AvP

Okay here's the deal with this story. It is set after final fantasy X-2 and as the title suggests it is a crossover with the Alien Xenomorph, the Predator and the characters from FFX-2. Timeline wise I would say about a year after the events of FFX-2.

Chapter 1

The Approaching Storm

The falling darkness of the evening slowly swallows up the vast open plain that was once the glittery and mysterious Macalania woods. The woods have long been dead after the loss of Shiva's fayth in the Macalania temple and now there is nothing left, the land resembles the Thunder Plains more than any other part of Spira.

The Spiran people, not wanting to allow the land to go to waste, have started to build there and start a new city. Construction workers mill about, digging up the ground, constructing large metallic looking structures and operate machinery. A number of buildings have already been finished, though they did not exactly look very friendly or glamorous.

A hovercraft travels over an area that has not yet been built on; it closes in on an area where there are only a couple of workers, who have been digging out and levelling an area about half the size of a football field. But for now they have stopped work.

The hovers two occupants; a man and a woman, talk to each other as the man drives. The woman is a sophisticated looking red head wearing thin black rimmed glasses on a petit nose and she looks to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her hazel eye's dart infrequently from the view outside to her companion on her right and back again.

Her companion is a middle aged man whose hair colour is starting to catch up with him thanks to the few strands of grey hair that stand out from the rest of his black hair. He does not however cut the rough and tough look of a construction worker; he looked more like a surveyor or inspector.

The woman supports her head with her arm, which rests against the door to the hover, she has a look of boredom about her, whatever reason they have for coming out to the diggers she did not care much for it.

"Do we have any idea what it is that they have found over here?" she says with a sigh.

The man shrugs apathetically, "We know zip except the idiots think that they have managed to open up some sort of void, but once they opened it enough for someone to walk into, they stopped digging. They said they wanted someone to investigate first before they continued, and as luck would have it, you and I are the only ones qualified to go searching in uncharted areas."

The woman makes a rasping noise with her lips, obviously as disinterested in why they were going as her partner was.

"This sucks," she mutters.

The man rolls his eyes, "No shit."

The hover pulls up next to a group of excavators who look impatiently at the machine. The driver and passenger jump out, open up the hovers cargo hold and pull out various pieces of equipment; torches, safety harnesses, ropes and flares.

A burly looking construction worker walks up to them both, arms crossed, "You two the experts around here?"

The woman steps towards him to shake his hand, which he grudgingly takes, "My name is Elsa, and this is my colleague John. So come on start talking, what happened here?"

Another construction worker, hands in pockets and chewing on something calls out to answer her, "We were digging over there," he points to a large hole in the side of the ground, "and our machinery went straight into that, we then opened it up as much as it would allow us and bob's your uncle we've got ourselves a cave of some sort."

John glances over at the black opening as he fiddles with some ropes, "How's it look inside?"

The first worker to have spoken to them speaks up, "That is one of the stranger aspects of it, the walls as far as we can tell are not soil like should be; they're made of some sort of weird stone, in fact it looks like this thing was built by someone, but when it was built, we can't say. Apart from what we can see outside there's nothing more we can tell you. We don't really want to go in without proper lighting equipment."

John nods, acknowledging the statement, "Okay that's fine, we'll get to work as quickly as possible, I hear there is a large storm heading our way from the thunder plains, and I don't want to be out here for that."

The pair assembles their equipment; they attach one end of the rope to a large digger and tie the other end to the John's safety harness. He has a radio attached to his right shoulder and a lamp on his left shoulder. As they move to the entrance of the cave he packs flares into one of his pockets.

John inhales deeply and looks at the cave, then back at the workers and Elsa, "Alright here is what happens; I will be in constant radio contact. If for any reason I stop talking for long periods then tug three times on the rope, if I don't tug three times back then get help, do not play the hero and come in after me, for all you know I may have just knocked my transmitter, but, I might also have fallen down a big hole or something. Got that?" Elsa nods.

"If I don't tug back then pull the rope back to here using the machine, even if it means you will drag me on my arse kicking and screaming."

Elsa smiles at him, "Gotcha!"

He looks over at the hover that they came in and points to it "Oh, there's a gun in the little compartment in front of the passengers seat, can you get it? I may need it, who knows what I'll find in here."

