Twilight Perfected Chapter 13: Will they hold the wall or will the city fall?
Barret Wallace and Jessie Raspberry were fighting a losing battle to defend the Sector Seven Plate. They were the only members of Avalanche left on the platform; Wedge had been thrown over the side by an exploding missile, while Biggs was still trying to hold the stairs to keep Shinra from simply flooding the platform with reinforcements from below.
When Barret had gotten his prosthetic, he'd opted for a gun chambered for Shinra's standard AR round out of simple expedience. He found himself blessing his foresight in doing so; he'd already scavenged munitions from his fallen foes twice today. Jessie in turn had been forced to completely abandon her sub-machine gun and arm herself with a dead trooper's weapon.
They'd been scurrying from cover to cover, trying to defend the pillar while exposed on all sides. More than once, he'd had to throw himself between Jessie and incoming fire, running up a tab his body was sure to call due sooner or later...
Another Shinra helicopter swooped in low to deposit still more attackers. They'd been more cautious, at first, but seemed to have caught on that the duo's conventional weapons fire was no longer supplemented by magic or explosives.
This one didn't bother to come to a hovering stop for troops to rappel out; instead, it did a slow flyover of the platform while three men jumped out. Three men with swords and mako eyes.
SOLDIERs.
Barret could feel beads of sweat trickling down his forehead; Shinra was playing for keeps, all right.
"Ain't no getting off of this train we're on, Jessie!"
"End of the line..." One of the SOLDIERs scoffed.
That was when Barret realized that, despite the countless beads of sweat that were working their way down his body, when he'd spoken, his words had been accompanied by a cloud of white mist.
The SOLDIER's words had likewise produced a noticeable puff.
Something big was happening… and Barret was willing to bet that it was something good, because he didn't see how things could get much worse.
XXX XXX XXX
Biggs was gut-shot. He'd been wearing one of the makeshift flak vests that Avalanche had been able to kludge together, and he thought it might have helped… some.
He'd downed his last potion shortly after being hit; it was probably why he was still able to stagger around upright at the moment rather than just crawl. Whatever evil genius had thought of putting medical-grade painkillers in an energy drink, Biggs was grateful for it, today.
He'd never imagined that it would end like this.
Not the part about perishing in a hail of gunfire; every member of Avalanche with half a brain was prepared for that possibility. He'd just never thought… he'd get a chance to die a hero.
Trying to hold off a squad of Shinra troopers with just a pistol, trying to save the lives of everyone in Sector Seven... if that didn't give him the right to call himself a hero, what would?
It was just too bad that it didn't look like there was going to be anyone left in Sector Seven to tell people about "Biggs the Hero" when all was said and done.
Biggs drew in a breath that made him feel as if he had daggers lodged in his stomach and tried to steady his arm.
"Come and get me, you bastards!" he called out the advancing trio of Shinra troopers; if he was going to die, he'd do it on his terms: on his feet, with his last round fired. To his surprise, when the words left his mouth they briefly created a miniature fog bank.
As the troopers began to draw a bead on him, he could see the same billowy condensation emerging from their mouths.
XXX XXX XXX
"Attention, Avalanche! You are surrounded; stand down and surrender to Public Safety Immediately!" The voice boomed from the helicopters above.
George would have vastly preferred that the insurgents heeded the message. He'd joined after the Wutain War had ended, but he'd heard stories about it… and this seemed to be worse.
The enemy wasn't wearing uniforms, they didn't have battle lines, and most of all they weren't sane enough to realize when they were beaten.
Avalanche… no, all of Sector Seven had gone insane! The rebels were trying to sabotage the Plate and hold all of Sector Seven hostage. On top of that, the very people whose lives they were endangering had decided to join their cause!
It was absolute madness!
"Stop! I said stop!" George called out to the terrorist one stairwell ahead of him.
The only response he got was a burst of gunfire that forced him to double back a few steps and take cover.
The stairs that lead up to the vital terminal were hell. Not only was it an impossibly long journey, but each separate set of stairs offered another possible strong-point for Avalanche to entrench and inevitably pour fire down on him and his squad-mates.
The only safe way to make progress was to call in gunship support, but if you wanted the support to arrive anytime soon, you had to know what floor of the structure you were on... and one set of metal stairs began to look painfully like all the others you'd trodden up, especially in an active firefight.
The insurgent shouted something, but George couldn't hear it over the sounds of the gunfire; if it wasn't for his helmet he'd probably be half deaf by now. The insurgent surely was… that was the only reason he could have possibly missed the stuttering roar of the helicopter taking up position behind him.
Its chin mounted gatling gun opened up and flushed the man from his cover, right into the advancing squad's line of fire. Cut down by the fusillade, the Avalanche member sagged against the safety railing, then fell to the deck as his legs gave out completely. George's squad stormed up the stairs to take his position before it could be reinforced from above.
"Stairway, clear..." George rasped, catching his breath; why couldn't Avalanche have attacked someplace closer to ground level?
The words left his lips with a trail of condensing water vapor.
That shouldn't be happening.
"Something strange is going on, is anyone else noticing abrupt temperature changes?" George broadcast through his helmet's radio.
"Cold… so cold… can't feel my legs…." Was the first answer he got back.
"Silver snow… silver snow…."
"We've lost contact with the base of the Pillar!"
"Can't get eyes on the ground floor, there's some sort of localized weather disturbance. Wait… since when does Lower Midgar have weather?"
"There's something moving in the fog. Can't get a bead... Wait, no- Contact! Conta-"
"My gun won't fire, it's frozen sol….." More and more responses were terminating with an unsettling abruptness.
"Somebody please give me a situation report!"
The more he cried out for information, the more frost filled the air.
XXX XXX XXX
"Rude, we're under the Plate right?" Reno shouted above the "WHUMPA-TINK-WHUMPA-TINK" of their chopper.
"Look up."
"THEN WHY IS IT SNOWING!?" it wasn't a shout; it was a horrified scream.
Except it wasn't snowing. Snow was something that happened when frozen liquids drifted down from above… this… this was rising up from below.
A rolling mass of freezing fog was enveloping the entire Sector Seven Pillar, starting from the bottom, and rising upwards.
"We need to get out of here, now..." Reno insisted, as he realized that there was only one "logical" explanation for what he was seeing.
Rude gripped the flight stick firmly and tilted it.
"I can't help but notice we're going closer to the platform. Closer is the opposite of bugging out..." Reno whimpered, his hands fidgeting through countless different positions, in a futile quest to find one that felt comfortable.
The radio in their chopper suddenly flickered to life and Tseng's firm, dry voice spoke up.
"Please remember that Shinra briefed us and no one else on this mission's true objectives. Shinra will accept a loose cannon, but not one that refuses to fire at all. Take a look around you. If you don't do your part, each and every single one of those helicopters will stop what they're doing and focus on blowing you out of the sky. In other words, your death is a possibility if you set foot on that platform, but it's a certainty if you don't."
Reno took a deep breath and made a pointless effort to try and straighten out a suit he'd spent years getting to the perfect state of rumpled to say "I don't care about this job" but not quite disheveled enough to actually be grounds for censure.
