FIVE: "The Crisis From The Sky"
Tifa slowly opened her eyes. They focused slowly, letting the radiant morning sun into them. She didn't move yet, instead Tifa simply lay there looking out the window watching the glistening water of the horizon for a few minutes before she finally sat upright in bed. Throwing her covers off she pulled herself to the edge of the mattress and stood up. She did her morning stretches, as she did every day, mainly working on her legs to keep in good shape for traveling around a lot.
After she was through stretching, she got prepared for the day, she washed up, combed her hair and got changed into some clean clothes. She headed outside into the hall and knocked on the door across the hall from her own room. There was no answer, after knocking for awhile longer, she opened the doorknob and found that it was open. The room had been unused. Nothing was out of place, still fresh for someone to use for the first time. She knew that night, Cloud had not slept there.
Tifa quietly closed the door behind her as she left and walked a bit further down the hall to Yuffie's door. She knocked three times and after a few moments of shuffling and odd noises from beyond, Yuffie swung the door open.
"What?... Oh, Tifa; Hello." Yuffie said with an slightly blushed grin. "What brings you here.. now?"
"Have you seen Cloud around anywhere?" Tifa asked, wondering what Yuffie was doing behind closed doors. "He didn't sleep in his room last night."
Yuffie seemed to blush a little more. "Nope... haven't seen him." She lost eye contact with Tifa as she looked at her own feet. "I thought he was in your room last night."
Tifa blushed madly. "W-What? What does that mean?" Tifa felt the hair on the back of neck begin to stand on end.
"I dunno, I just figured... Well, when I look at you two, I don't see friends.. If you get what I'm saying." Yuffie stammered around the words. "I'm not blind to those things, you can fool Barret, but I'm not that blind."
Tifa couldn't believe what she was hearing, from Yuffie at that! Lost in thought, many things raced through her mind, but from out of nowhere her action took over.
Tifa raised her hand and slapped Yuffie across the mouth. "How dare you assume that? Cloud and I are just friends!!" She said with a slight waver in her voice. She walked backwards away from the astonished Yuffie until she backed into the wall, she felt a great sadness beginning to well up, ashamed of her words and actions Tifa covered her face with her hands and ran off down the corridor.
Just around the corner she ran headlong into Cloud, who caught her before she could fall to the ground from the sudden rebound. He only managed to catch a glimpse of her swollen red eyes before she pulled away from him and out the door. He called after her, but Tifa was gone. Cloud stood there watching after her for a moment before hearing Yuffie's door slam shut.
In an instant, he was there at her door grasping the knob and flinging the door wide open.
"I've only seen Tifa cry once before in my entire life! What happened?!... Yuffie....?" Cloud stopped dead when he saw Yuffie, she was facing away from him, her shoulders shook as she held back her own tears.
"I think.... I've said too much." Yuffie stoically stated, the tone in her voice stern, hiding the quivering little girl in her words.
Cloud advanced slowly and when he finally met her, he held her shoulder. Yuffie shrugged him off as she turned round to face him. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, but otherwise dry, and a tiny line of deep red ran down her face, from her nose over her lips.
"Your bleeding. Here, take this." Cloud took a tissue out of his pocket and attempted to dab at her lip. She immediately backed away from him.
"Don't.... I can take care of it." Yuffie spoke as she brought her hand up to her face, limply placed in front of her mouth, obstructing the view.
"Yuffie, what happened?" Cloud withdrew his hand and shoved the tissue back in his pocket. "Why did she hit you? It definitely not like her."
"I told her how I saw things around here. She got upset." Yuffie spoke, but her eyes never moved from her suitcase of materia on the floor across the room.
"What did you say to Tifa?"
"I, I said that I thought she was involved ...with you." Yuffie directed her attention to Cloud, she looked straight into his soul. "She said you were only friends."
Cloud went cold. He had only felt that way once before in his entire life, when he stood and watched as. he was too late, once again. For Cloud those words seemed to perforate his soul. All this time, he had thought Tifa was falling for him, but her resentment of that fact proved otherwise. At that moment, Cloud's heart sank, his plan had failed.
Yuffie attempted to comfort him, knowing all to well Cloud's feelings, as he stood there before her. "I know you like her more than you let on.. but she is not ready, my nose can attend to that." Yuffie said, attempting to console Cloud.
Cloud wasn't listening, instead something else was happening inside of him. Something in his perception changed. That moment seemed to freeze. He looked around the room, it was blurry and distorted, He looked at himself, and his eyes couldn't focus on anything, he was dull and transparent. He looked back to Yuffie who remained stationary until that very moment when she slowly and clearly pulled her hand from her face; oozing red blood, thick like slime was plastered to her. Where her hand had been, strands of blood glistened as she drew it away from herself. She had a wicked grin and a demonic look.
Cloud couldn't move. Yuffie drew closer as everything else seemed to fade away into pitch blackness, devoid of everything; only the now strange bloody Yuffie stood before him. Drawing ever closer.
"Cloud... Stop it." Yuffie spoke calmly.
She drew closer still. Cloud couldn't move his legs, but he leaned backwards as she got ever closer.
"Stop it Cloud, your hurting me." The words retained no emotion of any kind and echoed like they were bouncing through a canyon.
She reached forward, her blood soaked hand touched Cloud's face, and she drew ever closer to him. There she stood, face to face with Cloud. Her red lips quivered with some unknown and undesirable drive. She took Cloud's limp hand in her own and trust it to her breast.
"Your hurting me... please.. stop..." She whispered quietly as she pressed her lips against Cloud's mouth, She kissed him passionately, and Cloud all the while was gripped with fear. When she finally pulled away, she was no longer Yuffie Kisaragi, she was Aeris. She looked angelic, even through the caked on blood. She smiled and began to laugh, that innocent laugh.
"I love you, Cloud Strife." Was all that she said. With that the apparition of Aeris joined with the inky blackness of everything else.
"Cloud!! Agh.. Let go of me! Your hurting my wrist!!! Idiot!!" He heard Yuffie's voice echoing. Then in a brilliant flash, everything was normal, except he was now clutching Yuffie's arm with his hand. Cloud released her from his fearful grip.
"What the HELL? What's wrong with you, you jerk." Yuffie took back her arm and rubbed it gently with her other hand. "Lighten up, It's not as bad a situation as you might think."
"Am I going insane?" Cloud thought to himself. He couldn't grasp at all what had just transpired. "I need a drink." He tuned around slowly, stuck in between dark thoughts and shock.
