Heartstrings
Vincent
Unleashed
by
TacomaSquall
Part Six:
Nanaki was alone. On the day that Meteor was
smashed from existence by the massed power of the Lifestream and Holy, his only
living relative, Bugenhagen, died. Since that day, he had been searching for
others of his kind, for surely he was not the last?
He took time from the search to assist his
friends in AVALANCHE in helping pull the ravaged world begin to get its paws
back on the ground, but, a year afterwards, he knew he needed to find someone
soon. He had hopes and dreams of one day settling with a soulmate, just as his
friend, Cloud, had done with his friend and companion, Tifa.
That dream could not be if he was unable to
find a mate, so he set out from Cosmo Canyon and began ranging the plains and
forests southwards, remembering a tale his father had told him before his death
to stop the Gi. His father had spoken of the great rainforest of Gongaga and
the dearest friends of the Kyrrawlen, in the hidden city of Nuavalan. With that
destination in mind, Nanaki had begun searching for Nuavalan.
His search had led him into the forests
surrounding the ruined town of Gongaga. Gongaga, Nanaki had discovered, had
been abandoned by what few people remained there in the final days of Meteor's
coming. The explosion of the Ultima Weapon to the east had proven to be the
last straw, and they had fled to the ford to the north, and the coastal town of
Costa del Sol.
At the entrance to Gongaga proper, Nanaki
discovered a cemetery. Names of people were scrawled on crude headstones.
Francene Carpenter – Beloved wife and mother. Nerise Fischer – Taken too soon
from her family. Jon Fischer – Husband and father, stolen from us by
terrorism's cruel hand. Ashin Lambert – Loyal Company Man. The names of the
dead went on, a litany of deceased that stretched back to Gongaga's heyday,
less than twenty years before. Nanaki could hear the voices of the fallen
through the Lifestream, and he mourned for them all.
He left the deserted town and headed toward
the ruined Mako reactor. It had been destroyed by a group of terrorists, before
the rise of AVALANCHE in Midgar. The Reactor's loss marked the beginning of
Gongaga's twilight. Within a half hour, Nanaki had reached the ruins of the
ShinRa operated facility.
The ruins were overgrown by the ever-present
greenery of the rainforest. Vines, creepers and ivy covered all of the walls
that still remained standing. The hard ground had been covered by moss and
grasses. The plants had cracked the hard pavement that the Reactor had stood on
and revealed the ground beneath. A few hardy trees and bushes had begun to
sprout, promising that the forest would reclaim what ShinRa had wrested from it
within a few decades. Nanaki felt certain that this was a fairly accurate
mini-portrait of the entire world. Mankind would have to learn to live in
harmony with the Planet, or face extinction.
At that moment, he heard a crash from the
far side of the ruins. The Kyrrawlen scrambled around the ruins, and drew up
short in horror. There was a middle-aged, dark-haired woman, standing alone.
She stood about five and a half feet tall, and still maintained some of the
graceful curves that must have made her a beauty when she was younger. Towering
over her was the Hellmasker, and it was preparing to attack her!
Nanaki, thinking quickly, called upon the
power of the Mystify Materia in his Limited Moon in an attempt to Confuse the
errant behemoth. The spell impacted on the Hellmasker and, astonishingly,
succeeded. In bewilderment, the Hellmasker went through its Splatter combo,
cutting down a swath of trees with its chainsaw.
The woman dove away from the Hellmasker, and
started to run as quickly as she could. Before she had traveled a dozen steps,
she tripped over an exposed tree-root, and fell in a heap on the hard forest
floor. Nanaki knew there was no time to wait. The spell he cast on the
Hellmasker would not hold it for long, and she would be dead the moment it
turned its unholy attention back on her.
As Nanaki darted forward, the Hellmasker
turned its chainsaw upon itself, gouging away flesh and ichor in its confusion.
This attack, however, succeeded in bring the monster back to its senses. Its
eyes narrowed behind the Hell Mask, and it laughed. Horrified, Nanaki redoubled
his efforts to interpose himself between the fiend and the woman.
