FF7 Heartstrings
Vincent Unleashed
by TacomaSquall
Part 2
Darkness coated the throne hall of Lord Tenarrus. The absence of light covered all in its mantle. To those whose sight is based in the spectrum of visible light, darkness has but one color – ebon black. But there are other spectra of vision, and in one of those, darkness is as variegated in its hues as the spectrum of visible light is to human eyes. Four pairs of eyes were watching their Lord through a mirrored portal of scintillating obsidian, watching their Lord as he began the opening gambit of his endgame.
The watchers were displeased, for they were the instruments of Tenarrus' will, but he had chosen to begin this game using other pawns. First, Tenarrus had sent the outcast, Jenova, to this planet, only to watch in rage as her efforts were cancelled out by the sacrifice of the most advanced race on the planet, the Cetra. Tenarrus waited for Jenova to reawaken, for she was not slain, only forced to retreat.
Jenova's awakening was due to the tampering of the inheritors of the Cetra, the humans. A group within the humans, calling themselves ShinRa, had taken over much of the planet and began to delve into the secrets of Mako energy and Materia. Tenarrus had been hysterical when he realized that ShinRa was bringing about Jenova's awakening due to their frenzied research.
That ploy had met with failure, due to the sacrifice of the last of those accursed Cetra and a group of terrorist freedom fighters who called themselves AVALANCHE. Jenova was once again forced to retreat, and her pawn, Sephiroth, was slain outright.
It was a year later, by the humans' way of reckoning time, and Lord Tenarrus had deemed it was time to strike. However, instead of using the power of his four generals, he chose to begin with yet another pawn. The four were tired of being held in check, and hungered for the chance to ravage this world like they had countless others over the centuries.
Tallest of the four was Tenebrius, master of shadow and stealth. To human eyes, his body would have seemed to be a living shadow, but in the sight of his colleagues, Tenebrius was a handsome, striking man. Waves of shadow-locks flowed from his head, pulled back into a tail with an ebon band. His armor was formed from obsidian that reflected the many hues of darkness outwards in a rainbow, making him difficult to look on for any of lesser stature. His scimitar, Rimewand, was the dark color of evil's heart, and was rumored to have been forged from a shard of metal that still maintained the chill of deepest space.
Tenebrius' rival was the seductive Inanna. Tenarrus' mistress, and a calculating foe who would prefer to avoid open conflict whenever possible, Inanna preferred to operate through manipulation and subterfuge. Her voluptuousness was clothed in a pale ebon cloak that did nothing to hide her beauty from those who could see in the Mephistean darkness. She loved the power of coercion, and was the acknowledged mistress of Magic, which humans manipulated in a crude manner through Materia. The touch of her whip, Venomkiss, was exquisite agony.
Third in their number was the cruel Darklord Uragi. Uragi was the most skilled warrior in all of Tenarrus' realm, and always sought opponents to test his skills against. Only Tenarrus had been able to defeat Uragi, and through subterfuge was that victory gained. Uragi was slight, and moved with all of the venomous grace of a shadow-dancer. Uragi cared little for others, except as pells for his never-ending quest to hone his mastery of warfare. His rapier was known as Hell's Stiletto, and could pierce any guard.
The last of their number was the ever-changing Coyote. Alone of the four, he originated from elsewhere, willingly entering Tenarrus' service when his homeworld was destroyed by Tenarrus' hordes. Coyote was Jenova's father, and was a master of shape-shifting. He ruled his homeworld before Tenarrus, and saw a chance to assuage his bloodlust upon the Universe that made him.
The four watched and waited as their master, in shape-changed guise, led Vincent Valentine to where he intended to set his plans in motion. None of them knew precisely what Tenarrus intended, and they were eager to see how this plan would make the eventual conquest that much sweeter.
* * * * * *
Vincent looked at the ruins around him. They were in the center of the ruined city of Midgar. They had burrowed their way past debris from the fallen plates to a hidden portal in the central pillar of the city. Looking upwards, Vincent could see where the pillar still stretched toward the sky, pitted and scarred by the assault of the Diamond Weapon and Meteor. It had been sheered off at about two hundred feet, just about where it entered into the foundations of the ShinRa tower. The tower had been largely vaporized by Meteor's onslaught, which actually meant that even that disaster did something good. Vincent chuckled at the irony.
"Yes, it is very funny, isn't it, Vincent?" The old maintenance man smiled from where he had just opened the portal into Midgar's pillar. "The ShinRa believed themselves to be masters of the world, only to discover that there were forces beyond their control or understanding."
Vincent soberly nodded. Already he was beginning to tire of this old man who viewed everything as a joke of some kind.
