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Chapter FortyTwo Before flying up to examine the crater, Cid had the pilot swing by Cosmo Canyon to drop off Bugenhagen, who was quite happy to be home. "It may be good for you young people to go off and save the planet with your weapons," he commented, "but I'm just an old man. I don't think I can take the action, not anymore." Chuckling, he turned to Red. "Nanaki, this is your world now. My time has nearly passed, so it's up to you."
Red shook his head. "Grandpa, don't talk like that. You sound like you're giving up, just waiting to die..."
"That's all right," Bugenhagen said softly. "My instruments say that Meteor will fall in seven days, and there's not a thing I can do about it." He shook his head. "Not a thing. I can't do anything more in this fight, but you, Nanaki... You're Seto's son, you can do a lot. Make him proud."
"But... Grandfather..." Finally, Red sighed. "I will. And then I'll come back to you, and we can go on living together, all right?"
"For awhile," Bugenhagen told him. "All things that live will someday die and return to the Lifestream - that's the way of the world. Nanaki, I'm only one old man. It's more important you worry about your own life now, and that of the planet."
Red nodded reluctantly. "All right. I understand, and I'll stay alive. Not only for my sake and the planet's, but for yours too." He smiled. "Whether you live as an old man or as a part of the Lifestream, I will protect you."
After they'd said their goodbyes, Cid instructed his pilot to head north towards the crater. It was going to take awhile to get there, so Cloud advised them all to use the time to relax and prepare, in case their final battle was imminent.
After that statement, Kit couldn't very well relax, though. She found herself pacing around the airship, trying to find something to take her mind off what had just happened and the thought of what might happen next. Wandering into the onboard stables, she discovered Cloud had brought a pair of chocobos aboard. One of them chirped at her, and she couldn't help but smile. "You want to get out of here too, don't you?" she asked, patting its feathery neck. It whistled at her, and the other chocobo turned to look at them, then stretched its neck out to be petted as well. Kit obliged it, and amused herself by feeding the birds greens and nuts for a little while, but finally went back to the bridge. There was no sense in running from it, or trying to pretend that it was never going to happen.
Cait Sith was standing in the same position near the door that he'd been standing in, and Kit realized he hadn't said anything since the incident with Weapon. His controller must have been all right, since he'd hopped back down to the bridge after it was over, but still...
"Cait," Kit said, approaching him. "What happened in Midgar? You're okay, right?"
The cat didn't move. "Oh, uh, hmm? I'm sorry, I'm really busy now..." the voice mumbled. "Weapon's attack took out part of the Shinra building. We're trying to restore communications, but the Sister Ray depleted the reactors' energy stores, so many of the machines we'd be using to make repairs aren't functioning... We still don't know the full damage to the rest of the city, since the power's out and we can't contact large portions of it, but it doesn't look good. Hundreds of casualties at least, perhaps thousands."
"Wow..." Kit was taken aback by how concerned Cait Sith sounded. Even if he was Shinra, he sounded like the loss of life really did upset him. "I'm sorry... I'll leave you alone then."
"Thanks," the cat muttered, falling silent again.
Cloud was standing at the front of the bridge, looking out at the northern continent that lay before them. A mountain range still hid the crater area from view, and Kit went to stand next to him. "I guess you know a little bit more about Sephiroth now than I do," he commented. "Do you think Shinra destroyed the barrier?"
"I couldn't say, but I sensed that he was annoyed by the attack," she replied. "It definitely got his attention, at the least."
Barret was standing nearby, and he grumbled. "Just like Shinra to waste all that energy just to tap Sephiroth on the shoulder and say 'Gotcha!' Wonder what happened to Marlene in the middle of all that..." He sat down against one of the airship's control consoles, looking grim. Kit didn't have the heart to repeat what Cait had just told her about the damage to Midgar and the Shinra building. Better to let him worry about several vague possibilities than a single very real one.
"We'll go back for her once we've saved the world," Tifa spoke up. "We have to make sure there's a safe place to take her before we can take her there, right?" Barret nodded, though his gloomy expression didn't change a bit.
There was a faint glow in the air beyond the mountain range, and it seemed to grow brighter as the Highwind approached. The air shimmered with leftover energy, it seemed, and when they'd risen above the mountains, it became obvious why.
