The next morning, Cloud cracked one eye open and peered at the only clock in Vincent's room. When he saw that it was almost ten, he pulled himself out of bed with a groan. His fist still hurt from where he'd put it through a window last night. Despite his friends' offers of Restore Materia, he'd refused heal his hand or even dull the pain. He needed to have much better control of himself.

Stumbling out of Vincent's room, Cloud saw that the mansion seemed empty except for Reeve's operating room. The door was slightly ajar and the blue glow emanating from within was just enough for Cloud to see that Reeve was inside, sitting in his chair. Cloud poked his head in. "Morning, Reeve. It's Cloud."

"Cloud, good morning," Reeve said, not opening his eyes. "Vincent asked me to tell you that he'll be downstairs analyzing the sample you got from that Renbato character if you need him. I imagine that Yuffie will be down there with him."

"Thanks. Do you need anything?"

Reeve shook his head. "Not at the moment, thank you, and if that changes I have a Cait Sith on hand that can bring me anything that I might need. I appreciate your concern, though."

"No problem." Cloud withdrew into the hallway and headed downstairs into the mansion's kitchen to get himself some breakfast. It was well-stocked, and with a variety of food – he'd imagined that without the ability to grow crops people's diets would naturally suffer. Apparently, however, they had found some sort of solution to that problem. He resolved to ask Vincent about it.

As Cloud was frying up a pair of eggs – what kind of eggs they were, he didn't know and didn't want to think about – Yuffie came into the kitchen. "Oh. Good morning, Cloud."

"Morning," Cloud said.

"Are you okay?" Yuffie asked. "Vince told me you went and hurt yourself last night."

"Nothing too serious," Cloud replied. "I'm mostly over it."

"Good to hear. Vince is downstairs –"

"Analyzing the Renbato sample." He looked up at her. "Reeve told me."

"Of course. Careful, your eggs are burning."

Cloud pulled the pan off of the stove and scraped the eggs out of it onto a plate. "Thanks. Can I get you anything?"

Yuffie laughed. "I learned how to cook properly years ago. Don't worry about me."

"Suit yourself." He ran the pan under some cold water and stuck it back on the stove to unstick any remnants of the eggs before putting it in the sink to soak for a bit. "Tell me something."

"What's up?" she asked.

"What do you do around here? I mean, what's your job?"

Yuffie sighed as she poured herself a glass of water. "I don't really have one. Back when I was younger I was an Inquisitor just like Vince, but when the bad guys started getting faster and stronger than me – when I started slowing down and getting weaker, that is – I knew it was time to give it up. I just mostly make sure that Reeve's taken care of and help with whatever I can." She sipped at her drink, clearly dissatisfied about her situation. "Father probably would have reprimanded me for being idle, but there's really nothing I can do. I would be a transport pilot, but even after all these years I've never been able to get over my motion sickness."

"I see." Cloud swallowed a mouthful of egg, which tasted better than he'd anticipated it would. "I mentioned this to Red XIII yesterday, but between meeting everyone again, getting the grand tour, and getting drunk and reminiscing I forgot to ask you and Reeve. Have you ever heard of a group called the Immaculate Swords?"

"Can't say I have," Yuffie replied. "Was this Renbato person one of them?"

"He claimed to be. Vincent and I would have written him off as being insane except for the fact that he was obviously in control of his faculties and he used the disease to give himself special powers. Like I said to Red XIII, given our luck, there's probably more like him."

"It does seem that way," Yuffie agreed sagely. "Whenever we're hanging onto life by a thread, some group of super-powerful bozos always seems to crop up and give us hell. It's like a recurring theme of this place."

Cloud chuckled. "Well, I'm sure we'll be able to handle it. They couldn't possibly be as bad as Sephiroth, right?"


"I've found the method by which Renbato was able to control the disease," Vincent said as soon as Cloud entered the basement. He was seated at a table with an array of surgical tools, a microscope. On his hands were wearing a pair of rubber gloves he had taken from the box sitting to his left.

"Really?" Cloud asked.

"Yes. Put on a pair of gloves and look at this."

Cloud moved to the table. He retrieved a pair of gloves, noticing as he did so that Vincent had retrieved the capsule with the piece of Renbato in it. A scalpel sat next to the microscope, and on the microscope's slide was a very thin strip of flesh that Cloud had to assume belonged to the late Immaculate Sword member. He got the gloves on. "What am I looking for?"

"Just take a look," Vincent said. "You'll see exactly what I'm talking about."

With a shrug, Cloud put his eye to the microscope. He saw a variety of types of blood vessels, some amoebas, various other bacteria… and then he saw something else, something that stood out like a huge, black warning sign. These were not ordinary cells – they were sleek, aggressive-looking, and latched onto other cells with hundreds of tiny proboscises extruded from their bodies. Cloud had seen them before in his own blood.

