By a Fraction of a Degree

A FFVII Fanfiction work by findthetiger129

Rated T for Violence and Language.

I do not own Final Fantasy VII, or any of the characters, trademarks or likenesses from Final Fantasy VII or its spin-offs That honor goes to Square-Enix.

Part III: Demons


Chapter 55, Wow, What Were the Odds of That?

June 16th [ ν ] – εуλ 0008

As soon as the air cleared, Zack realized Cloud was missing. And he wasn't the only one. The SOLDIERs and the troopers on the Sector 4 side of the bridge had retreated, and that meant they had an opening out of this firefight, even if it meant jumping over that gap leading down into the abyss below. "Guys! That way!" He yelled, continuing to shield Aerith behind his wall. He felt her channel a limit and to his relief it was the one that made everyone temporarily invincible. Great. Now to get the hell out of here before they were overwhelmed and so they could get down into the slums to find Cloud. Sheathing his sword and lifting Aerith up with his good arm, he leapt across the hole and the others followed. He didn't bother putting her down as he raced through the streets until the gunfire was well behind them.

He could hear the others following him, though at some point, he realized they had outstripped the few troopers that had decided they were the bigger threat than those guys that had come out of the reactor by several blocks and ducked down a nearby alley. The others joined him soon after. "Is everyone all right?" Zack asked.

"I think so," Yuffie said. "Where's Cloud?"

"He fell from the bridge," Vincent murmured. "We should go to the slums."

"And soon," Zack agreed. "Shinra may already be sending someone down there. At the very least, I think I have an idea of where he might be."

Aerith's eyes lit up in recognition. "You're right! We should hurry. I can show you the way from here." She beckoned that they follow her as she ran along the alley, away from the reactor.

"Where's that?" Cid asked as the others started to run after them. Everyone was in too much of a hurry to answer.

They continued on for a couple of minutes and Aerith had brought them to a set of emergency stairs when suddenly, Kunsel heard his PHS buzz. He reached for it even as Zack helped Aerith lift up the trap door leading down through the main plate. "Cloud?"

Zack paused, listening… And his advanced hearing caught the sound of someone breathing on the other end.

Kunsel's eyebrows furrowed in concern. "Cloud? You okay over there?"

Zack was listening with baited breath now. "He's… I'm not…" The voice quavered. It didn't sound like his friend. The owner of this particular voice sounded a bit younger and very rattled.

Kunsel seemed to have come to the same conclusion. "Hey, calm down, kid. It's okay. Is Cloud there? Can he talk?"

Zack didn't hear anything for a second and then Kunsel spoke again. "Cloud?" Another moment passed and then Kunsel handed the PHS to him. "He wants to talk to you."

Zack put the phone to his ear. "Cloud? Are you all right?"

"Mostly," Cloud said, "I blacked out for a bit. Only just came to. I think I'm still a little shaken up… world's still spinning… but the kid's okay… He just got a couple of scratches. You won't believe where we landed…"

"Actually, I think I will," Zack said with a sigh. "Don't move from that spot, stay out of sight, don't go to sleep, whatever you do, and we'll be there in half an hour." He hung up the PHS and handed it back to Kunsel. "Let's go, he's at the church."


When Cloud came to, he was at first not sure he was awake yet. He seemed to be surrounded by familiar yellow flowers, though they didn't look like they'd been properly weeded for a long time, and even more confusing, he saw a young face looking down at him. He groaned and tried to sit up. His stomach lurched but he managed to hang onto his breakfast, barely. That was when he'd seen his PHS in the kid's hand and took it from him so he could talk to whoever was on the other end. It was perhaps only then when he fully realized where he'd landed. The irony of the whole situation was not lost on him.

He'd just hung up his PHS and was finally beginning to regain some sense of balance when he noticed the kid next to him start to sway. "Hey, you okay?"

The boy didn't answer as his knees went out from under him. Cloud caught him and carried him over to the bench, the same one where he'd slept through a lot of Zack's adventure with Zirconiaide. Looking him over, he soon realized the cause. A bandage that had obviously been applied by someone who knew what they were doing was wrapped around the boy's shoulder. It was peeking out of his shirt sleeve on his right side. Geostigma.