"Okay, I've thought it over, and the one of you who outranks me has made some very good points. I'd normally say that I'm a little too sober to be in the mood for having my ass kicked, but what the hell, I'm gonna give it the old college try! Get me within 20 feet of that platform and I'll jump the rest."
He might be about to die, but he'd try his best to do it with a smile.
XXX XXX XXX
(A few minutes earlier)
Sephiroth looked up at the battle being waged between Shinra personnel and... anyone in Sector Seven who could find a gun, it seemed. By engaging in such an insane plan, Shinra was making Barret Wallace's dreams of a massive revolution a reality.
Shinra was really trying to do it; for some reason, it hadn't felt real until he'd seen it unfolding in front of him.
Behind him, Tifa and Aerith were arguing; something about Aerith needing to go rescue the young girl who he'd seen in Seventh Heaven. He tuned them out. Around him, people were racing through the streets, chattering and screaming; he tuned them out, too. All of his focus was turned inward, all of his prodigious intellect brought to bear to calculate the scope, the sheer weight, of the disaster unfolding in front of him..
There were more people living on the Sector Seven Plate than there had been in Nibelheim, and they were all going to die. There were roughly five times that many people living in the Sector Seven Slums, and they were all going to die. Faces seen in passing, names glimpsed in a directory... Death at this scale invited abstraction, incredulity, and horror, none of which were useful. Wrath, however… Wrath was unimpeachable as a galvanizer, and he had wrath in ample supply.
Nibelheim had been the last time he'd been this angry, but back then, he'd been too self-absorbed until too late, his best too little to undo what he'd let happen. Today, however... today was going to be just one more case of General Sephiroth arriving just. In. Time.
Shinra's news media had loved to talk about Supernova, about how he'd used it to burn an entire Wutain division to ashes in the blink of an eye. Not all situations could be resolved with an apocalyptic alpha strike; luckily, Sephiroth had more than one limit break….
"Ninth Circle." The words roared in his chest, thundered in his temples... but left his lips in a whisper too soft for even Kadaj to hear.
The only proof they'd been spoken was the collection of frozen crystals that sprayed out from his lips... like a small piece of Sephiroth's soul had just left his body.
It was fortunate, he reflected in a detached sort of way, that Aerith had somewhere else she needed to be… he wasn't going to be using any of her zip ties today.
XXX XXX XXX
"Ah, for the love of… I'm getting sick of this. Don't they have anything better to do?" Lucas muttered as he reloaded, crouching behind a makeshift barricade that had been set up near the bottom of the support pillar.
"Tell me about it." his squad-mate Jamie agreed "You see how hard we got hit over here? Shit, what's wrong with these people…?".
"I repeat: This is... Goddamn it. No signal." Lucas muttered as he tried to get his radio working again.
From behind it they could hopefully keep any more insane terrorists from trying to seize the Plate Access Terminal.
Still, with how vicious things were getting, would there be anyone left alive in Lower Sector Seven by the time this battle ended?
He drew a deep breath and turned his eyes upwards upwards, towards the house his parents had been able to buy on the Sector Seven Plate with the money he'd made from this job. He was going to keep them safe, no matter what.
"What the hell is that?" cried out Jamie as he gestured with his gun towards the floor.
Lucas risked a glance over the barricade in time to see jagged tendrils of ice racing across the ground towards them.
A few moments after that, both men began to shiver.
A few moments after that, both men were dead.
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth didn't bother to wipe the blood off of Masamune as he stepped over the decapitated Shinra troopers; there would be more to come, soon enough.
XXX XXX XXX
Biggs could vaguely make out a figure in black with silver hair approaching him. "'Bout time you showed up, newbie."
He couldn't stand anymore, and was reduced to slumping against part of the support structure, holding tightly to the pistol that had two bullets left in its final clip.
"Cureaga."
Biggs' smile became slightly less forced as he felt his body go into overdrive to piece itself back together, or maybe the healing magic was just making it so that he could die peacefully instead of in agony?
"Like what I did with the place? Had to do my part before you stole the show..." Biggs motioned towards the fallen Shinra troopers who surrounded him.
By the time he looked back up, Biggs was alone.
XXX XXX XXX
Tifa Lockhart was powerless.
Shinra was trying to destroy her home and everyone she knew for a second time, and there was nothing she could do about it.
It was making her start to second guess even the few moments she'd spared, making sure that Wedge was okay. It was a good thing he'd had his grappling gun on him; there was no way he'd have survived falling from the support pillar's superstructure, otherwise.
She was running as fast as she could, and yet it still wasn't fast enough to get her hands on any of the Shinra troops attacking the Plate; every single one she and Kadaj managed to find was already dead.
As a little girl, she'd never had a crush on General Sephiroth. She still didn't… but she'd be lying if she didn't suddenly understand how all the boys in her town had felt towards him a great deal better.
Tifa was fast, she was vicious, and she was spoiling for a fight- but right now, she was just a barracuda swimming in the wake of the Planet's biggest shark.
XXX XXX XXX
Kevin was one of Shinra's elite helitroopers, equipped with an arm-mounted rotor that generated enough lift for powered flight and an exoskeleton that supported him enough to move freely with all his weight hanging from the end of one arm. For a mission like this, close air support for brutal city fighting, helitroopers were a vital complement to Shinra's more heavily-armed but less-maneuverable helicopter fleet.
Ever since an unexpected fog had rolled in, however, his flying device had started to behave erratically, to the point that he'd flown in low over the pillar's stairs in case it failed outright.
Something strange was definitely going on; the flexible parts of his suit were getting stiffer, and he could feel a chill seeping through them. Ice started to spread over the flight mechanism, and sure enough, its whirring blades soon came to a complete stop.
The moment he touched down on solid ground, a black and silver blur struck him, knocking him back into the air and straight over the safety railings.
He spent the rest of his life trying desperately to restart the frozen rotor.
XXX XXX XXX
The trio of SOLDIERs advanced on the two members of Avalanche.
There was a crackling sound. It wasn't the sharp retort of gunfire, this was more like the sound of ice breaking beneath someone's boots, and it was getting closer with every step.
"You guys are in troouubl…." Jessie drew out the word like a child mocking their classmate who had just earned their teacher's ire.
"While you studied the blade... I was in rehearsal! I hate to take my bows so early, but any actor worth their lines knows better than to upstage the leading man."
A baleful green glimmer refracted through the fog, slowly coming into focus as two burning eyes in a dark silhouette.
"Three SOLDIERS?" the figure scoffed.
The trio charged, either because they had nowhere to retreat to, or because they wanted to kill Jessie and Barret while they still had a chance.
Sephiroth charged, and the ice charged with him, a kaleidoscopic, impossible blur. Masamune effortlessly batted away one SOLDIER's blade, nearly taking his hand on the return. A blade of frost formed from thin air in the path of the second's, shattering on impact and showering him with razor-edged shards, before a frozen spike longer than Jessie's arm emerged from nowhere and plunged itself into the third's torso.
