A/N: The next few chapters will contain elements of body horror.

Chapter Eleven: Outbreak

"The Cetra were attacked by the virus and went mad…transforming into monsters."

—Ifalna

Fear had always served as one of the humans' greatest motivators. Their most exploitable foible. When faced with forces beyond their shallow comprehension, they invariably fell into helpless disarray and self-sabotage. These advanced ones were still subject to the same animal impulses, doing little else with their lives than feeding and defecating, their tri-planetary empire adhered together with sins surpassing even ShinRa's. The Lifestreams from planets he destroyed lived on as part of his being, but these humans plucked them from the heavens for mere consumption, to their ultimate decay. She would be displeased, in a word, once the scope of their Mako-gluttony was laid bare. And he would show her.

But first, they needed to be afraid.

Masamune's downward swing parted space and time before him, opening a rift overlooking one of their fleets. Another swift turn and a sweeping upward slice ejected an energy blade through the gate, elongating until it stretched the full length of the oblong monstrosity he'd targeted. It bisected the craft perfectly upon impact, sparking explosions and spilling clusters of unsuspecting bodies into the vacuum. Most importantly, it kindled their fear. She was also afraid. It was dead weight sinking into the pit of her stomach, and a tight tremor gripping her spine. And there was something else. Her wrist itched and burned where she'd donned a device meant to suppress her magnetism for spirit energy, controlling it artificially.

Controlling only what they could perceive, but so be it. He had provoked their imaginations' terror, but Tifa would be the one to carry it through to madness. Perhaps she could be the one to judge them, care as she did for the stars' agony. He would not stand in her way if it came to that. When it came to that—it would, and he would guide her through it.

He had also been aware when she'd permitted Cloud a physical presence. Seething from that moment still, he yearned to remind Cloud how of impotent he remained; to draw him out and annihilate him entirely, but he would abstain for now. He'd long sensed her old compatriots' fumbling efforts to restrain her transformation and deny his presence in her mind. The former was amusing; the latter, impossible. Now, they'd instead latched onto her newfound power, hoping to manipulate it to their own ends. He wondered if she could imagine the toll that allowing Cloud or the others to borrow her form would exact upon them. If she could withstand it when the time came.

Clenching his hand into a tight fist, the rift he'd shorn open obeyed him, knitting the light years between them back into place. The time for him to breach that space was growing near, but it was not just yet. He traced the fading, jagged white line that remained with the tips of his fingers. Once the truth of her existence swallowed her up, he would fulfill his oath to be there with her. Although she'd received his words as a taunt, she'd soon behold the depth of his sincerity.

Soon, she would see him as he truly was as well.

"We got a lock on the source for about five milliseconds. We were pulling something in, but it just vanished. I don't…I've never seen…Sir, no one knows what to make of this," a shaky, cracking voice replied from Control.

"Feed us the data," Ruri ordered.

The window displaying the broad galactic map morphed into a more localized view, splitting into several panes with different visual readouts and endless, streaming lists of numerical measurements. Each one showed its own version of an elliptical hotspot that had erupted from a single point, fired off the beam they'd all witnessed, and then blinked out as if it hadn't been there—not a rapid retreat; it was simply gone.

"It's almost like an entire sun just popped in, fired off a solar flare at us for shits and giggles, and then said, 'oh, never mind'. Tifa, is this what that guy does? This is what we're up against?" Aron protested, unable to mask his dismay. "That big boy out there was fully shielded, too…"

A bag of rocks dropped into her stomach. Renewed tension crawled its way up her back, clamping down on her shoulders and wiring a fresh kink into her neck. "Maybe he left once he saw you had something that could hurt him," Tifa offered. She so wanted to believe it was possible, but faith escaped her. What could stop Sephiroth from peeking through space like that again and again, flaying off chunks of their fleet, their station—everything—until they were left completely adrift and defenseless? Come to think of it, all he really had to do was destroy the siphon cannons. Why hadn't he?

"This—this—is not a small amount of energy," Nia squealed. Swiping frantically at one of the window tablets, he continued, "Three of the reserve tankers are near capacity! We'll have to test its viability because of the unusual source, but we may have extracted enough tectonic energy to power all three stations for a year."

Della crossed her arms and sighed, "Admiral Nia, sir, that's wonderful news, but please do try to remember that energy already has a body count."

"Real progress is priceless, Lieutenant Emila," he sang out.

