After the attack at Shinra, everything was tense, like a low droning rumble of an earthquake right as the ground opens up and swallows everything.

"Come on, pick up!" Zack grit his teeth by the Break Room window.

"Who are you trying to call?" asked Kunsel, a 2nd who'd gone through A-School with him.

"Sephiroth. I haven't been able to reach him."

"Haven't you heard? He's shut himself inside the data room, researching the R&D Department like mad."

"How do you know this?"

Kunsel took Zack aside in low muffled tones. "Sessions are logged and I know the network guy…"

Zack froze, this was way above their clearance level. "What do you know, Kunsel?"

"He's looing up something called Project G. What's going on Zack? This is like Men in Black conspiracy-type creepy."

"Heh, your guess is as good as mine."

Zack would get his answer sooner rather than later, when he would be called to Lazarus' office for another one-on-one briefing. Zack wore a black uniform now, as opposed to the dress blues all the 2nds and 3rds in the Unit wore. Teh, movin' up in the world.

"The army is hounding me because of the Genesis raid," Lazarus said from his desk as Zack stood front-and-center in his office. But unlike last time, now the Commander was cold and stern, more like a Commander now that he addressed a 1st. "They're getting ready to eliminate both Genesis and Angeal."

Zack froze, trying hard not to freak. "Wait a minute! You do know that Angeal was in the battle, trying to protect the Shinra Building—"

"Doesn't matter. He's been branded a terrorist. We do not negotiate with terrorists."

Too late, Zack freaked. "I can't believe what I'm hearing! If that's the way things have to be around here, I quit!"

"You forget SOLDIER, you signed a contract when you joined this organization. If you try to quit I'll have you in a holding cell for the remainder of your tenure and send Sephiroth in your stead, and I can assure you Shinra has been making him dance for far longer than we have you. A good SOLDIER knows his place."

Zack was so blindsided he was speechless. Only one word came to mind, that took everything in his willpower to hold in. Backstabber. For some reason Sephiroth's words filtered back to him in that classic deadpan tone.

Welcome to SOLDIER.

Zack stormed out, slamming the door so hard that a crack edged across the glass. It was not the only crack, there were several in different places making their way toward each other like an expanding road map. Lazarus remained unfazed. He was used to having 1sts storm out of his office, and seemed satisfied with putting his newest alpha dog in his place.

A set of stairs descended from the Shinra Building into the Fountain District. Zack reached the bottom when a shady voice spoke at him from an alley.

"Ah, a young 1st, that would make you Zack."

Zack whipped around to the alley on full alert.

"Who wants to know?" he asked.

And he stepped from the shadows, a funny looking man with funny looking glasses and a scalp that could bounce a mirror signal off it. He flashed a crooked smile and handed Zack a card.

"A member of the only army you can employ."

Zack took it and the man walked away. The card was blank save a name and a phone number for "The Spider." A journalist, snooping around Shinra for juicy conspiracy theories. When Zack looked up, he was gone.

He put the card in his wallet and continued down the stairs, all the way to the train station, all the way to the church in Sector 5, where the asphalt piles from long-ago bulldozing operations laid like open graves.

"They want me to kill the man who trained me," he said to Aerith as he sat next to her in the pew like one of the kids she peer-counseled on weekends.

"How are they even allowed to do that? You're not just a drone, you're a human being with a conscience."

It was so nice hearing Aerith call him a human being. He'd felt like a corporate punching bag for a while now.

"Is this the man you fell off the Plate for?" she asked, and Zack just looked at the flowers with a nod. "Then he deserves your support, and I support him too…he brought us together."

"He killed his own mother Aerith. How do you square that against a guy? I've been going over and over it in my head and I just can't make it mesh."

She sighed next to him. "Oh Zack, if only I could help you answer that question."

They sat there in silence holding hands, lost in their own thoughts like the dust swirling in the fraylight of stained glass windows.

"Things are really starting to heat up at HQ," said Zack. "I'm locked-down on base right now but I can be deployed anywhere in the world at any minute. I could be gone for weeks, maybe months, even a whole year if things get hairy."

"But you're a SOLDIER, that's what you do. What are you worried about?"

