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Hunter
Part 3
By: Raven-Chan
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It wasn't long after the explosion of Rocket Town sounded across the plains that Barret fell into darkness. It was only a few hours, at that point of night where everything is pitch black, where everything is dark and quiet, when evil lurks about in the shadowy corners of reality. It was when night was at its peak, the point of night when everything was perfectly balanced, night and day, good and evil. Except for the fact that the good was about to lose it's balance, and start an un-versible fall into darkness...
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The Hunter was on its way to Midgar now. It had things there to take care of. The heart and soul of the good was there. The good that had killed Sephiroth... But had somehow mysteriously and wonderfully created him...
Barret Wallace lived in Midgar, now on the top of the number 7 plate. After the destruction of the origanal Midgar, The Neo-Midgar project had been pushed forward by the new president of Shin-Ra, Hiddegger, and a staff of eleven other council men and women. Barret Wallace, Tifa Lockhart, and Cloud Strife were among them. They were all in Midgar, and he needed to get rid of all of them...
The Hunter was in Midgar now, going through the shadows of the streets. A car passed on the road beside him. A cold chill ran through the man who was driving. His wife beside him stirred, as if having a bad dream, and his small child began to cry out in its sleep. The child would die in only six hours, something had mysteriously ruptured in its brain while it slept...
The Hunter swept through the city, changing the dreams of those asleep to nightmares of deadly darkness. Darkness that came upon them and swallowed them into its darkness of death. One old man had a heart attack as he ran in his dreams, terrified, trying to escape the black death.
The Hunter was almost to where it needed to be. The heart of AVALANCHE would die tonight, and then he would take care of the reaments of the group that had somehow brought him so much pain, yet so much joy...
The Hunter was where he needed to be now. The Hunter would have Barret soon. Barret would be with his friends, Yuffie and Cid, very soon...
The Hunter rounded the corner of the house with his liquid movement, and scared a small ally cat half to death. The cat ran through the Hunter, hit a pyramid of tin barrels, and then dropped dead. The barrels collapsed, and he sensed something in the house wake from its sleep. It was small, but it would still be okay.
That soul, too, would join Yuffie and Cid in the greatness... that soul to would have a part...
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It was already 4:00 AM when the Hunter stalked around the corner of Barret's humble dwelling.
Barret had just been awaken from his last dream to find his worst nightmare slowly unfolding...
Cloud and Tifa were now lying in Tifa's bed. Tifa was lying asleep beside Cloud, who was awake, pondering what was happening in his life...
Reeve was still out, having fun around the town, now looking for some more action, after getting kicked out of the Bumble Bee Inn. He was thinking of going to one of the open-all-night bars around Midgar...
Vincent was now crouched on top of the Shin-Ra Mansion, looking at the night sky. A big storm was about to sweep over the Planet... He could feel it...
Red XIII was restlessly sleeping in the observitory at the top of Cosmo Canyon. If he had been awake, he would have noticed the storm Vincent felt coming...
They were all about to be rudely awaken by the death of their mentor, and friend, but most importantly, their leader...
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Barret didn't hear the large crash outside. Although he was a sound sleeper, it took something very small to wake him up...
"Daddy!!!" He heard Marlene cry from the other room of the small house. Barret sat up in bed with a quick bolt of action. He was throwing back the covers when he started remembering the nightmares, and how Marlene had awaken him from them and how grateful he was for that, but there was no time for that now. Marlene needed something. She had probably just had a bad dream, or saw a shadow or need a drink of water...
But Barret knew better. He already knew something bad was happing. He had been the leader of AVALANCHE for a very long time, and even though it may have been a while, he could still smell something bad in the air... And he had a feeling those dreams had something to do with it.
"Marlene, I'm coming!" Barret looked at the night stand beside his bed, where his gun-arm was now sitting. He had had an operation so that more of his gun-arm could be removed as he slept, then just reattached to its base in the morning. Without a second thought, he snatched it up and began to put it on his arm as he ran toward Marlene's room.
"Marlene, are you okay?" Barret asked when he had reached the girls room. He finished clamping the last lock on his gun-arm as he talked.
"Someones going around outside. They knocked over some barrels, and I think it's Sephiroth..."
