Warnings: When it's -20º Celsius, always make sure you have windshield washer fluid that's good below -5º before washing your windshield. Sprayed fluid that freezes makes it hard to see the road, (nobody was hurt during the testing of this warning).
Chapter 7 : Banking on a Myth
Tifa turned to the unaging ex-Turk, "We'll hit the mess tent first." Vincent nodded and followed. Tifa seemed content to wave and shout snippets of news to the people they passed, most obviously ShinRa military, but many looked like ordinary civilians with a cause.
As they walked, Tifa was asked about the fighting, the reactor—they'd seen the glow from here apparently, but the most common question was 'Did he find them?' which Vincent soon realized meant; had Lucrecia's child, Sephiroth, found Commander Fair and the comatose boy. It was puzzling. Why did these people care?
He glanced at the tough, little fighter walking beside him. She seemed to know everyone, perhaps she could tell him some more about the boy Lucrecia hadn't lived long enough to save. A lifetime of being a Turk making him unwilling to appear too curious so he didn't come right out and ask, "There is a great deal of interest in the General's doings," he said obliquely.
"Of course, his story's famous," she responded.
They'd reached the mess hall, a large open-sided tent with rows of benched tables and a line of cooking stations along one wall. There were only a few people lining up. A couple technical sergeants wearing chef's hats were supervising a crew working feverishly to prepare for the evening rush. Although, watching them, Vincent thought maybe they were working on something special. He didn't remember ShinRa grunts getting Wutaian sekihan as part of their regular diet.
His companion walked in, waving hello at her many acquaintances, grabbing a tray and stepping into line. Vincent followed her but didn't bother with a tray. He hadn't eaten for many years and, if his memory of ShinRa cafeteria food was correct, he didn't want to begin with the stuff he'd get here. Instead, he would try to satisfy some of his curiosity.
"I am unfamiliar with the story."
Tifa looked at him over her shoulder, "I suppose you would be. Three years ago, ShinRa sent the General to Nibelheim to check out the reactor. It was a trap."
"I am aware of this part," Vincent interrupted, "Commander Fair explained it. He was, however, unable to tell me of what happened to Lucrecia's child after he fell into the mako stream."
"Lucrecia's child," Tifa questioned?
"General Sephiroth. His mother was Dr. Lucrecia Crescent, a beautiful lady." Vincent looked away, not wanting this girl to see the guilt echoed in his eyes. He should have done more, convinced her to change her mind, somehow…
"Really? That must be where Sephiroth gets his good looks from because, Ramuh knows, Hojo is a dog," she laughed. Vincent just blinked and hid behind his collar. "Okay, so Sephiroth falls into the mako and Cloud and the Commander are captured by Hojo. Hojo burns Nibelheim to the ground killing just about everyone." Her mouth twists in a rare show of bitterness. "A couple weeks later, ShinRa declares all three of them dead, killed in action while on a routine mission. Wutai terrorists are blamed. They always got blamed for ShinRa deaths. Them or environmental terrorists."
"Environmental terrorists?" Vincent questioned. He knew Wutai had been fighting against ShinRa's influence for years so that cover made sense. Environmental terrorists did not even though it sounded familiar.
"Mako is a part of the Lifestream of the planet, just with a physical form. By using mako the way they did, ShinRa was weakening the Lifestream and killing the planet. Even three years ago some people knew what ShinRa was doing was wrong and fought against them but despite what old man Shinra said, we did not use terrorism against human targets." She glared at him as if he were about to argue with her.
This small woman had been an environmental terrorist? It certainly explained why she'd been the one to set the charges in the mansion basement.
*Fascinating,* a part of Vincent thought. He ignored the voice, not easily, but with abilities honed by long practice. Chaos, his unwelcome 'guest', never really went away.
Lucrecia had melded him with the creature in an attempt to save his life after Hojo shot him. It had been separate being; aware and sentient. Chaos was always sitting there, just behind his brain, listening in, watching, commenting on the doings of the mortals around them. He could never really relax, knowing the demon was just waiting for its chance to take over.
