"Your friend Vincent - he's quite a unique one, isn't he?" the blue-eyed man asked lightly, his voice still maddeningly cheerful. He turned his full attention to Cloud, Tifa and Rude. Goody.
"What do you mean 'unique'?" Cloud asked flatly. He had idea what the odd man was talking about, but he decided to play dumb.
"Quite a beast, isn't he?" the man asked, then laughed as if he had just told the funniest joke in the world. Cloud frowned at him and tightened his grip on the Ultima Weapon, not at all bothered by the sword's weight.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Tifa demanded harshly from her place where she was guarding Cloud's left side, his fists held at the ready.
The man smiled cheekily. "Never mind. You wouldn't understand anyways."
Cloud grew tired of the stranger's shady ways. "Who are you anyways?" he snapped. "Why do you insist on standing in our way?"
The man's pale blue eyes were empty and innocent, his mouth an "O" of surprise. "Oh my," he lamented. "I would have thought the leader of AVALANCHE would have been a bit…quicker on his feet."
A tight smile came to Cloud's face. "It's been a long day."
"I can see that," the man said conversationally, folding his arms across his chest, two pale hands peeking out from the billowing sleeves of his robe. "Well, if you really have to know, my name is Ajax, and I'm not going to let you get any further into our lair."
Something suddenly occurred to Cloud, and without turning, he asked, "Rude? Is this-"
"No," Rude said immediately. "This is not the Running Man. The man I saw in the labs was taller, and he *felt* different from this one."
"My, my," the man exclaimed, sounding impressed. "Quite the perceptive one! I suppose one needs to be perceptive to be a Turk, don't they, Rude Dominicus Sheik?"
Rude didn't say anything, but Cloud heard him inhale sharply. As an unspoken rule, Turks weren't supposed to have last names. Their pasts were - for the lack of a better description - wiped out when they join Shinra.
"How did you know Rude's name?" Tifa snapped. Cloud could feel her tensing, like a panther ready to strike.
Ajax smiled again, still annoyingly cheerful as he began to saunter towards them casually. "I know everything about AVALANCHE and the Turks. It's only practical to know your enemies, isn't it?"
"So everyone down here considers us an enemy?" Cloud asked sharply. "Is that why you took Reeve and Yuffie from us?"
"I'm not at liberty to say," Ajax replied, one of those infuriatingly happy smiles still on his face. Now that he was closer, Cloud noticed that the stranger was actually shorter than he was, a true rarity. The slight build and the jovial disposition made Ajax seem to be around Yuffie's age, but his soulless, ancient eyes told a different story.
"Tell us where our friends are!" Tifa demanded, edging forward menacingly, burgundy eyes blazing with angry fire.
Ajax shrugged gracefully, a look of mock-sadness on his youthful face. "Why worry about them?" he asked. "They're probably already dead by now."
//He's lying// Cloud thought. //Vincent knows where Yuffie is. He knows she's not dead//
"Tell you what," Ajax continued. "Since you really don't have any reason to be here, how about if I just let you three turn around and walk away?"
Cloud shook his head. "You're a liar. You won't let us escape. You intend to kill us."
Another one of those shrugs. "You're right."
His words were followed by a loud pounding sound, like an abnormally powerful fist striking a metal wall. Immediately, the sound came again, and Cloud realized that behind Ajax, something was trying to break free of one of the cells. He could see the metal door bending outwards as whatever was in the cell kept slamming against the door over and over again.
"Um," Cloud started. "Ajax, you might want to look behind you."
Ajax just stood there, smiling serenely, blue eyes devoid of fear.
With a loud crash, the door suddenly flew from its hinges to strike the opposite wall with a metallic clang that echoed down the prison corridor. Cloud held his breath, muscles locking in place, fully expecting some humongous monster to come lumbering out the cell, roaring and screeching. But instead, what he got was the anticlimactic appearance of a man-like creature that walked gracefully and quietly on two legs, just a human would. Only there was no way this thing was human. It was a pink, fleshly creature, completely smooth all over, with a bald head…and no face.
"Faceless Man," he breathed in shock. So this was one of the creatures Vincent and Yuffie had faced…
Ajax laughed softly as the creature came up behind him. "Is that what you call it? Very practical name, I must say."