Not wanting in on the ensuing argument; not wanting to have to explain how it all came at such a dire cost, Tifa wandered back to the table and plopped down where she'd been sitting before. She wanted to sucker-punch Nia for his callousness; for dredging up all the wrong people from her memory. But he had delivered good news, if only incidentally. Those mobile Mako reactors really could damage Sephiroth and had very possibly landed a critical blow in less than a second. If that wasn't cause for something resembling hope, then nothing was. She had known that killing him was going to be hard. Complicated. She had known this. It had to come with a price; he of all people wasn't just going to let himself be shot out of the sky—or rather, dissolved from it. With him, it could never be a cut-and-dry assassination. It had to be a war. Still, she couldn't stop thinking of how many people that first volley alone might have murdered. How many hearts and minds were going to be shattered because she had led him here? She had no right not to count the cost.

As if to bolster her remorse, Santri motioned out the window, disrupting Della and Nia before their verbal scuffle could grow too hot-headed. "But is this going to be the result we can expect every time? If this entity can withdraw so quickly, what's to say he won't have fully regrouped for next time? We need to study what happened out there so we can prepare a defense that actually works, and I think we need to figure out how to entrap him…How and where do we even begin?"

"And we have no clue what kind of timetable we're working with," Aron added evenly, but the sweaty sheen that had formed on his brow remained.

Ruri scratched his chin, zoning out in front of the maps and charts as if trying to absorb them by osmosis. "As a precaution," he slowly uttered, "we should bring any remaining personnel inside. No one boards a vessel unless they're assigned for travel within the half hour." Then, he turned to Tifa. "Miss, I think you owe us a drink. After what we've all seen here today, unbroken sobriety would be a bridge too far."

"I could actually go for a few myself," Tifa agreed, "but I can't just stand and watch. Is there going to be a rescue mission for the people out there?"

"Of course," Ruri grunted. "I'll leave it up to the Lieutenant whether or not your assistance is necessary."

Della gave a nod. "There's going to be extensive injuries with a mess like that. We'll take all the help we can get."

The ship that Sephiroth had cut was unironically called The Egg. A freighter used to ferry standard dry foodstuffs from the planets to their stations, it contained nothing lethal. A large company of Privates and under-graduated cadets were usually stationed there in rotating week-long shifts, loading and unloading freight between training operations. Della's initial briefing revealed that The Egg's shields had immediately reactivated after its destruction, forming invisible walls for both sides of its exposed innards, allowing them to restore pressure and maintain a steady oxygen supply for the survivors. Automated anti-fire measures had snuffed out all but the rare ember here and there. As wreckage went, it was neatly contained, but regretfully, the group that had been on board during the attack had been preparing to disembark, gathered at docking bays located in the center of the ship's underbelly.

Tifa didn't need it spelled out for her—those emergency measures had done nothing for the fact that the crew been huddled directly in the line of fire. Just as they did nothing for the bodies that drifted past the shuttle as they approached. She wasn't allowed to wonder how the frozen, mortified faces that drew too close got that way. They couldn't erase the stray, frenzied green wisps of spirit energy darting about, reverberating with life's final horror and searching in vain for a home. Anyone the attack had ejected into the void—more than those it hadn't—had probably known for all of two endless minutes that they were going to die.

"It's bullshit, but at least they didn't suffer much. Space is quick," Cid grumbled. Tifa knew he was trying to console her, but right now, she didn't care. She didn't care how fast they had or hadn't met their demise. The bodies' icy rigor mortis didn't hide how young their faces were. Most of them had just barely finished growing up.

"Cid," she shot inwardly, a warning.

"Yeah…well, just try not to go blaming yourself this time around. War always has casualties. All you can do is make sure you're fightin' for the right reasons. Shit, right now, I don't think there is a wrong reason," he replied.

Tifa frowned. It was too late for that argument to work on her. She already felt unbearably guilty; she hadn't escaped the notion that she was using these people. Old emotional nerve damage resurfaced—memories of when she'd fought with Avalanche—and she felt sick. People were dying, and it was in part because she was here. In the surrounding carnage, she couldn't help but wonder what it must feel like to be one of these cadets' parents, looking back on their tenth birthday, and in place of happy memories, seeing nothing but an unfair, cruel halfway point. But they'd all die if she didn't fight back, and she couldn't do it without their help.

"I shouldn't say it got cracked, but with things this terrible, you have to try to keep a sense of humor," Della yammered, her words laced with nervous laughter.

