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Chapter FortyEight "Oww... damn, man!"
"Barret!?"
"What...? So everyone's together again...?"
The voices swam their way into Kit's head as she regained consciousness. She was still alive, it seemed, and at least some of the others. Forcing herself to raise her aching head, she looked around. It looked like the crater still, but instead of the light of the Lifestream swirling around them, everything was dark. Everything except a bright glow coming from what looked like a huge boulder in the midst of them. It illuminated the forms of her friends as they shook off their own disorientation and looked around at each other, and at the light. She counted - they were all there. Every one of them had survived. It was incredible. Could it be she'd been right, and this was Sephiroth's mercy?
Cloud was staring at the light, bright and pure despite the oppressive darkness that seemed to almost suck it away. Kit turned to look as well, and the calm she felt as she looked upon it left no doubt as to what it was. The light could be nothing other than the Holy spell that Aeris had called.
Suddenly Kit was lifted off her feet in a flash of blinding light. The startled exclamations all around her told her that she was not alone. There was another flash of light, and Kit knew she didn't even have to look. She'd felt this energy before. But she looked up anyway, just in time to see Sephiroth step out of that glow to hover there in the midst of them all as they hung suspended around the cavern like marionettes.
"Sephiroth!" she cried, but he seemed to pay her no mind. He just stood there holding the Masamune, smiling to himself as his eyes swept over the people held in his thrall. His eyes passed over her as quickly as they did the others, and her heart sank.
So this is your ultimate answer, Kit. His voice came into her mind as clearly as if he'd spoken out loud. You did not choose me.
No, she answered his thoughts. I chose hope over despair, I chose life over death. I can't be with you when you've chosen such a violent path. Don't you see what you've become?
And what about us? his thoughts asked her. What about love?
She sobbed once, out loud. Most especially, I choose love over hate.
They killed Mother, Kit.
His thoughts were eerily calm, and he was still smiling oddly. Sephiroth, think! You're free now - think for yourself! she told him desperately. You don't have to obey her anymore...
They killed Mother!
The words hit her mind like the crack of a whip, and she winced under the sharp, painful rage that he'd loosed only for an instant, matched by another wave of the energy that slammed against them. When Kit opened her eyes again, he still wore that smirk, the rage only betrayed by the violent glint in his eyes, which were as cold to her as they would have been to a stranger.
You just watched, didn't you? You watched them kill her. How can you say you chose love, when you watched them kill my mother? His face remained cool, but his thoughts were seething with that violent rage Kit had felt a moment earlier.
Sephiroth, she's not your mother! she pleaded. She's not! Lucrecia is-
You took her away from me... now every single one of you will all die by my hand.
Kit doubted he'd even heard her words through the disorder in his mind; what she could read of his thoughts was filled only with madness and hatred. She lowered her head. I'm sorry it has to be this way. Sephiroth...
"My front legs... my hind legs... my tail's about to rip off!" she heard Red say fearfully.
Cloud just moaned. "...There... It's... there..."
"Cloud?" Tifa gasped.
"...Holy," he whispered, and the others strained to hear him. "Holy... is there... The Holy is shining... Aerith's prayer is shining..."
More bursts of energy battered them, as helpless as they were, but Cloud refused to cry out. "It's not over yet... This isn't the end yet!"
Before anyone could respond, they were all pulled toward him again, then another wave of energy sent them flying head over heels, all except Cloud, Vincent, and herself. Glancing around, Kit couldn't tell where the others had landed, or if they still lived, for that matter. It was all up to the three of them now.
"Kit - take these," Cloud said, not risking a glance at her as he pressed something into her hands. It was a handful of materia.
"You trust me with it?" she whispered to him. "I... thank you."
He nodded quickly. "Be careful... you're not fighting just for yourself, or even just for your child." Without waiting for a response, he turned and said something to Vincent as he handed him another collection of materia. Without a word, Vincent immediately began slipping the materia into the slots of his weapon and one of the enchanted armbands they wore as armor. A true professional, Kit thought as she did likewise, and Cloud took what was left. A sideways glance at Sephiroth showed her that he was watching them, perfectly aware of what they were doing. He wore an amused grin, as if inviting them to try.
