A Flower's Touch - Chapter 2 - Uncertainty
Aerith was led by Rude into a room deep inside the Department of Administrative Research, or 'Turk' territory. She had never actually been to this part of the building before. During her youth, it had always been the Science Division, and even when she had been recaptured when the plate fell...
The plate...
Aerith pursed her lips, reminded of how far and how low the Turks could actually go if they were ordered to. She would NOT let that happen! It was another reminder of how much suffering she had to prevent in the world.
She paused her thoughts as Rude led her into a room that...
"Why does this look like my room at home?" she questioned intently, eyeing Rude.
Rude barely raised an eyebrow. "Comfortableness."
"How do you all know what my room looks like?" she demanded, growing just a bit furious.
"Been there," was the answer.
"In my room?!" she all but shrieked.
"Yes," was his reply.
Her face turned positively murderous. "You had better not have put cameras or microphones in my room at home!"
At that, Rude raised a full eyebrow. "We're professionals, not perverts, Miss Gainsborough."
Aerith crossed her arms and went, "Hmph," before walking into the room and sitting down on her bed.
It was... really eerie and creepy now that she thought about it. The floor was wooden, there was the larger carpet and then a small circular one oh top of it. Her bed had the same type of pillow and blanket. It had the same dresser with the exact same kind of flowers in vases on it. Even the inside of the door was the same red as her home. Even the room itself was the same shape! The last thing this room made her feel was 'comfortable'.
"If you need anything there will be two of my co-workers outside at all times," said Rude.
"All times?" said Aerith, raising an eyebrow.
"For protection," he simply said.
"From what?" she asked, a little incredulous, they WERE in the heart of Turk territory after-all.
"Hojo if need be," he replied before turning and leaving, closing the door behind him.
Aerith had gone silent at that. Up until Veld could retrieve his daughter and partner, she wasn't safe. If it were found out that she was here, and she was ordered to be handed over, she would be. Even after, she wasn't fully sure she would be safe, depending how things turned out. Now that she thought about it... how WAS this going to turn out?
If Veld retrieved his daughter and killed Fuhito, there would be no AVALANCHE. That would also mean there would be no inspiration for the second AVALANCHE...
Which meant...
If she screwed this up, there might not be something to fallback on...
A bead of sweat rolled down her face at that thought. While she might have saved a lot of lives from being lost during the original AVALANCHE crisis, it might have hurt her in the long run. No, no, she couldn't think of it like that. It... just meant she had to do everything right... but... what exactly WAS she going to do?
It would take Veld at bare minimum a week or two, hopefully, to find his daughter and Vincent. It wasn't exactly a great expedition when Shinra had acess to helicopters. She had some time to come up with some kind of plan.
First: What did she know?
In less than a year, Genesis Rhapsodos, SOLDIER 1st Class, was going to desert Shinra. She didn't know his full story, but, in her few talks with the Goddess, she had come to learn that the man had been plagued by his Jenova taint. It had begun to degrade his body for some reason, causing him to grow a wing, see himself as a monster, and follow another mad scientist, as if Hojo wasn't enough, into desertion.
Zack's mentor Angeal would soon follow, which would set of a chain reaction of missions that eventually led to Zack being forced to kill his mentor. Aerith winced, still recalling when she had came across Zack in the church after that mission. For him, she'd try to make sure that Angeal wouldn't...
Oh...
Him.
Zack.
ZACK WAS STILL ALIVE!
She lost all of the breath in her lungs, and her body began to tremble. She didn't know how to properly digest that thought. It was sudden and startling enough that she herself was alive, and in a younger body, but Zack...
In an instant, all the trauma and hardships she had learned Zack had gone through slipped into her mind. She brought up an arm to block her mouth and try to muffle a horrific sob. Oh Zack...
She didn't know how she would handle him. Seeing him, but also seeing what he had gone through. Having to watch as his dreams shattered. As Shinra's corruption became undeniable. As his master fell from grace and was forced to be killed. To watch Sephiroth turn to madness and have to fight him. Years experimented on by Hojo. Taking care of poor mako poisoned Cloud. The... the final sacrifice so close to Midgar... he had been coming for her...
Aerith laid down on the bed, buried her face into her pillow, and sobbed... she couldn't face him... she just couldn't...
Aerith gave a start as someone knocked on her door. "Miss Gainsborough."
Aerith shook her head and sat up, clearing her throat. "Enter."
