Blood & Sympathy (FFVII: Vincent x OC)

Ch24 - Gast Faremis, An Old Friend

After walking for a while in the silent town, her gaze caught something suspicious. It wasn’t so difficult to spot Gast’s house when the entire thing was surrounded by a frozen yellow-black ribbon with the RESTRICTED AREA sign on top. Her fingers brushed over the old plastic ribbon. The color had faded away in a few spots, letting her know that it had been standing around the perimeter on metallic pegs for a long time.

Jocasta shook her hand to make the dagger beneath her sleeve, slide over her palm. With a swift move, she cut the plastic ribbon making it fall on the ice below. She made her way towards the entrance of the house and side-kicked open the locked, wooden door.

She walked into the dark room. Her hands reached for the walls, searching for switches that were supposed to turn on the lights she supposed hung above her head. Hopefully, she found out that they hadn’t cut off the power from the old house, and the old lights worked, flickering at first.

It was a small house, with a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a basement. Jocasta proceeded straight to the basement. The door was locked, but she found a key by the kitchen counter. She doubted if the key was compatible, but she was surprised it actually was.

Jocasta entered the basement, turning on the lights from the switch beside her. There was an old bench in the middle with a few rusty tools and a microscope that she doubted it was still working. White sheets were thrown over the monitors and computers that were attached to the wall, in an effort to keep them from being dusted.

She looked at something black and sticky that had coated the green carpet beneath her feet. Jocasta knelt down tracing her finger against it. It must’ve have been blood, but it was black because all these years it had oxidized. She sighed. She didn’t want to imagine Gast’s dead body sprawling over the very carpet she stood on.

Jocasta made her way towards the old computers and monitors. She pushed off the white sheets, leaving a cloud of dust flying in the air. She sat at the old wheelchair that creaked in response. She pressed the button of the old computer and waited for it to switch on.

Jocasta’s eyes drifted over the table the computer was resting on. There were a bunch of papers filled with notes and messy scribbling. She grabbed one of the yellowed-from-time papers and brought in front of her, recognizing Gast’s handwriting. Her eyes recognized the familiar chemical reactions and Gast’s notes around them. Letters nobody but a doctor could read.

She turned her attention on the computer’s screen once it was done opening up. She fumbled through the files that were stored in its memory. She opened a file named ‘The First Crisis of the Planet’. It was filled with videos that Gast had probably recorded those two years he spent with Ifalna, away from Shinra’s reach.

She opened the first video. It was Gast’s face on the screen. His black moustache lied above his upper lip, nerdy glasses were placed on the bridge of his nose. He was wearing his white lab-coat as he always did. He turned at Ifalna who was sitting right beside him, wearing her purple dress. Pale brown hair and bangs fell on her face, while her green eyes glanced over the lenses of the camera. The recording was old. The camera could barely catch the colours, and the sound wasn’t the best quality, but it should be enough.

“Alright, Ifalna. Tell me about the Cetra,” Gast said.

“Two thousand years ago, the ancestors of the Cetra, were said to have heard the Planet’s scream. They followed it to the Knoll’s Pol, where they discovered the Planet’s great wound. Knoll’s Pol is here actually. Here is where the Cetra began learning how to communicate with the Planet. The Planet told them that it had been wounded by something that fell from the sky. Thousands of Cetra gathered here and attempted to mitigate the Planet’s injury. However, the wound was so deep, that the Planet needed many years to heal itself,”