Kit's left hand went to the belt compartment while the right removed the regular clip of ammo from her gun. There was no hope now, she realized, and she placed Scarlet's custom clip into the weapon with resignation, but no tears. Too much was at stake - tears blurred the vision and left her unable to see the enemy. Crying would make her lose the battle. It had been drilled into her for years, and knowing the truth about the training didn't change that fact at all.
"Sephiroth..." Vincent's voice was a low growl, filled with the pain he'd known for years over this man's real mother, the mother he denied. "We will grant you eternal sleep..."
Sephiroth ignored him, still wearing that amused grin as he looked them over. Kit couldn't stand it.
"I know now that you have to be stopped at any cost," she said out loud. "But... I do this out of love, for humanity, for the planet, and for your child. And for..."
Not so much as the flicker of an eyelash betrayed any emotion in him, and she let her head fall. Whatever the outcome of the battle was, she'd failed.
"Aerith's memories... Our memories..." Cloud murmured, staring at the light of Holy behind Sephiroth. We came... to tell you... our memories... Come, Planet!" Cloud called suddenly. "Hear our dreams... our memories... we await your answer!" He paused, and raised his sword, looking straight into Sephiroth's aquamarine eyes, glowing like his own. "And Sephiroth - to the settling of everything!"
Sephiroth finally took notice, and looked up at him. The energy holding them aloft swept them towards the place where he stood ready and waiting. As they set foot on the rocky surface of the platform, Sephiroth vanished. In his place, a monstrous form rose up out of the stone to tower over them, with wings and a spherical shape embedded in the middle of it. It was one of the most bizarre creatures Kit had ever seen... if indeed it was a creature at all. It seemed to move more like a machine than a living being. And on the head of the creature was a figure vaguely shaped like a man. Was that figure Sephiroth himself?
They had no time to wonder about it, for immediately the creature began to attack with strange, disorienting energy waves and exploding beams of light. Systematically the three of them avoided the attacks as well as they could while hammering away at the thing, aiming for every vulnerable spot. Cloud had given Kit most of the curative materia, so she ended up casting spells more often than firing at the creature herself. After what seemed like hours of fighting, Kit sensed a difference in the sphere at the creature's center. "Attack its core!" she instructed Cloud and Vincent. "It's vulnerable now - that's the way to destroy it!"
They did as she said, Vincent's gun blasting it while Cloud brought forth comets with his materia to repeatedly strike the creature. It wasn't long before the core burst, and the creature began to topple over, ruined. It had to be some kind of construct, Kit thought, or something Sephiroth had created had created in his madness from the Mako energy he was surrounded with in this place.
As the creature splintered into millions of pieces, Cloud shouted in victory, and Vincent showed his satisfaction with a smile. Then everything went black. A noise filled the air, one that Kit had heard only once before, in Bugenhagen's observatory in Cosmo Canyon... The planet was crying. The battle wasn't over yet. In fact, as a sudden silence filled her ears, almost painful in its intensity, she realized it had hardly begun.
"Cloud?" she called into the darkness. There was no answer. "Vincent? ...Sephiroth?" She couldn't see or feel anything around her, she could no longer even feel ground below her feet, and suddenly felt disoriented. Where was she?
The blackness parted suddenly, and clouds roiled around her on every side. She was standing in nothing, and then Cloud and Vincent were there with her too. Vincent took it in stride, as he did everything, but Cloud was looking around, as puzzled as Kit was.
A flutter of motion above them made them look up. Descending upon them was a twisted form, many wings unfolding as it sank slowly to hover in front of them. When it stopped, Kit could see that out of this flurry of wings sprouted the upper torso of a man, with one arm and one gigantic wing where the other should be. Halos of light surrounded his head, but when she looked through the glare, she knew the creature for what it was.
Aquamarine eyes looked back at her coldly, unafraid, just as they'd been when they looked up at where she was hidden on the fire escape. "Sephiroth," she whispered in dismay. He'd said it himself once, in the cabin near Mideel, that without her by his side he would be like an angel with one wing. And here he was, majestic and monstrous, as that one-winged angel.
