Chapter 9: Behind the Masks
Blood was splattered against the walls like thick blotches of paint, painfully bright and obvious on the plain grey steel. Eight corpses were scattered across the floor, the looks of terror forever etched on their mangled faces as they lay in puddles of dark red. The gigantic room was utterly soundless, and from where Aeris stood, it felt very much like looking at a deranged painting from the fractured mind of a demented soul.
The artist sat in the farthest corner, his long sharp brush still wet with the only colour he ever used as he hugged it to him, his soft golden eyes locked intently on her own, watching her patiently as he awaited her critique. But no words were traveling through the mind of Aeris, only emotions that couldn't quite be expressed with language. None the less, the painter looked as though he understood her very well.
"Aeris." The man hushed as he stood to his feet, seeing her and her alone as she stood amongst the rest of the Avalanche faction.
"Who are you?" Cloud demanded valiantly as he made himself an artificial wall between the two, seeing the girl's obvious uneasiness. "What are you doing here?"
Adam stared at her forever, ignoring everything else, but the colours were still gone. Her clothes were grey, her skin was white, and her hair was black, as was the rest of the world around her. She still looked vibrant though, not dead like the others. She didn't need the colours; she was always going to be beautiful. Still, Adam was a bit disappointed that the rest of the world would remain so generic. But compared to her, he supposed that's what it was.
"Rissy..." He began as he approached her worriedly, a confused expression on his face as he remained unidentified "Rissy, it's me..."
She cowered a bit, incapable of looking away from those piercing irises as she took shelter in the small crowd of her comrades. For each step he took forward she took one back. "Don't call me that..." She managed to sputter quietly as the monstrous stranger called her by the long-buried pet name.
There was nothing resembling love as she looked back at him, only fear for this dark outlander standing in front of her. She didn't recognize him. She saw nothing but a beastly murderer, the fresh blood of a few innocent victims running freely down his blade. She saw none of Zack in whoever it was glaring at her, only blackness. Only Adam.
There was something severely wrong here. She shouldn't have been this upset. She should have been happy to see him. But as she stared at him with those horrified, unbelieving eyes, Adam couldn't help but wonder what exactly it was she was seeing. The thing she was looking at couldn't be a loved one, but wasn't that what it was? Maybe she wasn't seeing what he thought was there; maybe she was staring at something much worse.
"Back off." Cloud raised his voice as he unsheathed the infamous Buster Sword and intercepted the apparent murderer. The blade served well enough to grab the black-haired menace's attention, but the man was far from intimidated. He only looked at the blade with a very deep-rooted irritation, as if its presence were nothing more than a mocking smack in the face. "Aeris, get out of here and hide." Cloud called over his shoulder as he noticed the man's intensity, a soft, very subtle concern under the sharpness of his voice, his eyes all the while locked on the hooded figure.
"Out of the way, Strife." Adam hissed venomously, struggling to keep composure. "I don't want to deal with you while she's watching."
"I'm not going anywhere until you explain a few things." Cloud retorted impatiently, not the least bit appreciative of the way the man talked down to him. "For starters, where'd you get that sword, and who the hell are you?"
"Cut the hero bull-shit, Cloud." Adam spat spitefully as he stepped to within an inch of the blonde's face, but he too showed no signs of recognition. "I don't know what the hell you're thinking, but I don't have the time to deal with you. I'll give you one chance to take your buddies and get your ass out of here." He pointed a finger at the eclectic group that formed a protective barrier around the frightened Aeris, who cowered out of the room. "Consider yourselves lucky."
"Avalanche don't run from no one." The largest of the pack abruptly interrupted, looking as imposing as could be with his large frame and a sub-machine gun grafted to his right arm. "Especially from some evil badass wannabe like you."
The black clad man slowly looked from one battle-anxious member of the coalition to the other, weighing his odds as he analyzed his opponents: There was of course Cloud; One exceptionally big and aggressive black bear with a gun; One well-endowed brunette who seemed fairly competent as she assumed a fighting stance, and one teenaged ninja-rookie with a 4-pointed shriuken along with her bizarre orange pet tiger-wolf...thing. With an acceptant frown, the man took a couple of steps back, slid his foot into place and lifted the Masamune to his side. "Close your eyes, Rissy..."
***
"So how did you manage to track it down to here?" Adam asked curiously as he paced the outside of a dilapidated church of the Sector 7 slums, kicking up dead dirt as he wondered just how long ago the last church of Midgar had been abandoned. "Tseng's been working on this case for years without any luck, how the hell did you get a lead?"
