Disclaimer: Final Fantasy en Harry Potter zijn niet van mij en zullen dat helaas ook nooit zijn..
Sirius: Alright, what language is that?
Dutch.
Harry: I still like that one disclaimer that you had, the one sending people to Snape for psychological evaluation.
Yeah, me too. Though I can't decide which would be worse; Snape hunting me down for making him work more, or sending me a 'present' for giving him more business.
Sirius: The present. Definitely the present.
Harry: *nods in agreement.*
Alright, whatever.
The few security mechs they ran into on their mad dash to exit the Reactor were quickly mowed down by Cloud and Barret. Within minutes of setting the bomb, the quartet of AVALANCHE members (well, Cloud was a hired mercenary, but that's besides the point) threw themselves into an elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. They attempted to catch their breath during the two minute ride. Once the doors slid open, Cloud and Barret led the retreat. They found themselves facing a set of blast doors, with three buttons on a table in off in a small side room.
"Jesse said we have to press all three buttons at the same time to open the door," Tifa added. She stood before one button, Cloud at another, and Harry took the third. "On the count of 'three.' One...two..."
"THREE!" As one, the three of them pressed their buttons in perfect unison.
"Can't get much more perfect than that," Barret growled as the doors opened. A minute later, and everyone was gathered at the 'T' intersection of walkways outside the Reactor tower.
"This way!" Barret called, but as soon as he finished speaking, Shinra soldiers blocked the way. "Shinra soldiers! SHIT! What the hell's going on?"
"...A trap..." Harry and Cloud replied at the same time, though where Cloud spoke audibly, Harry's voice was soft and inaudible.
Then, from behind, coming out of the Reactor tower, a smartly-dressed man in a business suit, with a blonde moustache and a professional part in his blonde hair, stepped toward them, his Oxford-like shoes clicking on the sidewalk. "President Shinra!?" Barret gasped.
"Why is the President here?" Tifa wondered in awe.
That's the President of Shinra, Inc.? Harry thought to himself. Kinda looks like a blonde Fudge; he only needs a lime green bowler hat. That particular thought made Harry snort with mirth.
"Hmm..." President Shinra mused, gazing at the quartet speculatively. "So, you all must be that...what was it?"
"AVALANCHE!" Barret bellowed. "And don't ya forget it! So, you're President Shinra, huh?"
"Long time no see, President," Cloud remarked conversationally, stepping forward.
"...'Long time no see'? Oh, it's you..." the President looked momentarily confused. "You're the one who quit SOLDIER and joined AVALANCHE. I knew you were exposed to Mako, from the glow in your eyes...Tell me, traitor...What was your name?"
"Cloud Strife."
"Forgive me for asking," the President shook his head in feigned regret, "but I can't be expected to remember each person's name." He looked away, into the distance. "Unless you become another Sephiroth. Yes, Sephiroth...He was brilliant. Perhaps too brilliant..."
Cloud took a step back, shocked. He shook his head. "...Sephiroth...?"
Barret shoved past Cloud. "Don't give a damn 'bout none of that! This place's goin' up with a big BANG soon! Serves y'all right!"
Shinra sneered at the AVALANCHE leader. "And such a waste of good fireworks, just to get rid of vermin like you."
"VERMIN!?" Barret roared with outrage. "That's all you can say!? VERMIN!? Y'all Shinra're the VERMIN, killing the Planet! And that makes you KING VERMIN! So shu'up jackass!"
President Shinra pretended to yawn. "You are beginning to bore me. I'm a very busy man, you see, so if you'll excuse me...I have a dinner to attend."
Barret made to run right up to him. "Dinner!? Don't gimme that! I ain't even started wit' you yet!"
"But," President Shinra smirked, snapping his fingers, "I've arranged for a playmate for you all." As he finished speaking, the dull drone of engines filled their ears.
"What's that noise?" Tifa asked. Barret ran back to stand beside her.
"The hell is this!?"
A huge, menacing-looking robot buzzes in. Barret and Tifa squeezed to the sides of the walkway to let it pass. It now hovered between the pair of Barret and Tifa, and the pair of Harry and Cloud. Each pair was, essentially, cut off from the other, as the machine took up almost the entire width of the walkway.
"Meet 'Airbuster,' a techno-soldier. Our Weapon Development team created him," Shinra remarked casually, with the air of one commenting on the weather. "I'm sure the data he'll extract from your dead bodies will be of great use to us in future experiments."
"...Techno-soldier?" Cloud repeated, dazed.
The roar of a helicopter's engines and rotors filled their ears as the copter itself hovered next to the walkway, within easy reach of President Shinra. The Shinra logo on the side of the cockpit was clearly visible. President Shinra stepped into the carriage. "Now, if you'll excuse me..." Cloud moved forward to intercept him, but was too late to catch him. The four AVALANCHE members were now left alone with the Airbuster.
"Yo, Cloud! We gotta do somethin' about this thing!" Barret called out, training his gun-arm on the armored mech as it buzzed toward him and Tifa.
"Help, Cloud, Harry!" Tifa cried out, backing up alongside Barret. Cloud and Harry approached it, weapons drawn. "THIS is from SOLDIER!?"
Cloud shook his head 'no' vigorously. "No way! It's just a machine!"
The machine spun around to face Barret and Tifa. "I don't care what it is! I'm gonna bust him up!" Barret declared, opening fire on the mech. The bullets only grazed the armor, striking sparks. Tifa's Thunder spell was much more effective.
