Disclaimer: I own nothing, make no money from anything, and am writing this purely for personal enjoyment.

To his surprise, Cloud found himself enjoying his new life. As a child, he was all but invisible to people he didn't care to interact with, while the people he did care to interact with treated him as a peer. His fellow SOLDIERs had no experience with normal children to know they weren't supposed to, and the people he communicated with as 'Twilight' weren't aware of his pre-teen appearance. He grew slowly complacent and trusting, which made the discovery of betrayal rougher.

He had decided against going to the meeting in uniform, so he had to move with purpose to prevent people from offering to help find his parents. Looking determined wasn't difficult. Concealing the towering rage he was feeling was what was taking the effort. He spotted his prey in a quiet spot, and registered with a glance the small devices that shielded it from being recorded. Good. He was in no mood to have to try and talk in code. He walked up to the small picnic table and leaned on it. At his height, it could hardly be considered an intimidating act, unfortunately. Flashing Mako-bright eyes would have done it, but he wasn't at that stage. Not yet, at any rate.

"Tseng. Glad you could finally make time to see me."

"Cloud. A private meeting takes time. You know that. What's wrong?"

"I found something. A few things actually." Cloud reached into his pocket and withdrew memory sticks as he spoke. "Item one - an analysis of the essential imports into Wutai, and the necessary skills and resources needed to take over those industries. Item two – an evacuation plan for moving the population and technology of Cosmo Canyon to Wutai. Item three – a threat analysis of two hundred SOLDIER personnel against Wutai in the absence of any supplies or support. Taken together, they add up to a somewhat disturbing picture I'd rather like your opinion on."

Tseng copied the reports onto his PHS, scanning them. Cloud let him do so in silence.

"Where did you get these?"

"Are you going to tell me that they weren't written by our good friends in Cosmo Canyon?"

Tseng put his PHS aside, looked sideways up at Cloud and immediately down. "I haven't seen them before. But they... could be."

"So. This is why I never got a straight answer out of anyone as to how you intended to inoculate the whole population. You never intended to inoculate them in the first place."

Tseng nodded.

"How do you expect Wutai to hold against the combined weight of the rest of the continents? How are you planning of saving the Life Stream?"

Tseng spoke to his hands, not looking up. "We won't need to."

That was not one of the answers Cloud had anticipated. "We don't need to save the planet?"

"We lied," said Tseng. "In the future, I mean. The Second Calamity was never much of a threat to the Planet as a whole. It could only infect humans, and the infected turned ... well... stupid. Their attacks were simplistic, and they could never fix anything that had broken. By the time we used REWIND they were quite literally starving themselves to death. None of them ever reproduced."

"So, if we'd stayed, we could have been fine?" asked Cloud in a voice that sounded far away even to his own ears.

"The Planet would have been, but humanity itself was screwed, no doubt about it. The three hundred odd of us you could keep inoculated by yourself would never have been able to form a stable society."

"Why didn't you just tell me that?"

"The council didn't want to run the risk of you siding with the Planet and letting all humans die."

"But the Planet gave us REWIND. It wouldn't have done that if it hadn't wanted us saved." Cloud heard the pleading in his voice, and it made him even angrier. Tseng managed to huddle even further into his chair and Cloud was grimly satisfied at making a grown man cower away from a child.

"The Planet didn't give it to us. The Cetra created when they realised they were in danger of dying. They tried to use it themselves, of course, but the Planet stepped in and stopped them. We figured the Planet would be too weak after METEOR and HOLY to stop us. We also hoped the Planet wouldn't fight as hard if you were participating, so we needed to make sure you wouldn't protest."

Cloud concentrated on his breathing. They had lied to him. All of them, by the sounds of it. Kept him in the dark like a child, because they didn't think he'd understand the important things. Did they really think he would have just stepped aside and allowed humanity to wipe itself out? His objections to the plan had been because it hadn't made any sense, not because he thought it against nature. Of course, since it had all been faked, it was hardly surprising it was so flawed. He pushed away the clawing emptiness of that lack of trust and ran through the real plans in his head.

"How are you planning to inoculate Wutai? That's a lot more than three hundred people."

