Summary: Left alone in Sector 7, Zack decides to explore his new hometown. He gets his first solo mercenary job, and meets some unfriendly people at a bar. That's not the only unsettling encounter though, but at least he can understand that one.
Chapter 10: Good Neighbouring
Zack watched them go.
There were lamps here and there, and lights from windows. Plus whatever Hojo had done to him in Nibelheim had improved his night-vision considerably from even SOLDIER First standards. He watched through the deep gloom until Cloud and Aerith rounded a bend and were out of sight.
It was only then that he realized he was trusting Aerith's safety to a guy he'd only known for a couple days.
Life was fucking strange.
He stood there, trying to see movement on the mountains at the edge of the sector. Were those movements Cloud and Aerith on a green chocobo, or were they things that would hunt Cloud and Aerith and that chocobo, and that Zack should protect them from?
Was he imagining things?
He was definitely imaging things.
Worst case scenario-type things, but who could blame him? These past five years had been nothing but worst-case scenario on top of even worser-case scenario.
But he did trust Cloud. And Aerith hadn't been a slouch in the battle department.
Zack smiled. His girlfriend was kick-ass. How cool was that?
Still, he knew he wouldn't settle until Cloud returned and reported her safe at home, so rather than go back into Cloud's small apartment, he checked the gil in his pocket (considerably more than this morning) and headed into Sector 7. If he was going to be living here, he should probably know his way around.
It was crowded and noisy. Lots of people in the streets (more like alleys), talking, playing, dancing…. Some guy tried to give him a music disc, but Zack just shook his head.
He got himself a beer from an open air bar and stopped to savour it. It probably wasn't as nice as the ones Cloud had brought home with him earlier, but it was Zack's first brew since he'd nearly been killed so it tasted wonderful.
He browsed the weapon shop, smiling widely at the irritable grump behind the counter. He found an armourer. And he found Little Gongaga.
Found it…. And stopped.
There might be people Zack had known on that street. Family, even. But it had been longer than five years since he'd visited anyone but his parents. If he went down that street, would people recognize him? Would they call out as friend, or would they jeer because he'd failed?
Would they run away in fright, assuming he was a zombie?
Zack went back to the central area, the one with that big bar on the square. The beer had tasted good. How would a decent whiskey taste?
Before he got there, some kid stopped him by tugging on his shirt. She was a cute kid, with a worried expression.
"You're part of the Watch, right?"
Zack's mind blanked, because no, but kinda? She didn't wait for an answer though, so Zack heard all about her lost friends, and how worried she was, and would he go find them before they got into trouble? "They like to go where there's food, and nice people who give them treats when they ask."
Turned out they were cats.
Zack nearly laughed, but then he thought, why not? What else did he have to do, and it was probably smarter than spending his limited money on whiskey that wouldn't even get him drunk.
So he dutifully trooped around using the kid's unhelpful tips. "Where people gather and will give them treats" could be anywhere under the plate. Except maybe Sector 2. (He'd done a lot of missions to that sector because it was the testing area for Weapons Development. There wasn't a whole lot of if fit for human residence.)
Zack circled around, to the gate where Chocobo Sam's Delivery Service had dropped them off. There were two new guards on the gate and they watched him warily, but no more warily than they watched everyone else. Most of the stores were still open and there were people browsing or standing around, but no cat.
He decided to follow the crowd heading back into the sector. At a T-junction in the middle of nothing, Zack saw a snow-white cat gleaming under a lamp. It had a collar, so that probably meant it was at least kind of tame.
This would be fun, he thought as he approached.
It was well-known, (and during Genesis's time at least, well mourned) that cats and SOLDIERs didn't mix. The sweetest, most easygoing cat in all Midgar was just as like to hiss, bite, and scratch any SOLDIER that tried to pet them and the laziest, fattest cat would run away like a guard fang was chasing them.
Add to that, Zack wasn't a cat person.
He inched closer, making the silly noises people always made when trying to tempt a feline to do anything. He held out his hand, fingers loose and open, ready to pull back as soon as the cat turned feral.
