Chapter Six: Identity
"Soul wrought of terra corrupt, quelling impurity, purging the stream to beckon forth an ultimate fate. Behold, mighty Chaos, Omega's squire to the lofty heavens."
-Lucrecia Crescent
She had laughed until her ribs ached and her throat dried; until it cracked and gave way to weak, silent sobs. Her mouth opened and closed, heaving and gasping for air while her whole body quaked with panic and interminable grief. Flashes of blinding self-hatred, burning like blood coated in glowing ash, beat against the backs of her eyelids with each furious squeeze. It poured out innocently as clear, salty fluid, drenching her face and meeting at her chin to drip down into the cold, wet, ignorant earth.
Tifa knew that with each spark of its life she sucked up, she forfeited more of her humanity, but she didn't know how to make it stop. She couldn't conceive of how to calm the raging life within her; how to tell it that it couldn't have all the company it so desired. Mere passion without a definitive will, she felt the fragments of the Goddess coiled around her own soul, hungry, yearning, demanding—"Let us become as one!"
As she writhed and curled up with herself atop her slain monster, a soothing, numb exhaustion finally settled into her heart and mind. The ghost of a cool hand smoothed away the pain between her eyes, and Tifa swallowed her tears. Slowly, she slid down from her kill, feet squishing in the gore-laden algae slime at the pool's edge. A hard, resigned sigh moved past her lips while she stripped away her Amyntasi vestments, along with their stains, cuts, and humiliation. Standing still at the water's edge, she beheld her naked form in the moonlight, staring back at her from the undisturbed surface.
Pristine. Perfect. She was not merely healed or well mended, but completely unscarred. She couldn't see a single mark from the many wounds she'd endured throughout her lifetime. The tiny, jagged marks from her fall as a child from Mount Nibel? Gone. That deep, diagonal line that had been etched from her right shoulder to her left hip when her first home had gone up in flames? A sight unseen, as if it hadn't happened. The Goddess' coil wrapped tighter, and Tifa physically flinched.
"Are you scared, Tifa?" There was no voice; just words that seemed like they'd been impressed upon her mind from without. It was like madness shrouded in comfort, or maybe the other way around.
She shook her head. This had to be just another way she'd found to talk to herself, right? The compassion she'd normally shared with others—or rather, used to share—she'd turned inward because she so desperately needed it. For fear it might be the last time she'd ever speak to them, she dared not turn to Cloud, Aerith, or any of the others. Too much about her being had changed too quickly, and she didn't want to make haphazard guesses or take thoughtless risks where they were concerned.
"I can't remember when I haven't been," she confessed.
"And yet, this fear no longer becomes you. That which once possessed you has become your possession."
Tifa's breath hitched in the back of her throat, her dissociative haze shattering. Nothing about those words were hers. She still remembered herself enough to know that it would take so, so much more than simply wishing not to feel afraid for her to view her situation as some kind of advantage like that. The only soul she wanted to own was the one she was born with.
"Sephiroth," she murmured the name, recognizing those thoughts' true owner. If he was telling her not to be frightened, then the only correct response had to be sheer terror.
Mortification had to be the answer, but she couldn't muster it anymore. Even as the list of atrocities Sephiroth had committed against her continued to grow, the gnawing dread stayed where it was, nothing more than a complacent acknowledgement of the facts. Part of her must have grown accustomed to the constant uncertainty and chaos. It wasn't acceptance; she'd just come to expect it. Ironically, anticipating no improvement or answers turned out slightly easier than outright denial. It dampened the shock value, if not the soul-crushing sadness of it all.
She sensed Sephiroth's smirk of approval, and her friends' swift retreat into her subconscious mind in response.
"Soon, they will join with you as well."
When he said that, it felt like someone was trying to implode her heart, but she also saw the truth in his words. Perhaps he only intended them to prey upon her doubts and to break her, but they were nonetheless true. Unless she could figure out some way to sustain their individual consciousnesses, her friends would become interwoven with the remnants of Gaia along with all other life she'd absorbed, and they would be lost to her again—irretrievably dead this time.
