Assassins in Gaia

By the time the group of four had gathered the fallen items, it had become late evening. It was already dark in the forest, save for a few luminescent flowers giving light for them to see the path ahead. It made a very beautiful, yet surreal sight to look at, leaving a feeling of mystery for the onlookers. The group trudged on forward with Cloud and Tifa marvelling at the beautiful sight in front of them. Tifa started to giggle half way through getting a curious look from Cloud and Ace.

Tifa shook her head, "Just thinking about how my Dad is gonna blow his head off when he realizes that I'm not going to return till tomorrow morning."

Cloud blinked then snickered, "Pffffffffffft! That will be funny."

Ace laughed, "Well~ He should learn after this."

Tifa laughed along with them, "I really should not be laughing considering, I'm going to be grounded for life once we return but still....... This is fun! You know?"

Cloud waved his hand, "I'm pretty sure, he won't ground you, if you bring the Phoenix feather and a few other prizes home."

Tifa smiled, "You think so?"

Cloud shrugged, "Probably! After all it will be proof you know how to take care of yourself, right?"

Tifa hummed, "You know what? You have a point. Let's collect more stuff!"

Desmond stopped signaling them to halt their chat. The three of them got down and looked at what was in front of them. There in the clearing was a weird green colored creature that would be easily mistaken for a squid in first glance. There were six of them staying together.

Desmond looked at them before activating the Eagle vision, "Well kid, I promised, I would show you our gift. Here it is!"

Tifa looked up excited at Desmond only to gasp when she saw his eyes, "That's so cool! Cloud and Ace have this ability too? Are you... Um."

Ace smirked before activating his eyes, "Yep! And yes, most call us Cetra. Honestly though we are no different from other people. We still got to train and learn, you know?"

Cloud watcher in wonder, "I have not activated mine yet, but I will soon."

Tifa nodded, "Still, pretty cool."

Desmond pat his shoulder before observing the stats of the monsters in front of them, "The strongest is level thirty five. Interesting, and two of them have fire elements, one has water, the rest are wind. I have to wonder where they came from though? They were not mentioned in any of the book in the library."

Tifa looked up, "What do you mean? They are just monsters."

Ace looked perturbed, "He means, this is not their natural habitat. They don't belong here."

Cloud looked thoughtful, "They could have come from the reactor."

Desmond hummed, "Let's figure it out later and deal with them first. Same method as last time. Ace take the two on the left, Tifa the ones on the furthest right and Cloud you are taking the ones in front. Tag team, the last one. I'll take the the strongest one in the back. Be careful! These six have obviously been tampered with so they are probably stronger than normal."

The three of them got into position waiting for Desmond to give the signal for attack. After a few seconds, Desmond attacked the monster that was the strongest in the group, distracting the rest of the monsters. While the monsters were distracted Tifa and Cloud jumped out attacking two of the monsters that were preparing to attack Desmond. Tifa punched one of the monster's head in while Cloud stabbed it above the tentacles before running his blade upwards cutting it half. Ace took this chance to stab one of the monsters in the heart killing it instantly. Desmond fought with the strongest while dodging it's attacks. It used whips that too with what looked like poison on it.

Desmond warned them, "Be careful! The stronger ones have poisoned whips."

Ace shouted, "Seriously!"

Cloud growled, "Got it!"

Tifa hollered, "Right!"

Desmond then used his lightning materia and created three lightning strikes that hit the monsters dead on, weakening them. Desmond moved to give the final blow on the strongest while Ace and Cloud killed the last two as Tifa distracted the monsters by pulling their aggro towards herself then punching them.

Desmond huffed, "That was exhausting."

Ace laughed, "But, it was fun."

Cloud grinned, "Yeah, we got a nice work out."

Tifa was bouncing in excitement, "Let's check out what items we got ~"

Ace moved to his first kill, "Ho ho ho! Look at this! Look at this! 500 Gil!"

Cloud grinned big, "Really?"

Tifa's eyes bulged, "No way!"

Cloud checked his own monster, "500 Gil and two ink bottles."

Tifa looked at hers, "500 Gil and Ink, check the other two."

Desmond, "I got 2000 Gil off my monster."

Ace, "These two have nothing but ink filled bottles on them."

Tifa looked flabbergasted, "Where would they get bottles from? I get it of they produce ink but bottles. That's a bit."

Cloud, "Maybe, they grabbed the bottles when they were leaving the reactor."

Ace looked at Cloud, "Why do you think they are from the reactor, Cloud?"

Cloud shrugged, "I remember, I used to go with my Dad to the reactor, before he died. He wanted to show me where he worked. These were one of the few monsters I remember, they brought with them on cages. I don't know if they were released or escaped but I remember seeing Dad being really pissed off when he saw these monsters being brought here."

Tifa went blank faced, "What? Cloud, tell me you are joking!"

Cloud shook his head in negative, "No I'm not Tif. Sorry!"

Tifa punched the tree next to her, "I can't believe this! So there is a chance that the monsters from the reactor are escaping and it's the reason why the monster population has increased the last few years."

