Chapter 858 - 857: Finally Reunited, and the Bizarre End of the Whisper Harbinger."

Scooping Aerith into his arms and preparing to set off in search of the others in this strange mirror dimension where the laws of physics had finally ceased to function, Alex cast one more glance at the stunned Whispering Harbinger. Seeing that the main idiot of Fate was still frozen motionless after receiving colossal damage, Alex began rapidly looking around in search of a safe path forward.

Closing his eyes for a fraction of a second and sending out a wave-like magical impulse in order to precisely determine the current location of the others, Alex instantly detected Dean, Tonberry Steve, and Red, who were closest—on a neighboring fragment of the destroyed road.

Continuing to smoothly expand the search radius, he soon locked onto Claudia together with Tifa, Yuffie, and Barrett, who at that very moment were advancing forward in an organized manner. Sharply opening his eyes, Alex took several wide steps back in order to gain sufficient inertia for a powerful acceleration.

Before tearing off from the spot, he briefly warned Aerith to hold on with all her strength, since a prolonged jump awaited them ahead. Feeling how Aerith instantly pressed herself to him even tighter, Alex lunged from the spot and, taking a series of wide steps, pushed off with all his strength from the edge of the decayed roof.

While they were flying at enormous speed over the bottomless abyss toward the next floating platform, Alex cast a glance downward and noticed with surprise that the familiar mirrored Midgar below no longer existed. The entire space beneath them had turned into a single boiling ocean of dense purple fog in which lightning continuously raged and millions of Black Whispers swarmed.

Softly landing on a massive piece of torn-off ceiling from a long underground tunnel, Alex immediately rushed further. But in the next fraction of a second, noticing sharp spatial oscillations ahead, he sharply braked and jumped back. Aerith, sitting in Alex's arms, was already about to ask why he had so suddenly interrupted the run, but her words stuck in her throat.

Right above the overturned ceiling of the tunnel a gigantic purple funnel instantly gaped open, from which the gigantic hand of the Harbinger emerged and with a monstrous crash crashed downward, in a single instant splitting the concrete tunnel into two equal halves. Having delivered this crushing blow, the hand slightly trembled and rapidly dissolved into clouds of purple fog.

"Did he… Did he just try to simply swat us?!" Aerith exhaled in astonishment, raising an anxious gaze to that very place where a moment ago the spatial rupture had gaped.

"Yeah. As it turned out, our colossal buddy suffers from a complete lack of any fantasy whatsoever. And here I naively assumed he would turn out smarter than simply hitting from behind," Alex tossed out with a broad grin, sharply accelerating and easily jumping over the gaping abyss of the destroyed tunnel.

"Why does it stubbornly seem to me that he's trying to crush us like some annoying mosquitoes?" Aerith said thoughtfully, shifting a worried gaze back to where the gigantic hands of the Harbinger were again disappearing into portals.

"It just seemed that way to you, dear. This idiot simply has no other tricks left in reserve except summoning pathetic clones," Alex answered with a smirk, performing yet another acrobatic jump and continuing the rapid run right along the vertical façade of a collapsing skyscraper.

"Maybe… But I still really hope that none of our guys below got hurt… Oh, look, it seems there's a passage further that way!" Aerith quickly began speaking, nodding to her own thoughts and confidently pointing a finger at a long inclined platform stretching into the distance.

"As for the others, you can even not worry—they have the unbreakable power of friendship… And Steve," Alex answered with carefree laughter, deftly jumping onto the slippery platform and beginning a cheerful descent downward with Aerith in his arms.

Hearing Alex's phrase, Aerith for a moment deeply pondered: could the tiny Tonberry Steve even inflict any real damage on a creature of the Harbinger's scale? Not finding a logical answer to such an absurd question, she decided not to clutter her head with nonsense anymore and fully concentrate on searching for the remaining guys in this insane space.

After all, she had no idea on which of the chaotically floating fragments the friends were stuck and in what critical situation they currently found themselves. At that moment Alex, powerfully pushing off from the edge of the inclined platform, made a sharp jump forward and seized in a death grip a thick metal cable of a half-destroyed tower crane.

Hanging over the bottomless abyss, Alex felt yet another series of alarming spatial oscillations right beneath them and sharply shouted to Aerith to immediately strike the lifting mechanism above their heads with lightning. Hearing this urgent request, Aerith did not waste precious time on questions and, swinging her magic staff, sent a powerful electric discharge straight into the old winch block.

