"It's time for you to escape."

Cloud opened his eyes, woken from a dreamless sleep by the sound of a strange voice. He came fully awake when he realized Gabriel stood over him. The Second Angel had fixed Cloud with his unblinking stare, a solemn expression on his face.

"Escape?" Cloud asked. "How? Where to?"

Gabriel extended a hand. For an instant, Cloud stared blankly at it before realizing the boy's intent. Then he grasped it, letting Gabriel pull him to his feet. The building the two of them stood in was the house Cloud had slept in for the past few nights, the predawn glow of the horizon barely visible through the windows lining its walls. "I've procured a long-range, rapid-deployment helicopter I believe you should be able to pilot. Your companions from the Protectorate, as well as the refugees from New Nibelheim, are on their way to Wutai. You should be able to rendezvous with them there and prepare yourself for your last stand."

That seemed strange. Cloud remembered having been told Rufus was now in charge of Wutai, but from the way it had been put he hadn't expected any help from the ex-President of Shin-Ra. "Why Wutai? Wouldn't Old Nibelheim be closer?"

"Old Nibelheim no longer exists," Gabriel replied. "While our main force attacked this city, Jegudiel was dispatched with orders to uplift Yuffie Kisaragi and destroy the Protectorate stronghold while it was vulnerable. I've just been brought up to speed by Michael and commanded to prepare this city and the army to receive him."

That was bad news, but it confirmed Cloud's suspicions about the mission Jegudiel had said he'd been sent on. However, it was the second thing Gabriel said that really grabbed Cloud's attention – since he'd arrived, he hadn't seen a single trace of Michael. "Where has he been, anyway?" Cloud asked.

"He returned to the North Crater to recover his power," Gabriel replied.

"Did killing Vincent really take that much out of him?"

The Second Angel sensed the hope in Cloud's words and shook his head. "Only in a certain sense. To put it in a way you will understand, Michael atomized Vincent by exerting his sheer force of will on the Lifestream within Vincent's body and ripping it apart. Such a thing is monstrously difficult, even for Michael, and he needed to rest afterward. Our base in the North Crater has many amenities and devices to aid in his recuperation, so he returned there.

"However, Michael is obsessed with symbolism. The way he destroyed Vincent was evocative of the utter annihilation he will bring to bear against all his enemies, and he chose to use it because of that symbolism, not because it was an easy or practical way to kill. As a comparison, you could choose to kill somebody by cutting them a thousand times with a dull knife instead of merely decapitating them with your sword. It would not be efficient and you would very likely need to recuperate afterward, but it would have a very different effect on witnesses than the decapitation."

Cloud sighed. "So when he fights us for real, he's not going to have to stop and wait two days after killing one of us. That's too bad."

"Unfortunately, that is correct, but you should be able to derive at least a small amount of hope from this."

For a second, Cloud wasn't sure what Gabriel was trying to say. Then the realization hit him, and he did indeed find a bit of hope in it. "He may be really powerful, but this proves that he has limits. We can beat him."

Gabriel nodded. "Yes."

"Good to know," Cloud said. "But anyway – you said you got a long-range helicopter? How'd you justify that to whoever's in charge of requisitions for you?"

"I did not need to justify it to anyone," Gabriel replied, "because the person in charge of requisitions is dead, and his replacement has not taken up all of his official duties. For the moment, a lower-ranking uplifted, one of those we did not have accompany us in our war, is in charge, and no lesser uplifted would refuse the Second Angel a helicopter."

It took Cloud a second, but then his eyes flashed with recognition. "Uriel," he said. "And his replacement's Yuffie."

The bitterness in Cloud's voice made Gabriel cock his head questioningly. "Yuffie Kisaragi was a friend of yours?"

"One of the best people I've ever known, and she gave up everything important to her for a shot at immortality," Cloud said. "Raphael told me yesterday. I still have trouble believing it, but it makes sense."