"What the hell are you doing? Cloud? Where are you going?" Yuffie ran to her door as Cloud turned the corner.
He had left her room as suddenly as he had arrived, the only thing he said to her was "It's happening again..."
"Argh.. Why do I get involved with the people." Yuffie slammed her door and shook her head. "I'm just going to pretend this morning never happened..."
Reeve stood watching the ocean from the observatory deck. He was disturbed by some shocking news he had just heard from afar. Surveillance reports from the north continent were grim, compiled of the unfortunate news that Icicle town had been mysteriously snubbed out of existence by a huge inferno.
This was very bad news , not only were there no survivors of the catastrophe, but investigation had come up nil, with a source for the blaze. It was puzzling, but not so far-fetched. It was true this had happened before, when Sehiroth's rage erupted in Nibelheim causing it to burn to cinders. His predecessors rebuilt the entire town, a facade was installed to protect the true purpose of that town, and now the same would have to be done with Icicle.
Icicle was no mere town, even to the untrained eye it was merely a Shinra research facility, or at least at one time had been. These days, it had become a town all the same, with Midgar out of commission, Reeve knew there were people there. His own people. He was disheartened, unlike his former employers would have been, but still something had to be done.
Lost in thought, he hadn't the slightest idea of the strange events that were unfolding all around him. Yuffie was tending to her sores, trying not to think about what had just transpired, although she felt an uncontrollable worry for her friends. Cloud wandered down the street, towards the bar in central Junon, and elsewhere, deeper in the city, a freshly clear headed Tifa found herself in a futile confrontation.
"What are you talking about? Off limits?" Tifa questioned a Shinra soldier who had stopped her approach to the underwater reactor facility.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, unauthorized personnel are not permitted to enter."
"What? What's so special I don't already know about!?" Tifa questioned the soldier. She had wanted to go down into the facility and just watch the undersea environment for a while to cool down, before going back to Yuffie and apologizing. However upon arriving she found two guards.
"I'm really sorry, but only official authorized personnel can go down there now." The guard couldn't be swayed.
"Fine." Tifa sighed, her plan defeated by protocol she slowly made her way back into the crowded Junon streets. She felt terrible for hitting Yuffie, it truly didn't become her. However she was even more worried about what she had said.
"Why can't I bring myself to admit it?" She thought to herself as she plodded along. "I love Cloud so much, but I just can't say it. Is it so wrong?" She pondered futilely over the same questions that went through her mind everyday. After a while had passed, she found herself at her doorway once again. She looked towards Yuffie's suite and guilt possessed her. She knocked three times, the same way she had earlier.
Yuffie answered, her nose red. "I knew you'd come crawling back." She sneered mockingly.
"Yuffie.. I'm sorry, I... I just wasn't expecting you to say that." Tifa explained.
Yuffie already knew. "I know.. I know. You don't need to explain yourself, just restrain yourself."
Tifa blushed a little, knowing all to well her own strength.
"Well, are you going to come in, or what? We need to talk....." Yuffie invited Tifa in from the hall.
It was then that both of their PHS systems rang in unison.
Meanwhile at that moment, a distraught Cloud pulls up a stool in the Junon Bar. "Give me something hard." He says to the barkeep as he swaggers towards him.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't sell liquor here at Eight O'clock in the morning." The barkeeper replied dryly.
What? Just gimme something... I need a drink bad, here." Cloud was astonished when the barkeep handed him a strange pink brew with an umbrella and a straw in it. "What is that?"
"Lemonade De Sol." The man behind the bar replied, wryly once again. "It is a specialty, imported from Costa De Sol."
Cloud's eyes narrowed, but he really didn't care. He took the drink and swiveled around in his stool so he was facing away from the bar, and stuck the straw in his mouth. He sat there for awhile not really observing his environment, only searching inside. Searching for answers to his recent waking dream. It had only been two days since Tifa told him to get over Aeris, He intended to let her go, knowing there was nothing he could change, however there she was, once again. Aeris Gainsborough's likeness resurrecting itself from his memory, a morbid version of her this time. Cloud had forgotten about her, and she came back to haunt him, now in the day, and not even confined to his dreams. this bothered Cloud to no end.
Was there something more he could do?
"What can you do, huh?"
Cloud snapped out of his thoughts at the unexpected sound of that voice.
"I mean, shi't... no alcohol here, I was surprised myself. Damn Fad Drinks."
"Cid Highwind; when did you get here?" Cloud turned to find the old pilot perched up on the stood beside him, hunched over the bar, staring at his own Lemonade De Sol.
"Heh! That's my name. I arrived, maybe an hour ago, give or take the amount of time those damned traffic controllers take to find a landing zone. HA!" Cid bellowed heartily. "I figured after a long flight, I'd come and wet my whistle, but instead I find this two-gil fad shi't."
"Right. I hear that. Hey, I thought you were a tea kind a guy?" Cloud remembered the first day he met Cid, and his insistence on having tea served piping hot.
"Ah, I only like tea when Shera brews it up. She's a good little woman to have around sometimes." Cid replied. "So Cloud, how's life on- site??"
"On-site? Oh... Midgar, I quit." It seemed like ages ago to Cloud since he had been there. "Three days ago."
Cid took a drink from his straw, gave a strange squint and then continued the conversation. "Really? The great Cloud Strife QUITS? What has the damn world come to?" The pilot almost sang, as he pulled out a cigarette. He lit that up and put it between his teeth.
"Excuse me sir, but you can't smoke that in here." The barkeeper interrupted.
"Ah shi't." Cid stood up. "Let's get out of this fairy-bar. I'm sure there's more drinking establishments around this place somewhere."
"Fine with me." Cloud stood up, the barkeep cleared his throat. "Oh yeah." he dug into his pocket and threw 2 Gil on the counter. The barkeep picked it up and crossed his arms. Cid stopped just before he left the bar. "Oh, could you pay my tab too? I'm short on cash."
"You don't have 2 Gil?"
Cid grinned and shrugged.
Outside, Cloud joined Cid who was puffing away on his cigarette. "You owe me."
"Owe you? Hah. I figure, I helped save the world, I shouldn't have to pay for anything cause without the lot of us, they wouldn't be here now, would they?" Cid seemed stuck on that idea.
"I saved the world too, so you owe me at least." Cloud retorted.
"HAH, clever bastard."
"Not really... Your just getting old."
"You stabbed me, right in the heart. Right in the heart!" Cid laughed as he held his hand to his heart and winced in pain absurdly.
