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Chapter TwentyTwo The members of AVALANCHE followed Cloud as he followed the mountain range north. Kit once asked Aeris where they were headed, but she wasn't sure. None of them were familiar with the area, and so all of them were quite surprised to see a tall, thin shape far off on the horizon. Whatever it was, it was large. As they drew nearer, they could make out the shapes of buildings near the base of the thing, and then they could see that the tall object was slightly tilted, as if it were about to topple over. And as they got close to the outskirts of town, it became obvious what it was.
Everyone stopped for a moment and stared. "A rusty old rocket..." Cloud said wonderingly. "I wonder what they'd make something that huge for?"
It was Shinra work, of course. No private sector could have afforded to fund such a project, and Shinra's space program, though basically defunct, had built a few rockets before it got cut back. Or so Kit had heard. It had all been before her time.
Cloud managed to stop a man who was walking past. "Hey, what is this place, what's with the rocket?" he asked him.
The man shook his head. "Better ask the Captain about this town," he said. He's the one in charge of it."
The Captain... that sounded vaguely familiar to Kit, but Cloud looked puzzled. "Who's the Captain?"
"The Captain was a pilot when Shinra was still interested in their Space Program," the man told him. "He was going to be the world's first astronaut, but there was an accident..."
Of course! Kit remembered now - Captain Cid Highwind. Although she'd only been in the military, Kit knew enough about Shinra history to remember his story. He was infamous - the Shinra airship, the Highwind, was even named after him.
"Ever since then, he's been wasting away his life here dreaming about going into outer space," the man finished.
Cloud shook his head impatiently. "Did you see a man in a black cape?" he asked the man.
"A man in a black cape?" The man shrugged. "Nope... don't know a thing about it."
Kit could have told Cloud that much. She couldn't feel him at all, not like she had back in Nibelheim. But now that she was thinking about it, she could sense his presence somewhere far away... off to the east...
A hand on her arm made her jump. "Kit, are you okay?" Aeris asked. "For just a minute, you looked very... strange."
"I'm fine, Aeris," Kit replied bluntly. "How many times will I have to tell you before you believe me?"
Aeris turned away with a small frown. "Until it's true," she said under her breath.
Kit chose to ignore her last comment, and instead followed Cloud and the others into the town. Despite the casual, friendly atmosphere of the town, Barret was glaring around as if he expected a trap to spring up at any moment. "Shinra an' their $@&% machines..." he grumbled. "This whole %@#& place reeks o' Shinra."
"It's not that bad, Barret," Tifa was assuring him. "The man just said the Shinra space program was cancelled. It's not like they'd still be around."
"Yeah, really," Cait chimed in. "Just look at that rustbucket! It's not going anywhere. Why would Shinra care about it?"
"I dunno," Barret said, still aiming suspicious glances in every direction. "Jus' something in the air here don't feel right."
"Then you can stay out here and keep an eye out," Cloud told him. "I'm going to find this 'Captain' and see what he can tell me. Who's coming with me?"
Aeris and Vincent volunteered, and after they'd gone, Yuffie ran off immediately. Red decided to follow her to make sure she stayed out of trouble. Barret was stomping around town glaring at everyone and everything, apparently still not convinced it was safe. Tifa followed him, trying to calm him down before he attracted attention. Cait Sith vanished into one of the shops, and so Kit was left alone to wander through the town. She had to disagree with Barret - all of her life that she remembered, she'd leved in the sterile, bland halls of one Shinra building or another, and this town was completely different. It had a sort of comfortable charm to it, even if it did have the rocket looming above.
She kept glancing up at it - she couldn't help it. If that rocket were to tip any further, it would probably lose its balance entirely and fall over. At least it wouldn't fall directly on the town, she thought, but the repercussions of such an enormous weight crashing to the earth so close would almost certainly do some structural damage.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Kit looked away from the rocket, to see the old man who had addressed her standing by a fence in front of one of the houses. "Yeah, it is," she agreed, "but don't you worry about what could happen if it falls?"
