Ah crap. I accidently overwrote this chapter. ; ; Ah well. If I wrote something important in the Author's Notes, it's gone now. Pretend this has merit. ;)
Godsent, Regrettably
By: SilverKnight
Chapter 4: Stupid is as Stupid Plans
"Hi, I'm back the dead, can you help me?"
--Sephiroth
Sephiroth was royally pissed. Words simply couldn't suffice.
While floating in the nothingness of what he once assumed was Hell, he believed that anything was better than the boredom eating away at what lucidity death had brought him. Well, once the wench dropped the bomb - with far too much glee, he mused - he effectively scratched that notion. He immediately transcended the ever-present, if somewhat muted, annoyance and bitterness of his situation, and his mood escalated into a boiling rage and contempt for everyone and everything that wasn't him.
The Planet was just flat-out playing dirty, now.
In all of his thirty-some odd years of life (give or take the times in which his body was rotting at the bottom of a dank cave somewhere), he could not remember a time in which he felt so utterly helpless, worthless, and chock full of resentment that he wanted to take it out on the entire world. (Somehow, the whole Meteor fiasco was strangely absent from his train of thought.) No, it wasn't enough that he was forced back against his will to serve the Planet. It wasn't enough that he was forced to deal with the perpetual nagging of the pink nightmare; which, in his haggard mind, was nothing short of diabolical in its cruelty. It wasn't even enough that he was forced to rely upon her to gain the information needed for his quest.
No.
Now he had to rely on Strife.
Of all the people in the world, he had no other choice than to find and willingly submit to the authority of a man whose hairstyle of choice bore an uncanny resemblance to an unkempt, malnourished chocobo's. And he had to go about submitting in a way that would:
1) Not get him killed again, and;
2) Regain enough trust in order to be accepted in the manner necessary to accomplish his goal.
And to top it all off, he had to do this while having their dear friend whom he had murdered just to spite them skulking over his shoulder, giving him orders without them knowing about it, because even if he did tell them the truth, they would decree him insane and kill him on the spot.
Indeed, if there was a Hell anywhere in the universe, Sephiroth had unwittingly stumbled into it and was now hopelessly stuck in the mire. And he had decided that Hell's lead demon, the Grand Poobah of his torment, currently went by the alias 'Aeris Gainsborough'. The way her lips pulled back into that cat-eat-mouse grin - which would have looked positively evil if it were on another's face; say, for instance, his - and the way her eyes danced with mirth at his reaction; oh no, meager words could never fully highlight the scope of his fury and hatred of all things remotely sentient in the universe.
"Deal's off."
But he was determined to try, anyway.
She gaped at him, perplexed. "What?"
He, in turn, scowled deeply. Or, perhaps, more deeply than he had been previously. "Do you have difficulty understanding the spoken language? Deal's off. I will not partake in this exercise of idiocy any longer!"
Her fine chestnut brows furrowed, that insidiously gleeful smile still clinging to the corners of her mouth. "Why's that?"
"Why, you ask?" he replied with a fanged grin of his own. "How in the hell can the Planet possibly think Strife has the leadership skills and mental capacity necessary to pull off something of this nature?"
Her smile slowly vanished as she tilted her head to the side in what Sephiroth had now dubbed 'the Labrador Maneuver' in his mind. "Cloud had enough leadership skills to guide AVALANCHE to you, and had more than enough to rally them to defeat you."
His slit eyes narrowed further, the Mako glow intensifying. "He guided AVALANCHE to me because I led him around by the nose the entire time," he retorted darkly. "And as far as 'rallying the troops' to kill me? Doubtful, and inaccurate besides. Had 'Mother Dearest' not panicked and forced her will upon me, I assure you, the outcome would have been much different."
"Sure, blame it on her," Aeris mumbled cheekily.
