End of a Reality

by Blue9TigerDarkMutatedBrock

A co-written fic of enormous proportions, concocted by the devilish minds of two psychopaths. Pokémon crossed with FFVII. Mutations galore. Glorifies Brock, Giovanni, and Hojo. Scared? Then go ahead and read. We dare you. Chapter 28 up!

28. Two Minus OneHalf Equals Zero

End of A Reality

by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana

*~*~*

A/N: Enjoy! Intro is in picture form, which isn't ready yet.

*~*~*

Chapter 28: 2 - 1/2 = 0

*~*~*

"Firshhhrkr at Silphshhhhhrr Co. Allsshhhrkk units in the shhhhhhsshtthhhhhrpnity of Saffron, resposrrrrrhrrr---"

Like outside. "Shhhrrhhhhrhhhhhhh"

"Sssssss.....hhhssssssss.."

What are you saying?

"Rrrrrrrrr....."

It's not coming through Repeat that
Again

The static's in the way

"Hsssssssssshhh....."

Can't hear

"Ssssssssssss......"

Can hear perfectly well

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr......."

The question is.....

"Hssssssssssshrrrrrrrrkkk....."

Do you understand?

*~*~*

A wearied drizzle left a gossamer film on the apex of midget skyscrapers, that trickled slick moisture from its concrete edges, tumbling in scarce companies, too few and too feeble to devour the harrowed squad car that screeched around a narrow corner with its siren howling through the true night. A few solitary, maybe out-of-town malconformations slinked into sewers, into manholes, plunging back into the shadows to dodge the intrusive tires that jarred the raging vehicle out from the ruts and sent it speeding, another following in close succession. The creeping shadows meant little to the drivers tearing through the pavement with their rackety machines---a far more urgent catastrophe had reared its head, dire enough that it yanked every squad car, fire engine, and motorcycle from Saffron's public services department out of their respective garages even with the grave warning against setting so much as an eyelash outside. And when the Psychics predicted something you'd have to be stupid or from out-of-town to be cynical.

"My aunt's coming over from Celadon for the holidays."

Don't expect her.

Why? Fire or water? You'll never see her again either way. Burn something long enough and you'll end up with ashes. But the water's uncertain. Prey to the predator, but which one? Humans by captivity or euthanasia, the food webs' outer fringes converging on and consuming the first-level consumer, or pride? You're too good for the dead rat. Eat and live. Don't eat and die. The whitest and blackest laws govern the living with its natural scythe. Any way, it's prey.

*~*~*

"rreeeeeeeeeeeee---" The wipers on the car smeared the opaque rain and forced it down the windshield. The car ran around the curbs, racing for the blaze. "-----eeeeeeeeeeeE-" The howling horn drove closer to the reddened site. "EEEEEEEEEE-----" Shorter. Medics got there first. Firefighters already set. Local cops were already out. And the servicemen from Vermillion. Some of the civilians didn't look so good. Like the rain was getting them sick. Pneumonia already?

Nothing short of a catastrophe could've gotten the locals outside once the Psychics predicted the storm.

But the eleven stories of a blazing pillar that raged with derisive defiance was nothing short of that catastrophe. The Rain...no one paid heed. They were stumbling out in floods, some of the cops already exhibiting the beginnings of behavioral changes as they strayed from their duty, firemen from their ladders, hose, and Squirtle, Squirtle from the cops, Chansey from their stretchers, leaving the wounded strapped on the stretcher, screaming or paralyzed with shock. Authorative demands for a rescued worker to stay away from the building sank in the crazed ravings of the humans that gradually lost their hold, the groaning faucet of the sky, with the drips of moisture it released, acting without delay on their mental faculties that were already diminished from the smoke fumes and the blind of flame.

And already taking them out from inside. A stomach ache that wasn't because of adrenaline or an ulcer.

As for the Shin-Ra unit-----at the risk of marring an efficient and deadly reputation as well as reducing their already meager pay--- retained their rigid unity. The masks with the Midgar- trained Blastoise that fell in tight formation on the ground with a machine's precision. From this immovable wall of water, a hardy brown entangled pattern of wings, beaks, and talons bearing Shin-Ra emblazoned globes soared under the water and shot up the column of air interposed between the building of fire and the building of concrete. The Fearow, as per the human order, opened their talons, the metallic spheres landing in the Black Rain film. It was too little to react, and the Blastoise burst out, spearing a downward assault on the upper floors rent by the blaze.This pattern mirrored itself on the building's opposite facade at a whistle's blast. They assaulted Silph from all sides. The fire writhed underneath this high-pressured spillage, a pulsing torrent searing through the heart of the flame and effacing it. If everything else was shadowed with uncertainty, it was sure that Shin-Ra knew how to use their assets. One cannon took one level while the opposite took the one directly above or beneath it. While the native units collapsed into stupefied individuals terror-struck with their own foaming and staggering intoxicated with the slow trickle seeping into their bodies, the SOLDIERs remained SOLDIER.

The geysers pulsed from their sources, raging through the inferno twisting and dancing death on the eleventh floor, the vapor of steam shooting from the torn barricade, only to triple its strength and tenacity on the target.

"Unbelievable..." the red-garbed commander growled under a restrained inhale. He marched a pace and belted, "Turn up the power--Hydro Pump!!!"

"This IS Hydro Pump, sir-!!!" yelled the SOLDIER over the upward cascade of water, cutting through the fire that tripled its size for every foot it receded, intractable and fractious, taunting the shaken workers below, covered in ebony droplets, and taken by the indomitable change. Some clamored to charge into the charred stalk of concrete, fighting against the grip of the cops and the firemen and the greasy Black Rain film scattered in puddles on the blaze- lit asphalt. A few others, clumped around Officer Jenny's path, murmured about Silph's president.

"It's impossible that he made it out," the officer said with frankness etched in her mouth. That wouldn't be the first time. The cycle of death and life went on all the time. But even with her line of work, for the line to end so abruptly, in the fire.....she crinkled her forehead. and took one look at the consuming fire, pursing her lips, the clamor growing louder around her and her dogs, dragging the fractious and mad workers. "What in the---?"

Eleven stories off the ground the fire receded and resurged, blazing a light in the top-right corner of the building. There was something...strange about it..it was just a feeling in her gut, but pretty soon, those Blastoise would've been out of ammunition. Any moment the roar arching above their heads would peter into a trickling whimper of water. "Sergeant-----that's no accidental fire.."

The Senior Grunt whirled in a red-faced fury.

"You're telling me this why? It's your job to investigate its cause after we put out the damn---"

Upstart. Woman too. That's why it's a mistake to let a woman tote a gun. They suddenly think they run the place, he grumbled resentfully. The encroacher's fitful gaze lay on the orange flame which the tumbling arches hammered at.

What Pokémon could make that much fire?

Charizard? Arcanine? Typhlosion?

The fire spilled out in a cataract. Something twitched in her gut. Could it be the one? That totalled Viridian?

"I've got a hunch it's the killer Pokémon---" Drilling and training kept her level-headed, but she could feel it herself--her throat drying out, her nerves rolling over. It scared her like it scared anyone else. "-you weaken it and--" The mask was brittle. "....-we'll do the rest." The commander leered. Unbelievable.....taking orders from a civilian---a woman----in Shin-Ra's sphere of influence...practically its principality!

"Our orders are to exterminate." His voice dropped a notch, and he muttered, sitll red-faced with fury and embarassment, "And you're not going to give my men orders---Drain them dry!!!" he delivered the adamant shout over the dying roar of water, the cascade receding back into the river, drying up until only an occasional droplet smacked the ground when too heavy to hang to the rim of the cannon. The commander purpled and his lip tightened in a grimace. "That's what you get for trusting foreign weapons---stick with 100 % Gaian---" He thrust a gloved finger into the damp air. "--you, call summon 006!!" he directed. One of the SOLDIERs instantly, robotically reached for his gun and discharged it into the air, the force triggering the Materia that glowed its own eerie red amidst the blazing crimson above, and then died.

"It malfun--"

The human's unperturbed voice was shredded in the light and intense heat of the redoubled fire, overtaking the tenth floor. The commander stood stupefied, and didn't wait for the officer to butt in his arena again with some snide salt to irritate his cut pride.

"Get those watering cans up there. The civilian might be right," he admitted, his upper teeth grinding against the lower ones. Given the order and a whistle blast, the Blastoise latched the wall. There was their advantages over Venusaur: they could switch from bipedal to quadrupedal, and they heaved their bulky bodies towards both of the blazing tongues that lashed like a chameleon's for a fly. The turtles scaled while the SOLDIERs trained their high-powered arms at the tenth floor windows. The magazines went like the water, pummeling the air with increased clamor. The final shell burst through the flame.... .that engulfed the ninth floor.The Blastoise were in the windows unobstructed from toppled debris, lost to sight, lost to communication, as if they were weapons themselves, innominate, and judging from the way they fired, regardless if they hit the Blastoise in the skull, the least useful of Shin-Ra's cache of weapons.

