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Chapter Four The sun was rising over Midgar as Kit set foot on the ground again. She felt Sephiroth's arm slip away and she reluctantly removed her arms from around his shoulders. He stood with his back to her, silohuetted against the sun. How long had it been since she'd seen the sun? In Midgar, the air was so utterly polluted that the sun seemed like a vaguely glowing green circle. She hadn't seen the ocean for quite some time either.
After a moment, he turned to her. "Do you need to sleep?" he asked. She shook her head; this had been far too exciting a night for her to be able to fall asleep. He nodded in satisfaction. "Good. Then we shall walk."
"Why walk, when you can fly?" she ventured to ask.
He didn't seem to take any offense. "Mother is not yet strong," he said. "I must take her with me, you see, and I'm not sure she could keep up without straining herself. I must be with her."
Kit looked around, but she could see no one. He was starting to talk like a madman now. "Uhm... where is she?"
"She is here somewhere," he replied without a moment's pause. "I can sense her. She keeps her distance though. I think..."
Kit waited, but he didn't finish what he was about to say. "What?"
"No. It's nothing." With that, he began walking off to the east as if she did not exist. After a moment's hesitation, she followed. She hadn't imagined that kiss, had she? And he'd said he would take her with him. He was just... distracted.
No, not distracted. He strode ahead with a purpose, as if his destination was only over the crest of the next hill. But they had crested the next hill, and the next, and the next before Kit realized he really meant to keep this pace for however far his journey was. If she hadn't been in SOLDIER, she probably wouldn't have been able to keep up without getting short of breath.
Sure enough, he kept to that pace all day, never saying a word beyond asking her if she needed to rest, or if she needed food. She didn't, of course. She had stashed some rations in her pouches back in Midgar, because the shifts were long and she wasn't getting paid to take lunch breaks.
During this time, she meditated again on the things he'd said to her on the fire escape. She couldn't come up with any new conclusions, and she couldn't ask Sephiroth. She didn't have the breath to ask him, though at least she could keep up without huffing and puffing like some new recruit. She'd wait till they camped for the night before she asked him anything.
The sun had been down for an hour or two before they finally did make camp on the north side of a hill just west of a little village called Kalm. Kit was relieved - she'd started to wonder if he was going to make camp at all. She'd gotten no sleep in the last twenty-four hours, and since the last twelve had been spent travelling on foot at a fairly good pace, she was rather sure she could sleep now.
Their camp wasn't much of a camp, though. There were a few scrubby bushes to the south of them, which would keep them from being seen by anyone to the south, and only the ocean lay to the north and west. No one really ever came from the east. The people of Kalm weren't interested in going to Midgar for the most part, Sephiroth explained when she asked. Kalm was supplied with power by Shinra, who had built a small Mako reactor there just recently. Sephiroth got a curious look on his face when he mentioned the Mako reactor, but when she asked what was wrong, he just shook his head and changed the subject.
"We don't need to build a fire, because we have nothing to cook and the night is warm," he said. "Not that the people of Kalm would look outside their village and see it. They're only concerned with their prosperity. They do well, you know. They mine Mithril, and that can be made into better weapons than you'll find in Midgar, outside of the Shinra arsenal."
"I take it you've spent time there?"
"Not much. I went nearly everywhere during the war, of course, so I picked up the general feeling of some of the towns. Kalm is a strange one."
So are you, Kit thought. She took a deep breath and forced herself to ask the question she'd decided was most important. "When have we met before?"
"You really don't remember?"
"No. To be honest... there are a lot of things I don't remember." During the day's journey, she'd also tried harder to recall life before SOLDIER, but she hadn't had any success.
His lips twisted in a cynical smile. "And here you were chastening yourself for betraying Shinra. By the time I am even half done telling you how we met, your feelings will be different, I'm certain. Do you remember ever being in Nibelheim?"
"Nibelheim?" Kit racked her memory. "No. They said though, that that was where you..."
He smirked. "Went mad?"
"No, they said you died."