He was too late. The fiend called forth the
mysterious incantation that linked its twisted mind with the subconscious of
its victim, the Nightmare. From the woman's mind, it pulled memories of pain
and terror, and set them loose upon her. She was swarmed over by a wave of
phantasms from her worst fears – A monstrous techno-organic being; A
Sephiroth-clone; A handsome man who looked at her with love as he sharpened a
knife to stab her with; A Frog. They pulled her under like the undertow about
thirty feet out from Costa del Sol's beach.
They was a flash of light from something in
the woman's hair, and she stood out of her terrors, unharmed. Fey, she looked
at the Hellmasker and laughed. "Visions from my past will never be able to
hurt me!" The phantoms turned thin, like wisps, and then vanished. Nanaki
saw that she wore a Ribbon in her hair, which rendered her immune to the
dangerous influences of the Nightmare.
Two forms darted out of the forest to stand
between the Hellmasker and the woman. One of them was a Frog, who held in his
short arms the Slash Lance, a weapon that Cid claimed he had lost during their
travels through this area. The other was a Sahugin, wearing a sheathed sword on
his back in the place of the customary water blaster.
The Sahugin stopped and cried in a loud
voice. "I will not let you harm her, Vincent Valentine! You acted the hero
with AVALANCHE, but I will not stand aside and allow you to harm
innocents!" He drew his sword from its scabbard. It was slightly curved,
like a scimitar, and it burst into flame once it had cleared the scabbard.
The Frog just said, "Yeah, what he
said," and bounced forward into an attack. He leapt high into the sky in
the same manner that Cid had done so often in battle, coming down point-first
at the Hellmasker.
The Hellmasker stood and stoically absorbed
the impact of the Frog's attack, standing straight and tall after the impact.
Its hate-filled eyes watched the Frogman as it rebounded away from the monster.
As the Frog landed, the demon called forth the Nightmare. The Frogman was
simultaneously shrunk, poisoned, and silenced. The first wave of Poison caused
the Frog to fall to its knees, retching.
The Sahugin yelled, "Yager!" He
charged forward and slashed the flaming sword across the Hellmasker's waist.
The flame sword left a scorched swath of flesh and clothing in its wake, but
was not capable of penetrating the demon's hide. He darted backwards, just in
time to avoid a sweep of the Hellmasker's chainsaw.
The woman saw Nanaki rushing toward the
battle and realized that she could help make sure the Demon was unaware of the
Kyrrawlen's approach. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small sketch-pad
and pencil. Quickly, she began drawing furiously. "Hieros, keep him
busy!"
Nanaki continued running, his four legs
eating up the yards separating him from the battle in a blur of motion. He
hoped that he would arrive in time to save the Frog and Sahugin, clearly
outmatched by the Hellmasker.
Hieros and the Hellmasker exchanged blows in
rapid succession, becoming partners in a bizarre dance of slash and thrust and
furious dodges and parries. Numerous times the Sahugin warrior hit the monster,
but never were the blows serious enough to impair the monster, which continued
with unholy endurance.
Finally, the woman cried in triumph as her
sketch expanded to life, and the Hellmasker was attacked by a two-dimensional
version of itself, made from paper. The sketch slashed at the Hellmasker with
its chainsaw, drawing demonic ichor from the slash created. The Hellmasker
cried in inchoate agony. Its riposte shredded the paper doppelganger.
The feedback from the construct's
destruction flooded back into the woman, and she crumpled, in agony. As the
Hellmasker prepared to take advantage of its prey's incapacity, it was struck
by a pinpoint stab from the miniaturized Frog. In an angry voice, he screeched,
"Leave Maiji alone!" The Hellmasker swatted Yager like a fly, and the
Frogman crashed into a tree trunk, unconscious.
Enough was enough. Nanaki howled in rage.
