Another Chapter is here!
Kazeshuriken : Very smart indeed!
Enjoy!
The PHS's ringing woke Aerith from her slumber inside of the Buggy, nestled some distance away Nibelheim to avoid being spotted. It was the consensus of the group that the people living there would likely be reporting on any visitors in the town to Shinra, and they were too conspicuous to simply walk through town during the day. So they'd move on the manor in another few hours while it was dark out, using the darkness to obscure them from the view of anyone who wasn't asleep at the late hour.
She stirred from beneath the sleeping bag-turned-cover and pulled her phone out of her pocket to see an unknown number. Curious, she answered. "Hello?"
The soft voice that answered was instantly recognizable. "Aerith, Sweetheart, is that you?"
Gone was the lethargy from her early sleep. Her voice cracked as she cradled the phone to her ear. "M-Mother? Ho-How did you—".
"Your friend who delivered the letter gave me the phone," she said. "I've missed hearing from you."
"I've missed you too." She looked out the window to see that Barret was the only one visible, smoking a cigar as he performed maintenance on his weapon-arm. It had been used a lot on the trip. Nibel wolves were a pain to deal with. Aerith curled up and kept talking. "How have you been? Shinra and Tseng haven't been giving you any problems, have they?"
A small, good-natured chuckle came over the line. "I've been doing fine. Everything's been peaceful and I've been taking care of the flowers too. I've even made a friend, I think… but what about you?"
"I don't know where to start," she said. "So much has happened…."
"Start with what you feel is the easiest to tell me and we'll go from there."
"Well, I met Zack's parents not too long ago." She thought back to the time spent in their place at Cosmo Canyon. Tears prickled the corner of her eyes before falling down her cheeks. "They were nice people, but they hadn't seen their son in such a long time only to learn he had died recently. When I thought of how long he had been gone without them having any word about him, I thought about how you would have felt too. But just like you, Shinra was watching them until they finally killed him…"
She took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the hull of the Buggy. "I felt when it happened. It was that was the night I didn't come home, before everything that happened in Sector 7."
"I remember that night," her mother said. "I ended up finding you in the church with your eyes reddened from crying, but you wouldn't say why."
"I needed to come to terms with it alone," she said. "I mostly did by the time I met Cloud and the others, but after meeting his parents I couldn't help but feel that if he wasn't on the way back to see me then Shinra wouldn't have killed him. It doesn't help that one of my friends nearly died when Tseng shot her and we barely kept her alive long enough to get her real help."
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "Did she blame you for it?"
"No, she didn't," Aerith said. "In fact, she wants to help me for as long as it takes to accomplish my mission. All of them are the only reason I've made it this far given everything we've fought against, but I hate the thought that I might end up sacrificing them to do my duty as a Cetra. Maybe if I go alone…."
She trailed off when the door opened and Crimson came in. "Aerith, I need you to come with me."
"Can I have a moment?" she asked.
"Okay, but hurry. I'm not sure how long they'll remain unconscious." She stepped out of the Buggy and waited by the door, her attention briefly turned elsewhere out of courtesy.
"I'm sorry, Mother," Aerith said regretfully. "I have to do something. Can I call you back?"
"Of course, Sweetheart," her mother said. "You can call anytime, for any reason, and I'll answer. I love you."
"I love you too. Goodbye for now." She hung up her PHS and started down at the number on the screen for a moment before saving it into her contact list. Then she grabbed her Wizer Staff and bangle loaded with materia, and slipped on her coat before climbing out of the Buggy. "Sorry."
"Who were you talking to?" Crimson asked. "Was it Kunsel? Did he make it to Midgar?"
Aerith's hair softly swayed forward as she nodded her head. "He did, but it was my mother I was talking to. He gave her a PHS after my letter. Thank you for that."
She looked pensively at Aerith for a moment at that. "What do you mean?"
"When he told me to write a letter to her, he said it was your suggestion," Aerith explained. "Because of that, I could hear her voice again and that she was okay. It makes things a lot easier, so thank you."
"Uh… it was nothing," Crimson said. "Anyway, I need you to take a look at two people I've knocked out with my Seal Materia. I think they're Sephiroth Clones."
[-oOo-]
Cloud noted, as the lock came undone with a click and the door creaked softly as it opened, that it was a strange feeling having to break into what used to be his own home. He had asked Yuffie to help him to do so, reasoning that she had experience with this sort of thing. It hadn't even taken her ten seconds to pick the lock.
