Disclaimer : KH is not mine. Sephiroth is not mine. Cloud is not mine. Riku is not mine. The Masamune is definitely not mine, no matter how many times I attempt to steal it.
AN: Yes. This chapter. First of all, I don't know if you guys will like it. I did. I really really want to finish because I have the epilogue all ready and if you guys like this story and the epilogue, then by golly I'll make a sequel. If not, the epilogue can stand alone. I guess. ^-^
Moogles. Yes, they are here. What are they doing? Teleporting? Well, obviously, those in Traverse Town are working on different kinds of items and such, you can't say that they might not want to try a teleporting device. BTW, I know almost nothing about Moogles.
Cloud and Sephiroth. I don't know if I really like their opening lines to each other and such, but I think they're okay. And yes, I did put some of my own thoughts into Sephiroth's words, how'd you guess?
I hate Aeris.
What the…? Damn subconscious, always messing up my writing. *grumbles* Anyway, on with the show!
***
Chapter 10
The first thing Sasha did when getting back to Limbo was grab Sephiroth by the arm, nearly pulling him off his feet in her urgency.
"What is wrong with you?!" Sephiroth growled, trying to pull his arm out of her grasp.
"Guy… fight… you…" Sasha whimpered.
"What? What about a fight? What are you talking about?" Sephiroth said impatiently.
"There's this guy. He's blonde, he's that guy that you told me about, he-" Sasha stopped to catch her breath. "I went to the coliseum, and heard him talking to this goat-guy freak, and he said he wanted to fight you."
"And? That doesn't seem very probable, considering where I'm stuck." Sephiroth said, without any worry at all.
"The goat-freak said he could call anyone!" Sasha insisted.
"Really?" Sephiroth said, unconvinced.
"Even the gods, he said!" Sasha shook his arm harshly at each word.
"Still, why, again, are we so worried?" Sephiroth asked tiredly, finally managing to get his arm free.
"Because… because… the blonde guy, he looked… scary…" Sasha muttered that last, realizing that it would sound like a very stupid reason to Sephiroth.
She was right. The man rolled his eyes and sighed.
"Please. If everyone just ran away from everything that looked 'scary', there would never be any progress made. And I refuse to believe that this idiot could look scary enough to lead you to believe that I would have any trouble in a fight against him."
Sasha looked at him, and had to agree. It was her first time seeing the blonde, and he scared her only because she wasn't expecting to see him looking like that. It was the same kind of scared feeling she had when she had first seen Sephiroth.
"Yeah, well… still… he's got this huge sword, and…" Sasha began, but Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at this and she knew it was another useless attempt. "But still, don't go, I have a bad feeling about this."
"Bad feeling, hm? Still, is this feeling bad enough to dissuade me from going to fight and possibly destroy one of the major blocks to my plan?" Sephiroth asked. Sasha knew he was going to say that.
"I'm not going to be able to convince you not to go, am I?" Sasha asked dejectedly.
"No. But look at it this way, this will be one less thing for you to do." Sephiroth said, and suddenly the Masamune was in his hand. "At least I know what to expect now and can prepare. When was he going to call me?"
"Er, sometime today, he said." Sasha said, sitting down on the floor and watching Sephiroth check the blade of his sword.
"Impatient." Sephiroth muttered, then chuckled. "Ah well, the sooner its over with the better."
Sasha glanced up at him, this seeming not quite the kind of thing Sephiroth would say. He noticed her glance and looked at her.
"Not the fight. The wait. The fight's going to be nice and long…" Sephiroth grinned.
Sasha shook her head. Keeping the guy in Limbo for so long without any real fights was making him real vicious, she knew. The last training sessions had been getting quite…strenuous, to say the least, and she tried every excuse she knew of to get out of them.
"You sure about this?" Sasha asked, although now that she thought about it, Sephiroth seemed to be the favorite in the upcoming fight.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Sephiroth answered, taking a few practice swings. He turned to her and grinned, a little maniacal but pure happy. He was going to fight and he was going to love it.
Sasha sighed.
