Chapter Three


Kit watched him ascend to the top of the Shinra building, then sat down hard. What should she do now? Sephiroth had told her to wait, but... What was she thinking? Tears welled up in her eyes, and she angrily brushed them away. SOLDIER had been her life, and she'd thrown it away for certain, in just the blink of an eye. There was no excuse she could give for a failure of this magnitude.
Her pistol still lay on the metal beside her. She picked it up and absently checked the clip, still full of hollow point bullets. She'd fallen in love at first sight with a stranger - no, worse than that, a legend. A living legend had just kissed her, but a mad legend, who'd become a killer. And by doing so, she'd thrown away a job she'd worked to get her entire life. Maybe the "one shot" she'd intended for him should end her own life instead. But no, he'd said to wait for him, and wait she would, like a fool.
The other things he'd said were puzzling, but didn't seem like the babbling of a madman. He had a purpose, that much was certain. He'd mentioned the names Cloud and Tifa - those were names Kit recognized. Shinra HQ had mentioned those names in their official report about the Sector One Mako Reactor bombing and the Sector Seven disaster. Tifa was one of the members of AVALANCHE, and Cloud was said to be an ex-SOLDIER who was currently a mercenary working for AVALANCHE, though Kit had never met him. What that had to do with anything, she couldn't see.
He'd said they had more in common than being ex-SOLDIERs, but that could mean anything. The most disturbing thing by far was the idea that they had met before, as he suggested. Kit searched her memory for a time when it might have happened, but all she could remember was years and years of training for SOLDIER, and that made her eyes fill with tears again. All that time spent to make herself acceptable to their standards, all wasted. In fact, all she could remember of her life was life in the barracks, she couldn't remember when she'd last done anything but prepare herself...
That was wrong, she suddenly realized. She couldn't even remember when she'd come to join SOLDIER, and in fact she couldn't remember joining at all. Desperately, she tried to remember her childhood, or even her mother's face, but no memories came to her. If she'd had some kind of amnesia, wouldn't she at least have remembered that she should have had memories?
An inhuman roar jolted her out of her thoughts, coming from overhead, near the top of the Shinra building. Startled, she looked up to see a twisted shape flying away from the helipad. That was certainly no helicopter!
A man's scream followed closely behind the roar. It was a death scream; being in SOLDIER, she'd heard enough of them to know. Someone at the top of the building had been killed, and horribly. She had her grappling hooks in hand, ready to climb up to the top and find out what had happened, before she hesitated. She'd said she'd wait... But that was ridiculous! Someone had just died up there, and something had flown off into the night.
Kit put down the grappling hooks anyway. It's not because he told me to wait, she thought. It's because I'm not a member of SOLDIER anymore. If I went up there, they'd likely just arrest me anyways.
It still wasn't enough to keep her curiosity in check. She climbed a few stories to get a better vantage point, and then she could see that there was something going on in the elevators. Some of Shinra's battle machines were fighting someone, though to see who she would have to get closer than she wanted to be. It was enough to see no silver hair on that platform. Not that their machines would do him any harm, if half the stories were true.
A shotgun blast rang out from above, and she looked up at the helipad again. The helicopter was circling the building, and from the looks of it, someone was fighting with Rufus. That white coat he wore was unmistakable - no one else had such bad taste, Kit thought with a smirk. Then her breath caught in her throat. Was... he fighting Rufus? Someone up there had a gigantic sword, she could see the light gleaming off it even from this far below. But no, his blade was longer and thinner, and if he'd wanted to kill Rufus, Rufus would have been dead before she'd even looked up.
"I thought I told you to wait for me."
Kit gasped and spun around. Sephiroth was standing right behind her, and his eyes were glowing with triumph barely held in check. What was I so afraid of, he said he wouldn't hurt me, she reminded herself. "I knew you could find me," was her excuse.
He laughed again. "Of course I could. What a glorious night!" he exclaimed with a grin. "Mother is free, I will take back this planet, and we will enter the Promised Land together! And you, Kit... The people have betrayed you as they have betrayed the Cetra. I will take you with me, if you will allow it."
The Promised Land? Cetra? He sounded driven, but not mad. Not quite.
"Will you allow it?" he asked her.
She nodded eagerly. "I think... that I would follow you anywhere," she admitted, more to herself than to him. "What is it that you mean about my being betrayed? Because of what they do to you when you join SOLDIER? Hundreds of people have gone through what I went through."
One arm slipped around her waist, and he lifted her off her feet. Exhilarated, she realized his own feet were no longer touching the ground, and the buildings of Midgar were falling away beneath them. She caught a glimpse of the roof of the Shinra building, and the young man with spiky blond hair and the huge sword, that was still battling Rufus and his pet, Dark Nation. Then they too fell away, and the city was only a circle of lights beneath them.
"Hundreds have gone through what you remember," Sephiroth whispered into her ear, "but no other has survived what you do not. I will tell you one day, but for now enjoy the flight. We have all the time in the world."
To Chapter Four.
To the intro.
© 1998-2000 by Andrea Hartmann.
That means it's mine, not yours!