Stone-faced, Tifa stepped forward into the pond until the water came up to her chest, finding it pleasantly warm. She scooped up handfuls and splashed her face, washing away the crust of dirt, blood, and tears before lifting her legs from the sandy floor to float on her back. Layers of filth softened and peeled away from her skin, and she cringed. If that was how completely soiled she was, maybe it was better that she hadn't run into any type of intelligent life yet. At least the lizard monsters and bugs didn't care how she looked or smelled. Running her fingers through her hair, she snorted at the thought. This wild, primordial planet, thus far free of humanoid drama—a place meant only to be survived or explored if visited at all—offered more solace than she could imagine in the company of beings who might actually understand her if she spoke. Both her home world and Amyntas had taught her that there was no underestimating the pettiness and cruelty of the thinking, speaking universe. Brimming full of liars and killers, maybe it was something that would truly be better off undone.
So, there it was: She had started to grow morbidly resentful of her losses. Wrathful, even. But for now, it was only enough to nurse a few begrudging thoughts. It was insufficient to win out against the warmth that she still so fondly remembered. The pain wasn't yet enough to forget the precious lives she housed, those who shared her memories. She would do whatever she could to protect them. Mentally, with every ounce of willpower she could summon, she drove an invisible wedge between the churning mass of raw Lifestream and her friends' spirits.
Hours of washing, scraping, cutting, tearing, and tying later, Tifa had finished bathing and reworked her clothes into something not entirely civilized, but a great deal more functional. The excess cloth of her once-flowing pants she tied behind her knees and bound each by a dried strip of what had been part of the monster's underbelly skin. She'd done something similar with her top, carefully tearing away the fabric beneath where Sephiroth had run her through to create a loose midriff, which she then also tied flush beneath her chest and around the middle of her back. As she fastened the last leathery knot in place, the sun was starting to rise. She briefly allowed herself to wonder how she wasn't exhausted when she hadn't slept all night, but quickly dismissed the question. There was nothing truly mysterious about it. Her body didn't work the way it used to, subsisting on food, water, and sleep. Clumps of dried out swamp grass spread out around her campsite were enough to testify to that fact. Tifa averted her eyes from the life-sapped ground to stare at the clear sky above instead.
"At least it didn't keep raining," she noted to herself, exhaling.
Sunlight rippled through the air in waves of deep crimson and gold, piercing through the humid fog still hovering around the streams and pools that spotted the landscape. If she had to guess, it was probably late spring or early summer in this part of the world.
This planet didn't really notice her, she decided. When the sun reached its apex, the full heat of the day would wilt the stringy grasses just as thoughtlessly as her own footsteps had. She was little more than a mosquito where this world's spirit energy was concerned; small and powerless—nothing more than a vagabond trying to make sure the voices in her head could continue to keep her company. Whatever Jenova had ultimately done to become the Calamity, Tifa swore she would never do. To obtain that kind of power, and to use it to destroy one world after the next required a kind of malice only someone with nothing left to lose could possess. It meant becoming so embittered with what she could no longer have that she wanted to deprive all creation of it. Tifa couldn't embrace that idea. Even if the inherent, inevitable ugliness of some intelligent life made her stomach turn, the potential goodness of so may individual souls was well worth preserving. Close friends and family—they were the ones she missed so greatly, and to deny anyone their own for the sake of her personal sadness was unthinkable. She'd only succeed in cutting her own wounds deeper.
"Keep remembering us, Tifa," Aerith encouraged her. "If you can do that, we might all still see one another again someday."
"I'll give it my best," Tifa promised in a whisper, "but where do I go from here?" She stopped and listened very carefully, but no one answered. The silence was so heavy, her shoulders quaked under its weight, and her eyes leaked from the strain. How was she supposed to do this alone? She didn't even know where to start.
