The groups' PHS, which had ended up in Shera's pocket, rang loudly, jerking Shera and Nanaki out of their shocked silence.
"He-hello?!," she stuttered.
"Shera, it's me, Reeve!"
"Reeve! You're okay! But Cait Sith . . . "
"I know; somehow the Mako disrupted my connection." He was silent for a minute as he thought, and then he continued. "You see, the reason I'm able to control Cait is because I've been specially treated with Mako . . . basically, it's as if I have a powerful Manipulate materia somehow connected to my brain, and the moogle has been similarly treated to allow me to find it and establish a connection. I should have guessed that so much Mako might interfere with that connection, but I suppose I've gotten a little too used to being invincible." Shera could hear him give a short, self-mocking laugh.
"Well, that makes sense," Shera replied thoughtfully. "You did give us a bit of a scare, though!"
"Heh heh, sorry about that!"
"Anyway," she continued, "what should we do now?"
"Well, I could probably round up some anti-radiation suits from here, but it won't be easy. Most of them were in the old Shinra buildings, I think. It could take a few days to search through the rubble."
"We can't wait that long!," Shera cried desperately, "We don't know how long we can hold off the Weapons!" Suddenly, Red, stood up, alert, and sniffed the air. Shera put her hand over the PHS and looked down at him. "What is it, Nanaki?"
"The . . . Lifestream is moving. I'm not sure what it means -- it feels different from when the Weapons appeared, but . . . " He shook his mane. "We should hurry." Shera turned back to the phone.
"Reeve, isn't there anything else we could do?"
"I believe I can help you," a soft, melodious voice sounded behind Shera. Whirling around, she came face to face with the figure she had seen earlier, in the leaky reactor. Shera gasped.
"You! Reeve, I'll . . . call you back," she said, hanging up the phone, eyes wide in shock. "Who . . . are you?"
"I am Phiros." Shera waited for more, but the stranger was reticent.
"You . . . said you can help us? With shutting the reactor down?" Phiros nodded, and then glanced at Nanaki.
"I wish to end the Planet's suffering, just as you do."
"What do you suggest?," Shera asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.
"As you can see," Phiros began, gesturing to impossibly light blue-green eyes, "I have been treated with Mako extensively, and therefore can tolerate it more than a normal . . . human. If you tell me what to do, I can go down there and shut off the reactor." A gentle smile, soft as rose petals, danced across Phiros' pale features, and Shera relaxed a little bit.
"Is . . . is that what you were trying to do before? In the reactor where I saw you?" Pausing for a moment, pale face half-turned away from her, the white-clad figure answered,
"Yes. My feeble efforts only succeeded in damaging the Mako processing equipment. The extracting equipment just pumped more and more through the hole, until, suddenly, it stopped. I assume that was you?" Shera felt pierced by those innocent-looking, yet intense eyes, and looked away, blushing uncharacteristically.
"Yes -- we . . . have been shutting them down from the computer consoles, but this one has a loose connection somewhere and needs to be shut down manually." Recovering a little, Shera explained where the room was, and what sort of equipment would be there, and what handles and buttons to look for.
"I can do that," Phiros said simply.
"There is one other thing," Red XIII interrupted suddenly, "If you would toss that stuffed Moogle out here before you go, we'd be very grateful." With an unsurprised nod, Phiros turned to enter the De-contamination room. Before the door would open, however, the far door where Cait Sith lay shut automatically, and a faint hiss sounded as the Mako-infected air was extracted, and fresh air brought in. Then the first door opened, and Phiros entered confidently, picked up the moogle with ease, and deposited him on the floor of the hallway. Tossing white-blond pony tail over a bony shoulder, the stranger reentered the room, opened the second door, and began descending into the reactor.
"I'm back!," Cait Sith exclaimed, straightening the crown on the little cat's head. "So, did I miss anything?"
Vincent had been thinking, between blasts of his weapon, the Death Penalty. He had been thinking for at least an hour, along with Reno and Yuffie, and so far they hadn't come up with any feasible way to defeat Amethyst Weapon. The sun was beginning to set, and the purple Weapon silhouetted against the rosy-golden sky looked almost poetic. Until the Weapon lunged forward and almost clawed Vincent's good arm off.