His fingers twitched for something to squeeze without mercy. The hilt of Masamune or the shrew's pretty little neck would have done nicely. "You have followed Strife around yourself, Cetra, you know of his 'leadership skills' first hand, which is thus; stumble along blindly, hitting every trap and pitfall along the way. That's - "
Suddenly, he stopped, his mind turning over the idea of Strife's usefulness to his mission. Absently, his hand went to his chin as he weighed the pros and cons. He outright refused to follow the younger man's lead, however he couldn't deny that his former-puppet's uncanny ability to find trouble was unsurpassed. Strife was a terrible leader, but he was an excellent blood-hound, and letting him do all the dirty-work saved Sephiroth the trouble of finding his quarry via his own tracking skills and instead allowed him to focus entirely on how to properly and expediently kill them. He hated to admit it, but it had possibilities.
He ignored Aeris watching with blatant fascination as he analyzed his current situation, determining the course of action he needed to take. Hunting down Strife and the other members of AVALANCHE was a non-issue, but he could hardly knock of Strife's door and say, "Hi, I'm back from the dead, can you help me?" Furthermore, he wasn't about to spend any more time alone with his failed clone than was absolutely necessary, and speaking to him individually - and asking him for his help, of all the humiliating things - was simply not going to happen; not in this life or any other. Perhaps, though, if it were possible to round them together and force them to see that some sort of truce was in order, they would be willing to listen. Either that, or face certain death by his hand. Indeed, it had many possibilities.
"Hmm," he hummed to himself, tapping a finger against his pursed lips. "After careful consideration of the situation at hand, I have come to the conclusion that Strife's interference in these events may yet prove fruitful, and that in the best interest of my mission, I should make an attempt to see that a temporary alliance with me would be in his best interest."
"You're not going to try and kill him, are you?" she asked, her large emerald eyes slightly glazed over. He half-heartedly wondered if she understood half the word he used, distrusting of Shinra's educational system. Ignorance bred ignorance and all that rot.
Sephiroth waved a hand dismissively, his aquamarine orbs focusing on the corner as he found it infinitely more interesting than the Cetra. "Dead men don't prove very useful," he answered dully, "and I doubt any of his little friends would agree to my request should they find their fearless leader spiked atop my Masamune." The word slipped from his mouth before he remembered that he no longer had his beloved katana in his possession, and for half a second, a stricken expression crossed his perfect aristocratic features. The thought that Strife might have taken it as a trophy flickered through his mind, and a muscle in his cheek ticked of its own volition. If Strife laid one stubby finger on Masamune, so help him, he was going to shove his fist so far down that idiot's throat -
Abruptly, he shook his head. He would worry about petty vengeance later. "We're wasting time here," he declared, straightening his black leather gloves out of habit as he strode for the door. "We'd best get going."
Aeris blinked. "But what about the storm?"
He gripped the bronze handle and turned, striding out of his room with unnatural grace. "I'm certain the lovely owner of this resting establishment would be more than happy to lend me some of his belongings."
She scampered along next to him, that same doe-eyed look on her oval face. He was growing to hate that expression. "You're not going to kill him, are you?"
'Keep nagging me about it, and I just might,' he snapped mentally, stomping down the ruby-carpeted steps. Blood and gore might have been hell to clean from his clothing, but he was tempted to throw vanity to the wind and crush the little man, anyway, just to piss the pink harpy off. It would serve her right. "What concern of it is yours?"
"You shouldn't kill him, it's wrong!" she exclaimed, her expression twisted with worry and indignation. He was beginning to hate that expression, too.
"And what if he were to alert someone of our presence and ruin my plan?" he retorted, deciding not to highlight his earlier intimidation of the man as it would effectively derail his own argument. Simultaneously, he noted that he was arguing against his own spoken words from two days ago, and garnered the necessary refutation for when she would surely fling his words back at him.
And yet, instead of taking the obvious, logical argument, she shot back, "You don't even have a plan!"
He nearly sighed. Why was he surprised? "Oh ye of little faith," he quipped for a reason beyond him, a faux smirk tugging his lips as he glanced over his shoulder to her. How he loathed her so. "I've done far more difficult missions than this; it can not and will not be that difficult to gather your friends in a manner of my choosing. I succeeded once, and I will do so again."
She glared warily. "I'm going to quote you on that."