Then, there was warmth. It poured over the top of her head, cascading down to embrace her whole body. Audibly, Cloud's voice resounded in her ears, "All you need to do is make it there, Tifa. Get there before he does, and we'll take him out together. After that, it'll be over."
"Cloud," Tifa whimpered, "how do I keep from hurting anything else on the way?"
That one question was all it took to drive his comforting presence away. Everyone seemed to know what needed to be done, but no one could really help her figure out how to get there without draining the life from half of everything she touched. It took everything she had not to fall to her knees and cry again. She pushed back against her embroiled emotions, rejecting them. If she wanted to, she could lay down and lament until it turned into mad, unintelligible howling. Her reserves of sorrow ran deep enough, but she had no business spending them. Not now. Anyone had that right but her, because she'd brought this burden onto herself. The only way to go was forward, through the marshes and its prehistoric-sized monsters, to whatever lay beyond that if anything.
Seemingly no longer capable of tiring physically, she trudged ahead. Smaller creatures occasionally scampered near to sniff her out and bite at her ankles, but a swift kick here and there dissuaded their interest, and they scampered away, warning the others, "This one is not safe. Go hide, go back into our holes and beneath our rocks. This one is a new predator; not like the others."
Walking for hours on end left the scenery unchanged. The foggy haze didn't entirely lift as the day wore on, instead hovering just above the ground, snaking between reeds and over the watery places in a gravity-defying river. By force of habit, Tifa swiped at her brow, but her hand came away completely dry. Her skin had prickled there—maybe it was whatever this world had for mosquitoes and gnats—but it was like her body didn't really register the humidity or exertion anymore. She could feel the sun's heat enough, and the damp air still had its characteristic heaviness, but her physical being was hardly picking up on them even as a nuisance. As nice as it was not to be drenched in sweat just after doing the best she could to wash off, Tifa had never wished so strongly to be inconvenienced. Perspiration, scrapes, bruises, painful bug bites, or even an allergic rash from exposure to the surrounding alien floral would do. Anything to reassure her that she wasn't too far gone from being human.
She kicked a few twigs along the ground and stretched her arms upward to relieve some tension. Maybe she was fixating too hard on what she was, rather than who. What really mattered was that the latter didn't change for the worse. It was a moot point to worry about the former—she was literally the last fully human person left alive from her world. Still, there was no denying that what someone was inevitably informed who they became. Eden had taught her at least that much.
A small, rogue twinge of grief reared its head in her chest.
"No," she murmured, and repeated, as if scolding an ill-behaved dog, "No." It wasn't safe to think of him but for what he'd become. Failure to accept that had proven fatal to her Planet. She couldn't afford to repeat her error, even in retrospect.
Just off to her left at about thirty degrees, a snapping branch mercifully distracted her.
Ducking into some of the longer grasses for cover, Tifa slowly crept toward the tree that seemed to have produced the sound. It was a huge, dried out husk, so anything could have broken off a piece without much effort or even intent. Her curiosity wanted answers regardless—something for her mind to chew on that wasn't part of an existential crisis—so she continued onward, gently brushing thick, green blades aside, trying to keep her contact brief so as not to siphon them beyond recovery. Barely emerging into the opening, she caught a glimpse of something red darting quickly out of her periphery.
"What-?" she mouthed, and changed her trajectory to try to follow after it. Crouching lower, she quieted her breathing. For all she knew, it was just another animal or monster that had taken off exactly because of her close proximity. It was incredibly silly, but she was also chasing after it because it was a colorful object in comparison to nearly everything she'd seen here so far. She'd wandered for half the day, but the marshlands stretched on and on, showing no signs of ending anywhere nearby. The scenery had been growing monotonous until that thing had shown up—monotony that tempted her thoughts into places she'd rather avoid, at least for the short time she could.
A rustling sound dead ahead made her quicken her pace. Her target was swift, but not necessarily stealthy. Another clip of crimson slipped deeper into the grass as she approached—something flowy or floating. It appeared low to the ground, but like it was trailing or attached to something larger, perhaps taller.
