The Cactuar Cult

     Cloud continued to wail in pain in the corner of the roof. It was really pretty dangerous to be so close to the Cactuar Cult, but they weren't shooting needles at us, so I figured he'd be fine. By now, Cloud excluded, we all formed a circle around the peculiar Aquamarine Weapon.
     "So you better than those other %#&^ Weapons?" Cid asked.
     "Which ones?" Aquamarine asked, still talking in his deep voice. It scared the crap out of me, but most of the girls of the group found his voice sexy or something. They'd usually smile like little school girls, then when they saw the cockroach thing and were reminded that it was him talking, they looked a bit disgusted. This happened several times during the conversation.
     "Those ones we fought," Cid said. "You know, Ruby, Diamond, Ultimate, and that underwater %#&^. You know. What's his name."
     "Oh, Emerald," Aquamarine said. "All of us are better than Ultimate. He was a hot-head dipshit. We were still working on training him when he decided he was too good for us and ran off. We couldn't even name him before he ran off like a little bitch calling himself the "Ultimate" Weapon."
     "I always kinda thought he was a little douche," Tifa said.
     "Sure was," Aquamarine said. "But then the other two. I'd say Sapphire is about as good as both of them combined, and I can kick the crap out of Sapphire."
     "That's #%&^ing scary," Barret said.
     "You said it," Yuffie said. "Those two were both 'piss myself' scary good, and you're saying this Sapphire dude is better than them, and you're better than him? Crap, and I thought those cactuars were scary."
     "Yo wait a minute," Barret said. "I heard on the news that Seph's momma Jenova beat the living shit out of that Sapphire guy. Dat ain't possible. She's... Jenova. And we've all met Jenova."
     "Jenova is the most powerful thing on this planet," Aquamarine said. "None of the Weapons that have ever faced her alone have prevailed. The only reason we were able to contain her as we've done for thousands of years is that we all attacked her at once, then before she was able to fight back, we found a method to contain her."
     "The Lifestream?" Reeve piped in.
     "No. An ancient television program known as Sonic the Hedgehog."
     "Wait a damn minute," I said. "That's bullshit. You seriously contained an infinitely powerful being that wiped out Ancients and Cetra and all that old shit with Sonic? I'm not saying I don't believe it, but damn. That's lame. You guys are a bunch of wusses. But I don't get it. You pretty much just said that even combined you guys can't beat Mother. So why're you doing things for her?"
     "We need to rescue her as much as you do," Aquamarine said.
     "We don't really need to," I said. "It's just that she's gonna bug the crap out of me whenever I sleep, and well, I-"
     "She must be rescued!" Aquamarine interrupted.
     "Why's that?" Reeve asked.
     "Hojo," Lucrecia said. "He's slowly extracting Jenova's power to make himself more powerful."
     "I get it!" Shera said. "Hojo's going to get all of Jenova's powers, and he's too damn boring to be stopped by a silly television show!"
     "That makes sense, and yet, it doesn't," I said. "I mean, I understand all that, but how the hell do you take someone's power?"
     "With SCIENCE!" Shera said excitedly.
     "That's a bit over simplified," Reeve said. "How do you take someone's power?"
     Yuffie gasped and started waving her arms wildly in the air. I wasn't sure if she knew the answer or had to use the bathroom or what.
     "Drink her blood!" Marlene yelled. "That's how I get energy from Niggapapa. Watch."
     Marlene bent over and bit Barret's arm. Barret didn't even flinch. He seemed used to it. He used his opposite arm and pushed Marlene's head away.
     "She doesn't have blood," I said. "She said she has goo, but no blood."
     "I know how I know how!" Yuffie continued to yell. Everyone continued to ignore her.
     "Any ideas Shera?" Reeve asked.
     "I don't do that kind of science," Shera said. "And neither do my tits, so if you'd stop staring at them Reeve-"
     "Sorry," he said, blinking and looking away.
     "How about you?" Vincent joined in the conversation, looking at Lucrecia. "Is he still hell-bent on the Jenova Project?"
     Lucrecia shook her head. "We tried several methods with the Jenova Project. We tried injecting the cells directly into people such as Zack and Cloud, and we tried injecting them through a parent like we did for Sephiroth, but nothing has actually harnessed the full power of Jenova. People can't handle too many cells, so the best we could ever do was 2.4% Jenova cells to the remaining 97.6% human cells."
     "What's wrong with you people!?" Yuffie butted in. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I know you're all wrong! It's so like, simple! He's going to put all of Jenova's power into materia!"
     "Damn you guys are dumb," Aquamarine said. "Only the teenager could figure it out, even with all these scientists around."
     "Wait, she's right?" Zack asked.
     "Yes, she is. Now are you ready to go save Jenova?"
     "Yeah, let's get going," Cloud said, still holding his foot. "But I still don't know how you're gonna move us all. You can't hold onto all of us, can you?"
     "No, I can't," Aquamarine said.
     "Wonderful. I told you we couldn't count on Jenova. So how-"
     "Just hold onto something or someone," Aquamarine said.
     Marlene grabbed onto Barret's arm. Zack grabbed onto Marlene's shoulders. Cloud grabbed Zack's collar and pulled him off Marlene.