He harrumphed, remarking, "Yes, you do that." He straightened his gloves again, flexing his hands inside them and enjoying the squeak of the leather as they moved. Small favors. "Now be quiet and come on; I have a few needed items to procure."
"I could have sworn you said something about finishing tougher missions than this," Aeris said with a half-cocked smirk.
Sephiroth ground his teeth together and shot a glare that promised a slow death over his shoulder. Damnable harpy and her lack of a corporeal form that he could properly kill. "I fail to see how distracting me from forming a viable plan by reminding me that I've yet to think of one is going to help in any way."
"I said I was going to quote you on it, remember?" she replied. "And I remember you agreed to that arrangement."
"If you're going to quote me, at least get it right," he barked, turning to face the crinkled paper laying on his lap, covered in elegant if scrawled handwriting. His chiseled lips curling in annoyance, he ripped the paper from the yellow note-pad he had 'borrowed' from the hapless tender Merv, wadded it into a ball, and chucked it into a nearby gray plastic waste-bin. Seven hours. He had been sitting here in this rickety wicker chair in some dank little hovel of an inn outside of Bone Village for seven hours, using all of his formidable knowledge at tactics, subterfuge, and espionage to concoct a brilliant plan that would lure all of his technically-former enemies together in a manner that would allow him complete control of the situation. However, all he had managed to accomplish in these seven hours was giving himself a headache, a stiff back, and a rather impressive pyramid of discarded wads of yellow paper sitting in the corner of his cramped little hotel room.
Much to his chagrin, the ex-general was beginning to realize that scheming a deliciously underhanded and subtle plot was a lot harder than Jenova made it out to be. Of course, he brooded, she had two-thousand plus years to come up with one, while he had...well, he knew it was significantly less than two millennia. Damn it. He glanced over his shoulder again to the tickled apparition and his frown deepened a fraction. "If you have nothing to offer me, would you mind not perching over my shoulder like that? It's bothersome."
She shrugged impishly, bending over slightly to get a better view of the notepad in his grasp. "What? I just want to help."
He snorted. "Help? From you?" Chuckling, he appeared to ponder her request for a moment; lips pursed minutely and blue-green eyes focused aimlessly upward. Then, he turned in his seat to gaze up at her. "You want to help, hm? Very well, you can help."
Aeris' face brightened with pleasant surprise. "Really?"
He nodded quickly. "Really. First thing you can do..." He lifted his hand and pointed to the far corner of the room, all traces of humor vanishing from his expression. "Stand over there."
She huffed angrily as he returned to his notepad, stamping her foot and slapping her hands to her hips. "Why do you have to be such a jerk about it? I can contribute!"
Scowling, he slammed the yellowed pad onto the rickety wooden desk, swiveling in the unforgiving seat with his powerful hands clamped around the armrests. "Fine, what do you have in mind?"
The ardent ferocity in her ashen, lightly freckled face dwindled into bemusement, her brows tucked down in thought. "Well...what do you have in mind?"
He sneered. "You have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say, do you?"
"I'm just wondering, that's all!" she snapped in return. "If I know what you're having trouble with, maybe I can help come up with something."
His back tensed, clenching his teeth. "I'm not 'having trouble', like some remedial student," he censured tartly, the words leaving his lips in a quiet hiss. "It's simply proving more difficult than I'd initially anticipated to strike the proper balance between catching their interest and their suspicion. Send a message that's too mundane, and they won't come; send one that's bound to catch their eye, and they'll be too ready for a fight to bother listening. And if they suspect that I have absolutely anything to do with it at all, no matter how remote the chance, they'll arrive with guns blazing." He glowered at her through his silver locks. "So, any suggestions?"
She remained silent, staring aimlessly as she thought. Absent-mindedly, she reached up and began twirling a lock of hair around her finger, tugging on it now and again. The movement, slight as it was, made his insides coil in knots with contempt. Everything about her was saccharine sweet that oozed innocence and purity, from her ghastly pink and red attire to her pretty braid to her wide green eyes. The more time he spent around her, the more disgusted of her he became. Stupid harpy! She had been brutally murdered and she still had the nerve to think the best of things.