Cloud grinned a bit, Cid always knew how to cheer him up. "So you really didn't know I quit the Midgar Project?"
"Nope."
"How much do you know?" Cloud was curious as to the security Reeve placed on the upcoming events.
"Reeve said to get here as fast as I could and bring the Sub-winch." Cid recalled Reeve's brief conversation with him over the phone. "Why? What's so god-damned important?"
They began to walk as they spoke, it was still very early in the morning, however the non-stop bustle of crowds was constant. Cloud filled Cid in on the details of what had transpired the past few days.
"I'm sorry I missed it." Cid finally spoke. "But what's the big deal? Why the winch?"
"Do you enjoy being the first man in space?" Cloud asked casually.
"Damn straight."
"Well you can add another 'first' to your roster."
Cid looked genuinely puzzled. "What's that?"
"I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it's going to be..." Cloud stopped in mid-sentence.
He stared ahead, not sure if he was seeing was really there or not. He ran into the crowd ahead of Cid and disappeared. From between the paths of crossing workers, he swore he could see someone in pink, ahead in the crowd making her way through the bustle. Cloud cut swiftly through the people, but no matter how much time he made the girl was always ahead of him, she ducked into an alleyway. Cloud reached the corner of the building she had cut into, but found no one.
Cid caught up, out of breath and looked around. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary he looked at cloud. "What the hell has gotten into you?"
Cloud was staring intensely down the dark alleyway. "I swear.. It was her."
"Who?"
Cloud didn't answer. Cid just shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck as his breath returned to him. "Man, I must be getting... The hell? What's this?"
Cid stooped down. Cloud too looked at the ground, amazed at what he saw. Cid brought up the small thing he had seen, and held it upright between them. "Isn't this... one of hers?" He said.
"The only ones I know..." Cloud spoke, in a state of reminiscence.
It was a single flower.
At that moment, Cloud and Cid received a signal from their PHS. It was Reeve on the other end calling them all to a meeting, immediately. When finally Cloud and Cid arrived in Reeve's doorway, they found Tifa and Yuffie already waiting there.
"Cid! You've arrived already!" Tifa exclaimed as she stood up from the couch where she was seated. "I was hoping to meet you at the runway."
"Yeah, I made good time. The new girl is much faster than the old one." Cid responded.
"You guys wouldn't believe what we found, just now." Cloud brought up the strange discovery before the group.
Reeve spoke up from across the room at his desk. "What is it?"
Cloud revealed the flower which he and Cid had discovered on the street. "It's the kind Aeris grew in Midgar."
"It's beautiful. It's the same kind of flower you brought be back in Sector 7!" Tifa clued in.
"I guess."
Yuffie didn't seem overly enthralled by the discovery. "So what? Some worker brought it back from Midgar, woo-hoo. What's so special about it?"
"I saw Aeris just before I found this. I swear it was her. This is a sign.... of what, I can't say though."
"Are you sure it was Aeris, I mean.... she's dead; to put it bluntly." Reeve leaned back in his chair.
"I didn't see anything, I think Soldier-boy is still sleeping." Cid laughed.
"I haven't slept yet." Cloud looked at him.
Cid raised a hand to him offering a reasonable explanation. "There you go. Your imagining damn girls that aren't there, lack of sleep I tell ya."
Tifa took the flower. "That's reasonable Cloud...."
Cloud crossed his arms, as Tifa spoke. "Whatever."
Everyone settled into the room after that, and Reeve began. He spoke of the plans for that day, that afternoon they all would go to crater lake via Highwind II, Cid's new ship. Using his new winch they would lift one of the submarines over to the massive body of water and set down, then dive into it. Crater lake had been explored, but it had always been too deep to ever reach the bottom by any other means, and there was no reason to ever explore the crater bottom before, until the discovery in the unearthed Cetra library the previous day. It was a shot in the dark, but if the marking on the map was accurate, whatever was hidden beneath crater lake was immense.
Time that day raced by. Cid, Cloud and a small team of Shinra crew had been installing the winch into the docking bay of the Highwind II and were just finishing up. The sub had been prepared for immediate loading into the ship and was currently being pulled inside the immense cargo hold.
"What do you think is down there anyway?!" Cid yelled above the loud rumbling of the winch motor and the clatter of retracting chains.
"I'm not sure, if anything at all!" Cloud shouted back. "Like Reeve said, the marking I had seen on the map was at least Midgar sized, maybe a bit larger!"
"Were the Ancients that advanced?!"
"I don't know! Technology wasn't their thing..." Cid nodded as Cloud thought a second. "....It might be magically based, from the architecture I saw in the library!"
Meanwhile, on a catwalk elevated above the cargo bay, Tifa leaned over the railing, looking at the flower she had taken from Cloud. She knew there was more to it than their explanation of it.
"Any flower would have wilted long before it made the trip from Midgar to Junon. This flower is freshly prepared, and they only grew in Aeris' church." She pondered upon it for awhile longer.
If she didn't know better, Tifa would have thought the flower she held, was the very same one Cloud had given her that day in Seventh Heaven. When she smelled it's pedals, it was like no smell she had encountered before, the smell had a light, but distinct smell of Mako, a fragrance she could not easily forget.
Yuffie sat beside her on the grating, her legs dangling over the edge. She was impatiently waiting the trip. Minute by minute she grew more hopeful that this endeavor would end up with the discovery of some new kind of materia.
"Do you think there will be any new materia down there?" Yuffie asked Tifa.
Tifa looked down at her. "Don't you have enough materia for one person?"
"No... I need the ultimate collection and I know there is more than what we had collected." She was sure of herself in that.
"I swear, you'd find a way to pry Holy out of Aeris' grasp, wouldn't you?"
"I'm sure she wouldn't mind." Yuffie scoffed.
"What about Black?" Tifa asked her of her thoughts on it.
"If I found it, I would take it.... but I wouldn't know where to look for it now."
"I wouldn't touch it personally; Unless to destroy it."
Tifa watched Cloud and Cid talking down below. Cloud was standing with his back to her, and Cid was facing the open cargo doors. She could not hear what they were talking about over the noise of the motors.
"Yuffie, Look how much Cloud and Cid are talking."
"Yeah? They haven't seen each other in about a year, I imagine they are catching up."
Tifa still had the flower in her hand, she was twirling it between her fingers while watching the lone soldier make conversation with the rugged pilot. "Cloud has only said about three words to me all day.... is there something wrong?"
Yuffie hunched over a little. "Something wrong? It's Cloud, he barely ever says anything to anybody... right?" She said, watching him gesturing with his hands to Cid. Yuffie frowned. Tifa sighed. "Not with me."