Cloud watched the creature warily, wondering if it was going to attack Ajax before the swordsman realized that the blue-eyed man must have summoned the Faceless Man from its cell. It wouldn't lay a finger on Ajax unless it was ordered to. Damn.
"Surrender," Ajax ordered cheerfully. "And I'll spare your lives. There's no use fighting this creature." He gestured to the Faceless Man that had come to a stop at his right side. "It's very tough, let me assure you. You can hack it to pieces and beat it to a bloody pulp, and what's left of it will still keep coming after you. Bullets won't work either, Rude-san."
A quick glance to the left revealed that Rude had taken out his gun and was aiming it in the general direction of Ajax and the Faceless Man, his pale green eyes flat and emotionless.
Cloud was about to tell Ajax that he and friends were going to call his bluff when a low moaning rang through the prison corridor, chilling Cloud to the bone. Next to him, Tifa shivered violently, and Cloud had to suppress a shudder of his own as he looked down towards the end of the corridor - near the gaping door Vincent and the others had vanished through - and was horrified to see a pair of emaciated, pink arms sticking out the spaces between the cell bars, scrabbling at the air with raw, bleeding fingers. The pitiful moaning flowed down the tunnel like a foul stench, and this time Cloud didn't bother not trying to shudder.
Ajax suddenly turned his back to them and put his hands on his hips, staring down at the end of the tunnel, the Faceless Man waiting patiently at his side, still as the dead. "That thing's going to turn into an Evict," the blue-eyed man said conversationally. "I tell you, these creatures are so utterly-"
Cloud didn't even wait for the man to finish. His mouth was already opening and giving the signal to attack when his cry was cut short by a blast of light from the blade of the Ultima Weapon. He took one hand off the sword and covered his eyes to avoid being blinded. As he turned his face away from the light, he saw Tifa also covering her eyes.
//What the hell's going on?!//
A powerful tremor suddenly shook the ground, nearly throwing Cloud backwards into Rude. He stumbled and almost fell, the Ultima Weapon pulsing in his hand, showering the corridor with blinding white light intense enough to pierce the soul. He was blind.
"An interesting weapon you have there," Ajax suddenly commented, voice gone dead serious. Cloud couldn't see him because of the light and the violently trembling ground, but he thought that the man sounded WAY too goddamn calm for someone who was caught in the middle of an earthquake.
The tremors suddenly died down, though the metal floor beneath Cloud's feet was still quivering slightly, doing nothing for his balance as he took up his stance again, trying to ignore his blasted sword as it continued to pulse with light, as if it had some kind of luminescent heart within its cage of unnatural metal.
"Where did you get that sword?" Ajax demanded, visible only when the light wasn't pulsing and gone when it blazed brightly again.
"From a friend," Cloud said through gritted teeth, closing his eyes as the Ultima Weapon pulsed again.
"Liar," Ajax accused, suddenly sounding dangerously cheerful again. "Your 'friend' never would have given that sword to you willingly. That blade is linked to the Planet itself. It feels its pain." He cocked his head to the side curiously. "And it feels your pain as well, doesn't it, Cloud-san?"
Whatever else Ajax might have wished to say was drowned out by both the pulsing light from the Ultima Weapon and the arrival of another tremor, this one the most violent yet, strong enough to send Cloud reeling into the metal wall, his shoulder armor clanging against the cell door and sending jarring pain running down his arm. He threw one hand up and felt his fingers wrap blindly around the bars of the small cell window, a small act of self-preservation that kept him from tumbling artlessly to the shifting metal floor.
Cloud's world was just one massive nightmare. The glaring light streaming from the Ultima Weapon's blade blinded him, and he desperately wanted to see how Tifa and Rude were holding up, but he didn't dare release his deathgrip on the cell's bars. With his sword still in his hands, it would be dangerous for him to be tumbling all over the place. He could end up impaling himself or one of his friends with the blade for all he knew. It wasn't a perky thought, so he stayed where he was, letting himself be flung against the wall left and right. One of the lights embedded in the ceiling overhead burst, raining down stinging glass shards that sliced into Cloud's bare arms and opened up a thin cut on one of his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter and gritted his teeth to avoid screaming in frustration of his own helplessness.
