Calamity's Reign: Chapter 6 - The Return
Sephiroth stared at Genesis Rhapsodos, his old red-headed friend, stunned for a moment, before his face turned into a scowl. "It would seem you enjoy disobeying my orders Genesis."
Genesis raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"I seem to recall telling you to rot," spat Sephiroth.
Genesis smirked. "Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess."
"Loveless, act one, you never change," said Sephiroth, shaking his head slowly.
"Who the hell is pretty boy here?" demanded Tifa.
Genesis turned, drew his rapier, and twirled it before him. "Hero of the Dawn, Healer of Worlds. I am Genesis Rhapsodos, former SOLDIER 1st Class, champion of the Goddess Minerva, and a WEAPON of the planet."
Sephiroth frowned intently. WEAPON? Genesis looked nothing like those towering monstrosities the planet had released during Meteorfall. Then again, perhaps becoming a humanoid WEAPON was how his degradation was cured. Stranger things had happened. Hmph, leave it to Genesis to actually be cured by the Goddess he believed in. Sephiroth stole a quick glance towards the Puppet, both him and the pest had stopped fighting to study the new arrival.
Tifa frowned at him for a moment before slowly shaking her head. "Leave Genesis, unless you want to lose what little time you have left on this planet prematurely. Your not involved."
Sephiroth smiled cruelly, he had a lot of resentment towards his old friend, and it was long past due to see it sated. "Oh but he is Lockheart. Did you know he was there?"
Tifa grew confused. "There?"
"At Nibelhiem, ask him what his role was in what happened there," suggested Sephiroth.
Genesis scowled. "I have much to answer for Sephiroth, but is now really the time?"
"It's the perfect time, because if she doesn't kill you I swear I am going to gut you with a smile on my face after this," snarled Sephiroth.
Tifa narrowed her eyes. "What is he talking about pretty boy?"
Genesis sighed. "I suppose could could say I was the one who gave Sephiroth the starting push towards his descent into madness."
Tifa went still, she went very still, shock on her face. "You..."
She clenched her fists, rage emanating from her. "You son of a bitch!"
"Enjoy yourself Genesis, I have a pest to deal with," said Sephiroth.
"Strife!" roared Sephiroth, taking to the air and rushing at Morbunova...
Cloud was reeling. This man before them... this Genesis... he had been the one who pushed Sephiroth towards his madness? Why didn't he remember him? If not from his own memories, then from the ones he had gotten from Zack? He was livid, furious, but, now was not the time.
Cloud separated his fusion swords and charged at the Calamity, driving both his blades into its chest up to their hilts. The Calamity screeched in pain before swatting him away with its tentacle arms. Sephiroth took advantage of the moment and swept his blade as he arrived, slicing into the Calamity's egg-like growth and releasing a spray of black blood and cells. Morbunova screeched again and spun, swinging its Scythe claws at Sephiroth, who flew up and over the attack. Cloud charged from behind while it was distracted and slashed at it, releasing another spray of black blood.
Back and forth they went, giving the Calamity no chance and no quarter. Where one was attacked, the other would strike, forcing the Calamity's attention away to defend itself. Cloud had to admit, fighting together like this with Sephiroth was... a strange but not unwelcome sensation. He found his anger and hatred with his nemesis slowly giving out. As much as he wanted to hold onto them, he was conflicted. If he were to hate Sephiroth, he would by default have to hate Tifa as well...
He shook his head and refocused, now was not the time. He'd sort out that mess later.
BOOM!
Cloud staggered, growing unbalanced as a quake shook the land. He shifted his head, sighting a flying Genesis raining a stream of fireballs at Tifa as she sped along the ground evading them. He shook his head and leaped, joining his fusion swords and aiming right for the Calamity's face. He per-emptivly braced and readied himself. The Calamity reacted, slashing at him. Cloud swung, batting the attempt aside before splitting open the Calamity's face with his blade. It screeched in pain before batting him off it with a sway of its tentacle arms. Sephiroth chose that moment to strike, descending from above, his blade angled down. Cloud reflexively grimaced at the sight, remembering how Aerith had been killed in a similar fashion. Sephiroth drove the blade into the Calamity's egg-like growth on its back to the hilt before ripping upward, cutting it open and then leaping off.
The Calamity screamed in anguish, black blood and cells gushing out of it.
"FATHER!" came a scream.
Before Cloud knew what hit him, Tifa barreled into him, flooring him to the ground and knocking him away. She took off and slammed into Sephiroth as well, forcing him away in a barrage of blows before Genesis came after her. But time had been bought, and the Calamity was rushing away, rushing towards the pool of Mako.
