Chapter 14: Bland Horizons
The silver haired imp watched with delight as his determined little puppet marched through Shin-Ra Inc., butchering anything in his way with perfect efficiency, leaving a thick trail of blood with every step he took.
He walked over to a small elevator across the room, and it opened for him without a touch, somehow aware of his presence. Casually, he stepped inside the small coffin like transporter, his arms folded as the doors automatically closed and the elevator descended for a few brief seconds before the doors reopened to a brand new room, which resembled a medical storage facility with its many crates and containers. But the imp only had his eye out for one thing, and he found it immediately.
It was a small grey dome, almost indistinguishable amongst all the other useless garbage. Hidden away behind general supplies and only occupying a small corner of the room, you wouldn't have noticed it unless you knew what it was: a tomb, or more accurately, a prison to hold something that couldn't be contained.
The beast walked right up close to the small hold, running his hands along its egg-like shell. "Everything's running smoothly," he told the cage soothingly. "You'll be back with him in no time."
A low growl resonated throughout the floor.
"Patience, mother..." the beast murmured, irritated. "It's a very delicate situation. He'll need time to adjust and become comfortable in his skin again. He's not quite ready to take you back yet. In the mean time..."
Forcefully, the beast grabbed onto the latch of the prison, and tore the door from its hinges. Cold white mist and bright hot sparks poured from the tear as the floor's lights began to short circuit, throwing the area into brief spouts of complete darkness. Amongst horrid, primal screams, the beast reached under his long black coat and pulled out a somewhat humanoid head, severed from its body, an anxious smile on his face as the head opened its red eyes.
From the fog emerged a grotesquely strange silhouette, floating out from its prison and levitating in front of the beast. Its skin was a pale blue, with navy coloured veins running rather explicitly throughout its entire body. It had vaguely feminine curves among bizarre, freakish tentacles across its back and scaly spikes along its bones and joints, with breasts and hips being all that resembled conventional humanity. It was monstrously beautiful, even if it had been decapitated.
The being grabbed the head in both its claw-like hands, ripping it away from the beast, hugging it to its chest for a moment before lifting it to its neck and resting it upon its slender shoulders as the veins and arteries reattached themselves like pieces of string. Finally, the two folds of skin blended into each other, and the entity known as Jenova was restored.
"Let's play..." Sephiroth snickered at the creature.
***
"So this is what the upper plate looks like..." Aeris began, looking up at the tall posh building that stretched upwards, cutting through the green smog and poisoned grey clouds.
"You've never been?" Zack asked, rather surprised.
"Not lately." She shrugged "Hasn't changed much, though..."
"Let me guess..." He cut in playfully, and she smiled at him as she brought her eyes back down to earth. "'Still rich and dead', right?"
"I guess you could say that." She giggled. "I had something a little less bitter in mind, but whatever."
"Either way, it's still possible to have some fun up here, so we should at least make a conservative effort, okay?" She nodded emphatically, and he turned back around and the two were back on there way.
"Zack," Aeris began anew, noticing the ever-present Buster Sword slung along his back. "Why do you carry that big thing everywhere? It's such an eye-soar and it's gotta be heavy..."
A loud piercing whistle suddenly rung out, and as if to answer her question, the wall to their left disappeared in a massive explosion of fire and brick, sending the two hurtling forwards. When Aeris looked up from the debris, she found Zack holding her head between his arms protectively. He helped her up and the two immediately darted into a near-by alley-way as another explosion hit the pavement behind them.
"Stay here, okay?" He told her, setting her down behind a dumpster, and darting off sword drawn before giving her the chance to answer.
"Fucking SOLDIER!" a voice rang out from the sky. "You've gotta pay!"
As Zack strolled into the middle of the street while the masses fled from the scene in the opposite direction, he got his first good look at the attacker. He was a foreign man of about forty, heavily armed with a bizarre giant robotic sort of suit which served as both a ship and a body that kept him about fifteen feet above street level.
"Listen bud." Zack called after the robotic beast. "I don't know who the hell you are but you better have a damn good excuse for interrupting my fucking promenade."
"You son of a bitch..." The man spat, shaking his head with fury. "It's all your kind's fault that the world is the way it is..."
"Oh I see..." Zack nodded his head rather sarcastically "So you've decided to fix it by tearing up a city block and endangering thousands of people. Good plan."