Unaware of his internal dialogue, Tifa continued the tale, "Anyway, eight months later, Sephiroth is pulled out of an open mako pool in Mideel. They recognized him, of course, but they don't notify ShinRa because the company had said he was dead and they'd held a huge memorial ceremony, including a state burial."
"A burial would indicate that they had a body." Most bodies dissolved into the Lifestream, only a few did not. His father's hadn't, infected by something from one of his experiments. Vincent could remember attending the burial. How odd it had seemed to lower a body into the ground.
Lucrecia's body hadn't dissolved either. He'd watched the lab technicians throw her into a bag and wheel her away. He'd heard them talking about how Hojo was going to examine her to find out why birthing the specimen had weakened her so badly. Stuck in his tube, suspended between life and death, he'd been unable even to flinch at their callous ignorance of the bright, intelligent person that Lucrecia had been.
"Right," Tifa said and dragged Vincent out of his memory. "Yet Sephiroth wasn't dead so what was ShinRa hiding? Hey, Carl," this last was said to one of the cooks behind the counter, "how's Jenny?" The cook answered cheerfully. Jenny was apparently his wife and nearly five months pregnant. She was finally having problems bending over and getting out of chairs. She craved Gongagan sausage hot enough to peel paint and her ankles were swelling.
Was the dark-haired fighter actually interested in this information, Vincent wondered? It served no purpose he could see, yet Carl served Tifa a significantly larger portion than he'd given the others in line. Perhaps it was a strategy on the fighter's part, so that she could obtain more food? However, judging from her behaviour on their walk through the camp, it was more likely that the female was just a friendly person. They finished their chat while Vincent waited with no outward indication of impatience.
It was the same with the next cook. In fact, she talked with each of the cooks in line, calling them by name, asking after loved ones and camp doings. The food, not very hot to begin with, was visibly cooling as she chatted and the amount of sensitive information the cooks knew and casually talked about—troop deployments, injury statistics, and supply levels among other things, was astonishing to former Turk. It brought up long-buried instincts to report them or discipline them himself. He crossed his arms over his chest to contain the impulse.
This had the added benefit of discouraging the cooks from trying to shake his hand when Tifa introduced him.
Uninterested in the lives of the cooks, and still trying to control his impulse to reprimand them, he watched the chefs in the back as they worked. He recognized several unique and complicated Wutaian dishes, the kind that was served at formal meals where each guest controlled the lives of millions. He raised a brow, very curious now. If the chefs were cooking these items for a negotiating dinner it would explain why the General hadn't gone with his friends to the infirmary as he'd obviously wanted to. However, according to what Fair had told him in the cave, Lucrecia's child had been pivotal in the subjugation of Wutai. Surely they'd be more interesting in assassinating the leader than negotiating with him.
He was missing too much information. For the first time in nearly thirty years, he felt the itch of vulnerability such lack of knowledge caused. He'd been an Ace Turk in his day, the best of the best. Junior Turks completed their assignments without knowing the reasons. Ace Turks were trusted to think of potential consequences that had been overlooked therefore they were given more background knowledge.
He suddenly wanted that information, with a fierceness that shocked him.
It was an uncomfortable sensation, like he was slipping back into the role of one of President Shinra's attack dogs and that he would never do. It was odd that Lucrecia's child had gone back to the company, considering what they had allowed the Professor to do to him and his companions.
Finally, the young fighter finished collecting her food and gossip. She took her tray over to an unoccupied corner of the tent. "So where were we?" she asked as she dug her fork in.
"He was in Mideel, recovering."
"Right. Sephiroth recovered quite quickly, of course. Two months after being pulled out of the mako, he was tracking down rumours of an escaped First on the run from ShinRa. Apparently, he'd hoped it was Zack, but it turned out to be one of the original SOLDIERs, Genesis Rhapsodis." She looked at him as if he should know the name.