The moment the lightning struck the mechanism, the steel cable jerked wildly, and Alex with Aerith were dragged vertically upward at terrifying speed. But the moment they only began the ascent, right beneath them a horrible purple portal gaped open from nowhere, from which the gigantic hand of the Harbinger emerged and with a deafening clap closed in that very place where they had been hanging only a moment ago.

Seeing this sudden attack, Aerith gasped in fright—not so much from the realization that they had almost been grabbed by the legs as from Alex's incredible ability to anticipate such nastiness. Alex himself did not even raise an eyebrow: for him all these sneaky lunges of the Harbinger were merely pathetic, desperate attempts to somehow harm them.

"Aerith, hold on tighter! It seems you just overdid it a little with your signature lightning," Alex warned, narrowing his eyes as he observed the sparks of electricity dancing across the mechanism.

"What's happening?.. Oh, damn!" Aerith exhaled in fright, instantly shifting her frightened gaze from the emptiness below to the dangerously sparking mechanism above.

"Looks like we're about to make an unscheduled flight…" Alex began speaking with a twisted face at the very moment when the cable stretched to the limit in his hand let out a horrible screech and tore free from the reel.

The moment Alex finished speaking, the steel cable in his hand jerked with such monstrous force that it almost dislocated his shoulder and immediately stretched to the limit. Following this the damaged lifting mechanism flared brightly, spewing clouds of acrid black smoke.

Wearily groaning from such an unpleasant surprise, Alex and Aerith suddenly felt how they were being pulled vertically upward with terrible acceleration—so frantically that already a moment later they reached the very top of the collapsing tower crane.

The red-hot cable was winding onto the winch with a deafening, ear-blocking metallic screech. Tightly pressing Aerith to himself, Alex allowed the inertia to throw them high into the sky, and in the next second they drew level face to face with the Harbinger himself, seated in the epicenter of this insane dimension.

Finding themselves at a dizzying height, Aerith did not close her eyes but began feverishly looking around in unsuccessful searches for any signs of the members of their group. And thanks to this incredible height she indeed managed to make out in the distance new purple funnels from which the gigantic hands of the Harbinger kept appearing now and then.

Aerith instantly figured out: that was exactly where the remaining guys were currently located. Beginning a rapid fall downward, Aerith through the whistle of the hurricane wind pointed a finger at the distant portals, hurriedly informing Alex of her guesses. Narrowing his eyes, Alex carefully surveyed the indicated directions and first noticed the group of Claudia, Tifa, Yuffie, and Barrett.

To his mild surprise, they at that very moment were waging a fierce battle with their own mini-avatars of the Harbinger. Shifting his gaze in the opposite direction, Alex just managed to notice how Dean and Red were jointly and spectacularly finishing off their opponent. The moment that avatar finally crumbled to dust, the entire space around them shuddered from a most powerful underground jolt.

From the body of the Harbinger turbulent purple lightning sprayed in all directions, and following it a deafening, rolling crack rang out—as if some colossal stone slab was collapsing. Sharply shifting their gaze to the source of the sound, Alex and Aerith saw with amazement how a massive piece of the Harbinger's chest armor cracked off with a crash, exposing part of the pulsing purple core.

And the moment this vulnerable part of the crystal opened to outside eyes, thin glowing rays shot out from it, rapidly rushing toward every member of their squad scattered throughout the dimension. Observing the approaching multicolored streams, Alex allowed one of the rays to touch his palm unhindered, while the second softly touched Aerith's forehead.

And the moment the ray came into contact with Alex's skin, foreign fragments of the future rushed before his inner gaze at terrifying speed. From these bright flashes Alex instantly recognized the events that were supposed to unfold two years after the main events—when the world would be gripped by a cruel, incurable disease called Geostigma. Quickly shaking off the numbness from these images of the future, Alex deftly pushed off with his feet right from the air and made a powerful jump forward, softly landing on a wide floating concrete platform.

"That was… a rather strange vision. An exclusively strange vision, to be precise," Alex spoke in a thoughtful, slightly puzzled tone, not taking his heavy gaze from the Harbinger frozen after the recent damage.

"You just saw only one of the possible variants of the distant future… But it is still not predetermined at all," Aerith said, slowly shaking her head, carefully climbing down from Alex's arms and anxiously looking at the motionless Harbinger.

