Chapter Text
Nibelheim burned.
Tifa ran towards the billowing smoke rising above the trees. Where were the SOLDIERS and the scientists? What had happened?
She burst out of the forest behind old Mrs Schenker’s house. Black smoke poured from the upper windows and red flame licked along the walls on the bottom floor. Tifa gaped at it. In her uncomprehending horror, her first clear thought was that Mrs Schenker couldn’t walk well. In blind panic she ran inside, yelling the old lady’s name.
The heat stung her face and made her eyes water. Nobody replied to her yelling. She threw open doors and the flames roared. The fire had engulfed the left side of the house and crept along the carpets and walls. Tifa coughed and struggled to gulp down air. Maybe the old lady had passed out somewhere. Her panic grew.
She ran up the stairs. The wood groaned under her boots. She coughed and coughed then staggered on the landing.
There was nobody there. The smoke was thick in the once cosy attic, blanketing the roof entirely. Tifa fell to her knees. Her eyes were blurry with tears. She dragged herself to the window and hauled herself up enough to lean out of it. She gasped in the cold night air.
Mrs Schenker’s wheelchair lay empty and on its side in the street.
She stared at it.
Her own house was across from her. Her eyes rose to it, latching onto the flames reaching out of the windows and the open front door. The roof collapsed in. Tifa watched in mute horror.
Where was papa?
Voices yelled and she turned her stinging eyes up to the town square. The unit of Shinra soldiers had their rifles out. A line of villagers stood with their backs to the tavern wall, their hands raised.
The rat-tat-tat of gunfire sounded just as she spotted papa at the far end of the line.
He collapsed. She screamed.
“Hey! Get that one!”
Professor Hojo pointed up at her. The three helmeted SOLDIERS at his side ran towards the burning house.
She turned and ran.
Fire gleamed under the floorboards and she couldn’t see anything. Her panic led her through it. She leapt straight out the smashed back window and landed hard on the packed earth, sending tremors up her legs.
Footsteps thundered behind her.
She ran into the woods, up the wild slopes of Mount Nibel. The collapse of houses drowned out the sound of her pursuers.
The week before Tifa had walked up the mountain path alone on a bright autumn morning.
The reactor loomed up ahead, a rusting blemish cut into the wilderness. She walked with a spring in her step towards it, holding the straps of her backpack securely. Birds sang in the canopy and little snuffling creatures hid in the ferns and bushes.
Out of habit she made note of which species she saw and how many. And whether or not any of them looked especially mutated.
She was eighteen years old, and starting to realise that being Nibelheim’s best mountain guide wasn’t enough for her. A scientist in Cosmo Canyon had reached out to her about the local wildlife and she started exchanging regular letters with him. Ecology was fascinating, and way more complicated than she had assumed. Maybe conservation work could be her future? She was good at it, and unlike almost every other option, it didn’t mean moving to Midgar.
It just didn’t pay anything.
She was still figuring that part out.
A stoat with gills ran across the path. She watched it disappear into the undergrowth with narrowed eyes. That she was pretty sure she had figured out already.
The mutations were getting worse.
The Cosmo Canyon scientist told her to be careful, but this was her mountainside. If something was mutating the wildlife so badly it was only a matter of time until it affected the people as well. Her father didn’t like to think about it, blaming it on bad luck.
She would put her bet on something far more mundane than luck.
The reactor appeared over the ridge, rising up behind its chicken wire fence.
She’d never gotten this close before. Technically she was already trespassing, Shinra owned the whole rise the reactor was planted into, the fence had to be slightly further in to stay on stable ground.
The underground caves and waterways made building anything up here tricky.
She stood next to the fence and looked around. She felt a little silly, as though she ought to be whistling innocently, but she knew full well there was nobody looking. The reactor was from before even Shinra had used security cameras in their outposts, and nobody had been out here in at least twenty years. No matter how many times her father had asked them to send someone out to fix it.
She grabbed the netting and hauled herself up and over. She landed with a bounce on the reactor side.
She grinned and looked over her shoulder, feeling excited and clandestine. She straightened her backpack and headed off towards the towering thing.
From the front there was nothing to see. Its doors had no inclination of opening no matter how she jiggled the handle, so she looked around the back of the structure, where it bordered the river bank.
She didn’t really know what she was looking for. She clambered over pipes and more fences and humming boxes. She assumed the reactor was leaking, her Cosmo Canyon friend had said Mako run-off caused mutations. Maybe she could find a leaking bolt or something and she could tape it up. She had her dad’s sealing tape in her pack. Or maybe if she had proof then Shinra would finally stop dragging their feet and do something about it.
The rush of the river got louder. Giant pipes wider than she was tall passed overhead, sucking up the river water. Or returning the water? She didn’t know how reactors worked.
