This is another odd one, really, and it's going to need some explanation. The timeline for Goldeneyes, one of my dominant Original Characters, is thus. A SOLDIER's Sister leads to a crossroads. At that crossroads are several stories. One went to A Traveler in a Strange World. One goes to Reset: A Traveler in a Strange World. In Chapter One of Reset, though, Cloud is unable to reach Maracae before the final blow by Wolf Eyes. That is what triggers his need to send someone else to aid her. This story is what would have happened had he reached her in time.

However, some of the circumstances are altered. This is set to mirror the environment in a new role-playing forum that just opened up. It's called Final Fantasy: Phoenix. The address is linked on my personal webpage if you are interested in joining us for play. I will be playing Maracae there. As a side note, I also play Maracae on a site called FFWorldzcom. Her story has the same beginning as the one from FF:P, but things are handled a bit differently. I will be adding a link to FFWorldzcom to my website shortly.

Please let me know what you think of the story. Depending on responses, I might just continue the tale as events unfold.

Rescuing an Old Friend

The phone rang in Tifa's bar on the outskirts of Edge. Now that Omega had been defeated, the WRO had turned its efforts to rebuilding the cities which had been decimated by the destruction. Cities like Edge which had been all but abandoned during the chaos and confusion. The population loss, though, would be generations in repairing but at least, with efforts to find cleaner magical-electrical sources, the Planet would find ways to heal itself.

The "new" Shin-Ra was leading the effort to find ways of producing friendlier magical sources, and electrical sources, in part because of the new President following the voluntary retirement of Rufus Shinra. Rufus had said that he wanted to reconsider the Planet, and his own place in it. Shin-Ra's new president was the oddest individual which anyone had ever seen.

He was a short man, as short as Marlene, who called himself Sol Jashy Muur and who claimed that his people were called Lilties. President Muur, though, was not the greatest surprise in store for the stunned survivors of Midgar and Edge.

The phone rang again.

Tifa started to walk upstairs to answer it when the ringing abruptly cut off and a man's voice, low and still, spoke. "Strife Delivery Service, Cloud speaking."

She nodded to herself, so Cloud had gotten the phone this time. At least he was home today. They had all been kept very busy lately with some of the travel and delivery opportunities which presented themselves shortly after Omega's defeat.

It had started with a humming in the materia. Yuffie had almost gone mad from the sound of it since she had such a large collection. Then, one day, the humming became an exultant shout and that was when the first of the strange airships had appeared. Airships which had been named for the Shokenjuu in the summon materia.

They were explorers from another world, one they called Ivalice, and with their help the WRO had installed Gate Crystals in all their major cities so that people could travel to other places beyond their own Planet. Cloud had been to a few of them on deliveries. They were strange places where humans didn't need materia to use Magic, or to summon Shokenjuu.

Tifa wondered who was calling them and walked into the office to see Cloud standing by the desk, his face bloodless and white, his eyes wide and staring at nothing. He stood completely still. Tifa started to ask him something when the phone, which was still in his hand and was still raised to his ear, dropped to the ground with a loud clatter. Cloud didn't try to pick it up again. He turned and ran for the door downstairs.

"Cloud!" Tifa called after him, "What is it? Who called?"

"No time," he called back, "it's Maracae. She's dying." His words were cut off as he ran outside and she heard the roar of an engine, Fenrir, Cloud's motorcycle, fill the air.

Tifa remembered Maracae from their journey three years before. Like Cloud, she had claimed to be former SOLDIER, and like Cloud that claim was somewhat inaccurate. Maracae wasn't SOLDIER because she was something else entirely, even though she'd grown up around SOLDIER and Shin-Ra and the scientists responsible for creating Sephiroth and Genesis.

Maracae was the reason why the Avalanche core of the WRO hadn't immediately rejected Sol Jashy as President of Shin-Ra. Avalanche knew the truth about Maracae, and why she alone of all of them could use magic without materia. Maracae had come from another world before being born in their own. She had come to Midgar under her own power, no Gate Crystal, no strangely powered airship, and had caused herself to be physically born through a woman of their world.

Maracae was Sephiroth's kid sister, and she was one of them, one of Avalanche. She'd stood against her brother and with Cloud, to defeat the One-Winged Angel and Meteor.

Fenrir roared again as Cloud raced away from the bar in a desperate run to save the life of a friend. He had failed to save Aerith three years before; he couldn't fail Maracae, too.

---

It's said that a person's life flashes before their eyes as they are dying.

All Maracae could think was that it wasn't fair. But then, since when had her life been fair?

And goodness knew she'd had the chance to do more living and see more places and do more things than anyone she had known back when she had been merely mortal and a different person entirely.

She fell to the ground, all strength gone from her legs and coughed weakly. Standing above her was a twisted abomination of a humanoid wolf with ebony black fur, streaked by white across his brow. Two great black wings sprung from his back, wings that made her think for a moment of a different brother entirely, and her own blood covered his hands.

He was her brother. Wolf Eyes Dreamsail, the scourge of his family, the Corrupter and the Hunter, bound to destroy those tied to him by blood, was going to be the one to finally kill the last Motherborn Shard, Goldeneyes Dreamsail herself.

He howled in a brief flare of grim delight as he prepared to take the final blow.

Maracae flinched away from him, curling her broken and bloody body around itself. She had no defenses left. She was dying, and no one knew where she was. No one knew how to find her or where she had gone. There was no one who would know enough to mourn her. She would simply vanish and not reappear.

