24: But there's No Finish Line
"No, it's only where we make it."
-----
Gunfire flew from the mouth of the passageway, sparking on the surrounding metal alongside wild splashes of fire. Militiamen whooped and howled as they sprayed the entire area with heavy salvos, giving the WRO little freedom in returning the favors. Pushed off to the sides of the underpass against the street rails, they crouched, struggling for a shot in edgewise.
"Vincent," Tifa cried over the blasts, "did you see how many guys there were?"
"There's only five," the gunman called back.
"What? Then what's with all this heavy ass fire?" Cid barked. "I thought we were just up against a small fuckin' army, not a few automatic tanks!"
"They're better equipped than we thought under Noah's payroll," Reeve uttered against his shouldered weapon. "But, still, something isn't right."
"Where's our backup?"
"On their way!"
Vincent bent down on one knee, slipping a tiny blue orb of materia into his gun before cocking the chamber shut. He ducked lower towards the ground, almost sliding the nose of his gun along the asphalt beneath the unrelenting fire. Peeking around the edge of the wall, the gunman spied the men towards the front of the passage, shooting everything with all their blind might. Vincent grimaced at their abandon. Like all infernos, he knew they'd blow out sooner or later. But he preferred sooner. Time was wasting.
"Ridiculous," he breathed.
Where he aimed his gun, a frail shadow of nothing floated out of the shaft and vanished before Vincent could even lend a thought to what it might have been. With urgency pressing on his fingers, he pulled the trigger, launching a wave of swirling starry yellow light into the passageway. A fitting swell of frenzied cries burst out, letting him know he'd hit his mark. But it wasn't before long that the shaft belched a giant fireball into the underpass.
"Get back!" Vincent screamed.
The fireball had only fallen short, fizzling out on the pavement like a dying fish. Taking advantage of the brief ceasefire, Tifa, Cid, and WRO alike scrambled to tackle the militiamen before they could start again. Vincent and Reeve brought up the rear, mostly watching out for the reinforcements that were en route to their location. Behind them, dazed grunts and flashes of light shot out and about.
"Vincent... is that who I think it is?" Reeve asked warily, pointing down the south side of town.
"That's... not backup," he said, his tone dark and grave.
"They're coming up the north side, actually."
The gunman narrowed his eyes suspiciously against the figure approaching them at leisure. It was Sephiroth, there was little doubt, but he moved erratically on his feet. Peering behind him and back, Vincent hesitated. Whatever state the man was in now since being left at the terminal, he knew he'd only more likely be a hindrance than help. But… An unusually devious thought came to mind. Vincent backed up to Reeve's side and leaned close.
"I have an idea," he told the other.
"You do?"
"Sephiroth can clear the way if there's more of those men down inside the complex," he explained.
"We don't want too much bloodshed, though," Reeve hedged. "Just disarm them."
"With that much firepower, they mean business. It doesn't matter what Noah ordered them, they want us dead. So, fight fire with fire."
The WRO commissioner grumbled halfheartedly, but warmed up to the idea. Vincent nodded back, then turned to Sephiroth who was now only a couple of yards away, most of his upper body drawn close about his disfigured arm. Abruptly, he looked up and smirked at the gunman, but it wasn't the usual sinister smirk he seemed to enjoy giving. It was just a wooden mask, which felt infinitely more unnerving than the former.
Finally close enough to be heard, Sephiroth intoned, "Where is she?"
"Down there," Vincent said, nodding his head in the shaft's direction.
Silently, he looked in the given direction then slowly back to Vincent. His feline eyes went scornfully narrow as he turned on his bare heels and headed inside. The gunman took one step in his wake, but decided not to follow, not just yet. He knew the solemn Sephiroth would probably have a wicked conniption if he was seen openly following him on his 'one-man mission'. No, as was the plan, he'd allow him time to clear any militiamen lying in wait, then swoop in for the kill.
Tifa, Cid, and the WRO troops made a hasty little retreat when they saw him coming, with Cid throwing useless curses to the air like confetti.
Reeve shook his head, sighing, "I hope this idea doesn't backfire on us."
"Right now, he's the only one that can clear them out faster than we can because... well, he's not going to hold back."
"Sounds bad when you say it."
