Fanfiction = No Ownership or Profit = An Obvious Staement

Back to Reality

Chapter Two: Opportunity Cost

By FullMentaPanic

Original Concept HazzaTL3

Mako did not numb. It overwhelmed. Sensations, smells, and thoughts until you caved and shut down under the assault. It was something he'd been hoping never to re-experience. He blinked again, thinking that whatever had happened might be reversed, but he was still immersed in green. Trickling laughter, screams, shouts, whispers, explosions, music, and howls into his ears. Filling his nose with fumes of sweat, sweetness, blood, smoke, and salt water. Touching his skin with leather, claws, fists, knives, stone, fur, heat, and ice. Casting shadows in his eyes of trees, monsters, buildings, flowers, fire, people he knew and others that he'd never encountered. None of them matched up. He tasted ash while seeing running streams, hearing wailing children, smelling gun oil, feeling teeth sinking into him. Through it all his mind twisted in bitterness, anger, disappointment, laughter, terror, indecision, affection, disgust, sorrow, love, despair, hope, hate.

He pushed forward and his arms slammed against something immovably stiff and smooth. Rock, glaciers, metal. He moved back and hit the same unyielding surface. Images still ghosted in front of him, but nothing seemed to reach past the frictionless jade around him. Faces, fields, and mountains fell back as he turned to them, but still hovered on the edges of his vision. He was trapped in a space less than his arm span. Trapped alone. His feet weren't touching anything, but he still kicked out and the apparitions of all that wasn't there scattered as his boots struck the hard walls of his prison. He froze as his frantic eyes swept over his feet. He hadn't worn those mass-issued infantry boots in years. Not since -

No.

Not again.

He couldn't be here again. He couldn't deal with the smells and the touch and the whispers that tore him in a thousand different directions until there was nothing left of himself. Not again. The way every time he hit the walls around him it echoed back only once as a dull thump before morphing into explosions, punches, rock slides, and crumpling metal. This couldn't be his life again. Pounding followed him everywhere he turned, pulling at his skull. Except...there. It was something steady. He stopped thrashing and wrenched himself to his left, zeroing in on the sound that intermittently seemed like it could actually come from something striking the smooth sides of his cell.

Foggy green clouded over the curving surfaces around him, and he struggled to see past it for something that wasn't Mako induced. He needed a focal point, something he knew was real and immovable. Although...if he couldn't find one, maybe he wasn't even here. Maybe he could go back. He strained through the murky liquid and stared down the shadows beyond, daring the dark lines to settle into -

Zack.

Hanging unconcernedly in a vat of green goop with that easy grin that seemed to be what his face naturally fell into when it relaxed.

Alive.

Now he wanted this to be real. This was something he could center on. His head conked against the side of the tube and he bounced back before he completely mashed his face against it. Zack laughed soundlessly, and Cloud didn't care. Every other sense clamoring for his attention in the Mako soup, even the ones involving Zack, paled before the solid assurance that his friend was right in front of him.

Dipping his chin down, Zack raised his eyebrows before tilting his head to the side. Cloud nodded, he was definitely ready to get out of here. Even if he was still seeing the world through a chartreuse lens, he could now see it clearly enough to know that the room beyond them was empty, which was very unlikely to last. Bracing his back against one side and pushing against the other with his legs, Cloud poured every wish he'd ever had for saving the people who mattered to him into his muscles. Nothing happened. It had haunted his nightmares, but he hadn't merely cringed away from it. He'd wracked himself trying to figure out how he could have acted differently, what else he could have done. Which meant he had half a dozen plans up his half-sleeves for breaking out. With a twist and a tug, he detached one of the metal shoulder guards from his uniform and drove it against the clear material he was encased in. It couldn't possibly be glass, or it would have broken already. He glanced over. Zack had also apparently spent some time on alternative ways of getting out.

Wedged at the very top, Zack was pushing at the area where not-glass switched to metal. Cloud had considered that himself. The hollow cylinders weren't as well anchored at the top. It was one of the areas more likely to give under an attack. On top of that, pressure at the top could possibly lever enough force at the bottom to crack the containment tube. Though anything they tried to throw against it was hampered by heavily concentrated Lifestream, viscous and clinging. The cylinder didn't budge, even when Cloud could hear the muffled impact of Zack's shoulder against it. He looked at the clear barrier in front of him. It wasn't even scratched. With snowballing alarm, he tried to cram the pauldron into one of the seams where the tube would open, but it scraped ineffectually away. He braced the metal against his fist and punched. The epaulet cracked, but the wall wasn't even scuffed. He tore the metal apart the rest of the way, hoping for an edge he could jam into something.

