Chapter Five: Choices

"Where…?" Tifa uttered.

The last thing she recalled was floating, numb and hopeless through the blackness of space, in and out of a restless sleep. Now, a vast plain of multicolored flowers and grasses stretched out endlessly before her as if everything she'd just endured had been nothing but a bad dream. Their fronds and blades tickled and pricked at her bare feet and legs as she took a few cautious steps forward. A mild, comfortable breeze swept unkempt strands of her hair out of her face, neither humid nor too cold. Ahead, maybe a few miles off into the distance, falls of clear, clean water poured through what appeared to be slits in the fabric of an early morning or late evening sky, nourishing the garden-scape below. Above all else, directly overhead, a massive vortex of spirit energy swirled and churned with the clouds in hues of blue, indigo, and emerald, occasionally converging together to form huge, luminescent spheres at its core, and ejecting them into space through an upward funnel.

In the corner of one eye, a fleck of green, glistening light distracted Tifa from the spectacle above. Turning to find its source, she watched in awe as a patch of flowers all bloomed together in a single instant, each releasing tiny tendrils and sparks of life. They floated up like heatwaves from a hot road, donating themselves to the spinning mass overhead.

"Do you remember the Gold Saucer, Tifa?"

"Aerith?" She perked up to see her friend standing off to her right, hands clasped behind her back.

"Come to think of it, it wasn't that long ago, was it? So much fighting, but we still had a little fun, didn't we?" Aerith continued.

Tifa frowned. True, it had only been six years, but, "That feels like another lifetime."

"Well, for most of us, it was," Aerith softly laughed, pacing from her spot, "but that's okay."

"I don't think so," Tifa countered, feeling her heart sink.

"It has to be, though, doesn't it?" she insisted, and a small, exasperated sigh later, "Before the Planet called me to pray for Holy, I had a dream. My mother brought me here, too. You could say…this is where everything begins and ends."

"The Promised Land;" Tifa concluded, "the actual place where planet are born, and return to when they die."

Aerith nodded once. "For the souls of whole worlds, yeah. Seeing this place made it easier back then. It no longer mattered what happened to me once I got to the Forgotten City."

"Then, maybe it's almost time for me to go as well," Tifa guessed. Melancholic, she hoped.

Tight-lipped, Aerith closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's not quite…like that anymore, Tifa. Things have changed with you, and with Minerva. I don't know what it means. It's just…different. You're different."

Tifa threaded a finger through the hole in her sacrificial Amyntasi prisoner's shirt, touching the skin where Sephiroth had run her through—the smooth, scar-free spot that should have been home to a fatal injury. "You can say that again," she quietly confessed.

Aerith sat down on her left hip and stretched her legs out in the flowers. "Even this place is different now. It used to dream only of the birth and re-creation of the stars, but now, it's breathing, thinking—like a living consciousness, slowly waking up. Maybe it hears the cries out there…"

Clenching her hands into tight balls, Tifa forced herself to ask, "Is Sephiroth capable of taking it over?"

Head bowed, Aerith paused long before answering. Perhaps she was listening, praying that the heart of the universe would give her the answers they both so desperately needed.

But then, droplets of dew rolled off the petals of a gradated violet flower beneath her, evaporating into streaks of new life before it could hit the ground. Whether from the falls, the process of blooming, or the eyes of a Cetran ghost, the garden used it all the same.

"I don't know. I can't tell," she finally admitted, rising to her feet and brushing the loose foliage from her dress, and the moisture from her eyes. "But at least you're free now."

"That's not exactly the word I'd use," Tifa answered tersely. She was once again fleeing the man for whom she'd unwittingly become an object of fierce obsession. There was no freedom in that.

Clasping her hands together in front of her, Aerith managed a weak smile. "Still, what Genesis said about you being Minerva's vessel is no longer true, Tifa. After what happened on Amyntas, she didn't have the strength to regroup. You called her back, though, and she dissolved…into you."

