Chapter 8: The red
Midgar's Wall Market was, like the majority of the slums, a disgusting and unpleasant place to be. Crime was rampant, morals were forgotten, bodies were bought and sold like currency, and poverty was painfully obvious. The roads were nothing but dirt, greenery was nonexistent, and the sky was blocked out by the pitch black steel of the upper plate and dim neon red and blue billboards advertising products that no one had the money to buy anyway.
Zack walked the familiar unpaved streets silently, his hood pulled over his head and his hands, tinted red with fresh blood, concealed rather subtly inside his pockets. He almost smiled as he recognized the specific land marks of years past. There had once been a time when this place didn't seem so bad, when instead it was almost charming. But then again, everything seemed a little bit better when she was around...
"Enjoy your trip to the Don's?" A friendly voice inquired politely. "He's got the best girls in the world, you know. They'll fix you right up and leave you smiling. At least that's what the ad says..."
Zack froze, and turned on his heel. "What do you want?" He demanded gruffly from the silver-haired imp who so enjoyed haunting him.
"I always have to want something, don't I Adam?" The man smiled as he sat atop a small pile of garbage and debris. "I can never just want to be with a friend. I always need to have an ulterior motive. Honestly, I'm offended."
"Why do you insist on playing around with me?" Zack asked impatiently. "Can't you just get straight to the point? It'd be a lot faster if you would just say what you wanted right off the bat so that I can just go ahead and tell you to fuck off."
"Such attitude." The beast hopped off its ledge, and crossed its arms in a sarcastic pout. "It's really not necessary. You should show more respect to your superiors. In fact, you should be honored that I'm so amicable and generous with you. It's not every day I show kindness to another human being."
"Remind me to thank you the next time I happen past your grave." The young skeptic ended with a shrug and went back on his way.
"Still don't believe I exist, huh?" The beast snickered "I'm with you every minute of every day but you still don't want to accept me. Is it that hard to believe, Adam? Think I'm just a figment of your unstable ego? Go ahead and tell yourself you're insane, it won't make me leave. I'm here because you chose to follow the path I offered you. Whether you like it or not, I'm going to hold you to your word."
"Why should I believe in you?" Zack questioned aloud, once more turning to face the inconvenience. "Aside from bugging the crap out of me, there's not much you've done but whisper dark little lies in my ear. Why should I listen to you? You're just trying to break me. Too bad, it's not gonna work." He smiled to himself as his former comrade stood there saying nothing. "Goodbye." With a sarcastic salute, he turned back around and continued on at a comfortable pace.
"You can't ignore me, Adam." The beast simply chuckled. "I can see every thought that travels through that dreary little head of yours. If you don't do what I say, I'm very much capable of making your life a living hell. There are things inside that conscious of yours that you've locked away; horrible ugly thoughts, and they will resurface regardless of how hard you try to bury them."
"Not listening." Zack informed him without turning.
"I was impressed by the way you handled those thugs back there." The black clad man called after him conversationally. "It's good to see that someone is willing to stand up to the mob." He continued, his hands in his pockets as he playfully kicked up a cloud of dirt. "Things need to be done to keep the Don in check. The way he markets that whore house of his is appalling. Although..." The beast paused, turning his gaze to the brightly painted mansion behind him, a thoughtful frown on his face. "It had a very pleasant smell. Unusual, I don't know how they got it to be like that. Did you notice it, Adam?"
Zack stood there for a second in the middle of the road, his body and mind uncertain of how to react, but both working rapidly to understand how on earth the beast had recognized it .
"It smelt like... like an open field of fresh grass, but with something else there..." The beast mused as he scratched his chin in an effort to remember. "A rose maybe, only a little bit better. Now from where do I know that scent..." He shook his head in disdain "Do you remember, Adam?"
"Shut up." He slowly turned back to face his figment, his face red with a sustained rage as he pointed a heading finger. "Just shut up."
The beast grinned at first, and then broke into quiet laughter. "I knew you'd remember." He smiled mischievously. "That Flower Girl of yours always had an unforgettably wonderful scent to her, and it was thick in that place. I could see you tasting it on the air. I'm sure you were wondering what on earth she would have been doing in a whore house, but you've probably figured it out by now, haven't you?" The beast stopped for a moment and approached his former comrade, who stared at the dirt on the ground, shaking. "Do you ever wonder if that little flower of yours isn't quite so innocent anymore? That maybe plucking a pedal from her isn't quite as hard as it used to be?"