"I think he heard you yell 'just fiends!' this morning. When he was talking with me, he was acting really weird.." Yuffie tried to cover for herself telling Cloud that.
"But we are.. just friends." Tifa was distracted.
Yuffie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Uh-huh."
"By the way, what do you mean when you say 'acting weird'?"
It was just after noon, when the preparations were finally completed. Everyone stood out on deck of the Highwind II as she sailed in the sky a few meters above the water's surface of Crater Lake. Cid was puffing away on another cigarette, while Cloud was leaning on the rail. Staring at his reflection passing along the calm water's surface. Tifa was at the railing as well, she too gazed into Cloud's reflection upon the water. Yuffie was sitting on the floor of the deck, leaning against the railing, she still hadn't developed her wings. Everyone simply stood there, not talking at all.
The submarine was released from the hold and everyone boarded it. Cid took the controls and rushed into the other front seat, for the view, and for the reason of leaving Cloud and Tifa alone in the back.
Cloud sat down in one of the remaining benches behind Cid, facing sideways towards the isle, looking at the opposite bench where Tifa would sit down. She did not take that seat, instead she too sat down beside Cloud on the bench. Everyone pulled their seatbelts across their laps and Cid began hitting various buttons and setting switches. The engines whirred to a start and a few other consoles and instruments began to emit noise.
"Here we go." Cid spoke as he finally pulled a large console lever beside him, which started the descent into the unknown. The sonar beeped regularly, drawing up a map on a computer screen in the middle of the dashboard. They slowly kept going down and down, until eventually there was no light cutting through the water. Internal lights came on in the sub and cast a red hue to everything inside.
"According the sonar, the crater floor should be right below us now, however if this is accurate, there's another hole just ahead of us in the floor. Think that's what we're aiming for?" Cid asked.
"I'm not even sure what we're looking for." Cloud spoke.
"We should at least try it." Tifa spoke.
Yuffie sat in her seat, seemingly enjoying the view, even though there was not much to look at except an inky darkness, with four tiny beams of light being cast out in front of the submarine. She coughed lightly, and almost simultaneously Cloud tensed up. Tifa had put her hand on his leg. He followed her hand up her arm and met her eyes, she looked at him straight faced for a moment before an awkward grin came over her. Cloud grinned too, as he put his hand over hers. They held hands for a long time.
When the submarine passed through the hole, on the other side a feeling of awe swept over them all. Even through the murky water, the searchlights on the sub revealed to them a grand testament to the Cetra. Huge spires and pillars shot from the roof of that cavern below the crater down into the deep darkness below. The further down they proceeded, the more magnificent the architecture became. It was very old and covered in rough barnacles and coral growths, the structures themselves looked like a collective web forming a dome around them. Each section looked like a huge metal plant, all eventually weaving together towards the bottom into a single small passage, only big enough for the sub to fit in.
After proceeding to dive into that they came into a smaller area beyond the first massive web structure, was only a small pool. The tube they came down went under the waters surface, but in that area was an air pocket where they could surface and get out of the sub. This was an ancient docking bay, into a complex underwater structure.
This was the Cetra's finest creation.
Before they had a chance to exit and explore the area, a new sound screeched inside the submarine. Yuffie jumped at the sound and Cloud squeezed Tifa's hand. Cid flipped a panel open and turned a dial until a click sounded. Reeve's voice, distorted from interference and preoccupation filled their ears.
"Junon has just come under attack, repeat , Junon is under attack." That was all the transmission said, before it was cut short. A sudden fear gripped them all, as it sunk in.
"We've got to get back there. This can wait." Cloud said, speaking over Cid's shoulder.
Cid had already began to climb back up the structure, before Cloud had finished speaking. The pressure tolerance of raising the sub quickly made their ears pop a few times, but they were more worried about surfacing. A few minutes later, they were pulling themselves aboard Highwind II and setting out for Junon.
Upon arriving they found a lot of massive damage. It was apparent whatever had arrived had already finished with the runway, airships lay in pieces, exploded where they sat, some smoldering in flame.
"Holy shit! Reeve wasn't fucking around!!" Cid blurted out as he climbed out of this ship and surveyed the damage.
"What happened here? Where is everyone??" Tifa took a few steps away, listening. She could hear screams from the streets below. "Come on! Whatever is here, is still here!!"
Cloud was silent.
"My Materia had better be okay!" Yuffie blurted out as they all ran off.
On the street below, they ran headlong into wanton destruction. They slowly made their way through the mess and fires until they were almost trampled by a fleeing crowd. Coming around a large section of a fallen building wall, they caught a glimpse of what was reeking havoc upon Junon Harbor. A single woman.
Cloud rushed ahead, putting his arm back forcing the others to stand back. He unsheathed Ultima weapon as he quickly made his way along the crumbled street towards the woman. "Hey! What do you think your doing!?"
She slowly turned at the sound of his voice, and looked at him. Her red eyes burned with power. Long black hair flowed softly in the wind, as it also blew around flames that sparked on every surface.
"The champion has come at last." She spoke.
"Who are you?" Cloud yelled over the screams.
"I am the Crisis From the Sky."
Cloud's blood ran cold. He had heard those words muttered before, when Sephiroth had confronted him inside the Temple of the Ancients. No, Sephiroth had said 'Calamity from the Sky'; the Meteor. It was something else. In Icicle Town, Dr. Gast's research tapes had recorded Ilfalna speaking of another Calamity, in that reference, she spoke of the original Jenova.
"JENOVA!!"
The woman looked at him oddly. "Another name to add to my collection?"
"What are you doing here?" Cloud beckoned.
"It was you, who defeated the Guardians. I can feel it, and I can see it in your blade."
She raised her hand. As she did so, the Ultima weapon ripped itself out of Cloud's grasp and flew through mid-air into the hand of Jenova.
"We can't have things like this around can we? That is not acceptable." She said. As she held it, the blade became dim, dimmer than it had ever gotten before and she took it and swiftly smashed it against the street. What remained of the hilt the threw at Cloud's feet with a heavy metal clang.
Cloud was astonished; when the time came, even Sephiroth could not destroy that blade. It was rapidly hitting Cloud that there was much, much more to this mysterious woman than he had first realized.
"Champion. There is always one." She stated.
"What are you talking about?"
"You will prove quite worthy of challenge." Jenova spoke once more, but that was the last thing she would say. With that she flew off leaving behind her a wake of terror, fear and mystery.
