Another chapter is here!

Reaper2908: lol

Enjoy!

Crimson's lungs were burning as she ran down a walkway nestled between two walls on the interior of the reactor, lined with pipes and railing as it ascended and descended in winding patterns. Her group had made it into the reactor and were heading into the center of it, chasing after the monster that Heidegger had become. However, they were still being intercepted by the few remaining Deepground Troopers still alive, taking up time they did not have. So she had opted to take a different approach while the others dealt with the distractions, based on what both Reeve and Shelke knew about the construction of the reactor rather than going through the various chambers and corridors to get there via the normal route.

Sense was active at the moment, and her mind was processing data as it came in from every angle with a familiar efficiency. The sound of footfalls different from her own and the hollow thump of metal being jumped on were enough for her to peg the ambush waiting for her just in time. She came to a stop and behind a metal pipe larger than her, meant for funneling Mako, as a hail of gunfire sailed through the air and clattered against the top while showering sparks down over her head.

"How far until I get there?" she asked into the earpiece, over the gunfire, while she attached the wire to her Rekka and did the calculations in her head. Since she lacked her preferred offensive materia, given to Cloud for his own fight, she had to rely more precision than power.

'You should be able to see the core of the reactor just past the door ahead of you,' Shelke said through the earpiece. 'Heidegger is currently crossing the walkway, accessible through a lower corridor. You have less than a minute by my estimation.'

"Got it!" She flung the shuriken around the corner at an angle, so that it bounced off the wall and then wedged itself into the barrel of the gun. A loud bang and scream followed as it backfired, knocking the Deepground Trooper off his perch and down over the edge of the railing and pipes. Given how high up they were, it removed him from the equation.

Crimson ran ahead, reeling her Rekka back into her hands as she jumped over a dip in the walkway to land on the other side and go through the sliding door. That led her into a smaller corridor with another door in front of her. She stepped through that one and instantly found herself exactly where she wanted to be.

Space had opened up to where she could see the stone ceiling of Deepground above her, the deep darkness of its shadows kept at bay by the green-tinged phosphorescent light stemming from the Mako resting at the bottom of the pit. Walkways zigzagged at different intervals in the sky, with only a single one resting relatively closer to the Mako pool below and connecting to the long structure that was in the center of the reactor—the core.

She spotted Heidegger below, carrying the Materia Bomb in his hands as he moved along the walkway. He was midway there and the bomb hadn't been placed or armed yet. She'd made it in time. "I've got eyes on him. Moving to take him out now."

Taking in the distance between her, him, and the closest aerial walkway further ahead, Crimson checked to make sure that the Long Distance Materia was attached to her Rekka. Then she readied to throw it, intending on swooping down to intercept the target. That was when a blur burst from below, just over the edge of the railing, and took a swipe at her head from the left side.

Sharp and jagged talons that would have beheaded her if she hadn't taken a step back in time clenched in frustration at the near-miss. Orange pinions flared open and an inhuman shriek rattled her ears as the winged monster, a gargoyle, tried again to take her head from her shoulders. This time Crimson was ready as she used her Rekka like a blade, first to sever the claw at the wrist and then to cut horizontally across its head. But the cut was too shallow, as it had pulled back with the loss of one limb to a relatively safer distance, and instead opted to let loose a supersonic bellow that assailed her ears.

"Ahhhhhh!" Crimson felt as though her body was being shaken apart by the deafening shriek, leaving her to fall flat on the metal walkway that threatened to be torn apart by the sonic waves, as the earpiece was jostled free and went over the edge, into the pool of Mako below. She gritted her teeth as the attack ended and then noticed there were more of the monsters buzzing around in the air, roused by the cry just now.

There's no time to deal with them individually. Not when Heidegger is close to getting to the core. She focused on the Summoning that dwelled within her bangle. "Clear the air, Ramuh!"

A jolt ran through her mind as the Elder Justiciar of Lightning appeared with the rumble of thunder, staff held out to stand against the flying horde. With a bone-shaking crack, sharp tendrils of lighting spat out of his staff and into the sky, branching out and spearing through the winged horde that darted through the air. Bright light and the scent of ozone assailed her senses as Crimson got back up to her feet and left the extermination of the aerial menace to Ramuh while she looked down again to see that Heidegger was almost across the walkway.

With no more time to waste, she leapt off the platform she was on while using Sense to plot out her path. Then she flung her Rekka towards the walkway in the air between them. The oversized shuriken caught it, the blade sawing into it from below and then embedding the points on the top-end as the wire attached went taut under her weight.