It sniffed and rubbed its cheek along his fingers, before running off.
Zack stayed crouched. All he could think was 'huh'. Maybe he smelled different?
He raised his hand and gave himself a sniff. It smelled like him, like he'd smelled since getting out of Nibelheim, but it also smelled like Aerith and the flowers that surrounded her.
He smiled with a happiness he knew was dopey.
He kept the smile as he wandered in the direction the cat had fled. He wasn't lost yet, and the evening was nice, and he'd found his way back. Life was good.
The motorcycle shop was closed, so Zack made a mental note to come back sometime later. Although, it would have to be some motorbike to get up the man-made mountains of dirt and trash that Shinra used to divide under the plate from the wastes the way Cloud's Deza could.
Taking a longer route was better than riding a chocobo.
Without warning the street widened into a large open area. He'd arrived back at the square with the bar. "Seventh Heaven." The sign for it, easily the tallest thing in the sector, was probably as close as anyone born down here got to the heavens.
Since it was likely to feature in his new future, because everyone needed a local, Zack decided to go check it out. As he got closer, he noticed it was remarkably quiet for such a big place. There was no music. If there were people inside, they weren't yelling, or singing, or fighting. It didn't look particularly busy. There were only two people on the porch.
He'd essentially changed his mind when he spotted that white cat sitting on the porch, waiting for someone to give it treats.
That kid's hints were helpful after all.
Zack climbed the stairs in a crouch, smooth and easy. Hand out, fingers loose. Ignoring his small audience, he made those stupid kissy noises. The cat looked at him, watched him approach, but otherwise ignored him.
He was that close to grabbing the thing when the doors to the bar opened and some red-haired guy went flying out. 'You don't go treatin' my people like that, ya hear?" boomed a large black man from the doorway.
The cat, of course, took off.
"What you doin'? Sneakin' around my place!" Heavy footsteps heralded the large man's approach.
"Trying to get Betty's cats back to her." Zack stood with a sigh. "Cats, however, can't discern friendly intentions."
Even standing Zack had to look up to the guy. He was half a head taller, and probably twice as wide as the former SOLDIER, and every bit of it was muscle. The bar guy wore sunglasses (even though it was dark) and Zack wondered if he was blind in that eye. There were enough scars around the socket to support that theory.
He held out his hand. "Zack Fair. Just arrived in Sector 7 and looking to help out."
The black guy lifted his right hand and displayed a huge metal attachment where his hand should've been.
Zack raised his own hand, feeling like an idiot. "Oh man. Sorry. Didn't notice." He scrubbed through his hair. "Still, I'm looking for a good bar to hang out in. Since I'm going to be here a while."
The guy pointed his weapon arm at Zack. "I see those eyes. Them are SOLDIER eyes."
"Uh, yeah. Mako power." Zack twirled a finger. "Yay?"
"If you're a SOLDIER, then you're Shinra dog, and I ain't gonna have no Shinra shit dog lapping around my place!" He stepped forward, leaning close, frowning aggressively. Zack wondered if he'd found a bar fight after all.
He didn't actually want to fight.
Zack held his hands up. "Hey man, I was just looking for a cat."
"Barrett? What's taking you so long?" It was Cloud's friend, Tifa. She froze as soon as she saw Zack. "Oh. It's you."
"Heya." Zack waved.
She crossed her arms. "What're you doing here?" She wasn't any more friendly that the black guy, but at least her appearance had stopping anyone from throwing a punch.
Zack took a half step back, but kept his hands up. "Just a little misunderstanding, I guess," he said. "I got hired to find some cats."
"You know this guy, Tifa?" The guy didn't take his eyes off Zack.
"Cloud vouches for him."
"Cloud," the guy sneered.
Tifa went on. "Says he's no longer with Shinra. Just a merc like him."
"Hence the cat job," Zack stuck in. He tried smiling. Both of them frowned harder. "Look, I haven't caught a single cat yet, and since this is my first solo job in the sector, that kind of failure's going to really impact my approval rating. So, if it's all the same to you, I'm just gonna mosey…"
"Are you looking for Betty's cats?" Tifa asked suddenly.
