently. "What? What is it? …Danger? An evil…consciousness?" She stood, still apparently speaking to the pool. "…show? You're going to show us?"
Just as Zack reached her, he saw a bright light and then suddenly, he found himself looking at a completely different place. It was a room covered in murals and carvings, and lit up with torches. At the edge of his awareness he thought he heard Cloud's voice. "…What's going on?"
Aerith's voice replied "Wait! Look! It's showing us!"
Silence fell across the onlookers as their field of view panned across this new room. Zack wasn't sure if it was part of the vision or if there was actually a chill running down his spine, but what he saw next caused him to shiver. Looking up at one of the murals with a cold hard gaze, stood a familiar man with long white hair in a black leather coat. The scene barely lasted a few seconds before Zack found himself back in the room with the pool.
Aerith hurried over to him. "Did you see it?"
"How did he get ahead of us?!" Tifa exclaimed.
"The place we came from was kind of a maze, and he proved he could fly when we found him just before Cosmo Canyon. He probably just cut right past us," Kunsel said.
"However he did it, we need to catch up with him yesterday," Zack said, and turned to Aerith. "That room with all the pictures on the walls. Did they say anything about where it was?"
"We're almost there…" Aerith said, though she sounded slightly uncertain.
"No matter what, it's going to end here," Cloud said.
"My thoughts exactly," Zack agreed. With that, they all made their way back towards the main corridor and continued onward.
It was now getting later in the afternoon at the clinic in Mideel, and preparations were nearly complete. The man, unofficially identified as Number VI lay on a gurney in one of the examination rooms, sleeping soundly. As a precaution, they'd put him under using the same method Rayleigh had used when Kunsel had needed to carry Cloud through the slums. A sleep spell to knock him out, and then a sedative to keep him out. She wasn't sure if this was overkill, but one could not be too careful, especially when there was no telling what the subject of this investigation would do. Liz was now in the room, watching him and waiting for the doctor to return from her office. The nurses had mostly stayed away, at her request. She had just procured the rest of the equipment she would need when she received another call from the receptionist. "Doctor, there's someone else at the front who wants to see you. He says his name is Tanjuu. Do you know him? He looks really suspicious."
She pushed the button on the intercom. "Have someone show him to my office. I'll wait for him."
"Yes ma'am." She waited at the door for barely half a minute before one of the nurses appeared with a familiar looking man behind her. His bangs were still long and curly as she remembered him from their escape from Midgar, and he was still wearing a suit, though it was more of a leisure suit now since he had shed the standard Turk garb. Freya's former partner had been in Wutai for some time now, for unsaid reasons, and even now the ex-gangster looked around the hall of the clinic with a careful eye. Everyone at the lodge was aware of what had happened between him and Don Corneo, and frankly, she couldn't blame him for being cautious.
"What brings you here?" She asked as the nurse who had directed him to her office departed.
"I heard through the grape vine that big things were happening and felt the need to check it out," he said. "Where're the girls?"
"They aren't here. But Liz arrived earlier. I don't know if you got the news, but she picked up one of the targets I asked everyone to keep an eye out for." She gestured that the man follow her down the hall.
The man behind her grunted in acknowledgment.
"I was just about to conduct an examination in order to run some comparative analysis on the procedural differences and similarities, to see how close they match up to what was done to Zack and Cloud. You were present when I saw them. If it's not too much trouble, I wouldn't mind your assistance."
The man shrugged. "I've got time to kill."
Rayleigh nodded and opened the door. The man had been decloaked on the gurney and his pale figure was now respectfully covered with a sheet, since he had worn nothing else, but he was otherwise oblivious to the goings on in the room. His wrists and his face shone nearly white at the edges of the covering under the stark bright light.
Liz was leaning against a wall, observing her charge warily, but she looked up when the two of them entered and nodded in welcome when she recognized Tanjuu behind the Doctor. The gunman joined the martial artist in observing as Rayleigh set her tools down on the counter nearby and washed her hands, before pulling on a pair of latex gloves. Once she was finished with this task, she passed each of them a pair, and took a deep breath in preparation, her expression grim as she finally broke the silence in the room.
"All right, let's do this." She reached for her stethoscope and clipboard before approaching the slumbering man.