Airbuster returned fire with what sounded like a machine gun. Fortunately for Barret and Tifa, the weapon didn't rotate; they only had to press against the railings to safely permit the bullets to pass by them.
Harry leapt forward and swung his sword, scoring about as much damage against the robot's armor as Barret had. He jumped back as the Airbuster slowly turned around to confront them. Cloud came forward, his huge blade in hand, and slashed at the barrel of main gun. Despite the strength of the blow and the massive weight of the blade, Cloud only managed to bend the barrel a little as opposed to chopping through it; it was enough, however, to cause a malfunction in the weapon. It could no longer make use of its main gun; the Airbuster was forced to rely on secondary weapons, one which was a small sub-machine gun located at the base of its back.
The gunfire caught Barret and Tifa by surprise, and Tifa was forced to abandon casting Thunder again to dodge away to safety. Barret, not quite as fast as Tifa, raised his gun-arm; by a massive stroke of luck, all the bullets headed toward him clanged against the metal appendage, causing no damage.
Harry charged forward again, distracting the Airbuster with another lunging slice; this time, Harry's blade struck gold. Sparks flew out from where Harry's sword sank into a mess of exposed wires and circuitry, and Harry hurriedly pulled back to avoid being singed even more than he already was.
"Nice hit, kid," Cloud muttered, passing him a Potion. Harry gulped it down and felt the stinging burn in his hand disappear. He nodded his thanks as Cloud stepped back and cast Ice that, while not as effective as a Thunder spell, did leave it slightly damp.
Tifa caught her cue and promptly followed up with Thunder. The moisture left behind by Cloud's spell acted as a conduit (as water does) for the electricity generated by Tifa's Thunder magic. The Airbuster was very quickly and effectively damaged such that it looked like it would explode without very much more abuse.
Barret unloaded several more rounds into a newly-opened gap in the armor plating, tearing apart green circuit boards. The robot began to twitch. Harry, in a maneuver reminiscent of his battle with a two-meter-tall mountain troll when he was eleven, took a great flying leap and landed near the head of the Airbuster. Harry stabbed Gryffindor's Sword down viciously, catching the robot in the joint between the head and the shoulders. Pulling the blade out, Harry jumped back down to the walkway next to Cloud in time to watch as Cloud began to glow. He dashed forward to stop right in front of the Airbuster and crouched down, bringing his sword back behind his head. He jumped straight up into the air and with a yell, slammed the blade straight back down.
The robot didn't stand a chance. As Cloud stepped back, panting lightly, the mech's two halves leaned away from each other before it exploded, taking out the walkway between Cloud and Harry's side and Barret and Tifa's side. The sudden shockwave reversed its direction after passing Cloud and Harry without warning, knocking the two of them toward the missing walkway and the near-fifty meter drop below. Cloud, however, managed to grab hold a piece of metal from the walkway that stuck out into nothingness. Harry's hand found itself wrapped around a small piece of pipe that ran underneath the walkway on either side.
"It's gonna blow! Let's go, Tifa! There's nothing we can do for them from here!" Barret shouted as an explosion began to rock the Reactor Tower.
"Barret! Can't you do something!?" Tifa cried.
The leader of AVALANCHE shook his head. "Not a damn thing."
The owner of the Seventh Heaven bar turned back to Cloud. "Cloud! Please don't die! You can't die! There's still so much I want to tell you!"
"I know, Tifa..." Cloud called back.
"Oh, so I don't matter?" Harry yelled, grinning at Tifa to show that he meant no offense.
"Hey, you two gonna be awright?" Barret asked.
"We'll be fine!" Harry answered. "We're the heroes of this whole thing, right? Heroes always survive!"
"Worry about yourselves," Cloud agreed. "We'll be alright, but take care of Tifa!"
"Alright." Harry looked, and saw a grim, sorrowful expression on the face of the leader of AVALANCHE. "Sorry 'bout all this..."
"Stop talking like this is the end!" Cloud roared at him.
Barret nodded. "Alright, then. Later." He gripped Tifa securely by the shoulders and pulled her back as a massive explosion literally warped what remained of the walkway. The shockwave, combined with the metal twisting in their hands, made Cloud and Harry lose their grip and fall. The pair then proceeded to plummet to the slums below.
"HARRY!" Everyone cried as they watched the Defeater-Of-Lord-Voldemort fall from the walkway.
"This is not good. This is so not good," Hermione whimpered.
Ron didn't seem to be especially concerned. "Well, he's fallen that far before and wasn't hurt. He was only knocked out for an hour or so."
"He wasn't hurt because Dumbledore used Arresto Momentum to slow his fall, Ron!" Ginny swatted him in the back of the head. "In there, there's no Dumbledore! And he doesn't have his wand to do it himself, either!"
Ron rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Er...right. I knew that."
Harry: Ron's smarter than that.
Nah. If he were that smart, he would have known to ask McGonagall what could happen when he cast that Transfiguration spell he used on Muggle technology.
Sirius: I like Ron, Harry, I really do, but Cor's got a point. If Ron had thought to ask that question, than your being pulled into the game itself could have been avoided.
Harry: *sighs in defeat* Alright, alright, already. I give up. There's no argument I can come up with that will convince Ron really is intelligent at least part of the time.
Part of the time? That I can believe. Then again, even the most ignorant and stupid of people can have a moment of brilliance, just as the most knowledgeable and wisest of sages can make a stupid decision.
Sirius: When did this become a lecture on philosophy?
It didn't; I'm just saying, is all...
By the way, thanks to Articuno13 for correcting my Dutch!
