Clouds had settled over the Nibel region by the time the helicopter landed. From the air, they had seen several glowing Deepground soldiers patrolling the edge of Nibelheim, their vehicles blocking major entrances to the town. Not daring to threaten his only escape, Reno set the aircraft down fifty yards from the end of the sewer system. He kept the propellers moving as he bid the pair goodbye.
"Don't do anything stupid. Too stupid. Dangerously stupid," he clarified, a quick squeeze of Aria's arm causing her to stop and look back at him. "See you soon, sister."
She nodded and jumped onto the grass, Vincent steadying her.
"I have an idea that you won't like," she said, once the quiet of the field had settled back over them. His eyes flitted from the fields to the logo on her sleeve, then up to her face.
"You want to split up," he surmised. She nodded.
"The sewers are safe, but you won't be able to see the town. I want to get an idea of how much control they have here. I want to know if they're taking people here, too, and how many. I won't go into town," she quickly added, sensing his argument, "but if I come in through the back, from the edge of the Nibel range, I can look down on it, get a feel for the surroundings and plan a backup escape, should anything happen in the Manor."
"Take a wide berth," he commanded, knowing she would not hear any rebuttal to her idea. "Keep your distance, and meet me in the Manor's main hall."
She nodded and he caught a glimpse of uncertainty in her gaze.
"What is it?"
"Before you go back in there…" she started, her hand digging into her pocket. "I went back home, and I just felt...compelled."
He suppressed a grin, understanding the confession before she could utter it.
"I had to know. And now, with you going back into the heart of it…" She extended her hand, his blue ring resting in its palm. "You should take it with you."
His amusement drained at the sight of it. He thought he had cut his ties to the ring, but it stung his eyes to see in her hand.
"She would want you to have it, right? Especially now."
"Perhaps…" he began to concede, but resisted slipping into the warm embrace of his memories. He cradled her hand in his own, then closed her fingers over the metal. "But hold it for me. I would rest easier knowing that you have it. It strengthens Sleep and Evasion...to help escape your nightmares. And maybe a live enemy here and there."
She offered a half smile, resisting the urge to remind him how little Materia boosts meant to her. It was the symbol that had the power. She slipped it onto her index finger.
"Okay. I'll give it back to you in the mansion."
He nodded.
Vincent met some resistance in the Nibelheim sewers in the form of organized Sahagins. They offered no cause for impeding his progress, but fought with a vindictiveness that hinted at generations of anger. Perhaps it was the years spent in sewage; perhaps it was just their nature.
It took over an hour to reach the entrance to Shinra Manor, and once facing the elevator, Vincent had to clench his jaw to work the controls. The metal gates pulled back as lights flickered on in the perfectly-preserved car. He leaned against the dark wooden panel and let the machine carry him slowly upward, his mind wandering in the security of this box.
"Vincent Valentine reporting for duty, ma'am. I've been assigned your protection."
"No..why would they...send his…"
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, I apologize. This is the first time I've ever met anyone from the Turks. Lucrecia Crescent. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Valentine."
The car stopped at the lowest level of the building and opened its gate. The metal came to rest with a refusal to move any further. His hand moved directly to a switch on the wall without fumbling in the darkness of the corridor at all. He had a map of the place ingrained in him. Lights sparked on, buzzing as they illuminated the long hallway of the basement. He breathed deeply, grateful for the smell of musty, stale air to keep him rooted in reality.
He began his search in an office that had once belonged to Lucrecia. The bookcases along the walls had deteriorated, shelves coming down in sharp angles, weight books long toppled onto the floor. She would have been sorry to see this…
As he scanned the room for a place to begin, the quiet sound of glass rolling across wood cut through the silence of the office. He turned, finding a bluish orb, not unlike that of Materia, rolling toward his feet. It was not clear where the orb had originated, or how he could have yet disturbed the room enough to set it into motion. Upon picking it up, he felt a warmth in his hand that grew until it shot a blinding white light through the room. Vincent closed his eyes against it, and upon reopening them, he felt less alone in the room. He turned around and his hand fell.
Lucrecia stood across from him, as real and living as he could possibly imagine, inspiring a tightness in his chest that shortened his breaths.
"Lucrecia?"
"Vincent...right?" She sighed. "Have you come to check up on me?" They locked eyes before she began walking toward him, her heels clicking against the plank wood floor. His reaction was instinctive: he opened his arms for an embrace thirty-three years in the making. She came to him, then stepped through him and continued walking to the opposite end of the room.
She had not truly seen him at all.
He swallowed hard at the realization and turned to listen to the holographic transmission.