The man shook his head. "I'm an old man," he said, chuckling. "I might as well fear climbing the steps to my room at night - either is as likely to be the death of me. And everyone here was an engineer or technician when old #26 was built," he added. "If it's going to fall, we'll know about it far enough in advance to make plans. It'll fall someday, certainly, but for now..." He turned and gazed up at it again. "For now, it's just a majestic sight. Makes me proud to look at it."
"I suppose..." Kit looked up again at the rocket as the man fell silent, and tried to see it as something comforting. But it only looked awkward and foreign to her, placed so closely to this calm little town.
As always, when she had nothing urgent to think about, her thoughts drifted to Sephiroth. In the reactor, he'd said he missed her. How often had she replayed that conversation in her mind now, she wondered with a smile. It made her all the more certain that this would all be over soon, and when she returned to his side, they would have a future together. Even if he was mad, and she accepted that. He could help her regain her memories, she could help him regain his sanity, and they could live together in a quiet town like this one. Or perhaps they would build their own house, deep in a forest somewhere, where no one would stumble upon the secrets they kept. For all Kit cared, they could live in a cramped apartment in the Midgar slums, as long as they had each other...
Suddenly Kit's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Barret cursing wildly. Turning quickly to see what was wrong, she saw him diving behind a fence in someone's yard.
Something was definitely wrong. Kit started to run towards him, across the cleared area in the center of town - and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw what had startled Barret. A huge truck was driving into town, barely missing Kit, but that wasn't what made her jump. The Shinra logo was painted on the side!
The truck rumbled to a stop beside a house just a little ways past, and a few blue-clad troops jumped out instantly, a sharp contrast to the casual demeanor of the next man to step out, looking around in disdain as he straightened a familiar white coat. What was Rufus doing here?
Kit realized abruptly that she was still out in the open, and instinctively made a dash for the same bushes Barret had dived into. He was hunched down, peering through the gaps in the hedge at the Shinra entourage, and so was Tifa. The girl's eyes were fixed on Rufus even though Kit had dashed right in front of her hiding place on her way to kneel down beside her. "Do you know where the others are?" she whispered.
Tifa jumped. "Kit! You scared me half to death!" Tifa whispered back. "I didn't hear you coming." Kit frowned, knowing Tifa should have seen her. She must have gone invisible again, she realized nervously. She had to learn to control that. If someone caught her in the midst of a change...
"Cait Sith is in that shop across the way," Tifa continued in a low voice. "I don't know where Red and Yuffie are, but I just saw Cloud, Aeris, and Vincent going into that same house where the Shinra truck is parked..."
Kit turned back and watched the activity around the house. Someone else had gotten out of the truck too - an overweight, balding man in a brown suit.
"Palmer!" Barret cursed softly. "He's seen us up close. $#@&! He's goin' inside... That pokey-head kid better be slippin' out the back about now!"
There was nothing they could do though, except watch and wait. A minute or so passed, with Rufus and one guard standing impatiently in front of the house, but there was no commotion. Finally the door opened, and an unfamiliar man stepped out to speak with Rufus. They were too far away to hear exactly what was said, from AVALANCHE's hiding place among the hedges.
"Hey." A whispered voice came from behind them, and they turned to see Yuffie and Red. "We were just checking out that house when the truck pulled up," Yuffie explained. "What's up with that? What's going on?"
"I dunno," Barret muttered. "But Cloud an' the others went in there, and so'd Palmer. What'd you see?"
"There's a plane out behind the house," Red replied.
"Oh yeah! It's like, pink!" Yuffie interrupted. "I guess it's called the Tiny Bronco. Weird name for a plane..."
"It looks as if it's in working condition, too," Red finished, glaring at her.
"So there is a back way out?" Tifa asked. When Red nodded, she turned back to watching the house. "Then maybe Cloud escaped - no wait! There he is!"
Everyone turned to look, just in time to see Cloud step out of the front door of the house, almost right in front of Rufus. He froze for a second, and the members of AVALANCHE watching from the bushes tensed. Barret hefted his gun-arm, Yuffie pulled out one of her throwing stars, and Red crouched, preparing to leap.
