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Chapter Four
 The four of them had camped out under the stars that first night - Lisa, Aaron, Bili, and Gabriel. It was exciting to them, not just because for once they were out from under the watchful eyes of their parents, but also because they were sleeping nearly in the shadow of the greatest city that had existed on the planet. They were close enough to see the towering remains of buildings that had once been twice as tall, and the bulk of the eight ruined Mako reactors that had fueled it. Lisa insisted on reminding them that it hadn't just been a great city, it had also been responsible for sucking the energy of the planet, and if it had continued to exist, the planet might be dead by now. Bili had asked her if she felt that way about it, why had she come to look at it with the rest of them, and she'd simply turned away.
In truth, Gabriel knew why she'd come. She'd had her eye on Bili for as long as he could remember, though he wasn't the type to say anything about it. At any rate, Midgar made him feel a little apprehensive too. He'd come more or less because Bili wanted to check it out, and then Aaron had decided he wanted to come too. That had given Lisa her excuse. Bili was as tall as Gabriel was, and built like a bull whereas Gabriel was more slender and agile, and the two of them were the best fighters in Kalm - at least, of those under the age of thirty. Together they were unstoppable, and Gabriel was sure that between the two of them, Aaron and Lisa would be well protected. Besides, though they were younger than himself and Bili, they also were good fighters and showed a lot of promise.
Another reason Gabriel had come was to get away from his mother. She'd been radiating strange emotions towards him lately, and from what he picked up on, he was almost certain it had something to do with his father. He could understand that she missed him, but since he'd decided to grow his hair long, the feelings he'd been getting from her were even stranger - a mixture of pride and fear. He was nearly seventeen now, almost a man... did she really have to see his father in everything he did? And why the worry? There was no war, no dangerous battles for him to be lost in. The worst that Kalm had to offer was the occasional Nibel wolf, and though it wasn't as if he was arrogant about his abilities, monsters as weak as those posed no threat to any moderately skilled swordsman, let alone a well-practiced one. She should have had enough confidence in him by now to know that he could take care of himself.
As a subtle form of revenge for all the frustration, he'd taken his father's sword before he left. In its place, he'd left his own sword, which had been specially made by a local blacksmith to look almost exactly like his father's, though it wasn't as strong or perfectly balanced. He supposed since she had no one to talk to while he was away, she'd be spending most of her time over at Cloud and Tifa's. She probably wouldn't even notice the switch until after they'd come back and he'd had time to replace it. And it made him feel good to hold this sword - it often felt as if it had a life force of its own. Logically, he knew that it must just be the materia embedded in the hilt, but he liked to think that maybe traces of his father remained in it.
The next day when they'd woken up, it was time to begin their hike into the city. If all went as planned, they'd be in well before noon and out again before sunset, where they'd spend the night in the same campsite they'd spent the first night, and then be back in Kalm by the following evening.
The first place they headed, once they'd passed through the broken walls at the edge of the city, was for the remains of the Shinra complex at the center of the city. Even after the Meteor had destroyed the upper plate, the ruins of their central building towered above the rest of the wreckage. They paused only briefly on their way to examine the piles of burnt-out rubble and twisted metal that had once been houses for the lower-income people of the slums. The massive destruction angered Lisa, and Gabriel was a little worried about she or Aaron finding dead bodies in the mess, so he made a casual comment about Shinra keeping their advanced technology a secret from the public and using it only within their own walls. That got them moving again.
It was early afternoon when they discovered a gigantic, flat building at the foot of what used to be a support pillar for the upper plate. It seemed to be in better shape than many of the others, and after a little investigation, Aaron found a sign designating it as one of the barracks for Shinra's military.
An interesting thought suddenly occurred to Gabriel, and although the others wanted to move on and see if they could find a laboratory or something, he suggested that they search the barracks after all. The quarters of a SOLDIER was bound to have some interesting weapons - maybe an entire armory. Or, he thought to himself, some clue to his father. Maybe he could even find his father's room... his father's spare uniform, perhaps a keepsake photo. At the very least, he could get a glimpse of how his parents had lived so many years ago. Lisa and Aaron took off to check one wing of the building, while he and Bili looked through the rooms in the other.
"Hey Gabe, check this out!" Laughing, Bili held up a tattered magazine featuring an almost nude woman smiling coyly on the cover.
Gabriel smirked. "There's a whole pile of those in this closet," he said as Bili thumbed through his find, snickering. "They're all wrinkled and stuck together. Water damage, I suppose."