"Omega…" she began. He knew the name. "His awakening is upon us. 'Soul wrought of terra corrupt, quelling impurity, purging the stream to beckon forth an ultimate fate. Behold, mighty Chaos, Omega's squire to the lofty heavens.' I came across this passage while studying the scriptures of the Ancients, the Chronicles of yore. Omega...the end. Just as all other sentient beings, he too is born of the Lifestream. However, his only purpose is to cleanse the planet of all things living...and lead their immortal souls through the abyssal ether to a new beginning...far, far beyond the neverending sea of stars. Just as life circulates through our planet, so too does our planet through the universe...or at least in theory. However, what I can be certain of is...if Omega awakens, then all life as we know it will end. And when Omega has embarked on his journey through the cosmos, our planet will wither...and die." She turned back to face him, though he knew not how the image could discern his location.
The weight of this impromptu lesson evaded him. He understood that he should feel some sort of enlightenment, that he should have a new perspective and understanding of his condition, but he stood frozen in the room, the words washing over him in a voice that threatened to stir up deep pools of emotion long since calmed.
"I will leave a copy of my records here for you, Vincent. Though I cannot imagine what help they might be, if any at all. Just remember…" She sighed again, and dropped her head in undeniable sorrow that made him long even more for the embrace he was denied. "...I am so sorry." There, the transmission ended, her image dissolving into nothingness, the room growing cold and empty again. The orb dissolved in his palm.
In the moment, all he could manage to say was her name.
As he turned back toward the door, a red disk caught his eye on the wooden desk. A record, as promised. He collected it, exhaled heavily, and took off for the laboratory.
The entrance to the mountains had been left unguarded. Aria scanned the area in detail, looking for evidence of Deepground soldiers from her perch in a large oak tree at the edge of the valley. While the main road into town had been blocked, Deepground's presence had not yet become oppressive. People still walked through the center of town, though at a quick pace, with their eyes on the ground. Businesses kept operating, though with doors closed tight under the illusion of security. The quiet, tense atmosphere spoke of a population aware of something dangerous headed their way, but the determination of its citizens seemed to convey that, if they kept living like normal, they could ignore the threat out of existence.
Her backup escape route had been set. They could easily take the valley away from the village. The lack of resistance had placed her in town long before she imagined Vincent would have reached the Manor. She wondered briefly whether she should stay hidden in the thick branches while she waited to slip into the house. The answer came with a glance toward the east side of the town, catching sight of a blond man ushering two children into a house. They complained, wanting to keep up a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk, but he persisted, glancing over his shoulder at the patrolling Deepground soldiers. Aria quickly planned the safest route by which she could break her promise to Vincent.
Cloud had locked the wooden shutters over a front window of the old home when the familiar voice cut through the stiff quietness.
"This didn't work out how you'd planned, huh?"
He turned to face Aria as she approached. "If it's not one oppressor, it's another," he said, nodding at the emblem that seemed burned into her left shoulder.
"It was a parting gift. To protect me so I could protect Vincent. And him. And you."
He chuckled. "No thanks."
"Oh? You have a plan to get out of here before they start rounding everyone up, then?"
His gaze burned into her. "I'm working on it."
She glanced over her shoulder to find a soldier approaching on his patrol, then glanced at the door to the house. Cloud nodded, wordlessly inviting her in.
Tifa waited inside, saying nothing as Aria entered, but placing mugs of coffee on the kitchen table for the three of them. They sat together for only a second before the soldier passed by the covered windows, the tension momentarily leaving the room with his fading footfalls.
"Vincent is working his way into Shinra Manor through the sewers. It seems the Tsviets are after something called protomateria. And they seem to think that Vincent is its keeper."
Cloud sat up straighter, crossing his arms at this news.
"It seems to connect back to Lucrecia Crescent. Project S was not the only work happening down there. She may have left some journals, some evidence, something that can help us make sense of this. Something that might help us take down Deepground."
Tifa took a deep breath, then asked, "What can we do?"
"They seem to be staying away from the Manor…" Aria offered. Cloud shut down the thought immediately.
"No. I won't take Marlene and Denzel in there. Barret would never allow that, anyway."
"It might be your only way out. The sewers go out to the plains, and that area is safe. I was just there. It's only a matter of time before the cages arrive and they start hunting you down. It happened in Kalm, in Edge...it could happen here if we don't figure out a way to stop them soon."
"We can fight them," Cloud said, eyes fixed on the table.
"The WRO is miles away. You don't know how many soldiers are waiting at the edge of town, or how quickly the Tsviets could be here."
"The Tsviets...the elites, I gather?"
She nodded. He rubbed his eyes, then leaned in close. "What do they look like?"