They had worn it down some with their physical attacks, and some of the weak magic that they had left. But it had worn them down, too -- Reno's jacket was missing half its left arm, and Vincent's cloak was torn in several places, the blood from gashes in his back drying and forming patches of a sort that blended disturbingly well with the cloak's red fabric. Half-heartedly, he called up his Death magic against the creature, even though it seemed unlikely to work. When the attack missed, Yuffie shouted out,
"What we need is some way to link together a whole bunch of cool materia! Like that Destruct one you just used, Ultima, and Deathblow! That would take care of the Weapon!" Reno laughed, a little too loudly.
"You and your materia." Without thinking, Vincent replied to her suggestion.
"We can't do that -- linking together more than two materia at a time is too much for the human mind to handle." As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. They don't need to know about that!
"What?!," Yuffie exclaimed, looking at him in disbelief, "You mean it's possible?!"
"No, forget I said anything," he stated firmly, but it was too late.
"Hold on, Vince. Yuffie comes up with an idea that sounds powerful enough to take this thing out, and you tell us to forget about it? What do you know, old man?!" Vincent sighed. Not only was it difficult thinking back to his days at the Shinra mansion, as this required him to do, but he knew that if he told them, they would want to try it, regardless of the consequences.
"Tell us, tell us!," Yuffie demanded, as she threw her giant shuriken to keep the Weapon at bay.
"It -- linking three or more materia together -- was tried before. It was one of the few experiments Dr. Gast and Hojo and Lucrecia worked together on. After those experiments, though, even Hojo wanted nothing more to do with the project."
"What happened?," Reno asked, lightning arcing from his rod to engulf the Weapon.
"They lost their souls."
"What?!"
"The power was too much -- the Planet absorbed their consciousnesses through the materia into the Lifestream. All those who tried to wield it became like Cloud was, in Mideel . . . " Vincent shook his head sadly, remembering. "One subject, one of the most tragic, still roams the Shinra mansion, nearly split in two from the force of it. That's when Dr. Gast decided to stick to studying the Ancients."
"Whoa." Yuffie was duly impressed, and for a moment she looked thoughtful, a strange expression for her normally hyper face. "But -- hmmm -- well, there's just gotta be some way to do it. I mean, think about how cool that would be!!"
"I don't know," Reno wondered, sounding almost serious, "That's a pretty big risk to take."
"But . . . what if we used it together? You know, we could all, like, call on the materia at the same time, and split it up between us . . . " She trailed off, and jumped out of the way as the Weapon tried to charge her. The three retreated a little ways to give them more time to think while the Weapon approached, its progress slowed by the myriad of holes in its wings and tail.
"I guess that's a dumb idea, huh," Yuffie finally ventured, after a long pause.
"Actually," Vincent replied, "I haven't thought of anything wrong with it, yet. If we really could simultaneously invoke the materia, it should diffuse the effect among the three of us. And, if we couldn't do it at the same time, most likely nothing would happen instead of the gruesome effects we saw in the labs. Of course, 'most likely' isn't usually the type of probability you want when you're talking about your own soul."
"Sounds like it could work," Reno added noncomittally. Yuffie jumped in the air with a grin.
"Wahoo! What are we waiting for, then?! Here, Vincent, since you know how to do it, you can work on doing whatever it is you need to do with the materia while Reno and I keep this thing off your back."
"All right, but . . . "
"But what?! C'mon, Vinny, we gotta try it! For the Planet! For Lu- for, ah, lots of reasons!" Vincent just looked at her for a moment, but she avoided his gaze, gazing down at her feet nervously. Suddenly, Reno broke in.
"Even if something does go wrong -- and I don't think anything will -- it'd be worth it to save that miserable city." He jerked his thumb at Midgar. "Besides," he said with a mocking grin, imitating Yuffie's voice, "it sounds really cool."
"Yeah! That's the spirit!" Vincent wondered why they were so eager to do this, so confident it would work. Were they that ignorant of the risks? No, he had explained that part pretty well, he thought. Were they that ready to die? They certainly didn't look like they expected to be dying. He didn't have time to think about it then, but later he would also wonder why he went along with the plan, knowing full well the consequences of similar previous experiments. He could only remember feeling at ease with the decision.
"Give me your weapons," he requested suddenly.
