Chapter Twenty Eight

Locke'd Away

If anyone thought that Reno was being a good solider and obeying Squall's orders for anything other than his best interests, then they were sorely mistaken.

As he wandered through the forest outside Timber with the monkey boy looking for the guy with the huge hair (geez, how could anyone take anyone else's dimension seriously with people like these guys wandering around?), he cast his thoughts back to Midgar.

Arriving in this dimension hadn't exactly been a difficult choice; jump off a seventy storey building into a dimensional rift or be obliterated by an Ultima spell. Well, he supposed it had been a difficult choice; it's just that in his head he would take a slim chance at survival over certain death any day. And what do you know, it had worked, he was still alive.

Being in a completely alien world, however, jarred you somewhat into taking stock of what you used to have before and what you had now. Reno realised that he missed Rude and the other Turks. Rude had ventured off to pastures new, seeking a better fortune than the pittance Shinra was capable of paying him. But, the choice of definitely being paid and maybe being paid, in a similar manner to the choice he had more recently faced, had elicited a similar response. He had stayed in Midgar while the rest of the Turks had disbanded and gone their separate ways. To be a part of a team again was probably one of his greatest hidden desires, right below booze and sex.

Not that the last two were great secrets or anything.

So when the very attractive lady Quistis had offered him a place on another team, he had gone along with it for a while. He had been bored, and they had offered to pay him. Plus, he could have wound up having sex with the really attractive lady, so his priorities had shifted towards helping them almost immediately.

But, typically, these things have a way of becoming really, really weird, and quite dangerous, and before he knew it his hormones had driven him into the Shinra building with the aim of rescuing the very attracti – Quistis, from saving Quistis. Then, of all people, Sephiroth had shown up and, in true Sephiroth fashion, ruined everyone's day.

So now he was here, in exactly the middle of nowhere in a completely new dimension.

With Monkey Boy. Zidane was off ahead, eagerly hunting for some trace of that crazy bastard Strife, who was someone Reno had some reservations in attacking based on the fact that every time he had done so in the past, he had lost. But he hadn't seemed entirely himself, and besides, they had parted somewhat amicably, choosing to walk away from each other in the devastated tunnels under Sector 8 during Avalanche's attack on Midgar.

He kicked at some dirt disconsolately, feeling slightly depressed. This Garden had better be everything he had hoped it would be, or he wouldn't be very happy. He wondered if there was some other dimension with a Shinra Corporation who had a division of Turks. His fantasy had extended to finding a world that was an exact copy of his, but where everything was back to normal, killing the alternate version of himself and taking his place, when a sonic boom rattled the trees around him, making him throw his arms around his head on reflex.

Zidane hit the dirt out in front of him, and Reno could pinpoint the location of the blast by the black cloud of smoke rising from the town behind them.

"What was that?" exclaimed Zidane. Reno scowled at him.

"Hang on, I'll check with my psychic radar."

Zidane returned Reno's glower. "There's no need to be sarcastic."

"There really is."

"Look, are we going to stand around here all day, or go back and see what just blew up?"

Reno considered this. The explosion, in his mind, wasn't his problem. He had orders, and he was eventually going to be paid to carry them out. However, he didn't want to set the precedent of actually following his orders to the letter, or even at all, or Squall might get the wrong idea.

He stood pondering for a few more seconds.

"Let's go and check it out. I doubt we'll find Strife now, and we might get to blow shit up if we go back."

Zidane nodded, and they started back towards the quaint wooden town.


"Why were you in the Shinra building?"

Might as well open with the most obvious questions; what's your name? Locke Cole. Age? Twenty-seven. Etcetera, etcetera, but the million gil question – what were you doing in that tower. Squall eagerly anticipated the response to said question.

"That's a long story."

He gestured with his hands. "I've got time."

"Maybe not enough time to hear this story."

