Aeris's Resurrection Part 3
"I thought you said she was dead!" Cloud exclaimed.
"For her own protection!" Prett yelled back. "But now that I know why you want to see her, I can take you to her."
"But it's the middle of the night!" Tifa protested. "Shouldn't we get some sleep first?"
"Yeah, I'm tired." Aeris agreed, yawning.
"No. We're going now. I really don't give a damn what time it is, okay? Now are we going or not?" Prett demanded angrily, her hands on her hips.
Cloud shot an angry look in Tifa's direction before turning to Prett. "Let's get going," he said, offering her a tiny smile.
"Good. Now follow me." Prett said. She led them to her garage to get her motorcycle, a shiny black Harley. "I'm not going to leave this behind." Prett explained as she led them back towards the cemetery, floating her motorcycle a few feet behind them using her mind.
"Um...I'm kind of still soaked," Aeris said as they neared the graveyard. "Can't I change or anything?"
"Too late," Prett replied coldly. They were already at the cemetery and Prett saw no need to turn around.
She led them through the cemetery, to the town, and out of it, being sure to stay quiet so as not to wake anyone. "Now which one's yours?" Prett asked, motioning towards the cars in the parking lot.
Vincent proudly led her to his Jaguar and unlocked it, but Prett seemed unimpressed. A little frustrated, Vincent instructed Cloud, Aeris, and Tifa to get in, and they willingly obeyed.
After Prett saw that everyone had gotten into Vincent's car, Prett swung one leg over her motorcycle and started it up, motioning for the others to follow her. Then she drove off.
"Where are we going?" Aeris asked Vincent sleepily.
"I don't know," Vincent answered honestly. He was pretty sure that Prett would take them to Sage Katrina, but in the deepest corners of his mind, he was hoping that she wasn't leading them into some sort of a trap.
To everyone's surprise, Prett stopped right in front of Cid's airship.
"Well, we're here," Prett told them.
"How'd you know where it was?" Vincent asked increduously.
"I have my ways." Prett smiled, amused.
"What a nice...er...thing!" Aeris exclaimed, jumping out of the car.
"Why did you bring us here?" Cloud demanded angrily. "I thought that you said that you were taking us to see Sage Katrina!"
Prett looked at him with a look of absolute boredom on her face. "Calm down, Mr.Strife. My mother lives in Alamsy and that is too far to drive. Besides, your friends were beginning to get worried." She walked towards the airship, leaving Cloud to stare at her with his mouth hanging open. "Next time," Prett called out, "perhaps you should think before you speak."
Then a silver object came flying into Tifa's hands. "What the hell-"
"Put my motorcycle away, please, Tifa?" Prett asked.
"Oh, keys." Tifa got on the bike and followed Vincent into the built-in garage on the side of the airship. Good thing Cid had this thing renovated, she thought.
When Tifa and Vincent got into the airship and went into the cockpit section, everyone was already sitting down, waiting for an explanation, apparently waiting for Tifa and Vincent, too.
Once Cloud noticed that Vincent and Tifa had arrived, he told everyone about how Aeris had been brought back to life and what they needed to do to return her to normal.
Yuffie regarded Prett skeptically at the mention of telekinesis, but silently agreed wholeheartedly that they should journey to Alamsy to see Sage Katrina. Who knew what kinds of materia they might have there! Then another thought struck her, one so appealing that she had to voice it aloud: "Holy shit! If Prett can do all those things that you guys mentioned, do you know how easy it would be to acquire new materia?" Yuffie's eyes glistened at the prospect.
"Shu' up, foo'!" Barret yelled, and Yuffie meekly obeyed so Cloud could finish his retelling.
Aeris had looked puzzled through entire relation of the tale, so she excused herselrf now to go to find the bathroom. She smelt like seawater and she wanted to go shower. (Yes, the new and improved Highwind did have a shower.)
After Aeris left, Cloud finished the tale without anymore interruptions. Then he looked towards the other members of their small group for advice on what they should do.