"Yeah, I hope so, because the prospect of a future in which Claudia suddenly becomes a guy and then brazenly steals my favorite motorcycle doesn't appeal to me at all," Alex tossed out with a light, mocking smile, unhurriedly lighting a thin cigar and gently poking a finger into Aerith's reddened cheek.

"Um… I think you're still partially right here. Probably it was a parallel timeline that will happen with completely different people," Aerith answered in a slightly lost tone, realizing exactly what absurdity had just flashed through Alex's head.

"All right, to hell with it, let's move on. Now I've even become interested in what other entertaining fragments of the future our gigantic buddy is capable of demonstrating to us. For that we just need to properly thrash him harder," Alex concluded with a broad grin, clamping the cigar between his teeth and again confidently scooping Aerith into his arms in order to continue the path to the others.

Nodding in response to Alex's words, Aerith wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck, clearly realizing that they needed to hurry considerably if they wanted to reunite with the others. Fortunately, thanks to the clues from above, they had managed to roughly determine the location of their comrades, which significantly facilitated further searches.

Gaining sufficient acceleration, Alex powerfully pushed off from the edge of the concrete slab and made a distant jump forward. On the fly grabbing a metal beam floating through the air, he slightly swung and with a strong swing vaulted onto the next floating platform.

Looking around in search of a safe path, Alex intended first of all to reach the location of Dean, Red, and Tonberry Steve, who were closer than the others. Jumping onto yet another massive fragment and noticing below the familiar silhouettes of Dean and Red, Alex and Aerith were already about to call out to them when they suddenly noticed that the Harbinger had stirred again behind their backs.

Sharply turning toward the colossus, Alex involuntarily pondered exactly what sneaky trick this self-proclaimed idiot of Fate had again decided to pull. Noticing how the giant was beginning to raise his gigantic hand, Alex slightly frowned and on the move commanded Aerith to climb onto his back, urging her to wrap around him as tightly as possible.

Hearing this request, Aerith instantly threw her arms around his neck and tightly wrapped her body with her legs, after which she lightly slapped her palm against his shoulder, showing her full readiness. Nodding affirmatively, Alex noisily exhaled a dense cloud of white vapor, and in that same second wild arcs of bluish lightning flared and danced brightly around his body.

Taking a wide step forward, Alex in the next instant simply dissolved into the air together with Aerith, leaving behind a blinding trail of crackling electric discharges. The moment they disappeared, onto that very concrete platform where they had stood a second ago the gigantic paw of the Harbinger crashed with a crushing roar, pulverizing it to dust.

Meanwhile Alex virtuously flashed between the floating fragments, racing in an arc straight toward the positions of Dean and Red. Instantly pushing off from yet another protrusion, he flew out onto a long piece of destroyed expressway and tore into a maximum sprint there.

From this literally lightning-fast, insane speed Aerith did not even risk opening her eyes, tightly pressing her face to Alex's warm neck and hearing only the continuous roar of thunderclaps and the deafening crack of discharges on both sides of them. Not even a moment passed before Alex reached the end of the overpass—but right in his path a new trio of avatars suddenly formed from dense black fog: fresh projections of Rubrum, Viridi, and Croceo.

Irritably snorting at such a brazen obstacle, Alex angrily stretched his hand to the side, and in his palm materialized the heavy sword Rebellion. Sharply jumping back and directing the crushing tip of Rebellion straight at the three avatars of the Harbinger, he put all his strength into a most powerful lunge.

"Get out of the way, you bastards! I have absolutely no time right now to mess around with your pathetic copies!" Alex swore irritably, making a lightning-fast thrust and delivering a rapid, piercing stabbing strike with Rebellion.

The three fresh projections of the Harbinger did not even manage to properly react to the threat when Alex materialized right in front of them. Sharply yanking his hand forward, he in a single fluid motion pierced the bodies of Rubrum, Viridi, and Croceo with the demonic Rebellion. Instantly yanking his hand back, Alex brought down upon the stunned avatars a barrage of dizzying, blindingly fast stabbing strikes.

Each new thrust inflicted ever greater damage on the shadow bodies until the silhouettes of the opponents literally turned into a hole-riddled sieve. Swinging Rebellion in a wide arc, Alex intended to sever the heads of all three bastards at once, but around them dense black fog suddenly swirled, foreshadowing an emergency evacuation.