Zack spoke as if in silent prayer.

"What if someone else comes along while I'm not here?"

She shook her head smiling.

"Zack, I don't think I'm ever going to meet anyone else who's as charming, sweet, naïve and pig-headed as you…" Then she interlaced her fingers in his. "I'll wait for you…for as long as it takes."

But Zack seemed only to slump more, a subtle sadness hovering over him like a cloud.

"That's what they all say," he muttered, not meaning for her to hear. But then he realized he'd done it again, said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. "…I didn't mean it like that…"

But she just giggled her sunshine laugh.

"How about if anyone is talented enough to fall off the Plate, sail through my roof and land smack in the middle of my flower bed like some other bozo I know…I'll give him a shot."

Her sunlight pierced his darkness, a reminiscing half-grin on his lips. He fell into her arms, the only place he could find solace in this madness, and she took him in like a deep lake swirling around him in waves of fiery auburn hair.

"If only I could have taken you to my Prom," he said as he inhaled her flower petal scent, "then I could have shown you off like royalty. All my guy-friends would be sweet on you and they couldn't have you because you're taken. It would be so satisfying."

"Zack, if you would have taken me to your Prom, you would have ended up in the hospital falling over my two left feet. I can't dance."

"How do you know? Have you ever tried?"

"No, that's how I know I can't dance, because I don't do it."

At that, an evil thought entered his mind. He whipped up the YouTube ap on his flip-phone, and a moment later the smooth aural hymn of soft music amplified in the vastness of the empty church, a beautiful baritone beaming off the arches and rafters like a full echoing choir. Zack leapt out of the pew and held his hands out to Aerith.

"Ohmagosh no!" she panicked.

"C'mon this is the first song I danced to in 8th grade! You'll like it, it's about a flower."

She hesitated, but couldn't resist the warm look in his eye for long. She took his hands as he pulled her up into him, away from the pews to where the gleam of marigolds flickered just for them. He put her hands around his neck, held her about the small of her back, and danced with her to the soft aria of Seal's "Kissed by a Rose."

In that moment, everything outside of that church ceased to exist. The flowing lines of moonlamp light seeping through the hole in the roof swayed in delicate shadows between their two bodies. They moved together like watercolors blending in synchronous flush, their soft still breathing brushing off each other's eye lashes as they pulled in closer. A pounding energy seared through their limbs, connecting them together in a spiritual barrier, a lulling magic trance that was them and only them on this night.

"I'm not in the hospital yet," he teased.

"Just wait. The song's not over yet. You will be."

"Maybe," he sighed. "Every time I see you, it's like I fall out of the sky all over again."

"Oh no, you and your cheesy pick-up lines," she rolled her eyes, but felt him tense. An anxious silence between them seemed to grow before he managed to string words together again.

"…Yeah, I guess I am pretty cheesy aren't I?"

She winced realizing she'd tapped him. She hadn't meant to do that, she hadn't expected it from the joker he was.

"…Not always," she tried to coax him back out. When he didn't speak for a long time, she knew she'd messed up, sending him running right back into a shell she'd been trying to bring him out of.

"Every night I have dreams that I'm falling out of the sky, I come to in a cold sweat. Every morning I wake up in your flower bed, but I don't wake up next to you. Sometimes I wonder if you're even real, or if I'm just floating in a cryotank somewhere dreaming this all up. I've never felt this way about anyone before…"

He closed his eyes against her soft hair, his lips touched the brim of her ear, swaying in the philharmonic solitude of each other's arms. "I'm falling for you…it feels good."

His sweet breath on the side of her face lulled her into calm as his cellphone serenaded a rose. She hated that guarded part of her that doubted, that couldn't enjoy him for fear of losing him. A small insignificant part of her thought maybe he wasn't being genuine…until she felt his heart speed up.

She leaned against his chest like she'd never felt a man's heart beat for her, slow-dancing in the flowing acoustic ambience of an old church in the Slums.

He couldn't walk her home anymore, as her mother would chase him with a meat clever. So he walked back to the station with his heart on his sleeve, a twenty-something kid with pierced ears and boots that were just starting to get dirty, shuffling alone through the Slums on a starless steel night.