He wasn't surprised. Even above plate, the renegade Turks in the area had been reporting instances of it among the children here, and the strain from the fall couldn't have helped either. He tried to think what Tifa or Aerith would do, and after a moment he put his hand to the boy's forehead. The boy's was definitely warm.

Cloud straightened and looked around the empty church. Surely there was some way Aerith had kept the flowers watered around here… Ah ha! He saw a bucket standing by the door and walked out with it, searching for a tap. He soon found one and returned. Looking around again, he discovered a small rag in the back near an old washbasin and after taking a moment to make sure it was mostly clean, he returned to where the boy lay and dipped it into the bucket. He then placed the cool cloth on the boy's head before taking the First Sword off his back to lean it against the pew and sitting down on the floor next to it, leaning against the seat. He could already feel a headache forming and he reflexively cast a Cure to see if that helped. A few moments later, he heard the boy stir behind him. Looking over, he saw the kid blink and then try to sit up. He put out a hand to stop him.

"You should probably rest," he said. "I think you have a fever."

The boy looked at him in surprise. "Who…?" he asked.

"No one important," Cloud said.

It didn't help matters that the kid was looking up at him with a very curious expression. "You saved me?" he asked.

Cloud nodded and the boy's eyes widened as he smiled weakly. "That was cool…"

The swordsman wasn't prepared for that. "What were you doing on that bridge?" he asked.

"I heard noises, and then those SOLDIERs came…" the boy answered.

"You should have gotten out of there," Cloud murmured, standing and walking to the aisle so he could watch the door.

He could feel the boy's eyes watching him and it didn't help that the expression on the kid's face was one he recognized from when Marlene had first met him. Awe. There was a very uncomfortable silence until the door to the church swung wide open and he looked up to see Zack and Aerith both rushing in with the others behind them.


Tseng listened carefully as Reno gave his report from on-site and found his pulse quickening slightly. So it seemed GUARDIAN had returned to Midgar to investigate. That, he'd expected. What he hadn't expected was the platoon of unknown, apparently SOLDIER enhanced militants with machine guns. This was unprecedented. Where the hell had these guys come from?

According to Reno's report, they'd all been dispatched and their bodies were being removed by the SOLDIERs and troopers on-site, but they still had no clue what they had been doing, and that made the situation dire. The answers had to lie with that elevator shaft Reno and Rude had seen them exit. Since he was planning to meet with Heidegger on the matter within the next few minutes, he had instructed his two subordinates to guard the shaft and await further instructions. In the meantime, he had some pointed questions for the head of Public Safety.

Fortunately the bridge hadn't been completely destroyed by that grenade but several of their troopers had died, and it looked like the SOLDIERs on their side of the three-way fight had even taken a casualty or two. By Reno's assessment whatever those militants that had followed the members of GUARDIAN out of the reactor were, they were powerful fighters. Probably not on par with Sephiroth, seeing as from Reno's vantage point behind the majority of the combatants he'd been able to see that the advantage had been with GUARDIAN before Shinra's troops arrived. Still, they were definitely a force to be reckoned with, even though they had disappeared back into that elevator after the bridge was damaged. This was a dangerous situation.

He walked along the halls of the 43rd Floor, reaching the place where the two board members were waiting. Upon pulling open the door to the conference room, he saw Heidegger already seated at one end of the table in his usual military garb, and Scarlet was next to him, in her usual red dress. They had appeared to be talking until just a moment ago but now the last two remaining members of the original board looked up at him, both very concerned. Tseng pretended to ignore this and took a seat across from them.

"Thank you for coming," he said, attempting to suppress any sense of satisfaction he may or may not have had from being permitted to make Scarlet do what he wanted her to in favor of the seriousness at hand. He searched through the files in the briefcase he'd brought with him and produced the file containing the emails he'd recovered, along with photo stills from the security cameras at Mako Reactor 5, the photo stills from Hojo's escape, and several other files containing the exhaustive mountains of research he had accumulated over the last couple of months, including budgets going back at least three decades if not further back, correspondence with the president as well as Professor Hojo and each other and anything else he could compile to make his case solid.