Startled, Tifa checked herself. Always somewhere, if she looked hard enough within, she could find the Goddess' quiet but imposing presence. Like this place, she was always dreaming or planning—or usually, trying for all she was worth to gather her strength. But search as she might, the corners of her mind and depths of her soul were devoid of Minerva's presence. In her place remained only a sense of heaviness that differed somehow from the emotional burden of having watched her friends and world after world die. It was like a longing or a hunger; an aspect of herself or a power yet untapped. Yes, there was some kind of power there—something difficult not to inspect just a little more, to reach out and claim—

"Let her rest," Aerith admonished, seeming to catch on to what she'd discovered. "It's better if you pretend what's left of her isn't even there. If you don't, one might not be enough. You'll seek out and take more without even knowing it—at least, not at first."

"One?"

"One planet," Aerith clarified.

With that bleak pronouncement, the waterfalls' rushing ceased as if they'd heard, and Tifa looked back behind her to see what had stopped them. Instead of the calming, low-light shades of dusk or dawn, the sky had turned pitch-black, illuminated only by far-off pin points of starlight. Taking a startled step backwards, the flowers that had brimmed with and birthed life only seconds ago crunched, brown, decayed, and dry under her feet.

Mouth agape in horror, Tifa jumped when a small, familiar hand suddenly grabbed one of hers.

Marlene.

"Tifa, it's time to wake up!" the girl shouted joyously.

Above, the vortex of lifestream was collapsing and burning up at is core. Flaming comets streaked across the night, pummeling it further into self-destructive submission.

Frantically, Tifa looked in every direction for Aerith, but her friend had vanished.

An insistent tug at her entrapped palm drew her attention back down to Marlene. Marlene, who like Barret, should not be alive. Marlene, who even worse than her father, had not just become another Geostigma victim, but the very catalyst for Sephiroth's reunion.

"Wake up!" she yelled again and again, "Wake up! Wake up!"

She came to splayed on the ground as if she'd passed out. Cold raindrops splattered in her face and eyes while Tifa struggled to regain her bearings. Her head swam and throbbed, trying to piece together how and when she'd arrived here, on what appeared to be yet another life-supporting planet. Remaining flat on her back for exhaustion, she cast long, confused glances at her new surroundings. The heavenly vision of the Promised Land, and the terror of its sudden, violent destruction were just figments of her sleeping imagination, it seemed. Just her frightened mind trying to figure out what came next.

Aerith had been there—had revealed something important, or that had a sense of urgency, but Tifa couldn't quite recall. Maybe later, when she had the energy to handle it, she'd ask again.

There were too many details missing, she quickly decided. The patch of land she lay on bore no evidence of her touch-down, still flat and damp. Nearby trees also showed no signs of having been too close to her crash site, growing strong and tall in what looked like a naturally twisted pattern, strewn with half-wilted vines and coated with mushrooms and algae. Most curious of all, she couldn't locate a single broken shard of her materia craft.

Straining to summon what little reserves of strength she still had, Tifa sat up and shuddered. The ground weakly pulled at her back in response, protesting with a sloppy, sucking noise as it released. Her entire backside was wet and dripping with mud. Every joint in her hands, arms, and legs were stiff from laying for what must have been way too long in the swampy, cold mire. And she felt weighed down; heavy, as if her own weight had become foreign to her.

"How far did I go?" she croaked to herself. To feel so weak, she must have been gravity-deprived for quite a while. She might as well have swallowed a boulder.

Awareness of her physical state was creeping back in far too quickly for comfort. Achy, leaden muscles, an empty stomach sour with hunger, and a parched mouth joined in the complaints of the frosty, unyielding body that had greeted her upon waking. For the moment, she had nothing to help any of it but her own bare hands and the flimsy, torn clothes on her back.

If something hell-bent on an exotic, meaty meal dwelled in this wasteland, she would make for an easy hunt.

