did I not promise, come rain or shine, I would do my darnest to get this thing out every single Sunday, once a week? Well, gentle readers and best beloveds, I'm not about to fall this close to the end. Unfortunately, I've been in the hospital and, while they've assured me it's not life threatening and I'm in the process of healing nicely, I am unable to remain upright for great lengths of time at this point. So... until I figure out how to rig the laptop so I can type laying on my back - or, more likely - heal up enough to sit without giving myself a headache, today's next three chapters will be without the usually replies to all the wonderful reviews I was given by my best beloveds. Don't think they weren't just as wonderful for me, some of you guys are really getting into your stride when it comes to reviewing - I'm getting whole stories and inside, inside jokes and insights and, of course and always the encouragement that feeds a writer's soul. So, today, please take my clingy hugs and what I can give you as thanks and know that it's just as heartfelt - though less articulate - as ever. You guys really do make my day with your reviews. I apologize for the roughness of this - though Peeka-chan did edit, I haven't been able to make her corrections.

Chapter 106: Jenova

They had to take turns looking out through the grate and Tifa almost wished she hadn't taken her shift once her eyes had managed to adjust to the fact that the only light in the room was provided by the widely gaping cracks in the floor that revealed rushing sickly familiar green.

Tifa was starting to hate that color.

The room she was looking at had once apparently been a large meeting room or perhaps another cafeteria or break room. A few randomly placed motivational posters still hung crooked in their broken frames on the scorched and blackened walls. The poster with 'Perseverance' written in bold white under its uplifting picture had blood splashed across it. Any furniture that had once existed was gone and the ceiling had been broken through to reveal bits of the rooms that had once been above. Lifestream, moving with strangely cognizant motions was flowing sluggishly along the cracks that shattered most of the floor. Tifa through she could hear it screaming, almost too high pitched for her ears to hear, not sounding like any scream a living thing would give. Over that though were much more human screams.

There was a line of people pressed up against the far wall, cowering and trying not to watch, or else watching in dim horror. Silver haired men kept them there with violent efficiency and the victims wept and moaned and screamed. But those noises of hopelessness and despair were nothing compared to the one that came from the far end of the room.

Tifa had tried her hardest not to look at what she'd seen from the edges of her vision there but when the screaming started again, her eyes shifted to show her and she cringed, feeling sick.

A huge, discolored… something crouched in the far corner. It was all putrid flesh and arms and legs and tentacles and barbs and feelers. So strongly not real, not natural, that Tifa's eyes tried to avoid focusing on it automatically, giving her only impressions of wrongness and too much. Too much of everything. And in the very center of all of that… other… was the one familiar thing. And it made Tifa close her eyes tightly and turn her head. The image was already burned in her though. Because that… thing was wrapping itself around a human body, like some giant spider wrapping up a fly found in its web. A human body that had still moved and writhed… and screamed like a dying animal, long and protracted and horrible and hopeless. And the scream went on and on. Far longer than it should have been able too. Green glowed around that body and that scream. Living, horrible, incandescent green. And the creature grew even more bloated as it absorbed that.

Zack was shaking his head and cursing under his breath in a long running monotone, his eyes pale chips of ice. In the dark and shadows, Cloud's were an aqua wolf's.

"Are we done?" Zack's whisper was raw. Cloud's voice was the contrasting calm, flat answer.

"We're done."

Zack shifted as Tifa moved out of the way and a second later, his boot sent the grate flying across the room. He was out in a second and Tifa came next. Cloud came last and raised the hand his sword wasn't in. The clones in that direction disappeared as lighting more intense than anything Tifa had ever seen pulled down from above to erase them in electric blue. That lightning was still in Cloud's eyes when he turned toward the monster against the far wall.

Jenova let her latest victim fall and the body fell in dissolving pieces as it parted from hers. Glowing green moved under her pulsating skin, highlighting veins that pumped with the stolen energy. At the very center of the swollen monster, Tifa saw the dull reflectionless surface of the green stone Aerith had sacrificed herself to pull free from the Lifestream. Dimly, she was aware of screaming, scrambling sounds behind them as the people that had been lined up as siphons fled in panic now that their captors were gone but she couldn't have turned her eyes to look if she'd wanted to. And she wouldn't have dared anyway. In front of her, the discolored form expanded and contracted. She had a second to realize the air felt thick and clotted and suddenly she was on her knees. Something was squeezing her skull, like a pair of giant hands wrapped completely around it, pressing inward with careless consistency. She thought she might have cried out but she couldn't hear anything. A… something… laughed at her. Laughing inside her head at what it found there. She was nothing to it. Fragile flesh and breakable bone that was already turning to dust. It was ancient. It had traveled through the stars as if they were a field of flowers. It had – It was everything. And she was only still alive but crushing her slowly was more amusing than doing it quickly. The sounds she made were more enjoyable when the death was slow. Tifa squeezed her eyes shut and unnoticed tears of pain leaked form them.

