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All of Us Monsters	By : ub3rschnitzel Category: Final Fantasy VII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 870 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Disclaimer: I don't own SquareEnix or any of their Squaresoft
characters. I don't own Advent Children, or else I would be rich. I
don't own Cloud, Fenrir (his bike), Vincent, or any of Cloud's many many many
swords.
Author's Notes: Tons of spoilers. For those of you who
have seen the movie, you might understand where this could be coming from.
I've recieved lots of good words for this on the Livejournal Community acfiction.

Chapter 4

I stared at Cloud's inert form, laying on the bed once more, still with sleep's
mantle over him once more. He was quiet and beautiful when he slept. He dreamed no more of fantasy.
His face held something not entirely unhappy. I thought about what I had
done to him, how he had begged to hear the truth - and isn't that what all
people beg for, function from?

Slowly I went through the mundane task of wrapping his Geostigmatic arm,
quietly, lovingly as if I had done it a thousand times before - each motion I
coveted, for I feared it would be the last I would ever touch this, his skin,
his fingertips and everything that I had fallen in love with. What great
unlikely event had occured to make all of this unravel like so many streamers at
Gold Saucer? His earrings jingled softly when he turned his head in discomfort;
I stood back when I was finished. Only his silence remained constant. My body
sank itself into the chair beside his bed and my crimson eyes stared.
There I slept uneasily for the rest of what remained of the cold night with a
throatful of tears.

Slowly I became aware of the light coming into the sky again. My drowsiness fled
in a moment of terror as I noticed the starkly empty bed beside my chair. I
stood up, staring at the impression of his body left in the blankets, the
neatness of the bed made. I clenched my hand, cold and unrestrained anger and
betrayal filling me. The sword in the mattress was gone. He had dressed and left
and not left a single word. How could he have moved so silently?

I checked the room over once and then a second time. Not a note, as I had
thought. Not a slip of paper. Nothing scrawled in the glass of the bathroom or
the mirror or on the window panes. I knew I was wasting time; the true culprit
of my hesitation to seek him out was simply fear. Fear that he had left me
because of what I had done to him. Fear that his own insecurity had driven him
away from me.

A metal beast growled from the swirling shadows outside. Heartened by the sound, I cocked my head to one side, then
hurled open the window a little too hard and leapt into the predawn light. The fog that had
drifted in from the sea had devoured the village.
Not a child in sight...
This is a ghost town already.

Regardless, I swooped through the fog in a flurry of crimson and onyx. The
fabric snapped and hissed as I followed the snarl and roar of the motorcycle.
Cloud was not going necessarily fast, not in the narrow, rocky dirt road here. I
saw the black flag of his cloak rippling behind him for a few seconds and,
heartened by my progress, I landed on a stone outcropping and leaped to follow
again.

For half an hour we traveled thus. The farther we went, the more the fog seemed
to clear into swatches of powdery white that clung to the cold air. The sun was
blackened out by great, gray puffy clouds. It seemed as if a giant bird of
prey had spread its black wings across the earth, breathed white cold fire that
made it damnably difficult to see much of anything.

The growling monster Fenrir, Cloud's vehicle, began to slow down and stop to a
purr; I landed directly above him on a craggy knoll. A stone slipped from the
face of it and rattled down the face of the thirty foot precipice.

Cloud jerked around in his seat, and narrowed his eyes at me. I tensed, but kept
my gaze firm and unwavering. Then he looked away and said, "The monster took
some of the kids. They're in this cave down there."

How unlike him - as if nothing had gone wrong - to speak to me in such a
friendly, familiar way. I wouldn't let him escape questioning so easily, slip
away from his half-betrayal so neatly. "Why
did you leave?"

"I tried to be quiet," Cloud amended gently. "I wanted to let you sleep..."

"Yet you left without a word." I could barely keep the strain of emotional hurt
from my voice. It was as if I had said, "You betrayed me."

Cloud looked away. He bowed his head, and apologized softly. I stood, and glided
down onto the ground beside him, and I followed his gaze down toward the broken
grotto, still jealously seething and not feeling altogether bursting with
forgiveness. How dare he? How dare he?
There were freshly overturned stones scattered in front of the cavern's
entrance, and odd, clawed tracks of mud and dirt, and unfortunately old dusty
bones. This thing liked flesh.

I could almost smell the creature. I could smell it... and it was hungry
and mad with sickness. I would have been amazed if the children were still
alive, if Geostigma hadn't taken them by now.

"I'll distract the monster," I said softly. "I want you to find as many children
as you can and take them out of there on your motorcycle. I'll hold it for as
long as I can."

"Vincent!" Cloud hissed, reaching out to grab my cloak. But it slipped through
his fingers like fine wine, and I was already beyond his reach.

The grotto was silent. I landed near the edge of the cavern and peered into the
darkness. A sick, warm stench rose to greet me; it was not unlike the combined
aromas of rotting meat and sickness and old, old leather that had gotten wet and
was never repaired. I strained my ears, still as death, still as stone.
Underneath all that was the subtle, rattling breathing of something large and
exhausted. I heard the stone shift, the deep and long breaths shudder.

Judging by the direction the scent was coming from and the closeness of the
breathing, I pinpointed a general location of the monster. Then, slowly, I crept
into the cavern and with my preternatural sight searched the darkness that not
even my despairing swordsman could not penetrate.

