A/N: If you've made it this far, do consider leaving me a review! They're very encouraging, and any constructive criticism is extremely welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or FFX, nor do I stand to make any money off its creative property.
The Fall of Gaia
Chapter Six: Tides
"So let me get this straight, Cloud. You're an alien who just so happens to be humanoid and speak English. You come from a planet called Gaia, which we've decided is most likely the same planet whose rubble is now orbiting Spira. This planet of yours was not only alive, but sentient, capable of imparting knowledge through mako, a physical form of something called the Lifestream, which is literally its blood or soul or something. You fought a guy named Sephiroth, who's plan was to hijack this Lifestream and fly the planet through space."
After Zeitu finished venting, Cloud very slowly nodded.
"Well... shit. The fact that you're here means you lost, I guess?"
Another slow nod. Cloud's eyes were downcast, fixated on the ground.
Zeitu looked up at the wreckage of the city above them, his thoughts turning to the beautiful, glowing, green circle of rock and light that lay beyond. It seemed... strange, to think that something so inherently terrible and wondrous was the literal obliterated corpse of another planet. One that had once held humans. Humans that were, ostensibly, from the same place Spirans were from. They did speak the same language, after all. And somewhere, in the aftermath of all that destruction, some god of a man named Sephiroth probably still lived: the instigator and deliberate mastermind behind the whole event. What might have become of Spira if Vegnagun II hadn't been fired?
Come to think of it, were they much better off now? These fiends couldn't just be a local event now that it seemed they were a product of this mako business. Is that why help was so slow to arrive? Was the entire world fending off armies of fiends? Zeitu shivered for a moment with fear. How were they going to survive this?
Cirri, who had been carefully keeping an eye on exit of the alley for packs of fiends, suddenly yelped, drawing both Cloud and Zeitu out of their thoughts. "Water!" Zeitu only had a moment to wonder what she meant before a distant rushing noise alerted him to what sounded like a lotof approaching water. 'Oh shit.' Of course. The sudden appearance and destruction of a planet couldn't have had no effect on the tides. They barely had time to clamber up the side of a wrecked building before about three feet or so of water came rushing through the streets below. "We have to get to the upper levels or we're going to end up drowning," Cirri said, looking around them for some kind of way up from their vantage point. "Looks like there's a stairway column to the east. We'll need some way of getting there."
The water was rising rapidly, and the column looked impossibly far away, but Zeitu was quickly learning that the word "impossible" meant "try harder," and he broke out into a run, leaping off the edge of the building and managing to grab the edge of the neighboring one to pull himself up. "Come on!" he called back to the others, and they quickly followed. It was in this manner that they found themselves at the staircase; bloody-handed and bruised from repeated impacts with hard concrete.
Then began the slow climb up the great, wide staircase that had daily borne the weight of hundreds of workers, and Zeitu wondered just how much of the upper levels they'd find still standing after the events that had occurred only a day before. Had it really only been one night? Had the sun even come up, yet? Zeitu's stomach turned over. Less than 12 hours. That's all it had taken for this Sephiroth guy to completely destroy everything that Zeitu had ever known.
He glanced over to Cirri. How was she handling all this so well? Her stoic face reminded him vaguely of Cloud; if all this was disturbing her, she was holding it all inside. If anything, she seemed to become more withdrawn with each step.
"Cirri. You okay?"
"Yes. I'm fine."
"No. You're not fine. I can tell."
"If you weren't going to believe my answer regardless, why ask the question?"
"I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about it. You're not alone, you know."
"I know I'm not alone. If I wanted to talk about it, I would have. Just drop it, alright?"
Zeitu stared at the two people to his right. Was he really the only person who wanted to talk about this? Didn't she realize that maybe hewas the one who felt alone, here? With friends (could he even really call them friends?) like this by his side, it was suffocating silence at all times.
"Cloud-"
"Zeitu. I'm sorry, but not now. I've got a lot on my mind."
And that was that: back to suffocation. Zeitu looked down off the side of the railing just in time to see the tops of the buildings below disappear under the water and he felt sick again. 'The others...' Seriously. How could he be the only one who desperately wanted to let all this out? He wasn't used to not having anyone to talk to: he had always had his sister. 'Oh no... Cyfia... How could I have forgotten about you, even for a second? Where the hell are you?' He felt a pang of guilt. How had he forgotten about his sister, even in all this mess? With the waves coming in to sink Besaid Island, there might not even be a body left to bury. He hoped desperately that she was alive, somewhere.
With nothing else to turn to, he looked to his sphere-net key and saw it was still faintly glowing green, humming strangely, the screen blank. He choked for a second, running his fingers through his hair and touching the device to his temple in frustration and anguish. ' I can't even imagine how I'm going to fix this stupid thing, And even if I did, I don't have a terminal to work on it with.'
'THANK YOU.'
A/N: Thank you for reading.