Blood pounding in her ear and wind rushing against her face, Crimson swung towards the entrance of the structure serving as the core. Legs chambered, she withstood the impact against the wall and then kicked off of it as she loosened the wire, freeing herself enough to land in front of Heidegger. Blocking him—it off from the exit as the charred corpses of the remaining gargoyles fell into the pool of Mako below and Ramuh dissipated, she took a quick glance at what Heidegger had become since the last time she'd seen him alive.

His body was still whole, minus the missing arm. That was replaced by a sinuous appendage that branched into three points, coiled around the Huge Materia and device it was strapped into. The texture was the same alien composition that she'd come to expect from Jenova after the last few encounters with its spawn.

His eyes were glassy and he showed no real alertness or anger at her presence. That was a strong contrast to when he tried to kill them in Costa del Sol, his fury and rage palpable to the extent that it laced his voice while strapped into his war machine. Without a doubt, there was nothing left of the man who she'd loathed. It was just a body that was being moved around under an alien will.

With a sharp flick of her wrist, her Rekka dislodged itself and slipped through the initial opening it made to fall into her raised grasp. Crimson then chambered her arm and threw it forward with as much calculated precision as she could to avoid hitting the bomb. The flying weapon came to an abrupt stop as the point of her shuriken punctured the skull and jerked the head back, leaving the body to collapse.

Crimson then ran over and pulled the Materia Bomb free of the slack tendrils that had gone limp. It hadn't been armed yet, so all she had to do was disconnect it properly and they'd have accomplished their mission. She'd be able to go help Cloud and Aerith.

Damn it, if only I hadn't lost my earpiece I could at least check on them. She silently cursed her own carelessness, but there was nothing to be done right now. Cid, Reeve's proxy doll, and Barret would hopefully be there soon and she'd be able to use one of theirs to get an update on the situation with them.

…twitch…

Her attention snapped to the corpse when she caught the slight twitch in the appendage, an instant before the three tips flailed to life and tried to grab her. She barely managed to jump backwards in time, pulling her arm with the wire attached to her Rekka and returning it to her hand. There she held it at the ready as the corpse began to move again.

As the Jenova cells seized the dead flesh and no longer saw fit to keep its previous form, it warped and shaped under the alien influence into a more suitable form for killing. It didn't rise on two legs. Rather, it melted into a viscous puddle before what was the upper-half of it sprung forward and began to rise above her.

The bones that would form his ribcage opened up, blooming to display the writhing innards as they quivered and then melted into a slurry that oozed and added to the mass forming the thick base beneath the sinuous skin. That base was connected to the upper-half by a spindly section of flesh, consisting of his lower jaw that fell close to where the chest would be, and one eye was sucked inside of the skull as the other was exposed by the lengthening of the face as it stretched along with the head.

Even with all she had seen to date, a stomach churning sense of revulsion washed over Crimson as it looked down at her comparatively slender body, dwarfed by three times at a minimum. She took a step back as a second appendage emerged from the center mass opposite the first, replacing the other arm with what looked to be a trident, with the center blade coming to a point. The moment the sound of her footfall rang out on the metal passage, it was like a starting pistol that signaled for the monster to thrust the pointed tip of its offensive arm at her.

Crimson barely managed to step out of the way fast enough to dodge the attempt to run her through, the blade stabbing through the metal where she had been standing while shaking the rest from the force of the impact. She tried to slice into the fleshy spear and managed to draw blood, but with one hand it was too shallow. Then the second arm came around, the three flailing tendrils each coming for her, and it forced her jump backwards again.

However, it had learned. One of the tendrils stretched out and snagged her foot the moment she touched down before pulling her leg from under her. She fell backwards and the back of her head slammed into the metal floor, causing her mind to blank for a split-second.

Pain rolled through her skull. It wasn't cracked, but the dizziness and headache were bad enough that she suspected she'd been concussed. Either way, she was in no position to dodge as Helletic abomination lined up for the killing thrust. With a wet shriek, the abomination's right arm speared forward to punch through her body—

"Now's not the time to be lying down!"

—and was repelled in the span of a breath as a blur landed in front of her and swung its weapon around. It didn't repel the attack, but was angled to deflect it off to the side as well-honed arms strained to keep it from moving further.

"Ngh…He looks as rotten on the outside…nnn… as he'd been on the inside now!" Cid gritted his teeth, chomping down on the cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he glared up at what remained of Heidegger. He then slid his foot back and spun with his hips before slashing the edge of the Scimitar spear along the upper arm, just above the neck of the trident.

The slash wasn't enough to cut the limb off entirely, but the roar of pain and alien ichor that cascaded down gave the impression it had been enough to get in some damage. The abomination pulled back, clearly enraged as it raised its other arm around to crush him. Automatic gunfire and an avian shriek rang out before it could, shells raining from above and showering the walkway with a metallic ringing.