Weapons that think, Jenny pondered in her mind with dry lip. The Blastoise passed the window, their lumbering, somewhat delayed gait taking more time for them to climb up the stairs than it took for the fire to consume the remains of the ninth floor. If that's the killer Pokémon...she had to get them out of there. Or at least advise them. But she knew what kind of people that had come to their city. Barely-disguised monsters that weren't above exploitation. Nothing they could do here. Nothing they could do...except go up there themselves.

The Squirtle were on standby. The Growlithe and the other officers were on the wtach for the worst with the rescued Silph workers that refused to get in the ambulance. She was tied.

*~*~*

The fifth floor. From ground level they could spot the speck of lumbering turtles through the steel and chrome curtain. But it was too high up to discern details...no one saw the sweat from Blastoise's face. It couldn't be from the fire..maybe the heat of the smoke. Maybe because out of the humans' sight there was a killer surpassing the destructive capacity of anything it faced in Midgar...right, it was Midgar-trained. Nothing frightened it...it already had crushed Whole Eaters and Hell Houses while the Mako poisoned its lungs and crazed its mind...nothing...It withdrew into its shell and hurled itself spinning out of the view of the window for a Tackle, when a reptillian muzzle obscured the glass square, a jaw stretched open like the jaws of a cage and a jagged stub of a broken tongue writhed against the roof of the jaws reflexively, while the acid-coated, fire-stained fangs BROKE OPEN the shell and devoured the turtle, the cracked shield now smeared in blood clattering on the windowsill.

No longer any doubt.

This is it..the monster in Viridian...

A massive snort burst through the flaring nostrils of the beast. Other Blastoise. Another food source. Plaster and concrete buckled against its weight, bulged, and burst, revealing the disfigured head, adorned with a horn flecked in Blastoise gore, its pathetic leftover of a tongue wriggling in its innard-spattered cage of teeth, its silence more menacing than its once-terrifying roar, now muted to the mere visible attempt and the auditory failure.

"What in holy hell is that..?!" screamed the commander, all of his time- gained experience crumbling away to reveal a man just as freaked out as anyone else. How anyone could still keep his wits after witnessing that abominable muzzle, further defacing the building with its acidic drool, streaking it with indentation, shredding and renting the concrete wall with the lance-like horn?

The same bulging and battered plaster masked the source of the lizard's distress. But what distress? Such a THING couldn't have emotions. Distress is an emotion, yes? It couldn't FEEL distress because it was less than an animal..a monster and a freak...

Meanwhile Hojo primally expressed his vexation. It would not relent. That damned equine that had muted him in the crudest of fashions beat its pronged hooves against its mangled retinas and chipped the skull beneath all that impregnable hide. No sound to express this inexpressible..discomfort? No...more akin to pain, hurt..whatever you may call it...nothing to intimidate it, to ward it off, no painkiller, no way to ameliorate it. In desperation he struck blindly with his claws, chomped with his fangs, getting a mouthful of concrete that further buried into the inner walls of his burning jaws. Scorched concrete wreathed in fire welled up in his mouth and the boiling spillage burst out in twisted knots. The horse, unstoppable until this point, was startled and dropped from the window to the pavement, landing roughly on its knees.

A normal horse---even a normal Ponyta or Rapidash would've snapped its legs or at the very least dislocated them. But the horse was fine, barring the bloody gash that no one saw against her ebony fur. Accusing voices from some of the scattered stretchers stabbed in her ears. Voices brimming with malice and terrified shock.....

"It's another freak.."

Like the voices in Pewter.

"Could've been a Rapidash.."

Scornful and shaming...she lost her childhood to that crowd.

"It's not a Pokémon."

Her neighbors and friends..

"Demon? Devil?"

They all turned on her.

"Must be."

Who had she left for haven?

"Capture it--"

Not people. They weren't her kind anymore.

"Our orders are to exterminate. You'll let Shin-Ra handle this."

They were the monsters in the closet, under the bed, lurking with their weapons of words and of steel.

Suzy let the tables turn.

An entire section of pavement collapsed as the beast landed, crunching SOLDIERs under its claws and bringing the horse towards the same pit out of which ground asphalt billowed behind her. The horse clamped on the edge with four hooves, her muzzle raised, only to see the people with knives--like the ones Brock kept for emergencies, only much...much bigger.

"You, kill it quick! We've got the mother lode of behemoths breathing down our necks--" He loaded his own gun and they fell into their ranks, one death machine preparing to demolish the other, with their machine guns, their grenades, and their swords. Two of them ran and stopped at the pit, discharging their weapons at the drill sound. The horse cried and reared, dashing haphazardly in the pit, crashing against the rough stonelike hide of the Pokémon she proudly vowed to beat. But she was trapped under the table.

Youth never fails to express a reckless boldness...

Someone said something---a voice out of nowhere---someone was talking in her head. A strange voice, the kind of voice your parent or brother or sister would use for the shadowy figure that you didn't know was good or bad in a fairy tale.

Was there any doubt? .
W-who's that? she asked timidly, losing whatever boldness that had driven her through the lizard's tongue and kept up the chase for this long. Sparks and smoke flared in the black pit as bullets shredded the asphalt and clamorous yelling of the hooded men with their big knives and water pistols that didn't shoot water. She backed up against the scaly wall, the constant drill noise drawing the bullets closer. She climbed the wall that suddenly moved out from under her, leaving her in a heap. Ow-- -

How infinitely curious, these aggressive tendencies...Indistinct yelling. The slip and crunch of boots on gravel that landed stealthily at the bottom. ..Constantly nullified by a brain that has not quite matured...Or should I say, denatured? A grotesque grin rose in the darkness as the flame spewed. The black horse was now in full view, scraping the pit's wall, in vain effort to get away. It started to clear up. She just wanted to help Brock, by chasing out another Pokémon. It was just big, really---Onix was big too. She wasn't afraid of Onix. Her child's mind warned her it was a bad Pokémon. But never would she think it capable of killing...feeding..on her. She scrambled to the other side, hearing a choked gurgle in her ears. The fire behind her revealed a bloodied person in red that flumped on the ground, a big knife stiff in his hand.

H-hello? M-mister? Yo'kay?

It barely registered what happened when Suzy felt hot breath behind her. The creature lunged, now chasing her, turning the tide, its hideous claws grinding into the asphalt wall. It crushed the corpse and lunged with its jaws, searching the air for the scent of horsemeat, baking the air. Suzy scrambled for air, out of the jagged crater, dragging herself up by the claws curving from her hooves. Flashes of smoke and light exploded by her and she reared and bucked, clopping a SOLDIER in the ribcage into the hole she just left. A geyser of fire and a shriek erupted from the pit. The Senior Grunt didn't flinch. "Get down there and finish it off!" ordered the commander without a second thought based on the ready equation: monster-slaying - no questions asked = gil.

The horse blasted by them at inhuman velocity and away from the fire, the blind gaze of the monster more frightening than anything she could've dreamed of under the bed, rushing past the other monsters, people--bad people. Like the bad people at Pewter that kicked her out.

They stopped chasing her. They were bad to her, but they'd stop the other bad one--the one that tried to eat her, that talked in her head using big words she didn't know. The darkness welcomed her with its black arms, the silence grew enormous as the only thing she could hear was the splatter of her hooves against the damp pavement and her cyclonic horn. In the obscurity creatures like her snaked and slithered around her hooves, some talking to her in her head and others deprived of all communication. She pushed past them, pinning their tails to the asphalt. She was still young, a child. It was easier for children to accept and adapt. She was little, now she was big. Day was scarce. Rice made her sick. She'd find something else.

Indeed...she'd find something else.

When winding your way through the blackness you fear the shadows, the lurking umbrage that cloak themselves with the night. Not the moonlight that sets the pavement ablaze. Never light.

B-brock? she asked the descending light that drove her back, burying her muzzle in her side. She rasped a neigh, backing away from the poison light. It wound and weaved in white silk, sharp as any knife. Her head, neck and shoulders sank, the drill upwards in a wary defense.

It didn't fear its own kind.

"If there is a human here let the children of the storm be comforted: the tyrants are sentenced." Suzy looked at him in her childlike curiosity, snorted involuntarily, and stood her ground. Another person, but no weapon. Looked more like a Pokémon. Maybe somewhere in between. She stared blankly at the figure, its throat bearing a hungry tear. The angel's mouth creased lightly in an expectant indignation. "Ignorant child. We are now on the throne. You are searching for Daemon. I'm searching for him too." His mouth creased further into the beginnings of a scowl. His gossamer-cloaked arm glided to his neck and pressed it tenderly. "He must be punished for this act of rebellion. Would he prefer the tyrants enslave us for sport?" he asked derisively, bringing his hand away from his neck. That entire time he heard the clip of the hooves, the fear in the child's sweat and quieted breath. The fur-coated tail trailed along the puddle as it approached, with a smile emanating a glow. "Perhaps..you can help me find him."