"Yeah, we should go to Alamsy. And let Prett stay with us. Let's not forget what I said earlier!" Yuffie said, her eyes beginning to sparkle again.
"And she can move things with her mind. That would be helpful. Imagine how good she must be with materia!" Cait Sith exclaimed.
"You don't need materia, do you?" Cloud asked.
Prett shook her head. "I can summon up the effects in my mind. Mother taught me that type of sorcery too."
"More materia for ME! Give her share of materia to me!" Yuffie exclaimed, delighted. Not only were they getting a new member who could help get materia, they were getting a new member who would not need materia! Life is sweet, Yuffie thought.
Red XIII was a little concerned about allowing Pretticina into the group but didn't voice his opinion. He had some doubts about her. What if she was just playing them along, using her mind to control them like...like puppets, as Sephiroth had controlled Cloud? The idea made him uneasy and he dared not mention it to the others, who had accepted Prett wholeheartedly, if only a little hesitantly.
As Red XIII was considering these thoughts, Aeris poked her head out of the bathroom door. "You know what? I have absolutely nothing to wear. Can I borrow something?" She gave them all a tiny smile.
"Yeah, wear Vincent's ensemble!" Yuffie yelled, and started laughing hysterically, picturing Aeris in a black cape and Vincent's clothes. Vincent just shot her a dirty look, but Yuffie was too hysterical to notice.
Tifa sighed. Though she too would love to see Aeris wearing Vincent's clothes, she supposed that she would have to come to the rescue again. "I suppose you can borrow one of my outfits." Tifa walked into a small room on the airship and emerged with a set of clothing identical to what she was wearing. She handed this to Aeris, who thanked her sincerely and promised to return the favor someday. By stealing Cloud from me? Tifa thought bitterly before walking back to join the others.
"But now this leads us to another problem," Prett said in a matter-of-fact sort of tone. "Where are me and Aeris gonna sleep?"
"Da livin' room?" Barret suggested.
"Isn't it a good thing that I had this airship redesigned?" Cid asked the group, gazing fondly at his airship.
"Oh my god! Did Cid just say a sentence without swearing?" Yuffie asked, laughing hysterically again.
"He never does when he talks about his airship," Tifa muttered.
"So we're going to Alamsy tomorrow?" Prett asked irritably. She was beginning to tire of this nonsense.
"Yeah, we should rest before heading towards another town." Cloud nodded.
"Well, see you all tomorrow!" Tifa yelled as she walked off into a room in the airship. The others began to follow suit, but Prett stopped Vincent before he could leave.
"I want to talk to you," Prett told him, stopping him in his tracks. "Tell Aeris where your room is, you can sleep on the couch or the floor; I really don't give a damn, but you stay here, because I don't expect Aeris to stay up while we talk, and I don't expect our talk to be very short. Got all that?" Vincent nodded, and Prett nodded back curtly. "Good. Aeris, go to Vincent's room."
"Where?" Aeris asked, and Vincent pointed. Aeris shot Prett and Vincent a strange look, wondering why they wanted her out of here, but she left without asking any questions, slamming the door as she entered the room.
Vincent looked at Prett expectantly. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
"Your life," Prett replied simply, as if the subject in question had no more meaning than asking him what he wanted for breakfast.
Vincent looked at her, shocked. "My life?"
"Yeah, you remind me of myself." Prett looked into his eyes, trying to get the information. "I want to know why."
"It's a long story. I'll tell it to you some other day," Vincent said, not meaning to keep his promise, but not wanting to tell Prett about Lucrecia. How the hell would she know what it felt like, anyways? And why did she care?
Prett seemed surprised. "Haven't you noticed some similarities between us?" Vincent deftly avoided her prying eyes. "Because I have, and I think that I know what you've been through. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I care about you or anything, but I was just wondering why." Vincent still made no reply.
"Maybe I should start," Prett mused. "Maybe after you hear my story, you'll want to tell your own."
"Maybe that's a good idea," Vincent agreed.
"But I have one question: will you tell me what happened to you if I talk first?" Prett asked him, raising one eyebrow.