"JENOVA cells," he said. "You think you've seen the last of something…"

"You can't see the disease on this microscope, because it's viral," Vincent said, "but it works by getting into the genetic code of the human body and modifying it. However…"

"What happens when it gets into a human who's already been modified by JENOVA cells?" Cloud asked.

"That's the big question, isn't it?" Vincent replied. "JENOVA cells, as you well know, take over the host's mind if he's not strong enough to deal with their influence. If, however, the host can survive their incorporation into his system, he's considerably strengthened by their presence. The details of how it all works out are beyond me. The disease, on the other hand, works by taking over the body's systems and overwriting key parts of the human genome. Different strains can produce different kinds of creatures."

"Just a minute," Cloud said. "I know this might sound weird, but – don't we have a name for this disease?"

Vincent shrugged. "There's a scientific name as long as your sword. Nobody bothers to remember it. I've heard it variously called the Plague of Gaea, the Great Death, the Wretched Fever… None of us in the Protectorate, however, call it anything but the disease." He looked at the sliver of flesh on the slide. "There's never any confusion because we never talk about any other sickness."

"I see." Cloud cleared his throat, glad he'd asked but not sure if he was happy with the answer. "You were saying?"

"Yes. JENOVA's genome is entirely different from a human's, so the disease must react differently when it comes into contact with it. The cells in Renbato's body all show the telltale signs of disease infection, but the JENOVA cells look the same as ever – if I extracted some of your blood and looked at it I'm willing to bet they'd be exactly the same in your blood as in Rebato's.

"So that means we essentially have two groups of foreign bodies both working on the human genome. JENOVA cells, if the host's mind can't hold up under their strain, cause a psychotic break and madness but still augment physical strength and resilience impressively. The disease causes horrible mutations and madness. Now, what if you expose a SOLDIER to the disease? Their genes are already overlaid with some of JENOVA's, which the disease apparently can't or doesn't want to influence. So that means that rather than rewriting the majority of the human genome, the disease only rewrites some of it."

"You mean," Cloud said, "just the parts of it that keep humans from doing the kinds of things that Renbato could do."

"Exactly." Vincent dropped the microscope slide, the glass tube with the rest of Renbato, and his gloves into a nearby wastebasket emblazoned with a biohazard symbol. He took the scalpel and dropped it into a nearby beaker of water, which he then hit with a quick blast from his Fire Materia that set the water boiling. "When you introduce JENOVA cells and then the disease into a human being's system, if they can keep their mind throughout the experience, they become a Lost that has control over itself and has capabilities far exceeding any mundane mutates."

A horrible thought suddenly struck Cloud. "Vincent. You remember that I told you Project R wanted to run some tests on me. Because of my JENOVA cells."

Vincent nodded. "I think that this may have been Project R's ultimate goal. A disease that would purge the entire population, except for the select few who were given the only thing that even approaches a vaccine for the disease – a JENOVA injection. Those elites would then also be elevated to the level of superior beings, at least in the sick minds of whoever conceived this project."

"But unless I'm remembering incorrectly, at the time of Project R I was the last known person on Gaea to carry JENOVA cells. How could they have designed a disease to interact with it unless they had a sample?"

"With the kind of connections they had to have possessed, they could easily have gotten some of your blood," Vincent replied. "After that it would be a simple matter of cultivating a batch of JENOVA cells for study and testing. I'm given to understand that they only reproduce under certain conditions, but they had plenty of time. They would have been able to do it."

"And once they had made their disease, they wanted to see how it would interact with somebody who had had the SOLDIER treatment and survived." Cloud looked disgusted. "I was going to be their lab rat."

Vincent nodded. "Luckily for you, the Second Meteor hit and something went wrong. The Data Materia with shipping schedules and delivery manifests shows that the disease had been shipped out in large quantities weeks before they ever approached you. It did what they wanted it to do to normal human beings, and obviously they thought it would behave as planned with you as well. When the Fall started, though, communications must have broken down and Project R had to have been forced to abandon their base of operations, leaving you behind. Then somebody got the wrong idea or a false signal and suddenly they were releasing the disease into towns' water supplies and into rivers."

Cloud looked at the wastebasket, at the biohazard sign marked in red that reminded him of blood. "So Renbato is the result of a human being given the SOLDIER treatment, coming out of it okay, and then being deliberately infected with the disease."

Vincent nodded. "Somebody out there has access to a ready source of mako, JENOVA cells, and a live disease source. These things might all be in the same place or they might be shipped in from different places around the world. The only thing that's certain is this: somebody discovered the true intent of Project R long before we did, and they're using it to make living weapons."

