End of A Reality
by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana
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A/N: Sorry for the long absence of Cid.^^; This chapter will make up for it, hopefully.^^ And Brock and Rufus, too. ^^;
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You are very unreasonable: we are doing the world a favor. Look at the problems we strive to solve thorugh these procedures: human population is limited, which limits overcrowding, which in turn limits disease and crime. We draw nearer to a utopia. How, you ask? We open their minds and force them to see how you have degraded those that differ from them in class, order, genus, species..we ourselves aren't that different from them. Aeons ago we were undoubtedly like them. Our communication was in the form of growling and grunting. We had no concept of a schism..there was none. We have lost sight of that as a result of Father Time. Now we have evolved..but at the same time degraded ourselves by lowering our fellow creature to slaves, base entertainment, and mindless sport. Can I ask you, who then is the brutal beast?
~Unsigned retaliation from the OOTP to Kanto sovereigns unaffiliated with the PPA(PPL). From the merge of radical and conservative opinions, it is assumed to be the result of a collective effort to legitimize the organization declared illegal by both the PPA and the police department.
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Chapter 22: Janus Amused
Grief slayed the urge to shed tears in private where critical dry eyes scoffed at those that were not.. They kneeled there under the gravid skies and wept through the rain, unaware that the cold bodies they held in their hands grew colder than before, filmed in slime and things unnatural and fearsome...that filled them with horror and disgust until they realized they too had become little more than monsters.
Their turbulent wails jerked Red from his haunches and dragged his lean form upright, ever wary. It was like the cry of the Gi, relentless, unsparing...ever hungering for slaughter. Except there was no confusion in the Gi's war cry. The haunting whoop that was lost in the thunder was lost itself, confused, afraid, the cry of witnesses to the destruction of their bodies that they had called human until the rains looted this thing that they had once taken for granted.
Red launched himself through the mud, scarcely advancing three steps when he sent a soft growl through the heavy rainfall. He sensed the birth of monsters...of consciousless beasts that the ignorant often mistook him for.
Like the Gi...
He backed to his post, convincing himself they were no longer on Gaia, the hated tribe was dead, and the disfigured shapes trudging through the thickening mud were distorted by the clattering rain that his sharp eye could not pierce through. Besides, defending the town from the dragon..that took much higher priority than the constant animal cries that permeated the night shroud.
Knowing who the dragon was trickled drops of guilt into his soul.
He had a duty. A duty to a strange town he didn't know the name of, whose people were distant and far from his heart that beat strongly in yearning to instead defend those he had in fact bonded with.
Like Cid.
But Cid became a killer, a murderer. A murder of guiltless tribles and harmless peoples. Or..at least, it was the dragon hiding in Cid. Without a doubt. The dragon...it was the dragon they guarded, were ready to kill, not the pilot.
"It's no use pretending that's not actually Cid," Red shook his head in steady resolve and shoved his soggy nose against the mounting mud, closing his eye in that bit of remorse that separated him from primal killers. He raised an ear with evident tension as his scarlet fur-----well..now blackened by the strange-hued rain--bristled at every noise, fearful of a gunshot. He shifted uncomfortably in the black grime that piled amidst his ankles. From his post he had a clear view of the figuratively entombed, rooted to the earth with a white hand on the handle of the gun.
Red watched the living corpse with a warning eye and a questioning growl. Vincent answered him with the slightest shift in his soulless gaze that aimed at the weapon. The click of the loaded shotgun conveyed a meaning clearer than spoken words. Red gave a brisk nod, and returned to his post, the sucking sound of the mud pulling on the bottoms of his paws as he sat tensely among the cries of what magnified in his mind of phantom Gi.
*~*~*
Cid pressed his face stained in a mixture of sweat and the leftovers of sobs and wiped them on his arm split by scars old and new that ran jagged lines across the rough skin. He opened his eyes that reddened around the corners and puffed and swelled and glared into the spartan ceiling.
"And here you are tellin' Stife to be more manly," he chided. Goddamn it, he hated when he cried. He could turn and hide his moistened face from Tifa, from Barret, from anyone, really...except Draconis Rex.
The thunder permeating the windows roared in accordance with the dragon. A haughty, pompous, obnoxious roar that made Cid want to tear the dragon's lungs out...yeah., sure. Like that was even POSSIBLE. He couldn't do a THING to that overstuffed son-of-a fucking bitch.
Your human scientists attribute emotion to humanity. Trying to hold back emotion...avoiding it, denying it, ADMITTING.....you're not human.
"Flaming shitwad..!!!" growled Cid, hurling himself to a semi-upright position only to get yanked by the ropes like a leash. A leash? Leashes were for animals... and..and..and NOTHING. He backed up on the bed and pulled his sore legs out from under the sheet. They even gave him some jeans that were about two sizes too small so he'd be half-decent. His scowl curved into a half-smile as he leaned his shoulders against the wall, letting his hands dangle by the ropes as he regarded them satisfactorily. "You're just good at mind-games, Drac. I only believe what my five senses say, and I'm seein' two man hands and-" He leaned one elbow against the wall, flashing a grin of improved confidence, "--that you're a motherfucking liar."
The rain clattered on the window in a steady, continuous sheet that pronounced the glorious execution of a tyrannical race.
Typical human.
A surge of energy, and the rope snapped, its coarse pieces flumping on the floorboards followed by a yelp and a crash as Cid landed on his chest. "Crazy fuck," he groaned, rubbing at his sore wrists. Shit, he felt like crap about now. He pushed himself up by his knees, wincing as he rubbed at the raw skin with his calloused fingers. He stared into his head and snorted ruefully, "I...I guess I owe ya."
The dragon did not respond. "Hey, Drac..!" Cid repeated a bit louder, cupping one hand at the side of his mouth. The storm ran rampant outside the window without the roar of thunder. "You're gonna answer me or what?! I said I owe ya!"
Strange...it seemed that the dragon already knew it.
Muttering a low cuss and shaking his head in disgust, Cid advanced for the door, in his, for now, unshared mind, planning hundreds of long chains of verbal acids to burn his so-called "comrades" with once he opened the frigging door.
Make that IF, Cid grumbled in his mind. Consciously he paused and waited for the dragon to make some smart-ass remark, some commentary on his stupidity, or even that grating laugh in all its bombast and "better than you" attitude.
"Cold shoulder, eh?" he asked his mind, placing the heel of his bare foot on the door and yanking with as much force six or seven hours of languishing let him. "Fine," he huffed. "Maybe I can get a shit's worth of time to think----" Frown lines added to his premature wrinkles. Think? Thought. Door was locked. He looked at the doorknob and took his hand off of it. He took those things apart dozens of times before but took it apart with tools. Right now..he didn't have anything, except a pair of someone else's mad-ugly pants. Not even a cig, for Christ's sakes.
The rain tumbled off the glass panes and into the ground below. Looked like that would be his way out. He jogged heavily on the floorboards, conscious of the clamor his weight made on the wood..maybe it'd attract plastic girl and chrome-arm. Heh.too bad for them, he wasn't gonna stick around long enough for them to nab him.
Cid unlatched the window and grit his teeth. "This is all your fucking fault, Lockheart..." His hands slipped on the latch as something in his gut twitched in warning.
Whatever nagging feeling he got he shrugged it off and pulled open the window, thrusting his head out which connected with the automatic death dealer, its rigid shape fashioned after outmoded weapons that still managed to maim and kill despite their bad accuracy and their fucking loud warning sound that threw any hope of stealth out the window. . And this one threatened to put a hole in his friggin head that somethin weird was happening to--pinpricks of pain erupted all over his scalp as the alarmingly familiar sensation of skin turning into scales...hit....him....
Cid clamped one remolding hand on the side of his head that shuddered violently as the rain battered his head. He grabbed his forehead with that hand, feeling the scales. "Christ...not AGAIN... NOT_AGAIN....." He shot a panicked glare at the corpselike man, unmoved. Cid fell backwards in the mud that swallowed his ankles that began to take on that blue-silver tint, watching not the gun that followed his movement downward, but the rain around it, the fast-falling rain more relentless than 100000 scalpels. Cid shut his eyes that the rain seeped into, backed up on his elbows and side as a tail burst out from behind him and snaked under his scaling legs still covered by the ill-fitting pants, as he breathed through lungs that expanded irregularly and painfully...all the worse for someone who was bound to a pack a day.
Vincent observed with gun drawn. An ordinary experience. Almost routine. Commonplace. He stared into Cid's eyes now slit through middle.
Like a reptile. A dragon. Draconic Rex....as a piercing cry shot from Cid as the wings once again broke through his skin and spread stiffly like divergent upward crustal movements that erupted into the sky, he bit down on his molars, some of them sharpening and pushing through his gums, fresh blood pouring from the hardening gumline and the rain filling his mouth. Goddamnit.....no wonder he was so quiet..just biding his time...waiting for him to make the jackass decision to escape out the window. And as he pondered his own stupidity, he hardly even noticed the force that overthrew his tentative control over his actions.
His eyes glowed in sudden malice.
"The hell you doin', Valentine?!" A clawed hand shot foward and grabbed the barrel of the gun, pushing it away from his head in relative ease. "Don't point yer carbine at me, you're gonna shoot someone's head off with that piece 'a junk!!" The immovable corpse simply levelled the long barrel at the dragon-man's head a second time as if it had never been diverted in the first place.
He crossed his arms over a puffed-out chest, grinned with sharp and dull teeth straining to occlude each other as the deluge poured across his face agleam with some strange vibrancy. "I said I don't_like yer carbine. Can't ya take a hint?" He ventured a step to the side that brought him a couple inches closer to Vincent. The indifferent weapon pressed against his temple. Ready to expel the bullet at a moment's notice. Cid looked greatly amused. With a cold smirk he made a gesture with his arm, his eyes wandering down until he saw the brass limb, blackened by the rain. "That's one helluva job, son. Don't ya feel a little one-sided, ya know.....asymetrical?" A shake of the head was all he got for an answer. But that was all he needed. Vincent was a fast shot, but the dragon, in speed, could not be matched by a "human's." Whatever enhancements made to his defense, they were not made to his speed. He had actually been designed to be slower than the average human. Another reminder of his long sleep, his punishment for his sins...