A moment passed in silence, save his own murderous thoughts toward Aeris, before he recognized that he had actually been expecting an answer of some kind, even if just to ridicule it. He shook his head, returning to the front and pulling the notepad into his lap again, determined to ignore the diminutive Cetra and her even smaller IQ. "Forget I asked. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work, so stop pestering me."
She moved in place, shifting her weight to one leg judging by the squeak of the floorboard, he unconsciously noted, and said, "Why don't you just, I don't know, invite them somewhere?"
He couldn't help but slowly pivot to stare at her, eyes squinted in a mix of incomprehension and incredulity. "Why don't I what?"
She wilted a little under his scrutiny, her petite form shrinking in on herself, and shrugged. "I mean, leave some sort of anonymous note or message that tells them to meet some place."
He continued to gape, the gears in his head turning. "I have to commend you," he stated. "That is, without a doubt, the stupidest idea I have ever heard in my entire life, and I know you've met Palmer."
Her expression crumpled into a disappointed pout. "It's not that bad." Her jade eyes flickered with something he couldn't quite recognize, nodding her head in the direction of the pile of crushed yellow paper sitting in the corner. "And it can't be any worse than your ideas over there."
'Was that a shot?' He grit his teeth. "Even if they were stupid enough to fall for something like that, it still runs into the same problems I've been having all night. If these 'notes' weren't out-of-the-ordinary, they'd disregard it. Too suspect, and they'd come prepared for a fight." He looked away, closing his eyes and waving his hand dismissively. "Besides, there's little I could say on these 'notes' that wouldn't give me away, regardless."
She deliberated for a moment. He wondered if he cared. ...Nope, he didn't. "Not if they're written by me."
The gears quickened their pace. "What are you talking about?"
The Cetra seemed to grow more confident when he didn't immediately shoot her down again. "Write a note that looks like it's written by me and leave it where they'll see it. Make them think that I'm back, and they'll come."
"How can you be certain of that?" he questioned warily.
She inhaled, schooling her features. "They're my friends. They watched me die. Just like you, if there's a chance that I'm alive, they'll come looking."
An eyebrow rose. 'A little ego-centric, don't you think, fair Cetra?' "They'd never fall for it." Was he actually considering her plan? "Even Strife isn't that dumb."
Her rose-colored lips curled down. "Cloud's not dumb." He harrumphed, begging to differ. "And they'll never see a tactic like that coming from you."
He scowled, retorting, "That's because it's stupid."
She grinned. Always with the obnoxiously bright grin. He loathed her. "Which is exactly why they wouldn't expect it."
He wasn't sure whether to be enraged that her plan held merit when so many of his fell apart within minutes, or disturbed that her last sentence made a shred of sense. He just barely resisted the urge to give himself a good punch to the face. With a growl, he begrudgingly tossed the flimsy pad of paper onto the desktop and crossed his arms, keeping his voice painfully even. Damn her. "Go on."
Sephiroth could not believe he was going along with this. It was doomed for failure.
'Meteor was destined for success, and look how that one turned out,' the voice he resigned to calling 'his conscience' riposted smugly. He told it to shut up.
After initially agreeing to the hair-brained scheme of hers, it took hours of arguing to settle on their location. He could have simply just picked a place and moved forward with the plan, but he knew that if he left her out of the process, she could continually annoy him about it, or worse yet, wind up doing something incredibly stupid even by her standards. So, they debated:
- City of the Ancients. Aeris, "I died there. Bad idea."
- Sector Five Church. Sephiroth, "I destroyed Midgar. Even worse idea."
- Temple of the Ancients. Sephiroth, "It's pretty difficult to hide in a gigantic crater in the ground. And not one word about my previous base. Not. One. Word."
- Costa Del Sol. Aeris, "Hey, I would too go there! It's sunny and has a wonderful atmosphere. Why couldn't you have killed me on the beach or something? At least then I could've gotten a tan."
- Northern Crater. Aeris and Sephiroth, "No."