A sharp tap swung his head back to the other containment tube where Zack was giving him a steady look and then a slow smile bracketed by a thumbs up. It didn't really mean everything was fine, but it did ease him just a bit and that feeling immediately swelled into reminders of open skies, work finished, beaches - he snapped his attention back to where it mattered.

Zack kept the smile in place and reached down to rap his knuckles against the grating at the bottom of his cylinder. It was filled with narrow openings already. Maybe they could tear through that, and even if they couldn't break completely out that way, if they could just get the Mako out they'd be able to get up the momentum to hit the clear barriers a lot harder.

Cloud turned to ramming an edge of his torn shoulder guard into one of the slotted grate openings. It fit easily enough, and he slowly started easing it sideways hoping the floor would give before the epaulet. He kept an eye on Zack to measure the other's success. Zack had maneuvered off the metal emblem that was usually centered on the defensive band around his middle. Besides marking the wearers as SOLDIER, those emblems were designed to do the job of completely shielding the vitals they covered and were the result of lots of gil, research, and only the most top tier materials. The grating visibly dented under the emblem where Zack smashed it into the floor, too impatient to fit it into a crevice. The sieved flooring warped and stretched, then abruptly broke away from where Zack was levering it up. Funding the infantry wasn't the highest on the priority list. The metal epaulet in Cloud's hand snapped.

Cloud rotated to another sharp edge and wedged and lifted a little more slowly to prevent tearing. He looked back to the side where, with a few more squeezes, there was a jagged edged, oblong opening in the grate. Zack hunkered down next to it in a floating crouch, peering into the mechanism under the slotted metal. Cloud bobbed to the top of the tank he was in for an angle where he could see what Zack was looking at. There was a spasm of confusion across his face before Zack jerked his head to the side and resumed a slight smile. Cloud clamped down on his own worm of fear and started thinking of stop valves and piping and – there.

He tapped against the side of the tube urgently with his ragged shoulder guard. Zack's face snapped up, and Cloud gestured and then chopped through the Mako with his torn pauldron. Zack's face lit up and he reached down to an area of the inner piping before looking back at Cloud, who motioned toward himself. They were currently bathing in the stuff, but Mako was not cheap. If Zack could cut the line beyond where the stop valve was and Mako started leaking out without being prompted by the system mechanics, there might be a safe guard that would safely drain away the rest of the liquid rather than losing it. It could also just have an emergency shut off valve to keep any more of the liquid from leaking. Either one probably came with an alarm.

Zack readjusted and slashed.

Cloud felt a plunge of horror when nothing happened. Zack wasn't finished though, and jammed the SOLDIER emblem deep where he'd hacked with both hands before wrenching it upwards. Cloud watched stiffly, until an unobtrusive bulb on the base of the cylinder blinked and the Mako started to drain. Right, the tubing could have been initially crushed shut rather than sliced open with the blunt edges Zack was using.

By the time Zack straightened, he was head and shoulders above the waterline, and promptly sneezed. Condensed Lifestream looked really similar to snot.

Cloud gave an extremely Mako muffled chortle. Zack shot him a smirk and shook off his boots even though Mako was flowing down him heavily from pretty much everywhere. One of Zack's legs bent abruptly and he leaned against the side of the tube before looking at Cloud with a blazing grin, coughed, spat, and said, "So how about we take our lives back, Spike?"

Cloud smiled like he hadn't since he couldn't remember when.

Pushing himself back to his feet, Zack flicked Lifestream off a section of the transparent tubing, and then punched.

There had been times when Cloud had seen Zack lay out a behemoth with nothing but his fists, although it had been a dare and taken fifteen minutes straight of pummeling. Still, meeting Zack had been the first time he'd seen the power of SOLDIER in all it's jaw dropping strength. Of course, Zack was still inside an unbroken containment tube. That was alright though, because there was a crack.

So it wasn't a one punch job. It would only take a few minutes and Zack could open Cloud's tube from the outside with just the control panel, and he could get out the conventional way.

Which was when a legion of guards burst into the room.