"Can we stop talking about stories? All I want to know is why you were with the guys we ran into back there, not hear an epic tale about love, adventure and triumph over evil. Give me the short version."

"The short version? Well, okay then. Cyan went missing, Terra cast a spell to try and find him, I go through this gate thing and end up in some strange new world, I get chased by terrified villagers, I run into these four guys who tell me they saved the world from some guy called Garland, I tell them, that's nice, seen any portals around here? I end up having to swim to a portal in the ocean, go through it, swim back to shore in the new world and fight my way through a mountain path to arrive in a slum of a coal mine town. They tell me if I've come through that path alone then I can try out for some battle tournament, and I'm not interested until they tell me the prize is some kind of teleportation magic. So, I go, but registration has ended, so I have to sneak into the tournament, get pounded by this guy in a red cape, get carted off to medical when this guy called Rufus comes and tells me I must be good to get past his bodyguards, that he has a proposal for me. I say, okay, but only if you use your teleportation magic to get me home, and he says no problem. Next thing you know, I'm in this machine that can hover in the air, like an airship, but smaller. He takes me to that tower, makes me help him break in with his army guys, and then next thing you know we're on the top floor in the office with that creepy dead guy, and then I'm jumping off the side into yet another portal. Which, if you hadn't already figured out, puts me right here in this room with you."

"I asked for the short version."

"And you got it. Now, seeing as how I explained how I got here…how about hearing your version?"

Squall considered it, and there didn't seem to be any harm in relaying his side of events to Cole. Locke's story was too close to what they had been experiencing to be a fabrication, and besides, if they had a mutual exchange now, it would lead to the older man being more open to co-operation in the future.

"Much of the same, really. I'm the leader of a military organisation here in this world. Irvine, the man you saw earlier with the ponytail and the hat, and myself were undercover to try and get hold of a powerful magical object. The paper trail from that meeting led us to a government base where we discovered someone had been trading said magical items through the portals across dimensions, and we were forced through the portal into the world where the Tower is – was – located. One thing led to another, we followed a similar trail to the man selling the items to the government in my world, when Quistis was captured and taken to the Tower. We went to rescue her, but at the same time, in a strange coincidence, your Rufus attacked the Tower, and we ended up, as you know, jumping off the side of the building to escape back home to our own dimension."

"Lucky. You could have ended up anywhere."

"I know. And I don't plan to be making any more trips through portals any time soon."

"Well, that's all very good, but that leaves the question of…what's going to happen to me now?"

"I'll take you back to our base, the Garden. We'll be able to hide you there for a while, to stop people asking questions as to where you came from. We'll give you a false background, so any governments looking to exploit the portals again won't target you, and we'll use our own investigation into the nature of the portals to find you a way home."

"I hope so. Because if you're just saying that to use me…"

"Look, I know you've had a bad experience recently with trust issues, but I don't want anything from you. All I want is for you to keep quiet, and not cause a fuss here. I don't want this to get out, it's too problematic."

Locke looked like he was about to respond, but Avira interrupted. Squall had almost forgotten she was in the room.

"One of the lights on this panel is flashing."

Frowning, Squall crossed the small room to look over Avira's shoulder. He took a full second to realise what the alarm heralded, his eyes widened, and he grabbed Avira by the shoulders, pulling her to her feet.

"Locke, take her and leave through the back exit!"

"What do you – "

The door down the narrow flight of stairs exploded, shaking Locke into action. Squall all but threw Avira at Locke, ushering them into the room at the back of the building with the beds inside.

"Quickly, they can't find you, they can't know you're not from this dimension! I'll stall them as long as I can!"

He shut the door behind them and hurried back to the bank of computer panels as the sounds of many feet clambering up the stairs echoed around him. He has just input the password to erase all of the data on the computers housed inside the small facility when the first intruder roughed him to the ground and started to secure his hands together behind his back.

"Squall Leonhart, you are under arrest."


