17: The Whetstone
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What had I been expecting in my time of need?
I'd expected to be saved.
I anticipated being stolen away by a shining Sephiroth begging for absolution for the things he'd done, or a less likely Vincent who still wanted to pay dues toward Lucrecia who rested beside my heart and his, despite my turning him away. I expected the far-fetched Cloud, the unorthodox Tifa. So many candidates with little boisterous signs picketed and whooped at the chance in my head.
But in the hour that I'd been poked and prodded by the deeply fascinated hands of Saristis Noah and his inquisitive band, no one came to my aid. No Sephiroth, no Vincent, no Cloud, no Tifa. So I didn't expect to be saved anymore, regardless if I were jumping to that conclusion too soon. The feeling wasn't immediate, but existed nevertheless. I only looked forward to time passing quicker when I wasn't hoping to be set free. Like a living, forever flipping coin, I hoped and lost hope, hoped and lost hope again.
Finally, I hung on to the hope toiling within.
Because out of all the candidates to come to my rescue, only Sephiroth proved the most faithful. I was his treasure. No matter what, he'd be certain to get me back. Therein lied my salvation as an object, one cherished as high if not higher than another person's life itself. I struggled not to be especially flattered by this fact, but concerning my safety it was, regardless, a vast relief.
"Do I detect a glimmer of hope in those magical eyes?" queried the scientist before me. His voice seemed to drop like a spider on a thread from above. I kept any alarm in check and glowered in his direction. "What are you thinking? What does a thing like you think?"
"I think it is hope, Sar," said the female with the creamy-looking face. "She's obviously waiting for someone to save her. Someone strong, perhaps, who'll rip us to shreds once they see we have her in our custody. This means we should either be getting the hell out of Nibelheim right now, or we need arms until we do."
"Maybe our fabled general?" Saristis visibly shuddered. There was an unusually real apprehension these people harbored towards Sephiroth being alive. The tension coated the air like a toxic sheet. The redhead had risen to his feet, a bona fide expression of distress razing his face. "Well, I've kept some materia stashed away for just this sort of occasion; though I don't know how much help it'll be if anything like the late general arrives."
"I'm going to call the pilot back early," the woman decided, fiddling with her cellular phone. As if a challenge had been made the moment she extracted hers from her pocket, the red-haired scientist took his own phone in hand.
"And time to call on some extra arms."
Half the scholarly group jumped to life with the realization that Sephiroth or something equally formidable could be coming for me, and if they didn't prepare for his or whoever or whatever's arrival, they would be as good as dead. While I guessed their plans for me only in the simplest terms, I had no ill will for these people. I wished death on no one. Sephiroth, on the other hand, was uncontrollable. His humane side was hard to appease, short of putting my body on the line in some way or another, and such opportunities hadn't presented themselves since my old days as a hostage. Fortunately enough. Our seclusion ensured the sparing of lives. But not anymore. After this, Sephiroth would pin the folly of a few on the whole human race. Or maybe he wouldn't. The chance was slim. I had to trust that he'd reformed at least some of his ways.
I still peered into the black vortex of colorful dots and geometric shapes spiraling over the back of my closed eyelids.
"I don't care anymore," I whispered to myself. Then, throwing discretion to the wind, I voiced, "Sephiroth's coming for me. He's real, really real, and he'll probably be very mad at you guys. I'm not. I'm sure you'll do the right thing. I don't want to see you people hurt, no matter what you've done or will do or-"
"Saristis, she said it!" fat Emerson shouted. "That's confirmation that Sephiroth's alive!"
"Maybe she's lying," the woman remarked.
"It's possible. It's also possible that our specimen knows no concept of false truth," Saristis said. "I say we take this warning to heart. Just in case."
"Green, red, purple. Red? Sir, summoning is dangerous," the goggled man stated, fussing over a small duffel bag brought to one of the beds. The sounds of subtle clinking like wineglasses for a toast hooked my ears. I opened my eyes, turned my head, and studied the offending bag with its cordial little string of noises. I felt a dangerously familiar energy radiating out in all directions from it. Materia. A tinge of Sephiroth, an overwhelming swath of Lifestream. Spirits, drifting and swirling.
I sat up straight.
"Yes, I know, Kit. Summoning is very dangerous, but it's merely a last resort in the probable failings of all else."
