The barrier is gone, and the north crater lies exposed in the crisp, glacial landscape. The Weapon's emergence that fateful day of the Black Materia left mountains of ice dislodged, blocking any straightforward descent.
"Gonna have to climb down," Cid says as he chews his cigarette. Wind sways the airship, and his knuckles are white pressed on the controls.
Nobody speaks while he navigates. The meteor darkens the sky with a hot red ring of unnatural clouds. It won't be long now until impact. Tifa rubs one palm and cannot keep the jitters down. She's never felt the end of the world this close, this palpable, and it's disheveling her insides. She glances at Cloud, so focused and intent, eyes locked on the closing gap of ice below.
"Damn this feels crazy," Barret opines. "We sure Aerith down there?"
Cloud responds without moving. "Yes, I'm sure."
"You gonna have to be a bit more specific on how you know this. 'Cuz looks to me we about to plunge into some deep shit."
Cloud's eyes go to Tifa, then Barret.
"She contacted me once through that…dream," Cloud says. "This is the same sort of thing."
The Highwind is climate-controlled, yet a chill branches at the base of Tifa's skull. This is where the reunion was supposed to happen, and now Cloud feels beckoned back here. She sees him standing in the Nibel Reactor, ooze dripping from his face, smiling with the tentacled body of Jenova suspended in clear blue liquid behind him. Writhing, in grotesque detail.
"Hey," Cloud says, touching her forearm. "You ready for this?"
He's only speaking to her, and the dizziness clears as she holds his stoic expression. He wouldn't endanger them all, bringing them here. And he's tried to convince everyone to walk away multiple times.
Yuffie pushes in.
"Ready as ever to get off this ship," she says, ever the one to lighten the mood.
The Highwind levels off, and the engines settle into a purr. Cid exhales.
"Okay," he says. "We'll climb the rest of the way down."
The group is silent as they head to the cargo bay. Cid and Barret haul open the doors into a gloom of blue stillness with rocks and jagged sheets of ice.
Cloud slides down the rope ladder first. He rolls one shoulder upon landing and tests his weight across the platform. He reports it safe and begins scouting the best route. Tifa waits until Nanaki is down before following because his fiery tail lends a comforting sphere of light. The rest of the cavern glows with the subtle flow of pale green. The Lifestream is beneath them, and its presence is stronger now than on their first trip.
The Highwind ascends to a safe hovering altitude after everyone disembarks, and as it does, the meteor clips into view, massive and ominous. It's close enough that keen markings on its surface are visible. Tifa squints at it. Can Cloud see them, too? All those squiggling patterns?
He's well ahead of the group, moving rocks and climbing over icy shafts. The deeper they go, the brighter the luminescence becomes, lending a dreamlike quality to the overall pallor. Claustrophobic tunnels bud with clusters of materia, and the party moves without speaking. Puffs of breath and the occasional tumbling rock underfoot mark the only signs of their existence. Cloud forges ahead, and nobody asks how he knows the way or even if he does.
Trust, Tifa tells herself. She has to trust him. She brushes sweat from her forehead. The air is warmer here, and ice drips from coiled stalactites. Maturing crystallizations canvas the walls. A tinge of Mako rises, but it is unprocessed and pure, nothing like what churns within a Reactor. The smell is almost pleasant.
Tight passageways eventually open into an expansive cavern, glittering in low multi-tonal hues. Blue and green materia dominate, but purple and yellow splash here and there.
"How's it possible we can breathe down here?" Barret asks.
Spindles of open darkness dot the ceiling. Cid points at them.
"Must be enough ventilation?"
Or something unnatural wants them to survive, Tifa wonders. Something creates an environment where a human could exist. Aerith must be here. Sephiroth, too. Would Cloud require any such atmosphere? He catches her eye and smiles.
"We must be deep in the Planet," Nanaki says, sniffing the ground.
"Wowza, I wish I could pluck half of this materia free," Yuffie says, tapping at a nearby crystal with her fingertips, but it is secure and unresponsive.
"Let's continue," Cloud says. "We're close."
Barret narrows his gaze. "An' how you know that?"
Cloud halts, realizing ambiguities won't be enough.
"Because," he says, "I can…hear her."
"Whatchu mean by that?"
Cloud looks at each of them while picking out his words. "There's a hum in this place, whispers. I know that's not comforting, but it's how I can hear Jenova. And I think Aerith's voice is in there."