For the maximum effect he made sure the image of the unknown man emerging from Reactor Five and the emails he'd recently intercepted were placed squarely at the top of the heap, and that the pile of neatly organized papers, which was at least the size of a large dictionary, landed on the table with a very satisfying thump.

"As you know, one of the projects Rufus has charged the Department of Administrative Research with over the last few months has been the investigation of the rumored top-secret project known as Deepground."

As dense as Heidegger was, he seemed to have noticed what lay in front of him right away and he definitely reacted with some nervousness, while Scarlet hadn't bothered to look at what lay before them because she drew herself up to her full height and folded her arms dismissively. "Kya-ha-ha. Tseng darling, I told you the last time we spoke on this matter. We all know very well that Deepground was simply one of the Science Department's little jokes that they spread around as a rumor to keep the SOLDIERs in line. They all had an absolutely wicked sense of humor; you should know that."

Tseng nodded. "Of course. But there is something else that is of equal importance that I felt might be related." He indicated the image of the unknown man climbing out of the reactor.

That was when she finally bothered to glance down at the photo and he saw her swallow hard. Tseng took a couple of moments let the image sink in before continuing. "Shortly after this image was taken, there was an incident at Mako Reactor 5, where this occurred. While it's equally troubling, in regards to our security, how GUARDIAN managed to find their way into sensitive areas, what is even more troubling is what occurred while they were apparently investigating the situation."

He slipped a final image on top of the file. It was a final still from the same security camera looking out at the entrance to the reactor. In it, Zack, Kunsel and several other members of GUARDIAN were standing at the T-intersection at the bridge, flanked by SOLDIERs and troopers on either side. It was right before the grenade had gone off. Cloud could easily be seen diving to cover what appeared to be a small boy behind them, even as he had drawn back his right boot to kick the explosive away. While it alone cut a rather dramatic image, that wasn't the reason Tseng had picked this picture. He had selected it because the small company of mako-enhanced men and women toting machine guns and clad in mako suits could be seen quite clearly at the entrance.

"Whether you know nothing or not, the fact remains that a small unit of physically enhanced militants with missing Shinra technology and," he reached for another photo Reno had sent him of the logo stamped on one of the enemy fighters' breastplates, "a symbol used by the science department in connection with some heavily encrypted documents even the Turks weren't privy to before our current president took office. This is a crisis. We have no idea who these people are, or if there are more of them. If there is something any of you know about it, it would be best to say something now."

It was at that point when the head of Weapons Development and the head of Public Safety looked at each other. For the first time, both of them looked worried, Tseng felt a sense of triumph even with his concern. He had them!

It was Heidegger who finally spoke, and in the face of this overwhelmingly obvious evidence, even he could see they'd been outgunned. "Perhaps… there are some things we can tell you."

"Is that so?" Tseng looked behind him to find Rufus Shinra himself standing in the door, with Elena behind him. He had apparently set himself up in an adjacent meeting room to overhear this interview.

"Mr. President," he acknowledged.

Rufus nodded in his direction, an undisguised smirk on his face. "I hope I'm not interrupting," he said.

Tseng shook his head. "No sir."

"Excellent." Rufus padded into the room with a calm, controlled demeanor, Dark Nation at his side, before taking a seat next to the leader of the Turks and looking across the table at his two wayward subordinates. Dark Nation sat on the floor next to him and Rufus nonchalantly reached out and scratched his pet behind the ears as he continued. "Because, I would be very interested to hear this."


Shears was watching Elfe work in the kitchen when Shalua returned. "I guess the cameras are taken care of?" he asked.

The woman nodded, depositing her equipment by the door to her room before looking around questioningly. "Where's Veld?"

