Chapter 7: Blast from the Last

Though Erda fancied the freedom of long cargo ship cruises, the bottles of bourbon, shes selling sea shells—not exactly by the sea shore—there was something to be said for coming home. The comfort of the frosty shores of Icicle made her feel almost human. She had wandered this continent for two thousand years, learning every remedy for frost bite, navigating the Sleeping Forest, picking along the rocks of the great crater.

Energy frothing at the pole of the world still soothed her, but she had forsaken it for thin alcohol and fat down comforters.

When the cargo docked at the travel center in Icicle, Erda made the decision to ignore her immediate appointment with Jonathan Shinra and the Shinra building all together, but her jaunt home left her in close proximity to her place of work. She drew up several yards away, nearly dropped her handbag, and felt her head turning against her will toward the massive steel building at the corner of Main and Styx.

The Planet was hissing.

Hissing.

Viper coiled in the center of its core hissing.

Erda could not make out a single intelligible word, and she wondered if that had more to do with the liquored cotton balls she had used to stop up her inner ear or extreme distress removing its comprehension of the current language—did it comprehend the current language?

Whatever caused the hissing, Erda felt certain it had to do with her place of work. She heaved a sigh, shrugged, and continued her trudge home.

The resulting squeal sent Erda's head throbbing and her knees buckling such that she found herself with the palms of her hands in the snow and her suit pants caught in the slush.

"Human Gods love you, Mother," Erda grumbled. "When you want something, you get it. Don't unleash the Weapons; I'm going."

Erda staggered to her feet, stamping her little brown bag, and still clutching her temples. She bent down and snatched up the bag, but did not bother brushing off her knees. No one expected her to be presentable anyway.

As Erda trotted up the steps, the hissing dulled. Her feet shuffled down the halls, past the green plants like beacons of The Planet's distaste and ventured to the Drake Labs, the hissing leading her as if she were attached to puppet wires. As she stumbled, she fiddled with her hair, pulling against the ache inside her skull.

Erda came to a halt as the hissing ceased outside a heavy steel door with a small square glass window. She clutched her purse close to her chest and stood on her toes to peer through the opening.

The hissing began again, but this time from her lips: an involuntary intake of breath. On the steel table was a woman's body, covered in marbled blue flesh. Erda had never seen it in that form before, but she knew exactly what it was.

It's coming again. I need you.

She wasn't kidding.

Erda fell back down on her heels and fumbled for the latch on the door. Locked. Humans like to lock their doors—that was the entire point of doors! To keep people—things—out.

She ran her fingers through her hair, messing the recently tightened bun and tapped her foot. Something. She could do something, couldn't she?

As her fingers came in contact with the sharp wooden stick in her hair, she snatched it suddenly, letting her bun fall in complete disarray. The other stick clattered to the floor, but she ignored it and tried to jam the implement she had grasped between the lock plate and the strike.

Of course, it snapped in half. She threw the two pieces to the floor and kicked the base of the door in frustration. Then she took a deep breath and counted to ten.

Guilt reared its ugly head first. The Planet had entrusted her with one simple task in the past two thousand years—keep the damn thing in The Sleeping Forest. Make sure the humans don't get too close. Somehow, the humans had managed to get into the Forest, dig around, and pull out the reason for all the sleeping.

Erda did not even think that was supposed to be possible. Her presence there seemed overkill when, if anyone managed to enter The Sleeping Forest, they got lost forever or got spat out, disoriented and positively mad.

Then it occurred to her that, even if she managed to break into the laboratory, she could do nothing about the situation. If The Calamity could not move from its spot—if it remained in a weakened state—it did so because it could not lock onto any of The Planet's energy. Humans blocked themselves up. Unless it could get direct access to the flow of Lifestream under their skins, it could not get direct access to any life energy at all, but Erda—

Her people didn't even know what doors were until humans came along.

Erda crossed her arms and leaned against the wall to the right of the lab's entrance. She slid all the way to the floor and tapped her right foot when her rear end hit the ground. Then she fumbled in her purse for her small twelve ounce bottle of bourbon before she remembered that she had downed it all right before she left the cargo ship.

"Miss Tinning?"

