I apologize for the slightly late update, dear readers. Pen Against Sword is here on a visit and she is... distracting. =D

Looking up at Wutai from the front entrance, Vincent felt they might actually have a chance.

He had not seen the city in decades, and Rufus had been very busy during those long years. A fifty-foot-high metal wall surrounded the entire city in an octagon, and atop it patrolled various members of the army. At each of the eight corners of the wall was mounted a heavy machine gun capable of swiveling three hundred and sixty degrees and depressing to fire at enemies directly in front of the wall. This city would be a tough nut to crack even for the Immaculate Swords.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Rufus asked.

"To people like us? Yes," Vincent replied, eyeing the President of Wutai. He had been shocked to see what Rufus had done to himself to escape old age, and despite his best efforts he had found himself wondering if Yuffie would have taken the same path had she been aware of its existence. "How thick are those walls?"

"Four feet," Rufus said. "They're corrugated steel, though, which makes them exceptionally strong and difficult to damage through conventional means."

"Our enemies don't use conventional means."

"Fair enough. You should still find this city much easier to defend than that rat-trap you lost to the Immaculate Swords."

Vincent said nothing, merely proceeding to the front gate of Wutai. It was true – this wall and the mounted weaponry would make things much easier, but he knew the Immaculate Swords would come on much stronger this time. Michael would not underestimate the Protectorate again. He would come forth himself.

"We should start making plans," Reeve said from the other side of Rufus. "If we can't defend the city, we'll need to evacuate everyone…"

"To where?" Rufus asked. "Like you said, Reeve, if we fail here, there won't be enough of the human race left to make a difference. We have to make a stand." He brushed a grey hair out of his burning blue eyes as he approached the gate. "This is President Shin-Ra!" he bellowed. "Open up!"

Rather than swinging inward or out, the gate began to grind slowly down into a deep trench in the ground. Vincent felt his mouth twitch into a grimace of grudging approval; the gate would be sturdier if it was one solid mass of steel and did not have a seam down the center for the enemy to exploit. As it disappeared into the ground, he and Reeve got their first look at Wutai… and the four black-suited figures standing in front of it.

The city no longer even remotely resembled the Wutai Vincent had once known. It was another Midgar, with towering metal buildings and narrow streets. There was no trace of greenery or water in sight. Many of the buildings had the design motif of a pagoda, with multiple tiers separated by eaves, but the overall picture was one of deeply entrenched urbanity.

The Turks were just as different from their past selves as the city. All of their eyes glowed blue with mako, and their skin was pale and grey, spiderwebbed with luminescent veins.

Reno's shock of red hair was almost entirely grey, with only a streak of crimson hanging on desperately. It snaked from his forehead above his right eye back over his head and terminated somewhere in the silver mass of his ponytail. His distinctive facial markings remained unaffected by the constant mako treatments, standing out on his face like a pair of bloody gashes.

Rude still wore his sunglasses, but the burning of his eyes were visible even through the shaded lenses. His goatee was silver instead of grey; Vincent attributed this to facial hair commonly being lighter in hue. Of all the Turks, he had changed the least; he was still bald.

Tseng's long hair was pulled back into a ponytail and had also gone slate grey. The mark on his forehead was still dark. He now sported a goatee like Rude's, which, like his colleague's, was silver.

Elena, in stark contrast to her colleagues, still had her blonde hair, but Vincent could tell it was a dye job and not natural. She had not extended her cosmetic efforts to include her face; the blush, lipstick, eye shadow, and other affectations Vincent had been so used to seeing her wear were conspicuously absent.

"Welcome back, Boss," Reno called. He looked at Reeve, then Vincent. "You're hangin' with a weird crowd these days, y'know."

"Good to see you too," Vincent said. "What's the situation?"

The Turks looked at him, seeming somewhat annoyed at his presumption, but a nod from Rufus quieted their misgivings. "We've drawn up the entire eligible populace into a standing army and equipped them from our stockpiles," Tseng said. His voice had changed over the years, becoming more gravelly and hoarse. "They're about two thousand strong. In addition, some ineligible citizens volunteered. They number around three hundred."