All three of Sephiroth's foes were wearing the purple of First Class SOLDIERS, yet they seemed utterly helpless. Sephiroth's black booted feet found effortless purchase on the ice that made them stumble, and every blow that he didn't dodge or parry was instead blocked by instantly materializing icy armor. They might as well have been trying to fight a glacier….
XXX XXX XXX
Like many decisions he'd made in his life, Reno immediately regretted jumping down to try and activate the Plate Release System.
"To all choppers in the area, this is Whiskey One, requesting air support in roughly ten seconds, danger close. If you can avoid killing me that, would be awesome." he said into his suit's concealed radio.
Reno was scared. That was a good thing. Being scared of fighting General Sephiroth meant he wasn't insane. Fear was the appropriate response. Fear, and running away.
Well, so much for going with the appropriate response…
Still, Sephiroth had been out of the game for the last five years while Reno had been perfecting the art of staying alive; maybe that would count for something?
Reno took off running. The world around him slowed to a crawl. Every individual movement of his body was so fast it generated discharges of static electricity that formed a miniature lighting storm around him.
Sephiroth was distracted by a trio of SOLDIERS. There would never be a better chance than this. All Reno had to do was get behind him. Sephiroth only had one sword, he couldn't use it to stab two people on opposite sides of him at the same time. At least, he shouldn't be able to, now that his personal snow storm seemed to finally be abating.
All Reno had to do was get behind him.
How hard could it possibly be?
Reno had already managed to stab countless people in the back, what was one more?
All he had to do was get behind Sephiroth…
A single mako green eye moved.
Reno kept running, keeping well out of Masamune's reach…
A chin started to tilt.
The blood froze in Reno's veins, vodka and all.
A single silver eyebrow rose in open mockery of the Turk's efforts.
Reno was running as fast as he could; the entire world was a frozen tableau except for him… and General Sephiroth.
Reno felt his eyes widen, bowels loosen, and his mouth open to shape inventive invectives. He now deeply regretted approaching any part of this silver haired monster. Reno expended incredible amounts of energy to move this quickly…. Sephiroth made it all seem so completely effortless.
The monster's face morphed from passive concentration into a sneer of contempt.
A black gloved wrist twitched; all three SOLDIERS went flying.
Masamune lashed out at the Turk.
Reno dodged without a care where exactly he ended up; all that mattered was that he NOT get bisected by Sephiroth's very first attack.
Which was how he ended up flopping over onto his back and sliding across the platform to ram shoulder-first into a guard rail.
The trio of SOLDIERS were still "flying"; their bodies hadn't even managed to clear the railing yet, which would be happening in the next few subjective seconds.
Seconds had never felt like such an impossibly long time; thinking that you wouldn't be alive for very many more of them had that effect, though…
Sephiroth jumped.
It was like he was so freakishly strong that the air itself couldn't help but get out of his way. That was the only explanation for how he was able to move like that; the faster Reno ran the more he had to actively fight against air resistance, but apparently, Sephiroth was too powerful to be bothered by such mundane concerns.
How could Sephiroth jump like that, but not have the floor buckle beneath his boots when he landed? The question bounced around inside Reno's head; for some reason he found himself more invested in pondering that mystery than the little matter of how he was about to F**KING DIE!
Masamune descended and Reno somehow managed to not only roll out of the way, but rise to his feet in the process. It came at him again and Reno darted to the side; trying to block or even parry that blade would be like getting into a fist fight with a speeding locomotive.
His hypothesis was confirmed by the way the longsword neatly severed the same safety railing that had kept him from plummeting off the pillar a few moments ago.
Then Sephiroth forwent any sort of fancy blade-work and just shoved him.
Reno went flying across the platform and slammed into the railing on the other side hard enough to leave a Turk-shaped dent.
As massive stabs of pain shot through Reno's sides, he tried to reassure himself that this was fine. Having gotten the wind knocked out of him meant that his perception of time would go back to normal, and then Sephiroth could kill him so quickly he wouldn't even notice. All he wanted now was to queue up a PSA on his phone before it happened…
That was when the missile exploded about ten feet behind Sephiroth.
It didn't kill him, of course; how could you hope to kill a mountain sized mass of murder compacted down into a vaguely human shape? It did manage to piss him off, though, which was more than anything Reno had managed, and was more than enough for the wounded Turk's purposes.
XXX XXX XXX
"Fire one." Tom smirked as he pulled the trigger.
A moment later, the missile slammed into the platform. It failed to kill his target, but it had hurt him; it had to have hurt him.
"Is that… is that Sephiroth? I'm pulling back..." warned Hardy, his pilot.
Tom carefully watched the crosshairs as he began flicking switches to arm still more munitions.
"Does it really matter? He stands still long enough to use magic, he gets turned into chunky salsa. What's he gonna do, stab us from over there?" Tom countered as his weapons panel came to life with a lovely array of ready lights. If the Turk wanted a fire mission, he'd get a fire mission.
Their silver haired target took his attention off of Reno, and focused on the two of them, as if he could see straight into Tom's eyes.
"Fire… everything." Tom said with the dispassionate derision of a child holding a magnifying glass above an anthill. A salvo of over a dozen missiles streaked away from under their helicopter's wings and shot down towards the platform below.
The silver haired figure leaped.
"No…"
He soared through the air, Masamune flashing in intricate patterns as he carved a path through the missile storm in mid air.
"NO…"
The missiles he'd attacked exploded in his wake, but Sephiroth seemed utterly unharmed when his boots slammed into their windshield.
"F#$K!"
It'd be child's play for Masamune to punch through a sheet of glass and impale them where they sat, but Sephiroth didn't stab; he slashed above the canopy, then extended Masamune straight upwards. The rotor stalled out, imparting its momentum into the outstretched sword and flinging it and its wielder clear... but the helicopter was already falling, deprived of the whirling blades by Sephiroth's first strike.
"He just… he just…" Tom muttered the words, not quite knowing what he was trying to say, but unable to stop gibbering.
"Bastard didn't even bother to kill us himself, he's gonna let gravity do it for him..." Hardy moaned.
The two shared a look. They both knew that even if they managed to put on their parachutes and bail out, their odds of surviving were miniscule at best, and even if the landing somehow didn't kill them, they'd probably be butchered by the rebels on the ground.
What did you do when death was racing towards you at 9.8 meters a second squared?
XXX XXX XXX
"Cure… cure… cure… cure..." Reno gasped out the word over and over and over again, extremely glad that he'd stuck that particular materia into his nightstick on his first day of work and never even contemplated removing it.
He wasn't sure exactly what Sephiroth had done to his chest, but the healing magic seemed to be reversing its worst symptoms. Reno could breathe again without feeling like he was tearing his own body apart, and stand without worrying that he might collapse at any moment.
Right now, some other poor bastard was getting his ass kicked by Sephiroth, and Reno was perfectly okay with that.
All that mattered was that he get roughly ten seconds alone with the Plate Release System….
"Hold it right there!" announced a voice that Reno had never heard before.
"Now what?" Reno spat, unable to keep his eyes from rolling in exasperation.