It would be months or even years before her sisters would even wonder what happened.

She'd just wanted to get away for a couple days, clear her head as it was. She had been going home to Avalanche, hoping that they would accept her back for a while. She should have been paying attention, or Wolf Eyes wouldn't have caught her unawares, wouldn't have had the chance to seal her powers so that she couldn't fight back against him.

It wasn't fair. But nothing ever was.

And then, as if to only make it worse, she heard the roar of a motorcycle engine gunning towards them.

---

Cloud didn't know what the creature was, but it stood on legs like a man, and had a pair of great black-feathered wings spread from its back, and it stood above a broken form covered in blood, a form with blonde hair with a streak of white shining in the sunlight.

He leapt from the moving bike, one of his swords already in hand. He would die before he let some monster kill another one of his friends.

The creature looked up at him and its eyes widened and it jumped backwards, the wings working to steady it in the air. It growled in anger as Cloud landed protectively over the still-breathing body of its victim. "This is not over, Puppet. I know what you are. I know how to hurt you!"

Energy gathered in the creature as he formed an attack. Cloud was weak against telepathic energies, one of the side effects of being what he was. As the strike reached him, though, there was a cry of pain from the woman on the ground and the attack dissipated without a target.

Maracae lost consciousness for a moment, the last of her strength spent to shield her friend.

The wolf-creature roared in anger. "How!"

Cloud held up his hand to show the scar of a cut across the palm. "Old magic, she called it. Her blood mingled with mine." He took up a stance and prepared to fight the creature. "You will not kill my friend!"

The creature growled in anger and abruptly dropped to all four feet, becoming an even larger wolf. Its wings pumped several times and it rose into the air, flying off with a howl of frustration. "This is not over! I will destroy the Shard!" Then it vanished, leaving Cloud alone with his broken and bloody friend.

He worked quickly, as quickly as he dared. The sword he stuck back into its spot in the wings on Fenrir, and grabbed a greenish colored materia from a bag there. Strangely enough, the materia was the same color as his eyes. He pressed it into his arm, letting the materia sink into him as the power from the crystalline stone flooded through his body. It wasn't much, but it should help.

He knelt next to Maracae and ran a hand over her, and felt the energy flow from him and into her as the Cure spell took effect. It didn't do much at all, but it did heal the gash in her belly where the creature had tried to disembowel her during their battle. He cast the spell three more times before it became apparent that the wounds were resisting the magical energies.

But at least she would live long enough to plead for help from another source.

He pulled the materia from his arm and dropped it back in the bag. He had to get it back to Yuffie at some point. He couldn't remember why he'd borrowed it in the first place, but he had. He was grateful for it now, though. He lifted Maracae into his arms and for a moment she blinked her golden eyes open to look at him.

"C-cloud? H-how did you . . . ?"

He sighed as he got back on Fenrir and settled her in front of him on the seat. "A phone call. Don't talk. Save your strength. I've got you now, just don't die on me."

She chuckled, a weak, tortured sound. "Who would have known enough to warn you? Wolf Eyes . . . blocked the signal . . ." Her voice faded and she fell unconscious again.

Cloud started Fenrir's engine and pointed them towards Midgar. There was only one place he knew of that might help Maracae.

---

Fenrir rolled directly into the ruined shell of what had been a church at one time. The roof was gone above, letting sunlight directly to what had once been a floor, and was now a pool of water glistening through the shattered floorboards. Cloud killed the engine and the building was silent around them, almost expectant.

He sighed in remembered pain. He hadn't been able to save Aerith. He knew that she bore him no malice for that failure, but it had still been failure. She had spoken to him about it, more than once.

After all, just because she was dead, it didn't follow that she wasn't around anymore.

He stood and carried Maracae over to the water. It was her only hope. Her wounds weren't healing, and he knew that she had powerful magic of her own that should be healing her. Something was blocking her, and the only source of hope that he knew . . . was in the Lifestream.

She was still unconscious, which was something of a blessing he supposed. He didn't want to think of her still feeling the pain of her wounds.

It was too much like when he had given Aerith to the water for his comfort, but it was the only way. He carried her into it and then let her sink. He could only hope that the remains of Holy in the water were able to help her.

His only other choice was to carry her all the way to Paramecia, to Crescent Lake and the Holy waters there, if this didn't work.

Maracae sank into the water and for a moment nothing happened. But then she stiffened suddenly as countless sigils suddenly appeared on her body, glowing like brands in her flesh. A few of them faded from sight as the water eased them away. Her eyes fluttered open and the wounds, slowly, closed.

She floated on the water for a moment, still. "Am I . . . going to live?" She whispered the words, as if her voice could not go louder.

"Mmhmm." He nodded briefly with the sound of affirmation.

She sighed. "He won't stop. He'll try again." There were tears in her voice.

"I'll take you to Tifa. You aren't alone. You don't have to face him alone." Cloud silently berated himself for weakness. If only he were stronger then she wouldn't have spent her last energy shielding him from the wolf-creature's attack. If only he weren't so weak then he might have known that she was in danger before he had gotten the call, and gotten to her before so much damage had been done.

She closed her eyes again and sighed. She was asleep again. Cloud carefully pulled her back out of the water. It was a long way back to Edge and Tifa's bar. She was alive and he had made it to her in time.

It wasn't much, but at least it was something. They could deal with the other challenges as they came up.

Maracae was back with Avalanche, back where she belonged.