THE NEW CETRA HERITAGE: IMAGO

CHAPTER 4:

LET'S GET THIS PARTY ON THE ROAD

Light seared his retinas as Harry woke up. He groaned a little in pain. Given that there was a distinct absence of the depressingly familiar sensation of Dementors sucking his happiness and magic from his soul, though, it was something of a relief to discover that it wasn't a dream, that he was out of Azkaban. Okay, he was involved in another save the world quest, but he could deal with that.

"He's waking up," said an unfamiliar voice right next to him, a low, gentle voice. Harry turned to look at the speaker, only to lock eyes with…was that a mountain lion?

Harry yelped in fright, and the mountain lion, amazingly, recoiled. "It's okay!" the creature said, being apparently the one who spoke earlier. "I'm not going to hurt you!"

After a moment, Harry said, "Okay, we've got a talking mountain lion. Not the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life by a long shot. Are you with Aerith and the others?"

The mountain lion nodded. "I'm Nanaki. Luna told us you were Harry Potter. Are you feeling better?"

"A little." He looked around the house they were in, which seemed to have weird décor. With the spiral shape, it was like being inside a giant seashell. Then again, no less weird than having a talking mountain lion watch over you when you were asleep.

Aerith and a group of others entered. "I'm sorry, Harry," Aerith said. "Had I known you were going to wake so soon, I would have left someone other than Nanaki here."

Nanaki inclined his head. Harry saw that he had red and orange fur, with a mane like a Mohawk, adorned with a piece of jewellery like a feather. The tip of his tail glowed like it was on fire. He had a number of scars and tattoos, and seemed to be missing an eye. "Okay, it's fine. As long as you aren't going to maul me or anything…" Harry said.

"Oh, I mauled Hojo something fierce," Nanaki said, with something that could pass as a smirk. "He trapped me and Aerith together, and expected us to mate. All in the name of science, so he claimed, but I reckon it was his fetish(1)."

Aerith came over to Harry, and gently touched his brow. "Are you all right, Harry?"

"Yeah. For a given value of 'all right', though this is better than Azkaban," Harry remarked, sitting up in the bed. He realised he had been dressed in new clothes, basically plain trousers and a shirt. He then looked at the people who had entered. Not counting Aerith or Nanaki or Luna, there were seven people present. He had met three of them already. Cloud was obvious. Then, there was the busty young woman woman in the tight-fitting tank-top and miniskirt, with the long black hair and warm brown eyes. That was Tifa, if he remembered. And the big, burly black man with the beard and the gun instead of a right arm was Barrett. But he didn't know the others. What a motley lot they were.

"Well, you've met Cloud, Tifa, and Barrett. I'll let the others introduce themselves."

The first to come up was a girl in her teens with short black hair and Asiatic features. "Hey there, Harry. I'm the great ninja of Wutai, Yuffie Kisaragi!"

"More like great Materia thief," sniffed Barrett.

Yuffie rounded on Barrett, but Aerith put a calming hand on Yuffie's shoulder. "Anyway, Yuffie is the daughter of Lord Godo, the ruler of Wutai. While we've had our differences, she's decided to join us to the very end." Confidentially, she whispered to Harry, "She wants our Materia when we're done with it."

"Hey, nothing wrong with that!" Yuffie protested.

The next person to come forward was a blonde-haired man, tall and with rough and rugged features. A cigarette packet was stuck in the headband of the goggles pushed up on his forehead, and a spear was on his back. "Hi, Harry. The name's Cid Highwind. Tell me, did they ever make it into space on your world?"

"Umm, yeah. They even landed on the Moon a few times, years ago."

This provoked an interesting reaction from Cid. He let loose a tirade of expletives. Harry flinched at the stream of invective coming from Cid. Eventually, the older man calmed down. "Damn. Sorry 'bout that. I was gonna be the first man into space on this world."

"Well, maybe you still can be. Dunno whether you can, but, well…"

"You sayin' hold onto my dreams? Well, can't fault that."

The next one that Aerith had introduce himself sent a shiver down Harry's spine. He was tall and thin, with dark hair framing his face. A tattered red cloak covered much of his body, with him wearing black clothing underneath. The high collar of the cloak and the red bandanna the man wore concealed much of his face. He also wore a golden gauntlet, and similar boots. But his manner, while distant, was cordial. "Vincent Valentine. Thank you for helping Aerith."

As he moved away, the next one appeared, and he was the most bizarre of them all. At first, Harry thought that the large white…thing with the wide, betusked mouth and pathetically small purple bat wings was the one, but then, a cat perched on top of the first thing waved, and said, in somewhere between a Scottish and Southern accent, "I'm up here! Cait Sith, at your service! Fortuneteller, raconteur…"

"…and a spy for Shinra," Cloud added pointedly. "We're only letting him tag along because he's been useful."

