Another Chapter is here!
Kazeshuriken: Of course!
Enjoy!
Tifa looked down from her position above the waterside tracks, towards the nest with a number of baby Cokatolis sleeping peacefully. The mother was absent at the moment, probably out hunting for herself. But she kept her distance to ensure that she didn't risk waking the little chicks.
Her attention wavered from the fluffy yellow chicks when she heard Barret mumbling. He had been pacing back and forth on the top of the bridge that wasn't in use, due to the set of traintracks there being broken from a landslide in the past, according to him. If the others failed to stop the train, they would destroy the lower bridge themselves so that the train went tumbling into the water.
"Something on your mind?" she finally asked.
A low growl left his mouth. "It's nothin'."
"It doesn't seem like nothing with how you keep moving around like that." She turned to look back, where the Corel settlement was stationed, just beyond the rope bridge that didn't honestly seem like it could support the train. "You're worried about them, aren't you?"
He stopped pacing to stare at her for a moment, looking like he was going to tell her otherwise or to be silent. Then he saw her quirked brow and knew better. He sighed gruffly. "They already had everythin' taken from them once. I can't fail a third time."
"A third time?" She slid down from the perch to the rusted tracks and wood rotting from disuse and weather.
He looked down to his gun-arm and then towards where the new settlement was before he began. "…Corel wasn't a fancy place, a dust-filled patch of dirt surrounded by trees, but it was still home. It was a coal minin' town that had used the mines for generations, but things were gettin' tough since everyone was using Mako now, a change of the times. That's when Shinra
approached us.
"To build the reactor?" she guessed.
Barrett nodded. "They wanted to buy the mines and the land around it to build a reactor. Between that and the people gettin' paid, we thought things would get easier. The only one who didn't want to do it was Marlene's father, Dyne. He was my best friend and I wanted to back him up, but my wife was ill and her medicine was gettin' expensive. So I convinced him to agree to it and we built the reactor."
Tifa saw where it was going. "And that's when the incident you were talking about at the Gold Saucer happened?"
"Yeah." He rubbed his eyes with his good hand and stared towards the distant settlement. "Some guys took it over and blew it sky-high. The next thing me and Dyne knew, we found Corel burnin' down because of Shinra's troops. They blamed it on a rebel faction and said the people in town helped them get into the reactor."
Rebel faction… the moment she heard those words, her thoughts went back to what Hojo said about AVALANCHE and Corel. They had been the ones to sabotage the reactor. They had given Shinra an excuse to destroy his hometown, just like bombing the reactor gave them one to destroy Sector 7. That was the second time he failed.
"That day, I lost my wife, my best friend, my arm, and my home. The ones who made it out blamed me for givin' the final push and only thing I had left was Marlene. So I took her with me and eventually got this arm made before headin' out to start AVALANCHE again."
Seeing the solemn look on his face, Tifa gathered her thoughts for a moment. She had known he was a man who sought revenge against Shinra, and even gathered something left him miserable, but to shoulder all the blame… it just wouldn't do. She walked over to give him a pat on the back hard enough to nearly stagger him.
"What was that for?"
"You don't want Marlene to see you like that, do you?" She raised her arm and stared into the red Summoning Materia slotted into her bangle. "Personally, I understand what you feel. I lost everything to Shinra too… but it's not your fault."
"It is," he said with a slight snarl. "If I hadn't made Dyne sign over the mines, then—"
She cut him off. "They needed a target and you were the biggest one they could find, that's all. You said it yourself, everyone agreed to build that reactor, and no one could have guessed what would have happened at the time. Shinra poisons with sweet lies, we know that much. If it hadn't been for one reason, it would have happened for another. So you don't have to shoulder all the blame—not for this."
"…It doesn't change the fact that all of that shit did happen," he settled on. "We still lost everythin' that day. And they still stand to lose everythin' again if we don't stop that train from comin' this way."
"Then we'll stop the train if it gets this far," she told him with a shrug. "Not for the people that won't accept you, but because you don't want them to suffer anymore. That way, even if they won't forgive you, you'll know that you did what you could and it won't add to your regrets."
He looked as though he wanted to say something to her for that, but couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. Instead, he let out a small grumbling noise towards her that was too low to hear.
She caught the meaning anyway. "You're welcome."
After that, the night remained silent. That is, until a shadow passed overhead that caught their attention. The muffled sound of an explosion and distant fire and smoke came not even a minute after.
"I'm bettin' that's trouble," Barrett said as they saw more explosions in the air, trying to hit what looked to be a moving flame. It was Phoenix. "We should probably get over there."
Tifa agreed when she witnessed Phoenix being blown out of the air. The bridge that led to New Corel was swiftly smashed as a failsafe, to ensure that the train couldn't get by. Then they ran.