A particularly violent tremor suddenly seemed to birth itself right underneath his feet, flinging him to the side so roughly that his head slammed against the metal wall. He saws stars for an instant before darkness threatened to consume his vision. His eyes began to close, and it took an extreme force of will to keep them open. Everything was lost in a haze of fuzzy darkness, like a blank TV screen with only the sound turned on, and then his head cleared.
Vincent Valentine was standing before him, and the limp form of Yuffie Kisaragi was in his arms.
"Is she alright?" Cloud tried to ask, but he choked on the heartbeat that had leapt into this throat. All that emerged from his mouth was strangled wheeze, not a very charming sound.
"We have to get out of here," Vincent said, voice sounding more urgent than Cloud had ever heard. "This place is going to fall down around our ears."
Cloud could only nod silently and gesture weakly with the end of the faintly glowing Ultima Weapon, indicating that Vincent should lead the way.
//Shit…Reno would be having a field day if he could see me now…//
It was only as he was stumbling away from the wall that he noticed Ajax and the Faceless Man had disappeared.
* * * * * * *
Fa-Li had to run to keep up with Titus' long, determined strides. She had never seen her ex-lover in this condition before, and it made her nervous…even scared her a bit. She was used to Titus being stern and stoic, only showing emotions in random bursts that usually caught her by surprise and left her behind in the dust when they vanished as quickly as they had come. There and then gone, just like that! Sure, Titus was the brooding type, but never like this! This was beyond brooding; the look on Titus' face was severely unstable, maybe even little psychotic. Not a comforting thought.
"Where are we going, Titus?" she asked fearfully as another tremor shook the ground, nearly spilling her onto the rock floor.
"Titus!" she cried when he didn't answer her. The insane urge to scamper up and grab onto his hand suddenly struck her, and she would have followed through with it if she hadn't been so sure Titus would shake her off.
Instead, Fa-Li satisfied herself with grabbing onto the sleeve of his jacket, tugging hard. "Titus! We need to get out of here! This isn't the way out!"
Titus angrily jerked his arm from her grasp, unfazed as the tunnel quivered, spilling rocks onto his broad shoulders and tense back. He seemed impervious, invincible - a man who was so far gone that he could no longer feel pain. That was bad. In all the time she had known him, Fa-Li had never truly seen Titus in complete/total/point-of-no-return pissed-off mode, and she had a feeling that she was seeing a vague glimmer of just how completely unstable Titus could get. It wasn't pretty.
Still, she believed it was her duty to keep her stubborn asshole of an ex in line so she ran and flung her arms around his waist, trying to get him to come to a stop and listen to her. Naturally, he didn't stop, and she ended up being pulled along for the ride, her heeled boots dragging on the rocky floor.
"Titus!" she snarled, tightening her grip and noting the tense muscles of his belly clenching underneath her arms. "This is the way to the prison cells!"
"I know," he said tightly, and his anger was an almost tangible thing in the air.
"If you know then why do you insist on-" Fa-Li's voice trailed off when Titus' destination suddenly came into view. Her arms slipped from around his waist as he strode up to the plain metal door, his hand reaching for the circular handle.
"Titus!" she gasped. "You can't! This is-"
Flinging the door open in one swift, angry motion, Titus suddenly spun and gripped her shoulders hard enough to bruise, the look in his green eyes stopping the words in her throat.
"Don't follow me," he said coldly before whirling away and disappearing through the door and the green mists within.
And for once, Fa-Li did as she was told, easing her frazzled nerves by pacing back and forth in front of the gaping door, arms covering her head to avoid being brained by falling rocks. The ground was still trembling. Oh yeah, the Burrower was one PO'd bastard right now. But why? *Why*??!!
Titus reappeared in the doorway, the limp form of President Reeve of Neo-Shinra flung over one shoulder. The man looked lifeless. Without even looking at her, Titus kept on striding down the tunnel, heading deeper into the earth. Fa-Li, of course, followed him, talking nervously.
"What are you doing, Titus? You know, you don't have permission to touch the prisoners anymore. Oh! Are you going to sacrifice him to the Hungry One? It just might calm his fury! Is that what you're going to do, Titus? Huh?"
"No," Titus suddenly snapped, voice low and cold. "This man will not be a sacrifice. He's not even dead, when he very well should be."