"What?! Why? How am I supposed to keep that thing away from you without my Conformer?!"
"I need their power," Vincent explained, "I can't just use the Outsider, because three linked slots would draw more power from the weapon than it has. Basically, for every extra slot you want to link in, you need five empty slots for it to overflow into. Plus, I don't think it would work if we all tried to use one person's weapon - it would be too distracting to try to find the materia and invoke it from an unfamiliar source."
"Hmph. All right, fine!" Glancing quickly at the approaching Weapon, she brought out her second-favorite weapon, Oritsuru. Its graceful, crane-like form belied the sharpness of its edges and its deadly accuracy. She dumped all the materia out of her Conformer except Ultima, and slapped them into the crane's small slots. Reno tossed his night-stick, materia and all, at Vincent, and brought out his pistol once more.
"I want that back," he demanded, more than requested.
"I can make no promises," Vincent replied truthfully, and Reno nodded with a grimace. Then he trotted off to join Yuffie a few meters ahead. Vincent could hear the sounds of their battle as he looked down at the three weapons. Now that they were actually before him, he wondered how he was supposed to connect three slots correctly. For the three warriors to really be able to use the materia together, there would have to be one slot from each weapon connected to a slot in each of the other two weapons. Using the Conformer as a base, he set the Death Penalty and Reno's night-stick on top of it, forming a sort of eight-pointed star.
Yes, that should work. These three center slots here . . .
Using the night-stick and a lightning materia as an arc welder, and keeping his metal claw carefully out of its way, Vincent set to work.
Elena watched in horror as first Cid, then Barret fell beneath Onyx Weapon. She continued shooting, reflexively, face pale and tears streaming unnoticed down her cheeks. Her bullets had about as much effect as feathers, but she didn't know what else to do. She tried tossing some potions down to Cid, but they either missed him, or he was too far gone for it to do anything. Desperately, she called upon her Restore materia to heal all of them, but again she could see no effect.
The beast, however, having downed two foes, now looked up to see who dared to fling objects down below. Catching sight of her, it snarled and leaped into the air, missing the airship by several meters, but coming frighteningly close. With a yelp, Elena leapt back. She was alone. How could she possibly prevail against the monster when both Cid and Barret had failed?
Still, she thought, some of her Turk determination returning to her, I have to try! Approaching the side once again, she tried to stop her hands from shaking as she searched for some way to gain an advantage over this monster. She could no longer throw items down to Barret and Cid; the airship had seemingly drifted away from them, as if it was taunting the Weapon away from the fallen warriors.
Looking down at the creature, she tried to calm the frenzied fear that rose up in her throat like bile when she saw it looking back. Its red eyes glowed like embers amidst charred black flesh, and for a moment she thought she would catch fire just looking at them.
The eyes.
Using the railing to steady her gun arm on the bottom, and her left hand to steady it on top and sides, she carefully took aim at the creature's right eye.
She missed.
Gritting her teeth, she took aim again, when, suddenly she remembered Rude's advice, picturing his taciturn lecture in her mind. Stay calm, Elena. Gather yourself calmly, and then put all of yourself into your fighting, like stuffing a pillow into its case. She loosened her death-grip on the gun a little, and forced her muscles to relax. Taking a few deep breaths, her heart rate began to slow down, and she even managed a semi-peaceful smile.
Rude . . .
Leveling the gun, concentrating all of her life energy into that single bullet, she pulled the trigger, following the bullet in her mind with calm determination.
This time, her aim was true, and the creature roared and stumbled a bit. It leapt up at the airship again, but without the depth perception provided by two eyes, it fell far short. Its bloody socket stared at her accusingly, and Elena decided to try to take out its other eye as well. As if reading her thoughts, it kept its good eye shielded by its body, making it impossible for her to get a clear shot. She couldn't damage any other part of its body with her puny bullets, though, so she merely waited. She had some time; it couldn't reach her up here.
Just then, though, she caught movement back in the clearing where they had first fought. Squinting against the late afternoon sun, she could just barely make out that it was . . . Cid! She felt unreasonably happy to know that she was no longer alone, but her joy soon turned to dread as the beast followed her gaze and also noticed the injured man. Snarling with renewed vigor, Onyx Weapon galloped back to the clearing, seeking easier prey. Elena watched in horror as Cid, barely able to lift his spear, readied himself to fight the beast again.