He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting to ruin his day next, but it was not a miniature version of Sephiroth.
That was the only way that Reno could conceptualize what he was seeing.
Had Sephiroth started moving so fast that he'd split into multiple versions of himself?
Reno had all manner of insults instantly vying for a chance to be the first past his lips.
Then he remembered just how thoroughly he'd gotten his head handed to him less than a minute ago. He'd thought getting out-napped was embarrassing, but that had just become the second most humbling defeat he'd suffered at Sephiroth's hands.
So, much like needing to go on a mystical vision quest with a talking coyote had led to Reno to promise himself he'd never again mix alcohol and Gongagan insanity peppers, he was now making a vow that he would NEVER, EVER, smack talk anyone with silver hair and vertical pupils.
"What's your name?" Reno asked, figuring that this fight was probably going to last for a while; and he didn't want to spend its entire length thinking of his new foe as just "Mini-Sephiroth".
"My name is Kadaj. I'm Sephiroth's younger brother, and the hero who is going to stop you."
Reno kept his lips buttoned in an act of restraint that would have impressed one of those hermits who spent their entire lives on desolate mountaintops.
Instead, the Turk took another deep breath and started running as fast as he could, trying to circle around Kadaj.
Just like Sephiroth, Kadaj seemed to be able to move even when Reno's pure celerity would have reduced most people to statues, but at least it seemed to require some effort on his part!
Reno had a chance in this fight, which was a hell of a lot more than he'd had against Sephiroth!
XXX XXX XXX
Rude saw the silver blur coming towards his helicopter. He wasn't sure if he'd been singled out, or just made the mistake of flying too close to the platform, but the question became academic when the comforting roar of a functioning rotor abruptly vanished.
His stomach jumped up into his throat as the helicopter began to plunge towards the ground.
The Turks' 'benefits package,' had made him stronger, faster, and tougher than any normal person; he could easily grab a parachute, if not put it on, and jump clear. Low-Open jumping was dicey, though; he'd survive, but he'd still hit the ground pretty hard... and be too far out of position to support his partner atop the pillar. Judging by the sounds Reno was making over the radio, he could use the help.
Rude's partner in Shinra sanctioned crime needed him. He unbuckled his safety gear and made a beeline for the helicopter's still open side hatch.
He leaped clear of the plummeting vehicle and grabbed hold of the platform's safety railing. Once he pulled himself up, he should be able to properly support Reno in his mission to activate the Plate Release System.
Except that as it turned out, someone was waiting for him.
Mako flecks, contrasting sharply against the woman's mahogany-colored eyes, flared like distant wildfire in the night as she glared at him. She cracked her knuckles, then her neck.
Rude had always appreciated women were able to say more by saying less; he was sorry for what he was about to do…. and she wasn't.
XXX XXX XXX
Kadaj's sword clashed against Reno's nightstick for roughly the dozenth time. Arcs of electricity jumped from Reno's weapon into the metal of Kadaj's blade, then Kadaj's body.
A single "blade lock", assuming you could call it that when only one of the combatants was actually wielding an edged weapon, would be enough to shock your average human into submission.
He'd hadn't fought that many SOLDIERs in the past, but even a First Class should have started to develop numb fingers several shocks ago. It was possible that Kadaj's outfit sported a hidden layer of non-conductive material just like the one Reno had added to his suit after the third time he'd accidentally zapped himself with his own baton. It was also possible that someone who claimed to be Sephiroth's brother might share the big guy's disrespect for the rules of nature.
Luckily, while he might be freakishly fast, and shockingly resistant to being electrocuted, he lacked Sephiroth's raw strength. That, and he also lacked the big guy's actual skill at fighting opponents who could keep up with him.
Reno leaned in on the nightstick, and used his forearm to press the tip of the baton towards his foe just above the point where they'd made contact. Normally, a move like that would have come with a risk of being stabbed in the face, but in this case….
"A knife fighting grip with a sword, really? What, did you learn how to fight from movies?" The Turk scoffed.
There was another sharp "crack" of electrical discharge and the sword fell from numb fingers; Reno kicked it away with a cocky smirk.
/Finally, something comes up Reno! I missed you, cocky smirk!\
Kadaj gave ground but refused to get out of the way, his green eyes locked with Reno's own turquoise.
"Sword or no sword, you're not getting past me."
"C'mon, kid, you really gonna make me kill you?"
"...Yeah." There was something fey in those inhuman eyes. "Yeah, I think I am."
Kadaj raised his fists and squared his shoulders. "This is what heroes do. This is what heroes are for."
Reno had seen how fast Kadaj could move; he could easily dart over to retrieve his weapon, but he refused to be anywhere that wasn't directly between Reno and the Plate Release System's terminal.
"Your funeral." The Turk sighed before rushing straight ahead.
Kadaj landed a mean left hook to Reno's face, but deprived of his weapon and refusing to dodge out of the way, it was easy for the Turk to tackle his silver-haired foe to the ground. Scrabbling for position, Reno delivered a vicious headbutt and a series of blows with a baton that was only technically a nonlethal weapon.
"Nap-time kiddo." Reno declared, grimacing as one eye swelled shut. He couldn't quite shake the sense he was forgetting something.
He cranked up the output on his baton as high as it would go and jammed it into Kadaj's sternum.
"Hhhhhihhh... Hurhhhh... Hehh... Heheheh..." Kadaj gasped for air, grinning past bloody teeth. "Is that… the worst you can do?"
Reno wasn't sure what kind of a reaction he'd expected, but that sure as hell wasn't it. He didn't notice Kadaj's gloved hand wrapping around his bare one until it was too late- a pulse of electrical energy leapt from Kadaj's glove to Reno's flesh and knocked him sprawling.
"Why won't you stay down?" the Turk demanded. He was definitely forgetting something. He was sure of it.
"Why do you want to kill so many people?" Kadaj retorted, hauling himself to his feet. "What could possibly be worth that?"
Reno determined that the most persuasive response possible to that question was to beat Kadaj's face into a bloody pulp with his nightstick.
Several blows later he'd managed to split Kadaj's lip and shatter his nose… but that damnable smile was still there.
"Damn it, buy a vowel and get a freaking clue!" Reno screamed before bringing down his nightstick again, though this time around Kadaj managed to get his right arm in the way to absorb the Turk's attack.
"Give up!"
"Never."
WHACK!
"Give up!"
"Never."
WHACK!
"Give, up!"
"Never."
WHACK!
Before long the words lost all meaning, they might as well have been bestial grunts as the Turk tackled Kadaj to the ground again and the two rolled around on the platform, Reno trying to find a level of physical trauma or electrical discharge that would finally end this increasingly brutal brawl.
It was funny in a way: millions of years of evolution, millions of gil spent on raising him, training him, equipping him, tinkering with his body, and teaching him to control magic… but at the end of the day, Reno was just a monkey with a stick beating another monkey to death.
"Thanks." Kadaj eventually choked out.
It was the first thing other than "never" he'd said in a while.
