Disclaimer: I in no way own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII or Final Fantasy VIII. Don't sue; I'm simply an E5 in the USN, therefore I have no money. Ha.

A/N 1: Each chapter is written from a different POV. The identity of the 'speaker' is located with the chapter's name. Just trying to avoid confusion here. :)

-BEGIN FIC-

Chapter 6
The Ex-SOLDIER – Shot

Three days.

Three long days.

Three long, tedious days.

That's the amount f time that'd passed since Sora and his gathering left our company to fly to the fading star in the sky. Since that time, since my excursion into the bowels of Hollow Bastion, the imagined sight of golden eyes in the shadows had haunted my dreams.

There was something about that sight that continued to put me on edge. Leon's acceptance of the possibility of leakage through the door that existed in Hollow Bastion's Grand Cathedral didn't make my anxiety any less substantial.

Sora had regaled me in the tale of how he had closed the door to Kingdom Hearts during our travels through the winding passages that permeate Hollow Bastion's foundation. He'd spoken of the End of the World, an eerie land of dead worlds floating in a stagnant sea of nothing, of plunging chasms that terminated in increasingly decayed remains of worlds crushed and hearts exterminated. He talked about how he came across an increasingly familiar door in that darkness, and how once he'd stepped through he found himself upon his home island. How his best friend was already there, his voice deep and sour, its light tone gone and overridden by the booming strength of the man who possessed his frame.

The young keyblade master had sniffed as he explained how he felt when his friend's figure had been cast completely aside, when Ansem took his true form and glowered at him with his glowing gold eyes and his vicious pearly sneer. He'd described the horror of the battles, the flailing against the shadowy guardian that protected the seeker of darkness, the envelopment of him and his two companions by complete darkness and the battle against Ansem and his huge guardian in the shadow of Kingdom Hearts' massive doors.

I sighed, resting my chin in the palm of my hand and glowering at the window. I couldn't help but remember his sighs and his continual rubbing of his gloved palms upon his cheeks, trying to hide any trace of tear trails as he told me about how he and his friends Donald and Goofy put their backs to the huge doors to Kingdom Hearts' interior, how they had felt no hope when they noticed the waves of Heartless making their way rapidly towards the cracked-open orifice. His voice was mournful as he mumbled the conclusion of his tale, about his friend appearing from the interior of that dark Kingdom and grabbing the door from the inside, telling Sora that they could do it together and pulling with all of his might. His voice cracked when he spoke of King Mickey appearing in the depths of darkness, his keyblade radiant and his voice cheerful as he told Sora that now they would close the door for good.

Pressing my fingers lightly on my cheek, I tapped out an idle melody of the desk that I sat before. The boy was torn about his locking of the door to Kingdom Hearts – it was a task he was destined to accomplish, but by meeting the expectations of fate he had sealed himself from one of the friends he'd been trying so desperately to save. A sad fate. Even I'll acknowledge that.

But the difference between his locking of the door of Destiny Islands and the locking of Hollow Bastion's door were what was mostly on my mind's forefront. His sad tale took no precedence over that.

They locked that door from both sides. Our own was only locked from our side.

Leon thought that the singular securing of a possible double-sided lock would permit the Heartless access to our world if they chose to come through.

The sight of golden eyes seemed to confirm that – if it wasn't my own overactive imagination that conjured that image, that is.

I still wasn't quite so certain of what I'd seen down there.

Leon supported my belief that I had indeed seen a Heartless. He placed such belief in my words that for the last three days he'd been venturing into the foundation of Hollow Bastion himself, his gunblade slung over his shoulder and his gunmetal eyes hard and ready for adventure.

I went with him the first day. The second day he left before I'd risen from my bed. The third, I went instead to look at those pages of Ansem's report that Sora had left at Hollow Bastion, trying to discern the meaning behind the madman's ramblings and his reasons for admitting the Heartless to the worlds. My thoughts were that if I came to understand what Ansem discovered, we could discover the true way to undo what he'd done and permanently seal ourselves away from the Heartless.

However it was that the seeker of darkness had damaged those barriers that held the Heartless at bay, he'd done so to such an extent that I was doubting even the power of paired keyblades could ever be able to restore them.

Letting my hand slip from my cheek and lifting my chin from my palm, I stared down at the desk I sat at and the book that lay sprawled open before me, my eyes glazed and tired. I'd been looking at the blasted thing all morning and had yet to see anything of true interest. Of course, though, it was the seventh book I'd tried to pour through that morning. It wasn't that it didn't have any pertinent information in it – it was just really, really damned dull.

Aerith appeared at the top of the stairs, another book in her hands. She approached me with a gentle smile spread across her lips. I greeted her with a like gesture.