"Fair told me some things about him. He rebelled against ShinRa because he'd been experimented on." The red-eyed gunman leaned away from the nauseating food smell. He'd been right to avoid eating it. Too bad he couldn't avoid the odour. He buried his nose in the familiar musty smell of his collar.
"Um-hmm," she nodded, "the stories say he was injected with Jenova cells in vitro, like Sephiroth, but that it didn't work as well or something. I don't know the details; I was a bit young when it all happened but everything I've heard said Genesis was really bitter at ShinRa. So Sephiroth recruited him as an ally and they headed north to take on the company and demand answers. And to kill Hojo if they could."
"An admirable plan, if a bit impulsive," Vincent remarked dryly. *Impulse isn't always a bad thing,* his 'guest' commented. Vincent didn't bother to sigh. Chaos would approve of impulse, it was… chaotic.
"I suppose," she considered the remark. "The way it's portrayed in the stories is that Genesis agreed because he wanted to avenge the death of his friend, Angel Hewlett, Heeley… something, like that, and that grief over his friend's death combined with everything else had made him a little insane."
"I thought he was insane before this," Vincent protested, sure that detail had been part of Fair's account.
Tifa smiled mischievously, "That's not what the magazines say. It wouldn't be half as romantic if Genesis was already nuts before his friend was killed."
"Lovers?" he asked.
She shrugged, "Depends on which rag you're reading. Sephiroth has never said and all Genesis does is quote Loveless. Even the nosiest of reporters have stopped asking him to tell the story 'in his own words'," she made air quotes and smiled maliciously. As the only known survivor of Nibelheim she'd suffered her share of press hounding and she felt no sympathy when they whined that they could never get a straight answer out of the Red General.
On the other hand, she'd read that the new staging of 'Loveless' very happy to have the eccentric, but oh so pretty, General quoting from the ancient poem. Every time Genesis was caught on tape repeating passages from it, their ticket sales jumped. Book sellers were also very happy. Loveless was old enough that ShinRa didn't have the copyright so they could print and sell their own version of it and then keep all the profits.
Tifa didn't think the gunman would want to hear those little tidbits of information, but she thought they were interesting.
"They got as far as Fort Condor before they were recognized. A news crew was there to report on a Phoenix that decided to nest on the reactor exhaust and in walks two of the world's most famous, supposedly dead, warriors. Needless to say, they jumped on the pair of them and splashed their faces, and their stories, all over the news. ShinRa had a hard time back-tracking on their reported 'deaths'." And that, obviously, hadn't bothered Tifa either.
She looked up at him with that odd glint in her eyes, "Are you ready to be the star of the next ShinRa romantic-tragedy?"
Vincent didn't understand. Was that a legitimate question? Why did the dark-eyed fighter think that anyone would be interested in him?
"Face it, Vincent. You've got tragic hero written all over you." She held up her hands, counting off the points on her fingers, "One; you're a Turk, or ex-Turk. The rags love gossiping about the Turks."
He blinked, finding the comment strange. In his day the Turks were hidden behind layers of secrecy with a covering of office-drone blandness. How did they become the target of gossip?
"Two; you've been in the mansion for thirty years yet you only look in your late-twenties or so. Three; the way you look: dark hair, red eyes, the cape, the leather pants; silent and broody. The fangirls are going to go nuts over you."
The image that came to Vincent's mind was of Wutaian women pulling the cords that made the ceiling blankets move and caused a cooling breeze on hot days. He didn't think that's what Tifa meant by 'fan girls'.
"Four; you survived how many years of Hojo, the world's favourite villain. You'll obviously be physically and emotionally scarred, so of course you'll need lots of loving to heal. They'll write stories about you, maybe even a play. Some of them might even be rated 'G'." She grinned.
Vincent looked away, hiding his blush. Uncomfortable, as always, with discussing anything connected to physical intimacy.
