Another chapter is up!
Kazeshuriken: Thank you!
Beloved Daughter: of course. you know the answer.
Enjoy!
Crimson stood off to the side with the others at the base of a wooden stairway leading further up. The only exception was Yuffie, who knocked on the door, rocking back and forth as she waited for a response. The door latch clacked and the hinges groaned as it opened to reveal an elderly woman.
"Hello," Yuffie said brightly. "Is Priscilla in?"
The elderly woman, perhaps having recognized Yuffie, smiled. "No, no. She went to the shore to play with her little dolphin friend at the offing."
Suddenly, Red XIII tensed. He turned his head towards the shore that rested past a house on a drop that led down to the water. He must've heard something.
Cloud too, through his SOLDIER-enhanced senses. Though he looked unsure. "Did you—"
"The sound of a girl screaming," Red XIII confirmed, darting towards the Dolphin Offing. Yuffie, apparently having heard him, jumped down from the top of the stairs and barely touched the ground before she sped past Cloud, who was readying his sword and running in that direction.
Crimson and the other girls only realized what was happening when the old man at the overlook screamed, "The Bottomswell is going after Priscilla!"
The former Turk ran over to the edge to see that the Bottomswell was a monster that was just barely shorter than the adult Midgar Zolom they had dealt with. It floated in the air just over a small, tanned girl in a yellow top that was lying down next to a flailing dolphin. The fact that it opened its maw wide pretty much confirmed what they feared would happen next—it was going to eat them.
"PRISCILLA!" Yuffie screamed, instantly shrouded in a coat of power. A Limit Break. She kicked off the overlook and, with her weapon in hand, rotated as she fell directly onto its head. The kunoichi brought the shuriken crashing down with enough force to successfully divert its ravenous lunge for the two. "GET AWAY FROM HER!"
It reeled around, focusing on its assailant, but spheres of fire and ice pelted it before it could act. The others charged in while Crimson remained on the stairs, around the middle part. Her weapon was long-ranged, and she would be better served as mission control.
She activated her Sense Materia—Floating. No changes in the air current around it. Manipulates gravity to a moderate degree using fins. Subject to damage by strong winds—and the information flooded in as she watched Red XIII use Matra Magic to further hinder the creature while Yuffie and Tifa retrieved the little girl and dolphin respectively, moving them off to the side. Missile constructs were created and flew towards the creature, only to veer off-course as they neared. They crashed into the water and exploded, sending water and bits of sand and stone everywhere without harming it.
"That spell won't work!" Crimson told Red XIII. "It's manipulating the gravity around it to float! The missiles will fly off-course because of it! Stick to your other magic!"
He snarled in agreement when the water suddenly surged up in a large wave, around the sentient beast's height, and swept him back. Cloud planted his sword into the ground and kept his feet under him. Yuffie and Tifa managed to get to Crimson's level on the stairs, avoiding the waves entirely.
"C'mon, Priscilla! Breathe!" begged the kunoichi, performing rescue breathing while Tifa was keeping the dolphin calm. Aerith was busy as well, tending to their wounds with healing magic. That left the frontline fighting to the males while Crimson readied her next attack.
As the wave retreated, Bottomswell lashed with its tail at Cloud. He blocked and slashed at the tail when it pulled back, but it was of no use. The damn thing was floating and fighting knee-deep in water, as proven in the marsh, was a pain in the ass.
"Get out of the water!" Crimson ordered, charging up a Bolt 2 spell. The monster was floating over the water, but she didn't want to risk a stray bolt catching them. Once they both were on the shore, she let the bluish-white bolt hit home.
The creature shrieked and spun in place, conjuring another wave. This time it was large enough that it could reach them on the stairs. Yuffie grabbed the coughing, now-breathing Priscilla and ascended to the top of the overlook with a jump befitting a kunoichi. The rest were pulled down with the retreating water to the level of Cloud and Red XIII, who helped them to their feet.
"Cough—Lo—cough—Lockhart!" Crimson coughed out the briny water as Aerith unleashed a Healing Wind. "Give Cloud your Long Distance Materia and retreat back to the stairs to use magic with Aerith! Next time you see the water rising, freeze as much as you can. Magic will tamper with the cohesion of the wave and dampen the effect—otherwise we'll be swept out into the sea next time."
The martial artist tossed the materia to him and moved back with Aerith like she said, wet clothes clinging to her frame as she did so. Crimson elected to do the same, knowing she was vulnerable up-close. That was when she was sudden entombed in a sphere of water that was so dense and heavy that she couldn't move.
She heard Cloud's garbled voice calling her and watched as he swung the sword around, letting the point of the blade cut through the surface of the bubble. Some of it splashed out as the blade exited, but the bubble held its shape and form. He tried reaching in to pull her out, but it was too dense for even him to reach deep enough.
Gravity to manipulate water. Magic to disrupt, the Sense Materia told her. He needed to use magic to break the bubble, but she had no way of telling him that and her air was running out. Was… was she going to die like this?