Reeve frowned. "A city of this size and the eligible citizens number only two thousand?"

"The total population of Wutai is only about nine thousand people," Rufus explained. "By eligible populace, we mean men ages seventeen to thirty-five. Most men in Wutai are either younger or older than that and thus are exempt from forced recruitment – ineligible. We have to rely on volunteers from the ineligibles, and as you can tell, not many of them feel like putting their lives on the line."

"We're talking about the extinction of the human race!" Reeve protested.

"I run this city based on the idea of quiet peace, Reeve. Most of the people here either have bad memories of the immediate post-Fall days and never want to see a gun again or are sniveling society types and office drones that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn – the perfect populace to maintain control over. No masses of fiery rebels to get upset about the administration."

"That also means they're a whole lot of sitting ducks when the cards are down," Vincent growled.

Rufus did not contest this statement. "We're lucky we got the twenty-three-hundred we did. Continue, Tseng."

The head of the Turks nodded. "We've rolled out everything we have – automatic weapons, explosives, even a very old pre-Fall artillery cannon. It might not even work at this point, but it can't hurt to give it a try. The plan is to slaughter the enemy army from atop the wall as they swarm us; if and when they start climbing or getting through the gate, we get our people off the wall and reroute the city's electrical grid into it."

Vincent raised a bushy white eyebrow. "A fifty-foot high electrical fence made of corrugated steel."

"It's a contingency plan we've developed over the years," Rufus said. "It should be an interesting variable to throw into the mix at a crucial moment." He gestured to the city. "Are you ready? Wutai doesn't get much tourism – at all – so there aren't any hotels or hostels, but all our citizens have generously agreed to quarter your troops and refugees in their homes for the time being. Of course, all of you will be staying with me."

"I somehow doubt your people were feeling that magnanimous," Reeve remarked dryly.

Reno grinned. "They took a little persuadin', but we're very good at appealing to the humanity of our fellow men."

Beside him, Rude shifted slightly. "He threatened people," he clarified.

"Thank you, Rude, for enlightening us," Rufus said. "Shall we go in?"

In the back of the helicopter, Cloud had found several things: a survival kit with rations and water as well as various small toiletries, the mastered Fire Materia the Immaculate Swords had confiscated from him, and a note from Gabriel. Picking the paper up, Cloud could not help but smile; it was evident that Gabriel had been taught handwriting through flash-learning and had never really needed to use it. His letters were awkwardly formed and shaky. Even the Second Angel had weaknesses, apparently.

I hope this note finds you well, it went. If you are reading this, I assume you have escaped and are on your way to Wutai. Here is a little food and water so you can keep up your strength; the 'copter is fast, but will take the better part of a day to cross the ocean to the Western Continent. I also return to you your Fire Materia. If you got any Lost blood on your clothing or skin, you should not worry too much; the new breed has been rendered several hundred percent less contagious than the wild variety for purposes of population control. However, if any entered cuts or other lacerations, cauterize the wound thoroughly just to be sure. The disease is designed to gestate inside the dermal layer for perhaps five to seven minutes before moving on into the bloodstream; that is your grace period. I will see you at

Cloud eyed the quickly-drying Lost blood all over him. He had sustained several cuts and scrapes from being thrown through walls by Raphael, but though the black spatters came close they did not actually touch any of them. Vincent's injunction to burn any and all skin exposed to the disease resounded in his mind, making him shudder at the prospect. He seemed to have been fortunate enough to escape that, however.

Fatigue gripped him. He swiveled his seat back around to the control panel and rubbed at his eyes. As he did so, he felt a sharp pain below his right eye, and when he pulled his hand away from his face it had both black and red blood on it.

Cloud felt his stomach turn upside down. He whirled the chair around, rummaged through the survival kit until he found a small mirror. Afraid of what he might find but determined to know, he held up the mirror and inspected his face in it.

He looked disheveled and beaten, with a large purple bruise on his left cheek. What was more alarming, however, was a large, fresh gash. It started underneath his right eye and curled down his jaw, ending about halfway to his chin. It was covered in Lost blood.

