So starts chapter 6. Genesis is fun to write, he's just so verbose and pompous.
Suggested listening.
*
This part of the plan was, in retrospect, not going well.
Tifa threw herself sideways. Her feet skid along the side of the way, sparks of Lifestream stabilizing her path. Genesis's sword followed her. It cut through metal like it was paper, leaving a trail of slashes in her wake that tore the wall to pieces. She bunched her legs as she slid. Yellow light flared from her materia and she Jumped. Even to Tifa the speed was disorienting as the facility flashed by in a flicker of motion before she slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the chamber with enough force to dent the metal and the solid earth underneath.
She allowed herself to slide downward until she came to rest on a rusty pipe that extended from the wall a few meters before crumbling apart. As she stood she hastily dropped another Mighty Guard to shore up her flagging Barriers and a Regen for good measure. Genesis floated across the platform they had been fighting on and landed adroitly on the safety railing. Nearly a dozen meters separated them now.
"I have to admit, that you are the most remarkable human I have ever met," Genesis called across the distance between them. He gestured with his elaborately decorated red blade and brushed his bangs out of his hair. "However, even the greatest human is still only human. You should have sent your boyfriend to handle this."
Tifa grit her teeth and wanted to throw herself at him but forced herself not to. This was her chance to get him talking. The longer he talked, the more likely she was to survive this encounter. "Cloud isn't here anymore."
"Cloud?" Genesis seemed taken aback by the mention of her vanished lover's name. "Zack the puppies' little shrimp friend? The one who got the S-Cells and was sent into a coma by it?"
Tifa clenched her hands so tight she could feel the nails biting into her palms, even through the thick palms of Premium Heart. "Who did you think I was talking about?"
"That black-haired man who seemed so keen on fighting Weiss," Genesis said with a nonchalant shrug. Tifa raised an eyebrow. Her and Vincent? "Vincent Valentine was his name, yes?" He chuckled. "I can feel the power of the Planet within him, though his power is much more demanding then my own. But,
Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess."
"I don't think he considers it a gift," Tifa responded dryly.
"He has been chosen by the will of the Planet, given a great gift. He can bring death and peace to life, to all life if he so chooses on this world and cleanse this sick world of its painful wounds." Genesis extended his arms to his sides, throwing his head back. "To run from such a gift would be to deny destiny."
Tifa wasn't about to leave such an opening unexploited. She flashes across the room, another Jump driving her into a platform three stories down the massive shaft of the abandoned mako extraction facility. Even as the wire mesh floor gave way under the force of her landing she rolled to the side, crossing over the body of one of the Genesis Copies that they had put down when she and Vincent had broken into the room. She came to her feet holding the Soldier-issue broadsword in one hand.
Materia enhanced muscle strained and she cocked her arm back and let the blade fly in a Throw that turned it into a silver moon of flashing light. Genesis was fast, but not quite fast enough to avoid the weapon as it smashed full force into his chest before he realized that Tifa had even left her perch.
Tifa felt her heart sink as the air in front of his body filled with tightly clustered hexagons of blue light. The blade, a tempered steel built to withstand the immense pressure a Soldier could exert on it in combat, shattered with the force of her attack. Yet even that didn't make a single panel of his Barrier shrink. The power behind his spell was just obscene.
"There's no need to be rude, we were having such a nice conversation," Genesis said with a smirk. Tifa was already moving when he landed on her level. A green sphere of light shot from his hand, drilling through the wall as it skimmed past her Barrier close enough to make her spell shimmer briefly into existence.
"I don't like talking to madmen," Tifa shot back and dashed towards him. He raised an eyebrow and set his sword to receive her charge, probably amused by her suicidal tactic. The fact was, even with her Haste pushing her reactions to the edge of her ability she could just barely keep ahead of his attacks. Defending herself, especially when one or two strikes would knock aside her own Barrier, was not a winning strategy. Her capacity would run dry if she kept up the spell for much longer.