"Sephiroth's energy barrier is gone..." Cloud murmured. All that remained was the round crater, now glowing only from within, rather than bursting with Mako energy like it had been when they'd first encountered it. Was it Shinra's cannon that had siphoned it off, Kit wondered, or Sephiroth trying to defend himself and maintain the barrier?
Cloud turned to the control panel where Cid stood, supervising his pilot-in-training. "Cid! Can the airship get inside?"
"Huh?" Cid looked almost offended. "He's my student, ain't he? Of course he can go anywhere!"
"Right, sorry about that," Cloud muttered with a shrug.
"Yo, Cait Sith! Now what?" Barret called, turning away from the window.
The stuffed moogle jumped in surprise. "Hold it!" he exclaimed in a oddly nervous voice, hopping away from the group. "Scarlet! Heidegger! What's going on?"
Voices could be heard through Cait Sith's megaphone, very faintly, and the others tried to listen in. "Strange. I can't reach the President," a deep, gruff voice stated. Heidegger, Kit realized after a moment.
"Not the President! To Sister Ray!" Reeve's voice said frantically. Somehow, it seemed different...
Scarlet's laugh rang out. "What is it, Reeve? You're speaking strangely."
Kit racked her brain, trying to put two and two together. If Reeve was there, and Scarlet and Heidegger... whoever Cait Sith's controller was, he was either high up in the Shinra heirarchy, or perhaps just a guard. She'd known a few guards, that might explain how she knew that voice.
"None of that matters!" Reeve exclaimed. "The reactor's output is increasing all by itself!"
Both in the Highwind and the Shinra building, Reeve's statement made everyone freeze. After a moment, Scarlet's uneasy voice was heard again. "Ww, wait a minute. That's not wise! It must be cool for 3 hours or it won't work. Reeve, shut off the machine!"
"We can't do that! It's inoperable! Someone has switched the machine over to mainframe operation! We can't operate it from here." Reeve's voice was growing more and more desperate. "What about the mainframe? Who? Hey, call the mainframe!"
There was another tense pause. "Huh? Why are you giving orders?" Heidegger growled.
"I don't give a damn about the details!" Reeve shot back.
There was a feeling like deja vu coming over Kit now at the sound of Reeve's voice. Something told her there was a mystery unravelling there, but then the crackling of an intercom caused the sound coming from Cait's megaphone to be even more faint and distorted. Even so, the voice heard over it was clear enough to turn Kit's stomach to ice. "Ha, ha, ha... Just you wait, Sephiroth," it cackled. "I'll give you all the Mako you want."
Kit took a stunned step backwards, away from the sound of his voice, and nearly tripped. "No way..." she whispered. "I killed him..."
No one else seemed to be paying her any mind, as caught up as they were in the scene unfolding in Midgar. "Hojo, stop! The cannon, no, Midgar itself is in danger!" Reeve was shouting.
"Ha, ha, ha... One or two Midgars? ...It's a small price to pay," Hojo's voice crackled gleefully.
"Hojo! Hojo...!" Reeve shouted, apparently not getting any response as Hojo continued laughing to himself.
"Show me... Sephiroth. It should be near... Ha, ha, ha... Go beyond the powers of science... Before your presence, science is powerless... I hate it, but I'll concede to it. Just... let me see it. Ha, ha, ha..."
The noise from the megaphone ceased abruptly. In the sudden silence on the deck of the Highwind, Red was growling, a rumble from deep in his throat, and Barret was gesturing angrily at Cait Sith. "Yo! Do somethin'! Ya big cat!"
The cat slumped over helplessly on top of the moogle. "We're sunk," Reeve's voice said, suddenly much louder and clearer than it had been previously. Hearing it, Kit's jaw dropped as the revelation she'd been trying to find came together. "Hojo's doing this on his own..." Reeve's voice trailed off, apparently as he realized what he had just done. The others on board the Highwind stared at him as they came to the same conclusion. "H...huh?" Cait's usual voice squeaked, with the exact same volume and clarity Reeve's had had only an instant ago. Seeing the looks of the faces all around him, the moogle turned away. "I don't like this..." he mumbled.