"I found another reference to the Shadow World. Azel is quite an informative collection, from what I've discerned. Maybe this will help, Cloud."

"Thanks, Aerith," I muttered with a nod, my smile still upon my lips as she set the book before me on the desk and slipped behind me, laying her hands upon my shoulders. Leaning back into her comforting touch, I sighed. "I almost feel that this is a hopeless task. The principle makes sense – discover what Ansem learned and figure out how he'd damaged the barriers that held the Heartless back to learn what we can do to correct the problem, but…."

"You don't know where he began, so you can't begin to see how to follow the path he took?" she finished, her voice light and airy as she began to lightly rub my shoulders.

I groaned as she continued to kneed my tense muscles. "Mm hm," I mindlessly agreed, my eyes drifting shut. "It's rather difficult to follow a path when you can't find the mouth to it."

"Quite a dilemma," she agreed with a soft laugh. "Maybe you're trying too hard."

"Trying to hard?" I repeated, cracking open on eye to look at her.

"You and Leon. You worry too much. You two are so similar in that aspect. Many other aspects too, but that one most especially."

I huffed quietly, turning my face away from her. "I think you and Yuffie worry too little. The Heartless can still come through the door. We have to figure out how to stop them."

She laughed quietly, stopping her massage and instead playing with my earrings. "They haven't bothered us yet. Maybe we should count the leakage of the door as a blessing. It allows us to see Sora and his friends again."

I snorted. "But they're still a threat."

"So silly," she chuckled. "Or is it because Leon's so concerned that you're concerned as well?"

Shutting my eyes tight, I bowed my head towards the desk. "That's not it."

"You're certain?"

"Positive!" I nearly snapped. What was she trying to insinuate?

I heard laughter from my left. Groaning, I turned my head slightly, opening my eyes a bit to glare at Yuffie.

She just grinned from her previously unnoticed seat atop the bookshelf to my side, slipping my clawed glove onto her hand and flexing her fingers.

Wait a second….

"Yuffie!" I groaned, holding my head in my now gloveless left hand. "Why?"

"Because you were so distracted," she giggled lightly before hopping off the bookshelf and tossing my glove to me. I caught it with a scowl marking my lips. She ignored my irritation and instead walked to Aerith's side. "So he's pounding his head against the proverbial wall just like Squally, huh?"

"Yep," the woman behind me confirmed even as she returned her hands to my shoulders and began to massage them again, lulling me back into an eased comfort. "They're so funny like that."

I groaned quietly, both in enjoyment of the attention I was receiving and in annoyance.

Yuffie just laughed, shaking her head before yanking one of Aerith's hands away from my frame, interrupting her barely begun neck massage. "Come on. Cid's got lunch ready. You coming, Cloud?"

"…. No. I've got to continue this. After all, Aerith just got me a new book to look over."

"Suit yourself," she sighed.

"Have fun, Cloud," Aerith said merrily as she patted my shoulder before leaving with Yuffie.

As silence fell over the library I dedicatedly returned my eyes to the book, allowing my brain to slowly absorb the information that was scrawled there. It was all pertinent to my personal mission of understanding the twisted set of Ansem's mind, speaking of the Heartless' quest to bring their dark Kingdom all light, absorbing the worlds' free hearts so they might fill their own lacking voids. It spoke of the hypothetical creation of the realm we know as Kingdom hearts.

It was….

Dull.

Very, very dull.

My eyes felt like they were glazing over as I continued to stare at the same sentence for minutes on end. Blah blah blah, created from the darkness in people's hearts, blah blah blah.

I stared out the window, returning my chin to my right palm, tapping idle tunes on the desk. The skey was bright and blue. Puffy clouds were rolling lazily by.

Hmm hm hmm hm hmm hm hmm….

Darkness consuming the worlds because of the people there letting it consume them, la la la. The window was infinitely more interesting.

Hm hmm hm hmm hm hmmmmmmmm….

"Em I see, kay e why, em oh you es e. Mickey Mouse…."

I heard a rough voice harrumph at my side. Startled out of my wits, I nearly sprang from my chair as I turned to see who had snuck up on me.

"Yuffie was right. You are incredibly distracted. Are you done with that book?"

I snorted at the huge red creature at my side, ignoring the mirth in his single remaining eye and the playful twitch of his flame-tipped tail. I flipped the page. "No. I'm still looking over this."

"Then what did that last page say?" Red XIII said, his elongated muzzle's lips twisting into a grin.

"That… darkness in people's hearts absorbs worlds…?"

A snort through his nose accompanied a paw being roughly slapped onto the page. Red XIII nudged me with his muzzle. "Out of the chair."

"Why?"

"Because you're not paying attention to anything you're doing. You clearly lost interest in this, so out. Go eat lunch."