A Turk with a shotgun strapped over her shoulder entered the room, depositing a tray of food on the edge of the bed. "I'll come back in ten minutes to collect the leftovers."
Aerith reached for the tray before pausing briefly, studying the Turk curiously. There was an... echo in the back of Aerith's mind. She had learned much while dead in the lifestream, had seen and witnessed so much, but, it was hard to consciously drift through all those memories. Something about this Turk stirred a memory... she had played an important role during the first AVALANCHE insurgency. But what role was it?
"What's your name?" asked Aerith before the Turk could leave.
The Turk paused, turned her head, blinked twice, and simply said, "You can call me Shotgun. Shuriken and I will be standing watch over you for the time being."
Shuriken?
Thump Thump
Another echo stirred in the back of her mind.
"Cissnei?" whispered Aerith, trying to understand what she was hearing.
Shotgun stiffened, shooting her a surprised look before masking it. Abruptly the Turk turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her. It occurred to Aerith that she might not have wanted to speak that aloud. While Veld, Tseng, and Rude knew what was going on, to a degree, the other Turks didn't, they wouldn't understand how she could know such things... and speaking of the other Turks...
Aerith frowned, rubbing her head. She had never met either of these two last time around, aside maybe from being watched by them once or twice. In fact, if she recalled correctly, abruptly at one point so many Turks had suddenly vanished, leaving only Tseng, Rude, and Reno for a time before they got another new member. What had happened to cause that? It made her feel like she was missing another story, something that happened Before the major Crisis.
Maybe it was a good thing she was stopping the first AVALANCHE from coming about, she really didn't have much knowledge of what happened then. Which meant that there would be a whole lot that could have gone wrong if it had been allowed to happen...
And that also applied to what was coming up in less than a year. She returned to her previous train of thought before she had cried herself to sleep: Genesis. This whole thing went completely downhill after he left to her knowledge. She didn't know the specifics of it all aside from NOT wanting Zack to have to repeat Modeoheim...
Zack...
No, NO! No more thinking about the bad past! She shook her head violently before refocusing. The best thing to do was to NOT let Genesis defect. But how? She wracked her memories, trying to tap into what she had learned within the lifestream or from the Goddess herself. Degradation. It had torn at his body and mind, disrupting his control and mental stability. How had it been dealt with...
She frowned for a moment before a memory hit her. The Goddess... the goddess herself had saved him. But that had been after the fact, after all the damage had been done and... wait...
Genesis and Zack had fought?! Zack had BEAT Genesis after he had been healed?
She was a bit shocked by the bits and pieces of memories that flowed through her mind. She could see some of his battles, broken and jumbled in her mind and... wait...
THE GODDESS?! She had tested Zack herself?! Well, tested with a weak avatar to be precise but... wow... she knew Zack had received some S-Cells, but, just how strong could he actually become? One day, could he have become as strong as Cloud ended up being? And wait a second... if Minerva could create physical avatars, why didn't she personally intervene in what had happened? Or were there constraints on when and where they could form?
Aerith shook her head and grabbed the tray of food on her bed, putting in her lap and starting to eat as she kept thinking.
She needed to stop derailing her thoughts. She needed a plan. She needed to stop Genesis from leaving Shinra. So many bad things happened because of that one act. If she could stop that, then, that only left the Nibelheim Incident to deal with. But... would that event even happen as it did before if she changed Genesis leaving? Or heck, if she stopped AVALANCHE from ever being born?
It hit her suddenly how dangerous meddling with past events was to the future. Each change, no matter how little, could ripple out and lead to more changes, some drastic some not. Eventually, the future would become unrecognizable and she would lose her advantage she held now. That meant...
She nodded slowly. That meant the most important thing she could do was do as much drastic damage as she could and shake things up as much as possible right here and now. Well, when Veld got back anyway. After that, she'd need to end up in a position of power that would let her counteract anything bad that happened once her future knowledge lost it's potency.
To be frank. Even if everything went perfectly, and that was: Jenova dead. Hojo dead. Sephiroth still sane or permanently dead; things could still go wrong in the far future... and wait...
Sephiroth. Permanently dead. Pick one or the other.
She groaned with frustration and wanted to yell profanities that would make Cid proud. Sephiroth in the future had kept reviving himself over and over again no matter how many times Cloud and the other's beat him. That meant she had one actual option concerning him: He HAD to stay sane. He could NOT become enthralled with Jenova again, otherwise history was doomed to repeat itself. Beyond that...