It was some time later when Cloud and the others finally emerged from the room with that strange clock and mysterious egg-timer looking spirit who called himself the Time Guardian. Granted, it had been rather nice when upon going the wrong way, they had accidentally stumbled on some interesting things. Things that included a ceremonial staff Aerith identified as a traditional Cetra weapon, and a mysterious ribbon Kunsel swore had special properties. However since they were in a hurry, it had been rather frustrating to figure out exactly which opening on the clock face they needed to travel through.
Now, Cloud found himself facing a new set of terraces, each with several tunnels leading into the wall. They stood at the side of the highest terrace, and there was a door to their right that looked like it had been carved out of the rock face with the intent to strike an imposing visage. What also got their attention was that there was a small figure standing at the door, trembling. Upon their approach, they heard a door slamming shut and the figure fled in the other direction. Aerith hurried forward to check the door. "Hey! It's locked."
"Was it that little guy that ran away from us?" Zack wondered.
"Looks like we'll have to catch him," Aerith said.
Once the objective had been decided, Zack nodded and turned to the others. "Okay guys, everyone fan out and search the tunnels. He's gotta be in one of them." Cloud hopped down to one of the lower terraces and the others scattered to check the various entrances. He thought he caught sight of the small figure at one point, but about two minutes later he heard Freya call out "I found him!"
When the group reconvened at the door, Cloud noticed that the person they had been chasing had not followed. On the questioning looks from the others, Freya deferred to Aerith. She smiled and said "Once he saw I was with her, he went ahead and opened the door."
"Good enough for me," Zack said. "Are we ready?" Everyone gripped their weapons in anticipation as they approached the now open passage. The corridor was dark but as they drew closer to the room to which it led, they saw it was lit up with torches as many of the other rooms had been. They stopped at the entrance to take in the scene before them. As they had seen in the vision, this room had been intricately carved and painted with murals and sculptures while pillars rose up into the canopy of the ceiling, but there was one major fact about where they currently stood that no one could have missed. Sephiroth was not here.
"Where is he?" Zack wondered.
"I don't know," Freya said.
Tseng walked forward, looking over the walls with a critical eye. "These murals… they don't look like they're about the Promised Land."
Kunsel examined the pictures. "No they don't. But what could they be for?"
The rest of the party spread out, searching around the room. Finally, Cloud decided he couldn't take the wait. "Sephiroth! Where are you?!"
His call echoed off the walls of the room and then, almost as though the former general had been there the whole time, there he was, kneeling in the middle of the room. Everyone watched in surprise as the silver-haired man stood and then, inexplicably, began to float, rising up into the air, an evil smirk gracing his lips. "So cold. I am always by your side. Come." He vanished and then reappeared, standing in front of one of the murals. Everyone hurried over as he continued. "Splendid. A treasure house of knowledge…"
"What are you going on about?" Zack asked.
Sephiroth laughed malevolently before he moved again this time reappearing in front of a different mural, gesturing to it and Cloud could see that it appeared to be a scene of a giant round object flying towards the ground like a comet. Sephiroth turned to face them. "Look well."
"At what!?" Cloud demanded.
"At that which adds to the knowledge of…" Sephiroth did not finish the sentence but instead started again. "I am becoming one with the planet." He raised his arms in an all-encompassing gesture, and laughed again. He disappeared again and then Cloud spotted him up ahead, sitting at the foot of what appeared to be an altar, continuing to laugh as he watched them approach. "…Mother…It's almost time. Soon… we will become one."
Aerith interrupted his monologue nervously. "How do you intend to become one with the Planet?"
Sephiroth stood, waving his sword for emphasis. "It's simple. Once the Planet is hurt, it gathers Spirit Energy to heal the injury. The amount of energy gathered depends on the size of the injury." He then took the Masamune and stabbed it into the groud. "…What would happen if there was an injury that threatened the very life of the Planet? Think how much energy would be gathered!" He pulled the sword out again, holding it at the ready. "Ha ha ha. And at the center of that injury will be me. All that boundless energy will be mine. By merging with all the energy of the Planet, I will become a new life form, a new existence. Melding with the Planet… I will cease to exist as I am now… Only to be reborn as a 'God' to rule over every soul."
Aerith seemed to be taken aback. "An injury powerful enough to destroy the Planet? Injure… the Planet?"