"We have to stop them. Whatever their intention is, it can't be good."

"Of course we have to stop them. The question is – where do we start?"


"The mako reactors are your best bet to start with," Reeve said.

Cloud nodded, then remembered that Reeve couldn't actually see the motion and said, "I agree." The two of them and Vincent were sitting in the mansion's living room, Reeve taking a break from controlling multiple Cait Siths during a period of relative calm throughout the Protectorate's domain. Yuffie was in the kitchen, making sandwiches. "The question, though, is which one we start at. There's Midgar, of course, but besides that there's also Fort Condor, the Underwater Reactor at Junon, Corel, and the one right here on Mount Nibel."

"As much as I hate to suggest this," Reeve said, "the likeliest choice for a reactor to draw the requisite mako from would probably be in Midgar. That gives these Immaculate Swords, whoever they are, the largest amount of relative privacy. The Western Continent is a wasteland and has no civilization. They could do whatever they wanted there."

"You're right, of course, but let's look at the facts about Midgar," Vincent said. "If they were using the mako reactors there, why not simply set up shop in Deepground? Really, they had no reason to think that anybody would be coming back anytime soon. We had no interest in delving down there before we learned that Cloud was still alive, and that was a freak accident. Logically, if they wanted to avoid detection, that would be the best place to do it. However, when we got there it was deserted and hadn't seen use in years. Furthermore, when Renbato confronted us, he told us his name and who he was working for, and promised that he would let us go peaceably if we simply didn't investigate the base. That hardly seems like the attitude of a group devoted to secrecy at all costs."

"Of course, now that you mention it, why didn't he want us investigating that base?" Cloud asked. "There must have been something in it that he didn't want us discovering."

"I'm fairly sure that he didn't want us ferreting out the true intentions behind Project R, that's all," Vincent replied. "And we deduced them through examining his remains, so I say that all's well that ends well."

"You can't be sure of that," Reeve pointed out. "There may have been something there that you simply didn't find that Renbato knew you might. It might have had nothing to do with what you two have discovered about the disease's interaction with JENOVA cells."

"If there was something that the Immaculate Swords didn't want us to find inside that base, and knew that we were going to end up there – Renbato had to know to be able to intercept us or follow us or whatever he did – why didn't he simply get there ahead of us, destroy whatever the thing in question was, and move on?" Vincent countered. "It must have had to do with what we've discovered, because nothing short of blowing the entire place to shreds could guarantee that there wouldn't be some scrap of data we might stumble across that would lead us to this conclusion."

"I have a third idea," Yuffie said. She had been standing outside, obviously waiting for the right moment to make a dramatic entrance. Cloud saw she had made them sandwiches, one of which she handed to him with a smile.

He bit into it and tasted what could only be Chocobo meat, which prompted him to raise an eyebrow at her. "There's a lot of inbreeding done by people who still have the money and the land to pursue hobbies like this," she explained. "This is what happens to the ones that don't quite make the cut because they turn out… special."

"Oh," Cloud said.

"What's your third idea?" Vincent asked, apparently not bothered by the fact that he was eating the genetic dregs of the Chocobo species.

"Reeve, you think these Immaculate Sword guys didn't want Vincent and Cloud to find something in the base. Vincent, you think if that were the case they would have just destroyed it unless it was something so widespread it'd be almost impossible to destroy. I say that Reeve is right – there's something in there the Immaculate Swords don't want us to find, but they can't just walk in and destroy it because it'd be just as hard to destroy as all the information relevant to what you two just figured out, and they can't just move it either."

Vincent nodded. "I follow your logic. What might this thing be?"

"Do I look psychic to you, Vince? That's as far as my genius goes."

"Hmm," Reeve said. "Well, now that we know where the private elevator is, it won't be a terrible hassle to send someone back down to conduct a much more thorough search."

"I hate backtracking," Cloud sighed around a mouthful of special Chocobo.

"Don't worry; I can send a Cait Sith and it can take its time," Reeve assured him. "I'd much rather have you two out hunting for these Immaculate Swords. We need to know who they are and what their agenda is."

"If they have one," Yuffie murmured.

"At any rate," Reeve went on, "if you don't think that they're using Midgar, Vincent, what reactor might they be using?"

"That's the thing," Vincent said. "The Underwater Reactor isn't so much underwater any more, considering there's not as much ocean as there used to be, but if they're going to be operating on the Western Continent, why not just use Midgar? Why go to the trouble of going through Junon, which in some ways is even worse than Midgar, just to get access to one reactor that's a couple thousand feet down what used to be a submerged continental shelf? In Midgar, they'd have access to six reactors."

