The next day, we were back in Gongaga Town. Cloud had given the Black Materia to Sephiroth and then proceeded to attack Aerith. We managed to stop him, but AVALANCHE left before we could get anyway more information from them on Tseng's murder. We then returned to Gongaga Town to consider our next move.
"We've got to keep Yuffie from getting her hands on the other Materia -- the White Materia," Butch said.
"Yeah, but where is this White Materia?" Mukki protested.
"Doesn't Aerith have a white Materia in her hair?" Johnny asked.
"That's it!" Butch said. "The White Materia is a Cetra heirloom... that's got to be it!"
"We've got to stop her!" I said. "We don't know what she's going to go to to get that Materia."
"We don't know that AVALANCHE killed Tseng," Hart pointed out.
"Yes, but it certainly seems likely," I retorted. I thought for a moment. "She might try to frame Sephiroth again. I'd better get in touch with him."
"What?" Hart said. "You can't be serious!"
"I'm not," I said. "Sirius is in Ogre Battle."
"That's the most stretched joke I've ever heard," Fred said. "Somebody shoot me."
Unfortunately, there were no phones in Gongaga Town, so I had to hike all the way up to North Corel to use one. I called directory assistance and asked for Sephiroth. I heard his phone ring. And ring. And ring. Eventually, he answered it. "Who are you?" he snapped. "How did you get my phone number? I don't need new siding, thank you very much."
"Wait!" I shouted. "This is Tortellini Domino -- the mayor of Midgar. Somebody's framed you for killing Tseng. We think it's AVALANCHE but we're not sure. And now they're trying to get the White Materia from Aerith, and we think they might pin the theft on you, and... and... and I just thought you might want to know."
There was silence.
"Could you repeat that?" Sephiroth said eventually. "We've got a bad connection."
"Wait!" I shouted. "This is Tortellini Domino -- the mayor of Midgar. Somebody's framed you for killing Tseng. We think it's AVALANCHE but we're not sure. And now they're trying to get the White Materia from Aerith, and we think they might pin the theft on you, and... and... and I just thought you might want to know."
"AVALANCHE, you say?" Sephiroth said coolly.
"Yeah, AVALANCHE."
There was a sudden sound. "Can you hold?" Sephiroth asked. "That's Kefka calling about our parcheesi tournament." After a brief pause, Sephiroth got back on the line. "Where were we?"
"AVALANCHE."
"Oh, yeah. Well, I'll look into it." Sephiroth then hung up.
Although I was not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, I returned to Gongaga Town. By the time I got back, it was almost night, so any plans had to wait until tomorrow.
"So how'd it go?" Hart asked me the following day.
"To be honest, I'm not sure," I said.
"Well, we don't have time to wait around," Hart said. "AVALANCHE's heading up north. We've got to catch up with them before Yuffie can swipe the Materia."
We hopped on Hojo's seaplane and flew on up to northern continent. After parking the plane, we headed on up to the nearest sign of civilization -- Bone Village. A few minutes in town revealed we'd need a Luna Harp to pass through the forest to the City of the Ancients.
"Don't worry," a somewhat familiar voice said. "I've taken care of that."
We turned towards the source of the voice. Sephiroth was lounging against the trees. "S-S-Sephiroth?" Johnny said.
"That would be me," Sephiroth said. "Now let's get going. Stand over here."
Somewhat apprehensively, we walked over to stand next to Sephiroth. Sephiroth raised his hands -- one holding the Masamune -- and a white light surrounded us. "Don't misinterpret this," Sephiroth said to us. "I'm not trying to help you out or anything. I just want my name cleared. Don't be surprised if I destroy the world on you."
The white light dimmed, and we were standing in the middle of some shells. "The Forgotten Capital of the Ancients," Sephiroth announced in a deep booming voice.
"You sound like one of those National Geographic announcers," Fred said.
Sephiroth chose to ignore the comment. He gestured with the Masamune towards a large spiraling building in the center of the ruins. "That building holds the Floating Temple. Your friends are probably in there."
"They're not our friends," Hart protested.
We followed Sephiroth to the building and entered. A spiral staircase led down between some weird green seaweed-like stuff. With Sephiroth in the lead, we descended.
"So what's the plan?" Mukki whispered.
I looked down. Below was a vast purple crystal temple-ish building shining brightly even though there was nothing but pitch black around it. "Oh, man, that's even brighter than Hojo's Hawaiian shirt," Hart said, shielding his eyes. We were standing on a long spiral staircase that wound down to the temple. Standing on the temple dais was Aerith. Cloud, Barret, and Red XIII were approaching the steps to the dais below us.
"There they are," I whispered to our group. "Looks like we made in it time. Okay, here's the plan. Johnny, Fred, you guys see if you can - OH MY GOD! THEY KILLED AERITH!"
"Bastards!" Johnny yelled.