They never got a chance, as the man talking to Rufus suddenly swore in disgust. "$%#&! First the airship, then the rocket, and now the Tiny Bronco," he exclaimed angrily. "Shinra took outer space away from me, and now you want to take the sky away from me too?!"
Even Rufus looked startled. "Oh my..." he said with a smirk, collecting himself. "You seem to forget that it was because of Shinra Inc. that you were able to fly in the first place."
"What?" The man went livid and began cursing incoherently at Rufus, who stood there as if bored. Under cover of the sudden distraction, Cloud ducked back into the house, and Tifa breathed a sigh of relief as the small party in the bushes lowered their weapons.
Yuffie was still gaping at the man's harsh language. "Wow - even Barret could give that guy some lessons on how to lighten up," she commented.
"He does have some nerve, talking that way to Rufus Shinra," Tifa agreed. "I wonder who he is?"
"I bet it's the Captain," Kit realized suddenly. "If it's his plane, and he's been talking about the airship and the rocket. Captain Cid Highwind was Shinra's top pilot, and he was chosen to fly their rocket into space, but then they cancelled the space program."
Barret nodded. "Makes sense," he muttered. "So is he on our side or theirs, you think? What's he been talking 'bout with Cloud in that house?"
Suddenly Red's ears perked up. "Something's going on behind the house," he told the others.
They all went silent, listening. Indeed, the faint hum of a motor could be heard. The Captain and Rufus should have been able to hear it easily, but they seemed to be too busy arguing to pay it any mind.
"I'll go check it out!" Yuffie said cheerfully, bouncing off through the hedge. Somehow, she managed to make no noise at all, for which they were all grateful.
Still, Tifa made a grab for her arm but was too late. "Yuffie!" she exclaimed softly. "She could be walking right into trouble!"
Barret growled. "If that $@%& kid gives us away..."
Red shook his head. "She'll be fine. You heard how little noise she made just now," he reminded them. "And she almost lost me a couple times, just walking around this town. No one will see her unless she wants to be seen. She's very sneaky."
Barret started to say something, but Tifa pointed back towards the scene in front of the house. Captain Highwind had stopped cursing and had cocked his head to one side, listening. "That sounds a whole $%&@ lot like my Tiny Bronco," he told Rufus accusingly. "Ain't that a %^@# coincidence?"
Rufus didn't change his level expression in the least. "Maybe," was his only comment.
Captain Highwind didn't buy it for a second. "$%&# you, Rufus!" he exploded. "Where the #&%@ do you get off trying to steal my plane?!"
Beginning to look a bit nervous, Rufus seemed to be searching for an excuse when his attention was drawn to something far off in the sky. "That's... that's not Palmer!" he said angrily. "I never should have trusted him to get the job done-"
"Ah! So you admit you tried to steal the Tiny-" the Captain began, then looked up as the noise got louder. His jaw dropped, and so did the cigarette he'd been holding. "Holy $#@&..."
The members of AVALANCHE hiding behind the hedge all looked up too, to see two people clinging to the plane for dear life - a red cape billowing in the wind, and a pink dress fluttering frantically from the speed of their flight. And piloting the plane was...
"Cloud!" Tifa cried out as she jumped up. Barret swore and tried to pull her back down, as the Captain ran past their hiding place, chasing the plane down, but then the sound of gunfire erupted as the Shinra guard opened fire on the plane as it flew overhead. Before anyone could stop Tifa, she ran out of their hiding spot and tackled the guard, causing his shot to just barely go wide of the fuel tanks. Even so, everyone could plainly see that the plane had been hit. A plume of smoke hung in the air, as the plane began to wobble and descend.
Red jumped over the hedge to go to Tifa's aid, and Barret and Kit pushed through to get a better shot at any remaining guards, but the only person left standing in the clearing was Rufus Shinra. He glanced at them once, then returned to staring after the plane with a look of minor annoyance. "I'll have to have a word with that obese idiot," he muttered to himself. Finally, he turned to the small party that had been hiding in the bushes.
