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Chapter FortyThree The lights in the gigantic city were coming back on as the Highwind approached, flickering faintly through the haze of smog that made it seem perpetually night. After having been away for so long, the ever-present smell of the Mako reactor outputs and the grimy feel of the air made Kit grimace, though she'd never even noticed it during the years she'd lived there. It seemed exceptionally perverse to her now, knowing what it was - the leftover residue of spirit energy that had been stolen away for personal gain. Something so pure should not have become so distasteful. Hopefully it wasn't tainted enough to harm her child.
When they were almost over one of the reactors, Kit left the deck and went back down to the bridge, to see what the plan was. "There'll be no way we could slip into the slums," Barret was saying.
"Looks like all transportation from the slums is cut off..." Tifa agreed.
"Hey, hey, whaddya think we have Highwind for?" Cid cut in. "Where are we now?"
Barret looked at him curiously. "Huh? Where are we...?"
"If land's no go... We'll go by air!" Cid declared proudly.
The others glanced at Cloud, and he nodded decisively. "Okay then - we'll parachute into Midgar."
At Cid's instruction, the nine of them headed for the lockers just below the deck. As she put the straps of one of the parachutes over her shoulder and began buckling the harness together, Kit again felt a strange premonition; something down there was not right. In fact...
She paused in the midst of tightening the shoulder straps. She shouldn't have been surprised, but she still was - Jenova was down there with Hojo. Or at least something made with Jenova, and far more powerful than the half-conscious clones they'd encountered in Nibelheim or even Lucrecia, if she could tell while still on board the Highwind.
Tifa noticed her pause, and smiled encouragingly at her. "Are you sure you want to do this, in your condition and all?" she asked as she buckled the latches on her own parachute.
Kit thought a moment, then nodded. "I can't just let him go, not after all he's done. This time I'll make sure he's good and dead." She yanked at the straps of her chute absently, accidentally pulling them too tight. "Despite my 'condition', as you put it, I'm feeling perfectly fine, and there's nothing to stop me from doing what I've been trained to do."
Tifa turned to look at her again. "Is everything all right?" she asked. "You seem a little different somehow... more anxious."
Kit shook her head. So maybe she was a little unnerved, so what? This was a fight like any other she'd been in in the past. Well, almost... and they should know what they were heading into. "Something's down there," she told Tifa. "Something not unlike the Sephiroth clones... it's got Jenova blood. I can sense it, and I have to believe it can sense me. And probably Cloud as well. And that means Hojo probably knows we're coming."
Tifa shrugged. "So what's he going to do about it, do you think? I'm sure he knew that someone would try to stop him, it doesn't really make much of a difference whether he knows it's us or not."
"That's not what I'm saying," Kit told her. "I'm saying Hojo has some kind of creature down there with Jenova cells. It's more strongly in tune with Jenova than anything or anyone I've encountered in my time with AVALANCHE except for Sephiroth himself. It's probably serving as his bodyguard."
Tifa was beginning to look a little uneasy as well. "If that's the case, then yes, we'll have a tough fight on our hands. But Cloud and Barret and Yuffie took out that Weapon, and I doubt there's anything else on this planet more powerful than the Weapons..."
"True," Kit agreed, "but remember, they didn't finish off the Weapon either. Shinra's Mako cannon did that, and Weapon still managed to destroy a good deal of their city in retaliation. Even if whatever's down there is only half as powerful..."
The nervous look on Tifa's face made Kit stop. "Tifa, I'm not saying that we can't beat it. I'm just saying that this may be a lot tougher than it looks."
"What is it?" Cloud asked, making his way over to the two of them. His parachute was already in place, and the harness buckled together "Is something going on?"
"Not yet," Kit muttered. "Cloud, can you feel it?"
He paused, narrowing his eyes in thought. After a moment, they widened again. "Jenova..."
"It's powerful," Kit told him. "Not as much so as Sephiroth, but I'd bet it's his second strongest experiment."
Cloud's face didn't change in the slightest, though his voice was tense when he spoke. "It doesn't matter."
"Cloud!" Tifa exclaimed. "We can't just rush in unprepared for something like that! Shouldn't we have a plan or something?"
"Same plan as always," he said flatly. "Go down there, fight as hard as we have to, and stop Hojo. It doesn't matter if it's a thousand Shinra guards or Jenova herself - Hojo has to be stopped."
"Spike's right," Barret cut in. "If we don't stop the cannon, who will? Who's gonna save the planet? Me, I figure it'd be great if Jenova and Hojo were together down there. Take 'em both out at once."
"It'll be a good warmup for when we go after Sephiroth, anyway," Cid added. Suddenly he cursed loudly, turning to Yuffie. "What are you #$&%ing poking me for?" Yuffie shrugged casually in reply, her eyes darting to Kit meaningfully.
