TO DEFINE EVIL
CHAPTER FOUR: WHO ARE THESE GUYS? THINGS GET CONFUSING.
Disclaimer: Square Soft and lots of other people own Final Fantasy, not me.
I'm just temporarily enjoying the playground they outgrew and left behind. . . no sense in letting it go to waste!
By the way, I love C&C on my writing. Short comments are great, but
if you want to spend the time telling me what I should change, I'd be delighted! Thanks
for reading.
Inarae
***************************************************
CHAPTER FOUR: WHO ARE THESE GUYS? THINGS GET CONFUSING.
"Control, this is 04. We're ready to start the mission. The other man has left the house, but the target is still inside." The voice had a slight nasal twist, like the citizens of Mideel.
"Acknowledged. Be careful, don't forget how dangerous he is and get yourself killed. I don't want to have to explain why your corpse is over there."
"Yes, sir. If he's been seeing things and is afraid of hurting people in his delusions, this shouldn't be a problem, sir. He'll hesitate at least a little; that'll be enough."
"Well, the best laid plans and all that. You have the sleeping gas?"
"Yes, sir. And we plugged up all ventilation into the hut yesterday while they were gone."
"Then the best of luck to you. I'll see you in a few days."
"And then we'll rule the world."
"Of course."
*NOOOOOO! *
The scream cut off suddenly, leaving Sephiroth clutching his head in pain, kneeling on the ground. What the. . .? Cloud?
He tried to reach out to his clone, but there was no response, just a disturbing stomach twisting emptiness.
The chaos beast hissed at the men who had dared invade his territory, crimson eyes burning with pleasure despite the huge injuries torn in his side by their various weapons. The wounds were healing quickly anyhow, and the pleasure overrode everything else. Oh yes, this delicious mix of terror and pain. The creature that had been Vincent slowly licked a man's blood off his arm, enjoying the horrified reactions of the men before him. There was no where left for them to escape to, so he could play with them slowly before making the kill. Some small corner of his mind noted the whirr of a chopter's blades disappearing into the distance, and considered doing something about it, but the metal bird was no where near as interesting as the live meat he had here. He bared his fangs and spread his huge wings, signaling the start of the massacre.
"Shit. . . Pick up, pick up!" The short, fat brown-haired man yelled into the radio, sweat pouring down his face. He kept glancing at the sky behind them, the rapid thwap thwap of the chopter blades echoed by his racing heart, increasing his terror.
"Hello, this is the Heiwa Monastery. How can I help. ."
"This is Calson. I . . ."
"I told you not to contact me once you start the mission!"
"Fuck the mission. It's over, do you hear me? That other guy turned into some sort of fucking invulnerable giant beast, didn't even notice anything we did to it!"
"You're hysterical. Besides, I told you to take him while the other man was gone."
"We did! He always leaves at six each morning and doesn't return till eight, when the target wakes up. I don't know why he came back so soon this time!"
"So you failed to get the subject." His commander's voice was cold, dangerous.
The short man hesitated.
"No, actually, I've got him. But everyone but me and the pilot are dead, that monster killed them. Or is in the process of killing them." He shuddered at the memory.
"Wonderful. Good job, Calson."
"What?!"
"It saves us the trouble of getting rid of them ourselves. They were all just hired muscle right? There's no way they could be traced back to us?"
"That's right. But. . ."
"And you got the target. What's the problem?"
The man looked down at the blood liberally splattering his clothes, sprayed there when the beast had ripped the arm off one of his men. He blinked.
"Nothing, I guess." His heartbeat was beginning to slow down now that the danger was over. "I'm sorry to bother you, sir."
"You should be. Idiot." There was a sharp click and the phone went dead. Calson stared at the speaker for a second before slowly reaching forward and turning it off. Still a coward. He'd spent his entire life to get rid of that appellation, learning to fight, to kill. He had become one of the best in the entire Shinra army, and everyone knew it. If he hadn't been, Falstor wouldn't have chosen him for this job. And yet, all it took was a monster and a plan that didn't quite work the way he had planned to terify him as if he was still the six year old boy who had ran from the @wolves, leaving his baby sister to die at their fangs. He had heard the disgust in the General's voice, felt the scolding twisting through his heart. Coward. He set the 'copter to autopilot, a twisting course that would cover most of the planet before arriving at the Heiwa base. He slid out of his chair and kicked the unconcious man on the floor visciously. It was stupid, he knew, but it made him feel better. He smiled coldly as he felt a rib snap under his steel toed boot. His foot shot forward again.