Zack grabbed the man by the collar of his coat and swung him as hard as he could into a brick wall, his face beat red and his eyes nearly burning a hole through him "Shut up. Just shut the fuck up." He spat spitefully.
"Hey, easy there." The beast laughed casually. "If I'm just a figment of your imagination, then I can't be telling you anything you don't already know, right? So that means you must have already realized that she's probably selling more than just daisies at that street corner of hers these days."
Zack could only bring himself to stare at that smug face, wanting so badly to punch it into an unrecognizable crater.
"I wonder why she would have first tried it..." The beast continued, mercilessly clawing at the man's fears and insecurities "Probably got lonesome after you never came back. Probably felt pretty cheap and used. She's a smart girl, probably figured she may as well make a couple of Gil if guys like you were going to take advantage of her anyway. At least she doesn't have to feel lonely at night anymore..."
"SHUT UP!" Zack roared furiously as he harshly banged the beast backwards into the wall.
"Calm down." The beast only smirked. "You're the one who thought of it all in the first place. I'm just reminding you."
Zack stared at him for a moment, fuming. Finally, he pushed himself away and paced the dirt, doing his best to empty his head of the horribly exploited idea.
"Would you like to go see her?" The beast chimed in politely "You may not be happy with what you see, but I can show her to you if you want me to. You have to do something for me first, but I promise you a peek if you do a good job."
For a long moment, Zack only stared at him, his decision made but none the less speculative of the beast's offer "What do you want?" He finally asked.
The beast grinned for a moment, and then left his wall to roam the dirt, his head bowed and his hands clapped together. "I need you to send a message for me." The beast explained. "I've been gone for far too long, Adam. The world has stopped fearing my name, and I simply can't have that. My ruthlessness only exists in legend now, and the people need to know that I'm coming back, stronger and crueler than ever before. I need you to show the masses that the General has returned."
"How am I supposed to do that?" Zack asked, somewhat hesitant.
The beast paused, still smiling "It shouldn't be too hard for you." He said, masterfully speaking every deceitful little word. "Just a nostalgic roam through the halls of Shin-Ra Inc. should be enough. Then maybe a new coat of red paint in the President's office. That place just looks too generic right now."
"You expect me to march into Shin-Ra HQ, and then waltz right into the President's office, unarmed?" Zack asked, his arms folded as he lulled over the ludicrous suggestion. The beast only nodded its head "Mind telling me how the hell I'm going to pull that off?"
"You'll find a way." The beast shrugged. "You always do. But I do suppose you might need a weapon. Here." He tossed the infamous Masamune that hung at his side. The blade landed at Zack's feet, and he could only bring himself to stare at it in a silent shock "You may as well get reacquainted with it now. Goodbye." With a sarcastic salute of his own, the beast turned away and began to leave.
"Hold on a second." Zack managed to shake himself out of his stupor before the beast disappeared. "What about Aeris? Where is she?"
The beast didn't even bother to turn around before evaporating in a cold black flash of light, leaving Zack with an irritated frown.
Swearing under his breath, he kicked a cloud of dirt into the air, disgruntled in the way the beast toyed with him. The long thin sword known world-wide as the Masamune suddenly caught his eye. Reluctantly, he picked the blade up off the ground, staring at it soundlessly. He made a few swift slices, cutting the air with each strike and finding himself frighteningly comfortable as he held the blade in two hands. With a contemptuous sigh, he sheathed the blade and concealed it deep in the shadows of his cloak.
He looked up to the massive sky scraper of glass and steel named Shin-Ra Inc far above his head. It towered over everything else, dwarfing even the tallest of buildings. With a shrug, Zack was on his way. "May as well get started," He muttered to no one "It's a long way up..."
***
Sneaking through the corridors of Shin-Ra Inc had required surprisingly little stealth, only a ridiculous amount of patience and endurance. For the first sixty floors of the sky scraper, he had managed to get through using only the sealed off fire-escape, which had proven to be a task both exhausting and mind-numbingly boring. An assassination was a far less exciting process than most imagined.
On the higher levels he had moved silently and inconspicuously, taking full advantage of the shadows. The employees of the corporation were busy and unconcerned with anything other than their own menial tasks, and the only security had been basic hired help and the low-ranking members of SOLDIER who lived in the barracks. Most of the SOLDIERs were a bit eccentric anyway, and since he still wore the First-class emblem on his belt, so they did little else but bow their heads politely as he passed them. It wasn't long before Zack found himself on the sixty-eighth floor.