"And I see AVALANCHE is here," he said casually, as if he couldn't see that all their weapons were trained on him. "And Kit too," he added with a pleased smile. She didn't lower her pistol an inch. "I just knew I'd see you again someday... So," Rufus said, flipping his hair back from his eyes. "Our little runaway SOLDIER, Kit, has joined up with the rebels. When I heard it, I could hardly believe it. I mean, really." He shrugged nonchalantly. "Why would you do such a thing, after all Shinra has done for you?"
"And what did Shinra ever do for me?" Kit replied coolly. "So I was SOLDIER First Class. I worked to get there, and it's not like I'm irreplacable. You have a few dozen others just like me." Well, they didn't actually, Kit suspected. But she hoped he wouldn't bring that up. "Why even think twice about me?"
"Oh please." Rufus smiled infuriatingly at her. "I know for a fact you were never at Fort Condor, like you've told your little friends here. I know where you were really supposed to be stationed," he said. "You're directly responsible for my father's death."
Beside her, Kit heard Tifa gasp. Glancing around, she saw Barret regarding her suspiciously as well. "So you want revenge, is that it?" she asked Rufus, tightening her grip on her pistol.
"Not at all," he said smoothly. "Actually, just the opposite. Thanks, Kit - you've made me the most powerful man in the world." That certainly hadn't been what Kit was expecting to hear from him, and so when he shrugged casually again, she snapped her gun up to aim it at him. "Why don't we put down the weapons and talk?" he suggested, apparently not the least bit fazed.
"What's to talk about?" she retorted, not backing off a bit. "You're a sorry excuse for a son, and I'm done with Shinra, that's that."
"Are you so sure?" he asked, taking a step towards her. She kept her gun trained on him. "I'd like to reward you in some way. So you never felt fully appreciated as a SOLDIER First Class, hmm? What would you think of a promotion? I could make you a Turk, Kit. Would you like to be a Turk?"
"Not hardly." She kept her voice level, though she was beginning to sweat as he took a step closer. If he kept it up, she really was going to have to shoot him.
"Hmm... hard to please. An attractive challenge," he commented. "You know, Kit - you're cute, even if you could use a little work. I've always thought that."
"So?"
He looked a bit disappointed. "Doesn't it do anything to you, to know I might find you attractive?" he asked, taking another step towards her, and this time she stepped back. "I mean, here I am - half the world's power and money at my fingertips. Most women would kill for me."
"That's what you'd like, isn't it?" she said coldly. "And back off. Now."
"Ah, Kit," he chuckled, taking a step closer, until he was only an arm's length away from her. "You wound me."
"That's right." With a quick motion, Kit reversed the gun in her hand, and struck him across the face with the barrel. She was trained well enough that the one blow was all it took, and he fell unconscious at her feet.
Just behind her, Tifa jumped. "Well, that takes care of that," she said with a nervous smile. "What are we going to do with him?"
"I dunno. And I don't care," Kit stated. "Let Palmer take care of him, I guess."
"Shyeah! Not likely!" A sudden motion, seen out of the corner of her eye, made her swing the gun around to her left, locking it back into firing position - on Yuffie. "Whoa, hold on!" the girl said, alarmed. "Just me! See, Palmer can't take care of him, cuz I... well..." She giggled sheepishly. "I was trying to block his getaway with that Shinra truck, and... I sorta... hit him."
"You what?!" Tifa exclaimed. Everyone was staring at Yuffie in shock. Even Barret's mouth was hanging open.
"I sorta knocked the truck's driver out, and tried to move it, only I'm not a real good driver," she explained. "I hit the gas a little harder than I should have..."
"You ran over Palmer?" Red was aghast.
"No, I didn't run over him. Gawd. I just hit him, and..." She stopped and giggled again. "I think he'll be okay - he bounced."