"Come. We are almost there!" The old man waved toward the pillar and then vanished into the opening that had been created when a hidden toggle was depressed.
Vincent looked into the pillar's darkness and grimaced. Just a little farther to go…
* * * * * *
Yuffie looked from her window in the Desert Rose Inn toward the ruins of Midgar. She sighed. They wasted so much power to try and take over everything, and now all that is left of them is a blasted eyesore on the face of the Planet. They forced us to give up all our Materia, and look what good it did them!
Yuffie sighed again. Unwonted, her mind drifted to the reason she was still in Kalm, rather than having returned to Wutai and her students. Vincent Valentine. The mysterious stranger, cursed to be a monster for the misdeeds of his past. A man whose struggle with the ghosts of his past blinds him to the friends he has today.
Vincent, for the last year, I have wanted to grab you by the shoulders and shake you. I've anted to make you see that you are not the monster you believe yourself to be. You did things wrong, but so did everyone else. I stole everyone's Materia when I met AVALANCHE. Cloud betrayed us all, as did Reeve. Tifa endangered everything by not telling us about Cloud's fabricated past. Barret and Tifa and Cloud are responsible for scores of dead in Midgar, when they blew up two Mako Reactors. Not to mention our attack on the cargo submarine, Midgar, out of Junon harbor.
Can't you see that everyone makes mistakes, but that that doesn't mean we cannot learn from those mistakes and be the better for them?As for Lucresia, she made her own choices. You did not force her to go to HoJo's bed. You did not force her to undergo the experimental process that changed their unborn child into the monster that became Sephiroth. I wish you would stop taking all the blame for something that wasn't your fault, because the only fault you bear there was placing the woman on a pedestal!
I wish there was some way that I could make you understand. I wish there was something I could do to help you see that you are a good man, Vincent Valentine. I wish I could make you see that, if you stop holding onto a lost love, there is someone who would love to see you smile, and laugh, and have joy.
Vincent, come back and see that that someone is me.
Over the head of the young woman, clouds roiled, flowing toward the mountains to the south. Flowing in a rushing wave towards the ruined city that ShinRa built.
* * * * * *
Deep beneath Midgar's central pillar, Tenarrus flipped a switch, revealing a laboratory akin to the one that HoJo maintained atop the ShinRa tower. There were banks of instruments and monitors lining the walls of this heptagonal room, and the center of the room was encased in a crystalline dome of hardened glass. Tenarrus walked to one of the banks of instruments and flipped a series of switches. A portion of the floor within the dome rose four feet upwards, poised on a central jack, and then angled downward towards the floor. Tenarrus gestured at the tilted operating platform. "Let's get you strapped in."
Vincent walked forward, his eagerness to be free from the lion's share of his curse overruling his native caution. "How long will this take, old man?"
Walking up to the table, a syringe in his hand, Tenarrus replied, "Not long at all, my friend."
Vincent stepped up to the table. He saw that clamps were built into the surface of the table. The clamps looked to be made out of the same lightweight material that ShinRa used to make the hulls of their attack submarines and skycraft. The clamps currently were open to accept Vincent's limbs.
Tenarrus followed Vincent's gaze, and said, "For your protection, my friend. During the process, you will need to be held relatively still and, even drugged, we cannot guarantee that you would be unable to twist away and undo the work we want to get done here. It is even possible that we would end up doing more harm than good, if you twist free before the procedure's end."
Vincent nodded curtly. "Let's get this over with."
Tenarrus helped Vincent into the clamps, and activated them quickly via a remote device Vincent had not seen the old man pick up. He walked over to the banks of monitors and scanned them quickly. "Everything is ready to go. Are you ready for your injection?"
Vincent chafed at the feel of the restraints. It reminded him too much of the torture so many years ago. "Time's wasting, old man."
As Vincent watched, the old man swelled into a different form. A pale-skinned man with bat wings and vestigal horns towered in front of him once the change was complete. Tenarrus laughed as Vincent struggled to free himself. "It is, isn't it?"
Vincent watched the demon walk towards him and struggled to reach any of his darker personas. There had to be a way he could break out of these restraints! He twisted desperately, gashing his skin open in an effort to slid free of the restraints.
Tennarus stopped by Vincent's side. In his hand, Tenarrus readied the hypodermic needle he had readied before clamping the hero to the operating table. Bending down to Vincent, he pressed the hypodermic needle into Vincent's neck, deep into the gunslinger's jugular vein. He injected the narcotic into Vincent's bloodstream.
As Vincent drifted away from consciousness, he heard Tenarrus' laughter. "Soon all four of your other personas will be mine!"
End of Part Two