"What's she saying?" Yuffie asks.
Cloud puts his hands on his hips. "Something not good. It's unclear, but…"
"But what!" Barret pushes. "You better be clear with us on all this Jenova bullshit from here on out."
Cloud rubs the back of his neck. "I know. I am. I just don't know what to make of it."
"Well, whatever it is," Tifa interjects. "We have to hurry. We have to reach her if she's near."
Cloud nods and resumes the journey forward while Barret continues to grumble. The caves split ahead in multiple directions, but Cloud chooses without stopping, and the group carries on.
The route terminates into a fog-filled cavern with a single rock formation bridging an endless chasm. The length of the bridge is obscured, the footing treacherous. This is the only way across. Scintillating light from below plays odd shapes in the fog.
Cloud steps out, balances, and proceeds. Tifa remains close, careful not to look down. Heights never scared her, yet something else twists her nerves. Halfway across, Cloud pauses.
"Do you feel that?" he whispers to her.
There is silence, coldness. She listens, straining. No, nothing.
Then a crack breaks the rock between them. The walls shake, and ice groans free, splintering and smashing down. Cloud shoves Tifa out of the way as a massive shard hits the bridge. Dust and debris choke the air. Materia-laced granite slams down, and she loses sight of him.
"Cloud!" she shouts, bracing and falling back.
The shaking continues, sliding rock and ice, impassible. She kneels and spots him far below, clinging to a ledge. She shouts for him, reaches. The others are retreating in the avalanche, calling her name, but she fixates on Cloud. He's scrambling against the rockface disintegration. There is nothing below him, nothing to grab onto. He pivots, searching for a route, but everything is too far.
Then he gazes up at her. There is no way to reach him. Yet she pushes on, scraping her knees, forcing every ounce of equilibrium forward. The cave is a blur of beige. The quake tremors her teeth, upsets her balance. Cloud sways, muscles tensing as his grip falters.
"It's okay," he says up to her. "It's okay."
It's not. He's going to fall. She can't lose him again, not after all they've been through, but the walls crack and cascade.
"I've survived worse," he says or something along those lines. She can no longer hear him as Barret whisks her away.
The bridge collapses, and Cloud vanishes into the fog. The quaking stops as suddenly as it came, settling into a haze of glimmering dust and emptiness. The group stands together, motionless, surveying. Tifa cannot breathe. The structure supporting Cloud is gone. Everything, in a heartbeat, is gone.
Her fists clench. That earthquake was unnatural. Something tore him away. Something doesn't want them near. Tifa stares into the vast below, hoping for any signs of Cloud, but then a delicate pricking tracks up her spine and expands in her head like fireworks.
There is a new scent in the air, no longer awash in Mako. It is the scent of rot, a sickening sweetness like wilted roses and putrid undergrowth.
A shadow forms up from the pit. It swells and solidifies into the torso of a woman, distorted and pressed onto a globelike body with a serpentine neck and faceless head. Organs pulsate along its exterior, and bones protrude beneath a mycelium of iridescent veins. This is Jenova, but she has evolved. Forked thick tentacles extend from the spherical body.
"We can't get out…!" Yuffie says.
She's right. The entryway is a pile of rocks and crystals. Barret steadies his gun, and Vincent narrows his eyes.
"So this is what's become of it," the sharpshooter says, and it's almost sad.
Tifa wants to search for Cloud, but this new threat demands her attention. The eyeless cranium observes, reaching into her, inspecting. Within it are a multitude of half-formed entities, inert and lifeless. It seems impossible this creature could spawn something—someone—like Cloud.
"Fuck this," Cid says and launches his lance.
The mythril punctures the belly and slides out, but Jenova gives no reaction. Darkness bubbles from its minor wound, and Tifa flashes to the nightmare Reactor, the lake of cosmic ooze, Cloud drenched and dying. Needles preying over a waiting slab in a darkened basement.
A tendril whips past her face, scoring her cheek like fire. Her companions erupt on the offensive, yet she is in shock, blood dripping to her chin. The contact passed something into her veins, a fuzziness that distorts her surroundings. A frightful awareness hits hard and fast—they will all die here. Their bodies lay broken, dismembered in a dire premonition, and Jenova flails at the center of the carnage, untouched. The vision rattles. This is where they fall.