Zack stood there in the middle of the room for a moment, awful little memories of needles and scalpels stirring up emotions that he swallowed and saved for latter. For now there were more pressing matters.
The sixty-eighth floor was nothing more than a clattered laboratory, with bales of chemicals filling most of the space on every table and dozens of scattered books littered everywhere, all with nearly incomprehensible logs and notes. The place was a mess to say the least, with broken beakers and torn pages everywhere. Most would have guessed that someone had been hired to sabotage this lab, but Zack knew better. This was simply the way that Professor Hojo worked.
He walked through the lab indifferently, not caring what his feet stepped on and subsequently destroyed. He actually found himself enjoying the sound of the crushing glass under his boot, dreaming of how important it all was to the scientist. He only stopped when he smelt that familiar odor on the air. That perfect rose... Aeris had been here.
Emotions buried hardly a second ago burst through their caskets, engulfing his mind in primal rage as he jumped to the first conclusion he could muster. Hojo. That fucking prick, what had he done to her? He poisoned everything that tried to live and be beautiful. If he so much as plucked one strand of hair from off her head...
"What a temper..." The beast chuckled, leaning against a table as he gleefully watched his enraged toy.
"Where the fuck is he?!" Zack roared, furiously tossing a cart of pots and beakers aside. The glass abruptly shattered as it hit the floor, but neither of the two acknowledged it. "Where is that little freak?! He's got to pay..."
"He's not here." The beast told him. "If he was, I'd gladly sick you on him. I hate him as much as the next homicidal maniac. But unfortunately for you, he's none of your concern tonight. We've got a bigger, fatter, richer fish to fry."
"First," Zack swallowed his fury, and tried his best to regain his composure. "Tell me where she is. I need to know..."
The beast frowned for a long second, and then shook his head."Five years of excruciating torture and Hojo's only a distant thought in your head," The beast began, confused. "But the possibility of him harming that little flower girl of yours is enough reason for you to make a bee-line to kill him? Love is ridiculous..."
"Where is she?" Zack demanded sternly.
"She's right here, actually." The beast shrugged casually. "Safely locked up in a cell just over there. She had a rough night, she's sleeping now. Go see her, if you want to."
Zack stared at him for a long moment, surprised yet wary. Finally, he made his way past the lab and into the prison-like hold for the Professor's specimens. Anxiously, he made his way through the dimly lit corridors, his heart pounding loudly in his ears as he passed both empty and occupied cells until he finally reached hers, and then his heart stopped entirely.
She was exactly as he had left her as she lay on her cot: sleeping blissfully, her head resting gently on her arm, same pink dress attached to her figure and her soft chestnut hair hanging down from her undone braid and resting limply on her cheek. Nothing had changed; she was still perfect, still so incomprehensibly beautiful. For a good long moment, everything seemed right again. All the fears, all the doubts, all the pain, all the hate, it all simply melted away, like it had never been there in the first place.
He felt helplessly weak as he watched her lay there perfectly still, memorizing every minute detail. His body was warm again; as though his icy blood had melted and was now flowing freely once more. He gently pressed his hand up against the thick window, and he felt his knees buckle and his heart ache with want and sorrow as she stirred softly. Despite the soundproof door, he dared not make a sound. He wouldn't want to wake her. He was content now just to watch her, and if he could just freeze this moment for all eternity, he was more than willing too.
"She really is quite breath-taking." The beast cut in carefully to an oblivious Zack, who seemed not to even respond to him, trapped in his perfect instant of peace. "It's no surprise you're so taken with her." Zack still seemed far off, ignorant to beast's existence. "I know you've missed her Adam, but it's not your time to be with her. There are still things that need to be done."
Zack still had yet to move, his body expressing nothing but a very silent defiance to anything other than his angel. That was, until a horrible dark pain exploded inside his mind, forcing him to his knees as it seared inside his head like a giant black super-nova. He screamed in agony as he was blinded by the uncontrollable anguish.
The beast only smirked as he watched the puppet writhe despairingly. "Mother's jealous." It snickered cruelly as the hate rose up in Zack's heart, engulfing his eyes in that familiar yellow fire. "You didn't honestly expect to be this close to her and get away with it scott free, did you?!" The beast boomed, furious and amused all at once. "You've still got some big debts to pay before you get anything more than a minuscule taste of happiness. Mother's not quite ready to let you off the hook just yet."