Erda did her best to wring the scowl from her face before she craned her neck to meet the eyes of the man who had called her name. Faremis Gast. Short. Bottle brush mustache. Wore a lab coat that bubbled around the shoulders. Far too interested in The Sleeping Forest and the Ancients. That summed it up.

She should have assumed he would be involved.

"Hello, Doctor Gast. I had heard about your—err, discovery, and I became interested, so I ventured down here, but then I found I couldn't get in the door and decided to wait for you."

Gast's eyes lit up. He pushed his glasses up his nose and rubbed his hands together. "It pleases me very much that you're interested in my research, Miss Tinning. If you'd like to see Jenova—"

Erda bolted from where she sat. "Oh my! I didn't realize what time it was. I have a meeting with President Shinra, and I'm already late. Perhaps we can discuss it over coffee today? I'll meet you in the café in an hour."

"I suppose…"

Erda did not wait for him to finish his sentence. She bolted down the hall in a blind panic, practically swimming through the air.

Outside the Shinra building, Kane Tuesti sat on a stone bench, scribbling on a crossword puzzle and whiling away his lunch break. Since Catherine Drake and Simon Shinra left, he had felt on edge. He felt as if his life took place in every continent exempting the one upon which he resided. His wife sat sick in Mideel. His people moved forward in Wutai. Drake and Shinra Junior looked for ways to force him from the company in Gold. In the middle of it all, a war was being fought. High stakes. It could determine whether or not he would ever go home.

In Icicle, Kane supervised a project his pupil had overtaken and was failing to make headway on while he foraged for a seven letter word for "to worry about excessively" as snowflakes stilled on the breeze, and drifts buried his nice leather boots.

Kane scribbled "belabor" on his crossword as he heard the thrusting open of the doors, racing of feet, and an abrupt halt. He put down his crossword and turned from his point on the bench to see Erda Tinning, wearing her form-fitting brown suit, doubled over, and drinking in air like someone had recently been holding her under water.

"Miss Tinning?" Kane began to stand.

Erda stood straight, became the icicle the trading continent gained its name for, and almost stopped breathing completely. Her eyes flicked to Kane, and she raised her hands behind her head to straighten her hair. "It's fascinating, how you science types are always unsure of my name."

"Excuse me," Kane said and bowed his head.

"For what?" Erda still did not look at him. She rubbed at her knees, which Kane noticed appeared to have gotten drenched. "Doctor Tuetsi, I spent several weeks in Wutai. I'm tired of self shame and misery without cause. Do straighten up."

Kane, still halfway between sitting and standing, decided to resume his seat. Erda Tinning always had the effect of unbalancing him. He assumed that she intended this result and had widespread success.

Erda stalked over to the bench and fwumped down beside him. She fumbled in her purse and removed a cigar, waving it like a prize, and a match. In a second, she had lit her cigar and leaned back comfortably on the bench as if the cold of the stone required no adjustment whatsoever.

Kane did not know a single person more at home in Icicle than Erda Tinning. She never seemed to get cold.

"Was Jonathan pleased with the results of your trip?"

Erda waved the cigar about. "Who knows? I suppose I'll find out. I doubt it, but he'll learn it's for the best."

"I take it they didn't bite."

"I asked for too much money."

Kane gave her a half smile. "This is why Jonathan Shinra shot himself in the foot when he picked you to head PR."

Erda licked her lips. "I'm not nearly as big of a mistake as you are. What is that thing your assistant has in Drake's lab?"

"The future of Shinra Manufacturing Works," Kane said. He studied her face. She seemed visibly distressed. Her eyebrows twitching, her right leg pumping up and down, propelled by the ball of her foot shuffling on the stone. "Or Faremis' ticket to my job."

Erda threw her elbows back over the top of the bench. A puff of smoke issued from her cigar and rose to dirty the white sky. "Try to be less bitter about it. You're getting old, you know."

Kane sighed. Sometimes conversing with Erda Tinning only drew him in circles. "You're right, I suppose. He did make a great discovery. He worked with a musician at the Institute to make a harp—instructions in the old writings from the excavation. Then he dug deeper and further into the forest, and found her. He managed to find an Ancient, and here I am, only concerned with my job—"

Erda quite suddenly doubled over, choking on the smoke from her cigar and guffawing between gasps for air. "An"—she slammed her chest with her fist—"Anicent?" When she stopped laughing, she took another puff from her cigar. "That is something, isn't it? What is she going to do, then, be old all over the table?"

