Chapter 4: Sky
Sephiroth stares up into the raining sky, breathing in at least somewhat fresh-air. It was still polluted around Midgar, but it was better than being down in Deepground. He stands on a ledge on a tall building overlooking a top plate. "Is it everything you thought it would be, Rosso?"
Rosso the Crimson stares up into the sky, unblinking, head tilted as raindrops soak her uniform. Easily the most problematic of the Tsviets, getting a compromise out of her that didn't involve throwing around his superior power had been... difficult. He didn't want to be a new Restrictor, so finding common ground or something to offer had been challenging. Until the teenager had asked to see the sky. That, he would grant, and would be happy to. While he had been kept in a lab for considerable time, he had seen rain at least out of windows on occasion, or when walking between buildings. Her entire life without seeing the sky, something he thought many would take for granted, he couldn't imagine it. Just another cruelty, another tragedy in the making by Shinra.
"I don't know," she answers quietly, none of her usual malice or personality in her voice.
Finding someone even more unstable than Kairi had been an experience, but he supposed it gave him guidance in handling her. He merely stands next to her in companionable silence, staring up at the sky, much like he had sat in the same room as Kairi on those Sunday gatherings. He does not rush her, he gives her time to sort her thoughts and feelings out. Of course, it is only in hindsight that he recognizes Kairi was never insane, never unstable (or at least not to the degree assumed). Sad to say that may have been preferable compared to the alien-parasite that she was infected with. That they all were infected with.
He wonders, if he had made himself more approachable, would Kairi have trusted him with the truth about Jenova speaking to her? Would he have been able to do anything about it?
"I have to go back down after," mutters Rosso.
"For the time being," he confirms, "But not forever."
"So you say," she answers bitterly, "But I cannot change myself so simple as you make it seem like it should be. I cannot ever see weakness and not desire to punish it."
She peers out, squinting with enhanced sight, to see cars on the street far far below, people walking around on the sidewalks. Her voice fills with contempt and loathing. "I see these pathetic worms who wouldn't last a minute in Deepground, and I want to bleed them. I want to make them suffer, I want kill them."
He says nothing. He is, after all, not a psychiatrist. He doesn't honestly know if someone as badly damaged and psychotic as Rosso can be helped. But like hell is he not going to at least try. Its what these people are owned for the travesties afflicted on them.
"So tell me, Sephiroth," she continues, turning her head towards him, "Am I to be kept down below forever? Or, to at least allow yourself to not be a liar, will you or one of the other top 1st class SOLDIERs be my keepers for the rest of my days?"
She smiles an odd mixture between feral and sly. "Or are you going to kill me and spare yourself the trouble, hmm?"
He does not do her the dishonesty or disservice of lying. "I will only ever kill you if you absolutely force me to."
She scoffs, crossing her arms across her chest and scowling, turning her head away. "As if you can be forced to do anything. You've already made that abundantly clear."
He has not enjoyed having to restrain Rosso in her more bloodthirsty moments, but she isn't incorrect, she has not yet engineered a scenario where he can't simply knock her out. Some of the time he thinks she acts extra maliciously just to see how he reacts, to see if she can find a way to harm him since she can't defeat him. "As you say."
She sighs and resumes looking up into the raining sky.
"I will not lie, your road will not be one easily walked," he said quietly, "But if you are willing to try, I am willing to help."
"I have yet to figure out what you get out of it, its not the usual lot," she said, eying him, "You don't want me to kill for you, sabotage someone, cover for you, forge records, stand in for a mission, or anything like that. You don't lust after me either. So what is it, Sephiroth, that you want?"
He pushes down the intense disquiet, the anger, the disgust that a child was used that way. The recognition that, bar the sexual exploitation, he had once thought of others like that, of what they wanted from him. "Peace of mind to know I tried."
She gives him a puzzled look, before shaking her head and once again taking to look at the sky. The way she looks at it...
"When you look into the sky like that, Rosso, what is it you feel?" he asks.
She considers his words. "Argento was the first one who told me of the sky. Who gave me a goal to reach for. Something to... I suppose 'hope' for. A false hope it may be, but it is something I desire. To wake up every morning to this, rather than being trapped in Deepground. I look into the sky, and I hunger for it."