Red groaned, and Tifa looked disgusted. "Just as well," Cait said, bounding out from the door of the shop he'd been watching from. "Palmer's not exactly a dangerous fellow. But what are we going to do with Rufus here?"
"I say we just leave him." Kit replaced the gun in her holster and knelt to get a look at him. "He'll be out for awhile, but he'll be okay. We'd better go see if we can find out what happened to the plane, don't you think?"
"Not so %$#& fast," Barret said grimly, blocking her as she turned towards the direction the plane had vanished. "What'd he mean, you're responsible for ol' man Shinra dyin'? And you weren't at Fort Condor neither? You been lyin' to us?"
He loomed nearly a foot and a half over her, and Kit couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt as he stared down at her accusingly. "I..." she began, and couldn't think where to go from there. She hadn't expected to have them find that out. "Well, what does it matter why I quit Shinra?" she asked indignantly. "I quit, and that's all there is to it."
"You can't think she's the traitor, Barret," Red spoke up. "She did just take care of Rufus for us..."
"She didn't finish him off," Barret pointed out. "Why didn't you jus' shoot him?" he asked her.
Kit looked around at all their faces - Barret's was accusing, Tifa's was stubborn, Red's was concerned, Cait's was nervous, Yuffie's was confused. She opened her mouth to protest, but even she wasn't sure. She was a trained SOLDIER. She could have killed him...
"Barret, leave her alone," Tifa said finally. "I wouldn't have shot him in cold blood either. Does that make me a traitor?"
"You ain't tellin' us lies, tho," Barret growled. "%$@&, SOLDIER girl - why'd you really quit Shinra? Why didn't you blast this little son of a $%@#& in the face when you had a chance?" he asked, kicking Rufus in the side to illustrate his point.
Kit's mind was racing, trying to come up with a good excuse, a back story, some kind of explanation for why she'd lied to them, but nothing came to mind.
"Barret, you're overreacting," Red told him, but the big man ignored him.
"Somebody here's been leaking information to Shinra, an' I wanna know who!" Barret bellowed.
"Calm down! Yelling isn't doing anyone any good." Tifa told him firmly, then she turned to Kit. "It's okay, he'll understand if you just tell him the truth now," she assured her. "We trust you."
"Why didn't you jus' shoot him?" Barret repeated.
"I..." Kit began, still not knowing what to say. Finally she decided all she could do was tell the truth - or at least a part of it. "I'm tired of killing," she said coldly. "I quit Shinra and ran, because I don't want to be a killer anymore." Pushing her hair back out of her eyes, she looked around at the group again. They all looked stunned, even Barret himself. "Is that good enough for you? Or are you disappointed? Do you want me to kill for you too, Barret? I thought you wanted to be better than they are. All this talk about how AVALANCHE is a team, and you're the good guys - and now Cloud and Aeris and Vincent are out there somewhere, and you'd rather stay here and tell me to kill people than go out looking for them?"
Without waiting for an answer, she brushed past Barret angrily and headed for the edge of town. She was only mildly surprised when no one tried to stop her. What she'd said had been mostly a smokescreen, but as she walked, she realized there was more truth to it than she'd imagined.
Especially when it came to her feelings about killing. She'd killed before, of course - it had been her job, she was a fighter - but now that she didn't have to, she didn't want to do it again, ever.
With that realization came a wave of guilt that made her shudder. How many times had she seen the light go out of someone's eyes, extinguished by her own hand, just because Shinra thought they deserved to die? The sight of their faces came to mind unbidden, and she stopped walking to cover her face, as if her hands could block out the visions inside her head. She'd never thought anything of it. In fact, she couldn't remember the times, places, or reasons - killing had been second nature.
I was bred to be a killer, she thought in sudden despair. What else can I be, when I'm through with AVALANCHE? She would return to Sephiroth, she reminded herself. But then, he had been bred to be a killer too, even more thoroughly than she had. What else can he be? What kind of life can two manufactured killers possibly make?
And that was why, when the others caught up with her, they found her crying.
To Chapter Twentythree. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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