"Ah, yeah. That was the kid's name."
"You're really looking for her cats," she repeated.
Zack refrained from rolling his eyes. He shrugged. "It's a job."
She looked at him silently for a long moment. The guy beside her twitched a little but didn't say anything.
"Try the training ground over there." She jerked her chin to her right. "You enter through a half-buried old culvert, so it's easy to miss."
"Uh, thanks," Zack responded, surprised. He backed down a stair and tossed them a sloppy salute. "Have a good night."
He jumped down the rest of the stairs in one go, well aware that he'd be in range of Barret's gun until he left the square. He kept his ears out for the sound of a round being chambered. His shoulder blades itched, but he forced his walk to be loose and easy by thinking about nothing. He was just a guy, looking for cats, in a town he didn't know, filled with hostile people who might kind of want to kill him…
As soon as he rounded a bend and knew that guy, Barret, couldn't see him, Zack let out a breath. Shiva's tits, that had felt close. Zack made a mental note to avoid that bar in the future and went looking for a cat.
He eventually found the training ground entrance - mostly because he asked a couple women who were just standing around. He'd walked right past it even though it was exactly how Cloud's friend had described it – a half-buried culvert pipe. He had to bend nearly in half to even get into the place, and Galatine's hilt hit the top on nearly every step making the whole thing 'bong' like a Wutaian temple gong. Finally on the other side, he was rewarded by the gleam of snow-white fur.
"One more try," he muttered.
He kept low and slow, with open hand and weird noises, and he got close enough to grab it. It hissed. He ignored it, giving it a little scratch behind the ears.
Instead of crawling though the culvert again (which had been uncomfortable the first time and would likely be painful with a cat in the mix) Zack jumped up onto the roof of one of the lower buildings surrounding the yard and then down onto the road. A passing couple gave little half-screams.
Blushing, Zack begged pardon and made his way out of there.
It took him some time to reorient himself (long enough for the cat to have settled down enough to remove its claws from his shoulder) but eventually he found the playground with the kids.
Betty was there, with an older man standing at her shoulder. There was a resemblance, so Zack figured this was her father – or a much older brother.
He'd prepared himself to admit defeat – he'd only caught one cat out of the three she'd asked for – but when he saw the yard fully, the girl had two identical white cats at her feet.
That explained… not much actually. "Uh, here." He held out the last one.
"Thank you!" the girl said, gathering up the final cat. "I was worried that you wouldn't find them all, since you're new here."
"No, no." Zack said airily. "Your tips were good."
To his embarrassment, the girl insisted on paying him. He got a peppermint bull's eye (yum), and a Maiden's Kiss potion. "In case you're turned into a frog."
The kid looked confused when Zack burst out laughing. He'd probably spent half his childhood as a toad. All the kids in Gongaga had.
He held up the potion and grinned. "Thanks, kid."
The man (father, Zack decided) thanked him as well and then ushered the girl out of the play area. It could be a school, he decided, taking one last look before heading out himself. For some reason, he'd never associated school with Lower Midgar, but Reno was from somewhere down here, and the Turks wouldn't have taken him if he didn't have basic literacy.
Did they pay taxes down here?
Probably to Shinra at least, he thought. Shinra made everyone pay taxes even if they did fuck all to help them. But Zack wondered if there were sector taxes to pay for things like schools, and sanitation. Like, how did the Neighbourhood Watch get the reward money?
He'd asked Cloud a lot of questions when they'd been traversing the wastes. Felt like he had a whole lot more.
He wandered back to Cloud's apartment. There was still dinner and that beer. If he could find Cloud's kit, he could start fixing some of the dings in his sword. Polishing her up right, rather than the rough maintenance he'd done on his flight from Nibelheim. Indulging in the soothing rhythms and smells of sword care sounded really nice.
From a narrow side lane, a tall figure in a dark cloak jumped at him.
Well, jumped was an exaggeration, but the person, guy – whatever – was suddenly in Zack's peripheral and Zack's instincts had him thinking 'threat' before he'd even processed the movement.