Eventually, they settled on the enchanted forest that surrounded the ruined Cetra capital, given that it was fairly neutral, secluded, and most importantly, had plenty of places for him to hide, if necessary. Satisfied of their meeting area, they forged ahead to the meat of the plan; the note. He spent the next four days hunting for a sample of her writing once he concluded she couldn't hold a pen. Luck, for once, was with him as they set foot at the entrance to the Ancient City, where he noticed a carefully arranged knapsack that held Aeris' scant few worldly possessions. While she concerned herself with tearing up sentimentally, Sephiroth thoughtlessly rifled through her belongings and tugged out a small journal against her wishes. Another argument ensued, that ended with him completely disregarding her and reading the contents with a smirk, only to have him drop it in revulsion at the amount of personal details he had never wished to envision. That was a nervous breakdown waiting to happen.
Recovering as quickly as he was able, Sephiroth spent the next day and a half thereafter using every page on his yellowed notepad teaching himself how to successfully forge the delicate handwriting that covered the pages. Then he tore a page from her precious journal (with no small amount of grief from the shrew for it) and began to dictate the words she spoke. He managed to finish without losing his lunch, but was unable to fight the need to wash his hands thoroughly once the deed had been done. Having to write that type of schmaltzy nonsense became yet another reason to add on the 'Why I Should Be Able to Kill the Cetra' list he had been forming over the past few days. It just wasn't fair.
Then came their guinea pig. Valentine was obviously out, as he was assuredly sleeping away eternity in a rotting coffin, Strife had apparently been searching for a way to bring Aeris back to life (Sephiroth was highly amused by that tidbit of information), the ninja brat was undoubtedly stealing people blind the world over, the dog had no hands to properly use a phone with, and Wallace, Highwind, and Reeve weren't exactly the chatty types. So, that left Lockheart to spread the word. He believed her the perfect choice, regardless of her availability; she was certainly mouthy enough to get the job done.
Then he waited.
And waited.
And nearly died laughing as Strife seemed to have an apoplexy over the phone when Lockheart called him.
And then waited some more.
Currently, Sephiroth was perched in one of the glowing white trees that comprised the Sleeping Forest - still waiting, of course - as silent and motionless as a statue. Which said absolutely nothing about his spectral companion, or his patience. Aeris sat beside him, her arms wrapped around the trunk in a death-grip (as if falling would kill her, anyway, the dimwit) but still managing to wring her hands and swing her legs anxiously as she stared at the ground ten stories below. It was driving him nuts.
Frowning, he imperceptibly angled his head in her direction, grunting, "Will you stop fidgeting? It's distracting."
"What am I distracting?" she asked, nodding to the uninhabited forest around her. "There's nobody here except for us."
He felt a headache coming on. Leave it to her to make him defend a plan he thought wasn't going to work in the first place. Irony loved to sucker-punch him. "They'll be here soon enough," he answered brusquely. "You were there when they got word of that note; they reacted how just how you had anticipated."
Aeris smiled warmly. "They're my friends, of course I would know how they'd react."
"And the fact that we watched for a week before making our move was just an excuse to bond, I presume?" he sniped.
She gave him that mutated squirrel expression again. "It was your idea to spy on them."
"It was your idea to send them a note in the first place," he retorted.
"One which you agreed to," she answered.
He bit his tongue and forced himself to relax. It would do no good to go about shooting his mouth off and coming off like some air-headed twit, i.e. the shrew. He couldn't allow her to get under his skin and start making mistakes; he'd already blown his lead, he certainly wasn't about to start trailing the wench in the war of wills. Heaven forbid if she ended up winning; the universe as he knew it might implode. Not to mention his brain.
He began to form an answer when the distinct sound of an argument drifted in the wind. "It's about time they got here," he grumbled irritably. He hated being held up. Turning to Aeris, he grunted, "Stay quiet and let me handle this."
She shot him a wry look, fine eyebrow arched in clear amusement. "They can't hear me, you know."
