Chapter 36: Holy Eidolon and Kuja
"I wonder how Shera's doing…" Cid Highwind muttered as he and his two comrades in arms walked up a spiral staircase leading to nowhere in the darkness.
"That's the third time you asked that in the last thirty minutes. Gawd!" Yuffie whined.
"GOD DAMNIT WOMAN! I'M GETTING MARRIED WITHIN THE YEAR AND THERE'S A %^&%IN' MONSTER ON THE LOOSE AND I'M ON ANOTHER GOD DAMNED WORLD! DAMN I'M PISSED!" The Captain stopped right in his tracks and through his cigarette on the warm fleshy stairs.
A great cry rang throughout the staircase, shaking the three on it to their knees. The flesh around Cids cigarette shriveled and turned black. Barret got up.
"What the hell was that?!" The one armed man shouted.
"I…I think Cid hurt the stairs." Yuffie stammered.
"The god damned thing deserved it." Cid said bluntly.
An evil smile crept across Yuffie's small face. Quickly grasping her conformer, she through it as hard as she could from the great height she was occupying. The larger than life shuriken few through the air with the greatest of ease and sliced into the capillary clad stairs below. A neat cut formed, but was quickly healed by an instant scab. Yuffie looked puzzled.
"Looks like a fire thang." Barret commented. "Cid, ya got any dynamite left?"
Cid looked nervously at the big black man, but reluctantly agreed. He had not used his sticks, because there were no great open spaces to use them. "I hope you know what your doing, or you'll blow us all to hell."
"WAIT!" Yuffie shouted. She ran down the stairs, pried her weapon from the scab's hold, and leaped ninja style back to her original position. "There you go."
"Alright foos. Hold on to your asses." Barret lit a stick of TNT and quickly tossed it down the stairway and into the darkness below.
Clink, Clank, Clunk. The noises of the dynamites descent gradually thinned. Barret and Cid strained to hear, yearning to learn just how far they had climbed. BOOOOOM! A large explosion trembled from below, throwing the three all around the now burning staircase. Long wails and shrieks of pain bellowed throughout the vertical stairway as the flesh caught flame.
"I'd wish it would stop doing that!" Yuffie sighed, picking herself up.
From the darkness below, gunfire flew up and barely dodged our heroes faces. A mechanical whirring rumbled.
"Shit! Ya had to wake something up? Didn't ya?!" Cid spat at Barret. A large mechanical gray claw showed itself as the machine pulled itself up.
"Shut up old man!" Barret fired his gun arm down at the hand. The bullets flew off like rocks being thrown at a wall.
"You never were good at dealing damage, Barret!" Yuffie cried from her new position way up the stairs. "It's time to actually do something!" Yuffie held a small red materia in her fingers. "ALEXANDER!"
"GOD DAMNIT YUFFIE! THAT THING ISN'T GOING TO FIT IN HERE!" Cid shouted as he started to run up the stairs with Barret tagging behind.
"If it's one thing I hate, it's stair ways. Why'd it have to be stairs!?" Barret moaned as he shot into the thing.
The walls of the round spiral staircase started stretching, the thin red membranes growing tense as if trying to fit something inside. But it was no use; the walls tore apart, letting some type of light in. The stair way began to lean dastardly to the right.
And Alexander rose. The holy machine came out from the dark places of the earth, through the Burmecian Hands evil roots and through it's body. Just the sheer strain of Alexander inside made the Gaian counterpart of EON scream in pain. Several floors, bones, vessels, muscles, beams, and complexes collapsed. Alexander was here.
** *
"ALEXANDER?! I THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD!" Zidane shouted as the vacant spots in the arena walls showed Alexander.
"Did EON bring him back to?" Vivi quizzed.
"I have no idea…" Fratley gasped at the sight of Alexanders heavenly wings.
"I doubt it. It must be those strangers doing something." Freya suggested.
"My ladies eidolon has returned from the grave! This must be a good sign!" Steiner grinned.
The arena walls that were left soon collapsed under the heavy strain. One hill was left in the area, but Zidane could make out a staircase leaning wildly his way to the north, and several collapsed floors and bloody debris around.
It was then that the clone of Kuja emerged. In his trance form, he hovered over the hill such as the original did in times long gone. Zidane, Vivi, Steiner, Freya, and Irontail quickly took battle stances as Kuja laughed.
"If I have to die, you're all coming with me!" The clone shouted.
