Another chapter is here!
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Kazeshuriken: Thanks!
BukkakenNoJutsu: Yes it is.
Enjoy!
Heidegger smirked as he adjusted the cigar in his mouth, staring at three of the vermin that had been sabotaging his forces through a monitor. Give Scarlet credit where it was due, she could build a machine made for war when not off painting her nails. Even with the funding restrictions Shinra's entitled brat placed on them, they had managed to salvage enough data from the Airbuster's black box and scrape together enough parts to put together this baby—the Airbuster Alpha.
Once the targeting system locked onto the three on the rooftop he pushed the trigger. The shoulder-mounted rocket launcher fired four missiles at the terrorist rat, Hojo's lab rat, and the third rat they picked up somewhere, slightly jostling the framework in the process. He made a mental note to have that fixed later on.
Hojo's lab rat seemed to have learned some new tricks over the years, because it fired a salvo of its own missiles to intercept the ones that he fired. The resulting explosions and smoke obscured the camera, but a Bolt spell punched through it to hit the Airbuster Alpha. It did nothing—they'd learned from the last one to coat the surface in insulated plating.
He aimed the Gatling-gun where the lightning came from and pulled the trigger. The whirl of the barrels and repetitive drumming of bullets being fired was buffered by the thick metal exterior, but orange streaks were visible as the rounds punched through the smoke and showed they were missing.
"Slippery rats…." Heidegger clicked his teeth in mild frustration, chomping down on his cigar. Sneaky as they were, he wouldn't let them escape. His foot pressed down on the pedal to move when there was a beeping noise to signal an incoming communication. He pressed a button on the control panel to allow the audio feed to come through.
It was Rufus. "Heidegger, the Turks are en route and will be in the area within ten minutes."
He resisted the urge to question the worth in bringing those outdated incompetents into the operation when they were the reason most of their problems occurred in the first place. They had allowed the traitors to live and everyone else was paying the price now. Their cover-up allowed for these… monsters of Hojo's to diminish their military and kill the President. It was only fitting that he ended up being taken by them after the coward cut-and-ran when they came for their creator.
"I'm engaging them now," he told his superior, hiding his thoughts behind his words with his gruff voice. "I can find where Hojo is and eliminate the vermin before they arrive."
"Remember that I want the Ancient and Hojo alive. Be careful with that little toy of yours." The feed cut then as Rufus hung up.
"Entitled little shit," he spat as he flipped the switch to activate the radar. Rufus was nothing more than a fence-sitter who only watched, afraid to take risks like his father and men who actually did something other than give orders. The moment the sensors pinged three moving signals, he used the joystick to shift the battlesuit in that direction to give chase and a smile crossed his face.
"Time for a rat hunt."
[-oOo-]
Yuffie was never fond of the sound of rockets flying through the air or gunfire. They both reminded her too much of her home during the bad times, the war years ago. The explosions that followed as Red XIII fired his own to intercept the battlesuit's also brought back the memories of friends of her family who went out to fight and never came back after she heard that sound in the distance.
"Can't you two call out those summoning things and have them do something about this!?" she finally asked as she fired another Bolt spell that washed harmlessly off the surface of the machine. "Why isn't this working!?"
"It's probably insulated somehow," Tifa huffed as she ran. "And both the summonings are recovering from being destroyed. Shiva was caught in the explosion when the ship blew up and Ifrit was just taken apart by that Gatling-gun. They can't do anymore."
The whirling of the barrels reached their collective ears. They ducked into an alley before the streaking orange shots of the Gatling-gun tore through them with even greater ease than they did the summoning. Tifa quickly used her Ice Materia to erect a pillar of ice to seal off the entry to the alley as they moved towards the other end with their heads low, a spray of debris falling down as the rounds punched through the building walls. It would only buy the seconds at best.
"If we don't do something we're going to die!" Yuffie fished through her pouch for any materia that would help. They were supposed to be able to turn the tide against anything, which is why she wanted them in the first place—to give Wutai the power to return to their former glory—but most of them wouldn't work on the war-machine that was coming after them if the Thunder Materia couldn't.
"Perhaps we need a stronger spell!" Red XIII suggested with a huff as he moved. "Had I the mental power, I could try the same spell I used against the abomination."
"But you can't," Tifa pointed out. "Maybe a strong variation of the Bolt spell would work, but the only one of us who has the materia that can do that is using it to interrogate Hojo. Don't you have a Sense Materia that you could use to see any weaknesses it might have?"
She shook her head. Even if she did, Yuffie wouldn't use it. Not after the last time. Having all that knowledge pour into her head was like boiling water filling up her brain until her skull was overrun with knowledge about even the minutest details of everything around her. It was a miracle her mind didn't entirely break, and said a lot about how the former Turk had apparently acclimated to using that Materia to such an extent that she could handle it.
More rockets were launched, angled to come from above. This time Red XIII used a Fire spell to ignite one that caught the others up in a chained explosion. Yuffie hoped the reason he used that spell rather that the missile one wasn't because he didn't have the strength of mind to do so. "Get the others on the phone and have them help us!"