"I've seen two. A huge man, Azul, and a small child, Shelke. Both were incapacitated at the WRO headquarters. There is at least one other. A woman-"
"In red," Tifa finished the thought. Aria and Cloud looked up sharply. Tifa's eyes were distant, looking through the slats in the shutters. "She's right there."
Aria flew to the window to watch a small group of Deepground soldiers follow a figure in red toward Shinra Manor. "Shit," she swore as quietly as possible. "They had the same idea. They knew there would be information on the protomateria there…" Cloud watched as she shifted her weight, trying to devise a route to the mansion.
"Go out the back," he said. "Take the alley around the backs of the houses. It ends at the entrance to the valley. You'll have to cross the clearing."
Without a word, she headed for the back. When the mansion came into view, the small group had already entered. Only a pair of soldiers guarded the iron gate. She thoughtlessly rubbed the ring on her index finger and took a deep breath. The steps that followed were more silent and surefooted than she expected. A path from the large oak to the closest edge of the gate became clear, and she followed it expertly, slipping up and over the wrought iron with ease, slipping into the mansion through the front door like a shadow.
Once inside, she leaned against the front door and caught her breath, taking a moment to look appreciatively at the ring. No materia needed, she thought, before dipping into the many shadows of the mansion's interior, praying to reach Vincent before Rosso.
The laboratory door offered little resistance, welcoming him back into its chambers with a dark irony. Only two steps in, he felt a tightness in his chest that took his breath away. The room swayed in his vision before a bright white blindness overtook him. The sensations of memories rushed through him, unseen by the mind's eye, but felt through pulses of adrenaline. The cool green tank. An awakening. Lucrecia's concern as she peered through the glass. Panic. Panic. Panic. He came to quickly, on one knee in the lab. "This pain…" he uttered, trying to figure it out. The sound of footsteps cut the thought short.
"Well, well. We meet again." Rosso entered from the hallway, stopping a few steps away to take in his bent form. "This is perfect. I so wanted to see you again, my love."
He stood, facing her, and noticing the sharpness of her gloved fingertips as they ran along her jaw. "Deepground...what are they attempting to do with Omega?"
She raised her hand in suave gesture of disinterest. "I don't know...To be honest, I don't care."
He frowned. "What?"
"But this is what Weiss desires. Hail Weiss," she added, almost as a happy afterthought. "And what Weiss orders, we do. It is very simple. If he desires the awakening of Omega, then that is what all of Deepground desires. We could care less what happens to the planet." She laughed tightly, her arm bent confidently around her waist. "But all this matters little to me. It is not every day you are granted the chance to cleanse the world of all life. Just the thought sends a chill of excitement through my body." Her red eyes met his before she began pacing in a circle, her boots clicking against the floor. "The Deepground soldiers were born and bred to kill. We were chained to a destiny of servitude. But then, three years ago, we were freed from our chains. Awaiting us was darkness, lit only by the faint glow of Mako. And what do you think we did when we gained our freedom, hmm?" He gave no answer; she laughed from deep within her throat. "We killed. That is how we were raised. That is all we knew."
He swallowed hard, recognizing the sentiment from his early days with Aria. In explaining her attack on Shinra's efforts to rebuild, she had used almost the very same words. She, too, had taken lives in retribution. This is what I was trained to do! How could I be better? I was made by them.
"And so I bathed in the blood of a thousand soldiers...and I enjoyed it. I revelled in it. And when I finally stepped out of the abyss, I craved for more. You understand, right?"
He understood more than he wanted to admit. But he refused to play her game. Drawing Cerberus, he replied, "I don't think so."
She scoffed. "How can you say that, darling?" Her feet moved quickly as she moved backward toward the door. "We're one and the same." With that, she disappeared down the long hall. He pursued into the corridor, only to be met with a robotic arachnid at the opposite end. It flung small grenades at him, missing him, but causing enough of a distraction to escape toward the main hall.
Aria heard the explosions and gunfire from the second floor, her head whipping toward the door of the bedroom in which she had hidden. She slipped into the hallway, crouching at the edge of the railing through which she could watch the foyer below.
"Hey!" a man called out from the opposite end of the landing. She drew her gun and fired almost before looking at the Deepground soldier who had spotted her. He fell to his knees, firing a last shot before falling to his stomach. The bullet tore past her ear, momentarily distracting her from the scene below, where flash of red had crossed the room into a shadow of its own. The air filled with a metallic scent so strong that she could taste it.
"Nice shot," a deep, calm voice said from behind. It was both unexpected and unsurprising. A violent chill rattled her spine. Footsteps approached, but Aria sensed that only she could hear them.