"I'm fine," I tried to retort. I'd discussed this idea with Leon last night and he thought it was a good one. I intended on seeing it complete.

Red XIII obviously had other ideas. Arching a brow, shaking his mane, he snickered outright at me. "Then obviously you were paying attention to the fact that the last page you flipped past was describing methods to penetrate the barrier between light and dark using life energy?"

I blinked.

"Go."

Bowing my head, accepting the defeat I was being handed by the dull writing in the texts before me, I rose from my seat. As I tromped down the stairs, I glanced back to see Red XIII hopping into my chair, his tail flickering casually over the armrest and his forepaws resting on the desk upon either side of the book. Flipping back to the beginning of the book by lifting the front cover delicately between his sharp fangs, he hummed and began reading, nearly pressing his large wet nose to the pages.

Leaving the library, I instead decided that following my nose to the scent of lunch was my goal for the day. I'd obviously been replaced in the library.

Pushing the door to the kitchen open, I made my way to the small table that was set near the refrigerator. Almost salivating as the smell of fresh udon met my nose, I pulled a chair and seated myself before a steaming bowl. Quickly grabbing a pair of hot dinner rolls from the platter that had been set in the table's center and putting them onto the empty plate that sat beside the bowl I'd claimed, I removed the napkin that was stuffed beside the plate and spread it on my lap.

"Nice t'see you," Cid grunted from his place by the small stove on the other side of the fridge. He quickly wiped his hands off on the grubby apron he wore which proclaimed in loud pink lettering for the reader to 'Kiss the Cook.' I think that was a present from Aerith, but as I wasn't with this gathering last holiday season I can't be certain. Grabbing another bowl, he shuffled lazily towards the table, his cigarette dangling between his lips and the smoke from its tip snaking its way towards the ceiling. Sitting across from me, he grinned before sweeping his thumb past his nose to wipe it clean and nodding. "Thought the library swallowed ya, kid. Find anything interesting?"

"Not really. Red took over," I said quietly, picking up the chopsticks that sat beside my bowl and fishing a chunk of tofu from the udon. Sticking it in my mouth I chewed idly, closing my eyes.

"Got bored, huh? I got'cha. I'd get bored looking at that shit, too. What possessed you to try something so damned stupid in the first place?"

I huffed lightly through my nose. "It's a pretty sound concept. If we can discover what Ansem did-"

"We can repair the damage, yeah, yeah. What the fuck ever. But what possessed you to do it? That's somethin' I'd leave to Red."

Frowning, I shrugged. "Leon thought it'd be a good idea."

"So you volunteered?" a voice to my right chirped lightly.

Looking over, I arched a brow.

Yuffie smiled brightly as she shuffled her dinner rolls that were firmly stabbed on the ends of her chopsticks around the table. Humming a show tune she kicked them like feet, proverbially dancing with the chunks of bread.

Reaching for my chopsticks, I scowled.

"Hand them over."

She laughed merrily as she handed the chopstick legs complete with my pierced dinner roll feet over to me. "So, Cloudster, Leon came up with that idea?"

"No. I did. He agreed with me that it might turn something up."

"Oh really? You're not usually the type to go for research. Like Cid said, that's more of Red's territory than anything. Or Leon's – he's been like that since I first got to know him. Must be that SeeD training or something; follow orders to perfection, but when orders aren't given try to educate yourself about the situation, blah blah blah. But like I was saying, not you. You're the one to charge in without thinking and get your ass kicked if it weren't for having the world's greatest ninja at your side! Trying to impress him or something? Show that you really have a brain?" Yuffie giggled, her lips curling in a huge smile.

I grunted noncommittally.

A shuffle to my left and a flash of pink told me that Aerith had arrived. How I'd managed to beat the girls to lunch when they'd left before me was a mystery. Turning slightly, I arched a brow. "What took you?"

"Yuffie and I were talking about stuff," Aerith said slyly, a smile gracing her lips even as she lifted her chopsticks from their place on the table.

"Stuff?" I mouthed. That was the most muddled answer to a question I'd received yet.

"Yes. Stuff. Stuff that we girls are privy to, that you boys don't need to hear," Aerith clarified even as she stirred her udon.

Cid snorted at her, his eyebrows arching and his eyes squinting. "Girl, what the hell're you talkin' about?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm certain you already know," the flower girl said with a bright smile.

I stared, completely lost, stuffing noodles into my mouth.

Yuffie cleared her throat. "You didn't answer my question, Cloud."

"I don't have to," I scowled. "My reasons behind my ideas aren't for your scrutiny.

I barely caught the sight of Aerith lightly tapping the tips of her chopsticks together, quirking a brow at Yuffie.;

The 'world's greatest ninja' nearly spit her soup across the table and burst into laughter, burying her face in her hands after she dropped her chopsticks into her lap.

