Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

One More Moment

"They weren't kidding," Cloud muttered, giving a low whistle of resignation under his breath. "That is definitely inhuman."

After having left the three Turks in Kalm with very major hints alluding to the fact that the Turks were better off staying far away from Midgar, Cloud and the rest had headed over to the swamp that surrounded one of the entrances to the Mythril Mines. This time, only the Highwind's crew stayed aboard—with the exception of Cid and Dusk—while the rest headed out over the swamp on foot, gingerly picking their way through surprisingly lucid water whose clarity was only disturbed by the wave of mud each step forward brought to the surface. Cloud was in the lead, carefully working out a path that would take them through areas where the water was only about knee deep at the worst. Certain precautions were at their extremes here; despite the calm look of the water's surface, there were sudden deep drops that could lead an unwary traveler to a suffocating death as they sunk to the bottom of the hole. Most often, those holes were either filled with tough, grasping weeds that would easily get tangled in clothing and equipment, or by the massive, scaled bulk of one of the endangered Midgar Zoloms that lived in the swamp. Napping Zoloms did not like to be disturbed, and waking one was only slightly better than actually running into an active, searching, and hungry Zolom. A sleepy Zolom would go for the kill instantly without seeing who was causing the disturbance in a lightning-quick attack that only one of its fellow Zoloms could survive. A wide-awake Zolom, on the other hand, preferred to toy with their would-be food before actually finishing them off. If things got out of hand, the Zolom would simply flick the prey out of the swamp and return to searching for a less rambunctious meal. If not, then the poor animal could be broken, bleeding, and unable to move except in pain by the time the Zolom was ready to get down to business and finish it off.

Zoloms were snakelike in appearance and typically about twenty to thirty feet long from snout to tail tips, proudly sporting fangs the length of a man's forearm. Those sharp fangs were placed in a mouth that could easily snap an adolescent child up in seconds while stuffing a full grown human's leg into the corners of its jaws for dessert. However, they did not like to leave the cool comfort of their marshy habitat and had notoriously short life spans that went from when they were born to when their children were born. In deference to their offspring, the adult Zoloms would usually quietly starve to death and leave the home to their children. Their litters, however, yielded an uncountable amount of baby Zoloms that were capable of fending for themselves as soon as they have hatched. Most of the time, only one Zolom shadow is seen aimlessly circling the marsh, but the grounds below the visible surface were filled with holes and caves that housed possibly dozens of Zoloms.

It was also almost practically impossible to kill one without summoning the rest of its family to its aid.

That was the reason why the way this Zolom was killed simply left the group stunned and unable to utter a single word.

The long, almost silvery body of a Zolom twisted upwards into the sky, its curving spiral ending where its head lay impaled through the sharp tip of a dead tree that looked as if it could barely support the weight of the huge reptile. As if some unseen force were poking fun at the spectators, this Zolom was easily the biggest one Cloud and any of the others had ever seen, reaching to almost fifty feet as they could judge from the coiled length. Blood seemed to drip from an endless supply from the Zolom's impaled skull, running down the length of the serpent's hide or simply splashing into the lake of blood already gathered below. One of its menacing yellow eyes, although clouded over in a fuzzy sheathe of white, glared balefully down at the group beneath it as if they were the cause of its death.

"Oh, gross," Yuffie complained as she caught sight of a small portion of the Zolom's brain sticking out of the side of its shattered skull. "I think I'm going to be sick." She followed up on that threat with faint retching noises, fortunately all of which produced no results.

"Dad, what is that thing, anyway?" Aeris asked Vincent, curiosity fighting with disgust in her large, light green eyes.

"It's called a Midgar Zolom," Vincent replied absently as he fingered the Death Penalty gun at his side. "I believe Reeve named it an endangered species."

Dusk, meanwhile, calmly stalked up to the creature's rigid coils and placed a hand against the cooling scales. She gently ran her hand over the skin, listening to her gloved hand rustle against the hide. Her head bent sideways as if she were waiting for something, eyes closing halfway.

"She's not the only one left," Dusk finally announced, letting her hand fall back to her side and instead reach for the hilt of her sword. "She's had her share of children and lived for almost a century, kept going because her litters were not large enough. She was the oldest Zolom living here…"

"How do you know all that?" Aeris asked with her insatiable curiosity of the world.

Dusk studied the girl with calm, crimson red eyes before nodding. "Come here."

Aeris stepped forward almost instantly, eager to learn more. She waited by Dusk's side for further instructions.