"Fine." She said.
There was a sudden sparkle around Sephiroth, and he stopped and looked at it. It seemed he was listening to something, and shrugged.
"Well, I guess this is it." He said. He made as if to walk into the sparkle, then stopped and turned to Sasha. "Stay here."
"What?" She asked, surprised.
"Stay here. Who knows what might happen, you'll be safer here." Sephiroth said, then stepped through the sparkling portal.
"But…" Sasha started, but he was already gone. She glared at the empty spot for a moment. Then sighed. "'Stay here' 'you'll be safer'… hmph."
She stared at the ground for a while.
"Screw that." She grabbed the stone around her neck.
The wind rose, fell. There was a sensation in it, an anxious rustling that matched both fighters' feelings at the moment. They looked at each other for a long moment, stared each other down like wolves.
"Sephiroth." The blond said, his eyes cold with hatred. The other man tilted his head to the side a little, smiled a little.
"Cloud." Sephiroth said, "Long time no see. How are you?"
"Shut up, Sephiroth." Cloud said impatiently. "I didn't come here for small talk."
"Of course not... You always did like to talk big."
Cloud narrowed his eyes in a glare, and Sephiroth grinned more, a little icily this time.
"You know why I called you here..." Cloud said, taking down the Buster Sword and readying it.
"Still depressed about your girlfriend? How precious..." Sephiroth's eye's glinted dangerously. "Boyfriend comes to get revenge."
Cloud gripped his sword hilt tightly, his eyes nearly glowing with anger.
"You know, if I were her," Sephiroth said conversationally, pulling the Masamune from the air and readying it also, and then chuckling, "I would have stuck to... 'selling' my 'flowers'... if that's what she really did in those alleys..."
At those words Cloud growled and lunged forward, his blade slicing the air next to Sephiroth as the other man dodged to the left.
"Bastard..." Cloud hissed, " This time I'll make sure you stay dead..."
"Go ahead and try." Sephiroth answered with a smirk, parried and advanced the attack.
Sasha blinked, looked around. Darkness surrounded her and she wondered if she hadn't succeeded in leaving Limbo at all.
KAPOOF!
"What in the world?" Sasha turned around and saw a beam of light. Following its light to the side, she noticed a pair of white creatures with little pink wings standing around a small machine. They were talking quickly about something.
"This doesn't seem right at all, kupo." One creature said.
"There must be something wrong with the positioning system, I think, kupo." The other said.
There was a sudden clang of metal, and the two creatures turned to where the light was streaming from. Their eyes, which normally looked like squinting lines, grew wide, and without another word they flicked a switch on the machine and with another KAPOOF were gone.
"That... was strange..." Sasha said, stepping forward. The metal-on-metal sounds were growing louder as she approached where the light was. She came up a portcullis, with two-inch wide bars. Looking through them, she gasped.
There was a flash off metal, and the swords connected again. Both fighters pulled apart, and she saw that although there was no blood, the slashes were getting close. The blond man's cape was torn, as was Sephiroth's long coat. Although the blonde's eyes were hard and cold, she saw a fiery glint in Sephiroth's eyes.
From his eagerness before, she had guessed that he was looking forward to this battle, but she had never known just how much. She had thought that he was amazingly powerful before, but it wasn't until now that she knew just how great his power was.
Watching the battle unfold before her, she realized, with quite a shock, that all those times she thought him to be too hard on her during training, he was actually holding back. And quite a lot, at that. Watching the two men lunge back and forward, swords flashing, she was happy he had.
Sephiroth slashed forward, and, anticipating Cloud's parry, twisted his blade around to come up behind it and slash him in the side. The blond, though, had trained hard too, and, seeing his mistake as he swung the blade, reversed it and managed to knock away Sephiroth's sword. Both fighters flew at each other again, slashing harshly, and falling back, neither one was surprised to see the sudden appearance of blood on the clothes of the other.
Sephiroth gripped his sword hilt tightly, although the slash to his arm was stinging. He grinned wildly, his eyes flickering. This had turned out better than he thought. All the time he had been locked in Limbo, Cloud had been improving his skills.
