15: White

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"Miss Drana!"

A little blond boy flew out of nowhere as we entered the inn, his arms thrown around my hips and hugging me with a force that rivaled Vincent's mistaken embrace. His warm display heaved my escorts and I into slight confusion, no big feat for children like him. His cherubic face and mouthful of happy gapped teeth virtually rang no bell in my mind amongst the children that prowled the town's dusty streets. Granted, I said hello on random occasions, but other than that, I was no more an acquaintance to them than Sephiroth or a bucket. So their faces at the moment were all the same to me.

"I…"

"Don'tcha remember me?" he asked with puppy dog eyes. "I got a mean bug bite on Mt. Nibel and then you came an'-"

"Oh!" I yelped, cutting him off as well as figuring out his identity. How a few words could make everything come rushing back. In recollection of the evening in question, he'd been sitting out of sight by the general store, nursing a bite that Sephiroth said would be sure to kill him in his sleep. Happily rebelling against orders, I'd healed the boy under the pretense of just giving him an apologetic I'm-sorry-there's-nothing-I-can-do hug. Little did I know that he was smarter than that and would figure out my power— so cleverness wasn't reserved for a just select few anymore. It came even in kid sizes. Shaken out of memory, I patted him on the head, while struggling through a bitten lower lip, "It's, um... It's been a while, huh? What's your name again?"

"Des, short for Desmond," he told me, beaming. "I tried to get some materia for you so you could be friends with me and mine, but couldn't find any. So-"

"Des, you don't need to give me anything so I'll be friends with you," I said, melancholy but nowhere near disappointed. Being in the company of the men who accosted me felt like a major damper, but I tried not to let it rule me.

"But every time we asked you to play, you'd run away so we thought…"

"Th-those were just busy times for me. But, don't worry about it. I'm your friend, always and just like that. We'll play sometime, okay? Soon."

"Really?" the boy exclaimed. "Awesome, I can't wait to tell my friends!"

"Alright, enough of that," the stocky man announced, urging me on with big impatient hands. "Up the stairs with you. Saristis would love to see what we managed to catch so fast."

Intentionally faltering at every step, I was led out of the boy's venerating arms and up the stairs, jammed between the dopey pilot and the chubby white-coated man. I panicked and brimmed with excitement all the same over who I was going to meet next. Would this Saristis be as grim and nasty looking as the man to my left or goofy and plain as the one to my right?

A tawny-headed boy-man with glasses as thick as the bottoms of mugs paced the hallway on the third floor. A yellow notepad flopped back and forth in his hands while he spoke at a speed and in words I had to admit were far beyond me. He seemed not to have noticed us at all when we passed by, but the intense scribbling I heard behind me could have said otherwise.

We pushed through the door at the end of the short hall, where I was jostled into a room with various things packed against the wall, things not very inn-like, and a funny table in the middle with a computer on its top. At the computer sat a woman with ginger hair and a smug, squinty-eyed face. Next to her stood a man with red hair and glasses several sizes smaller and thinner than those of the man in the hallway. All eyes were on me, however. But the redhead's faded blue eyes were the widest of all. His mouth was agape, curled at the corners as if a smile wanted to shine through and snap it closed.

"An, Anton... Is this?"

"I, I remember you…" Shock ordered me to retreat, though the pilot impeded my path.

"You tell me, Sar," answered the fat man.

The gaping fiery haired man stumbled from around the table in my direction, hands open to catch a defiant nothing that floated through the air. His enthusiasm seemed uncharacteristic among those that surrounded him, but just the mere look of these people told me that they were altogether uncharacteristic. I felt lost in a sea of total unknown, swimming with dangerous alien fish wielding some higher intelligence as their secret weapon. Scientists. These were the fabled scientists that Sephiroth loved tirelessly to curse, that Vincent warned would do as many bad things to me as what had been done to him and countless others.

Yet the one called Saristis looked about as menacing as the child Des when he assaulted me with a hug. Brilliant and full of worthy curiosity.

He reached for my hands but caught only air in his fingers.

Not a moment too soon, a frightened squeal shot from a corner of the room, jolting me out of the wedge between my escorts. I searched all corners until I saw the most fragile man ever writhing in a little space next to one of the two beds present. His hair was stringy and sloppily tied back in a ponytail after having been pulled every which way prior to now. His face was sallow and full of deadly, incomprehensible fright. What was he afraid of? Was it me?

"Oh damn it all," the woman at the computer muttered.

"Haha!" the redhead shouted with glee. "Quelin, this is it, isn't it? Anton! I could kiss you. How, how did you do it?"

"Thank the wonders of modern technology, Saristis," his cohort boasted. "But I think our girl here would've been easy to find anyways with the way she was running around the plains like a headless bird."

