The flight to Bone Village was largely silent. Aeris looked at each of the others on the helicopter in turn. Veld was piloting the machine, though it didn’t seem to require much effort now that they were in the air. Zack sat next to her. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders and she was glad he was there. At the rear of the cabin sat Hojo, muttering to himself. She was glad he had chosen to sit there. Planet’s weapon or not, he still creeped her out.
“Hey, Zack?” she asked, turning to look at him. He shook his head as he was pulled out of his thoughts.
“What is it?” he smiled at her.
“Do you mind… I mean, you looked all weird when my dad called you my boyfriend.”
Zack chuckled and pulled her closer. “I was just caught off-guard. If you want me to be your boyfriend, I’d be honored.”
“Oh, wow. I’ve never had a boyfriend.” She hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder for the rest of the ride.
When they arrived in the village, it was still quiet. Hojo checked on the buried Jenova specimen, declared it still safe, and the four of them took up positions within sight of it, among the long-abandoned excavations.
It was getting dark again by the time Lucrecia and her sons approached the village. Hojo shook his head when he saw her. Her skin was bluish and almost translucent, and her hair seemed to be turning white. Sephiroth and Dadjy trailed behind her. They didn’t seem to be expecting any trouble; their guns remained in their holsters.
They entered the village and went straight for the body. Aeris waited for them to draw close to where she sat, obscured behind some kind of half-excavated artifact, and then she reached out to Sephiroth the same way she’d done to Reno. Sephiroth wavered and then stopped walking.
Lucrecia turned and frowned at him. “Sephiroth, darling, why aren’t you listening to Mother?” He stared at her, his eyes pleading, but didn’t move. Lucrecia’s frown grew deeper, twisting into a grimace.
“Someone’s trying to take you from me!” Lucrecia screamed, her voice more shrill than Hojo remembered. “I won’t let them!” Dadjy stepped away from her, looking for the hidden attackers, while Lucrecia hurried to Sephiroth’s side and put her finger in his mouth.
“Bite down,” she coaxed him. “That’s a good boy. You need more of Mother in your body.” A trickle of blue blood trailed out of the corner of his mouth. Aeris guessed he’d done as he was told because the pressure of the Crisis fighting her multiplied. It felt like it was surging around her, drowning her, trying to push her out as she’d tried to do to it. This was a lot harder than it had been with Reno. She fought to retain her concentration.
“Ewww,” Zack grimaced, in his hiding place opposite Aeris. Dadjy immediately turned toward the sound and opened fire. When the clip was empty, he let the gun hang from its strap and drew some kind of blade. SOLDIER-issue, Zack judged, and he waited until Dadjy got close before jumping out from his hiding place.
Zack pressed what advantage he had in surprise, getting one clean swing in at Dadjy before the younger man blocked his sword. They settled into a duelling fight, each pushing the other back in turn. Dadjy was quick and clever with his sword, but he was only a second-class SOLDIER, and a young one at that. Veld could see from his vantage point that Zack would wear him down eventually.
“I suppose I could hurry that along,” he said, taking careful aim as Dadjy seemed to hesitate.
“Hello little one,” Dadjy was saying below, not in hesitation, but because he had spotted Aeris in her hiding spot. Zack rushed to put himself between Dadjy and Aeris as Veld fired.
The two young men shouted almost in unison. Zack wondered if Veld had missed, but noticed Dadjy was bleeding too. The shot had actually gone through Dadjy completely and buried itself in Zack’s side.
“Fuck,” Zack swore, throwing himself and his sword at Dadjy again. He waited to change into the wolf again, but the feeling running through his veins just didn’t seem right. He was losing himself, that much was the same, but…
He lost conscious thought then.
Veld frowned, angry at himself, and aimed instead for Lucrecia. She barely flinched when he fired and hit her in the stomach.
Lucrecia looked away from Sephiroth. “Why, Dadjy! You’ve infected a new toy for Mother! Thank you!”
Dadjy smiled proudly and advanced on Aeris. Lucrecia spared a thought for Zack, ordering him to do the same, but as his body twisted and swelled into the wolf form, Fenrir fought her control.