Is it terrible of him to wonder if its the Calamity in her that hungers for space rather than the very understandable desire to be free of Deepground? He doesn't voice it. "I see."
"How much longer do I have?"
"We have a few hours yet until I have to be back down for a lesson, I'm in no rush otherwise."
She nods and resumes her simple staring, and they stay there, as hours pass, looking up into the sky...
Aerith sits on a hill outside the entrance to Banora Underground, legs tucked to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She shivers and shakes, struggling with all she witnessed, all that was pressed into her mind, all that was absorbed into her. She had grabbed her clothes and fled so fast out of the underground, at enhanced speeds; she had never agreed to that. So much that she never wanted, never asked for. If she had known... if she had known... would she have refused Minerva?
She closes her eyes, and she sees.
She knows, she truly, utterly knows, why the Planet is so afraid, so abhorrent of Jenova. She can flicker through her memories and piece together Jenova's original planetfall in all its horror. Sees the deceptions, dead loved ones coming for an embrace, only to infect. Terror and horror to see those you love lose themselves to madness, to mutate and become horrors trying to rip you limb from limb. Hordes, tides of infected, surging across nomadic camps nearly unopposed. The trickle of taint into the Planet, its steadily growing concern with this new enemy. Her people, their grief, their sorrow, their determination. How they sacrificed their vows and their ways, turned their mending power to wrath. Prayers to the Planet for power, answered. Those what would become summons answering the call, devastating Jenova's masses, but in turn springing the Crisis's trap. All of that taint poured into the Lifestream. The struggle, the corrosion, Jenova consuming the powers within the Planet...
How Materia came to be, Jenova commandeering parts of the Lifestream, sealing away summons into little red gems, slicing away the Planet's power into little crystal baubles to crush its resistance. Materia did not exist before Jenova started injuring the Planet and damaging the Lifestream. Lifestream coming to the surface of the Planet wasn't supposed to happen, Mako Springs were a sign of the problem, not a natural wonder. A spring is a wound, Lifestream literally bleeding out of the Planet onto its 'skin'. Even two-thousand years later the Planet isn't remotely close to fixing the damage Jenova did to it. It might never fully, truly, recover, even if the last of Jenova is scoured from it. Adapt and adjust, but perhaps never become what it once was, bearing its scars forever.
She witnesses just how close to the tipping point it came. How close Jenova came to overwhelming Minerva and dominating the Lifestream, how close Jenova came to wiping out the Cetra and controlling the surface. If either had happened, it would have been over. The only reason they won, the only reason Jenova lost, was because of its greed, its hunger. The Cetra noticed how Jenova would sacrifice hordes to infect powerful members of the Cetra. They used that, had their most powerful member commit the ultimate sacrifice, to turn herself into a trap, a jail, a prison to contain Jenova, and it worked.
A soul, so bright, so noble, so loved, sacrificed to the horror of being consumed by Jenova to stop its onslaught.
Aerith grieves for thousands she never knew but now does. She grieves for the likely billions, possibly trillions, that Jenova had consumed over its lifetime, as it is so easy to envision just how the abomination ate its way through the stars... and now she knows, thanks to Kairi, that there are worse things out there.
She picks up on Vincent's approach well before his arrival, his boots crunching on rock and dirt as he leaves the tunnels. He makes his way up and sits down next to her.
"I thought I was getting lessons, not... not this," whispered Aerith.
"You needed to know, needed to understand," comes Chaos's voice, gold in Vincent's eyes, "And needed to inherit knowledge of how to use your power far faster than decades of steady learning."
"To what point?" snapped Aerith, "The trap my ancestors used to win isn't going to work on Kairi because she is fundamentally different then Jenova. Even IF she becomes negatively influenced by the Jenova she absorbed into herself, it wont be the same enemy the Planet faced before. She isn't Jenova, if it comes to a conflict, fighting Kairi wont be anything like fighting Jenova. She's not going to infect and consume her way across the Planet, and even if she did, her girls are capable of individual action, she would not stay trapped if they stayed loyal to her."
"As Minerva said, defeating the New Crisis is not within our capabilities, at least not without enacting my purpose," said Chaos, "To best her is to deny her battle and banish her back whence she came. You were given this knowledge to know how to use your power to the fullest, to know how to manipulate Lifestream without being a part of it."