Irritably snorting at such brazenness, Alex put all his speed into the strike and managed to cleanly sever Croceo's head—the latter simply did not manage to dissolve into the protective haze. The moment the lifeless Croceo finally dissipated, from the chest armor of the Harbinger yet another huge piece cracked off with a crash, exposing an ever greater part of the pulsing purple core.

From the newly opened breach multicolored rays of energy sprayed in all directions. Allowing one of the rays to touch him again, Alex this time fell into a completely different vision—before his inner gaze a touching fragment from Aerith's earliest childhood flashed by, when she as a tiny child had diligently watered the yellow lilies under the vaults of the abandoned old church.

Seeing how incredibly cute little Aerith had been, Alex simply could not restrain a soft, sincere smile on his lips. But in the next moment tiny Aerith in the vision suddenly sharply turned back and slightly tilted her head to the side, as if sensing a foreign gaze.

As for the girl herself, at that moment she was contemplating completely different images: before her eyes unfolded a fragment of the future in which the stern Barrett comes face to face with his old front-line comrade and the true father of little Marlene—a man whom everyone had long ago considered dead. Wishing to examine the details of this enigmatic event, Aerith awoke from the vision and quietly exhaled.

Slightly shaking her head in order to shake off the remnants of the hallucination, she suddenly paid attention to the fact that in Alex's hand a strange, sinister sword had materialized, decorated with a skillfully carved bone ribcage and a terrifying skull instead of a guard. Trying to figure out where he had gotten this diabolical weapon from at all, Aerith noticed that Alex was looking at her with warmth, having clearly discerned something good.

"So what interesting thing did you get to see there?" Aerith inquired with curiosity, leaning a little forward and looking straight into his eyes over his shoulder.

"I saw you in the old church when you were just a tiny thing. And you were incredibly cute. And what did your little ray share?" Alex answered with a light smile, more tightly gripping the hilt of Rebellion in a reverse grip and preparing to resume movement.

"I saw a piece of a possible future… Where Barrett unexpectedly met Marlene's father. That very one who, as everyone thought, had fallen from a cliff… I didn't manage to make out anything more," Aerith answered with a slight sigh, thoughtfully shifting her gaze to where ahead the positions of Barrett and the others should have been.

"Shouldn't he be dead? Barrett himself personally told that during the Shinra raid Marlene's father fell from a cliff into the abyss, and he physically couldn't hold him," Alex said, slightly raising an eyebrow, although in reality he knew perfectly well that Dyne had miraculously survived, even if his mind had been shaken by grief.

"Honestly… I myself don't fully understand. I've already seen so many fragments of possible variants of the future that it feels like wandering through an endless dark labyrinth with a hundred doors. Go figure which of them leads to the truth and which is a dead end," Aerith answered, sadly shaking her head, clearly doubting which of what she had seen was worth believing.

"Then just stop cluttering your head with that. We currently have far more important and closer matters… Hold on tighter, we've almost reached Dean and Red," Alex tossed out softly, lightly squeezing the tip of Aerith's nose with his fingers in order to force her to distract herself from gloomy reflections.

"All right, you've convinced me… But still, where did you get this horrible sword from?" Aerith nodded in agreement and immediately shifted her gaze to Rebellion clenched in Alex's hand.

"Pulled it from one extremely specific pocket. And haven't you ever been insanely curious why my cigars never run out no matter how much I smoke?" Alex parried with a sly smile, easily waving his free hand, between whose fingers a new thin cigar instantly appeared.

Seeing how between Alex's fingers that very thin cigar which he preferred to smoke suddenly materialized from nowhere, Aerith gave him an amazed, questioning gaze, silently demanding explanations regarding that very "specific pocket" he had just mentioned.

Quietly laughing at her comically surprised facial expression, Alex was already about to deliver a prepared portion of plausible lies about a rare Space Materia when his sharp gaze suddenly caught on the figure of the Harbinger. Noticing that the colossus had again come into motion, Alex immediately cut himself off, tossing to Aerith that such captivating conversations about his secrets would have to be postponed for a more suitable moment.

Fully agreeing with him, Aerith hastily nodded and asked Alex to break through to the others as quickly as possible before the giant pulled yet another nastiness capable of delaying them. Reminding the girl to hold on with all her strength, Alex tore off from the spot and, powerfully pushing off from the edge of the destroyed overpass, vaulted onto the next floating platform.