[-oOo-]
Nanaki had been lucky that he hadn't been thrown off upon impact with the ground. That was thanks in part to the summoning trying its hardest to stay aloft by flapping its wings as it neared the ground. The effort had allowed them to survive the fall relatively unscathed with the cowardly Soldier practically clinging to the Undead.
"You can rest now," the Swordsman told the summoning as it warbled on the ground, patting its head. Phoenix dissipated with a somber song, leaving him to blaze with the light of the Limit Break afterwards in tranquil fury. He turned towards the bridge and then swung his sword twice, releasing a wave of energy with each slash that blasted apart the section of the train-tracks their new foes had been occupying.
"That buys us seconds to get ready," he said as wood, steel, and bodies began to fall from the dizzying height. He turned to the Soldier and extended his arm before the coward tried to run, shrinking him down to that uncomfortable size. He then scooped him up and placed him into a reinforced, steel container in his pouch before zipping it shut.
While the bodies that couldn't endure the long fall broke upon the hard-packed ground, the airborne craft that evaded the twin slashes dropped more capable combatants onto their new battlefield with tethers. Among the men and women dressed in blue and grey were what he assumed to be hounds twisted by experimentation to give them feline-like bodies, the prehensile appendage with the spear tip on the end at the base of their skull, and the bladed tail at the end.
All of them reeked of mako, but none more so than the boisterous man who landed last. He towered above everyone else with inhuman eyes that shone in the dark and furrows along his face. In his arms was a massive weapon that seemed to be a melding of a hammer and cannon.
Nanaki's bestial instincts flared in his presence. Everything about him seemed wrong, like a beast wrapped in a man's flesh—no, something even greater than that.
"Who are you?" the Swordsman asked with his sword at the ready.
"I am Azul the Cerulean, of the Tsviets. I have come for the Huge Materia and your lives," he announced boldly and without reservation. Then he gestured and the enemy forces moved. The soldiers took aim and opened fire with their firearms while the Crimson Hounds lunged for them.
The three moved as well. Nanaki released a barrage of Matra Magic on reflex, sending missile constructs at the ground to throw up a veil of dirt and dust to hinder their accuracy. He then followed it up with the Laser spell aimed towards the ranks of the enemy to strike them as the hounds that waded through the veil of dust thrown up were gunned down by the Undead. At the same time, an intensified field of gravity bore down on the large man and those around him as well.
"RAAGGGGHHHHH!" roared the Beast-man who called himself Azul as he tensed his muscles to the point they looked like they would burst through his skin. Then he brute-forced his way out of the gravity field with a mighty leap and chambered the giant weapon he had. The moment that he slammed the hammer-end into the ground, it burst from beneath them as though a bomb had detonated.
The force swept the leonine warrior off his feet and left his bones aching until he caught the scent of mako and heard the footfalls of approaching threats. Two of the soldiers that brandished knives approached him in an effort tag-team him. He responded with a Fire 2 spell, only for the pair rushing ahead to push-off one another and escape the blast-range unharmed. That left both to flank him from two sides.
Nanaki snarled and flared with the light of the Limit Break. The spiraling crimson shroud surrounded him as he lunged, and with the Blood Fang he tore through the body of the first one. Then he turned and let loose a Laser spell to hammer at the other one, following up with another Fire 2 that hit the mark this time.
As the charred corpse hit the ground, he turned to see the Beast-man grinning as he held the Gravity-imbued sword at bay with his larger weapon. Then he strained his muscles further and swung. The sheer force behind it managed to force the Swordsman backwards with a grunt, and the follow-up machine-gunfire from the lower section of the cannon forced him to move.
Nanaki then looked around to see the rest of their foes were dwindling in numbers. The Undead wielded his firearm with deadly efficiency as he executed the last of the Crimson Hounds with a shot to the head. Then he let loose a bolt of lightning to the female soldier getting ready to shoot at him.
The soldier only kneeled, withstanding the tendrils of lightning that wormed over her body, and tried to take aim again. But the Undead had already jumped into the air and landed on top of her, leaving her pinned to the ground. Before she could brute force her way up, he fired downwards twice. She didn't move after that.
The leonine warrior then spied a cluster of three others attempting to blindside the Undead. He used the Trine spell upon them, letting caged lightning ravage their bodies and weaken their mako-enhancements and suits. The Undead used his gun to put them down for good and then turned to Nanaki, giving him a slight incline of his head in appreciation.
Then they focused on the lone survivor of the group, the Beast-man himself.
[-oOo-]
Kunsel's muscles ached from the simple clashes of their weapons. Even Cloud didn't hit his blade so hard that his arms trembled in the wake of the attack. That said a lot about the sheer strength of the man standing before him.