I wanna find my brother. She crouched midway between the shadow and illumination. The second, it kept her on guard. She raised her long muzzle, the black, ivory tornado cycling in the jet. On the half-person's face there was a warm glow of a smile warding her away. I don't want everyone mad at me, mister. They're all mad back home, and over there, too. They're all mad...."And what wrong have you done to merit this hatred?" Y-you mean why they're mad at me? "Innocent child.....they are angry because they are evil. I do not need to tell you this. Humans are evil. What they fear, they destroy." His right hand closed at his side. The blunted claws scored the flesh. A shining drop of blood wavered milky on the Black Rain's surface. "They are oppressors that must be destroyed." Des-troyed? What's that? she asked, angling her head in childish curiosity. "The children of the storm posess the power to purge this planet of that despicable race." He reached outward with his hand, penetrating the brain that sat under the skull, probing the memory without laying a hand on her head. "That pestilence you called neighbors and kin----expelled you from your nest because you loved your brother."

At this the horse snorted and squirmed. She didn't see the hand in front of her, but the cruel lips of the angel made her uneasy and restless. "The battle is no longer a game, child.." Angelon extended his arm draped in that thin cloth, white as what could be seen of his body. "For your brother, purge the world of humans."

What's 'purge'?

Angelon said nothing more.

Let his sister punish him for protecting the slime...... He lightly grazed his fingers over the ragged scar that had traced one of his arteries ...and for the damage. He advanced with the aura encircling him, outstretching his hand as if to lead her. His eyes closed, the Psychic focus clothed in a pseudo-divine facade stemming from his brain.

If it was to his advantage.....to make the effacement sooner...

What a child's mind can create is magnified when seen with their eyes.

The horse shook her mane and blinked her scarlet eyes. The fur on her back bristled and she backed up, stunned at the sudden flurry of shapes that wavered in front of her. Her eyes snapped open, her nostrils dilated, and she half-reared. Images rose up to swallow her..faceless at first, somber and cold, terrible in their guarded silence. Ghosts, maybe..

They grew from transluscent to opaque. They wore faces. Of her neighbors, the officer..jeering, a near-faceless shape in the background, with head buried, shaking, like she did when she was sad but didn't know how to express it.

The voice is gone.
Replaced with a primal speech.
That all will hear and no one will know what it means. A new language. An ancient tongue. That's been extinguished. Now rekindled, who recognizes it?

Isn't it hard if you can't make yourself understood? That you're speaking in jargon? That you don't have a language.....and no sound at all. No voice, no meaning. No meaning, alone. The world against you. A world armed with rocks and voices. Voices that are heard, that know they're heard, that grow louder as they're fed with approval from other voices that eventually echo each other so they're not many, but one venemous blade afire with boiled acid.

Her brother shrivelled and stretched, his scream crushed and maimed as she grew farther away, the black shape fell lower under the rocks and the words.

Her own family was among them.

They became the knife-people. They crowded around her brother and hacked into him. His body jumped and writhed. It stopped moving. They moved in for her, wielding their knives. "They are all the same. Each desires your death." They swarmed her, their knives raised. She charged at them, driving her horn into a dispersed apparation. The snort was one of confusion.

The angel withdrew his slender hand brimming with white veins. "If you have no concern for yourself, then for your brother.....What if you find him and...."

The scaled demon---her brother stretched out on the pavement, his limbs torn off his body. Blood submerged a leg. Blood was what came out after getting a cut. It'd stop bleeding. It'd be better.

He didn't.

She jumped for him but he melted...retreated back into her mind. An invisible force released the manipulated optic nerve. It scared her so much she didn't realize her eye was twitching-- he was twitching her eye.....so it wasn't real. There was nothing...except for her, the alley, the two buildings that walled her in on two sides, and the man in the white dress. The rage of fire farther away. The cry of the men.

Man.

The true monster.

So all monsters.

Are one of us.

Kill the man.

The man is hate.

The horse lowered her head and curled it inwards, tears dropping across her unremovable mask of scales. It mingled with the fur below it, down her ellongated muzzle, the equine snout..

What'm I gonna do?

"I know which humans will kill your kin. You must destroy them before they destroy your brother. I will light the way." He glided onto her back, bristling with the breed of excited uncertainty. The horse snorted, rearing with the impatience of youth as the white figure boarded her, reinless, bridleless, having no marks of the domesticated steed. Ah...they weren't needed. It would be a mockery. A mockery of his own doctrine. To slay the men.

Her beacon washed the pavement with light. Suzy reared on her hind limbs and burst into a gallop away from the fire, prepared to hit them 'till they didn't move anymore. So they wouldn't do the same to her brother. The image hung in front of her, vague and transparent, but still there.

Her eyes were twitching again. The meat in front of the hungry dog, or the worm in front of the fish. It was a cruel incentive...but it would ensure that the most mobile, most heavily-armed fragment of the humans were effaced. How convenient that Daemon's kin complied...he preferred willing assimilation as opposed to brainwashing...it was necessary to precipitate the dispersal...but he did not desire an army of drones. That was what a human would want. A human.... he passed his fingers over the white robe and tore it with the blunt claws, the other hand resting on the base of Suzy's neck.He tossed the garment into the air-- it was a human sign that he did not need to be burdened with. It scarcely landed before the claw-hooves trampled it in the Rain puddles.

*~*~*

Saffron's night sky had stripped itself of the man-made disguise and listlessly revealed its shielded visage. The faucet stopped leaking, and the shower that hit Saffron a bit easier than the southern cities vanished completely, the puddles and slippery pavement the only testimony that there ever was a Black Rain.

That and the offspring. Funny..they couldn't see their reflections in the black puddles. What they became..never could see it in the Rain.

Same for the winged streak that cleaved the air current and plunged, angled downward, a plane diving nose-down.

Plane...he couldn't remember the last time he flew one. .
What was the name of that airship?

He named it after a pilot. Best damn flyer on the Shin-Ra Air Force.

Good guy..sometimes the medals get to his head. He should keep his feet on the ground. Don't get too cocky. Ya get in trouble when you get too cocky. That goin' up and comin' down shit.

Way down..through the dirt. Rock. Straight through the crust and mantle and core. Feel like I wiped out in the ground and fell out the other side.

A high airy whine and a brush with the mutt's fur thrust Cid towards his senses. Still had his doubts... no. Too short a time. It'd take years...a lifetime maybe, for him to forget. You can't just drop your identity and all the memories wth it. That's what they're doin'...makin' you forget...

"Fuck 'em," growled Cid, gripping the dog around his ribs tighter. Another whimper. "Fuck 'em all!" he snarled, the dragon's roar rumbling in his stomach still tumbling and churning from the raw meat still haunting his digestive tract.

The dog meanwhile stayed still in the reptillian cradle. He dared not bite the arm that stood between him and the pavement far beneath. That and the behemoth. Wasn't sure if the dragon saw it. They passed right over a great black dune trapped in a pothole. The spurting heat entangled perspiration in his fur and he squirmed reflexively while nervously licking his nose. He had a feeling that this time, it would be impossible to escape a conflict with the monster. A momentary glance revealed he saw them. He pulled up for that reason. Nanaki read the maneuver and pointed his muzzle towards the shrinking ground.

"I can feel the heat up here." A geyser pulsated at least fifty feet from the pit's bottom. The SOLDIERs had woven a ring and were blasting it with everything they had. A red arrangement of rectangles stood sideways with a ladder protruding from it with light blue worms that were squirting out a building's fire. "I have a bad feeling it's a WEAPON." The dragon didn't dive. "We should do what we can."

The reaction was explosive, and the sentient jet took him farther up.

"If ya think that I'm gonna lift a finger------claw---whatever the fuck it is, for the Shin-Ra-----" The tone suddenly changed but the voice remained the same. "I'm going to let go. You're enough of a burden with your mouth shut." Nanaki growled, pushed to wriggle out of the impending realization that he was unwanted baggage. Cid recovered, his muscles under the scaled skin becoming taut, while his head was wreathed in a laurel of sweat. "Don't do anythin' to piss the psycho off," he growled, rubbing the sweat out of his slit eyes. Awkward as hell...

And who exactly is the psycho?

Nanaki didn't answer what was drenched in coarse desperation a warning and a plea---maybe partially for his own depleting sanity. It wasn't enough that he was a dragon freak, that they wrenched him out of his ignornace in the most FUCKING painful way Hojo could concoct, and now he was a MAN- EATER while having the memories and the slipping illusions that he was still half a man. Even that was slipping. Sliding down the slope. Out of reach and out of recognition.

The scaly beast sped over Saffron, guilt gnashing his gut. The heat from the fire diminished when they passed over the building into another district.. But he couldn't breathe any easier. Couldn't run away from yourself. Couldn't stop yourself from killing when you were just too weak to begin with.

He dropped in altitude with his front heaved downwards, dodging the other creatures that blurred past him surrounded in flashes of dizzying, drugged-out light that lanced the dragon's slit pupils, and with frenzied, haggard eyes, searched for somethin to heal Red up quick. Who knew how long it'd be till the dog'd have to fight HIM... wasn't any time for a hospital. "Like I'd trust them doctors," he snorted derisively, anger buckling under the weight of a despairing, humiliating terror of the--that cut him down small and helpless-----like he was a 12 year old tyke again.

