The One They Call Beautiful
Chapter 14
I just finished running- which I hate- and moved slowly inside the mansion, due to the sweat and exhaustion of my muscles, to meet up with Vincent. It feels like he's training me for the Olympics or something.
"Hello Vincent." He was sitting at a table, gazing back and forth between papers sprawled around the table, working on many reports to give back to the head of Shinra, in the library.
"Hm? Oh, hello Daisy. How are you?" His eyes met mine as I looked at him with an "are you serious" look. "Oh that's right; I made you run 2 sets of breakdowns." He said nonchalantly and went back to the papers as my eyes burned with rage. I quickly calmed myself down so he wouldn't make me run again as I sighed in a defeated manner.
"What else are we doing today besides stamina and speed training? I need to work on my strength as well."
Vincent pondered as he put his hand under his chin while the other supported his elbow, "Have you ever heard of The Forgotten City?" His gaze turned to me with a slight smirk.
"Forgotten wha-?" I tilted my head in a confused manner.
666
We arrived at our destination in a few days due to the location being farther north. The Forgotten City was not at all what I had imagined. I thought it would have been ugly, infested with creatures and such, but alas it was not anything like that. In fact it was beautifully tragic. The houses were bear with no sign of human life. The trees seemed as if they were crystallized and the sky was as black as the night, however the crystallized trees gave us a lot of light as we ascended up to higher ground.
"This was a place of peace and once held prosperity." Vincent's voice cut through my thoughts as we were walking. "This place was once a home to the Cetra civilization, before the calamity destroyed them." He was short with his information and only gave me what I should know. "The Forgotten City has been an abandoned place since then, a perfect place to do your training." He smiled softly at me.
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"Stop dilly-dallying Sephiroth." I spoke bleakly as we walked through the Forgotten City. He was awed by the beauty of the forest and kept glancing at the trees; he looked like a little boy who never saw the outside world...of course he didn't, either he was being experimented on or training with me. I am one of the reasons he has never seen the outside world.
"Why are we here? You don't usually take me with you with your missions." The eighteen year old looked at me suspiciously.
"This isn't a mission; I'm here to work with you on your survival skills. I'll be damned if we don't do any kind of training, it took me ages to convince Hojo and Gast to let us go, I'm not about to let this go to waste." I unhooked the sword from my back and planted it into the ground. He still kept his Yamato as he did not know what training exercise we had to do and I had yet to give him the Masamune. We began to walk forward as I looked at a crystallized tree by the stream; it was the same area that Vincent had given me the first task in this god forsaken place. It was the worst day of my life.
"All you have to do, is survive for three days without me, if you can do that, I'll give you your present I promised a while ago." I motioned with my arms to the forest.
Sephiroth looked to his left, then right. "Are you sure this place will let me survive? It doesn't seem like it will let me out alive." His deep voice was a bit hesitant about the forest.
"Like I said before, survive for three days without me. Use anything at your disposal, think of this as a life and death situation." I said to him with closed eyes trying to concentrate on the crickets not too far from us.
"Did I manage to piss you off in another life or something? If so, I'm really sorry and I won't do it again." He joked with me, but I knew that he had no desire to leave me alone. In a strange and twisted way, I was his mother…sort of.
I chuckled at his antics and opened my eyes, "I'll give you some motivation if that helps." I took out a syringe and injected it into my neck. Sephiroth could only question what I had done. "That was poison, pretty weak right now, but if you can't find the green leafy plant to cure me in three days-which is in this forest- I'll die. You'll know what it is, there's only one place that it grows." I went and sat under the crystallized and leafless tree next to the stream. "Tick-tock Sephiroth." I mocked him and he ran deep inside the forest with his sword.
"I think I'll take a nap." I said to no one in particular and closed my eyes.
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"Tick-tock Daisy. You better find the cure, and fast." I turned away from Vincent and dashed into the trees. Stupid Vincent! I can't believe he did that! Three days of looking for the cure! What the hell is his problem?! I began to sprint through the forest to find that blasted plant, oh why oh why did he say strength training when it was survival skills? Did he have to inject himself with poison? I stopped running and shook my head side-to-side to get rid of all the negative words flowing through my head.
"Rule number one; stay calm and look for water." I said to myself and looked around the forest, which I have no clue where I am. "This is going to be a long three day process."