"We have no gauge of Sephiroth's strength, sir. Postulate: Is he the SOLDIER general from the Great War with some mastery of materia and unparalleled swordsmanship? Or the untold thing in the Northern Crater hopped up on alien steroidal cells that brought about Meteorfall? Or some normal, quite powerless human being with only an ace up his sleeve?"
Saristis chuckled. "You have a point."
"Time to hold caution close to our little scientific hearts," noted the female scholar.
"You took caution not nearly fast enough."
My head came close to swiveling right off my neck at the uninvited guest of a voice. It echoed around the corner that concealed both door and doorway from immediate view. But what rounded the corner was not a person in any recognizable shape or form. It was, in fact, the ominously stylized single-barreled muzzle of a gun. This wasn't exactly the figurehead of salvation I hoped would come but at least my prayers had been answered.
I shook my head, relieved and yet dissatisfied, too. "Vincent… But where's Sephiroth?"
"Vincent? As in Vincent Valentine, the ex-Turk?" Saristis folded his arms in each other, disbelief suffused throughout his mediocre physique. "Kitton's told me a lot about you. You're in league with the WRO."
"Flattered you would know me," Vincent said as he came to stand fully in the flesh. He made a sort of U-shaped motion with his gun at the scientists. Seeming to take the hint, they gathered at the other end of the room far from me and him. Of the four, only Saristis and the woman whose name I couldn't recall, sported a strange look of confidence as if things were going to turn in their favor much sooner than later.
Then it hit me.
"They have materia!" I screamed. "Watch out!"
Saristis threw his hand up high, holding an orb of green materia beyond the size of his fist. As I watched Vincent physically steel himself beneath the flurry of his cape, the walls and floor shook with oddly abated strength, rattling every piece of furniture and wall fixture on their collective legs and nails. I fell out of the chair as air puckered in the center of the room above me and exploded outward in a flurry of stone.
Jagged boulders rushed sideways into Vincent, igniting a scintillating dome of red and green upon impact. Head-sized chunks dispersed and slammed into the back wall along with their more complete brethren, literally splitting the backside of the inn open with a crash. Besides the commotion of gravity-defying rock meeting wood, plaster, glass and stone, I heard an energized laugh spout over my head.
"I never knew using materia could be so fun," Saristis gasped.
"Just a pinch destructive," his womanly companion scoffed. "I think we'll be paying for that."
Vincent had only been brought to one knee after the passing rock storm, but seemed to sustain more than just a shaking of his foundation. Color flushed out of his arms and legs and in its wake, they dried and hardened more each passing second. I gasped, reaching out with my glowing injured hand.
"Vincent! What's happening to you?!"
Endeavoring to stand erect, Vincent huffed and grunted against the stone solidifying over his semi-immovable limbs. His eyes beseeched me as I lain on the floor. I understood the silent plea. A state of slow-moving petrifaction would be easy to remedy. So like a snake, I crawled on my belly along carpet and hardwood floor to his feet, grabbed a hold of his ankle, and wished my body to do the rest. Meanwhile, my gun-toting savior had aimed his rifle over my head.
Boom!
A dual-bodied afterimage ballooned above me, causing Vincent to balk unexpectedly after he'd fired a shot. He reflexively swung his gun at the blue silhouette, slicing it in two and ousting the pair of scientists from their high speed tackle. The gunman's stony forearm cracked loudly on the floor thereafter, splintering a floorboard or two in his descent, and the stocky scientist and his skinny, androgynous cohort tumbled and skidded over the carpet in a daze.
"You guys are real dumbasses!" the woman shrieked.
"You can't blame us for trying, you shrew!" replied Emerson.
I glanced back to see Saristis ready his materia for another grand onslaught.
Visible curtains of air spun and smashed together, racing across the ceiling and spiking straight towards Vincent. I grappled his calf but was soon yanked away by Emerson as the mini-tornado risen to life swept the man out through the huge space of missing wall in the back of the room. With a grunt of surprise, he rolled into the darkness beyond.
"Sar, we need to get the hell out of here, now! Come on, we need to go rendezvous with the plane." The woman tugged at the redhead's arm, vying to bring him down off his materia high. Cackling, he nodded and gestured to each of his colleagues to hastily recover and move out. Emerson pulled me to my feet then bent to hike me over his shoulder, which he'd done with substantial effort.
