A/N: I'm sorry it's been so long since my last update. Sometimes I don't know where the time goes! I'm not crazy about this chapter, either, but I figure I might as well post what I've got. I'll probably come back and edit it at some point; the ending especially needs some work. But overall, I'm pretty pleased with the balance I've achieved between new Fran and old Fran. That balance is central to her character arc, so please let me know if it seems clumsy or heavy-handed. In other news, I've also completed the first Yuffie chapter. I won't put it up just yet (gotta milk those page views for all they're worth), but look for it to be up sometime this coming weekend. In the meantime, enjoy this chapter!
The flight was barely 30 minutes long, but it seemed like an eternity. The rotor screamed in her ears. The stench of the engine was overpowering. The stiff, un-cushioned steel seat jostled her backside with every pitch and drop. Fran would much rather have crossed the basin on foot, running like a wolf with her pack behind her and the scent of prey ahead. Discipline, she reminded herself sharply. Control. The chopper could reach cruising speeds of 200 miles-per-hour, far faster than her hardest sprint. Besides, she needed to spend time with her team.
Before the procedure, they'd been afraid of her, as a subordinate is afraid of a superior. Now they were awed. Fran was just fine with their reverence, but awe was not always the same as respect, and a leader had to be respected. You can't respect something you don't understand, she reflected. Once she'd been their commander, but now she was something else entirely. The difference was most palpable in Tseng. Elena had always carried a kind of wide-eyed wonder, and Reno & Rude were as nervous as ever. But Tseng, who had once worn a sly smile and eyes that flashed with insolence, was subdued. Every so often, when he thought she wasn't looking, he'd shoot her a glance, the kind of look he might give a sleeping behemoth discovered in his quarters.
Maybe part of it was that he'd finally made 2nd Class. He was supposed to have his own squad now, his own group of fresh-faced young Thirds to push around. Maybe he even dreamed of taking over Elena, Rude, and Reno. Instead he was part of Fran's Legacy squad. For the others, it was an honor. For Tseng, it must have felt like an insult. Fran almost wondered how she would feel if, as a 2nd Class SOLDIER, she'd been ordered to join a new squad, one headed up by a commander she no longer recognized. I'd take it, she decided. I'd do my duty and be proud of it. But part of her wasn't so sure.
In fact, Fran hardly recognized herself these days. She used to keep her hair short, trimmed once a week by the barracks' barber. Long hair was a tactical vulnerability, easily exploited in close-quarters combat. But a single weakness hardly seemed to matter when she was besting three SOLDIERs at once on the training floor. She'd taken to flaunting her new mane, earning hungry looks from the men in the barracks. Once those stares had unsettled her, forcing her to acknowledge a side of herself she'd never had the time nor energy for. But now she found herself reveling in their gaze, and in the warmth they kindled in her gut. Once or twice she came to close to acting on her impulses, but something always stopped her. Focus, the voice that was almost her own would chide, and she would remember that SOLDIERs were wed to the sword.
Of all the gifts the procedure had given her, that subconscious whisper was the most valuable. Her senses were enhanced to levels she still couldn't believe, and a thousand distractions had entered the world. The wafting aroma of a Sector 5 bakery; the gamma-ray heartbeat of a distant star; the heat of blood running just below the skin; it was enough to drive anyone crazy. But underneath it all, underneath the sensations that pulled and tugged at her like nagging children, was one strong, silent voice keeping them all in line.
Patience, the voice counselled now. He's close. Her mission was to track down Avalanche and bring the terrorists to justice.
"It's up to your discretion whether you wanna bring 'em back in handcuffs or a body-bag," Heidegger had growled. "It's all the same to me."
But Hojo sang a different tune. "The one calling itself 'Cloud Strife,'" The scientist smacked his tongue as though trying to rid himself of a foul taste. "That one is not to be left alive. You must destroy it by any means necessary. Crush it, incinerate it, heh heh, drown it, whatever it takes. Although," he added as an afterthought, "if you can recover any part of the body, it may be useful for, heh heh, testing."