That made him laugh. "Ridiculous. It would be like President Shinra to make such a story up. Wishful thinking on his part, I'm sure. Though it's too late for him now. He's found his own Promised Land at my hands."
Kit had suspected as much, but hearing it confirmed made her feel much worse about abandoning her mission. She'd been hired by a man to protect him from a powerful enemy, and not only had she failed, she'd thrown in her lot with this enemy. She didn't see how anything Sephiroth could tell her would make that seem acceptable.
"Anyway, that has nothing to do with where we met," Sephiroth continued. "That mission I... died in..." His shoulders shook with silent laughter again. "Five years ago - or maybe six? Seven? Ah well, it's unimportant. I went with a young SOLDIER first class named Zack to Nibelheim to investigate the Mako reactor, which was malfunctioning and producing monsters. That seemed illogical to me, but then, the mountains it was built on were very rich in Mako energy. It was a unique reactor for that reason, and a few others I discovered when I arrived. You see, Hojo was doing a little experiment in that reactor, trying to follow in the footsteps of Professor Gast, I suppose. I'm not sure if it was authorized by Shinra entirely, but it is unlikely they would have built the reactor in such a way if they had not."
"What were they doing?" Kit was beginning to feel rather uneasy about this story. If this was necessary to explain where they'd met before... Her hair was falling into her eyes, and she brushed it back.
"Hojo had put humans inside capsules, where they would be in direct contact with the Mako that the reactor was sucking from the mountain. Normal members of SOLDIER are imbued with Mako energy in a similar way, but with far less intensity. The high levels of Mako were making these humans mutate into ... well, monsters." Sephiroth's already hard eyes glowed in hatred. "Hojo was creating monsters. The proof seems overwhelming that he was trying to make something more powerful than SOLDIERs to work for Shinra."
Kit shivered. When he'd mentioned capsules, that had triggered something in her mind. She remembered something cold, and a glow. She tried to remember details, but couldn't. Actually, she wasn't sure she really wanted to remember. That whole feeling felt wrong. "I take it he didn't succeed, or I'd be an outdated model," she joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"No, quite the opposite. You're their new prototype."
Her blood ran cold. "What?"
"While Zack and I were in the reactor examining it, I... I suppose you could say I lost my temper. There was something else in the reactor besides the capsules - a locked chamber with a sign above it, reading 'Jenova'. I'd always been told my mother's name was Jenova, and she'd died shortly after she gave birth to me. Now that I'd found these capsules, what could I conclude except that this was how I'd been made?"
Kit stared at him, half in horror, half in relief. She was sure he'd been about to say she'd been in one of those capsules.
"I guess I did go mad for a moment there," Sephiroth continued in a low voice. "I slashed at the capsules, at the reactor, at anything around me. Zack jumped back out of my way, I guess, or he would have died. Which he didn't. Not then, anyway. All I could see was a red haze, and then a sudden motion surprised me. One of the capsules broke open, and a monster tumbled out. I told Zack to get out, and he did, so no one saw what happened next except for me. I fought with that monster, who attacked me on sight. It died easily, but then another capsule broke open, and another and another. I fought them off, but it weakened me greatly. Finally I saw only one capsule still closed. Thinking to surprise that one if it were to come forth, I went up above it, for it was right beside the locked Jenova chamber and there was a small walkway there. I waited for some time, until it became apparent that whatever was in that capsule was not in any hurry to come out. So I looked through the window on the front of the capsule, just to see if there was anything in there at all..."
Kit buried her face in her hands. She did remember seeing him before. There had been the cold and the glow shining around her except for one dark portal before her eyes. There was no consciousness of time, just the cold and the glow that didn't change. Then one day, she'd seen a pair of glowing eyes in that Portal, and silver hair pouring down like mercury.
She didn't realize she had curled up into a ball, lying on the ground shaking, until she felt a hand on her shoulder. "Kit," Sephiroth was saying, and he sounded almost concerned. "Kit. You remember now, don't you." It wasn't a question.