-
"Drana." He strode past the fallen bodies at the entrance, not even batting an eye at them as they tried to get back on their feet only to be subdued by WRO once again. He raised his nose, not smelling anything in particular. But his pace never slowed as he descended to the next level, where his eyes and nose finally sank towards the floor. Below were rooms. Mostly abandoned yet lived in at the same time.
He knew these rooms. In the closing stretch of the Wutai war, he'd watched Shinra build this place from the sea floor on up. And prior to the construction of the undersea reactor, this section of Junon was just another bunker to hold the company's many and beloved secret stores. Sephiroth inwardly scoffed; it was to these stores, these labs, that he was always destined in the days he'd been marginally loyal to Shinra as then colonel, commander and general. The urge to evaporate the entire complex welled in his chest. But there was no choice but to refrain, just until he got what he came for.
"'ey, we got company!" someone shouted.
Sephiroth stared thoughtfully at his feet, at how nowadays they often moved him places he didn't realize were new until something reached out and grabbed his attention. This new level was brighter than the other, more suffused with electricity and, plainly, life. Hostile life. Men with guns stood in his way, as gritty as old unassailable stone walls, but fortunately not as solid.
"Who are you, Mr. Hot-stuff?"
"Where's Drana?" asked Sephiroth.
"Who wants to know?"
"You're in the way." With an upward thrust of his hand, the floor beneath the men's feet spiked, shoving them up into the ceiling. And at the drop of a hand, they plunged through the hole in the floor. "Hmm."
Sounds of alarm echoed from beneath the soles of his feet.
"She feels... close. If you're there, this is the last time you will ever get away from me."
Sephiroth knelt by the hole, watching the broken men twitch amongst the debris. A few frail bodies in white lab coats swarmed around the mess, distraught by the ceiling's cave-in. One happened to look up, spying him there, and by a single word they all scattered like frightened bugs the next instant. Sephiroth hopped down to the next floor, landing not so perfect in the wake of their escape. His wing rattled, furiously knocking his body off-kilter. Something it didn't like was near.
Something it hated was near.
Reacting to this hatred, the ooze spiked out of Sephiroth's arm, crystallizing hard as rock nails on his skin. He winced but continued down the hall after the fleeing lab coats.
Clouds appeared along the way, colorful fogs he never saw until now. They swirled all around him, black and red, yellow, blue, purple, even white. Individually they meant nothing, but together…
He groaned, "Where are you?"
With the people around him either long gone or unconscious, the halls fell as quiet as a tomb. There was no sign of the ringleader and his cronies, which left his patience tried. Sephiroth soon broke into a hurried stride, as if he should have been doing so in the first place. With all this desertion, Sephiroth felt a pang of shock. All the rats were likely jumping ship. Meaning, his chance was slipping away to trap this vermin king.
The concrete walls had gotten whiter and brighter, doors more unassuming but at the same time labeled by silver plates, doors which rarely opened but for a weasly little lab coat to pop out and try to make their escape. Sephiroth watched them run ahead to the end of the hall and disappear down the stairs. Whether he was after them or not, he'd catch up to them sooner than later.
"Drana!" he barked.
"Uhh!" came a reply from the fragile figure suddenly thrust at him, literally bouncing off his chest and falling to the floor. The small man scrambled to his feet, his hand trembling and glowing darkly red between the fingers. His salt and pepper hair was a wild, scraggly mop, but his sad gray eyes were wilder with fear, like a cornered beast.
Suspicious of the man, Sephiroth narrowed his green eyes, readily bent his knees in alert, all the while trying not to yield to the pain in his arm as the wing gored his flesh with spikes. He knew now what it was afraid of. This man. He had materia with him, worst of all, summon materia. Mother despised the stubborn, damnable spirits. With good reason.
Now his chance was lost.
The materia shone bright red and a blast of blue-white light covered everything in front of him. The gracious figure of a cold-faced woman flashed briefly before dying away, replaced by a crackling force above and below him. Sephiroth's feet swung out from beneath him, snapping his face to the floor with a sharp thud.
A slow and shameful curtain fell over his still conscious eyes, blotting out the sheet of thorny ice spreading across the floor and the man vanishing over his fallen body. He hoped this blow to his pride would be brief; otherwise, his oncoming dream was going to be a sore one.