"Yes, Yuffie Kisaragi was the traitor and mole within your organization," Gabriel said clinically. "I have never met her, myself, but I have seen her profile. Like you, I find her desertion of her friends and allies difficult to comprehend. Why do humans think being uplifted is such a wonderful thing, Cloud Strife?"

Cloud hesitated. How could he explain the fear of death to somebody who had never known mortality? He was sure Red XIII or Vincent could, but he didn't know if he had the words. His thoughts drifted back to his kànderén training, Yuffie telling him how humans sought memetic immortality through their descendants because they were afraid of being forgotten. That made a certain amount of sense, but as she'd said, that wasn't why he feared death. He feared it because he was afraid he would die without having been forgiven – for what and by whom didn't matter.

Finally, he said, "If you died right now, would anyone miss you?"

Gabriel's eyes twitched; Cloud instinctively knew the movement was the closest to a blink of surprise the young man could muster. "What do you mean, miss me?"

"Would anyone be sad that you died? Would anyone say, 'If I had known Gabriel was going to die, I would've done this differently and been nicer to him, or tried to make things right between us?'"

The Second Angel considered this. "Michael would be saddened by my loss," he said slowly, "but I believe it would be because my loss would represent a setback of more than a decade to the cause of the Immaculate Swords, and not because I – the person I am that is me – would be no more. Beyond him, I can think of nobody that would be bereaved or upset."

"That's what a lot of people are afraid of," Cloud said. "They want to be remembered, and they're afraid of being forgotten once they're gone. They'll do crazy things to be remembered. If they think nobody will care, they might think becoming immortal, even at such a high price, is a good thing."

"Uriel told me people fear death because they fear the unknown, and death is the ultimate unknown. After death, the life-essence and soul return to the Lifestream, where it is used to make new life, but what is that life? Is it in a form recognizable as such? He once asked me if I was frightened by the prospect of dying and returning to life as a beetle or a tree."

"And?"

Gabriel shrugged jerkily. "I do not know. Is being a beetle or a tree so bad? It would be more peaceful than this life, and I would not have the intelligence to be distraught if I were killed again."

In spite of the gravity of the situation, Cloud laughed. "I guess you wouldn't at that."

For another long moment Gabriel stood thinking, the gears in his head obviously turning, but then he shook it off and was all business again. "At any rate, we have gone off on a tangent. You must take this helicopter and escape to Wutai, but it cannot be known that I had anything to do with it. Officially, I requisitioned the helicopter so I might form an aerial scouting force of Losts. Your escape will be an unfortunate coincidence. Therefore, I cannot tell you where it is."

Cloud grimaced. "I guess I understand. We don't want Michael and Raphael realizing you're not on their side until the last possible minute."

Gabriel responded with a nod. "And speaking of the whore –" at the mention of Raphael, the right side of his mouth curled up in distaste while the left side stayed a flat line – "you will have to get past her. You must genuinely escape from her, or it will seem too easy. I advise you to let her push you past the limits of your ability to endure your resentment for her just before your escape. She will recognize this emotional response and therefore believe you acted on impulse and found the helicopter by chance."

"That'll be the easy part," Cloud said with a small smile that Gabriel did not return. He hesitated, unsure what to say next, before extending his hand to the Second Angel.

Gabriel looked at it curiously, obviously having no idea what to do. "Is there something wrong with your hand?"

"Shake it with yours," Cloud replied. "This is one way people make deals and say hello and goodbye. You've never heard of a handshake before?"

"Physical contact is kept to an absolute minimum in the environment I am from," Gabriel said. "I suppose it is another one of those things I never learned to do." Slowly, but with quickly mounting confidence, Gabriel extended his own hand and firmly grasped Cloud's.

The blonde gave the young man a steady shake. "Here's to good luck."

"Good luck," Gabriel repeated. "To us both. I will see you at Wutai… assuming you escape."

Without another word, the Second Angel turned on his heel and exited the building, leaving Cloud alone. The morning silence was punctuated only by the occasional scream of a Seeder as it repopulated the Immaculate Swords' army. Those sounds had jolted Cloud awake more than once during the night.