"Hellmasker! Face the rage of all of your victims, as they are remembered
in the memory of the Cosmo Candle!" He leapt into the air and felt the
energy of the stars above fill him. He basked in the energy, hearing the voices
of the dead of Gongaga as he was filled with their emotion. Finally, it was too
much, and Nanaki screamed, their anguish and grief and rage echoing in his
voice. Released with Nanaki's scream, the energy Nanaki had absorbed blasted
into the Hellmasker.
As the Hellmasker was struck by the Cosmo
Memory, Hieros leapt into the air, and brought his flaming blade downwards into
the Hellmasker's head. The blade shattered the Hell Mask, revealing a
flame-scarred face underneath. The flaming scimitar passed through the demon's
skull, lodging in one eye socket. The Hellmasker's face caught fire.
The Hellmasker began flailing its arms
around in an attempt to quench the fire burning on its head. One arm buffetted
Hieros, knocking the Sahugin away in a windmilling ball of arms and legs. The
Hellmasker clutched both hands to its head, and the flames spread to both
hands. Quickly, the monster was engulfed in flames. Hotter and hotter the
flames burned, until the Hellmasker glowed white-hot. Finally, the Hellmasker
exploded in a blast of flame and pent-up murderous rage. All that remained from
the Hellmasker was a blood-stained gem of Materia.
* * * * * *
In the ShinRa Submersible Vehicle Palmer,
Vincent Valentine stirred in his bunk. He knew that the world above the waves
had been jeopardized because he was unwilling to bear the demons of his past.
He got out of the bunk and pulled on the clothing that he had found, with the
assistance of Rude, in the Undersea Reactor. He grimaced at the abnormal, to
him, sensation of the clothing rubbing against his skin.
He strode out of the officer's room he had
been assigned, and walked forward. He walked down a narrow passageway and up a
slender metal staircase. He came to a open doorway and strode through, into the
bridge of the attack submarine. A skeleton crew was on the bridge, along with
Elena.
"Vincent, how are you this
evening?"
"I wish we would get to wherever you
are taking me." Vincent's voice was bitter. "I don't know what good I
would be to you."
Elena chuckled. "I am afraid you will
have to just chalk things up to institutional memory and pride. Once you have
been a Turk, you are a Turk until your death. You are alive, and we are
currently not enemies. Hence, we helped our former compatriot."
"That doesn't make any sense."
Vincent was frustrated. I betrayed the Turks and ShinRa 30 years ago. I
tried to kill HoJo, and did kill Lucresia. I certainly earned my death
certificate from the Turks. Even if I had not done that, I helped AVALANCHE
foil ShinRa's plans for Neo-Midgar. There's no reason for them to help me!
Elena smiled mysteriously. "Rude is
waiting for you in the armory. He has a new toy for you. It won't be the Death
Penalty, but it has its uses."
As Vincent left the bridge, going aft toward
the ship's security locker, he wondered what the game was that he had found
himself in. In addition, he was confused. Somehow, his humanity had been
restored when the demons were stripped from him under Midgar. How could a
monster like him be human?
* * * * * *
In the citadel of Lord Tenarrus, the dark
lord looked at his minions and smiled broadly. "Things proceed apace.
Three of the four demons we have freed from Vincent Valentine have attacked the
members of AVALANCHE. They will now gather together, and when Chaos strikes,
they will move in unison to stop him."
Tenebrius smiled coldly. "And what do
we do when they have gathered to defeat Chaos in a place of our own
choosing?"
Tenarrus laughed. "Then, in one stroke,
we rid this miserable Planet of their staunchest defenders. Then we shall seize
this Planet, and we shall strip it of all of its precious energies. Finally,
the Lifestream will be ours!"
As Tenarrus' generals laughed, echoing their
master's glee, Chaos smiled a secret smile, hidden behind a gauntleted fist. Perhaps,
your plans will change when a little unpredictability is interjected into them.
After all, you haven't even taken notice of Vincent's journey, and his
companions.
End of Part Six