She sighed quietly to herself. Sephiroth was a conundrum to her. It was hard to hate and hard to not hate him at the same time to put it plainly: He had killed her. He had eventually killed Cloud and the others. He was a monster.
And yet...
She knew he hadn't always been that way. He had once been a 'good' man. Zack had considered him a friend. While she didn't know much about him personally, he had friends, he had a strong career and was considered a hero, though, definitely not to the Wutai. He had probably saved the lives of many people by slaying monsters in missions and the like. He had the potential to be good, just as readily as he had potential to be evil.
More than hate, perhaps she just pitied him. She had been in the Nibelheim basement with Cloud and the others, reading through those books full of lies and half-truths. She had spoken with Vincent, had learned much of what had been involved with Sephiroth's birth. The man had been lied to and used his entire life. It was... sad... and even further, knowing what she knew, was it any surprise he had gone insane? Especially if the 'truth' he had learned in Nibelheim had been tainted by Hojo?
Perhaps this time it could be different for him. Aerith nodded to herself silently. It would be different for him, different for everyone. If Sephiroth didn't lose his friends... maybe that alone could have grounded him? No...
No, Hojo would have found some other way to twist Sephiroth into a monster.
She ground her teeth and couldn't help but hiss. Hojo. That damn man... she actually felt BAD that Sephiroth had him as a father...
She wouldn't wish that on anyone.
Okay so:
First Objective post gaining Turk trust: Save Genesis?
Or...
Deal with Hojo and Jenova?
Could she even deal with them so soon?
No, she needed more allies, and, she needed to grow stronger herself. She had learned so much more of what an ancient was capable of after entering the lifestream. If she could grow her body and talents, she'd be far stronger than she had been during the hunt for Sephiroth.
She needed the Turks on her side, AND she needed SOLDIER on her side. She knew that without a doubt at this point. Saving Genesis would go a long way towards earning the trust of SOLDIER, but aside from that... what else could she do? Even if she was an Ancient, that in itself probably wouldn't mater that much to the SOLDIERs. They respected strength, and mostly, eachother, and it wasn't like she was a SOLDIER herself, they...
She paused briefly, a flicker in her memory. She recalled once misleading Cloud by telling him the Turks were interested in recruiting her for SOLDIER when they had first met. It had been a lie, but...
Being a SOLDIER was a source of power and influence...
Aerith frowned intently at that line of thought and stopped eating. The thought was a disturbing one to her. She recognized that she needed to become stronger, and that her powers as an Ancient might not be enough. But... chasing power was not something she was interested in, but, she might not have a choice.
She kicked her legs out once, twice, three times, fidgeting. Chasing power was a dark road one could walk. If not done very carefully, it could led to the corruption of who one was. She didn't think she could ever really go power hungry, it just felt sickening to even think it of herself, but... it was foolish not to acknowledge the possibility of damning herself in her pursuit to save the world. If she ever walked down that road as the sole surviving Ancient, she could do so much damage to the world...
Still...
She toyed with the thought of becoming a SOLDIER. Was that even possible? Did she really want to go that far? To be frank, did she have a choice in the matter? Could she afford to just sit back and try to influence things from the shadows? Well... maybe? Hopefully? She didn't really like having to kill things, or people...
She fidgeted for a moment before putting the tray on he edge of the bed and moving to the center of the room and knelt down, closing her eyes and clasping her hands together, she needed a question answered first. "Planet?"
She got no response to her prayers. Oh dilly dally, could she even reach the planet in Midgar in the Shinra building itself? She sighed quietly before redoubling her efforts, this was important, she needed the planet's wisdom.
"Planet?" she prayed again.
CHILD.
Aerith's eyes went wide. It heard her! And it actually directly responded with acknowledgement for once!
CHILD. FAIL-SAFE ACTIVE. DESIRES?
Aerith blinked a few times. The planet knew she had been thrown in the past? Maybe that was why it was so directly talking to her. It knew what was at stake perhaps. But how did it know to begin with?
PAIN. MEMORY. LOSS OF AVATAR.
Aerith grew confused for a moment. Loss of Avatar...? What did that mean?
She shook her head abruptly and refocused, trying to communicate as the planet did. "SOLDIER. FEMALE. MAKO. POSSIBLE?"
CALAMITY'S TAINT!
Aerith winced. Right, all SOLDIERs were tainted by Jenova to allow themselves to be enhanced and not die to the Mako. Hrm...
"SOLDIER. FEMALE. CETRA. MAKO. NO-CALAMITY. POSSIBLE?" she asked.