This sluggishness did not guard against the claws shot in a blur at Vincent's weapon, wrenched it from him, and aimed it at the right arm and its shreds of sickly white that was an obvious target in the Black Rain. "I'll fix that for ya."
With unnerving aplomb Cid emptied the clip into Vincent's arm. They were old bullets, meant to shatter, not pierce. And though the rain poured unending,
at point-blank range, Cid didn't have much of a chance of missing.
Vincent groaned with his white lips still clamped agaist each other as the bullets ripped through the bone and out the other end. Slightly painful...the wound would heal: the traces of Mako and Jenova cells in his blood assured that. But the utter surprise, of the other being, of Highwind's demon that his nemesis now etched into his soul.
As he waited for the.....modifications to his blood to take their delayed effect, the cadaverous man couldn't help but laugh in a quiet, low tone. "For an eternity I have descended alone....now there is one who may descend with me." His red eyes raised at the dragon-man, who, finding the gun useless, snapping his weapon in two with a malicious fervor. "But it cannot be trusted," he resolved, the crack of his shotgun being broken in two distant in a removed and far-off ear." I have learned to.control my demons. It is an arduous process...his life may conclude before his demons are tamed."
The glow in the slit eyes abated.
"You FUCKIN' ASSHOLE!!!!!' Cid roared, hurling the broken weapon into the muck and glaring at his claws. "So THAT'S what you were up to, huh? You're gonna turn everyone against me 'cause ya THINK you know how I act?!! I'm pissed at gothfreak, yeah..but am I STUPID enough to SHOOT him in the fucking arm when I KNOW he can rip me into itty bitty little pieces of bloody SHIT?!" He let hot rage burn in the scaled limbs. Jesus, it was this all over again, except it was harder to fight...the change...THEY couldn't see it, it was only...in the words..how he acted.
Their trust in him soon proved clear.
"You would certainly be capable," Vincent answered without any sort of inflection, one straight, flat, line of lifeless words. Thing about it was, it was just as mordant as any burst of bitter passion...maybe more so. "The young and reckless tend to do that. They act on an instinct..." Vincent did not blink, absorbed into the distant past. His own demons swallowed the hollow hole where his soul used to rest.
Instinct is why her child lies dead.
The chemicals finally took effect, expelling the smoking bullets that fell from the sealed flesh. The past and present disentangled and he distanced himself from the memory of his sins and stared at the pilot squarely in his menacing eyes. "Now that your demon has been released, the necessity that demands you to be confined is greater..."
The reaction was no surprise.
"It's HIM that doin' this..c'mon, Valentine, you've been through this shit-- you know good as me how it is---!" Vincent was stone-faced, no different from the normal, but this time it emanated a pure lack of trust. The glare of Vincent Valentine was rattling enough to an ally, but to an enemy...The gaze tore and divded both the innocent and guilty soul..and Cid knew it. He was falling apart, sweating like shit, making it all the easier for the dragon to weave his lies. "You--KNOW-- me...I'm Draconis Rex---the hell?!?! I'm NOT Cid Highwind--SHUT YOUR DIRTY FUCKING MOUTH------"
A bestial howl collided with a stab of lightning as a flying mass of fur and muscle hit Cid square in the shoulder and toppled him to the slippery ground, his scaled form gouging an imprint in the mud that swept it in piles. The lupine/leonine pinned him by the wings, pressing his whole body weight against the scaled appendages. A gleaming eye turned on him and he blinked, suddenly unnerved by the pilot's wry smile. "What's the matter, catdog? Ain't you the king of beasts? Don't look like it to me." He felt the grip of Red's paws on his wings loosen. Worked like a charm. "No kingly roar for me?" He suddenly rose, Red yelping as he tumbled on his side. He jumped to his paws, more wary, more untrusting as. Cid leaned in his face and scoffed, "C'mon. You lost an eye to the Gi, eh? Sure ya didn't LET 'em poke it out?" He jabbed at the saturated air with a draconic claw.
"I lost this eye protecting my tribe. I am proud of my blindness," Red answered, steeling himself against the taunts coming from one he used to call friend. Cid laughed, striding towards Red's blind side, holding his head straight with a scaled palm.
"Just for a bunch of HUMANS. You sure are an ass." He sauntered behind him, the outline of the dragon-man's wings held against the darting lightning. "A BLIND ass. Wait a minute. Asses're donkeys. I should call ya a blind kitty--MEOW!!!" Red's glare hardened, but he stayed himself. CId wasn't acting like himself at all..his namecalling was frequent, but NEVER to this extent.
But now he got serious.
"Ya think your SIGHT's worth even half a life? ESPECIALLY a human? Humans---
they ain't worth catchin' COLD over, much less yer frggin' EYE," Cid berated, enthused at the ferocious growl climbing in Red's throat. He had borne insults before, but when it came to someone injuring his tribe with spears of words...the tribe whose murderous hands that his father fell at, forever entombed by the toxic tip of the Gi's arrows.
"I do not consider them lower or higher than me," Red breathed, restraining righteous amger beneath basic reasoning. "But you do. You want to destroy this village because you think you're entitled to that." He spun to face the towering form of the pilot, whose mutated features were twisted with a blatant malice. "Because humans have hurt you? They've hurt me, too. It's my fault you're in this mess, but you can't destroy this place. We'll have to battle if it comes to that." The flashing ball of flame flickered amidst the downpour. "I don't want this...you understand, Cid."
"Sure, I understand. You're full 'a dogshit AND you're a traitor!!" He grabbed Red by the muzzle and crushed his snout against his lower jaw. "Can't ya SEE, Red?!!
It's me-!!! It's CID_HIGHWIND, fuck it!!!" he yelled, the slit eyes filled with crazed desperation that so recently had been raw cruelty. Cold distrust radiated from the one eye obscured by Cid's claws. He loosened his hold and stepped back. "It's the wings, right? Stupid..fucking...why're ya lookin' at me like that, Red? Ya don't trust me? This is ME, understand?!? That son of a bitch dragon freak's messin' with your mind!!!" He sprang and landed directly in front of the wolf/lion, grasping Red by the forelegs and hoisting his dripping face up to his. His lower jaw dropped, releasing a roar of anger that hurled a tornado into Red's face."I'm tellin' the truth, goddamnit!!!!" He let go of one of Red's forelegs and thrust out his arm. "Ya see that?!?! See it?!? Those're MY scars!!" He pointed Red's eye at the arm, the rapid trails of Black Rain streaming over the jagged claw marks. Cid was shaking now, his other claws tearing a deeper hole in Red's front leg. Goddamnit it..why won't they believe him?!?! It WAS him this time, it was Cid----
In some monumental frustration, the pilot with his claws still shaking dragged Red by the shoulders and with a violent yell and his eyes emanating aa total breakage of all sense in the space of that instant, he hurled Red into Vincent. The two forms upon collision toppled into the sludge. A blur of silver raced past Red's face as Cid braked in midair, crossing his arms as he smirked at the slowly- recovering beast, gazing hurtfully skyward as Cid waved an arm at them with a pompous grin of one who saw the end result of an injurious prank and sped off into the sky.
Suckers.
Red lost himself in rumination and after slipping more than a lot, swayed and righted himself, absently heard Barret's loudening tromp and stared skyward with a dismayed growl.
"Yo! N-dawg, y'awright?" Barret queried, fiddling around with a busted umbrella that he couldn't get to open all the way. Red lowered his snout slightly, and shuffled rearward., piercing the cloud-engulfed skies with his one eyeball that shifted pensively.
"Unharmed, Barret." He pointed his nose earthward, ready to relay the news of their failure briskly. "Cid's gone. We have to find him as soon as possible."
Barret nodded hasilty while he started to back up, his boots caked with deep mud as he shouted above the din of thunder,
"G'wan stop 'im---I'm gonna look foh Tifa!"
Red and Vincent started to head through the sea of muck, but the slosh of Red's steady gait receded, one paw held in the heavy air as he backpedaled gradually and turned around, his tail twitching in a latent anxiety.
"She's not with you?"
"She came runnin' when she heard da gun go off but I can't find her round nowhere--" His small eyes widened as the lightning revealed something behind Red. "Watch yo' back, N-dawg!" Barret warned as a flurry of deadly bullets rattled through the darkness and left holes in the shape that camouflaged with the enduring downpour. "Man, dey're everwhere--"
Red's eye shifted backwards and caught a glimpse of the dark shape slink into the darkness, a rusted brown blood dripping from the bullet holes that slowly sealed with the Black Rain. He rubbed his eye with his paw. For whatever reason his eye decieved him and he saw the dark shape in a short white midrift and---he turrned about and plunged foward again through the mud that steadily grew to waist-high, trying to push this minor concern out of his mind and replace it with the much more immediate threat. "Take care of yourself. This place is dangerous."
Strange, he pondered, that Barret didn't change along with.....the rest of the humans in the town, whose presence was now unmistakably real: he heard unearthly wails rail against the thunder, that clearly were of beasts very much like him, and not of the Gi. He nudged that into the corner of his mind along with the other creature with clothing he was on the verge of remembering but left the memory behind in an isolated pocket of his brain, and focused on the task that loomed ahead.
The waning fireball danced in the ebony sheet, a red-orange phantom that vanished into the air. The rain stayed relentless as the sludge swelled. Barret plodded through the sopping mud that clung to his belt, headed into the very midst of them freaks to keep on looking, shouting at the top of his lungs without any answer back. And when he stayed out there 'till he wallowed in the mud and couldn't see a thing 'cuz the rain was in his eyes, he wondered if Tifa...
Hell y'get dat kinda idea? Barret shook the rain off his dripping head and knocked on it with his meaty fist. Brain still there. Then why'd he think of somethin' like that? Tifa was out there. Just had to find her, that's all. He could stay out there that if it was actual rain he'd get pneumonia 30 times over but he'd find her. Town was small, anyway. Small as Corel, people-wise. Barret felt the freak eyes boring into his back. SMALLER den Corel. Was he and Tifa the only people left?
The wailing moan of the creatures that now swamped the peaceful town echoed the cry of stray specters far into a bleak and forlorn night.
*~*~*
Ephemeral scars left on the horizon carved the imprint of Gemini's claws in the bludgeoned mire. A primal grunt of determined desperation spread through the air, choked off by the thunder that rattled in his brain that now clamored madly for what was lost forever.