"They think they've managed to duplicate the Nibelheim effect. They've expose Mako to JENOVA, and then added it to the water supply. Every child born in Wutai in the last four years can be converted into... well, you. By the time Second Calamity occurs, that will be a third of the population."

"And Yuffie agreed to this?"

Tseng fiddled unnecessarily with his PHS. After a few minutes, he simply shrugged in reply.

"Oh. Yuffie planned it herself."

Tseng nodded. Cloud pulled out the chair and sat down heavily. He thought of Yuffie as she was during the planning sessions. When they had decided to come back as early as they had, it had meant Yuffie would be returning to a body just months old. No one knew if her brain would cope and the integration would work. Even if it did, Yuffie would be stuck for years in a body that she could not control. He had spoken out on her behalf, but she had come to him afterwards, held his hand and told him that she was not important enough to delay things for. That her people deserved every minute of time they could give them to survive. That she would prefer to go insane than risk the slightest chance of stopping Second Calamity. That it was her choice to make and he needed to respect her right to make it. He hated it, but had made no further complaints. He had been relieved beyond measure when word had reached him that she was okay, if a little frustrated, and would have the chance to help her people like she had been so determined to do. Now he tried to recall the exact wording of their conversations and wondered if he'd ever actually understood her at all.

"She's just going to leave us to die?"

"No, that was never the plan. We're to be extracted to Wutai in good time."

"'We', meaning you and I and Reeve. Not 'we' meaning Midgar and the rest of the continents. Do you really expect me to just abandon everyone? "

"No, I didn't." Tseng finally looked up, his expression suddenly fierce. "You're Our Saviour. I never expected you to just go along with it. I might be from Wutai, but my family is here, in Midgar, in Shinra, in the Turks. I knew you'd find a better solution. You have been finding a better solution. Ever since you arrived you've been making the important changes. And I swear I had no idea they were regarding your SOLDIERs as a potential threat. Planet's breath, you managed to organise the whole thing into a group that never kills anyone. If there's any group that deserves to survive, it's SOLDIER."

Cloud finally let his posture relax and leaned more naturally against the back of the chair. The faith Tseng expressed in him, especially given how undeserved it was, soothed the wound about not being informed about the truth. Tseng, at least, had lied because he had too much trust in Cloud, rather than not enough. Then, he'd believed that Cloud would obey his duty to the Planet rather than save his own species. Now, he believed Cloud had made the really impressive changes in SOLDIER. It was not the time to discuss how Sephiroth was the real driver and Cloud simply stepped out of the way, but it was hard to stay indignant in the face of his own hypocrisy.

"So you're saying it was 'them' and not 'you' planning all this?"

"None of the Rewound are exactly what anyone would call natural allies."

That was very true. Without the concentrating effect of the destruction of everything they knew, the group would not have lasted two minutes without bloodshed. Even given the circumstances, it had come close.

"Who gave you the reports, anyway?" asked Tseng.

"Oh, you won't know them." Cloud waved dismissively. "Not a Rewound."

"But... then why would they be in contact with you?"

"I am in charge of industrial espionage for Shinra, Tseng. Why do you think people would be in contact me?"

The look on Tseng's face managed to do the rest of the job of lightening Cloud's mood.

"You mean you're actually—"

"Of course I am. And I hope I can count on you to support me in any power plays with the other department heads."

Cloud couldn't (wouldn't) do anything directly against Cosmo Canyon. He was another of the unnatural allies, and the imminent danger of Second Calamity wiping out humanity was more important than his argument with their morality. But that didn't make him helpless. His entry into the upper ranks of Shinra might have initially been a joke, but it might now be the one thing that enabled him to save the lives of everyone on the two continents.

He would no longer just rely on Cosmo-approved research and what he was picking up from others. He would re-develop the dangerous techniques to give them an edge, like Mako-assisted transfer of memories. He would find solutions to the new problems, and give SOLDIER non-lethal options for their own defence, so they would not be punished for their ideals. He would turn the entire focus of Shinra's research to things that would benefit the citizens and strengthen their mutual connections, so that when the time came, they would rally to a single flag. He was going to take every advantage he could. His people required it.