A quick flash of white by the hole in the wall caught his eye. He went over just to check. Ducking through the hole into an old construction site that had tried to clean it up decades ago, he saw nothing there.

The crunch of boots on gravel, and Zack looked up to see an angel perched on the wall.

"Angeal!?"

And there he was, crouching like a dark titan atop the wall. Zack was so elated he couldn't get his thoughts to stand still.

"Where have you been? What are you doing here?"

The man smiled down at Zack. "I got your email."

Zack's own smile took in his ears. He was whirling in his mind, so taken aback at seeing Angeal there when he'd wanted nothing more in life at that moment. Zack stammered up at him as if all the chaos at Shinra had never happened.

"…Are you okay? D-do you need anything? I can help."

"I'm fine Zack. Well, almost." Angeal fluttered his wing and Zack smiled.

"You know, I don't know why this is such a big deal. I mean, can you hold beers with it?"

Angeal studied his wing. "Hm, probably."

"Then what's the problem?!" Zack threw his arms out. They both laughed like they used to, Zack had always been the one to make Angeal laugh first.

But a silence followed, and the laughter faded like the aftertaste of fine spirits. They knew what the problem was. He pinched his black uniform shirt with a sheepish grin, to point out that hey, he'd made 1st. Angeal smiled that he knew, looking down on him the same way he'd looked at him on their first mission, that gleaming gaze of pride in his ocean eyes.

It seemed like he was there just to look at Zack, like a father violating a custody order to see his child. Zack knew what he wanted to say to him, but beat around the bush, pulling up things to talk about just so he could keep talking to him.

"…I didn't know you had a kid."

And Angeal's eyes fell for a long moment. When he looked at Zack again, he smiled to hide the pain.

"Did you ever think of trying to contact them again?" Zack asked. "I mean, it's not like you have much to lose now."

Angeal just sighed. "It would be dangerous for them to see me now."

"Oh…I suppose."

Zack looked at the ground too, so many questions and no way to ask them. Did he even really care about the answers anyway?

"How are things on the homefront?" Angeal asked.

"Crummy. Lazarus is a prick, and now I can't get a hold of Sephiroth either."

"Why not?"

"He's holed up in the data room or something, going over old research documents about Project G."

Angeal went silent for a moment, a tension falling over him. "I see…"

"What, is something wrong?"

"No…I'm glad you're getting to work with him more."

Zack smiled at the ground. "He's something else alright."

"He's a good man Zack."

"You're telling me. I was scared of him at first but he's really a great guy, I'm learning a lot from him."

Angeal gazed at Zack with a look that wasn't a look, as if he was giving him silent instructions. He bore into him and Zack panicked, sensing his meaning.

"Wait! Don't do that Angeal! Sephiroth already has a student, don't you dare try to hand me off!"

He stepped forward, strong like the young boy who'd broken a sword in the training room—the young man who now stood ready to take on the world before Angeal. It was so refreshing to see Zack like that, burning with that fire that had made Angeal take him as his student in the first place. Angeal wasn't letting him go that easy, and Zack relaxed when he saw him relax in turn.

"Actually…" Angeal said, "I know his student."

"Huh?"

He nodded. "I used to take her out on missions before you came along. A girl whose only dream was survival, I only hope that some of the things I said got through to her. She's about your age, you should talk to her sometime, find out for me."

Zack traced lines in the dirt with his foot. "Heh, that worked great last time."

He kicked his boot off the ground, scattering pebbles like shrapnel bits at the wall. He slumped his shoulders in a melancholic calm, it was time to say what he had to say.

"Lazard wants me to go after you. He says the Security Department is planning to ice you and wants me to help. I'd leave the company…" Zack looked up at him with pleading eyes then, like a little boy in silent prayer. "…but I have nowhere to go."

Angeal saw the pain there, felt it rip through him like a saw blade, Zack's gaze piercing him like a sword.

Take me with you, wherever you're going and whatever you're doing, I want to go too.

Angeal gazed back as if he'd heard him, but he didn't acknowledge him. Deep in his heart he knew he couldn't, and deeper still, Zack knew it too.