--
Vincent didn't like the way things were looking after descending two more levels of the complex. There were fewer militiamen lying around than he would've liked, meaning this was barely the brunt of their forces that they, or rather Sephiroth, had faced. Still, it was a fair number. If they all had to face them again, the militia would be a little less of a whole force, at the very least. But for now, Vincent and crew had to secure the area and hope they weren't too late.
Halfway down the fourth level, a chill of tomblike cold shot through the halls, whipping and howling through his jet black hair then dying away. This familiar chill unnerved him. It meant one thing but also another. He couldn't decide until he saw it with his own eyes. But either way it wasn't going to be good. The gunman, in spite of his apprehension, quickened down the hall ahead of his cohorts, rifle clutched in one hand and its barrel tucked into the crook of his arm.
Soon, the walls began to sparkle, misting over with a sort of permafrost. Ice blanketed everything, as if something forcibly shoved a glacier through the corridor. But it wasn't that. Sadly, it wasn't that at all. Towards the end of the corridor, the ice tapered in to a point, with frosty spears interlocking so thickly amongst themselves that nothing was visible beyond them. Blocked. But between them was a deep red stain and a body mangled at their feet.
The pale skin and sweep of gray hair spilling across the icy floor nearly threw him off balance.
"Drana?" he called softly, frowning. But he knew better. The hair was a shade darker, the body, bigger. Of course it wasn't…
It was Sephiroth. Relief washed over Vincent, followed sharply by caution. He hadn't been attacked by the usual floe. It was something much stronger. A summon. Naturally. The gunman found a dark, ironic humor in the fact that Sephiroth had been downed by the very same thing that Vincent, himself, had earlier managed to survive. He wanted to jump to the conclusion that the man was dead, having been impaled on ice like this, something no mortal man would have survived. But…
"Vincent!"
"What happened here?"
Finally, his companions caught up with him, sans the WRO who were mostly likely mopping up the militiamen. But not taking care in their steps, Cid, Tifa, and Reeve all slipped and tripped over themselves on the ice slowly creeping up the hall.
"What the hell?!" Cid exclaimed. "Argh, my ass!"
"Watch your step," Vincent said, even knowing he was late in delivering the warning.
"Vincent, is that..." Reeve's voice trailed off behind him when he nodded, not looking back.
"I'd still be careful," he told them offhandedly.
"Yes... be careful."
Vincent dropped to one knee, clutching his gun and fighting the urge to shoot.
He watched Sephiroth's previously limp body stir to life. Painfully so, he twisted his body up, blood and ooze trickling down the spikes of ice the more movements he made. The gunman winced at the sight. With all the fighting and atrocities he'd seen in his own life, he felt a little ashamed to have reacted in such a way just then. He beheld the bloodied Sephiroth manage to pull his limbs from the ice spears and drop to his hands and knees. The dark wing quivered sickly on his shoulder all the while, a nervous entity completely separate from the one it was attached to. But the gray-haired man himself was mostly silent, coughing and panting under muted breaths.
He'd then lifted a hand up.
The gunman took a step back. That hand looked pleading enough but he obliged not to get any closer.
A calm, green well of light formed around Sephiroth, lifting his hair off his shoulders. What Vincent reckoned to be Lifestream shot ribbons up, through, and all around his body, mending wounds and turning ooze to dust, but leaving all the shed blood behind. Sephiroth then rose to his feet, facing the jagged wall of ice fill the end of the hall.
"Hmm…" Vincent holstered his gun, sighing in defeat. Ahead lied the way to the undersea reactor, but with this ice wall blocking the path, it would take long, too long, to break through. And that kind of time they didn't have.
Their chance was lost.
"We didn't make it. Not even Sephiroth…"
"So, Drana's gone?" Tifa said in disappointment as she picked herself up off the floor. "That's not good, is it... ?"
"No, it's not," Vincent muttered.
"You were there..." Sephiroth approached the bloody spears on which he'd been impaled. The gunman spied him clench a fist and raise it against the ice. He bent down and struck it forcefully, chunks flying off into the left wall. Then he struck others, practically plowing through it all, clearing a haphazard path that tore open his feet which healed soon thereafter. But even with his strength, his progress was too slow for comfort. Vincent sighed again and heaved his shoulders at the spectacle, then turned around to Reeve.