Galatine was out instantly, held defensively in front of him, threatening just because of its size. The person in the cloak didn't seem to notice. He groaned, and moaned, and sounded like every muscle in his body ached.
Zach had made sounds exactly like that after some of Hojo's injections, and if the cloaked guy felt even a tenth as bad as Zack had at the time, then he wasn't going to be attacking anyone anytime soon. Zack swung the buster back onto the harness.
"Hey, man. You okay?" Stupid question. The guy staggered towards Zack, moving as if blind. "You got a place to stay?"
In response, the guy fell over. Just, bam! Like someone had pulled out his spine. His breath rattled. It was another sound Zack was familiar with.
Instinctively Zack tried to cast Cure, but he didn't have any Heal materia equipped.
Well, someone around here had to have healing materia.
Zack bent down and prepared to lift the guy and carry him to a busier area, where he could get help. A thin hand shot out and caught his wrist. Zack's brain shorted out.
White, grey. Mist.
An empty plain.
The Midgar wastes. Body after body staggering through. Muttering… wanting….
Reunion…
Zack ripped himself away from the grasping hand. He knew mind-fuckery when it was happening. VR was another thing Hojo's evil minions had loved to play with.
"What did you do to him?" a voice asked from up the lane. A chubby guy in a baggy, white T-shirt stood at junction ahead. Far enough away to be out of reach.
"Me? Nothing," Zack said. "He just came out of the alley and fell."
"Why'd he reach for you like that then?"
"Because he's fucking dying?" Zack answered. "D'you have a healing potion or healing materia?" It was too late. Zack heard the guy's heart stop beating, heard his lungs stop rattling. "Shit," he muttered. "You got a Phoenix Down?"
White shirt guy snorted. "Do I look like I gotta Phoenix Down? You gonna check him for ID? You know, before his body dissolves?"
Zack didn't want to touch the robed figure. Sure, the guy was dead, but what if touching him brought back that hallucination?
"Can you go get someone from the Neighbourhood Watch?" he asked finally.
White shirt guy shrugged, "I suppose," He took off in a rolling walk that was at least in the right direction. Zack settled down to wait
It took a while for Wymer to show. Zack figured it had been a good thirty minutes, and the robed body was just starting to twirl away into green sparks. Wymer crouched next and pulled at the robe, looking for something. Whatever it was, he hadn't found it by the time the body had dissolved.
"Didn't say anything?" he asked Zack. Zack shook his head.
Wymer rubbed his chin. "There's been a few of these robed figures around the sector," he said. "That's the second one I know of that's just collapsed. Did you notice a tattoo?"
Again, Zack shook his head.
"Are they part of a cult?" asked White shirt. He was excited at being so close to a mystery. Zack would've loved to trade him places.
"We don't know what they are," Wymer answered White shirt. "They showed up maybe a week ago? They don't speak. They don't bother anybody. They just wander around moaning."
"Maybe they're from the underground lab," White shirt suggested gleefully.
Wymer sighed. "That's just a stupid rumour."
Zack didn't want to hear it. He'd done his duty. His head hurt from whatever the robed guy had touched him with, and he was two sectors away from his girlfriend. He made sure Wymer didn't need him anymore and said good night.
If this had been before, he would've texted Kunsel to get all the latest conspiracy theories. As it was, Zack slowly climbed Cloud's stairs, and decided that he'd find a way to replace the beer. Maybe if he drank it fast enough, Zack could get a buzz on and forget about weird moaning guys who put words in his brain in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Sephiroth's.
He unlocked the door to Cloud's apartment and stepped through. He didn't notice as a single black feather floated in the air behind him
o0|0o.
Several days later, Tseng's PHS buzzed in his pocket. One-two. One. Then one more. He looked around at the executives arguing about who needed the most money for their pet projects. They weren't paying attention to him.
He gave Rude a nod, and the martial artist slid into the security position as Tseng slipped out of the room.
When he had ensured his privacy, Tseng took out his personal phone. This one was undetectable and untappable. There were no numbers stored in it, and it didn't record any information about calls in or out. President Shinra would likely shoot him if he ever found out about it. Or give him to Hojo.
