Listening hard, ees eye and black materia casting about for the source of the sound. Ee heard it again, distant and echoing, but definitely someone humming a tune.
Next ee glimpsed them. Dressed in black, they retreated into the mako mist were the shadows were deepest.
Ee was both reluctant to follow, and reluctant to let them get away. Ee chose to pursue them, being careful not to be seen emself.
The stranger turned a corner in the warren of natural tunnels, the profile view revealing that they carried something with them.
Ee went after the person, turning the corner in to an empty dead end, the stranger having vanished entirely.
Ee couldn't remember doing it, but ee had taken ees handset from ees pocket, it was ringing loudly in the stillness. Instinctively ee knew the call was a harbinger of some terrible calamity, ee let it ring.
Ee was beginning to feel lightheaded, while ees body grew heavy and slow to respond, ees vision swam coming to em in freeze frames as ee turned. Ee feelt as though ee had been stuck with an anti soldier tranquilizer dart.
There at the mouth of the passage, stood the stranger ee had been trailing. Though they were not strange to em at all, the face was ees own. Only they were without scaring, and the light of ees materia eye was missing behind the red colored goggles of one of Fuhitos raven soldier uniforms. In the ravens arms Zax lay mortally wounded, blood pouring from a constellation of bullet wounds to his chest and head, his wings dragging in the rising mako lake.
"NO NO NO!" Was all ee could articulate through welling tears, and painful breaths that weren't reaching ees lungs. "Anything else, please not him, not Zax. I'll take his place I'll take his place, let the lifestream or Fuhito or Hojo whoever have me instead, just let him live!" Ee's voice splintered.
The raven was coming forward now, each step sounding like a gunshot, eyes focused on em. They hummed a tune while simultaneously and impossibly speaking to em in ees own voice.
"He was on the run, but he returned to Midgar. He was trying to get to you, trying to keep his promise to meet up again soon, you remember." The raven growled with ugly satisfaction. "He wanted to run away with you that was all, but you let him down. You weren't fast enough strong enough smart enough, you couldn't escape Midgar and missed your chance. Your best friend was murdered because you failed him, his life cut short by a traumatic death after years of torture. How dare you believe there's anything you can do now?"
The raven stood directly before em at last, meeting em in the middle where ee had come desperate to take Zax in ees arms, to pull him back from death. But ees PHS was still ringing.
"Aren't you going to answer that?" The raven asked.
Somehow ee understood that ee must, or Zax would die. Ee hit the button to accept the call, headless unhesitating. "No more regrets." Ee formed the words without the sound leaving ees lips.
At first there was a long stretch of silence, an electric click, then a barrage of gunfire and Zax's cry agonized and wet with blood.
The PHS slipped from ees unresponsive fingers, but just before it hit the mako lake now blood, ee woke up.
It took em a moment to come back to emself, ee was on Pollensaltas sofa. Zax blessedly alive and snoring beside em beneath the blankets, his face turned in against ees shoulder. There was a fire crackling in the wood stove, its golden shifting light illuminating the ceiling and beams above.
But ee sensed some threat still, not malevolent like that cave had been, the one ee now realized had been borrowed from the place Veld had kept em hostage the previous year. No this feeling was simply dangerous, familiar even.
Sitting up and pulling one of the Gongaga style blanket about ees shoulders, Kunsel swung ees feet to the floor. Casting ees eye toward the fire, ee saw just who ee had expected. Pollensalta was awake also, stitching together a new blanket by the light of the fire.
She must have heard em getting up, because she looked back over her shoulder, seeing em she smiled and patted the rug beside her.
"Couldn't sleep?" She asked when ee had joined her, she didn't wait for a response. "I'm not surprised."
Ee was puzzled by her saying so, how could she have guessed ee had trouble sleeping.
Ees puzzlement must have shown, because her smile turned little ruefully. "I know something, or maybe a lot of things must have happened for you to be here looking for that Monear. The one with your face, right? I can't imagine any of it was good."
"There was a man named Fuhito, he used to be with Avalanche around the time I joined. He took some of my blood and used it to create imperfect copies, enhanced soldiers of his own to fight ShinRas forces. I think that's what must have happened to Doctor Monear, who was also with the first iteration of Avalanche, and closs to Fuhito." It was almost as easy to talk to Pollensalta, as it was to her nephew after ee had gotten to know Zax. Maybe it was the way Zax had always spoken highly of his aunt, but ee was sure ee could trust her too.
"Raven soldiers."
"Yes, you know of them." It wasn't a question, just a statement. Ee didn't doubt that living out here in the time frame that she had, meant she was well acquainted with Raven soldiers, and possibly even the augmentation facility that had been based in the area.
"There was a building out here, built in to the side of a rise. Those who were singled out to be augmented as ravens were taken there to undergo the process. I would have done something about it myself after tracing them to the building, but my Zax got to it first."
So shad had known of the laboratory before its destruction. "I owe Zax for that." Ee expressed earnestly.
"I can tell you love him a whole lot." Pollensalta stated unexpectedly.
Ees face warmed. "Oh uuh umm." Was the best Kunsel could do.
She laughed softly. "It takes the very best kind of friend, to bring someone back from death, so many years after their passing. I feel we can call any kind of debt you think you owe, settled. Thank you for saving him, he deserved better then what fate dealt him. And I have to say, I admire your willingness to fight even the current fate."