Cloud swore. "Sephiroth! Its going to feed again!"
But he was wrong. Instead of feeding, to his shock, the Calamity literally tore its egg-like growth off its back, cut it completely open, and dumped gallons of black blood and cells into the Mako pool, into the lifestream itself. He was mortified at the sight, knowing full well the taint the lifestream was about to take on. Even Aerith would have a hard time suppressing that. The Calamity then gave a cackle of laughter, and dove into the blackening Mako pool.
Cloud made to follow before Sephiroth held out a hand to block him. "Hold Strife, neither of us can dive into that and come away alive or in control of our bodies."
Cloud ground his teeth, watching the Mako churn and swirl. The black taint began to condense, and out of the pool arose a changed Calamity. It was like a giant winged centipede now without its egg-like growth. It had grown more scythe like arms, its spider like feet had multiplied and grown elongated and sharp. Its wings had expanded in size and strength. The red crystal on its forehead had warped and extended, covering its back where the egg-like growth had been, like a protective shell. It's presence had increased again, a loud buzz in the back of his mind.
Morbunova hissed at them. "The Firstborn's will dies this day, the planet will follow."
Cloud had little time to ponder it's words. The Calamity was borderline twice as fast as it had been before, and that speed had already been well far faster than Cloud's. Sephiroth barely managed to dodge a slash of it's claw, Cloud was not as fortunate. A scythe-claw speared right through him, making him scream in agony. He swung his fusion sword up, partially cutting the claw, but rapidly losing the strength needed to free himself.
Cloud shivered, feeling his blood seep out of him, his grip on his blade loosening, his vision darkening...
SHLING!
Cloud lurched and fell through the air as the Calamity's claw was severed and fell out of his body. He became loosely aware of someone catching him and setting him down gently on the ground.
"Yeeesh Spikey, your really messed up this time, not as bad as the whole Mako poisoning time though," came a familiar voice.
Cloud blinked once, feeling a healing spell come over him, sighting his old friend kneeling over him. "Z...ack...?"
"Heya Spikey!" said Zack cheerfully.
Cloud cringed, clutching his stomach, blood still seeping out. He was taken aback by the sensation. This wasn't a dream, this wasn't the afterlife, he was still alive, in pain, and Zack Fair was kneeling over him, whole in body and alive.
He stared at him in shock. "Zack?! Your..."
There was an audible roar of the Calamity, cutting his words short as Zack shook his head, dropped a Restore materia in his hands, and hefted up a bizarre green/white buster sword. "Can't stay and chat Spikey. Stay here, rest and heal up for a bit, you've done enough, let us handle it for now."
With that, he watched as Zack took off, a white wing flapping behind him. Cloud reached out and grabbed a falling feather, feeling how real it was between his fingers...
Sephiroth had little time to acknowledge that Zackery Fair, of all people, had somehow just seemingly came back from the dead. He was putting everything he had in simply trying to stay alive. Never before had he been so utterly outclassed. The pest had grown into a full blown nuisance. It's dip into the tainted Mako had empowered it to an inane degree. Was this but a taste of what it would have been like to have become a god after absorbing the lifestream? If the Black Materia wasn't lost into the planet itself, he'd have considered chasing that option again.
Left right up down, his blade sung back and forth, not attacking, but merely trying to parry aside each slash of the nuisance's claws.
SLICE
Sephiroth hissed, missing a block, a red line slicing down his right arm.
SLICE
Another along his right side.
SLICE SLICE SLICE
Sephiroth flapped his bloody wing, trying to buy time and fall back, but the nuisance was faster. Each attack came from multiple arms at once, impossible to defend against properly, injured and weakened as he was. He was no stranger to death, having died plenty of times up to this point, he knew how this was going to end, but he would have preferred Cloud killing him over this nuisance, hell, anyone but the nuisance would have been a better executioner. The nuisance slashed upward, ripping open his chest, and then raised its bloody claw high into the air, bringing it down to try and decapitate him.
Sephiroth gave a startled cry as someone shoved him from behind and out of the way.
CLANG!
Sephiroth righted himself, casting a quick cure spell on himself before turning. Hmph, had Zackery finally decided to join the... fray...?
Sephiroth stared, dumbfounded, at the one who had saved his life. "Angeal..."
There, in the flesh, exactly as Sephiroth remembered him, baring the white wing he now had of course, was his old friend Angeal Hewely. In his hands, crossing 'blades' with the nuisance, was the Buster Sword. For some reason, to him at least, the fact that Angeal was using the weapon was more surprising than the fact he had apparently been revived.
"What happened to wear, tear, and rust?" asked Sephiroth with amusement, forgetting where and who he was for a moment, lost in a memory.
