The Song of Eternity
Canto 3
The Return of Sephiroth
Verse 2
Into the Fire
He gathers his sense,
Planning on how to survive in the new world.
The one who brought him back stands up himself,
And they face to soldiers.
Vincent Valentine sat at the bar half a day after Keep woke him up. He sat hunched on his stool, staring into the glass of brandy in front of him. Keep had given him a new black cloak to cover up his signature red clothes. Vincent kept his claw close to his body and out of sight. He had ventured around the city earlier and found one of his wanted posters. There had to be dozens of bounty hunters looking for a man with a golden claw.
He swirled the ice in the glass around as he tried to make sense of things. Following the death of Sephiroth and the destruction of Meteor he took his PHS and separated from the group. He spent a lot of time wandering around between Nibelheim and Lucretia's cave. Several months later he got a call and went to meet the others in Midgar.
The city had been wrecked by Meteor, but was in livable condition. Reeve, the Turks, and the rest of AVALANCHE were helping in the process. Cloud gave Vincent a mission. They all wanted to stop the exploitation of the lifestream. They already shut down the mako reactors. Cloud and Cid had been busy over the last few months. They had bought all the materia on the planet and searched all the reactors and mako springs for every last piece.
Cloud wanted him to get rid of all of it. He wanted Vincent to go dump it in the lifestream, then hide the huge material where no one would find them. Vincent agreed with the plan. He did not like mako or material any more than others, if possible he hated it more, due to its connection to Hojo. Vincent remembered encountering a man wandering around aimlessly as he was on his way out of Midgar.
"That's where we met," Vincent said out loud. It caused Keep to walk over from behind the bar to him. "Nothing, just remembering," Vincent explained. Keep shrugged and walked back to the other customers. Vincent remembered that Keep had a sword with him at the time, he wondered where it was now. When he met Keep, he was having trouble controlling Chaos and the other demons inside himself. He gave Keep all of his gil, feeling some sort of trust for the man. He told Keep to open a bar and wait for his return.
Vincent left Midgar, wondering if he had done the right thing. He made his way to Mideel and dumped the materia into the lifestream there. He did not dump all of it though. He hoped there would never be the need for the power the materia controlled, but he wanted to be safe, just in case. He kept all three master materia as well as one of each other type. He went to Cosmo Canyon afterwards and took the huge materia to Junon by way of chocobo cart. Once there he transported the materia to the crashed gelinka by way of submarine.
After his task was completed he returned to Midgar and informed Cloud of everything but the materia he kept. He wandered the city until he found the bar Keep had opened. He had Cid bring his suspended animation chamber (coffin) from the Shinra mansion the next day. He and Keep took it to the basement once it arrived. He told Keep that he wanted him to keep him hidden for five years. Keep asked why and Vincent explained about the demons. Keep was silent for a bit then asked how Vincent kept them from taking over. Vincent said three words that stayed with Keep for the next five years. "Do not kill."
As far as Vincent could tell, a year after his death Sephiroth reappeared in the Northern Crater. AVALANCHE went to fight him and crash landed at Junon during their retreat. No one really knew who survived and who died, but there were wanted posters for Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Reno all over Midgar. Following the disappearance of AVALANCHE Sephiroth took over all the cities and ruled from the rebuilt Shinra tower. He restarted the SOLDEIR program and had been building up forces for the last five years, supposedly for the day when his enemy arrived.
Vincent's gaze turned to the end of the bar where a pair of SOLDIERs were harassing an old man. "Get out of here old man, this is our town," the one said as he pushed the old man to the ground.
The other pulled a gun and pointed it at the old man's head. "You wouldn't want me to have to do anything drastic would you? You should learn not to bad-mouth those of us who work for Sephiroth," the man sneered as he prepared to fire. The shot rang out, but hit the ceiling as Keep cracked the gun with the upward motion of a mop handle before the shot was fired.
Several people in the bar cheered, but fell silent as the SOLDIERs turned their attention to Keep. "House rules, no killing," Keep said calmly as he cleaned a glass.
"Do you know who you are messing with, bartender?" the one with the gun asked as he pointed it at Keep.
"A couple of losers with nothing better to do than to pick on an old man," Keep said as he set the glass down. "I'm sick of you SOLDIERs coming in here and starting shit. You will behave yourselves in my establishment."
"I read a report about you," the other said as he pulled out a pair of brass knuckles. "We are authorized to use force to make an example of you if you cross anyone in SOLDIER one more time. Guess this isn't your lucky day."
"Every day is my lucky day," Keep said as he grabbed the gun from the one SOLDIER's hand and dropped it on the floor in pieces.
"You bastard!" The SOLDIER shouted as he grabbed Keep and pulled him over the bar to the main part of the restaurant. "This'll teach you!" The SOLDIERs shouted as they took turns delivering blows to Keep's face and torso. Vincent looked at the situation, preparing to start firing, but noticed something. Keep wasn't breathing hard. He was slowly edging his way to the door as the blows hit him. He reached back and opened the door as the two SOLDIERs stood in front of him and he stood in front of the door.