At this point, in part, Tifa couldn't help but believe that wouldn't be the worst way to go. Better to be lost in the jaws of a hungry animal on a remote planet than to face another unjust execution attempt, or to cross paths with Sephiroth again. Indeed, there was now something heart-wrenching about the idea of so much as meeting with a single member of another civilized race. It was something too strong and bitter to be mere sadness or fear, but too weak and desperate to resemble the fires of hatred.

Although her mind was content to sit and ponder how she might sooner perish, her body adamantly refused that path. One hand in front of the other, she pushed herself forward to crawl on all fours, clawing at handfuls of slurry and rotten leaves. Just up a slight hill a yard or two away was a large, old, dead tree. The ground would be dryer there. Tifa had no plans after reaching it—those would have to figure themselves out once she arrived, if only she could make it.

One belabored inch after another, she reached the base of the hill, and forced herself to rise on shaky, unprepared feet. Hobbling and stumbling forward, she made her way up, catching herself from falling every few steps until finally, she let herself collapse, panting against the trunk. As hoped, the earth here was not the same soupy mess she'd woken up in. But then, beneath her hands, something prickled and crawled. Tifa backed off with a start, but saw nothing but the brownish imprint of her palms in the layer of green and blue moss that coated the bark. Strangely enough, while she inspected it, she also felt as though some of her vigor had returned—enough to stand steady and unaided, while less than a minute ago, she'd barely been better off than an infant.

Maybe it was nothing but an adrenaline rush brought on by the assumption that she'd pressed her hands against a nest of alien insects, but something about it made her stomach sink.

Peering back down the hill, she noticed that a dried out, rotted path marked where she'd struggled her way up. She wasn't native to this world, though, she reasoned. Something as simple and normally benign as the oils in her skin might be like poison to some of the surrounding fauna. It was probably just a disagreement in chemistry, but oh, how perfectly it seemed to represent the last two years of her life! Everything she touched; every goal she reached for withered away just like that.

Here, that relationship with her environment had turned starkly literal.

The longer Tifa trudged onward, the more energized she became, but at the same time, hints of panic were beginning to set in. How far would she have to keep walking to escape this marshland? What could she eat or drink in this world's wilderness? Was there any intelligent life to be found, or was this planet completely untamed? And what was she supposed to do if it was, or rather, if she never found any evidence to the contrary? For all she knew or could guess, this world might host one of the universe's highest civilized populations. She'd just never know a thing about it if she was walking in circles, trapped inside wilds that could very well span for thousands of miles.

"Looks like I'm wishing for company after all," Tifa reflected.

As always, in spite of everything, and no matter how great and oppressive that "everything" was, the urge and instinct to survive held out, strong and true. Not that she honestly relished the thought of meeting any new peoples, but if it meant a meal, fresh clothes, and even a modicum of time to think on anything but how to save her skin, then maybe the risk was still worth it.

Sephiroth had mentioned that they'd only meet again when she was ready to follow him. Willingly. The idea that she'd comply with him in any state resembling sanity was ludicrous. Thus, Tifa dared to flirt with the idea that this meant she had nothing to fear here—nothing like what had happened with Gaia and Amyntas, at any rate. If she did run once again into civilization, people wouldn't fall left and right because he was stalking her. If Sephiroth was to be believed, then the only thing she really needed to be afraid of was how the next race might receive her. Ironically, she felt like she could believe him, because he was more the type to take pleasure in revealing his hand than in spinning webs of lies, knowing full well that no one could do much of a damn thing about it.

Abruptly jarring her from her inner negotiation, a hot, hissing breath blasted into her face. Pushing up through the cattails and reeds that concealed a deep, murky pool of water straight ahead, a huge, scaled beast resembling an alligator or crocodile had crept up on her. It loomed over her, staring her down with its mouth half ajar in a reptilian, razor-toothed, pseudo-grin. With a head the size of her whole frame, it could probably snap her up in one bite if it wanted to; if it was angry or hungry enough.