As Aerith fell forward, transfixed by a boomerang, Sephiroth leaped down from the steps to the dais and tried to pull the boomerang free. It was too late. Aerith fell to the ground in an oddly bloodless death. The White Materia came loose from her and bounced down into the water surrounding the temple.
"Sephiroth!" Cloud roared, raising his sword.
Sephiroth stared at him. "What?" he asked, unsure of why Cloud was yelling at him.
"She will return to the Planet soon," Sephiroth said sadly, looking down at Aerith's corpse.
"...shut up," Cloud said. "The cycle of nature and your stupid plan don't mean a thing. Aerith is gone. Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry... or get angry..."
"My stupid plan? MY stupid plan?" Sephiroth demanded, outraged. "I'm not the one who killed Tseng and Aerith. I won't mention any names, but..."
"Damn right you killed them!" Barret said, waving his gun-arm at Sephiroth.
I jogged up to Cloud and Barret from behind, having taken the route around through the stairs. "Hey... guys," I said. "Sephiroth's innocent. He might be a crazed, evil, homicidal maniac out to destroy the world, but he didn't kill Tseng and Aerith."
"I thought you were on my side," Sephiroth said in hurt tones. "You're damaging my self-esteem."
"Shut up," Johnny said. "You don't have any self-esteem."
"That's it!" Sephiroth shouted. "Prepare to face my wrath!" He summoned up Jenova*LIFE and then flew up into the air. He paused briefly and glared at Cloud. "Cloud, you are a..." and then he was gone.
"I am a what?" Cloud demanded.
"I can hazard as a guess as to what he was going to say, but it might offend some members of the audience," I said.
Cloud pointed his sword at me. "You," he said, "shut up."
At that point, Jenova*LIFE cast Aqualung, spewing out a stream of blue bubbles. Red XIII retaliated with a Cure spell. Yuffie and Vincent dropped down, and they, with the aid of Cloud and Barret, made short work of the monster.
"Hey, wait!" Butch protested. "Don't kill it yet! We need to learn Aqualung! We have all the Enemy Skills but that one! We've spent hours trying to get it but -" His voice trailed off as Jenova*LIFE dissolved.
Cloud turned to our party. "You still here?" he asked. "Get out of here. I never want to see you losers again."
"Hey, hey, wait," I said. "Sephiroth did not kill Aerith."
"Yeah?" Cloud asked dangerously. "Then who did?"
"Well, this is just a guess, but.... Yuffie Kisaragi, in the Forgotten Capital, with the boomerang."
"What?" Yuffie said, shocked (or at least pretending to be shocked). "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!"
"YOU? Beautiful?" This was too much for Hart. He cracked up and started rolling on the floor in hysterics, soon joined by the rest of our party. "Trust me, Yuffie," Hart said. "You have a face that launched a thousand ships... all trying to get as far away from you as humanly possible."
"You want proof?" Fred said to Cloud's gang when we had recovered. "I have a videographic memory."
"A videographic memory?" Barret repeated. "What the hell's that?"
"It's like a photographic memory, but it records a whole event instead of just a picture. See, look." Fred stuck a finger into his ear. There was a humming and whirring sound and a videotape rose out of the back of his pants. Fred took it and held it out to AVALANCHE. "This is the truth."
Hart shuffled through the remaining Summon Materia in his pocket (he was running rather thing on them by now) and found a Summon TV & VCR Materia. He cast the spell, causing a TV and VCR to appear on the temple dais. Fred popped the tape in and pressed Play.
His videographic memory had provided a close-up of Aerith's death. The metal tip of a boomerang clearly pierced her body. Fred rewound it and showed it again. "See that?" he said, pointing. "That's a boomerang."
"Well, it could be, maybe," Cloud shrugged. "But even if it was, what's to say that Sephiroth didn't throw it?"
"Look," Fred said, rewinding the tape again. "Sephiroth came from above Aerith, right? That means if he threw a boomerang, it would have knocked Aerith down flat. But it doesn't."
Fred rewinded the tape yet again. "See? It knocks her back and to the left... back and to the left... back and to the left... The only place that boomerang could have come from," Fred pointed up through the stairwell to the surface, "is from that grassy knoll way up there. And that's about where Yuffie jumped down from."
"You guys are so mean!" Yuffie whined.
"Don't believe me?" Fred said. "Look again. Back and to the left..."
"I don't want to listen to any more of this crap," Cloud said, and smashed the TV set with his sword.
"All right, that's it!" I shouted suddenly, surprising even myself with my anger. "You so-called heroes are nothing but a bunch of lying, back-stabbing, treacherous murderers! You aren't any better than the Shinra! So far you've done nothing but ride along on my work and take all the damn credit! Well, now you can see what it's like on your own! You can try to save the world on your own, but you're not getting any more help for me, because I QUIT! I'm going to do this on my own, and I don't you need lazy pond scum along!" With that, I stormed up the stairs out of the temple.
| Next chapter: In Which We Discover the Promised Land |