She couldn't speak, or even nod, but he continued anyway. "You did not look like a monster, and I thought perhaps you'd not been in the capsule long enough to be affected so greatly. So I opened the capsule to free you... but you just lay there, staring around at your surroundings. I wondered, briefly, if I should simply kill you as I had killed the others, but you were in no state to do harm to anyone, I decided. For all I knew, I might have interrupted this... experiment... at a vital point, and ruined you."
Kit was still shaking, but his hand on her shoulder gave her strength, as if power rushed from him into her body. "What... what am I? A monster?"
"I'm not sure how exactly it happened that you retained a human form," he replied, "but I believe it may have had something to do with the fact that your capsule was in such close proximity to Mother. The Mako energy may have flowed through her, forming a different kind of energy which didn't mutate you in such a grotesque fashion as the distilled Mako did the others. Mother can be gentle, in her own ways." She looked up at him, incredulous. "I am not misshapen, am I?" he asked with a gentle smile. "Mako is the wisdom of the Ancients, the Cetra, and my guess is that is too raw for humans to deal with. But when provided through a filter, like Jenova..."
Kit lifted one of her hands up to look at it, and it seemed human enough. She could have been a monster, maybe she was. What powers were within her that she didn't know about?
"I suspect you do have some sort of special capabilities," Sephiroth said, seemingly reading her thoughts, "otherwise Shinra would have simply done away with you, rather than go to all the trouble of brainwashing. What do you remember of life before SOLDIER?"
"I don't remember anything," she whimpered. "Why did they do this to me? Did I volunteer to become... this?"
"Only you can answer that," Sephiroth said gently, placing his hand over hers. "But if you don't remember anything at all, then perhaps even you cannot."
"Then... then I can't." She clutched his hand closer to her. "Why would they do this to me? What set me apart?"
"I can't answer that for you. Maybe nothing set you apart at all, and they used you simply because you existed. It would not be unlike Shinra."
This was all too much for Kit to deal with. For as long as she could remember, Shinra had been the benevolent protectors of Midgar, there to provide it with energy and anything else it needed. But when she thought back, she realized she'd never liked any of the people in charge at Shinra, save perhaps Reeve. Reeve was in charge of city development for Shinra, so he wasn't really in her division, but she'd met him a few times at corporate parties and the like, and he was far less annoying than any other Shinra executives. They'd even managed to have a pleasant conversation or two about the future of Midgar. But anyone else there... she could imagine Hojo stealing children to put inside his capsules, and Heidegger standin g by to watch, laughing and ordering his guards to aid him.
"Will you be able to sleep?" Sephiroth asked her, and she nodded. She couldn't think of anything she'd rather do, actually. Though the ground was hard, she'd slept in similar conditions before, on missions. Still, she wished she had a pillow.
Sephiroth didn't lie down when she did, but sat watchfully nearby. Of course he would keep watch, Kit thought. He was SOLDIER, he knew at least as much about campaigning as she did.
After a few minutes of squirming, trying to find a position that would not make her neck ache after a night's rest, she sensed him standing up. She opened her eyes to find him taking off his long coat, then folding it. When he'd finished, he knelt down to offer it to her.
Who would have thought he would have even considered being thoughtful? She accepted his coat gladly. "One more thing," she said as she arranged it under her head. "What did you do after you opened my capsule?"
"What could I have done?" he asked. "I would not seal it again, and I could not take you out of the reactor. Who knows what could have happened then? I left you there, hoping you would recover or else die an easy death. When I went back a few days later, you were not there, and I knew one or the other must have happened."
She sighed and lay her head back on his coat. "I guess I must have recovered, then."
He nodded. "Apparently. I was so troubled then that I probably did not make a good decision in doing so. But I am pleased that nothing was hurt by it."
Kit noted before she closed her eyes that Sephiroth had a magnificent physique beneath that coat. At the thoughts that put in her head, she could have blushed had she not been so exhausted. She drifted off to sleep quickly, dreaming of moonlight reflecting off his Masamune in the midst of the darkness.
To Chapter Five. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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