Chapter 8: Out of Control

Blood splattered against the rusty brown walls of the prison level as Gabe punched Edgar consecutively in the mouth. Each blow weakened the once strong King of Figaro, loosening his jaw and bruising his cheekbones.

"Why did you come to this sacred place, OUR PLACE of worship and disturb the peace that we have worked for so long to achieve?" Gabe scowled at Edgar. His captive answered him with silence, causing the angered priest to beat the king's face once more out of frustration and sending a mixture of saliva and blood to the bare floor below. Edgar's head had become Gabe's punching bag for the moment, taking the brunt of his captor's anguish and anger in the aftermath of his loved one's death.

One of his eyes was swollen shut and a large gash had appeared over his upper brow, "We were . . ." Edgar struggled to speak out," observing to . . ."

"OBSERVING? What need is there to observe? Did you relish in the death of my wife, huh?! What reason do you have for such an act?" Gabe yelled as he kneed Edgar in the stomach, gritting his teeth and grunting in further agitation. Edgar now cowered in fear of this hulking monster, his will broken as he flinched at the man's every movement. He had never encountered someone as strong as this high priest, his training never readied him for the type of sadist torment this man enjoyed to take part in.

He was vulnerable to Gabe, a feeling that only intensified once his cape and armor were taken away. The man dwarfed him in size and each part of Gabe's body seemed to enlarge the angrier he got. In his final act of defiance, the valiant monarch raised his head and looked his subjugator in the eye, "Fuck you," Edgar managed to say in between coughing up blood and losing consciousness, "we were going to kill you but-"

Gabe kicked Edgar squarely in the chest and he collapsed to the ground. The pain was too much and he slipped out of consciousness, darkness covering his eyesight, "Bastard," Gabe commented as he left the interrogation room. As he walked outside he noticed that the rain had subsided and that the moon was shining brightly in the morning sky as the sun struggled to show itself. He looked down forty floors below and saw a serene landscape unfold. The mist of rain gone, Gabe could look for miles in any direction. He used this image to calm himself, taking a deep breath as the stillness in the air caused by the encircling mountains soothed his tattered nerves.

A guard quickly locked the door as Gabe shut it. The leader of Fanatic's Tower turned around, noticing that a solitary priest had listened to the torture that had taken place and seemed to have been waiting for a while to talk to his superior. The priest politely offered Gabe a towel and it was graciously accepted. The priest spoke to Gabe as the white towel gradually turned red from the bloodied hands of the high priest.

"Lord Gabe, your presence is needed most urgently in the nursery," the priest alerted him.

"Is something wrong with the baby?" Gabe said, suddenly concerned.

"No! I mean yes . . . well, sort of," the priest informed him," Please follow me quickly!"

The two climbed the stairs as fast as they could until they reached the nursery on the forty-eighth level. Gabe viewed chaos through the windows of the nursery as he got closer. Priests were being tossed like rag dolls in every direction, slamming into walls and being covered in debris. Was somebody attacking them, trying to kidnap his daughter? Had the king's men returned for retribution?

Gabe reached for the knob to open the door but leapt backwards as a guard crashed into the doorway, taking the portal off its hinges before flying over the guardrail. The priest that had told Gabe of the incident jerked his view towards the man as he sailed down to the punishing earth below, cringing as the poor soul slammed helplessly against the ground. No use sending the doctors, he was dead on impact. Gabe rushed through the splintered door, ready for a fight, but was taken aback when he saw a girl of nine sitting like a perfect angel in the center of the room. She had a slender frame, with beautiful green eyes and golden blonde hair. It was almost as if this girl were a miniature clone of his late wife Cirra.

"P, Phoebe?" Gabe stuttered.

"Hello daddy! I've missed you!" She responded happily with a wide grin on her face.

Black Hole

Vincent stared unblinkingly at the computer screen. Red had passed out from exhaustion a while ago, which left him the only one left awake on the ship. He had run many tests with Nanaki today but each result was useless in gaining any more of an understanding about the phenomena outside their ship. The thing that disturbed Vincent the worst was the presence of Mako around the test site. How could a rare material such as Mako exist in deep space? It was all beyond his comprehension, unless . . .

Vincent went into a trance as he fell into a deep thought. His mind took him back to the fight against Sephiroth, to be more specific, while he watched the final battle unfold from the safety of limbo with the other dimensional warriors. The slow falling waterfall of crystal had created a mirror, and in that vision he had seen Xanien stop the falling moon, calling about his might and that of the planet before redirecting it back at Sephiroth. The former Turk had stared in awe as he saw the moon and meteor clash in flurry of explosions before shattering into millions of small pieces. The lightshow that ensued from the falling projectiles was magnificent, and it looked as though the planet was crying tears of joy for the fused hero's victory . . . But did it all burn up? The moon had been coated in Lifestream, seeping into each and every crack . . . Vincent knew how to answer his own question.

He came out of the shallow dream and went to the computer terminal, switching it on once more. His search would be narrowed down this time, trying to locate the closest pieces of rock containing Mako. He was in luck, finding a few specimens only a few hundred meters from the ship. Vincent grabbed a laptop and headed for the airlock, determined to shed light on this mystery. Once there, he suited up with one of the three spacesuits used for outer hull repair. Somehow he had picked Shera's, and the suit was a tight fit, but it would suffice for what he had to do. The vampiric looking man carefully covered his mechanical arm with insulation so as not to tear the suit and fastened the small computer he had brought with him onto that arm.