"Miss Tinning"—Kane's eyebrows furrowed; he turned to try to address her, but she remained facing away from him—"we found her in a box buried below the ground, and her heart is still beating. Do you know what this means for my research in bioengineering? A living motor that can't die."

Erda scratched her chin, the cigar bobbing in the air from her fingertips. "So it is still your project, correct? He's working from your idea. It sounds to me like all that boy did was play a harp and tell people to dig." She patted Kane on the shoulder and stamped out her cigar.

"I am supervising, and I don't have ideas—"

"Ah, but shouldn't you be in the thick of it?" Finally, Erda pivoted where she sat. She gripped his upper arm and pursed her lips. "You should have full control. It's your project. After all, you know what you're doing more than a student, don't you? It's your job to protect him from himself."

"Protect him from himself?"

"From ruining his career, yes." Erda rolled her eyes and looked unhappily at her now unlit cigar. "I always do that," she mumbled absently.

"Always do what?"

"Get excited and ruin a good cigar before it's quite ready. Neither here nor there. The point is"—she shook Kane's shoulder—"it's your rear on the line, isn't it, Doctor Tuetsi?"

"I appreciate the suggestion, but—"

The light grasp became a stiff squeeze. Erda's eyes narrowed. All hints of joviality vanished. "Tuesti," she breathed, "for once in your life, grab an opportunity. I am sick of your moping, your caution, your false Wutai misery keeping you from important things. But it is your caution that this project needs, that Faremis doesn't have. You just found this thing. You don't know what it's capable of."

Kane cleared his throat. "What it's capable of? It's heart is barely beating."

"Reverence, Tuesti," Erda said. "I know you have it. Rein the boy in."

Abruptly, Erda removed her hand from Kane's shoulder. He felt himself rock forward. She rolled up her sleeve as if to check a watch, but she wasn't wearing one. "I have some things to attend to," she said. "I'll see you in Jonathan's office in—an hour and a half, let's say? Can you pass along the message to his secretary? He told me to meet him when I got back in."

She bustled down the walk before Kane had a chance to respond.

Kane scratched his chin and clenched the crossword, hearing the crinkle. He licked his lips. Something about Jenova had upset Erda. He had never seen her disturbed, and she seemed to have been shaking, though she had attempted to cover it with wild gestures.

If pressed, Kane would guess the idea of working on something sentient had rattled her. She had used the word reverence. \By all accounts, the Ancients in the text were highly intelligent and spiritual. Perhaps she had a point, but that would be a battle he would have to fight with both Jonathan Shinra and Faremis. Maybe, since Kane was feeling avenues of progress melt away anyway, he could at least use her concerns to stall.

Kane knew himself well enough to know he didn't have the spine for that.

Maybe Erda would do it for him.

Erda could only vaguely account for her activities over the hour between her conversation with Tuesti and her coffee meeting with Gast. She had gone to her penthouse, thrown off her suit for a paisley shirt and some slacks not smelling of barges or the incontinent cat which belonged to the captain.

Not having a bandersnatch at home made it feel more lonely, but so did living so far above ground she couldn't feel The Planet barefoot.

After making herself a pot of coffee, Erda recalled she would be going out for coffee, dumped half of it down the sink before shrugging and pouring herself a red mugful anyway. The mug was red because she had "borrowed" it from Jonathan Shinra the same way she had borrowed this new, bandersnatch and Planet free life.

Erda confessed she liked coffee because it always tasted vaguely of dirt. She couldn't change everything, but she could throw kahlua at it. Which she did. Before redoing her hair, grabbing a new cigar from the drawer, and slamming her door behind her.

Gast waited for Erda at Gavin's, which is where all Shinra employees meant by "coffee." Gavin put in an extra shot of espresso without having to be asked, played no music, and ran a generally deserted establishment, except for during lunch at Flask, which inaptly produced leather shoes and thick clogs. The company's president arranged a deal with Gavin for his employees to receive 10% off bagels and finger sandwiches. Gavin's had minimal decor: a handful of red paper lanterns, which Shinra employees also found desirable. Gavin himself rarely shaved and smelled of hazelnut.

