He saw her in his sleep that night. She flowed like new light cast in a pearlescent umbra. She wrapped him in the pale ivy of her arms. She wove the stars and galaxies within her glowing emerald aura. And she cried like worlds ending, reaching for his outstretched hand in the rushing whirl of the stratosphere.
He put her out of his mind as he paced the Shinra corridors in SOLDIER wing, replacing the ghastly impression with three all-powerful letters.
MIA.
His mentor had gone missing, not by accident, and no one knew why, least of all Zack. In whitewash hallways, words filtered back to him in echoes.
"Zack, it takes more than pride to become a First Class SOLDIER," Angeal had said to him what seemed like a long time ago now. A newly recruited Zack Fair had stood with that blind determination like a high school jock in a wheel chair.
"Whatever it takes I've got it. And if I don't got it I'll get it! I will fulfill my dreams, and I WILL become a hero."
Angeal had regarded him, and turned away. It was the day he'd decided to take him on as his student.
"Very well, then you have my support."
A left turn past the Wall of Fame, where Angeal's placard sat beside his Congressional Medal of Honor, and Zack reminisced on his wayward mentor.
Angeal Hewely was a hardened war veteran with a service record decorated like a Christmas tree. He lived his life by a strict moral code, the kind of man who stood on ceremony and expected the same from those around him. He'd stepped up to fill a role Zack's father had apparently neglected, disciplinarian.
When Zack was late, he'd gotten the longest lectures of his life. Angeal harped on him about his honor, his sworn word that he gave when he signed up for SOLDIER to be the best he could be, a sacred oath that should extend to everything he did in life from protecting his friends in battle to tying his boot laces to being on time for work.
"How can being two minutes late be dishonorable!"
"Count 'em out." Angeal waved him off.
Zack sighed and started squatting. "1…2…3…"
Angeal came down hard on his student, he was a man of stern principals and iron resolve. As if being run into the ground on a daily basis wasn't enough for Zack, Angeal demoted him to his dog.
"This is my new puppy, Zack," he'd say as he introduced him to other higher-ups with hands on his shoulders. "I just picked him up from the pound. I'm training him to be a fighter, but I've barely got him off using puppy-pads."
Zack slumped. Even his humanity had to be earned.
That training was nothing short of hellish. Angeal would spar with him for hours in the Training Room until he literally couldn't lift his sword, and then they'd go rounds hand-to-hand since his weapon became too heavy. Zack rocked a two-hander longsword—because he was "tough" and could handle it. So Angeal never let him put it down. If Zack was going to carry it then he was going to carry it. After all, Angeal had to carry his sword.
His Sword.
His sword was a family heirloom, a tungsten carbide devil cleaver with a torso as big as Zack, a ball-bashing Buster Sword. Zack watched him cleaning the thing, thinking he'd never loved a woman the way he loved that sword. Weirdo.
There were days when it just got to be too much though, the enduring grind too hard and frustrating. Zack would throw his sword across the training room and sit on the floor fuming at himself, wondering if he would ever get the hang of things, wondering if he was even cut out for SOLDIER to begin with.
"Hey," Angeal would crouch down to his level, an even tone in his voice. "You followed your dreams. You made it here. You deserve to be here, and when I'm through with you you're going to make a lot of people proud."
Those anecdotes had been coming more and more frequent lately, and after being deprived of humanity for so long, he only needed one kind word to jolt him back to his feet with a mad energy to please. Small jokes had been being exchanged, little ribbing insults in good fun, and Zack felt himself pining to be in his mentor's good graces.
There was no question that Angeal was solely responsible for making Zack the SOLDIER he was today. Now his nerves were wracked with worry on his way to a last-minute briefing, but something in the hallway caught his eye, stopping him dead in his tracks.
A familiar shadowed figure leaned against a table in a conference room, arms crossed and eyes turned down as if marking the world for death. Zack caught his breath as another word crossed his mind: backup.
The frosted glass affected the translucency of the pane, but there was no mistaking the monolithic man's imposing form and Gunmetal-black non-standard-issue longcoat. Satellites would have trouble mistaking him from outer space. He stood statuesque for long moments, ringed in the silver veil of his hair. That deadly daikatana still rested in its sword harness over his shoulder like it had at the reactor, clipped across his bare chest with a cord-modified battle harness.
His presence left Zack transfixed in a frozen time warp, until someone else entered to join him. A girl about Zack's age strode over to the big man and clicked her heels together at attention.