After the last bolt of the helmet was tightened, Vincent walked into the neutral room between the ship and outer space then flipped the depressurize switch. A red light glowed inside the airlock as the door to the outside opened slowly, leaking the remaining air. In a flurry of dust, the entire room was voided of oxygen and Vincent was left weightless without the slow spin of the ship to hold him down. The air tank switched on with a hiss as he tethered himself to the ship before departing for the first piece of rock. Using quickly controlled bursts from his air tank, he maneuvered towards the first piece of space rock. The target had been locked in while he prepared from within the science laboratory, and the beeping on his laptop informed Vincent that he was in proximity of the target. Turning around, Vincent saw that he had drifted hundreds of feet away from the ship. It was a little uncomfortable and concerning, but he would have to go no further, the object was right in front of him in a motionless state. He reached out his hand towards the rock and it crumbled before he could get a grip on it.

Vincent gritted his teeth and grumbled but found a similar subject in the same vicinity. He touched the second rock more delicately and placed a small drill into its core. It almost instantly bore through to the middle and was able to scan it, sending the data to the small terminal he had brought with him. The screen flashed on as it began the process of breaking the rock down. A 3-D model appeared first, and then the program cut it into multiple different layers, labeling each with great speed before a dialog box opened underneath the model as it finished scanning, revealing what the substance was made of.

Elements . . . . . . . Mako . . . . . . . Silicon . . . Iron . . .

Before it finished Vincent knew what it was, "These are fragments from our moon," he said to himself, almost shocked at his discovery, talking as though someone were there along side, listening.

Luckily, someone was.

"Hmm?" Nanaki groggily mumbled as he woke up from the floor. Vincent's suit had been transmitting all the data back to the ship, entering his findings into Aeris' databanks in real-time. The screens were filling up incredibly fast, saving everything in the blink of an eye.

"Vincent?" Red asked in his message over the com, "What are you doing outside? Can't sleep?" he joked.

"You won't believe what I've found out here. I've discovered the reason why we have been receiving traces of Mako with our scans . . ." Vincent stated.

"I thought we gave up on that," the canine scientist responded.

Part of Vincent's training as a TURK was to question everything, and everyone, but nothing could explain this phenomenon other than what he was about to say, "It's part of our moon," Vincent stated. A sting of pain surged through his body as he thought of the implications of what this meant. If pieces of the moon had traveled this deep into space, and the readings of Mako near the center of the black hole were so high . . . then it was quite possible that Sephiroth's body was a part of it all, and somehow . . . his will had lived on.

"Then that means . . ." Red replied, seeing where his friend was going with this.

"What I'm trying to . . ." Vincent's comment was cut short by a small rock floating past his visor. It gracefully floated by, disturbing only the space and time it occupied. But when he looked over from where it came, he immediately grabbed hold of the tether and started to tug himself in. "Get me out of here now Nanaki!" He screamed as hundreds of hot rocks whizzed by his body.

"What!?" Red exclaimed, powering up the control panel in the main cockpit as quick as he could. The computer screen lit up with the confirmation of hundreds of approaching bogies and the alarm began to sound across the entire ship. It only took seconds for Red XIII to activate the crank that was connected to the tether and hurry the process. Vincent's life was in the paws of Nanaki now . . . One false move and he would be a goner.

The crew members of the Aeris had begun to stir, and the commander of the ship was shouting to everybody, trying to find out what the hell was going on. Down at the airlock, things were a bit more hectic . . .

"Come on . . . faster . . . FASTER!!!" Vincent eagerly yelled, breaking his usual fearless code as the first wave of meteors had passed by him at breakneck speeds, screeching into oblivion. It would only take one hit to rupture his suit and end his life. The man might have welcomed death, an end to all his nightmares, but he would choose that end. He was positively sure this was not his time to go . . .

"It's going as fast as it can! Any faster and it will break!" Red snapped back. His yelling had awakened both Cid and Shera. Cid jumped through the doorway and took the controls away from Red, pressing all sorts of buttons as the crank went into overdrive.

"What the hell is going on?" Cid screamed at Red over the noise of the ship.

"Vincent is outside with a meteor storm bearing down on him!" Red explained.

"What's going on up there? Need some help here . . . THE STORM IS GETTING CLOSER!!" Vincent shouted over the intercom line.

"He won't make it unless we get the ship closer to him," Cid told Red as he weighed Vincent's options in his head," Start the engines, we're going in after him."

Cid climbed up a ladder and moved into the cockpit, hurriedly operating the thrusters to get the ship in position and constantly glancing at the screen to monitor how far they were from Vincent. Hundred yards, fifty yards, ten yards . . .

"Get ready to open the door to the launch bay and tell me when he's in!" Cid ordered Red who had followed him up into the cabin.

The pounding of Red's paws as he clamored down the belly of the ship woke everybody else on the ship up. After a minute he was at the inner airlock and managed to see Vincent just as he climbed into the ship and shut the outer bay door release. Red hastily opened the inner door and led him inside.

"We need to get out of here now!!" Vincent yelled as he collapsed to the floor. He was breathing heavily trying to catch his breath.

As Cid powered up the main engines, the sound of rock on metal began to resonate all over Aeris' hull. A hailstorm of razor sharp shrapnel was pounding the ship. Nanaki walked over to Vincent and nudged him to get back up, but as Vincent propped himself up, he whispered, "Big . . . rock . . ." Shortly after, he passed out.

Red looked out of the small airlock window and saw a massive asteroid erratically tumbling toward the ship.

"Umm Cid . . ." There was no response from the cockpit. The captain was too focused to respond, "Cidddddddddd!!!"

"What!" he groaned angrily. The roar of the engines indicated that they were almost at full power.

"Ciiddddddd!!! We need to get out of here now! Look outside the window!" Nanaki screamed.

"Ahh shit . . ."

The asteroid hit them just as the engines came on. The blast from the engine and the impact from the rock sent the Aeris and her crew careening out of control directly into the center of the black hole.