"It's SOLDIERs like you who killed my family..." The man continued with his rant. "It's SOLDIERs like you who burnt down Wutai...It's people like you who rip everything and anything apart just because it pays!" The man screamed. "It's SOLDIERs like you who took our country away from us and made us scared to even live!"
"It's terrorists like you made us." Zack yelled back at the man.
"Don't you dare say that..." The man muttered, fuming. "Don't you dare get righteous with me...You did it for money, don't try and justify it you fucking whore... You invaded our land and slaughtered families without even thinking about it just because there was a big fat check paid for by the devil itself waiting for you at home. Don't you dare tell me we deserved it. Just because we had money and property that didn't belong to Shin-Ra does not give you the right to come and destroy us! We were faultless, all of us, and you murdered us by the thousands!!!"
With that the man fired a missile at the SOLDIER, who dove to the side as an explosion ate up the street. Zack quickly made his way into an alley, dodging machine gun fire from the Wutaien. In a flash, he was climbing a fire escape as the contraption rose higher into the air, following the SOLDIER with a restrained rage as he made his way to the roof.
As soon as he found himself on steady ground, he shot a barrage of fire spells at the man to little effect, who opened up on the roof with more machine gun fire. Once more, Zack escaped from the bullets, charging across the roof towards the street opposite of the machine. He jumped off as the machine chased him downwards to the street, but he grabbed onto the edge of the roof to prevent himself from falling as the man whizzed past him. Finding himself above the ship, Zack kicked himself off the wall and fell down upon it blade first. The Buster Sword stabbed deep into the hull of the machine, sparks raining out of the massive breach as the machine's boosters began to fail and it fell downwards.
The Wutaien struggled fiercely with the controls as the robot suit hit the pavement, back to the ground, but it did nothing as the SOLDIER stood atop the glass of the cockpit, staring down menacingly at the man.
"What can I say?" Zack shrugged to the furious screaming man, before stabbing the Buster Sword down past the glass and through the man's face.
"It's a living." he muttered as shards of glass and blood splattered everywhere. He pulled the sword from the wound, and turned to find Aeris staring at him from the alley.
"I told you to stay where I left you." He called worriedly, running to hug the shocked girl who began to whimper a bit. "It wasn't safe to come here." He said, kissing her on the forehead, oblivious to the specks of blood on his face.
"Come on." He brushed her hair gently as she shook uncontrollably. "Let's get you home."
Spare arm around her, he walked with her hastily back towards the Sector seven slums, but all the while, she could only stare at the bloody Buster Sword in his other hand.
***
It was a cold dark day in Olde Junon when Tifa found herself staring up at an ominous apartment building. A little less than a couple weeks ago, she had fled from it as though it were hell itself, but here she was about to go hunting after the same guy who took her hostage and almost killed her in a fit of severe insanity. Curiosity was the damndest thing.
She had done nothing but wonder about the man since the moment she left the room in which he kept her. She wondered what he was, where he had come from, and most of all, what he was planning on doing. He was obviously a force to be reckoned with, but the role he was playing in the big picture was clouded. She felt he was far too important to simply ignore, and the many mysteries he presented had been too much for her to resist.
She was dressed in a plain old white tank-top and a short black skirt, with little more than a leather jacket to protect her from the harsh late-fall briskness. She found it to be incredibly cold outside, which was partly because of the season and place, while mostly because of the fear crawling up her spine. She was not by any stretch the sort of girl that would be classified as a coward, but as she stared up at the dark grey sky, she found it hard to believe there was a person in the world who's knees wouldn't be buckling.
Eventually, she walked across the street and to the door of the dilapidated tower, briefly glancing at all the broken glass. On the door handle there was an automated lock, which she guessed would only allow permitted visitors to enter. Thankfully, it was old, damaged, and broken, so an intruder such as herself could make her way in with ease.
The inside of the building was strikingly reminiscent of Midgar. The faded brown walls were peeling in chunks, and graffiti was littered everywhere. Broken glass, used paper and other assorted garbage took up most of the dirty damp floor as the ceiling leaked, drops of water hit the ground rhythmically. The place seemed completely abandoned, aside from a few crows who stood in the corners or sat on the window-sills. At the end of the hallway was a lone elevator, dauntingly sinister as a dim electrical light enveloped it.