What...HE lost forever..in one agonizing chain reaction. If he hadn't changed, he wouldn't have fought, Misty wouldn't try to save his own worthless ass, and she wouldn't get caught outside.... It didn't have to happen. None of it.
But it did.
He smacked a liquid slab out of his path in anguished rage. The grime accumulated in dark clumps between the malformed digits on his hands in cruel rebellion, staying in his line of sight as if on purpose, ingraining the agonizing realization more solidly in his heart.....that the same liquid that destroyed him now destroyed Misty.
The rain continued to mock Brock's mind while it soothed his misshapen body. Its double faces gnawed at his writhing, guilt-eaten guts as he desperately tried to mollify it, to keep it from getting worse..
It doesn't hurt as much..he mused with only half-hearted conviction... .it's still no better than a needle. But for some reason... He ran his claws over his chest and searched for the remains of the pieces of his heart. Not the beating heart vital for existence, the one that pumped black blood through vein and artery alike with no longer any distinction between them save for function, but the soul so frequently attatched to the heart in the minds of humans. After efforts that ended in futility he let his monstrous hand fall unnaturally to his side and came to a conclusion that left hate ugly and rotten in his mind.
It hurts MORE....
Death, in all natural or induced forms, devestates and destroys, eats at slowly or devours rapidly the one who witnesses it. This physical death of humanity, for few an ascent, for many the lowest possible descent, behaved no differently. As tears lost themselves in the taunting flood, a roar of no longer a friend, he felt the mud break under him as he let gravity and the weight of his misshapen body pull him down and shifting his eyes away from a blazing sun that decided to be a sadistic asshole, he felt reversed, flipped upside-down in such a way that would fill his head with blood and make him sicker than he already felt. It was HIM that used to be lost, confused, angry, afraid...Misty would never see this because she was human...she was MEANT to be...she COULDN'T be a freak...it just.couldn't....happen...!!!!
Yeah, sure. Brilliant, stupid.
Gemini curled his fist and made the black blood spurt from the veins in his wrist only for it to subside with the hailing drops of the same hue. He sank further in the mud, just as Misty now sank... How ELSE did I get to be a freak? Because it can happen to ANYONE.
Unsuspecting Pokémon trainers included.
He pressed the claws with enough force to break through the scales and feel the ends of the claws puncture the back of the wrist. He tasted the air and the loathsome drug hammered his forked tongue. It recoiled in immediate revulsion in a bitter comprehension of the truth.
The same chemical pouring from the skies floated inside of him..... Now it swam in Misty. The unfeeling monster that used to BE Misty. Blatant cruelty in the leaden sheet. Of all mutated Pokémon out of the 250 + on Earth, it had to be a deformed GYARADOS..
She always hated Gyarados, didn't she? It was big and scary and downright unpleasant..exactly like her when she got mad. But even if it mirrored what flared up in her tantrums, she didn't...DESERVE what she was.
Brock let his hard eyelids snap shut in an agonizing pulse of thought.
No way to get rid of it all. No way to change it. Just deal with it and learn to stand it. Deal with the bloodlust, the changes, deal with the fact that every second a psycho wants to donate you to science. Accept that you can't have your old self back.
Accept that your best friend's a monster.
Gemini felt his blood steam and churn as the image of gored corpses that formed broken wreaths amidst miles of ruin entered blazing vision. And on this macabre throne the sun with his light-shrouded head swathed in streams of white hair that spilled across a visage shining with utter elation. The shadow of the grey creature darkened the crushed bodies of the Rockets mauled twice over, the ripped fragments of their now bestial faces piled under Angelon's feet that were thrice crushed as the land Gyarados' webbed claws pushed into the tattered hide as it robotically climbed the hill of corpses and upon reaching the angel's flank, turned around in trancelike rigidity.....
The emptiness in eyes that glowed a servile white conveyed total willingness to obey.
"MRGHESTIE.....?" came the weakened growl that wavered in the distant thunder and made it less understandable than it already was. He leaped out of the mire that weighed his body, already heavy with the bleak yoke of despair that drove him to scale the edge of ruin where the grey creature stood in a way that wove unvoiced dread in Brock's skull. He suddenly stopped his scramble, the sound of Angelon's euphonic voice penetrating his ears.
"There is no one named that here, Daemon." Angelon lowered his scarless head, covered gloriously with Black Rain that cloaked his fair form in proclamation of a virtuous triumph. The rivers of white dripped sable droplets that poured in dark streams that coated the mutated corpses below his feet.
What do you MEAN, there's no one named that?! Gemini growled in a desperation of dreary contrast. He leaped to where Angelon stood, the viper's tongue rattling in the angel's face. His claw snapped through the black sheet and he growled in unfettered wrath. There, you see her? That's MISTY, understand?! MISTY.
Angelon's tranquil white eyes followed Gemini's claw and turned, the dark curtain hiding the content smile that marked his white features. Liver and kidney quietly squished underneath his heels as his tail lashed amidst the cape of blackness. He ascended the throne of ruin, from there surveying his pawns that he had so easily stripped of will. His eyelids closed and the glow was shut out. Gemini's eyes darted wildly, the once-conspicuous angel rendered invisible by the chemical deluge. From out of nowhere the voice permeated his pointed ears in the distinct ring of an otherworldly bell that proclaimed judgement on the loathed race:
"On this day of deliverance, the names of human are cursed and damned to Cosytus...all of us have been reborn..." A flash of lightning sketched the outline of the angel against the distance. "...those who named me Gemini II and you Gemini I, they are hereafter damned....." The white eyes opened again, burning with the fires of white-hot stars standing in a distant galaxy. Though little more than a freak on the scathing tongue of humans, power seemed to imbue him, the same power that his enemy thrived on, the power, though only in the inflated imagination, where humans could feel they controlled the very stars. In that moment, he had surpassed humanity.....and had embraced its nature in opposing it. With a near royal sweep of his robed arm to encompass the monster kingdom, he proclaimed with despotic might, "...This law.Angelon has decreed to the children of the Black Rain."
His audience was taken by a grudging silence, distrustingly pensive as Gemini could still add 2 + 2 and it equalled 4.
It all added up...he understood in one painful snap. And now he was glaring into the eyes of a liar. And he was stupid enough to be duped. And too wrapped up in his drowning thoughts to find out exactly WHAT was in those drums that Team Rocket picked up. It all made sense...piecing itself in a schemed puzzle.
Now that it was solved, every degree of his hate exploded into inferno of the seventh circle of hell, massive torches in his eyse that spurned raging magma.
Gemini hurled his night-hued form through the leaden air and smashed into Angelon, who toppled from his throne into the climbing earth. Gemini followed him with a savage leap, landing on Angelon's clothed chest.
I see it now, you fucking LIAR!! The demon roared with vengeful hate, dropping to his knees and bringing his claws across Angelon's face, pulling his hand away to find it covered in cold, pure white blood that dribbled down his rain-drenched arm. White blood, huh? It was just as red as any human's. With a nerve-freezing hiss, Gemini sank his face into the open wound before the Black Rain could seal it and drank it, the fluid burning at his throat, burning because it was blood he wasn't designed to drink..but he didn't give a damn. Not at this point. Not after what happened.
His demonic eyes burned hot enough to draw sweat beads from both their heads.
"HUOOAAAAARGHH......" You had it planned this way the WHOLE TIME... He brought his other arm, shaking with unleashed rage, and gripped Angelon's throat, crushing it mercilessly. Well you won, Emperor Adenine. Now everyone's a freak. That was your idea? THIS is your...salvation?..!! The claws buried relentlessly in the back of the white neck that bled white blood that rapidly disappeared down Brock's raging throat. Indeed, the only thing that kept him from breaking the flimsy neck was that the blood weakened him, drained his own strength as well as the angel's.
His chokehold slackened, and he recoiled his forked tongue, the white blood dripping down his lips. His spiked shoulders slumped with the weight of anguish.
And you had to take Misty with them, too. The look of sadness burned with hatred that gouged at the soul of the drained angel, whose mouth was half-open as shocked eyes gazed into nothingness. Gemini began to walk away, his tail dragging through the dark slime. And for your information, she's still Misty, he snarled in cold hate. I don't care WHAT you say.
The angel said nothing.
Help.....please stop...I want to live...don't kill me... please....!!
"WRRGAAAAGHHT?----" Gemini turned halfway and growled, only to feel the unfeeling grasp of a scaled hand tightly constricting his arms. He flung his head backwards and saw Angelon's wounded body slowly vanish in white light.
But he would not leave this rebellion unchastised.
His mental command rang through the empty minds of his drudges.
Daemon wishes to endure the human mastery the enemy punishes him with. Go forth, children, and punish him as well.
Gemini's eyes glowed with tardy dread as the haunting glow of Misty's eyes burned into his head as she held him still, easy prey for the Giovanni's deadly horn that flashed in the Black Rain.
His struggle was useless, worthless, as the white blood retaliated in his muscles, weakened him, sapped him of energy, made him lean and reel as Zero-X's hell-shaking roar blared through his head, a cacophanous din that blended with Butch's croak and Cassidy's shrill screech.
All he could do was helplessly plea.
Misty...don't do this....
A mindless growl of relentlessness in hypnotized reply.
Irony really was sick.
*~*~*
Rufus could do no more than to ponder the roar that hung in the roads and boulevards of the slumbering city..
That sound was the most unnatural thing that had come out of his throat. For a lengthened time he would deny that that sound belonged to him, that inhuman sound that was entirely meaningless..especially for someone who used words to manipulate and dominate...an entire corporate EMPIRE that functioned on the principle of fear. Hire or fire, pardon or condemn: he ruled with absolutism. To hell with the beauracracy. None of them were competent, one had been waiting to backstab him--it was because of him that the president even had occasion to doubt his indisputable control over not only this company but the cities of Saffron and Vermillion, with spheres of influence in Kanto and as distant as the Orange Islands.
How naive... foolish of me to entertain such an idea. He lifted his paws and straightened the collar of his turtleneck, a practiced habit that carried more or less the same finesse and poise..at least he would like to BELIEVE that...paws were vastly different than hands, forbidding the subtle movements exclusive to a
simian or human hand. But he managed. This only served to heighten his confidence, his esteem. With a growl rising in pride that cast its pompous shadow over shame, he brushed the accumulating rain off his white coat, upon which his mouth locked into a smile.