A paper cup, steaming, rested between Gast's fists in front of him. He had a two inch high manila folder in front of the seat directly to his right. Erda supposed he wanted to go through at least part of it with her. She raised an eyebrow at it, made sure Gast saw, and waved to Gavin. He immediately started pouring her a cup of his darkest roast.

Erda sat down, pushed back in her chair, and left a handful of loose change on the table. Then she cleared her throat.

"Hello, Miss Tinning," Gast said, "did you have a pleasant voyage?"

"Yes," she said, "it was very pleasant. But I missed out here, didn't I?"

Gast beamed and flipped open the front of the manila folder. Erda tried to keep her face smooth as paper fluttered.

"The short version, please?" she said. "I'm not a scientist, you might recall. I just handwave through the hard parts and use vague terms like energy and life force. You'll excuse me."

Frowning, Gast closed the folder and leaned forward in his chair. It did not take long for his excitement to return. "We found her in The Sleeping Forest, as I said. She was asleep—still is asleep."

"What makes you sure she"—Erda licked her teeth, but she avoided calling The Calamity an 'it'—"'s an Ancient?"

Gast blinked four times, which Erda found excessively unnecessary. "What else would she be? She was dormant in a Forest enchanted by the Ancients, no doubt preserved from whatever wiped the rest of them out. There's no writing on what happened to them. The Ancients were long-lived, able to withstand a great deal of time's trappings. It can be nothing else."

Erda pursed her lips. Gast wasn't stupid. She had to agree. Even two thousand years later, she couldn't answer his question. She had no idea what it was.

Gast nodded. He seemed satisfied by her silence. He took a sip from his coffee as Gavin trotted over with Erda's, snatched up her over-generous tip, and left.

"From the preliminary tests, we've been able to determine that she heals quickly, and her heart rate has risen since we retrieved her from the ground, but so far we haven't been able to rouse her from her stasis. We're trying to sequence her DNA, but..."

As Gast continued to speak, gesturing wildly with his hands, Erda sucked on her tongue. She took a sip from her coffee and felt the inappropriate desire to laugh build up as pressure in her lungs. She took a long swallow. The Planet seemed surprisingly silent, perhaps because Erda had decided to have this meeting at all. She wondered just how conscious The Planet was of subtleties involved in meetings. Erda's mere presence implied she would do something about The Calamity. That was the contract.

Humans tore up contracts all the time.

"Unfortunately, the proteins are arranged—"

"Doctor Gast?"

"Yes, Miss Tinning?" His eyes shone at the direct address.

"If you had to give me a number, how many instructions would you say you have disobeyed in your lifetime?"

"Excuse me?"

"Just a number. Three? Fourteen? One hundred eighty seven? You can guess, but points for avoiding rounded digits."

Gast's eyes seemed to cross over. "I don't think that's really relevant at the moment."

"I just want to know. Scientists redefine rules, don't they? They invent them and break the ones that don't work anymore. If you had to guess, Doctor Gast."

"If you're counting instructions my parents have given me?"

"Of course, especially those."

"If you are asking for a number, I can't—"

"Doctor Gast, answer the question."

He gave a deep sigh and looked at his hands. He folded and unfolded the corner of his folder. "Fifty seven."

Erda narrowed her eyes. The number seemed large; Gast had a bottle brush mustache. But the sentiment sat. Humans broke rules. They didn't listen. They broke everything, and they meddled. They didn't get any headaches. The world didn't end.

Erda picked up her coffee—jerkily, she had been starting to get the shakes—and pushed her chair in. "Then here's an instruction you should heed. I don't care what else you do with Jenova"—Erda swallowed—"just keep it away from me."

She had lived long enough. If Jenova killed her, who cared? If the humans got punished, it was about time. Erda was tired of it—watching it, thinking about it, listening to The Planet scream at her about it. They had dug up The Calamity.

Let it Calam.

Kane Tuesti found himself facing off with Jonathan Shinra in his office once again. The President of Shinra Manufacturing Works fished out his lighting flask and fiddled with the lever of the stopcock, threatening to release a cache of flame. Kane tried not to wince at the click.