Shocked, Fa-Li stared at the dark head of President Reeve. His hair had tumbled all around his face and his body looked weak and drained, but when she studied him more closely, she noticed that his fingers were twitching ever so slightly, a small semblance of life still remaining. Her hand reached out, as if to touch that black hair, and sure enough, she felt the heat from his fever, pulsing deep within his skull. He *was* alive. Insane, maybe. But alive, surely. She had seen other prisoners perish under less harsh conditions than this.
Another tremor shook the tunnel, but this time Fa-Li paid it no heed. "How can he still be alive?" she wondered softly.
"His will to live is considerable," Titus said flatly as he carried the President's weight like it was nothing. "But in the end, it won't be enough to save him."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"Dump him into the Lifestream."
Fa-Li's eyes widened slightly. "But…why? He'll get Mako-poisoning, you know. The Lifestream is never quiet."
Titus casually batted away a plummeting rock that was on a collision course with his head. "I think Mako poisoning is a more merciful fate than what awaits him otherwise. His usefulness has already passed, and the *Master* will want to get rid of all prisoners quickly. Especially now that he, in all his 'infinite' wisdom, has *apparently* done something to enrage the Burrower. It's all been shot to hell. Things can't get any worse. The Master has…desecrated what little remained of our religion." By the time he was finished, Titus was trembling with barely checked fury.
"Do you still think of him as your Master, Titus?" Fa-Li asked quietly, walking slightly behind him, not able to summon the courage to travel at his side, especially when he was…like this.
Titus didn't reply to her question, and they continued walking deeper down into the tunnel, deeper into the earth, down to a place somewhere between heaven and hell.
~owari chapter 26
Author's Notes (again): Well, there it is, minna-san! Long enough for ya? ^_^ Oh yeah, and I have a little announcement to make! If you want to know what's going on with "Sink" and all my other fiction as well as my site, I now have a mailing list! Hurray for me! If you want to join go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catalina_updates/join
If that link doesn't work, then e-mail me, and I'll try to send you an invite. Just be warned that I'm still trying to figure out the bugs of this entire thing! O_O And a big THANKS to all those people who sent me e-mail urging me (in so many nice words) to get my lazy butt in gear!
Next…
Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter 27
The Ones Left Behind
"What do you mean 'unique'?" Cloud asked flatly. He had idea what the odd man was talking about, but he decided to play dumb.
"Quite a beast, isn't he?" the man asked, then laughed as if he had just told the funniest joke in the world. Cloud frowned at him and tightened his grip on the Ultima Weapon, not at all bothered by the sword's weight.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Tifa demanded harshly from her place where she was guarding Cloud's left side, his fists held at the ready.
The man smiled cheekily. "Never mind. You wouldn't understand anyways."
Cloud grew tired of the stranger's shady ways. "Who are you anyways?" he snapped. "Why do you insist on standing in our way?"
The man's pale blue eyes were empty and innocent, his mouth an "O" of surprise. "Oh my," he lamented. "I would have thought the leader of AVALANCHE would have been a bit…quicker on his feet."
A tight smile came to Cloud's face. "It's been a long day."
"I can see that," the man said conversationally, folding his arms across his chest, two pale hands peeking out from the billowing sleeves of his robe. "Well, if you really have to know, my name is Ajax, and I'm not going to let you get any further into our lair."
Something suddenly occurred to Cloud, and without turning, he asked, "Rude? Is this-"
"No," Rude said immediately. "This is not the Running Man. The man I saw in the labs was taller, and he *felt* different from this one."
"My, my," the man exclaimed, sounding impressed. "Quite the perceptive one! I suppose one needs to be perceptive to be a Turk, don't they, Rude Dominicus Sheik?"
Rude didn't say anything, but Cloud heard him inhale sharply. As an unspoken rule, Turks weren't supposed to have last names. Their pasts were - for the lack of a better description - wiped out when they join Shinra.
"How did you know Rude's name?" Tifa snapped. Cloud could feel her tensing, like a panther ready to strike.
Ajax smiled again, still annoyingly cheerful as he began to saunter towards them casually. "I know everything about AVALANCHE and the Turks. It's only practical to know your enemies, isn't it?"
"So everyone down here considers us an enemy?" Cloud asked sharply. "Is that why you took Reeve and Yuffie from us?"
