Author's Note – Love your reviews! Things will pick up in the next couple chapters. No more vegging around.

Chapter 11 – On the Run

My stupid cellphone was ringing again. Three times already. This time I grabbed it off the nightstand and looked at the display. It was Aeris. I closed my eyes and groaned. I really didn't feel like talking to her. It was 7:30 in the fucking morning. What the hell could be so important this early? I let it go to voice mail and rolled over to go back to sleep.

A few minutes later the damned thing started ringing again.

"Cloud," mumbled Tifa from her bed. "Shut it off."

I grabbed the cellphone and flung it into Tifa's closet. The ringing stopped, thank the Gods. Maybe the battery fell off. I went back to sleep.

Since there were no classes for the rest of the week, everyone seemed to be taking their time during breakfast. No one really had anywhere important to go. And it didn't seem like there were too many takers to go with Hutchins on his weekly chocobo watching tour. I thought about going just to make a nuisance of myself. Maybe catch a chocobo and while everyone was watching, I'd pretend it was chewing off my arm.

"Does anyone know what we're having for lunch?" asked Sara.

"I don't know," replied Tifa. "Maybe we should go see a movie in the Village."

"I think I heard someone say we were having crab cakes," said Jaden.

I had my elbow on the table and my chin resting in my hand as I absently stirred the small diced potatoes into the runny eggs on my plate. There was literally nothing to do in this school. Maybe I could talk Tifa and her friends to go snowboarding…but we weren't going back to that lake. No way, never again.

After listening to Tifa, Sara and Jaden talk for a few minutes, I suddenly looked up. "Did you say crap cakes?"

The three of them stared at me like I had food on my face. Then they started laughing.

My little first-grade friend, Jessica ran over. "Cloud! Cloud! Your picture's in the newspaper again." She shoved the paper in front of my nose. "Look!"

I was in the paper? How could that be? I hadn't even done anything public lately. I took the paper from her hands and moved it away from my face so I could actually see it. Sure enough there was a picture of me, one that was used quite a few times. But not only me…Tifa and Rufus, too. The headline read 'President of Shinra Corp Has a Secret Sister'. Oh no! I quickly scanned the article for the important facts.

…Tifa Lockhart and Rufus Shinra share the same mother…

…the ex-Mrs Shinra moved to Nibelheim and married the town's governor…

…Lockhart was born in Nibelheim nearly nineteen years ago…

…sources say President Shinra has been receiving death threats, which explains the shooting at Rocket Town while he was there on Sunday morning…

…Cloud Strife, ex-member of the anti-Shinra terrorist organization AVALANCHE, was hired as Lockhart's bodyguard…

…our source says Lockhart and Strife, childhood friends from Nibelheim, are romantically involved…

…Lockhart is currently finishing her schooling at the Icicle Village Academy…

"That stupid asshole!" I blurted out. "Might as well paint a big bull's eye on the roof of the fucking building." The dimwitted reporter had no idea he was condemning Tifa when he wrote the article.

My next thought was, who could have tipped off the reporter? Who else but Redgrave knew that Tifa was Shinra's half-sister? I couldn't imagine Redgrave saying anything. She'd be cutting off her own nose by leaking the information because Shinra would totally cut off funding to the school.

It had to be someone else.

I glanced around. My eyes fell on Priscilla, four tables away. There was something about the look she was giving me. Like she was savoring some kind of sick satisfaction out of doing something terrible. She must have overheard us talking in Redgrave's office. Was it possible she called the reporter? But what about all the other things in the article? How could Priscilla know any of that? All that was said in Redgrave's office was that Rufus was Tifa's brother. There was no discussion about their mother or our childhood in Nibelheim.

Well, I wasn't going to find out anything by sitting on my ass and waiting for the answers to come to me. I rolled up the newspaper and got up. "Come on, Tifa."

She looked up at me. "What, I'm not done eating."

"We gotta go right now."

"Cloud…"

"I mean it. Let's go." When she wasn't making a move to get up, I went around and grabbed her by the arm. "Will you please just listen to me for once in your life?"

Tifa finally got up and didn't put up a fight as I dragged her out of the dining hall by the arm. "Cloud, what the hell's the matter with you?"

As I kept her moving down the hallway to the stairs, I handed her the newspaper.