And then she grit her teeth.

Because… this wasn't the first thing to try to tell her she was nothing. It wasn't the first thing to try to tell her she couldn't change anything. That told her to just accept and give up, give in.

Her hand fisted on the floor and she pressed her forehead to the harsh surface. Grounding herself as if she were grinding her heel into loose rock to anchor herself during a fight.

Oh –

Oh no. She'd beaten the slums. She'd beaten the threat and lure of drug dealers and criminal 'families' trying to stake their claim on her business or her family, on pimps, gang lords, slum lords, and common thieves and small time thugs. She'd refused to let her family fall that way. She'd refused to lose them to the bullies there, refused to be bullied. Refused to be beaten down. She'd be damned before she'd let some alien without a real concept of what living was really about to start with tell her she was down and beaten before she'd even had a chance to throw a punch. Instead of fighting it, she focused on the pain and she funneled that down through her into the materia embedded in her glove.

Ultima exploded out from her in green like an ocean wave and it grew and doubled as it rolled. She thought she might have yelled something but she couldn't hear it if she had and when the rolling green struck the creature in front of her, its entire form quivered and shook, limbs flailing wildly for a moment.

Tifa was on her feet in an instant but Zack and Cloud were even faster and they both closed on the creature at the same time from either side. Their swords glowed with a wild blue fire as they bit through ruined flesh and unnatural animation. For the first time, Jenova made a sound. And it was a scream of horror and shock and surprised pain. Something else belled out in that scream and it rocked Tifa back on her heels. It was a call, a tug, a demanding pull –

And Tifa knew it hadn't been meant for anyone in the room.

Sephiroth…

She pivoted on her heels, risking leaving herself exposed to the fact that both Zack and Cloud were more than enough to keep Jenova occupied for a second more and looked toward where she knew the door was. Expecting it to burst open. Cloud had taken care of the few clones in the room and the people that could had long since fled. If Sephiroth had been kept in wait in the previous room, he would come now and all Tifa knew was that – somehow – she was going to have to stop him long enough to let Cloud and Zack finish Jenova.

Except, nothing came through the door. It stayed silent and closed and whatever bell toned call had gone out…

Sephiroth wasn't answering it.

Could he do that? Or was he busy with her friends instead? Zack suddenly went flying past and Tifa abandoned thoughts about the unopening door. She called up a Cure spell and twisted it in her head, the tricky slip she'd learned from working with it so long, setting it to regenerate them, knitting their bodies as they received the damage over a longer period of time.

Aerith had taught her that trick…

With a sound, she dodged the two overlong arms that tried to crush her and drove her fist forward into the center of the monster. Strange, translucent blue fire glowed around her skin the way it had when she'd lashed out at the clone and her blow burst unnatural colored skin and ruptured veins that bled glowing green. The… thing in front of her raged and she felt a suddenly blow, except it was inside her. Inside her head. And it said that, no matter how much damage she did, she'd never manage to kill what was in front of her. It was too much, it was too big, it was too endless. As if it had been a physical blow, it sent her skidding backward, the soles of her shoes burning the friction and speed was so great. And then Cloud gave one of his wordless grunts of dismissal and his sword rang like sheet metal as it sliced through air and alien.

"She's not even whole. We destroyed her arm in del Sol. Remember? One of her clones fell apart before he could get it back to her and it mutated onboard that ship it wrecked. She'll never be what she was and even what she was ended up buried in mako and forgotten."

"Come on, babe," Zack was back from whatever wall he'd been thrown into, boots thumping as he charged forward and threw himself back into the fight. "Can't let Spikey have all the fun!"

It was ridiculous and absolutely insane… and yet, Tifa found a smile on her lips when she charged back into the fight. She called down lightning – why did she and Cloud always use lightning? – and it tore through the beast in front of her and more green exploded away from it in glowing mist. And then the fight was too close to use material and it got dirty and vicious fast. Tifa pulled out every dirty trick she'd ever learned and unexplained blue fire sheathed her as she wove and tore pieces of the monster away with her blows. Jenova regenerated and new limbs grew, each one carrying a different nasty surprise as poison and fire and ice and lightning lurked at the tips of each of them. Sweat poured down into Tifa's eyes and she saw it ran diluted green with the mix of what fell from Jenova as it coated her skin and mixed with her red blood.