"Genesis and Hojo are in Modeoheim. That's where you go next," he replied.

"Modeohiem? Doing what?"

"Making more copies, I presume."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Angeal sighed, a soft breeze blowing oil dark hair across his warrior's brow.

"Because you and I are pieces in a passive-aggressive chess game. Do you ever play chess Zack?"

"Is it a videogame?"

And Angeal smiled, the way he used to smile when he was with Zack, a smile that made Zack's heart leap up to see again.

"Remember videogames Angeal?" he asked.

The man shrugged. "I haven't gotten any better at them."

"Why couldn't it have just been videogames? Why couldn't things have stayed that simple, you know?"

He bowed his head for a long moment in meditative stasis like he'd done with his sword. "Because, Zack, if life stayed in one place, we'd never get to where we're going."

Angeal gazed down at Zack in gilded reverence. Zack had changed so much that he almost didn't recognize him. He was so proud of the way he carried himself in that black uniform, the same uniform Angeal wore and had been training Zack all that time to wear, but something else tore right through his heart—his student didn't wag his tail anymore.

He already saw the dark circles beginning to ring Zack's eyes, he wasn't getting much sleep. It killed Angeal to see him like that, it made him want to hop down from that wall, scoop him up and carry him away somewhere far. But he stayed put…he had nowhere to take him.

They stayed like they were for a long moment, like two parts of some grand play, a silent angel perched on a wall, a boy in a courtyard gazing at the sky. They shared a solemn silence, a long lonely gaze connecting their worlds in a fraying thread that threatened to break them apart forever.

"Tell me about honor, Angeal," Zack asked the angel.

Angeal flinched. "You actually want me to lecture you now?"

And Zack nodded strong, pleading.

"But you've heard so many times."

"I forgot."

Angeal sighed up at the durasteel sky, the flooding moonlights swept off his dark vestige like oil on the river. When he looked back at Zack, he was his mentor again.

"Zack, I can tell you what honor means to me until I'm blue in the face and the skies turn red. Now, you're old enough, it's time for you to figure out what honor means to you."

"What if I can't?" Zack pleaded. "What if I can't figure it out?"

And the man gazed down at him with a soft look in his dark eyes.

"…You will. Tough times never last Zack, but people like you…you're made of something special."

That hit him, like a lightning strike straight to the heart, Zack almost lost it then and there. He took a breath as Angeal stood up off the wall fanning his wing out to its full length. He just stood there for a moment, one last sacred moment that Zack marked forever in his soul, taking a mental snapshot of Angeal like that to look back on whenever he needed strength. The dark angel gazed down at him in prophetic revenance.

"…Until we meet again, Zack."

Then he whipped his wing so hard against the air that Zack threw his arm up to cover his eyes, dust swirling around in the abandoned courtyard like squalling cyclones. He looked up to see white feathers floating around him like snow, and Angeal was gone.

He made his way back to the train station wiping his eyes, swinging his arms in deep breaths to get his bearing. He made it all the way back to the Shinra Building, all the way up to SOLDIER wing and stopped…

All four Turks—Tseng, Reno, Rude, Cissnei—were rushing up the stairs toward Lazarus' office. That was strange, if they were all at the Shinra Building, who was guarding…

Zack turned on a dime, bash-barreling down to the entrance. He tore out the front doors sprinting like he'd never run in his life through the Fountain District. Forget the train. What kind of a stupid public transit system took a whole hour to go five miles!

He went on foot running with the wind at his back, driving him onward through adrenaline-coursing fear. He made it to Sector 5 with half an hour lead over the Express, dashing through the Wall Market knocking people over, racing for his life against his burning lungs and searing limbs. He remembered wind-sprints up sand-dunes with his sword over his head, Angeal had made him the person who could run this road. Now Zack saw a trail of white feathers leading up to the church, and couldn't breathe.

The rotors of a B1 Alpha Chopper whipped sand at him, making him throw his arms over his eyes. The chopper turned about touching down in front of Zack, and the door slid open as Tseng hung out the side.

"She's not here Zack! Get in!"

Zack leapt into the chopper and they took off racing perhaps toward the very mouth of Hell itself.

[Received Titan Bangle]