Locke grabbed Avira's arm as Squall swung the door shut, and assessed his surroundings. As a master treasure hunter, he had become quite adept at analysing buildings and rooms to spot hidden compartments that might house said treasure.

He spotted such a compartment on the far wall, at chest level opposite one of the mattresses. He led Avira across the room as sounds of a commotion broke out beyond the closed door.

"Don't worry," he said to Avira. "I swear; I'll protect you."

"Uhm, thanks," replied the strange, quiet girl.

He pried open the hidden panel with practiced ease, and motioned Avira into the small passageway that was revealed. He climbed in after her and had replaced the panel – which had handles built into the opposite side for such a circumstance – when the door to the room burst open and several sets of footsteps stomped inside.

Locke held his breath as the newcomers tore the room apart on the other side of the thin wooden panel; the solitary cupboard was emptied forcibly and then smashed apart, the beds were thrown against the wall, the mattresses torn open. Locke could only guess at what some of the other noises were, but after several minutes the invaders shouted an all clear and left the room.

He exhaled as he relaxed ever so slightly. The immediate danger of discovery hadn't passed, but the task of evasion had become ever so slightly easier.

He once again found himself assessing a new environment. The panel had hidden a small crawlspace that allowed enough room for Locke to stand in a crouched position. The secret passageway led back from the building, and then proceeded down, where Locke could not follow with his eyes. He motioned Avira to be quiet, and then for her to proceed along the pathway set out before them.

The drop down, they discovered, was fitted with a wooden ladder. At the bottom was another pathway of the same height, also leading away from the building. Eventually they reached the end of the path, where a metal grate covered the ceiling.

Locke lifted the grate slowly, allowing enough space for just his eyes to probe the area surrounding the metal disc. A street lay around him; presumably one of the back alleys a few blocks from the SeeD hideout. Seeing that the way was clear, he shoved the disc to one side and, after lifting himself up, pulled Avira out of the wooden tunnel. He replaced the grate, led the smaller girl around the corner and crouched behind a metal trashcan.

"Are you from this dimension?" he asked her, his first spoken words in just under ten minutes.

She shook her head, no.

"Hmm." He looked out from behind the trashcan. The town, like all towns, seemed pretty straightforward. There were made up of back alleys and main streets, and they definitely wanted to avoid the main streets. All he had to do was avoid being seen – preferably by everyone – and try and figure out where he was in relation to the perimeter of the town.

He motioned Avira up, and, having deemed the alley safe to walk down, stepped out to carry on their escape.

Unfortunately, he did so at exactly the same time as a man dressed all in blue wearing a mask.

Not knowing who he was hiding from exactly, and so being of the mind hiding from absolutely everyone was a good idea, he tried to dodge back under the cover of the trashcan, but he knew he had been spotted.

"Hey!" yelled the man in blue from around the corner, and Locke once again grabbed Avira by the arm, leading her down the other exit the alley afforded.

Footsteps were once again pursuing them doggedly. Locke rounded a corner to the sight of even more men in blue running towards them, and in an act of desperation, kicked open the door leading into the building they stood outside. It revealed a small storeroom filled with crates, and after Avira was inside he shut the door, pushed one of the crates in front of it, and leaned against the door.

There was another exit inside the room.

"Listen," said Locke as the door started to pound against his back. "I want you to escape through that door, get as far as you can before they get through here and take me."

Avira just looked at him with her big, green eyes.

"Quickly! I won't be able to hold them for long!"

Slowly she moved towards the door, and as she approached it, and the door Locke leaned against started to pound even more violently, making the older man bounce away from it repeatedly, she turned back towards him.

"Thank you."

He grinned. "Hey, I swore I'd protect you, right? Now quick, get out of here."

She vanished through the door, and less than thirty seconds the slab of wood that Locke was trying to keep shut started to splinter. He stepped away from it, facing the entrance to the room, and raised his arms in the air. The top half of the door smashed open, the bottom being restrained by the crate Locke had pushed in front of it, and men in blue swarmed in over the obstruction, shoving Locke against the wall and tying his hands behind his back with rings of cold steel.