In the process of the jump they noticed with surprise ahead Dean and Red: at that moment they were fiercely battling a new, unusual avatar of the Harbinger. This brute stood out with a creepy purple shade of skin and resembled a classic Berserker whose massive maces had literally fused with his forearms.

For a moment experiencing mild surprise at such a bizarre appearance of the avatar, Alex immediately discarded extraneous thoughts. Realizing that they had no time for banal running, he decided to radically change the approach to movement and dealing with it. Gripping the heavy hilt of Rebellion in a reverse grip—as if intending to throw a spear on the fly—Alex narrowed his eyes, aiming precisely at the broad chest of the hostile Berserker.

Before making the throw, he tossed a short warning, asking Aerith to quickly hold her breath. Although Aerith did not fully understand the reason for such a strange request, she did not argue—only obediently nodded and deeply inhaled air, quickly holding her breath.

"Dean, Red! Get aside right now!" Alex shouted with all his might, putting all his strength into a crushing swing before sending Rebellion into free flight.

Dodging the deadly mace of the Berserker who was spinning frenziedly in place like a top that had broken free from its chain, Dean was experiencing an extreme degree of irritation. And all because this massive purple giant with weapons instead of arms had materialized at the most unsuitable moment, solidly blocking their path.

Dean closed his eyes for a second, trying to comprehend that strange vision that had visited him a couple of minutes ago when a mysterious multicolored ray had struck him in the forehead: before his eyes some fragments of a large-scale military parade had clearly flashed, cutting off exactly at the moment when this berserker had emerged from dense black fog.

Managing to react in time to the whistle of air being sliced, Dean managed at the last moment to grab Red by the collar and sharply drag him back before the massive spiked club with a crunch smashed the concrete under his paws to crumbs.

Once again jumping back to a safe distance, Dean cast a quick glance at Red, gesturing an improvised plan: he would take on the task of stopping this purple idiot in close combat, while Red's task would be at the right moment to rapidly sink his teeth into the creature's unprotected throat. Red affirmatively nodded his muzzle, growling dully and preparing for a jump with springy grace.

Tightly gripping Cain's Blade in a reverse grip, Dean was already about to rush forward when suddenly above the destroyed arena a loud, familiar voice of Alex rolled. Sharply turning toward the call, Dean and Red saw Alex and Aerith standing on an elevated fragment. Instantly realizing what Alex was driving at, they without hesitation jumped aside.

And in that same second the heavy sword Rebellion, launched with colossal force, with a supersonic whistle pierced the Berserker's chest through, pinning the brute to the concrete platform for good. At the same instant Alex silently materialized above the defeated enemy, with Aerith still tightly holding on behind his back. With one hand casually holding the hilt of Rebellion, Alex smiled radiantly and demonstratively raised a thumb upward.

"Well, damn it, where have you two been all this time?" Dean inquired with his signature grin, lazily tapping Cain's Blade against his own shoulder and examining the arrived pair with interest.

"Just running races away from this cute idiot. Turned out to be a surprisingly persistent guy," Alex answered with a completely carefree look, carelessly nodding toward the Harbinger frozen in the distance.

"If one reasons logically… It's quite possible that the Harbinger himself deliberately tried to separate us in order to prevent our reunion," Red wisely nodded his head, voicing a quite sound assumption about the reasons for their wanderings through the space.

"You're absolutely right, Red. This gigantic thing really tried with all its might not to let us reach each other," Aerith confirmed, peeking from behind Alex's broad shoulder and warmly smiling at Dean and Red.

"Well, judging by everything, this giant turned out not to be such a complete blockhead… Or is it the opposite after all? In general, are you even going to finish off this purple freak? Or do you plan to simply stand and wait until his ass deigns to evaporate so he can start spoiling our nerves again?" Dean inquired caustically, slightly rolling his eyes and pointing his blade at the convulsively twitching Berserker under the sword.

Hearing Dean's caustic remark, Alex lazily lowered his gaze downward, evaluatingly looking at the purple Berserker on whose chest he was still standing. Carelessly shrugging his shoulders, he sharply yanked the hilt of Rebellion forward and upward, with a clean vertical cut splitting the brute's body into two even parts—they instantly melted, dissolving into clouds of acrid black fog.