"You're busted, Reeve!" Barret roared, waving his arms at the cat as the moogle suddenly leapt about frantically. "Too late trying to hide it now!"
"Reeve..." Kit murmured. Of course the voice had sounded familiar. Even hearing his normal voice faintly over that megaphone hadn't been enough to compare properly, but hearing it loud and clear again, she could hear the similarity instantly.
Cloud didn't seem to care all that much who the man behind Cait Sith really was. "Can't you stop the Mako reactor?" he asked.
"...We can't stop it," Reeve's own voice said helplessly.
"You're from Shinra, ain't ya? So why's it impossible?" Barret yelled at him.
Cait made no response but to look at them nervously. "We came a long way to get here. You better not double-cross us now!" Cid threatened him.
"I can't make you trust me..." Reeve sighed.
"You damn fool! Don't you understand anything I'm saying?" Cid continued angrily. "I don't give a damn about Shinra. If you're a man... no, if you're a human being, you'll save the planet! Don't you even care?"
"No way!" Reeve protested. "If we shut down the reactor, all hell will break loose!"
"Why?" Cid asked. "Can't you just shut off the valve?"
"Yeah, it's easy to shut off the reactor's pipe valves," Reeve explained. "But the reactor made a path for the energy to escape from below. Once you open that, it'll be impossible to close it until everything blasts out... and we can't try to stop the energy from gushing out..."
"An explosion!" Barret exclaimed.
The cat nodded quickly. "This blast'll be way stronger than when the number 1 reactor blew up!"
Barret turned away and cursed. "Forget about that," Reeve told him. "The cannon! We've got to get to Midgar! That's the first thing!"
"Must stop Hojo... first," Cloud muttered. "Sephiroth will have to wait again."
"Jus' wait'll I get my hands on that scrawny little #$&%," Barret growled. "You think we can get in there, Cloud?"
Cloud scratched his head. "Of course. We have to. If we don't, Midgar's..."
Cait Sith had fallen silent again, apparently as Reeve addressed Scarlet and Heidegger back in Midgar, and Kit watched him in disbelief. Reeve, of all people. She'd been suspicious of Reeve, all this time.
"Cloud, everybody! Sorry..." the cat murmured suddenly. "But! But you'll come, won't you?"
Cloud nodded, as did the rest of the team. "I know," he said simply.
"Hey!" Cid shouted to his student at the helm. "I'm leaving the ship in your hands! I'm heading for Midgar!" The young man nodded and smoothly changed course, turning to head east once again.
As Cloud and the others planned, Cait Sith bounced away from the group, off the deck and out into the hallway, then stopped, head bowed. Kit followed him, thinking. All this time, it had been Reeve feeding the Shinra information.
And yet, Cid and Barret had told her how Cait Sith had helped free Tifa from a painful death in the gas chamber. He said he'd gone and told Aeris's mother of her death. That was the Reeve Kit had thought she'd glimpsed before, when she'd talked to him during her time in Shinra: a man who loved his work, because it allowed him to do the unfortunate citizens of Midgar some good.
Apparently, he had more layers to him than she'd thought.
"Reeve!" Kit called to him, going to the moogle's side. "I'm sorry I was so hard on you before. I thought you, well... you know... I should have realized..." Her voice trailed off, as she thought about it. "No, actually I shouldn't have. I expected it would be someone from Tech Division, and certainly I never thought you, of all people, would be the one to come up with such a..." She trailed off again, searching for the right word.
"Weird?" the cat suggested helpfully, turning to look at her. Once again, Reeve was using his usual voice rather than the more jovial voice of Cait Sith. "Lamebrained? Absurd?" He shook his head with a chuckle. "All true, I'm afraid."
"It's just that... well, when we met, at those parties, we actually talked," Kit explained. "You seemed like the most normal person that worked for Shinra. You seemed... nice."
"Thanks a bundle," Reeve said dryly. "Anyway, wouldn't being normal be abnormal if I were working for Shinra? Everyone's got their little quirks. Take yourself for instance. You didn't seem to be the kind of person who'd go running off with a madman you were supposed to kill. In fact, that possibility never even crossed Heidegger's mind. When old man Shinra was killed, and you disappeared, he declared you dead."
