The journey to the elevator was not long, nor particularly dangerous. More arachnid-type robots attempted to defend the headquarters, but against a particularly well-trained pair, they did not last long. With each fight, Vincent saw Aria grow more aggressive. She went from simply taking up the rear to actively seeking out enemies several yards ahead of him. He said nothing, but could not help but notice the darker part of him cheering her on, gaining pleasure from watching her fire lethal shots. The beast enjoyed the violence and yearned for much, much more. By the time they reached an exterior door leading to the elevator tower, his jaw was clenched in an attempt to keep Chaos quiet.
Aria stopped at the door and finally turned to face him, her face shining with the exertion of bringing down her foes. The robotic destruction had offered a temporary release from her fresh and angry wound.
"What's wrong?" she asked, catching the look of concern in his eyes before stopping to clean the robots' oil from her gun.
"Before I lost contact, Shelke told me that...the protomateria had...It had essentially suppressed Chaos. It served as the reins to the beast. But now…"
"You're saying...Rosso was right? That you really can't control it anymore?"
"For now, I seem...I don't know. I just feel far more aware of it than I used to. It is responding quite strongly to your...style of fighting."
She laughed sheepishly. "I guess I got a little harsh back there. I mean, we were going to have to kill those things anyway."
"Of course we were. I just...I want you to be careful. Consider keeping your distance. Let me take the lead here. If anything happens, you can get out."
"If anything happens, I'm staying right beside you. I'm not giving you up to him."
"Aria."
"Vincent," she fired back, mimicking his chiding tone. "We've come this far. Let's just keep going. But if you insist on taking the lead…" she trailed, opening the door and stepping aside for him, arm raised in a dramatic gesture of good manners. As he stepped through she spoke again.
"Why don't you try calling Shelke back? She might be able to tell us if anything's waiting for us."
Vincent nodded, pulling out his phone while Aria leaned over the railing of the bridge, eyeing the steep drop below. Twenty feet away, the private elevator promised to deliver them to Deepground. She shivered.
He watched her closely as she hid her growing anxiety, but before he could offer her a way out, his phone beeped repeatedly, unable to connect to the Shera. Aria heard the tone and faced him, crossing her arms.
"Should we be concerned?"
He snapped the phone closed, but before he could speak, it rang back. He opened it, turning on the speaker. Background noise blared through the device before a familiar voice announced, "We got through!"
"Tifa?" he said, standing taller. Somewhere near Tifa, Barret shouted an unrefined greeting, making Aria grin.
Tifa's voice chirped across the line. "Barrett, do you really have to shout right next to my ear? I apologize, Vincent. Here's Cloud."
The grin fell.
"Vincent?"
A beat passed before he responded. "Cloud. It's been a while. Cid's airship?"
"We lost contact about fifteen minutes ago. I don't think we have to worry, though. Those two should be fine."
"What about you?"
Cloud seemed amused. "What do you think?"
Tifa chimed in. "Right! You can count on us."
Again, Barrett shouted his confirmation: "When I'm through, there won't be a single sucker standing!"
Vincent laughed lowly. "Right."
"And as for you?" Cloud asked, his tone suddenly more serious.
"Don't worry. Leave Deepground to me."
Tifa took over again, sending him a map of the complex. "Take the elevator as far down as you can."
The trio offered parting good luck wishes, ending with Cloud's quick, "Don't go gettin' yourself killed."
Pocketing his phone, Vincent turned to Aria. She raised her eyebrows and cemented Cloud's advice. "Well, don't."
"Let's go," he said, breaking off a smirk before it could surface.
The building across the bridge housed many Deepground enemies: a few soldiers, a few mechanical arachnids, a few surveillance drones. Their attacks were not enough to prevent the pair from reaching the massive elevator shaft that stretched far beneath the Shinra building's first floor. They had, however, failed to consider what might await them in that elevator, and charged through its doors hastily, stopping short at the sight of a familiar face.
Azul smiled darkly at them, eyes only looking once toward Aria and coming to rest on Vincent.
"So...Rosso didn't survive."