"I'm not making any promises," Vincent replied simply.
Prett was silent for a while, contemplating whether or not she should tell him the fact behind the fiction. She wanted to know what had happened to him(she didn't really know why she wanted to know this; she just did), but she was afraid to tell him the truth. The truth might lead to her getting kicked out of their little group, and Prett didn't want that to happen. Her brows furrowed in frustration and she ran a hand through her hair. "I've made up my mind. I'm going to tell you," Prett told Vincent. She irritatedly brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes before speaking. "Before I start, there are four things that you should know. 1) This takes place around the time that my mother was hanged. 2) My mother allowed herself to become a Shinra specimen in exchange for my safety and so that I would never have to comply and become part of Hojo's experimentations. 3) I had a pet dragon that my mother never knew about."
While she had been speaking, Prett had been undoing the laces of the boot on her right foot. Now she pulled it off, and pointed to a dragon tattoo on her ankle. "I got this done because the dragon is my family's symbol, or guardian. That is the fourth thing that you need to know-that the dragon is supposed to be our guardian. With that said, I can start.
"A day in March, I was out playing with my dragon-Bahamut, named after the GF-when I heard a scream. I told Bahamut to wait for me and scrambled down the little hill that we were on and over a log to investigate. When I was comfortably settled on the log, I looked down. I saw Steve (he was one of my friends and two years younger). Two other men were with him, both dressed in blue suits. They asked him something, and I heard my mother's name mentioned, but since I was so high up, I couldn't exactly hear right.
"Luckily for me, they asked Steve again. The poor boy, meanwhile, was frozen with fear. They demanded that he tell them where Sage Katrina was. He tried to answer, but couldn't get his mouth to function correctly. I had a mind to go down there and kick the crap out of those two men (even at the age of 12, I was an excellent student), but something held me back. That something was what saved my life...and ended Steve's.
"I would've jumped down and helped but intuition held me back. The split second after I decided to remain where I was, a man in a white lab coat stepped into my viewpoint. It was Hojo, the one man that I hated with all my heart, though in the course of my life, more would join him. Hojo was also the only man in that point of my life that I was entirely afraid of. I never trusted him, and I don't think that my mother did, either, though she did become his specimen for a couple of years.
"But, anyways, back to the story. Hojo had stepped out, and he looked into Steve's eyes. I knew then that Steve wouldn't talk no matter what. If I was afraid of Hojo, Steve would be terrified. He was more easily scared than I was, and one look into those cold, mean eyes would settle it for him. I looked down at the three men and the one small boy, wondering what Hojo wanted with my mother. Her years with him were finished. She had allowed them to do research, so they should just leave her alone!
"Then Hojo said something, and everything grew suddenly quiet, so that I could hear his words clearly and perfectly. 'Give the boy 10 seconds,' he told the two men. 'If he doesn't start talking, shoot him.'
"Up on my log, I suddenly grew afraid for Steve. The seconds ticked by, and though Steve made many attempts to speak, he was unable to. Now I wanted desperately to help, but I knew that it would be too late. I couldn't get down to the clearing in less than ten seconds, and my magic attacks weren't strong enough to reach them. If I had wanted to help, I should've gone down earlier. Tears began to blur my vision as I realized that I would have to watch my best childhood friend be executed right in front of my eyes.
"You don't have to, I told myself, and I listened. I turned and ran, not caring if they saw me, just knowing that I must escape this place as soon as possible. I didn't hear any gunshots, but I heard Hojo's command. He told the men to use Fire or Ice materia to kill Steve. He said that he didn't want it to look as if the Turks or Shinra had anything to do with the boy's death. I heard what sounded to me like fire, and even from where I stood, I could feel the heat at my back.
"That was when I lost my train of conscious thought. Now all that mattered was getting home safe, forgetting this day. I ran, crashing through bushes and running through puddles that lay in my path. My arms and legs were badly scraped up, but I didn't really care. I couldn't get the image of Steve-burnt to a crisp-out of my head. How could Hojo be so heartless, I asked myself as new tears formed in my eyes. He just executed Steve right on the spot, not caring about Steve's friends...or family, without even knowing who Steve was! Then he actually decided that he wanted to cover it up!