Changing tactics, Tifa paused. After a minute or two, she heard her mark imitate her, as if equally curious as to why she'd stopped coming after it. Then, she took one small, light step forward, careful of where her foot landed. She was getting close, and it might only take the smallest snap or crunch to send it running again. Another step brought her back to the edge of the clearing where she'd started the chase. Through the thin veil of fronds and straws, she finally perceived what she'd been stalking, and her heart immediately invaded her throat. Not what; who.
"Vincent?" she croaked, stepping out of the weeds.
He turned to face her, tired crimson eyes assessing her, quietly fact-finding, trying to put unknowable pieces together. "Tifa," he acknowledged, and cut right to the chase: "Where are we, and how did we get here?"
Tifa pressed her lips together tightly, urging herself not to react. This was just like with Barret—or maybe not, she argued with herself. One critical difference between the two was that Vincent hadn't been felled by Geostigma. She needed to be careful, but it was possible that he wasn't enthralled by Sephiroth. She had to know more before she could decide what to do.
"It's a very long story," she finally answered, sounding every bit as deflated as considering the journey that had brought her here made her feel. "Maybe you should go first."
Vincent's gaze trailed off to one side, as if contemplating where to start. "We were at W.R.O. headquarters. Now, we're here," he started, and then stopped, realization dawning on his face. "Hm. Missing time. Another nightmare, then."
"That's one way of putting it, Vincent," Tifa's voice tremored, "but we're awake, and it's still going."
"Sephiroth defeated us."
Tifa tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, also breaking eye contact, and quietly confirmed his suspicions, "Yeah. Our Planet is dead. I got away from him. Barely, but not entirely. It's hard to explain."
With a concentrated look downward, he briefly inspected himself, and ran a hand over the side of his neck while shruggng one shoulder. "Shelke, Reeve, and I did not," he concluded.
Gawking at him momentarily, Tifa recoiled slightly when he pawed at his neck for the memory it provoked. He remembered precisely how he'd died, it seemed; not merely that he was supposed to be deceased. "No, you didn't," she agreed.
Another awkward pause passed between them.
"Still, 'unscathed' isn't how I'd describe you, Tifa," he said.
"You can say that again," she replied, a weak, bitter laugh crawling up from her tightening throat. "But it was the end of the world. No one walks away from that kind of thing unchanged."
Vincent offered a long, exhausted sigh in response before pronouncing, "I'm sorry, Tifa. I can't allow those changes to continue."
At that, Tifa snapped her head back to look directly at him; directly down Cerberus' barrels. Her heart was trying to pound its way out of her chest now. She still wasn't convinced that he was being used in the same way as Barret, but he was at least acting on incomplete information. She hoped. He had to be. "Vincent, listen to me. I know it's hard to believe, but I'm doing Omega's job. I'll end those changes myself soon enough. I just have to reach the Promised Land before he does."
"You've become a nascent neo-Jenova. There's no time left to race Sephiroth to the center of the universe," he insisted. "This stops here."
"No, I'm not. That's not what I choose to be. I won't be. I'm going to carry Cloud and the others home, and then rest with them," she pleaded. Understanding that she'd have to fight another friend was sinking in, and her stomach was sinking with it.
"Don't misconstrue this as a choice again, Tifa," Vincent continued, clicking off the safety. "You already know it's happening."
"It's an obstacle, nothing more! Stop this," she frantically countered, "because it's either me or Sephiroth now. That's the real choice here, Vincent. If not me, then who stops him? Who else alive understands what's going on enough to be able to try?"
"Our time is done. Another civilization will handle him, eventually."
"No. I can't take that on faith. You haven't seen what I have…Besides, it's become too personal now. Long ago, I thought I could say that he'd taken everything, but now that I really have lost almost that much? It has to be me."
"Another 'Chosen One', then?" he quietly retorted, and pulled the trigger.
Reflexively, Tifa ducked and rolled. Without thinking, she twisted around sharply and swept one leg under Vincent's feet, knocking him off balance.