Red suddenly felt heavy to carry. He dropped eye-level with the buildings. A howl here and there when Nanaki's tail smacked against the damp concrete and he jerked two feet back, all the while the flying coyotes and anteaters and other freaks hurled at him, their erratic flight path sending him spiralling across screwball traffic. This was shit. He clamped the wings and landed, behind a dwarfed building. The freak bottleneck above only got worse, and their flight as the light stream descended, uprooted the planted SOLDIERs and cracked them against the bricks. Both broke for the next street, dodging the one-track fliers.

Cid ran the other way, hard breaths forcing their way through the black lungs. So much for a stress reliever, Cid grunted, feeling the dog's heartbeat pound against his own, his out of alert fear, his that Draconis Rex'd kill the smelly mutt. The pulse coursed, fierce and brisk, young rivers about to flood the banks.

A dash through the labyrinth of emptier streets and they reached the Materia store indicated by a hastily-thrown-together sign that was nailed lopsided across "Mart". He flew sideways with bent wings through the door and met a mask that raged hostile with one look at his draconic freatures, with barely a vestige of man to glimpse.

Barely?

Maybe barely if he wasn't half-naked, the borrowed jeans caked up to the beltloop in mud, and his body overrun with sweat and the uncleaned residue of tissue, a wet dog laying draped over his disgusting elbow, dripping globs of muck on the waxed tiles.

Wherever there wasn't mud there were.....Humans.....full humans with their dropped jaws, some scowling, others grabbing their nearest loved one and shivering, weak in their defenselessness, and still others recoiling in apparent disgust from the mud faucet and from its mud-slathered source.

From the way they clung to each other, and the scowls...he knew from right off the bat the kind of shit they'd give him. .
Behind the counter the cashier turned from conversing with his own kind.They stopped their exchange and one said out of the side of his mouth, out of which a strawberry gum wad hung lazily out.

"That's what happens when there isn't a psychic in town. People go out, no ordinance, from city to zoo."

"And the Shin-Ra executives get rich off extermination," the other answered, scratching his unscaled nose and leaning back on the counter. He glanced casually around and pointedly ignored the mud-drenched customer.

"It doesn't change. They're putting Midgar on Earth."

The crowd's eyes cussed him out a million times over.

"Devon's dream turned nightmare."

Have some respect, he wanted to say. I'm just as man as any of ya, he wanted to protest. The dirtiest of looks he knew real good. The freakiest of Unknowns in the Gelnika--- he shot 'em that when his spear came out the other side of them shits. That's how he looked at the writhing meat spilling fucking poison out of their green insides.

They put him on the other side.

"Wanna bet that's what they planned all along---a couple more millions in their pocket for the cure."

It hurt. It hurt in there.

"They probably've got it locked up somew---" Drip. The dragon had barged its way over the human crowd, dripping the slime on his body all over the waxed floor. The tiles were all painted brown and black now. But these people didn't appreciate artists.. "--well, what'd we have here?"

The cashier turned halfway and retrieved a sign. He smacked it on the counter in full view of the dripping dragon with a sort of knowing smirk.

OLD CURRENCY OR GIL ONLY

"Not that you could read it."

The pilot's pride hardened..he wasn't about to lay down and become a simpering little sludge ball for everyone to sneer at and throw around.

"I ain't gonna take any shit from ya, alright?" He imprinted the rough shape of his arm in Black Rain on the rounded counter. " I came here for a Cure Materia--" He stalked rather than walked, scraping the muddy tracks on the tiles and spreading the mess around, washing the white in brown and black, filling the sterile shop with the outside odor of dirt and slime. The people squirmed closer to the walls. One sensed trrouble and blew out of there in spite of the light traffic bowling across the alleys. Better out there than in here.

The cashier grinned and wore a placating mask.

"Don't want to make trouble for you. What's that you need, a Cure Materia?" The cashier reached for a PokéBall equipped with linked Materia slots and held it out wiht a lopsided smirk. "I'm sorry, we've only got Bolt3 in stock." He raised the solidified Mako and with a buzzing crack and a high-pitched zap, Cid doubled over with a roaring groan at the old famliar shock of getting electrocuted, except now--made to feel it more as an airborne dragon, feel the staggering shock that lanced like the spear...turning his own weapon against him and gutting him and the lame dog like a Bandersnatch.

Some sneered, jeered, laughed, crossed their arms and nodded in curt approval.

He raised his singed head bowed low, cut in a few places, his drooping body brimming with the vestiges of the shock, the very scales quivering, a twisted leer carved on his features, his arm tightened on the sparking dog whose broken howl abated.

Draconis Rex swept his pain aside and hurled vengeance in its place. Exaggerated...blown-up..magnified...overkill.

"You want to play games. You won't mind that I join in." It wasn't a an invitation. The cashier noted the difference in his tone. But he was expecting it. There was going to be some blood and he let it escalate. But the grip caught him unaware. Crushing, a vice clamped on his neck, squeezing, ripping a sanguine gurgle from a mouth that had laughed only a moment ago. A sharp blow to the head, the flourescent lamps suspended from the ceiling swam. "Hunting. A human's amusement." Some of them, whether it was from cowardice or stupidity, shot out before it got ugly. "A fine sport---" He raised both arms and conquered the ex- pilot. Draconis Rex clamped his claws on the back and front of the neck, his grin sharpening as the cashier gurgled and raked his nails across the counter. There was no twitch as the bones crunched. A shriek from the humans as the creature severed the head from the neck. "--In which they take the head as a trophy--" The regal monarch snatched the bloody mess up and raised it over his head, crowning himself in blood which he licked up avariciously. "And mount it." Then with a deft swing, dropped the head and smashed it into the wall with the reptillian tail. "For the curious observer. maybe the hunter will place a plaque." He glided to the wall---by now the remaining humans had frozen. Their blood had stopped. The weaker of heart died from trauma and slipped face-down in the mud that they were endeavouring so hard to avoid. He leaned on his right hind leg and brought his claws to the wall, and then stopped, and smiled as if he was doing them all a great favor. "But--unlike you---I won't disgrace my trophy by letting it keep its idenitity..as one of your filthy own---" The nightmarish sneer divided once more as the powerless deserter fell on his knees quaking from , his wings curled around his body that seved as some warped canvas on which the mediums were mixed. His head lay powerless on the ground. His stomach knotted itself like you tie a piece of rope and strangled a rasped choke.

Whatever you do, don't even dare to look up. At the head. At the blood. It'll make make you crazy...crazier. Get the fucking Materia and get the fuck out. Before you kill again. Before they kill you.

So it's all about you? Not an ounce of guilt for the smashed head? No guilt? You can eat him with a clean conscience---Eat him---eat him---"Goddamn it, get the hell away from me!!!!!" he roared madly at himself, standing straight up with his claws buried in his temples that oozed gold--add gold to the defiled canvas---what a blend...a masterpiece.....

He buried his sticky arm in the stacks of Materia, all the while, his gaze straight ahead, not to the side, where the bodies were, not up, where the head was. He knocked the pieces down and they hit the floor with almost--deliberately sonorous clinks. He grasped the Cure in his stained hand and tossed it at Nanaki's paws, his lower jaw chattering against his half- flat, half-pointed teeth. He felt him behind him. His wings spread over him, the dragon ready to put him under his feet at any moment. The muddy wolf/lion made no move to snatch it. "Christ...c'mon, mutt, fine time for ya to go catatonic---" A half-smirk turned imploring and madly desperate. "Use the fucking Cure..!!!"

And get the hell out.

Because you don't want it to sink in.

Cid cast a drowning glance at the dog, silent, steadfast, biting his tongue, judging and condemning with that solitary eye.

Death for Bolt3. Cruel.....painful...but death? And desecration. There was something about desecrating a corpse----even as detestable as an intolerant and malicious human--that bothered him, that stirred up the memories of old folklore. Maybe because of the Gi. What they would do their rival, human tribes...how they would systematically, ritually--- maim their corpses, and arrange the parts in such a way that appealed to their sanguinary gods.

How the dragon seemed so much like the Gi, now.

"I won't drink an innocent's blood."

You are the enemy. You are the Gi.

The dragon heaved Cid's body foward, devoured by impatience. Nanaki''s caked fur bristled and growled as he would at any other foe. The compact attack stance, the lowered muzzle, flattened ears, foam leaking from between his sharp teeth.

To die was foolish...if survival meant that he could put an end to the threat.

Nanaki caught the Materia with his unbroken paw. A swipe climbed it over his muzzle and into the comb he wore in his seeds of a mane. He activated the solid Mako and the glow wrapped around his limbs, mending the bones by someone else's blood. At that very moment Draconis Rex attacked. Nanaki leaped over the flying target and scrambled up the shelves, knocking them down with a cacophanous clatter of Materia and vials of liquid and spray bottles. He sprang off of one of the spilt vials for the pulsing throat that vanished from sight, the sweep of his wings whisking him across the ceiling out of reach of the lupine jaws. The dragon glided sideways through the door, the gate to the sky, to his element. "Putting himself at an advantage," noted the dog. The nimble mass of red fur broke in pursuit, his earth-confined shadow pitifully lagging behind the dragon's. The strength and endurance of a land bound creature was nothing pitted against one who reigned the clouds. The ceiling gave way to the dome above, burning with the blazing aura of the intertwining spirals of energy from the bestial traffic overhead that converged on each other, obscuring the dragon.