Cloud dove back to the bottom grate and jabbed his partially shredded pauldron at the floor. Zack launched himself against the upper side of his prison, and this time with all the uninhibited power of his legs behind it. The bottom side of the tube next to Cloud gave a strained whine. He glanced furiously back at the guards as Zack continued with his tactic. About ten guards rushed toward them only to be yanked back by their comrades who whispered harshly in words muffled by distance, not-glass, and Lifestream. Zack jumped again, and the lower side of the tube crackled and splintered in a half circle around the bottom. Squinting through his overstimulated eyes and the wavering image through the barrier, Cloud saw every one of the guards slip a mask over the lower half of their face that wasn't covered by their helmets. There was a violent crash as Zack hit the top half of his cell and the lower half split while the whole structure started to tip. One of the guards flipped a panel up on the wall and brought his fist down on a dark button.

Zack's containment tube crashed to the floor, but Zack had already shot out of the bottom, and the nearest guard opened fire. Apparently that wasn't allowed, as half of the infantrymen shouted until the guard jumping the gun reluctantly took his finger off the trigger. It had been enough to divert the beeline Zack had been making for Cloud, though. Zack had dived away from the spray of bullets, and landed wrong and sprawled into an uncontrolled roll that crashed him into the opposite wall. Cloud stilled in shock as Zack awkwardly raised himself on an elbow and yanked the collar of his uniform over his nose.

Guardsmen stared down, weapons trained and unmoving, not one of them in range where Zack could attack. With slow deliberation, Zack rose to his feet, his eyes on the tensing mass by the door. It might have been the Mako, but it seemed that even over the distance Cloud could hear the creak of metal as the horde tightened their grip. Zack edged a foot forward into a fighting stance, and then collapsed.

He's faking. Zack's face was turned toward him, slack and still. He has to be faking. No, it was real. The mob would descend and tear him apart right in front of Cloud's eyes. Stop it, he strangled the thought. Zack was faking, he was waiting until they got closer and he had a chance for taking them down. Cloud counted heartbeats while Zack lay still and none of the guards moved forward. Whether he was shamming or not, Zack couldn't hold his breath indefinitely. The only hue Cloud could distinguish was a greenish cast and he couldn't tell if Zack was going any other color from oxygen deprivation. Even if he was, it might just mean that the dark button poured out total body paralysis gas and Zack was slowly and inexorably suffocating. No, he was faking it. Unless the gas had straight out killed him. No, the guards were all waiting and they apparently weren't allowed to shoot, so the orders were probably to capture them alive. Unless Hojo just didn't want their bodies damaged by bullets. No, it was a bluff. He glared desperately at the guards, willing them to get close enough that Zack could take them down and prove he wasn't dying. All the ranks were hopelessly stationary and no one Cloud scanned over looked like they were even thinking of moving. Every one of them was uniformly fixed on Zack except -

He snapped back to the guard whose slightly different shade of scarf-life neck guard might have indicated that he was the captain of the unit. The almost entirely obscured face was toward Zack, but Cloud got the unshakeable feeling that the man's focus wasn't on Zack, but him.

He felt like cracking his head against the surface in front of him. If he looked like he was taking things calmly of course they would suspect something was going on.

So freak out.

It wasn't at all hard to do. He'd been beating back panic ever since he woke up, now he let it sweep through him and take over. He opened his mouth, but his voice was gagged in thick liquid that streamed in cool tendrils past what was already warmed by his body. He raked his torn scrap of metal across the surface in front of him and smashed his fists, shoulders, forearms, and knees against it. The Mako swirled and agitated around him, turbulence cutting down the force he could throw against the clear barrier even further. He couldn't get out, Zack couldn't get up. The guards were coming for them, he could see them creeping around the the far corner of the room and he couldn't do anything to stop them. They were closing in on Zack, circling him. They would rip out his spine and cut off his feet so he couldn't escape, and all Cloud would be able to do was watch. He watched them crowd around, taking away Zack. He watched Zack's eyes flick open.

The lines in front of Cloud were immediately swept to the side and he had a brief flash of Zack pushing off the floor with one hand while his upper leg finished an arc that flung a handful of guards up to the ceiling. Whatever sanctions had been against it were either void or ignored, and the ranks against the wall opened fire. Zack had cleared out before a single finger tightened on the trigger, trailing in the wake of the men he'd thrown off him, which meant that Cloud had a perfectly unobscured view of the hail of bullets heading toward him.