Dusk reached out and took Aeris' hand, placing it palm down on the Zolom with her own hand covering the girl's. "Listen," she said simply, without any further explanation.

Aeris frowned and closed her eyes, trying to strain her ears for any sound at all. All she heard was Yuffie shifting impatiently behind her and Cid yawning widely. Cloud, Tifa, and Vincent remained silent and on guard, almost as if they were waiting for something to happen.

"No." Dusk's cold voice pierced Aeris' concentration as neatly as a needle through cloth. "You're not doing it right. Listen with what is inside of you, not what is outside."

With what's inside of me…? Aeris furrowed her brow, wondering what Dusk meant. What is inside of me that can hear something my ears can't?

Dusk sighed audibly and firmly placed her second hand over her first one, completely encasing Aeris' hand. "Concentrate and listen, Aeris."

As if Dusk's added hand had brought more support to her, Aeris instinctively retreated to the back of her mind and reached out with a strength she knew she had used before. Perhaps she had never described it the way Dusk had, but it was there and she knew that she had used it at least once.

The rough hide underneath her hand began to throb, as if the corpse still possessed a heartbeat.

As if it were still alive and breathing.

In a bare breath, all of the memories that belonged to the shutting down brain of the Zolom came flooding into her own, filling her with experiences and thoughts that she had never known before. She saw a crack of light appearing in the shell of her egg as her tongue flicked out to taste the sweet air. A huge, towering silver body nearby was her mother; another, dark gray one that was rapidly sliding away into the water, was her father. She saw herself growing and maturing, watching as a young male her own age sidled up to her and caressed her neck with his own. She felt the pain that she bore silently as she laid her first batch of eggs, breathing on them to warm them and curling around them until they hatched. She watched her children grow and die from competition, only the strongest living into adulthood. She mated again and birthed again, over and over again, until she grew too old to support her eggs until they hatched.

In the later years of the old Zolom's memory, Aeris saw the Zolom watching helplessly as one of her latest children hungrily attacked a human man. The man easily defeated her child and impaled him upon a tree—the very same tree, Aeris realized, the Zolom was lying on now. Then, not too long after, another one of her sons went after a wandering group of humans. The human in the lead was a young man with distinctively spiky blonde hair that jutted out in all directions. A massive, deep red creature that looked like a cross between a lion and a wolf followed him.

And in the back, clutching a staff to her with one hand gripping a glowing red orb, was…

…Me?!

* * *

Cloud's hand involuntarily tightened its grip on his sword's hilt as Aeris' eyes flew open the next second after Dusk had spoken. She stumbled backwards, snatching her hand away from Dusk's as if the silent woman's were on fire. Her eyes were wide open in shock and surprise as she stared wildly at Dusk.

"What was I doing there?!" Aeris demanded, a question that triggered the instinctive "what the heck is she talking about?" question in Cloud's mind. She held her hand to her chest, biting her lower lip. "Those…memories were from the past. Why was I there?"

Dusk shrugged calmly and glanced over Aeris' shoulder at Vincent. "I cannot tell you that, Aeris. But someone else can probably answer many of your questions for you, those ones in the back of your mind that Bahamut chose not to reveal the answers to."

"How…did you know that Bahamut…" Aeris began.

Dusk cut her off calmly. "I know."

"Will someone mind telling us what the hell just happened?" Yuffie requested in what she felt was a reasonably calm enough voice.

"That might have to wait," Dusk replied. She extended a finger over the group's heads, pointing to an area in the sky. "I don't know who that is, Cloud, but it's your choice whether to hide or stand our ground."

Cloud strained his eyes to their limits trying to see what Dusk was referring to. He finally saw it as the object drew steadily closer, growing from nothing to a speck and finally to a visible dot. With its appearance came the steady noise of helicopter rotors beating at the air.

"Damn," he swore. "Can anyone make out what the hell that helicopter says?"

" 'Reeve Sith Inc.', " Dusk and Vincent said simultaneously without either one of them batting an eyelash.

Cloud didn't relax in the slightest. "Reeve? But…that helicopter just looks like the old Shinra one! And it sounds like it, too!"

Even Tifa stiffened visibly as the helicopter grew more distinct in noise and appearance. "I know this sounds stupid, but the way that engine is going…well, it just reminds me of Shinra."

"So what do we do, oh glorious leader?" Yuffie asked Cloud, sparing enough breath to add in enough sarcasm to her tone. "Shall we flee like rabbits or greet the dude properly?"