The moment the Berserker finally evaporated, the already familiar deafening crack rolled through the entire space again. Synchronously turning toward the sound, Alex, Aerith, Dean, and Red saw how a new network of deep cracks ran across the gigantic chest of the Harbinger, rapidly finishing off his right forearm.

In the next second a dry click rang out—the gigantic hand of the Harbinger covered in cracks finally broke off and tore downward, on the fly crumbling into billions of tiny bright-green sparks of pure Lifestream. Following this a powerful sheaf of multicolored rays burst from the Harbinger's torn forearm, which this time for some reason rushed in a completely opposite direction.

Slightly raising an eyebrow at such a strange deviation—for these rays traditionally carried fragments of alternative variants of the future—Alex already wanted to approach the very edge of the platform in order to track their trajectory when the space shuddered from yet another rupture.

The armor on the Harbinger's face began rapidly covering with a web of cracks, with a screech sliding down to the neck and massive shoulders. In mere moments the heavy pieces of dead metal flew off in all directions under the pressure of monstrous force. From the torn face of the creature dense ink-purple fog poured out, torn from within by wild flashes of lightning.

Following this a powerful stream of multicolored rays struck from the giant's chest, which directly poured into this purple fog. And inside the purple fog cardinal changes instantly occurred: the fog flared so fiercely as if an unquenchable flame was raging inside it, and from somewhere in the depths of abandoned space a guttural, sinister hum reached them, indistinguishable from the whistle of a falling meteorite.

Not taking a shocked gaze from this frightening spectacle, Alex with gloomy precision understood exactly what had just been demonstrated to them: a fragment of an alternative future from another timeline where the mad Sephiroth had nevertheless managed to summon the catastrophic Meteor that had wiped the planet Gaia from the face of the universe.

"What the hell was that just now? Does anyone have a desire to explain what kind of horror movie we just watched?" Dean inquired irritably, frowning and squeezing the hilt of his weapon when the purple fog with echoes of the apocalypse finally completely dissipated.

"A future… in which absolute end came to all living things," Red answered in a gloomy, fallen tone, narrowing his burning eyes and not taking his gaze from the crippled Harbinger.

"Sounds, honestly, like an extremely lousy prospect for the evening," Dean expressed, contemptuously clicking his tongue and shifting a questioning gaze to Alex.

"Any future is always a pure, unstained page. And we are here precisely in order to write our own history," Aerith pronounced in a soft but unbending tone, tightly pressing her magic staff to her chest.

"You speak the truth, dear. Exactly for that we all found ourselves in this mess… And now it's time for us to finally find the others. Judging by everything, they just successfully swatted yet another avatar of this bastard," Alex said, nodding in agreement and with a deft motion putting Rebellion behind his back.

"I'd support this optimism with enormous pleasure, but I'm afraid this gigantic idiot is again brewing some nastiness. Get ready, he's about to pull his next trick!" Dean barked tensely, sharply raising his blade and pointing a finger at the Harbinger who was visibly coming into motion again.

Turning back to the Harbinger, they noticed how he was slowly raising his last, miraculously surviving gigantic hand, sinisterly directing it straight at them. Slightly narrowing his eyes, Alex lightning-fast pulled Rebellion from behind his back and gripped the hilt in a reverse grip—the blade of the demonic sword instantly flashed brightly, emitting a low, guttural vibrating sound.

Noticing Alex's preparations, Dean synchronously pulled Cain's Blade from behind his back, and his right arm up to the shoulder covered itself with monolithic black spiked armor, while the bone blade sinisterly lengthened, wrapping itself in dense swirling darkness.

Aerith also did not delay: right under her feet a complex magic circle flared, around which shining pink buds blossomed, inside which pure magical energy began concentrating at terrifying speed. Red, raising his feline muzzle to the sky, let out a rolling, menacing howl, forming in front of himself a dense energy sphere that was rapidly expanding before their eyes.

But they did not manage to deliver a joint crushing blow when the Harbinger with a horrible crunch swung his gigantic palm with all his might. In that same instant the entire space around came into mad motion—the chaotically floating fragments of Midgar tore from their places and flew in different directions.

Observing this spatial chaos, they unexpectedly heard the well-familiar, loud and extremely juicy swearing of Barrett, which was becoming closer with every second. Sharply turning their heads toward the sound, they saw the roof of a destroyed skyscraper rushing straight at them, on which stood Tifa, Claudia, Yuffie, and Barrett who was frenziedly swearing at the top of his lungs.