Fran liked Hojo's idea more than she cared to admit. Strife was the most dangerous of the terrorists by far: a ruthless killer with all the speed and strength of a 1st Class SOLDIER. He'd be incredibly difficult to take alive, even if she wanted to. And she didn't want to, not really. She'd studied the dossiers of all her targets, even the slum girl and Hojo's red wolf, but Cloud's was the face that haunted her. She only had to close her eyes to see his stupid spiky hair; his thin, smirking lips; his coldly glowing eyes burned into her brain like a fresh brand. Just the thought stirred her anger, but she forced it down. Discipline. Three deep breaths later, she could think again.
There were three ways out of the Midgar basin. The first was to chart a ship at one of the ports that dotted the northern shore. But the docks at the coastal villages were sealed; no ships had landed or left since the assassination. She'd find nothing there; even a fool like Cloud would avoid the coast. The second route, the valley path connecting Midgar to the grasslands in the east was equally hopeless, though for different reasons. The only route worth pursuing was the road through the mines. It was a long shot, but it was also the only shot she had. And as the mountains grew to fill the view out her window, her certainty grew as well. She couldn't explain how, but she knew she'd made the right choice.
Her knee bounced, her hair twisted between her fingers, her teeth ground together and, just when she couldn't take one more second, the sound of the engine changed.
"Boots up," she shouted over the thudding rotors, trying not to sound too relieved. Fran crossed the chopper in one stride, threw open the door and stepped out into empty space. The aircraft was still a hundred feet up, so she had some time to relish the fresh air as she fell. She watched the ground coming up towards her and thought of the last time she'd trusted her life to such a drop. This was a longer distance, but she was stronger now than she was on the pillar. Much stronger. This time I won't fail. When she struck the ground, she didn't even bother to roll.
Fran strode away from the crater that marked her landing without waiting for the others. She was nearly at the cave before they caught up with her.
"Damn, Commander," Reno panted. "How 'bout a little warning next time you jump out of a plane?" It was just the sort of empty comment she'd come to expect of Reno. The man was uncomfortable with quiet, determined to fill it with his voice whether he had any worth saying or not. Fran answered him with stony silence.
It was awhile before anyone plucked up the bravery to break that silence. To Fran's surprise, it was Elena who spoke first. "Um, Commander," she began. "Why are we searching the mines? I mean, if it were me, I'd run east. The grasslands have tons of places to hide, and I could take a boat to the southern isles if I wanted." At least this one's using her head. Fran was about to respond when Tseng spoke up for her.
"That's exactly why we won't look there," he explained. "It's been a week since they ran, plenty of time to reach the plains and choose between thousands of escape routes. If they went east, they're as good as gone. The only chance we have, however remote, is if they were stupid enough to hide in the mines." Fran was impressed, not only at his knowledge, but at his courage in answering a question meant for his Commander. Maybe he got used to being called "Commander" while I was out, she thought. Or maybe he's the same old Tseng after all.
One thing was for sure, Reno was the same old Reno. "So what you're saying," he griped, "is that we're out here on a wild-cockatrice chase."
"He's here," Fran said. "I can feel it."
"He?"
"The target. Wallace and the rest." She didn't have to turn around to know they were exchanging glances. She could almost hear them wondering if the procedure had gone wrong, if mako sickness was already corrupting her mind. Well, let them wonder. Crazy or not, I'm still their Commander. And when they entered the mines, she knew she wasn't crazy.
When the first people stumbled across the cave, it would have been pitch-black. They might have been prospectors, searching for gold or jewels. They might have been hunters, chasing a quarry to its lair. They might even have just been weary nomads, looking for shelter for a night. In any case, they would have raised their torches high to throw back the dark and found something beautiful.