"Oh really. Then I guess fate's been smiling down on us."

This thing called fate had been sticking its tongue out at me, though I didn't know what I'd done to deserve such injustice. The thrill and temptation of meeting with these people had passed. My body was now fraught with knots of misfortune towards my now fully appreciated jam. As this Saristis studied me with fervid abandon, as the goggled man from the hall suddenly appeared still scribbling in his notepad, as the woman grinned with cagey intuition, as the thrashing man-thing in the corner continued to sputter dire nonsense, and as the thickset man next to me spouted boastful words that my ears ignored completely, my heart sank.

My heart sank.

"Kit, Anton, sit it down. Pilot, you're free to go. We'll take care of the rest," the redhead scholar declared. "Jenna, take Quelin downstairs and see if you can calm him down."

"Sar, if you were anyone else, I'd kick you in the dick for always sticking me with this retarded piece of flesh," the woman regarded, rising upon long legs I hadn't seen on a woman since Tifa. She stalked to the corner of the room in which the frothing man still flopped like a fish and took him by the arms.

"Jenna, you know I don't mean to but you know how soothing a woman's touch can be."

"Charmed, but kindly stick that back up your ass." Keeping to the far edges of the room, the two made their way out, her applying as much force a woman could to restrain a wild and wiry ball of babbling male nerves. Though throughout her endeavor, she managed to always return my gaze with one of calculation.

My heart sank further as the skinny goggled scientist and his chunky balding counterpart took me gently by the arms, directing me to a chair that had been pulled out specifically for me. I was seated in the middle of the room, once more sandwiched by less than vigilant looking men.

"Now... you look pretty civilized to be something akin to Weapon. Kit!" Saristis called, snapping his fingers. "Time for dictation."

"Yessir." The one called Kit flipped to fresh pages of his notepad and readied his pen.

"Suspected specimen has been acquired. By human standards, its appearance is indeed female, five feet four inches in height, possibly one hundred thirty to forty pounds; skin is fair— or rather translucent?— and hair is considerably beyond waist length, coloration a light gray to white. Definitely not premature whitening, but it looks too exceedingly natural to be anything else. Oh, Kit, look at the eyes, look here. Heterochromatic." The scholar withdrew a pen shaped object from his breast pocket and pointed it into my eyes. A light flickered on in an instant, shocking me backwards. "Irises are green and blue, respectively. Pupils dilate with no discrepancies in size or shape by the average human standard. Hmm. No apparent body hair... Absence of pores? Or simply an absence of genes that govern body hair... Well, there are other areas such as the pubis that can be scrutinized to affirm whether or not specimen adheres to outward Ancient physiological criteria. I know, I know, it is a very awkward criteria. That will come later, don't worry, dear. Ahem, moving on— let me see your hand."

"No," I murmured, stuffing my hands down between my knees.

"Suspected specimen understands and can speak human speech, although to what extent shall be tested in a later battery of tests. Anton, you found it. Does it have a name?"

"Upon our initial encounter, she called herself Drana."

"Drana?" Saristis repeated with wonder in his face and tone. "What a lovely name. Tell me, who named you? Or did you name yourself?"

I said nothing.

"Aw, it's shy. Specimen seems to mimic a human fairly well thus far. Shifting eyes and closely drawn knees depict uneasiness. The hiding of the hands demonstrates secrecy. Anton, what say you?"

"We saw her disturbing some foreign mass on the beach," the fat man said. "Even from our distance at first, we could see light emitting from her hand. And if you've noticed, a light still shines through when she's careless enough to let her guard down."

"Ah, light? Really? Now I absolutely must see your hand. Please, if you cooperate with us, then the faster this will be over and we can decide whether or not you're what we've been looking for." Saristis settled on one knee at my feet, a near genuine expression of entreaty on his smooth but lightly creased face. But I shook my head, determined. It didn't matter if they already knew what was wrong with my hand or not, the sight would have only confirmed their suspicions and prompt them to begin their evil tests at once.

No.

"No," I said out loud.

"Please, we're not violent people. We don't want to get physical. We can't get physical, look at us. Let's be civilized, shall we?"

I scowled at how, sooner or later, his words would be lies great and big and fat like his colleague, but far more disgusting than anything I knew of in existence. Like that clump, that possible 'remnant' of Jenova sitting on the beach, as it ate and tainted birds.

"All we'd like is for you to show us your hand. Please?"

I closed my eyes against the smiling, pleading mask of the scientist at my feet. With time, I was certain that all their forms would drain out of my eyes like dirt and dust caught in tears. I was certain. If I believed in the power of my mind, the power of this body, my body, like Sephiroth would tell me, then by will these men would be gone.