She came in fist first. Genesis danced and dodged side to side, avoiding her blows with ease. "No matter how fast your magic makes you," he taunted as he moved between her strikes, closer and closer to the wall. "You are still a human being, with human limits."
"I don't acknowledge those limits," Tifa snapped back. She dropped to a crouch and kicked out, not at him but at the ground. A wave of blue light rippled from her strike, ripping the metal flooring to pieces. Genesis floated upward, his one black wing propelling him out of danger. Even as he moved Tifa was already leaping skyward.
He may have natural flight, but that one wing of him gave him imperfect control over it. In the air he just couldn't dodge like before, forcing him to parry her open hand. Blue light flared as her hand pressed against the edge of his Barrier. "Gotcha," she said. Genesis eyes widened as her legs shot sideways and began to run along the wall.
In the air, Genesis was not only slower, but all his superhuman strength meant almost nothing. Without any leverage to work with, he had only his inertia and Tifa easily overwhelmed that, her footsteps leaving green sparks in their wake as she used a trick to keep herself moving along he wall. If she had been holding him, he might have grappled with her and used his superior strength to break the hold. However she was cupping the edge of his Barrier, not him. The force of the spell repelled the two people, which meant it also repelled Genesis from her as much as it did her from him. For a few precious seconds, Genesis was like a hamster in a ball, pushed through the air in front of Tifa like a cannonshot.
He didn't take her advantage lightly. Twice he stabbed at her with his oversized rapier. Both times Tifa managed to jerk her head to the side just in time, though the blows sent flares of light across her Barrier as the size and number of her shielding fields shrunk alarmingly. It was as he was lining up for a third shot that probably would have skewered her that she smashed him into the far wall with all the built up force of her run and a thrust from her materia at the same time.
The collision was deafening. Tifa was thrown backward by the impact, a lance of pain shooting up her arm that Regen quickly numbed. As she flipped backward the wall around Genesis crumpled inward, clouds of powdered rock escaping from cracks in the metal like steam. Genesis was driven to one knee, but his Barrier had only shrunk to half its size. Above him the machinery of the abandoned extraction site groaned.
"Gravija!" Genesis barely grunted as the spell materialized a black void just above his head. He crouched deeper, driving one hand into the walkway to keep himself from being pulled into the ultra-high gravity field. His Barrier barely flared as it resisted the tidal forces at the edge of the miniature singularity. He looked up at her in a glare as the field faded.
That was when the tonnes of machinery collapsed on him. Ripped from the wall by the spell, they had been pulled downward with incredible force and managed to reach him just as the spell faded. One would almost think Tifa planned it that way all along. She resisted the urge to smirk or relent. Even multiple tonnes of metal raining down on his head at several times terminal velocity wouldn't do more than slow a Soldier 1st Class down.
She braced herself, took a breath and extended her hands towards the pile of metal. "Flare!" she yelled. It was unnecessary, but yelling focused the emotions and thus further pushed past the Limit. Red light spiralled into the jagged pile of metal. Then again, and again. As fast as her Haste and Dualcast would let her Tifa poured spell after spell into the wreckage until it had fused into a white hot puddle of molten metal. When she felt her body begin to overload as her capacity reached she finally allowed her hands to drop to her side.
Streams of liquid metal began to drip through the floor and fall into the dark void below. She hoped none of it landed on Vincent. She hadn't seen or heard any sign of him since he and Weiss had plummeted into the abyss.
Not to mention there had been no word from Yuffie at all. What was the girl waiting for? Hadn't she been the one so adamant against Tifa's real plan. Of course, Tifa had waited until they were already well past the point of no return before revealing it to the girl because otherwise...
Tifa frowned and shook her head and bit her lip to focus herself. The symptoms of mako overexposure were subtle at first, but if she was letting her mind wander this much she must have exceeded her capacity by more than she wanted to admit.. Scrambling through her pockets she managed to pull an ether to her lips. She felt her mind clearing and her vision sharpened so quickly she was amazed she hadn't noticed it getting blurred.