The torches were gone, but electric work-lamps had been strung along the tunnel in their place. The cave was much deeper, too; drilled back into the mountain until it broke into a web of water-carved tunnels. But one thing that hadn't changed was the beauty. The electric lamps cast a severe orange glow, but once that light touched the mythril deposits, it scattered into all its brilliant components. A prism will fracture light into a neat, orderly spectrum, with layers of color ascending naturally from dark purple to bright red. Like a prism, mythril split the light into colors. Unlike a prism, it would then mix those colors together into a strange, rippling mix of hue, reflected on every surface. The color of mythril depended on the angle and nature of the light reflecting off it. Like ice, it could be pure as glass in one light and a cold, pale blue in another. Like fire, it could be at once scarlet, crimson, and a delicate white gold.
Mythril was a "living" metal; if left alone for long enough, a nearly-depleted mythril deposit would steadily regenerate itself. The growth was magic; once cut from the rock, the metal was "dead." The mines were worked in zones, rotated from year to year, to ensure that tapped veins had a chance to replenish themselves. The first tunnel was labelled Zone 1, Fran recalled. It had been mined fairly recently, and the crystals poking through the walls were small. But as they progressed deeper, they reached Zone 2. Veins of swirling color streaked through the hewn rock. Clear emerald surged into deep aquamarine, twisted into tawny bronze as they passed.
But Fran ignored the marvelous sights around her. While her squad gaped and stared, she kept her eyes forward and marched straight ahead. Even as the tangled rainbows leapt off the walls to dance across their faces, she stayed focused. She wasn't interested in the color, or the beauty, or the sparkling splendor. Fran wasn't interested in anything visual at all. Fran was interested in the smells. Because underneath the dense, earthy scent of the rock, underneath the tang of sweat drifting all the way from the workers in Zone 5, she smelled something she recognized. Him.
She stopped at the first split, scenting the air like a hound. Left. She followed her instinct and turned left. Right, it counseled her, and she turned right. Right. Left. Left. Right. She followed without hesitation, and the rest of the squad scrambled to keep pace. Then, all at once, the walls fell away and she found herself standing at an abyss. Somewhere in the black distance a hidden waterfall thundered, filling the cavern with a thin mist. Hovering in the darkness before them, bridges spanned the void, dotted with lampposts crowned by fuzzy halos of light.
"Zone 3," Tseng told them. "The workers call it the Pit." The Pit was the center of the mines, with shafts striking out in every direction. Bridges above and below criss-crossed the bottom-less chasm to connect shafts of different levels. But the tunnels themselves sloped up and down, even as they twisted back and forth. A woman could cross a steep bridge to a tunnel far above, only to follow it around and around back to a lower level than she'd started on. So when the voices drifted up out of the depths, anyone who had studied the maps in the mandatory mission brief would have known better than to assume that the source of the voices was below. Tseng cocked his head to listen. Elena looked nervously at her comrades. Reno got a running start and threw himself headlong into the Pit.
The bridge he landed on was slippery from the damp, and he very nearly slid right over the side. He ended up wrapped halfway around one of the lampposts, his feet dangling over the yawning emptiness. With a grunt halfway between annoyance and concern, Rude leapt after him. He made a much neater landing, and Elena was steeling herself to follow when Fran caught her arm.
"Don't you dare."
"But they need us," Elena pointed out. "They'll be lost in here for days, Commander."
"Hey!" Reno shouted up, totally compromising his position. "What're you guys waiting for!? They're getting away!"
"Leave them," Fran spat. "They made their bed. Let them lie in it." The voices were coming from above, she decided. They must be trying to reach the Rustling Vale. "Tseng, you know how to reach the south exit. Take Elena and seal it off. I'll drive them to you." Without another word, she jumped, not out and down as Reno had done, but up to a bridge above. She jumped again, and again, and suddenly his stench filled her nostrils.
She followed the trail into a tunnel, jogging along until, all at once, she ran into their voices like a wall and skidded to a stop.
"They're after us," a girl whimpered. "We need to get out of here."