The ripe smell of blood, the stink of ripped bowels, they were familiar, and bothered him not in the slightest. If anything, he was slightly impressed by the scale and viciousness of the slaughter. The corpses were carrying some powerful weaponry, but it apparently hadn't aided them in the slightest. Not that he had expected anything less, considering their opponent. He walked steadily through the blood soaked ground, his black boots squishing slightly, heading towards the dark haired man panting dizzily on the ground. Sephiroth grabbed a handful of the red scarf and yanked the other man to his feet, slamming him against the hut's wall.
"What happened here?"
It took a second for the glowing red eyes to focus on him, and then they widened in shock. "Se. ." Sephiroth slammed him into the wall again, tightening his grip till the other man was almost chocking.
"Where is Cloud?"
Vincent struggled to speak through the constriction at his throat, feeling Chaos attempting to reemerge. Cloud hadn't been imagining things. He had to warn the rest of Avalanch. . .
The knife sharp fingers of his metal arm tried to slice at his captor, but the other man easily batted it away. At last the general realized his captive couldn't speak and released him.
Vincent fell to his knees, coughing. Then he raised his eyes to calmly meet the glowing green ones.
"If you keep attacking me, I will lose control of Chaos. Even you would find that inconvenient, I should think." He warned, getting to his feet, only leaning on the wall a little with his good arm. Sephiroth detested whining. It stood to reason that he would treat a calm opponent with some amount of respect. Not that Vincent ever planned on whining anyhow.
"I can deal with your other form as easily as I am dealing with you now. Where is Cloud?"
Cloud? Cloud! That's right, what had happened to him? Surely he hadn't . . . but he hadn't tried to identify the bodies yet. He tried to sort through his muddled memories. He had left to go hunting, . .
*Useless*.
The voice echoed in his mind, and then something was forcing him to remember what he had forced himself to forget. Leaving to go hunting in the early morning mist, smelling the strangers before he was five minutes from the hut. Cloud's sudden angry yell snapping him into battle mode, and that combined with Chaos' natural territoriality pushing him over the edge, serrated black wings erupting painfully from his back as his muscles swelled, his skin changing into a tough blue black scaled armor that would withstand almost anything. Then the slaughter, . . . but Sephiroth wasn't interested in that. He focused tightly on a brief glimpse of an unconscious and chained Cloud being tossed onto a black helicopter, and the helicopter taking off for the northwest. Then he was gone.
Vincent opened his eyes. As he expected, there was no sign of his lover's son. He quickly got out his PHS, worry for Cloud and the planet overriding both the pain from the injuries Sephiroth had dealt him and the slight, traitorous happiness he felt that something of Lucretia still lived.
Barrett twisted around and got the PHS off the back of her pack as it beeped.
"Hello?"
"We have a problem." Vincent's voice was as emotionless as always, although he was breathing hard. "Cloud has been kidnapped by a large group of heavily armed men dressed in black uniforms. And Sephiroth arrived here looking for him shortly after they left."
The man's still as miserly with words as ever, was Barrett's first thought. Then, "Oh, shit. You saw Sephiroth too?"
"What?!" Tifa gasped.
"Oh, dear. He is still alive?" Red murmured, eyes wide.
"Most definitely." Vincent acknowledged. "I have the bruises to show from it. He wanted to know what happened to Cloud."
"You didn't tell him, did you? Do you know who the kidnappers were or what they wanted with him?" Tifa asked urgently, her heart skipping a beat. Oh, Cloud, I should never have left you . . .
Vincent hesitated. "Luckily I know absolutely about them, for Sephiroth entered my mind somehow. He knows everything I do. In fact, he found things I couldn't even consciously remember."
Cid began to swear, loudly and obnoxiously as he slid off his chocobo and began to pace. "The fucking vampire belongs to green eyes now too?! Shit, we don't have a fucking chance in a fucking green moon!"
Red blinked in confusion. "I think the saying is 'once in a blue moon. . ."
"Shut up!" Tifa snarled at them. "We need to find Cloud first. Who took Cloud?"
"What the fuck does it matter?!" Cid railed. "Our two strongest fighters serve the bad guys! We're chicken feed next to them, and you all know it."
"Yeah, chicken sure fits you well, flyboy. Now shut up!" Barrett slammed his gun fist into his palm warningly.