"Now, you have to remember that I was sobbing and crying my eyes out, so I had no idea where I was headed. I was lucky all of this time, but what I did was unavoidable. I ended up tripping over a rock, falling and bashing my head on something or another, and I blacked out.
"Bahamut was the one who woke me that night. In the pale moonlight, I could see blood all over my arms and legs from numerous little scratches. My shirt and shorts were torn. Basically, I was a mess. Then I brushed my hair out of my face and brought back my hand soaked with blood. I gingerly touched my forehead and felt a big gash there that still hadn't quite finished bleeding. All this time, Bahamut had been licking my cuts, trying to take the blood away. I was terrified, but somehow having Bahamut with me helped to calm my fears. He would make everything all right, I knew he would, because dragons were my family's guardians, so my dragon would have to protect me.
"I threw my arms around his neck and just...wept for hours. I don't quite remember the line of events that night, but I must've healed myself sometime that night, because when I woke the next day, I was still bloody, but there were no more cuts on me. Even though I wasn't really thinking clearly that morning, I decided to wash myself off as best as I could. Nothing could really be done about my torn shirt and shorts, but that would be acceptable since I was playing in the woods all night. Of course, I had no idea what I would tell my mother, but I knew that I would have to head back soon, like about now.
"So I patted Bahamut on the head and thanked him for staying with me, went to a stream, washed myself off as good as I could under the conditions, then headed back to town. Apparently someone (probably Hojo had informed had already found Steve's body, and a puppy had just been born with two heads, so they had decided to execute my mother while I lay sleeping in the woods.
"No one saw me enter the village save my mother and Gerald, the guy that I was sort of dating at the time. My mother had a rope around her neck and a chair beneath her feet, and I guessed that they were about to pull the chair out from other her. When she saw me, she just smiled, regardless of her impending death. Gerald was the one who would have to kick the chair away, and he sent me a look of such sadness and pain that I pitied him and wondered what kind of a town I was living in that would make a thirteen year old boy commit murder.
"Anyhow, my mother was killed right in front of my eyes. As she hung there, I began to cry, and people began to notice. I guess they felt bad or something, so they began to leave...guiltily. When everyone had left and I was alone with my mother, I decided that she shouldn't just be left there to hang, even if she was dead. So I climbed up there, put the chair under her feet again, and cut the rope. She fell to the ground, regardless of the chair.
"Then I thought to myself, What if she isn't really dead? I leaned over, summoning all of my powers, and just kneeled over her body, concentrating my energy into her still form. I could bring her back, I knew that I could, and I knew that I would. I don't know how I did it, but I somehow brought her back to life, if she had ever lost her life, and she just looked at me for a while.
"'We should leave,' she told me, and I nodded.
"'I would,' I replied, 'if I didn't have business here.'
"She nodded, neither of us really knowing what we were talking about but both knowing that she would have to leave...and I would have to stay. She told me that she would have to leave now, and stroked my hair lovingly. She thanked me for bringing her back, and before she left, she said one last thing to me. It was that thing which made me sort of give up some of the guilt that I had harbored. She told me that I had learned all that I needed to know from her.
"That may be very hard to understand for you, but it was a great achievement for me. After all of those years of studying, I had finally graduated. So when she went home to get my 2-year old sis, Stacie, I decided that I would take on Hojo. I would make him pay for what he did, and so I ran in the direction of where I thought that he would have headed.
"As I suspected, he was looking for me, but it was me that found him outside of town. He looked happy to see me, but I wasn't happy to see him. We fought, and I won, but I didn't kill Hojo. I just succeeded in injuring him and he ran away, the two Turks following him. I won't tell you the specifics of our battle, because that's not really important. All I can say is that I scared him pretty badly, and he left me alone after that. But even through all of these years, I haven't really given up the guilt of watching my friend die before me...and not even doing anything about it." Prett was finished with her tale now and looked at Vincent to see his reaction.