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I awoke from my dream with a darn green frog on my head. I shook my head a bit and it refused to hop down. I sighed and grabbed the frog from my head and gently put it on the floor, only to have it hop back onto my head. I rolled my eyes and just slid lower on the tree and waited for Sephiroth. Two more days, and I will see his improvement. Two more days, and he will have Masamune. I couldn't help but feel my stomach turn in discomfort. It felt as though something was burning my insides but I know it wasn't the poison, it was the visions that Lucrecia had talked to me about. She described how he had a long silver sword and walked through flames that he caused, his body did not suffer any damage.
Rib-it.
My attention turned to the frog on my head, "Do you think I can help him?"
Rib-it.
"I'll take that as a yes. What do you think about Gasts' theory about Sephiroth? He's supposedly a Cetra."
Rib-it, rib-it.
"I think it's false as well Kevin, you don't mind if I call you Kevin, do you?"
Rib-it.
For some odd reason I didn't find it disturbing at the least that I was talking to an amphibian, especially if I'm supposed to chill and not move for another two days. If I did anything that stressed my body, the poison would move a lot faster through my blood.
I turned my attention to the stream by my side and stared at it. I saw something shinning in it. I stood slowly as to not disturb my little passenger and walked towards the item that was under the water. The item was a golden key. My knees touched the ground as my hand went inside the cold water and grabbed the small metal. I inspected it slowly and I immediately recognized the details on the key.
I felt shocked and put the key in my pocket. There was a buzzing sound coming from my phone and pulled it out. It was Veld. I answered.
"Hello, this is the Rejection Hotline the person you are trying to call-"
"Dawn, we need you and Sephiroth to get here, now."
"Why? We only just got here; Hojo and Gast gave us permission to-" I stood up from my crouching position.
"There's been a breaching of Shinra information." I put the frog down from my head and continued listening to him, "The hackers have coordinates on both you and Sephiroth. Get out of there, immediately. I'm picking you both up." The phone went dead and I immediately sprinted the way Sephiroth had taken off.
"Today just isn't my day." I said to myself as my red eyes turned to a brighter shade and gained more speed. "Why did you have to be superhuman Sephiroth?" Dust cleared out of the way as I sped through the forest and saw his footprints. "He may be fast, but I'm an even better tracker." I smirked and turned to the right and hurdled over a large rock. All I saw were blurs of the same trees, a never ending forest of white. About three minutes passed by and a missile implanted itself in front of me. It had a countdown of 15 seconds. "I don't have time for this," I sheathed my sword used one of my favorite moves, the Quick sword technique. Faster than the eye can see, the missile turned into a pile of small, neatly cut pieces. As it fell, it looked like white snow…deadly snow that is.
I've been told by Gast that he's fond of this move, said that it's done so quickly he doubts anyone would be able to see my sword moving. Sephiroth has never seen this technique and I pray to Gaia that he never does. This is my triumph card; I don't want anyone finding out the weakness of my technique.
I turned my head to the right and saw out of the corner of my eye at least 20 men armed with guns about 10 yards behind me. "This feels like déjà vu. Like what happened at the cemetery," I said out loud to them, "the only difference being that you guys aren't dressed as Turks!" I shouted and grinned at them turning my entire body towards them. My red eyes began to glow again and I brought my sword to the level of my eyes with the end of the sword pointing down diagonally to my left.
Their guns were upgraded since about nineteen years ago, no longer the scrawny guns but now there were portable mini-machine guns and mini missile launchers. "…"
"Oh, the silent treatment? You guys don't like talking much, do you?"
"…"
"Fine, I see how it is." I pouted childishly, and I struck the man in the front. I stabbed him through the heart and snapped the neck of another man with my hand. There was shock among the eighteen people but snapped out of it and began firing sloppily at me. I jumped back slightly and went behind the tree for cover. I waited until they reloaded and took off the blood that was on my Nodachi. I disappeared and reappeared in front of every man slicing down across their chests and occasionally decapitating them. I caused death, left and right; it mattered not to me, as I was already immune to their final cries of death and their gurgles of blood. I did not finish them off without one being alive. We needed one for interrogation, and I was in need of a very thorough bath.
I picked up my sword and placed it back into its case and knocked out the surviving member of the people who attacked us. I began coughing badly and went down on my knees. My right hand covered my mouth as the other carried my sword at my side. I saw the blood coming out of my mouth and I knew that the poison had spread quicker than usual due to my adrenaline carrying my blood faster throughout the body.
"Dawn?"