"I guess I'm just way better than Seng" Reno explained with a smile, a lit cigarette hanging from his bottom lip and his hands casually resting in his jacket pockets.
"Not quite yet." Adam laughed as he came to a stop, and stared up at the broken stained glass. "Seriously though, how did you find it?"
"A couple nights ago we got a disturbance call saying something unusual was going on in this abandoned church. Seeing as Sector 7 was the escapees last known whereabouts, I figured it could use some investigation." Reno went on for a moment, sounding oddly professional "Did a little bit of espionage and I found out she had been living in this sector the whole time with a foster mother, and it seems to me like this is one of her hangouts."
"It's female, and human?!" Adam let out a surprised snicker. "What, you afraid of some girl Reno? If you were able to track her down, why didn't you just catch her yourself instead of dragging my busy ass into it?!"
"It's not my job to hunt down 'potentially dangerous' lab escapees." Reno shrugged lazily.
"You'll make a great Turk someday, Reno." Adam sighed sarcastically to an indifferent Reno as he unsheathed the infamous Buster Sword.
"Remember, Hojo wants this one alive." Reno warned the hack-happy SOLDIER "That means no slicing, dicing, or whatever the hell else you do with a huge-ass knife. I don't want you screwing this up for me."
"Relax." Adam said, taking a few shots at an invisible opponent. "This isn't going to be anything more than a walk through the park."
***
The fivesome abruptly rushed Adam, Cloud in front. With a simple parry, the blonde was pushed off balance to the side, leaving Adam but a moment to toss his foot into the air and kick the four-legged orange creature across the head who had made an ill-fated pounce. He then quickly side-stepped as the young ninja Yuffie swung her shriuken at his head with little grace. He heard the loading of a gun, and as one of the girl's weapon's four points jabbed at him, he swiftly caught it with one hand, spinning the girl around and making an adequate shield out of her. The trigger-happy Barret only managed to stop himself from firing his first shot in time to hear the young teen yelp in horror as she stared down the gun's barrels. As Cloud charged in for a second round, Adam kicked the green ninja away into the arms of the burly gunman, knocking them both over.
Cloud swung the Buster Sword shockingly well, as did Adam with the Masamune. Neither combatant thought the other was worthy of the blade they weld, yet both were equally stubborn in their belief that their own rapiers were rightfully earned. Two egos clashed along with the steel.
Adam attacked swiftly and furiously with the Masamune, trying desperately to pierce the blonde's defenses in time to defend the upcoming spell being conjured by the thoughtful brunette off in the distance, who had until now remained unnoticed. He managed to hit Cloud across the face with his fist, in time to mutter a counter-incantation and make a complicated hand gesture, redirecting the brunette's hurtling ball of mystical fire at the ever-dangerous Barret, who had just made his way to his feet. The massive sphere of orange and red hit him square in the chest, tossing him hard backwards into the steel wall hull of the room. He slid back down to the ground, unconscious.
A quick kick into the recuperated Cloud's chest gave Adam the necessary second to slice a fast-approaching large propeller out of the air. Two halves of a four-pointed shriuken fell to the floor, and a female teenager could be heard cursing loudly in the background. "Watch it kid." Adam scowled at the young combatant, barely turning back around in time to block a mad offensive by the blonde 'SOLDIER'.
Cloud made stabs, slices and sweeps as he tried to cut down the black-clad man, and Adam was more than a little surprised to find himself on a very uncomfortable defensive. He ducked parried and side-stepped to the best of his ability, but the blonde's pace was too fast, even for the ex-SOLDIER. Cloud hit a very heavy shot across Adam's head with the blunt of the Buster Sword, knocking him sprawling hard flat onto his stomach and opening a large gash to the side of his forehead. Never-ceasing, Cloud opportunistically jumped into the air, blade held high as he roared a primal battle-cry before falling rapidly back down to the ground for the kill. In the short instant that he had to react, Adam rolled onto his back and caught the blade, one hand on each blunt-side, then thrust both feet hard into the blonde's abdomen, following through by rolling backwards, only to flip the fighter head-long into the wall. Cloud crashed hard, and fell to the ground, unmoving.