"Five; rescued in mysterious circumstances by one of Gaia's Champions, the Silver General himself on his own romantic quest. Six; you join the elite group of heroes fighting a noble cause. Do I need to continue?" That look was in her eyes again. It had often been in Lucrecia's eyes. She'd had it when she had gently mocked him, teasing she'd called it. Is that what the fighter was doing now, teasing him?
"Face it, Vincent. You are doomed to be a leading man." She picked up her fork and finished cleaning her plate, "You'll have a fan club and groupies. Maybe they'll even make a video game about you. They have for Genesis, it completely rewrites his whole war with ShinRa and cuts his Loveless quotes by about half. He voiced it himself apparently. If it's true he's got a helluva sexy voice."
"This is completely irrelevant," was his response. Although his unwanted inner voice thought it might be fun to meet this unpredictable and irritating Genesis. Vincent ignored it.
"Just wanted you to prepare yourself." She gave that quirky smile again before standing up with her empty plate and walked to one of the tray collection sites. He followed her. "Where were we?"
"Fort Condor." They resumed their journey through the city of tents that was the ShinRa base. They got a few strange looks but most of the people they saw were busy with their own duties and ignored the small fighter and the tall gunman.
"Right. They showed up alive in Fort Condor in front of the media. Genesis quotes Loveless to everyone's confusion, but Sephiroth comes right out and says that Hojo had illegally kidnapped, detained and experimented on at least two members of ShinRa's Public Safety Department, with the President's approval, and he's going to find them by whatever means necessary even if it means ripping Hojo into little bits and destroying all of ShinRa in the process."
"He threatened to kill them all?" It didn't need to be a question.
"Only Hojo really, but the sub-text was there; that he'd kill anyone or anything that tried to stop him from getting to his friends," she paused to say hello to a passing soldier. "I've seen the clips. The General was very, very scary." Vincent could see how the long-haired warrior would be intimidating when upset. He'd been intimidating just walking through the ruined village. The anger had poured off him in icy waves.
"The President would have sent the Turks after them." At least that would've been what happened back when he'd been one. Eliminate the threat.
"Maybe he did, but if so, they never had a chance of carrying those orders out. It was only a couple days later that Hojo activated the DGS, and they tried to trigger explosions in all of the Midgar reactors," she looked at him to see if he understood the impact of that. He didn't so he remained silent.
"Some experts in mako-dynamics estimate that the explosions would have been powerful enough to set off a chain reaction within the mako stream itself. In theory, if that had happened, huge chunks of Gaia would have been incinerated or expelled into space; the planet's gravity could have shifted enough that it would have pulled it apart."
"Armageddon," he murmured.
The building they stopped outside was more sturdy than most of the structures in camp. It even had guards at the entrance, and Vincent assumed they'd reached the storage facility. "Hey, Danan," his companion greeted the soldier.
"Tifa, I hear the General got his sweeties back." Vincent hid his sigh as the comment started another exchange of repetitive social information; who was seeing whom, who had broken up with whom, and who was finally getting married. Whether it was people they knew or celebrities they would never meet, the two women had to discuss every nuance of every piece of information about their favourite couples. At least this time there was no discussion of troop strength or possible future strategies and his Turk training stayed safely buried.
He did not allow himself to show any impatience, after all, to be impatient you have to have hope and hope belongs to sinless men; men whose demons were figurative, not literal.
Finally she finished her exchange with the guard and they entered the building. She stopped them just inside the door.
"Where were we? Armageddon," she answered herself, "That was one theory, but others said it wasn't likely that Gaia would blow apart. Instead they figured the explosions would have released a huge cloud of toxic gas that would've killed thousands instantly, before spreading throughout the atmosphere and blocking the sun's rays from reaching the surface causing a 'mako winter'," Vincent just looked at her which Tifa correctly interpreted as a request for more information. "A sudden, catastrophic drop in temperature. Ice would cover most of the world. Growing anything would be essentially impossible. Humans, animals, plants, all of it would be at risk." He nodded his understanding.