"Yeah... so I heard." Mara's broad smile came to mind, and Kit shoved the memory back down. "Killed by Sephiroth."
The moogle shuffled off to the edge of the platform. "Yeah. They held a nice memorial service, even. By they, I mean the other SOLDIERs. Shinra's idea of a memorial service is bothering to tell the family."
Kit joined him at the railing, and looked down to the gears grinding away below. "Nice to know that Shinra cares," she said bitterly.
The cat turned to look up at her, then glanced away. "I did. We had some nice talks, you and I. When they said you were dead, it... sorta got me down. I was shocked to find you alive. But it was a good kind of shock."
Kit smiled slightly at him. "Thanks..." She turned back to the machinery, watching the gears grinding together as they flew back to Midgar at top speed. "Of course, you went right ahead and told Rufus I was still alive, I assume."
The cat heaved a heavy sigh. "I didn't want to," he said. "You have to understand my position, Kit. If I didn't tell them, and they found out some other way, they'd know I was keeping something back. Then... I'd be in big trouble. As if I'm not now, anyway."
"I wish I'd known it was you," she admitted. "I didn't trust Cait Sith, even after I heard what he'd done for Tifa and Cid, but I knew you could be trusted."
The cat shook its head vigorously. "The fact I'm doing this at all proves I can't."
"No, not really. I thought I knew you... that you cared about people far more than Shinra." She rested her elbows on the railing, thinking. "I wonder if they told my family I was dead too," she murmured. "And when."
"Hmm. Couldn't say for certain," Reeve said. "I didn't know you had one."
"I don't know myself," Kit muttered. "Being brainwashed is no picnic."
The cat looked at her in surprise. "What?"
"Oh, you didn't know?" Kit was genuinely surprised. "You're an executive there at Shinra, so I assumed you knew what they did."
The cat's head shook vigorously. "No, I don't... you mean Shinra brainwashed you?"
"Yeah. That's what I think, anyway. And what Sephiroth thinks. It's hard to know for sure, though, having no memory of events previous to the last four years."
Reeve sighed. "I didn't know, I swear it. But I'll tell you this much." The moogle swiveled so that the cat could look directly at her. "I did know they were going to drop the plate on Sector 7. I know... lots of horrible things they've done."
"Then why did you stay with them?" Kit was mystified. "I can hear it in your voice, you hate them like the rest of us do. Why stay with Shinra, when you know they're wrong?"
"If I quit Shinra," Reeve continued in a low voice, "it would make no difference. They'd hire someone new to my position, and go on with their dirty work. This way, I keep my job. I am in... well, was in," he amended reluctantly, "a position to help the citizens of Midgar. Old man Shinra never listened to me, of course, and Rufus... fah! He never listens to anyone. Except that &!%@# Scarlet. But at least I could try, rather than sitting back and watching them screw over the people, and the planet. And if all else failed... which it did... I'd have an insider's knowledge. If I'd quit Shinra, we wouldn't know that right now Hojo's messing with the cannon."
"Fair enough," Kit admitted. "But... you did kidnap Marlene, right?"
"No!" The cat shook its head emphatically. "I wouldn't threaten a kid, especially not such a sweet little thing as Marlene. That was Heidegger's idea. He had Tseng do that, and then presented her to me, as 'incentive'. He knew I didn't like this idea in the first place, using Cait Sith as a spy, so I wonder if he meant incentive for Cloud to allow me to travel with him, or incentive for me to do as he said." He heaved a heavy sigh, and shook his head sadly. "Much good it did me to follow his orders."
"Reeve... What's happened at Shinra? Why can't you do anything there?"
"I'm under guard," he said bitterly. "Heidegger called some goons in - yes, I called you goons," he said suddenly. There was a loud crack, and the cat winced.
"What was that?" Kit asked, worried.
"Nothing," he replied. "Just one of the guards reminding me who's in charge: his boss. Now that Rufus is dead, it's every man - or &!%@# in Scarlet's case - for themself. And Heidegger's in charge of most of them."
Kit sighed. "Should we not be talking?"
"It makes no difference now."