The little girl didn't know how right she was, and Barret would usually have found this to be totally crazy except for three things: With the dreams he had been having, it Couldn't have been something he ate, Marlene usually never told any kind of wild story, and the front door sounded like it was about to cone off it's hinges.
"Marlene, Whatever you do, stay right here! Yo Daddy's gonna protect ya!"
With that, Barret charged out of Marlene's room, and out into the front room. The door was bowing inward, holding by only three screws. On of these screws flew out about the time Barret realized this, and almost hit Barret in the eye. Then the door its self gave way, and it came down with a crash. When barret saw what he was up against, he had only one idea.
"Marlene, ran out and get to someone elses house, Quick! Now!"
Marlene was frightened, and didn't know what to do. She thought she might die, but she had no idea. But she trusted her father, and went sprinting as fast as her little legs could carry her, straight out of the room and straight for the back door.
Barret was in now postion to be making requests at the time, being face to face with the Hunter, butr he did anyways.
"Aeris, If you can hear me..." He began to whisper, "Protect my Marlene... Shes all I've got..."
As he finished, he began ot raise his gun-arm. Heard Marlene trip, but she was almost there, and he would hold this sorry jerk till he was dead.
THe Hunters' cold glare was fixed on Barret, and he knew inside his heart that he was as good as dead. Then, the Hunter began to speak at him, straight to his mind, and he cringed at it. It sent cold chills through his spine.
She can't hear you... No one can... Aeris is with me...
Barret strangely understood what it meant, but wasn't leaving time for that. Barret was beginning to fire at the Hunter, but he Hunter payed no attention to the bullets that were poinlessly flying through it. It was done playing around, and it saw that the little child Marlene was not yet out of the house. It moved past Barret with liquid speed, and Barret turn around to see the Hunter comingdown on Marlene.
Marlene saw the Blackness come down on her, and the Hunter engulfed her. It began to kill Marlene, Turning its arms into long, killing spikes, and shooting them through her at lightening speed.
"DADDY!!!" Barret heard Marlene scream. It was the scream of the dying. He had heard it before. But he was to shocked to do anything. When the Hunter pulled away after a few seconds, what was left was not recognizible as a little girl. It looked as if though Marlene had thrown a bowl of spagetti on the floor, except she was the spagetti, and her blood and intestines and all of her insides were lying sprawled across the floor. Her blood was running everywhere, and now Barret became inraged. He began firing all of his bullets straight at the Hunter, but it was no use. The bullets were flying straight through it, scarring up the walls.
The Hunter moved toward Barret now, not as fast as usual, but at a good speed, and when he was right upon Barret, he heard Barret's cursing over the sound of his gun... and he saw the tears...
"Ya sorry Mother Fucker! Marlene was all I had in this world!! Your goin' die!! Ya Hear!!!"
The Hunter payed no attantion to this, and turned one of its huge hands into a ripping claw. It slashed at Barret, and opened his stomach wide with the claws. Barret stopped shooting just in time to catch his intestines as they spilled out all over the floor. Barret fell over, holding th gapping hole his stomach used to rest in. The Hunter bent down, reached straight into that hole.
Without a hesitation, it grabbed hold on Barret's heart, and ripped it striaght out. Barret began shaking wildly, and after a moment, lyed still. The heart of AVALANCHE had been silenced.
The Hunter stood over his body, and as his soul left him, the Hunter took it, And Barret's soul screamed out as it joined Cid and Yuffie's in the darkness...
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With the Hunter work done here, he needed to move on. Another soul was waiting there. The soul of a man named Reeve... and before the night turned to day, his soul would join those of Cid and Yuffie and Barret and so many others...
He would join the darkness...
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As the Hunter left the house of the now passed Barret Wallace, something began to happen, far away from Midgar. The small community of Corel was over-taken by darkness. Mt. Corel and all of the surronding area was sweeped up onto a terrible darkness. Storms of darkness and death, like those that had happened in the areas of Rocket Town and Wutia, began to bring death across that land. Now the land Barret's soul had protected was part of the Hunters playground...
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Hunter Created by Raven-Chan
Final Fantasy 7 copyright of SquareSoft