The atmosphere permitted him to see not more than a few feet ahead. Sparks flickered across his face, singed against his eyelids, and sucked into his breathless mouth. If he turned his head, it would be right there.
He spotted a narrow alley to turn to, and scraped to it. A few seconds making his escape down it, and he hit a wall. Nowhere to climb. No door. Nothing to do to salvage himself but collapse on his knees against the wall and shut his eyes; to meet his end without having to see it.
The low and methodical voice hummed into his ears, piercing his burning head.
Even if the morrow is barren of promises,
Nothing shall forestall my return,
To become the dew that quenches the land.
The final verse of the poem. "Beautiful words, aren't they?" something foul whispered, as if to mock him.
His body recoiled tighter as the presence closed in around him. But it wasn't there to kill him. He was a plaything, the food to toy with, the little insect to torture. A walking instrument for some sadistic ghost.
His eyes crawled open. The alley erupted into flames in slow motion, climbing up the walls, spreading across the ground, and rising greater and brighter. It didn't immediately burn when it touched him, but he felt the air getting sucked out of him. The inferno cooked him slowly, melting him down rather than nuking him.
He heard crackling wood—screams of a condemned people—a thin blade whipping through the air, cutting through bone—a woman's cry for help—and all voices going silent, rescued from the horror by their cruel savior and their scourge. He knew exactly who it was, and what was behind him.
"Welcome back, Cloud." The words boomed in the alley, growing louder every time they echoed off the walls, rippling through the sea of fire. Over and over again, they assaulted his ears in an exponentially deafening crescendo.
He screamed over it until his broken, guttural voice shut it off. He whipped around with his sword and swung at nothing. The flames died down just a fraction—enough to see his silhouette down there. He remembered all of it.
The long black coat. The long silver hair blowing with the inferno. The crooked six-foot-long masamune. The lone black wing outstretched from his back. The wicked eyes of a viper, staring hungrily with divine purpose. The destroyer. The archangel. The reckoning.
Sephiroth. Sephiroth. Sephiroth.
Cloud breathed, "You're dead."
That glowing viper stare from his pitch black figure stabbed into his irises. They swelled and watered, unable to break from his gaze.
"You remember it just as well as I. But you need not be an enemy to what is coming."
Cloud remembered the vague image of something significant. Something that shouldn't have allowed for what he saw. He shivered in the raging inferno and scraped back against the wall.
"I killed you. With my own hands. My own sword."
He huffed desperately to catch his breath back, but he couldn't get more than frail gasps. The air rejected him.
"They are hers. You have earned nothing you are provided. So many easy shortcuts you've taken. But this is a new era for us, and all sins will be forgiven."
So calm, but so vile. Every word was an aberration. This thing shouldn't exist. It never should have been allowed.
The heat began to suffocate his skin. He wiped away sweat, shaking and going limp from the loss of air. His vision went blurry and nerves went static. The storm erupted behind the silhouette, gleaming a ray of burning light down the alley.
"We are the same now, Cloud. You have nothing to hide."
"What do you want?!" Cloud decrepitly shrieked.
The silhouette came closer. "I want everything to be lost until you have nothing to offer but your life. I want spite and malice to course through you like your misused blood. I want you to be venom to the hubris of men; the malady to peace and blissful emptiness. I want this world to fail—to be just like you. Only then will you be ready."
The sun raged brighter and the wind blew harder. The flames flapped towards Cloud and the light blinded him, but the demented stare him from that silhouette piercing him was unbroken. The tears that would have poured down his face evaporated. His eyes were dry and cracked, and he couldn't close them. This felt like a death that would never kill him.
The silhouette grew in front of the raging sun. He waved his sword around in a futile attempt to ward it off. It kept growing larger, casting a wider shadow against the wall behind him—until it was right in front of him. He could see the orange glow on Sephiroth's face, and the glint off the blade sliding across his cheek.
"This is our planet, Cloud. It is hers by right. And she is ours."
You're a SOLDIER. Get up.
With Sephiroth right there and his sword still gripped, Cloud remembered the power in his hands. His timid face turned furious. He swatted the masamune away and launched the buster at him.
The moment it made contact, Sephiroth was gone. The sun faded and the flames snuffed out, leaving a giant blind spot in his eyes. Cloud was left alone standing in a dark alley.