They pinged against the transparent curve in front of him and fell uselessly aside. The barrier wall was barely smudged. He still felt like the first layer of his skin had vanished leaving raw nerves stretched before a knife. He looked past the blurred marks to let his focus latch onto something else, and saw Zack zipping under the thrown guards who were now heading to the ground after bouncing off the ceiling. Zack snagged one out of mid-air and dragged the hapless man along by his neck guard.

There were still a few rows of guards by the entrance, and Zack streaked toward them in a low run. Gleaming barrels were belatedly tracking downward when, even faster than his run, Zack launched off the floor and leapt over the helmeted heads. He crunched high onto the wall, slamming the slightly struggling, captured guard against the rock and wrapping his right hand around the metal tubing that led down to the dark button. Planting both feet beside his grip, he reared back, wrenching the piping free and kicking off the wall. Flipping backward, he landed rather unsteadily on his feet in front of the door. The guards were still turning to look where he had hit the wall.

Zack wasn't going to die.

Cloud dropped to the bottom of his tank, again digging his epaulet into the flooring. They would make it out of this. He would feel sun and wind and actually breathe air again. They could do this.

Zack ripped a hand over the face of the soldier he'd captured, then shoved. The man fell back, hands moving frantically over his face and scrabbling along the floor. Lying on the ground, the soldier was out of the line of fire that chased after Zack as he dashed to the right side of the room and skated behind Cloud's containment tube. Cloud looked over his shoulder as Zack staggered against the cylinder and pressed something over his nose and mouth. He'd stolen the infantryman's breath filter. Pulling in deep breaths, and still looking glassy eyed, Zack slid his left hand around the cylinder toward the controls.

Air ripped and roared as bullets rushed through it. Cloud jerked up in front of Zack even as half his brain realized that the cylinder would already block the storm. Zack snatched his hand out of the target zone, as the lines against the opposite wall fired by turn in staggered bursts that kept a steady hail in between Zack and the controls that would open the cylindrical cell. Switching to hold the breathing mask with his left hand, Zack leaned his back against the tube and braced his legs against wall. He pushed, and Cloud immediately set his arms against the opposite curve of the cylinder and did the same. Lead showered against the surface in front of him and he could feel the patter of the impacts and hear the explosive bangs swirling in the liquid around him. Through the metal flurry, he saw the guard Zack had swiped the breath filter from. The man had gone still except for the regular rise and fall of his chest; whatever was being pumped into the room wasn't lethal. Though it must have been insidious if all the guards were issued a specific breathing mask. The neck guard on the infantry uniforms could be pulled up and used as a basic air filter that was effective against most air-borne poisons present in the field. A tinkling pop alerted him that the tube was starting to give. He angled his head to the side as he put more effort into pushing, and saw the line of impacts from the bullets start to track around the curve of the cylinder.

There was a sharp hiss and Cloud spun to see Zack jerking to his left, a thin stream of blood flowing down his right arm. He dodged back almost instantly as a barrage of lead descended on the other side of the cylinder from the guards still located near the door. Turning his body sideways, Zack kept himself in a narrowing pocket of safety as the gunmen advanced around the barrier.

Zack looked through the translucent not-glass and green sludge at the soldiers closing in on him, then up at Cloud with tense eyes and taut skin. Cloud floated weightless and voiceless, his fists and that increasingly battered piece of metal against the clear wall in front of him. He could feel the phantom of every impact against the curving sides on his own skin, piercing and tearing, but it was only illusion. He wouldn't be able to block anything from hitting Zack.

Zack eyed the the impacts intently and Cloud knew he was gearing himself to reach through the hail for the button regardless of getting hit. Mutely, he shook his head furiously at Zack. His arm would be shredded to the bone or completely blown apart, and he wouldn't even be able to reach the controls without exposing his body as well.

Awkwardly, keeping his left shoulder to the barrier and his body restricted, Zack stretched and pressed his right forearm on the cell wall above his head. Cloud lifted his own arm, crossing it against Zack's through the transparent barrier. Over their arms, he looked down as Zack's eyes glinted in a smile hidden by the mask. Then gunfire met and ravaged the space in front of Cloud.