The cat looked rather down, despite the fact that it seemed to perpetually smile. It even wore a cape and a crown. "Wow, Cloud, you really know how to bring a guy down. Didn't I prove myself at the Temple of the Ancients?"

"Look, your little sentimental speech as you sacrificed that body was nice and all," Cloud said, "but you're really at Shinra."

"And I'd be willing to put money on who you really are," Tifa said, her eyes narrowing.

"Anyway," Aerith said, "you've met Nanaki. When we first met him, he called himself 'Red XIII'. That was Professor Hojo's way of classifying him as a specimen. We learned his real name at his birthplace, Cosmo Canyon. So we've called him by his real name ever since."

"Hey, nice to meet you," Harry said. "Luna, did you tell them my life story?"

"The abridged version," Luna said.

"Thanks. Saves a lot of exposition…I mean, explanation," Harry said, getting shakily to his feet. A nasty thought occurred to him. "By the way, who dressed me?"

"I did," Luna said.

"Of course you did," Harry groaned. Luna thought 'societal norms' to be a group of upwardly mobile Muggles. "So, are we staying here, or are we heading somewhere else, or what?"

"We'll be heading to Icicle Inn from behind the City of the Ancients," Cloud said. "Luna explained something about the Reunion, and how it may have been drawing me towards Sephiroth. I need no such lure. He destroyed my hometown and Tifa's. He's trying to destroy the world. I don't like bringing Luna along with us, so if you're coming with us, I will be keeping an eye on you both."

Luna rolled her eyes. "Yep, the wrackspurts are still affecting you."

After traversing through some caves, they had emerged onto a snowy mountainside. Tifa, who had thought ahead, had brought jackets for everyone. She had brought one for Vincent, but he claimed not to feel the cold, so the jacket went to Harry. Luna eschewed asking for one. She didn't feel the cold either, she claimed.

Tifa thought about the events of the past while, of Cloud being controlled by Sephiroth in the Temple of the Ancients, about Aerith disappearing. Cait Sith, before going off to sacrifice one of his remote-controlled bodies, had checked Cloud and Aerith's compatibility, while Tifa was nearby. Cait Sith's proclamation had hurt, that Aerith and Cloud were made for each other. So why was Aerith being so guarded around Cloud now? Was it his attack, caused by Sephiroth influencing Cloud? Or was it something else?

As it was, Harry seemed to gravitate to Aerith, something she noticed Cloud not liking. But the two of them approached, and Aerith said to Tifa, "How about we bring up the rear? Cloud, Barrett, and Cid are taking point."

"A good idea," Tifa said. She got the hidden message. I want to talk without people listening in.

However, it seemed that someone would be listening in anyway. The lanky, sinister form of Vincent Valentine joined them, his shot-rifle ready by his side. "Vincent…" Aerith said, before Vincent held up a hand.

"I have concerns about Cloud too. We all do. But I think I know part of the answer," he said in his raspy voice. "Jenova cells."

"Jenova cells?" Tifa asked. "Didn't Luna remove them?"

Vincent inclined his head in a nod. "Though she is a Jenova creature, I sense no deceit from her, merely…"

"Insanity?" Harry asked wryly.

"Eccentricity," Vincent corrected.

"Potato, Potahto," Harry said.

"Who the fuck says potahto?" Tifa asked(2).

"It's not quite the Jenova cells," Aerith said. "It's what they've done to Cloud. Luna mentioned that they mess with memory, and I've realised he is so like…like…Zack."

Tifa gave a start, but she couldn't hide it in time from Harry. "You knew him, didn't you?" he asked.

"Only briefly," Tifa said. "Look, Aerith, I don't know what you're implying…"

"I'm implying nothing, Tifa. I'm speculating. But I've seen the way you look at Cloud when he talks about Nibelheim. It's like you don't quite believe him," Aerith said.

Tifa hesitated, feeling like she was about to confess to a crime. But then, in a low, hesitant voice, she said, "That's because…he wasn't there. I thought I saw him once, but I was bleeding out from a wound Sephiroth gave me, and…"

"Oh, he was there." They whirled with a start (even the usually stoic Vincent) to find Luna behind them. They then looked to where Luna was, up ahead, engaged in a snowball fight with Yuffie, Cait Sith, and Nanaki, and then back again. "What?" Luna asked. "I'm a Jenova creature. I can split off extra bodies. That's why the Reunion came about in the first place, to bring those pieces back together. But the Jenova cells I absorbed from Cloud carried his memories, and those of Zack. It took me a while to go through them and disentangle them. Oh, and Aerith, that was so funny, that whole thing in Wall Market when you had him dress up as a woman."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"Long story. Cloud wanted to try and rescue me, even though I didn't need rescuing," Tifa said. "Funny thing was, he got picked by Don Corneo as his paramour for the night. Anyway, what do you mean, he was there? I didn't see him."