Still not enough, Sephiroth told himself, chuckling silently. As much as the blonde's skills had improved over the time, they were still no match for him.
The two fighters circled each other, watching every move the other made. Cloud was moving quite well for someone who had a foot long gash in his side, but adrenaline, and his undying hatred for the monster before him, carried him above the pain. Pain was nothing compared to the final joy of destroying that which had destroyed so much.
There was a noise behind her, but Sasha was too intent on the fight to pay attention to it.
The two men flew at each other again, blood sprinkling the ground as they moved. It flew in arcs from the blades as they flashed and sliced, leaving long trails of maroon on the stone floor of the coliseum. Only a few moments passed before it was impossible to distinguish one's blood form the other, and both men still fought on.
There was no magic in the attacks of this battle, the only magic being that in their blood and in their sword arms, powering their muscles and minds and leading them further and further through the fight. But, just as their blood was staining the ground, the magic in their veins was staining them, bleeding out through them much the same as their blood bled through their cuts.
And so Sasha watched, awestruck by the terror and wonder she was seeing. The anger, the hate, the maliciousness and violence, things that would at any other time seem horrendous and disgusting, now, at this moment, in this fight, radiated more beauty than she had ever seen.
But it faded fast.
The glow from the magic that had begun to cloud the men's forms was growing steadily, bursting out in flashes each time the blades struck, although the two fighters' did not seem to notice it. Even as she watched, the glow was threatening to cloud them from view, and suddenly, the blades crossed one last time.
The flash that ensued made Sasha shut her eyes tight for fear of losing her sight. Eyes still closed, she felt a strange wind pick up, and barely had enough time to grab the bars in front of her before being blasted by a bone-chilling blast of air, accompanied by a roaring blast that shook the ground she stood on. Her wings, held tight against her back a moment before, were pulled back by the wind as it blew past her, and then snapped back into her as the air was pulled back into the coliseum, smashing the girl into bars.
It was after a few moments that she ventured to open her eyes, blinking to clear her vision of the myriad of shapes that seemed to be burned into her cornea.
"Sephiroth…?" She muttered, pushing herself painfully away from the bars. Her vision began to clear, and she noticed a gate in the portcullis that had been blown open by the wind. Walking, or rather, stumbling out of it, she made her way onto the square stone slab that served as the ground for the fight.
Glancing around, she squinted against what seemed to be bright sunlight. Staring at the ground was the only way she could get anywhere, and she moved cautiously across the stone. It was only after passing a few bloodstains that she noticed something strange. Stopping, she looked back at the last one she passed, trying to figure out what was bothering her. Looking closer, she realized that it didn't seem so much that the stone was stained, but that the blood was, almost, engraved, into the stone. She scuffed her shoe over it, but it felt as much a part of the stone as did the gray area surrounding it.
Wondering what that could foretell, she started off again, now better able to see against the light. Glancing around, she was surprised to see nothing, or rather, no one. The arena was empty except for her, and for a moment she lost the ability to breath.
"But…" She whispered, not really understanding what this all meant. She walked toward the center of the stone slab, the last place the two fighters had been standing. There was a slight concave dip in the ground, a dip that had been burned white, with a rough halo of red surrounding it.
Reaching the center of the dip, she turned round and round, looking everywhere, and dropped to her knees, shaken up by what had just occurred. She stayed like that for a few moments, staring at the ground and trying to make sense of this. There was a noise behind her, and she turned quickly, not knowing what to expect.
"Sasha?" Riku said, but she seemed to shrink away a little.
"Riku…" She said, although it seemed more like she was trying to convince herself it was really him. It didn't work; she still felt that odd feeling, that same one she had gotten when she'd seen him in Wonderland. He was… different. Changed.
He noticed her pull back; his eyes narrowed a little in confusion.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing." She said, shaking her head and trying to ignore that feeling. "Nothing…"
Something caught her attention, and she looked up. An object, small and dark, was flitting softly towards her, and she held out her hands to catch it.
