Chapter 101: Descent
If Tifa had been a screamer, she would have screamed all the way down.
'Flying' them down apparently meant changing into some kind of creature that was all dark and blood color and horrible eyes, scooping both her and Red up in arms that felt like ice and steel and simply plunging down the shaft feet first, Tifa's long hair trailing in a streamer behind them. In fact, the only time the wings came into play was at the very end when whatever Vincent had turned himself into, snapped them open and almost sent the top of her head through his chin where she'd been clinging to him with her eyes shut, face pressed into the ice brick he called a shoulder. She made a noise then, because the claws on the hand he had around her dug into her hip with the jerk, but that was the extent of her vocalizations.
When she got to know him better though, she'd have other vocalizations for him about this and she'd have to make sure her siblings weren't around to pick up the new words when she gave it to him.
His clawed toes lashed out and she heard metal grind and assumed it was the closed elevator door. A few more screeching blows and there was sudden light and the horrible smell of blood and broken entrails. Tifa let herself leave her eyes closed just a little bit longer. She felt Vincent settle and heard Red huff as he was dropped and/or set down. Skin tightening around her eyes, she told herself it was very unlikely that there was blood or gore this close to the elevator and when Vincent set her down, she wouldn't flinch no matter what sound her boots made.
Except he didn't set her down.
Waiting, she managed to get one eye open but since her face was against his shoulder all she saw was the strange organic fabric of his cloak or maybe it was his fur now since it seemed to shade back and turn into wings and the dim interior of the shaft behind her where the weak light managed to filter in. Behind her, she heard Red snarl:
"Set her down, mutt. You haven't earned the right to her yet."
Whatever Vincent was made a noise in its throat in response and it didn't sound human or animal. Tifa's other eye popped open so both of her eyes could widen and she felt the claws on her hip tighten again, breaking skin again. She made her own noise then and reached over his shoulder to tug on his wing.
"Down," she ordered. She already had too much to freak out over. Vincent wasn't allowed to join that. Slowly, very slowly, she was lowered to her feet. She reached down and pried the claws out of and off of her.
"Thank you," she managed primly as she stepped back and proceeded to dust herself off. That was the way you did things, at the bar when patrons got a little too familiar. You acted as if you didn't notice. Sometimes it worked, something you had to twist somebody's wrist. She hoped the first worked because whatever Vincent was, she thought if she tried to twist his wrist he'd consider it a turn on. The creature growled low in its throat and then the body hunched and went through the sickening twisting and popping it had done to change into whatever it was in the first place. Tifa didn't watch and tried not to listen to bones breaking and realigning. Afterward the only sound was Vincent's ragged breathing.
Tifa gave him a moment, pretending not to notice. He didn't seem the kind that appreciated sympathy and so the best support she could give him was to pretend she didn't notice that he needed it. Finishing her 'dusting', she straightened and looked around. And wished she hadn't.
The floors were painted with blood. So were the walls. Almost literally it seemed from the way the blood was dragged deliberately across the metal surfaces. And, as horrible as it was, what bothered Tifa more was the fact that, despite the smell and the gore – there were no bodies.
She pulled out her PHS and Yuffie answered on the second ring.
"Ho Huang's House of Hung. If you're a Ho we're Huang."
In the background, behind the girl's cheerful voice, Tifa could make out the sounds of battle and Reno's voice asking distantly:
"Is that a pizza place? Tell 'em we need extra olives, yo, and if it ain't here within fifteen minutes we want it for free."
"It's a telemarketer," Zack's voice responded from somewhere just a little closer. "They always call at the worse time. Like when you're in the shower, you know?"
"Or right when you and your girl are in the middle of fuc-"
"Yuffie!" Tifa interrupted. "You guys are going the wrong way. It's all downstairs. Under the first floor. You have to take an elevator shaft or something."
"Downstairs? There's a – hang on. Could you guys keep it down?!" she screeched over the sounds of battle and Tifa winced and held the phone away from her own ear. "I'm trying to talk here! Sorry, Tifa. What? There's a downstairs?"
"There's a sub-basement level to the Shinra building or something. It's where Jenova is. You need to get the boys and call Leon and get the others and come down here. Something bad's happened. I mean really, really bad."
"We should not stay in the same place for too long," Red commented and Tifa nodded.
"Look, I've got to go Yuffie. Get everyone and get them down here. Whatever's going on it feels like a slasher film."
"You're making a slash film?" Yuffie asked but Tifa knew she'd understood and so she hung up and pocketed the phone. Vincent gave her a nod and it was hard to tell in the flickering florescent lighting whether he was paler than usual or not.
"Which way?" she asked him, hoping he could still sense Jenova. The hall went both directions and so did the blood. He paused and lifted his head and she watched his nostrils flare a little. Then he shook his head.
"Either way. I suspect all paths lead to it."
Tifa looked down at Red and resisted the urge to say something dry simply because it was in his eyes to do the same. Instead she nodded and randomly picked the hall to the left. She took it at a trot because walking seemed too exposed and… wrong for this situation. Red padded next to her and Vincent took up rear guard behind them.
Tifa tried to stop her head from matching the words 'I wish I wasn't here, I wish I wasn't here' to the beat of her boots on the ground.
The air was stifling and heavy as whatever air vents and cooling units that were supposed to operate down here only seemed to be doing so fitfully. The blood made the air thick and it felt moist against her skin. Tifa resisted the urge to wipe at her face or rub at her arms. She gave the closed doors and air vents in the ceilings and walls wide berth as much as she could and told her mind to stop replaying scenes from that movie based on that shooter video game about the monsters on the base on Mars that she'd watched because she'd fallen asleep on the couch one night with the TV on and when she'd woken up it had been on.
Yeah, so not a good time to be remembering the whole totally unnecessary but nerve wrecking wading around in the water in the dark tunnel scene.