Tifa slowly opened her eyes. They focused slowly, letting the radiant morning sun into them. She didn't move yet, instead Tifa simply lay there looking out the window watching the glistening water of the horizon for a few minutes before she finally sat upright in bed. Throwing her covers off she pulled herself to the edge of the mattress and stood up. She did her morning stretches, as she did every day, mainly working on her legs to keep in good shape for traveling around a lot.
After she was through stretching, she got prepared for the day, she washed up, combed her hair and got changed into some clean clothes. She headed outside into the hall and knocked on the door across the hall from her own room. There was no answer, after knocking for awhile longer, she opened the doorknob and found that it was open. The room had been unused. Nothing was out of place, still fresh for someone to use for the first time. She knew that night, Cloud had not slept there.
Tifa quietly closed the door behind her as she left and walked a bit further down the hall to Yuffie's door. She knocked three times and after a few moments of shuffling and odd noises from beyond, Yuffie swung the door open.
"What?... Oh, Tifa; Hello." Yuffie said with an slightly blushed grin. "What brings you here.. now?"
"Have you seen Cloud around anywhere?" Tifa asked, wondering what Yuffie was doing behind closed doors. "He didn't sleep in his room last night."
Yuffie seemed to blush a little more. "Nope... haven't seen him." She lost eye contact with Tifa as she looked at her own feet. "I thought he was in your room last night."
Tifa blushed madly. "W-What? What does that mean?" Tifa felt the hair on the back of neck begin to stand on end.
"I dunno, I just figured... Well, when I look at you two, I don't see friends.. If you get what I'm saying." Yuffie stammered around the words. "I'm not blind to those things, you can fool Barret, but I'm not that blind."
Tifa couldn't believe what she was hearing, from Yuffie at that! Lost in thought, many things raced through her mind, but from out of nowhere her action took over.
Tifa raised her hand and slapped Yuffie across the mouth. "How dare you assume that? Cloud and I are just friends!!" She said with a slight waver in her voice. She walked backwards away from the astonished Yuffie until she backed into the wall, she felt a great sadness beginning to well up, ashamed of her words and actions Tifa covered her face with her hands and ran off down the corridor.
Just around the corner she ran headlong into Cloud, who caught her before she could fall to the ground from the sudden rebound. He only managed to catch a glimpse of her swollen red eyes before she pulled away from him and out the door. He called after her, but Tifa was gone. Cloud stood there watching after her for a moment before hearing Yuffie's door slam shut.
In an instant, he was there at her door grasping the knob and flinging the door wide open.
"I've only seen Tifa cry once before in my entire life! What happened?!... Yuffie....?" Cloud stopped dead when he saw Yuffie, she was facing away from him, her shoulders shook as she held back her own tears.
"I think.... I've said too much." Yuffie stoically stated, the tone in her voice stern, hiding the quivering little girl in her words.
Cloud advanced slowly and when he finally met her, he held her shoulder. Yuffie shrugged him off as she turned round to face him. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, but otherwise dry, and a tiny line of deep red ran down her face, from her nose over her lips.
"Your bleeding. Here, take this." Cloud took a tissue out of his pocket and attempted to dab at her lip. She immediately backed away from him.
"Don't.... I can take care of it." Yuffie spoke as she brought her hand up to her face, limply placed in front of her mouth, obstructing the view.
"Yuffie, what happened?" Cloud withdrew his hand and shoved the tissue back in his pocket. "Why did she hit you? It definitely not like her."
"I told her how I saw things around here. She got upset." Yuffie spoke, but her eyes never moved from her suitcase of materia on the floor across the room.
"What did you say to Tifa?"
"I, I said that I thought she was involved ...with you." Yuffie directed her attention to Cloud, she looked straight into his soul. "She said you were only friends."
Cloud went cold. He had only felt that way once before in his entire life, when he stood and watched as. he was too late, once again. For Cloud those words seemed to perforate his soul. All this time, he had thought Tifa was falling for him, but her resentment of that fact proved otherwise. At that moment, Cloud's heart sank, his plan had failed.
Yuffie attempted to comfort him, knowing all to well Cloud's feelings, as he stood there before her. "I know you like her more than you let on.. but she is not ready, my nose can attend to that." Yuffie said, attempting to console Cloud.
Cloud wasn't listening, instead something else was happening inside of him. Something in his perception changed. That moment seemed to freeze. He looked around the room, it was blurry and distorted, He looked at himself, and his eyes couldn't focus on anything, he was dull and transparent. He looked back to Yuffie who remained stationary until that very moment when she slowly and clearly pulled her hand from her face; oozing red blood, thick like slime was plastered to her. Where her hand had been, strands of blood glistened as she drew it away from herself. She had a wicked grin and a demonic look.
Cloud couldn't move. Yuffie drew closer as everything else seemed to fade away into pitch blackness, devoid of everything; only the now strange bloody Yuffie stood before him. Drawing ever closer.
"Cloud... Stop it." Yuffie spoke calmly.
She drew closer still. Cloud couldn't move his legs, but he leaned backwards as she got ever closer.
"Stop it Cloud, your hurting me." The words retained no emotion of any kind and echoed like they were bouncing through a canyon.
She reached forward, her blood soaked hand touched Cloud's face, and she drew ever closer to him. There she stood, face to face with Cloud. Her red lips quivered with some unknown and undesirable drive. She took Cloud's limp hand in her own and trust it to her breast.
"Your hurting me... please.. stop..." She whispered quietly as she pressed her lips against Cloud's mouth, She kissed him passionately, and Cloud all the while was gripped with fear. When she finally pulled away, she was no longer Yuffie Kisaragi, she was Aeris. She looked angelic, even through the caked on blood. She smiled and began to laugh, that innocent laugh.
"I love you, Cloud Strife." Was all that she said. With that the apparition of Aeris joined with the inky blackness of everything else.
"Cloud!! Agh.. Let go of me! Your hurting my wrist!!! Idiot!!" He heard Yuffie's voice echoing. Then in a brilliant flash, everything was normal, except he was now clutching Yuffie's arm with his hand. Cloud released her from his fearful grip.
"What the HELL? What's wrong with you, you jerk." Yuffie took back her arm and rubbed it gently with her other hand. "Lighten up, It's not as bad a situation as you might think."
"Am I going insane?" Cloud thought to himself. He couldn't grasp at all what had just transpired. "I need a drink." He tuned around slowly, stuck in between dark thoughts and shock.