"I sure hope that's it," Bili chuckled. "Ah man, these pictures are ridiculous!"
"I wonder if their superiors knew they had these," Gabriel wondered out loud.
"Nah, I doubt it. They probably would have confiscated them," said Bili. "...And kept them for themselves!"
Seeing nothing of interest in the closet, Gabriel closed the door as well as he could. "You can stay here and look at dirty pictures if you want," he told his friend, "but I'm going to go look for something more interesting."
"Me too, I guess," agreed Bili. "You go left, I'll go right, and if either of us finds anything cool, we yell. Okay?"
Gabriel nodded and headed off down the hallway. He stuck his head inside the next door before entering, and saw only old decaying furniture. He sighed and continued down the hallway. This part of the barracks hadn't been hit too hard, not like the part Bili was headed towards. In that direction, the ceiling had been nearly ripped off - even from far away, he could see daylight filtering in and shining on the piles of rubble. Bili wasn't going to find much, unless he sifted through the concrete and plaster.
After glancing inside the next few doors Gabriel came to, he opened one to find himself confronted by a woman aiming a gun straight at him. Gabriel drew his sword, then realized it was only a lifesize poster and began to laugh. He stepped inside, looking around in amazement at all the pictures and posters that were taped up around the room. Some were pictures of women, some were diagrams of firearms, some were photographs of people, presumably this SOLDIER's family. A dark-haired woman smiled out from many of them, sometimes holding a grinning little boy. One shot featured the woman, the boy, and a man with his arms around them both.
Gabriel's eyes lingered on it, as he thought about what his life might have been like if only his father had lived. Seeing the happy face of the boy in the picture, knowing how Cloud cared for Lisa and Aaron and Cole... It wasn't that his life with just his mother was unhappy. But even though it was the only life he'd ever known, at times he felt that something was missing. It wasn't any big deal, of course. Nearly everyone his age in Kalm had lost one parent or another thanks to the Meteor. When he thought about it, it sometimes infuriated him that one lone man's selfish actions - no, Sephiroth wasn't even a man, he was a monster, Gabriel thought bitterly - had caused so much emptiness in the lives of so many people. It was likely that even the smiling boy in the picture now felt that emptiness, if he hadn't been killed by the Meteor as well.
With a sigh, Gabriel tore his eyes away from the photograph, forcing him to look at the one next to it instead. At first he just stared blankly, then his eyes widened in shock as he realized what the photograph was of. He pulled the picture from the wall, being careful not to tear it, and his blood ran cold as he read the small, printed caption in the corner. Sitting down on the bed, he studied the picture he held in his shaking hands in disbelief.
When the commotion broke out somewhere down the hall, in the direction Bili had headed, Gabriel didn't even hear it.
Stifling a giggle, Lisa crept up behind Bili where he sat, moving chunks of heavy concrete one at a time. She wondered how long it would be until he noticed she was there. In the meantime, she was content to stand there and admire him. The muscles in his back and broad shoulders rippled magnificently as he hefted the concrete. He was so handsome...
"Hi guys," Aaron said as he stepped into the wide open space with them. The Meteor had completely ripped the ceiling off here, and knocked most of the walls over too, so they stood beneath open sky.
Bili turned and smiled at them, even as Lisa glared at her little brother for the interruption. "Hey you two," Bili greeted them. "Didn't even hear you. Man, this place is a mess. Did you guys find anything cool?"
"Nothing except rubble," Lisa replied. "How boring... Do you think someone else has been here already, and took all the interesting or valuable stuff?
"Nah, I bet most of the really interesting stuff was probably locked up somewhere," said Aaron. "So where's Gabriel?"
"He went off that way," Bili grunted as he strained to move a particularly large piece of concrete, sparing a moment to nod towards where Gabriel had gone. "You two want to help me out with this? I think there's something underneath."
Lisa and Aaron immediately knelt to help their friend lift the concrete away, piece by piece, until something was exposed. They looked at it, puzzled.
"So what do you think it is?" Lisa asked, frowning. It looked like a raised rectangle of tile, the same kind the floor was paved with, but underneath the tile was a thick plate of metal, and below that, there seemed to be some sort of mechanism.
"It was made to sink into the floor," Bili said, lying down on his stomach to peer under the metal plate, "but it looks like it's jammed halfway open. There's some more chunks of concrete wedged between it and the floor."
Aaron had turned away, examining the rest of the room. "I think there's another one right here," he said, shoving another piece of concrete aside. Sure enough, there was another rectangle of tile, angling slightly upwards from the rest of the floor.