When the blast of fire exploded in front of her, Tifa's nerves were so tightly strung that she moved with a speed that even surprised her as she dove to the side and rolled, retaliating with a burst of mastered Bolt that tore through the ceiling and walls around the silver haired clone that had stepped out of a doorway ahead to attack them. It sent him through the doorway he'd just stepped out of and Tifa followed before he had a chance to recover. She didn't wonder for even a second if Red and Vincent were behind her as she followed the clone into a room that once, disturbingly, had apparently been a employee cafeteria of some sort.
She hadn't fought one of the clones before and this one was fast. Far, far too fast. He was also a potential Sephiroth but at the moment he was just himself. Tifa had wondered, briefly, how she should deal with the silver haired figures when she fought them. If they were being used like Cloud was, killing them seemed doubly horrible. The man in front of her though was smiling as he attacked them and Tifa quickly decided that anyone that smiled while they tried to kill you probably didn't need your pity or a gentle hand. She and Red and Vincent laid into the clone in the same pattern they'd developed against the monsters they'd fought, Red focusing the materia, Vincent supplying the long range attacks and Tifa closing in for the physical battering. It was a devastatingly effective routine. Despite his speed and the blows he got in, the clone was no real match for the three of them. He went down and his body began to haze with a strange black spotted fog. Before Tifa could get a closer look at what was happening though, there was an explosion of ice around her that tossed her backward as two more silver haired clones burst into the room.
Tifa shook off the splinters of ice and ignored the way they'd sliced fine lines over her exposed skin and clothes. She cast Cure over herself and both of her companions as she moved to join them but even that didn't heal everything. The monsters outside had taken their toll for their passage and the clone they had just defeated had inflicted his own damage. The constant battles were starting to wear them down and as the first silver haired man moved forward, sword flashing while his companion stood behind him and sent bolts of materia elements flaring their way, Tifa wondered just how many battles you could fight before you simply ran out of the ability to.
Enough battles to end with just one more fight in you than your opponent had in them, she guessed.
Planting her feet, she settled into her opening crouch and waited for the right opportunity to move forward and bring her fists and feet into action.
A part of her was still waiting for one of the clones to morph into Sephiroth. She wasn't sure how they'd manage if he showed up. Just that they'd have to.
The fight quickly devolved into the controlled chaos that was battle and Tifa found herself fighting another clone she couldn't even remember seeing enter the battle. This one was all speed and muscle and he traded her blow for blow. Neither of them were above using the abandoned furniture either and Tifa dodged the table he slid at her before kicking a metal and plastic chair up into the air and then at him without having to drop her boot to touch the ground between the motions.
He was stronger than her but she was faster, even with the strange sliding motions he could use that seemed to put him in two spots at once. She got in more blows but when one of his hit home, she felt it. Lashing out with her leg, she caught him in the jaw with her heel and he went back. But he caught her ankle as he did so and spun her before bringing her down hard on the floor. She made a noise and covered her head with her arms and the floor, already weakened, buckled and collapsed under her, chunks of concrete and rebar leaving furrows in her skin. She fell through the floor/ceiling and crashed down on what felt like a desk or conference table. She heard a crack and the brief cry of pain and surprise left her. The breaking sound had come from her, not the wood under her.
Air left her lungs in a rush as fire spread up through her rib cage but she kept enough sense to roll and her body fell off the table as her silver haired attacker came down after her with a follow up blow that halved the polished imitation wood of the table. Though the hole in the ceiling, Tifa could see the flares of materia.
While her opponent was over balanced from his missed blow, she lashed up with a foot again and this time she caught him in the nose. He gave a cry and even as he fell backward she noticed the familiar black fog starting to swirl around him. Quick, she focused her mind, reaching out for the Cure materia on her glove. A blast of energy lifted her, the pieces of the desk and several chairs off the ground and threw them as Fire exploded upward around her. The noise it ripped out of her was harsher than she'd let herself make so far and she felt the way her skin went raw where the core of the blast had caught her. It shattered her concentration and the half caught Cure blinked out as she rolled instinctively to avoid another blast, this time of ice. Her abraded skin protested the rough surface of the rug as she dragged across it.
A form fell toward her and since she saw silver when it did, she raised her hand. It was an instinctive move. She didn't have any materia her mind was wrapped around and as punches went, it wasn't well timed and didn't have much force behind it. It did connect however and as it did, something surged up through Tifa's body that felt a little bit like electricity and a little bit like water. There was a flare of blue as her fist connected with the stomach of the man over her and she watched in amazement as he was hurled backward as if she'd struck him with a mastered Bolt at close range. She blinked and her throat suddenly felt dry.
"Holy…" she managed weakly. That hadn't been materia. She knew what materia felt like. That had felt like… as ridiculous as it sounded… that had felt like… her.
There was a cry of rage from the corner the body had been thrown into and Tifa snapped back to the present, frantically concentrating on Cure and hoping it was fast enough as the silver haired man she'd thrown so impossibly lurched out of the rubble of the wall and charged toward her, twin silver blades in each hand.
And for the second time in as many minutes, Tifa's concentration shattered as the ground under the rushing man suddenly exploded in blinding electric power. The silver haired clone was illuminated and his scream, rage and pain, split Tifa's ears. His body flared and when the light died, even the black fog was gone. Tifa twisted weakly as she heard movement from the doorway and saw familiar boots.
Heart in her throat, she raised her huge eyes and saw…
She almost wept.
Silver moonlight for his hair…
"Cloud…"
His eyes swept down to where she lay and they were jade with all too familiar snake slits. There was no recognition in those cold, inhuman depths.
"Mine," the voice that left his lips wasn't his and it was as dead as the attacker he addressed, as he added: "My kill."