"At least it was hard-boiled…" Tifa sighed, forcing herself to play along. She wasn't innocent of laughing at her own terror on a rare occasion, but unlike Della, those moments were when she most felt like her mind was slipping. Those times, she could feel how badly the insanity wanted her all for its own, offering itself to her for relief—maybe as the only way she could ever know peace again. There was a temptation in it, because it would almost certainly mean an end. An incomprehensible end, but an end all the same.

Della sniffled and stared at Tifa. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her cheeks streaked wet. "A bit overdone, though. Most of the yolk-stuff crumbled up and fell out. What do we do about that?"

She cast her eyes to the floor, but Della's petrified face was already burned into her mind. "Fire the chef, hopefully."

"Please, please promise me that you don't work in the same kitchen," she whimpered and then started cackling again, overcome with anger. "This whole thing is stupid. 'The kitchen', honestly…You did try to warn us. You really did."

"I'm sorry I didn't try harder…"

Della was wrong. She could have said so much more to begin with, using herself as hard evidence, but she'd been too afraid. Even while she swore that she'd do anything to defend her new-found companions, she'd been anxiety-ridden over what could happen to her in the process. She was terrified that if she dared to look at herself without compromise, inside and out, she'd be forced to agree with Sephiroth that her humanity was no more and lose her will to go on. What should have mattered most was what befell everyone else, not her. Her desire to protect everyone should have overpowered any need to belong. Again, she'd fallen into a trap of selfish conceit, too busy grieving over a life she could probably never have again or waxing bitter that it would feel misplaced if the opportunity ever arose.

She'd always been that way to one degree or another, never fully able to work it out. There were times that had been better than others, but she was no saint. Not the kind of person this situation so desperately needed. Sure, she cared about helping people. She cared about stopping evil from taking another step forward. Deep down, though, there was always something she wanted for herself even more; reasons for doing the right thing that weren't pretty. Every time, that's what made her go about it all wrong—too reckless and violent or too reticent—and people got hurt. They died. Including Gaia—

"Oh stop it," Della snapped, straightening up. "I know that face. Penitence looks miserably ugly on you."

Tifa recoiled. "What?"

"You heard me. Stop torturing yourself. Stop worrying about being messy or impure or what-have-you. You've damn well earned it. And you were right, you know? We would have thought half of what you had to say was rubbish. There was nothing more you could have done. Not realistically." Abruptly, she stopped and threw her arms around Tifa's neck. "Look, if we both live through this scary shit, I'll help you settle somewhere. Make sure you're treated right and get you whatever you need to reacclimate."

Biting her lower lip and pinching her eyes shut hard, Tifa returned her embrace.

It was surreal, mixing and pouring drinks after having helped to move the wounded and bag up dead bodies. Despite the destruction they had to wade through, and the harsh unease painted on every face, the work had gone quickly. Space-walking construction crews had assembled at a moment's notice, working between the station and The Egg to build a sort of evacuation tunnel connecting both halves directly to the station's medical ward. A dual set of tracks ferried stretchers and carts loaded with patients or other implements back and forth through the tunnel without delay. Tifa had never seen such efficiency. Neither had she seen a state of shock quite like what the injured suffered. Everyone she'd met came off as delirious. Euphoric, even.

One man had blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth. His gray eyes had glazed over by the time she was able set him down, and he was trying to reach out for her even though he had a badly broken arm. "Oh, is it you? It is you! But how…?"

He'd been mystified and gleeful to see her. Disturbingly so. Maybe he'd been hallucinating and had mistaken her for someone else, Tifa reasoned. If she had to guess, it was probably someone he hadn't seen in a long time.

There was a young girl, a cadet not quite out of her teens with a deep laceration along her ribcage. She had staunched her bleeding as best she could with gauze until medics could come by and mend the wound properly. "I thought…I thought they weren't real…but look at you. So beautiful…"

Maybe she'd been trying to flirt to keep her wits about her? Her broken speech had come across vaguely like some of passes Tifa used to receive from her less than courteous customers back at Seventh Heaven. At least she hadn't been too rude about it—just really, really unfiltered.

An older woman had her sternum crushed under heavy debris. She couldn't talk and her breathing was labored. But as Tifa had adjusted her into the support cart that would take her to the hospital, she'd cupped her face with tremor-wracked hands. After only a few moments' contact, her eyes flickered shut and she'd fallen comatose.

Tifa eyed the shot she'd just poured for Aron and downed it herself instead of sliding it over to him. Bitter and not exactly the highest quality stuff, the tell-tale burn as it traversed her esophagus let her know it would do the trick nonetheless, and not politely. She filled a second round and considered stealing it as well but decided against it. She only wanted to take the edge off, not get totally plastered.