Cloud and Vincent began to attack upon sight of the thing, throwing all their most powerful attacks at it, and Sephiroth took them without so much as a wince. His left hand, the one that once had gently stroked Kit's hair, blasted them with a pale blue light. Kit kept using the healing materias Cloud had handed her to heal their party. It seemed it was all she could do to keep them from getting killed, and she had no time to attack anyway, and that was a small blessing. Even though she knew he must be stopped if the planet was to survive, she wasn't sure she could bring herself to attack him outright.
Little by little, she began to sense a change in him as the fight raged on. At the beginning of the battle, he'd been cold, confident, and haughty, but now there was a perturbed feeling about him - not quite concerned, but slightly surprised, though the look in his eyes was as confident as ever. A cold smile passed over his face, and he suddenly ceased his attacks. Lifting his hand up over his head, he shouted a summon command.
"Super Nova!"
The non-place they were in disappeared, replaced by a starfield. "It's an illusion," she told herself firmly. "He can make us see anything." Her heart skipped a beat as something whisked by her - a meteor even larger than the one that threatened the planet, she thought. He did have the Black Materia, but what could he do that would be worse than just letting the first meteor fall? Kit's vantage point changed, following along after the meteor as it sped through the cosmos at what must have been an incredible speed, crashing through planets as if they were just clumps of dry dirt. "Why are you showing me this?" she muttered, puzzled. She wasn't expecting an answer, but soon she had it. The meteor was heading straight for a star which became suddenly familiar. As it plunged into the star - the planet's sun - the surface began to bubble and boil, and then exploded, sending an expanding sphere of flame out to vaporize each planet of the solar system as it touched them.
Kit watched in horror as the two inner planets were turned to ash. She remembered from Bugenhagen's planetarium that their planet was the third, it would be next.
Abruptly she was back where she had been, beside Cloud and Vincent as they faced Sephiroth. Behind the wings that held him aloft, the sun was growing larger. The heat grew intense, and huge rocks were ripped from within the planet and blown around in the energy as if they were no more than snowflakes. Vincent's calm detachment had vanished, and he stared at the approaching catastrophe with a look in his red eyes that approached madness. He wasn't the only one - Cloud had turned his head, hands covering his face as he stubbornly refused to watch the death of the planet.
Kit did watch, helpless to do anything more. "So it's over," she whispered, as the flames came close enough to engulf Sephiroth, who appeared perfectly unconcerned. "And we sacrificed all we hold dear... for nothing?" The thought made her angrier than she'd ever been in her life. "Is this your 'destiny', Sephiroth?" she shouted at him. The fire seared her skin, she could feel her flesh melting away. "Your son will never live to know the trees, the sky, the stars... anything? I hope you're happy, playing at being a god, when all you have is nothing!"
Suddenly it all vanished. There was no exploding sun charring her skin, no rocks flying through the air, just she and the others still standing in that illusionary swirling sky facing Sephiroth. Cloud was kneeling to one side of her, out of breath and terrified, and Vincent lay unconscious on the other side of him. She cast a healing spell first, targetting Cloud and herself, and he stumbled to his feet, still woozy. "It's okay," she told him quickly. "He just made us think it. It was an illusion. I should have realized..."
Cloud shook his head to clear it, and drew a long, shuddering breath. "I'm okay," he muttered, though that frenzied look was still in his eyes. He turned that look to Sephiroth, who still stared down at them coldly. "Revive Vincent," Cloud said, as he began his attack.
Kit did as Cloud suggested, quickly using her Revive and Full Cure materias. Vincent was back on his feet in seconds, and then was nearly cut down again by a blast of Sephiroth's. His body contorted in agony, as bat-like wings began to sprout from his back.
As Chaos, Kit knew Vincent could take care of himself for awhile, so she turned her attentions to Cloud. But when she looked, she saw Cloud lying senseless where he'd last stood. Kit herself was growing weak, and Vincent couldn't hold out forever, no matter what form he took. Sephiroth was just too powerful - maybe it was futile. But she couldn't give up, not for anything. After all, if she'd have given up for anything... it would have been for Sephiroth himself, she thought with painful irony.
She summoned up the strength to revive Cloud, but never got the chance. A shadow loomed over her, and she looked up just in time to see the wing, the one in place of Sephiroth's right arm, come slashing down from above, nearly severing her right arm. Her gun fell from nerveless fingers as she stared up into his eyes, which mocked her with their coldness. The pain was too great for her to stand, and for the first time she could remember, Kit screamed.
