Nourish the Seeds of Sin

Vincent slept soundly, unaware of his injuries, even unaware of what happened to him. Oblivious to the world like a slumbering newborn. And while he slept, he was even impervious to his clawed dreams and the notions they left behind as mindful everlasting litter. But this siesta of his could not last. He knew it had to end again sooner or later, because the threat was still out there, mindless and unforgiving as it ever was. But…

What does it matter to me, really? What does the annihilation of the Planet's people mean to me? I've spent decades dreaming of an end to this life that Hojo and Jenova maimed and left for dead without so much as a thought. Allowing the Planet to suffer beneath the beautiful but lethal light of the emerald moon is really nothing to me. I, who wishes for death, a permanent surcease to the pain in my undead soul. Let it kill, let it burn and hope that it slays me as well. Why should I care anymore? Why?

But then… I think of my nominal friends, who had shown me many things. Cloud, with his will, even after discovering long hidden and unbelievable truths about himself; Tifa, with her soft heart and conviction in those around her; Barret, with his wild spirituality; Cid and his doggedness; Nanaki and his loyalty; the girl ninja Yuffie and her vibrancy; the most humble of Shinra, Reeve; and lastly, Aeris with her strong, courageous heart and almighty love… I should care, minute as it may seem that I don't. For them, I should at least fight for what they sought to keep.

Vincent awoke with the scent of scorched earth faintly wafting by his nostrils. He sluggishly opened his eyes. To his side there laid a gruesome looking limb, long black tapering nails protruding from the tips of the skeletal digits. He was taken aback. His heart raced.

"...what is this? Why?" He trembled and the black and blue skinned limb trembled along with him.

"Vincent?" Nanaki was near, to some relief.

"This isn't… What is it? It can't be…can it? Is this my…?"

"Vincent, what's wrong?" Nanaki asked.

"Is this...part of me? Is it?"

For a moment there was silence. Then, "Uh…I don't know what to say."

"Say it isn't," he maintained in subtle but genuine dread. Nanaki bowed his head in apology.

"I can't. Because it IS a part of you."

His monstrosity of an arm twitched as he gazed on at it. It was his arm, at one time sealed from prying eyes by the golden claw Hojo had placed on him, now bared to the world for all to see its true semblance. A freakish semblance the result of the dark side of science. He twisted his head from it in shame. "…cover it up."

"What?"

"I don't want to see it… Cover it up," Vincent repeated in a hushed tone.

"Okay," Nanaki said hesitantly. He called someone over to where Vincent lain on the ground covered by a blanket, and had his beastly arm wrapped snugly in a sheet and tied up with a long strip of leather.

"…what happened?" Vincent inquired exhaustively.

"You don't remember? You changed," Nanaki told him.

Vincent sighed and slowly sat up. His whole body ached and his skin burned when he dared move any part of his body. But the ache was trivial compared to any other ache he'd ever felt prior to then.

"Vincent…" Nanaki began, who had come to sit on his right side. "Uh, I don't mean to pry…but where did you get those scars on your back?"

"…"

"Ah, I understand. You don't have to tell me. But…they look like claw marks to me."

Vincent glared over at his companion. His scarlet eyes unnerved the other, abysmally lifeless orbs they were, set in a pale blank face. Eventually, to Nanaki's relief, he looked away. He refused to let anyone else know of the other atrocities that were inflicted upon him by Hojo, under Shinra mansion. No one bothered to listen to his screams…

Not wanting to wallow in his own self pity any longer, he took a second to study his surroundings. He saw that they had left the sanctity and asylum of the Gi's caves, that they were now above ground demolished by the emerald moon. The terrain had been completely seared down to every last stone and grain of dirt. Craters where the rays of green light had impacted upon the land riddled the canyon almost as far as the eye could see. Bugenhagen's observatory was nothing more than a domed pile of rubble and scrap. All the people's homes, ravaged. Dust and ashes. Nanaki's people picked about the site of destruction, salvaging what they could, meanwhile dreaming of how to recover.

"…where will you go, Nanaki?" Vincent asked. "Your home, it's gone."

"No. Our houses may be gone, but our home is not. Cosmo Canyon will always be our home and this is where we will stay to restore it to its former glory," he declared with subtlest fervor. Vincent, however, wasn't so sure of Nanaki's conviction. He would rebuild, risking the possibility that the emerald moon would come back and destroy his home again and again and again, until he had no more energy to do anything anymore and just surrender to death. Then what would be the point? What would be the point to it all?

--

The emerald sphere crossed the mountains that bisected the central half of the continent. North Corel laid in its warpath towards the other flying over the sea in its direction. And beneath the scintillating rays of Mako colored light, a century's hard work for their town toward betterment had been thwarted in an instant. The erstwhile destitute town had been reduced to rubble once again, though much more was lost now than then.

The second object, just as well a sphere like its destructive counterpart, resembled a moon more than the other did. A rotating ball of white light with the slightest pale green glow. The moving air about it was galvanized, forming a sparkling trail behind it, like the tail of a comet through space. The citizens and frequenters of Costa del Sol beheld the immense entity as it passed overhead in a splendor not unlike that all those years ago when Meteor hung in the sky, a still pendulum presaging a catastrophe that had been thankfully averted due to the effort of unsung heroes. Near soundless gales eclipsed by the rumbling of the spherical entity dashed through the beachside town for days until it drifted out of airspace.

But meanwhile…

Gongaga bore the fury of the emerald moon from over a stretch of a thousand miles, barely standing against the deadly light. And Gold Saucer, having been emptied to an extent of its fun goers, endured a similar cruel fate, crashing to earth in a blaze of broken dreams and soon to be lost souls. The prisoners of Corel Prison far below had nowhere to escape, and so awaited their respective quick and simultaneously slow deaths as burning debris fell upon them.

The plains turned to fields of ash, the desert bleached white by flame, forests the black and steaming graveyards of nature. The skies became gunsmoke, thick with the silenced cries of the dead, the dwindling screams of the dying, and the dismal moans of the wounded survivors. And nary a hope yet in sight…