"Thanks, Tifa," he grumbled, seemingly not minding that she'd taken the first one.

"So, Admirals, what will it be?" she asked Ruri and Santri. Della was busy at the medical ward, where the situation was naturally all-hands-on-deck. Nia had opted not to come, far too engrossed in setting up tests for the energy they'd leeched from what she thought had been Sephiroth. She was still certain it was him, but hours had passed without another attack, and her mind remained blissfully clear save for her own harried thoughts and the occasional quip from her friends. What was he waiting for?

"Please, 'Kalle' and 'Nessia' will do. We're off duty for the next eight hours. Or at least until something else designed to endure theoretical bombardment gets sliced in half. I only ask that you give me mine first," Ruri said. "As for what, surprise me."

Nessia pointed to a caramel-colored glass flagon on the top shelf behind Tifa. "No, me first. That's Nia's stash. Just give me the damned bottle. If he can't be bothered to show up for a little camaraderie after a day like today, he deserves to lose his drink."

Standing on the tips of her toes to reach it, Tifa retrieved the bottle and passed it down, daring to wonder aloud, "What's up with that guy, anyway?

Nessia rubbed her temples. "What isn't up with him, you mean? He earned his position through performance as much as any of us, but...ugh."

"Sometimes men like Admiral Nia are a necessary evil," Kalle finished for her.

Setting down a double shot glass containing some freshly squeezed citrus and what smelled enough to her like mint, Tifa wiped her hands off and carefully contemplated what she'd say next. Nia inspired a sense of foreboding the likes of which she hadn't felt in a long, long time. It was a creepy flavor of apprehension, making her feel like she needed to watch her back constantly. She could already tell that the Research Admiral was a twisted, self-absorbed man. He very much enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and his priorities made no room for others' well-being, but that was only the surface. What could he be hiding beneath all that showy arrogance? What did he do when no one was looking? Arguing based only on a bad feeling wouldn't work, so she settled on, "That kind of thinking didn't work out so well back home."

The air hung heavy, and no one answered her for a long moment. Nessia took a deep swig from Nia's bottle. Aron handed his glass back for a refill. Kalle sipped the fruity concoction she'd made, smacking his lips for the sour taste and nodding his approval. Tifa idly wiped up stray spilled droplets from the counter, second-guessing whether it was worth chiding them at all.

"Unfortunately," Nessia began, "that's beyond our purview. We can report unethical behavior of course, but he's promoted nothing but sycophants since the central government gave him command of Research three years ago. We can't report what we don't know. He's effectively shielded."

"So he is…they always are," Tifa hummed, scowling.

Once Sephiroth was out of the picture, her personal battle would be over. She only had to figure out what she was going to do with herself, a daunting question on its own. At the same time, the rest of humanity seemed dead set on spiraling through the same old mistakes endlessly. Their predictable reliance on the worst people for expertise, regardless of their overt cruelty and disregard for life. Their continued insistence on supplanting wisdom in favor of cynicism to try to justify it all. She was tired enough already. She didn't want to stick around and watch them nearly self-destruct again and again throughout the ages, until eventually they went too far.

Ages. It really would be that long, wouldn't it? If she was turning into something like Jenova, death wouldn't come naturally. The easiest solution she could probably hope for was to get caught in the sights of a Mako siphoning cannon and let it consume her life as well, dying a death from which there could be no rebirth. Her energy wouldn't become another person, someone's cat, or even just flowers and grass after that. She needed to think of something else. There had to be a better option than allowing her soul, and especially those she loved, to be manufactured into the meaningless, lifeless radioactive soup that powered a turbine somewhere.

Tifa's breath hitched at that, a morose angle she'd failed to consider coming into focus.

She continued dragging the damp cloth up and down the counter on autopilot, disguising her rising panic by chasing down imaginary specks of dust. There was no escaping the excruciating truth: If the Mako siphons were what finished off Sephiroth, wasn't that exactly what she was doing to the rest of Gaia or any of the other planets he'd slain—turning them into fuel? Discarding the rag, she clutched the cheap liquor bottle by the neck with white knuckles and chugged three huge gulps. How had she missed something so obvious?

"A necessary sacrifice, mayhap. Hopefully the very last of its kind," Genesis quietly interrupted.

Forgetting herself, Tifa slammed the bottle down and spat, "Necessary?" She was getting tired of that excuse, and the kind of inebriation she'd need to let it slide was suddenly beyond her.

Kalle, Nessia, and Aron all looked up from their drinks, startled.