"Zack knocked a bit of sense into me, little help here Sephiroth," said Angeal, his voice strained.
Sephiroth blinked and refocused. "Hmph."
He cast a second heal spell on himself and as Zack flew up to join them. "Hey Seph."
Sephiroth glared at him and pointed down towards Genesis and Tifa. "Take over for him and tell him to get up here."
Zack grinned and flapped his wing. "Oh man, watching the trio fight is gonna be good."
"Unless you desire Lockheart to kill you, I advise giving her your full attention Zackery," chided Sephiroth.
Zack pouted a little bit before rushing down to relieve Genesis. Sephiroth stared after him for a moment, feeling lost at the casual way Zackery had interacted with him, even if it had been only seconds, its impact had been directly felt. It had been over a decade since he had last experienced anything like it. He... couldn't help but desire more of it. This was too much, it was an overload he hadn't had since he had begun to read Hojo's research in the basement of the Shinra mansion all those years ago. Angeal, Zackery, Genesis, all of them being here, alive, and on the same side of a battlefield for once...
Sephiroth tensed and forcibly closed off the emotions. Accused madman or not, he was a man of control. He would figure out what to do with them later, for now, his ally was facing off against the nuisance alone. Sephiroth's eyes washed over the contest. Angeal was far to slow to consider outpacing the nuisance, instead, he kept the Buster Sword tight to his body and twitched his blade to keep blocking oncoming attacks. He absorbed the attacks, keeping the nuisance's attention focused. Which meant Sephiroth was clear to get in one single free blow uncontested and unaware by the nuisance.
Sephiroth flew down below the nuisance and then up, stabbing into the nuisance's underbelly and dragging along his blade as he flew, tearing open a large portion of the nuisance's bottom side. He was rewarded with a screech of pain, a smug smile of satisfaction coating his face. At least, until the nuisance's underbelly started to rapidly mend itself. Sephiroth stared at it blankly. The regeneration was off the charts. Nothing short of outright killing it was going to work...
Sephiroth's mind was instantly whirling with thoughts and alarms. It hadn't occurred to him until that moment, but, the objective was to kill the enemy. Obvious of course, except for one slight problem. The enemy was his mother's kin, a fellow 'Calamity from the Sky'. Like his mother, killing this nuisance was so much more than damaging the body or going for a 'lethal' blow, if there was even a vital spot to attack. So long as a single cell of the nuisance remained, it would not truly die. They could disrupt it perhaps, but kill it? Even if they did so, it would taint the lifestream of the planet upon its actual death. This... was an unwinnable battle even if they did come out triumphant. Even in victory, the nuisance could still kill the planet, not that he cared for it, but he'd rather not be on the planet when it died. Not that he had much of a choice in the matter...
BOOM!
Genesis had arrived and was raining magic down upon the nuisance, driving it away from Angeal under his barrage. Sephiroth took the initiative to resume attacking. He could admit, he didn't have a plan to actually kill the nuisance. Short of dropping the Meteor from the Black Materia on it he didn't have a clue on how to actually truly kill a Calamity, let alone deal with the after effects of a tainted lifestream. For now, he'd continue to play his part and simply try to survive until something came up...
Cloud was miserable, sitting on the sidelines casting cure on himself every thirty seconds. Healing a giant stab wound that went all the way through his chest was not a simple task, nor did casting cure restore lost energy or the immense amount of lost blood. If he wasn't Mako enhanced, and Jenova tainted, he figured he'd have been dead awhile ago. At this point, he knew he was a liability if he actually stepped back into the battle. He doubted he could last against Morbunova for a second, ten seconds at most against Tifa. His fight, frustratingly enough, was over for the time being.
So he focused instead on watching the battle overhead. He vaguely knew of Angeal and Genesis, brief flickers in what little of Zack's memories remained. They had been SOLDIER 1st class, and... Sephiroth's friends? The thought of Sephiroth having friends was... bizarre to him. Then again, he hadn't always been hell bent on destroying the world and riding its corpse to the next. There was a time he had been a SOLDIER, perhaps... perhaps even a good man. He had been who Cloud had looked up to as a child after all.
He shook off the thought and resumed watching the three SOLDIER 1st classes assault the monstrous Calamity overhead. They had clearly identified it's weakness, it didn't handle multiple strong targets well. It kept trying to focus and kill one of them, only to be unbalanced and driven back by the other two. It was rare of Cloud to actually admit, he was a bit awed watching the three of them devastate the Calamity over and over again. Regardless of the fact that it was stronger than any one of them, their coordination, borderline teamwork, was extraordinary, they couldn't have fought alongside each other in over ten years yet those three outclassed how well him and AVALANCHE fought during Meteorfall. It was... inhuman...