Aerith glowers at him. "And the mako flowing through my body now? Don't tell me my eyes aren't glowing right now because I'd call you a liar."
"You can't absorb memories from the Lifestream without taking some of it into yourself," he said mildly, "But beyond that, you needed the boost in power to do what must be done. You would not have achieved the strength needed to open the Door for decades when you reached your peak potential, perhaps not even then."
"What Door?" she snapped.
"Then one Minerva pulled the original Kairi through," said Chaos, "We will show you when we return to Midgar..."
"No," said Aerith coldly, "No. You can't just trick me into more than I agreed to like that and expect me to go along with it. I told Minerva, and I'll tell you, that I'm going to try this my way first."
"If that is your wish," he said, tilting his head, "But we will still show you were first incase your efforts are returned with violence rather than dismissal."
She burns with anger at his words, even if she knows its smart. "Fine."
She looks to the sky, fuming. "Why couldn't Minerva just open the Door herself?"
"She can send her presence through the closed door, a phantom to poke and prod, but to actually open the door into Kairi's home Realm requires a power of that Realm, just as Minerva's power was used in conjunction with Kairi's own to pull her in," explained Chaos, "Kairi was also physically there on the other side of the door. So we assume some kind of physical proximity is required."
"If we need Kairi's power to open the door, then how exactly is the door going to be opened if things go sour?" asked Aerith.
"Your power, empowered by the Lifeblood of the Planet and ignited by Minerva, will be enough to fulfill one portion of the opening," said Chaos, "The other portion will require deceiving the New Crisis into contributing energy, her light."
Aerith makes a face. "So, get her into a fight near the door, get hit by her light, and try to funnel the energy into opening the door?"
"In short, yes," said Chaos, "It would not be a pleasant encounter."
Aerith sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly, laying back on the hill and staring up solemnly into the sky for a time, frustrated, wary, and...
"What is it, child," murmurs Chaos, "That causes you to look into the sky so?"
"Fear," she admits, "If Kairi is to be believed, Jenova was just the beginning. There are things worse out there. Even if we have to fight Kairi and win, what comes next? If we drive her off, and something terrible comes along that we couldn't beat without her, what then?"
"Nothing lives forever," said Chaos softly, "We will struggle for as long as we are able, but when our times comes, it will come. Life and Death are a cycle, child, one that is sacred and should remain unbroken."
Aerith sighed. Perhaps expecting comfort from a primordial entity was foolish. "...does Minerva require anything else of me down there?"
"It would behoove you, regardless of your feelings on the matter, to practice your abilities in a controlled environment under watchful eyes," he answered, "Regardless of your knowledge gained, you do not have the experience to back it up."
Aerith nodded quietly. "Tomorrow. Tonight I... I just can't."
He tipped his head in acknowledgement. "Tomorrow."
The gold leaves Vincent's eyes, and the two of them sit in silence, gazing up into the sky...
Kairi walks up the stairs of HQ in irritated silence. She had thought perhaps after a brief break from her, perhaps some people would get over themselves, their fear of her. Nope. Nadda. Still there. She is considering if full disclosure had been an honest mistake. She had wanted to prove herself better than Jenova, who wouldn't have hesitated to conceal it. Yet no good deed goes unpunished. Easy lies preferred over harsh truths. Self-delusions over proven facts. Their fear despite her assurances is...
Pathetic.
The distaste she feels roil through her is hard to keep from disrupting the mental web. Her entire life after coming to this Realm was one harsh truth after another. If she could survive and face such brutality, she a former schoolgirl, abducted and experimented on as a teenager, a child effectively, then why couldn't anyone else? Who had come from stronger backgrounds and trainings? Why were they so weak?
The Turks were better at concealing their wariness and discomfort, but she could still feel it, sense it.
She reaches the top and opens the door, stepping onto the roof of headquarters and walks to the edge, staring down across Midgar in silence. She never used to get this angry, this... molten sensation in her gut. Not until she was infected with Jenova. She should be understanding, she should let go of her anger. That despite her desires to be different, that she never wanted this, that she IS a horror. They have every right to be afraid.
Its not fair.