Hesitantly, Tifa pressed the up button for the elevator, and after an elongated mechanical hum, the door's two pieces slid in opposite directions and menacingly welcomed her into a cramped coffin-like room, lit only by a buzzing and fading hanging lamp. She pressed the button for the highest floor, and the doors sealed, trapping her in the box as the elevator strained upwards for what felt like an eternity.
Finally, they reopened to show her a familiar empty hallway with a foreboding door at the end. Here, the natural colours, the paint, and the wallpaper had all faded to a dull dark grey. It seemed the residential equivalent of a burnt up piece of paper, untouched and isolated from the growing world around it. If Death owned an apartment, this was it.
She contemplated what awaited her. Would the man be aggressive, passive, depressed, insane? Would he even be there when she walked into the room? Her most dominant fear was that he'd have completely lost it; that he'd have transformed into an animalistic vicious beast, ready and able to slaughter anything that walked through that front door. She was prepared to fight him if she had to, but considering what he had done to Avalanche, she sure as hell didn't want to.
Within the dead silence was what seemed like the only noise in the entire universe: a quiet, sort of confused, sustained chuckle that echoed out from somewhere beyond the door. She felt compelled to take this, her last chance to run away, but the door drew her in like a perpetual black-hole at the end of a corridor. Within a couple of reluctant minutes, she found herself slowly turning the knob, and even pushing forwards for the door to open.
After she opened the door, expecting everything and anything, she found exactly the opposite: nothing. Nothing but a breakfast table in an otherwise empty room, and a second door directly across from her. She let out an exasperated sigh, and shook her head at her own nervousness, but the laughter continued to suck her in. As she passed the table, she noticed various narcotic substances littered across it in large piles, probably worth thousands of Gil. After a moment of worried deliberation, she opened the second door, and was rather pleasantly taken aback by the enormous artificial window she found herself staring out of.
The absence of a wall that had apparently been forcefully torn from the building exposed a perfect landscape of a Junon at dusk. The gentle current of the ocean stretched out into the setting sun, which painted the normally grey cloudy sky a vibrant pink, casting colourful reflections upon the blue water's surface. It was chillingly beautiful as a mercilessly cold wind blew throughout the highly elevated room.
In the corner opposite to the make shift frame for the image sat the source of the laughter, oblivious to the beauty in front of him as he gawked in mild amusement at his own mutilated wrists and forearms. A dozen or so long, deep cuts ran throughout his arms, slicing veins and all as they intersected, leaving only small patches of skin below his elbow free from wounds or blood.
Tifa watched the dark demented man, frozen stiff as still he laughed. "Oh my god..." was all her lips could muster as she leered with wide-eyed terror, inaudible whisper as it was.
"Don't worry..." He chortled, shaking his head in a slight daze. "It doesn't hurt..." He let out a louder, more maniacal laugh. "I can't even feel it..."
Odd as it may sound, it was not his pain that had her worried, or even the shattered syringes littered across the room. It was in fact his blood, which dripped to the floor as casually as a spilt glass of water. It wasn't natural; not the deep red colour humanity had come to accept as the norm. It was instead an icy navy blue that stained his skin, like the ocean washing against the sandy beige shore. It was horribly unconventional, and she couldn't help but feel sick to her stomach at the very thing he seemed to have overlooked.
"My god..." She repeated, swallowing hard as she forced herself to edge closer to him. "What's happened to you...?"
"Looks pretty obvious to me..." He snickered, shrugging at he looked back to his own slit wrists and arms "Doesn't seem to be working very well, though. It's funny... I should be able to feel this, right?"
She didn't answer, her eyes fixed on the running blood as she kneeled down beside him. "Here..." She began sympathetically, pulling a cloth from her pocket and going to wipe at him. "Let me help you..."
"Don't touch me..." He hissed, suddenly dead serious and a little bit panicked as he violently pulled away from her and retreated even further back into his corner.
She frowned, a bit hurt as she pocketed the cloth and took a seat beside him, and watched the sun fade further and further into the ocean.
"It's nothing personal..." He hushed eventually, apologetic with his head down as he pulled his legs closer to him "I just don't want to hurt you, is all..."
"I know who you are." She said rather dryly, and he simply turned his head to look at her. There was a long silence where neither made a noise or effort to speak, but Tifa finally continued "What happened to you, Zack?"
He swallowed and looked away, taken aback by the name. "I've had a rough five years, Teef..." He finally began with somewhat of a forced chuckle.