Chapter Six : Gemini - Nibelheim Fire
It was rather disturbing how easy it was to hide a grown man from the eyes of their troops. Some small usage of a manipulation materia, some quick orders and viola, Vincent Valentine was as good as invisible. Those that did capture a glimpse of the man, believed him to be their General, the similarity of the two being helped by the fact that the twins dressed their father up in one of Alexanders coats. Only the golden claw was disrupting the illusion and Vincent was able to hide it, the few times that he was spotted.
In the back of his mind Sephiroth made a note to train the recruits in the ways of destroying manipulations... but later, after Vincent was on his way to his homeland and they had made their visit to a family they didn't know anything about... yet.
But right now he and Alexander were teaching the troops about another, very important thing. They were teaching them about their own mortality.
The coffins in the Basement were playing an important role, their finding them and bringing them into the open made the cadets think. One day, they knew, one day they might have to bury one of the young men they where teaching now and every means to teach them to be careful and paranoid was ok. Also they were able to send the mortal remains of the four SOLDIERs home to their families, answering questions and closing wounds that had been open 25 years.
With the coffins of the four SOLDIERs, they also brought Vincent's empty one and send it to his ancestral home, as well as a letter. That way they could make SHinRa believe, that Vincent Valentine was dead.
Hojo would bitch about the removal of his specimen before he could have one last look at it, but the fact that this experiment had been illegal should stop him from whining to the president.
There was a short ceremony for the souls of the dead and then the generals send for the guide, to lead them into the Nibel mountains.
***
He couldn't believe it. Of all the guides Sephiroth and Alexander could have hired, they had to hire her! Tifa Lockheart! The most popular girl in town, the mayors daughter and the reason why he had left Nibelheim in the first place.
The other 'popular' kids in Nibelheim had decided to make his life hell, ever since the day when he rescued he from her own foolishness. Why did she have to climb the most dangerous mountain of the area and without the right gear! He'd gone after her, had rescued her when the bridge fell and had brought her unconscious body to the doctor. He'd been seven at the time and he'd bleed as much as her, but he'd remained conscious. The adults had been quick to lay the blame. Suddenly it wasn't her recklessness, her stupid idea to climb the mountain that was a fault, but him. He was the outsider, ever since his dad had died and it was easy to lay the blame at his feet.
Cloud never played with the other kids after that day. When he came too close to them, they threw rocks at him or beat him up, when he got a pet, they disembowelled it and dropped the warm carcass on his doorstep. Books became his best friends, books and the mountains. There was no rock in this region he hadn't climbed upon, no cave he hadn't pocked his nose into. If not for the fact that he was here as an recruit and to learn something, he would have been the guide, but instead, it had to be Tifa.
He watched her walking towards the generals and frowned. She wanted to guide them dressed like this? A short T-shirt that did nothing to protect her from the cold weather in the mountains, but displayed her impressive chest size at its best, shorts, that showed off her legs, but were useless otherwise. Every bit of scrubbery, each piece of sharp rock would be a danger to her, while climbing and to think that they would test themselves against Nibelwolves today... he shook his head. Tifa had obviously dressed up to impress. Cloud knew that she, like thousands of other girls, had a raging crush on the twin generals. In fact, he'd heard her bragging, that one day she would marry one of them! [1]
Since he had met and become friends with the twins, he knew that all her tries would be for naught, since the last thing Alexander and Sephiroth wanted, was a shallow girlfriend, that only wanted them because of their looks and the stories they had heard about them.
Cloud couldn't see Sephiroth, but if his face was like Alexander's then he was glaring at the prattling girl with all his might. He saw the subtle straightening of Alexander's posture and like every recruit that had seen the generals in action, he knew that Tifa was in for a good scolding.
But then everything happened so fast.
***
When she entered the town, the first thing she saw was THEM. SOLDIERs, she hated SOLDIERs. They had come and had taken her from the only home she'd known in her life.
The voice in her head spoke to her, lured her into a cocoon of sounds and whispers. 'If she hated the SOLDIERs so much,' the voice said, 'then she should punish them. Make them hurt like she did.'
Aeris smiled. Mommy always had the best ideas.
***
They were just getting ready to give the guide a dressing down SOLDIER-style, when it happened.