Reno was starting to think he might have finally inflicted some form of concussion on Kadaj, then he saw the glint of light striking off of something metal, something that was far brighter than any of the random debris surrounding them.
He'd been so busy trying to beat his opponent senseless that he hadn't realized they'd rolled within arms reach of that weird sword. Not just that, but they were positioned so Kadaj could reach it with his left hand, which was why he'd let Reno pummel, nay pulverize, his right.
/Ah. Right. Smack talk. Silver hair. That whole bit.\
"Son of a bitch." Reno yelped as he scampered like the scared simian he was, just barely disengaging and rolling away fast enough to avoid getting gutted.
Kadaj rose to his feet, spat out some more blood, and yet again positioned himself directly between Reno and the Plate Release System's terminal.
"My name is Kadaj. I'm Sephiroth's younger brother, and the hero who is going to stop you."
/This f**king mission.\
XXX XXX XXX
Rude had half a dozen black belts and had been killing people with his bare hands for over a decade now; why was he currently having trouble dealing with one random rebel?
Okay, that was underselling her. Whoever this woman was, she had to be among the Avalanche's elite; she'd been chosen to attack the Sector Five reactor alongside Sephiroth and the one armed man who seemed to be their leader. Rude desperately hoped she was among Avalanche's elite; he didn't look forward to fighting someone even more deadly than his current opponent.
There was also the little matter of how she'd been able to inflict noticeable damage on the Airbuster with her bare hands. Only someone with SOLDIER enhancements should be able to accomplish that. Faced with such a dangerous foe, Rude did what he did best, fight conservatively and study his opponent.
He'd managed to determine two facts so far; the first was that she clearly knew what she was doing; she seemed comfortable trading shots with him, but wasn't afraid to clinch up to negate his longer reach. The second was that he'd never fought anyone who hated him as much as this woman did.
Rude's blue suit,superhuman abilities, and his own impressive combat skills were normally enough to ensure his foes were far too frightened to actually be angry. Not this woman.
Not only that, but she seemed aware of how angry she was; she was using her rage to fuel her attacks rather than letting it drive her into a mindless berserker frenzy.
As she advanced on him again, Rude swayed out of the way of a punch, his suits' sleeves fluttering to unleash some of his carefully concealed supply of Shinra's top of the line air-borne soporific. Reno liked to call the stuff "the vacation slide-show" because exposure to it would make you go from combat ready to unconscious in less than ten seconds. Rude gently puffed a generous portion at his opponent who brought up her hands to shield her face, a highly inefficient way of keeping yourself from inhaling something.
Then her gloves burst into flame.
There was a miniature fireworks display as Rude's chemical attack combusted harmlessly. Not even bothering to clear her field of vision, she followed it up with a kick from her left leg to Rude's chest. That proved to be an overreach, though; he managed to catch her foot with one hand before it could make contact.
He gave a yank, hyperextending the leg and pulling her off balance, then followed up with a hammerblow to the side of her locked knee. She twisted in his grip, letting out a hiss as the blow landed on the back of her knee- painful, but a far cry from the disabling strike he'd attempted. As she finished her spin, she drove her free heel into the side of his head, breaking his sunglasses and sending them flying.
Rude staggered, his vision swimming... but he still had control. She had no footing, no leverage, and no traction. With another sharp yank on her ankle, he swung her over his head and slammed her into the floor.
He saw the flashes of hatred in her eyes as he pulled her down, gravity aiding the strength of his attack, also spotting how she tried to go limp in order to better ride out the impact.
One slam wasn't going to be enough to get the job done, not against someone with SOLDIER enhancements who knew all the right counter moves. So he lifted her up into the air and slammed her back down a second time. Then he did it a third, and a fourth.
It was clearly taking a toll- she was getting less and less able to catch her breath between impacts, and her eyes seemed unable to focus on him.
He pulled her off the ground again, but this time the momentum he wanted to impart on her was horizontal instead of vertical. Big throws with lots of windup were normally the last maneuver that Rude would ever consider using in a fight; leave that sort of thing to the movies where they had to show the hero being menaced, yet somehow always avoided serious harm. Right now though, right now, throwing this woman off of the platform seemed to be the surest way to take her out of the fight.
It might even have worked… but the moment he tried to do something other than pound her into the floor her eyes suddenly refocused; she struck like a snake, flexing her leg and curling her body to wrap both hands around his wrist.
Using his own body for leverage she delivered a kick to his right shoulder that sent waves of pain and numbness racing through his entire arm.
Surprise mixed with sheer simple inability to properly manipulate his wounded limb slackened his grip. A slack grip combined with his attempt to spin his opponent around was the perfect recipe for her break free, and sure enough, the woman willingly let go of his arm and launched herself away with another stomp kick to his chest.
The escape sent her rolling across the platform, but if she could still fight like that after being actively mashed into it several times over, a few bumps wouldn't even slow her down.
Rude did the only thing he could at the moment: take a second to pop his dislocated shoulder back into place. That done, he reached into his right breast pocket and pulled out a new pair of sunglasses. A "new" pair of sunglasses that must have been clipped by the edge of her second kick, because they already had a shattered lens.
/This f**king mission.\
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth had run out of helicopters to deal with. This wasn't to say the skies were empty, but they'd all pulled back too far to be sure of reaching them with a jump.
Deprived of his prey, he resolved to deal with the Turks. Before he could get down to business, though, Sephiroth felt the slight twinge of his body being peppered with shrapnel from nearby explosions, again.
Turning around to see who had just signed their own death warrant this time, he discovered that what had attacked him was no ordinary helicopter. It had a trio of distinct rotors and its main purpose was obviously ordnance delivery rather than personnel transport.
Right after the missiles struck home against him, a few errant ones peppered the support pillar itself, tearing chunks from its superstructure. The pillar didn't seem to be in any danger of collapsing, but Sephiroth didn't intend to find out how many more such strikes it could withstand.
Whatever that flying machine was, he was going to destroy it.
"Why don't you have the decency to just lay down and die?" demanded a familiar voice broadcast at maximum volume.
"Could you come closer, Heidegger? All that shrapnel left my throat a little sore."
Imparting the kinetic energy of a sword swing into a wave of force that traveled along the ground was a trick every SOLDIER had to master to take 2nd Class colors... but the ground had never been a particularly important part of the process for Sephiroth
Still, he preferred not to use this technique; both the likelihood and severity of collateral damage were too high for comfort, but at the moment, he was running out of options. Masamune slashed through the air, sending a flurry of blue-white arcs of force to meet the heavily armed copter, but they did little more than scratch the paint; the hull flashed brightly as a structural power field bled off the kinetic impacts. His attack broke like waves on the shore, powerless against the barrier.
Sephiroth was running out of options, and he now had one fewer.
"Did you really think that your little kung-fu tricks would be able to damage Shinra's new Valkyrie ordnance platform? You're an obsolete relic, Sephiroth, no better than the Wutains you brought to heel! It's time for Shinra to put you back where you belong, the past!" Heidegger jeered.
Numerous hatches on the sides of the Valkyrie popped open to unleash a fresh storm of missiles.