Aria turned her head from the words, swallowing hard at the reminder. A low utterance of surprise drew her attention back into the elevator. Azul's eyes had widened, now staring hard at Vincent. She turned and felt her breath catch in her throat.
As Vincent faced Azul, black wisps of energy drifted from his core, darkening the air around him in an angry haze.
"Something inside you wants out," Azul noted. "It's stench is so familiar."
Aria stepped back, heeding the warning Vincent had given not long before. In the air between them, a strong tension had risen, promising something explosive in the near future. She tightened her grip on her gun as Azul spoke again.
"Come, Vincent. Show me your rage! Let the killing begin!"
Mind ever on the end goal, Vincent's hand shot out to a small control panel on the exterior railing, sending the elevator into motion. Aria took off across the moving platform, preparing to strike Azul from behind, though the massive man never looked in her direction. Instead, he launched a violent attack on Vincent with his oversized machine gun. As she fired her few remaining bullets into his shield, she could tell that Reno would know the perfect overcompensation joke for just this moment. She wished he was there to offer some help.
Vincent did not seem to need it, though, as he darted around his half of the platform, keeping Azul's focus away from Aria and firing a seemingly endless line of brass at the Tsviet. He edged closer with each careful step, eventually coming into contact with his shield and shattering it with three quick shots. As it fell around him, Aria darted in from behind, knocking his gun from his hands and escaping to the railing again. Azul laughed, still only watching Vincent.
"This is how a battle should be. Don't you think so?"
Vincent watched Azul's feet, waiting for him to lunge toward his weapon. His chest burned with each inhalation, though he had hardly exerted himself. The edges of his vision darkened quickly, then cleared as Azul spoke again.
"Now feel my true strength. Feel the wrath of Azul the Cerulean!"
A flash of white light blinded Vincent and Aria, both squinting hard into the center of the platform. As the light faded, Aria cursed under her breath. Vincent only sighed, recognizing the beast from his encounter at the WRO headquarters. But this time, he realized, no other Tsviet would be coming to stop it.
In a single held breath, Vincent unloaded a full clip into the beast. From behind it, Aria dropped her empty pistols back into their holsters, drawing two short blades from their places up her sleeves. In doing so, her eye caught the Shinra logo on her shoulder, drawing from her a heavy sigh.
"Where are you now?" she asked of no one, before saying a quick prayer and heading into the fight.
Catching his breath from a hard swipe of the beast's right claw, Vincent felt time slow to a crawl as Aria approached the monster from behind. He could discern the exact length of her deep breath before she launched herself off of the railing and onto the beast's back, plunging her knives into its sides like handlebars. And for a moment, she held fast to them, pressing her body against its back as she drug the blades through its skin, hoping to hit something vital beneath. And in this moment of soundless clarity, Vincent watched the air vacate her lungs as she slipped down to the ground and took a curled claw to the chest, throwing her hard into the railing, where she fell into a heap that would not rise in retaliation.
The approach was easy. Azul had been watching his most recent victim when Vincent placed the muzzle of Cerberus against his chest and fired. The beast stumbled, clearly dazed by the wound. Its feet failed, and with a heavy crash, it fell. Behind it, Aria's eyes had slowly reopened, though her body would not heed her commands. She watched from the edge of the elevator as ladders and doors rose in the shaft around them, marking their steady descent. She watched as the beast lay on its stomach, still for a long moment until another light flooded its body and the floor beyond, raising it from the dead for a final strike, which it took with blinding speed at Vincent, at once catching him off guard and hurling him through the air until his back connected with the railing and bent him against it before he dropped in a position that mirrored her own.
"Stand! This isn't over yet," the beast taunted.
But whereas Aria could only extend an arm across the metal floor, choked cry dying in her throat, Vincent simply pushed himself back up, shockingly unfazed. His head hung for a moment as the beast snarled, and when finally it lifted, Aria could not look away from his eyes. Against the shadows of his face, they glowed a fiery red, lifting slowly until they fell back on Azul, who commended the performance.