The next thing she knew, she was cold. Ice surrounded her and then collapsed in on itself. She covered her head with her arms in a knee-jerk reaction, no longer restricted by the water, and gasped as a strong hand pulled her out of the remaining ice. It was Cloud.
"Are you okay?" he asked, a hitch in his voice. The sound of fire searing the air as it flew and the Bottomswell screeching told her that Red XIII was carrying on the fight.
She nodded as she tried to pull away, only for her legs to collapse under her while her lungs fought desperately for air again. It was no good. Her body was useless until it pulled itself together. She'd be dead weight.
"Put her on, kupo~!" She turned to see that Mog had been summoned. Cloud lifted her onto the chocobo and she held on as it took her up the stairs where Aerith and Tifa were. The healer set to work immediately.
Crimson turned to Tifa. That abrupt coldness was a blatant clue about what had happened. "How'd—cough—you know to use magic?"
"You said that using magic would disrupt the waves and weaken them." Tifa used an Ice 2 spell to do just that as another wave was getting ready to crash into the group. The frozen portion caused it to collapse early. "Even if it didn't, Cloud could've shattered the ice easier than dealing with the water."
"….Thanks," Crimson found it in her to say. She didn't like Tifa and, on some level, she knew the feeling was mutual. They were on opposing sides for too long, and both blamed one another for the bombing of the reactor and the plate falling. But they were in this together and knew survival meant cooperation.
A shadow was cast as something flew over their heads. It was Yuffie, looking angry and carrying her shuriken. She landed at the bottom with a roll, leaped onto Cloud's shoulder as he blocked another attack from the thing's tail, and was then wreathed in the light of a Limit Break again as she swung down with another hammering blow that pierced the outer shell this time.
"HOW DARE YOU—" She twisted the point of the shuriken and the hard shell cracked enough that a fist-sized portion popped out. She pulled a materia out of her pouch and then shoved it, enclosed in her fist, into the opening to unleash a spell directly into it, bypassing its defenses. "—DO THAT TO HER!"
Bio Spell. Poison inflicted, the Sense Materia told Crimson as the monster began to thrash around. The kunoichi held on to fire the spell a second time, eliciting a louder shriek from it as the poison did its work. It twisted its body upside down before she could get a third shot in, dropping the girl in the water beneath it.
Red XIII went to retrieve her as it brought its tail down, only for Cloud's Blade Beam to smack it away and then hit the monster full-on in the face. Its scales began to fall apart, revealing necrotic tissue and muscle beneath it. The poison was killing it faster than they had been.
Sensing its impending demise, Bottomswell sluggishly retreated far off-shore and spun in a tight circle. It was conjuring a wave in the distance, one that rose higher than the offing. It was going to sink lower Junon into the sea at that rate.
"Stop it! Now!" Crimson ordered. Lighting, fire, and ice flew out, but the wave still grew higher and higher. They couldn't do a thing with their spells being so weak. "We have to get to higher ground!"
Reluctantly, they did so with one exception. Red XIII refused to move. Instead, he took up a defensive posture as heat seeped from every pore of his body and the light of the Enemy Skill Materia grew brighter.
The Sense Materia, still active, fed her the information—Enemy skill acquired from Midgar Zolom. Immense fire damage impending—and Crimson turned to Tifa. "We need a wall of ice in front of us, now!"
His maw opened. A crimson, throbbing, maleficent sphere swelled in front of him until it was larger than he was. He unleashed it with a roar, and the orb of destruction flew towards the dying Bottomswell.
The wall of ice finished the moment it connected, and a blast of heat and fire went skyward in a small mushroom cloud. Steam from the flash-boiling water billowed out and cooled into an unpleasantly strong gale as it hit the ice wall, making the wooden buildings shake and tearing a hanging fish skeleton near the top of the stairs off its hook. The lingering cloud of fog obscured their vision and silence reigned as the remnants of the ice wall crumbled.
When the fog cleared nothing remained of the Bottomswell.
Red XIII panted as he ascended the stairs. In his mouth was some kind of armlet. He set it down on the ground in front of them. "The blast carried that over."
Then he collapsed from exhaustion. Tifa picked it up as she kneeled down and ran her hand along Red XIII's body to check for any injuries. There were burns present given the proximity to the blast and the lack of shielding they had with the ice wall. Aerith worked her healing magic right away.
"We need to hide," Crimson said as the Sense Materia ceased functioning. The size of that blast had no doubt sent the upper level of the base into a state of heightened alert. "Shinra will have heard the commotion and will send someone to investigate."
"Leave that to us," said the older man who had called out before about the monster in warning. He was holding Priscilla in his arms. Next to him was an old woman. "Follow her!"
[-oOo-]
Crimson sighed as she dried her hair in a bathroom. The warm shower had helped her relax after having to kill some unfeasibly destructive monster again. Night had fallen at this point, and the group found themselves in the home of the old woman who lived by the overlook of the offing.