She gave it a cursory glance. "So what? So it's finally out that Rufus has a sister."

I stopped and turned her around to face me. "Don't you get it? If everyone knows then chances are the person threatening Rufus also knows. They'll come after you to get to him." I grabbed her by the arm again to pull her up the stairs. "We gotta leave."

"You mean leave the school?"

"Yes."

"Right now?"

"Yes, right now."

"And go where?"

"I don't know yet."

We walked into her room.

"Grab some clothes," I told her as I rushed to the corner where my dirty clothes had been piling up…except they were all gone! "Where's my stuff?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you. Beatrice comes around our section of the floor on Monday mornings to pick up our laundry. She'll have it back here by tonight."

"I can't wait until tonight." I grabbed my duffle, which luckily still had a couple sweatshirts, a clean pair of jeans and two clean pairs of boxers. I shoved my mp3 player in it and sat on the bed. As I waited for Tifa to get her things, I grabbed my phone and listened to the two messages left from this morning when I threw the phone into the closet.

The first one was from Aeris. "Did you see today's paper, Cloud? Call me as soon as you get this message."

The second one was from Rufus. "Cloud, I'm sending Reno with the chopper. Someone leaked that Tifa's my sister. I don't think the school's safe anymore. Reno should be there around 11:00. Be ready."

"Rufus saw the paper, too and he's sending a chopper to pick us up." I closed my phone and looked at the display. It was 10:15. There was still some time before the chopper arrived. I got up and walked to my weapons. I strapped the weapons harness to my back and slid Apocalypse and Organics in their places. My other swords were still with Fenrir.

Tifa turned around with an armful of clothes. "Where should I put these? I don't have a suitcase."

I grabbed the clothes and shoved them into my duffle. When I turned back to her she had another armful, bigger than the first one. "No way, Tifa. That's it."

"What? I'm not leaving my stuff here."

"You'll be coming back as soon as this all blows over. Don't worry about your stuff."

She rushed into the bathroom and came back out with a hairbrush, our toothbrushes and my razor. After she tossed them in my duffle bag, I zipped it up.

Just then I heard the sound of a helicopter. I went to the window and saw it coming from over the trees. That was fast. Reno was a half hour early.

I moved away from the window and grabbed Tifa's arm. "Let's go."

"What about Redgrave? Shouldn't I tell her I'm leaving?"

I led Tifa out of the room. "I'll let her know on my way down to get my bike. I want you to stand by the front door and wait there for me. Okay?"

"Okay."

When we got to the first floor, we split up. Tifa went toward the entrance while I went toward Redgrave's office. When I opened the door, I found the room empty. I didn't have time to look for her. I'd have to call her later if she didn't figure it out already from the article in the paper.

I quickly went down to the basement where Fenrir was parked. After stowing the duffle bag and starting my bike, I pulled away and stopped near the closed overhead door. A maintenance man inside a glass-walled room gave me a wave. When I acknowledged him back with a wave, he pushed a button on the wall and the door started rising.

"Wait, Cloud!"

I turned to see Hutchins jogging toward me.

He stopped in front of me, a little out of breath. "That Shinra helicopter didn't respond to any of our hails."

"The pilot's name is Reno."

"Well, whoever's in it didn't respond."

I removed the brake and flew out the door. As I made my way around to the front of the building I saw Tifa walking toward the helicopter. Dammit, I thought I told her to wait for me at the front door.

There was a man standing next to the open helicopter door. He had on a dark suit similar to the ones worn by the Turks. He looked suspiciously like Tseng, but Rufus didn't say anything about sending anyone but Reno. Rufus wouldn't make such a blunder, knowing the seriousness of the situation.

I sped up. "Tifa, stop!"

Tifa whirled around at the sound of my voice.

The man in the dark suit suddenly rushed over and grabbed her from behind. She struggled with him, kicking her feet up in the air. Someone else appeared from inside the chopper, holding a rifle and fired some shots at me. I swerved Fenrir and swung Apocalypse up to deflect the bullets.

I watched the man start to drag Tifa toward the helicopter. As the shots continued to come at me, I ducked down and sped up even faster.

Just then Tifa slammed her elbow into the man's gut and then flattened his toes with her boot heel. The second she pulled away from his grip, she ran and slid under the belly of the chopper. Good girl!