Leave it to her to completely misread the implication of his statement. 'Idiot.' "But I can, and if you break my concentration by yammering some worthless nonsense in my ear, then - "
He immediately went still, words dead in his throat, as he stared forward and caught a glimpse of a petite young woman crouched atop a branch fifteen feet in front of him. 'The ninja brat. Great.' In her right hand she clutched her precious shuriken possessively, a carefree, lopsided grin dangling from her thin lips as she scanned the area below her. It was miraculous that she hadn't noticed him yet; a black figure amidst the pulsating forest of white around them both, and even as he scrutinized her tiny form, she still seemed blissfully unaware of his presence as she eagerly spotted AVALANCHE approaching below. Thus far, he had been very lucky.
So, naturally, it was all bound to go horribly wrong somehow.
It also appeared that, in addition to being leader of Hell, the little flower girl known as Aeris Gainsborough went under another assumed alias: 'Harbinger of Doom'. He found it suited her quite nicely, really. She did make him want to commit suicide just to get away from her; he could only imagine her effect on other people.
Aeris squeaked affectionately and wiggled in place. "Yuffie!"
Irritated, he sighed in disgust. The movement, slight as it was, caused the glow to glance off of his brightly polished steel pauldrons. Unfortunately for him, the youthful ninja managed to catch the small flash out of the corner of her eye just as she was about to turn away.
Their eyes met; gray against aquamarine. She froze. He concluded he would have to rethink wearing shiny metal armor during reconnaissance missions.
Aeris glanced between the two of them, and decided to state the obvious. "I think she sees you."
He snapped his head to the side to glower at her. The spell broken, Yuffie blinked and leapt to her feet, her right arm cocked back to throw her lumbering Conformer. Spitting an obscenity, he launched from his branch the same moment she vaulted upward, letting her weapon fly. It whizzed past his head in a blur of gold and red, sailing down into the underbrush as he landed on the branch she stood on seconds before, glaring above.
She landed lithely above him, already yelling. "What the hell are you - "
He lunged for her, successfully taking hold ankle as she tried to backflip away. Still screeching, he yanked her to him, pinning her in a vice-grip - or attempting to, anyway - and clamping a hand over her mouth. "Quiet, you little brat," he hissed in her ear, struggling to maintain his balance as she thrashed in his grip. "I'm not here to hurt y - "
He stopped speaking when she bit down on his fingers. Hard. Growling, he twisted and shoved her roughly against the trunk, enjoying the little squeak of pain it elicited from her. Miserable little tomboy and her freakishly powerful jaws. "Listen, you - "
He realized a second too late how stupid of a decision that was, when she pressed her sneakers against the luminescent trunk and kicked out as hard as she could. He was thrown back, teetering precariously on the ball of one foot before they both fell over the edge.
His shoulders and back connected painfully with at least five branches before his free arm wrapped around an unsteady branch, suddenly ending their descent, much to the chagrin of his now dislocated shoulder. Damnable gravity. Yuffie still continued to fight, yelping as she flailed against him. "Stop," he snarled hotly, teeth bared.
She grunted, feebly trying to cover her own paralyzing fear with righteous anger. "Hey, you were the one that came back from the dead and attacked me, jerk-wad, so you stop!" She wriggled and kicked him in the shin.
Vaguely, he heard confusion from below, and gathered that AVALANCHE now knew of his presence. His foul expression darkened considerably as she continued to buck wildly in his grasp. He was tempted to forget the plan altogether, knock her unconscious and deal with the ramifications later. "Will you stop movi - "
Crack.
Immediately, both Sephiroth and Yuffie halted and gaped at the branch which kept them aloft.
By the base, still humming with the force of the throw, jutted Yuffie's Conformer; buried almost completely through the branch and reflecting the dim glow of the trees as if the weapon had some holy aura.
Sephiroth would have laughed if he hadn't been so utterly exasperated. 'You have got to be kidding me.'
"Well I'll be damned," the ninja muttered.
His eyes travelled to hers dully as he felt the limb slowly give weigh under their combined weight. "I hope you know this is all your fault."
With a final deafening groan, the branch snapped.
To be continued...