Kunsel glanced towards Zax, still snoring soundly. "We agreed a long time ago to have each others back, and to meet up again."
She leveled a steady approving expression on him. "Zax loves you just the same, I can read it in that new ink of his. That sun motif and the partnered enata would be Baltos handy work, yes I taught him well too." She wore the same smart smile after complimenting her own legacy, that Zax did when he was jesting or bragging.
Kunsel couldn't keep from smiling in turn, it was catching, rather than alienating as ee often found a smile in ees lower moments.
She ladled them each a drink from an ornately carved wood bowl, that ee suspected might be her own handy work.
Reviving the rink, Kunsel recognized the muddy looking liquid as the beverage Zax had given em during their stay in Gongaga, to help em sleep.
"I might be living like a hermit out in the snowy far off, but I can't do without it. And I have the best supplier, only ever sells noble roots none of that tudei stuff. This is the heavy variety for sleeping."
Kunsel lifted the mug she had offered em, Pollensalta mirroring the gesture, then they both downed their share.
_
When morning came, Zax was awake first, a rarity these days. So had just finished making a breakfast of chunky fruit salad, deep fried banana toast and hash browns, with pan fried herby tomatoes. The tomatoes being a recipe of Kunsels.
"Yumm, is that a fried breakfast I smell?" Coming down from her mezzanine bed in the other room, Polle sat at the table, hair disheveled and shoulders cloaked in one of the blankets of her own making.
"Yup, and I heated up the hash browns I found in your freezer." Zax reported.
"What's this about breakfast?" Kunsel rasped, emerging from the nest that was the couch. Ee looked a little more rested than ee had an a while.
Zax just grinned at em over his shoulder. Plating up for the three of them, he got comfortable beside his best friend so that their shoulders meet.
"Your banana toast, it's been a while." Kunsels smile was a wobbly one.
Zax got the impression it wasn't so much about the toast that he hadn't made since his disappearance, as it was about there being together again, and the little proofs of that fact. He felt the same way, it was like nothing had changed save that the two of them were admittedly worse for wear. But at the same time, every little thing held new significance.
"So!" Polle got out past her first big bite of the fried meal. "Not to spoil breakfast, but you're tracking someone, and I know where he was last."
He sat up a little straighter. "Monear, you have some info on the guy?"
Polle deferred to Kunsel with a nod, polishing off another few bites of her breakfast.
Kunsel chewed slowly and thoughtfully, seemingly putting what ee wanted to say in order. "I'm thinking that when he disappeared from Felicia's hold. It was Fuhito who broke him out, they were always two of a kind. They probably came here to the Great Glacier and…" Ee looked perturbed. "It's just a guess, but Monear may have undergone the raven augmentation process."
"But that building where the Raven soldiers were being augmented, it's self since destructed. So if he was turned into a raven by Fuhito all those years back, will he still be here? And how come Geostigma didn't get him if he has J cells?" Zax wondered.
"Humm! That's where I come in." Polle spoke up. "A while back, before I sensed you return from the lifestream Zax, I saw who I thought was your friend Kunsel, here in the north. I was in town at Icicle, and Monear was leaving the door of a house that used to be abandoned, I went after him thinking to ask about Zax. But then I saw that the person I had taken for you Kunsel, had no scar crossing their lip." She addressed Kunsel. "When I last saw you, you had a wound crossing your mouth that would have left a scar, like the one you have now."
Zaxs eyes followed the memory of the injury, now a pale line. It was given to Kunsel by the commander of their first mission together, who had been a covert deepground operative conscripting Wutai combatants. "So because you already knew about the ravens, you put two and two together." Zax realized.
"Yes, but I thought Monear was just some unfortunate soul. Now I get the impression that's not the case." Polle frowned.
"Not at all." Zax intoned, brows pulling together. "Monear tried to kill K the other day, let eight behemoth loose on Midgar plate."
"But between the two of us, we tidied up." Kunsel assured.
This last got a grin from Polle. She glanced from Kunsel to Zax, pride clear in the fold of her arms and the upward tilt of her head. She held out her hand. "Your PHS Kunsel?"
Ee handed it to her, and bringing up the satellite map she marked a location, then returned the device. "That's the house Monear was staying in, you might find clues, or he may return even. So what will you do now?"
"Find Monear." Kunsel decided.
"Head on over!" Zax declared in the same breath, punching with one hand in to the palm of the other.
They shared a look and in sync added. "After we help with washing up."
Once the dishes were cleaned and dried, the two of them had taken Pollensalta up on her offer to use the bath. Next they dressed in their snow proof trousers and insulated coats, at last returning to the main room to collect their boots packs and swords, still propped by the door.
"Ready to go?" Polle asked, her words muffled by her biting off a thread in her stitching.
"All set." Zax had just slung the buster over his back.
Unfolding her legs to stand from the sofa. She drew both Zax and Kunsel in to a hug, draping the blanket around them both in the same action. Her tone was colored with affection when she requested. "Visit now and then, won't you?"
"Of course." Kunsel assured.
"Now that we know where to come, we'll visit at least for december month calibrations, but hopefully other occasions too, if you'll have us." Zax agreed keenly.
"Consider yourselves welcome any time." She let a long satisfied breath out her nose. "Alright, off with you. And, take care out there."
"Got it." Zax gave her a last squeeze. Stepped out the door with Kunsel. And waving themselves off, they headed down the mostly snow cloaked path from Pollenseltas cabin. Then oblivion carried them away.