There was a whistling sound and several of their recruits weren't fast enough, when the firespell slammed into their troops. The screams of the wounded and the moans of the dying hung in the air as the generals whirled around.
The first thing Alexander did, was using his cure materia to cast Curaga and thanks to the all materia linked to it, the wounds of the injured started to heal. Then Sephiroth used a combination of barrier materia and all materia to cast Wall on their troops and themselves.
Only then they faced the enemy.
It was a girl. Or maybe a young woman, in a pink dress and a red jacket. She was holding a staff, but it looked like she didn't really needed it. Tongues of fire were dancing around her, like living beings.
And she was talking in a singsong voice.
"You are them. Firstborn. Mommy's dearest. But you can't hear her, naughty boys, don't hear mommy's voice, just each other. And mommy stopped trying, stopped talking to you, she had me."
She giggled.
"I didn't hear her. The planet spoke to me. My friend. Until the men came. Bloodmoney paid. They gave me to him. There where needles and pain and the voice of planet dissolved into nothing."
A disturbing sight. She was smiling while tears spilled out of her green glowing eyesockets.
"He gave me another voice, the man with the funny name, he gave me another mother. Mommy talks to me all the time. And I listen, I'm a good girl. Good girls do what their mommies say to them. Mommy says that humans hurt us, humans are bad. And now we will hurt those that hurt us."
The fire around her floated higher, forming a giant rose, before exploding and drenching the entire town, turning it into a red inferno.
For a moment time seemed to have stopped. As if the entire scene was frozen in eternal ice. Then reality snapped back and Sephiroth started shouting orders, using his water [2] materia to drench the flames, while his troops started evacuating the houses.
Alexander started attacking the girl, but she was magically well protected and none of his spells had any effect on her.
The girl pouted as the first attack branded against her shields, then she used a combination of despell and ice spell to attack the SOLDIER recruits again. The effect was destavating.
Angry now, Alexander closed in to attack again, but she started moving as well, running away from the town, up to the mountains. The entire time she was smiling and prattling about her mommy and the man with the needles and what he'd done to her. Some of her descriptions made Alexander flinch, made him remember thing he and his brother had to endure when they were younger, but he couldn't show mercy to this girl, she'd attacked his men without any reason to and he knew that there would be several, that had been too far gone for his curaga to take effect. Alexander hated loosing people.
***
His brother was hunting the culprit and Sephiroth knew, that it would be only a matter of time before the girl in pink would die. Right now he'd other things to worry about. The last spell combination the girl had used had killed about a third of his men and while he had a phoenix summon equipped in his Masamune, he'd left the revive materia at home, it should have been a simple mission and he'd believed that he wouldn't need it. He could use the phoenix summon, but phoenix was always surrounded by fire. And while his aquaga spell had put out most of the fires, there where several, that were still burning. Could he risk it?
He was developing a headache and the fact that he was using the twinbond to listen what the insane creature was telling his brother didn't help. In fact it only made him want to go, find and tie up Hojo before he slowly disembowelled him with a rusty knife.
*Seph?*
*Xand? What is wrong?*
*The girl has gained access to Jenova. I will need to do something to stop her and it will be dangerous. I need you to focus on the task at hand and don't worry. I will come back.*
*Alexander, what does that mean? ALEXANDER!*
But his brother didn't answer.
Then he felt it. At the edge of his awareness he felt his brother concentrating on a spell. Then he knew.
Alexander was casting Ultima.
And the reactor exploded.
tbc
[1] Yes I know, Tifa is rather OOC here but when I played the game and got to Clouds Flashback, I couldn't help but notice that she was the most popular girl in Nibelheim and he the outsider. She was the daughter of the major and never had anything to do with him, except for the time he rescued her (and never got any thanks for that, how mean could you be?) and the time he spoke to her before he left Nibelheim. When we got to know Tifa, it was 5 years after the loss of her father and her hometown so I decided that this traumatic event helped Tifa to grow up and the pre-fire Tifa was a real brat and wrote her as such, to be able to do some character development.
[2] I know, there were no water/aqua materia in FF7, there was Fire, Ice, Earth, Lightning and Wind, but no Water. Leviathan was doing water based damage and Aqualung was an Enemy Skill based on Water, but there was no materia. Well, in my Fic there is. It is unlogical that there should be materias for the other elements, but none for water.