     Aquamarine dove into the water from the rooftop. He went in fast enough that the cactuars didn't notice him at all. Everybody took a seat and watched everybody else to see what they were doing. A few moments later, the whole island started to shake. This was the point that everybody reached around for something to hold onto. A few more seconds passed and the rumbling stopped. I was the first to stand up and look around. Everything looked pretty normal on the island. The cactuars looked like some might have stumbled and fallen over, but they were all generally in the same positions. Then I noticed what exactly Aquamarine had done. Instead of moving us individually, he was moving the entire Cactuar Island. I'm not exactly sure how he was able to break an entire island away, but he did. The water was pushing harder and harder on the beaches until it was finally lifted completely out of the water and was basically hovering over it. The island was moving fairly fast considering it didn't feel like it was moving at all.
     "Amazing," Lucrecia said. "He was able to put a barrier over the entire island. A barrier strong enough to block wind."
     "Isn't it a bad thing if we block out air?" Aeris asked.
     "Yes, yes it is," Lucrecia responded. "But he seems to have given us a large barrier capable of holding enough air to last us a long time. Long enough anyway."
     "How is this better than waiting for the boat?" Vincent asked.
     "The boat wasn't coming," Reeve said. "I have a radio uplink in Shin-Ra that those moron guards forgot to confiscate, and I heard them call in the distress call. Luckily I don't think they have any idea about the whole 'we escaped' thing. They just called in a cactuar swarm requesting back up. The whole island thing will be nice. It should buy us some time. Shin-Ra might divert its attention to the cactuar thing and not be thinking about their defenses. And those Shin-Ra morons will probably keep circling looking for the island figuring they screwed up their longitude or something."
     "So what of the cactuars?" Cloud asked. "We're gonna have to get passed them somehow."
     "Let's fight them!" Yuffie said eagerly. "I'm bored to tears up here waiting."
     "Go fo' it," Barret said. "Ain't no way you gettin' me to fight. Jus' look over the edge!"
     "Okay!" Yuffie said. "I'm not afraid. What's so bad about them?"
     Yuffie walked to the edge of the roof and looked over at the cactuars. The cactuars slowly turned and faced her. Then screamed something like 'fourteen billion needles!' Yuffie ran away from the ledge as quickly as she could, diving down onto the roof. Tons of needles flew by where she used to be.
     "Damn you guys are wimps," I said. I went to the edge of the roof and stared at the cactuars below. They gathered up and began their zillions of needles attack. The needles flew towards me, so I crouched down and dove to the left. Once I was only a few feet from where the cactuars had targeted, I jumped quickly off the roof and started slicing the shit out of the preoccupied cactuars.
     "Finally! Thanks Seph," Barret yelled. "We was jus' waitin' fo' someone to jump off and draw the fire."
     Barret, Dyne, and Vincent all moved to separate sections of the roof and blasted cactuars away left and right. For the most part I was able to hit the cactuars. Hell, they were grouped so damn tightly I had to hit at least one, even if it wasn't the one I was aiming for. After our small attack on the cactuars, the remaining ones, which was still a large number, ran to one side of the island and hid.
     "Heh, you've got a bit of your mother in you," Aquamarine's voice echoed. He was still under the island dragging it wherever the hell we were going, but he was doing one of those creepy voiceovers that powerful evil villains always do. I'm sure I've done one at one point, because those voiceovers are badass.
     "A bit of your mother? The hell is that supposed to mean?" I asked. The hardest part about talking to an evil voiceover is you have no idea where to look, so I just looked at Barret, seeing as how he was most fitting to have a Barry White style voice.
     "Yo Seph, stop lookin' at me," Barret said. "It's creepy man. Or at least put the damn sword away when you yellin' at me."
     "Apparently all your parents were pretty strong," Aquamarine said.
     I sheathed my sword. "No, they weren't," I responded. "Mother maybe, but my real parents were a couple science pussies."
     "Oh. That's true."
     "Didn't you know who my parents were?"
     "Yeah, I was just making small talk. I'm bored. Dragging islands isn't exactly my idea of fun. I was in a game of Texas Hold 'Em with the other Weapons when your mother called me."
     "Oh, sorry about that."
     "No, it's cool. We're almost there. You all might want to hold onto something."
     This time, everybody grabbed tightly onto whatever they could and braced for impact. There wasn't much of an impact though. He dropped us off next to the shore, not on it, so we never even collided with anything. Everybody helped each other down from the roof and we all jumped off the island and onto the mainland. The spot he chose to drop us off was very near the chocobo farms, which should be generally nice for a quick, sneaky attack.
     "Good luck Sephiroth," Aquamarine said. "We're not allowed to help you anymore, but I think you can take it from here. Bring your mother and yourself back alive. We Weapons would like a rematch with your mother, and you're not quite the pushover yourself. I look forward to a match with you. Now I'd better take this island back. The planet hates when we move major landmarks without permission."
     Aquamarine, who was still not visible since he was under the island, took off the way we came. I really don't know if people would care if Cactuar Island sunk, but whatever. At least the more cactuars there were on that island, the less there were elsewhere.
     "What a jerk!" Yuffie said, obviously referring to Aquamarine Weapon.
     "Why?" I asked. "He saved us, didn't he?"
     "Yeah, but he only told you and your mommy to come back alive. What about the rest of us!?"
     "Expendable," I replied.
     "Oh thanks Sephiroth!" Yuffie yelled at me, punching me in the back. I think it was a playful hit, but then again, she's not that strong, so it might've been her best shot. It didn't matter either way. I turned and led the very large group of people to the Chocobo Farms so we could grab some transportation into Midgar.