Panic immediately began to set in, but Cloud choked it down and forced himself to be rational. It had only been two minutes, maybe three, since he'd taken off from New Nibelheim, and he'd gotten covered in Lost blood maybe thirty seconds before that. Gabriel's note said five to seven minutes, so if he treated this right now he would probably be okay.

But then… the skin on his face was delicate, not thick like that of his arms or legs. Did that affect his grace period? Could he be infected already? Cloud pushed those thoughts out of his mind and readied the Fire Materia, generating a low flame in his palm and bringing it up to white-hot intensity. He held the mirror in his other hand.

He had known pain more terrible than anyone should ever be forced to experience, but this still hurt him to even think about. He had no Restore Materia on him; whatever the cauterization did to his face, he would most likely be stuck with it.

For a little more than three seconds, Cloud sat stock-still, the flame in one hand, the mirror in the other. He was gripped with equally powerful and contrasting forces of urgency and hesitation. The need to keep himself from being infected was overwhelming, but so was the basic human instinct to avoid forever scarring his face.

Finally, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath. He stared into the mirror, steeling himself, and focused the flame into a sharp point as he brought it up to his face.

Rufus, unsurprisingly, inhabited the mansion once lived in by Godo. The old Wutainese leader had passed away shortly after the Fall, leaving everything to Yuffie. When she had elected to stay with Reeve and try to keep the failing WRO together, she had handed over temporary control of the city to Rufus, in order to keep him on their side and to make sure her homeland did not go unprotected.

The mansion had changed very little since Rufus had moved in so many years ago. There was still the indoor pond with koi, some of which had been originally owned by Godo, and the many decorative wall-hangings and secret passageways. Rufus had modernized the building, putting in computer terminals, a television, and other such amenities, but the décor stayed essentially the same.

"Do you drink?" Rufus asked his guests.

They had spent the day touring the city, and now he, Vincent, Reeve, Red XIII, Denzel, and Marlene were all in the mansion's living room, seated on cushions or standing depending upon their preference.

"Not for a long time," Reeve replied.

"Alcohol does not affect me."

"I have never understood the point of slowly killing one's brain for enjoyment," Red XIII said.

"It doesn't really do anything to me, either," Denzel volunteered.

All eyes swiveled to Marlene, who shrugged. "I'll take something just so you don't feel lonely, Rufus."

"Wonderful," the man said, removing a bottle of brandy from a cabinet in a corner of the room. "It's been a while since I had the opportunity to drink with such a lovely young woman."

"You're full of shit," Marlene sighed, but her eyes betrayed her pleasure at the remark.

Rufus shrugged easily and poured both of them a glass. He sat on a cushion across from her and held up his glass. "To the fallen and our future," he intoned. Marlene clinked her own glass against his and they sipped at the liquor.

"And what exactly does that future entail?" Vincent asked. "The Protectorate has been all but destroyed, the Central Continent is essentially lost, and you seem more than happy to sit here behind your walls and watch the world burn. Only now that the threat is on your doorstep are you doing anything."

Reeve made a warning sound in his throat, but Rufus nodded. "You make a good point," he said. "Wutai has always been famous for its isolationism, something I wanted to foster in order to increase my control over the city. A place that is entirely its own, with no new ideas or thoughts coming in from the outside, is much easier to regulate than something like your Protectorate. That's why we've done so well for ourselves while all of you were out living in the abandoned buildings of yesterday."

"So you admit we won't be able to count on your help for the restoration of the world," Vincent said, his eyes flashing.

His friends exchanged glances; Vincent was being unusually aggressive and outspoken. Was this Galian coming to the surface again?

Rufus gave Vincent a thin smile. "Do you want to see something, Vincent?"

"What?"

The President of Wutai got to his feet, still holding his brandy. "Follow me, all of you," he said. "I have something to show you."

The party trailed after Rufus as he led them through the halls of the mansion to a small storage closet in the back of the building. He reached up past a shelf and pushed a small button set into the wall, almost undetectable against the wood paneling of the closet.