"Oh..." Kit looked out over the railing. The gears below were turning in the engine, as were the thoughts in her head. Circles and circles... "Reeve, what you said to Barret earlier-"
"Yeah, I guess maybe it was harsh," he cut her off. "But it was true. That reactor explosion killed several people, and those people were just like us. They had a job to do and they were doing it. They weren't responsible for what happened as a result."
"I know that, I know you were right," Kit said quickly. "Barret knows it too, I'll bet. Thing is... you were right. But the same applies to me. I killed so many people during my time at SOLDIER, and I don't even know who they were, or why they died. They died at my hands because Shinra didn't like them. I'm just like Barret."
The cat looked up at her sympathetically. "Or you're just like the people who died in the explosions," he pointed out with a little shrug. "You had a job to do, and you did it."
"But my job was to kill people!" she protested.
"Well, look at it this way," Reeve said. "Did you realize at the time it was wrong?"
"I was brainwashed, I never realized any-"
"Neither did the people that worked in the reactors realize they were slowly destroying the planet," Reeve interrupted. "Shinra never mentioned that part of their job to them. They kept them in the dark, just as they kept you in the dark, as their pawns. Just as Barret realized those people weren't responsible for the result of their actions, you should realize you're not responsible for the result of your own."
Kit then shook her head with a sigh. "What you're saying makes sense, but I find it hard to believe that these questions I have could be answered so easily," she muttered.
"Hah!" the cat exclaimed, suddenly speaking in Cait Sith's high voice again. "You just want to feel responsible for something."
Kit looked at him in surprise, thinking about it. "You could be right," she admitted. "Right now I certainly don't have any responsibilities to anyone or anything, and I can't remember having any other, so it would be logical to cling to the hope that something I did really was my own responsibility, my own decision, even if it was a bad thing."
The stuffed cat grinned up at her. "Told you. And I'm not even a doctor like you."
Kit rolled her eyes. "Don't get too smug. You're acting like a real cat," she said, grinning back for a second. The relief of that conclusion lasted only a moment, until another disturbing thing came to mind. "Then... I really don't have any responsibility at all. Not to anyone, not to anything." The thought suddenly frightened her. "I could do anything at all... but I don't know what I should do."
"Not true," the cat admonished her. "You do have one responsibility. Probably the most important responsibility of all."
"Hmm? You mean Sephiroth?"
"Not quite," he chuckled. "You may not be showing it yet, but you can't have forgotten."
"Oh... yes." She smiled sadly. "My son. Of course there's that responsibility, but how am I supposed to know what's the best thing to do for him? On the one hand, for his safety's sake, I probably shouldn't be out fighting battles while I'm pregnant - I could be hurt, and him with me. But on the other hand, I have to protect the planet, so he has a life to be born into."
"Then don't fight battles. Leave that to us," the cat suggested.
"Sorry, but this is my child I'm fighting to protect," she replied. "No offense, but... I don't trust anyone else to do it. Not even AVALANCHE."
"So you're willing to risk your life, and his, by fighting?" Reeve inquired. "Even if it goes as far as fighting his father?"
Kit turned away from him. She didn't want to think about that at all, so instead she forced her mind to another subject - what they'd do when they reached Midgar. Of course, that brought to mind something else disturbing. "Reeve, I have a really bad feeling about this thing with Hojo."
"Yeah?" The cat turned to her quizzically. "Why's that?"
"I saw him in Costa Del Sol a few weeks ago, when I left Mideel. He..." Kit couldn't bring herself to explain to Reeve about Mara. "He's done so many horrible things, I shot him. Not just shot him - I shot him many, many times. I saw every bullet hit him, and I saw his body bleeding on the ground when I left," she told him. "He shouldn't have survived that, it's impossible."
"Hmm..." The cat scratched his chin thoughtfully, as the moogle shuffled its feet. "And a SOLDIER would know a fatal wound as well as anyone. But maybe, as you're remembering more of your old self, you're forgetting what you learned in SOLDIER? Maybe you just misjudged."
Kit would have liked to believe that, but she couldn't. "I guess it's possible, but I don't think so."
"It's okay," he assured her. "Cloud and the others will handle this, no problem. Pretty soon, this will all be over."
Kit wasn't convinced, but she forced herself to nod in agreement. Even so, the eerie feeling grew stronger and stronger as they approached Midgar.
To Chapter FortyThree. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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