He curled up in the most comfortable corner of the house, next to where he had leaned his sword against a wall. An hour or so after sunrise, Raphael usually brought him food and merrily began the day's tortures. As he dropped back off to sleep, Cloud knew he did not have long to wait.

"Wake up, darling. Today I have something special in mind for you."

Cloud came instantly awake as a wave of revulsion swept through him at the sound of Raphael's voice. After only a few days of dealing with her, it was now an instinctual response whenever she said anything. Deep down, Cloud knew she fostered this reaction purposefully, as any emotional response was equal in her eyes and revulsion tasted as sweet to her as love. Still, he couldn't help himself, and he knew why Gabriel's only indulgence in obscenity was to call Raphael a whore.

He sat up, brushing the dust off of his tattered and smudged clothing. Raphael had made him wash himself off yesterday, but his clothes were still dirty from days of sleeping on the ground. It made Cloud angry to think of how he had to look right now – disheveled, tired, defeated. He tried to ignore that and focus on Raphael.

Unfortunately, focusing on Raphael only made it clear what her definition of "special" was.

Instead of her normal jumpsuit, the Third Angel wore a matching white bra and panties. Both items of clothing were decorated with lace and of a cut sheer enough to suggest their purpose was form over function. Her only other item of clothing was a slip made of white, shimmering, semitransparent cloth that did nothing to preserve her modesty; it hung by straps from her shoulders down to just below her hips. Her dark skin contrasted strikingly with the white of her garments, and her purple eyes flashed mischievously as she looked at Cloud.

"I found these in one of the more intact homes," Raphael said, doing a twirl in front of him. "I had to fill out my figure a little bit to fit them properly, but that wasn't too hard, for obvious reasons." It was true – her breasts seemed fuller and her hips wider than before. Cloud felt the revulsion return in force. "What do you think?"

"What are you planning to do?" Cloud asked, ignoring her question. He knew the answer well enough, but he was playing for time – he had to nurture the revulsion inside him, feed his anger, summon up every emotion he could for when he made his break. He thought about how this woman – no, this girl – had psychologically tortured him, physically abused him, denigrated and violated his memories of Tifa, talked callously of his friends dying… His emotions hit a fever pitch and he held them there, willing himself to hate Raphael as much as he could consciously loathe another being.

She obviously sensed his emotions, because she sauntered closer, swinging her hips in a way that he guessed was supposed to be attractive. "I think you know," she said. "I've slept with men before, but none of them felt things as deeply or as powerfully as you do. I want to see what kind of difference that makes."

Cloud swallowed and kept his anger at a fever pitch as Raphael lowered herself into his lap, straddling him. She took his head in her hands and pressed her mouth against his, forcing open his jaw and pushing her tongue into his mouth. At the same time, she ground her hips against his, riding him. Cloud felt himself respond, an animalistic reaction that redoubled his revulsion. He hated her for doing this to him and he hated himself for enjoying it even in the slightest.

Raphael obviously felt his emotions spike, because she pressed herself against him harder, disengaging from his mouth long enough to murmur, "That's it, Cloud. Get angry at me. Hate me. Like I told you before, it's all the same. It's all ecstasy to me." She pulled her head away from his for a second and removed a hand from his back to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

In that second, Cloud seized his opening. As he felt the icy fingers of Raphael's vicarius skittering madly in his head, feeding off of his emotions and transmitting them to her so she might derive some twisted pleasure from them, he struck in her moment of carelessness and buried his fist, blazing with spirit energy, in her solar plexus.

The force of the blow lifted her off of him, sending her crashing into the ceiling eight feet above. Knowing time was of the essence, Cloud leaped to his feet, grabbed the First Tsurugi, detached one of the shortswords from the main blade to serve as an off-hand weapon, and dashed out the door of the building.