"I'm innocent!" He proclaimed, grinning foolishly despite himself. "You've got the wrong guy!"

Strong hands flipped his around, his back once again against the wall. Steady eyes gazed into his.

"Where's your friend?"

Locke shrugged. "I don't have any friends."

The face the eyes belonged to grunted softly, but there was no surprise in the expression.

"I hope she didn't go through this door, because that's a dead end."

Locke was glad the man, who wore no mask or uniform like the men he presumably commanded, looked away to find the handle of the door, because he may have seen the fear in Locke's eyes. The door swung open to reveal, like the man had said, a small room approximately five feet square.

But there was nothing in it.

Confused, Locke inspected the room further as best he could from where he stood. It looked to be entirely smooth, with nothing in the room to hide in or behind.

The man with the cool eyes walked in, appraised every corner, wheeled on his right heel and walked back out.

"Never mind," he said, sounding ever so slightly disappointed. "We'll find her eventually. Take him away."

The building emptied of men in blue within two minutes, however neither the leader of the group, nor the two guards who subsequently entered the small, empty room to double check that it was, in fact, empty, looked up.


"Squall Leonhart, you are under arrest." Squall was unceremoniously lifted and placed into one of the chairs that had avoided major displacement during the new arrival's dramatic entrance.

"You are charged with destruction of Galbadian military property, theft from the Galbadian government, conspiracy to traffic illegal weaponry and evading a warrant for your arrest. Anything you say and do will be used against you. You do not have the right to a fair trial."

"And you will rot in the newly reconstructed desert prison facility," added a new, familiar voice. Squall scowled at the man garbed in civilian clothes who had just entered.

"Caraway. Don't you have anything better to do?"

"Remember, anything you say and do will be used against you. No funny business."

"That doesn't scare me, Caraway. Besides, if I don't get a trial, why does it matter?"

"Basically, it might reduce the number of beatings you get from the guards. But you already know about that from your last leg of time spent inside."

He had been set up to take a very large fall for the Galbadian General. Presumably, Caraway had somehow lost the materia he and Irvine chanced across on the black market, and with the corrosive chemical spill they didn't cause inside the secret facility Caraway had subsequently sent he, Irvine and Quistis along with Seifer to investigate, Caraway had a lot of face to lose in the Galbadian military circle. However, by Squall showing up at this moment in time, he gave the General a good escape. There were no witnesses to who actually destroyed the facility, as the deal took place on the black market there wasn't much of a paper trail for officials to follow to indicate concretely who stole it, and as Squall hadn't been in this dimension to know about the warrant being issued for his arrest, Caraway had another charge to level at the SeeD leader.

This would keep the Galbadian authorities happy, it would keep Caraway in his office that little bit longer, and it would keep Squall locked away for a long, long time. Caraway was justified in how he looked smug.

"Your team mates aren't with you?"

"They have a prior engagement, unfortunately," returned Squall dryly.

"A shame. You could us some company, considering where you're going."

"Stop trying to intimidate me, Caraway. Let's just get on with it, shall we?"

Caraway's vaguely friendly expression melted away, and he nodded to the guards surrounding Squall. They filed out of the room and down the stairs, leaving Squall and the General alone.

"Listen to me, you son of a bitch," he began. "I am not going to sink because of this. You butcher an operation I paid you for? So be it, these things happen from time to time. I could even live with you running off with the magical stone you found; we have enough of them now anyway."

"What are you talking about, Caraway?"

Squall recoiled as Caraway slapped him sharply across the face. Slapped.

"Don't play games with me, SeeD." He produced a small device from an inside pocket of his coat. It was just large enough so Caraway couldn't close his fist around it, and it was vaguely spherical in shape. There were two points extruding from either end of Caraway's hand, and a small screen was built into the front of the smudgy brown device. The screen displayed a countdown.