The moment they noticed each other, that part of the expressway on which Alex and company were standing also tore from its place. At first Alex instinctively thought that the Harbinger had decided to finish them off in the most banal way—simply by colliding the platforms and smashing them into a pancake.

But in the next moment the surrounding fragments of the collapsed city began with a dull roar interlocking with each other, forming one enormous monolithic combat platform. In its very center the expressway with Alex, Aerith, Dean, and Red was fixed, while on the opposite edge the roof of the building with Claudia's squad froze.

Slightly frowning at such a large-scale reconstruction of space, Alex shifted his gaze back to the Harbinger and noticed that his single surviving arm had covered itself with a continuous network of deep cracks. Tilting his head to the side, he managed to notice how the giant slowly and heavily extended a surviving finger, pointing them straight into the center of the group—after which the arm began rapidly crumbling to dust, starting from the tips of the fingers. Distracting himself from this horrible spectacle at the sound of approaching running, Alex shifted his gaze to the side.

"Guys! Are you all intact?!" Tifa cried ringing, rapidly closing the distance and running up to Alex and the others.

"We're completely fine! How about you yourselves? Did none of you get hurt?" Aerith responded with a relieved smile, widely stretching her palm forward in order to give Tifa a ringing high-five.

"None of us got hurt. Although, to be honest, we had to run quite a bit through this insane labyrinth," Claudia answered in an even tone, running up after her friend and at the same time casting an interested glance at the sinister Rebellion in Alex's hands.

"And we also had to desperately fight some strange freaks who had real guns and swords instead of arms! But we still kicked their asses!" Yuffie jumped up with a shining smile, literally sparkling with pride for the common victory.

"All of this is wonderful, of course, and I'm sincerely glad that everyone is alive and well… But maybe someone will finally explain what the hell this gigantic bastard arranged again? Does anyone have at least some ideas?!" Barrett interrupted the girls irritably, frowning and pointing the barrel of his machine gun at the main unsolved problem.

"No idea at all. Possibly…" Alex drawled thoughtfully, slightly frowning, flatly refusing to tear his gaze from the boss's figure.

"Possibly—what exactly?" Claudia demanded sharply, turning toward Alex and crossing her arms on her chest.

"Possibly… This is the final end. Just look for yourselves," Alex answered quietly, raising his hand and pointing a finger straight at the crumbling Harbinger.

Hearing Alex's words, all those present synchronously shifted their tense gazes to the Harbinger—and with their own eyes saw how the colossal body of the boss was rapidly covering with deep cracks, crumbling before their eyes.

Heavy pieces of ancient armor tore from the frame and, falling into the bottomless abyss, instantly transformed into shimmering myriads of sparks of pure Lifestream that flew off in all directions in a blinding fireworks display. The countless swarms of Black Whispers that had been chaotically circling the surroundings all this time rushed in panic toward the collapsing body of their master, trying somehow to protect him.

But the moment they only approached, the green particles that had torn from the Harbinger touched their astral bodies. In that same second the Whispers began dissolving one after another, disintegrating into exactly the same shining green granules and forever dissolving into space.

Observing this unexpectedly quiet and hasty destruction of the Harbinger, Alex experienced a mixture of bewilderment and mild disappointment. After all, he had sincerely believed that an entity of such scale—a divine instrument whose sole purpose consisted in returning the universe to the established order—would fight to the death until it exhausted its last strength or fulfilled that for which it had been born.

Such an inglorious, smeared end left behind a strange aftertaste: it seemed to Alex as if he had just passed a cheap demo version of a large-scale boss fight from which he had subconsciously expected a far more epic, teeth-shattering, and grandiose spectacle.

To be continued...

(Actually, I had considered making this battle more epic—perhaps even testing the power of the new Red Matter that Alex got from Rufus. But I changed my mind; obstacles like this are always bound to be a bit… strange. After all, every member of the group ended up fighting the Harbinger's avatars. In the end, I decided not to drag things out and just move on. Besides, it's the Harbinger's own fault for having such a weakness! Now, though, I can pull that planned trick out of my hat—I think I might have even discussed it with some of you, though I don't quite recall. Anyway, just sit tight—all will be revealed in time. For now, I'm off to grab a bite to eat and continue my ongoing struggle with self-loathing. Peace, love, and remember: a "strange" death is still a death.)

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