"What the hell are you doing? Cloud? Where are you going?" Yuffie ran to her door as Cloud turned the corner.
He had left her room as suddenly as he had arrived, the only thing he said to her was "It's happening again..."
"Argh.. Why do I get involved with the people." Yuffie slammed her door and shook her head. "I'm just going to pretend this morning never happened..."
Reeve stood watching the ocean from the observatory deck. He was disturbed by some shocking news he had just heard from afar. Surveillance reports from the north continent were grim, compiled of the unfortunate news that Icicle town had been mysteriously snubbed out of existence by a huge inferno.
This was very bad news , not only were there no survivors of the catastrophe, but investigation had come up nil, with a source for the blaze. It was puzzling, but not so far-fetched. It was true this had happened before, when Sehiroth's rage erupted in Nibelheim causing it to burn to cinders. His predecessors rebuilt the entire town, a facade was installed to protect the true purpose of that town, and now the same would have to be done with Icicle.
Icicle was no mere town, even to the untrained eye it was merely a Shinra research facility, or at least at one time had been. These days, it had become a town all the same, with Midgar out of commission, Reeve knew there were people there. His own people. He was disheartened, unlike his former employers would have been, but still something had to be done.
Lost in thought, he hadn't the slightest idea of the strange events that were unfolding all around him. Yuffie was tending to her sores, trying not to think about what had just transpired, although she felt an uncontrollable worry for her friends. Cloud wandered down the street, towards the bar in central Junon, and elsewhere, deeper in the city, a freshly clear headed Tifa found herself in a futile confrontation.
"What are you talking about? Off limits?" Tifa questioned a Shinra soldier who had stopped her approach to the underwater reactor facility.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, unauthorized personnel are not permitted to enter."
"What? What's so special I don't already know about!?" Tifa questioned the soldier. She had wanted to go down into the facility and just watch the undersea environment for a while to cool down, before going back to Yuffie and apologizing. However upon arriving she found two guards.
"I'm really sorry, but only official authorized personnel can go down there now." The guard couldn't be swayed.
"Fine." Tifa sighed, her plan defeated by protocol she slowly made her way back into the crowded Junon streets. She felt terrible for hitting Yuffie, it truly didn't become her. However she was even more worried about what she had said.
"Why can't I bring myself to admit it?" She thought to herself as she plodded along. "I love Cloud so much, but I just can't say it. Is it so wrong?" She pondered futilely over the same questions that went through her mind everyday. After a while had passed, she found herself at her doorway once again. She looked towards Yuffie's suite and guilt possessed her. She knocked three times, the same way she had earlier.
Yuffie answered, her nose red. "I knew you'd come crawling back." She sneered mockingly.
"Yuffie.. I'm sorry, I... I just wasn't expecting you to say that." Tifa explained.
Yuffie already knew. "I know.. I know. You don't need to explain yourself, just restrain yourself."
Tifa blushed a little, knowing all to well her own strength.
"Well, are you going to come in, or what? We need to talk....." Yuffie invited Tifa in from the hall.
It was then that both of their PHS systems rang in unison.
Meanwhile at that moment, a distraught Cloud pulls up a stool in the Junon Bar. "Give me something hard." He says to the barkeep as he swaggers towards him.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't sell liquor here at Eight O'clock in the morning." The barkeeper replied dryly.
What? Just gimme something... I need a drink bad, here." Cloud was astonished when the barkeep handed him a strange pink brew with an umbrella and a straw in it. "What is that?"
"Lemonade De Sol." The man behind the bar replied, wryly once again. "It is a specialty, imported from Costa De Sol."
Cloud's eyes narrowed, but he really didn't care. He took the drink and swiveled around in his stool so he was facing away from the bar, and stuck the straw in his mouth. He sat there for awhile not really observing his environment, only searching inside. Searching for answers to his recent waking dream. It had only been two days since Tifa told him to get over Aeris, He intended to let her go, knowing there was nothing he could change, however there she was, once again. Aeris Gainsborough's likeness resurrecting itself from his memory, a morbid version of her this time. Cloud had forgotten about her, and she came back to haunt him, now in the day, and not even confined to his dreams. this bothered Cloud to no end.
Was there something more he could do?
"What can you do, huh?"
Cloud snapped out of his thoughts at the unexpected sound of that voice.
"I mean, shi't... no alcohol here, I was surprised myself. Damn Fad Drinks."
"Cid Highwind; when did you get here?" Cloud turned to find the old pilot perched up on the stood beside him, hunched over the bar, staring at his own Lemonade De Sol.
"Heh! That's my name. I arrived, maybe an hour ago, give or take the amount of time those damned traffic controllers take to find a landing zone. HA!" Cid bellowed heartily. "I figured after a long flight, I'd come and wet my whistle, but instead I find this two-gil fad shi't."
"Right. I hear that. Hey, I thought you were a tea kind a guy?" Cloud remembered the first day he met Cid, and his insistence on having tea served piping hot.
"Ah, I only like tea when Shera brews it up. She's a good little woman to have around sometimes." Cid replied. "So Cloud, how's life on- site??"
"On-site? Oh... Midgar, I quit." It seemed like ages ago to Cloud since he had been there. "Three days ago."
Cid took a drink from his straw, gave a strange squint and then continued the conversation. "Really? The great Cloud Strife QUITS? What has the damn world come to?" The pilot almost sang, as he pulled out a cigarette. He lit that up and put it between his teeth.
"Excuse me sir, but you can't smoke that in here." The barkeeper interrupted.
"Ah shi't." Cid stood up. "Let's get out of this fairy-bar. I'm sure there's more drinking establishments around this place somewhere."
"Fine with me." Cloud stood up, the barkeep cleared his throat. "Oh yeah." he dug into his pocket and threw 2 Gil on the counter. The barkeep picked it up and crossed his arms. Cid stopped just before he left the bar. "Oh, could you pay my tab too? I'm short on cash."
"You don't have 2 Gil?"
Cid grinned and shrugged.
Outside, Cloud joined Cid who was puffing away on his cigarette. "You owe me."
"Owe you? Hah. I figure, I helped save the world, I shouldn't have to pay for anything cause without the lot of us, they wouldn't be here now, would they?" Cid seemed stuck on that idea.
"I saved the world too, so you owe me at least." Cloud retorted.
"HAH, clever bastard."
"Not really... Your just getting old."
"You stabbed me, right in the heart. Right in the heart!" Cid laughed as he held his hand to his heart and winced in pain absurdly.
Cloud grinned a bit, Cid always knew how to cheer him up. "So you really didn't know I quit the Midgar Project?"