Adam immediately sprung to his feet and caught two ninja stars whizzing through the air. Again, Yuffie cursed. Annoyed, he threw the two projectiles back at the girl with all her skill or if not more, and they each embedded themselves deep into the girl's thighs. She fell to her knees and let out an agonized scream, biting back tears as her legs bled uncontrollably. In a mad sprint, Adam dashed across the room and dove, giving the girl a roundhouse kick so hard that it may have snapped her neck had she been frailer. Luckily, it left her little more than knocked out.
The orange-furred creature was quick to aid the girl, pouncing on the prone Adam and digging his claws deep into the man's back. Adam belted out a painful howl, and rapidly tossed the beast over his shoulder, but it altered its position in mid-air to land on its feet. It dove at him once more, but a frustrated Adam gave it a very harsh slash of his sword that lacked finesse, but was none the less very effective. The beast fell backwards out of the air, bleeding profusely, but still alive.
His breaths heavy and his body and mind exhausted, Adam looked at all the fallen fighters around the room, satisfied as he noticed no one standing. "Do NOT fuck with a first-class SOLDIER..." He muttered under his breath.
Masamune in his right hand, he made a bee-line across the room for the incognizant body of Cloud. A hard right hook across the face caught him off guard as a left hand twisted his wrist and tossed his weapon far aside, throwing him off balance only for a thin muscular leg to quickly sweep his feet out from under him. Adam moaned as he hit the ground and subsequently felt the wind get knocked out of him, but gathered himself in time to catch a falling boot that would have otherwise smashed into his face. He harshly twisted the foot, and its owner spun in the air and fell to the floor. The warriors rolled in opposite directions of each other and onto their feet, arms raised in a nearly identical fighting stance.
Adam mentally smacked himself in the head as he realized the attacker was none other than the brunette who cast the fire spell earlier. He had forgotten her, probably because she had pretty much stayed to the shadows and waited until he had been weakened. Now, she had been able to catch him off guard and take an exceptional advantage. Whoever this girl was, she was smart. Then it struck him...
The woman swung her fist and connected with a rough backhand across his face, confidently following through with a quick but deadly kick to his abdomen. He lurched forward, and she lifted her knee up into his face with crushing force, sending him stumbling backwards. The girl looked primed to finish him off with one good maneuver as she leapt up for a potentially bone-breaking axe-kick, but Adam caught the girl's foot with one hand while it was still considerably high up, swung his free arm around her waist and locked wrists. He followed through with the awkward hold by arching backwards and tossing the girl over his head and onto her own. His plan didn't quite work as he had hoped though as she took the fall with perfect grace and agility, intelligently rolling off the impact and back onto her feet.
She charged in with a few swift jabs, but this time around he seemed more than suitably prepared as he blocked each shot and even managed to retaliate with a couple of rapidfire strikes of his own, but neither managed to sneak in a solid hit. Boths styles and stances were similar at a brief glance of the constantly moving duo, but ironically, the girl's was probably the more agressive while the man's was the more polished and rounded. It was a very unusual battle of the sexes.
Adam made a full twist in the air before tossing a roundhouse kick, one which the girl dodged with a well-timed shoulder-roll. She countered with a sweep aimed at the back of his calves, but he forsaw it and jumped over it, altering his position in mid air to nearly axe-kick her into oblivion, but she again rolled aside safely and was up again in time to make the first strike.
He caught her speeding fist and slid under her arm, quickly pulling her over his shoulder and tossing her to the ground. She hit the floor hard with a loud thunk, but she took the fall properly and kicked back up onto her feet before he had the chance to follow through. She forcefully twisted his arm that held onto her wrist and gave him a few quick kicks to the abdomen, forcing him to lurch forward for a moment. Seeing a perfect opening, she swung his arm over her shoulders, then wrapped her one arm around his neck and grabbed his belt with the other, setting up for a personal favourite move of hers by the name of MeteoDrive. She lifted him upside-down and straight into the air and was ready to drop him on his head, but he was all too familiar with the move and knew very well how to counter it. Simply by tossing his weight forwards with his legs, Adam was able flip out of the hold and land on his feet, behind her. Reacting quickly, he caught her in a full-nelson, lifted her up into the air, arched his back, then leapt backwards off of his feet, letting Tifa's defenseless head land straight onto the floor with both Adam's weight and her own on-top of it. Needless to say, it was a knockout maneuver.
Adam pushed himself off the almost accordion-like girl, and nearly felt like collapsing from exhaustion. The girl had held her own amazingly well, almost annoyingly so. He couldn't help but smirk. That had certainly not been the Tifa Lockheart that he remembered.