"Nobody could understand why he did it. It was just so insane. I mean, it went completely beyond being a distraction. Why would he want to trigger something a catastrophe like that since he has to live here too?" Suddenly, the fighter looked years younger, a child asking her mother if the monsters under the bed were real. Vincent tightened his hands where they gripped his arms, keeping him from reaching out to reassure the girl. What would he say? He knew the monsters were real… after all he was one.
She shook herself out of it. "Come on, Vincent, let's see what we can find," Tifa led the way into the cluttered front chamber. A heavy-set man with sergeant stripes sat at a desk behind tables piled with paper and old coffee cups. His 'room' was walled with filing cabinets. He was entering data from a list onto a computer but Vincent didn't miss his quick, sharp inspection. The sergeant was more than just a clerk.
"Hey, Johnson," Tifa said in a friendly voice and Vincent barely managed to hold in a groan. His clawed hand flexed and he buried his face behind his collar and his hair.
He could feel his beasts stirring, encouraged by his, not impatience... irritation. Impatience belongs to the sinless man, he reminded himself, but really, was hoping that Johnson was 'too busy to chat' the same thing as hoping 'there's more to life than this'? He quelled the impulse to laugh out loud at himself. It wasn't his impulse.
"Vincent, you ready?" He nodded, thankful to be moving again. "First stop will be the materia pit. We call it that because materia goes in," her voice changed to something that was supposed to be spooky, "but it never comes out." This part of the structure was obviously meant to be more secure than the rest as there are sturdy walls and a thick door. It's also centered in the building; a hall circles it so that it can't be accessed directly from an outside wall. She knocked on the door and received a muffled invitation to enter.
"Hello, Jordie," Tifa said as she opened the door.
Vincent braced himself, barely containing a sigh. How had he ever thought this woman would be quieter than the black-haired swordsman? Even a medical exam could have been moderately more pleasant.
She managed to surprise him by getting straight to the point, "I found this materia in the lab. I've never seen anything like it."
The man at the desk must have found this significant because he looked up from the small chip of materia in his hand. "Did you activate it," he asked?
"Tried, nothing happened." Tifa opened her bag and dug around.
The scientist's eyes perked up, his whole being focussed on the young fighter. "A new materia? There haven't been any new types of materia since ShinRa shut down the fusion chamber." Despite his eagerness to see what Tifa had brought, he still handled the chip in his hand with care, placing it carefully in its velvet-lined box and sealing it before reaching out for whatever the dark-eyed fighter would hand him.
Vincent could sense something, not a danger, a hum of some kind... perhaps from all the materia. It was… unpleasant. Inside him, his 'guest' came fully to life becoming more present than it had for many years. It flicked his eyes around the small room, made him sniff the air, trying to locate the source of the sensation. Then Tifa pulled a strange white globe out of her bag, holding it for a moment to look at it. The hum increased and tightened, centered on that ball. Chaos pulled Vincent's attention toward the unremarkable, cloudy little globe. "Here it is," she said and tossed it to the scientist.
It didn't make it that far.
Chaos, through Vincent, reached out and plucked it from the air. The gunman held it in his right hand, his human hand, and could feel it resonate within him. He could feel the sudden recognition; he was meant to find this. The ball flashed white, brighter than the brightest sunlight, then nothing but a gentle glow swirling all around the orb, covering his hand before floating away into nothing.
"Vincent, right?" a soft voice said and Vincent whirled to face her.
"Lucrecia," he whispered her name. How had she come to be here? Within him, Chaos growled in anger at the one who had trapped it. The others in the room gasped in shock at the sudden appearance of the pretty woman in the standard white lab coat of ShinRa's Science Department.
"Have you come to check up on me?" she asked. There was no smile on her face, no sense that she knew him.
Vincent stepped toward her, calling her name a little louder, "Lucrecia." She walked toward him. The long lab coat flared, revealing the pronounced belly of a woman in her last trimester of pregnancy. It didn't matter. This time he wouldn't back away from her. This time, he would let her know how he felt. He opened his arms to welcome her...