Tifa snapped her head up as the collapsing pile of slowly cooling metal suddenly bulged outward. Cursing she cast another Barrier as the entire thing burst in all directions, a wave of hot steel breaking against her shield followed by a rain of molten droplets that took a few seconds to let up. Her hand was shaking as she pulled another ether from her pocket.
"Another ether will just delay the inevitable," Genesis said, walking out of the rain of metal without so much as a scorch mark on him. "I must admit, I am impressed despite myself. That was a fantastic combination." He rolled his hand before him and bowed respectfully. "I underestimated you. Truly, such speed of action and surety of attack. A combination of magic and skill and materia enhanced power like that is something I have never seen before. If you had used that attack on me ten years ago, it is entirely possible I would have been overwhelmed."
"I don't suppose you'd let me try again?" she asked.
He smiled, a mocking little smile. "No." He shook his head. "Your body can't take another attempt like that. No matter how many ethers you down, the mako in your body has built to the point where you simply can't sustain the level you are fighting at anymore."
"I'm not going to give up," Tifa informed him as she raised her fists into a defensive position. "I have plenty of magic left in me."
"Your magic is an advantage that is easy to compensate for," Genesis informed her. "Haste."
Tifa barely even saw him move. One moment he was holding his hand above his head, the next there was a red blur and a loud crack as her Barrier shattered. Ziedrich turned what would have been a knockout blow into one that merely left her head ringing like a bell. It didn't keep her from smashing into the far wall and bouncing off it with a strangled cry.
She landed on hands and knees. Her forehead was bleeding from where Genesis had slammed the hilt of his sabre into it. Only a few drops managed to fall before Regen closed the wound, but she could feel the magic reaching the end of its potency even as it did so.
Genesis landed next to her and kicked her in the stomach. She was sent flying and landed on her side, coughing and trying to suck in air at the same time. Still she managed to roll sideways and spring to her feet as the man landed where she had been, his long coat floating behind him. She growled and charged, driving her fists and legs as fast as she could in a series of hopefully unpredictable feints and strikes.
Genesis didn't so much dodge them as flicker in between her strikes like a red strobe light. "It's not fair, is it?" he asked. "You went through so much trouble to gather all that powerful materia so that you could hope to compete on my level... and nothing prevents me from using the same strategy to utterly outpace you."
This time Tifa managed to get her arms crossed in front of her face as Genesis drove the hilt of his sword against her. The blow sent her skidding back along the grated floor, sparks hissing from her feet as she tried to bleed off momentum. Genesis came in behind her, launching through the air like an arrow. She just barely managed to turn so that the elbow he drove into her caught her in the hip rather than the kidney. Even so, it hurt like hell.
"Why do you fight on so much?" Genesis asked, stepping back and giving her a breather. "You have to realize you can't win this fight. You have to have realized that coming in here. Your one trump card was Valentine, and there was no way he could defeat both of us at the same time."
Tifa took the few seconds to catch her breath. "It's not about defeating you," she said finally between pants.
"Really?" he asked. "Then what do you fight for?"
"I'm fighting to save my family," she said simply.
Genesis eyes narrowed. "Family? You mean Shelke." He snorted. "You have no right to use that term with her."
Tifa's fists clenched tighter and she stood up straighter. "I won't take family advise from you, of all people. I've spoken to Tseng. I know what you did to your own parents, you monster."
"My parents?" He brushed his fingers against his forehead and chuckled bitterly. "Don't use that term for those people. They were not my parents. That woman was no more than an incubator, a well-paid surrogate. She was nothing to me. Nothing!" He snapped his hand sideways violently.
"She raised you," Tifa growled back. "She loved you!"
"Love? You think that makes her family?" He sneered. "
My friend, the fates are cruel. There are no dreams, no honour remains. Love did not keep them from accepting Shinra's money. Love did not keep them from experimenting on me. Love did not keep them from selling me into slavery, from turning me into a weapon. Love never made them tell me the truth." He lowered his hand and his sword. "But I will show you true love. My love for my child is boundless. I will give her the truth, I will give her everything she ever wanted."