"Good, good. Now come and fight."
She flinched as Vincent raced forward, moving faster than her eyes could discern, until he stood close enough to force his fist into the beast's body. Azul cried out in pain and surprise, and a familiar bright light washed over them, again causing Aria to close her eyes. At this point, she could push herself onto her knees, though the pain in her back kept her from standing. She gasped against the light and covered her face, noting the sharp taste of metal in the air. When finally the room darkened enough to see, she lowered her hand slowly, cautiously taking in the sight of Chaos proudly squaring off to Azul, who had been returned to his human form. The Tsviet stumbled at the sight of the beast and chuckled upon finding his only weapon in the hand of his enemy.
"Chaos…" Azul spoke quietly, proud to have awakened this monster. He inhaled to speak again, but his voice failed him as Chaos raised the arm holding his gun.
With a single fluid motion, the demon launched the gun directly through Azul's chest. While the impact had sprayed Aria with mako, it was the expression of pure glee on Chaos's face that weakened her resolve enough to send her back to the ground. Her stomach churned at the sight of the Tsviet.
"It looks like you were more a beast than I," Azul coughed, stumbling backward. "Very well. I'll see you again, Vincent..in Hell."
Red wings spread to either side of Chaos as he watched Azul choke for a moment longer. Only once the Tsviet came close the elevator's edge did the beast ball his fists and project a beam of red and white energy into the dying man, hurtling him through the railing and down into the shaft below. Aria shivered, now left alone with Chaos.
He twisted his body quickly, quickly growing frustrated with the confines of the elevator, before settling his gaze on her. Approaching slowly, he knelt beside her, embers flickering in the air around him, singeing tiny holes into her jacket. A large, sharp clawed hand extended, wrapping around her upper arm and pulling her into a seated position against the railing. Her teeth ground against the pain of his grasp. Still, he seemed more curious than violent as he examined her face, though she watched the folded wings at his back rather than risk eye contact. The smell of metal and oil overcame her again, and she wondered if it was tied to this creature.
"I know you're in there. It's safe now. Come back, Vincent."
At the name, Chaos bolted upright, wings spreading violently into the air beside him. She feared for her safety at the sight of sharp fangs peeking between his dark lips, until a light clatter distracted him. He turned away, finding a cell phone now lying on the elevator floor.
Aria could only assume he heard something she did not, as Chaos quickly dropped to a knee, lingered for a moment between this world and another, then fell onto his back in a explosion of light. When it faded, Vincent lay in his place, eyes closed in the new quietness of the elevator. She crawled first to the cell phone, collecting it in her scraped and weakened fist, then slid over to Vincent, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder and allowing her eyes to close.
Far from the waking world, Vincent braced himself against the fragmented memories that Chaos had shaken loose. His brow twisted as images of Lucrecia, Hojo, and the Nibelheim laboratory faded in and out of sight, familiar voices speaking uncomfortable truths.
"Open your eyes."
The low voice commanded softly, gently prodding her toward consciousness. Aria turned her head toward it, keeping her eyes shut tight.
"Come now, Marx...you're only getting started. Open your eyes."
I'm tired, she replied without speaking, blindly trying to search out the source of the voice, both comfortingly familiar and somehow foreign.
"That never stopped you before. Get up. Open your eyes."
When Aria finally opened her eyes again, Vincent was already staring straight up the elevator shaft, momentarily dazed at the pieces that had come together. She pushed herself up slowly, waiting for him to do the same.
"Chaos...Lucrecia used me to...Lucrecia…"
Aria looked away as he repeated the name, sensing the hole burning within him. She had one with another name.
"This pain is…" his voice drifted away again. Aria stood and extended her hand, snapping him out of his fog. His eyes focused, and he pulled himself up, newfound cellphone in hand. He dialed Shelke and sighed at the silence on the other end. The next step waited only yards away, and he finally turned to look at it.
The massive metal portal promised a fresh wave of unspeakable horror that even he could not predict. Their eyes meeting once in a glance of solidarity, Vincent and Aria straightened their backs and entered Deepground.