He flinched slightly as Zack's boots flashed past his face, Cloud twisted around tracking the dark bolt that had sprung up and over his tank. Zack swung off one of the hanging lights, that ripped out of the ceiling in a shower of sparks, and sailed over the gunfire rising to meet him to drop right in the midst of the guards by the wall. Cloud sank down again, striving to keep an eye on the action while still trying to maneuver the mutilated shoulder guard to pry up the flooring so he could damage the piping, get out, and help Zack.

In the close quarters, half the guards reached for their tonfa sticks. Zack was far faster, even with one hand occupied holding his breathing mask in place. Apparently ripping out the piping above that dark button hadn't stopped the flow of gas, or else there was still enough of it hanging in the room to make regular breathing hazardous. Zack was staying in the thick of the crowd. Cloud only saw flashes of a kick to a knee, a fist to the face, and an elbow to the gut. Why wasn't he going for more sweeping moves that could potentially knock back a half dozen guards per blow? Cloud flicked his eyes at the door, there was still a large number of guards to take down in that direction even after the ones by the wall were dealt with. The infantry members blocking the way out were completely orderly, lined in graduated rows from kneeling to full height, every one with the sights of their gun on the group by the wall.

Cloud whipped back to the steadily thinning bodies around Zack. Those guards weren't just an obstacle, they were cover. As soon as Zack finished with the infantrymen by the wall, the soldiers by the door were going to open fire on him. The guardsmen around the edges of the wall were already skirting away, leaving Zack more exposed. It also showed that Zack wasn't the only one giving it out.

It wasn't really slowing him down, but a rare tonfa would connect before its owner was flung to the ground. Cloud had only a moment to wonder how many hits Zack had taken that he hadn't seen before Zack was down to only one guard within arms reach. He literally threw the man at the infantry members backing away from him. Knocking over two of the strategic retreaters did eliminate gunfire from that quarter, but it was instantly released from nearly everywhere else.

Again, Zack had cleared out and avoided the bullets. All the guards who had fallen back from the wall were unloading cartridges, but only half of the men located near the door could fire without hitting their squad members. Zack twisted through the safe spots of negative space, no one who wasn't exceptional or Mako treated would be able to track him fast enough to actually aim where he was or would be. There was a heavy landing before Zack was whooshing away again, and Cloud was left staring at several scattered drops of dark liquid.

Blood. It could just be from the wound on his arm. Cloud swept over him and did see blood on his arm...both his arms. Maybe it was just a lucky shot. Cloud's eyes darted to the gunman. None of them were following Zack with their weapons; they weren't even trying. They all seemed to be firing steadily at designated spots. There weren't enough of them to fill the entire room with lead, and Zack was left with maneuvering through the small areas they didn't have enough people to rain bullets in. It was obviously tight, but Zack would be able to figure out the pattern and -

Abruptly, ever barrel shifted minutely. Zack contorted in mid-air to avoid the sudden change in the sequence of fire. Cloud watched closely, easing with each miss, and tensing with the single hit. Cloth ripped as a shot tore through fabric on the back of Zack's leg right above his boot. The bullet didn't lodge, it carried on in shreds of trouser leg and tiny bits of Zack.

It's not that bad, Cloud beat into his fracturing mind. Zack hadn't even flinched at being hit, he was on enough adrenaline and willpower that he'd be able to keep going for a while. Three hits was workable for the amount of time he was being shot at because eventually the guards would run out of bullets -

Infantry always carried at least fifteen extra clips. It was also entirely possible that these guards specifically carried more or had a stockpile close by.

They still had to reload. A few seconds would be more than enough time for Zack if he didn't have to worry about being shot at. At the rate they were popping lead, fresh rounds should start becoming necessary really soon. His insides leaped as he noticed a single ceasing of fire from one of the guards by the door. It was only one, but it was a harbinger for everyone else who was going to have to take time to reload and he scanned the rest of the combatants in anticipation of the next to give out - He whipped back to the first guard. The man had stepped back and was already slipping fresh ammo into place. The guards on either side had angled their weapons slightly, making up for the absence of fire so it was hardly noticeable. So there were only two soldiers capable of thinking on their feet, that didn't mean every other guard in the room would be able to compensate when bullets started running out.

Another guard ran out of ammunition, and Cloud eyed him hopefully, then his stomach iced over as the flanking guards adjusted their aim to compensate. These weren't randomly competent soldiers responding spontaneously. These were soldiers flawlessly following a preset plan to wear Zack down until he was blood running out of a human sieve.