Follow your leader, Cloud. Answer the call.
He kept swinging at the air, his heart pounding in a frenzy. The blade only slammed against walls and the trash-littered ground.
"I'm not afraid of you! I've killed you before! I killed you before!"
His body gave out and dropped to his knees. He was gasping for air that had finally returned. The splitting headache glimmered to life again and recaptured its territory.
The child in him wanted to break down crying, but as he thought about it, he understood less and less why he would want to. It was hard to keep a grasp on exactly what happened. It was like waking up from a dream.
He stumbled out of the alley, the migraine shooting through him in waves. He could only barely see from the corners of his eyes, but his body knew where it was and where to take him.
"Hey! Stop there! Drop the sword and hands on your head!"
It was probably more damn Shinra MPs behind him. He didn't give a shit.
He kept trodding. There was a spot he needed to find again. Our spot.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
An electric baton jabbed him in the side and a set of hands tried to yank the buster sword off his back, to no avail. He ignored it and kept dragging down the street. It wasn't far away.
Another taser stick by his armpit. His lower body was on the verge of giving out and the hands pulling his sword were tilting him over, but he kept pushing.
Another baton knocked him in the temple, and he was pitched onto the asphalt accordingly. It now started to register that he was under threat.
He jumped back to his feet. One hand gripped his sword handle while the other flung out to punch somebody and missed. The MPs responded by yelling, "Down him!" and shooting a hail of bullets into his back. He plunged face-first right back on the ground.
They wouldn't let him stand, so he decided to crawl where he needed to go. More taser batons rammed him, making his torso feel like radio static. Other non-taser batons just pummeled him. The sticks clanged on his skull and jolted his limbs, but he had to keep going.
They pulled back at his arms to try to restrain him, but he pulled back to keep crawling. Too many hands were grabbing his arms for him to force them back on the ground, so he scraped forward with his legs.
The voice of a woman behind him shrieked, "Hey! Stop it!" He felt a powerful burst of wind above him. All of the men attacking him yelped as it hit, and their reacting voices fell further away. He heard the sound of their bodies tumbling far away.
That voice was it. That graceful pitch. He didn't need to search anymore.
More distant wind blasts made the MPs keep shouting incoherently. Something zipped over his head that sounded glittery and gave a feeling of magical radiance as it passed, and in a flash, all of their voices fell dead silent.
His arms struggled to lift up his body so he get on his feet. He wasn't sure what to do now. The woman's hands grabbed his arm for him and yanked him up. He knew that touch, that energy. The kind that his instincts would surrender to. But he couldn't see it.
She tugged at him. "Come on! It's not gonna hold forever!"
What wasn't going to hold? What did she do? He gave in anyway, and let her drag him somewhere else. He didn't know how far or to where, only that she made a sharp turn unexpectedly, he strayed off too far, and ran into the corner of a building when she pulled him into an alleyway.
"Oh god, I'm sorry!" She stopped running and moved him against a wall. "Are you alright? Can you see me okay?"
His vision was still almost entirely burned. He rubbed his eyes to feel the moisture in them return. The blind spot faintly started to heal around the edges, and he could see the vaguest outline of her hand waving at his face.
"I'm fine."
All she could see was bruises everywhere covered in leftover soot, a smear of dry blood still on his face and two currents of it down his arm. "You don't look fine. What happened to you?"
Her face was starting to take shape. And the pink dress, and the red jacket. It was her.
"Nothing you need to know about."
"You're a SOLDIER, right? I know that outfit. You must have taken a serious drubbing to look that damaged. What were those guards on you for?"
He gave a frustrated sigh. "I could have handled them. You shouldn't have intervened. Shinra's gonna come after you too."
She made a pfft at him. "I'm already on a list, don't you worry." He could hear her impish smile.
"W...what? Who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Aerith." She paused. Cloud couldn't tell if it meant she was waiting for a handshake. "Just don't tell anyone. Who might you be, Mister Chance Encounter?"
"Not your concern." He kept rubbing his eyes and brushed past her.
She scoffed, "I was just curious."
Cloud could see enough to navigate back to the street, but Aerith raced in front of him. "By the way, I was selling flowers here before the whole town blew up."
He glanced down and saw the basket hanging from her arched arm. Actual flowers, grown and harvested. That couldn't have been done in Midgar.