A lone guard came to answer the agonized screams coming from the corridors of the containment area. He found a lone black haired man crawling up against the wall, making himself as small as could be as the hurt inside him shook him uncontrollably and he blubbered incessantly. "Sir!" The guard began, extending a careful hand to the hysterical dark man who had ceased to make any noise, but was instead now rocking back and forth with his head between his knees. "Are you okay sir...sir?"
"I guess it's time you do your job, Adam." With one final icy smirk, the beast disappeared in a flash of cold black light, leaving the man sobbing pathetically on the floor with nothing other than a confused employee trying to help him. But the dark man wanted none of it.
As soon as the guard dared touch the man's shoulder, his hand was lost in a flash of silver and steel. He screamed in horror and pain as he stared at the bloody, ugly stub that now replaced his hand as he fell backwards into a corner, his eyes wide with shock and terror. The black haired man only stood up, an unsympathetic expression as he approached the poor guard who could only watch in fear. Another flash of silver, and it had all come to a quick end for the man.
His stoic face etched in stone, the dark man turned the corner and kept on walking as though nothing had happened, not even bothering to wipe his blade clean. He opened a door, and entered a small, crowded room recognizable as the security cabin. Having just watched the footage of a murder, the guards stood up to face him with a look of shock as they stared at the blade. The expression lay engraved on their faces forever, as the black-haired man instantly cut them down.
He stood there for a moment, watching the corpses bleed, pooling across the floor, but the red dared not touch him. He turned his attention to the console, the lights of many buttons and monitors flickering in the darkness. With one fowl swoop of the sword, the console erupted in an explosion of sparks and eventual fire. He listened carefully as the cameras and the electrical locks in the building buzzed quietly and went offline.
He stepped out of the burning room and made his way to the stairs, the Masamune held ominously at his side, dripping fresh blood and leaving a thick trail of it wherever he went. Nothing could stop him, and nothing was going to change that lifeless look on his face. He looked every bit as dead as his victims.
***
Pr. Shin-Ra sat comfortably in his plush chair, staring out at his massive office with a very content look on his face. After all, he was the most powerful man in the world. He was the man who held the world's economy in an unbreakable vice-grip. He was the founder of the world's most dominant and elite military force, SOLDIER. He was the one who had ruled over the great General Sephiroth. He had every right to be content.
He raised a somewhat surprised eyebrow as the monitors of his own personal console flickered and became a bright black and white blizzard of static. Confused, he pondered what may have just happened, but then thought better of it. He wasn't worried. Probably just a glitch in the head console. He sunk back into his snug chair, relieved. The ignorant bliss quickly faded when a black clad man marched up his stairs, holding the bloody blade of the General himself in one unflinching hand.
As the dark man leapt over his head and landed behind him, the President of Shin-Ra Inc. bound his eyes shut and grit his teeth. He felt the blade sink deep into his back and pierce his heart. He fell forward onto his desk, wheezing his final breaths. He wasn't all that surprised. He always figured he'd die because of someone stabbing him in the back.
So this was how it was going to end. No slowly losing his monopoly and dying a poor old man. No getting executed in front of the cheering masses. No getting betrayed by one of his jealous associates. Just a quick murder by some lunatic stranger. He supposed it was one of the better deaths he could have asked for.
***
Adam stared at the Masamune in his hands, a strange gray liquid dripping from it onto the floor. He looked up at the colourless world around him, the painfully generic blacks, whites and grays weighing him down. The colours had been stolen from him. He had lost them, and he couldn't figure out why they weren't coming back. Nothing seemed alive without them.
He sat in a corner of a large empty room, hugging the blade close to him and breathing heavy breaths, the soothing sway of the ocean rocking the boat like a cradle. He stared at the mundane corpses scattered around, bleeding nothing but gray. The red was gone. It looked so strange. He knew it was blood, but it simply couldn't stir him anymore. It made puddles all over the floor and stained the walls, but without the red...
He hugged the Masamune close to him. He had forgotten what it felt like to hold it; how satisfying it was to use it. He had forgotten his little escapade in Midgar, too. But maybe the quiet joys of murder were better left in the darkness. The blade pressed against his cheek, easily opening a wound. Still no red, though...
She could bring them back, couldn't she? Of course she could, she would fix it all. Everything was just so dead without the colours, she needed to make the vibrance come back. Or at the very least she could help him make it all better. Picking up the pieces was much more fun with her at his side.
A muffled gasp slowly pulled him out of his trance. He lifted his head, and across the room, he could see her standing there, perfect...