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Chapter Fourteen Kit sat with her head in her hands, elbows on her knees, staring out at the vast desert. Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see.
"This isn't going to get us anywhere," said Red, sitting at her side.
Tifa nodded, leaning back against the side of the truck they'd spent the night in. "There's got to be some way to get out of this place," she said, "and we have to find it. We certainly can't go back the way we came."
The robots from the Gold Saucer had fallen a few hundred feet before their reverse thrusters had fired, lowering them slowly to the desert floor where they dumped Kit, Red, and Tifa unceremoniously into the middle of what looked like a junkyard. Their task accomplished, they rose into the dark sky again. No one was sure what had happened to Yuffie, since she'd been taken down before them. She was probably all right though.
But then again, who knew? Tifa in particular found out quickly that they weren't alone down here - she was greeted by catcalls and whistles from a group of crude, toothless men as soon as she hit the ground. One had even made a grab at her, but all he got was a kick in the groin and a growl from Red. The others backed off quickly when they saw that, but they'd gone off muttering in a way that implied they weren't going to let it drop.
The sun was rising now, a ball of white fire that made the sand shimmer in the distance. At the top of the Gold Saucer, they could see the mountains around Corel, but here at it's base, they couldn't see anything beyond that shimmering.
"Come on," Tifa said, nudging Kit. "Let's have a look around."
Kit didn't answer. She wasn't at all worried about the possibility of being trapped here - Sephiroth could get her out without a second thought, and she could hold her own for as long as she needed to. She had been trained not only in firearms, but in martial arts and some swordfighting in SOLDIER, and these thugs couldn't stand up to that. What she was most worried about was why she had done what she'd done. AVALANCHE was trying to kill Sephiroth, and she was just here to spy on them. And yet she'd tried to save their lives, when she led them into the arena to fight against Shinra's troops, in what seemed like impossible odds. She tried arguing to herself that it was just self-preservation - but then, why did she feel so guilty that they'd ended up here? She should be glad. Sephiroth had said he would be able to find her when she wanted him to, and so all she really had to do was wander out into the desert and wait.
So why didn't she? Her brain reassured her it was just because she didn't want to abandon her surveillance of them, but her heart seemed to disagree.
On top of that, she was beginning to feel sick again, and her head hurt. She wondered if it was Hojo's experiments catching up with her. Maybe she was changing into a monster after all...
Gunfire erupted behind them, near the spot they'd come in. Tifa jumped up with a start. "Is it Barret?" she asked, half hopeful, half afraid.
"Let's find out," said Red, bounding off towards where they'd heard the shots fired. Kit wasn't going to follow them, but then she heard Red's growl. Looking around the front of the truck, where they'd disappeared, she saw another band of the thugs surrounding Tifa and Red.
"C'mon, girlie," one said with a leer. "Call off your dog. We don't get many chicks down here, and none as cute as you."
"We'll be nice, see, we like you," insisted another.
Kit counted quickly - there were about eight of the men. Though none of them were armed with anything bigger than a stiletto, she wasn't sure Tifa and Red could take four each, from every side.
"We've been waiting for you to come out and play with us," the first man said. "You wanna play with us, right?"
"I'll play," said Kit calmly.
Hearing another female voice, the men turned and looked at her with huge grins. "But I get to choose the game," she continued grimly. "How about tag?"
"Sounds good to me," said one of the men, advancing towards her.
Kit smiled. "Okay," she replied, pulling out her pistol. The grin slipped off the man's face. "You're it," she finished, blasting him in the knee.
"Hey! What the-" began another man, but he was cut off by Tifa's foot slamming into his ribs. Red tackled another as he turned for Tifa, and Kit shot another in the shoulder as he ran at her. Before long, all the men were lying in the sand, in various states of hurt.
"I can't believe they fell for that old trick," Kit muttered. She didn't finish them off, but put her gun back with disgust. It would have been easy enough to leave Tifa and Red to themselves. Why did she keep fighting for them?
"Thanks for the assist," said Tifa over her shoulder as she ran off towards the direction they'd heard the first gunshots from. Kit decided to follow them after all.
Just past a rusty metal fence, they found the body of a man. He'd been shot repeatedly, and very recently. Tifa shook her head. "It can't be Barret," she said. "He's too efficient. This was overkill."
Red sniffed around the path. "Barret was here though," he informed them. "So were Cloud and Aeris. And something else, something strange. It doesn't have a scent, but look at these tracks."
The tracks were long, about two and a half feet long, and broad. Also strangely flat. "It looks like a machine of some kind," Tifa pondered out loud.