The floor in front of him slid smoothly open to reveal a ladder leading down into blackness. Rufus began to climb down, keeping a steady grip on his brandy. They heard him touch down about five seconds later; Denzel and Red XIII sprang down without needing to use the ladder. Marlene stepped forward to begin climbing down, then stopped and handed Vincent her drink. "I need both hands," he said. "I'm not as spry as Mr. Glow-In-The-Dark."

He nodded and watched her climb down, then leapt down after her and landed lightly, being careful not to upset her drink. He handed it back to her, and they found themselves standing in front of a large, hermetically sealed metal door.

"Reminds me of Deepground."

"I assure you," Rufus said, keying in an access code at a keypad next to the door, "that it is nothing so dubious."

The seals on the door popped with a hiss. It slid smoothly open, revealing nothing but blackness. Lights came on a moment later, a row of them along the ceiling of the chamber beyond that stretched past the party's ability to see.

It was a massive reservoir, carved out of the rock of the earth. Moisture assailed all of them as they stepped inside, onto the rocky shore before the edge of the enormous underground lake.

"Rufus, this is incredible," Reeve said. "Is this your water supply?"

"We get water the same way you do – wind traps, moisture collectors, and so on. The difference is that we hoard it and dole it out in exceedingly precise portions. We know exactly what a man needs to drink daily in order to maintain body weight; we give the citizens that and no more, and we keep the surplus and put it down here. This is decades' worth of hoarding." His eyes, which were even brighter in the dimness, glittered. "Very soon, assuming we survive the coming conflict, we'll have enough to start the global climate change."

"You're not serious," Marlene breathed.

Red XIII stepped forward, sniffed the water. "He is entirely serious," he said. "I cannot even estimate how much water is here, but it is obviously enough to fill a small ocean, if not more. If used judiciously and intelligently – to nourish plant life that will trap the dunes and make them fertile, to induce moisture fronts and storm patterns, and so forth – it could return the Planet much of the way back to how it was before the Fall."

"Exactly," Rufus said. "This is the difference between you and me, Reeve. You just had to help every poor soul you saw. You couldn't bear to give up even more of the Planet to the Losts, to the freaks, so you stretched yourself too thin and made yourself impotent. I closed Wutai off, maintained a controlled population, and started planning in the long term." He gestured out at the mind-bogglingly huge reservoir laid out in front of them as he took another sip of brandy. "Just blowing this out of the earth took five years of constant demolition and clearing. There's a massive mound of rubble two miles out of Wutai that nobody talks about because I say nobody should. Now I'm poised to save the Planet, and you're a refugee here in my little kingdom."

"Ironic," Reeve murmured.

"How do you benefit?" Vincent asked. "What makes you so eager to be the Planet's savior?"

"Shin-Ra nearly destroyed the Planet once," Rufus replied. "People still think of me as the son of a tyrant, not my own person… and gathering this water has taken forty years of fostering that image, of cultivating tyranny and fear in the name of peace and a greater good. But it's finally time for me to break free of my father. I'll go down in history as the man with the vision, the plan, the one who saved the Planet." He drained his glass. "That will be my legacy. That will be what people remember when they think of Rufus Shin-Ra."

Nobody said anything for a moment. Marlene finally laughed. "Rufus, you've gotten altruistic in your old age."

Rufus snorted. "Call it altruism instead of selfishness if you like. That's why I'm doing this." He looked Vincent dead in the eye, not seeming to even register the demonic beast looming over him. "If you don't want to believe me, you don't have to."

Vincent seemed to shrink a little. "I apologize, Rufus," he said. "I've been… angry… and irrational since I became stuck this way. The change has been difficult."

"I sympathize," Rufus told him, and Vincent could not help but believe him.

They stood in silence for a minute, staring out over the vast expanse of Rufus's reservoir. Finally, the sound of somebody landing behind them echoed out into the cavern.

Reno strode forward to the edge of the lake. "Showin' them the reservoir, Boss?"

"I'm making a point," Rufus replied.

"Cool, cool," Reno said. "Listen, somebody just got here that I think all of you might be interested in seeing."

Marlene threw open the door to Cloud's hospital room and stopped in her tracks, arrested by shock and relief in equal measure. The blonde lay recuperating in a bed, hooked up to an IV. He looked battered and tired, but what made her heart leap into her throat was the horrible, blistered scar curling beneath his right eye and extending down his jaw. The skin was charred and burned, bright red patches showing through crisped black tissue, and small yellow boils had risen up along the edges of the wound.