Raphael collapsed to the ground, clutching at her chest and moaning. Between her vicarius and her uplifted body, the attack should not have fazed her for more than an instant, but Cloud had taken advantage of the weakness he had seen in his first day here in New Nibelheim. Raphael had described her empathic vampirism as ecstasy more than once, and it had not been a great leap of logic for Cloud to determine that it was a kind of drug, an addiction that she might not even be aware she was a slave to. When she had been riding the crest of his anger over her callousness at the news of Vincent's death, he had seen her stagger and become nauseated when he'd cut off physical contact.

Now, when Cloud had been consciously amplifying all his emotions, running them so high and strong they were overwhelming, being suddenly and violently cut off from them was enough to cause something in Raphael akin to a withdrawal. She rolled around on the floor, clawing at herself, her moans punctuated by short, sharp screams that ripped their way out of her at irregular intervals.

For his part, Cloud knew his plan had worked when she wasn't immediately on top of him, so he kept running.

Even in ruins, New Nibelheim was a big town, and Gabriel's helicopter could be anywhere. Cloud desperately cast his gaze around as he fled, looking at piles of rubble and half-collapsed buildings, wondering where in all of this devastation Gabriel could land a 'copter. He sprinted past Seeders in the throes of birth, as well as quickly maturing Losts that stalked the streets and watched him pass with soulless eyes. These mass-produced Losts seemed to lack the killer predatory instincts of the wild specimens; Cloud was thankful they didn't seem to be interested in giving chase without an order.

Then an inhuman screech tore through the dawn silence. Cloud felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. The screech repeated itself, but this time it formed words.

"KILL HIM!"

All the Losts threw back their heads and howled, long and loud and terrible, and then took off after Cloud, moving with amazing speed for such malformed beings. Their screams intermingled with the sounds of their loping footfalls as they pursued him, steadily gaining ground.

Cloud leaped into the air, kicked himself into a spin, and fired off Blade Beams in every direction, getting off eight or nine before he landed and kept running. The beams each cut down a Lost and split, killing or injuring one or two more before dissipating, but three Losts replaced every one that fell. They poured out of dark buildings and from beneath mounds of rubble, swarming after Cloud and screaming as they came. On any given bearing, he could see dozens of them rushing at him.

There was no way out of this unless he could get to that helicopter. He had to get up high where he could survey the whole town.

A building nearly a hundred feet high and twenty feet to a side had been blown apart at the base and had fallen parallel to a road branching off from the intersection in front of him. Cloud banked sharply to the right, took three rapid steps, jumped. His boots scraped the side of the toppled building and he began to run along it, feeling gravity pull at him even as his momentum kept him going forward. The Losts beneath him screamed and tried to leap at him, but he fired off more Blade Beams, purposefully letting the force of the projectiles transfer through his blades up into his arms. The attacks' recoil kept forcing him up the side of the building as he ran along it, a good twenty feet off the ground and above the Losts filling the road. The Blade Beams killed the monsters easily, but it was like trying to drain a lake with a pipette; there were hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands.

Cloud switched his gaze from the road to the building he ran along, saw he was nearing the end of it. He unleashed another Blade Beam to give him a little more altitude before kicking off into the air, twisting above the sea of Losts below him. At the apex of his leap, when his head was pointed at the ground and his feet toward the sky, Cloud whirled the main blade of the First Tsurugi around him, channeling spirit energy through the blade and loosing a Finishing Touch. The Blade Beams had been a small kick that pushed him up a foot or two; the edged maelstrom of death he now unleashed was like a massive backlash. Even as it shredded dozens of Losts on the ground below him, it also sent him spiraling fifty feet higher into the air, where he could see everything in the town.

From this new vantage point, Cloud easily spotted the helicopter Gabriel had requisitioned. It sat about a quarter mile away in what had apparently been the main town square, in the shadow of a fifty-foot clock tower that loomed above the desolation all around it. Cloud oriented himself toward the clock tower, knowing it would make an excellent landmark, and began summoning up spirit energy for another Finishing Touch to cushion his fall.