"Too small to be the ones that brought us here," Kit remarked. "But what does it matter? Cloud and Aeris were here, so was Barret. So are you going to find them?"
Red sniffled. "I can't follow their scent - the air here is even worse than Costa Del Sol. But these tracks lead back this way..."
Tifa and Kit followed Red to the side of a run-down shack. Tifa was about to enter when a hand reached around the corner of the shack and grabbed her arm. Acting on instinct, Tifa yanked the person out towards the group and drew her fist back.
"Heeey! No, wait! Stop!" It was Yuffie, making a valiant effort to stay quiet. "Sorry I surprised you, but... Barret just went in there, and Cloud and Aeris and Cait went in after him."
"Cait?" Tifa looked confused.
"You'll see later," Yuffie explained. "If Barret doesn't shoot them full of holes first. He looked really ticked off."
Abruptly her words were confirmed by the sound of gunfire inside the house. "Aw, man!" Yuffie exclaimed. "I guess that means we gotta go in..."
Tifa nodded and ran in, Red and Kit following close on her heels, Yuffie following more reluctantly.
"Hey, that's Cloud's line," Aeris was saying as they entered. "'It's too dangerous, I can't let you get involved...' blah, blah, blah..." Cloud looked at her, a little flustered. That brought them up to speed quickly enough, coupled with the bullet-riddled body of the thug lying on the floor.
"Yeah. We're already involved in this," added Tifa with a casual shrug. "We saw you and hurried here. So come on, Barret, just tell us what's going on."
Barret looked them over and shook his head wearily. "You guys..."
"I heard that the murders at the Battle Arena were done by a man with a gun-arm," Red said cautiously. "...Was that you?"
Barret shook his head vigorously. "There's another..." he began. "Another man who got a gun grafted inta one of his arms. It was four years ago... I remember... I was on my way back from visiting a Mako reactor being built..."
The others listened with interest to Barret as he related the events of the day Corel had burned. Scarlet had apparently even taken a personal interest, and had ordered some troops to fire at Barret as he held his friend Dyne's arm, trying to pull him up from where he'd slipped off the side of a cliff. Scarlet's men had happened to shoot Barret's arm to pieces, and Dyne fell into the deep ravine.
"From then on, I couldn't use my right arm no more. ...I was depressed for awhile... but then I threw away my artifical arm and got this gun grafted in," he finished, holding his gun-arm up bitterly. "Got a new right arm to get revenge on the Shinra, who took everything away... Back then, I heard the doc say there was another man who got the same operation as me. But, his was the left arm."
"But... Dyne's injury was the same as yours, right?" Aeris said, sounding hopeful.
"Yeah, that's right," Tifa said cheerfully, catching on. "He was deceived by the Shinra too. He'll probably join us to fight against the Shinra."
Barret shook his head again. "Wouldn't count on it. I gotta 'pologize to Dyne before I can rest in peace. An' that's why, I gotta go alone."
Kit thought his story over. If Dyne had been the one who committed the murders at the Battle Arena, the man was obviously insane. And Barret wanted to go to apologize to him... so he could rest in peace? From the resigned, weary look on Barret's face, Kit knew what she was thinking had to be correct. Barret knew Dyne would kill him, but he honestly believed he deserved it. From Tifa's shocked look, she knew too, though the others still looked puzzled.
Cloud finally looked up from where he'd been staring at the floor, thinking. "Do whatever you want," he said. Everyone looked at him in surprise. "Is that what you want to hear?" he asked Barret with a curious shrug. "Well, I can't let you do it. Because, if you die on me, I'm gonna have nightmares."
Kit was rather startled by his words, and from the looks on everyone else's faces, she wasn't alone. Cloud almost was beginning to sound... as if he cared.
"Barret, this isn't the end," Aeris said, concerned.
"Weren't you going to save the planet?" Tifa added.
"$#&%! Tifa, you oughta know by now," he said angrily, turning to stare at her.
Tifa met his gaze without flinching. "That's alright. I'm not so different from you."
"That's easier to understand," Aeris put in. "It's you, Barret."
"So there it is, Barret," Cloud finished. "So I guess it'll be Barret, me, and..." He looked the group over.
"I'm going," Tifa said with a quick glance at Barret.
The big man just nodded and turned away with the same weary expression. "&@%# it, Tifa," he muttered, but without any real anger behind the words.
"Fortune's good! Everything is perfect!" said a voice behind Cloud and Aeris. Kit, Tifa, and Red whirled to look at the owner of that voice. The voice appeared to be coming from a large white mound of fur with wings, which had a stuffed cat sitting on top of its head. Kit frowned. What was that thing, why was it talking, and... the strangest part was that the voice sounded familiar.