Ace nodded, "Looks like it! Are you okay Tif?"

Tifa looked at Ace, "I'm not sure! I just found out why the monster's population most likely increased, why it's gotten more dangerous. So I'm peachy."

Desmond ruffled her hair, "This only means, we need to get stronger to protect those that we love."

Tifa grumbled, "Hey! I'm already a mess fighting."

Desmond smirked, "Now then, I think, I can trace the path this group took from the reactor to here. It goes west from where we are."

Ace looked at the same direction, "I can't deny I'm curious about it, maybe we will come across more monsters."

Cloud nodded, "Lead the way Des! We will follow. We have come this far already."

Tifa nodded clenching her fists, "Yeah, we can even do some clean up and get rid of the monsters while we are at it."

Ace, "Do you think we should have brought our camera?"

Cloud, "Camera?"

Tifa, "What for?"

Desmond, "We could take pictures as proof if we had a camera and organise hunts."

Desmond got up and started to follow the path the monsters had used previously. There were more luminous flowers lighting the path and this time Tifa looked at them with apprehension instead. They were beautiful but now that she thought about it these were not normal flowers at all.

Tifa spoke up after a while, "You know what? There were originally no flowers like these in Nibel mountains. It was only a few years back that they started to appear."

Cloud agreed, "Yeah! Especially after the reactor was up and running fully, according to mom. She never liked these flowers despite how beautiful they looked. She called them cursed flowers."

Ace hummed, "So, you are saying, it is a side effect of having the reactor here then."

Destiny looked at them, "Well, it is possible after all the reactor runs on mako and these flowers glow like they have mako in them."

Cloud gave a shudder at that, "I can't imagine anyone wanting to be injected with mako."

Ace grinned a little hard, "Well Cloud, SOLDIERs are actually filled with mako."

Tifa looked at little green at that, "How can they handle it? I remember falling ill once because I touched the mako spring, that is now cordoned off, with bare hands."

Desmond shook his head, "Some people will do anything for power. Even put their health at risk."

Cloud looked dubious, "That's stupid!"

Ace huffed, "Some people just are stupid."

Tifa snickered at that and Cloud's lips twitched upwards in amusement. The four of them walked at a leisurely pace towards their next destination before Cloud and Tifa's stomachs growled. The two of them blushed in embarrassment making Ace laugh in amusement.

Desmond smiled, "Let's have dinner first! Then we'll carry on, this path looks pretty straightforward. We can even spend the night at the mansion next to the reactor. From what I heard it has been abandoned for decades now."

Ace grinned, "Sure! An abandoned mansion sounds like a treasure hunt to me."

Cloud perked up, "Do you think we could find more treasures up there?"

Tifa perked up too, "Maybe, I can find a materia."

Ace, "Ku fu fu fu fu fu fu! Or we will find a zombie or a ghost"

Tifa, "Ace no."

Cloud, "Don't ruin my dreams!"

Desmond chuckled, as they stopped at a clearing with no monsters around. He would have been more worried about the questionably bright flowers if the Eagle vision had not shown him it was safe to be around. He half thought, Connor would have loved it here as he laid a table cloth for them to sit on and took out the wrapped dinner for four of them to eat. Dinner was curry bread, Desmond wanted to laugh when Ace decided to make it. Who knew the artifact was a Kuroshitsuji fan boy?

Desmond smiled, 'For a heaven knows how old item, he's actually pretty childish and cute.'

Tifa looked at the bread curiously before taking a bite out of it, "Oh my! This is delicious!"

Ace was smug, "Thank you!"

Tifa blinked, "Wait! You made this?"

Ace smirked, "Family recipe ~"

Cloud nodded, "He taught mom how to make it as well. The bread is made from acorn flour while the curry inside is rabbit cooked with carrots and pumpkin."

Tifa's eyes twinkled, "Show me how to make this. If I can show my Dad I can cook just like any other girl out there, he will probably let me off the hook and stop bugging me about being more womanly."

Desmond snorted, "If my mom had heard that she would give your father a earful."

Ace agreed to teach Tifa, "Come over next weekend with flour and items for the curry you enjoy. I love rabbit so for tonight this was made with rabbit curry."

Cloud chimed in, "We can practice together, I still have trouble getting the curry right."

Tifa nodded, "It'll be fun to learn together."

Ace took out a flask filled with pine top tea and poured out cups for everyone.

Tifa looked at her wooden cup, "This is cute. It even has rabbits carved on it."

Ace, "Desmond made it."

Tifa looked at Desmond, "Cool!"

Desmond nodded his head in acknowledgement and continued drinking his tea. The four of them finished their dinner before cleaning up the area of their presence in case a monster picks up their scent and follows them. They continued on towards the reactor this time using the torch lights they had brought along with them as the flowers from before stopped growing beyond one point. There in front of them was the path to the reactor which was still working and checked up on by Shinra personnel from on a yearly basis. And further up the path, they saw the old Shinra mansion that was completely abandoned and had no one living there. Or at least they hoped so.