He never hit the ground. A black streak leaped seventy feet into the air to collide with him. Cloud felt the breath leave his lungs in an explosive gasp as the impact sent him hurtling into the side of a two-story building that stood on a side street. He blew right through the weakened concrete wall, hit the floor, made a hole in that as well. He finally landed in a shower of concrete and dust on the ground floor, collapsing into a heap.

Raphael yelled shrilly at him from outside. "I spare you and your friend and keep you safe from everyone who wants to hurt you, and this is how you thank me? Cloud, I'm hurt!"

There was something strange about her voice – something strained in its tone – that put Cloud on guard even as he staggered to his feet, still holding his two swords in iron grips.

"Come on out and I promise I'll make your death quick!"

She sounded angry, but Cloud realized what was wrong. Her voice was like that of someone who had lived in the slums of Midgar all their life claiming they had seen the sky. She wasn't really angry; she was just pretending.

What she had told him the first time he had fought her came back to him. Her uplifting had burned all emotions out of her. Whatever she felt, whatever she pretended at, came solely from what she could feel from others. All the emotions she had been expressing around him had been false, hollow memories of what she had once felt, but it had never been obvious until now. Why?

"Come out where I can see you!"

Cloud stiffened as it came to him. She had said she could only maintain the illusory world in which she'd trapped Red XIII as long as he was in her line of sight. Could that apply to her empathic link as well?

It made sense. This was the first time he'd been out of her field of vision and interacted with her in any meaningful way. Now that she was no longer feeding off of his emotions, she could not draw upon them to accurately simulate her own… which meant her vicarius wouldn't work…

Which meant he could kill her.

The temptation rose in Cloud, almost overpowering in its insistency, but he forced it down. He had no way of attacking her without being able to see her. He would just have to remember this for the future.

"Ready or not!"

The concrete wall behind Cloud collapsed as Raphael hurled herself through it as though it were made of tissue paper. She landed deftly next to him, glared. He immediately felt the crawling fingers in his mind again, and he barely managed to leap over a low, spinning kick she lashed out at him with. He noted she had changed back into her jumpsuit.

She was faster than him and the helicopter was a mile away, but Cloud still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

The ceiling was low. Rather than letting himself land after jumping over her kick, Cloud thrust his swords up through the hole he'd made while he was falling and then swung them down parallel with the ceiling. Steel clanged against concrete; using his swords as anchors, he kicked his legs up, got them through the hole and ground his heels against the floor, then pulled the rest of his body up. He was braced above the hole in the second story's floor on his swords and legs, his body vulnerable to an attack from below. Raphael slid smoothly to a position beneath him, crouched, and leaped.

Even as she did so, Cloud kicked his feet and pushed his swords against the floor, propelling him into a backward somersault. He landed on his feet facing the hole, swords at the ready, out of her line of sight for the moment. As Raphael leaped up through the hole, he sliced down in a double Braver attack. The blows crushed Raphael's skull completely and slammed her back down to the first story of the building before she could get a look at Cloud and reestablish vicarius. He heard her cry of pain and knew his strategy was working.

Rather than waiting to see what she would do next, Cloud spun, leaped out of the building through the hole he'd made when Raphael had sent him crashing into it. Losts still swarmed the streets, but they had lost him when he'd been thrown into the building, and they were somewhat dispersed, not putting up a united front.

Cloud hit the ground running. He slung the shortsword in his off-hand in its harness, detached the other shortsword from the main blade of the First Tsurugi, returned the main blade into the harness and removed the first shortsword. Ordinarily he would be able to wield the main blade one-handed with no problem, but he wanted maximum dexterity for this. Pounding along the road, firing off Blade Beams left and right, Cloud estimated it would take him a little less than a minute to get to the helicopter.

He glanced over his shoulder, saw Raphael explode out of the ceiling of the building and leap a hundred feet into the air. He didn't have a minute.