Gathering breath, he announced, "While the hall is being cleared, we should case the area entirely. Whether Noah has gotten away yet or not, we can control what comes in, out, or is still around in the meantime. We'll find something or nothing at all."
"And here we thought we were on top of things…" Tifa slouched sullenly against Cid for a little warmth while watching Sephiroth smash through the ice with determination they surely found scary.
Vincent sighed one more time. That glimmer of hope had always been the hardest to keep. Deep down, he was almost certain he'd make it in time to make his boldest rescue. It didn't matter that they had relied on a most seedy bit of faceless information that had more chance of being false than not. As long as it led him somewhere, someplace close. But now that someplace was flying out of reach again. Lost behind a wall of ice. And it would take another windfall for him, for them, to get back on track.
"Drana…" Vincent said soundlessly, staring at Sephiroth cut like a bloodsoaked machine through his task. It was no surprise that whatever pain he suffered trying to break down the ice was hidden so well. As something even remotely human in the past, he'd been renowned for his persistence even in the face of injury. This gruesome scene was no less different. Now, infused with enough Lifestream to kill maybe scores of people, he was nearly an unstoppable force. He's docile now but… The gunman frowned.
Somehow, it felt like things were only going to get worse before they got better. As always. With Sephiroth and Shinra thrown into the mix, there'd be no escape while events ran their dreaded course. With Sephiroth and Shinra, the future was at the same time a fate unpredictable yet fated disaster. Vincent disliked this realization. Once was enough.
An explosion of fire resounded behind him, the gunman nearly knocked flat on his face from the rush of hot air down the corridor. He ducked within the confines of his cape, twisting slightly to the side to see what had just happened. In the glare of the dying red and white hot flame, he saw Sephiroth with his arms raised before him. He spun to the other side to spy Tifa, Cid, and Reeve awkwardly defending each other, huddled like children.
With the fire now gone, Vincent saw that only a small hole managed to open in the ice wall. Sephiroth toiled with trying to get through, using his fists to chip away just enough extra room for his thorny wing. Then he quickly vanished inside. Seeing an opportunity for himself, Vincent leapt to his feet and dove right in, landing on his stomach on the other side. He reached for his holster, but his fingers clutched only air.
"Vincent!"
"I'll be back," he called.
--
Sephiroth glided down the hall on bloody footprints. He felt clearly that the end of the complex and the beginning of the path to the undersea reactor was near. His wing remained silent all the while, having endured the worst of the previous assault. But he hoped now that it would react to something, anything at all. Outside the familiarity for this place, he could sense nothing else, not even the still healing pains in his body.
"Close..."
Abruptly, a pair of lab coats struggling with boxes collided with his slender block of a body. His pace hardly slowed as papers fluttered down about him. With these random bodies still rushing about, it looked clear that maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance. That, or they were left behind and trying to get out on foot while they still could. But like the humans he loathed, he hoped for the better. He hoped that this wild chase would be over and he could go back home with his one, lasting possession, away from Shinra, away from anyone else who'd take what mattered to him, his strength, his godhood, away from everyone and everything.
Back to an existence he didn't think could sustain him until only recently.
Before then, it hadn't even been a real life he ever thought one could live.
His body ran on autopilot into the depths while he continued to hope, brood, plot, and seethe in one cycle after the other. It wasn't long before the white halls morphed into a long glass tunnel framed by dark metal and gigantic pipes. Deep ocean loomed overhead and to each side, hiding glowing silhouettes with prying eyes that floated in its pitch waters.
As he neared the end of his path, Sephiroth heard the busy noises of machinery, clanks, booms, groans. With everything running on no less than auxiliary power, he knew it couldn't be the reactor processing Mako and pumping it out for use. It was something else. Pushing through the heavy doors to the dormant core room, he was now certain. He could feel the stagnant death of Lifestream clinging to the walls. Beyond that, he picked up the vibrations of something large.
The open doorway ahead gaped upon a great big room lined with contraptions built for maintenance and water travel. In the middle of the floor sat a bubbling hole of water, alongside it signs of recent activity. Sephiroth rushed to the edge of the pool, spying lights grow dim the further they traveled underwater.
"Sephiroth!" a voice shouted, just as his body hit the water.