Chapter 52: Aboard the Urchin
"My mom?!" I exclaimed.
"What do you know about her?" Ifalna asked.
I took a deep breath. I was completely shocked that Ifalna somehow knew about my mother.
"Major Reynolds...she was found dead in a field with my newborn self by her side," I replied. "Someone delivered me through a cesarean with a shuriken and then took a hike."
"You were told with a shuriken?" Ifalna inquired.
"That's right," I replied. "I even called myself Shuriken for a while to honor her."
Ifalna looked at me with empathy.
"Did you grieve for her?" she asked.
"I don't think she would have lived long anyway," I replied. "She was so morbidly obese, nobody even knew she was pregnant with me."
"And, to this day, twenty-seven years later, you never found out who used that Shuriken on her?"
I shook my head.
"I see," Ifalna replied.
Finally, I couldn't resist, and I asked.
"Do you know who did?"
"Possibly," Ifalna said. "But I need you to listen to my daughter. What she has to say is very important."
Quid pro quo, I thought. There's no way Aerith telling me her life story can be that important.
I was wrong.
Very wrong.
"Well then," I began, "we last left off where you faked your death at the altar, and you returned to Midgar. What happened then?"
"Not much," Aerith replied. "Until a few days later, when I went through the sewers, up into the Shinra building, and boarded the Urchin with a grappling hook!"
"I heard about that," I said. "I can't believe you took out Bestla single-handed."
"It was her own stupidity that took her out," Aerith corrected. "But you'll never believe what I saw when I first boarded the Urchin. Guess who else was on board?"
FLASHBACK….
"Rufus Shinra?!" Aerith exclaimed.
She was standing, clad in leather, in the first room in the Urchin.
"Aerith Gainsborough?!" the prime Rufus exclaimed back. "I thought you were dead by this point!"
And then, the four prime Turks began to close in on her. They look exactly the same as the ones she had encountered before, only Reno had crow's feet, as well as a few streaks of gray.
"Somebody must have altered the timeline," the prime Elena suggested. "This is definitely Aerith Gainsborough."
"How did you get on board?!" Aerith demanded, ignoring the speculation.
"Invited," the prime Reno answered. "Bestla took us in. She said we could come back with her if we helped find the parts of the Chronus Wand."
"So what are you doing alive?" Elena demanded. "Sephiroth forgot to stab you?"
"He missed," Aerith replied truthfully.
She then looked at Rufus. She had not forgotten how Tifa had just knocked the 0007 Rufus out of an elevator, causing him to plummet to his death.
"But if Tifa killed your younger self, why are you still here?" she asked out loud. "Shouldn't you disappear or something?"
"I'll assume us jumping off the linear dimension protected me from any changes," Rufus correctly deduced. "Which means I'll have no rival when I reclaim the Shinra Company."
"The Shinra's dead," Aerith informed them. "Palmer got hit by a truck. Heidegger and Scarlet exploded in the Prod Clod."
"We will rebuild," Rufus assured her. "But, in the meantime, we obviously can't let you just walk away. You already know too much."
"You are supposed to be dead," Elena continued. "I passed through the Forgotten Capital. I peeked in the lake and I saw your remains."
"Time to correct history," the prime Rude said.
Aerith then made eye-contact with the one person who might be sympathetic towards her.
"Tseng?"
"It's what's right," the prime Tseng said. "You don't belong alive. And who knows what you might do to our plan to reclaim the world.
Aerith let out a sigh.
Then, without warning, she did a handstand, and kicked all five of them in the face with a roundhouse kick.
The five villains quickly doubled.
She then darted into the interior of the Urchin, looking for Bestla.
"After her!" Reno demanded.
"Forget her," Rufus insisted, as he eyed the opening to the world below. "Our time on board this vessel has served its purpose."
….END FLASHBACK
"I learned to stand on my hands during cheerleading," Aerith explained. "But I was able to do the roundhouse kick simply because I believed I could. As for Rufus and his friends, they obviously escaped."
"Wait a minute," I protested. "You're saying you knew the prime Rufus and Turks were here? And you didn't tell anyone?"
"I landed in the back of a truck full of poop," Aerith replied. "I ended up with amnesia. I completely forgot who I was until I saw Cloud again."
"So you did get your memory back," I pointed out. "On Choco Bill's farm, as I recall."
"I didn't get all my memories back at once," Aerith insisted. "Cloud brought most of it back. But I was still shaky, and some recent ones took longer."
"I see," I said.
I still believed her, though I found it quite inconvenient.
But at least now we knew why there was still a Rufus, and two sets of Turks; Bestla had taken them back with her in exchange for helping her get the Chronus Wand.
It all made sense now.
"This was literally the last memory I got back," Aerith continued. "Too bad it was the day I died."
MEANWHILE….
"Zack Fair," called a familiar voice as he stepped out of the hotel.
Zack turned to see, of all people, Sephiroth standing near the entrance.
His Masamune was pointed directly at him.
"I have not forgotten how you tried to capture me on the Southern Continent," he continued. "Do you know what the price is for interfering with me?"
Under normal circumstances, challenging Sephiroth would result in death of serious injury.
But I think it's funny how your misfortune can save your ass sometimes.
Zack, defying international protocol, removed his mask.
"Your Masamune is only four feet long," he pointed out. "You don't want to get infected, do you?"
"Only a moron would try to kill something that is already dead," Sephiroth admitted as he put his sword away and stepped back. "Today is your lucky day."
Mind you, Sephiroth wasn't frightened, but he wasn't stupid, either.
He knew better than to risk catching a deadly virus.
Even Sephiroth was capable of social distancing.
Zack, meanwhile, started his motorcycle and rode off.
THE STUFF THAT MIGHT HAVE GONE UNNOTICED...
HEARD IT TWICE: Sephiroth repeats Aerith's line from the previous chapter, "Only a moron would try to kill something that's already dead." That line, of course, originally appeared in Chrono Trigger.