"Can you believe we fended off a former Turk? Oh ho, don't you all feel just great?"
"Sar, brag about it later. Move!"
--
Vincent groaned miserably as he lay practically in traction atop the broken pile of wall fallen from the third floor. Watching the owner of the inn and his child gawk at the destruction partially bathed in yellow light spilling from the interior, he scrambled out of the mess, unhooking his cape from a deadly skewer of wood narrowly missed in his fall. His eyes spun about to seek his gun which sat wedged into some debris a few feet away. Snatching it up thus, he rushed around the inn to its front, where he spied the band of thieving lab coats make their escape west out of town.
He gave chase, shortly joined by Tifa and a gaggle of the WRO workers.
As she ran beside Vincent, she shouted, "What's going on?"
"They have Drana!" he said, plowing forth in a spurt of momentum.
Tifa slowed to a stop, while her company continued to follow Vincent to the city limits. He removed a few marble-sized materia from a pocket in his holster and snapped them into place along the chamber, then pulled the rifle's butt into the crook of his arm. He took aim, though at no fleeting figure in particular. Vincent pulled the trigger and a dark blot propelled ahead of him like a comet.
The roving blackness caught on the underfoot of the scientists, lifting three of them off their feet, smacking them against each other and finally laying them in a heap on the nighttime grasses in measly cries of pain.
"Saristis, do something!" the woman cried as she crawled to her knees.
"Get back, I'm going to summon!"
"We need about fifteen minutes, Sar!"
Saristis waved materia as red as his hair, pulsing with searing light, in the air. As though he had written a message out with the orb's luminescence, the tiny flickering flames bolstered into a cap of fire then burst and rained down on the earth around him and his party.
Vincent and the WRO youths halted dead in their tracks as fists of enlivened heat licked and lapped at the surrounding air, warding them away from the kidnappers. Sparks of fire crackled and spat until more than just fists formed of the constant activity. An ignited silhouette rose high above the rest, burning and burning, roaring flames and stamping small infernos.
In all his life, Vincent had never done battle with a summoned beast. Summons were the Planet's raw power given temporary magic flesh. He knew that nature fought without pulling punches; that, given the occasion, it would demonstrate how much more of a ruthless force it could be than mankind. And tonight, he would face this demonstration firsthand, alongside a crop of untested but well-meaning young soldiers, soldiers who were even less equipped for the job at hand.
"Damn," he cursed under his breath, loading new materia. Positioning his gun, he yelled, "Fall back!"
"But sir-"
"This isn't playtime, move!"
Loping like an ape on fire, the summoned man-shaped giant of a spirit advanced upon Vincent, spitting magma over the distance between it and him. The gunman took one step back for every one step the creature took forward, trying hard to maintain a healthy gap away from the walking inferno. Even standing four yards away, the sweltering heat assaulted him and drenched his body in sweat.
Frozen blue fire shot from the snout of Vincent's gun, spearing the summon in its face with javelins of ice. It screeched and reared up, slapping at the stinging cold and flames that heretofore had kept its true face hidden. In a whirling fit, it pitched its head into the ground with such brute force that the javelins snapped and shattered to pieces. Face uncovered, the snarling demonic visage belched forth a stream of liquid fire.
"Vincent!"
"Tifa, be careful!"
"Whoa!" Tifa bounced just short a foot of Vincent's backward shuffling heels, hands landing on his shoulders for support. "Is, is that-"
"Yes, it is," he replied, firing off more rounds of ice-powered bullets. The summon reeled and frenzied from each volley but never dared relent in its advance. The brutish, hawk-nosed face and roaring jaws of talon-like teeth made Vincent wish he still possessed the power of Chaos. No other time would have been more perfect. The memory of that devil's spotless cruelty shone as a bloody hope in his briefly guilt-ridden eyes.
"Those guys are going to get away," Tifa fretted.
"Unfortunately."
"Having a little trouble, Mr. Valentine?" Saristis crowed from the safety of the summon's rear.
"Well, that guy's a pompous ass when he wants to be," Tifa spat.
"There's the plane, Sar!"
"I thank you for such an exhilarating chase while it lasted."
Vincent let a volley fly but was quickly stunted by a grand ball of hellfire billowing above his head.
"Shit."