Phoenix descended, carrying Barret with Cait Sith riding on the larger man's shoulder. With the barrel of his gun-arm spinning, a flurry of orange streaks flew towards the monster's head and caused it to bring its tentacle arm around to defend. It then diverted its other arm towards cutting down the Summoning and Gunman.

The abomination distracted, Cid shifted his spear to beneath his arm before he turned to Crimson. "Come on! Up and at 'em!"

"Right…" She shifted the Materia Bomb off her chest and forced herself to sit up as Cait Sith landed with a flop on the walkway behind her. Almost immediately a sense of vertigo overwhelmed her. Definitely a concussion. "My head…"

"Leave it to me," Cait Sith said as the doll stood upright before jumping up to her shoulder and laying a hand on her head. The next second, a sense of relief flooded her pounding skull and soothed the dizziness that had overtaken her. A Heal spell courtesy of the materia in its fluffy body.

Her mind refreshed, it was just in time as the abomination gave up on defending itself for an all-out assault. Between the tendrils and trident, Phoenix was forced to move rapidly enough that Barret was unable to keep firing as the tentacles stretched out to ensnare them. However, the Summoning, though agile as it was, simply couldn't effectively get away with its payload.

Eventually, Phoenix got a wing slashed by the pointed limb and lost its speed advantage. It barely managed to toss the Gunman onto the walkway before it was ensnared by the sinuous appendages. Its death wail as it was brutally ripped apart from them all pulling in different directions was disheartening and enraging at the same.

"Bastard!" Cid spat out his cigarette as he took up a stance with his spear. "Come on! The sooner we kill the ugly thing, the sooner we get outta here!"

"Don't hafta tell me twice." Barret said as he took aim. "I've been meanin' to kill this bastard for a long time!"

[-oOo-]

The darkness was abysmal—a seemingly infinite sea that was distorted and undulating, a swirling mass of deathly howls and wails that reached the ears of not only Vincent, but everyone in their group. They were afloat in the darkness with no light, aside from the crystalized sphere that contained and isolated them from the outside, and no escape. They could only watch as dark ghost lights flittered about, a tail following behind them as they swam against the exterior of the barrier like piranha in aquarium—waiting to feed.

"Ah…" A soft cry slipped out of Aerith's mouth. She was holding her ears, torn between maintaining her focus and the countless voices assailing her ears beneath their hearing range. Her gift had become a curse.

"Hold it together," Tifa told Aerith, kneeling and gently grasping her by the shoulders.

"They won't stop," Aerith whispered. "They won't stop saying things. Horrible things. Things so horrible they make me sick. I can feel them crawling on my skin even now."

"Can't you do that teleporting thing?" Yuffie asked, her voice tinged with fear.

Aerith only shook her head. "If I do that here, then it'll absorb all of us. I don't even know where we are, so I wouldn't be able to direct it anyway."

CRACK.

The sound of glass cracking under pressure turned their attention towards the barrier. Fissures had begun appearing in the crystalized light, darkness weighing down on it with every intention of crushing it the longer they lingered within it. Whether it was by time, Aerith losing her focus, or running out of magic, it looked like the end result would be the same.

Nanaki grew tense, head low and ready to pounce as his eyes chased the fleeting wisps. Paranoid. A contrast to the normally composed, if fearsome warrior.

Yuffie huddled over, eyes screwed shut. The normally energetic, relentless behavior you'd associate with her was missing. Despair was swallowing her whole, leaving her curled up like a child who sought to escape the monsters lurking in the dark by closing her eyes and pretending they weren't there.

Even Tifa had an air of defeat around her, despite her best efforts to keep Aerith's spirit up. Delaying the inevitable. There was no hope if Aerith couldn't get them out of there, meaning that Hojo would prevail in the end and her vengeance would go unanswered.

The only one who wasn't affected was Vincent. This unsettling darkness, the wails that contained all of the negatives of humanity, all of their sins and regrets and evils, was nothing but noise to Vincent. It was as Lucrecia's notes and Hojo had mentioned—the essence of Chaos itself, the beast within him, stemmed from this place and was born of this darkness itself…

No. Even without Chaos, the darkness born of mankind was something he was very familiar with. The depression, the guilt, the burden of it weighing you down like this all-consuming darkness that threatened to swallow them—they were all things he'd felt as he spent decades sleeping away, drowning in his own guilt. Under normal circumstances, he would welcome this place as a second coffin—an eternal punishment he deserved for his failings.

I just want to dream in peace without hurting anyone else.

"Lucrecia," he muttered to himself as he recalled her wish and his promise to grant it. If Hojo succeeded, then she wouldn't be able to dream in peace. Unable to die and connected to Jenova, she would be all alone on a dead world and forced to live with the burden of her knowledge and family being responsible. He couldn't let her suffer for eternity believing that.