The children were huddled together against the monster's side. I took stock of
the creature in utter silence, Death Penalty hanging stiffly from my fingers. I
crept forward, and my voice was as soft as I could make it. The children
trembled but they were silent as I instructed them to find their way to the
exit. I led a pair of them back with me - every moment spent listening to the
gargling wheezing coming from the unconscious creature.

I saw Cloud still waiting. He had cut the engine, now straddling Fenrir with
every sign of apprehension in his angelic countenance.

I sent the children in his direction. From there, he directed them back up the
hill to wait by the stones. I turned back and jumped down to the cavern once
more, and saw that the children had all moved safely to the other side of the
cave.

I stepped inside, and leveled Death Penalty at the creature's head. Too easy -
perhaps I should have known it. The wheezing ceased all at once, and with a
flash, the creature was up on all four of its thickly muscled legs, and its
jagged teeth closed on my gun arm, and with a snap of sinew and muscle and
power, threw me against the wall of the cavern and lunged forward fully intent
to stampede me into the ground.

I rolled out of the way. My arm felt broken in a dozen places, leaving me
searingly aware of my precarious situation. Instead of
releasing Death Penalty, I only gripped it tighter, raised the muzzle and
blasted open a bloody hole into the shoulder of the monstrosity. All the while I kept backing
away toward the light, outside, away from the white-faced orphans.

I backed away, firing and reloading, the whole while forcing my arm to cease its
pained trembling. I missed more times than I actually struck the beast. The
monster's pace had slowed as it tried to lope along on three legs instead of
four. I heard the squelching crack and pop of broken bones in its arm as at last
it lost its balance and leaned its weight on the shattered shoulder bones.

I checked my distance and noticed that I had cleared the cavern at last and the
monster was almost on top of me, its slathering mouth only a few feet away. It
looked like a wolf, but it was no wolf I had ever seen before. It was huge,
twice the size of a Coeurl and, I soon discovered, mildly unpredictable.

Lunging forward from its bad shoulder the beast plowed toward me; I once again
threw myself out of its path to the right, firing until I had nothing more. I
scrambled to my feet and lunged left, right as I slipped additional ammunition
into the chamber. The creature wheeled around to find me, and pounded against
the earth with its right forepaw, barely missing my leg by inches. Not so far
away I heard the clear roar of the Fenrir as it dashed in, spun around, and
Cloud gathered as many of the ten children he could onto his bike before bearing
them safely away.

Good, I thought. But he could only carry at most three.

I flipped out of the monster's path, quickly positioned myself between the
creature and the warrior and the orphans once more. The pain raced up along my
arm, and I felt a masochistic purr of glee somewhere inside of me. I clenched my
teeth on my pain and fought hard.

The creature's tail whipped out. It was snake-like, and it struck without
warning. Suddenly the world was tipped topsy-turvy. Upon struggling to look up,
I found myself staring at the ground. I took aim and fired at the prehensile
spiked tail, but its spines only buried themselves deeper. Then it snapped me to
the side, and send me colliding into the grotto wall with a sickening crunch.

I saw blackness. I felt failure, then a dim hope that somehow I had given Cloud
time to save the youngsters. Some indiscernable amount of time fell in between
that black space and when my eyes opened next. I quickly shut them again, just
as I felt the giant talons rake across my chest and push me into the stone. My
chest screamed with agony. Not a breath inside of me to cry out, to protest. I
raised Death Penalty and pushed it inside the blood-caked fur of the beast and
tried to work the trigger. My bones screamed in protest. I couldn't do it.

There was only one thing I could do. I shut my eyes, and felt myself falling
inside myself - below me a dark chasm where something lived and breathed apart
from my own soul. It was a lasting descent that felt like an eternity,
spiralling and floating and turning in the warmth and the shadows. Whatever
happened to my body no longer mattered. I had only a little strength left, but I
prayed despairingly that it was enough.

And it was. Far below in the eternal black, there was a steadily growing roar.
It filled my dark universe. My ears and bones rattled, my blood sang. It began
to crescendo into an all-consuming scream of rage and power. It was no difficult
task to let it fill me and strengthen me.

I opened my mouth and my eyes and the roar was coming out of me. I dropped the
gun, forgot it completely, and instead reached my metal claw toward that gaping
wolfish maw and took hold. Its jaw cracked. It toppled sideways; I rose
unsteadily, a wretched, ragged gasping flooding my lungs as blood careened
through numerous punctures into them. But I was free, liberated, broken but
unshackled by pain and suffering. I laughed at my pain. I rejoiced in it,
savored the taste of my blood in my mouth.

My body - no, my soul - split open, and everything fell to pieces around me, and Chaos
reigned my body.

I recall nothing else. Only murder and delight, and the power of destruction
and the horrifying lack of inhibitions. I ripped the thing apart with my talons,
drank its blood, and stared into its eyes as the life went out of it, the body
utterly useless and broken.

The sight that awakened me was the utterly shocking human gaze that peered back
from inside this mask of horror. Someone inside there still felt
something, still thought human thoughts... couldn't it? I wondered numbly,
holding its massive skull with each breath shuddering out of me and I knew what
a monster was, and this, all of it, seemed wrong. So very wrong.
Then the creature's breath ceased to renew
itself, and I fell down into my black abyss for an eternity.
- 3
- 4
- 5
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All of Us Monsters