"He took Lou and Rod out to watch from a distance," Elfe answered. "He doesn't want to be involved, but that's not saying he doesn't want to know what's happening." She was slicing through some vegetables with the same care and precision as she trained with her katana. Shears couldn't help but feel a little more relaxed by watching the familiar movements. Having the sick, injured, and potentially crazy SOLDIER sleeping in their back room was no small cause of concern to him. He didn't mind doing GUARDIAN the favor of keeping an eye on the man while they went to investigate. If not for Zack and his friends, Elfe might be dead right now, but he couldn't help but be worried. Having Elfe in such close proximity to a potential source of the disease made him edgy.

"Has anyone seen the charger for my PHS?" Shalua asked.

"I'm not sure…" Elfe answered. "Did you check the living area?"

The bespectacled woman nodded. "I checked all over the place… hmm…" she looked toward the back room.

"If you go in there, be quiet. That SOLDIER's still in there," Shears said.

"Mm…" Shalua seemed to be half listening. "All right…" He watched her walk down the hall heard a door open.

Shears was about to stand up and help Elfe with some potatoes when suddenly he heard someone yelling "You! Get the hell away from me!" He was at the door within moments and flung it open taking in the scene that lay before him. In the dim light of a lamp by a desk against the far wall, he could see that Shalua had jumped back from the cot in surprise, as the man had flung himself away from her, his glowing eyes reflecting complete and utter terror.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

Shalua looked completely confused, and no wonder. She'd helped Kunsel treat the SOLDIER's wounds not even a day ago. He'd been rather delirious at the time so he hadn't been completely coherent, but still… "I don't know," she said. "I only had the light on for a second and then he started shouting."

Shears looked down at the man cowering against the wall and knelt in front of him, careful to avoid the bandages as he tried to steady him and meet his eyes. "Hey, what's the matter?" It was a rather jarring experience. In spite of the fact Shears was not himself SOLDIER enhanced, Kunsel's friend was so weak the martial artist was still matching him in strength.

The SOLDIER glared at him before looking back in Shalua's direction, a haunted look in his eyes. His breathing was ragged like he'd run a marathon and he was curling up on the floor as though to protect himself from an invisible attacker. "It's that little $!#&%... She put him in my head… The transparent… Shelke… Get lost Usher… Where's my sister…?"

The SOLDIER's ramblings were getting less coherent by the second but at the mention of the name, Shalua's mouth fell open. A split second later she was kneeling next to Shears, even as the SOLDIER was continuing his fight for consciousness. "Luxiere," she said firmly, using the name Kunsel had used. "Are you saying my sister… Shelke did this to you?!"

"Tsviets… Go away Usher…"

Shalua grabbed him by the shoulder with her normal arm. "Where is she!?" the woman demanded. Unfortunately, the man had drifted off again.

"Shalua!" Shears gently pulled her away before lifting Luxiere up and pulling him back to the cot. "I don't think that's going to help."

For a second, he thought she was going to fight him, but finally, she let out a sigh of defeat. After watching him rearrange the SOLDIER on the cot and check to make sure his wounds hadn't opened again, she suddenly seemed thoughtful though. "Maybe not, but now I think I know what will." She walked to the desk, picking up the PHS charger before walking to the door.

"What are you doing?" Shears asked.

"Remember those encrypted files we stole back when we helped rescue those people from the Shinra building?" Shalua asked.

Shears nodded.

"Several of them had the same symbol in them that he had on that breastplate Kunsel brought him in with," the woman explained. "If Shelke is the one that did this to him, then those files might help me find her! They could get us all some answers!" She hurried out of the room, a new look of determination on her face.


Zack reached the spot where Cloud stood first and the first thing out of his mouth was "Damn it Cloud, you scared us half to death! Are you sure you're okay?" He was already looking him over for injuries.

"I'm fine," Cloud said, obviously trying not to sound too rattled by the experience.

Aerith was looking Cloud over with an appraising eye. "Well, we're definitely glad you're all right. It looks like the roof and the flower bed broke your fall."

Cloud looked behind him at the hole in the floor. "I guess. I'm amazed they're still here."

Aerith smiled. "Well, they're very resilient, because this is a sacred place."

"Well damn," Zack glanced behind him as Cid spoke to see the pilot looking at the greenery. "When you said Aerith could make stuff grow, even in Midgar, I didn't believe you, but you really weren't kidding!" The pilot seemed impressed, as did Yuffie.