"Nope."
"How much do you know?" Cloud was curious as to the security Reeve placed on the upcoming events.
"Reeve said to get here as fast as I could and bring the Sub-winch." Cid recalled Reeve's brief conversation with him over the phone. "Why? What's so god-damned important?"
They began to walk as they spoke, it was still very early in the morning, however the non-stop bustle of crowds was constant. Cloud filled Cid in on the details of what had transpired the past few days.
"I'm sorry I missed it." Cid finally spoke. "But what's the big deal? Why the winch?"
"Do you enjoy being the first man in space?" Cloud asked casually.
"Damn straight."
"Well you can add another 'first' to your roster."
Cid looked genuinely puzzled. "What's that?"
"I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it's going to be..." Cloud stopped in mid-sentence.
He stared ahead, not sure if he was seeing was really there or not. He ran into the crowd ahead of Cid and disappeared. From between the paths of crossing workers, he swore he could see someone in pink, ahead in the crowd making her way through the bustle. Cloud cut swiftly through the people, but no matter how much time he made the girl was always ahead of him, she ducked into an alleyway. Cloud reached the corner of the building she had cut into, but found no one.
Cid caught up, out of breath and looked around. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary he looked at cloud. "What the hell has gotten into you?"
Cloud was staring intensely down the dark alleyway. "I swear.. It was her."
"Who?"
Cloud didn't answer. Cid just shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck as his breath returned to him. "Man, I must be getting... The hell? What's this?"
Cid stooped down. Cloud too looked at the ground, amazed at what he saw. Cid brought up the small thing he had seen, and held it upright between them. "Isn't this... one of hers?" He said.
"The only ones I know..." Cloud spoke, in a state of reminiscence.
It was a single flower.
At that moment, Cloud and Cid received a signal from their PHS. It was Reeve on the other end calling them all to a meeting, immediately. When finally Cloud and Cid arrived in Reeve's doorway, they found Tifa and Yuffie already waiting there.
"Cid! You've arrived already!" Tifa exclaimed as she stood up from the couch where she was seated. "I was hoping to meet you at the runway."
"Yeah, I made good time. The new girl is much faster than the old one." Cid responded.
"You guys wouldn't believe what we found, just now." Cloud brought up the strange discovery before the group.
Reeve spoke up from across the room at his desk. "What is it?"
Cloud revealed the flower which he and Cid had discovered on the street. "It's the kind Aeris grew in Midgar."
"It's beautiful. It's the same kind of flower you brought be back in Sector 7!" Tifa clued in.
"I guess."
Yuffie didn't seem overly enthralled by the discovery. "So what? Some worker brought it back from Midgar, woo-hoo. What's so special about it?"
"I saw Aeris just before I found this. I swear it was her. This is a sign.... of what, I can't say though."
"Are you sure it was Aeris, I mean.... she's dead; to put it bluntly." Reeve leaned back in his chair.
"I didn't see anything, I think Soldier-boy is still sleeping." Cid laughed.
"I haven't slept yet." Cloud looked at him.
Cid raised a hand to him offering a reasonable explanation. "There you go. Your imagining damn girls that aren't there, lack of sleep I tell ya."
Tifa took the flower. "That's reasonable Cloud...."
Cloud crossed his arms, as Tifa spoke. "Whatever."
Everyone settled into the room after that, and Reeve began. He spoke of the plans for that day, that afternoon they all would go to crater lake via Highwind II, Cid's new ship. Using his new winch they would lift one of the submarines over to the massive body of water and set down, then dive into it. Crater lake had been explored, but it had always been too deep to ever reach the bottom by any other means, and there was no reason to ever explore the crater bottom before, until the discovery in the unearthed Cetra library the previous day. It was a shot in the dark, but if the marking on the map was accurate, whatever was hidden beneath crater lake was immense.
Time that day raced by. Cid, Cloud and a small team of Shinra crew had been installing the winch into the docking bay of the Highwind II and were just finishing up. The sub had been prepared for immediate loading into the ship and was currently being pulled inside the immense cargo hold.
"What do you think is down there anyway?!" Cid yelled above the loud rumbling of the winch motor and the clatter of retracting chains.
"I'm not sure, if anything at all!" Cloud shouted back. "Like Reeve said, the marking I had seen on the map was at least Midgar sized, maybe a bit larger!"
"Were the Ancients that advanced?!"
"I don't know! Technology wasn't their thing..." Cid nodded as Cloud thought a second. "....It might be magically based, from the architecture I saw in the library!"
Meanwhile, on a catwalk elevated above the cargo bay, Tifa leaned over the railing, looking at the flower she had taken from Cloud. She knew there was more to it than their explanation of it.
"Any flower would have wilted long before it made the trip from Midgar to Junon. This flower is freshly prepared, and they only grew in Aeris' church." She pondered upon it for awhile longer.
If she didn't know better, Tifa would have thought the flower she held, was the very same one Cloud had given her that day in Seventh Heaven. When she smelled it's pedals, it was like no smell she had encountered before, the smell had a light, but distinct smell of Mako, a fragrance she could not easily forget.
Yuffie sat beside her on the grating, her legs dangling over the edge. She was impatiently waiting the trip. Minute by minute she grew more hopeful that this endeavor would end up with the discovery of some new kind of materia.
"Do you think there will be any new materia down there?" Yuffie asked Tifa.
Tifa looked down at her. "Don't you have enough materia for one person?"
"No... I need the ultimate collection and I know there is more than what we had collected." She was sure of herself in that.
"I swear, you'd find a way to pry Holy out of Aeris' grasp, wouldn't you?"
"I'm sure she wouldn't mind." Yuffie scoffed.
"What about Black?" Tifa asked her of her thoughts on it.
"If I found it, I would take it.... but I wouldn't know where to look for it now."
"I wouldn't touch it personally; Unless to destroy it."
Tifa watched Cloud and Cid talking down below. Cloud was standing with his back to her, and Cid was facing the open cargo doors. She could not hear what they were talking about over the noise of the motors.
"Yuffie, Look how much Cloud and Cid are talking."
"Yeah? They haven't seen each other in about a year, I imagine they are catching up."
Tifa still had the flower in her hand, she was twirling it between her fingers while watching the lone soldier make conversation with the rugged pilot. "Cloud has only said about three words to me all day.... is there something wrong?"
Yuffie hunched over a little. "Something wrong? It's Cloud, he barely ever says anything to anybody... right?" She said, watching him gesturing with his hands to Cid. Yuffie frowned. Tifa sighed. "Not with me."