Kit sighed. "Say what you like," she muttered, finishing with the straps of her harness.
Cait Sith bounced over to her side, looking at her sympathetically. "Kit..."
"I'm fine, don't worry about it." She would be, if people didn't keep bringing it up. She still had no idea what she would do when she saw him again, but there had to be something... She'd think of something when the time came. But now was not the time.
"Right," Cloud said with a nod. "Is everybody ready? We don't have much time."
They were, and so they walked in single-file up to the deck. The Highwind manuevered just a little to get into the best position, and then began to hover. Cid nodded, and they began the jump.
For a few seconds Kit's stomach lurched as she went into the freefall, but she'd done this sort of thing in SOLDIER training years before, so the disorientation was only momentary before she remembered to flatten out, to catch as much wind resistance as possible. It was a short drop, so it would be best to slow as much as she could during the short time she had to open the parachute. A little ways below her, she saw Cloud's parachute open like a blossom, and she tugged her own cord as the others followed suit.
She hadn't actually done any of this kind of work for the last few years, so she'd forgotten that even with the parachute open, she was still falling fairly fast, and nearly stumbled as she landed on the broken, uneven pavement. A ways off to her left, she heard Yuffie's surprised exclamation as the young ninja fell, unprepared for the hard landing, and then quickly vanished beneath her parachute as it came down. Kit disconnected the lines that held her to her own, and went to help Yuffie find her way out.
"Heh, thanks," Yuffie said with a sheepish grin as Kit folded back the parachute, bringing her out into the open. "That thing smells." Taking a look around, the grin vanished. "Er... maybe it wasn't the chute. Wow..."
Kit took her first real look around as well, and was rather taken aback by the condition of Midgar. The city had always been dark, for as long as she could remember, and rather grimy - but now it looked like a war zone. Twisted metal beams littered the ground, and piles of rubble that were almost unrecognizable as houses lined what was left of the street, which was covered with chunks of concrete and steel. Looking up, Kit saw that a large part of the plate had been blasted apart right above where they were standing, presumably by Weapon's attack. The Shinra building, clearly visible through the gaping hole, looked... crooked somehow. But she could still see the gleam of lights off the long barrel of the Sister Ray, sticking out from behind the structure, and that reminded her of what they had to do.
The sound of gravel crunching caused Kit and Yuffie to turn, as Cait Sith came bouncing along - and then tripped over one of the metal beams, sending the moogle sprawling out face first. "Oops," the cat mumbled, shaking its head as the moogle struggled to get upright. "Er, we're meeting over in that alley, it's dangerous out here. Heidegger knows we're coming. So we're going to go below ground, by way of the subway."
"Like it doesn't smell gross enough up here above ground," Yuffie commented, heading for the alley the cat had indicated, and Cait bounced away more cautiously to find the others.
Barret, Cid, and Red were already there when Kit and Yuffie arrived, and Cait returned with Cloud, Tifa, and Vincent almost immediately. He danced around restlessly, indicating a hatch on the ground. "This is where we go in," he said, pulling the hatch open. "Please! Hurry and come to the Mako Cannon!" Cloud didn't waste a moment, and climbed in. The rest of them followed shortly after.
The room past the hatch was huge, with long, narrow catwalks traversing the length of it, and ladders leading down. It was obvious they'd have to split up to find their way through, and so Tifa and Vincent went with Cloud. The rest of them decided it would be best to split up further yet, to cover more ground, so Yuffie and Cid went with Cait, who had a fairly good idea where they were going, while Red and Kit followed Barret, who knew the general layout of Midgar quite well.
Kit's group kept running into dead ends, since Barret's knowledge of the city and Red's sense of direction only told them where they needed to go, not which ladder or catwalk would take them there. Eventually, they found a nearly hidden ladder leading up, and took it. They emerged on an abandoned street of Sector 8, not far at all from where they'd originally gone down.
"Screw that," Barret was saying. "If Heidegger's after us, then he can come get us. I'm not wanderin' around down there for the rest of my life."
Red didn't look so certain. "Are you sure that's wise? Heidegger by himself is no problem, I suppose, but if he's got the entire Shinra military on his side..."
"It's not like they gonna send every fighter in Midgar right at us," Barret argued. "We'll take 'em as they-" His words were cut off by a tremendous crash, and the ground shuddered. "...The @#&% was that?"
Another thud caused the ground to shake, and Kit glanced anxiously up at the plate overhead. It seemed to be holding up okay despite the gaping hole in it, but then she saw something even more disturbing. The others saw it as well. "Could that be what you were sensing earlier?" Red asked her.
A huge, hulking shape was making its way around the Shinra building up on the plate, at least thirty feet tall by Kit's estimation, though it was hard to tell from so far away. She considered it for a moment, watching as it went behind the Shinra building, vanishing from sight. "I don't think so. Did you see the way it moved? I'm almost positive it's mechanical. Probably something Scarlet cooked up."