…SOLDIER…?
Were there even any girls in SOLDIER? Zack hadn't seen any, yet she wore the same pauldrons and two military stripes indicating a 2nd Class. He cocked his head.
Well, guess so…
The big man put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her in for a quick hug, and Zack understood. That was his student! The way Zack was Angeal's student, this man had one also, and it was a cute girl! He HAD to meet her.
They resumed their serious air and Zack saw the man's lips moving, briefing her on her next mission. She phased to go-mode in a flash as her body went taut, and Zack's body went limp.
A salute, and she walked out of the conference room, toward Zack!
She strode with the grace of a panther, a lotus flower in human form. Shards of lilac sheered her brow—short on one side, long on the other—she didn't give two damns what anyone thought about her and wore it on the outside like a mark of pride. A blood-red side-pouch strapped to her thigh, and a blood-stained Gunblade strapped to her back, Zack was halfway to Heaven swooning on hormones and happy-thoughts.
He ran up to her wagging his tail.
"Hiya! I'm Zack, SOLDIER 2nd Cl—"
But she shot him the meanest glare he'd ever received in his life. It threw him back against the wall holding his hands up harmlessly, and she continued on minding her own business.
A huge sigh escaped Zack. He sucked up his bruised ego and headed with renewed morose toward Briefing.
Shinra was the big-wig outfit in charge of putting the reactors up in the first place. They held stake on Magnesium Kobaltite fuel-cells in the developing world—Mako—and hired their own elite paramilitary force to keep eco-terrorists from doing anything more than holding signs with pictures of dead Native babies on them. For some, SOLDIER was a symbol of corporate tyranny by use of armed force, but for Zack, it had been his ticket out of a one-horse town.
Now, on the sixty-seventh floor of the City Central building, which looked like a massive jetski carburetor and where Shinra shared headquarters with the military and the Department of Clandestine Affairs, Zack walked defiantly with hands in pockets through white-walled corridors displaying policy listings a mile long in font the size of ants. A minimum wage poster was tacked up with very small numbers in very large print.
ARE YOU BEING BULLIED AT WORK? showed a stick figure with a sword poking another crying stick figure.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT OKAY! warned a poster depicting a lurking SOLDIER stick figure with a Buster Sword creeping up behind a girl stick figure holding flowers.
Briefing was in the main war room opposite the Press Offices, have to keep up the image for the paying public. Zack let himself in to find an assembly of top brass debating around a congressional committee. At their head, Lazarus sat at a taped microphone pinching the brim of his nose in discreet agony.
All Zack heard was,
"SOLDIER 1st Class Angeal has deserted."
It hit home. Hearing it straight from overhead rocked Zack to his core.
"This is drastic," proclaimed a delegate. "Drastic times call for drastic measures."
"Agreed. We should send Him after Angeal."
"Whom are you referring to?"
"You know who I'm talking about. Sephiroth."
The door to Briefing swing open, slammed by a boot against the back wall, and in walked the monolith of silver stratus on cue. Zack gaped at his eminence, more regal and deadly up close, his train of spider-silken hair flowing over the smooth jet fibers of his gunmetal longcoat.
So this is Sephiroth, Zack thought.
He strode to the center of the congregation, a wad of papers crumpled in his right hand—official orders—and tossed them in the air. In a flash, he whipped out his daikatana slicing the papers mid-air. They hit the ground in tatters.
He replaced his longsword over his shoulder as he marched from the committee room, and only after he had gone did a single member breathe.
"I'll take that as disobeying a direct order," someone grumbled.
"Can someone please file an Article 15 on him?"
"Negative. I'm sick of sticking those in his file," complained Lazarus.
Zack stood statuesque off to the side, blending into the backdrop like the portraits of the Shinra royal family adorning the walls.
The committee went back and forth for some time before standing from rolling chairs at the conclusion of their meeting. Zack shot upright at parade rest off to the side of the room while papers were shuffled into leather binders and high-ranking officials filed out of the room without so much as a sidelong glance at the 2nd Class SOLDIER, like he expected.
Lazarus was among them and met Zack with a cool composure. The SOLDIER saluted his Commander at attention, who released him with a quick "at ease."
When he shut the door, Zack relaxed.
"Commander. Any word from Angeal?"
"None."
Zack sighed hard at the ground.