After a few wheezing breaths, he looked over his surroundings and spotted the Masamune. Right there in front of it lay the bloody Cloud, who looked to be slowly stirring back into consciousness as he reached desperately for his Buster Sword.
Adam locked his cross-hairs on the poor blonde, and in hardly a second he was standing over him, crushing the blonde's hand with his foot, his fingers inches away from the massive blade. He leant down with his free hand and forcefully made the nearly comatose Cloud sit up against the wall of the ship's storage facility. Kneeling down on top of him, with the Masamune in one hand and the Buster Sword in the other, Adam made a pair of scissors with the two blades just under Cloud's throat as his glazed eyes continued to drift through the murky waters of a concussion.
"You look like you've done pretty well for yourself, Strife." Adam hissed cruelly, pushing up with the blades against Cloud's chin and forcing his head back into the cold steel of the wall. "You've made yourself some friends, and you've gotten to be half-way decent with a sword. Hell, you've even got that Tifa girl you were obsessing about following you around...that's gotta be a nice change of pace..." Adam snickered as he nodded his head to the bruised, beaten, and unconscious brunnette behind him. Cloud looked half-dead; it was debatable whether or not he could hear the black-haired man. "You play the part of a SOLDIER pretty well. I guess all you needed was a good disguise. But that's all it is Cloud, nothing more than a fucking mask covering up the worthless prick you really are..." He spat at the boy, forcing the blonde-haired blue-eyed boy to stare him in his own fiery golden pupils as he shoved him again into the wall, nearly choking him. "You can hide behind that nice face of yours and make everybody love you, but you think they give a fuck about the real guy? You think if you weren't wearing that pretty little SOLDIER shroud they'd give a damn about you? Well how about you take it off and show them what I already see..."
Adam put the blade of the Masamune against Cloud's chin, piercing the skin and reaching the bone. Cloud let out a half-conscious piercing moan, but Adam didn't even flinch as he ever-so slowly pushed the blade further upwards, all the while staring at him squirm meekly. "Let's see what you look like without this pretty little face to hide you..." Adam whispered almost playfully.
***
Zack calmly strolled the inside of the Sector 7 church, making no effort to go unnoticed as he dragged his hand down the aisles, tipping over several pews and smiling in delight as they loudly smacked the broken floor tiles.
"Would you quiet down?!" Reno whispered as he pulled Zack away from the old wooden noise-makers. "You'll wake up the whole sector if you keep this up!"
"You're taking this way too seriously." Zack shook his head and roughly pulled his arm away from the downer "We may as well give the escapee a sporting chance by letting her know we're here. A SOLDIER and a Turk trying to capture one measly little girl? That's no fun. This way, we can at least chase her a bit."
"Well excuse me for not wanting to explain to a grumpy mob that we decided to have a bit of fun." The Turk yelped unintentionally loudly. "Besides, what makes you think she's even here, anyway? What's the point of giving a 'sporting chance' to an empty church? Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's nobody here but us."
"You really are a pain in the ass when you're sober." Zack sighed, irritated by the uncharacteristically uptight Reno. "And she's here. Don't worry about that."
"How would you know?" Reno asked almost obnoxiously.
"It's all in the details, Reno." Zack explained good-humouredly as he directed the red-head to an opening in the middle of the cathedral's floor that exposed gritty dead earth. He grabbed a capsized watering can off the floor and abruptly shoved it into the Turk's hands. "It's full, hardly any has leaked out since it's been lying on its side. Which means that whoever tipped it over, did so within the past couple of minutes. What's that tell you?"
"That whoever was using it is probably still here." Reno frowned as his friend continued to patronize him.
"Very good." Zack gave him a demeaning pat on the head. "I'll make a Turk of you yet, Reno."
"You're an ass, you know that?" Reno said plainly. Zack only smirked and looked up to the ceiling of the cathedral, while Reno continued to analyze the small green watering can. The never ending stone grey walls surrounding them climbed up for what seemed like forever, disappearing into a ceiling of shadow where crows slept and darkness was dominant.
"Here's what I don't get." Reno pondered aloud as he kneeled down to look at the tiny green sprouts in the small opening in the floor. "Who the hell would try gardening in the Sector 7 slums? The ground's as dead a corpse down here."