Red nodded, still looking anxious. "It's probably after us, waiting up there until we arrive."
"Which is good for us," Barret added. "If that's what he's got looking for us, no wonder we aren't seein' any troops down here. We got a clear shot from here to the plate."
"Maybe, but once we're up there, we'll have to find a way past it," Red pointed out. "And what if all his men are up there waiting?"
As the two of them discussed it, Kit grew impatient. Staring up at the Shinra building through the hole in the plate, she felt that eerie feeling growing stronger by the moment, and it was becoming difficult for her to ignore. Besides the giant mechanical monster they'd just seen, Jenova was up there, and it was calling to her. Kit wrestled with the urge to join it momentarily. Hojo's Reunion theory had explained that, so at least she knew what was happening, and she could suppress it.
But then again, maybe she should go. She had once been in SOLDIER, and she knew plenty of sneaky routes to get where she needed to go. If her ID card was still active, it wouldn't be hard to get up to the plate at all. And whatever was up there, she was a part of it. It was her destiny to destroy it.
That thought made her rethink the idea; the word "destiny" brought to mind uncomfortable thoughts of Sephiroth. He couldn't help but be overpowered by the manipulations of Jenova, and he kept saying what he was doing was his destiny... it could be just one of Jenova's favorite words. But Kit had resisted her before, and if she could pull back control over her own body after surrendering it willingly, she shouldn't have any trouble with whatever was up there. No, she was positive; it wasn't simply Jenova's will that she go up there, but also her own wish to destroy that creature, and eradicate its influence from all the world. Not to mention Hojo himself. She couldn't bring back the past, but ending his experiments would be one step closer to satisfaction.
She turned back to Barret, who looked away from Red grimly at her approach. "I can't just stand around here," she told him. "Not while Hojo's still alive. I can't let him mess up anyone else's life."
He peered at her, looking curious. "So? What are you gonna do about it?"
"I can get up there, if I go alone," she explained. "I won't be taking the back way, like Cloud and the others did, but I think I can fend for myself just fine."
"What? Kit, you can't be serious," Red argued. "We're a team. One of our parties will make it up there, and take care of everything. If you go up there by yourself, you could get yourself killed."
"Yeah, you'd be walkin' right into the enemy's forces," Barret agreed. "It's suicide! You wanna go out like that?"
"I've got ways to get around that," Kit said. If those strange Jenova powers of her activated again, at least. "I just... I can't be down here, knowing he's up there. I'll meet you all back down here later," she finished in a rush. Every second found her growing more tense, more impatient.
"Hey! You can't-" Barret began. Without waiting for him to finish, Kit took off running towards the ruined Shinra building which loomed above the city. The area below the main pillar was a mess, full of rubble, broken cables, and shards of glass, but Kit easily found the half-hidden alleyway that led to one of Shinra's private elevators, small enough that only one person could fit in at a time - and for anyone larger than Kit, it would have been a tight fit at that. Nearby was the keypad to enter the code that would unlock the doors. It still worked, and she stepped inside.
A red light came on, indicating that an ID check was taking place, and Kit tried to refrain from holding her breath. She still had her ID card in one of the packs at her belt, but from what Reeve had told her, they honestly had believed her dead. Had they deleted her personal profile from the records, she wondered? After a few agonizingly long seconds, the red light winked off and the elevator began to rise. Kit let herself breathe a sigh of relief.
The slow ascent of the elevator left her more time than she would have liked to ponder exactly what was up there. Who knew what sick projects Hojo had worked on besides herself and Sephiroth, Vincent, the creatures they'd found in the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim? Whatever was up there, it was too powerful to be a random experiment, which meant it was something he'd probably spent some time on. Or someone...
The elevator hummed to a stop, and Kit drew her gun from the holster. She'd be walking straight out onto Shinra property, and there could be a dozen SOLDIERs waiting for her.
However, surprisingly enough, there was no one in sight when the doors slid open. Taking a quick peek to both sides to make certain, she frowned. It was convenient that no one was around, yes, but it was also unusual. Finally deciding it was safe enough, she stepped outside and glanced up at the building, and gasped.
Not a single window remained intact in all the buildings' seventy stories. On the upper levels, some floors had come crashing down into the space of the floors below when those had been partially blasted away by Weapon's attack. The entire west side was shattered, and the top few stories didn't even exist anymore. The view from down in the slums hadn't prepared her for such a sight as all this. And somewhere in that mess was Reeve, Kit remembered. It was bizarre to think about, when she'd just spoken to him on the streets below.
And somewhere up there was Hojo, plus whatever Jenova-spawn he'd created this time.
To Chapter FortyFour. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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