Barret launches rapid-fire at the writhing torso. Bullets glance off. Vincent reloads with preternatural speed, and a tendril slaps at him. Purplish slime coats his jacket. He clutches his head, losing balance. Yuffie bounces past with shuriken flashing. The weapon clips a piece of Jenova's body, and beneath its skin, bones reposition like a sloshing pool of skeletons inside. From its pores, a gas exudes.
"Poison?!" Yuffie shrieks.
The puff encircles her and Cid, and within seconds they are coughing on their knees. The potency dissipates by the time it reaches Tifa and scratches in her throat like sandpaper. It tastes like starlight, that dusty, milky essence she'd felt in the Lifestream. But the vision will not leave her. Every step portends failure, bloodshed. Death.
They will all die here. This truth bears a gravity she cannot fight.
Nanaki activates his Fire materia. Jenova responds with a quick swipe at his inconsequential presence, and he leaps back while fire scorches Jenova's ribboned skin.
Despair paralyzes Tifa. Fighting feels senseless, remote and impossible. Her fists are heavy. Her legs are tired. Jenova is not—
"Summon that giant sea dragon!" Barret shouts at Yuffie.
"Not enough room!" she responds as she dodges a tendril.
Cid coordinates a jump with Nanaki to pin down a tentacle as Vincent unloads rounds to distract the Mother.
Tifa shakes her head. No, there is nothing maternal about this creature, yet the word resounds. It is Cloud's mother now, no longer the woman in Nibelheim with the clean white apron and the messy blonde ponytail. That woman is dead. They will all be dead soon. Except for him.
"Tifa!" Barret yells her out of the reverie. "Get yo' head in the game!"
She wants to comply, but this drug affects her muscles, her thoughts. A deep sorrow whittles a part of her core. All that despair, all that loss and rage. Her father dying, her mother beyond the mountains. Her body broken and weak after Sephiroth cut her down.
"Tifa!"
Another bout of poison seeps through the cavern. It chokes and waters her eyes. Tremors shake as Cid and Nanaki tear apart a tentacle using lance and teeth. Black splatters onto Nanaki's fur. It slides off his teeth, and Tifa sees the cosmos within, swirling. Beneath a lake, she's floating. Drifting.
Vincent turns to her, his eyes ablaze with stark confusion. Burns across his cloak follow the patterns of Jenova's tendrils.
"Who are you?" he growls and raises his gun at her.
Tifa lifts her palms. He's dead, too, in her vision, except he is a winged devil. Fog curls and obscures her friends. Clashes of metal ring out, and quakes unsettle the ground. Pebbles hail loose from the sky.
"What's it doin' to us?" Barret's voice sounds far away.
Yuffie spins by, drawing Vincent's befuddled attacks. The two square off, but Yuffie is lithe and deft, and Vincent fights against whatever has co-opted his bloodstream. More poison, more quakes. Nanaki and Cid amputate the tentacle and heave it off the ledge.
Realization bites Tifa, cold and sudden. Jenova's powers correlate to the materia Aerith holds. The Heal materia is a counteragent to poison. The Earth materia causes quakes. And what else did Aerith have?
Yuffie slaps Vincent across the face, twists his arm, and forces the gun to drop. His gold claw slashes at her then grasps her throat. Barret combats the remaining tendrils, aiming at the featureless face of Jenova with every available shot. Nanaki persists with his fire materia until the marble runs dry and fades. That black ooze coats his fur in hardening chunks. Cid levers his lance to jump high and attack, victorious from the detachment of Jenova's limb.
But the quaking continues to disorient. The poison invades. And each hard slap of the remaining tentacle sows confusion. No, they cannot win. Because Tifa remembers the third materia Aerith carried.
Waves of green healing light flow over the amputated limb, sealing and repairing. Cid freezes, mouth open. Vincent shakes his head, clearing his confusion. Yuffie and Barret stand back-to-back, gaping as Jenova heals. All their work, swept away in an instant of miraculous recovery. Jenova is linked to Aerith, and the connotation presses Tifa into a small laugh of defeat. This is why they cannot win.
It is linked to Cloud, too. She racks her brain to recount his materia, but comes up blank. Ice, at one point, but he'd lost that in Mideel.
"What can kill it?" Yuffie demands, sweating and breathless.
Vincent regards Jenova with fascination and mutters something Tifa doesn't catch. The mist thickens. It nauseates. Jenova corners the group at the blocked passage.
"That water dragon, maybe," Barret says.