Azul the Cerulean was unbothered when Vincent suddenly opened fire at the back of his skull. The bullets slammed against his tempered skin and broke against it like he was forged from tempered steel. He only returned fire with his cannon, the impact of the shell against the location where Vincent had been erupting in a spray of dirt that nearly reached the sky and obscured the man from view.
He was likewise unbothered when Nanaki pounced and raked his claws against the man's face, attempting to blind those golden eyes surrounded by black sclera. But his stout hand grabbed the leonine warrior by the throat. Before he could squeeze and break his neck, Nanaki loosed a point-blank Fire 3 and the resulting explosion freed him from the fingers….
Just in time for the hammer-end of his weapon to come around. It smacked Nanaki hard and far away. He hit the ground with a pained roar. Something likely broke from either the impact or landing.
Kunsel ran in and swung the Gravity-imbued blade with all his might at the barrel of the cannon, before Azul could fire the heavy-artillery within it and kill the sapient beast as he struggled to get back onto his feet. The impact dented it enough that the round backfired, causing the weapon to blow-up in both their faces. Kunsel had more than a few cuts and scrapes in his strengthened skin, but Azul boasted none.
The giant of a man back-fisted the former Second-Class away and sent him tumbling to the ground. He actually felt that in his ribs, which were either bruised or broken. As he rose to his feet while holding the spot with his empty hand, he glared at the man through the broken lenses of the shades that revealed his own mako-colored eyes.
Twin roars bellowed in the night. The Galian Beast and Ifrit had both been set loose. With feral eyes and bestial rage, they rushed towards their foe with claws that could flay flesh from bones and rend steel.
The madman actually rushed them in turn and purposely attacked them both head-on, a bestial grin coming across his face in the process. That smile didn't waver as both of them attempted to rip him apart in a flurry of swipes. Not even when they both unleashed their flames upon him at the same time, a pillar of fire born of Hellfire and Beast Flare that seemed reached the sky and scattered blackened earth.
The heat was suffocating as Kunsel watched the flames for movement. His stomach nearly dropped as he saw the silhouette of their foe drawing closer. Emerging out of the devilish inferno, Azul the Cerulean looked as though he'd barely suffered minor burns while he lumbered out of the curtain of flames with both beasts in his burly hands.
He tossed those two aside, with Vincent reverting back to normal while Ifrit vanished entirely into motes of light. Those yellow eyes that shone like molten gold then fixed themselves on Kunsel. He gestured for him come next.
The former Second-Class gritted his teeth. He was outmatched and overpowered. He knew that much. The sheer brute-strength that this man exhibited to this point made that abundantly clear. It reminded him of those days when he could only stand back and watch the First-Class SOLDIERs in admiration of their strength and courage.
They existed in a league of their own while he had always been in their shadow. Luxiere felt much the same, only it drove him to act once Zack disappeared with the others. He hadn't been a bad person, only someone who desired to fill the void left behind the others.
Without a doubt, this man would be among the First-Class. So how could a man like this have been off the radar for so long? How could Shinra hide something like this? Just how many secrets did they keep from the world?
Kunsel needed to find out. The truth needed to come out. And he would be the one to bring it to the front. But to do that, he had to survive. They had to survive.
He had to topple the obstacle in front of him. So he called to the power bubbling up in the face of the threat before him. The light of the Limit Break wreathed his body and blade like a teal shroud as he kicked off the ground.
The distance was closed in the blink of an eye before the hulking man could respond. Three strikes followed, leaving visible trails as they carved into him. Azul the Cerulean bled for the first time that night as Kunsel then darted past him to retrieve Vincent's downed form.
"Hmmm…not bad," spoke the man as he brought his hands to the wounds and looked down at his own blood. "Perhaps you would not fare so poorly in Deepground after all."
"What is…Deepground…?" Kunsel demanded. His breathing was labored and his aches had grown even worse after that. "What is your connection to Shinra?"
"If you want answers, you'll have to beat them out of me." He took up a fighting stance. "Come!"
Kunsel's grip on his weapon tightened. He sorely wanted that information, but the threat was still too great an obstacle. Nanaki could no longer fight, Vincent was out cold, and his body ached to the point of becoming a hindrance. The man they faced was too powerful for him to overcome alone.
No sooner than he thought that did the earth erupt behind the Cerulean Tsviet. Something massive emerged, tearing down the train-tracks entirely. Dust, dirt, and rubble rained upon him as the looming figure stood right behind Azul, who nonchalantly turned his head around to peer into the source of the deep shadow looming over him.
Then Titan promptly slammed its mighty fist into the man, and the blow was hard enough to make the earth around them tremble….