All the pain, all the fear and frustration she'd held inside poured out like a dam had been broken, and with it went something else - something like a block in her memory. Through the haze of sensation and emotion she could feel her body rising into the air in the same way Sephiroth had always been able to. Jenova's cells had been awakened within her, and she was changing without her willing it, into something more powerful than she'd thought she was. At first she tried to fight it - it was something strange and unknown - but soon she gave in and let the change take her. Energy crackled up and down every inch of her skin, and a tension built up until she could do nothing to relieve the pressure, except to simply...
Kit threw back her head, opened her arms wide, and released the energy. A shockwave burst around her, expanding outward to engulf Sephiroth in a blinding flash of light, and another followed, and another. The twisted form he had taken was knocked back and battered about by wave after wave of the sudden attack.
After the energy had expended itself, Kit came back to herself, wounds healed and kneeling in the middle of the same nothing. Sephiroth had been right - she did have powers given to her by the Jenova and Mako infusions. In her disorientation, she looked up at his distorted form in triumph... and gasped.
The body of the angel was disintegrating slowly. His aqua eyes were wide in surprise and pain as they stared at her. She could feel the agony he felt through the bond between them, the bond of Jenova. Good had triumphed, she knew it had to be this way, but he was still the man she loved, and he was dying. It seemed to take forever until he'd faded completely, and she couldn't take her eyes from his. Just before he vanished entirely, his eyes narrowed again, and she could have sworn he smiled just a little - a small, enigmatic smile that seemed almost triumphant.
In less than the blink of an eye, Kit was once more on a rocky ledge in the crater. Surprisingly enough, all the others were there as well, battered and bruised.
Beside her, Cait Sith cheerfully danced back and forth a little, though she could hear a rattle of broken machinery inside him somewhere. "Great work, everyone!" he exclaimed. "We did it! We-" His words were cut off as he dove to catch Kit, as she collapsed in exhaustion and remembered pain against the moogle. "Hey, are you okay?"
"I don't know yet," she muttered. "Give me a minute."
No one else wanted to move just yet either. The others were as exhausted as she was, though Vincent refused to give in to his obvious weariness and sit down to rest, and so Kit remained slumped against the moogle's plush fur, trying to sort out what she felt.
Cloud as well refused to relax, and was pacing at the edge of the crater's mouth. Tifa stood nearby, watching him carefully. "This was all we could do," he muttered.
"Wait!" Barret exclaimed, pushing himself to his feet. "What about Holy? What's gonna happen to the Planet?"
Cloud shook his head uncertainly. "That... I don't know. Isn't the rest up to the Planet?"
Tifa nodded in agreement. "You're right. We've done all that we could do."
Cloud looked around at the team, and gave them a vague smile. "All right, everyone. It's no use thinking about it. We'll leave all our worries here," he said, determined. "Let's go home proud."
The others rose to their feet, some with a little help from the others, and began the long walk back to the planet's surface. Kit pulled away from Cait Sith to walk alone, though he protested. She needed some time to think.
She'd expected to feel bad about Sephiroth's death, some kind of sadness or remorse, but there was nothing, save the remnants of the adrenaline high from the battle. She was still breathing hard, but suddenly she caught her breath.
"Wait!" she cried, but was cut off by a shout from Tifa, and ran with the others to see what was the matter. The girl was on a ledge just below, kneeling beside Cloud's prone body.
"He was talking to me, then... something happened, he just collapsed," she said frantically. "I don't know what's happened to him! What happened? What's wrong with him...?"
Kit knew. "Sephiroth's still alive," she said. All eyes turned to her. "I can feel his presence," she explained. "We killed the physical body, but his power was somehow great enough to allow him to go on living without a body, remember? He's still alive somewhere, and I think... I think he wanted one last shot at Cloud."
Tifa gasped, bending over Cloud's still form. "Cloud," she whispered. Barret knelt beside her, trying to comfort her.
"What can we do?" asked Red.
Kit shook her head, her heart filled with dread of either outcome of the battle that must be taking place. "I don't think we can do anything but wait."
To Chapter FortyNine. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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