It was rather disturbing how easy it was to hide a grown man from the eyes of their troops. Some small usage of a manipulation materia, some quick orders and viola, Vincent Valentine was as good as invisible. Those that did capture a glimpse of the man, believed him to be their General, the similarity of the two being helped by the fact that the twins dressed their father up in one of Alexanders coats. Only the golden claw was disrupting the illusion and Vincent was able to hide it, the few times that he was spotted.
In the back of his mind Sephiroth made a note to train the recruits in the ways of destroying manipulations... but later, after Vincent was on his way to his homeland and they had made their visit to a family they didn't know anything about... yet.
But right now he and Alexander were teaching the troops about another, very important thing. They were teaching them about their own mortality.
The coffins in the Basement were playing an important role, their finding them and bringing them into the open made the cadets think. One day, they knew, one day they might have to bury one of the young men they where teaching now and every means to teach them to be careful and paranoid was ok. Also they were able to send the mortal remains of the four SOLDIERs home to their families, answering questions and closing wounds that had been open 25 years.
With the coffins of the four SOLDIERs, they also brought Vincent's empty one and send it to his ancestral home, as well as a letter. That way they could make SHinRa believe, that Vincent Valentine was dead.
Hojo would bitch about the removal of his specimen before he could have one last look at it, but the fact that this experiment had been illegal should stop him from whining to the president.
There was a short ceremony for the souls of the dead and then the generals send for the guide, to lead them into the Nibel mountains.
***
He couldn't believe it. Of all the guides Sephiroth and Alexander could have hired, they had to hire her! Tifa Lockheart! The most popular girl in town, the mayors daughter and the reason why he had left Nibelheim in the first place.
The other 'popular' kids in Nibelheim had decided to make his life hell, ever since the day when he rescued he from her own foolishness. Why did she have to climb the most dangerous mountain of the area and without the right gear! He'd gone after her, had rescued her when the bridge fell and had brought her unconscious body to the doctor. He'd been seven at the time and he'd bleed as much as her, but he'd remained conscious. The adults had been quick to lay the blame. Suddenly it wasn't her recklessness, her stupid idea to climb the mountain that was a fault, but him. He was the outsider, ever since his dad had died and it was easy to lay the blame at his feet.
Cloud never played with the other kids after that day. When he came too close to them, they threw rocks at him or beat him up, when he got a pet, they disembowelled it and dropped the warm carcass on his doorstep. Books became his best friends, books and the mountains. There was no rock in this region he hadn't climbed upon, no cave he hadn't pocked his nose into. If not for the fact that he was here as an recruit and to learn something, he would have been the guide, but instead, it had to be Tifa.
He watched her walking towards the generals and frowned. She wanted to guide them dressed like this? A short T-shirt that did nothing to protect her from the cold weather in the mountains, but displayed her impressive chest size at its best, shorts, that showed off her legs, but were useless otherwise. Every bit of scrubbery, each piece of sharp rock would be a danger to her, while climbing and to think that they would test themselves against Nibelwolves today... he shook his head. Tifa had obviously dressed up to impress. Cloud knew that she, like thousands of other girls, had a raging crush on the twin generals. In fact, he'd heard her bragging, that one day she would marry one of them! [1]
Since he had met and become friends with the twins, he knew that all her tries would be for naught, since the last thing Alexander and Sephiroth wanted, was a shallow girlfriend, that only wanted them because of their looks and the stories they had heard about them.
Cloud couldn't see Sephiroth, but if his face was like Alexander's then he was glaring at the prattling girl with all his might. He saw the subtle straightening of Alexander's posture and like every recruit that had seen the generals in action, he knew that Tifa was in for a good scolding.
But then everything happened so fast.
***
When she entered the town, the first thing she saw was THEM. SOLDIERs, she hated SOLDIERs. They had come and had taken her from the only home she'd known in her life.
The voice in her head spoke to her, lured her into a cocoon of sounds and whispers. 'If she hated the SOLDIERs so much,' the voice said, 'then she should punish them. Make them hurt like she did.'
Aeris smiled. Mommy always had the best ideas.
***
They were just getting ready to give the guide a dressing down SOLDIER-style, when it happened.