The light seemed to coalesce around Sephiroth and he gestured to the wall. "Behold that mural. The Ultimate Destructive Magic… Meteor."
"That'll never happen!" Cloud said.
Sephiroth's laughter echoed through the chamber as the light flashed again and he disappeared. "Wake up!"
When the light died, he was gone, and Cloud looked around to see what had happened. Zack appeared just as confused.
In a surge of emotion Cloud ran back towards the mural. "Where are you!? Sephiroth!"
"Cloud! Wait!" He heard Zack behind him and the others were in pursuit.
For reasons he couldn't explain, Cloud suddenly felt giddy. Ecstatic even, and judging from everyone else's expressions, they were just as surprised as he was to hear himself laughing madly. "Ha ha ha…Black Materia…" Even as he laughed, he realized there was a faint buzzing at the edge of his awareness. "Ha ha ha… Call Meteor."
"Cloud?" He could hear Tifa behind him, and then the sound of someone else coming closer.
Zack was next to him, and suddenly he felt a disturbingly familiar ache wrenching its way through his skull. He reached up to grasp his head in his hands and Zack caught him when he saw him sway, slightly unsteady.
"Cloud! Are you all right?!" Zack demanded. The laughter in his throat had died, but the confusion remained, mired in embarrassment. "Z-Zack?"
His friend was in front of him, his hands on his shoulders, willing him to focus. "Good, you know who I am. Do you know who you are?"
"I'm… Cloud… Zack, I…"
Zack looked hard at him, evaluating his response as he asked the last familiar question. "Do you remember where we are?"
He nodded, his vision seeming to clear as the pain slowly left. "We're at the Temple…"
Zack nodded, and sighed in relief, before glaring at him. "You idiot! Why didn't you tell me that was still happening?!"
"It never got that bad before. I didn't want you to worry…"
"Well I'm plenty worried right now! How many times has it happened?" There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments before Zack seemed to remember they had an audience, and decided it would be better to save the interrogation for the time being. "We'll talk about this later, but right now…"
Cloud suddenly became aware of a distant rumbling sound. Zack seemed to be aware of it too because he turned away from him, pulling out the Buster Sword. "Sephiroth!?"
Laughter echoed around the chamber from a source no one could locate. "Ha ha ha… It is not me."
As though to emphasize his point, an angry roar echoed through the chamber and Cloud caught sight of glowing yellow eyes and a winged body covered in red scales that shone in the torchlight. Now was definitely not the time to be arguing.
Rayleigh reached for her camera. She had finished with the basic physical analysis. The man's heart rate and vitals were relatively normal for someone who had been suffering from severe deprivation and exposure. She put her clipboard down, and pulled back the sheet so that it stopped just below the man's navel. "If the two of you would lift him up, I want to get a look at his back."
Liz and Tanjuu took a moment to get on either side of the man and lifted him so he was in a sitting position. His head lolled forward under the effects of the sedative, but he made no other movements.
Rayleigh took the camera with her, walking under the light to get a better view. "I thought so. SOLDIER enhancements. This is the same nonstandard procedure Zack and Cloud were subjected to."
"So does that mean Zack and his blonde friend are just like these people?" Liz asked. Having fought side by side with him, she apparently had a good deal of respect for him. Hard not to have that if anyone knew him for any amount of time.
"No. There are differences," Rayleigh said. "First off, one thing I noticed from the Nibelheim samples was that the mako percentages and S-cell counts of that particular subject were 50% greater than Cloud's, which tells me this one should also have a higher percentage of S-cells, though I won't be able to confirm that until I can get in front of a microscope."
She ran a hand over the scars at the tell-tale locations of the Jenova cell implants along the man's spine and shoulders along with several exploratory scars at lower locations. She glanced towards the counter where the old file with the photos she'd taken in Midgar waited, just in case she needed a comparison. But that was unnecessary. She went ahead and documented each scar. Noting a slash mark that was clearly another sword wound along with what remained of a series of burns that must have been sustained prior to this man's enhancement procedures, judging by the way they had healed. She wondered who he was. Had he been a survivor of Nibelheim? It was quite possible. "It is safe to say that whatever Hojo was trying to do with Zack and Cloud, he got a lot farther with these people somehow. It's really strange. My initial theory was that he was trying to recreate Sephiroth, but the more I'm seeing, the more I'm beginning to realize that wasn't the case."