The kunoichi popped her head into the entrance, ears perked up to listen for snoring, and ushered Cloud to come in before she quietly closed the door and pulled out one of her Seal Materia. She cast the Sleepel spell onto the old woman who was lying in the bed, already asleep. The forced slumber was stronger, deeper, ensuring that she would enter a dreamless sleep from which she wouldn't wake while they were here, no matter how much noise they made.
A job well-done, she gave him a thumbs-up. "We should be good to go, but you probably won't find anything from when you lived here. Chances are that when they rebuilt the town they got rid of anything that could be used to identify anyone lived here before as a precaution."
"We had a hidden safe," Cloud said as he crossed the hardwood floor and went towards the stone-covered kitchen. "I want to see if anything is still there, to see if everything really is how I remember it."
Cloud noticed that tiles had been scrubbed clean, but not replaced. He moved aside the rug in front of the sink and felt around the edges. It seemed like the groove that they could use a knife to wedge it open had been melted shut. He slammed the bottom of his fist down with all the strength his mako-enhanced muscles had, breaking the stone layer covering the opening to reveal a hollowed out section with a lockbox.
Yuffie took a look at it. The box was covered in dust and cooled soot, the top layer slightly warped but solid. "It's flame-resistant, if not flame-proof, so whatever is inside should still be moderately intact. Want me to pick the lock open?"
He handed it to her before sweeping the broken pieces of stone into the hollowed out section and then covered the opening back up with the rug. It would be found out sooner or later, but that didn't matter as long as they were gone by morning. When he turned back he found that she was finished working on the lock and pulled the lid open.
Inside were a few trinkets he had placed in it when he was a child, one of which was a photo. It had his mother, Claudia Strife, and him on it. They were in front of the house when he was younger, and she was holding him in her arms while dressed in an orange dress and white apron.
Pain flickered briefly as memories of when he came home shortly before everything went to hell came to the front. She was always worried about him, but he never imagined that one of the last things they would talk about would be his love life. It was foggy in some places, but he could be sure now that it was real at least. He had lived here with her until the day Sephiroth lost his damn mind and took her away from him.
Cloud placed the photo back into the box and stood up before he took a final look in the house, a moment of nostalgia overcoming him. Then he squashed it down. This wasn't the home he grew up in anymore. It was a fake, inhabited by someone on Shinra's payroll instead of his mother. "Let's get out of here before the spell wears off."
They slipped out of the door and through the shadows of the early night, making their way back to the Buggy, when they spotted Crimson and Aerith disappearing behind a building with her staff in hand. A second later, a soft glow came from around the corner. They were drawn to it and came across the girls standing over a figure in a black hood on the ground, unconscious.
He was about to go up and ask them what was going on when Aerith shook her head and spoke softly, though both Yuffie and Cloud's hearing could pick it up. "No, I'm afraid not. Jenova's influence has completely overtaken his mind as well. This isn't like what's happened to Cloud, there's nothing left to retrieve."
Hearing his name and Jenova in the same sentence cause a knot of worry to form in his throat and stopped him from coming out to ask what was going around. Instead, he grabbed Yuffie and pulled her into the alley behind the building and concrete wall separating the Shinra Manor from Nibelhem. Before she could complain, he put a finger to his mouth and mimed for her to be quiet so he could listen.
"Were these two the only ones you found?" he heard Aerith ask.
"So far. I found them while scouting the manor to see if there were any guards or security. It was when I caught a look at the numbers tattooed into them that I decided to get closer and heard them mumbling something about Sephiroth and a reunion. It fits with Hojo's Reunion Theory, and I'm afraid that might mean Jenova is inside the manor—probably in the laboratory underground."
"Or Sephiroth, given that he's likely to contain the largest amount of Jenova's cells," Aerith reasoned as she stood up and brushed the front of her dress. "Should we get the others and go in as one group?"
"I'm not so sure we should until I can confirm it." Crimson held her chin in thought. "I'll go get the research documents from the safe inside of the second floor and then check the basement. If I see any signs that something has been moved around then I'll come back and tell the others. Can you hide these guys behind the trees so that they don't get spotted?"
"I guess I can," she said. "I suppose it would be bad if they recognized one of them while there's no way to save them. We'd have to explain what we know has happened to them and they'd both pick up what that means about Cloud."
"I don't want him to be bothered by this when we're hopefully close to solving the problem," Crimson said. "And who know? Maybe when we get rid of Jenova they'll regain everything they lost as well."
With that said, Crimson departed into the manor and Aerith struggled to lift the first person in the cloak onto her back. That was when he made up his mind and came out of hiding to see who it was she was trying to cart away. He ignored the shocked look and question from Aerith that followed as he pulled back the hood and saw a face he recognized.
"He was one of the kids that grew up with me and Tifa," Cloud said. "I saw him the last time I was here."