Aeris screamed as Dadjy swung his blade at her, scrambling backwards and reaching for her staff where she’d left it on the ground. The second time he swung at her, she brought the staff up and blocked it. The third time, she knocked him off-balance long enough to allow her to scramble to her feet.
With Aeris’s concentration gone, Sephiroth returned to Lucrecia’s control and she directed all of her effort to Fenrir. The wolf growled at her, trying to force away her mental pushes.
“Inflict some pain on him, Sephiroth, dear,” Lucrecia ordered. “That should break his will quickly enough.” As she continued to batter on Fenrir’s mental shields, Sephiroth dashed at him, firing repeatedly from his rifle and then dropping it, as his brother had, to draw a sword.
“I will never get used to seeing that,” Veld muttered, thinking that people should pick one shape and stay with it. His had served him just fine for forty years, after all, aside from the whole arm loss. He shook his head and waited for a good shot at either of the boys. He looked over at Hojo, who was watching from the highest vantage point they’d found.
“Well?” Veld shouted at him.
Hojo looked up at him. “What?”
“Well, aren’t you going to do something?”
Hojo looked back down, thoughtfully, as if considering. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, this would be a good time. Shoot me. The body needs to break down to release the energy that allows the shift.” He was ready to argue if need be, but he needn’t have worried. Veld shrugged and easily pulled the trigger.
Hojo had never been able to communicate well with the dragon. Their thought patterns seemed simply incomprehensible to each other, and he assumed that was why he lost all memory of himself when the dragon took over.
This time, it was different. Chaos himself reared up in the back of his mind, pushing his way forward through the haze of pain, and he was not thinking about the sort of animal instincts the dragon followed. Chaos’s thoughts were clear and concise and quite compatible with Hojo’s own.
“Kill the bitch,” thought Chaos. Hojo thought the sentiment a bit crude, but certainly not a bad idea. He was surprised to note that his own perceptions were not dimming as his body shifted. Hojo heard Chaos’s thoughts like notes on a violin, next to his ear and inside his mind at the same time, and he was surprised and fascinated by the amount of pain required to reshape his body. Unlike the dragon, this form was no mere beastial energy taking the form most comfortable to his mind.
Hojo felt the skin on his back tear as great, leathery wings spread. His skin hardened and it seemed like there was fire in his eyes and on his feet, like the demons he remembered from the old Wutaian legends.
He never had taken those very seriously, but after he was done here, he made a note to go back and read them.
Spotting Chaos above her, Lucrecia sent shards of ice through the air at him. Beating his wings, the demon took off and the ice spell flew past him, knocking Veld backwards and causing his head to bounce off a rock. The Turk reached up to feel the wound, and pulled his hand away bloody.
Beside her, Dadjy had Aeris pinned against a stone wall. He knocked her staff aside. As he pulled back for a killing blow, Veld fired again, this time clipping his hands and causing him to drop his sword. Aeris reached out and pressed her hands to both sides of his face, shoving the Crisis back in his body. He faltered and dropped to his knees.
Lucrecia dropped her assault on Fenrir’s mind and turned to Dadjy, then glared up at Veld. She let loose another volley of magic, and this time the sharped ice found purchase in his chest. Veld stumbled and almost dropped his gun.
Turning back to Dadjy, Lucrecia tried to reclaim him. Before she could bolster his defenses, Chaos swept in from the sky and knocked her to the dirt. He landed at her feet, staring down at her as she lay on the ground. At first she had no idea who or what she was looking at, but the demon’s form was much closer to his host’s body than the dragon.
“Chaos!” she spat, knowing the demon’s name instinctively. She knew it, like she knew what was right, because she was Mother. She knew Chaos was sent by the Planet. She knew he would try to stop her.
She would not let him.
“Jenova, you can’t win here,” Chaos said. Hojo felt the words forming before they were spoken. It was easier simply to think as Chaos, so he let himself slide into the mindset.
“Of course I can,” she answered. “You’re just plain outplayed, weapon. I have control of one of yours.” At this word and her unspoken command, Fenrir turned and clawed at Chaos. Chaos dodged and Fenrir, sensing an opportunity for freedom, let his momentum carry him toward Lucrecia with his claws raised.
