Author note: Hi, this is TheGreatSalmon! With what will hopefully be my first multi-chaptered story on this site. If I don't update often, don't be too hard on meee :(

Anyway, enjoy (or try?), and I promise the "humour" element will pick up in subsequent chapters!

Another day with the Shinra company, another mundane mission for 2nd class SOLDIER Zack Fair.

The young man stretched expansively, daydreaming about anything and everything else he could be doing on such a great day. Beautiful, even. The sun was high in a cloudless-blue sky, its rays streaming down to the soft plains of flowering grasses below. But despite their riot of colours, Zack would easily have traded in the flowers for a nice beach. Their pollen was making his nose itch, though that was nothing compared to the sweaty itching of the woollen SOLDIER top that would lie discarded and forgotten at the first sign of even the smallest pool of water.

His sole companion, the Turk Tseng, eyed him suspiciously. It would have been obvious even to someone without his years of training in noticing every tiny detail of his surroundings that the young SOLDIER was distracted. His sky-blue eyes darted up and down, left and right – and it was clear that their mission was the furthest thing from his mind.

"Zack," the Turk said softly, "what would you do if we were attacked right now?"

Zack spun on his heel and continued his trek backwards, head resting against the palms of his interlaced hands. "Huh?" was his reply. "Sorry, I wasn't listening."

Tseng sighed, and not for the first time in the past couple of hours. He didn't even dignify the boy's apology with a response.

And so the pair continued in relative silence, broken only by their footfalls, (Tseng's quick and precise, Zack's irregular and heavy enough to wake the dead), and Zack's occasional humming or sudden noise of understanding, as if every waking moment were a revelation to him. Then again, thought Tseng, if they say, 'simple things amuse simple minds', that may not be too far from the truth. He wondered further to himself why it had been Zack who had been assigned to bodyguard him, and it was obvious that Zack wondered the same thing, as he had apparently put such doubts to his mentor, Angeal. Surely the army's most honourable and diligent 1st class SOLDIER would have seen sense if there was any to see, and yet here they were regardless. Even though both Tseng and Zack knew that the highly-regarded Turk would be perfectly safe by himself, and though powerful, Zack's careless nature almost warranted him protection of his own.

But this debacle wasn't Angeal's fault. Not even such a treasured member of Shinra staff could talk sense into the president while he was curled under his desk in the foetal position. Tseng couldn't really blame him after what the man had apparently seen, although he could attest that the Turks sometimes dealt with even stranger sounding occurrences – that always resolved into something understandable. So he knew from experience – they would find the house of the "mystic" who lived in Kalm, they would sit down to tea with her and she would laugh and tell them that really she was just in it for the money and only pretended to be a clairvoyant, and they could all just get back to business. With the world's largest energy company in the hands of a young man barely old enough to be counted as such, and its current leader locked safely away in a padded cell…

Tseng's train of thought was brought to an abrupt halt as he ran up against something hard. It wasn't in his nature to not pay attention like that, but what was worse than temporarily compromising his dignity in his own company was that Zack – AKA head blabbermouth of the Shinra building, had not only seen him do it, but actually been the thing he had run into. The SOLDIER turned around slowly, replacing a muscled back with an equally muscled front in Tseng's view.

"What's wrong?" Tseng asked, his tone turning worriedly hurt towards the end of his question. Zack's face broke into his trademarked grin. "I was just seeing if you were paying attention!"

Tseng hmph-ed, when internally he was quite surprised at the boy's wit. It was something that he had not expected given certain…reports of his training progress in anything that wasn't physical. "I think this would be a good place to rest," Tseng mumbled.

This suggestion was met by a groan of frustration from Zack. "But if we rest now, we won't be back by dark. I can see in the dark with my mako-eyes, but you can't, and besides Angeal will get worried."

Tseng cocked an eyebrow.

"Well," Zack huffed, the slightest tinge of pink colouring his cheeks, "what I mean is I shouldn't have worried about leaving my parents behind when I came to Midgar. Angeal is good for about three."

This time his comment was met with a rueful nod from the Turk. "You're right. We need to make up for the time we lost when the truck broke down."

Zack, seeing this as a sign that for once he had proven right, grinned again and resumed following the narrow stretch of dirt road that meandered its way through the grass plains and chocobo farms that the countryside between Midgar and Kalm was famous for. God only knew why Tseng had entrusted the map to Zack. In his defence, he really had no way of knowing that the teen would mistake the labels of "shortcut" and "scenic route", but still. He should have seen something like this coming, though none of this seemed to phase the bubble 2nd-classer one bit.

The lack of conversation didn't really affect either man in a bad way, but after several more minutes of trudging their way along, Tseng started to feel uneasy. He couldn't claim to have seen the strange spectre that had sent President Shinra into such fits of terror that he could barely speak, but he had been in the room with him when the supposed incident happened. He had been the subject of the supposed incident, which he figured to be a deciding factor, along with his skill as a "collector of information", as some of the Turks liked to be known in more sensitive circles, in his being chosen to lead investigations into the matter. It was a strange feeling, considering, even for a moment, (Tseng would never admit even to himself that he believed in anything vaguely supernatural), that his own spirit, soul, a ghost, whatever people wanted to call it could be wandering the great wide world of its own free will. Even so, the first-class Shinra spy was determined to set the record straight, to prove once and for all that there was no "mystery" too strange to have the cover pulled off it by the Turks to expose the bare bones of the truth beneath.

Until something inexplicably cold and damp smashed into the back of his head.