"Weird." Lisa put her head down to the ground to get a better look at the mechanism. "I bet I could get that concrete out," she suggested, sticking her small hand into the space between the metal and the floor, pulling at the debris wedged between.
"Careful," Bili said quickly, still lying on his stomach on the opposite side from Lisa. "If you get those out and it snaps shut on your hand..."
"It's probably rusted in that position anyway," Lisa reasoned. "I mean, it's been exposed to the weather for over sixteen years."
Aaron just shook his head, worried. "I dunno, I'm not sure this is a good idea."
"I think I got the last piece," Lisa panted, struggling to yank it out. "It's wedged tight, but I think I can work it out." She spared a moment to smile at Bili through the gaps in the mechanism, and he grinned back. "Got it!" she said triumphantly as she pulled the last piece of concrete free.
With a creak, the panel began to rise slowly. "They must be linked," Aaron commented. "This one's rising too."
Bili was still flat on the ground, watching closely as the mechanism rose into view, when suddenly he cursed and tried to scramble to his feet. "Get out of here!" he shouted to Lisa and Aaron, as he slipped on the rubble.
"What? What is it?" Lisa asked in alarm.
But even as she spoke, the mechanism came fully into view. It was some kind of artillery, nearly as tall as she was, and it tilted and turned to aim directly at Bili. "No!" she screamed.
The mechanism began to fire off round after round of bullets as easily as if it had been cleaned and oiled the day before. Bili didn't even have time to cry out before he fell lifeless onto the floor. His dulled eyes stared vacantly up at Lisa, and she screamed again. "Oh, no, Bili, no!"
The mechanism Aaron had been inspecting was turning to fire at him now, and he was jumping from side to side, trying to avoid its shots. Lisa heard a click, and looked back to the one that had killed Bili. It was aimed at her now.
"Aaron, run!" she yelled at her brother. "I'll follow you!" He did as she said, but that left both the guns targetting her.
Forcing herself to stop staring at Bili's body, Lisa summoned up all the strength she had. "It's all my fault anyway," she whispered to herself miserably as she attacked the first gun with a whirlwind of kicks and punches. It wobbled a little, but corrected itself quickly as the second gun began to fire at her.
Lisa tried to run between the two of them, hoping that they might fire at each other, but one of the bullets caught her in the ankle, and she fell to the ground with a cry, her eyes only inches from Bili's.
"Bili, I'm sorry..." she whispered as she was caught in the crossfire.
"Gabriel!" Aaron shouted, forgetting any kind of composure as he ran down the hallway. "Gabriel! Where are you? Gabr-"
He stopped short in front of a doorway. Inside the room, Gabriel was sitting on the bed, his sword lying across his knees, looking at a scrap of paper with an intensity Aaron had never seen in his eyes before. He didn't have time to ask what he was doing. "Gabriel - you have to come help, fast!" he said in a rush. "We found these things, these machines, we accidentally activated them! Bili's been shot, I don't know if he's dead, or just really hurt..."
Aaron didn't know what he'd expected Gabriel's reaction to be, but he had expected some kind of reaction. Gabriel didn't even look up.
"Gabriel! Bili and Lisa need help," he said again. "Please, come on..."
Finally Gabriel stood, gripping his sword, and met Aaron's eyes with a cold gaze that made him shiver. "...Gabriel?"
His friend didn't respond, except to slip the paper he'd been looking at into a pocket and brush past him through the door. He seemed to be almost in a trance as he strode down the hallway, as if he had all the time in the world. Given the look in his eyes, Aaron was afraid to ask him what was going on, and simply followed behind.
He'd expected to see his sister headed back, but he didn't. As they neared the area where he'd left Bili and Lisa, he expected to hear gunfire, but there was none. Everything was still and silent, except for the motes of dust and faint trails of smoke rising in the sunlight that shone through the ruined roof. Aaron drew his sword too, and looked the room over.
A slight movement caught his eye, and he whipped his head around to look. Lisa lay in a pool of blood between the two guns, her clothes covered with it. Her fingers twitched feebly, as if she was trying to reach out to him. She tried to speak, but all that came from her mouth was a trickle of blood.
Aaron looked down at her, his heart pounding until he thought he might explode. "Lisa!" he roared, rushing furiously at the two gun platforms. They swiveled easily to fire on him, but before they could, a deafening crack of thunder rang out. Two bolts of lightning struck the two guns, which fizzled and sparked, then fell silent.