The army was well-equipped and efficient. The nose rushed to replace the eye. The dragon wasn't hard to track--he reeked of blood, mud, and chemicals----maneuvering around the buildings whose shadows melded with the other was a whole other thing.The city and its illusions, a yawning black pit---a silhouette, an actual building, the street, the image of the street, an actual building. Ahead and above the dragon flew, backwards, erect, arrogant, invincible, his sadistic mug grinning down at the dog. He knew the futility. That wall made unscalable without wings blocked the wolf/lion from getting his flesh between his teeth. Add that to this formidable shield of lesser creatures, hurtling to a common point, for what reason he cared not.

But.....

You know why he's after you...

Reparation for the human race. The hide that feeds you. Us.

"And who'd know it better'n me, huh?" The clenched teeth were again divided. Split.cracked..unwhole. One rode the current with a sardonic grin, the other dragged along it with the rending hopelessness..to do anything, but to watch, to scream until the voice was gone, to grab and tear at the offending arm only to realize that's where you wanted it to go...to fall on the man..on the enemy...

To slip farther away from yourself.

While someone else consumes you.

Tearing you apart, playing with your mind, it's toy and it's puppet.

When you find out it's you.

It's been you all along.

Nanaki heard a human scream on the threshold of becoming bestial. The ex-pliot swerved around the building. The dog followed, his tread beading his shin in dark fluid. The dog shook his fur free of Black Rain while running, bursting from a thick encasing. He sped around the corner, his matted fur slipping on the slick surface. The airborne creatures touched down in front of him, in a quasi-militaristic way, like those in which discipline was inherent, and it wasn't ground into them with a piece of meat or an iron rod.

He avoided them as one jumps over a rock or a log, none of them taking notice. One of their clawed hands grazed--briefly---his hind leg, in a motion that his front-focused eye wouldn't allow him to see.

"Kdrrrbb...iiiii...."

Nanaki brushed by the leader, knicked by what was that---brainwaves-? Come to think of it...they were everywhere.....at his flank, reaching his muzzle, rattling the innards of his jaw. But his nose drew him past without a glance at the ranks of monsters. A dog's nose is single-minded and encompassing all at once. His eye replaced his nose again. The bronze shroud and its light was gone. There remained the dragon. As well as all else, the SOLDIERs crowded around a pit, firing into it, flashing sirens and an abandoned fire truck, an ambulance, humans with fire dogs scurrying and falling, eggs wheeling humans into ambulances. Without a Sense Materia, the dog could smell it.

"That's it....." Nanaki gasped, still running.

"Just like a puppy," the creature jeered, turning the back line of SOLDIERs. Effortlessly, arrogantly, he swept under the bullets. "Chasing game that can't be caught." He laughed at the risk. He was young. He was invincible.

The game ended when a geyser of fire erupted from the pit. The dragon caught in the overturned cascade of vomit. One eye increasing in petulance and the other dilated, like Quake3 in the retinas as he plunged into the oven and caught in the jaws of the baker. Pain shot through his wings. Shin-Ra Steel raised level with his head at the same time acid- coated ivory tore through the veins, drawing spurts of blood that streaked the stretched hide of the wings. Made them heavier. Flapping ate up his stamina...

"Hold your fire. It's as good as dead."

Draconis Rex struggled for control, despairingly trying to work the appendages, appalled that not even he had the power to free himself..or his enemy. Stretching, twisting, to no avail---and Cid grinned sardonically at the draconic side.

"Ya broke your own wings," he stated bluntly. He made no move, no effort to free either of them. He stepped on the dragon's head and breathed in, amid choked and strangled breaths, the air of victory. Ah, but the balance was what made the dragon lethal. He might have fallen short on power. But he filled the void with speed and wits. "Who said they were broken? You call it quits far too easily, Highwind." He raised the claws and thrust them with all the strength he had into the eye sockets, clawing at the shreds of tangled muscle that weaved a net on the underside of the hollow socket. An agonized swerve of the head, a loosening of the acidic jaws, a last rip, and the dragon sprang from the death trap.

"Open fire!"

Into a gauntlet of bullets. The dragon plummeted, with burnt, scored wings, convulsing as one or two of them pierced him. He rolled on the rough pavement. Vaguely he felt the Shin-Ra's gaze and weapons on him.

But the red bullet struck first. He pinned the target with his paws, a low growl in his throat. The bullets came at both of them. But as long as he had the solidified Mako...

"You gave up on Highwind already?" It was Cid's voice. But was it Cid? The whizz and crack of bullets broke through his ear, but very little registered. The dog was glowing a faint crimson. Somewhere along the way he had ensured against any assault for a brief time, a reaction that catalyzed the platelets' reaction, closing the wounds in flesh, expelling the normally deadly projectile as it closed, repairing bone, and---foreign to the other planet-- muscle, whatever it was, this thing called Magic, stimulating the cells to divide and repair the broken muscles. Never mind the logistics. That's what it did.

"Then feel free to punish him for giving you so much grief." The same voice and different tone filtered in his ears and played with his mind as if it were modelling clay. The different tone...the biting edge of sadism.. This should have told him the difference. But how could he, solidified, whole, understand the multiple personalities of Cloud, Vincent----how much more with Cid? Through all this, and the punctuated and brief pain as the bullets punctured him only to be expelled a moment later, he knew something disturbed the back of his brain. Cid wasn't that type of two-faced human. Hojo had twisted his brain into something unrecognizable and made him more dangerous than any WEAPON. A known pattern of explosively lethal attacks paled when held against a foe whose next word was unpredictable. Because they had double weapons, the ones with speech. Like wielding double-edged lances. But he didn't know it was two beings. The same voice, the same man.

Nanaki sought for efficient kills. The quickest brought the least pain. Better if it was instantaneous. But-----this enemy---to pronounce judgement on him by himself--a cruel injustice worthy of being called human. That left incapacitating him. If heredity left him a twisted mind, he would stifle him---take out the wings, rip out the tongue, bite off the limbs and tail. It was hard for Nanaki how to be sadistic. He was efective but uncorrupted with the poison of that lust to torture and to prolong agony to the greatest degree for the longest possible time.....he instead grabbed him roughly by the back of the neck, wolflike, and started to run, prey in his mouth, away from the hail of bullets, and the scurrying humans, the fire engine, and the squad car.

*~*~*

Static is better than no static and no one on the other line.

"No response from Cerulean."

"Vermillion?"

"No signal."

"If that thing wipes out Shin-Ra, we have no choice."

"If? Don't you mean WHEN."

"You look at it that way, we're already sunk..."

The dog dragged the dragon towards the squad car, his wings folded on the dog's muzzle. He ran blindly and deafly, stumbling in the path of the headlights. "My God...it's another one. Two of them." One raised his gun behind the car door, shaking before a freak power of nature, and he a man with a pistol. It might as well have been plastic. The chaotic struggle between wolf amd dragon threw the two against the door, crushing the human against the car's side and dropping him, grasping his arm that had seen more than a fair share of knife-scars and bullet wounds in fresh and acute pain. The dog's shadow darkened the pavement and dispersed, a red shimmer enveloped the dragon, and its bloodied wings rose to lance the sky.

"Don't you feel idiotic, pup? Regen on your target could drag out the fight." All of a sudden he took off, the confused Nanaki's teeth still piercing the flesh on his neck. The shadow shrunk. The injured human struggled up, the other one, tersely restricted by Shin-Ra to backup, rushing to his aid.

"You okay?"

"Officer Jenny, it's getting away--!"

"They're heading for the Psychic field." She winced at the persistent hum in her head and reeled from it, clutching one of her temples."We'd better---stay in our own league if we want to be around to fight......it." She ran into the car and took out the radio for a last time, watching the Shin-Ra acridly though the windshield. They had been ordered to stay out of it, to act as strictly backup, "unequipped" for such a "dangerous obstacle". But as the radio still gave her a negative, she sighed and wondered if they were right.

Her dogs barked and whimpered tensely. Through the smudged window the torrid breath of the beast groaned and gurgled, the Shin-Ra biding, with their state-of-the-art weapons, a well-maintained engine of death waiting for its match."We've got pistols and Growlithe," she muttered, dropped the radio, and slammed the car door.

Shin-Ra...they were weapons that held weapons. Made nearly inhuman with the Mako, against their kingdom equal..it wasn't easy to call them people. Then there were the updated communications between Saffron and Vermillion that were cut with the collapse of Silph. They were fighting for survival, not to apprehend, as Rufus had demanded.

To the last blood.

Blood..The dragon's blood still streamed down the back of Cid's neck, and the dog's teeth in the wound, his claws digging into the splatter of mud, man's blood, and Black Rain....but why Cid? It wasn't right to say Cid. It was the dragon in control now.