"A war council hasn't even been convened yet," said Lazarus. "I told them Angeal never left the helicopter and that you jumped alone at the reactor."
"But—"
"I'm keeping this on the administrative level, and I think I'm right to believe that whatever is said between us stays between us…"
A hard stare from Lazarus' eye, and Zack got the hint. He swallowed a lump in his throat with a nod. Lazarus seemed satisfied enough to turn a laptop screen around...
"Do you recognize this man?"
A mugshot of a pale SOLDIER with sheered rust bangs appeared on the OLED touchscreen, a sharp contrast to the dark haired countenance of Zack's shadowed mentor.
"No…" But something irked Zack in the back of his mind. A lightning flash impacted his memory. "Yes! The bodies! The guys Angeal killed looked just like him!"
"SOLDIER 1st Class Genesis Rhapsodus, a highly decorated member of the Silver Elite. He didn't report back in for duty three days ago, and the battalion of Third Class SOLDIER's under his command has disappeared as well."
"Wait, SOLDIER? I've never seen him around the unit. I've never even heard of him."
"Nor should you have. Means he was doing his job right…"
Zack blinked, his mind in a whirl. Lazarus went to the high rise window, peering out over the atrium of the chromium metropolis that was Midgar City.
"SOLDIER isn't your typical military outfit. The Infantry is the Army and we're the Police. We don't work for the government of Midgar, we work directly for the Shinra Corporation, which allows us to circumvent the behemoth-crap bureaucracy that runs this cesspool of a city. It's why we're the best. So we've got a lot more wiggle-room when it comes to fighting a war nobody can see."
"Are we at war, Commander?" Zack asked in a serious tone, to which the Commander turned with eyes still downcast in deep thought..
"Genesis is one of the most powerful Red Mages Shinra has ever produced. If he's decided to turn on us, he'll do more damage than an invading army. Of all my operators, Sephiroth could stand up to him, but he's being an ass as usual."
"Sephiroth, that guy, I don't know him either. Who is he?"
Lazarus cocked a hard eyebrow at Zack. The drill-dogs at A-School taught rookies that there were no such things as stupid questions but that one really pushed the field manual.
"The hero of Shinra. The bloody harbinger of death himself. He's been in every major war since you've been born."
"...Oh."
Lazarus shook his head. Kids these days. He continued with his hands folded behind his back, eye contact sidelong to dance around topics he really didn't want to discuss.
"We have the corpses bearing Genesis' likeness in our possession. They display some troubling signs…"
A long silence. Zack waved his hand for him to get on with it.
"…Like?"
"JENOVA cells. It would take too long to explain what this bioware is, but the research was spearheaded by a Dr. Shinya Hojo, a name you need to look out for…He's head of the Shinra R&D Department."
A cold chill ran down Zack's spine. He didn't like the sound of any of this. Those words reeked of an unnerving stench: Conspiracy. None of the underling brotherhood of SOLDIER had any stomach for white-collar politics, but the higher-ups…
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"Angeal wasn't just one of my best, he was the best, and he saw something special in you. You two are close…?"
Zack ran his hand over the back of his head. "He's…like a father to me."
An expecting nod came from Lazarus.
"A lot of people in the Unit treat this like a second family, including Genesis…"
"Commander, I don't get it. If this guy's one of us, well, what gives? And what's Angeal got to do with this?"
"What happened after I sent you back to help Angeal, kid? Tell me, and then tell no one."
"He…he sicked his Eidolon on me, and left with the Genesis lookalikes. That's when…Sephiroth showed up."
Lazarus nodded but didn't look up, expecting as much. All was as he'd feared.
"I want you to go to Genesis' hometown, see what you can find. He'd always fall back there when things got hairy."
"But what can I do?"
"If Angeal is in league with Genesis, it's going to take more than firepower to bring him down. You're his student. You were closest to him, and at this point if he's going to trust anyone, it's going to be you. Talk him down, get him to come back in. Whatever his reason for defecting, we're his family here."
"Why's he doing this?"
"That's what I need you to find out. Will you accept this mission?"
"I will, sir."
"Then get some rest. You'll leave at oh-six hundred tomorrow. Any questions?"
"What's going to happen if Angeal comes back?"
"We'll knock a dollar off his pay and send him back out on duty without even having a hearing. Like I said, we're family here. We take care of our own."
"And…Genesis?"
The Commander paused for a long, tense moment.
"Dismissed."
[Received Orders]