The sound of metallic feet clambering through the lower hall drew her attention just in time to watch the robot stumble into the foyer, sparks flying from its side. It flew upward, placing itself on the landing in front of her, facing the foyer below.
"Now what?" the voice asked.
She raised her gun at the machine, whispering her rely. "You're not real."
Strong, warm arms slid around her shoulders from behind, a clean scent from years past replacing the oily metallic one in her lungs. She lowered her gun under the embrace.
"I'm as real as I need to be." This fucking house, she thought. Gloved fingers slid over her mouth though without much pressure. The implication was enough. "Sshh...let's just watch."
Vincent had pursued the machine, facing off with it the in front of the main door. Aria stood, trying to step into the light of stained glass windows behind her, but the body behind her moved in sync and held her in the shadow.
As Vincent darted through the foyer, firing with dizzying speed and precision, she fought against her captor enough to fire a few shots of her own into the machine. Her neck warmed with the breath of a single laugh of appreciation. "Why you always preferred blades, I do not understand."
"Shut up," she growled. She fired her last round, then dropped the empty weapon to her side, only able to watch as the machine stumbled in the foyer, a final shot from Cerberus sending it into a crumpled heap.
Vincent sighed below, holstering his gun. As he caught his breath, he thought carefully of his next move. The data Lucrecia had left him would have to be processed at the WRO headquarters, where Reeve could help organize troops for the defense of Nibelheim, Edge, Kalm, the Midgar ruins...He reeled against the overwhelming work to be done, but took quick comfort in the sight of the upper level. Aria stepped into view, looking down at him with an expression he could not place. Before he could speak, a larger figure came into the light behind her. He reached for his gun, but had only grazed its holster when Rosso appeared in front of him and, with a look of devilish satisfaction, plunged her fist into his chest. Just as the blood rushed through his ears, beginning to deafen him, he caught a strangled scream from above. In that moment, the world went still.
Her hand came out of his body and held in front of him a glowing orb that contained a universe of its own. He looked at it in a numb wonderment, almost reaching out to touch it before he fell to the ground, eyes blind with an all-encompassing white light.
This is not how I thought...But then, what did I think…
From miles away, he could hear Rosso's accented voice speaking, clearly amused with herself. "I'm sorry, were you not expecting that?"
The words brought him back to awareness and sparked a fury in him that felt both incredibly close and safely distant. It was not his own. It was not his responsibility. He wanted to close his eyes against the searing pain in his chest, the heat rising in his throat, the pressure in his head. He wanted to sleep this off, no matter the time it took to do so. His breath caught in his throat with each inhalation, as though he knew the oxygen was fueling a fire soon to be uncontrollable. He knew that Aria was watching from above while the house played one of its cruelest tricks on her. Though he did not know that she was watching Chaos flicker in and out of existence, he knew she was finally seeing Rosso. And as he surrendered to a welcoming blackness, he thought, At least she knows.
Aria recognized the futility of her struggle and stood still, every muscle in her body trembling at the sight below. Rosso laughed lowly at the body of Chaos gasping for breath between growls as it lay face down. "Ah...so you cannot control the beast without this. Well," she sighed, kneeling before him, preparing her final blow, "there will be no need for it when I'm done with you." Rosso raised her fist and Aria sprang so hard that the arms had to release her. She raced toward the stairs, but her arm was violently pulled backward, spinning her around, bringing her face to face with Sephiroth.
"You are not real!" she howled, driving a hard fist through the face of the figure. Simultaneously, a small cloaked figure appeared from the shadow of the staircase, sending a shuriken around the foyer in a dangerous circle until it landed at Rosso's feet. The Tsviet looked up, preparing a defense, but as she did so, the room filled with a blinding light, emanating from the shuriken. Aria squinted against the light, and before she had to cover her eyes completely, they met the angry, distrustful gaze of Yuffie.
The light subsided and Aria felt her arm release. Now alone on the landing, she turned back to the foyer to watch Rosso spin in a circle, searching for the now-missing Vincent.
"Wutai flea!" the Tsviet shouted, before heading through the front door. Aria stood still for a moment, processing what she'd seen, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to account for the familiarity of the Rosso's face. She rubbed her arm, a bruise undoubtedly forming from the strong grip of a memory, a ghost, and something far more alive than she wanted to admit. The thought repeated itself with more fervor: This fucking house.
As she approached the front door, she heard Rosso's voice outside. "If you managed to survive that wound...I'll make sure you don't survive the next one." She seemed to collect herself by the next utterance. "But no matter...The end is upon us."
Bracing for an attack, Aria exhaled and opened the door, drawing a blade. The stone of the front step was broken, and the area void of life. She had let her escape, and she knew exactly why.