Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Red XIII. Honestly. In fact, I claim I don't own Red XIII.
Part One
1.
It's a frightening thought, I'd say. Imagine being completely alone, without hope. Alone without the hope of ever being anything but alone. The world is a dark place walking through it in this state. It's like being locked alone in a room with no light and remaining there so long that you lose all of your bearings and become completely lost. In this world, the days pass with an amazingly dreary languor. The nights are just that much colder. It feels at times as though the world will open up and swallow you whole, and no one will be the wiser for it.
I speak from experience. I once was alone walking through this world. I had no one but myself. No one to rely on. No one to relate to. A friend once told me that to know complete isolation is to know fear intimately.
Someone tried to help me in my situation once, very long ago, though the way in which he made his attempt was wholly sick and demented. His actions were of such a manner that they negated the goal he strove to reach.
They say "hate" is a strong word. I hated him, but... I only say hate for a lack of a stronger word. And really, he was the only person I ever have truly hated.
I'm sure she felt just as I did. It was demeaning to both of us. He never had the right to use us as he did—as beasts. Unintelligible beasts. I still do, to this very moment, purely and implicitly hate him.
I remember the day she and I met. Though not under the best of circumstances—put simply, we met under horrible circumstances—everything turned out more-or-less alright in the end. It was, in my opinion, on that day that my journey toward fate began.
I remember I was on the elevator pad surrounded by glass walls lined up all around me in a circle, distorting my view of the laboratory beyond. I'd heard of her arrival to the lab from the other specimens near my holding cell, my cell being a cage amidst a room full of cages in which I was kept when not involved in any experiments. I'd also heard from the others some odd ideas as to why she'd been brought to the lab, though I did not believe any of them. In any case, I knew something was happening. I knew I'd see her. But for the moment I felt unconcerned, and so I slept.
In my dreams I saw Cosmo Canyon. Home. I dreamed of myself as a cub during the GI war. I was with my mother. We were fighting, or rather she was fighting, attacking GI warriors, for I was much too small to fight. She was so much larger than me. I saw my father behind me, small in the distance, running away deeper into the canyon toward what, at the time, I did not know. And I was filled with anger. I saw my mother engage several GI's. She took one down, but was stabbed in the back by the others' poison arrows. I, in my anger and what I suppose to have been desperation, leapt out at a GI with his back to me to attack. He turned, saw me, and slashed. Sharp pain hit me for a moment as I was knocked back in the air. And then I felt nothing. I hit the ground, took a limp, awkward bounce off it, and hit again and skidded to a stop on my side. My face burned and was numb. I could move but was paralyzed. I couldn't see from my right eye. My left eye saw, blurred, turned on its side, the form of my mother falling to the ground near me from exhaustion and pain. And then she died, right in front of me.
I snapped to attention abruptly. I was back on the elevator pad. Looking around, I came to fix my gaze on a reflection in the glass, and I looked myself in the face. A scar jagged its way downward. I'd had that dream before. Many times before then, and I've had it many times since. I'd woken up in the company of Grandfather Bugenhagen in the aftermath of the war. He told me about my eye, the best way you can tell a child, I suppose. Grandfather certainly had a way with words, and I admired him for it. He tried to tell me that my mother had gone away to find my father. He didn't realize at the time I'd seen it all. Everything he said to me stung my mind. The reflection looked pallidly back at me from the glass walls.
I sensed something amiss. Listening closely I could hear from the depths of the lab a low-pitched mechanical humming. It continued for about half a minute and was followed by a loud clicking. The elevator pad sprung into motion, giving me a slight start. It moved upward, toward a hole in the ceiling which led to the second floor of the lab. I rose to my feet and waited. I had some idea at the time of what Hojo had in mind for me, and I knew where I was going. I waited to see her.
Still, it was a surprise seeing her. I expected her to be somewhat…different than she was, but I haven't a reason why. She was a pretty girl as far as humans go. I never have held much of a fondness for humans for whatever reason. Perhaps it lies with my memories of the GI tribe and what it did to me and mine. Back then I kept most of my feelings hidden, some even from myself.
I feigned interest in the girl to fool Hojo. Anger began to well up inside me. I hated scaring her as I did, but it was necessary, I suppose. My mind and sight began to wander. Through the glass walls of our container I spotted a distorted Hojo standing nearby and, farther off, a distorted trio of humans, two males and a female. Hojo was arguing with the humans.
Closer to me on the perimeter of the container I faintly could see a pair of vertical cracks in the glass. A door. I kept up my shield of attention toward the girl, but I kept my mind on the door, trying to formulate a way to escape. I was startled when I heard a loud clacking sound against the glass. I glanced out just in time to see one of the trio of humans, a large black man with a massive machine gun in place of his arm, shooting at the glass before a rush of thick yellow smoke exploded downward from the ceiling of the pad, engulfing the girl and me. The thought quickly crossed my mind that the trio of humans was here to rescue the girl. That meant I might be able to escape as well. I let my shield down and waited. Anger had filled me. If I got out, the first thing I would do was to exact my revenge on Hojo.
Excitement and anticipation rose up in me as well, heightening the rage I felt. I flicked my head around trying to see something, anything. The sound of rushing smoke above created a sense of pandemonium and chaos that lit the atmosphere, setting it ablaze. I strained to see anything, but confusion reigned for a long moment. And then through the impregnable yellow wall I heard a click and a whirring and the sound of pressure being released (on a note distinguishable from the smoke above). The door had opened.
The excitement and rage overtook me and blinded my senses. I rushed forth and leapt through the smoke, emerging in the open doorway almost directly in front of Hojo's face.