Once she had her photos, she gestured that the two renegades lie him back down on the gurney. When he was situated, she secured his wrists and ankles in the cloth restraints, and proceeded to take a closer look at the man's chest and abdomen.
"Why is that?" Tanjuu asked.
"Because if he really wanted a super soldier he would have to make sure they were functional. We didn't even give a candidate a second look if he wasn't in top physical and psychological condition. This man has obviously never been in the military in his life. Anyone can see there's not much development in his muscles such as one would see even in the infantry. Aside from being wounded by Sephiroth, Cloud was in excellent physical condition at the time during which this was done to him, and Zack was already SOLDIER. This man wasn't even up to Cloud's level."
"Then why would Hojo have even tried something like this?" Liz wondered.
"I don't know." Rayleigh turned her full attention to her work. Zack had slightly fewer scars from the front, but as she looked at the sites here, each one stood out to her, mirroring each cut she had found on Cloud's body, during that tense hour at the hospital in Midgar. She drew in a breath, looking along the man's stomach, his chest, his shoulders. There were some differences. The Mako concentration and the Jenova Cells count she suspected this man had and which she would soon confirm would definitely be a bit higher. So high that his eyes had permanently changed from whatever color they'd been to that strange reptilian green. It was the most unnerving thing she'd ever seen, and at Shinra, she had seen a lot. "What I do know is that whatever was done to him, Cloud got a lot closer to it then Zack did."
She snapped the very last photo, and grimly went back to finish her notes. In all likelihood, she had half an hour left before the sedative would wear off. Just enough to collect samples for comparison to those collected in Nibelheim and document them. She went for the vial and grimly prepared the needle.
Cloud dived forward, pushing Aerith out of the way as a wall of blue flames washed past overhead. The dragon was blocking their way out of the room, and it was huge. He heard several gunshots behind him before he felt magic wash over him. Tseng and Vincent had pulled their weapons and Kunsel had apparently started using his Barrier materia to cover them. He pulled himself up and reached for his regular sword, just in time to join Zack in charging the monster. The dragon saw them coming and reached out to whip at them with his huge tail, but at the last second, the two of them ducked and parted ways, each headed for the opposite side of the room.
Once Cloud reached the wall, he used his momentum to run for as much height as he could and vault towards his opponent. His sword connected and with all his power behind it, the blade stabbed deep into the monster's hide. The dragon roared though it appeared that Zack was attacking from the ground and the giant lizard was conflicted about which way he needed to go. Cloud had just retrieved his sword when his perch flew out from under him and he landed in a crouch just in time to see the dragon charge across the room, knocking one of the stone pillars askew as it went. It was mad now.
He saw Kunsel and the others scramble to get out of the way before the dragon neared the alter with a roar, his mouth flaming. Vincent hopped away with incredible grace, but somehow, the dragon's tail caught him with a violent 'thwack!' sending him flying across the room. Tseng had managed to get away unscathed, but now he was firing his automatic pistol rapidly and Freya's shotgun blasts were echoing through the room.
Tifa let out a battle cry, casting an ice spell to get the heat off the others, and Aerith raced towards Vincent, ready to cast a Cure spell. Cloud could hear her asking if he was all right behind him, but turned his attention to helping Tifa, racing in front of her and slashing at the dragon's hindquarters to try and get its attention. Zack was already there, heaving the Buster Sword in a wide swing. However, Cloud felt a change in the air around him that felt like a limit break but was at the same time, different. Everyone's attention was suddenly diverted when Aerith shrieked in surprise. "Vincent?!"
Without warning, a guttural growl issued from behind them and a huge angry blur of purple and red whirled past them and threw itself at the dragon, a hurricane of teeth and angry snarls. Zack was already running back to see if Aerith was all right as Cloud dived back into the fray. He wasn't sure where this strange new creature had come from, but at least it seemed to be on their side for now.