Cid scoffed too, nearly swallowing his cigarette and choking on the huge lungful of smoke he'd inadvertently inhaled without planning to do so.

I blinked.

What the hell…?

Aerith smiled innocently before holding her chopsticks properly and fishing a good helping of noodles from her bowl. Nodding at Cid, she giggled prettily and said, "I told you that you already knew."

Cid held his head and groaned in dismay. "Yeah, I know girlie. I figured it out. Just don't do that shit at the table! You damned near lost me my cigarette with that crap!"

Yuffie was still laughing outright before she whimpered her apologies and wiped tears of mirth from her eyes.

"What?" I asked.

The table burst into laughter again.

Alright, obviously I was the butt of some joke. And I didn't appreciate it.

Snorting, I rose from the table. "Fine. Whatever."

They were still laughing as I left the room.

I tried returning to the library – Red XIII refused to remove himself from my seat, giving me a blasé stare and telling me to take myself elsewhere; the research I was planning on doing was getting done without my presence, and much more effectively. Instead of remaining I chose instead to sit outside, taking First Tsurugi with me out of habit – it always came with me whenever I ventured from Hollow Bastion's interior.

It was a short series of wing-assisted hops to the top of one of the rather pointless pillars that rose before the enormous gates that lead to Hollow Bastion's entrance hall. Sitting cross-legged atop the seat I'd chosen, I rested my elbow on my knees and my chin in my palm once more, relaxing as I watched the sun slowly slide into the haze-flooded distance. Night was falling.

The soft mist that swirled from the top of the inverted waterfalls eventually swallowed the glistening orb of the day's star, allowing only its wan orange and pink rays to flit from the lands beyond across our sky, highlighting the streaming clouds that spanned the darkening blue that hung above me. A few birds chirped brightly from the multitudes of crevices that proliferated the walls of the huge fortification my friends called home – that very place that, far in my distant memories, seemed to be familiar – to proclaim their roosts for the night.

All in all, it was incredibly peaceful. The soft rumble of water in the distance, the quiet songs of birds, the whisper of wind playing over the landscape were a music to lull the senses into the deepest state of calm imaginable. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to be absorbed by the quiet magnitude of my surroundings, relaxing completely and letting my mind wander.

My lips scowled as I recalled Yuffie and Aerith jesting continually about my friendship with Leon. What were they seeing in my actions towards him? I respect him. Completely. He is a warrior of my equal. He is an intelligent human being. He has skill that can't be denied. And he's good looking.

Scratch that last one.

Rubbing my forehead, I grumbled at myself. So my… eh… experiences with Mukki at the Honey Bee Inn raised some questions about my… preferences. I never thought that Aerith would share those horror stories – especially not with Yuffie.

Oh God. Did they think that I…?

I grimaced as I felt my cheeks flush brilliantly, the heat obvious as the cool wind brushed over my skin.

So Leon and I have been… familiar since the tournaments at the Coliseum. He's held my hand from time to time. He's gentle that way. With people. Well, with me.

Taking a deep breath, I fought valiantly to restore my focus on my surroundings.

Once I'd calmed my racing heart and my flushed cheeks, I sighed and leaned back, my hands resting on the pillar's top behind me. My eyes slipped shut once again.

My heart nearly burst from my chest as I heard the familiar sound of an explosive shot from a gunblade roar from the passages below.

Without hesitation, I grabbed the filled scabbard containing the six parts of First Tsurugi. Wrenching the base sword free even as I slung the remainder on my back I vaulted from my seat.

-tbc-

A/N 2: I know that there're probably gripes about the humor. Sorry, but I found much of FF7 pretty damned humorous. The dancing around with the chocobos, Cait Sith, Wall Market, Shera, the date with Barret, et cetera. The game actually had a bit of a lighter side to it once you bashed through the plot. So there. Besides, I like picking on the blonde unicorn. (cackle) Urm, sorry all of you KH-only people. You don't know what Cloud looked like in his craptastic polygons, neh? And you never got to experience just how foul-mouthed Cid actually is. They took away not only his cigarettes, but his colorful method of speech! Damn you, Disney! Ah, and one thing – no whining that Cloud only has one visible earring. The other side of his head is covered with his crappy hair. No matter how many times I stepped frame-by-frame through Advent Children, I never got a decent shot of his right earlobe. So until I'm proven wrong with a screenshot, I'm happily assuming that he has both ears pierced. At least Squally's easy – the game designers showed us both sides of his head quite clearly. Only his left ear carries jewelry. Feh.
Same as always, if you have suggestions, praise or gripes please embrace the great Ansem plushie. (squeezes her plushie so it squeaks out 'Submit!')