Stunned into inaction, Aaron stared at the two guns for a moment longer before looking around to see what had happened. It must have been someone using materia, he knew that, but there was almost no materia left in the world, and almost no one who knew how to use it. Gabriel was the only person he could see in the area. "What happened?" Aaron asked him nervously.
Gabriel was looking off into the distance, holding his sword close. "I can feel them," he whispered. "Drawn to the power I can wield. I can wield it... like... Am I...?" He paused, and then raised the sword higher. "No!" he shouted defiantly. "I am not!"
Aaron took a startled step back at the wild look in his eyes. "What's wrong with you?" he asked fearfully. "Come on, we've got to get Lisa out of here, she's still alive... but she won't be for long, if we don't do something."
Gabriel was still staring up into the sky, clutching the sword defensively. "Gabriel, come on! Pull yourself together!" Aaron repeated.
"I can feel them," Gabriel whispered. "And..." Suddenly he drew himself up into a battle stance, holding the sword before him. "They come!"
Before Aaron could even open his mouth to ask who, the air was filled with winged beasts with sharp talons and long, curved beaks. He threw his arms up in a futile attempt to shield himself from their attacks, but they tore into him again and again until he was screaming in pain.
"I can hear you!" Gabriel was crying out. "I understand now! Please! I can't... I can't..."
Through the flurry of blood and feathers, Aaron could vaguely make out the shape of his friend as he cut the monsters down with precise blows, two and three at a time. That was bizarre - Gabriel may have been the best fighter in town, but even he shouldn't have been this good.
Aaron, however, could do nothing but scream as the monsters cut him time and time again. He gave up his struggle to hold on, and closed his eyes, sobbing, resigned to death. But through the haze of pain, he realized that it was getting quiet. Was he dead? No, he could hear footsteps now, and after a moment more, a strange warmth spread over his body, soothing his raw wounds. He opened his eyes in surprise, then quickly closed them again, hoping that brief glimpse wasn't enough to stick in his mind.
It was, unfortunately. The bodies of the monsters lay everywhere, and the entire area was drenched with blood. Gabriel was once again looking off into the distance as if in a trance. He was remarkably unstained with blood, except for the red spatters on the tip of his long silver hair. His sword, however, dripped with gore, until he wiped it clean with a single swift motion.
"Gabe... Gabriel..." Aaron tried to whisper, but it came out as a strangled cry. His friend didn't look at him, instead kneeling down beside Lisa's body. She'd been just barely alive before the monsters had appeared, but now she wasn't breathing at all. As Aaron watched, a soft glow shone around Gabriel, and he stretched the sword out over Lisa's body. The same glow descended onto Lisa, and then...
Gabriel had already stood and was turning to where Bili had fallen, but Aaron saw his sister's eyes open. With a shudder, she looked down at her body. She was still bleeding, but the wounds were not so severe. She looked up and met Aaron's shocked gaze. "Aaron... you look like you were put through a blender," she said, clenching her teeth against the pain. "What happened to you? ...What happened to me?"
"Me, I came back to help you, and these... things... attacked us," he said, indicating the strange winged bodies that littered the ground. "And you..." His eyes went to Gabriel, and Lisa's followed.
The glow surrounded Gabriel again as he knelt beside Bili. Again, the sword passed over the body of his friend, and the glow spread. As it winked out, Bili drew a deep, painful breath, and shook his head.
"Gabe?" he said in surprise. "How did I survive that?"
"You didn't," Gabriel replied simply, glancing around the area.
"Gabriel!" Lisa tried to stagger to her feet, and groaned as her injured ankle caused her to fall back again. "You used magic, didn't you?" she asked him. "You have materia?"
Gabriel nodded. "It's no good," he muttered. "There are more coming, and you're all wounded badly. You need to leave."
Aaron looked at them all. Lisa couldn't walk, and Bili didn't look as if he could either. "How? I don't think I could carry Lisa or Bili, and you can't carry both..."
"Yeah..."
Gabriel looked dazed, and Bili regarded him curiously. "Gabe, man, what's up? Are you okay?"
His friend didn't answer for a long time. "I see..." he finally murmured. "I can't leave yet. Yeah." He nodded slightly. "Shouldn't be hard."
Aaron exchanged worried glances with his sister and Bili. For all the world, it looked like Gabriel was talking to someone who wasn't there. "Gabe," Lisa asked, concerned, "who are you talking to? What shouldn't be hard?"