There was a whistling sound and several of their recruits weren't fast enough, when the firespell slammed into their troops. The screams of the wounded and the moans of the dying hung in the air as the generals whirled around.
The first thing Alexander did, was using his cure materia to cast Curaga and thanks to the all materia linked to it, the wounds of the injured started to heal. Then Sephiroth used a combination of barrier materia and all materia to cast Wall on their troops and themselves.
Only then they faced the enemy.
It was a girl. Or maybe a young woman, in a pink dress and a red jacket. She was holding a staff, but it looked like she didn't really needed it. Tongues of fire were dancing around her, like living beings.
And she was talking in a singsong voice.
"You are them. Firstborn. Mommy's dearest. But you can't hear her, naughty boys, don't hear mommy's voice, just each other. And mommy stopped trying, stopped talking to you, she had me."
She giggled.
"I didn't hear her. The planet spoke to me. My friend. Until the men came. Bloodmoney paid. They gave me to him. There where needles and pain and the voice of planet dissolved into nothing."
A disturbing sight. She was smiling while tears spilled out of her green glowing eyesockets.
"He gave me another voice, the man with the funny name, he gave me another mother. Mommy talks to me all the time. And I listen, I'm a good girl. Good girls do what their mommies say to them. Mommy says that humans hurt us, humans are bad. And now we will hurt those that hurt us."
The fire around her floated higher, forming a giant rose, before exploding and drenching the entire town, turning it into a red inferno.
For a moment time seemed to have stopped. As if the entire scene was frozen in eternal ice. Then reality snapped back and Sephiroth started shouting orders, using his water [2] materia to drench the flames, while his troops started evacuating the houses.
Alexander started attacking the girl, but she was magically well protected and none of his spells had any effect on her.
The girl pouted as the first attack branded against her shields, then she used a combination of despell and ice spell to attack the SOLDIER recruits again. The effect was destavating.
Angry now, Alexander closed in to attack again, but she started moving as well, running away from the town, up to the mountains. The entire time she was smiling and prattling about her mommy and the man with the needles and what he'd done to her. Some of her descriptions made Alexander flinch, made him remember thing he and his brother had to endure when they were younger, but he couldn't show mercy to this girl, she'd attacked his men without any reason to and he knew that there would be several, that had been too far gone for his curaga to take effect. Alexander hated loosing people.
***
His brother was hunting the culprit and Sephiroth knew, that it would be only a matter of time before the girl in pink would die. Right now he'd other things to worry about. The last spell combination the girl had used had killed about a third of his men and while he had a phoenix summon equipped in his Masamune, he'd left the revive materia at home, it should have been a simple mission and he'd believed that he wouldn't need it. He could use the phoenix summon, but phoenix was always surrounded by fire. And while his aquaga spell had put out most of the fires, there where several, that were still burning. Could he risk it?
He was developing a headache and the fact that he was using the twinbond to listen what the insane creature was telling his brother didn't help. In fact it only made him want to go, find and tie up Hojo before he slowly disembowelled him with a rusty knife.
*Seph?*
*Xand? What is wrong?*
*The girl has gained access to Jenova. I will need to do something to stop her and it will be dangerous. I need you to focus on the task at hand and don't worry. I will come back.*
*Alexander, what does that mean? ALEXANDER!*
But his brother didn't answer.
Then he felt it. At the edge of his awareness he felt his brother concentrating on a spell. Then he knew.
Alexander was casting Ultima.
And the reactor exploded.
tbc
[1] Yes I know, Tifa is rather OOC here but when I played the game and got to Clouds Flashback, I couldn't help but notice that she was the most popular girl in Nibelheim and he the outsider. She was the daughter of the major and never had anything to do with him, except for the time he rescued her (and never got any thanks for that, how mean could you be?) and the time he spoke to her before he left Nibelheim. When we got to know Tifa, it was 5 years after the loss of her father and her hometown so I decided that this traumatic event helped Tifa to grow up and the pre-fire Tifa was a real brat and wrote her as such, to be able to do some character development.
[2] I know, there were no water/aqua materia in FF7, there was Fire, Ice, Earth, Lightning and Wind, but no Water. Leviathan was doing water based damage and Aqualung was an Enemy Skill based on Water, but there was no materia. Well, in my Fic there is. It is unlogical that there should be materias for the other elements, but none for water.