Aerith shook her head. "Not anymore. I take it you heard what we were discussing?"
He nodded. "Some of it. What does Jenova have to do with him and me?"
"… I suppose I should tell you the truth now, though Crimson won't like it." Aerith sighed. "She didn't want you to find out like this because she was worried how you would handle it, but Hojo took the survivors and put Jenova's cells into them using the same procedure that he did to create Sephiroth. He did the same thing to you as well. The difference is that there's nothing left of their personalities, Jenova has completely overwritten them."
It quickly dawned on him what that meant. The headaches only occurred during two points: when something of his past was compared to Zack or conflicted, and when he was in the presence of Sephiroth or Jenova. It was always worse in the latter case.
"Does that mean, I'm—" Before he could put his fear completely into words, the crack of the thunder and the sound of shattering glass filled the air, stemming from the rear of the manor. Cloud spared the man's whose fate was possibly a precursor to his own a final glance before he pushed it down and they ran towards the source.
[-oOo-]
Crimson's head was ringing. It was a constant, endless sound that drowned out all other while her vision was blurred. As it slowly came into focus and the ringing subsided, she found herself in the quivering shadow of an imposingly tall and lean figure.
"Stay conscious, child!" an elderly, stern voice ordered. "If you pass out now, you will die!"
It was easier said than done. A single punch had been enough to send her flying into the bookshelf and made everything hurt again as she slouched forward from the wreckage, half-buried in the books. It was a miracle that she managed to remain conscious enough to…
Right, I summoned Ramuh, she remembered when her vision completely cleared up. Standing in her defense was the stern and rigid older man, dressed in a white robe that billowed along with his epic beard. His staff was pointed forward, spewing bolts of lightning from it to perfectly offset the Bolt 2 spell being fired towards her from the abomination that had emerged from the safe.
It was an even more apparent mishmash than the first abomination of Hojo's that they had to deal with. One side of it was colored like it was going from a violet-to-teal color gradient, with a foot and clawed arm on its left side. The other was red-to-yellow, a writhing mass of tendrils with two long tentacles acting as an arm and leg, one of which it was using to shoot forth lightning that crashed into Ramuh's.
Only Hojo would violate the natural order and create such a thing. The safe had been a trap all along and she fell for it. Why didn't she even consider that Hojo would have set her up with a final 'Screw you' that he had in place, even under duress?
The answer came when Cloud burst into the room with his sword at the ready, followed by Aerith and Yuffie. She had been so focused on trying to help him that she had been hasty. She was so eager to believe the answers she was looking for were here that she dropped the ball.
Kunsel had been partially right after all.
"Take her and flee!" ordered the summoning, weaving the smaller luminous bolts of lightning into an almost solid beam that struck the creature while it lunged for him. It hit the safe hard enough that the thick metal bent out of shape, a key flying out of it and landing near the kunoichi who picked it up. "Her injury and the strain of the summoning will rob her of her consciousness soon!"
The abomination picked itself out of the safe and then proceeded to pick it up and throw it at them. The summoning used a dense bolt to deflect it, sending it askew until it plowed through the wall and into the neighboring room with a spray of stone dust and chips. Distracted while doing so, Ramuh was unable to charge another bolt in time as its massive fist swung down and crushed the elderly summoning.
"I think it's time to do what the Old Guy said!" Yuffie mentioned as she rifled through her materia pouch and grabbed her weapon. It went after her next, pointing its tentacle at her while sparks danced at the end. Cloud intercepted the Bolt 2 spell thanks to the Cover Materia, blocking the bolt that instead passed from his sword into him and then grounded itself.
"By your feet!" Aerith called as she helped Crimson up. The kunoichi looked down and saw there was a Summoning Materia there. She picked it up and tossed it underhanded to Aerith, who called it out. "Odin, cover us!"
Clad in argent armor the color of moonlight, the legendary Fell Knight appeared. His curved horns and crimson lance contrasted the polished armor and white eight-legged steed. Nevertheless, the summoning used the lance like a joust to impale the abomination, pinning it to the stone wall and bracing it in a valiant effort to hold it at bay while they fled.
They were down the stairs when a rain of stone and wood came from above. The summoning hit the ground hard, its mount notably missing and the imprint of a fist deeply pressed into its chest-plate, and the abomination landed atop of the knight with a thunderous crash. The impact of the landing scattered the summoning into glimmering motes and threw the four of them aside by the sheer force.
Crimson, ripped from Aerith's supportive hold, hit the ground. That was the moment her consciousness finally lost its battle to stay afloat. The sounds of combat faded as she passed out….