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Cloud Strife, Vincent Valentine, and Red XIII
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Date Posted: 12:17:20 06/26/02 Wed
OOC: This is going to be obscenely long.
IC:
Red XIII watches them sympathetically out of one moon-golden eye. When he judges that they are finished, ah, accepting the idea, he begins to speak again in a throaty rumble.
"I completely understand if you do not wish to join in 'saving the world again,'" he says, gently. "I would not ask that of anyone, especially someone not from this world." Yes, of course he knows they're not from this world. Isn't it obvious, after all? They smell different, they breathe different, they look different. It's not so hard. "But this matter concerns those of you who are from a different world, and perhaps will enable you to return home."
That should get their attention.
"So what's the big deal, Red?" Cloud asks, leaning forward. "Just get on with it."
Red XIII regards him gravely, tail twitching. "The dead are coming back, Cloud."
There is a scant two seconds of silence, in which there is the uncomfortable sound of Vincent's claw-hand scraping the wood of the table in a tense, nervous gesture. His face is as impassive as ever, but the muscles of his hand are tense.
"W--what?" Cloud finally stammers out.
The red-furred beast looks off to the side, finding something on the wall to peruse. "You have not been back to this world for some time, Cloud. You left a few months after Midgar was destroyed.
It was not noticed for some time. But--the dead began coming back. Not rising from the grave, it was just as if they had never been dead in the first place. They returned, for the most part, not knowing that they had died. We, here, at Cosmo Canyon, speculate that the Lifestream brought them back when it rose to stop Meteor from destroying the Planet."
"What--all of them?" Cloud interrupts. That's a lot of dead people.
"No. And we admit that we cannot understand the reason why only some of the dead have returned," Red XIII replies. "But in any case, they will not die."
"There is something they didn't finish," Vincent intones quietly.
Red XIII's head snaps around to look at him. "What?"
"There is something they didn't finish," Vincent repeats. "That is why the Lifestream returned them. And that is why they will not die. They won't die until they finish what they came for."
Silence accompanies this remark.
"How do you know this?" Red XIII queries, perhaps a little sharply.
Vincent shrugs. "There is no basis for my belief. But I think that it is true."
"We have nothing else to work with," Cloud says, slowly, "so we might as well take that to be the truth for now. But what else is the problem, Red? I mean, besides all the dead coming back."
"That is the problem, Cloud. The dead must remain dead. You remember the cycle that Grandfather showed you? It is twisted and skewed. There are too many living souls and not enough dead ones to feed the Lifestream. And--" Here Red XIII paused, as if reluctant to voice his next thought. "And you know as well as I do, Cloud, that there are some who are dead that we had rather not see come back."
--a fall of silver hair, velvet green eyes that seem to glow in the dark, turning to walk into the flames--
"The imbalance caused by this and the coming of Meteor also seems to have caused rifts in the dimensional barriers," Red XIII continues. "At least, that is what we hope. If it is a completely unrelated problem, then that must be placed on a plate that is already too full, so to speak." The expression on his face is grave, which looks unusual on a fae that is not human in the first place. "It is up to you to do what you can to set things to right. And perhaps, in the process, you will be able to go home."
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