She dissolved into a swirling black mist that snaked through the air toward him much faster than Cloud could run. He felt her vicarius in his mind again. He had been running for perhaps twenty seconds when she recoalesced next to him, easily keeping pace. She lashed out with a punch he just barely managed to block with both shortswords; the impact knocked him off his feet. He went careening off the road straight into a pack of Losts, who fell upon him, screaming.

The group of Losts died as he hit them with a desperate Finishing Touch. The razor-edged tornado sprang up around him and sliced them to bloody ribbons, spraying black fluid everywhere and covering him in it. Not even spending energy to swear, Cloud leaped to his feet, taking off for the helicopter again. He could worry later about whether he'd been infected.

Raphael was suddenly in front of him, launching herself at him in a flying kick. Without even thinking about it, Cloud threw himself onto his back, skidding underneath the attack, then transitioning into a roll that brought him back onto his feet. He was twenty seconds away from the helicopter, and it only now occurred to him that he would need some way to keep Raphael away while he started it up and got into the air.

"DON'T LET HIM GET AWAY!" Raphael screamed again in that inhuman voice. "THE SQUARE! GO TO THE SQUARE!" Losts began to converge from every direction on the square, most of them flooding in from a large thoroughfare to the north. Cloud saw them coming, cursed silently. He looked at the clock tower looming over the square, saw how weak it was at its base.

He heard Raphael coming up behind him again, but he ignored her. Quick as lightning, Cloud returned the two shortswords to his harness, pulled out the main blade of the First Tsurugi, and let fly with a massive Blade Beam that sliced directly through the base of the clock tower. The sound of Raphael's footsteps gaining on him, Cloud changed course to head straight for the tower. He charged at it, slamming his whole weight into it from the south side.

For a moment, nothing happened; then, just as he had anticipated, Raphael leaped at him, trying to crush his skull between her fist and the stone of the tower. Cloud pushed off and away from the tower, narrowly dodging the Third Angel's attack. The force of her blow was enough to tip the destabilized tower, and all fifty stone feet of it toppled into the north thoroughfare, crushing dozens of Losts beneath it and effectively blocking off that road. It missed the helicopter by barely twenty feet.

Cloud swapped out the main blade for the shortswords again, scrambled up the side of the clock tower, took a flying leap from atop its toppled bulk, landed ten feet from the helicopter. The craft's door was open, and Cloud could see the preflight routines had already been run through. It was ready to take off as soon as he got inside and started the engine.

He tossed his shortswords into the cockpit and was about to get in himself when he heard Raphael land behind him. She laughed haughtily, advancing. "Game over, Clo-"

Her sentence was cut off when Cloud whirled, ablaze with spirit energy. He drew the main blade of the First Tsurugi from its harness and hurled it straight through her torso with the force of a cannon. The attack sent Raphael flying, dazed even through her vicarius. With a sickening crack, the blade pierced the stone of the clock tower twenty feet away and pinned her fast.

It would only take her a few seconds to dissolve her form and get free of the First Tsurugi, but that was all the time Cloud needed. He threw himself into the cockpit of the helicopter, hit the ignition as he did so, heard the craft roar to life and the rotor go from zero to ten rotations per second in a heartbeat.

Raphael tore herself free from the First Tsurugi just in time to see Cloud launch the helicopter into the sky.

A minute later, when he was sure he was clear of New Nibelheim and there was no pursuit, Cloud allowed himself to slump down in the seat of the 'copter and start taking deep, gasping breaths, his heart hammering. He was covered in Lost fluids and might well be an uplifted before the day was out, but he was still alive for the time being, and he was on his way to Wutai.

Only once did he look back at New Nibelheim, a pang of deep regret shooting through him. He still had his shortswords, but the rest of the First Tsurugi was lodged in the clock tower, lost to him. He felt like he had lost a part of himself, one of his last links to the past and the Gaea he had known.

"Goodbye, old friend," he murmured. "Maybe someday I'll get you back."

He did not want to think about how unlikely that was.