"She was to report to me as soon as she got in."

Kane couldn't help noticing that Jonathan Shinra seemed to pout as he contemplated the possibility that one of his pets had defied him.

"She wanted to change, I think," Kane said. "I'm sure she needed some time to recoup. I can say that the barges are tiresome."

Jonathan raised an eyebrow and grunted. "So, tell me about this Ancient in my labs, Tuesti. What is it you and your—Gast plan to do with it?"

The door opened. The secretary ducked inside, bowing low. "Miss Erda Tinning, returned from Wutai." She put on her best fake smile and bowed back out as Erda entered, closing the door lightly before bothering to look at either of the men inside.

"Hello Jonathan, Kane," she said before plopping herself down in the empty chair beside Kane and making a show of throwing her elbows over the ratty armrests. "Isn't Simon going to join us today?"

"He left with Paer Rolfe to set up the new branch in Nibelheim," Shinra said.

Erda reached for the lighter in front of Jonathan Shinra, almost snatching it from his fingers, and used it to light a cigar she fished from her pocket. Kane suddenly noticed her shirt was puce paisley. Jonathan's eyes rested on her bodice, and Kane thought it unlikely he was being lewd.

"Gone already? Pity, I would have liked to meet this terror of the Wildlands. They didn't have much to say about him in Wutai. No one seems to know much about what happens on the other side of the range, maybe it's because they don't live long enough to tell."

Her eyes caught Kane as if noticing him for the first time. "I would have thought the Vice President would oversee the new branch."

Kane swallowed. Jonathan seemed to notice his discomfort, and he cleared his throat. "Do we have a contract?"

Erda cocked her head as if she had no idea what Jonathan was talking about, when Kane would guess she had an answer prepared. "Contract?" Her expression cleared as if realization had dawned. "You mean with Wutai? No, 'fraid not." A puff of her cigar. The smoke drifted to the ceiling.

Jonathan frowned, but then he heaved a sigh and laughed. "They say there's no one more stubborn than a Wuteng royal. Can't be helped." He patted his desk. "After all, Kane here doesn't have a drop of royal blood in him, and it took me forever to win him over, didn't it?"

Erda sprawled out in her chair, apparently unaware of the minefield she had just seamlessly navigated—instead of taking her free pass, she charged back in. "Had nothing to do with stubbornness," she muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said they weren't stubborn," Erda continued. "I convinced them not to buy."

To his credit, Jonathan attempted to keep his calm. He reached into his drawer for a cigar and a slicer. He contained all his malice into one subtle clenching of a blade. The end of his cigar popped off and rested on the desk.

"Why would you do that?" He chuckled, but it was strained. "Spending too much time with my boy, are you? Wouldn't say you got cold feet, as I imagine it's very warm in Wutai these days."

"The sooner the war ends," Erda said, "the better it is for you, especially if there's a decisive victory. With Paer out of the way, Gold can climb the mountains, and Wutai will surrender with time."

Jonathan frowned. "Miss Tinning, are you aware of your capacity as my employee?"

Erda did not so much as bat an eye. "Yes, President Shinra."

Jonathan folded the corner of one of the papers under the pyramid model Gast had excavated. Kane thought a man of Jonathan's wealth and position must have had a lot of practice preventing outbursts. He couldn't understand why Erda would want to ruffle Jonathan. He had tried to give her an out.

"Does that job description include defying my instructions?"

Erda averted Jonathan's eyes, her usual confidence gone. Kane followed her gaze to the edge of Jonathan's desk. "I maintain I did what I did in the best interest of the company. You don't want to sell weapons forever. If there's no war, you won't sell weapons. You'll sell something else, won't you? A powerful man adapts; that's what makes him powerful. A decisive victory gives your name more meaning."

"To an extent, I agree with you. Time will tell if you've ruined me or made the correct decision." Jonathan cleared his throat. "But it wasn't your decision. Your name is not on the line."

Erda took a puff of her cigar, but she still would not look up. "Suspension?" she offered.

In an instant, Jonathan's general good will and joviality returned. "Excuse me?" He chuckled. "Heavens, no, Erda. What good would that do either of us?"

Wrinkles formed around Erda's eyes. Kane would swear she seemed pained. She looked up from the desk, exhaled a pocket of smoke, and nodded slowly. "Yes, Sir."