"I'm not at liberty to say," Ajax replied, one of those infuriatingly happy smiles still on his face. Now that he was closer, Cloud noticed that the stranger was actually shorter than he was, a true rarity. The slight build and the jovial disposition made Ajax seem to be around Yuffie's age, but his soulless, ancient eyes told a different story.
"Tell us where our friends are!" Tifa demanded, edging forward menacingly, burgundy eyes blazing with angry fire.
Ajax shrugged gracefully, a look of mock-sadness on his youthful face. "Why worry about them?" he asked. "They're probably already dead by now."
//He's lying// Cloud thought. //Vincent knows where Yuffie is. He knows she's not dead//
"Tell you what," Ajax continued. "Since you really don't have any reason to be here, how about if I just let you three turn around and walk away?"
Cloud shook his head. "You're a liar. You won't let us escape. You intend to kill us."
Another one of those shrugs. "You're right."
His words were followed by a loud pounding sound, like an abnormally powerful fist striking a metal wall. Immediately, the sound came again, and Cloud realized that behind Ajax, something was trying to break free of one of the cells. He could see the metal door bending outwards as whatever was in the cell kept slamming against the door over and over again.
"Um," Cloud started. "Ajax, you might want to look behind you."
Ajax just stood there, smiling serenely, blue eyes devoid of fear.
With a loud crash, the door suddenly flew from its hinges to strike the opposite wall with a metallic clang that echoed down the prison corridor. Cloud held his breath, muscles locking in place, fully expecting some humongous monster to come lumbering out the cell, roaring and screeching. But instead, what he got was the anticlimactic appearance of a man-like creature that walked gracefully and quietly on two legs, just a human would. Only there was no way this thing was human. It was a pink, fleshly creature, completely smooth all over, with a bald head…and no face.
"Faceless Man," he breathed in shock. So this was one of the creatures Vincent and Yuffie had faced…
Ajax laughed softly as the creature came up behind him. "Is that what you call it? Very practical name, I must say."
Cloud watched the creature warily, wondering if it was going to attack Ajax before the swordsman realized that the blue-eyed man must have summoned the Faceless Man from its cell. It wouldn't lay a finger on Ajax unless it was ordered to. Damn.
"Surrender," Ajax ordered cheerfully. "And I'll spare your lives. There's no use fighting this creature." He gestured to the Faceless Man that had come to a stop at his right side. "It's very tough, let me assure you. You can hack it to pieces and beat it to a bloody pulp, and what's left of it will still keep coming after you. Bullets won't work either, Rude-san."
A quick glance to the left revealed that Rude had taken out his gun and was aiming it in the general direction of Ajax and the Faceless Man, his pale green eyes flat and emotionless.
Cloud was about to tell Ajax that he and friends were going to call his bluff when a low moaning rang through the prison corridor, chilling Cloud to the bone. Next to him, Tifa shivered violently, and Cloud had to suppress a shudder of his own as he looked down towards the end of the corridor - near the gaping door Vincent and the others had vanished through - and was horrified to see a pair of emaciated, pink arms sticking out the spaces between the cell bars, scrabbling at the air with raw, bleeding fingers. The pitiful moaning flowed down the tunnel like a foul stench, and this time Cloud didn't bother not trying to shudder.
Ajax suddenly turned his back to them and put his hands on his hips, staring down at the end of the tunnel, the Faceless Man waiting patiently at his side, still as the dead. "That thing's going to turn into an Evict," the blue-eyed man said conversationally. "I tell you, these creatures are so utterly-"
Cloud didn't even wait for the man to finish. His mouth was already opening and giving the signal to attack when his cry was cut short by a blast of light from the blade of the Ultima Weapon. He took one hand off the sword and covered his eyes to avoid being blinded. As he turned his face away from the light, he saw Tifa also covering her eyes.
//What the hell's going on?!//
A powerful tremor suddenly shook the ground, nearly throwing Cloud backwards into Rude. He stumbled and almost fell, the Ultima Weapon pulsing in his hand, showering the corridor with blinding white light intense enough to pierce the soul. He was blind.
"An interesting weapon you have there," Ajax suddenly commented, voice gone dead serious. Cloud couldn't see him because of the light and the violently trembling ground, but he thought that the man sounded WAY too goddamn calm for someone who was caught in the middle of an earthquake.