“Sephiroth!” she screamed, and her elder son swooped in, sword upraised, and shoved it downward through Fenrir’s body. Fenrir tried to stand, but he was pinned to the rock floor.
Aeris, pressed closely to Dadjy as she chased the Crisis from his body, could feel that something was desperately wrong with Fenrir — and with Zack — but she didn’t dare lose her concentration now. She’d already watched her work undone once.
“Now him,” Lucrecia commanded, pointing to Chaos. Sephiroth tore the sword free, leaving Fenrir collapsed and breathing raggedly, and charged at Chaos. The demon stepped smoothly aside, leaving Sephiroth’s blade catching only air at every turn. Sephiroth pushed himself harder, Lucrecia’s mental insistance serving to work him into a frenzy.
She pushed the foreign cells inside him to make him faster, make him better.
Sword caught flesh, and Chaos winced. It was not deep, but imprisoned for so long in the materia, Chaos had nearly forgotten he could bleed. He tried to make his way over to Lucrecia, but Sephiroth seemed to be in front of him at every turn. He moved faster than humanly possible, now. Chaos grabbed his sword and jerked it from his hands, throwing it aside. Irrational, Sephiroth dove at Chaos anyway, his hands twisting into claws as he made contact with the demon. They penetrated Chaos’s leathery skin more easily than the sword had.
“Protect me, Sephiroth! Protect me from the demon that fathered you! Be my angel, Sephiroth!” Lucrecia was screaming, hysterical. There was pain behind the glaze over Sephiroth’s eyes now and he hunched forward, dragging claws down Chaos’s chest, as a single misshapen wing pulled out of his back. Lucrecia’s eyes were wild and she was laughing.
In the corner of his vision, Chaos saw Dadjy in Aeris’s arms.
“No… Mother…” Dadjy whimpered, but Lucrecia’s attention was centered on Sephiroth alone. He didn’t want her gone, didn’t want to let her go, but he felt the bile rise in his throat and there was nothing he could do. Aeris stepped out of the way, knowing what to expect this time, and held Dadjy’s hair as his body shook violently and he vomited.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, stroking his hair. “It’ll be okay, Dadjy. It’s okay.” She wasn’t sure she believed it, but it was what her mother always said to her when she was sick.
When it seemed like there was nothing left for Dadjy to throw up, he collapsed, sobbing, onto the ground. Aeris turned her attention to Fenrir… or Zack, as his body had returned to the human form. She dashed in front of Lucrecia, hoping to drag him to safety.
The woman glared down at Aeris as she tugged on Zack’s heavy body. Above them, Veld painfully pushed himself up far enough to fire the last rounds in his gun, burying two bullets in Lucrecia’s lungs and drawing her attention away from the young girl.
Lucrecia’s attention was on Veld now and she drew on the magic in the stone beneath them, causing it to shake. The outcropping Veld was on shuddered and collapsed, and he with it, a sickening thud among the cracking stones as he landed.
She turned back to her eldest son. “Sephiroth, stand up for Mother. Fight for Mother,” she ordered him, standing close behind him, but the harder she pushed his body, the harder he found it to fight.
Sephiroth’s legs gave out and he looked up at Chaos with horror in his eyes. The pain was bringing him back to his senses, but his body was still in Lucrecia’s control. The seams on his pants burst, revealing a mass of tentacles and malformed wings where his legs had been.
Aeris screamed. A moment lated Dadjy was beside her, taking Zack’s heavy body from her hands and pulling both of them away. He couldn’t make himself look. He was too aware of how close he’d been to that, and suddenly his skin felt foreign and itchy on him.
Chaos watched, waiting.
“Get up! Listen to Mother!” Lucrecia was screaming. She grabbed Sephiroth’s hair at the root and lifted him from the ground, her arms far stronger than they should have been. Boneless, fleshy tentacles twisted against each other as Sephiroth’s body tried desperately to do as it was commanded. She released her grip and he fell again.