That sign of luxury and wealth, of affluence and prestige, with its fine fabric that he spent a small fortune to get tailored, the thread used to sew on its button worth gross monetary value in itself, this trenchcoat,.though a conspicuous tail moved restlessly under its folds, blotted the stigma of inhumanity.
He riveted monarchial eyes at the palace of his empire and snarled.
The old eel failed at his endeavor. To render me something else? To destroy my identity? The cat-man began to walk through the Black Rain, ripples rolling through the dark water that plunged into Vermillion's underbelly. The weight of the rain flattened Rufus' ears and drained off his whiskers, falling into the ever-swelling flood that crashed off the sidewalk. The glaciers miles north of Midgar could not rival the absolute zero in his eyes that burned with ice. He has succeeded in one sense, but.. I am still Rufus Shin-Ra. The president approached his reserved parking area, the sleek machine of eminence spoiling underneath the heavy storm. I...JUST had this repainted. He ran a paw over the rain-encompassed hood. Already the chemical started to eat at the paint. Closer examination sent wailing sirens through his nerves. The confounded rain ate through the car ITSELF....he gingerly felt around the car as if searching for a broken bone and heard an alarming crunch. He glared down into the hole, the chemicals bubbling ravenously as he saw the engine literally MELT.
The blizzards exploded and raged into liquid fire.You...FILTHY....OLD...WORM....You are lucky that I can bear to stand your PRESENCE, after what you did...but_WRECKING_my_CAR... you have signed your own DEATH warrant. In his rage he brought the weight of his paw through the deteriorating hood ornament, a few indistinguishable letters left of the Shin-Ra insignia that bounced under the ruined car. Rufus nailed a wrathful gaze into the sculpted metal that dissolved through the reaction through the rain. Scathingly typical of him. The unspoken hiss burned in his mind. why hadn't he seen it coming? The old man specialized in chemicals...freakish substances that turned regular humans into monsters-----
That said, a thought entered his fully functional mind.
Why am I concerned about the limousine in the first place while I, the chief executive of Shin-Ra, is a blasted CAT?...!!
A frown halved his feline features as he turned from the defunct limo and stared blankly at the sidewalk. To his utter disgust, it seemed as if he would have to walk home like any other Vermillion----or any other citizen on this entire ISLAND, for that matter.
The very thought made his blood crawl. Doing so would lead him away from the safety of Vermillion's wealthier section and take him into the common route...perhaps not as deplorable as Midgar, but the wretched areas of any city... he wished to avoid them.
But he was left with no other option.
*~*~*
Miraculously he did not tire after that walking. It must have been an addition to this.. Embarassing...form...
Or it could be the long distances he had to walk back when.....
Rufus avoided delving into what may have been a debilitating memory when he heard a siren in the distance that swelled in a blaring crescendo and died as a squad car raced by his deteriorating limo...The police? Rufus' open mouth shut and curled into a frown. Petty thieves or gang activity, no doubt. Hmph.
A voice from behind an alley sent a wary cold through the vertebrae of Rufus' spine that straightened in heightened awareness of an intruding presence. Surprised he was to find a....well..a human that had not changed into some other form: more shocked he was to find the voice was directed at him.
"Neither of the above, Mister President." A partially sheltered alley crossed by heavy shadow radiated a voice. The feline growled in fearful curiosity, compelled to advance towards the alley immersed in shadows of deceit and trickery. "You may ask how this is posisble, how I can understand you while your voice box forbids speech. Or why I have not reacted to the chemical precipitation. I suppose you desire to know." The shadow moved inches at a time. Cautiousness, latent wariness rose from both sides. "Let us say, for the first, it is an inheritance and leave inquiries at that."
I am through with attempting to solve riddles. Why is it that you have accosted me at this hour? Rufus snarled with partially closed jaws, the flash of his sharp teeth visible through the enveloping darkness.
"Why, only to make a proposition, Mister President.It will benefit both sides equal-----"
The said president suddenly lunged in the direction of the alley and snarled ferociously at the shadow. For all he knew, this potential benefactor could be Hojo, effortlessly distorting his voice and lulling his prey into a degrading and humiliating trap. Hah. He would be no prey. I have made enough one-sided deals to last me a LIFETIME. State your business being here---a threatening roar as Rufus grabbed the figure from the alley and hurled him onto the sidewalk. His eyes flared. A labcoat..that was all he could see of him through the darkness, except for the faint glow of energy that surrounded his body, that oddly caused the dark liquid to halt before it hit the human's skin. But the labcoat..That signal of double betrayal....he would not be a dupe a third time. He stood above the nonplussed man, shaking coniderably from the impact, pale from the shock. The man managed to squirm into a sitting position, one hand buried in his labcoat pocket. Quite stoic for one that faced the threat of a throatful of claws. It would seem that he had faced such beasts before. It could be he actually WAS, and somehow prevented it since those cursed scientists seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else.....and revelled in this exclusive knowledge. Ha...but if he was actually an animal like him, he did not show it. He could rip his throat apart if he wished to.
Human perspiration dripped down the man's head. If he could not prove to this feline that he indeed had something to benefit it, this attempt to preserve the remnants of the good half of his name would cost him his life, and liberty certainly did not outweight that..but as it was, this was a fortunate moment. "There we are..." the man exclaimed in a false show of exuberance as he displayed the array of knobs and buttons to the visage of pure ferocity. "A miniature thought projection simulator. An animal is not an animal unless its brain is an animal's. This device will prove that you are inside that animallike form and that you are still competent of your position." Rufus' jaw unhinged and growled furiously at the scientist. For your information, He held his arm and pointed a claw at himself wth furious obstinance, I have ALWAYS been a competent executive.
The man with the labcoat smiled and answered straightfowardly, "Will your employees know that?" He arched greyed eyebrows that framed analytical eyes , the pupils of which were so small that in even in light, the color would be hard to determine. All he knew they radiated a vague tint of raw malice. "Do your employees know that? They will see nothing but a wild animal." He illicited a questioning growl. A waver...obvious doubt, that immediate ego and self-esteem blew to gigantic proportions and stifled any uncertainty.
A wild...animal? The infuriated roar formed a dim smile on the man's lined visage. Patches of masked figures darted through the rain, incoherent shouts stiffening Rufus' fur in natural reply to an invasion of territory.
"Third class SOLDIERs. The most dispensable of the Shin-Ra army. At the most, they earn 20 gil per day, with no insurance or anything of the sort... or hope of compensation if they suffer an injury. They seem to have the poor end of the deal...but they all underwent Mako infusion. My colleague saw to that."
If I may inquire...why_the HELL would I CARE about the WELFARE of 3rd class SOLDIERs? They mean NOTHING to me. Absolutely zero value. "Now hold your horses, Mister President. I have not finished." Then CONCLUDE_THIS_
INSTANT. "To summarize, the most heavily infused---those ones over there-- they are now technically your masters-----" THAT'S ENOUGH!!! The older man wheezed at the blow to his stomach, and toppled the garbage can, debris and biotic creatures spilling into the street. Before Rufus could pounce and maul the offending tongue, a cry broke through the heavy rain and gunfire rattled into the stone wall. The instincts went haywire, practically throwing Rufus down behind, of all objects, a dumpster. As he leaned his feline skull against the wall, heavy breathing made heavier with the loudening splash of the SOLDIER's boots on the asphalt dense with potholes, he watched the older man get to his feet and slink away into the rain, shooting Rufus a glare that read, "You had your chance."
The SOLDIERs walked nearer to the president's crude hiding place. He stared up. The gun's shadow stretched across the wall and receded as the SOLDIER pointed it the other way. A flashlight beam held by the other one scanned the decrepit asphalt. Rufus himself waited in one of the potholes... most likely a result of the billions that constructed the weaponry and the half-gil and quarter-gil leftovers that went to public works. Rufus locked his pointed teeth and repressed a roar of rage. To think that the very department I fund is about to kill me...the funder. The fools...! Can't they see the clothes? That alone is enough to distinguish myself from an animal!
"Think it's gone?"
That is...it SHOULD have been enough.
"It isn't gone 'till its guts make some new grafitti." The flashlight fixated directly above the fur on Rufus' head. Perspiration began to flood his face. The heavy breathing grew into a fearful growl. The wide circle of light flitted across the stone wall, grazing the tail of his coat, black with the rain, blending into the night. "Can you believe it?! That's the fourth freak tonight! You got any more bullets for this one?"
Instinct resolved his course. So, they didn't recognize their own president?
That would be their own folly. With a low growl he raised himself to his feet, an imbued stealth leashing him...forcing him to wait..for the...perfect... time..to strike...
Upon seeing the outline of the target the other SOLDIER froze and fired. A maddening click was all that the spent machine gun had to say. The cat pounced, hurling hismelf onto the SOLDIER with the flashlight, biting, tearing, in frenzied fear that he would be killed first, a primordial fear of pure instinct. He HEARD the click that signalled the weapon was empty, it remained shooting through his ears until the other SOLDIER's mangled carcass landed in the pothole, the weapon held in the corpse's lacerated hands. The other body, maimed, one of his arms hanging by a thread of muscle, slid out of Rufus' claws. For a moment he stood there, the Mako-swarmed blood dripping from its sharp ends. He stared at the dying human, strangely calm.
Killing by your own hands was different than using the hired help, than keeping them clean in the pitiful effort to keep the conscience as unsullied.
Their lives mean nothing. My conscience overlooks this incident. He began to walk from the site of the slaying, his burning eyes fixated on the narrow strrests that loomed ahead. The Black Rain coursed down the claws, washing away the blood that drained into the sewers. See? I am still Rufus Shin-Ra. The heightening rain washed the bodies from the alley. Two human lives. What would they mean to the animal now if they were worthless before? The value of their lives lessened from nothing to below nothing in the cat's eyes. A guilty conscience was free from the beginning.
He strode across the decrepit concrete, unshaken by the death he so inhumanly caused.
*~*~*
TO BE CONTINUED......