Elsa jogs over to the hover, reaches inside and fumbles about for the gun. She brings her arm out, holding the pistol and walks over to John. He takes the gun and puts it in his safety harness at his right side.

John looks at the cave and switches on his lamp, the directional beam glows ahead of him, angled towards the floor, the circular beam illuminates the floor about seven meters in front of him.

He walks into the cave, turning his shoulders so that the light 'scans' the floor ahead of him.

Elsa's voice buzzes in on his walkie talkie, "You hearing me?"

"Loud and clear," he says, looking around himself.

"Start talking to me John," she ordered.

He clears his throat before speaking, "Okay well there isn't much to say, it's just a cave like any other, strange pattern and colouring though, it's sort of a green black colour. The ceiling seems to be covered with, what I can only describe as icicles, but they can't be icicles as it's very warm in here. I can't see any signs of fiends, guess even they can't live in a cave when there is no food around."

"Oh really, and what does that make you then?" she replies sarcastically.

John gives a small snicker, "I'm the waiter. Hmmm. Cave seems to be getting a little smaller. Its really humid in here, the air is so damp. Okay I've just reached an intersection I see two tunnels in front of me. I'll take the left one."

John's voice electrically drones in Elsa's walkie talkie, "This is kind of weird, the cave has certainly changed its look, the walls are still that green black colour but there is more of a pattern to it this time."

Elsa looks at the walkie talkie with curiosity, "How do you mean?"

"Well for starters there are no more of those icicle things anymore, but it now looks like I'm walking down a large rib cage. Right above me following all the way down the path on the ceiling is a large pipe-like mass of who knows what, if it looks like anything I'd say it looked like a huge spinal column, and the 'ribs' run down the sides at constant frequent intervals, as if it were moulded into that shape."

Elsa raises an eyebrow, "Weird"

John exhales slowly into his walkie talkie before speaking, "You got that right. Hey hold up a second, there seems to be some sort of opening in the wall here."

John gets down onto his knees and looks at the small, fist sized hole. He takes a small hammer from his belt and starts knocking at the hole in the left side of the wall, gradually making it bigger and stops once he can put his head through it.

"Whoa!" is all Elsa and the construction workers hear on their end.

"What, what is it?" asks Elsa, her voice showing a hint of panic.

John's head is sticking out of the wall and looking around at an enormous room, truly massive. A strange eerie light glows in the room allowing him to see a fair distance around himself.

He turns to his walkie, "This hole in the cave has led me to another room and my god this is one big room, I don't need the torch, the walls have this strange, faint glow coming off them, it's not that bright but I can see quite a lot."

"The floor is about forty feet below me, and I can see some sort of strange blue light covering the bottom, there are other things too, I can't make out what they are but there are a lot of them, covering the floor."

He exhales sharply, "This room is huge. It must be about the volume of a blitz ball sphere only it's a different shape, more like a square with rounded edges. I must be about fifty feet or so above the floor. The walls have that 'rib' look about them as well. only on a larger scale. I'm gonna go down. I've got to check what's down here okay?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Elsa responds firmly.

John responds with a reassuring voice, "Come on I can't see a single fiend here, I'll be fine, time to do a little abseiling."

"You better be careful John," she warns.

"I will don't worry. I've abseiled loads of time before," he tries to reassure her.

Having bashed out enough of the wall to get his whole body through, John begins to abseil down the side of the wall. He reaches the bottom with the dull thud of his boots. There is a rim of raised ground that circles the entire room; the ground a couple of meters in front of him is lowered by almost a meter.

The lower part of the ground has a white mist covering the strange objects underneath, and a blue light shines millimetres over the mist, and looks like a laser only it covers the entire area and there is no visible source for the light.

John looks around himself checking for fiends but sees none, "Okay I'm at the bottom. There is a small rim of raised ground that circles the entire area; the rest is about three feet lower. The lowered area has this strange mist covering it, I can also make out the blue light, and it looks laser-like, covering the whole of the lowered area. What's weird is that I can see no immediate source of the light; I guess it must be something to do with the walls and the mist."

"Anything else?" buzzes Elsa.

"Yeah, I can see these objects better now; there are a lot of them. They look sort of egg like. They have similar colour to the walls actually, I'm going to take a closer look."