But she didn't stop. She walked forward at a slow pace, as if he wasn't even there, because he wasn't, not to her. She walked right through him. When he turned to stare at her image, he could see that she flickered and faded. A hologram. She'd made a hologram of herself and programmed it to play when, if, he ever found the orb
"Omega," her image started to speak. Her voice, so light, held memories of sunlit fields, picnics and other things, things he could never forget… or be forgiven for.
Suddenly, Chaos stopped growling to listen. Vincent didn't know what she'd said that was so important but he realized that he couldn't allow the memories to draw him in; he needed to hear what she said.
"His awakening is upon us." A bright flash had them all wincing. When he opened his eyes again, they had been transported to a cave, with solid fountains of luminescent mako. They were beautiful and haunting… like her.
"'Soul wrought of terra corrupt," she, it continued speaking, "Quelling impurity, purging the stream to beckon forth an ultimate fate. Behold mighty Chaos, Omega's squire to the lofty heavens.' I came across this passage while studying the scriptures of the Ancients: The Chronicles of Yore." She paused, gazing fixedly at the tallest of the frozen mako structures.
"Omega—the end." She raised her hands, "Just as all other sentient beings, he too, is born of the Lifestream."
The same glow that had been in the small orb burst from her palms, forming a globe of swirling light and power that floated in front of her. The light swelled growing bigger, "However, his only purpose is to cleanse the planet of all things living and lead their immortal souls through the abyssal ether to a new beginning far, far beyond the never-ending sea of stars." The scientist behind him gasped the light grew to fill the room. Vincent ignored the sound, all of him intent on hearing everything Lucrecia said.
For a brief moment, the light was almost too intense for the red-eyed fighter, but before it actually became painful, the glow shrank back down to its original size. It hovered in front of the image of Lucrecia before shooting a pillar of blue-green light to the ceiling. Like fireworks, the light burst into many smaller flaring shards before disappearing completely.
"Oh wow!" he heard Tifa gasp.
Of course the image of Lucrecia didn't wait for them to take it in before continuing her tale. "Just as life circulates through our planet, so too, does our planet through the universe. Or at least in theory."
The cavern dissolved from the edges. The crystallized mako structures disappeared into black nothingness. Still, Dr. Crescent didn't turn. Her face stayed pointing away from the ex-Turk, head down, voice steady, even as the black turned into a night sky filled with stars—more stars than could be seen from the planet surface.
"However, what I can be certain of is, if Omega awakens, then all life as we know it will end. And when Omega has embarked on his journey to the cosmos, our planet will wither and die." The stars spun slowly, then faster. They were surrounded by them and the effect was rather nauseating. Then they flared, once again filling their eyes with white nothingness so bright it was almost pain. They were back in the storage tent, but this time Lucrecia's image was turned to face him.
"I will leave a copy of my records here for you, Vincent," her voice caught as if trying to hold back tears, "Though I cannot imagine what help they might be, if any at all. Just remember..." she paused, dropping her head even lower, pain radiated in her voice, and the captured sob made it much rougher than her normal liquid tones. Her image flickered as if infected with her emotions. "I am so sorry."
She finally started to cry just as the hologram disappeared. Vincent stretched out his hand as if to stop the inevitable and the small, white orb, that had carried her message to him, dissolved.
"Lucrecia..." It was a prayer, an apology, a plea. It was useless. She was gone. Once again, nothing was left of her.
Silence. Deeper without her soft voice. *Omega,* his unwanted guest whispered in recognition.
"Well, I guess the next stop is with the research department." Tifa said.
Vincent looked at her in shock, maybe anger, although he should not allow that emotion into his heart, but the fighter was not being disrespectful. Her face was full of awe and fear. "Whatever she foresaw, it was important enough for her to leave this message to warn you. We need to find to find those records."
All Vincent could do was nod.