*~*~* A/N: Tune in next time when all hell breaks loose (again) when---you'll find out. -_^
by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana
*~*~*
A/N: Sorry for the long absence of Cid.^^; This chapter will make up for it, hopefully.^^ And Brock and Rufus, too. ^^;
*~*~*
You are very unreasonable: we are doing the world a favor. Look at the problems we strive to solve thorugh these procedures: human population is limited, which limits overcrowding, which in turn limits disease and crime. We draw nearer to a utopia. How, you ask? We open their minds and force them to see how you have degraded those that differ from them in class, order, genus, species..we ourselves aren't that different from them. Aeons ago we were undoubtedly like them. Our communication was in the form of growling and grunting. We had no concept of a schism..there was none. We have lost sight of that as a result of Father Time. Now we have evolved..but at the same time degraded ourselves by lowering our fellow creature to slaves, base entertainment, and mindless sport. Can I ask you, who then is the brutal beast?
~Unsigned retaliation from the OOTP to Kanto sovereigns unaffiliated with the PPA(PPL). From the merge of radical and conservative opinions, it is assumed to be the result of a collective effort to legitimize the organization declared illegal by both the PPA and the police department.
*~*~*
Chapter 22: Janus Amused
Grief slayed the urge to shed tears in private where critical dry eyes scoffed at those that were not.. They kneeled there under the gravid skies and wept through the rain, unaware that the cold bodies they held in their hands grew colder than before, filmed in slime and things unnatural and fearsome...that filled them with horror and disgust until they realized they too had become little more than monsters.
Their turbulent wails jerked Red from his haunches and dragged his lean form upright, ever wary. It was like the cry of the Gi, relentless, unsparing...ever hungering for slaughter. Except there was no confusion in the Gi's war cry. The haunting whoop that was lost in the thunder was lost itself, confused, afraid, the cry of witnesses to the destruction of their bodies that they had called human until the rains looted this thing that they had once taken for granted.
Red launched himself through the mud, scarcely advancing three steps when he sent a soft growl through the heavy rainfall. He sensed the birth of monsters...of consciousless beasts that the ignorant often mistook him for.
Like the Gi...
He backed to his post, convincing himself they were no longer on Gaia, the hated tribe was dead, and the disfigured shapes trudging through the thickening mud were distorted by the clattering rain that his sharp eye could not pierce through. Besides, defending the town from the dragon..that took much higher priority than the constant animal cries that permeated the night shroud.
Knowing who the dragon was trickled drops of guilt into his soul.
He had a duty. A duty to a strange town he didn't know the name of, whose people were distant and far from his heart that beat strongly in yearning to instead defend those he had in fact bonded with.
Like Cid.
But Cid became a killer, a murderer. A murder of guiltless tribles and harmless peoples. Or..at least, it was the dragon hiding in Cid. Without a doubt. The dragon...it was the dragon they guarded, were ready to kill, not the pilot.
"It's no use pretending that's not actually Cid," Red shook his head in steady resolve and shoved his soggy nose against the mounting mud, closing his eye in that bit of remorse that separated him from primal killers. He raised an ear with evident tension as his scarlet fur-----well..now blackened by the strange-hued rain--bristled at every noise, fearful of a gunshot. He shifted uncomfortably in the black grime that piled amidst his ankles. From his post he had a clear view of the figuratively entombed, rooted to the earth with a white hand on the handle of the gun.
Red watched the living corpse with a warning eye and a questioning growl. Vincent answered him with the slightest shift in his soulless gaze that aimed at the weapon. The click of the loaded shotgun conveyed a meaning clearer than spoken words. Red gave a brisk nod, and returned to his post, the sucking sound of the mud pulling on the bottoms of his paws as he sat tensely among the cries of what magnified in his mind of phantom Gi.
*~*~*
Cid pressed his face stained in a mixture of sweat and the leftovers of sobs and wiped them on his arm split by scars old and new that ran jagged lines across the rough skin. He opened his eyes that reddened around the corners and puffed and swelled and glared into the spartan ceiling.
"And here you are tellin' Stife to be more manly," he chided. Goddamn it, he hated when he cried. He could turn and hide his moistened face from Tifa, from Barret, from anyone, really...except Draconis Rex.
The thunder permeating the windows roared in accordance with the dragon. A haughty, pompous, obnoxious roar that made Cid want to tear the dragon's lungs out...yeah., sure. Like that was even POSSIBLE. He couldn't do a THING to that overstuffed son-of-a fucking bitch.
Your human scientists attribute emotion to humanity. Trying to hold back emotion...avoiding it, denying it, ADMITTING.....you're not human.
"Flaming shitwad..!!!" growled Cid, hurling himself to a semi-upright position only to get yanked by the ropes like a leash. A leash? Leashes were for animals... and..and..and NOTHING. He backed up on the bed and pulled his sore legs out from under the sheet. They even gave him some jeans that were about two sizes too small so he'd be half-decent. His scowl curved into a half-smile as he leaned his shoulders against the wall, letting his hands dangle by the ropes as he regarded them satisfactorily. "You're just good at mind-games, Drac. I only believe what my five senses say, and I'm seein' two man hands and-" He leaned one elbow against the wall, flashing a grin of improved confidence, "--that you're a motherfucking liar."
The rain clattered on the window in a steady, continuous sheet that pronounced the glorious execution of a tyrannical race.
Typical human.
A surge of energy, and the rope snapped, its coarse pieces flumping on the floorboards followed by a yelp and a crash as Cid landed on his chest. "Crazy fuck," he groaned, rubbing at his sore wrists. Shit, he felt like crap about now. He pushed himself up by his knees, wincing as he rubbed at the raw skin with his calloused fingers. He stared into his head and snorted ruefully, "I...I guess I owe ya."
The dragon did not respond. "Hey, Drac..!" Cid repeated a bit louder, cupping one hand at the side of his mouth. The storm ran rampant outside the window without the roar of thunder. "You're gonna answer me or what?! I said I owe ya!"
Strange...it seemed that the dragon already knew it.
Muttering a low cuss and shaking his head in disgust, Cid advanced for the door, in his, for now, unshared mind, planning hundreds of long chains of verbal acids to burn his so-called "comrades" with once he opened the frigging door.
Make that IF, Cid grumbled in his mind. Consciously he paused and waited for the dragon to make some smart-ass remark, some commentary on his stupidity, or even that grating laugh in all its bombast and "better than you" attitude.
"Cold shoulder, eh?" he asked his mind, placing the heel of his bare foot on the door and yanking with as much force six or seven hours of languishing let him. "Fine," he huffed. "Maybe I can get a shit's worth of time to think----" Frown lines added to his premature wrinkles. Think? Thought. Door was locked. He looked at the doorknob and took his hand off of it. He took those things apart dozens of times before but took it apart with tools. Right now..he didn't have anything, except a pair of someone else's mad-ugly pants. Not even a cig, for Christ's sakes.
The rain tumbled off the glass panes and into the ground below. Looked like that would be his way out. He jogged heavily on the floorboards, conscious of the clamor his weight made on the wood..maybe it'd attract plastic girl and chrome-arm. Heh.too bad for them, he wasn't gonna stick around long enough for them to nab him.
Cid unlatched the window and grit his teeth. "This is all your fucking fault, Lockheart..." His hands slipped on the latch as something in his gut twitched in warning.
Whatever nagging feeling he got he shrugged it off and pulled open the window, thrusting his head out which connected with the automatic death dealer, its rigid shape fashioned after outmoded weapons that still managed to maim and kill despite their bad accuracy and their fucking loud warning sound that threw any hope of stealth out the window. . And this one threatened to put a hole in his friggin head that somethin weird was happening to--pinpricks of pain erupted all over his scalp as the alarmingly familiar sensation of skin turning into scales...hit....him....
Cid clamped one remolding hand on the side of his head that shuddered violently as the rain battered his head. He grabbed his forehead with that hand, feeling the scales. "Christ...not AGAIN... NOT_AGAIN....." He shot a panicked glare at the corpselike man, unmoved. Cid fell backwards in the mud that swallowed his ankles that began to take on that blue-silver tint, watching not the gun that followed his movement downward, but the rain around it, the fast-falling rain more relentless than 100000 scalpels. Cid shut his eyes that the rain seeped into, backed up on his elbows and side as a tail burst out from behind him and snaked under his scaling legs still covered by the ill-fitting pants, as he breathed through lungs that expanded irregularly and painfully...all the worse for someone who was bound to a pack a day.
Vincent observed with gun drawn. An ordinary experience. Almost routine. Commonplace. He stared into Cid's eyes now slit through middle.
Like a reptile. A dragon. Draconic Rex....as a piercing cry shot from Cid as the wings once again broke through his skin and spread stiffly like divergent upward crustal movements that erupted into the sky, he bit down on his molars, some of them sharpening and pushing through his gums, fresh blood pouring from the hardening gumline and the rain filling his mouth. Goddamnit.....no wonder he was so quiet..just biding his time...waiting for him to make the jackass decision to escape out the window. And as he pondered his own stupidity, he hardly even noticed the force that overthrew his tentative control over his actions.
His eyes glowed in sudden malice.
"The hell you doin', Valentine?!" A clawed hand shot foward and grabbed the barrel of the gun, pushing it away from his head in relative ease. "Don't point yer carbine at me, you're gonna shoot someone's head off with that piece 'a junk!!" The immovable corpse simply levelled the long barrel at the dragon-man's head a second time as if it had never been diverted in the first place.
He crossed his arms over a puffed-out chest, grinned with sharp and dull teeth straining to occlude each other as the deluge poured across his face agleam with some strange vibrancy. "I said I don't_like yer carbine. Can't ya take a hint?" He ventured a step to the side that brought him a couple inches closer to Vincent. The indifferent weapon pressed against his temple. Ready to expel the bullet at a moment's notice. Cid looked greatly amused. With a cold smirk he made a gesture with his arm, his eyes wandering down until he saw the brass limb, blackened by the rain. "That's one helluva job, son. Don't ya feel a little one-sided, ya know.....asymetrical?" A shake of the head was all he got for an answer. But that was all he needed. Vincent was a fast shot, but the dragon, in speed, could not be matched by a "human's." Whatever enhancements made to his defense, they were not made to his speed. He had actually been designed to be slower than the average human. Another reminder of his long sleep, his punishment for his sins...