A black feather settled into the hollow of her palms, and as it did, a gray light began to shine from it. In seconds it had changed, lengthened, and she nearly dropped the sudden weight of the object, but held steady and clutched it tightly.
The Masamune lay in her hands.
She stayed silent for a long time, staring at it, and even though Riku fidgeted a little behind her, she didn't notice.
"Does… does this mean… Sephiroth…" She was reluctant to finish the sentence, "Is he…"
"What? Is he dead?" Riku said, and she turned to him. He shrugged and continued. "Who knows? He was supposed to be dead last time too, but he wasn't."
"But, the Masamune…" Sasha started, looking back at the sheathed sword.
"Safe-keeping?" Riku supplied, looking around. The ground shuddered slightly, and he glanced down at it.
"Safe-keeping…" Sasha repeated quietly, her eyes still on the sword.
Riku looked around the ground, wondering where those tremors were coming from. His eyes were drawn to a nearby arc shaped stain. He was just a little shocked to see cracks appearing along the edge of the stain. Looking over at the other stains, he noticed the same thing happening to them, and the farther the cracks extended from the stains, the larger they got.
"Sasha… I think we should get out of here." Riku said, taking a step in the girl's direction.
"What?" Sasha asked, not really listening. There was a strange feeling coming over her. She pulled the sword close, wondering what had just happened.
"Get out of here, us, now…" Riku said, backing away from the advancing cracks and sparing a glance at Sasha.
"Get out…" Sasha realized what he was saying, and looked around. The cracks were surrounding them, and the tremors were increasing. Even as she looked, sections of the slab seemed to be descending into… nothing? She looked again, thinking it wasn't possible. The ground that had surrounded the slab had crumbled away, the bleachers falling to someplace far below. And, she realized, if they didn't do something soon, both Riku and her would end up with the same fate.
"Sasha…" Riku said warningly, turning to her.
"My stone," She clutched the stone, then stopped.
"What is it?" Riku asked, stepping closer to her.
"It's…" She couldn't finish, and he looked closer. The stone, which had before contained a lightly flickering light, was dark. She stared at it in horror. If the stone was dark… the stone… Sephiroth had made it work… But… she shook her head, it couldn't be, it couldn't.
"Sasha, we don't have time!" Riku dashed the last few feet to her, and she stiffened. She still couldn't shake that feeling she had.
"I can make us a portal, I can get us out of here," Riku said, and with a wave of his hand a dark glowing portal appeared behind him. He held out his hand to her. "Come on."
Sasha looked at him warily. Had he always been able to do this? Whether he had or hadn't, that strange feeling increased with his action. Had she the choice, she would've left on her own, but she had none. Wishing she could go with her feelings, fighting against them, she grabbed his hand and pulled herself up.
Together they passed into the darkness.
***
Once more, tell me if you think I should make a sequel. And no, I'm not calling you guys male, I'm just used to calling people 'guys'. ^-^, not my fault I grew up with two brothers and four guys for best friends…
Next chapter, some time in Hollow Bastion, what is it really that is so different about Riku? And what will Sasha do now.
Thanks to:
Ari Powwel: Yes, there was symbolism in the Wonderland chapter! Go ahead and write what you thought you saw, I wanna see if I got my ideas through to people. Pleeeeeease tell me what you thought symbolized what? Please? ^-^ And look, took me a whole month! wow! *damn college*
Sunnie: Trinculo, I DO have a life! It is mostly filled with surfing the internet and attending mind numbing classes, tho…*sweatdrops* not much of a life, eh? Heh… *grins* I LOVE CLOUD!! And do you know they're making a FF7 movie, a sequel to the game? You probably do… its supposedly good. I can't wait to see it… Glad you like the story.
Blue Fox: If you won't tell I won't ask. *grins* Glad to see you back. And look, KAPOOF! I used it! And yes, it was for the stupid Moogles, your disappearing got me thinking og teleporting. Heh…
Thank you all, you guys are great. I hope you liked this chapter, I'll try to get the next one up sooner, but we'll see…