This is my second release of this story. I'd hate to bore you, but I will tell you why.
It has been two years since I looked at this story. After purchasing Advent Children, I looked at this again, and felt it had some sort of promise. Somewhere, at least. I am touching it up a bit, re-posting, and then adding on until I can actually say I have a finished piece of work. Too bad I forgot the neat twist at the end – after two years, you forget details like that.
I don't own anything.
Ch1
It was quiet, and life was in a good spot for things being the way they were. It was as though someone paused time in the nicest way possible. Aeris was off in town, looking at flowers here and there, not really taking time with anyone or anything. Tifa was hanging off of Cloud, trying not to make anything seem obvious, although it really was. Barret was just trying to stay out of everyone's way, swearing whenever someone made him just a little mad, like always. Red just went back into the hotel room and curled up in the corner, falling asleep.
Aeris walked around the quaint little town. She couldn't believe that two people like Cloud and Tifa could grow up in a town like Nibelheim, and turn out the way they did. She though people from here were quiet, kind, and minded their business. Not to mention dressed. But, Tifa and Cloud seemed more robust and loud than they did. He always ran about, dancing and having his problems, and always trying to get on the good side of Aeris, whereas Tifa was just so different from everyone; scantily clad and active all the time. She couldn't really see them growing up here.
She walked up some stairs, fixing her skirt a bit, since it was starting to wrinkle and rise a little bit. Her eyes met with a big mansion that seemed old and outdated. The grass wasn't that tall around the deserted chateau, but only because it was all dead from lack of care. Off to the right side of the mansion was a gate, and behind that appeared to be a large gray mountain with a few caves here and there, so she decided she wasn't going through the gate. She remembered Cloud said that she probably shouldn't go in the mansion, since he had heard that it was haunted or something, but her curiosity got the best of her. She pushed open the rusty gate, and it screeched so loud that she swore it echoed through the mountains itself. She looked behind, her shoulders hunched in nervousness, only to see that no one had noticed. For some odd reason she really wanted to go in there, and she wasn't about ready to have Cloud or Tifa run up to her and tell her the whole story of 'It's haunted, so you shouldn't!' She walked down the little path all the way to the door and she grabbed the handle lightly, twisting it and pushing on the door, but it was jammed. She pushed harder and harder, although still softly, since she didn't want to make a ruckus. She sighed sharply, blowing her walnut brown hair away from her eyes, then pushed sharply all in one blow, shoving the door open and stumbling in a bit.
She looked around and noticed that the place was old and dilapidated. There were holes in the ceiling and boards were protruding from the floor. Sunlight hit spots on the walls and floors, leaving streams of light through the air. The house even smelled old, like an antique store, and it was enamored in dust. Just walking picked up a cloud behind your feet. She shrugged it off and lightly shut the door, but left it open just enough so it couldn't get stuck again. She walked to the center of the foyer, seeing that the chandelier that used to hang down had fallen to the floor, broken glass and mangled iron bars lying everywhere. She went to the left staircase and went up slowly, hearing the boards individually creek at a different tone as she went up. The large window at the top of the staircase had cracks and dust, so you couldn't really see through it, and instead it seemed more yellow than anything. Once the stairs were brought together, they separated again, and Aeris took the left side. She was led to what seemed to be a study of some sort. The large white doors were enveloped in dust, giving it a gray hue, and the carpet was old and rigid from years of rain and sleet poured on it, never to be cleaned. There, in the corner, lie an abandoned piano, a layer of gray covering a vast majority of it, the top cocked open by a little stick on the inside, and the keys seemed to be clean..? She looked over at it in wonder, raising an eyebrow. She got closer to the right side of it, looking at that stick and how frail it appeared; she wondered why it wasn't already broken. She went back to the keys and laid her fingers atop of them, contemplating a song in her mind. She let her hands push them down, and as soon as she did, the stick under the top gave away in a snap, letting the top crash down on the frame, shaking violently in a cloud of dust. The noise echoed throughout the whole chateau as she gasped for breath, her heart beating rapidly, and she walked away hurriedly, shutting the doors behind her. She pressed her back against the doors, catching her breath the best she could, closing her eyes lightly as she thought. What if the others heard that..?
She pushed off the door lightly, shaky about continuing, but she pressed on anyway. Aeris descended down the small stairway, then across to the next one, still on the upper level. She pushed open the door and turned right to enter a small hallway. There was just one door the way she was faced, and two or three down behind her. She entered the little room, seeing an empty old chair that looked so old that it must have been from hundreds of years ago. There was also a cabinet or two, covered in dust so badly that you wouldn't see what was in them anymore. In the corner lay a peculiar piece. It looked like a stone chamber with a carving of a door in it, laid in brick and soldered horrifically and seemingly hurriedly. She walked up to it, laying her hand on the door, which sent a shiver through her entire body. She grabbed across her chest with her other arm, and pushed open the door with the other. She couldn't really make sense of what she saw next, so she let her eyes adjust to the dark before she could see.