It's funny... I have what I like to think of as a satisfactory memory. I can remember a good amount of my life with some detail, but I can recall so vividly the look of pure and utter terror in Hojo as he saw me rushing him that, even after all these years, I can still get a good hard laugh thinking about it. He had what they used to call a deer-in-headlights look in him. The way I see it, he thought he was doing the girl and me a favor, and it shocked and staggered him that I would turn on him. Truly a martyr under false pretenses.
I tackled him, digging my claws in as we fell to the floor. We hit and skidded about five feet onto a bridge. I remained atop him and bit into his shirt up at his throat and ripped him around for a moment, emptying my rage upon him.
It was then I heard behind me the elevator pad in motion again. I got off Hojo and turned to see that the girl had been rescued by the humans and that the elevator had gone back down below to load something. I knew what was being loaded. I turned back to Hojo, but he was gone.
A little disinclined and disappointed, I ran over to the humans and said "this is a powerful specimen. I'll help you."
And so began my journey. I befriended those humans as well as a few others in a journey that eventually decided the fate of the world. Not bad for an unintelligible beast. As for the girl, whose name I discovered was Aeris, she became someone I respected deeply, probably more than anyone else the group, and someone with whom I became very close before she was…taken away.
Hojo. That day in the Shin-Ra building's lab I suppose I delivered to him nothing more than a merciful blow, ripping only his shirt and not his throat. I most certainly was maddened to the point that I could have killed him; it would have saved our group a lot of trouble down the road had I done so, but... I suppose that even in that wild state there remained enough thought and pity within me to keep me from administering the fatal bite. But I did hate him so. With a vengeance.
2.
If there is in this universe any one principle that is generally upheld, it is that time brings change. It is a simple principle, but in its simplicity it carries a multitude of complexities.
On the physical level natural forces work. Land is molded. Mountains rise up as the grounds of the world drift and collide, and then disappear with erosion. Oceans rise and fall with the flow of the shifting climate. Evolution takes its course. Also with time change the mental aspects of life. The world around us seems to change itself as we grow. Our maturity determines our outlook on life. And as we mature, so too does the reality of the world we live in. And in the midst of these other forces there even changes a certain nearly imperceptible part of life. One at which no one can grasp and which very few can even comprehend and accept. Of this change no one is ever in control, and rarely ever does it seem to occur as we would like.
In the 500 years since my birth I have seen innumerable changes, both in and around me. Early in my life I lost my parents. On that day I was awakened to the harshness life can bring, and my perception of the world changed. I gained friends in Cloud and the others and lost them in what seemed to me only a heartbeat of time, and the world changed again. And that process has repeated itself several times over. Through a cycle of gain and loss I have grown very mature, and the world has matured with me.
But it's strange. Cosmo Canyon has hardly changed at all from what I remember of it when Grandfather was alive. Most of the plateaus that constituted the canyon's topography remain, but have worn away some around the edges, slightly rounded now. The plateaus that house my home, the Cosmo Canyon village, however, have remained almost completely untouched. Perhaps there are more important matters in the world to worry about.
Midgar is essentially gone. What is left of it has been overrun by an encroaching forest. In fact, most of the eastern continent now lies under the veil of trees, though the mountains running through the continent and the area surrounding the Mythril Mine remain unforested.
But really, it seems almost nothing has stood strong in the path of time, for even the all-powerful human has essentially disappeared from the face of the planet. There still are small tribes of humans scattered widely around the world, but there are no large cities left that I know of. The planet seems much more restful without humans dominating it.
A severe decline in monster population has added to the peaceable environment. The Cosmo and Gongaga Areas are almost completely monster-free these days with exception of the old Mako reactor ruins on the Gongaga coastline. Monsters swarm around that reactor like it's some sort of asylum. The reactor is also home to one of the most dangerous monsters in the world: the Heavy Tank. Over the years it has evolved into a much larger, deadlier, bloodthirsty killing machine. That, coupled with my increasing age, keeps me away from that area at all costs unless I'm with company, and even then I tend to step lightly. In the north, the Northern Crater has healed up, though there still can be found the occasional King Behemoth or Dark Dragon, but they exist as mere shadows of their former selves. The Malboro on the other hand has remained relatively untouched, though it has grown slightly in size.
Even with the humans gone I am not alone in the canyon. I now have a family. I've had my family now for more than 200 years, and I thank the heavens every day that I have them here with me. I am mated to a beautiful female named Malaika. She and I together have had twelve cubs, most of which have had cubs of their own. Only my youngest daughter, Kulu, remains alone. She, although she is my youngest, will be 86 years old this coming year. My baby girl.
Malaika and I, along with our cubs and our cubs' cubs form our clan, the two of us acting as its leaders, or primaries, if our terminology is to be followed. There are many other clans with primaries of their own spread around the world as widely as the remaining humans. Most of the largest clans are headed by members of Malaika's immediate family. My cubs have paired with the cubs of other clans to create lesser sized clans. We all hope to avoid any inbreeding that way. After all, inbreeding can make repopulating an entire species from a population of seven a difficult process.
It seems as though I've known Malaika all my life, and it has been more than 200 years. A long time. But for half my life prior to meeting her, I was alone in the dark. I had no idea what sort of secret lay just out of my sight. It is somewhat angering and embarrassing to know now that which I could not have comprehended in my past.
And it's true. It really does seem like I have known her all my life. It's just as with anything else: when you are alone, it feels as though nothing ever was different, as though darkness and solitude were always right by your side. But when it changes, when the darkness has lifted, that feeling of fear and despair is replaced. Whereas once there had always been that loneliness, there now has always been a company, a family. It was never any other way.
