Chapter 3
The Black Materia was a heavy weight in his coat pocket. Barret didn't like anything that was going on, couldn't fully wrap his head around it. Uncannily certain that Sephiroth was somewhere up ahead, Cloud had taken Tifa and Nanaki and disappeared into the haze.
Was Sephiroth up ahead? All this time, they thought they'd been chasing after Sephiroth, but they'd watched his body crumble on the path, and they'd fought Jenova in his place. Cloud said the 'real' Sephiroth was here, as though they'd never met him.
If it was just an illusion, how did they know what was real? What did it mean for every time they thought they'd run into him in the past? Aeris was dead--thatwas no illusion. But had something else killed her?
He kept his hand in his coat, where he could feel the solid curve of the Black Materia under his fingers. The power to destroy the Planet... It was real, right?
Something about it just didn't sit right with him. Sephiroth hadn't had any trouble taking it from them at the Temple. Why lose it to them now?
Maybe Sephiroth was just a crazy jackass, but Barret had thought there was some kind of plan. It made him uneasy, thinking that holding this thing might make him a part of it.
And then there was Shinra. Shinra had followed Sephiroth here, too. He couldn't see the airship anymore, and maybe it was ahead with everyone else.
He glanced over at Cait Sith. He'd known Rufus was coming, and Barret wondered if the guy behind the cat was on that airship, too, but you couldn't read anything out of the expression stitched into that plush face.
Vincent, Yuffie, and Cid waited with a nervous energy, attention steady on the path ahead. How long did they wait for Cloud to come back, or for something to happen?
He realized Vincent's gaze had shifted to him. He tipped his head just slightly, as if in silent apology for earlier. Barret had wanted to go with Cloud to watch his back, and so when the question came of who would guard the Black Materia, he'd looked to Vincent. The sudden flare of brighter red in the man's eyes had kept him even from asking.
He got why it was a bad idea. Vincent the man might never hand over the Black Materia. But wound him, and there was no telling whether his monster would care about some useless orb.
Suddenly Vincent's red gaze vanished. Everything went dark, replaced by black smoke. No, not smoke-- just... nothing.
"What the--? The hell's goin' on? Guys?"
No one answered him. Yuffie had been standing nearest to him, and he took a step in that direction before stopping. The path here was treacherous, and a wrong step could be deadly.
"Barret!" It was Tifa's voice, and he spun to see her running up out of the gloom. The darkness faded away, revealing the path ahead. "I'm so relieved you're here!"
"Tifa!" he exclaimed. The stony path around him was empty, the others gone. He ran up to her. "The hell just happened? It went pitch black for a minute and everybody's gone."
"Everyone's gone ahead," she said. "We thought we lost you for a minute there. Please, you have to come. Cloud's in trouble."
He fingered the Black Materia in his pocket. Cloud had given this to him because he didn't trust himself with it, because they needed to keep it far away from Sephiroth. But this was Tifa. She knew better than anyone, and she wouldn't ask this without good reason.
"O-okay," he said. "I don't know what's goin' on, but I'm comin.'"
"This way, hurry!" she said, turning from him. She ran up the path and through the haze where the wind picked up.
Barret hesitated. It had only gone dark for a second, it wasn't enough time for everyone to have gone ahead waiting on him. Unless he'd blacked out? Maybe it was something to do with the Black Materia, maybe just holding it messed with your head.
And all this time, they'd been following an illusion.
"...guys?" he said. Still nothing. He stared into the empty air where he'd last seen Vincent. "Hell. Vince, if you're there, I'm goin' on ahead. Back me up."
He couldn't leave Tifa hanging. He waited for a lull in the wind and ran after her.
The ground quaked momentarily beneath his feet, making him stumble, and he hurried on. Ahead, the path burrowed into high rock walls at the crater's heart. No, not rock. Crystal. The Lifestream made solid. He didn't know if you could call it materia, a great mountain of it like this, but he was sure the Shinra would measure it in billions of gil.
There was a kind of clearing in its center, and that was where he found Cloud and half of Shinra's top brass: Rufus, Hojo, Scarlet. His hand twitched towards his gun-arm, but something more was wrong with this picture.
Nanaki was the only one with Cloud, who stood with his shoulders slumped, head down, right in the middle of everything. The others were nowhere to be seen.
"Cloud! Hey!" Barret came to a stop some paces away. "The hell's goin' on?"
Cloud put a hand to his head, and then slowly lowered it. He looked up. His gaze was steady. "Don't know," he said. "You have the Black Materia?"
"Y... yeah, but... You okay, man?"
"Sure," Cloud said easily. He approached, holding out a hand. "I can take it from here."
Barret's hand settled back inside his coat, curling around the weight of the Black Materia. He looked past Cloud at the Shinra, who stood apparently unconcerned, watching with interest. Nanaki sat on his haunches, sniffing the air, ears flicking in confusion. The earth gave another tremor, and he could've sworn something in the wall blinked.
He felt lost, out of his depth. He'd walked into a situation he didn't understand in the slightest. Tifa had said Cloud was in trouble, but what kind? With six different kinds of danger here, which one was pushing him to ask for the Black Materia?
"Don't," said a voice behind him, breathy, ragged.
Barret turned to see Vincent at the entrance to the clearing, hunched, breathing hard. He turned slowly back to Cloud. "...where's Tifa?"
Cloud just shrugged placidly, hand still extended for the Black Materia.
"My nose tells me she's here," said Nanaki.
"The others are still... behind," Vincent said. His voice was growing closer, but Barret didn't want to take his eyes off Cloud again. "You couldn't see us when we fell."
"Fell?" Barret repeated. "Is everybody okay?"