"I guess it comes with the territory of being an Ancient," Kunsel mused.

"I really didn't do that much," Aerith said thoughtfully. "I think there's a special current of the Lifestream that runs through here and the area around where I used to live. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't hear the Planet as well here."

"That's a good point," Kunsel agreed. "Though I think this is probably something to talk about later. What happened?" He gestured to the hole in the roof, though it was clear he was indicating what had happened up on the bridge.

Zack turned his attention back to Cloud, and the young boy who was peeking up over the back of the first pew. "He's right," he agreed. "What did happen up there?"

"A live grenade," Cloud said. "I kicked it away but the blast still sent us flying."

Zack took a seat behind the bench where the kid was. "Well, that was some quick thinking." He looked at the boy. "What about you kid? Are you all right?"

The boy nodded and then pointed at Cloud, saying quietly "He saved me."

Kunsel also sat on one of the front benches, deep in thought. "But there's definitely something going on up at that reactor. Whatever those guys were, they were wearing the same mako suit Luxiere was wearing."

"That's true," Zack agreed. "What was their deal anyway? What were they even doing there?"

Kunsel was quiet for a moment before replying. "I don't know what you remember of the rumors that used to fly around the Shinra building back in the day, but I have a theory. Do you remember hearing anything about a project called Deepground?"

"Not really," Zack said. "What kind of project?"

Kunsel shrugged. "I never heard anything specific, but right around the time Luxiere disappeared, for whatever reason some rumors cropped up about sightings of strange helicopters and someone said they saw a distinctive symbol somewhere. I wasn't quite sure I believed it, but now…"

"We shouldn't hang around here longer than we have to. Shinra's troops are probably already on their way," Cid pointed out.

"True," Zack agreed. He turned to address the boy. "So, do you have a name kid?"

"Denzel," the boy answered looking up at him nervously. He was sitting up now, though he still looked exhausted.

"Well Denzel," Zack began. "Don't worry about a thing, we'll get you home as soon as we can." He turned his attention back to the current situation. "First thing's first. We need to get out of here." He started to the door and everyone moved to follow him.

It seemed it was not a moment too soon either, as Zack was certain he'd seen a search team approach the church right as they'd turned a corner. They were almost to the base of the stairs when Kunsel's PHS buzzed and he answered it. "Shears? What is it?"

He listened for a while and then nodded. "Okay, I'll be back in a few minutes. Has anything else happened since we left?... Oh, okay… Thanks." He ended the call. "Apparently Luxiere just woke up for a bit but he still doesn't know who he is." Pocketing the device, he considered for a moment. "Veld took Lou and Rod to investigate some of the other reactors and see if they have any similar elevator shafts, though I guess we should probably figure out what comes next."

"Yeah," Zack agreed.

"These people are the same ones that took Professor Hojo," Vincent pointed out. "Investigating Nibelheim might be informative."

"That's a good point," Zack said. "That was also where I got Cloud's SOLDIER uniform and it had that logo on it. Maybe we can find out some more there."

Kunsel paced back and forth at the base of the stairs a couple of times. "The other thing to consider is the fact that as long as we're here, Shinra's going to be tearing the city apart for us." He looked at Zack sheepishly. "Sorry I dragged you into this. It's just…"

Zack shook his head. "No, Luxiere was in trouble, and we might have been able to help. Even without the stuff that's going on, you know we would have come anyway. He was my friend too, don't forget."

Kunsel considered for a moment. "Yeah." Finally, he seemed to have come to a decision. "You guys go investigate Nibelheim. I'll take the kid back to his parents, and stay with Luxiere until you can figure something out."

"You sure about that?" Cid asked.

The SOLDIER nodded. "The fewer of us are here right now, the harder it'll be for Shinra to find us."

"All right," Zack agreed. "Be careful."

Denzel looked up at Cloud who wordlessly nodded and gestured that he go with the other SOLDIER and then everyone left Kunsel and the boy on the stairs. They still had to get to Sector 6 before they could safely leave.


And the plot thickens.

See you next week!