This sluggishness did not guard against the claws shot in a blur at Vincent's weapon, wrenched it from him, and aimed it at the right arm and its shreds of sickly white that was an obvious target in the Black Rain. "I'll fix that for ya."
With unnerving aplomb Cid emptied the clip into Vincent's arm. They were old bullets, meant to shatter, not pierce. And though the rain poured unending,
at point-blank range, Cid didn't have much of a chance of missing.
Vincent groaned with his white lips still clamped agaist each other as the bullets ripped through the bone and out the other end. Slightly painful...the wound would heal: the traces of Mako and Jenova cells in his blood assured that. But the utter surprise, of the other being, of Highwind's demon that his nemesis now etched into his soul.
As he waited for the.....modifications to his blood to take their delayed effect, the cadaverous man couldn't help but laugh in a quiet, low tone. "For an eternity I have descended alone....now there is one who may descend with me." His red eyes raised at the dragon-man, who, finding the gun useless, snapping his weapon in two with a malicious fervor. "But it cannot be trusted," he resolved, the crack of his shotgun being broken in two distant in a removed and far-off ear." I have learned to.control my demons. It is an arduous process...his life may conclude before his demons are tamed."
The glow in the slit eyes abated.
"You FUCKIN' ASSHOLE!!!!!' Cid roared, hurling the broken weapon into the muck and glaring at his claws. "So THAT'S what you were up to, huh? You're gonna turn everyone against me 'cause ya THINK you know how I act?!! I'm pissed at gothfreak, yeah..but am I STUPID enough to SHOOT him in the fucking arm when I KNOW he can rip me into itty bitty little pieces of bloody SHIT?!" He let hot rage burn in the scaled limbs. Jesus, it was this all over again, except it was harder to fight...the change...THEY couldn't see it, it was only...in the words..how he acted.
Their trust in him soon proved clear.
"You would certainly be capable," Vincent answered without any sort of inflection, one straight, flat, line of lifeless words. Thing about it was, it was just as mordant as any burst of bitter passion...maybe more so. "The young and reckless tend to do that. They act on an instinct..." Vincent did not blink, absorbed into the distant past. His own demons swallowed the hollow hole where his soul used to rest.
Instinct is why her child lies dead.
The chemicals finally took effect, expelling the smoking bullets that fell from the sealed flesh. The past and present disentangled and he distanced himself from the memory of his sins and stared at the pilot squarely in his menacing eyes. "Now that your demon has been released, the necessity that demands you to be confined is greater..."
The reaction was no surprise.
"It's HIM that doin' this..c'mon, Valentine, you've been through this shit-- you know good as me how it is---!" Vincent was stone-faced, no different from the normal, but this time it emanated a pure lack of trust. The glare of Vincent Valentine was rattling enough to an ally, but to an enemy...The gaze tore and divded both the innocent and guilty soul..and Cid knew it. He was falling apart, sweating like shit, making it all the easier for the dragon to weave his lies. "You--KNOW-- me...I'm Draconis Rex---the hell?!?! I'm NOT Cid Highwind--SHUT YOUR DIRTY FUCKING MOUTH------"
A bestial howl collided with a stab of lightning as a flying mass of fur and muscle hit Cid square in the shoulder and toppled him to the slippery ground, his scaled form gouging an imprint in the mud that swept it in piles. The lupine/leonine pinned him by the wings, pressing his whole body weight against the scaled appendages. A gleaming eye turned on him and he blinked, suddenly unnerved by the pilot's wry smile. "What's the matter, catdog? Ain't you the king of beasts? Don't look like it to me." He felt the grip of Red's paws on his wings loosen. Worked like a charm. "No kingly roar for me?" He suddenly rose, Red yelping as he tumbled on his side. He jumped to his paws, more wary, more untrusting as. Cid leaned in his face and scoffed, "C'mon. You lost an eye to the Gi, eh? Sure ya didn't LET 'em poke it out?" He jabbed at the saturated air with a draconic claw.
"I lost this eye protecting my tribe. I am proud of my blindness," Red answered, steeling himself against the taunts coming from one he used to call friend. Cid laughed, striding towards Red's blind side, holding his head straight with a scaled palm.
"Just for a bunch of HUMANS. You sure are an ass." He sauntered behind him, the outline of the dragon-man's wings held against the darting lightning. "A BLIND ass. Wait a minute. Asses're donkeys. I should call ya a blind kitty--MEOW!!!" Red's glare hardened, but he stayed himself. CId wasn't acting like himself at all..his namecalling was frequent, but NEVER to this extent.
But now he got serious.
"Ya think your SIGHT's worth even half a life? ESPECIALLY a human? Humans---
they ain't worth catchin' COLD over, much less yer frggin' EYE," Cid berated, enthused at the ferocious growl climbing in Red's throat. He had borne insults before, but when it came to someone injuring his tribe with spears of words...the tribe whose murderous hands that his father fell at, forever entombed by the toxic tip of the Gi's arrows.
"I do not consider them lower or higher than me," Red breathed, restraining righteous amger beneath basic reasoning. "But you do. You want to destroy this village because you think you're entitled to that." He spun to face the towering form of the pilot, whose mutated features were twisted with a blatant malice. "Because humans have hurt you? They've hurt me, too. It's my fault you're in this mess, but you can't destroy this place. We'll have to battle if it comes to that." The flashing ball of flame flickered amidst the downpour. "I don't want this...you understand, Cid."
"Sure, I understand. You're full 'a dogshit AND you're a traitor!!" He grabbed Red by the muzzle and crushed his snout against his lower jaw. "Can't ya SEE, Red?!!
It's me-!!! It's CID_HIGHWIND, fuck it!!!" he yelled, the slit eyes filled with crazed desperation that so recently had been raw cruelty. Cold distrust radiated from the one eye obscured by Cid's claws. He loosened his hold and stepped back. "It's the wings, right? Stupid..fucking...why're ya lookin' at me like that, Red? Ya don't trust me? This is ME, understand?!? That son of a bitch dragon freak's messin' with your mind!!!" He sprang and landed directly in front of the wolf/lion, grasping Red by the forelegs and hoisting his dripping face up to his. His lower jaw dropped, releasing a roar of anger that hurled a tornado into Red's face."I'm tellin' the truth, goddamnit!!!!" He let go of one of Red's forelegs and thrust out his arm. "Ya see that?!?! See it?!? Those're MY scars!!" He pointed Red's eye at the arm, the rapid trails of Black Rain streaming over the jagged claw marks. Cid was shaking now, his other claws tearing a deeper hole in Red's front leg. Goddamnit it..why won't they believe him?!?! It WAS him this time, it was Cid----
In some monumental frustration, the pilot with his claws still shaking dragged Red by the shoulders and with a violent yell and his eyes emanating aa total breakage of all sense in the space of that instant, he hurled Red into Vincent. The two forms upon collision toppled into the sludge. A blur of silver raced past Red's face as Cid braked in midair, crossing his arms as he smirked at the slowly- recovering beast, gazing hurtfully skyward as Cid waved an arm at them with a pompous grin of one who saw the end result of an injurious prank and sped off into the sky.
Suckers.
Red lost himself in rumination and after slipping more than a lot, swayed and righted himself, absently heard Barret's loudening tromp and stared skyward with a dismayed growl.
"Yo! N-dawg, y'awright?" Barret queried, fiddling around with a busted umbrella that he couldn't get to open all the way. Red lowered his snout slightly, and shuffled rearward., piercing the cloud-engulfed skies with his one eyeball that shifted pensively.
"Unharmed, Barret." He pointed his nose earthward, ready to relay the news of their failure briskly. "Cid's gone. We have to find him as soon as possible."
Barret nodded hasilty while he started to back up, his boots caked with deep mud as he shouted above the din of thunder,
"G'wan stop 'im---I'm gonna look foh Tifa!"
Red and Vincent started to head through the sea of muck, but the slosh of Red's steady gait receded, one paw held in the heavy air as he backpedaled gradually and turned around, his tail twitching in a latent anxiety.
"She's not with you?"
"She came runnin' when she heard da gun go off but I can't find her round nowhere--" His small eyes widened as the lightning revealed something behind Red. "Watch yo' back, N-dawg!" Barret warned as a flurry of deadly bullets rattled through the darkness and left holes in the shape that camouflaged with the enduring downpour. "Man, dey're everwhere--"
Red's eye shifted backwards and caught a glimpse of the dark shape slink into the darkness, a rusted brown blood dripping from the bullet holes that slowly sealed with the Black Rain. He rubbed his eye with his paw. For whatever reason his eye decieved him and he saw the dark shape in a short white midrift and---he turrned about and plunged foward again through the mud that steadily grew to waist-high, trying to push this minor concern out of his mind and replace it with the much more immediate threat. "Take care of yourself. This place is dangerous."
Strange, he pondered, that Barret didn't change along with.....the rest of the humans in the town, whose presence was now unmistakably real: he heard unearthly wails rail against the thunder, that clearly were of beasts very much like him, and not of the Gi. He nudged that into the corner of his mind along with the other creature with clothing he was on the verge of remembering but left the memory behind in an isolated pocket of his brain, and focused on the task that loomed ahead.
The waning fireball danced in the ebony sheet, a red-orange phantom that vanished into the air. The rain stayed relentless as the sludge swelled. Barret plodded through the sopping mud that clung to his belt, headed into the very midst of them freaks to keep on looking, shouting at the top of his lungs without any answer back. And when he stayed out there 'till he wallowed in the mud and couldn't see a thing 'cuz the rain was in his eyes, he wondered if Tifa...
Hell y'get dat kinda idea? Barret shook the rain off his dripping head and knocked on it with his meaty fist. Brain still there. Then why'd he think of somethin' like that? Tifa was out there. Just had to find her, that's all. He could stay out there that if it was actual rain he'd get pneumonia 30 times over but he'd find her. Town was small, anyway. Small as Corel, people-wise. Barret felt the freak eyes boring into his back. SMALLER den Corel. Was he and Tifa the only people left?
The wailing moan of the creatures that now swamped the peaceful town echoed the cry of stray specters far into a bleak and forlorn night.
*~*~*
Ephemeral scars left on the horizon carved the imprint of Gemini's claws in the bludgeoned mire. A primal grunt of determined desperation spread through the air, choked off by the thunder that rattled in his brain that now clamored madly for what was lost forever.