"Aerith!" Cloud called it and for a minute, she wondered what he meant. Until she saw his sword strokes were determined and realized…

Aerith's stone.

Jenova's skin tried to close over it but the stone refused to be absorbed entirely and Cloud's strokes had freed its edge. Without a thought, Tifa darted forward. Her fingers caught the edge of the stone and it wasn't cold and colorless anymore. It glowed with strings of electric green just under its glass surface and it burned like ice where her bare skin came into contact with it. It belonged to Aerith. And her friend had given up too much for Tifa to see it lost to the creature that tried to swallow life itself. That tried to swallow everything that her friend held dear. With a cry, she wrapped both hands around it and used that as her center as she swung her leg up in a roundhouse kick that would have taken someone's head off. Blue fire flared and she found herself rolling backward as Jenova screamed in a pitch so high it hurt her ears straight down to the center of her head.

The stone was coated in gore, green and red and purple pulp. And it was in Tifa's hands.

The creature lurched forward, mobile for the first time. Except Cloud and Zack harried it like wolves, slicing away parts of it to be left twitching and helpless behind the greater moving bulk. The monster was still fast and Tifa darted and rolled, trying to be aware of the uneven floor, the cracks of liquid Lifestream, the walls, and her friends and the monster all at the same time, trying to keep from being cornered or falling over or into anything. She held the stone against her chest with one arm as she did so and it burned her and sucked all the heat out of her at the same time.

Even more than she loathed Jenova, Tifa hated the long dead Ancients and all of their life draining tricks.

She still held the stone tightly and she still refused to let Jenova corner her.

Aerith had said the stone would put Jenova to sleep. How? Tifa had no idea and she still liked Cloud's idea of cutting the creature to shreds instead. Jenova's boneless arms swept out for her and she fell backward and rolled. The green stone threatened to slip from her wet fingers and she tightened her hold on it and –

"Teef…"

The sound that came out of Tifa's throat was broken and she barely managed to dodge Jenova's next attack. Cloud was suddenly in the way, his dark form blocking the monster and refusing to be moved. Tifa's fingers scrabbled at the stone. Because… the voice… she'd heard…

"Aerith…?"

It was only a whisper but, somehow, she heard the familiar tinkling laugh of her friend.

"I've been waiting."

"Aerith!" It was her friend's voice and it was… so happy and yet so sad at the same time. It made no sense and Tifa tried to concentrate on the fact she hoped she wasn't going mad and scramble backward to give Cloud back his mobility at the same time.

"I've been waiting for you to come. I knew you would." It was Aerith's faith in the soft voice.

"Where - ? What?" Tifa was back to her single word questions again and Zack caught her arm and dragged her out of the way just as a horrible black fog swept out of Jenova and almost encompassed her. Cloud rolled clear at the last second. Where she had been went sickly colored and started to mutate, concrete melting and running in uneven oozing chunks.

"Teef?" Zack's question was puzzled and Tifa shook her head.

"It's Aerith. Can't you hear her?"

"Ask her how to use the rock," Cloud's voice was strained and his blade swept down. Blue fire rolled from it and sliced into Jenova, setting it screaming it's unnatural wail.

"Aerith?" Tifa asked, clutching the stone.

"The stone, Teef." Aerith's voice was gentle and amused and steadying. "It's Huge Materia. You and Cloud and Zack. I'm here too. Use it like materia. You all need to touch it and call it up. Just like Cloud taught us on the way to the church, remember?"

"Yeah," Tifa felt tears on her cheeks and nodded, vision blurred.

"Hurry," Aerith whispered in her ear. "It's not easy for me to stay here. I just knew I had to wait until you came."

"Aerith… you're… in the stone?" Tifa managed but all her friend's fading voice whispered was:

"Hurry."

"Cloud! Zack! It's materia. We all have to focus and trigger it at the same time. I need your hands." Tifa shut everything else out except what needed, in that moment, to be done. Otherwise something told her, she might fall apart if she let herself realize –

Cloud's sword was suddenly in front of her, planted in the ground like an anchor and he wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her close into his body as he crouched. She realized that there was a roaring sound, as if all the air were being sucked out of the room and that Jenova was starting to glow in front of them. Bad. Oh. So, so bad…

Zack was suddenly there as well and his Buster Sword joined Cloud's Fusion in front of them as a shield. His arm came around both of them and Cloud's voice yelled:

"Now!"