"No!," she cried out, feeling helpless from her high vantage point. As if in response to her cry, the airship lurched forward toward the Weapon, and then, with a deafening boom let off a volley of missiles from four different turrets. Shooting through the air almost faster than sight, every missile found the beast as its target, and when they exploded, all of Onyx Weapon that remained was a few large chunks of machine-like flesh scattered throughout the clearing.
The sheer abruptness of the attack seemed unreal. Elena's brain stepped through the scene several times before she allowed herself to really admit that the Weapon was gone. She heard footsteps on the deck behind her.
"Captain! Are you all right?," the Highwind crewman shouted worriedly.
"All right?! Of course I'm not all right! Some &^$#@ idiot driving my ship nearly blasted me and my friend here to bits!," Cid called back, sounding angry not that they had saved him, but that they had had to save him. Barret limped out of the trees behind him, and Cid continued, "Didn't I tell you to stay out of this?!" The crewman, whom Elena thought she recognized as the navigator just laughed.
"You're welcome, captain!"
Vincent thought that it was finished. It certainly didn't look pretty, with the Death Penalty welded to the Conformer off to one side so that the slots would line up correctly, and Reno's nightstick haphazardly wedged into the Death Penalty's trigger guard. But three slots, one from each Weapon, were now all interconnected, and that's what mattered. He had even managed to only electrocute himself once, when his makeshift welder had arced to his metal claw.
Carefully, he placed the three materia that would hopefully combine to defeat Amethyst Weapon -- Ultima in the Conformer, Destruct in the Death Penalty, and Deathblow in Reno's nightstick. Vincent looked up to see Yuffie running around the Weapon, attacking it from all directions, and Reno shooting it listlessly. When Reno glanced over in his direction, Vincent held up the makeshift weapon. Reno nodded, some excitement entering into his face, and he turned and shouted,
"Yuffie! If you're done playing with your little Weapon friend, Vincent's ready for us!"
"Roger!," she shouted, ducking the Weapon's beak stab to run over and join them. Onyx Weapon followed, but slowly. "OK, so how do we do this?"
"Each person grabs hold of their weapon. When I count to three, call forth the power of your materia against the monster. But . . ."
"But what?! That sounds easy enough!," Yuffie protested.
"But we can't be calling three separate materia from three separate weapons as three separate people. We have to be as one person, using one weapon, to call forth the combined powers of three materia. Kind of like . . ," Vincent searched for a parallel both would understand, "Kind of like how you join the magic materia with the All materia in your mind when you want to use them together. We need to be like that." Vincent struggled a little to explain exactly what they needed to do -- and almost laughed at the irony of it. Who kept themselves more at a distance from everyone than these three? Yuffie, with her selfish cheerfulness that never allowed any true emotion; Reno, with his bad-boy, seemingly uncaring attitude; and the aloof, privately brooding Vincent. Yet they had no one else.
"Huh," Reno sighed skeptically, "Sure, let's do it -- it'll beat whacking on that thing all night." Yuffie nodded enthusiastically.
"This is going to be so cool! I wish someone were here to take a picture!" But Vincent felt her hand tremble a little as she took hold of the Conformer on the bottom. Vincent gripped the Death Penalty a little tighter, as if afraid the contraption would fall apart, and Reno casually took hold of his night-stick, but his eyes were tinged with worry.
"One," Vincent began, and the Weapon, infuriated at how the warriors seemingly ignored it, hopped closer.
"Two." The bird-like creature shrieked and crouched for an attack.
"Three."
Sending his life energy through the weapon and into the Destruct magic, he could feel Reno and Yuffie next to him, both physically and as the materia they were calling forth. He struggled to join with them, to . . . embrace and be one with their alien energies. Slowly, their wills meshed together, all focused on the destruction of the nemesis of the people of the Planet. At that moment, Amethyst Weapon leapt into the air, intent on pouncing upon the three at once, but it was interrupted as a gigantic white light, like the opposite of a shadow, emerged from the ground beneath the Weapon and surrounded the whole area.
It reminded Vincent of the Lifestream; he kept thinking he saw people flowing through it out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked directly at them, the apparitions were gone. The light beamed toward the Weapon and engulfed it so completely that Vincent could no longer see it. He instinctively closed his eyes at the searing brightness that emanated from the combined weapons, but, after a moment, he opened them.