Her wing stretches behind her, and she has the honest urge to fly away and be on her own for awhile. Though, they're likely to be even more afraid of her been off on her own unmonitored than here in their face. She considers another monster culling mission to vent, perhaps down in the slums... but rejects it. She shouldn't use death as a means to unwind. Should not allow herself to get comfortable with it. Or well... any more comfortable as one is after living through a war and Jenova anyway.
She sighs and moves to sit on the edge of the roof, one leg hanging down, a knee brought up to her chest with arms wrapped around it, a slight flicker of instinctual mass shifting within her flesh to keep her balanced from tipping one way or another. She idly wonders when she started picking up these little habits. The fact that she had tendrils sprouting out of her to grab clothes out of drawers in the morning or to lazily uncloath herself for bed is... strange. She attributes it to parsing through Jenova's memories perhaps.
Speaking of which, might as well do something constructive instead of brooding.
She dips into the memories she's shuttered away, perusing without digging in. She really isn't in the mood to go through seeing if there is something useful she can get out of a consumption. She prefers the moments when Jenova is being curios rather than parasitical. When the entity encountered something new and strange and paused its hunger to study it. That was something she had already identified as different between Jenova and her kin. The others Jenova had encountered and consumed of her kind, were not as... adaptive. Sure they consumed and adapted traits from their victims, but...
The Firstborn had made herself something more. Rather than consume and discard, she consumed and catalogued. Jenova held memories of so many cultures, music and arts and triumphs and failings, ect..., while the Calamities Jenova consumed rarely held such a vast store of knowledge.
What differed Jenova from the rest of her kin? Why was there such a noticeable difference? Was it because she was one of the first few? Kairi wonders if she should dig into that. Jenova referring to herself or being referred to as the Firstborn had come up in several memories, but the beginning had thus far evaded her. How did a Goddess become Calamity? She digs and digs, looking for aged memories, what could possibly have...
"I could feel you brooding from fifty floors below," came Genesis's bemused voice.
Kairi pulls out of her search and back into awareness, letting her knee go and legs hang down. "I wasn't brooding."
"Weren't you?"
"I'll have you know I was making use of my time and parsing memories thank you very much," she snubs in a mock-Genesis tone, adding in a derisive sniff for good measure.
That gets a flicker of amusement down the web, of possessive delight, a pulse of 'my apprentice indeed' is the best she can translate it as.
"So, what has you in a mood?" he says, moving to sit down next to her.
"The weakness of others," she mutters, "The inability to accept and move on."
Genesis sighed. "They don't have our advantage, they can't feel your sincerity. You have no intention of being another Jenova. But frankly Kairi, even with that, this entire situation..."
He trailed off for a moment, shrugged, and flicked his fingers out as if getting rid of gunk on them.
"Shinra messed with something that should have remained buried, and everyone else paid the consequences, and will continue to do so," said Kairi softly.
"Quite."
Kairi sighs. "How long do you think the fear will take to fade?"
"People are always afraid, if not one thing than the other," he said dismissively, "You will always have detractors. Comes with the position, the fame, and I suppose what you are. Come now apprentice, have you forgotten our lessons? What do we care about what the riffraff think?"
"Pretty sure Angeal isn't riffraff," she stated, "Nor are my girls, who despite feeling my sincerity, over half of them are still at minimum wary."
He makes a face. "Must you ruin my pep-talk?"
She shrugged. "If you make it so easy to do so, why not?"
He grunted and grew quiet for a minute, a hand briefly on her shoulder to squeeze. "Give it a few months to a few years and the worst of it will likely pass."
She looks up into the sky, lips pursed, a hand reaching up to run through her hair in frustration. "That only works if nothing comes in that timeframe."
He cocks his head, glancing at her.
"Do you know what I feel? When I look into the sky?" she asked.
He raises a single eyebrow, not bothering to ask 'what'.
"Inevitability," she states, "I will never age, Genesis, so I will be here to face the future, and there are things out there that we need unity to face. I am stupidly powerful now, near unkillable, but I can't be everywhere at once. Especially once we spread off Gaia. I think of the things we will eventually face, and I wonder if its inevitable I'll be the only one left at some point."
"Pessimism doesn't suite you my dear," he chides, "Here and now apprentice, here and now."
She exhales, but doesn't respond. She sits there side by side, and briefly wonders if he's considered 'them' any further, but doesn't press. As she said, she has an eternity to wait for Genesis to come to a decision on what will happen between them. She has little but time...