"Uhm... what's... that?" Tifa asked, gesturing at the large white thing. It swiveled to look at them, and then Kit could see it was a giant mechanical moogle. Well, there was one mystery solved. Sort of. Who would build a giant moogle, and then put a stuffed cat on top?
"Why hel-lo!" the stuffed cat said, fixing its eyes on Kit as the moogle bounced over to her. The cat extended a paw, and Kit reluctantly shook it. This was ridiculous. "What was your name again?" said the cat.
"Who are you?" Kit asked curiously.
Yuffie smirked. "This is Cait Sith, he's a fortunetelling machine from the Gold Saucer. I've been eavesdropping a little," she grinned. "So... Cait, this is Kit. Kit, this is Cait. Cait's a cat," she said merrily, "and quite a cat. I've been waiting for the moment I could say that. Cait, Kit. Kit, Cait."
"Enough, Yuffie," Cloud said, clearly annoyed. "Cait, the other two are Tifa and Red XIII. They're also friends of ours and Aeris's."
"Charmed, I'm sure," said Cait, still looking strangely at Kit. Even though the eyes were glass, and therefore had to be expressionless, she could almost see a hint of recognition in them. But she had to be imagining things; where would she have met a fortunetelling machine before?
"If we're gonna go, then why the #&%$ aren't we gone yet?" Barret growled impatiently. At least he was starting to sound like the old Barret, Kit thought with a sigh.
Cloud nodded. "Everyone else stay here, we'll come back when..." He glanced at Barret, but the man offered nothing. "When we get done," Cloud finished.
"So they got all of you too," Aeris said as Cloud, Barret, and Tifa left. "I was worried, when we'd gone everywhere in the Saucer and didn't run into any of you..."
"How embarrassing," Cait said with a little shuffle of the moogle's feet. "I can't believe they dropped us down here like that. I'm a fortunetelling machine, not a murderer. Do I look like a murderer?"
"Like any of us do?" Yuffie replied, playfully bopping the cat on the head. "Well, Cloud maybe. Tifa, not really. Barret, definitely. Kit... well, those Shinra guys actually thought she was on their side. But I'm just a kid, Aeris is a flower girl, and Red looks like such a nice puppy..." Red growled under his breath, but didn't reply.
"So you saw the Shinra too," said Aeris. "Did you hear why they were there?"
"They said they were looking for Sephiroth," Kit answered. "I don't know what on earth made them think he'd be there..." That was the truth at least.
"Like he's gonna take a pit stop at an amusement park on his trip to the Promised Land," Yuffie put in. "Just waltz on in, say 'Hi everyone, I wanna try that game with the cute little moogle,' and then be on his way?"
"I bet he wouldn't have to wait in line at the Speed Square," Cait added. "'Oh, it's Sephiroth, the war hero turned psychopath! That's a pretty big sword... and sharp... You can cut in front of me - I mean, go in front of me in line! ...You know.'"
Yuffie and Aeris giggled. Kit would have too, if she hadn't been so distracted by wondering why Cait's voice sounded so familiar. "Cait, uhm..." she began, trying to think of a way to put it. "How is it that you... work, exactly?" He looked at her with a quizzical expression, and she tried to think of a better way. "I mean, are you running off of some kind of programming? Or is there someone controlling your actions, or someone even inside the moogle?"
The cat shook a finger at her. "Tsk, tsk - it's the height of bad manners to ask a machine how it works. It's like me asking you why you're alive."
"Oh. Uh... sorry. I guess." Kit wasn't sure what to say. Apologizing to a machine?
"I know why they were looking for Sephiroth at the Gold Saucer," Aeris said, returning to the subject at hand. "When Cloud and I went to the Speed Square, there was this man named Dio there who-"
"Aaaaagh!" Yuffie, in mock disgust, fell over the back of the ruined couch she was sitting on, and narrowly avoided landing on the body of the man Barret had shot. "Dio - I hate that guy already! He needs to put some clothes on or something."
Aeris giggled. "So you met him too. Anyway, he asked Cloud and I if we knew what a Black Materia was," she continued, sobering. "We didn't. But he said someone else about our age had come by looking for it... wearing a black cape."
Everyone's eyes widened. "So... he actually was there," said Red, thoughtful as always. "But I've never heard of a Black Materia either."
"Or me," Yuffie added, "and well... I'm sort of an expert on the subject of materia. Sephiroth's just a wacko, right? What would a Black Materia do?"
"I don't know," Aeris replied, "but I'm sure the Ancients had all kinds of materia that we never discovered." She shivered a little. "And thinking about a Black Materia is sort of scary. I couldn't say why exactly."