The older girl reached for the phone only for the wall next to them to explode as the battlesuit burst through it for a surprise attack. Its giant mechanical fists descended to squash them like insects and all three of them jumped on reflex in different directions. It turned towards Tifa first and the barrel of its Gatling-gun began to rotate.
Red XIII was wreathed in the light of a Limit Break and then coated in a shroud of blue energy. He threw himself at the battlesuit as hard as he could using his ancestral technique and struck like a cerulean meteor. It threw the aim off, leaving the gunfire peppering the ground near the downed martial artist as she moved away, preparing a spell of her own judging from the white and blue frost gathering in the palm of her hands.
The mechanical arm backhanded the sapient beast. It knocked him to the ground and, before he could recover, it grabbed him and threw him like a fastball through the air. He crashed into the weakened wall of a building that collapsed upon him in the aftermath. The shoulder-mounted rocket launcher then came around to fire upon where the rubble shifted as he tried to dig himself out.
Frost and rime flew forward and slammed into it, expanding into a mass of ice that wrapped around the rocket launcher and encased it before the missiles could fire. With no way to escape they exploded within the launcher and ignited the other rockets it had in stock. The explosion that resulted blew the walking-tank onto its back, buying time for them to get over and dig Red XIII out. They managed to pull him out and found him covered in blood as shrapnel dug into his flesh.
"Come on, Red." Tifa hoisted him onto her back. "You're alright. We'll get you Aerith."
"No, you won't." The booming sound that shook the ground reached their ears as the battlesuit rose to its feet and took aim with its Gatling-gun. "Now you—"
"Stop it!" yelled a new voice, Aerith. She hopped down from the back of the chocobo and stood between the three of them and the gun, using her body as a shield while she cast a group wide Cure 2 spell. "You can't get them without going through me!"
"That's what you think." The hiss of pressure being released came from behind the battlesuit before four rings emerged and circled her. They took up a formation and wrapped her in a pyramid-like structure before hoisting her in the air towards the mech. "Ancient retrieved."
Aerith tried to break herself out. But the moment her staff touched the barrier that sealed her within, it released a powerful electric current that left her screaming until she passed out. With her out of the way, Heidegger prepared to open fire.
Cloud appeared in front of them at the very last moment as the near-mastered Cover Materia he received from Kunsel shone and guided his movements, his larger sword that looked like a thick slab of steel shaped into a blade held in a defensive pose. The Gatling-gun's rounds punched through the moogle and chocobo only to pound at the Buster Sword in a failed attempt to do the same. Instead, each hit felt like a sledgehammer pounding against it, leaving his knees to strain themselves to keep from buckling while holding his pose to cover them.
He's not going to last long, Yuffie realized. Once he went down, they would be mowed down entirely unless she did something. She swapped out her ineffective materia for different ones, making sure her Throw Materia was slotted into her bangle. A soft exhale left her mouth as prepared herself, the muscles in her legs tensing…
Then she moved. The wind on her back she darted out from the shelter of the SOLDIER and curved around to approach the war-machine from an angle. Yuffie used Throw, sending the 4-point Shuriken she brought with her from home flying towards the Gatling-gun and wedging it in between the rotating barrels, causing it to jam. Equipping her Wind Slash in place of it, she moved in and cut at the source of the tracking beams to disable the sensors.
"Wutai Rat!" shouted Heidegger as he brought the metal fist down, only for her to flip out of the way. A hatch opened and revealed a group of lenses. "Agile little thing aren't you? Try dodging this!"
Yuffie did her best to dodge as the lenses fired a series of red lasers that curved to try and hit her, weaving around and letting them smash into the ground and rubble surrounding her with agile flips. But the sound of the metal shuriken straining as the Gatling-gun tried to continue firing reached her ears. Ice blossomed in her hand as she used her Ice Materia freeze the area around the shuriken wedged between the barrels in place at the expense of dodging the laser fire.
The beams struck home and a scream left her mouth as they hit her with a concussive force that hammered her into the ground. He fired again, intending to finish her off. Cloud appeared in front of her again thanks to the Cover Materia and shielded her from the impact.
Yuffie picked herself off the ground as the light of the Limit Break wreathed her, born from her pain and anger. She grabbed hold of it and entered a state of tranquility that she had been taught from a young age. The power turned into a soothing and healing one, spreading it out to encompass all of them and heal their wounds so they could continue to fight. Then, when the lasers readied to fire again, she used another Ice spell to coat the lenses with a thick layer of ice and distort the beams.
Cloud ran in with his mako-enhanced strength, swapping out the Buster Sword for the Mythril Saber on his back. He brought it around and carved into the thick metal of the war-machine through a combination of the sword's sharpness and his strength. Then he thrust it forward in an attempt to impale where he believed the cockpit to be.
The Airbuster Alpha's mechanical hand caught the blade before it could pierce deep. The gears whirled faster beneath the exterior as the pressure increased until the blade couldn't take it anymore and shattered, leaving him only with the hilt of the blade and the materia slots. The digits of the hand then wrapped themselves around his body and lifted him into the air before it started to do the same again.