/Obsolete?\
XXX XXX XXX
"Yes, yes, this will be glorious!" Heidegger's hologram and voice all but filled the cockpit.
Edward felt a lump forming in his throat as his grip on the controls tightened.
"General Heidegger, I was given to understand that the Valkyrie's purpose in this operation was to serve as your command and control platform," he hesitantly pointed out.
"The Valkyrie's purpose is to be a weapon of war, and weapons of war destroy their enemies!" a holographic representation of Shinra's field commander snarled back.
"I think you might have underestimated just how powerful some of its weapons are due to a lack of field testing; what if the salvo you had me launch damages the Plate's support pillar?"
Getting picked to pilot the Valkyrie had seemed like much more of a plum assignment before Heidegger had ordered him to to use it as more than a heavily armored set of eyes, ears and lips.
"If that traitor Sephiroth isn't killed today, it'll only be a matter of time before his insanity leads him to attack another reactor or support pillar. Better that all of Sector Seven should perish than to risk his survival!" Heidegger scoffed.
Edward's throat went dry. "Y- Yes, sir..." he managed to choke out.
It was not his place to argue with Heidegger's analysis of how big a threat Sephiroth represented; he was just a glorified chauffeur.
As they waited for lead missiles of their second barrage to [reach their target and detonate, the radar abruptly detected that some of the missiles had reversed direction and were now moving closer…
A moment later, more warning lights began to blink into existence.
"General, we're detecting localized category 5 winds in front of the pillar!"
Even as the center of the missile barrage was caught up in a catastrophic windstorm, its edges were assailed by crescents of blue-white energy that effortlessly bisected missiles and dragged survivors off-course to collide in their wake.
Before he could recover from that shock, Edward noticed that the windstorm had managed to spin the missiles around a full 180 degrees, and that they were now headed towards the Valkyrie... which was, sadly, only the second most unpleasant surprise he'd just gotten…
"General Heidegger, I think Sephiroth is... surfing a missile towards us!"
"Don't be stupid; that's impossible!"
XXX XXX XXX
As Sephiroth surfed a missile towards the Valkyrie, he couldn't help but think that he owed Zack an apology; sometimes plans so outrageous that the enemy couldn't have possibly conceived of them beforehand really were your best option.
XXX XXX XXX
While Heidegger was busy half muttering, half screaming something about air resistance and kinetic vectors, Edward brought the Valkyrie's gatling cannons online for point defense work.
Missiles began to prematurely detonate as they were punctured by the Valkyrie's rounds. Despite the cannons' prodigious rate of fire, it wasn't fast enough; Sephiroth seemed to be generating miniature windstorms for the express purpose of maneuvering his improbable explosive conveyance.
"The Drill! Use the drill!" Heidegger demanded.
In another situation, dealing with someone who couldn't have him and his entire family lined up against a wall and shot, Edward might have made some unkind comments about backseat driving or the feasibility of aerial jousting against an explosive missile.
Instead, he took a deep breath and began to tilt his joystick in order to alter the Valkyrie's flight profile from vertical to horizontal. At the same time his other hand was busy continuing to cycle through cameras looking for the perfect view to keep him aware of the situation.
"Good, now ram him!"
The Valkyrie's drill attachment had originally been designed for… on second thought, Edward wasn't quite sure why Shinra had decided to attach a gigantic melee weapon to what was otherwise a flying artillery platform. Well, whatever its original design purpose had been, Edward was damn sure it wasn't this.
These kinds of dogfighting maneuvers were demanding for the best pilots under the best circumstances, with the most agile aircraft, but Edward knew that if he gave it his all...
He could narrowly miss while the Valkyrie's system monitors politely informed him that the weapons platform had abruptly gained an unauthorized passenger's worth of weight, apparently.
"Shake! Him! Loose!" Heidegger growled through clenched teeth.
"Excellent idea, General!" Edward rapidly agreed before inverting the Valkyrie.
Maybe if he was especially lucky, not only would Sephiroth lose his grip, but he'd fall directly into the spinning rotors. If anything had a chance of actually killing the Silver General, that would be it….
A moment later, Edward could hear the groan of metal as something, or rather someone, refused to be shaken loose. This was followed by all of the screens suddenly flickering ever so slightly before stabilizing.
"That fool, he didn't realize that after the Guard Scorpion's failure, we hardened our kinetic barrier generators against electrical surges! Not only that, but it's so seamlessly interwoven with the armor itself that he'll never get through-the field won't fail while the armor holds, and the armor can't be breached while the field is active!"
"Yes, general. I did read the dossier..."
"What was that?"
"Brilliant innovation, sir!"
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth held on for the dear lives of everyone in Sector Seven.
He'd successfully closed the gap between himself and the Valkyrie; now he just needed a way to dismantle it. That was easier said than done, however; the kinetic shield hadn't shorted out, and he didn't like his odds of burning or freezing it, either. With his list of possible options rapidly dwindling, it was time to consider an impossible one.
Bracing himself awkwardly against the cylindrical module in the center of its roof he began to fiddle with the silver emblem at the middle of his belt.
Click.
The belt buckle came loose and then with the gentle "fsssh" of extending fabric he was able to wrap his belt around the entire cylinder in order to secure himself.
/Fifteen foot belt, actually useful... you win this one, Debbie, but Marketing still owes me for the PSAs...\
That done, all he needed to worry about now was breaking through the kinetic field; it might be able to absorb Masamune's impacts, but absorption wasn't nullification. That meant there was a limit to what it could take; he was going to push this system beyond its limits.
PTANG!
Well he'd managed to hit it once, and unlike with that scorpion he hadn't been thrown halfway across the Sector; so far, so good.
PTANG!
PTANG!
PTANG!
PTAPTPTAPTPTANPTAPTANG!
The sounds of metal impacting against the kinetic barrier again and again ran together into an endless cacophony from which Sephiroth outright refused to accept a migraine.
He kept swinging.
Kssssss….
The aural assault ended with the soothing sound of Masamune striking against only reinforced armor and effortlessly severing one of the gunship's rotors. Feeling his footing shift, he leapt clear as the other two rotors plunged towards him. His right hand opened, then closed a split second later, his grip tightening around the extreme ends of his belt before he realized... he needn't have bothered.
Deprived of a third of its lift, the gunship had begun to lose altitude… and Sephiroth hadn't.
His body had simply decided that the third law of motion could go and apply itself to people not named Sephiroth, and his mind had summarily deferred the matter in favor of focusing on his objective.
Even now, as the Valkyrie dipped and bucked from the unplanned change to its flight profile, Sephiroth stood above it, hanging in midair.
Still, he doubted removing one rotor would be enough to ground the Valkyrie, but with the kinetic shield out of the equation, its fate was sealed.
"I'd like gravity to turn back on now." He announced to whoever might be listening.
It did, and Sephiroth dove on the Valkyrie like a bird of prey.
XXX XXX XXX
"General, he just landed back on us, and without rotor 1, lift capacity is at 66%!" Edward warned.
"Take us closer to the Pillar!"
"Closer to the Pillar?"