Cloud found Zack again, touching down briefly on the back wall before shooting up to the ceiling to kick off and then hug the floor for a few running steps before jumping backward and arching over enemy fire. The pattern of screaming lead was being reworked too frequently and too continuously for Zack to do anything besides dodge. Guns were being re-armed too systematically to leave any openings. With every moment, the guards who had been next to the wall were moving further away, allowing more of the soldiers by the door to bring their weapons to bear. Things couldn't last in this situation without getting worse. Cloud needed to become part of the equation. He gripped the shoulder guard in determination, and the metal squelched against the flooring and then crunched into unusable pieces.

One slot in the grating was lightly stretched. Cloud abandoned tools and attacked the bottom of the tube with his hands. His fingers mashed and wormed at the slender holes, skin crushing as he tried to pry up the flooring. Their was a dull tearing as his fingernails strained to rip up the metal as his hands pulled back. He had to get out. He could already see Zack being shredded, broken, and drained. He could see his back moving further and further out of reach to take on death while Cloud scrabbled to understand what was going on. He could feel the stark realization that Zack could die, was dead, and that Cloud had done nothing to stop it and could do nothing to change it.

A crumpling thump drew his attention upward, and he saw one of the retreating guards flat on his back with an extra helmet rolling past his head. Eyes roving again, Cloud latched onto Zack corkscrewing around the room with an infantry helmet clenched in his right hand. In one of the scratches of time when he landed against the far side of the room, Zack whipped away his breathing mask to fling Cloud a confident grin and a shout that easily competed with the hammering noise of the room.

"Happy thoughts, Cloud!"

Then Zack was zooming away again, nailing one of the shooters by the entrance with the thrown helmet in mid-leap.

A hurried search of the ground showed some downed guards by the far wall, headgear missing. The SOLDIER swooped in to wrench another helmet free before being forced into evasive maneuvers again without being able to launch it at anyone. At the very least this would buy them some time, Cloud thought with settling control. His reconstructing hope was demolished as an explosion lit up the room.

He scanned the world outside his cell until his vision filled with a portion of the floor that was crackled and blackened. Gunfire and Zack still careened around the room, but Cloud's attention was on the ravaged ground and several grenades serenely rolling along as they ticked down to implosion. Seconds stretched and he switched back to the few guards who had hurled the hand-held bombs. They were utilizing the same cover method for reloading to gain the space to arm and throw the grenades. He blinked as a harsh flash dominated his green surroundings before he focused on more spots where the surface of the ground was cracked and torn by powerful blasts. Powerful enough to make a dent in a stubborn containment tube.

With determined purpose, he banged on the sides of his prison, trying to draw Zack's attention. His own focus on his friend, Cloud caught the moment when Zack's eyes cast toward him, despite how one of them was upside down at the time. Hoping Zack would be able to follow what he needed while slipping in between bursts of lead and explosions, Cloud hurriedly mimed pulling a pin with his teeth, throwing it at the foot of the tube, the ensuing blast, and how it would leave the circular cell weakened enough to break out of. As Zack continued to weave around the room during and after the charade-like explanation, Cloud wondered if he should keep on demonstrating or assume that Zack had understood and not risk the guards discovering what he was planning by further acting it out.

He was looking longingly at a couple of rolling grenades when Zack passed right next to them and sent them flying toward Cloud with a low kick. They bounced lightly off the tube and clunked into the narrow space between the metal bases of his own prison and Zack's. The guards near Cloud's cylinder scrambled back and he pulled his arm over his eyes as light and sound erupted in front of him with shattering force. Looking up, his entire field of vision was fractured. Lines criss-crossed and skated over the containment tube, rallying in near white concentration at the location where the bombs had gone off. It was enough.

Planting his back on the unbroken wall, he delivered a two-footed kick against the network of cracks. There was a crunch, then concentrated Lifestream was spraying out of the tube in thin sheets. Streaming bubbles streaked inside as Mako flowed out. Looking at the shiny pockets of space, his elation staggered. If air was getting into the tube then poison gas was coming with it. Could it mix with the green liquid and be absorbed into his skin regardless of whether he inhaled it or not? Getting out suddenly became even more necessary.