Black mist erupted from him as he fell, betraying the truth of his origin. It quickly rejoined him when he crashed to the ground, and he let out a feral growl. The dark spirit energy tore away at his human form, his back sprouting red, tattered demon's wings, and his forehead raising into a crown of jagged horns. His eyes flashed golden light, but then died into black, obsidian spheres. He was Chaos, corruption that had been corrupted yet again. Chaos, which was supposed to have returned to the Planet after Omega was eliminated, and it had. Sephiroth must have taken both it and Vincent's soul when he murdered their world.
No, Vincent was not like Barret. He was far, far more dangerous, now re-weaponized into the mechanism that their Planet had designed to return everything to the Lifestream at the world's end, thereby delivering it to Omega. With the roles they were both playing, the sick irony that she'd have to fight him now was not lost on Tifa. It reeked of Sephiroth's sense of humor, of his obsessive familiarity with the life cycle that allowed him to manipulate it so.
Shot after shot whizzed by her head in fast succession, but she was able to move just fast enough that precious millimeters of space shielded her from them. Of all things, she couldn't allow him killing shot. It wouldn't really kill her, but judging from what had happened the last time she was supposed to have died, someone or something else would bear the consequences, and they would likely be catastrophic.
Expending the last of his ammo, Chaos-Vincent abandoned Cerberus and lunged after her with his bare, clawed hands.
As he closed in, Tifa stood her ground long enough to charge forward at the last second, her right fist landing an uppercut that crushed into his sternum. For that split second, she tried to see if she could feel out the Protomateria, but had no such luck. It was nowhere to be found. This rendition of Chaos was completely unfettered from anyone's control. Vincent was not at the wheel this time. At breakneck speed, she drove her other fist into Chaos' ribs. She pummeled his torso with everything she had, until his claws found purchase on her right shoulder, sinking into flesh and scraping bone. A guttural screech emerged from her mouth, and she tried to pull away.
Chaos plucked her up by the clavicle, and violently tossed her aside.
When she landed, white hot pain instantly dulled to an unpleasant ache, and the claw-shaped holes in her shoulder quickly mended themselves. She rose to her hands and knees, and she could feel her palms drawing up enough spirit energy to heal completely. Something different was happening now, though. While she healed, a pulse throbbed up through her arms—not her own, but this planet's. A mental image of the Lifestream flowing miles beneath her feet coalesced in her mind's eye, and she could see it drifting along, gently humming. What would it do, to draw just a little closer to such a vast force…?
"Ignore it, Tifa! It's not for your taking," Genesis' voice snapped in her head, severe and urgent.
Tifa blinked hard and stood. No, she wasn't thinking what Genesis seemed to believe she was. She wouldn't take anything so great from this world, not now or ever. She hated that she was taking even a little, but the vision of its life-blood had bestowed upon her a twisted, wild idea. One that was crazy enough to work.
Overhead, Chaos was circling like vulture. Seeing her rise, he dove down to attack her again, racing at her just like he'd done to Omega back when Vincent had put the Weapon down.
Tifa locked eyes with him, focusing in on the corrupt energies churning within him. She was going to reclaim that energy and take Vincent back! Hands reaching high and spread out toward him, she remembered how she'd drawn the Goddess' Lifestream back. She recalled feeling like a magnet, pulling in each streak of light that had once been Gaia's divine being when no other recourse had remained. Conjuring up that desperate, terrified willpower proved effortless. She projected it at Chaos and pictured the same result. At first nothing happened. Tifa strained, pulling in harder. She could feel the two spirits there resisting her call, entwined with one another. She was face to face with the beast by mere inches when the knot released at last.
It collapsed, and burst outward in a massive, globular shockwave laced with violet, blood-red, and black streams. The Chaos globe expanded, igniting the grasses and trees. Every living thing for miles around was incinerated, or combusted and died. The mists and ponds evaporated instantly, far too little to quench the fires.