"If your decision turns out to be a mistake," Jonathan continued, spreading his hands on the desk, "we'll deal with it as it comes. In the meantime, we have assets down the pipeline, don't we, VP?"

Which, of course, meant more pressure would be applied to Kane Tuesti to produce results. His toes scrunched in his flat tops when Jonathan rounded on him. Erda might as well have dragged him into the fire with her. He swallowed and began to wonder if cigars really did have such a calming effect. He eyed the lighter again with curiosity. He again observed the stack of papers under the pyramid paper weight and wondered that they never caught on fire.

"Kane was about to tell me what he's going to do with that—thing in my basement. You would like to hear about it, too, wouldn't you, Erda?"

Erda dusted off the end of her cigar on the floor and stared resolutely at Jonathan. All trace of pain around her eyes and jaw had vanished. "I already talked to Faremis Gast. He was excited to have someone to brag to. They're sequencing the DNA. I don't really know what that means or why they'd do it, but that's what I've been told."

This morning, Erda had appeared under attack at the thought of the experiments going on with Jenova. It seemed she felt willing to return the favor with her lackluster endorsement of Kane and Gast's research.

When Jonathan received a wave of displeasing news, his hope for unexpected windfall through other avenues increased. He grabbed at whatever asset happened to be nearby and shook it like a honey jar. So when he looked to Kane, he smiled his best coaxing smile and reached across the table to pat his vice president's hand. "Is that a tough job, eh?"

"The proteins aren't pairing normally," Kane said. "All life shares the same basic proteins sequenced together in familiar patterns as its foundation, but Jenova—there's nothing else like it on the entire Planet."

Erda swallowed so loudly Kane heard it. Kane thought she might drop her cigar. Shinra didn't notice her reaction, or if he did, he gave no indication. They were mice in the same cage; Jonathan just had the cheese.

"That would explain her longevity, wouldn't it? The difference?"

"Sir, I don't think you understand—"

Erda cleared her throat. When Kane looked at her, her eyes were stuck on his, yet he couldn't find any help in them. "But it's doable."

It wasn't. It wasn't doable it all. You couldn't make a brick house from sticks.

Kane swallowed. "It's doable."

Because if it wasn't, Kane had nothing to show for his position.

"Splendid," Jonathan glowed. He reached across his desk to squeeze Kane's wrist. His need to express physical affection was a manifestation of desperation. Erda, Kane supposed, had put too many of Jonathan's eggs in Kane's basket before the president was truly ready. "I'm truly blessed to live in a time with so many brilliant minds. Why—I have the resources to make these ideas a reality. Imagine that."

At that moment, Kane realized that Jonathan had never really expected Kane to succeed. He was a gamble. A long shot. A vacation home in Costa del Sol purchased because powerful men like to flex their muscles—simply because they can.

"If that's all"—Erda stood from her seat—"I think I have paperwork?"

Kane frowned. Part of him had been relying on Erda making a fuss about Jenova and her treatment. Or whatever her objection had been in front of the building. Kane had wanted it to be his lifeline, an opportunity to make more time. But what was he making more time for?

"Then you better get to it," Jonathan said, waving with the back of his hand toward the door to his office. The door closed before he completed his gesture.

Jonathan absently reorganized his papers and refused to look at Kane. Erda had just sent Kane's whole world crashing down. She had refused to defend her decisions in Wutai when Kane knew she could have spun her report into an avenue of delight. Then she had all but promised Gast and Kane's project, a project she had no real knowledge of, would be fast-tracked. Kane wondered of Jonathan averted his gaze out of pity.

Kane Tuesti hesitated to put weight on his feet. He leaned forward and, when Jonathan did not respond, stood and headed for the door.

"Doctor Tuesti?" Jonathan called.

Kane froze with his hand on the doorknob and felt his shoulders cave in toward his neck. "Yes?"

"Good luck, my boy."

Kane turned around to express his appreciation for the sentiment with a nod. Jonathan Shinra's smile split off his chin, and the light through the window made the white in his hair shine as it picked its way through steadily falling sleet.

So, long hiatus. But I'm back to working on this, so I thought I would throw up the next chapter. Please review.