More than that, his companions didn't deserve to die in a place like this. They all had plans—futures waiting for them. He wouldn't let the man responsible for what happened to Lucrecia and himself ruin anymore futures—not theirs or the Planet itself.

Vincent moved over to edge of the barrier, extending his hand towards the darkness as the fissures continued to stretch and dark vapor began to seep in. To bend the darkness in a way that could help them was something he didn't know. However, Lucrecia's notes and housing Chaos meant that he could do it—and he had belief in her words more than just about anything else.

"There's no point in lingering here while the others are fighting," he declared to his allies, himself, and to the darkness itself as his form and voice shifted. In the distance, the darkness began to swirl and a pinprick of light began to grow. "Let's go."'

[-oOo-]

The horrendous, ear-splitting scraping of metal on metal drowned out any other sound in Cloud's ears. Even the pounding of his heart and his own strained groan as the shock of the last impact shook the bones in his arms and left them with a lingering sense of pain. Yet, there was no time to dwell on it as the next attack came for him again.

"RRRRRRAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!" A roar bellowed as Arch Azul attacked. The man was now a bestial mass of muscle and metal, the weight of which he threw into sweeping his right claw out to maim the swordsman. The paw was easily taller than he was, spread out so that the nails could rip him apart.

Cloud braced the Buster Sword with both hands to intercept it. The thick metal deflected the nails from ripping into his flesh with a heavy impact. Sparks flew and bones rattled again, leaving him straining to keep his arms upright as the ache of his muscles being pitted against the brute strength of the behemoth grew intense to the point of burning. "Nghh…"

His body, experimented on and shaped into one of the most lethal living weapons on the Planet, was being strained by the sheer might of the Cerulean Tsviet. He would be overwhelmed the longer the battle went on, so he had to press the attack. That was why, as another swipe came for him from the other arm, Cloud didn't block it.

The blow that could have sent a tank airborne with the same ease of a beach-ball only swept through empty space as Cloud avoided it by bounding off the ground with his sword ready to come down. Seeing that he wouldn't get his arm back in time before a blow could crash down on his head, Azul angled it so that he could gore him with his horns. Cloud was forced to intercept it and there was a moment of resistance as they clashed. Then Cloud triggered a Quake spell through his sword to give it an extra punch and the two spear-like horns shattered at the narrowed point, causing Azul's head to buckle as they clattered onto the ground.

"HAHAHA!" Rather than be angered, a rapturous laugh belted out of the Tsviet's mouth as he swung the same arm backwards, claws tightened into a fist to knock Cloud aside. "I WILL RELISH THIS FOR A TIME TO COME!"

The world shook for Cloud as the impact connected, threatening to smash his ribcage to pieces. It held but he lost his ability to breathe as his lungs froze and his consciousness flickered in a moment of weightlessness. Then, all at once, they returned as he slammed into the rubble-strewn ground in the distance with a loud thud.

Pain bled into every inch of his body with every ragged breath as he tried to get his arms and legs under him. But he barely made it onto his knees before blood forced itself from between his lips and filled his mouth with its coppery taste. He used the Buster Sword, which miraculously was still in his grasp, to prop himself up in time to see the Cerulean Tsviet in the distance.

Stones of energy hovered in the air around the metallic behemoth. They were launched with a roar, sending them streaking through the distance towards Cloud, who was barely on his feet. An attack meant to overwhelm him and tear him apart.

He gritted his teeth and tightened his grasp on the sword before using the Cover Materia. It moved his weapon and arms for him into a defensive position, the broad side of the blade as much of a shield as it could be against the bombardment that rained down. Blinding light, pounding force, and deafening roars assaulted Cloud's senses as they swallowed him up, until he once more found himself on the ground.

Have to… keep fighting… He repeated that mantra in his mind over and over as he tried to get up once again. But he couldn't this time. Just raising his head, blood streaming down from the corners of his mouth and the tears in his normally resilient flesh, took all the strength he had. It left him watching as the Azure Beast lumbered towards him while the world tilted back and forth, the edges of his vision darkening.

"And so it ends," Azul said, a quiet rumble in his voice as he approached with the intention of crushing the downed swordsman's skull to ensure the kill. A warrior's death by his account—decisive and personal.

The words barely reached Cloud's ears as his vision faded on the Restore Materia on his bangle. He needed to heal so that he could keep fighting. But his head was swimming, on the verge of unconsciousness, and he couldn't focus enough to trigger it.

"It was entertaining while it lasted." Azul was in front of him now, massive fist raised with the intention of bringing it down on his skull. "But, in the end, you were too weak to finish the job. Your ideals will now die with you. Such is the fate of the weak."

Cloud's eyelids became unbearably heavy and his consciousness faded away as the death descended…