"Do you think the planet is telling you something?" Red asked.
Aeris hesitated before answering. "I'm not sure. It's been so quiet recently, as if it's hiding from something..."
Kit glanced back over at Cait Sith, who stood casually beside the couch. He seemed to be perfectly comfortable with the fact Aeris could speak to the planet. He had to be running some kind of program. Probably he was made by parts from Shinra, Kit realized. She'd heard plenty of their voice synthesizers in various machines, alarms, and vehicles while she was in SOLDIER. That had to be why his voice sounded familiar. One mystery solved.
As the others talked, she felt herself beginning to wobble a little, and sat down in one of the chairs whose split cushions spilled dusty cotton stuffing onto the floor. The house was a mess. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised - this was only a prison, after all. She tried to concentrate on that, rather than the turmoil in her stomach. What had Hojo done to her? She felt as if something deep inside were trying to escape... Quickly she turned her mind away from that thought and tried to listen to what the others were saying, but their voices were a distant and annoying buzz in her ears. She clutched her head between her hands, trying to blot it out, but it was no use. She just wished Sephiroth were here, he could tell her, he could make it better... Sephiroth! her mind cried out to him - or did she call out loud? Her stomach lurched and she stood, trying to stumble to the door. She'd barely taken two steps before the room seemed to become a vortex, and she couldn't tell up from down.
When she came to herself again, she was leaning back against the outside of the house, with Aeris and Yuffie holding her upright. Red and Cait looked in in concern. "SOLDIER, you say?" Cait was saying. "I don't know, but I've heard you rarely see one get sick. Only the healthiest people are supposed to be accepted into their program - I hear they even screen out people with motion sickness."
"Yeah. They do." Saying that much was an effort, and Kit winced as the bright midday sunlight glared off the sand into her eyes.
"Oh, Kit! You're okay?" Aeris paused as Kit nodded painfully. "This is the second time you've blacked out. Are you sure you're all right?"
"First Costa Del Sol, now here. Must be something about sand," Kit mumbled, trying to make it all a joke. It sounded pathetic even to her. "Listen... did I say anything weird? Or do anything weird?"
"Uh, other than blacking out and getting sicker than me on an ocean cruise?" Yuffie asked. "Not really."
"Kit, what's going on?" Aeris asked her. "Does this sort of thing happen to you often?"
"Not that I can remember," Kit replied. At least she was feeling a little better now - shaky, but better. "How long was I out of it?"
"Just a couple minutes," said Aeris. "Want to go lie down somewhere till Cloud and the others get back?"
Kit couldn't help grimacing. "That would mean either that dusty couch in there, or back to the truck. No thanks, I'm feeling okay now."
Cait shook his head in amazement - the cat part of him did, at least. "Quite an amazing recovery," he commented. "Are all SOLDIERs that tough?"
Kit shrugged, unwilling to look at him. "Let's go back inside, the light glaring off your white fur is giving me a headache all over again," she said. "And will you two let go of my shoulders?" she added to Aeris and Yuffie. "I told you I'm feeling better."
Aeris looked dubious, but didn't have a choice as Kit stomped back into the house and sat down again. Questions kept running through her mind over and over - what if she was changing into a monster? What if she changed in front of AVALANCHE... would they kill her, after having been so nice to her? And why did they have to be so nice, when she was going to report on their activities to Sephiroth anyway? If she was changing into something else... what would he think of her?
The others followed her inside, obviously watching her closely despite their efforts to look nonchalant. Kit tried her best to ignore their veiled glances, but finally she couldn't take it anymore. "Stop it! Why do you keep staring at me?" she exploded.
"We're just worried about you," Aeris said calmly. She opened her mouth to say more, but just then the door Barret, Cloud, and Tifa had left through opened again.
Barret stomped in, looking about the way Kit felt - exhausted, angry, and guilty. "We're goin' up now," he said grimly, holding up a thin gold chain with a small pendant dangling from it.
"Is that Dyne's, then?" Aeris asked. "How did it go?"
Barret lowered his eyes and pushed past her to the other door. "Don't wanna talk about it," he muttered as he left.
Aeris shot a curious glance at Cloud and Tifa as they entered behind him. They both looked oddly subdued. "What happened?"
"Dyne's dead," Tifa answered. "No, Barret didn't kill him, but... well..." She shook her head angrily. "The man was insane."
"Poor Barret," Aeris murmured sympathetically.
Everyone was silent, except for Yuffie, who shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. "So what now?" she asked.
"Now we get out of here," replied Cloud, as he and Tifa followed after Barret. "Wait here, we'll get you when we're ready to leave."
To Chapter Fifteen. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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