"Cloud!" she cried, forcing herself to move and pulling him into an embrace. He laughed and winced simultaneously, wrapping his arms around her. "We thought you were gone!"

"I managed to make it out mostly in one piece," he replied, moving his mouth as little as possible. "I took a nasty hit to the face, though, and then I got Lost blood on it."

Red XIII came through the door next. He walked up to Cloud's bedside, his teeth bared in his version of a grin. "Good to see you're alive," he said, nuzzling the blonde's hand after Marlene disengaged from the hug. "That is by far one of the sloppiest cauterizes I have ever seen."

"You should have been here before the doctors started pumping me full of Cure magic and antibiotics," Cloud said. "They're waiting for the infection to go down some more before hitting me with more Cure; they claim it'll heal better that way. I don't really understand it that well. They say I'll always have a scar, but it shouldn't be that bad."

"I take it you managed to avoid infection."

Cloud looked uncomfortable, but he nodded. "I guess so. I don't feel any different, and looking at myself in the mirror with kànderén doesn't reveal anything. Do you…?"

"I detect no traces of the disease," Red XIII assured him. "I think you are free and clear, Cloud." He paused for a moment. "There are two people you need to see. Just be very calm and let us explain everything."

This confused him, but Cloud nodded. He trusted Red XIII, after all. The beast looked over his shoulder and called, "Bring them in, Reeve."

Reeve walked through the door with a smile and nod for Cloud, followed by two people Cloud never thought he would see again in his life.

Vincent carefully slipped Galian's massive frame through the door. Behind him came Denzel, still dressed in the jumpsuit of the Immaculate Swords. Cloud stared disbelievingly at them, trying to remain calm as Red XIII had said. It still burst out of him – "You're both dead!"

A grin appeared on Vincent's transformed face. "Not entirely. I managed to come back from the Lifestream by sending Galian in my place; however, Michael destroyed my body, so I was stuck with this one."

"You mean…"

"I will never be human – in some senses of the word – again. But I'm still alive, and I'm very glad to see you, Cloud."

Cloud nodded, still bewildered, and looked at Denzel. "What about you?" he asked. "I was told you'd disappeared, that you were probably dead. Where have you been?"

"Let me introduce you," Vincent broke in, "to Selaphiel, the Fifth Angel."

Cloud stared, dumbstruck. He finally found the presence of mind to ask, quietly, "Really?"

Denzel nodded, shame coloring his face. "Yes. It's a long story."

"He fought for us at the Battle of New Nibelheim, and he's on our side," Vincent said. After a moment's hesitation, he added, "I think you can trust him."

Cloud kept looking at Denzel, a deeply penetrating, measuring stare that seemed to strip the man of all pretensions and lay him open for examination. Finally, a crack appeared in the blonde's inscrutable veneer, and he gave a very small smile. "I don't know what you did, Denzel, or why you did it… but if Vincent thinks I can trust you, and you're helping us, I think what I don't know won't hurt me."

Obviously relieved, Denzel blew out a very long breath. "Thanks, Cloud."

"What happened?" Marlene finally asked, obviously eager to know what had gone on. "Where'd they keep you? How'd you escape?"

"I'll start at the beginning," Cloud said, holding up a hand to stem her questions. "But before I do, all of you should know something." His expression hardened and his mouth drew into a firm line. "Michael's going back to New Nibelheim to inspect the army and march on Wutai. I don't know how they're going to do it, or how long we have, but he knows we're here, and he's coming for us."

Cloud paused, looked at his friends gathered in the room. Vincent stood silently in a corner, eyes burning with Galian's power. Reeve stayed close to Marlene, a hand on her shoulder, and she sat at the side of Cloud's bed, a worried expression on her face. Red XIII sat next to her, comfortable on his haunches. Denzel seemed the most distant from all of them, but he wore a look of determination.

"There aren't any second chances this time, guys," Cloud continued. "Michael's going to attack with a vengeance.

"If we lose here… we all die."