John steps down slowly into the mist, which had been undisturbed until then. His feet also break up the mysterious light. Having touched the lowered floor he moves in closer to the nearest 'egg'.

"Ok I'm looking at one of these weird objects. Its egg shaped, that's really all I can tell you. The top of it looks like it can be split into quarters. The bottom is slightly translucent, it's got a yellowish green glow and… hey, I can see something moving inside, almost twitching."

"John watch it I don't like the sound of this."

John does not take heed of Elsa's warning and does not back away. A strange sound like two slimy surfaces rubbing together began to emit from the top of the object, which draws John's attention away from the bottom.

The four 'quarters' split apart slowly and fold upwards and outwards, like a flower awakening in spring, exposing a fleshy pink and white substance that pulses in random places.

"Hey whoa, whoa, the top of the egg has opened up into quarters. There is definitely something in this but I don't know what."

"John get out of there we have no idea what that thing is."

John ignores the command and keeps watching the egg. Eight spindly legs suddenly start to crawl above the opening of it.

Elsa listens closely to John's commentary, his electronic voice sounding out for her and the workers to hear, "Hey what the hell is…" he is cut short by an inhuman screech and John's muffled shout sounds out from the walkie talkie.

"JOHN!" Elsa screams, panic rushing over her in a wave. All that she can hear from John are his muffled screams which are slowly becoming quieter, "MMMMMMMPH! MMPH! Mmmmph! Mmph! Mmmph Mm…" Then silence.

Elsa is shaking rapidly, her eyes darting all over the place, the talkie held close to her ear and mouth as she calls out to him "John? John! JOHN!" but he does not respond, only a faint electronic crackling greets her calls.

"That's it, I'm going to get him out of there, we can't drag him out; he's in a lowered position and if we tried to pull him out from here his rope will drag on the edge of where he went down, if we try to pull him up we could break his back. You guys listen; here is a third walkie-talkie, when I tell you to, you slowly reverse that machine away from the cave so it drags him up, and I will be there to make sure he doesn't get caught where the rope comes over the edge, which could kill him okay?"

One of the workers jumps into the bulldozer-like machine and starts it up. The other one takes the walkie talkie and looks back at Elsa who is packing herself some flares, "Right we'll be waiting for your signal, watch yourself in there."

Elsa nods once then jogs to the hover where she gets a second set of equipment, attaches herself to the rope and walks into the cave.

She ignites flares every ten feet or so illuminating her path way. She travels down the left branch following John's rope, and stops when she reaches the hole that he has made. She pokes her head in and looks down at John who is lying still.

She takes her walkie talkie, "Okay guys wheel him up until I say stop."

The rope starts to move and John is dragged up, she could see something was attached to his face, a creature with eight legs holding onto the top of his head and she could make out its tail wrapped around his neck, it resembles some sort of spider. On its body are two sacks that slowly rise and deflate like a pair of lungs.

"Oh my God," she says under her breath, quivering slightly. John reaches the edge of the mouth. "Okay guys stop," she grabs hold of him and hauls him out, she checked his wrist. "He's still got a strong pulse," she thinks to herself.

She tries to remove the creature's legs, but notices the tail tighten round his neck and stops trying, "Whoa, okay fine, don't touch it."

She speaks into her walkie talkie again, "Guys start wheeling him out!"

At the entrance of the cave Elsa walks out of the darkness, bent over and arms out stretched supporting John's head as he is dragged out. She signals the workers to stop pulling.

They walk up to her and take a horrified look at John, "Damn! What the hell is that thing?" asks the burly worker.

Elsa slowly shakes her head, "I don't know but do not touch it. John is alive but I touched it and it tightened its tail thing around his neck. Now help me get him to the hover, he needs to get back to the hospital."

The three haul him into the hover, place him into a seat and strap him firmly in.

Elsa climbs into the driving seat and looks over at the workers, "Okay you guys better come back with me, that storm is coming in pretty fast now, besides I don't want you going anywhere near that cave."

The workers do not hesitate to jump in and strap themselves into the other seats behind her. She revs up the engine, the propeller of the hover coming to life, slowly propelling them forwards. She steers to the main facility and to the hospital, and the vehicle accelerates towards the new city as the ominous dark clouds move in over head, bringing the storm with them.