The only problem was, the Calamity wasn't tiring, and injuries inflicted on it weren't sticking. It would only be a matter of time before the three 1st Classes were worn down and started taking injuries. It was honestly a miracle, even for Sephiroth, that he was still going at this point after so much fighting. It hadn't even been a day yet since the two of them had initially fought. It crushed Cloud to recognized how much things had quickly fallen apart in only a day's time. Sephiroth was back, there was a new Jenova, Edge was wiped out and everyone in it killed, Marlene and Denzel were dead, and Tifa...
His eyes flickered towards Zack and Tifa. He was relatively surprised to see Tifa still going strong. She didn't even seem winded, in fact... she almost seemed stronger than before. Zack wasn't cutting loose, but, she was doing well, far to well, for someone who had gone a round with Cloud himself, Sephiroth, Genesis, and was now fighting Zack. He knew how driven and stubborn Tifa could get, but this was unnatural, and he wasn't sure it was just the Mako she had consumed either. Something else seemed to be empowering her...
Cloud frowned briefly, his eyes darting back and forth between the two fights before he wondered if she could somehow be drawing strength from the Calamity. It had grown stronger from its dip in the Mako, and if even a fraction of that passed onto Tifa... well... Zack was going to be in for a rough ride.
Thud
Cloud glanced back, sighting Yuffie landing near him, a cure materia in her hand. "You got your butt whopped!"
Cloud scowled, but did not respond, choosing to simply let her help heal him silently. Cid, Barret, and Nanaki joined them a minute later, each coming off the Highwind that was circling a safe distance away.
"Da fuck man, watchin these SOLDIER boy's go crazy like this is sometin' else," muttered Barret.
Cid puffed a bit of his cigarette. "Yep, fuck if I'm going to argue against it. Let someone else do the fighting for once, I'm getting to old for this shit."
Nanaki kept his eyes firmly on one battle or the other. "We need to intervene."
Cid swore. "Fuck man, why?"
"Because the Calamity and Tifa are simply going to out-sustain them," said Nanaki calmly.
Cid scowled. "Maybe, but what can we actually DO? None of us are Mako enhanced 'cept Cloud, and he's fucked up at the moment. If that Calamity thing so much as looks at any of us funny were dead. And Tifa? Fuck, she hits us once we'll probably be in a coma, she sure wont be pulling any punches, she didn't for those kids after all."
The group went intensely silent at the reminder that Tifa was full well trying to kill them all, and had murdered in cold blood, killed children even. It was harrowing to think of what she had done, even moreso to think of how she'd react if they could get her to pull through this. Cloud felt a pang of dismay and despair. Knowing she had killed Marlene and Denzel was going to destroy her...
"So, knocking Tifa out would be the best bet, but, would that bloke she's fighting even matter against that Calamity thing?" asked Cid.
Cloud frowned. "N... no. At this point no. Even if me and Zack were at full strength and helping the other three fight, it wouldn't be enough. That thing is on a whole other level at the moment. We've never fought an enemy this strong before. Not even Sephiroth when he was in that weird angel form at the end of Meteorfall was this strong. I'm... really not sure what we can do at this point. We'd need a miracle in order to..."
Before Cloud could even finish his sentence, a red blur passed overhead followed by an inhuman roar. They all looked up, shocked, to see Vincent Valantine, in the form of Chaos, barrel into the Calamity. Angeal, Sephiroth, and Genesis backed out of the fight, watching with surprise as Vincent-Chaos ripped into the creature with surprising power. He seemed even stronger than what Cloud remembered him to be.
At this point, Cloud wasn't surprised to see him alive. Zack was back, so why couldn't Vincent be as well? That he was merged with Chaos again was a bit surprising, but, helpful for the moment. Still... would it be enough? He had his doubts...
"I have a plan, and if your willing, I'd like your help," came a soft voice behind them.
They froze, they all froze. That voice... it was unmistakable...
Cloud turned, his breath leaving him as he sighted who stood there. "Aerith..."
Author's Notes:
-Sephiroth totally ditches Tifa on Genesis, I enjoyed writing that aggressive first interaction way to much.
-Sephiroth begins to have the first pangs for his old life, but tries to squelch them.
-Cloud begins to have doubts about his current image of Sephiroth.
-The gang's all here, 'cept for Cait Sith, fuck that robot thing.
-Otherwise, this chapter was pretty much a fight-cluster-fuck.
Next Chapter will be the conclusion of the first new Calamity incursion. The aftereffects will go on for some time before the next major crisis. Consider it 'down time' after the high start of the story. Though, it will be no less important.