The one who he disarmed earlier swung at his face, but met nothing but air as Keep ducked and delivered an elbow to the back of the SOLDIERs head, knocking him out the door. "You can make this easy or hard," Keep said as he faced the other SOLDIER. The SOLDIER swung at him, only to meet the same fate as his partner. "Don't let the door hit ya where god split ya," he shouted as he closed the door behind them. "Yo, dead man, come here," he called for Vincent.
"Yes?"
"Make like a bouncer for a while okay?" Keep asked without waiting for an answer as he walked back to the bar. Vincent shrugged and watched the door for the next three hours, contemplating the situation he was in. Around two in the morning the bar was almost empty and Vincent heard something outside.
"Keep, something's going on," he shouted to the bartender. The bartender walked to the door and listened for a minute.
"Breaking glass?" Keep pondered the situation until he and Vincent smelled something. "Fire! Everyone get outta here!" Keep shouted as Vincent herded the remaining patrons to the door. They spilled out onto the street and were met by the scene of the two SOLDIERs, along with half a dozen more SOLDIERs tossing Molotov cocktails at the bar. "What the hell is wrong with you? You're a bunch of f*cking pussies!" Keep shouted at them, soliciting the burst of gunfire that caused him and Vincent to retreat back into the bar.
"Great, just great," Keep said as he tried to think of how long they had until the bar was totally engulfed in flames. "Shit, this place is toast," he muttered as he sat down on a stool. "Oh well. This city was getting old anyway," he laughed as he grabbed a black trench coat and his sword from behind the bar. "What's the plan, boss man?"
"Fight our way out of here. Try to find the rest of AVALANCHE before Sephiroth finds us," Vincent said as he readied his Death Penalty. "I've never seen a sword like that before," he commented as Keep stretched his arm.
"Me either," Keep replied as he gazed at his weapon. It was a thick red blade full of nicks and scratches. "Found it in the rubble where I woke up after Meteor. No idea if it's even mine. Let's go teach these SOLDIERs a lesson," he said as he headed to the door. "Ready?" he asked as Vincent pointed his gun out the door. He nodded and kicked the door open as Vincent fired off several shots quickly, downing some SOLDIERs.
Vincent rushed out the door, eyeing up his enemies. Two were on the ground from his bullets already. There were another six pulling out swords, guns, and other various weapons. They split up, three going towards Vincent and the other three towards Keep. Vincent figured Keep could handle himself and concentrated on the three SOLDIERs in front of him. He rolled to the right as one started shooting and two others with swords flanked him. He pulled up to shoot and frowned as one moved making the bullet miss it's mark. He got a good look at their eyes as he squeezed off his next shot, grazing the arm of the one with the gun. Mako, he thought to himself.
Immediately realizing they were more of a threat than he initially thought he flipped backwards and blasted them with Ultima. They fell to the ground injured and surprised, like they had never seen magic before. They tried to get up, but Vincent was there in a flash and had his Death Penalty pointed at them. "Drop the weapons, hands behind your heads," he ordered as the SOLDIERs complied. He glanced over in time to see Keep deal with the last of his opponents.
"Did you kill them?" Vincent asked as he saw the pools of blood forming around the SOLDIERs.
"No, just cut their tendons and took their weapons," Keep explained as one of the SOLDIERs rolled in pain. "Remember when you told me about your demons? How you keep them at bay by not killing? Well, you know your demons and how to control them. I have something inside me, trying to get out. I can feel it whenever I fight, so I try to take it easy and keep it deep inside me," Keep explained.
"You are strange," Vincent said.
"What do we do with them?"
"Leave them here to take care of their comrades while we escape," Vincent said as Keep nodded in agreement. Keep raised his right arm and brought it down on the back of two of the three's heads, knocking them out. "You better go take care of your friends before they die," he ordered as he kicked the SOLDIER back.
"Enjoy it while you can Valentine. Sephiroth will find you and make you pay," the SOLDIER said as he stood up and brushed himself off.
"You tell him I will kill him for good this time," Vincent said as he turned around and walked away.
Keep turned to follow Vincent and walked with him. "You have materia, don't you?" he asked. Vincent nodded in reply. "That stuff is so rare, you could buy an entire city with just one of them. The only people with them are the SOLDIERs now." They walked in silence for a bit until Vincent stopped and looked around, lost. "Five years, been a long time, lots of rebuilding. Follow me, I'll get us out of here quick," Keep said as he headed off again. "Where're we going anyway?"
"Kalm for supplies, then south through the caves. We need to go to Junon, then maybe to Wutai. We need to try to find the others," Vincent said, trying to think of where his friends would hide.
"Whatever you say, you're the boss."