"You can hide here and rest," she had told them, hours ago. "Don't worry about anyone saying anything after what you did. Shinra should have dealt with that thing years ago, but they never want to clean up their own messes."
Then she left, leaving the group alone. The moment the door shut, Yuffie had taken up a pose of supplication and fell on her knees, pressing her forehead to the wooden floor in gratitude. It honestly caught Crimson off-guard given how they first met, what with the theft and attacking.
"Thank you!" the younger girl had said. "Thank you for helping me save Priscilla and this town! Truthfully, I ended up here some time after leaving Wutai. The Bottomswell sank the small boat I was on and I washed up on the shore. The people looked after me, so if it had gotten them…."
"It had to be done," Cloud had told her. "It was a good thing we came when we did."
"Still, where did that thing come from?" Tifa had wondered aloud. "That wasn't normal, and I say that after everything we've fought to this point. It was almost like the thing in Hojo's lab."
Yuffie had shrugged her shoulders. "I asked that myself some time ago. They just said that it appeared a few years after the base was built."
"It was probably mutated then," Cloud had guessed. "There's no way a town or a base would be stationed here if creatures like that were native. Not without being driven to extinction."
Crimson had nodded her head in agreement at the time. "From the sensory information alone I could see it manipulated gravity to fly, control water, and created those orbs that we had to use magic to break. It's clearly an apex predator, yet I'd never heard about it until now, and I doubt it could reproduce under normal circumstance. There's no way something like that had been natural, and there's a Mako Reactor underwater here."
After that the discussion petered off. Yuffie left to check on Priscilla, and the others decided to relax. All the fighting in the water was liable to leave them catching colds, so they took turns getting washed and cleaned and their clothes dried. Only Cloud and Red XIII were left.
Crimson slipped on underclothes, a shirt, and a pair of pajama pants that the townsfolk provided. They explained they had a lot lying around since most of the people around the group's age had moved when the base was built. Priscilla was one of the few remaining children and thus treasured dearly, which helped explain why they were going so far out of their way to cover the group's tracks and shelter them.
A quick check in the mirror to make sure she was presentable showed that Crimson was as clean as she was going to get. She unlocked the door and stepped out onto the hardwood floor of the main room. The fire that had been going since before she went in left the room warm in a different way than the bathroom steeped in steam was.
She noticed Cloud standing against the wall, looking out the window. "Notice anything strange in the town?"
"Some people from Shinra showed up, but the townsfolk gave them the runaround," he said. "They seemed impatient, but I think they bought whatever they told them. We should be fine for the night."
"Good," she said, breathing easier. "Great. Then go hit the showers."
"Right." He leaned forward and off the wall, gesturing to the cauldron stewing over a fire. "The woman who lives here made some Fish Soup. Said it might help us get meat on our bones or something like that."
Food sounded wonderful at this point. "I'll have a bowl before settling in for the night."
Cloud went to the bathroom and closed the door behind him, leaving his two swords behind. Crimson stared at Zack's for a moment, thinking about him. He had been on the run for almost a year with Cloud comatose, so she wondered if he managed to get by on the kindness of strangers like they were doing now.
She then ate the Fish Soup in silence, sitting alone in her own corner while gauging the status of the group she was a part of, now that she had a minute to think without the threat of something trying to kill them breathing down her back. Tifa and Aerith were comfortable in front of the fire around Red XIII, who had dozed off. So much had happened, but they seemed to be handling the stress of everything better than she was.
"Why are you eating by yourself?" It took every ounce of training that Crimson had not to lash out at the voice abruptly in her ear. Somehow, Yuffie had slipped into the house without her noticing and was dressed in a midriff-revealing shirt and shorts. Judging from her scent, she had bathed too.
"I have a lot to think about," Crimson told her, stirring the soup around in the bowl. "I take it your friend will be okay?"
"Mm-hm." Yuffie leaned against the wall next to her. "She's tired, but she told me to thank all of you for helping her and Mr. Dolphin. They should both be well enough to help us tomorrow."
"That's good." She still needed a way to get them on a ship to Costa del Sol. And then she needed to come up with a plan to get their hands on Hojo himself, who was under watch by Shinra. That wasn't going to be easy, and once he was officially in custody it would be a pain to extract him.
There was so much to do, and so little time. But, for tonight, that could wait. Right here, right now, cleanse of all the silt, dirt, sand, and every bit of grime that had accumulated on their trip to this point, she just wanted to eat.
The warm soup was simple, yet easily the best thing she had in a long time. It made her sleepy with how filling it was. She finished it off and drifted over to the beds.
Crimson felt tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep in a warm, welcoming, soft bed. It called to her, a siren's song and lullaby all-in-one. The moment her head touched the pillow, she drifted off to a long-needed slumber.
Then she dreamed.