I asked Flash for details regarding the “Metal Dragger” that we were looking for. The only helpful info I got was that he was always carrying a large slab of metal with him on his back. I pulled the Fairblade off my back and showed it to him.
“This slab of metal… does it look anything like this?” I asked. He got a good look at the sword and nodded.
“This one is a little more detailed than the Dragger’s,” Flash said. “But the size and shape are almost identical.”
“What’s different about them?” I asked. He pointed to two points near the base of the blade, right in the middle.
“There are two holes around here on the Dragger’s slab, each one just big enough to fit my hoof through, I’d guess.” Did I know what they were? It’d be rare for anyone not to by fifteen. Materia slots. And if the slots were by the base of the blade…
“We need to find this guy fast!” I told Flash. But when we reached the lake he stopped.
“No we don’t,” I was confused by what he meant until I turned around. There was a man by the edge of the lake wearing a white cloak that hid his face under the hood, and a sword that was bigger than he was on his back. The sword was black from the edge back and had, just as Flash described, two Materia slots near the base. The hilt was wrapped in red leather, and the guard was just half an inch all around the blade. He looked at me, and I saw deep blue eyes shining through the shadow of the hood.
“Who are you!?” I said. “Why do you have the Buster Sword!?”
“Your father doesn’t seem to need it anymore,” He said.
“But it’s a grave marker now! Isn’t that defiling the grave!?”
“I hardly think it matters,” The guy started to take the hood off, revealing black hair, blue eyes, an X-shaped scar on the cheek… “It was my grave after all.” I knew who this guy was, but how was he alive!? He took more lead in than a normal guy would die from! He pulled a capsule out of his sleeve and tossed it to me. I looked inside after I caught it, and saw what looked to be a liver. “Give that to your brother… we’ll meet again, Arn.” One leap later and he was gone. I was left standing there, speechless at what I just saw.
“Who was that?” Flash asked. The most I could muster in response was; “A friend of my father.”
We rushed back to the Castle and Twilight used “magic,” as she called it to replace Denzel’s Liver with the one that the Dragger gave me. A little later she said she had some work to get back to, and excused herself to a library in the castle. I asked the Bahamut creature, Spike (as he was introduced to me), to watch after Denzel and the girls while I hunted down the guy with the Buster Sword.
I searched the entire town of Ponyville (Aptly named place, and still very nice) meeting the denizens and looking for clues about the guy who saved Denzel’s life. It took a while, about two days, counting the breaks I took either to help or to take care of other business. I did find him though; he was at the far side of Sweet Apple Acres, doing squats from what I could see. When I got close enough he stopped.
“Hey there, Arn,” He said.
“Nice to meet you, Zack,” I responded. “How are you alive, and why are you here!?” I said as calmly as I could force myself to sound.
“I can’t answer the being alive part,” He said. “That one pony, Celestia, she wouldn’t tell me. But she did say that she thought it would be wise for someone who was familiar with the coming danger in her kingdom to come here.”
“If that’s the case,” I queried. “Why am I here? And for that matter Ava, Marlene and Denzel?”
“That was her doing,” he pointed to a tent set up like a cube as a woman, who I also can say I saw before, but like Zack I only saw her in photographs. She had long brown hair cascading down her shoulders with an auburn glimmer to it. She wore a red coat with a pink dress and brown gardener’s boots.
“Aerith!?” I was shocked now. How did they come back!?
“You must be Cloud’s son,” Aerith said. “And you must be wondering how we came back, that makes three of us, but we were needed here to bring you here.”
“What do you mean?” I was trying to sound calm, but I was freaking out inside.
“Celestia said that her former student, Twilight Sparkle was looking into an artifact that was found in the Evefree Forest,” Zack said. “And she called us here because we come from the same world as the Artifact.”
“The problem is, we can’t get near the Castle Twilight lives in without being recognized as something… Unnatural,” Aerith said. “We need you to find out what the artifact is, and if possible, find out what the danger is so we can stop it.”
It took a week to get over the shock of dead people walking in a magical land of equestrians… but when I did, I started asking Twilight anything about the Artifact I could. But when it became apparent that I had too much curiosity about the Artifact, she shut up and I had to explain why I wanted to know about the Artifact.
“According to Celestia, the artifact has some relation to my home world of Gaia,” I finished. “And whatever the relation is, it’s dangerous.” Twilight thought about my story for a little bit.
“If Princess Celestia said you were supposed to help, then I guess I shouldn’t turn you down.” She told me to follow her to the Library where the Artifact was being held. The thing was just a plaque that looked like it was made of stainless steel.
“I can’t make out what these symbols etched into it are. They’re definitely not from this country. At any point of recorded history. And the alloy is nothing like any of our materials. I can’t… Arn?”
I was paying attention to the story, but I was too stunned to respond.
“I have an idea what this is,” I said. “The writing is from Gaia, Midgard specifically. The letters are J-E-N-O-V-A.”
“What’s… Jenova?” Twilight asked. I remembered very well the stories my dad would tell me about this mutant Ancient. I told Twilight all I knew about the Walking Cataclysm. “That’s… unspeakable!” Twilight said.
“I guess I won’t be going back to Gaia just yet,” I said. “If Jenova is here, then Sephiroth could very well be here too, who would hasten Jenova’s work. Which would be bad.”
“I have to warn Princess Celestia!”
“Tell her not to tell anyone else about this yet.” Twilight wrote down the conversation on a piece of Parchment and gave the parchment to Spike, who immediately burned it by breathing on it. I had to question how Celestia was going to read that now, but that would come up later. I had to tell Zack and Aerith about this latest development.