The bar's door chose the next second to swing open and slam into the wall, saving Tifa from having to explain her outburst. Della barged in on them, panting heavily and dripping with sweat. Her bare arms and face were covered in red, bubbling splotches. "Something's wrong with The Egg's survivors," she cried out and collapsed, convulsing.

"Lieutenant!" Kalle barked and pounced up to go check on her.

Tifa vaulted over the counter as well, rushing to her side. Crouching down, she saw fresh streaks of blood oozing from her eyes and ears. The blisters on her arms and face were visibly multiplying, piling one atop another as if her skin was boiling. Aghast, she edged away, and one of the pustules on Della's arms burst. From the crater left in its wake, a gelatinous, opalescent whip-like appendage lashed out, wrapping itself around Tifa's irritated wrist. Pulling taut as if to reel her in, it emitted a sticky slurping noise. On her feet again, she wrenched her arm hard, uncoiling and detaching it with a painful wet snap, but it continued to flail in her direction, twisting and groping. She ran back behind the bar for distance, hearing a sound like someone stomping on a sheet of bubble wrap as she went. Peering up over the counter, she watched several more of the whips explode from Della's back and shape themselves into spindly, leggy structures, propping her up so that her feet hung inches from the floor.

Della lifted a weak arm and pointed at Tifa. "It's…marked…it's…with you…," she gurgled out, mucosal fluids churning over her voice.

Slow and deliberate, Aron freed his sidearm and trained it on Della. "Della, what's going on? What does this have to do with Tifa?"

Almost completely glazed over with blood, her eyes rolled around lazily in her head. The tentacled protrusions rupturing from all over her body continued unabated, puncturing holes through her clothes and slipping out from beneath them. "…Heh..ha..ha….We all…to be closer, closer…"

Tifa pressed her wrist tightly to her side. "I don't know…Della, what do you mean 'closer'?"

Della's head only slumped forward in response, and her body fell limp. She didn't answer. Most of the translucent ropes not holding her up had started to constrict around her body, encasing her arms, legs, and torso. They coiled around her neck and slithered over her face. They slipped into her mouth and forced their way up through her nose and into her ears, snapping the cartilage. Her throat gave a tiny, helpless peep as they coursed down into her lungs, simultaneously asphyxiating and drowning her. Rivulets of blood and bile seeped from between the layers, while anything not acting as legs or crushing her still undulated freely, grasping about for a warm target.

"I've seen enough," Nessia snarled, whipped out her own pistol, and promptly fired three rounds into Della's forehead.

Aron lowered his weapon and averted his eyes.

Kalle rejoined them at the bar from an opposite corner of the room, his eyes bulging at Nessia in angry shock.

"Don't look at me like that, Ruri. She was already dead, and you know it."

Sinewy tendrils still suspended the body, but they had stopped moving. In an instant, they'd solidified into a hard, rubber-like substance. What was left of Della now looked like someone's grotesque idea for a mummy, save for the very top of her face. The crimson glaze that had overtaken her eyes had drained, leaving wide open the only sign of how frightened she'd been.

Once more, Tifa approached her. She brushed the red locks of hair that hung down around Della's face behind her ears. Covering her mouth, she tried to suppress the wailing sob that crawled its way up, but to no avail. Della had wanted to help her have a future again, and while she no longer really felt that she could, it had meant so much. So very much. She could have made an amazing friend. Withdrawing her hand, she caught a glimpse of her rash, peeking out from just underneath the bangle. Not too much worse for wear, it hadn't spread, but was now weeping a clear, odorless liquid.

In her crazed stupor, Della had said something about being 'marked'. And the survivors in the medical ward were sick too…

Tifa's head was spinning.

"I think Sephiroth's attack might have contaminated The Egg," she pronounced before she could think twice, lying about her foremost suspicion. While inhibiting her radiation, she feared that the bangle or maybe her reaction to it had come with a grisly side effect no one had anticipated.

…Or would this have happened either way? Was she already so far gone from being truly human—so incompatible with humanity—that she'd become an uncontrollable hazard to them? She shuddered and pounded one fist sideways into the nearby wall, clenching her fingers so hard that her nails bit into her palm. No. No, she refused to believe that. She refused to accept that. It was too soon to jump to that kind of horrendous conclusion. Nothing about her own appearance had changed so drastically. She would just have to be careful not to touch anyone else until she could have the rash checked out.

Kalle checked his sidearm, grumbling something unintelligible under his breath. "Thankfully, the other stations have already been warned of an imminent threat. I will update them to include a potential bio-agent. Our next step here is to check the medical ward."