At the epicenter of the explosion, Tifa spread her arms wide, still beckoning to Chaos' essence, and most importantly, to Vincent. She felt her feet depart from the ground as she levitated up into the fall-out, eyes closed in deep concentration. She was only half aware of the broad, violent waves of spirit energy radiating out from her as well. Realizing that she couldn't see what was going on, she peered out from her closed lids, and beheld the world below in sheer horror. She had indeed succeeded in tearing Chaos apart, but his undoing had left a massive, bleeding wound in the planet's skin. Fissures had formed in the cracked, scorched earth, and pure Lifestream trickled forth, intermingling with the darker trails that were already swirling around her. The planet was trying to heal, trying to fight the flames, but the cyclone drew up the aquamarine tendrils instead.
There should have been a cacophony of noises—whipping winds, roaring flames, and wails and roars from the creatures being immolated—but Tifa heard none of it. Entranced, all she could hear was the world itself, shrieking in agony. Its blood-curdling cries filled her senses. Again, she picked up on its pulse, fluttering wildly now in mortal terror and blind panic. Oh, how she could relate to that kind of fear!
Turning her hands downward, she tried to will away the pain she'd caused, begging the planet to keep its energy. She didn't want this and hadn't considered that trying to capture Chaos and Vincent could have such an apocalyptic outcome—they were only two beings! She had to do something, anything she could to fix the damage. It seemed to be working. The high keening from the wounded world below died back down into a low, rhythmic hum that synced up with her own heartbeat. Maybe she had its attention. Hopefully, it was listening.
"Tifa, what are you doing?" Cloud's inquiry cut through, his tone alarmed and confused.
She pushed him aside in her mind. There was no time to explain. They could hash out the details of what was going on here later. She was getting somewhere now and needed to stay concentrated on the task at hand. Just a touch more and then—Tifa screamed at what happened next. At the very peak of her focus, a bright cerulean wave of light emanated outward from where she hovered, descending to pry open the seeping fissures into gaping sinkholes. Lifestream flooded out, swiftly merging with her whirlwind, far too fast for her to think about how to stop it. The world's energy surrounded her now as a whole, spinning and writhing, deadlocked with her.
Dread gripped her. She should have known better. What had gotten into her, that she'd imagined she could pull something like this off? She couldn't even find a way to control the continuous energy-sapping effects her physical presence had on some of the weaker lifeforms here. All she'd wanted was to take just one friend back; show herself that she could safely dare to hope for more than losing again and again. That she was capable of victory at all. The price of that wish had turned out to be the worst kind of fulfilled prophecy.
Below, the formerly lush green and moist landscape had rapidly shriveled up into a gray shell of its former self, aflame in places and spotted with ember-riddled carcasses. It was truly hopeless, wasn't it? In this moment, more than anything, she wished the Lifestream would return to its body, but projecting her will onto it had done just the opposite. Destroying Chaos had inflicted a mortal wound, and now its spirit energy sought a strong, reliable vessel to carry it to its next life. With that thought, Tifa glanced around, looking for any sign that a natural Omega Weapon type of creature had emerged, but there was nothing but nothing in every direction. The only mercy was the thick layer of smoke spreading over everything, slowly blocking out her view of the carnage.
She had no control. She had no choice. Tifa stretched out a trembling hand, dipping it into the spinning energy flow. In a weak, tear-soaked whisper, she assented to what seemed inevitable— "Come in."
All at once, every companion dwelling within her psyche cried out, "Tifa, no!"
It was too late. The cyclone contracted around her, and rapidly compressed into a single point of light that drifted down through the top of her head. Inside, the Goddess' remains immediately wove into the new world's soul, but both remained separate from her own consciousness. Although it was not yet breached, she could feel that the mental barrier she'd conjured to protect her friends from merging with her or the Lifestreams she carried was now riddled with cracks.
Tifa didn't know how much longer she could maintain that separation now.
"Well done, Tifa. You will not lose yourself when the time comes. Now, follow..."