The transparent purple aura specter version of Kuja quickly made a hovering mad dash into the clone's body of flesh and blood, driving the imposter soul out. The imposter soul withered inside the new environment. Kuja fell out of trance and onto the hill below him.
Puzzled, Zidane approached the limp body before him. "Kuja?"
There was no answer for several minutes. But then, Kuja's pail hand moved and his purple eyes opened. He was truly alive again.
"What foul magic is this?! Quickly, we must extinguish the flame before he tries to destroy the crystal again!" Steiner shouted.
Freya and Fratley tightened their grip on their spears.
"STOP!" Zidane leaped in the way between Steiner and Kuja.
Steiner reluctantly stopped. "What are you doing, master Zidane? Do you not remember the atrocities this foul being had tried to accomplish?"
Zidane had never told anyone but Vivi and Garnet what he did at the Iifa tree after they defeated Necron. Zidane had no reason to, for he was Kuja's friend and that was all he needed.
"Well?" Steiner impatiently asked.
"…After we defeated Necron three years ago, all of you had left in the Hilda Garde 3, while I went back in the Iifa tree, remember?"
"Yes."
"Well, inside, I found Kuja and talked to him before he died. He turned over a new leaf that day and wanted to help the world. He wanted friends."
Steiner raised an eyebrow. Indeed this was new, but he had never in his wildest dreams thought the abomination Kuja ever wanted friends. "…"
"It is true! Zidane told me a long while ago." Vivi said.
"Kuja is indeed powerful. He will be useful to us if he wishes to exterminate EON." Freya said as a matter-of-factly.
"That is, if you will become our journey partner." Fratley said uneasily.
Kuja got to his knees and moaned. It had been a while since he had flesh and bone. He gazed coldly at the group in front of him, but slowly formed a smile. "You mean friends."
Zidane lent out his hand to help his brother up. "Friends."
A great flash occurred, followed by a deafening roar. The six shielded their eyes. Once the great light faded away, they soon discovered that Alexander had gone, and the stairway crashed onto a long muscle hanging from who knows where.
[ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! CANNOT CREATE FILE NECRON.EXE! CANNOT CREATE FILE NECRON.EXE! CLONE SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINANT!] A loud mechanical voice cried from unknown speakers. In the air above the hill, bits and bytes and pieces of the creator of zero world darted about. Never nothing and never complete, the Necron clone was merely an image.
"What now?" Freya asked her fearless leader.
** *
"Gawd this is like gross!" Yuffie complained.
"Just keep climbing." Barret instructed. "I wanna get home to Elmyra and Marlene any day now."
"What the hell happened to 'AVALANCHE RIDES AGAIN'?" Cid teased.
"The same thing that's going to happen to your old scrawny ass if you don't shut up."
The three were crawling up what seemed to be a tongue. The stairway wasn't too far below them, but could roll off any minute. The red sticky mass rose up and up into what seemed like the brain of the Burmecian Hand.
"Yuffie, you ever hear of over kill?" Cid laughed.
"Gawd, like how was I to know that Alexander grew fifty times bigger in this world?" Yuffie replied.
"I am so god damned sick of climbing. I hate climbing. I think this is one of those climbing things that go on forever." Barret whined.
"Quit acting like a retard and climb!" Yuffie said.
"I'm going to smoke your scrawny Wutai ass when we get home." Barret mumbled.
{Hey, you think this is an esper?}
{I just love trains! Don't you?}
{So this is machina.}
{I'm going to live!}
{Princess Olivia!}
{You are … a puppet.}
Barret shook his head. "Hey Cid? Are you hearing anything?"
"A bunch of numbskulls talking 'bout espers and trains."
"Hey! I hear it too, but I'm hearing it inside my head." Yuffie jumped in the conversation.
"So are we, you moron." Cid said.
"What do you think it means?" Yuffie asked as she climbed.
"No %^&in idea." Barret said.
"Chances are nothing. Just mumbo jumbo." Cid said.
{Terra? Terra Bradford?}
{Selphie's driving. Where do you want to go?}
{Hey Tidus!}
{For your work, Zidane, I may just give you a lighter punishment when we return to Alexandria.}
{Ramza. You are a Beolouve.}
{Cloud! Get a hold of yourself!}
"The voices are naming things…" Yuffie whispered.
"Yea, and they said Cloud. Woop de Doo! We're almost to the control center!" Cid mocked.
"How do you know that's the control center?" Barret asked.
"It's at the top and it looks like a brain. What else could it be?" Cid remarked.