She ducked under a railing and startled a wildcat. It hissed at her with multiple rows of teeth, and scuttled under one of the humming boxes. It looked like it was nesting under there. Hm, that couldn’t be good. Maybe that was the problem, animals getting too cosy with the reactor and subsequent mutations getting handed down the food chain.
She considered it was a frown, before she turned and glanced at the river.
One of the giant pipes had its side ripped open, just above the water line.
The metal was bent outwards, exposing a hole a couple of feet wide. Clear looking water poured out of the wound, but the edges of shredded metal dripped with something green and iridescent. Purple fleshy growths coated the inside of the pipe and fell in long streamers through the grating at the end of the pipe.
Into the river. The river the town got its water from.
She told her papa. He told her off for trespassing, but still called Shinra and lodged a report with all the information she had found.
Papa warned her not to expect anything, if Shinra even cared it would still take months, if not years, before they acted.
She thought about the river system, the water disappeared into the ground further down from the reactor before resurfacing in the gorge where they piped it up. If you dropped something in at the top it wouldn’t resurface for weeks. Sometimes it never appeared again, she’d accidentally dropped a whole tent in once and nobody ever saw it again.
Maybe it was fine. they had been drinking the water for years, maybe the contamination was so diluted by the time it got to them that it wasn’t dangerous. She stared into the slightly cloudy water that came out of her kitchen tap.
She ordered a water filter.
Three days later, two helicopters landed on the edge of the town. Shinra military in an assortment of uniforms got out, led by scientists in shirts and ties.
Papa went white at the sight of them.
They asked about the report and she told them everything she had seen. She downplayed her trespassing, but they didn’t seem to care, and they paid her very well to lead them to the reactor. She pointed out the leak and described the mutations she had seen in the wilderness.
The head scientist, Professor Hojo, listened with rapt attention, eyeing her over his round little glasses.
She didn’t know what the infantry and SOLDIERs were there for. They fought off the wildlife but it was overkill having so many of them, it wasn’t like this was the time of year that dragons were awake.
The scientists stood around the burst pipe and argued among themselves with alternating stress and excitement.
She shifted from foot to foot.
She overheard them use the word ‘escape’ as they studied the pipe.
Her brow furrowed. She had assumed it was the purple gunk build up that had blocked the grate so the pipe burst. They turned off the water and one of the scientists scraped away the purple flesh from the opening. There were scratches on the inside of the metal.
The mountain wind turned cold. Night was falling.
Some of the scientists disappeared into the reactor, while the others went back down the mountain.
She trailed behind them, letting the forests swallow her up. She felt queasy at it all.
She smelled smoke.
She stumbled as she ran. The rush of blood in her ears was so loud she couldn’t hear her pursuers. She wasn’t on the path, couldn’t even find it. Her feet carried her over logs, around trees, through bushes, as fast as she could go.
A dark cave mouth opened in front of her. She plunged in.
The roar of flames and the rat-tat-tat of gunfire played on repeat in her mind. It felt like it was chasing her. Footsteps on cold stone echoed around her, her own, her pursuers, she couldn’t tell. It was so dark in the caves she kept tripping. She didn’t stop.
She ran and ran and ran.
Her lungs ached, her mind was numb, and the heavy thud of her heartbeat under her ribs has become a blanket monotony drowning out everything.
The stone turned to earth under her feet. The cave roof disappeared and was replaced by the dark of trees. She didn’t know where she was or how long she had been running. All she knew was she had to keep running.
Her legs felt like they were going to collapse out from under her.
Dark splotches intruded on her vision.
The tree cover suddenly ended and her feet splashed into cold water.
She stopped.
A lake stretched out in front of her, black and mirror smooth. It didn’t even lap at the grassy shore. Ripples from her steps smoothly spread out in a circle, drifting away from her in every direction.
She had no idea where she was.
A column of black smoke reflected on the surface, starting from where she stood and stretching across the long body of water, blocking out the stars.
She stepped back out of the water, panting and freaked out. The ripples circled out again.
She couldn’t stop now. They were coming for her.
The echo of gunfire fired in her head.
She looked along the shoreline. She had no idea how big this lake was, how far she would have to go around. Her legs were numb and her knees shook.
There! A tiny wooden dinghy was pushed up into the dirt off to her left. She stumbled over to it, dragging her feet over the tree roots that plunged into the waters. She grabbed it and pulled it into the water. It floated.
She tried to step in and fell over, collapsing into the boat’s bottom with a thud. It knocked the air out of her. The little boat rocked awkwardly in the water. She tried to push herself up and fumbled against the wooden seat. Her eyes were blurry and her breath hitching uncontrollably.
Oh, she was weeping. She hadn’t even noticed.
The boat drifted out into the water while the red of dawn began to leech into the sky. Exhaustion and grief swallowed her, and she blacked out.