Yet..are you confused at what feels what? Yes, you. Do you know if his emotions are his own? Or did he let himself be absorbed, dove into the gulf of his other self? Is it safer there? Is it safer not to think? Was he sick of fighting himself? Did the ex-pilot finally admitted defeat?

Or do you want him to become one, to accept himself, to accept his beast as his burden... A whole is better than a half. Incomplete, always in conflict. Would you dare to witness the globe of chaos reforged?

All of that was irrelevant. The Psychic wall reacted from an unvociferated order given from the other side. The leader, an Umbreon helmeted, like a Cubone wears its mother's skull..breastplated, and gauntleted in what appeared to be Kadabra hide, its jet ears standing alert through the bronze-hued helmet, its red-black eyes engorged with the Psychic aura. Upon closer examination, the armor did not move---the Umbreon wasn't wearing the Kadabra: the two breeds were genetically fused into one organism. Psychic and Dark--if there were no flaws in its structure, it was immune to the two elements that composed it. If there were no flaws.

The creature felt the conflict. The inner struggle of one set of organs against their stark mirror-image. Its response to this new-found pain was to withdraw, to become as it was before, as a human, calculating, deliberate, cruel beyond imagination. Void of feeling for others. The most deadliest of leaders.

At the very least, this time it was to preserve Saffron instead of for her own amusement. Her preliminary technique was simple. Blockade. Trap not only the target but anyone else within the premises. Make it a closed system where she could manipulate the results as she pleased with no outside interference. Whether for her enjoyment as a result of her being a reflection of chlidhood stunted in a woman's body, or for protecting her brood's territory, the strategy was the same, and she assembled the words without effort or exertion and radiated them back to the defensive line.

Let no one leave.

At once a twisted mockery of an Abra vanished and reappeared, the transparent wall travelling with it as it levitated. Cid and Red rebounded as if they connected with a stone wall and crashed, the dog flattened against the pavement. From his inverted stance he sighted the dance of bronze, the aching vibrations that hummed deeper in hs ears. He clamped his paws over them, teeth locked in a grimace. The bronze and ebony leader signalled with the pulsating light from her body.

Potential energy is maximum level.

Release.

Just as the dragon leaped up on his fours, stomping on the dog's recently-healed hind legs, his howl was stifled in the consuming wave of pulsing energy that converged from opposing points, caring not at what stood-- or lay--in the way. The two energy waves met at the center of the pit, drawing screams from the SOLDIERs with their unearthed humanity. The explosions in their brains, the reaction of the endless systems of nerves, making the assault physical, besting the damage of any Rock Slide or Dragon Rage without drawing a single drop of blood. And even then, the fallen SOLDIERs shrieked as if being quartered.

The Psychics in their cold efficiency prepared to Teleport.

.....I detect your bewilderment...

The low tremor of earth as the monster stalked its asphalt prison, vapor pouring from the fissure, that intermittent fire not nearly as much a concern as the one still collapsing the Silph building, combatted by teams of Squirtle on the projecting ladder.

The Psychic ocean had drowned anyone in its range. Now, the dragon...was just recovering, spun and whirled on a fast carousel, the digested meat tossed and thrown all over his stomach, begging to be splattered on the pavement, on which the Psychic lines stood immobilized, fixated on the link this apparently intelligent lifeform forged.

It is a genotypic farce, but a farce nonetheless. You will find your efforts ineffectual.

It has a lot of nerve.

Quite intrusive.

We will see its responsiveness to pain, the female monotone reverberated, exacting, frigid. The 'armored' leader raised her Kadabra's claw below her jaw, about thirty even mirroring her precise motion, the energy engulfing the malconformed hands, and they squeezed and strained, but the monster did not freeze in their paralyzing grasp.

It is the overwhelming tendency for various organisms to attack the mind when they are too muscularly challenged to cause any significant bodily trauma...

A hideous limb leered over the edge. Can your output be equal or greater to the input? Pebbles plummeted as the gravel loosened, dropped to the bottom with the shaking force that dislodged them.

The firing began as soon as that hint of hide presented itself. Nothing was spared. Grenades, molotovs, Deadly Waste, 8-inch Cannons, barrage after barrage. The monster kept coming. Its second llimb clasped the edge, feeling for it, its four other senses vital for..advancement? Discovery? For survival. For sustenance. The taste of human in the air, flesh and ferrum, the latter no less appetizing than the former-----even though his olfactory senses intercepted the Mako smell....quite a degree less enticing to Zero-X's impartial appetite.So. The hide was hot..the steel could be used against the very ones who wielded it. Like them he spared nothing.

He dragged his unwieldly girth up, slipping on the gravel, the limbs clinging and sliding against gravity, as the explosions of the lethal armaments cracked against this monstrous hide, a shield in itself, aiming at anywhere instead of vital areas that weren't ready to collapse either. First the claws, and the first limb, and second limb, and before long the head yawned in their scopes.

All the while the army of Psychics waited, anticipating. Before the first wave of gore, before Saffron was submerged...

The hind claws barely gripped the gouged-out edge when the leader issued a command.

Let's play..

Live chess caught her fancy. A4 to D4. With a deft action of their concerted power, they entrapped a straggler on the far right shoulder.

H4 to D4.

The opposite line mirrored.

C4 to 1800 ft.

Up.

1800 ft to D4.

And down.

The SOLDIER plummeted, the Psychics pulling him down faster than gravity. Years of training and drilling failed him: his nerves were locked not with fear, but with the manipulation. They had all at once puppeted everything, not a movement was voluntary. By their will he pointed his sword downwards. The buildings and street blew up from midgets. The target came up instantaneously. It hit.

The sword cleaved into flying shards that gored the body. It hit like the surface was granite. The immediate corpse crumpled on itself, the spine snapped and lodged into the smashed cranimum. The beast snorted its noxious breath from its nostrils, unaffected by the splatted gore in a Shin-Ra uniform. As the monster moved it rolled off his side and onto the two other obliterated bodies that the Psychics' manipulation failed to even cut the first layer of skin.

Checkmate, the grease-membraned voice muttered in the Psychics' heads as Hojo blindly broke the dam and the hot surf broke against the human reef, when a black meteorite crashed into the earth. The fire receded back to its source, drawing the curtain open. The cops not thirty feet away crawled out from behind the car, inspecting the mangled hood when the horrific smell of burnt flesh and bone gouged through their nostrils into their brains. Some of them hardly singed and treading their sweat, discharging their ammunition at the overturned target. Others badly scorched, baked, and the rest, heaps of ash that the residue of a bursting grenade wrapped around the muzzle that fell heavy on the scorched and battered asphalt, gripped firmly by a dark hand. Two sets of claws flung out, one lodged in where his ribs would be under those pounds of flesh, the other in his head. The slice was enough to shoot pain thorugh his body as a rifle ball lodged between the two folds. The heaving mass roared in silence, and the surviving SOLDIERs swamped the downed piece of flesh, drawing their swords in concert.

Horse got his tongue. A cracked, broken laugh, twisted sardonically with the human foot forever on his back. What are you waiting for, Misty? Start dissecting.

"Raaaghhhhh!!!!" was the feral reply to this cold, striking impartiality. Hojo felt the two wounds tear more, one with a slice, other with deeper ripping, and the Shin-Ra's seemingly limitless weapons rising with hideous mockery from the incresingly enlargening wound, a travesty of war banners or reminders of the defeat that the victor plunged into the conquered.... What was that? It must have been a sword. Yes, he had felt that sensation more than he believed his fair share on the Sector 8 platform. No doubt that they salvaged his decomposing remains, reanimated the tissue and organs, that at this moment was being mangled down to the bloody ribcage. Well, what do you know? It's still alive! Brock taunted in mock sympathy. We'll have to fix that, won't we? His blood- gorged hands dripped the rib and he reached inside the blood-bathed body for the pulsing muscle.

This new ability......of mine would be timely at present...but perhaps- --yes, of course, an immunity..in the case of which...The flamethrower spurted in a random direction, guided neither by hearing nor scent. The Gyarados raced awkwardly over Hojo's arched back, in her stifling grief, made her eager for the blood feast. One can leave their mind at a kin's grave and forget they dropped it. Maybe it was intermittent, when her sorrow was at its acme, but.....

She freed the head. He thrust it foward, massive enough to drag the rest of the bloody carcass. One hind leg heaved itself from the ground and blocked the nimble and driven claws from the vital muscle. The giant's claws closed over Gemini's and crushed downwards, the assault slow enough that Brock evaded it narrowly, but lost his chance. The monster clawed the pavement with all four limbs, quarts of the liquid collecting around the hide. He fled, cleaving the squad car in half and sending the engine with its sorry wrapper of metal crush and crumple on the wall. The torn engine leaked fuel like blood. The beast came to a vertical surface, crushing the SOLDIERs beneath his claws as he advanced, feeling it with his rough skin, and climbed, instinct dictating, slantwards one direction and slantwards another, lacking direction, unsure of its aim, the blood stream drying as the platelets started clotting. He vaguely heard Gemini's claws scraping the building. And the humans below could do nothing to stop them.