The tremors suddenly died down, though the metal floor beneath Cloud's feet was still quivering slightly, doing nothing for his balance as he took up his stance again, trying to ignore his blasted sword as it continued to pulse with light, as if it had some kind of luminescent heart within its cage of unnatural metal.
"Where did you get that sword?" Ajax demanded, visible only when the light wasn't pulsing and gone when it blazed brightly again.
"From a friend," Cloud said through gritted teeth, closing his eyes as the Ultima Weapon pulsed again.
"Liar," Ajax accused, suddenly sounding dangerously cheerful again. "Your 'friend' never would have given that sword to you willingly. That blade is linked to the Planet itself. It feels its pain." He cocked his head to the side curiously. "And it feels your pain as well, doesn't it, Cloud-san?"
Whatever else Ajax might have wished to say was drowned out by both the pulsing light from the Ultima Weapon and the arrival of another tremor, this one the most violent yet, strong enough to send Cloud reeling into the metal wall, his shoulder armor clanging against the cell door and sending jarring pain running down his arm. He threw one hand up and felt his fingers wrap blindly around the bars of the small cell window, a small act of self-preservation that kept him from tumbling artlessly to the shifting metal floor.
Cloud's world was just one massive nightmare. The glaring light streaming from the Ultima Weapon's blade blinded him, and he desperately wanted to see how Tifa and Rude were holding up, but he didn't dare release his deathgrip on the cell's bars. With his sword still in his hands, it would be dangerous for him to be tumbling all over the place. He could end up impaling himself or one of his friends with the blade for all he knew. It wasn't a perky thought, so he stayed where he was, letting himself be flung against the wall left and right. One of the lights embedded in the ceiling overhead burst, raining down stinging glass shards that sliced into Cloud's bare arms and opened up a thin cut on one of his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter and gritted his teeth to avoid screaming in frustration of his own helplessness.
A particularly violent tremor suddenly seemed to birth itself right underneath his feet, flinging him to the side so roughly that his head slammed against the metal wall. He saws stars for an instant before darkness threatened to consume his vision. His eyes began to close, and it took an extreme force of will to keep them open. Everything was lost in a haze of fuzzy darkness, like a blank TV screen with only the sound turned on, and then his head cleared.
Vincent Valentine was standing before him, and the limp form of Yuffie Kisaragi was in his arms.
"Is she alright?" Cloud tried to ask, but he choked on the heartbeat that had leapt into this throat. All that emerged from his mouth was strangled wheeze, not a very charming sound.
"We have to get out of here," Vincent said, voice sounding more urgent than Cloud had ever heard. "This place is going to fall down around our ears."
Cloud could only nod silently and gesture weakly with the end of the faintly glowing Ultima Weapon, indicating that Vincent should lead the way.
//Shit…Reno would be having a field day if he could see me now…//
It was only as he was stumbling away from the wall that he noticed Ajax and the Faceless Man had disappeared.
* * * * * * *
Fa-Li had to run to keep up with Titus' long, determined strides. She had never seen her ex-lover in this condition before, and it made her nervous…even scared her a bit. She was used to Titus being stern and stoic, only showing emotions in random bursts that usually caught her by surprise and left her behind in the dust when they vanished as quickly as they had come. There and then gone, just like that! Sure, Titus was the brooding type, but never like this! This was beyond brooding; the look on Titus' face was severely unstable, maybe even little psychotic. Not a comforting thought.
"Where are we going, Titus?" she asked fearfully as another tremor shook the ground, nearly spilling her onto the rock floor.
"Titus!" she cried when he didn't answer her. The insane urge to scamper up and grab onto his hand suddenly struck her, and she would have followed through with it if she hadn't been so sure Titus would shake her off.
Instead, Fa-Li satisfied herself with grabbing onto the sleeve of his jacket, tugging hard. "Titus! We need to get out of here! This isn't the way out!"
Titus angrily jerked his arm from her grasp, unfazed as the tunnel quivered, spilling rocks onto his broad shoulders and tense back. He seemed impervious, invincible - a man who was so far gone that he could no longer feel pain. That was bad. In all the time she had known him, Fa-Li had never truly seen Titus in complete/total/point-of-no-return pissed-off mode, and she had a feeling that she was seeing a vague glimmer of just how completely unstable Titus could get. It wasn't pretty.