What...HE lost forever..in one agonizing chain reaction. If he hadn't changed, he wouldn't have fought, Misty wouldn't try to save his own worthless ass, and she wouldn't get caught outside.... It didn't have to happen. None of it.
But it did.
He smacked a liquid slab out of his path in anguished rage. The grime accumulated in dark clumps between the malformed digits on his hands in cruel rebellion, staying in his line of sight as if on purpose, ingraining the agonizing realization more solidly in his heart.....that the same liquid that destroyed him now destroyed Misty.
The rain continued to mock Brock's mind while it soothed his misshapen body. Its double faces gnawed at his writhing, guilt-eaten guts as he desperately tried to mollify it, to keep it from getting worse..
It doesn't hurt as much..he mused with only half-hearted conviction... .it's still no better than a needle. But for some reason... He ran his claws over his chest and searched for the remains of the pieces of his heart. Not the beating heart vital for existence, the one that pumped black blood through vein and artery alike with no longer any distinction between them save for function, but the soul so frequently attatched to the heart in the minds of humans. After efforts that ended in futility he let his monstrous hand fall unnaturally to his side and came to a conclusion that left hate ugly and rotten in his mind.
It hurts MORE....
Death, in all natural or induced forms, devestates and destroys, eats at slowly or devours rapidly the one who witnesses it. This physical death of humanity, for few an ascent, for many the lowest possible descent, behaved no differently. As tears lost themselves in the taunting flood, a roar of no longer a friend, he felt the mud break under him as he let gravity and the weight of his misshapen body pull him down and shifting his eyes away from a blazing sun that decided to be a sadistic asshole, he felt reversed, flipped upside-down in such a way that would fill his head with blood and make him sicker than he already felt. It was HIM that used to be lost, confused, angry, afraid...Misty would never see this because she was human...she was MEANT to be...she COULDN'T be a freak...it just.couldn't....happen...!!!!
Yeah, sure. Brilliant, stupid.
Gemini curled his fist and made the black blood spurt from the veins in his wrist only for it to subside with the hailing drops of the same hue. He sank further in the mud, just as Misty now sank... How ELSE did I get to be a freak? Because it can happen to ANYONE.
Unsuspecting Pokémon trainers included.
He pressed the claws with enough force to break through the scales and feel the ends of the claws puncture the back of the wrist. He tasted the air and the loathsome drug hammered his forked tongue. It recoiled in immediate revulsion in a bitter comprehension of the truth.
The same chemical pouring from the skies floated inside of him..... Now it swam in Misty. The unfeeling monster that used to BE Misty. Blatant cruelty in the leaden sheet. Of all mutated Pokémon out of the 250 + on Earth, it had to be a deformed GYARADOS..
She always hated Gyarados, didn't she? It was big and scary and downright unpleasant..exactly like her when she got mad. But even if it mirrored what flared up in her tantrums, she didn't...DESERVE what she was.
Brock let his hard eyelids snap shut in an agonizing pulse of thought.
No way to get rid of it all. No way to change it. Just deal with it and learn to stand it. Deal with the bloodlust, the changes, deal with the fact that every second a psycho wants to donate you to science. Accept that you can't have your old self back.
Accept that your best friend's a monster.
Gemini felt his blood steam and churn as the image of gored corpses that formed broken wreaths amidst miles of ruin entered blazing vision. And on this macabre throne the sun with his light-shrouded head swathed in streams of white hair that spilled across a visage shining with utter elation. The shadow of the grey creature darkened the crushed bodies of the Rockets mauled twice over, the ripped fragments of their now bestial faces piled under Angelon's feet that were thrice crushed as the land Gyarados' webbed claws pushed into the tattered hide as it robotically climbed the hill of corpses and upon reaching the angel's flank, turned around in trancelike rigidity.....
The emptiness in eyes that glowed a servile white conveyed total willingness to obey.
"MRGHESTIE.....?" came the weakened growl that wavered in the distant thunder and made it less understandable than it already was. He leaped out of the mire that weighed his body, already heavy with the bleak yoke of despair that drove him to scale the edge of ruin where the grey creature stood in a way that wove unvoiced dread in Brock's skull. He suddenly stopped his scramble, the sound of Angelon's euphonic voice penetrating his ears.
"There is no one named that here, Daemon." Angelon lowered his scarless head, covered gloriously with Black Rain that cloaked his fair form in proclamation of a virtuous triumph. The rivers of white dripped sable droplets that poured in dark streams that coated the mutated corpses below his feet.
What do you MEAN, there's no one named that?! Gemini growled in a desperation of dreary contrast. He leaped to where Angelon stood, the viper's tongue rattling in the angel's face. His claw snapped through the black sheet and he growled in unfettered wrath. There, you see her? That's MISTY, understand?! MISTY.
Angelon's tranquil white eyes followed Gemini's claw and turned, the dark curtain hiding the content smile that marked his white features. Liver and kidney quietly squished underneath his heels as his tail lashed amidst the cape of blackness. He ascended the throne of ruin, from there surveying his pawns that he had so easily stripped of will. His eyelids closed and the glow was shut out. Gemini's eyes darted wildly, the once-conspicuous angel rendered invisible by the chemical deluge. From out of nowhere the voice permeated his pointed ears in the distinct ring of an otherworldly bell that proclaimed judgement on the loathed race:
"On this day of deliverance, the names of human are cursed and damned to Cosytus...all of us have been reborn..." A flash of lightning sketched the outline of the angel against the distance. "...those who named me Gemini II and you Gemini I, they are hereafter damned....." The white eyes opened again, burning with the fires of white-hot stars standing in a distant galaxy. Though little more than a freak on the scathing tongue of humans, power seemed to imbue him, the same power that his enemy thrived on, the power, though only in the inflated imagination, where humans could feel they controlled the very stars. In that moment, he had surpassed humanity.....and had embraced its nature in opposing it. With a near royal sweep of his robed arm to encompass the monster kingdom, he proclaimed with despotic might, "...This law.Angelon has decreed to the children of the Black Rain."
His audience was taken by a grudging silence, distrustingly pensive as Gemini could still add 2 + 2 and it equalled 4.
It all added up...he understood in one painful snap. And now he was glaring into the eyes of a liar. And he was stupid enough to be duped. And too wrapped up in his drowning thoughts to find out exactly WHAT was in those drums that Team Rocket picked up. It all made sense...piecing itself in a schemed puzzle.
Now that it was solved, every degree of his hate exploded into inferno of the seventh circle of hell, massive torches in his eyse that spurned raging magma.
Gemini hurled his night-hued form through the leaden air and smashed into Angelon, who toppled from his throne into the climbing earth. Gemini followed him with a savage leap, landing on Angelon's clothed chest.
I see it now, you fucking LIAR!! The demon roared with vengeful hate, dropping to his knees and bringing his claws across Angelon's face, pulling his hand away to find it covered in cold, pure white blood that dribbled down his rain-drenched arm. White blood, huh? It was just as red as any human's. With a nerve-freezing hiss, Gemini sank his face into the open wound before the Black Rain could seal it and drank it, the fluid burning at his throat, burning because it was blood he wasn't designed to drink..but he didn't give a damn. Not at this point. Not after what happened.
His demonic eyes burned hot enough to draw sweat beads from both their heads.
"HUOOAAAAARGHH......" You had it planned this way the WHOLE TIME... He brought his other arm, shaking with unleashed rage, and gripped Angelon's throat, crushing it mercilessly. Well you won, Emperor Adenine. Now everyone's a freak. That was your idea? THIS is your...salvation?..!! The claws buried relentlessly in the back of the white neck that bled white blood that rapidly disappeared down Brock's raging throat. Indeed, the only thing that kept him from breaking the flimsy neck was that the blood weakened him, drained his own strength as well as the angel's.
His chokehold slackened, and he recoiled his forked tongue, the white blood dripping down his lips. His spiked shoulders slumped with the weight of anguish.
And you had to take Misty with them, too. The look of sadness burned with hatred that gouged at the soul of the drained angel, whose mouth was half-open as shocked eyes gazed into nothingness. Gemini began to walk away, his tail dragging through the dark slime. And for your information, she's still Misty, he snarled in cold hate. I don't care WHAT you say.
The angel said nothing.
Help.....please stop...I want to live...don't kill me... please....!!
"WRRGAAAAGHHT?----" Gemini turned halfway and growled, only to feel the unfeeling grasp of a scaled hand tightly constricting his arms. He flung his head backwards and saw Angelon's wounded body slowly vanish in white light.
But he would not leave this rebellion unchastised.
His mental command rang through the empty minds of his drudges.
Daemon wishes to endure the human mastery the enemy punishes him with. Go forth, children, and punish him as well.
Gemini's eyes glowed with tardy dread as the haunting glow of Misty's eyes burned into his head as she held him still, easy prey for the Giovanni's deadly horn that flashed in the Black Rain.
His struggle was useless, worthless, as the white blood retaliated in his muscles, weakened him, sapped him of energy, made him lean and reel as Zero-X's hell-shaking roar blared through his head, a cacophanous din that blended with Butch's croak and Cassidy's shrill screech.
All he could do was helplessly plea.
Misty...don't do this....
A mindless growl of relentlessness in hypnotized reply.
Irony really was sick.
*~*~*
Rufus could do no more than to ponder the roar that hung in the roads and boulevards of the slumbering city..
That sound was the most unnatural thing that had come out of his throat. For a lengthened time he would deny that that sound belonged to him, that inhuman sound that was entirely meaningless..especially for someone who used words to manipulate and dominate...an entire corporate EMPIRE that functioned on the principle of fear. Hire or fire, pardon or condemn: he ruled with absolutism. To hell with the beauracracy. None of them were competent, one had been waiting to backstab him--it was because of him that the president even had occasion to doubt his indisputable control over not only this company but the cities of Saffron and Vermillion, with spheres of influence in Kanto and as distant as the Orange Islands.
How naive... foolish of me to entertain such an idea. He lifted his paws and straightened the collar of his turtleneck, a practiced habit that carried more or less the same finesse and poise..at least he would like to BELIEVE that...paws were vastly different than hands, forbidding the subtle movements exclusive to a
simian or human hand. But he managed. This only served to heighten his confidence, his esteem. With a growl rising in pride that cast its pompous shadow over shame, he brushed the accumulating rain off his white coat, upon which his mouth locked into a smile.