"Have the building evacuated," Jenny ordered, blinking fiercely to keep her bearing through a nightmarish whirlwind of the disaster train: the totalled car, ash piles that were so recently human beings, SOLDIERs' bodies, Silph building scorched and totally destroyed, the volcanic heat too much even for her Growlithe, the Psychics blocking the exit, and the three monsters at large.

She and the other officer ran under the forbidding shadow of the three monsters--two more coming up from the left.....Two more freaks.....all they needed right now.

On the other end of the street the figure of the dragon was bent sideways, the dog still clamped on his neck, both nauseated, both swamped with a whirling brain, confusion, disorientation. The dragon flew backwards, brushing the barrier as they crashed in a heap. The sky danced sickly before them, and the beast's wings convulsed in frantic jolts.

Nanaki was first to regain a grip. It was then he realized that he had a useless hold on the dragon. Now his paws were set firrmly on his wings, but the good that would do---the dragon was too strong for him.

It suddenly occured to him.....that he wasn't going to do this by himself.

"Won't give up 'till yer gone, pup?" He jumped in the air, throwing Nanaki upside-down for a scant two seconds by his paws and teeth. The hold was tight enough that it kept him locked there, bouncing freely and precariously in a fast-blowing wind. He scratched the air for a hold with his paws but the dragon thwacked him with the tail, stunning him long enough that he'd never reach the other wing. Between stunnings, Nanaki could see the grin with his one glaring eye. It was the same grin on the rare occasion that Cid was in a good mood. Nanaki pushed it aside. Worry about what that could imply..what that could change about his condition..to re-make him friend or keep him foe. Had to concentrate. He ransacked his brains---reeling from the last remnant of Psychic, like assembling a jigsaw when the pieces fall into a vent. Focusing on a blurred point. But his ears caught the groan of the concrete. They were coming up on the monster fast.

Confusion can be deadly but transient. The chaos ebbed in his skull--- it lessened to a throb encircling his head. It didn't matter. He still could think. Reason. And..something more foreign to his nature.

"I can impair the left side..." he calculated, his senses roused to feel where the temperature suddenly rose. There's where he'd act. Two strikes in succession would set off the reaction. Right...or not...he dropped. He caught the dragon's left wing, growling as he snagged the stretched skin already bearing blood forks from the lizard monster, weakening, refusing to open its jaws, gasping for air, a wheezing and groaning that violently shook the air.

"Impudent little mutt." The left wing thrashed violently, but with the pain bursting through one in a renewed gush, he veered right. At that same moment, Nanaki activated the Restore Materia, shrouding the lizard that suddenly lunged from the surge of energy as the platelets tripled and the cells elongated and divided at an alarming rate, and the beast retaliated with a vengeance at the first thing it smelled: Draconis Rex.

"Ya finally decided to play dirty..!" he growled through interlocked teeth, both sides of his visage contracting at the ferocious steel vice crushing the bones and nerves in the lizard- like appendage. The dog trampled on his face that jerked to bite the hind paw, but he'd already scored the windowsill. Maybe to gain ground and regroup.

All this time Brock's hand was laying waste to the tangle of arteries and veins in the body cavity in a mad rampage for the heart.

You're through.

He'd just grazed the muscle when he heard a vengeful crunch and the impact of the granite-like folds of hide suddenly resurge and press against his wrist. It must have been the Cure...the dog or the dragon, whichever had the Recover-like ability.

Goddamn it, one of them's on his side, he groaned as he greyed from the sliced circulation. He roared, his own skin tearing and bones crunching between the massive walls of tissue. How pathetic it all was...this close to rending the heart, the supplier, the most obvious life source along with the throat!

I was there...It squeezed. He paled at the mottled grey arm---funny how humans turned blue when they didn't have enough oxygen. So he was gray. He almost laughed. That makes it hurt more. Maybe choke on all the spit you're gurgling. It takes more energy anyways. Maybe he'd laugh again once the whole hand snapped right off...

He didn't get to find out what would happen if it did. Misty's claws dug under his shoulder and yanked him from the crevice. The bloody hand disengaged and he scrambled up the reptile's back, relieved, scared, and speared with bitterness.

So close...from the red corner of his left eye he watched the two hide walls interlock. Another leap brought them directly behind the silver dragon. Got cocky again..he berated himself, jumping parallel to the squirming dragon and crossing the vertical surface to the roof.

For the first time he identified the organisms.

Gemini I and its companion, Red XIII...I should have taken on one of their forms...at the very LEAST..The tail was still wedged in his mouth. The organism was scremaing unintelligibly.....why had he not....? Unless...it must be that he intended it as a vaccination.. Then.....this miserable cycle should be terminable...He paused outside a window where the panicked shrieking of the building's occupants prevented him from discerning the curses and oaths inundating the otherwise inscrutable speech. Unless it is only a temporary immunity... a flaw in the...the design..The jaws pulled into a calculative grin...as long as I am in control of my brain...whatever... primal, underdeveloped organism I may take the form of..

He could scarcely gnaw on the stretching, lashing, twisting tail when his feeble hopes that this was a temporary vaccine were dashed.

Confusion swallowed confusion consumed by confusion ingested by confusion and confusion...

...someone...the Gi..puncturing my brain...ten times...with a...horn of Black Mako..while strapped to a ..glass..wall....hair shorn...upside-down....she holds a drill.... .lapping...rain...from a...puddle..not unlike......a...di- element..Pokémon....parasite..feeding..on.... ...Chaos....burning...the...Gi.....

The..memories are still there.....are not mine.....

But the mutagenic instructions are blocked from the DNA for the time being..the repressor hasn't been inhibited...he reasoned, still chewing, clawing his way up as the wild protest fell on distant ears clogged with the dragon's own blood. ....Gemini....and .the one that destroyed my optic nerves...R-r--N--Red XIII--who...who could be left...? he wondered, a stream of drool winding out of between his teeth. A brash instinct dictated him to take a larger portion of tail to satiate his hunger and he clamped down again, the blood spurting in rivers holdings bits of bone that slid across the lower jaw. At that point, the dragon had it, and exploded into a paralyzed rage, his rolled-back eyes bugging so much it looked like they'd roll out of the sockets and all the curses amalgamated into one distinct feral cry:

"HREERRGHH!!"

The vice loosened and the dragon screamed upwards, the limp tail leaking a gold streak on the building's face.

Of.....of course...Draconis Rex.

Confusion cleared and hurtled the scientist into the depth of another memory, murk dispersing to reveal the leviathan underneath the cleared water.

Clang

Click.

It overpowered him. All other memories receded to dull echoing, engulfed by iron bars, their forbidding presence betrayed by the rigid leaning shadows interrupted by the broken surface, a double obscurity---he couldn't see anything---he'd been sensory deprived for so long that he didn't feel the merest light that penetrated the blindfold. Even if he could see--- anything, he was too numb, numb and strained---they strained him beyond his limit. He was only a kid after all, sweating, tried out, almost gone. But it didn't result from that youthful hyperactivity.

Each drop of sweat sprung from a needle---the haggard breaths from the scalpel, the mad contortion of his lips, hidden with a dirty rag, from the forceps. And from what he weakly remembered from before all this, that it was going to happen tomorrow, too. And it was going to get worse.

He leaned heavily on the bars greasy from his sweat, the straitjacket they strapped around him muzzling the thing they put inside him..that voice...

If...if he didn't think about it it wouldn't get to him.

He let his ma's voice fill his numb and quaking head.

Cid, don't forget to turn your lights off. You're too old to get scared of the dark and the bulb's gonna burn out.

Okay, but you're going to have to get the new bulbs.

Don't forget to fix the clock! All the neighbors' clocks are 8:48!

The clock ain't..gonna be.....fixed. It'll stay 2:59 forever...

Some good that did. It only reminded him that he wasn't coming home. And it only made the voice inside him mad.

Forever. A long time to wait, Cid. The sweat froze him. Add the cold to numbness. He shivered against the metal rods that ran from ceiling to floor, damp and dripping and only making him colder. So much for trying to sleep, going to bed like everything was normal, like everything was fixed.

The voice got all the more cantankerous.

They're telling me that that's how long I'll have to wait before I can come out? Before I can spread my wings again? Before I can romp with my brothers like before? He leaned from the bars, sweat sliding down the corners of his sagging mouth . While you-----the most "useful" to thrm--no doubt they'd choose one in their image--can do as you please?

What're ya talkin' about? We're tied up...

'Tied'? He jerked the constricted hand. It scraped against his shirt that they tore up to get to the skin. You've got the gall to whine when it's just your arms that are tied, he spat poison. They've---locked me up too---and these bars are harder than iron. Me...I'm in your blood and your brain---right now I'm hardly more mobile than an ESSENCE... like..no more than a soul in the Lifestream. You may escape yet---I've got nothing to look foward to save a lifetime in YOUR body!! NO... He felt himself being knocked over from inside. His head spun as he hit one of the bars. The arms struggled violently under the straitjacket. I won't accept it!! Wham. Not this!! WHam. My whole life's ahead of me.... WHAm. I WANT TO LIVE IT!!! WHAM.

They're at it again.

Even with the straitjacket?