Still, she believed it was her duty to keep her stubborn asshole of an ex in line so she ran and flung her arms around his waist, trying to get him to come to a stop and listen to her. Naturally, he didn't stop, and she ended up being pulled along for the ride, her heeled boots dragging on the rocky floor.
"Titus!" she snarled, tightening her grip and noting the tense muscles of his belly clenching underneath her arms. "This is the way to the prison cells!"
"I know," he said tightly, and his anger was an almost tangible thing in the air.
"If you know then why do you insist on-" Fa-Li's voice trailed off when Titus' destination suddenly came into view. Her arms slipped from around his waist as he strode up to the plain metal door, his hand reaching for the circular handle.
"Titus!" she gasped. "You can't! This is-"
Flinging the door open in one swift, angry motion, Titus suddenly spun and gripped her shoulders hard enough to bruise, the look in his green eyes stopping the words in her throat.
"Don't follow me," he said coldly before whirling away and disappearing through the door and the green mists within.
And for once, Fa-Li did as she was told, easing her frazzled nerves by pacing back and forth in front of the gaping door, arms covering her head to avoid being brained by falling rocks. The ground was still trembling. Oh yeah, the Burrower was one PO'd bastard right now. But why? *Why*??!!
Titus reappeared in the doorway, the limp form of President Reeve of Neo-Shinra flung over one shoulder. The man looked lifeless. Without even looking at her, Titus kept on striding down the tunnel, heading deeper into the earth. Fa-Li, of course, followed him, talking nervously.
"What are you doing, Titus? You know, you don't have permission to touch the prisoners anymore. Oh! Are you going to sacrifice him to the Hungry One? It just might calm his fury! Is that what you're going to do, Titus? Huh?"
"No," Titus suddenly snapped, voice low and cold. "This man will not be a sacrifice. He's not even dead, when he very well should be."
Shocked, Fa-Li stared at the dark head of President Reeve. His hair had tumbled all around his face and his body looked weak and drained, but when she studied him more closely, she noticed that his fingers were twitching ever so slightly, a small semblance of life still remaining. Her hand reached out, as if to touch that black hair, and sure enough, she felt the heat from his fever, pulsing deep within his skull. He *was* alive. Insane, maybe. But alive, surely. She had seen other prisoners perish under less harsh conditions than this.
Another tremor shook the tunnel, but this time Fa-Li paid it no heed. "How can he still be alive?" she wondered softly.
"His will to live is considerable," Titus said flatly as he carried the President's weight like it was nothing. "But in the end, it won't be enough to save him."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"Dump him into the Lifestream."
Fa-Li's eyes widened slightly. "But…why? He'll get Mako-poisoning, you know. The Lifestream is never quiet."
Titus casually batted away a plummeting rock that was on a collision course with his head. "I think Mako poisoning is a more merciful fate than what awaits him otherwise. His usefulness has already passed, and the *Master* will want to get rid of all prisoners quickly. Especially now that he, in all his 'infinite' wisdom, has *apparently* done something to enrage the Burrower. It's all been shot to hell. Things can't get any worse. The Master has…desecrated what little remained of our religion." By the time he was finished, Titus was trembling with barely checked fury.
"Do you still think of him as your Master, Titus?" Fa-Li asked quietly, walking slightly behind him, not able to summon the courage to travel at his side, especially when he was…like this.
Titus didn't reply to her question, and they continued walking deeper down into the tunnel, deeper into the earth, down to a place somewhere between heaven and hell.
~owari chapter 26
Author's Notes (again): Well, there it is, minna-san! Long enough for ya? ^_^ Oh yeah, and I have a little announcement to make! If you want to know what's going on with "Sink" and all my other fiction as well as my site, I now have a mailing list! Hurray for me! If you want to join go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catalina_updates/join
If that link doesn't work, then e-mail me, and I'll try to send you an invite. Just be warned that I'm still trying to figure out the bugs of this entire thing! O_O And a big THANKS to all those people who sent me e-mail urging me (in so many nice words) to get my lazy butt in gear!
Next…
Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter 27
The Ones Left Behind