Yuffie attempts to summon Leviathan, despite earlier doubts. Water fills the cavern, and the majestic deity emerges from the tide, fanning its wings and targeting its deluge at Jenova. But the lack of open space prevents a titanic result, and the crashing current slams Jenova to the jutting rocks but does not defeat her. The waters cannot linger, and when the mythical waves evaporate with their monstrous protector, the dripping crystals show Jenova intact.
A pocket of air shielded the team from the tide, so they are not wet, but water streaks down Jenova and reveals the topography of its skin—patterns, kaleidoscopic, draw Tifa's eye. Shapes of birds and malformed animals populate the bulbous flesh, frozen in hideous transformation. Or mimicry. Tifa's stomach churns. Cloud smiles at her in a Nibelheim basement.
Her friends resume their assault. Tendrils batter, shurikens and lances fly. Bullets pop. Tifa finds her senses and pummels at the tentacle that spews poison and slices her forearms with flickering spurs. Her gloves are useless, smashing into sinking skin that feels like exoskeleton beneath. The alien pays her no attention. Jenova throws Nanaki to the wall.
Warm yellow light begins to pulse up Jenova's center.
"Aw hell no. Whatever it's doin' can't be good," Barret says.
But there is no escape. Death presses in, tightens Tifa's throat.
Nanaki steps forward. A wild wind rushes from an unseen force, and the cavern goes dark. Then, a starry universe explodes beyond the knowable lengths of the caves, centered on Nanaki, and he howls a piercing tone. The darkness becomes a glimmer of stars. It forms a distant comet with a long tail. Nanaki echoes a powerful cry and the comet jets towards Jenova with incredible velocity.
The meteorite slams into the monster, flattening her and destroying any remnants of the bridge. All of it plummets down. Tendrils wrap at the colossal searing boulder but cannot withstand its force. Jenova and the smoking trail are taken below in a crash of heat and light.
In the crackling aftermath, the galactic energies vanish. Yuffie blinks. Cid brushes off his jacket. Nanaki lets out an exhausted sigh.
"The hell was that?!" Barret shouts. "You some kinda magician?"
The beast shakes his head, lets out a solemn chuckle.
"A memory," Nanaki says. "Grandfather always said I had it in me. This is the dream of the cosmos. I just never thought…"
Yuffie lurches. "A memory did that!?"
Vincent holsters his gun. "Memories can be powerful things, I suppose," he says.
Tifa leans over the edge. Jenova and its terrible aura are gone.
"Nah, can't be a memory," Barret says. "That was some real shit right there."
Nanaki shrugs. "I don't know how to explain. It's passed down through my kind for generations, but I didn't think I could ever…" He looks at his paws. "I wanted to protect my friends."
"Can you do it again?" Cid says.
"I don't think so. Not anytime soon. It was…draining."
"Well, we ain't outta the damn woodwork yet," Barret says. "So keep that memory or whatever sharp."
The cavern remains still. Tifa spots a path down now that the slate has cracked and slid apart. It looks treacherous, but there is no other exit. Nothing above. Nothing behind or ahead. Only below.
"I ain't goin' down there," Barret says, standing next to Tifa.
The others gather near her, peering as well.
"Cloud is down there," Tifa replies. "And possibly Aerith. We have to go to them."
"Aerith, I agree with you there. But Jenova is down there, too."
Tifa looks at him. "We have to continue."
That sweeping despair is gone in Jenova's wake. Tifa's sense of purpose and drive returns, and her longing for their lost companions deepens. The core of the Planet carries their resolution.
She starts down, climbing hand-to-hand in careful descent, testing her footing. Nanaki has the easiest time of it, but the group moves slow. Barret struggles with the sheer verticality given his gun-arm has no means of grasping. Tifa keeps her eyes forward, her mind focused. Cloud and Aerith are the mission at its simplest form. When faced with unwinnable odds and looming tragedy, she concentrates on one task and pours herself into it. Today—right now—that task is reuniting with her friends. She cannot think of Sephiroth or whatever remains of Jenova awaiting them below. There is no future, only every breath in and every shift of her hands. Only the Lifestream growing in pale green shades, the air warming as they descend. Down, into an unknowable fate. Into the fear that chatters in her chest and pools in her feet. There is no choice, and this unease won't last forever. Nothing does.
Whatever happens, she will be ready for it. And if it eats her alive, then she will have met it with strength. She is a survivor of Nibelheim, after all. One of the only pair.