Again, he kicked both feet, and the buckling barrier gave way under them. With a jolt he realized that his left heel was actually outside. Reluctantly, he drew it back against the slopping pull of exiting Mako. The hole was nowhere near large enough for him to squeeze out of and he needed to escape the possibility of poison sinking into his skin now. A buoyant jump pushed him to the top, and he crammed and braced himself into the small circle of space above the waterline. He wasn't sure if the emergency draining mechanism had switched on, but the level of liquid was still dropping rapidly. One jumping tic of his pulse later, and the only Lifestream he was still touching was that dripping off him.

Mako didn't hold with a graceful departure. Like it knew it was losing its hold, it kicked up a final ruckus as it slid off. Human mutters and animal howls rose and then dropped away. Hot wind and freezing metal dug and dragged along his back and limbs before falling into nothingness. Sensation still clung and seared in damp remnants on his flesh and clothing, but it was overpowered by the staggering appearance of color before his still bleary eyes. Colors besides the green wraith-like shades that were streaming away as he blinked, casting his fairly accurate perception of the room around him into confusion with the unveiling banners of sight. Light was in his eyes, air was on his skin, and with it came the overwhelming desire to just breathe.

Later, he commanded his wet lungs. Twisting his head over his shoulder, he saw that the draining system must have engaged after all since the containment tube was completely empty. He swung his legs free from where they were braced and then dropped. The battered opening in the cell was directly before him, but he hurriedly reared back from it as clear chips of the transparent material careened into the tube as bullets flecked the outside walls.

It didn't seem like it was deliberate, he concluded after swift scrutiny of the gunmen, just a few stray bullets on the edge of the barrage against Zack. It was a reminder that now Cloud could actually be hit by them. The main focus of the room still seemed to be on Zack, and Cloud tried to momentarily drag his attention away from that fact to ensure he was worth being considered a threat as well.

The hole in the containment tube was about knee high and he crouched before it. Carefully, he maneuvered his right hand and forearm past the jagged edges. He'd already knocked out the areas of not-glass that seemed most compromised, and hopefully this would be faster than spending time wearing down the rest of the wall. He stretched and inched his fingers up the outside of his cell, but he was angled wrong to reach where he needed to. Pressing closer, he slid his upper arm through so that his elbow could bend outside. The slight flex brought his bicep right against the sharpness waiting to lacerate him. He tried to relax the muscle while still pushing his hand toward the controls, which hopefully still worked.

Gloves, and then the pressure of his actual fingers were on the panel outside of his tube. Which button opened the door? There were two. Was it the right or the left? His right or left, or the right or left when someone was facing the controls? His jaw clenched, and the pressure seemed to pull a faint memory out of his head; outside right, his left. It was the harder of the two to reach.

His sleeve snagged on the toothy crags around the hole as he stretched out up to his shoulder. The side of his face was flush to the wall of his cell, and he stared at the blank back of the control panel while his fingers flailed on the opposite side for the button. He reached further, and his skin was pricked. Residual Mako slunk into the wound, and something depressed under his searching hand.

Prickling turned to a sharp bite and he instantly threw weight and muscle against the sliding panel to keep it from further slicing into his arm as it worked to open. With awkward haste, he slid his arm off the teeth of the opening and tried to retract the rest of his limb while still pushing with enough force to keep the door panel still. What if he saved his arm but burnt the motor on his way out? Skimming over the cutting surface, he looped back inside and his gloved hand bumped off the crags as the door wrenched away and open.

He lurched forward and all but fell out, and it was only when his hair was parted with lead that he remembered what had been going on outside his prison. Flattening himself in the dip in between his containment tube and the remnants of Zack's, he turned his head over to the door. He should have been lit up as soon as he was free of the cell the way people had been firing a little while ago.

The four guards who were all but directly to his right were sprawled on the ground. Hit, or thrown, or...something by Zack. Cloud was feeling a bit fuzzy. He needed cover. His eyes swung to his left and touched on a corner of Zack's fallen containment tube. He could use that.

Cloud darted around the broken bottom of the cylinder and hunkered down on the far side, only to find himself face to helmet with a pair of guards. He saw the barrel of a gun right in front of him coming towards his stomach, and then his fist crashing into the chest of the infantryman. The man flew backward into the one behind him. Their helmets cracked together and their bodies went sprawling well clear of the curved wall of the tube. That was good. They were knocked out and couldn't hurt Zack. They had also taken their breathing masks with them. That was bad. He probably should have grabbed one of those. He tried to steady himself with a hand against the tube but it slipped off. That was bad. Maybe he should sit down. All the colors and shapes were getting dim and dark. That was also bad -

Something clamped down over his mouth. Was that bad? He saw a familiar swoop of black spikes on the edge of his fading world.