"And if they were using any of the reactors here on the Central Continent, someone would probably have taken notice," Reeve said. "I see the problem here."

"Well, there is one place they could be based at that doesn't require a mako reactor to get the mako they need," Cloud said. They all looked at him curiously. "The North Crater."

"The North Crater has been covered in a miles-thick sheet of ice for a couple decades now," Yuffie said. "Otherwise we would have thought of it."

"I don't see the problem," Cloud said. "All you need is enough fire to melt through the ice, and once you get underground you're still descending into the Lifestream, where you can shower in as much mako as you want or can stand. I can't think of anywhere else where you can directly access the Lifestream except a mako reactor, and as all of you said, if they were using a reactor here we'd know."

Reeve made a contemplative sound. "I see your point, Cloud. Still, to go to such lengths to operate in the North Crater suggests that they don't want to be found, and we've already discussed the likelihood of that."

"Who says that if they're operating there they're doing it because they don't want to be found?" Cloud countered. "What if they're operating there for some other reason, one we can't know unless we investigate it ourselves? Send a reconnaissance probe or something to the North Crater, see if there are any signs of a settlement or even a hole in the ice that shouldn't be there. If I'm right, you'll find at least something, and we'll have an explanation."

"Cloud's right," Vincent said. "Send a scout, at least. Tell them it's just a routine flyby for some reason or another."

"Why would I conceal the real reason for the scouting run from the pilot?" Reeve asked. "They have a right to know."

"Renbato knew that I was in Deepground," Vincent said. "How else could he have shown up just in the nick of time to try to prevent Cloud and me from investigating Project R's old base? Now, I'm not ruling out the possibility of some esoteric method of detection they may have used, or perhaps even an ability to communicate with normal Losts –" the dozens of staring eyes flashed through his mind again – "but there's a much simpler explanation: we have a leak."

"A leak," Reeve repeated.

"Yes. Somebody in the Protectorate, knowingly or unknowingly, is leaking information to the Immaculate Swords or somebody they're associated with." Vincent took the last bite of his sandwich. "Now," he said after swallowing, "it's not as though we kept the fact that Cloud might still be alive particularly secret. We didn't keep my trip to Midgar very secret, either. Most everybody knew about it, and rumors were flying around like mad on top of that. However…"

"I don't like this," Reeve said. "Not one bit. I know everyone in the Protectorate, Vincent. They're all former WRO or people who joined up out of a sense of duty to humanity. I didn't take in any mercenaries or other people of questionable conduct."

"You took in people who believe that what they are doing is right," Vincent said. "How does that make them immune to bad decisions or mistaken opinions? It didn't make AVALANCHE immune back when they were blowing up mako reactors." Cloud flinched as though he had been slapped, but Vincent kept going. "We may have to face the fact that not everyone within the organization can be trusted. That's all I'm saying."

"I agree with Vincent," Yuffie said, looking grave. "As much as it sucks to admit it, as much as I like everyone here, people aren't perfect, Reeve. You can't check up on them and dictate their behavior like you can with Cait Siths."

"I am eminently aware of that," Reeve said, his tone becoming frosty. "You don't need to lecture me on how to deal with human beings." He ran a wrinkled hand across his brow. "All right. I'll ask Red XIII to run a scouting mission over the North Crater. I assume that he, along with everyone in this room, is excluded from suspicion when it comes to this leak idea of Vincent's."

"That seems like a safe assumption," Cloud said.

"Agreed," Vincent added. "I trust everyone here, and Red XIII, with my life."

"Then that's settled," Reeve said. He also took the last bite of his sandwich, which he washed down with some water. "Now. If all of you will excuse me, I think I'm going to take a nap until I need to check up on the Cait Siths again." He rose from his chair. "Yuffie, could you…?"

"Of course," Yuffie said, taking Reeve's plate. "You go on upstairs, I'll clean up."

"Thank you." The aged ex-Commissioner nodded to Vincent and Cloud and began to feel his way back towards the foyer and the stairs to the second floor. Yuffie took everyone's empty plates, heading back toward the kitchen.

"So," Cloud said after a moment. "What do we do now, Vincent?"

Vincent got to his feet. "I've been thinking about this for a while now, Cloud… not a very long while, but since we met up with Red XIII and he was flying us back. If these Immaculate Swords turn out to be hostile – which I'm sure they will – I want you to be prepared for whatever they might throw at you, which includes regular, non-JENOVA-injected Losts."

"That sounds fine," Cloud agreed.

Vincent nodded. "In that case, Cloud…" He looked at the other man, determination blazing in his ruby eyes.

"Today, we begin your training as an Inquisitor."