Tifa was next to him and she channeled a limit break of her own, landing blow after blow with her powerful fists while he leapt up once again to swing his sword, this time aiming for the monster's head. The dragon was having none of this, and once again whipped out with his tail. The great purple beast was missed but Cloud couldn't correct himself as well in midair, so he found himself flying backwards. He caught himself on one of the pillars, swinging himself around it and leaping forward again, driving his sword deep into the dragon's chest. At the same moment, he heard a gunshot from Tseng's direction, and the great furred beast lunged at the dragon's throat, tightening its great arms around the scaly neck.
Bleeding profusely now, and unable to breathe, the dragon thrashed wildly before Cloud stabbed one final time. With a final rasping cry, the smoke in the dragon's mouth and the heat issuing from its throat died. Soon after, it collapsed.
Cloud remained on his guard as the strange beast pulled itself up, holding his sword ready in case it attacked them, but at that point, he heard Zack behind him. "…Vincent? Is that you?"
The beast then did something that no mere creature would do. It sat back on its haunches, and waited. Fur began to recede, to be replaced by a red cloak and gold gauntlet, and fangs and claws melded back into pale skin and a pair of red eyes peeking out from under a red strip of cloth.
Once the transformation was complete, Vincent stood and dusted himself off, ignoring the surprised stares. Zack cleared his throat after a moment. "So, is that… uh… normal? For you?" he asked.
Vincent gave him a knowing look. "If you are familiar with Veld then you know Jenova cells weren't the only specialty of those working at Shinra mansion."
Zack was obviously trying to conceal a grimace. "Ah… I see." With the dragon already disappearing as it was reabsorbed into the Lifestream, he apparently decided to turn his attention back to the task at hand. After a cursory glance around the room he let out a sigh. "I guess Sephiroth got away, didn't he."
"I'm not sure," Kunsel answered. "What did he mean when he said 'I am always by your side'?"
Zack shrugged.
Cloud looked back up at the mural of the giant comet and he swallowed hard. "I don't know what that was about, but I think I understand what he said he was trying to do." He looked at Aerith before pointing at the mural. "This must be Meteor, right?"
Aerith looked where he was pointing and nodded.
Tifa walked up behind them, a worried look on her face. "Is something going to fall from the sky?"
Aerith frowned, deep in thought. "…This must be magic. Just what Sephiroth was saying. The Ultimate Destructive Magic, Meteor. It finds drifting objects and makes them collide with the Planet. We might get wiped out entirely…"
Tseng swore, and Zack looked back at him in complete surprise. When was the last time the Turk had been this expressive? The man shook his head. "If this is the case, Sephiroth isn't looking for the Promised Land at all. We've been had!"
Aerith shook her head. "One simply cannot just find the Promised Land. Not the way you're talking about it. But that's not what's important right now." She hurried over to the altar above which everyone now noticed something was floating. "Whatever we do, we can't let him get this… oh…"
Zack went to stand next to her. "What is it?"
Aerith frowned again. "There's something written on it that I think I can read." She was trying to spell out the letters when Cloud caught sight of a something glinting red in the corner, and went to investigate.
When he picked up the small orb, he felt the energy drawn from him and he realized this summon materia had to be Bahamut. He walked over to Tifa, slipping it next to ChocoMog in his bangle. Upon reaching her, both of them jumped when he heard Zack say "Black Materia!"
Aerith thought for a moment and then said. "Hang on, I'll see what I can find out." The others watched as she appeared to listen before mumbling "What? I don't understand… Oh… Really?..." She turned her attention back to the others. "They said that the whole temple is the Black Materia."
Kunsel did a double take. "You mean, we're… inside it?"
Aerith nodded.
"But this thing is huge!" Freya interjected. "I don't know if there's a reactor or mako pool big enough to make a materia this large! Not to mention, how would they keep someone from using it?"
Zack shrugged. "Maybe it only works if you touch a certain place? I don't know. At least we don't have to worry about anyone trying to take it."
"It's pretty hard," Aerith agreed. She gestured to the floating pyramid above the altar. "You see, this is a model of the temple. And inside it is a device that makes it smaller each time you solve a puzzle."
"So it shrinks it?" Tifa asked.
Aerith nodded again. "Yes. The problem is, as the temple becomes smaller, you become smaller too, until the Temple is small enough to fit in your hand."
"So if we solve all the puzzles, the Black Materia will get smaller and smaller until we can take it out?" Cloud asked.
"Yes," Aerith said. "But you can only solve them here. So anyone who tries to solve them will be crushed."