"I think it's this way."
"Like hell it is! You been leadin' us in circles, Tifa!"
"Well maybe if you didn't lose the map…"
"Damn wind took it! Coulda happened to anybody!"
"We're underground, Barret. There is no wind!"
"Everybody shut up." His voice was just as cold as ever. Fran felt her heartbeat increase. Discipline. Control. "Tifa, you need to get everybody to the exit right now."
"But, Cloud, I—"
"Just do it! I'll bring up the rear. Don't come back for me."
"Cloud?"
Fran had heard enough. Slowly, silently as she could, she crept up the tunnel. She rounded one corner, then another, and then he was there. The others must have followed his instructions; they were nowhere in sight. His sword was unslung, that huge, beastly thing that was always the first thing she recognized. Faced with bared steel, she had every right to draw her sword. But she left it in her sheath.
"I commend you," she began. "A good SOLDIER never lets others suffer for his sins."
"I told you before," he answered. "Sephiroth killed the President, not me." His sword didn't lower an inch.
"Those weren't the sins I meant." She felt the anger stir. "You maimed me. You destroyed me."
Cloud glanced at her arm. "You don't look too maimed to me."
"And doesn't that just eat you up!" she sneered. Her heart was pounding now, her hands balled into fists. "You wish I was crippled! You wish I was helpless because you're afraid!"
"I'm shaking."
Her sword was out in a flash, and she saw his eyes widen in surprise. He turned the first cut, but the second found his shoulder. He threw lightning in between them, but she was already sliding around to his injured side. He was slow, much slower than she remembered. How could I ever have lost to this buffoon? She cut him again in the thigh, then once across the back. He stumbled to one knee and she wrenched his sword away from him. One good kick laid him flat on his back and she knelt on his chest.
Kill him. His eyes were dazed, and her sword was poised over his throat. One good thrust and he'd drown in his own filthy blood. But he was disarmed; his sword lay fifteen yards away in the dirt. Kill him! Every fiber of her yearned to see the stupid look on his face as her blade drove down into his neck, to see the look of pain and fear grow until the eyes transfixed. But it was dishonorable to kill an unarmed opponent. He was at her mercy, and she had the opportunity to take him alive. KILL HIM!
"Cloud Strife…" She wrenched him to his feet and slammed him face-first into the wall. "You are under arrest for murder, assassination, escaping justice, and high treason. You will be taken back to Midgar, there to await trial for your crimes. You—"
Something slammed into her head and the world burst to pieces. The bitch, she thought as she came to on hands and knees, spitting blood. Fran had never been hit so hard, not even by a SOLDIER. Before the procedure, she would still be stunned, waiting for the follow-up blow to knock her out completely. Instead she heard the kick rushing through the air, bearing down to finish the job. So she reached up and caught it. Fran took a moment to appreciate the shock in the other woman's eyes, then she stood and twisted in one smooth motion, dragging her quarry along by the leg. She spun like a hammer-thrower, once, twice, and smashed the bitch into the rock wall.
No mercy, she thought. Not this time. She turned back to Cloud, but he was already moving, his sword strapped to his back. She swung her sword and the point caught his hip, but he only spun away, scooped up the girl, and ran bleeding down the tunnel. He was wounded, and even healthy, whole and unburdened he couldn't hope to outrun her. But as soon as she began to give chase, a wall of flame, scorching hot, roared up across the passage. She reeled back, just in time to watch the tunnel collapse of its own accord.
"I had him!" she screamed into the dusty quiet. "I fucking had him, and he slipped away!" She thought hopefully of Tseng and Elena guarding the entrance, but quickly dismissed the idea. If he got past me, he'll have no trouble getting past them. She should have listened to her instincts, should have killed him when she had the chance. "Next time," she muttered. "Next time I won't hesitate. Next time, I'll crack his skull like an egg." She picked up a fist-sized rock from the fallen tunnel and crushed it to powder. "And no one's gonna get in my way."