"Aggggahhhhh!" slipped out of Cloud's mouth as the pressure increased in an attempt to crush every bone in his body. Only the Buster Sword on his back stopped it from completely doing so, its girth acting as a stopgap. But there was no telling how long that would last. Zack's parting gift could only support him for long.
"Cloud!" Tifa yelled as Red XIII got back onto his feet. Righteous anger became her cloak and source of strength as she exploded forward with her frame shrouded in the fierce light of her Limit Break. She leapt up onto the battlesuit and her fist lashed out with each word, the blows hammering her mechanical foe hard enough to rattle the metal frame and dent it. "LET! HIM! GO!"
The Airbuster Alpha's torso rotated abruptly and then came to a sudden stop, throwing her off as her bolstered strength faded. She gasped for air, her chest rising and falling as she got back on her feet to see that Cloud was still in the death grip, pounding away at its hold with his own fist to no avail. Heidegger's guffaw rang out at the sight. "Gyahaha—"
It abruptly ended when Kunsel descended from above and brought his own blade down.
[-oOo-]
Kunsel made his way toward the sound of automatic gunfire and general destruction after seeing that thing Heidegger had unleashed and calling Crimson to tell her to bring Hojo out as a hostage. He kicked himself for not planning for it, not anticipating it despite knowing Heidegger salvaged a robot of some kind from the sunken ship. He didn't expect they would have been transporting a machine specifically to kill SOLDIERs when they were unaware that Cloud's group was even onboard the Cargo Ship.
Now Zack's girlfriend had been captured and the rest were about to die. They couldn't do enough damage fast enough despite him giving them better equipment and materia he had gotten over the course of the last few years. Screw that.
He jumped from above with a mastered Gravity Materia in the slot of his sword. It coated his blade and increased its density and weight. He added to it further with a spinning motion as he fell down, smashing the blade into the joint part of the arm that made up its 'Elbow' as hard as he could.
So much force and weight being applied to a small area ended up breaking the joint, hitting more like a sledgehammer than a sword. It severed everything from that point down from the main body, dropping Cloud back onto the ground. He pulled himself out of the mechanical fingers and readied the Buster Sword after fitting it with materia.
"Who the hell are you!?" Kunsel heard coming from the speakers, but he paid it little mind. Instead, he swung up an upward arc with all the strength he could muster and ran the blade through the rings that kept Aerith prisoner, shattering the pyramid-like prison and dropping her into his arms. She was unconscious, but alive as he put some distance between them.
The battlesuit's arm smashed into the ice and shuriken to un-jam the Gatling-gun, only for the air surrounding it to distort and grow heavy as Kunsel triggered the Demi 3 spell. The gears and internal mechanisms strained to support the already massive weight of the battlesuit as the intensified gravity caved in the ground beneath it.
A scream of unmitigated rage came over the speakers as Heidegger lost his temper at last. "Why won't any of you die already!?"
"We're persistent," said the final member of their party. Heads turned towards Crimson, who was hoisting Hojo in front of her. The man himself was gagged and looked like Hell, his body twitching even while unconscious. Kunsel doubted he'd ever be able to so much as walk straight again from the electrical damage to his nerves and muscles, even with medical treatment. "This ends now, Heidegger."
"Traitor!" he barked over the sound of gravity still putting his war-machine on its knees. "I'll personally do what Tseng should have done and put a bullet in your head!"
"No you won't." She put her Rekka at Hojo's throat, using the flat end so she didn't accidently cut it when he twitched. "The moment that spell wears out, you're going to get out of that hunk of scrap metal and tell your boss to call off his hunt. Otherwise, I'll slit his throat and you won't learn anything—like the fact that he made clones of Sephiroth."
A sort of horrid quiet settled over the assembled group as that bit of news circulated in their minds. Kunsel frowned at how easily she let that information slip after lecturing him about it for a second until he understood what she was getting at. They didn't know he made the Sephiroth clones, but it was easily imaginable that a madman like him would do so. Never mind that they weren't actual clones on a genetic level, just the thought would give them pause and force them to prioritize his wellbeing.
Heidegger was a spiteful man, but even he wouldn't be so dumb as to risk killing them before getting as much out of Hojo about that as he could. Not unless he was absolutely certain whatever he had in the works could deal with him. And, considering his battlesuit was on its last legs, Kunsel doubted he believed that very much at present.
He let a silent but strong exhalation escape from his nostrils. It seemed like things would wind down now. They would take Hojo and use him to get Shinra off their trail long enough to get out of Costa del Sol. He knew one place that the company couldn't do as they pleased and the group could take time to plan their next move.
Then it all went wrong as Red XIII yelled in Crimson's direction and a single gunshot rang out. Time seemed to move in slow motion as blood sprayed from Crimson's body. She fell to the ground, and her weapon clattered from her grasp as she laid there in a slowly expanding pool of blood….