Christmas fucking Day and the power was out. How the hell was anyone supposed to be festive when you've got one glowing reddish light as your celebration?

The pilot was not in the least bit happy. He had spent a completely irrational amount of time decorating his house – half because the town had requested that he not look quite so much like a stick in the mud around the holiday season, and half because Shera had said the house would look nicer if it looked like someone cared about it – and now no one was going to see all his hard work because the power had gone out all over all of Rocket Town.

If this wasn't something to bring up with WRO headquarters and the mastermind of that stupid fortune-telling cat, he didn't know what the hell was.

Instead, he checked to make sure that Shera's package had been shipped out the day before (it had) and then looked to see if there was a newspaper available (there wasn't – it was Christmas). Cursing, he lit another cigarette and starting doing his usual laps around the town.

It seemed hard to believe that it had already been five years – almost exactly five years, really – since he'd met those stupid numskulls that dragged him along on what would become the best time of his life. For a long time, he'd assumed that whatever he'd gotten at Shinra was going to be all he really earned. He'd gotten to build his rocket, built a town around it, and almost taken it into space. Oh, what a day that had been. The day the Space Program was finally going to see the stars that they'd so desperately reached for since the moment it started.

Well, maybe just Cid reached that far, but nonetheless. He'd reached.

And then he'd had his glory stolen away. The pain had long since faded – helped in so many ways from not only finding out that Shera had been right and he would have exploded had the launch back then, and by actually getting into space with the help of Cloud and the crew – but still the memories remained. Sometimes he wished he had a few new ones to overwrite the old ones with.

His life, as he led it now, was completely incomprehensible to the other members of what was then AVALANCHE. He lived alone, in Rocket Town, doing repairs on machinery both in town and on call for emergencies. So while officially he was a mechanic, he'd also turned into a bit of a drunk-kids-on-holiday pick up service. Which he didn't mind, really. If you wanted to go out and have fun, get a little – or a lot – smashed, that was wonderful. Just don't go flying through his air while you do it. Needless to say, the Shera had seen more than her fair share of puke buckets.

The namesake for the airship had not. This was really the point that seemed to stick for Cloud – though the captain didn't know why; Cloud did his fair share of being alone by his own choice. Shera had stuck around for about two and a half years after Meteorfall before deciding that the time had come to move on. She and Cid had formed a much better relationship, and while it had never really become serious, they had casually flirted for the last year of her stay. They were still friends, and they kept in touch regularly. She lived in Junon now, and was helping the WRO to rebuild the city after the Sister Ray had finally beed completely taken out of the skyline. It was a good place for her, and Cid could tell even from here that her skills were improving by leaps and bounds.

Cloud had somehow convinced himself that Shera and Cid were going to get married and have about six children by now.

He wasn't going to fool anyone if he said that he didn't think (after he got over the irrational hatred) that Shera was an attractive woman. On the contrary, he'd told her many a time that she was attractive – and she'd extended the same compliment to him. But the fact that two people got along in a vaguely romantic way didn't mean that there was a white picket fence in store for them. She wanted to get out into the world and become a better mechanic, and he was too much of an old fogey at heart to really try to find himself again. He was an airship pilot getting older by the minute and he'd really reached the last frontier he'd been aiming for.

So now he'd repair ships and cars and planes and trains...and try to let other people reach their dreams.

Part of him wanted to call Tuesti right now and give him a piece of his mind about this power outage. Sure, the electric wasn't as constant and untouchable as it had been back when the world ran on Mako, but this was the third time this month it'd passed out on Rocket Town.

He flipped open his phone and let it ring.

"Hi, you've reached the voicemail for WRO commissioner Reeve Tuesti. I'm not available at the moment, but if you'd leave your name, a number you can be reached at, and a short message detailing the reason of your call, and I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can. Thank you – and I hope to speak to you soon."

"Hey Tuesti – it's Highwind. …...Let's talk after the holiday, can we? The power's a little sketchy out here and I wanna see if it's anything I can fix. Hope you're enjoying the day off – cause if you don't have the day off on Christmas in your own damn company I'm getting in my airship and flying to Edge right now and kidnapping you. Heh...happy holidays, Commissioner."

Click.


Thank you to servant of SHEVAL for reviewing the last chapter - every review on every chapter is very much appreciated!

This one's a little longer to make up for Cloud's last time - though this one is going up a little late. Sorry! Hope everyone enjoys - and no matter if you do or don't, I hope you review! Because otherwise, how will I know if anyone likes it? :(

~R