"I guess that's one way to keep people from stealing dangerous things," Freya said.
"Maybe it's okay to just leave it then," Tifa suggested, tapping the ground with the toe of her left shoe nervously.
"We've got to find a way to get it out," Cloud said. "Sephiroth seems like he'd be perfectly fine with sacrificing a few flunkies to get it for himself."
"Hmm… now that I think about it, you're probably right," Zack agreed. "It'd be nothing to throw their lives away. This place is definitely not safe for it."
"So what are we going to do?" Aerith said, concern evident on her face.
There was a ringing from Zack's PHS and he answered it. "Yeah?"
He listened to whoever it was on the other end of the line for a while and then he raised an eyebrow. "Hang on a second Cait. For starters, how did you get this number, and second, how did you overhear everything?" He listened a little longer before he scowled. "Oh, is that so? On Tifa?"
Tifa stiffened and then blushed before walking off to a corner to check her clothes. She was clearly annoyed.
Zack listened a little longer before continuing. "Well whatever we do, we can't let Sephiroth have it. Though let me be clear about this. Hell will freeze over before I just hand it over to your employers either. You do realize that right?" Cloud glanced over at Tseng, but the man was incredibly capable of hiding his reactions to things.
Zack listened a little longer as Cait Sith laid out his argument before running a hand through his unruly hair. "I guess we don't have a choice in this." It was at that point when all of them heard the sound of breaking plastic from the corner where Tifa had been checking herself. She had apparently found Cait Sith's bug. At the same time, Zack ended the conversation on his PHS. "Okay guys, Cait says he's gonna meet us at the exit, so we'd better get going." Everyone hurried back down the corridor and past the Ancient spirit. He warbled a final "Nyum nyum," of farewell and soon they were back at the room with the time guardian. Almost as though he'd sensed their return, the Guardian had positioned the hands of the clock so they were pointing at 6:00, forming a bridge straight across. They marched across the precipice and through the next passage. When they exited into the next room, they found themselves looking at a door with a line of light shining underneath it.
"This has got to be the exit," Zack said.
Kunsel and Freya walked forward to inspect the door and the brown haired SOLDIER tried the latch. "That's odd. It feels kind of warm," he said.
That was when Cloud heard a noise up above the two of them that sounded roughly like rocks scraping together. "Behind you!" he called out reaching for his sword.
The SOLDIER and the Turk looked up and their eyes widened as they backed away. Kunsel's hand was already on his own sword and Freya went for her shotgun. A large head had slid out of the wall sporting a mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth. It was accompanied by a pair of equally formidable looking claws.
Zack hurried to the front as the two joined him. "Well guys, looks like it's time for Round Two!"
Rayleigh was washing her hands at the sink in the room where they were keeping Number VI. She really wished they had a better name by which to call him, but at this point, it was the only designation they knew. He was beginning to stir, though it would still be another ten to twenty minutes before he was fully coherent… or at least as coherent as these people could get…
Liz stood near Tanjuu at the man's bedside. When Rayleigh moved to leave, about to go back to her office, she cleared her throat. "What do you intend to do with this man, now that we're done?" She asked.
"I haven't figured that out yet," Rayleigh admitted. "But I can tell you it will be a lot more humane than what Hojo had in mind." With that, she left the room, uncertainty in her thoughts. What could she do with this man? She didn't have any facilities here to keep him securely, and while she could try and find a place capable of adequately caring for him, that would take some time. She sighed. This whole situation was developing one problem after another. But still, she had to keep going. There was no alternative. She had come too far not to get the answers she'd searched for. They were standing right on the cusp of those answers even now. She could almost taste it…
Her PHS buzzed and she pulled it out of the pocket of her lab coat, adjusting her glasses and checked the message playing across the screen…
Like a runner pushing off from the starting line, she took off towards her office, not minding the low heels of her shoes and she nearly threw herself into her desk chair, wrenching the connector for her PHS out of her desk drawer. Her breath caught in her throat. The screen of her PHS glowed as she started the file transfer process, revealing the message she had just read from Shalua.
"You need to take a look at this now! Full decryption complete."
Oh dear, looks like things are heating up again. The original party just left Rocket Town and are probably on their way to Wutai right now, though it seems we've skipped over that entirely.
Until next time!