All around, like a vast ocean, was whiteness. Looking down, he appeared to be standing on nothing. He could see nothing, not even his own hands -- all was empty . . . or rather, blank.
I -- who am I?, he thought, and wondered how he could be thinking that without knowing the answer. He felt suspiciously at peace, not knowing, but something nagged at the back of his mind that this wasn't right. He closed his eyes -- I have eyes? -- to think, but he couldn't remember what it was he was supposed to be thinking about. It was so comfortable there, so peaceful, but still . . . something wasn't right. Opening his eyes, he saw a figure emerging from the whiteness on the right, where Yuffie should have been. Yuffie? Who's that? She wore a white lab coat over a smart business suit, and her long, chocolate brown hair flowed over her shoulder in waves from a pony tail. But the thing that struck him most were here eyes. Those bright eyes, smiling, yet full of regrets, seemed so familiar. He could not remember her name, but one thing he knew.
"I . . . love you," he said, more as a statement of fact than of emotion. His low, calm voice sounded foreign to his ears. Is that what I sound like?
"No, I loved you," he corrected himself, remembering. "Lucrecia--" She smiled, then, and the sight of tears in her eyes, of so much hurt, made him remember more, although it was painful.
"I failed you." She shook her head, still smiling that bittersweet smile of painful memories. She whispered one word -- 'Vincent' and then with a tentative wave, she was gone.
That is who I am, he remembered bitterly, A man of failures and lost opportunities. But then, where Lucrecia had disappeared, he saw Yuffie, her dark grey eyes looking past him peacefully, and he saw himself as she did: the unnecessarily morose man whose only sin was loving someone enough to let them go; the one who, though prone to be aloof and depressed, never complained or fell apart; one who stuck to friends and his Planet to the very end. Is that who I am? How can I be both?
The whiteness then absorbed Yuffie and she disappeared, leaving Vincent to contemplate his memories. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he caught movement, and turned to his left to see an older man, hunched over, dressed all in sterile white. Vincent recognized him at once, but only after a moment would he remember the name.
"Hojo?!" The figure looked up, eyes hidden behind thick, glinting glasses, and laughed silently. Vincent remembered his dual hatred for the man.
"You . . . stole from me -- love, and humanity." Flashes of agony of soul and body flashed in Vincent's mind, and Hojo muttered only one derisive word -- 'Chaos.'
And that is a part of me as well, Vincent thought, remembering the "gifts" Hojo had given him, the demons both literal and metaphorical, hating them, but unable to let them go. Or did he have a choice?
While he was contemplating these elements of himself, Hojo vanished into whiteness, still chuckling to himself. In his place Reno appeared, eyes looking faraway, but shrewd. Vincent then saw himself through Reno's eyes: a skilled ex-Turk, somehow never becoming the demon Hojo had tried to force upon him, instead using his wretched powers to heal the Planet; a trustworthy companion in battle; a man who, though detached and sometimes unsympathetic, his self-restraint never wavered. Is that how you see me? Am I really like . . . that? Reno slipped away into white emptiness as quickly as he had come, but Vincent almost didn't notice.
Slowly his mind resolved the four views of himself and he . . . remembered. The whiteness disappeared, and he found himself lying on the ground, with Reno and Yuffie close by. Amethyst Weapon was gone. Slowly, he sat up, still thinking about what he had seen. How was it possible? Lucrecia and Hojo were both dead, and yet . . . Of course. They had called upon the Planet through the materia, and the normally-dormant Lifestream had answered too. That was why all those who had tried such a task previously lost their souls. Vincent almost shuddered at how close he had come. How ironic that Hojo was one of the four to help save his sanity.
Still overflowing with thoughts and emotions, he watched Yuffie stir, and then sit up, her normally mischievous eyes pensive. They sat in silence for several minutes, until Yuffie whispered,
"That -- was the Lifestream, wasn't it?" Vincent nodded carefully, not trusting his voice to speak without emotion yet.
"I thought so."
Reno awoke too, then, and for once he didn't seem to have any witty remark for the situation. Finally he stood up and muttered,
"Let's get outta here. Place gives me the creeps."
To Be Continued . . .