Cloud shook his head slowly. "We'll wait. Even though he spied on us early on, Reeve was never really an enemy. We may have lost contact with him once he took over Midgar, but there's no reason why he'd go plotting something behind our backs. Greet this…emissary of Reeve's like any normal person, all of you."

Yuffie snorted. "And the limits of naiveté are being tested right now. I never liked that guy, Cloud. And it wasn't just the fact that he communicated with us through a giant, oversized stuffed animal. Face it; we've never seen this guy before in person."

"So what are you saying?" Cloud asked irritably. "That we should just run away now?"

"Too late…" Vincent muttered cryptically under his breath as the helicopter drew in next to the Highwind for a landing.

Cid swore softly. "Let's go. I don't trust what that bastard might do to my Highwind if I'm not there to protect it."

The group began picking their way back through the swamp, careful to take the same route they had used on the way over. "I can't believe you guys," Cloud complained as they approached the other side of the marsh. "What do we have to distrust him for?"

"He took over Shinra," Yuffie reminded him evenly. "Anyone who wants to take over that godforsaken company has got to be out of their minds in the least."

"Well, he did say that he planned to reform Midgar with his new influence," Tifa added in softly, trying to play peacemaker between the prickly ninja and Cloud. "But he never said how he was going to do it. The ends don't always justify the means, especially if you're so caught up in the means that you lose sight of the ends. Reeve never did seem too tenacious when he was traveling with us. It might be easy for him to lose track…"

They all fell silent as they slogged out onto dry ground, dripping water from the knees down as they waited for the helicopter doors to open and reveal who was inside. Almost as soon as the last person had stepped out of the water, the added in passenger door closest to them popped open and a man dressed in a crisp business suit climbed stiffly out. He turned to them, crossing his arms over his chest and fixing them with a penetrating stare with dark brown eyes. Overall, he seemed rather unimpressive, what with the short black hair and moustache on his upper lip that melted in with a neat beard. However, his stance said that he was someone who was considered to be important—by either himself or by other—and that he would only take truthful answers to any of his questions.

"We have had reports of one of the endangered Midgar Zoloms being killed out here," he began in a firm, deep voice. "Are any of you in any way involved with this?"

Cloud blinked. "No. Is that all you came out here to ask us?"

The man paused. "No. I also came here because of a report of an airship that is very familiar to me flying and landing in this area. Now, who are you people and why do you fly in the airship that belonged to someone I knew?"

Tifa frowned. "Wait a minute…I know that voice of yours."

"Answer my question first, please, miss," the man cut her off. His eyes alighted on her and blinked rapidly, although whether he was surprised by Tifa's somewhat stunning appearance or because he distantly remembered her was hard to tell.

Cloud replied quickly for the group, sparing any more awkward moments in his anxiety to learn the stranger's name. "My name is Cloud Strife. Now tell me why you seem to damned familiar."

"Cloud…Strife?" The man's eyes widened as his eyes met Cloud's. He shook his head in astonishment. "Why I would not remember those spikes is beyond me. I'm Reeve Sith. Remember me?"

"Uh…" Cloud floundered, at a loss for words. "I, uh…remember your robot, Cait Sith, but I don't think we've ever met in person before."

"I thought so," Tifa muttered in a slightly smug voice.

"Why are all of you together like that?" Reeve continued, glancing over the others. "Is there some sort of reunion going on or something? Wait…where's Barret and that lion animal…Red XIII?"

Cloud exchanged a look with Tifa. "Maybe we'll…tell you later?"

Reeve nodded. "Fair enough. Hey, how about if you all come back with me to the new Midgar? You haven't visited for a while, have you? I think you'd be surprised as to how much it's changed since four years ago."

"Sounds cool," Cloud agreed. "So, we'll meet you there?"

"Follow the helicopter," Reeve returned as he slid back inside of the dark confines of his vehicle. The door closed with a slight slam as the rotors immediately started up, lifting the helicopter into the air and whipping the group's hair around along with the wind.

"Well, let's go," Cloud said, glancing back at Cid.

Cid nodded. "Yeah, might as well. 'Kay, everyone, back inside. We're going for a ride."

Yuffie groaned as the group began ascending the rope ladder to reach the deck of the airship, her face turning distinctively green as she stared upwards.

"Oh, gods, please answer me this question…Why in the name of Leviathan did you bless me with such an intolerable stomach?"

Any answer to Yuffie's plaintive question was lost in the noise of helicopter blades swiftly biting at the air intertwined with the noise of the Highwind's engine starting up. And to add a bit of harmony to it was Yuffie's own gagging noises that seemed to be producing more results than her earlier display.