"You didn't see his face. Tifa, Cloud never made it into SOLDIER," Luna said. "Zack did. Cloud was ashamed to show his face in Nibelheim because he never made it into SOLDIER like he promised you. He was a mere Shinra trooper, and he hid his face behind a helmet. He did take it off when he helped save you."

"He…he really was there?"

"Yeah, but he and Zack got captured by Hojo, and got experimented upon. Cloud got a bad case of Mako poisoning, and, well, that, plus the Jenova cell infusion and Zack telling him about what happened at Nibelheim, well, Cloud conflated the memories together. And his personality is part Zack, and part what he thinks a SOLDIER should be like." She looked over at Aerith. Quietly, she said, "Cloud saw Zack murdered by a group of Shinra troopers right in front of him. The only thing that saved him from the same fate was his near-comatose state."

Aerith's face fell, before she leaned a little more into Harry. Harry looked at Vincent. "How do you know about the Jenova cells?"

"I can sense them. And I did not spend all of my time asleep in a coffin, which was where they found me," the sinister man replied.

"Of course you slept in a coffin. Do you drink blood too?" Harry snarked.

"It was out of penitence for my role in allowing Sephiroth to be born," Vincent retorted. "On occasion, I ventured out to read the notes Hojo left behind in the laboratory, in hope of understanding what he did to me. He spoke of a Reunion Theory, and of the control Jenova cells can exert on other beings. I did not read much, for what I did read repulsed me."

"And Shinra took or destroyed many of the notes," Tifa murmured. "So the people at Nibelheim, the ones who claimed it had never burnt down…"

"Hired by Shinra. Presumably to cover up after Sephiroth's rampage," Aerith said. "It's the only sane explanation I can think of."

Vincent snorted. "And the actual survivors doubtless became Hojo's guinea pigs, like Luna said about Cloud and Zack."

Tifa, at this, frowned. "But…what of me?"

"I don't know. Someone may have found you first and took you away."

"Maybe it was Zangan," Tifa said. "My old martial arts tutor. The problem is, I don't know what happened to him."

"Probably had to flee Shinra's troops," Vincent said. "The real problem is, how do we tell Cloud? If he does have an amalgam of Zack's memories with his own, once the inconsistencies are pointed out to him, he may have a breakdown."

"I know that!" Tifa snapped. "But I've been afraid to tell him that I haven't seen him for seven years, rather than the five he thought it was. That I never saw him at Nibelheim, except in a shock-induced delirium. That you told me he was there, Luna, is a relief. I was worried…worried he might be something else. A cuckoo in AVALANCHE. First, Shinra's cuckoo, and then, Sephiroth's. Only his actions seemed to prove otherwise…"

As Tifa trailed off, Aerith nodded sympathetically. "But he isn't. He is Cloud. And without the Jenova cells within him…"

"He's less of a liability, right?" Harry asked.

"Right," Aerith said. "We'll tell him at Icicle Inn, up ahead. And there's another reason why I want to go there."

"Two reasons," Vincent said quietly. "Professor Gast Faremis …and Ifalna."

Tifa frowned. She knew that Ifalna was Aerith's mother. Hojo had mentioned her in the board meeting at Shinra HQ almost a few weeks ago, and when they confronted Hojo at the Costa del Sol beach, he had mentioned her then while being his usual callous self to Aerith. "Gast? Didn't Cloud say that he was the head of the Jenova Project? What did he have to do with your mother, Aerith?"

Aerith was quiet for a moment, before she said, "He was my father. My birth name was Aerith Faremis. And his private laboratory, where he changed from studying my mother to loving her, is in Icicle Inn. I think we might find some answers there…"

CHAPTER 4 ANNOTATIONS:

Luna taking the role of Minerva as expositioneer extraordinaire in this work.

1. Which Hojo freely admits in episode 9 of Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged, so gleefully and hammily, the screen shakes and the colours warp from his admission.

2. Another reference to the same episode as the above annotation. When called out on calling Aerith 'Aeris', Barrett merely remarks, 'Potato, potahto', and Tifa responds in the same manner.

CHAPTER 4 SOUNDTRACK:

Harry Meets the Gang: Barret's Theme (FTG). Yes, I know I'm misspelling Barrett's name in the fanfic. It's a bad habit. Deal with it.

A Heart to Heart Talk: Anxious Heart (FTG).