"I did not recognize anything about the attackers, but I will go investigate in more detail now." Vincent ignored the continuing argument he could hear over the PHS and steeled himself for the grusome process of going through the corpses' clothes, looking for identification.
It didn't take more than three bodies before he discovered a trend.
"Their uniforms were made in Wutai. The weapons are from all over, as they themselves are."
"Wutai?!"
"That's where that guy. . ."
"How do you know?" Red interrupted the surprised noises.
"I was born in Wutai. There is a distinctive pattern to the way they tie off the ends of threads when sewing. A double shark, they call it. No one else uses it because it can't be done by a machine, so they have to hand tie each end. It is one of the reasons Wutai clothing is so expensive," he replied. "A second ago you said, 'That was where that guy . . .' what were you referring to?"
"We're on our way to Wutai now. Apparently the guy we're hunting has ties there as well." Red replied. "This isn't looking good. If the people who stole Nibro's weapon are the same ones who took Cloud, and Sephiroth is hunting Cloud, then Sephiroth could conceivably get his hands on a very dangerous piece of equipment."
"Are we sure that it is Sephiroth?" Barrett asked. "What if it's some weird illness that people with Jenova cells get, and Cloud just passed it on to Vincent. He could be hallucinating. No offence Vincent."
"None taken."
"I think we have to go on the assumption that Sephiroth is somehow still alive." Red said seriously. "It is too much a risk to do otherwise."
"Aren't we assuming a bit much here? We're going on the assumption that the weapon might be dangerous, even though odds are high it isn't, the assumption that Sephiroth is back, even though that is impossible. . ."
"Red's right, Barrett." Tifa interrupted. "We have to assume the worst. After all, the idea that an alien would try to destroy the planet is pretty far out as well, but sure enough, Jenova and Meteor were here."
"Even though a lot of people still believe that was all a trick Reeve cooked up to make his coup more legitimate." Barrett grumbled. "Yeah, I get what you're saying. I just still can't believe. . . We killed the bastard, damn it! So what do we do now?"
"We need Cloud to defeat Sephiroth, so we've got to rescue him first." Tifa said firmly, hoping she wasn't letting her feelings for Cloud affect her judgment too much.
"It would make more sense to destroy the weapon first, so Sephiroth can't get his hands on it." Cid protested, and then slapped himself on the forehead. "What the hell am I saying? This is insane. Why are you all so dang calm and accepting? Sephiroth's back and everyone's just going to continue on like always?"
"What would you have us do, sit down and start wailing like a kid that's skinned his knee?" Tifa snapped. "This is serious. The planet is in serious danger again. If we don't get our act together, Sephiroth could wipe out mankind like he failed to do last time. Admittedly, he doesn't have the resources he had then, but he could still hurt a huge number of people."
"Just as long as everyone knows this if fucking suicidal." Cid snapped.
"Are you refusing to help?" Tifa demanded, hands on her hips.
"Hell no! This is my planet too, and I ain't letting any weasely silver haired alien take it. Just want to make sure everyone knows the situation."
Barrett sighed. "All right then. We have three goals: prevent anyone from using Nibro's weapon, stop Sephiroth from doing whatever it is he's planning, and rescue Cloud, right?"
Red nodded. "Doing any of them will take us a long ways towards accomplishing the other two, and right now they're all taking us in the same direction. We'll decide what one to do first when the opportunity presents itself. Let's get going to Wutai."
"What do you want me to do?" Vincent asked. "I am a liability if Sephiroth can control anyone who has Jenova cells, as is implied by his ability to invade my mind. Also, someone should contact Reeve and tell him what is going on. We do not have to do everything ourselves this time; we have the entire resources of Shinra to aid us."
Everyone blinked at that.
"Hell yes." Cid said slowly. "Not only will we not have to fight Shinra at every turn, Reeve can supply us with weapons, information, money; hell, he can call out the entire Shinra army as back up for us." He began to grin. "We might actually have a chance here."
"There's always a chance," Vincent said, surprising everyone. That from the guy who thought himself permanently damned for falling in love when he shouldn't have?
"All right, Vincent, why don't you meet us in Wutai." Red nodded sharply as he spoke.
"Are you sure about that?" Cid asked. "I mean. . . you know. . ." he waved his hands vaguely.
"We stopped Sephiroth last time with Sephiroth controlling Cloud. In fact, I doubt we could have stopped Sephiroth without Cloud. Vincent will probably be helpful as well. Any objections? Very well, lets get going then. We have a lot to do!"
************************************************