That was good.

He breathed.

Warm air crept in his nose and mouth, and turned wetness into ripping fire in his lungs.

He lurched forward, coughing violently. Mako trapped in his body spewed out his nose and mouth, eked from his eyes. Air squeezed around it and burst into the far corners of his chest. Zack kept the mask steady against his face.

Cloud brought one hand up to the breath filter, and Zack drew back as Cloud pulled the mask away to fling green liquid out of it and hock Lifestream and sticky body fluids directly from his mouth. He brought the filter back. His insides were still slick with the unsettling textures and tastes of Mako, and his breath was still more knife-like than soothing, but he looked up to take stock of their situation.

All of the guards on their side of the containment tube were strewn across the floor of the lab. The rest of the guards had congregated by the door and were sending lead sailing through the breadth of the room now that they weren't trying to avoid any of their own side. The material of their former cells was just as stubborn as ever, and he could see the warped picture of the guards hammering lead uselessly through its clear surface. The lights of the room still left very few shadows, even with the swinging cord from the lamp Zack had ripped out still intermittently shooting hot flecks of light.

The was a brief cuff against the side of his head and he turned to see Zack drawing his hand back.

"Sparks."

Cloud stared stoically for a moment then wrung a clump of his hair so Lifestream dribbled off. "Wet." It wasn't going to be catching fire.

Zack shrugged in amicable apology and took the filter Cloud passed him. The back lines of the convexly stretched guards were starting to step around to the right. He and Zack were in prime position to be caught in right angles of fire if they didn't do something soon.

"Grenades."

Cloud looked back and Zack tapped the wrist holding the breath filter and looked at him expectantly. Cloud hesitantly held up three fingers, not entirely sure he knew what was being asked. Zack nodded and shoved against the right side of the fallen containment tube so it was at a slight angle, then leaned against it while leveling a look at Cloud before turning his eyes to the infantrymen on the left side of the doorway. Past experience with how Zack thought and what they needed now joined, and Cloud dipped his chin in agreement. Zack's eyes smiled over the filter, and he took a single prolonged breath.

The air filter was tossed to Cloud, and he caught and held it to his face while Zack stayed down in the cover of his old prison and reached back to close each hand around the ankle of a fallen guard. Zack hauled the two against the side of the tube, and the activity of the guards moving to surround them kicked up their pace a notch. Zack's hands flew around the belts of the two infantrymen and ripped two grenades from the first and one from the second. He crammed and balanced all three into his right hand then straightened and turned so that he fully faced the gunmen by the door. He hooked his fingers through the circles of the pins, and with an exaggerated motion that could be seen even through the distortion of the clear cylinder, he pulled them all out.

One.

The slight tension when Zack first pulled the pins broke into visible wavering while the SOLDIER cooked the grenades.

Two.

With an underhanded chuck that didn't remove him from cover, Zack lobbed the grenades at the guards directly in the doorway. They scattered and dove out of the way, mostly to the left, and Cloud launched his foot against the containment tube, sending it in a flying spin towards the left hand guards. There was a narrow avenue to the doorway completely free of infantry, and the ones on the left at least were going to be distracted for a bit. Cloud closed his eyes.

Three.

Black turned to red, and he dashed forward with his eyes still shut. There was a flash of cooling heat on his skin, and he cracked his lids just in time to avoid colliding with Zack's back as he yanked aside the darkly scorched, askew door. Cloud could practically feel the sights lining up on him as the guards recovered from the bang of the triple explosion, and then he and Zack slid around the door in the same motion and slammed it shut behind them.

A/N: Well that update took longer than it should have. This chapter was actually cut in half on the recommendation of three or four people who said it was just exhaustingly long. The other half will go up in a few days. Huge thanks to everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and following; and to HazzaTL3 for creating a ready made fan base to tap into! Lest you think Shinra Infantry trains at the Stormtrooper School of Markmanship, please recall how Zack fought that platoon of soldiers in "Last Order". I propose that he would have been doing even better against the guards if he wasn't handicapped with sustained inactivity and fighting with one hand in a poison gas filled environment. I estimated how long the grenades take to go off, but I think I'm pretty close. Chapter Three coming soon, basically as soon as I come up with a good title.