Tifa woke with something scratchy against her cheek and the smell of damp earth tickling her nose.
She cracked her eyes open. They were crusty and sore, her whole face felt dirty. She was laying on fallen leaves on the hard ground. A broad orange leaf was cracking into pieces under the weight of her cheek. She sat up.
She was on the other side of the lake. Or, she was on a side of the lake. She didn’t recognise the shoreline or the mountain silhouettes around her. Even the trees were unfamiliar.
Hadn’t she been in a boat?
She squinted through her grogginess. It was dark and cloudy, but still daytime, mid afternoon maybe? The lake was still black and still. There was a crooked old fisherman’s hut behind her. It looked abandoned. A thin and wonky jetty reached out over the lake and looked equally forgotten by the world.
A cold wind shuffled the leaves around her and made her shiver. It smelled like smoke.
She closed her eyes again. They stung.
She wanted to cry again, but couldn’t. She felt too numb and exhausted. Her throat ached. She sucked in a breath of cold air and found her lungs stung too. Probably smoke inhalation.
She dragged herself up to her feet. Her legs were so tired, her thighs ached like never before. She gritted her teeth through it and hobbled over to the jetty. The water really was impossible to see through, fathomless and still.
The wooden slats groaned under her but held out. She sank to her knees at the far end and reached a hand down into the water. She splashed it on her face and washed away the tear tracks. It wasn’t as cold as she expected of an alpine lake.
She spotted the boat on the far shore. She frowned at it, unease sliding down her spine. It was a surreal sight, had she dreamed up getting in the boat? How did she get here? How was she supposed to be back?
...back where?
There was nowhere to go. She looked down at her soot streaked face.
Ripples ran across the surface, distorting the image. She looked around, sinking into a defensive stance. There was no sign of anything that might have disturbed the waters. The shore was empty. She was alone.
The placid stillness returned. It was so quiet.
She needed to keep running. There was no knowing whether or not they were still chasing her, but they had to know she had gotten away. Her body was so sore from the marathon the night before, she could barely hobble. How was she going to outrun SOLDIERs?
She looked up at mount Nibel. It looked different from this side.
There was movement on the mountainside. She hissed. Tiny distant figures walked in single file along the path.
She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if they caught her they would kill her. That knowledge was grounding. Nothing surreal about it.
She limped to the fishing hut. She forced the stubborn door open with a horrible shriek of metal. Inside was sparse and smelled of fish, but it had more than she did. She grabbed a scratchy wool blanket, the first aid kit, and some dried fruit which was so dry now it may as well have been petrified. She gnawed on it and sank down onto the humble cot.
Maybe if she got some sleep she would be able to run again. She tried to think back on her wilderness survival training but nothing came to mind. Everything she had been taught was how to find civilization when alone in the wild. She had no idea how to escape. Where was she supposed to go? What was the point?
anger flickered to life in the ashes of her grief. How dare they do this.
The four wooden walls closed in on her. Any second now they would ignite. The smoke would pour through the seams, the flames licking up the panels. She was burning, suffocating.
She snapped and fell against the door, collapsing back out onto the dirt. She was hyperventilating.
She gritted her teeth and punched the ground. She forced herself to turn back just long enough to grab the blanket then she shut the door and leaned against it. She squeezed her stinging eyes shut. Slowly her shoulders relaxed.
She opened her eyes. Sooty smeared stars blinked down at her.
Something moved on the end of the jetty. She jerked, thudding her back against the door. Fear gripped her, then fury took its place. What else was there to be afraid of, what more did she have to lose? She wasn’t going to cower.
The black of the lake and the dark shadow of the mountains made it too hard for her to make out anything clearly. So she hauled herself up and towards it. Nothing reflected on the water, it was like a pool of ink swallowing everything up before her. She squinted in the dark from the shoreline.
There was nothing there.
She had definitely seen something. She screwed up her courage and stepped onto the jetty. The wood creaked, the only noise in the night. She went all the way to the end, driving herself on in defiance and fear, and looked down.
Nothing.
The fine hairs on her arms stood on end.
She was increasingly aware of the gaps in the wooden slats beneath her feet. She didn’t even know how deep the water was.
There was a soft splash.
She froze.
“Behind you,” a voice whispered.
She spun around. There was nothing behind her, nothing on the jetty or on the shore.
Leaves crunched in the woods. Something was approaching. She remembered the reality of just who was hunting her and her muscles locked up.
She had to run. She had to.
“He has already seen you,” the voice said. “Knock him into the water.”
“What?” she hissed.
A SOLDIER emerged from the trees. He had his helmet on, so she saw no face, only blank metal. He had his sword drawn, but he lowered it at the sight of her and raised his other arm.
“Hey there, hey, don’t be scared. I’m here to help.” He approached, slowly returning his sword to his back and holding his hand up placatingly. She took a step back and found the end of the jetty with her boot.