Aeris was crouched over Zack, trying to make him breathe again. “Please,” she whispered, praying to the Planet or her mother or whomever would listen. “Please, please, please…” The Planet didn’t answer, and Zack’s body was growing cold. Dadjy put an arm around her now, hesitantly. He was afraid she would push him away. She was just hoping that she could close her eyes and never open them again.
Sephiroth’s one wing was beating sickly against the ground, blowing up clouds of dust. He clawed weakly at the air in front of him, towards Chaos, but couldn’t muster the force to reach him. Lucrecia laughed and egged him on.
Chaos reached over him, grabbing Lucrecia by the neck with his clawed hand and pulling her to him. Her hysterical laughter died on her lips as she gasped for breath. The demon’s other hand rested over her chest, ready to tear out her heart, but it was Hojo’s voice that came from his mouth.
“What did you do to your son?!”
“I made him better! Can’t you see? He’s better!”
Chaos’s voice was in his ear, telling him that this was no longer the woman he’d dated, or even the woman who had left him in the basement to rot. Lucrecia was gone, he said. Only Jenova remained, a cancer that had replaced her host.
Both minds were in agreement as Chaos’s claws sank into her chest, snapping ribs and closing around her heart. Lucrecia — Jenova — the body continued to laugh even after he’d pulled the organ free and let the body slump to the ground.
Her voice dwindled slowly. She twitched, and was still.
Then, without the force of his mother’s will to blind him, Sephiroth became fully aware of his situation. He looked at his twisted arms and the masses of flesh that had been his legs like a man slowly waking up from a nightmare.
It was a full minute before he began to scream.
Aeris approached him hesitantly, looking at Chaos, but the demon did not order her away. She put a small hand on Sephiroth’s chest and another on his head. She grimaced, trying hard to focus and listen over the sound of screaming in her ear.
“I can’t… I can’t do anything. It’s in too deep. I can’t fix it,” she said dully, stepping away from him.
She looked up at Chaos. “Can you fix him?”
“No,” the demon answered her.
“Can you… help him?” she asked, even more quietly.
Chaos nodded. He stepped up to Sephiroth, gently cupping his chin in one hand. He stood there for a long time, waiting until the screaming died away and the former SOLDIER was staring up at him, silent.
“I’m going to take your soul,” he said, unsure if Sephiroth could understand him. “It will ensure you can escape that tainted body.” Chaos trailed his clawed fingers over Sephiroth’s cheek, and the man closed his eyes.
Chaos nodded to himself, knowing that was as much acknowledgement as he was likely to get. He tipped Sephiroth’s face up and drove a claw between his eyes, into his brain. Sephiroth’s body went limp.
Folding his wings in around him, Chaos sighed heavily. The demonic form slipped away like wax, and then the man Aeris had first seen inside the lab was before her again.
“Is he…?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“For the most part,” Hojo answered, staring down at the bodies. “Zack?”
“He… he stopped breathing… I couldn’t do anything,” Aeris said, gulping air.
“That’s it, then.”
Aeris looked around the abandoned village, shaking her head slowly. Zack and Veld’s bodies lay where they had fallen. Dadjy walked up to stand beside her.
“We should bury them,” Dadjy said, biting his lip.
“I will, when I’m done,” Hojo said. He was looking past them, now, toward the cave Lucrecia had been heading for. “You two should go.”
“Go?” Aeris asked. Hojo walked over to Veld’s body and pulled out his cell phone. He flipped it open and the screen lit up. Nodding, he closed it again and tossed it to Dadjy.
“Take the boat they came in. Go back to Kalm. Call Midgar. Veld’s assistant will understand, I think.” Aeris and Dadjy both nodded.
“Go. Now.” When Aeris didn’t move, Dadjy gently took her arm and led her away.
Hojo watched until they disappeared down the path, then turned back to the cave. “Time to finish this, finish her, finish the story.” Ice froze Jenova, but didn’t stop her. He needed something more permanent. Chaos whispered to him that the way to destroy something totally was to make it ash. Hojo felt the energy forming the spell and smiled.
Looking back as Dadjy navigated the boat away from shore, Aeris saw smoke and then flames rising from the village. She was surprised. She hadn’t expected Hojo to choose a funeral pyre.