She plucked out something yellow with proudly outstretched petals. "Would one of these help boost your spirits in these trying times? They're only a gil each."
Sparks were drifting through the sky and a chunk of debris burned in the middle of the evacuated street. "You serious?"
"Yep! The best bargain in Midgar!"
The flower stared him down. Even through staticky vision, those glowing petals paired with Aerith's beaming eyes demanded that he take the offer. But his pockets were empty.
"Don't have any gil on me. Sorry."
"Hmph. Then it's on the house. Lovers would gift these ones as a symbol of reunion after coming home from war back in the day, fun fact."
"I don't need it." He's held out this interaction for too long already. But he doesn't seem to want to cut it short.
Aerith frowned. "You're not still mad about the sword thing, are you?" That flower kept hanging in front of him. "Come on, take it. It'll make you feel better, I promise."
Cloud sighed. There was no more fight left in him. "Can't promise I'll keep it alive."
She tucked the flower underneath the leather shoulder strap on his turtleneck. "There. I'll just hand this little gift to you and hope you're not a terrorist. You're lucky I feel sorry for you."
That stung him. He muttered, "Please don't," and finally had his opening to walk past her. But he turned around to tell her, "Hey, a reactor just blew up. You shouldn't be here."
She impishly smiled. "Sure thing, SOLDIER."
Cloud's eyes finally returned. He took a good look around to figure out what to do. He was in the upper city. The Sector 8 metropolis, no less. What was he doing there?
The fucking train station. Barret said they had only 15 minutes. But which station?
He exclaimed, "Shit!" and darted away from Aerith.
Two MPs were rounding the street corner ahead and spotted him charging at them. One alerted to their radio, "We found him! North of Fountain Square!" and opened fire before the buster sword cleaved through him. The other tried to turn tail but got impaled through his back, and flung away. Hopefully Aerith wasn't watching.
Cloud turned into the big roundabout square with a glowing white fountain in the center, all unscathed from the reactor. A few second-rate peacekeeping officers in red uniforms getting more than they bargained for were on the road, only armed with batons.
One tried to block the buster sword with their baton only for it and the roof of their skull to be split in half. Another tried to swing at him and lost a leg. The last wound up halfway sunk into the fountain with their head submerged and leaking blood into the water.
A lone trooper in camo gear carrying a grenade launcher on the south road out of the square appeared, saw Cloud's appraoch, shrilled, "Oh, shit!" and shot a bomb directly at his body. Cloud punted it behind him with the sword, and the fountain exploded. He turned and ran away, but not fast enough to outrun the sword flying at him like a javelin and punching through his shoulderblade.
If the team was taking a train to the undercity, then the rail would be heading south towards the city's central pillar underneath the Shinra HQ to take the spiral down. Luckily Cloud was already heading south.
The bright lights faded out as road took him into a residential zone. It was full of company townhouses big enough to make it look like the people lived in luxury. Civilians were out on their front porches eager to see all the fuss but the streets were empty, likely because the army told them to stay inside.
As he turned streets, a squadron behind him alerted their radio, but didn't shoot. He ignored them and kept running, and they followed from a distance. More troops appeared from out of corners of the intersection ahead, and he turned to avoid them. A whole posse was chasing him through the neighborhood, and they were awfully quiet doing it. There was only the sound of people in their houses hollering at the troops and some indistinct chatter from their radios.
He found the pier overlooking the train tunnel to the pillar. There was no train passing yet, or it already passed and he was screwed. Coming up to the railing, a squadron of men with riot shields appeared and boxed him in between the armada behind. "We got him!" someone celebrated.
They slowly closed in on both sides, and more troopers came funneling in to add to the mass. "Drop your weapon and surrender now!" said a megaphone. Dozens of rifles were trained on him.
A low rumbling underground signaled that time was up. He was far too worn out to try tanking any more bullets, but he figured he could leave a nice "fuck you" gift before he dipped. He reached down into his pants pocket, but it was empty. Both of them were.
The ice materia. Where the hell was his ice materia?
Whatever. The train flew out of the tunnel, he bade farewell to everyone with a "Piss off," and backflipped over the rails, crashing on his stomach on a passenger car. Bullets from a few hotshot idiots clanged against the roof as he rode away, until the train dipped back underground. And at last, no more bullshit.