It wasn't really a staircase more or less than it was just a walkway, twirling down to the ground, made entirely of stone with wood overlaid on top of it. She walked down slowly, holding on to the wall for support in the dark. You could hear the compressed air whistle lightly, and her heart raced violently, but she continued down anyway. It seemed to take forever, just walking down and then down some more into nothingness. The further on she went, the more she could even feel the air against her fair skin. How cold it was to be in short sleeves and feel such a breeze on you. She shivered lightly, her hands becoming even dirtier and her hair brushing against her face with the zephyr.
Finally the winding was over and she was at the bottom at last. She looked down a desolate hallway, which seemed to have nothing in it with promise. She walked slowly, the wind teasing her hair, pushing her skirt behind her legs a bit. She looked left and right for a doorway, but found none, until she got to the very end. She pushed it open and saw what seemed to be a laboratory full of just broken glasses and beakers, dusted scalpels and other surgical instruments of the sort. She walked between a table and some shelves to look at them, finding a bunch of different beakers with scratches on them, all labeled different letters with numbers as well, with little or no information on them at all. Something caught her eye to the left, and she saw a hallway connecting the lab to a library. She turned and walked out of the small, cramped area, looking at books here and there. They all had someone to do with Gaea, or Jenova, and that of the sort. Endless books on materias, uses of materias, the different kinds of materias, and old legends that seemed to enthrall this Jenova. Police cases, instruction manuals, but something drew her attention more than anything else. There was some sort of journal lying on the table where a bunch of open books sat. She seated herself in the empty chair, which didn't look too shabby and flipped open a page. Apparently a scientist who used to work here wrote of his studies and everything else that had taken place. A family used to live in this house years and years before Shinra took it over and handed it to Sephiroth and his men for studies. Strange experiments took place involving Mako energy and such, trying to create super-human creatures when fused with great deals of mako, completely inverting their DNA to recreate them into something new. They spoke of one who used to be an agent of some sort who got injured, and they did some experiments on him. They fused him with something; she couldn't read his writing too well from here on out, it looked as though he wrote it hurriedly, as if he were running out of time, and she could only pick out every other word. Aeris guessed that it might have said something about placing a claw on him instead of a hand, but she thought that was too farfetched to believe herself, so she thought it was wrong. And something and transforming. She couldn't pick out the rest of that detail, just the words 'transforms into'. I said 'They… detain into... coffin in... down... hall… lab… sleep.' And then it just ended right there, with more pages to spare. She flipped it over to see the back of the suede journal, to see bloodstains on it. She dropped it in the table immediately, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
She then thought a minute, curious about what 'coffin', 'down', 'hall', and 'lab' could mean when put together, so she thought there might be a room down the hall from the lab. She went out of the lab, a shiver running down her spine as she walked, so she shut the door and looked around at the walls, tracing her hand along the right side. She walked and walked, seeing too much of nothing, until her fingers hit an unfamiliar crevice, so she looked at it. It was shaped like a door, so she figured it was. She tried just to push it open, but it was too heavy and stuck from all those years. She placed her shoulder against the door, and with all her strength she shoved it open, heaving with light grunts and sighs. Finally it was open enough to squeeze in, and she gasped lightly at what she saw. There lay four coffins on stands; three were open with skeletons either hanging out or just lying there, and one in the center, closed still. She gulped lightly, seeing that the closed coffin didn't look so dirty or as old as the other ones. As if it had been taken care of for a while, but why just that one?
She walked over to it, touching it in all of her idiocy, still curious as to how humble it appeared to be compared to the other ones, tidy and kept- for. Her palms grew sweaty as she wanted to slide the top off to see inside. She grabbed the edges and thought once again about it.
'C'mon, if it's a dead body you're going to scream or something, and if it's decaying you'll puke!' She told herself. She shrugged it off, being her rambunctious little self, and she slid the top down to the bottom end, only revealing a face and shoulders. Her eyes widened, but then she started to feel remorse. The man inside looked so young, and he was so pale, he couldn't be alive in a place like this. It appeared as though he wasn't breathing; she mostly took a guess because it didn't seem like he was, and she wasn't about ready to get close to him to find out. His eyes, as they were closed, look so delicate and peaceful, and his seemingly long black hair looked so smooth and shiny and clean. He couldn't have been dead long down here, because it wasn't damaged. His skin was so fair and elegant, as in it was flawless, and the neck of his shirt surely came up above his chin. She sighed sadly, her hands still placed on the edges, one near his shoulder. She believed there was nothing more to see, and she wanted to leave before she found out anything about him and how he died so she would be depressed for a long time after that. She turned around and began to walk away slowly, her hand still on the edge of the coffin, when something cold and metallic grabbed her wrist suddenly. She turned around, heart pounding, with a loss of breath.
Tell me how it was.
-Illus.