He paused on the shore’s edge. “It’s okay. You come back with me, I’ll get you somewhere safe.”
She shook her head.
“Come on.” He stepped onto the jetty.
What was in the water?
“It’s alright,” he said, getting closer. Step by step. “It’s going to be alright.”
The water was black and still beneath him.
He reached out with both hands as he drew near. She waited until she couldn’t bare it anymore.
She leapt forward, her fist swinging. He sidestepped and grabbed for her. Her legs collapsed under her own weight. His hands passed through empty air above her.
She threw her elbow into his stomach. He staggered back with a harsh exhalation, his foot slipping on the edge. She surged up and hit him with an uppercut.
He wheeled his arms, and fell backwards with a curse. The water swallowed him up.
She panted as she stared down at where he went. There was no thrashing, no spluttering, not even a splash. Her heart was thundering with the short burst of activity, and it felt too loud for the quiet night. Now as dead silent as it had been before. Ripples spread out in lazy circles, and then dissipated.
Nothing resurfaced.
She stepped back.
“Who are you?” she asked into the night. Her voice came out hoarse and weak.
“Who are you?” The voice asked back.
Two green eyes opened in the water where the SOLDIER had fallen, glowing and looking up at her through the water. A palace face emerged a moment later, barely discernible in the dark. He rose up until a whole head broke the surface, thick silver hair like iridescent kelp fell from his head and disappeared back into the water.
His large eyes glowed stronger than any of the SOLDIERs she had seen, with thin slit pupils. They were terrifying, set in a sharp face with strong features. She stared at him.
“Well?” he drawled.
A shiver ran up her back.
“I asked first,” she said, hyper aware of how much danger she was in.
“You are in my lake, and I just saved your life.”
She swallowed.
“I’m Tifa. I’m the mountain guide from Ni- from nowhere.”
His eyes narrowed.
“From the town beneath the reactor.”
“It’s gone,” she spat. “Shinra came and… and now it’s all gone.” She looked up at where the sluggish smoke smudged out the stars.
“That is what they do to their allies,” he said.
“I’m not their ally!”
“Evidently.” He sank back into the dark. “Why did they come back to the town?” he asked a moment later, from where she didn’t know.
“The reactor was leaking, I called them to fix it. They said they would, instead they-” She gulped, stumbling over the words. She had called them. She had led them to her own home.
“I hate them.” Her voice broke. “SOLDIER. Shinra. I hate them all.”
She sank down onto her knees, her shoulders shaking. She didn’t care she was alone in the dark with a terrifying beast, she was so angry and grieved she thought she might break with it.
“You led them to your home ...and now you have led them here to me.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He rose from the water on the other side of the jetty, climbing up onto her level.
“Don’t be.” He offered a cold smile.
He had a long pale torso which disappeared into black scales at his waist. His lower half was a sleek black tail that curled around a wooden support before sinking into the water. It was so long, she had no idea how big he really was.
He sat between her and the shore.
“Did you take the boat away?” she asked.
“Yes. After I pushed you here.”
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“It would give away your position,” he said simply. He studied her with those giant green eyes. “You are being hunted.”
“Why help me?”
He cocked his head. “Do you know what they will do to you if they catch you?”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Unlikely,” he said, running a hand over his scales. “Not at first, at least.”
His movement drew her attention to a discolouration she hadn’t noticed before, like silvery veins disturbing the scales. The lines were fainter on his skin, but now that she knew to look for them- he was covered in surgical scars, all over his torso. Injection scars decorated his arms.
She looked into his eyes, horrified. He watched her reaction with a calm curiosity. It dawned on her all too late why the scientist had spoken of an escape from the reactor. Why it had been scientists who came calling and not engineers. What horrors had they done above her town?
“Will you help me hunt down the rest of them?” she asked. Her voice came out quiet and calm. Her confusion and indecision fell away. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with whatever time was left to her.
He smiled with too many sharp teeth.
“Yes, I will. There is a scientist who may be among them.”
“Hojo?”
His expression darkened.
“Hojo. Lure him to the water for me… and I will kill as many SOLDIERs as you bring me.”
She nodded. She had never killed anyone before. Her thoughts returned to the moment the SOLDIER who never resurfaced lost his balance. She had now.
She wasn’t sorry.
He must have seen something in her expression, because he smiled at her. It almost looked nice, in his unsettling face.
“I don’t know your name,” she said.
“I am Sephiroth, Tifa from nowhere.”
He placed a cure Materia on the wooden slat between them. Then he slunk back down into the water without so much as a splash.
She grabbed it and set it healing her overworked muscles. The relief was almost as sweet as knowing she wasn’t alone in this. She stood without pain.
“They are following the eastern shore,” he said from the dark.
She went hunting.