I was surprised and pointed my sword at Sephiroth. He looked at me with his usual bored expression, until he saw the corpses laying around me and blood on me.
"Back so soon Sephiroth?" I stood up slowly and held eye contact with me. "Do you have the plant?"
He reached behind him and pulled out of his small bag, a green leafy plant, it was the cure. "You killed them?" He asked me.
"Yeah," I said casually and pulled the plant out of his hand, "they were tracking us and were about to kill the both of us. Maybe I should've left some for you." I smiled mockingly at him. I ate the plant raw as there was no time to chemically take out what I actually needed.
"I already killed some, but I thank you for that kind gesture." He said with sarcasm. "I was wondering something." His hand went under his chin.
"Hm?"
"You said that you poisoned yourself, but you have an incredibly large amount of Mako in your body. Wouldn't it have destroyed the toxins?"
"No, not for this poison. This one is specifically designed to shut down the organs, and can evade the Mako in the body when it's inside the circulatory, digestive and respiration system. First, it attacks the lungs, the liver, stomach, intestines and lastly, it infects the blood to the point of turning it into a black substance and gives a gruesome death."
"How so you know this?" Sephiroth asked me.
666
I was running with all my might. There was so much adrenaline flashing through me. I was so late; I was scared that the poison had overtaken Vincent. I didn't care that I had cuts and bruises on my face and body; I didn't care that my hair had twigs and dirt in my hair. I didn't care that I was crying with tears pouring down my cheeks. I knew that in my heart that he was dead.
I made it to the rendezvous point and saw him on the ground and he looked so pale. I ran even faster to his body. My hands became clammy and held the leafy plant in my hand as I fell on my knees with my eyes wide open and tried to shake him awake. "Vincent." I said in a timid voice. "Vincent, this isn't funny. I-I brought the plant Vincent." It felt like my heart had stopped as I tried looking for a pulse, but there was none. My small hands laid the plant on his chest and brought his large hand in mine. "Please don't leave me! I'm so sorry Vincent!" I put my head under his chin and stayed there crying for what felt like days, but it had only been about three or four hours.
I hiccupped while lying on his chest, I didn't know what to do, and I felt so lost. I couldn't distinguish left from right, forward and backward. Everything in my eyesight was a blur to me. "If this is what it takes for you to show emotion then maybe I should take sleeping pills all the time." His voice joked and lifted me up with him.
My tears had dried by that time and I felt numb. "You made yourself look dead." I said in a hollow voice as my lips twitched up and down trying to resist from snarling at him.
His eyes widened knowing that I was pissed. "Daisy I-"
I slapped him hard and I began to beat on his chest weakly, "How dare you!" I began to cry again. "I thought you were dead!" My voice cracked at the end and I stopped hitting him and just settled for holding him.
I felt his arms wrap around my small body and hugged me closer to him. "You needed to know how it would feel like should you have been late. There are consequences on the battlefield Daisy. I'm sorry, but you had to know how it felt like should you lose someone close to you." He picked up the plant that had fallen on the ground and gave it to me.
"So there never was a poison?" I didn't say anything to him after, all that mattered was that he was alive. But I didn't know what to do with the plant.
"No, I was never in danger to begin with." There was a silence between us, "Daisy?" he lifted my head up and kissed me on the cheek.
That's what I thought he was going to do at least.
Instead, Vincent kissed most of my lips and part of my cheek for what felt like forever but it
Was actually a few long seconds.
I never knew why he did that; I never knew what his kisses meant,
Until after he died.
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I paused slightly before answering him.
"I created it." I held the half eaten plant and set it on fire with my fire Materia.
The day Vincent faked his death, I was so angry and I still am. His real eternal slumber had reminded me of the plant and I had created the poison during the days that I had to watch over a still innocent minded Sephiroth.
We both heard a commotion of what sounded like a helicopter and looked up to see a large black Shinra copter with tinted windows coming our way, and fast. I took out my sword as Sephiroth prepared into his own stance with Yamato. Veld appeared as the one controlling it.
"Get in; they're going to send an even larger wave in a few minutes." His voice wavered a bit in the middle of his sentence. This meant big business if Veld was nervous. We dashed inside the aircraft and took our seats as we saw two large vehicles coming our way. Veld immediately pulled us up in the air as the door closed and they began shooting at us.
I looked behind us and saw what was on the two vehicles.
"Avalanche."
I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I appreciate those who have been patient with me. Don't forget to comment/Review. :)