"Yeah, I thought that was kind of weird." Zack agreed "Anything with a half a brain could tell that nothing's ever going to grow down here. That she even managed to get that much is impressive..."
The faint sound of a scratching could be heard above them. The two youngsters both instinctively looked up to see a large wooden barrel hurtling downwards towards their heads. Ever the cool-headed one, Zack shoved Reno aside and to the floor and dove for his own cover. The barrel smashed against the ground, tossing small wooden debris in every direction.
"What the hell was that?!" Reno yelped to his comrade.
"I think we've found our escapee..." Zack whispered as he jumped to his feet, distinctly seeing something move amongst the shadows in the ceiling. In a mad dash, Zack dove up onto a gigantic old organ against the back decor of the gothic church, and climbed the many tubes and pipes, scaling the wall fearlessly until he found himself in the dangerous pitch darkness of the impossibly high rafters.
He followed the attacker throughout the ceiling as its feet creaked and cracked against the aging wood. He ducked and jumped from rafter to rafter as he tried to hunt by sound alone, moving quickly but carefully through the makeshift gungle gym with Buster Sword ready in one hand.
Finally, he found his sight again as he came to a large tare in the church's roof. There, looking like a ghostly angel as the full moon's anemic white light rested gently on her and her alone, was the escapee, a look of terrible fear on her face as she stared at her captor. But Zack could only watch the chillingly beautiful image, frozen in a surreal second as her warm green eyes silently pleaded with him.
"What the hell's going on up there?!" Reno called from afar, grounded in his lack of a SOLDIER's agility.
Zack and the angel had yet to budge, each awaiting the other's next move, or rather a first move.
"Zack?!" Reno persisted. "Are you there?! Did she get away?!"
Zack paused for a good long second, and then sheathed his blade. "Y-Yeah..." He called back hesitantly, not for a second turning away from the angel "I couldn't catch her...She got away."
The girl tilted her head at him, confused. He only gave her a meaningful nod of the head, and after a short uncertain moment, she charged out through the tear without a word.
Silently, he watched her as she made her escape down the piles of debris, onto the streets and into the night. After a serene moment of quiet darkness, Zack couldn't help but shake his head and chuckle to himself as he sat down on the rafter, letting his legs dangle over down to the far away ground. That flower girl sure was full of surprises.
***
A large ball of fire hit him in the chest, tossing him far backwards off the blonde and into the open space of the long room, disarmed. Adam scorned himself as he pondered who he had forgotten to give a good thwack across the head this time, hitting the ground hard and quickly rolling out the erupting flames. SOLDIER that he was, he was back on his feet in a flash, but was still a step behind as a painfully cold wind caught him and thousands of miniature icy shards crashed against his body, each cutting past the cloth and opening a wound in his skin. He stumbled backwards and nearly fell, biting back an inefficient scream as he wheezed for air. He was almost ready again when a crippling bolt of electricity struck him down to the floor, burning his flesh and organs. With an unbelievable amount of strain, he managed to bring his broken, spazing body up to its hands and knees in time to see something pink uppercut him with the butt of a long grey staff, knocking him onto his back and leaving him staring up at his attacker as she pushed the end of her weapon into his throat.
"Never underestimate a girl from the slums..." Aeris spat rather uncharacteristically cruelly at the seemingly defeated Adam who only watched her with a confused look on his bloody face. "Nobody messes with my friends and gets away with it."
"Rissy..." The black-clad man coughed weakly. "It's me...please let go."
She stared at him for a good long moment, her expression unreadable as she looked down upon the monster silently. "Don't call me that..." She finally said quietly, briefly letting up with her staff
"Rissy..." He pleaded silently.
"I said don't call me that!" She yelped furiously at the beast as she pushed down ever harder, making him writh.
Suddenly, a quiet ticking caught Adam's attention. It continued for a few seconds, and he was able to discern it as the tick-tock of a clock. But then the ticking stopped, and then for one brief second nothing followed. His eyes widened in horror as awareness hit him like a brick. A mako bomb had just been detonated.
A soft wall of blackness enveloped Aeris as he kicked her off of him and far away in less than a second. A massive explosion of green fire immediately followed, eating up the number 17 Shin-Ra transport ship in one instant, and gone in another as an eerie heavy darkness swallowed the colour whole. It engulfed everything, looking like a small piece of outer space right there in the middle of the ocean. It had come from nowhere only to consume the fiery destruction with chilling ease.
After the darkness parted, there was nothing left but ocean...