"Heh." A slow smile spread across Gabriel's face as he finally looked down at the three of them again, sheathing his sword. "Don't worry about it. I've cured your wounds to the point where they should heal by themselves now, if you just rest for awhile," he told them, suddenly looking more like his old self again. "But the monsters are drawn to the magic I used, you know. They'll come back and attack us all again, unless I draw them away."
"Are you nuts?" Bili exclaimed weakly. "You can't just wander off to who-knows-where all by yourself! You've got no idea what you might run into - just look at what we've already found! It was stupid to come here, and it's stupid to stay any longer! If you're going somewhere, it had better be to get some help! We can't even defend ourselves here, Gabe!"
"If I make them follow me, you won't have to," he replied. "And I have to go fast - you won't survive another attack like the last. So you three just rest and heal, and get out when you can," he instructed them, turning to leave. "I'll be fine." Drawing his sword, he strode off towards the center of the city. "I'm sorry."
There was a strange tremble in his voice. "For what?" Aaron called after him. "You saved our lives..."
There was no response, and Gabriel disappeared behind the broken walls of the barracks.
Bili cursed. "He's going to get himself killed! How could I have ever been so stupid? What's his problem, anyway - he didn't use to be such an idiot!"
"Calm down, calm down!" Lisa urged him, pulling herself to a sitting position beside him. "You have to rest, like he said. Even if he is acting really weird, he was right about that..."
Aaron was still staring off after Gabriel, thinking about what had happened. No one had ever taught them how to use materia... but then again, that could have been explained by Gabriel's background, perhaps. It wasn't really a secret that unlike himself and his brother and sister, both of Gabriel's parents had gone through the SOLDIER program. The enhancements didn't really affect him or his siblings at all, but they probably ran much stronger in Gabriel. Heck - the glow in his eyes proved that. Maybe the Mako energy in him gave him an instinctive understanding of how to use materia. But there was something else Gabriel had done that seemed unlikely... something that struck Aaron as completely wrong...
His thoughts were shattered by the high-pitched screams of monsters, and he looked skyward to see an ominous dark cloud descending a short distance away. Lisa's face went pale as she saw the dozens of monsters heading straight for where Gabriel had gone, and Bili cursed again. "Idiot, idiot, idiot! What's he thinking?"
Suddenly a flash of light illuminated the swarm of monsters, then the sound of an explosion made the ground shudder. The monsters' screaming became shriller, then began to vanish slowly. Little by little, the swarm grew smaller until all was silence once more.
Lisa's eyes were filled with tears as she watched anxiously. "I...I wonder who won..." she said brokenly. "This is all my fault..."
"Nah, Lise, it's not your fault," Bili reassured her, reaching up to touch her shoulder as well as he could as she began to cry. "I was the one who suggested we come here, I was the one who found those gun platform things... Hey, it's okay," he told her, slipping his arms around her comfortingly as she sank down, sobbing. "Gabe can use materia now, right? He's got a good chance. And we don't know anything yet, so don't worry about it. Okay? Nothing we can do anyway."
Another round of piercing screams filled the air just a little further away than the last one, causing Lisa to look up in alarm. Again, it was quickly followed by another flash of light and explosion, and Bili gave a relieved chuckle. "See? He's still alive. He is of SOLDIER blood, after all, and trained by Cloud, besides. Not like anyone your dad trained is exactly helpless, you know, and Gabe's got even more than that going for him. I should've had more faith in him myself."
Trained by Cloud... That was what was wrong, Aaron realized suddenly. Though everyone trained by his father evolved their swordsmanship techniques to suit their own personal fighting style, Gabriel had always continued to use the same battle stance as Cloud - feet apart, knees bent, sword held down in front of him. But just before the monsters had attacked the first time, Gabriel had raised his sword to shoulder-height, drawing himself up straight rather than dropping down into his usual solid stance. Aaron had never seen anyone who fought that way before, and he'd grown up watching Gabriel practice his swordplay. Where would he have gotten that?
"Yeah, he'll be just fine," Bili repeated, patting Lisa on the shoulder. "We sure owe him an awful lot. Once we heal up a little, we can go find him and help him out. Of course, maybe by then he'll have taken out all the monsters in the city by himself, huh?" He laughed a little, and Lisa smiled back at him gratefully through her tears, but Aaron wasn't reassured. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that even though Gabriel was still alive, he was far from fine.
To Chapter Three.
To Chapter Five.
To the intro.
© 2000 by Andrea Hartmann.
That means it's mine, not yours!
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