Chapter 100: Team Work
Below the ground was rapidly approaching, silver and black and green. So much green. Too much green. It made her stomach feel sick. At first those colors were all she could see as she held the rope end in her hand and watched over the side of the Highwind as the ship descended on Midgar. Closer, she could see the bright orange of fire as well.
Then the buildings were approaching and Tifa could see how ragged and already broken they were. It reminded her of sandcastles built too close to the shore when the tide began to come in. She had just a moment to wonder at her sanity, getting involved in this, and then the wind around the broken buildings, caused by the surging Lifestream was buffeting the Highwind and Cid was yelling orders. They'd decided the ladder would take too long and make them all too easy a target so it was ropes for everyone instead. Tifa dropped hers over the side and waited until the Highwind steadied and the end of her rope pooled on the roof of a building. Taking a deep breath, refusing to think, she went over the edge of the railing as well, thick gloves tightening around the rope while her boots fumbled and then found the thick cord as well. Down she went, into the night and the dark and the green and the fire and even though she knew the others were dropping just like her, she felt as if she were very alone.
Her gloves smoked with friction and the roof of the building came toward her fast. Above her, wind beat against the Highwind and it swayed. So did she. 'It's like being thrown' she told herself. 'Just pretend some monster has just thrown you and that's a wall, not the ground'. She caught the impact on her legs instead of her feet, letting her body compact and sink instead of trying to stay upright. A second later the rope whipped off the side of the building as well and Tifa straightened as she pulled off the now worn through work gloves and flexed her hands in her fighting ones. The air stank of smoke and oil and steel. And… ozone. The scent she'd learned to associate with storms and Cloud. Mako.
Somewhere nearby there was Lifestream flowing. Tifa could hear the way it sounded like screaming.
Her hands shook when she curled them over the edge of the roof and looked around for the others but she wasn't about to back down. It was the final game and she wasn't going to go weak now. Since she was the only one that had ended up on this roof, she swung herself down to the fire escape and quickly worked her way down the side. She could hear gunfire nearby, the steady stream of Barret's and the shorter single snaps of Leon's or Vincent's. Someone ran past the front of the alley she was in just as she dropped off the ladder but they didn't pause for her and in the darkness she couldn't tell if it was one of the clones, one of her friends, or a helpless city dweller. Cautious she made it to the head of the alley herself and was just about to peek around the corner when an arm reached out and snatched her back.
She spun, ready to badly hurt someone – and saw the flash of blood red and black and gold, topped by a corpse pale face.
"Vincent."
She didn't know him but he'd gone with Red and helped save Aerith's mom. He was one of them and she reached up to lock her hand with his without hesitation. He pulled and she scrambled and soon she was joining him in the caved in hole in the side of what once had been a building. Red crouched next to him, tail casting strange flickering shadows and the eerie green from outside reflected in his golden eye. Vincent released Tifa to go crouch next to him and Tifa joined them.
"The others?" she asked and Red's flame twitched in the darkness.
"Yuffie, the Turk, and Zack landed right in front of the tower," Red's nose gestured toward the building that was Shinra headquarters. "Leon, Cid, and Barret landed two blocks over but they ran into some of the silver haired creatures."
Tifa, hand curled over the lip of the building, nodded. It was way too late for her to be having 'what the hell am I doing?' thoughts.
She was having them anyway.
She swallowed against her dry throat. The thoughts didn't mean she was going to turn around and run though.
Someone had taken Cloud and she was going to kick their ass for it.
"I'm here for Cloud," she stated softly and turned her head to meet Red's single golden eye. That gold shifted and softened.
"I too, am here for Strife," the red beast admitted. "I have yet to pay my debt to him."
Somehow it made it easier to breath and Tifa gave him a weak smile. Then she looked at the man between them. Vincent shrugged.
"I'm here to kill Hojo's creations. The clones will do to start."
"Good enough," Tifa decided and looked across the ruined street. "Think we can make it to the building?"
Red's head swung next to her and he made a sound in his throat. It was a Cloud sound, one of his quiet hums of agreement. It made Tifa's lips twist upward even as her eyes hurt and she swung herself over the ruined lip of rubble and out onto the equally ruined sidewalk. Nothing dropped down on her immediately and she turned to give the others a thumbs up before moving forward at speed.
For some reason Tifa was surprised when the first monster scuttled out of a ruined building to grab for her with its long, thin jointed arms. She'd expected the silver haired creatures, she'd thought she might run into Shinra soldiers or Turks, she'd hoped and hoped for finding pockets of Midgar's citizens still safe and hiding. For some reason, she hadn't expected monsters. And the monsters she hadn't expected to see proved to be even larger and fiercer and more suicidal than what she was used to fighting. Worse yet, to her way of thinking, was the fact that, whenever they paused to fight one monster, other monsters heard the sounds of battle and came to join the fight. Since the monsters were very low on the priority level, it turned into a running battle, with the creatures darting out of cracks in the ground or lurching out of holes in buildings to come at them while they defended and raced toward the Shinra building. Tifa grit her teeth and cast another mastered Cure. In her head she could hear Zack griping about 'fuckin' random battles!'
By the time they reached the Shinra building, they were all bleeding. At least Tifa knew that she and Red were. Dressed the way he was, she could only guess for Vincent but he'd taken his share of the blows and some of those blows had been meant for her.
When they got out of this she was going to make it a point to make him a real member of their team. Or pack. Or whatever they were.
"Red," she gasped it as she skid to a stop inside the ruined interior of the building and put her back to a wall. The lobby of the building was in ruins and seemed temporarily empty. Outside the dark of the city was lit up with another orange explosion. Panting, Red swung his great head to look at her.
"What do you think?" she asked. "Up where the President's office is or where the labs were?"
"Down."
Vincent's voice was amazingly unruffled as he intoned the word and Tifa looked over at him as he reloaded the huge gun he was carrying. The silver charm on the end of it caught the chaotic light from outside.
"Down?"
He nodded briefly and didn't look up from what he was doing.
"Jenova is downward. I can feel it. She is looked for locked secrets that should be left asleep."
"You can feel it?" The last time someone had told Tifa they could 'feel' what the enemy was doing, she'd ended up losing them. She knew enough to be wary of it now. Vincent's eyes rose and they were deep ruby under his black hair.
"The beast that lives inside me – he can feel Jenova. Predator to predator."
Tifa paused long enough to digest the new information and then nodded.
"All right," she looked at Red and got his nod. "We go down."
Surprise flickered briefly over Vincent's face and then he was emotionless again. It made Tifa smile tiredly.
"You're part of our team," she told the taller man. "That means we go where you go. So… let's go."
There were quite a few ways leading up and it took quite a bit of looking to find any that went down. In the end, they improvised and blew open the doors to the elevator. The shaft went down as well as up. Red sighed.
"I left my harness with the rope when we were dropped."
Vincent leaned over the edge and looked down the bottomless seeming shaft.
"I can fly us down."
For a minute, in the dead silence, the explosions from outside sounded faintly through the hollow lobby.
"What?" Tifa finally asked.