The President will be disappointed if the boy cannot pass the physical exam that the SRAF administers. No reflection, no seocnd thought, no remorse. Pacify Draconis Rex.

That's just asking for food poisoning. Should I have an anti-toxin on hand?

It's not necessary. The effects should be purely psychological. That is, of course---the subject still retained proteins coding for a human digestive system.

Splat.

Sniff.

Crawl.

It's ro--The lie slipped off his tongue effortlessly.---grilled meat. Must be a poor grade---but it's the only food you'll get for a while---Eat it.

Eat___it.....

The fangs sunk again into Draconis Rex's shredded tail with a cracking crunch. A hack of smoke rolled out in a glut and stifled the dragon's roar soaring in decibel and frantic pitch. He lurched, snarling while a layer of his hide peeled under the grinding teeth.

"Where is your pride?!" growled the dragon, the laughs haunting, lingering. "This oversized cave-lizard dares to bite a dragon-----TWICE--twice he had the audacity--" he snorted viciously through a mask of sweat, "--and you think it FUNNY?!" The laughing didn't stop, even if it was his tail getting ground and mashed, even though HE was getting bitten, torn up, the startings of getting EATEN. "Why do you have a death wish..?!" he demanded imperiously, fists clenched, straining one way, falling back another, going for the eye sockets a second time, missing as the head jerked, bashing the prey on the concrete. In that instant Draconis Rex gazed up at Nanaki, laying a paw on his comb, on the stone wedged in it. But Highwind wasn't there. He was laughing and gone. The left wing spazzed and jerked uncontrollably in stocatto. The other half fell lopsided, scared as all hell, perhaps for the first time in his life.

It was then he realized in simple hard terms that their survival depended on each other.

A euphonic groan blew from southwards. Almost out of nowhere. It was a scattered noise, one in succession sometimes, others in the same instant. At the most ten. They were heard before they were seen, low-flying blurs of a yellow-orange.

The demon crouched over the precipice, on his chest and knees, the grasping fingers curled pensively around the concrete ridge. To attack again on vertical ground might land him on the street. He scowled coldly, impartially, like the prey crawling to the trap.

Hurry up, Hojo. I want to finish dissecting.

The dog lay with rivalling patience, nose-down at the half of dragon. The other half laughed, maniacally, loud. The threat reduced by half. All was left was to eliminate the other fifty percent. The euphonic music skimmed the clouds once more. Nanaki raised his muzzle.

The blurs gained definitoin, their outlines sharp against the old night.

Brock, Dragonite!

Brock grunted and craned his neck upwards, bringing the rest of his crouched body with it. His tail instinctively raised in defense when he made out the draconic titans sweeping the horizon. He'd seen these enraged.....they flew faster when enraged....the slow rolling inverse arc they traced was cut off, made shallower, more like a Charizard would gain altitude instead of a Dragonite.

One.....two...

Are they wild? Misty asked, growing wary, her broad, flattened scales bristling as the marine substitute for fur.

They're no more merciful wild than trained. Brock stretched his head backwards against the head of his scarred back, the wild Houndour howls menacing in his ears. A bit of hairless, peach to ruddy skin caught his livid eyes. Less if they're with humans, his mouth twisted in a sneer. So Hojo would have to wait to be dissected. He darted away from the precipice to the concrete center.

"2nd Class SOLDIERs...." Nanaki growled with some trepidation. Five at the most, cut through his mind, that held a perfectly ordered arrangement of events, including a record of a good chunk of skirmishes, brawls, and battles. Five. Not more than ten...ever. Especially, the larger ones, with their solitary feeding patterns, like the Dark Dragon-----

Dragons..these were dragons. So was his enemy. He turned around. The lower half of the tail was gone and the ends were bloody and frayed. The laugh- stricken half was silent. It was sort of hanging there with a hideous grin that etched his mouth. Fury etched the other half of the dragon's lips.

"You'll pay for that insult, cur." The last "r" melded with that brutish and regal roar that forged his throne in turbulent clouds and turbulent hurricanes. He hurled half of himself from the concrete precipice and took flight, heading straight for the orange formation. Nanaki grunted and passed the demon, sea creature, landing on the edge with his tail unwound. The petering wind grasped his immature mane while he watched the enemy approach the orange dragons. Nanaki could vaguely hear the shout above the incessant rumble of the ground underneath. The behemoth drew nearer.

The silver dragon stood suspended in the air, waving his arm imperiously while the other drooped under the weight of Cid's paralyzed head. All the while the orange formation continued coming, tank-like. "It's encroached on our sky. There they are.." He stretched his scaly arm towards the top of the building. "Destroy them if you still call yourself a dragon."

"Brrrrrmmm..."

The bellow turned from euphonic to cacophanic, and Draconis Rex wheezed at a striking blow to his gut as well as his ego, like a granite wall collided into him. Instead of deflating his pride it exploded his wrath, spiralling his agression to stratospheric heights. He rushed vengefully upon the lumbersome dragons, one set of teeth bared, the tongue flaring and his clawed fist quaking in their path. Two broke from the formation, and the secret behind their allegiance unveiled its cold, mechanical face as it unsheathed a sword and scored his right wing.

Half of the dragon dropped, Cid's lead weight dragging him down like someone chained to a ball.

Nanaki now crouched on his paws, leaning over watching the dragon plunge, and recover barely as he scraped his body on the pavement, gliding sideways, sluggish and deflated. He turned, watching over the building's side while loping for the human door. Before he sprinted halfway the distance, the bellow thundered, no longer distant but directly overhead.

"Breeeeeooo!!!!!"

He swung his lupine head over his shoulder to catch the barricade of orange. The demon seemed to see it too because he had given up bending over the edge and he and the sea monster scrambled, finding the exit an eight story drop. They hurtled over the edge-- whether they slipped or jumped down he couldn't tell. The concrete thundered under him as the lizard's fore claws nailed the roof. The blast hit simultaneously.

Flamethrower scorched the edge and the reptillian hand clutching the roof's brink. They hit altogether and separate, in succession and in unison, the fire breaking against the layers and layers of hide proof against all unaltered element. Nanaki yelped as he leaped over and crouched under the flame blasts, the lightning bolts wiring the air pressed on him, the ice that shattered a corner that he leaped away from, only to encounter the target itself that clawed for its meat as it dragged its torso over the ridge. The dragons ovalled, attacking the lizard with their maximum energy, the three primary hues a multi-colored melange against night's black robes.

The fire was concentrated at the corner. Nanaki grabbed his opportunity and broke for the human door, sliding in a slant as he made the man-made exit, howling at the vengeful debris that attacked his flank, roused from the splitting energy beam that blasted a ragged hole in the roof.

"What did the Shin-Ra want...?" the dog inquired, stopping to shake his coat at the foot of the miniature flight of wood steps. He heard no more thunder overhead. "Did they kill it---?" He gazed wide-eyed over his raised shoulder before he plugged on past the elevator, winding a shortcut over the stair railing and from there, a flight down. He turned his ear and heard the groaning bellow of the departing threat. That convinced him, and with that eliminated his thoughts rotated to the dragon." He licked his chops free of a perplexed drool and his ears flattened in chiding embarassment. "That was bad judgement to even try." He dragged his red tail behind him as he jumped another flight, in front of a deserted hallway. "To trust him again when he's practically on the other side?" He lowered his head, his great shoulders sagging. His arched spine shuddered with a growl as he turned a yellow eye towards the non-visible exit. Flight, hall, flight, hall, and not a human in sight. They must have evacuated. And the monster, dead. But--- Cid..why was he loping? He should be sprinting.."What good would that do?" Nanaki asked, slowing down to a lope again as he bounded the fifth floor."He could have gone anywhere. Almost like keeping up with Ultima Weapon...only that "Ultima Weapon was another enemy. We had to destroy it because it threatened to destroy Corel--" Down a floor. "Midgar..." Down a floor. "Gongaga...." and the Canyon.".That brought him to the door, smeared with handprints. They must have evacuated in a panic. He nosed open the doors. Door....the entire purpose of reclaiming Cid was to recruit more man---power to find a portal to the Planet.

First mission failed.

No sooner had he exited, pushing himself foward instead of dwelling on the debacle, he came upon the cops blocking off the road emptied of ambulance and bronze mutants-----the only vehicle there was the fire engine--solitary and pathetic under the laughing blaze-----and the long, malformed shadows. A growl climbed his throat as he approached them at a run, trampling over ash piles, scattered debris, and scattered weapons. Before he could find Cid surely he'd have to combat them.. the stationary but lethal umbrage that stood gazing at an empty point on the building, confused, choking on their bitterness, one form of justice robbing them of theirs.

The rivers that choke flow without drying up.

TO BE CONTINUED.....

*~*~*

A/N: Whoa, it's getting harder to finish each chapter..oO I hope that's not a bad sign. Watch the fate of Hojo (and maybe other people?) in chapter 29, where the curtain closes? on the career of the infamous scientist. And in chapter 30...look foward to Vincent trying to get a tan in the rain...or not. ^_^; Either way, the madness goes on as Nanaki and our heroes join forces. Until next time...