That sign of luxury and wealth, of affluence and prestige, with its fine fabric that he spent a small fortune to get tailored, the thread used to sew on its button worth gross monetary value in itself, this trenchcoat,.though a conspicuous tail moved restlessly under its folds, blotted the stigma of inhumanity.
He riveted monarchial eyes at the palace of his empire and snarled.
The old eel failed at his endeavor. To render me something else? To destroy my identity? The cat-man began to walk through the Black Rain, ripples rolling through the dark water that plunged into Vermillion's underbelly. The weight of the rain flattened Rufus' ears and drained off his whiskers, falling into the ever-swelling flood that crashed off the sidewalk. The glaciers miles north of Midgar could not rival the absolute zero in his eyes that burned with ice. He has succeeded in one sense, but.. I am still Rufus Shin-Ra. The president approached his reserved parking area, the sleek machine of eminence spoiling underneath the heavy storm. I...JUST had this repainted. He ran a paw over the rain-encompassed hood. Already the chemical started to eat at the paint. Closer examination sent wailing sirens through his nerves. The confounded rain ate through the car ITSELF....he gingerly felt around the car as if searching for a broken bone and heard an alarming crunch. He glared down into the hole, the chemicals bubbling ravenously as he saw the engine literally MELT.
The blizzards exploded and raged into liquid fire.You...FILTHY....OLD...WORM....You are lucky that I can bear to stand your PRESENCE, after what you did...but_WRECKING_my_CAR... you have signed your own DEATH warrant. In his rage he brought the weight of his paw through the deteriorating hood ornament, a few indistinguishable letters left of the Shin-Ra insignia that bounced under the ruined car. Rufus nailed a wrathful gaze into the sculpted metal that dissolved through the reaction through the rain. Scathingly typical of him. The unspoken hiss burned in his mind. why hadn't he seen it coming? The old man specialized in chemicals...freakish substances that turned regular humans into monsters-----
That said, a thought entered his fully functional mind.
Why am I concerned about the limousine in the first place while I, the chief executive of Shin-Ra, is a blasted CAT?...!!
A frown halved his feline features as he turned from the defunct limo and stared blankly at the sidewalk. To his utter disgust, it seemed as if he would have to walk home like any other Vermillion----or any other citizen on this entire ISLAND, for that matter.
The very thought made his blood crawl. Doing so would lead him away from the safety of Vermillion's wealthier section and take him into the common route...perhaps not as deplorable as Midgar, but the wretched areas of any city... he wished to avoid them.
But he was left with no other option.
*~*~*
Miraculously he did not tire after that walking. It must have been an addition to this.. Embarassing...form...
Or it could be the long distances he had to walk back when.....
Rufus avoided delving into what may have been a debilitating memory when he heard a siren in the distance that swelled in a blaring crescendo and died as a squad car raced by his deteriorating limo...The police? Rufus' open mouth shut and curled into a frown. Petty thieves or gang activity, no doubt. Hmph.
A voice from behind an alley sent a wary cold through the vertebrae of Rufus' spine that straightened in heightened awareness of an intruding presence. Surprised he was to find a....well..a human that had not changed into some other form: more shocked he was to find the voice was directed at him.
"Neither of the above, Mister President." A partially sheltered alley crossed by heavy shadow radiated a voice. The feline growled in fearful curiosity, compelled to advance towards the alley immersed in shadows of deceit and trickery. "You may ask how this is posisble, how I can understand you while your voice box forbids speech. Or why I have not reacted to the chemical precipitation. I suppose you desire to know." The shadow moved inches at a time. Cautiousness, latent wariness rose from both sides. "Let us say, for the first, it is an inheritance and leave inquiries at that."
I am through with attempting to solve riddles. Why is it that you have accosted me at this hour? Rufus snarled with partially closed jaws, the flash of his sharp teeth visible through the enveloping darkness.
"Why, only to make a proposition, Mister President.It will benefit both sides equal-----"
The said president suddenly lunged in the direction of the alley and snarled ferociously at the shadow. For all he knew, this potential benefactor could be Hojo, effortlessly distorting his voice and lulling his prey into a degrading and humiliating trap. Hah. He would be no prey. I have made enough one-sided deals to last me a LIFETIME. State your business being here---a threatening roar as Rufus grabbed the figure from the alley and hurled him onto the sidewalk. His eyes flared. A labcoat..that was all he could see of him through the darkness, except for the faint glow of energy that surrounded his body, that oddly caused the dark liquid to halt before it hit the human's skin. But the labcoat..That signal of double betrayal....he would not be a dupe a third time. He stood above the nonplussed man, shaking coniderably from the impact, pale from the shock. The man managed to squirm into a sitting position, one hand buried in his labcoat pocket. Quite stoic for one that faced the threat of a throatful of claws. It would seem that he had faced such beasts before. It could be he actually WAS, and somehow prevented it since those cursed scientists seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else.....and revelled in this exclusive knowledge. Ha...but if he was actually an animal like him, he did not show it. He could rip his throat apart if he wished to.
Human perspiration dripped down the man's head. If he could not prove to this feline that he indeed had something to benefit it, this attempt to preserve the remnants of the good half of his name would cost him his life, and liberty certainly did not outweight that..but as it was, this was a fortunate moment. "There we are..." the man exclaimed in a false show of exuberance as he displayed the array of knobs and buttons to the visage of pure ferocity. "A miniature thought projection simulator. An animal is not an animal unless its brain is an animal's. This device will prove that you are inside that animallike form and that you are still competent of your position." Rufus' jaw unhinged and growled furiously at the scientist. For your information, He held his arm and pointed a claw at himself wth furious obstinance, I have ALWAYS been a competent executive.
The man with the labcoat smiled and answered straightfowardly, "Will your employees know that?" He arched greyed eyebrows that framed analytical eyes , the pupils of which were so small that in even in light, the color would be hard to determine. All he knew they radiated a vague tint of raw malice. "Do your employees know that? They will see nothing but a wild animal." He illicited a questioning growl. A waver...obvious doubt, that immediate ego and self-esteem blew to gigantic proportions and stifled any uncertainty.
A wild...animal? The infuriated roar formed a dim smile on the man's lined visage. Patches of masked figures darted through the rain, incoherent shouts stiffening Rufus' fur in natural reply to an invasion of territory.
"Third class SOLDIERs. The most dispensable of the Shin-Ra army. At the most, they earn 20 gil per day, with no insurance or anything of the sort... or hope of compensation if they suffer an injury. They seem to have the poor end of the deal...but they all underwent Mako infusion. My colleague saw to that."
If I may inquire...why_the HELL would I CARE about the WELFARE of 3rd class SOLDIERs? They mean NOTHING to me. Absolutely zero value. "Now hold your horses, Mister President. I have not finished." Then CONCLUDE_THIS_
INSTANT. "To summarize, the most heavily infused---those ones over there-- they are now technically your masters-----" THAT'S ENOUGH!!! The older man wheezed at the blow to his stomach, and toppled the garbage can, debris and biotic creatures spilling into the street. Before Rufus could pounce and maul the offending tongue, a cry broke through the heavy rain and gunfire rattled into the stone wall. The instincts went haywire, practically throwing Rufus down behind, of all objects, a dumpster. As he leaned his feline skull against the wall, heavy breathing made heavier with the loudening splash of the SOLDIER's boots on the asphalt dense with potholes, he watched the older man get to his feet and slink away into the rain, shooting Rufus a glare that read, "You had your chance."
The SOLDIERs walked nearer to the president's crude hiding place. He stared up. The gun's shadow stretched across the wall and receded as the SOLDIER pointed it the other way. A flashlight beam held by the other one scanned the decrepit asphalt. Rufus himself waited in one of the potholes... most likely a result of the billions that constructed the weaponry and the half-gil and quarter-gil leftovers that went to public works. Rufus locked his pointed teeth and repressed a roar of rage. To think that the very department I fund is about to kill me...the funder. The fools...! Can't they see the clothes? That alone is enough to distinguish myself from an animal!
"Think it's gone?"
That is...it SHOULD have been enough.
"It isn't gone 'till its guts make some new grafitti." The flashlight fixated directly above the fur on Rufus' head. Perspiration began to flood his face. The heavy breathing grew into a fearful growl. The wide circle of light flitted across the stone wall, grazing the tail of his coat, black with the rain, blending into the night. "Can you believe it?! That's the fourth freak tonight! You got any more bullets for this one?"
Instinct resolved his course. So, they didn't recognize their own president?
That would be their own folly. With a low growl he raised himself to his feet, an imbued stealth leashing him...forcing him to wait..for the...perfect... time..to strike...
Upon seeing the outline of the target the other SOLDIER froze and fired. A maddening click was all that the spent machine gun had to say. The cat pounced, hurling hismelf onto the SOLDIER with the flashlight, biting, tearing, in frenzied fear that he would be killed first, a primordial fear of pure instinct. He HEARD the click that signalled the weapon was empty, it remained shooting through his ears until the other SOLDIER's mangled carcass landed in the pothole, the weapon held in the corpse's lacerated hands. The other body, maimed, one of his arms hanging by a thread of muscle, slid out of Rufus' claws. For a moment he stood there, the Mako-swarmed blood dripping from its sharp ends. He stared at the dying human, strangely calm.
Killing by your own hands was different than using the hired help, than keeping them clean in the pitiful effort to keep the conscience as unsullied.
Their lives mean nothing. My conscience overlooks this incident. He began to walk from the site of the slaying, his burning eyes fixated on the narrow strrests that loomed ahead. The Black Rain coursed down the claws, washing away the blood that drained into the sewers. See? I am still Rufus Shin-Ra. The heightening rain washed the bodies from the alley. Two human lives. What would they mean to the animal now if they were worthless before? The value of their lives lessened from nothing to below nothing in the cat's eyes. A guilty conscience was free from the beginning.
He strode across the decrepit concrete, unshaken by the death he so inhumanly caused.
*~*~*
TO BE CONTINUED......
*~*~* A/N: Tune in next time when all hell breaks loose (again) when---you'll find out. -_^