"Unconscious," Vincent said.
Whatever had happened to them, Vincent must have recovered faster than the others; he was built that way. And Barret hadn't seen or heard a thing. Now, Nanaki said Tifa was here, but they couldn't see her.
What about the Tifa who'd told him to come?
Barret drew his hand back out of his coat, leaving the Black Materia where it was. "...that's a dirty trick," he said, eyes on Cloud though it wasn't Cloud he was talking to. "You know how much her voice counts for, with me, with him."
At last, Rufus took a step forward. "Would anyone care to explain what's going on?"
Vincent stepped up beside Barret, so that out of his peripheral vision he could see Vincent's arm raised, gun levelled at Hojo. He risked a glance aside, caught Vincent's eye, and shook his head slightly. He got it. Part of him wanted to cheer it on. But a sudden shot now might be the catalyst for all hell breaking loose.
Hojo started to giggle. "I think I understand," he said. "You there-- What number were you? Where is your tattoo?"
Cloud's expression faltered at that, and his outstretched hand, so steady until this moment, dropped a few inches. Then he turned to look at Hojo. "You never gave me one, Professor. You said I was a failed experiment."
Barret grit his teeth to keep his jaw from dropping open. Just what the hell was going on? They'd always known something was wrong with Cloud, and Hojo's involvement made sense, but Cloud had never professed to understanding it. Back in the Shinra building, Cloud had even said he'd never met the man before. Now all of a sudden he remembered?
A chill went through him as Hojo's question fully registered. A numbered tattoo, like all those sickly robed weirdos. The ones from Nibelheim, who babbled about Sephiroth calling to them, who had struggled along the same path into the crater with them. Was that really what Cloud was?
"Please, Professor," Cloud was saying. "I made it all this way. Won't you give me a number?"
"What is he talking about?" Rufus demanded.
Hojo frowned briefly at Cloud, then turned to Rufus. "He's part of an experiment I began, after the real Sephiroth was killed five years ago. A combination of Jenova cells and Mako, brought to life with my skills. I'm not wild about the failure part, but his arrival here proves the Jenova Reunion Theory. You see, even if Jenova's body is dismembered, it will eventually seek to become whole again."
Rufus's frown deepened. "But Jenova is..."
"What have you gotten us involved in?" Scarlet demanded. "What about the Promised Land?"
"There's no such thing as the Promised Land," Hojo said dismissively. "But this, this is science! The culmination of years of research and experimentation. I never predicted at Sephiroth's conception that it would bring us here to this moment, but--"
A shot rang out. Hojo's head snapped back, and the man fell. Shouts of alarm, Rufus and Scarlet reaching into their coats for weapons. The ground rumbled again, and that was definitely a giant eyeball encased in the crystal wall.
"Sorry," said Vincent. "I couldn't let him go on."
"Did us all a favor," Barret said with a shrug. There was no taking it back now. He raised his gun-arm, joining Vincent in a stand-off against the remaining two executives, staring down the twin barrels of Rufus's shotgun and Scarlet's designer rifle.
"Barret!"
Cid's voice, behind him. His footsteps lost amid the quaking that didn't seem inclined to subside this time.
"Everybody here?" Barret asked, not risking a glance back.
After a beat, presumably Cid trying to make sense of the scene in front of him, he answered, "Everybody but Tifa."
"Tifa's here," Nanaki insisted.
In their midst, Cloud stood with shoulders slumped, staring down at Hojo's body. As if, with Barret's refusal, he'd been counting on that madman to give him some direction.
Rufus and Scarlet held their weapons steady, but he saw them exchange glances. They knew they were outnumbered.
"We gotta get the hell outta here," Barret said.
"Highwind can't be far," said Cid.
Barret jerked his head towards Rufus. "You show us the way, an' we don't put any more bullets in heads today."
For a long second, Rufus didn't react. Then the quaking grew worse, making Scarlet stumble in her heels, and he lowered his shotgun. "Very well. Follow me."
"What about Sephiroth?" asked Nanaki.
"I dunno where that jackass is hidin' himself, but we got the Black Materia back, an' that's what's most important. Think it'd be good if we got it as far away from here as possible."
That just left Tifa. She was here, but was she okay? Could she follow them, even if they couldn't see her? They couldn't leave her behind.
Rufus was leading the way out of the clearing, taking a path Barret hadn't noticed. Cid was first to follow, Cait Sith hurrying awkwardly behind. Yuffie hung back just in sight, waving an arm. "Come on, come on!"
Cloud gave a sudden start, looking to his side. "Tifa," he mumbled.
"Cloud," Barret said. "You got her?"
Cloud looked at him, all certainty gone from him, his eyes wide and staring. Well past his limit. It was a miracle, probably, that he was on his feet at all.
And then Tifa was there, standing next to him with her hand on his arm, her voice tripping on the middle of a word like switching on a radio mid-broadcast. "--ave to go, Cloud," she was saying, her voice hoarse. "Please."
Barret started towards them, but Vincent caught his arm and shook his head, casting a significant glance to Barret's pocket. Cloud and the Black Materia were two things that still couldn't mix.
"You got 'im?" he asked Vincent instead.
"I do," Vincent said. Holstering his gun, he strode to Cloud and, with a strength that slight body shouldn't have had, lifted the shorter man onto his shoulders.
"Tifa," Barret said to her, meeting her gaze so she'd know he could see her, and Nanaki likewise nuzzled into her side. "Let's go."
She put her hands to her mouth, tears in her eyes, and nodded.
Together all of them ran after Yuffie to the Highwind. As the ship pulled away, the crystalline clearing shattered below them.