"WAS I UNCLEAR? If you can't shake him off, smash him against the pillar like a bug on the windshield!"
Those were mighty easy orders to give when you weren't actually inside the vehicle you were commanding to engage in what could best be described as a controlled crash.
But then, Edward thought back to how when he was first getting briefed on his current vehicle, certain parts of the Valkyrie's schematics that had been redacted. Certain parts of the schematics… like a small cube located in the floor more or less directly beneath his seat... the perfect place to stash a load of explosives if you wanted to make your displeasure towards its pilot clear in the most terminal manner possible.
"I'm sorry General, was experiencing some audio interference, closer to the pillar it is!"
Edward set a course for the pillar. Well before he reached it, the Valkyrie lurched again as it rapidly lost both altitude and speed.
"We just lost rotor 2, lift capacity down to 33%!"
The Valkyrie had been designed to be capable of brief periods of flight with only a single rotor, but 'brief' was the key word.
There was no way that the Valkyrie would be able to generate enough lift to get itself back to Upper Midgar now. One way or another he was going to have to crash-land somewhere in Lower Midgar.
The only question was, did he want to do it after everyone saw him slam his vehicle into the Plate's support pillar like some kind of suicidal lunatic?
"We've just lost rotor 3, lift capacity is at zero! Pilot bailing out!" Edward screamed at the top of his lungs.
He didn't give General Heidegger a chance to argue or check the system monitor, and he especially didn't give him a chance to trigger any theoretical self destruct mechanism. Instead, he reached down and yanked the yellow lever located between his legs.
His head was jerked back against his chair as a cylindrical section on the top of the Valkyrie's chassis was ejected, and a few moments later so was Edward.
CLAAAAAAAANNNGGGG!
The one still functioning rotor slammed into his ejecting chair hard and the next thing Edward knew he was spinning around wildly in midair.
As his chute deployed the world started to make more sense and he was finally able to catch his breath.
The Valkyrie might still end up plowing into some poor soul's house when it crashed, but it wasn't going to take out the pillar and thus all of Sector Seven.
As the ship plummeted downwards his eyes began to ever slowly drift in the opposite direction; he really hoped he'd done enough to stop Sephiroth from dropping the Plate…. Getting crushed beneath it seemed like almost as bad a death as being torn apart by a mob of violent terrorists.
XXX XXX XXX
Reno was getting really, really tired of fighting someone who seemed to be too stupid to realize the importance of quitting while you were ahead.
At this point he was fairly sure that he'd never be able to take Kadaj out of the fight with his nightstick. Which meant it was time to get creative.
He retreated back towards the edge of the platform, seeming to brush his jacket clean in the process.
Kadaj pursued him eagerly, trying to keep Reno as far away from the Plate Release System's terminal as possible.
Click.
Kadaj looked down just in time to realize that the "piece of debris" he'd carelessly stepped on was actually a pyramid mine Reno had just dropped. Three beams of orangish yellow light shot from the sides of the mine, meeting at a point above Kadaj's head, creating the shape which gave the weapon its name.
Inside the pyramid was an unstable zero point energy field. While it lasted, nothing inside it was going anywhere; even gravity was on hold.
"Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance..." Reno chuckled to himself, amazed that for once he'd wound up on the former side of that saying.
A quick survey of the situation revealed that the one armed guy and the girl with the gun were still focused on exchanging fire with nearby Shinra helicopters while Rude was keeping the martial arts chick busy. Which meant that it was over; against impossible odds, Reno had somehow managed to win.
How many other people on the Planet had ever managed to defeat General Sephiroth before? Okay, he'd only "defeated" Sephiroth by allowing a couple dozen other people to get themselves gruesomely murdered while Reno completed his mission, but a win was a win!
Yes, his partner seemed to be getting bruises in colors that Reno hadn't even known existed, but so long as Rude kept his opponent from interfering, he was doing all Reno needed.
For the first time since this entire fiasco had started, Reno was finally able to activate the pillar's terminal, and thus was able to worry about something other than his own survival. He shoved his brief twinge of conscious into a deep dark pit and shot it twice in the head; he hadn't fought Sephiroth and Mini-Sephiroth to back out now...
Its screen went from being a void of black to a wall of blue with a few white words spread across it.
"System Update in Progress. 35% complete. Do not turn off this terminal. This may take a while."
"F%#kin'... What the f*!kin'. Fk. Who the f$/k f()ked this f+=king... How did those f¿þking f€§ks... FUCK!"
WHAM!
Rude, not traveling at all under his own power, slammed into him. Both Turks went down, leaving Reno gazing into a pair of broken sunglasses.
"Certainly illustrates the diversity of the word." the martial arts chick admitted as she approached to finish the job.
A red boot descended to crush the life out of them.
Reno and Rude had worked together for years, and that was AFTER being each others' only friends growing up; the pair had decades of experience at reading each others' body language. That was the only explanation for how they were able to successfully roll out of the way while tangled up in each others' limbs.
"Whiskey One, Whiskey Two, this is Whiskey Actual. I am inbound and very disappointed." The voice spoke in perfect stereo from Reno and Rude's radios.
A moment later, Sephiroth alighted on the platform, ready to carve the Turks up like a pair of turkeys.
Reno and Rude exchanged one more glance at each other, then their eyes locked on their one chance...
They rolled together once more time and threw themselves under the mangled safety railing's Reno-shaped indentation
All things considered, they had surprisingly little to fear at the moment; free fall was vastly safer than being anywhere near an angry General Sephiroth.
Rude began to reach into his jacket as Reno got his arms out of the way, allowing the bald Turk to pull out his custom grapple gun.
FSSSSS! CLINK!
The line extended outward, looping around the skids of a Shinra helicopter that had indeed been waiting for them.
"You need to lose some weight." Rude deadpanned as the pair's injuries were further exacerbated by the sudden shock of the line pulling taut.
XXX XXX XXX
"The Plate is still in place." Tseng noted as his two subordinates clambered on-board.
"There's some sort of computer shit or whatever going on. The system wasn't up for us to input the release code. How the f**k did that happen?"
"Someone dropped the ball." Tseng concluded, as if those four words could somehow fully sum up the catastrophe unfolding around him. "Looks like we're down to manual separation..."
All three Turks had been briefed on Shinra's backup plan: tell everyone involved what their true objective was and use helicopter munitions to damage the Plate's support pillar to the point that physics would do all the hard work.
"About that... Rude, buddy… why did you join me on the platform?"
"Sephiroth took out my copter's rotor, I had to bail out before it crashed."
Rude must have finally been rubbing off on him, because for once Reno didn't say anything, just looked long and hard at his commander.
Tseng risked a glance back at the "package" that he'd wound up spending tonight acquiring instead of joining in the battle.
He made his decision.
He reached out and flipped a number of switches to start broadcasting on a range of frequencies… including ones that Avalanche would doubtlessly be listening over by this point.
"This is Tseng, Head of the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department, speaking to all Shinra personnel in the area. My agents have disarmed and recovered the device that Avalanche was going to use to destroy the Plate Support Pillar. I repeat, the Sector Seven Plate is no longer in danger. Retreat to your fall back positions and evacuate, mission accomplished."