"You're going to tell me what this device is counting down to, and you're going to tell me now."

Squall looked blankly from the General, to the device, and then back to the angry looking man.

"Erm…you tell me?"

Caraway slapped the SeeD again. "I haven't got time for this, Leonhart. In approximately one and one half hours, the timer on this device will reach zero and…something will happen. Have you set a bomb to detonate? Will your Garden attack a Galbadian outpost?"

"What makes you think I have anything to do with this?"

"Several reasons. One, the device does not resemble anything we've encountered before, and I happen to know you've been operating in a parallel dimension, for want of a better term. You have likely acquired foreign technology and plan to deploy it against the Galbadian Empire.

"Two, your accomplice who we found the device with doesn't show up in any of our databases, thus he is likely to be both non-native to this dimension and the most probable culprit of setting into motion whatever the device signifies.

"Three, the device is emitting a low bandwidth radio pulse that will no doubt activate whatever you have planned. The alien to this world had doubtless planned to be far away from the event when it occurs, and activate it remotely. Probably inside your Garden."

"That is completely ridiculous. There is no strategic value in the Garden initiating a conflict with the Galbadians, not after the peace agreements have been signed."

"Unless of course you were hired to carry out such an attack."

"No-one in the world could pay enough for that contract, and besides which if I was made the offer, I would refuse it. We both know how a war between Balamb and Galbadia turns out, and I wouldn't want to repeat the experience any time soon."

Caraway slammed his palms onto the table in front of him.

"Damn you, Squall, tell me what's about to happen so I can prevent it! Tell me who hired you to carry out this attack!"

Squall felt his temper rise in response to Caraway's outburst. "I'm telling you, I don't know what you're talking about!"

Caraway tapped his right elbow, and within moments the guards had re-entered the room and started to haul Squall back outside.

"This is pointless," stated Caraway. "Load him onto the train, and take him to Deling City."

The sunlight made him wince. He was half lifted and half dragged to across the street and then dumped on the dusty ground.

Caraway marched out behind him.

"You'll never get away with this, Caraway. There's too much physical evidence here against you."

"Oh?" was all the reply the General offered. He issued a few murmured orders to an inferior officer, while a kicking and screaming new arrival from around the corner attracted Squall's attention.

"Locke?" he said in disbelief. "He's the accomplice with the timer?"

Caraway gave him a slightly amused glance. "No, but thank you for confirming that you two are familiar."

He gestured to the inferior officer, who in turn signalled a more minor guard. A button was pressed, and the office above them exploded into a fiery miasma, issuing a sonic boom that reverberated between the trees of the forest surrounding the town. Squall tried to shield his face from any falling debris, but couldn't raise his arms by account of the handcuffs restraining his hands behind his back.

"What physical evidence, Squall?" the General asked smugly. "Load them up!"

The guards lifted Squall to a large army transport vehicle that was idling nearby, and swung open the rear compartment doors. They then proceeded to lift Squall from under each arm, and deposited him onto the bench set into the side of the vehicle.

He started suddenly, realising who was sitting opposite him. Chained to the opposing bench was Cloud Strife.

As Locke was loaded into the vehicle, Cloud actually made eye contact with Squall.

"Look, you don't know me but we have to work together to get out of here. My name is Cloud Strife. I don't know how I got here, but with any luck we can make a distraction and escape, and then maybe you can tell me what this place is, and maybe how I got here."

Squall, speechless, offered no reply.


Author's Notes:

Some of you may have noticed the lack of author's notes on the previous chapter. There's a reason for that. When shit gets dramatic, I don't fuddle it up with excess noise at the end. So, for the previous two chapters, we give thanks to:

Rakunya, Alpha2Omega, Macky, Brutal2003, Ayri, and Lionheart1987. Keep up the reviews, guys. We appreciate them.