"The Turks...the ones that killed Steve...what were their names?" Vincent asked, recalling a similar chain of events from his past.
"I don't think that I need to tell you that, do I?" Prett asked. "I can see it written all over your face." She laughed softly. "Funny, isn't it? That you were one of the Turks who helped to ruin my life. But don't worry, I don't hold it against you. It's the Shinra's fault, and..." She stopped, forgetting what she was about to say. "What's your story? I sense that you have one. I've gotten mines off my chest, what about you?"
"You know that I was in the Turks, that's just one horror story out of many that I've been involved in. We just did that sort of thing...because it was our jobs. I was doing that all of my life, not wanting to get too close to anyone because you never know what job will come next." Vincent walked to the window in the Highwind and looked out of it into the still night. He, unlike Prett, had no desire to watch her reaction throughout his story. But he would make it as short as possible.
"One day, all of my plans changed. I fell in love with a scientist-Lucrecia. I'm not sure if she loved me too, but she married Hojo. That was my sin, to not have been able to prevent that, knowing that there would be drastic consequences. I tried-did everything in my power, but it was impossible to stop them. Then they wanted to do an experiment, and I was against that, too, but they didn't listen to me. They said that they were both scientists and that they were able to handle the consequences. I shouldn't have believed them." Vincent shook his head. "Well, because they refused to listen to me, Lucrecia and Hojo had a kid-Sephiroth. Hojo allowed Professor Gast to perform all kinds of experiments on Sephiroth, injecting him with Jenova cells, and Sephiroth grew up to be a psycho killer who ended up trying to destroy the world.
"All these years, I've blamed myself for Sephiroth's existence. If only I had prevented Lucrecia from marrying Hojo, but she told me that it was for the sake of science. Life just went by as a sort of non-existent blur since then, and somewhere along the line, Hojo gave me this. I think that it was after he shot me and performed a strange experiment on me that allows me to transform into different beasts. That is the punishment for my sin." He held up his clawed hand. "Then later, I met up with Lucrecia. She wanted so much just to live a normal life. She never even held Sephiroth after his birth. The poor lady was so attached to Sephiroth, and there was no way that we could save him. That's when the guilt came back. It's been with me ever since. Why wasn't I able to prevent Sephiroth's birth? If only I had, Lucrecia... But anyways, there you have it, the shortened version of my story."
"Wow," Prett said. "So Hojo ruined your life, too? God, I hate that jackass. The only regrets I have are of not being able to kill him myself. Of course, I have no desire to relive the entire thing, but...you know what I mean, don't you? I wish that I could just go back, and kill him...before my mother...before you and Lucrecia...well, before all of this happened. But...I can't. There's no spell in the world that can allow me to do that. So I just have to do the second best thing. Just live my life, and...and don't let him ruin what's left of it. You need to do that, too, Vincent. Just forget him. Just forget Lucrecia. Just forget the Turks. But I know that's impossible. Hell, I've had seven years to do it, and I haven't been able to."
She shook her head. "I don't know what to do, but, just try. It's the best way, instead of trying to deal with the guilt. You helped to kill him, didn't you? But that won't take it away, I know that it won't." She laughed again. "It's strange how both of our lives are intertwined in this way. Hojo causes my mother's death, you were there, and Hojo ruined your...girlfriend(?)'s life."
Wanting to change the subject, Vincent checked his watch. He was surprised to see that over an hour had passed. "We...I think that we need to get to sleep."
Prett nodded in agreement. "I won't sleep easy tonight, though. Calling up old memories will bring them up in more detail in my dreams." Prett took off her left boot and put it with the other side. "You can have the couch." She walked over to the chocobo room (which now doubled as a closet, also) and grabbed a sleeping bag. "I'll take the floor."
Vincent was more than happy to comply. He supposed that Prett was right. Was right about everything. But he knew that he too, would be troubled by memories tonight. He pulled the blanket over him. He'd be happy as soon as this day was gotten over with.