Tifa froze in place, returning the monster's icy, ravenous glare. No matter how she sized the thing up, this was looking to be an unfair fight. She was completely unarmed and unprotected. Her prediction that she'd get eaten alive seemed on the verge of fulfillment. With such a formidable enemy, and in these circumstances, "hopeless" was the first word that came to mind.

"But you know better than that, Tifa," Cloud reminded her, and memories of the some of the larger beasts they'd fought back home flared to life.

She...did know better, didn't she? It had just been too long. The only big and significantly dexterous ones back on Gaia were birds or other flyers. A creature this immense could indeed probably kill whatever it wanted to with a single bite or swing of its massive tail, but it was probably also just as impressively sluggish. Speed was definitely still on her side, whether she chose to turn and run or stay and fight. Running, she would escape this particular instance of danger, but would almost certainly collide head-long into another. If she fought and won, on the other hand, the monster's scales, bones, meat, and teeth were hers for the taking—food, weapons, and a makeshift shelter.

Even human beings were often most dangerous when hungry, tired, and scared. Tifa knew she was no different.

Leaping as high as she could against the pull of gravity, she lunged not for the crocodile's head, but for a sturdy, flat landing point on its back. Her feet met the rough, scaly surface with a thud and a small slip, burning their soles, but she ignored the pain. Reaching down, she latched onto a large, protruding scale, and throwing her full weight behind it, she ripped the hard, serrated chunk of flesh from its owner.

The monster growled and thrashed violently for its fresh injury, shaking its unwieldy head from side to side in a vain effort to shake or snap Tifa from its back. Its tail swept and flopped, but the vulnerable spot where she had chosen to launch her attack was completely out of the animal's range.

Determined, she sprinted up croc's back toward its head, scale in hand. Her feet were cut and bleeding, and the run was akin to trying to maintain balance on a narrow bridge during an earthquake, but she'd been through worse. Stars and planets, she'd been through so much worse! A little blood? She didn't care anymore. There was always more where that came from. Pain? No doubt she'd live to tell about it. But this monster would not. Kneeling atop the beast's head, she drove the pointed end of the scale through one of its eyes, piercing the membrane down to a layer of cartilage, scraping past bone, and burying it in brain. Unsatisfied, she allowed her hand to keep a hold of the makeshift dagger, her forearm following its grisly path into her foe to make sure it was embedded deeply enough to kill.

Moments and a final, exhausted growl later, the monster collapsed, and Tifa with it. Extracting her hand from the gore, she lay back and panted. How long had it been since she'd fought that hard? Maybe she hadn't atrophied and rusted quite as badly as she'd assumed.

Toward the monochrome, foggy sky, streaks of the crocodile's life energy spilled. For some reason, they did not drift away to rejoin their planet. Instead, they lingered, pooling together just over her reclined body, hesitant, as if in shock that this much smaller creature had actually managed to end their body's usefulness.

In idle curiosity, Tifa lifted a hand, stirring the airborne puddle. She wrapped some of its substance around her pointer finger, and the rest followed obediently, forming a small, glowing ball in her palm. It pulsated as she drew her hand back down to get an even closer look. Like a child who'd just caught her first lightning bug, she closed her other hand around it, and peered inside.

But it had vanished. Save for a slight glaze of translucent residue, the dark enclosure between her hands was completely empty. Soft, electro-static waves rolled up both of her arms in the wake of its disappearance, joining together at the base of her neck and traversing the length of her spine.

Tifa closed her eyes and looked inward, a storm of wonder and dread knotting in the pit of her stomach. There, three separate life energies swirled together, repeatedly meeting and dispersing. One, she instinctively knew had belonged to her since birth; her soul. Old memories that she once treasured called out to her; former happiness leaving bitterness in its stead. Nothing good ever lasted, and some things she once thought had been just were nothing but terrible and corrupt. There was no end to regret, was there? Sighing deeply, she turned her attention to the second, which was a disjointed mass of Holy magic, barely holding the frayed threads of a very ancient, powerful spirit together. It felt…very familiar. Finally, the last one was the sphere of light onto which she'd just clasped. Slowly, the orb unraveled into a straight, serpentine form. It weaved between the two others, binding them together, stretching itself longer and thinner to wrap around them again and again.