"Your child?" Tifa felt her stomach sinking. "You can't mean... Shelke?"
"And why not?" He smiled beatifically. "My blood flows in her veins. My DNA is written into her genetic code. I have as much right to call her my child as the woman who bore her, as the father who sired her." He gestured expansively. "She is the only one of my children to be born perfect, without the complication of degradation. She is my daughter, my legacy and I will create a world worthy of her for her to live in.
There is no hate, only joy. For you are beloved by the Goddess. Hero of the dawn, healer of world."
Tifa took a few involuntary steps back. "You're insane," she gasped.
"I'm not the one who threw themselves into battle against a Soldier 1st Class, and hoped to win," Genesis said coolly. "You are an impressive woman. I saw that back in the ruins of Midgar when you thoughtlessly fought through my army to try and save my daughter." He gestured magnanimously. "But I am her salvation, and much as I am impressed by you I am her real family and the choice of what happens to her is mine. I will spare you life. There could be a place in my new world for you."
"No," Tifa growled. "I won't let you."
"You don't have a choice," Genesis said.
"And that's why you're a monster, and don't even realize it," Tifa shouted.
"Monster?" Genesis frowned. "Don't throw around that word so carelessly. Better people than you have used that word and I won't have you profaning their memory."
"Better people?" Tifa smirked. "Like Zack? Or Angeal?"
"Don't speak about them!" Genesis roared.
"I know all about them, Genesis." Tifa pointed at him. "I learned all about your rebellion, your tantrum against Shinra. I learned how you managed to not only destroy your home town, your parents but also your two best friends."
"I'm warning you..." Genesis's grip on his sword tightened.
Maybe it was the anger. It was always hard to control once you got so far past your limit. Maybe it was the fact her magic capacity was so stretched she couldn't think straight. Maybe it was her attempt to buy more time. Whatever the reason, Tifa ignored the signs and pushed onward. "You're no hero, Genesis. Everything you touch turns to ashes, don't you see that? You barely even count as a monster. You're a footnote in history. You aren't even remembered. You caused the death of so many great people, and you're nothing but a jealous child playing at being a her-"
Tifa felt the pain before she realized that she couldn't see anything anymore. The world had gone red. When she tried to blink she realized it was something wet and warm in her eyes. Blood. Her own blood. She staggered back, clutching her face as the blood poured from the wound in her face. She couldn't keep from screaming in pain and a bit of panic. Oh dear sweet Gaia, had he taken her eyes?
It was only after his hand closed around her throat and he slammed her against the wall that she realized she still had her eyes, as she could just barely see his face leaning in towards hers through the blood. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the revelation.
"Primary mission accomplished. Package secure," a sudden voice in her ear said. That decided it, Tifa began to laugh.
"Why are you laughing?" Genesis asked, honest astonishment driving away his momentary rage.
"Because..." Oh Gaia, it hurt to talk with his hand crushing her windpipe. "Because you're asking the wrong questions."
"Wrong questions?" It was hard to make out his expression through the blood but she thought he was frowning. "And you call me insane?"
Tifa laughed again. She forced the words out in a sharp whistle. "You shouldn't ask me why I'm laughing, or why a normal human would take on a superhuman like yourself in one on one combat. Those are the wrong questions."
"And what is the right question?" he asked with a smirk.
"
Where, exactly, is my ninja?" Tifa said as she pulled the headset from her ear.
Even with her vision blurred and obscured Tifa would always remember the expression on Genesis's face fondly. It flowed from confusion, to realization, to astonishment, to rage so quickly and smoothly it looked like one expression. Then in a roar of anger he drove her against the wall and the world went mercifully black.
C&A Productions Presents
A Work of Crossover Fanfiction
The Empty Set
06
Gale
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Epsilon
So that's Tifa at full capability, as well as why she still has an inferiority complex despite being so damn awesome...
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