Tseng hoped that the men and women who Shinra had seen fit to deploy on this mission had actually been given genuine fall back positions. Considering how many of them would have doubtlessly been left to die if the mission had "truly succeeded", who knew how little thought General Heidegger might have put into that matter?
Every Shinra trooper who couldn't get on board a flight capable helicopter, and there were a lot fewer of them in the air than when the assault started, was going to have to find a way to get out of Sector Seven and back to Upper Midgar on foot.
Tseng didn't like their odds.
But caring about how many many people died wasn't his job; accomplishing the mission was, and if they couldn't accomplish the one they'd originally been sent here to do, Shinra would have to settle for a consolation prize.
"So... we completed our official mission and failed our secret one. Are we amazing at our jobs, or awful?" Reno mused.
"Why not both?" the captive Aerith Gainsborough said with a venomous smile.
XXX XXX XXX
Tifa grabbed an assault rifle from a dead trooper and joined Barret and Jessie in seeing the Shinra helicopters off with one last volley of gunfire. Needless to say, rifle rounds fired by a mostly untrained markswoman were unlikely to do much to a helicopter that was probably well outside the weapon's effective range, but she was determined to send a message all the same.
Shinra was running away.
They'd won.
The sun lamps mounted high on Plate were starting to glow brighter as artificial night gave way to equally artificial day.
Seventh Heaven was going to live to see another day; Shinra didn't get to just destroy her home and everything she cared about on a whim…she felt like she was awakening from a five year long nightmare
She'd gotten stronger, and it had meant something…
"It was us! We did this!" Tifa shouted her triumph at the top of her lungs, daring Shinra to change their mind, to turn back around and face her again.
She'd never thought faux sunlight could look so beautiful.
XXX XXX XX
"A free round at Seventh Heaven to anyone with a gun!" Tifa called out to the crowd of people milling around uncertainly at the bottom of the support pillar.
Before she knew it, the crowd swarmed around her, lifting her joyously into the air. She wasn't the only one, either; the crowd seemed determined to carry all of Avalanche back to her bar.
Well, all of Avalanche except for Sephiroth; he kept his distance and judiciously employed That Thing With His Eyes on anyone who came too close.
Giving away free drinks wasn't usually Tifa's style... but it wasn't going to put her out of business, and if ever there was a time for catharsis, this was it. Judging by how many dead bodies she'd seen, Shinra had left a small fortune in slightly used army surplus behind in the wake of their failed attack.
The people of Sector Seven might get tired of eating monster meat, but they weren't going to be lacking in guns to hunt them with any time soon, and all those crashed helicopters could yield more scrap than they knew what to do with.
Shinra had tried to destroy Sector Seven… and all they'd ended up doing was turn it into the best-armed sector in Lower Midgar!
XXX XXX XXX
Barret's feelings of invincible euphoria lasted only as long as it took for the crowd to carry him back to Seventh Heaven. Once he got there, he discovered something new to fear.
"Where the hell is Marlene?" he roared upon discovering that there was no sign of his daughter.
A short and increasingly frantic search revealed no sign of her, she wasn't in her room in the back, nor was she hiding in the bar's secret basement.
"Barret, calm down, one of our friends is looking after her." Tifa tried to reassure him.
"Which friend?"
"Her name is Aerith, she lives in Sector Five."
Barret didn't spend as much time working in Seventh Heaven as Tifa did, but that name didn't sound like any of their regulars or Avalanche's well established allies.
He could feel a mixture of fear and anger building within him; part of him wanted to tell Tifa that she had no right to make decisions about how to keep his daughter safe. What if Marlene had ended up having been attacked by Shinra goons or monsters while she was with this Aerith woman?
He tamped that instinct down with a deep breath and a reminder of what might have happened to Marlene if Avalanche had failed. She'd either have died when the Plate fell, or worse been left buried alive in their basement to await an even crueler death. No, getting Marlene out of Sector Seven had been the smart call; who could have expected a miracle would save the sector?
"Alright," he growled. Took a deep breath.
"Alright," he tried again, his voice still tight, but considerably more level. "Good call. Thanks. Let's... Let's go pick 'er up. Your friend was headed home?"
"Your answering machine is blinking!" Kadaj said, either eager to show he'd been listening to Tifa, or just easily distracted by blinky lights..
Barret briefly worried he might break the machine with how forcefully he slammed the "replay new messages" button.
"Mr. Barret Wallace?" The recorded voice sounded unsure, but not exactly afraid.
"My name is Elmyra Gainsborough. This is all… very complicated. Your daughter was dropped off at my house. I've already met a friend of yours, a tall man with silver hair. He can tell you how to find me. I'll do my best to keep her safe until then, I promise." The call concluded.
"So does your friend Aerith have another friend named Elmyra?" Barret sighed.
"Elmyra is Aerith's mother." Sephiroth at first seemed content to leave the matter at that, but as Barret turned away, he volunteered "If Marlene is with her, she is indeed safe."
From a man as aloof and taciturn as Sephiroth, the extra words were a surprising, but welcome, show of compassion. Barret gave him a gruff, grateful nod, but his improving mood derailed when Tifa abruptly asked another question.
"But why didn't Aerith call us herself?"
"She didn't have mako eyes like us, maybe she was so tired she fell asleep after she got Marlene back to her home?" Kadaj ventured awkwardly.
"A good point, but not quite the one you were trying to make." Sephiroth replied, already heading for the door. "Aerith isn't like us. How could she have parted ways with us right after we came out of the sewers, but reached Sector Five before we made it back here? Especially if she had a young child in tow? No… something happened to her."
"Well then, I guess we're gonna find out what." Barret vowed; if somebody had gotten in trouble helping his daughter get to safety, then he was going to get them out of that trouble or die trying.
XXX XXX XXX
Tseng looked around room B3 at his two fellow Turks. They knew what he was going to say, it was a blindingly obvious truth that none of them could deny, and yet he felt the need to say it anyway.
"The man who held this position before me felt like this possibility was one that we would never have to worry about. He was a great man, but he had a weakness; he refused to prepare for the worst, possible, situation. I learned much from the example he set... including how to avoid his mistakes.
"I might have hoped that this day would never come, but I faced my fears head on rather than hid from them. Reno, Rude, we've all spent years preparing for this exact situation, even if we were forced to do so in secret, because to openly name our concerns us would make us all traitors
"The folders before you contain all the relevant information and your orders. Whatever happens tomorrow, let none say that today found us unprepared. Initiate plan APS."
End Chapter
AN: Wow, so this really quickly turned into "Mook Horror Show" the chapter didn't it?
Side note, Reno's fight with Sephiroth was deliberately patterned on a movie scene, can any of you guess which one?
If you were curious, in real life most knockout gasses are currently non-flammable (for that matter real life knockout gasses just flat out don't work the way Rude's attack in the remake does) but many of the ones we previously used were very much capable of combustion in the right circumstances, so assume Shinra isn't letting a little thing like user safety get in the way of a good chemical weapon.