"I think he heard you yell 'just fiends!' this morning. When he was talking with me, he was acting really weird.." Yuffie tried to cover for herself telling Cloud that.
"But we are.. just friends." Tifa was distracted.
Yuffie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Uh-huh."
"By the way, what do you mean when you say 'acting weird'?"
It was just after noon, when the preparations were finally completed. Everyone stood out on deck of the Highwind II as she sailed in the sky a few meters above the water's surface of Crater Lake. Cid was puffing away on another cigarette, while Cloud was leaning on the rail. Staring at his reflection passing along the calm water's surface. Tifa was at the railing as well, she too gazed into Cloud's reflection upon the water. Yuffie was sitting on the floor of the deck, leaning against the railing, she still hadn't developed her wings. Everyone simply stood there, not talking at all.
The submarine was released from the hold and everyone boarded it. Cid took the controls and rushed into the other front seat, for the view, and for the reason of leaving Cloud and Tifa alone in the back.
Cloud sat down in one of the remaining benches behind Cid, facing sideways towards the isle, looking at the opposite bench where Tifa would sit down. She did not take that seat, instead she too sat down beside Cloud on the bench. Everyone pulled their seatbelts across their laps and Cid began hitting various buttons and setting switches. The engines whirred to a start and a few other consoles and instruments began to emit noise.
"Here we go." Cid spoke as he finally pulled a large console lever beside him, which started the descent into the unknown. The sonar beeped regularly, drawing up a map on a computer screen in the middle of the dashboard. They slowly kept going down and down, until eventually there was no light cutting through the water. Internal lights came on in the sub and cast a red hue to everything inside.
"According the sonar, the crater floor should be right below us now, however if this is accurate, there's another hole just ahead of us in the floor. Think that's what we're aiming for?" Cid asked.
"I'm not even sure what we're looking for." Cloud spoke.
"We should at least try it." Tifa spoke.
Yuffie sat in her seat, seemingly enjoying the view, even though there was not much to look at except an inky darkness, with four tiny beams of light being cast out in front of the submarine. She coughed lightly, and almost simultaneously Cloud tensed up. Tifa had put her hand on his leg. He followed her hand up her arm and met her eyes, she looked at him straight faced for a moment before an awkward grin came over her. Cloud grinned too, as he put his hand over hers. They held hands for a long time.
When the submarine passed through the hole, on the other side a feeling of awe swept over them all. Even through the murky water, the searchlights on the sub revealed to them a grand testament to the Cetra. Huge spires and pillars shot from the roof of that cavern below the crater down into the deep darkness below. The further down they proceeded, the more magnificent the architecture became. It was very old and covered in rough barnacles and coral growths, the structures themselves looked like a collective web forming a dome around them. Each section looked like a huge metal plant, all eventually weaving together towards the bottom into a single small passage, only big enough for the sub to fit in.
After proceeding to dive into that they came into a smaller area beyond the first massive web structure, was only a small pool. The tube they came down went under the waters surface, but in that area was an air pocket where they could surface and get out of the sub. This was an ancient docking bay, into a complex underwater structure.
This was the Cetra's finest creation.
Before they had a chance to exit and explore the area, a new sound screeched inside the submarine. Yuffie jumped at the sound and Cloud squeezed Tifa's hand. Cid flipped a panel open and turned a dial until a click sounded. Reeve's voice, distorted from interference and preoccupation filled their ears.
"Junon has just come under attack, repeat , Junon is under attack." That was all the transmission said, before it was cut short. A sudden fear gripped them all, as it sunk in.
"We've got to get back there. This can wait." Cloud said, speaking over Cid's shoulder.
Cid had already began to climb back up the structure, before Cloud had finished speaking. The pressure tolerance of raising the sub quickly made their ears pop a few times, but they were more worried about surfacing. A few minutes later, they were pulling themselves aboard Highwind II and setting out for Junon.
Upon arriving they found a lot of massive damage. It was apparent whatever had arrived had already finished with the runway, airships lay in pieces, exploded where they sat, some smoldering in flame.
"Holy shit! Reeve wasn't fucking around!!" Cid blurted out as he climbed out of this ship and surveyed the damage.
"What happened here? Where is everyone??" Tifa took a few steps away, listening. She could hear screams from the streets below. "Come on! Whatever is here, is still here!!"
Cloud was silent.
"My Materia had better be okay!" Yuffie blurted out as they all ran off.
On the street below, they ran headlong into wanton destruction. They slowly made their way through the mess and fires until they were almost trampled by a fleeing crowd. Coming around a large section of a fallen building wall, they caught a glimpse of what was reeking havoc upon Junon Harbor. A single woman.
Cloud rushed ahead, putting his arm back forcing the others to stand back. He unsheathed Ultima weapon as he quickly made his way along the crumbled street towards the woman. "Hey! What do you think your doing!?"
She slowly turned at the sound of his voice, and looked at him. Her red eyes burned with power. Long black hair flowed softly in the wind, as it also blew around flames that sparked on every surface.
"The champion has come at last." She spoke.
"Who are you?" Cloud yelled over the screams.
"I am the Crisis From the Sky."
Cloud's blood ran cold. He had heard those words muttered before, when Sephiroth had confronted him inside the Temple of the Ancients. No, Sephiroth had said 'Calamity from the Sky'; the Meteor. It was something else. In Icicle Town, Dr. Gast's research tapes had recorded Ilfalna speaking of another Calamity, in that reference, she spoke of the original Jenova.
"JENOVA!!"
The woman looked at him oddly. "Another name to add to my collection?"
"What are you doing here?" Cloud beckoned.
"It was you, who defeated the Guardians. I can feel it, and I can see it in your blade."
She raised her hand. As she did so, the Ultima weapon ripped itself out of Cloud's grasp and flew through mid-air into the hand of Jenova.
"We can't have things like this around can we? That is not acceptable." She said. As she held it, the blade became dim, dimmer than it had ever gotten before and she took it and swiftly smashed it against the street. What remained of the hilt the threw at Cloud's feet with a heavy metal clang.
Cloud was astonished; when the time came, even Sephiroth could not destroy that blade. It was rapidly hitting Cloud that there was much, much more to this mysterious woman than he had first realized.
"Champion. There is always one." She stated.
"What are you talking about?"
"You will prove quite worthy of challenge." Jenova spoke once more, but that was the last thing she would say. With that she flew off leaving behind her a wake of terror, fear and mystery.