I changed course and went around to the other side, avoiding the bullets. Tifa came out from under the chopper and I slowed down so she could jump on behind me. "Hang on!" I swerved and headed in the direction of the front gate. A glance at my mirror revealed the chopper lifting off the ground behind us.

The front gate was closed. There was no way I could crash through it. The bars were too strong. There was a large boulder on the left and nothing on the right.

"Hold tight!" I turned toward the boulder and accelerated. When I was within inches, I raised Fenrir's front end and rode right up the boulder, launching us into the air. Shit, it was going to be close. If the back tire hit the spikes at the top of the fence, it would blow and we'd crash.

The Gods were on our side. We cleared the top of the fence and landed smoothly on the other side just as the chopper came bearing down on us. They were so close I could feel the air turbulence from the spinning blades.

I was going on the hopes they wouldn't shoot at us for fear of hitting Tifa. No sense in them killing their bargaining chip. If they wanted her dead, they could have shot her coming out of the building. They wanted her alive…but probably wouldn't give a second thought to killing me.

I swerved off the road and headed for the forest, the chopper matching every move I made. "I told you to stay inside!" I yelled over my shoulder at Tifa.

"I thought it was Tseng!"

"I don't care if it was Ifrit himself standing out there! When I tell you to do something, that doesn't mean do the opposite." Ahh, shit…that reminded me. Except for the Fire materia I had in my pocket, I left all the rest in the drawer of the nightstand back at the school, including my Ifrit Summon. Damn, that could have come in handy right about now.

"I'm sorry, okay!" she yelled back.

We reached the trees and the helicopter was forced to pull up at the last second to go over them. I maneuvered around them while trying to maintain our speed. A few minutes later there were too many and they were too close together to continue. I had almost lost a mirror driving between two trees.

I skidded Fenrir to a stop and looked up. The chopper was circling in a wide arc not too far away. They were looking for us. As the chopper flew overhead, I saw the Shinra logo on the side of it.

"Go that way," Tifa said as she pointed over my right shoulder.

"What's that way?"

"A tunnel."

"Where does it go?"

"I don't know. We've never gone all the way through."

"We?"

"Me and my friends. We snuck out one night and found the tunnel."

"Not very smart with Bandersnatches lurking around."

"No, they weren't always around, just in the last two years."

I pulled forward, but could only go very slow to avoid the trees. The good news was the helicopter was having a hard time locating us and wouldn't be able to follow our progress from above the trees. The bad news was, we had no other choice but to go to this tunnel Tifa mentioned. On the open road, the helicopter could get close enough for a clean shot at me.

I scanned the immediate area to make sure there was nothing prowling around us before I drew to a stop again.

"Why're we stopping again?" asked Tifa.

I grabbed my phone. "I'm calling Rufus to tell him what happened." I punched in the number.

He answered after the first ring. "Cloud, I hope you got my message."

"Yeah, I got it. Listen, Rufus, we got a problem. Somebody in a Shinra helicopter is chasing us and it's not Reno. They nearly got Tifa."

"Where are you now?"

"We're in the forest, a couple miles from the school. South, I think."

"A Shinra helicopter, you say?"

I glanced up through the trees as the helicopter passed over us again. "Yeah, number 364AE99."

"I see."

"Whatta you see?"

"That helicopter was stolen from Healin several months ago."

I looked back up. The helicopter was moving a little further away. "So we've got some people posing as Shinra personnel. That can't be good."

"Do you know how to get to the Forgotten Capital?"

"Like the back of my hand."

"Alright, head there for now."

"You better call Reno and tell him to lay low. They might try to shoot him down." As much as I hated Reno, I really didn't want him to get capped because of me.

"Good idea. Call me again when you can."

I closed my phone and shoved it into my pocket.

"What did he say?" asked Tifa.

"He thinks we should head for the Forgotten Capital?"

"The last Cetra city? No one's ever been able to find it."

"I did."

"No way."

"Which way is that tunnel again?"

She pointed and after looking up to see that the helicopter was panning alittle further away, I pulled forward again.

If the trees got any thicker, I was afraid I'd be forced to leave Fenrir behind. Hell with that. I'd cut down some trees to make a path if I had to. I wasn't leaving my precious motorcycle behind.

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