There was silence, as if the planet were thinking.
WILL NOT ALLOW HARM TO CHILD.
And there it was, and in a near full sentence to boot for once. If she took that path, the Planet itself would not allow her to die. It gave her a more hands on option if she wanted to take it, but... it still made her nervous to think about, and speaking of which, she had a request...
"GENESIS. DEGRADATION. CURE!" she asked.
DON'T UNDERSTAND.
Aerith cursed quietly to herself. She thought briefly before trying to force her memories of degradation down the link. The Goddess had cured the degradation once, she could do so again...
IMPOSSIBLE. AVATAR LOST.
Aerith's eyebrows furrowed. Avatar lost... in response to her thought about the Goddess curing Genesis... wait...
Aerith grew petrified. No, NO WAY! There was no way! Minerva had sacrificed herself in the future, there was no way she could be dead in the past as well!
FAIL SAFE. REPLACEMENT. COST.
Aerith trembled in fear. Had it killed Minerva in BOTH the past and the future to send her back in time? Oh Gaia no...
Aerith was resisting the urge to throw up, to cry and scream. The Goddess couldn't be gone. She couldn't be dead... wait... WAIT! If she was dead then...
"FAIL-SAFE. SECOND TRY. IF FAILURE?" she desperately asked.
NO. REPLACING AVATAR. MILLENNIUMS.
The response was immediate and deafening. If she understood right, it apparently took thousands of years to make a new avatar, a new goddess of the planet. She had one shot at this. Just one. The Planet couldn't do it's fail-safe again in the allotted time-frame. If she failed, it was over...
Uncertainty and fear plagued her like a disease, spreading through her body so rapidly and ferociously. What was she going to do? She couldn't do this... she... she... what was she going to do?!
FAITH. JUDGEMENT. HOLY.
Aerith went still, her eyes going wide. Holy, the Holy Materia... where had she kept it when she was younger? When it wasn't in her ribbon? She searched herself quickly before discovering it simply in a pocket. Wow... had she really just so casually carried it around like that? What if it had fallen out? She scolded herself furiously before pulling Holy out and cradling it gently in her hands.
This... this was a trump card in her hands. Without Sephiroth or Jenova active, Holy would be unchallenged, it would not be held back. The question was... how was she to use this? What was the right way to do so? She didn't even know HOW Holy could be used outside of combating Meteor. What were its true capabilities? Were there conditions and costs to using it?
She could admit, she didn't know much about it. Even the knowledge in the lifestream about it was limited. To her knowledge, Holy had only been used once before in the far past, back during Jenova's original reign of terror on the planet, and those events had been deeply locked in the planet's memories out of her reach. So... what was the proper way to use it?
TRUST. JUDGEMENT.
Aerith sighed to herself. The planet was putting everything in her hands. She rolled the Holy materia in her hand briefly before pocketing it, breaking off her link with the planet, standing up, and beginning to pace the room. She had a week or two hopefully before Veld returned, she needed to think on what to do, on how to do it...
Save Genesis. Keep Sephiroth sane. Kill Hojo. Destroy Jenova.
And then deal with any aftermath or future issues that came up...
Oh Gaia, how was she going to do this?
Author's Notes:
So yeah, I might have lied about not continuing the story anytime soon. I just decided all the sudden to write a chapter. I can't promise consistency in when I release updates. Eat me.
Before Crisis's references! Note: I did not play the game, but I have a general gist of it (Final Fantasy Wiki), I don't plan on going into it to much, but I reserve the right to use those Turks in this story, AND I reserve the right to maybe use Zirconiade.
So yeah, big thing: Minerva is permanently dead, and Aerith is flipping out over how she can possibly handle this. Let's see how she handles things neeeextttt time on the adventures of Flower Girl!
Review Responses:
Sango44: There wont be a defined update schedule, sorry.
I waaaant more revieeewwsssss.
UnLike Us: Big review! YES!
That contrast is going to grow and grow. In the effort to save the planet, how much of herself will Aeris give up to do what she has to do?
LOL Lifesteam. Hah. I almost want to leave that error.
I think I might have read them once. IDK how much I'd tap into them or not.
The shelf-ness of this story is... questionable. I update a given story at random as time allows. ^_^
Alma: Ask and receive. Hope you enjoy this chapter. Aerith is kinda flipping out and going in circles the entire time.
Lady Yomi: I hope you enjoy the ride then, its gonna be a fun one.