"The Goddess vanquished, but a surrogate Omega is Omega still. Profaned, she now draws the strength and life of beings alien. And soon, the journey to rebirth may be forsaken for a celestial feast on the nectar of worlds," Genesis' warning echoed from deep within her subconscious.

Tifa opened her eyes and sat upright. "Vanquished…?" she repeated, furrowing her brows. And then, "The Planet is completely dead? But it can't be if I still—can it?" The space between her eyes ached, and she knew she was trying to remember something.

Genesis had not been the first to warn her. She had heard something like it, just a little while ago, but in kinder, gentler terms.

Of course.

Aerith had said something similar in her dream, hadn't she? Sephiroth had destroyed Minerva, to the point where Gaia's conscious will had effectively become the spiritual equivalent of a vegetable. The lifestream that remained only did so because Tifa had called it back. Her body and mind, once only a vehicle destined to go wherever the Goddess deemed, was now simply the incidental carrier of a massive amount of spirit energy. Until now, it had seemed content to sleep within her, distinct from her own life force.

The plants, moss, and algae that had dried up with each step forward—none of it was the fault of incompatible extraterrestrial chemistry, she realized. Tifa couldn't believe how much she'd managed to ignore it, but how many times had the very ground beneath her bare feet cut, scraped, gouged, and stung her? How many clouds of angry, swarming insects had she numbly stumbled through, barely registering their bites? This place should have meant a sure, hastened death from exposure. Instead, she had become death to it. She should have been much hungrier, thirstier, and wounded beyond recognition, but the remains of Gaia's soul still nourished her as the one who housed it, however perversely. Not a single nick or scratch had failed to heal.

Tifa stared at her hands again, morbid curiosity working its way into disgust. What was happening to her? It was as though the substance of her being had transformed into some type of mini, organic Mako reactor. If she did ultimately meet with more intelligent life, would she have the same effect on them as she had with this place? Would proximity alone kill them?

Maybe not. Not every single thing she'd touched on the way had died. The insects, the larger trees—those remained. Tifa stopped herself, half-hyperventilating, before the temptation to completely lose it became too strong. That kind of thinking wouldn't help her right now. Failing all else, the beast beneath her had required her to take it down in a more traditional fashion, with a little quick thinking, moving, and brute strength. It hadn't just dropped dead at her feet either. Only once it actually lacked a pulse did its spirit energy seem to mistake her for its home. Perhaps she was only dangerous to smaller, completely non-sentient things?

Listening to the sound of her slow, deep breathing, she noted that aside from her own turmoil, her mind was devoid of the usual chatter she'd grown accustomed to. For the most part, with the exception of a few very short interludes, it had been ever since she'd departed from Amyntas. She could still feel them there, but Tifa wondered what kind of environment she'd become for her friends. Could she sustain their existence with her will alone, or would Gaia's remains soon draw them in as well?

….No wonder Sephiroth had let her go.

No wonder at all. He had to have known this was going to happen, and probably figured that she'd become so perturbed and lost within her new state of existence, she'd eventually seek him out if for no other reason than mere understanding. After all, he had consumed entire worlds intentionally. He had control over what he did and did not take.

And again, Tifa recalled what Aerith had said about being free. It was true, regardless of the circumstances, for she now had a choice. She could continue to act as Omega on its pilgrimage to the Promised Land. That was the unquestionably right and noble thing to do, wasn't it? It was the only good purpose she could truly hope to serve after what she'd allowed her world, friends, and family to suffer.

And the other option?

Tifa laughed at the absurd, horrible obviousness of it, angry that she hadn't caught onto it earlier. She'd never run into a more perfect definition of "rock bottom". What else could it be?

The alternative was that she could become Jenova.