He entered the number he wanted from memory. "Tseng here."
"I have that information you wanted."
"I'm listening."
"Nine people escaped Hojo's collection after the Nibelheim Incident. One's in Midgar. One's in Da-chao in Wutai. I didn't go near either of those."
"We'll take care of those."
"When asked about the Strifes in general, the response was mostly 'oh, them' or 'who?', so they were outsiders in their own village."
That tallied with the information in Strife's records.
"When asked about the parents, only the mother, Claudia Strife, was mentioned."
No father. That also matched. "Continue."
"Descriptors were 'who?' 'crazy', 'witch', 'immoral' and 'unfortunate'. When pressed, a couple of the older survivors indicated that Cloud Strife's conception might not have been consensual, and that's the mother's mind had 'turned' because of it."
That was new. Both the rape and the mother's mental instability.
"What else."
"Same thing with Cloud Strife: 'weird', 'loner', 'poor kid', 'who?', and one who was sure he died years before the fire."
"Did nobody play with him? Didn't he go to school?"
Tseng could hear the shrug from the other end of the line. "School was four mornings a week until they could read, write and do math, then they were expected to work in the family business. One of the things that made him weird was that he was quote: 'scarily good with numbers'."
"What does that mean?"
"That he was even more of a target for bullies and he spent most of his time in the mountains."
Bullying had been in the original reports. It had been a factor in refusing Strife's SOLDIER application. Too many psychological issues could occur in someone who'd been bullied as a child. With SOLDIER strength and abilities, any loss of control or outbursts of rage could've resulted in a massacre.
Although, considering how Strife had reacted to his "accidental" exposure to mako, he would've failed the medical requirements anyway.
Tseng had read those files as well. Strife hadn't died or mutated as had most of his cohort, but he'd developed brittle bones and suffered blackouts that had made him unsuited to life in Shinra's army at any level. When he'd requested medical discharge, it had been approved the same day.
And yet…
Conversations in lower Midgar spoke of Strife as an accomplished fighter and mercenary; an odd-jobs man unafraid of any task or destination. A loner, with no strong ties to any one person or group.
This was the person who was now close to the Ancient.
"I said, did you want me to keep digging?"
"No," Tseng answered. "If the situation escalates, you need to be far away from it."
There was silence from the other end. "I'm sorry for leaving you in this position," Veld said.
"We all made our choices. You have nothing to apologize for."
Tseng closed his PHS ending the call. Mentally, he reviewed everything he knew about Cloud Strife.
It didn't look like he would be a direct threat to Aeris, but it was because of him that she was deviating from her established routine. It was no longer: home to church to upper Midgar and then back home. She was wandering all over the Sectors 5, 6 and 7, and she was fighting monsters.
He ignored Reno's opinion that she was "pretty good at it, yo." That wasn't the point. Aeris was putting herself at risk.
If she was hurt on one of their pointless monster hunts, and either Professor Hojo or President Shinra found out Tseng had known but hadn't stopped her, then that risked the lives of all the Turks. Not just the ones out in the open in Midgar, but the others, the ones who'd buried themselves after Fuhito's defeat.
Hiding from President Shinra's vindictive kill order because they'd chosen to save Veld and his daughter Elfé. That saving Veld had required them to fight the Zirconiade summons which saved the planet, impressed President Shinra not at all. Only four of them had returned to Midgar, offering themselves as sacrifices to Roman Shinra's anger.
If Rufus hadn't intervened…
But he had, and President Shinra had stayed – not rescinded – the kill order on all of them. As long as they proved their unquestioning loyalty to the company, everyone else was safe.
Finding out Tseng was allowing the person who might give him access to "the Promised Land" to risk herself, might be enough for the president to reactivate the order.
If President Shinra did make that order, then Tseng would have no choice but to carry out his threat to kill Rufus. It was an old threat, left over from the boy's attempt to assassinate his father in Rocket Town.
But Tseng didn't want to kill Rufus Shinra. They'd been mutual hostages long enough to have come to agreement on many things, and they did owe Rufus for their current stalemate.
A more radical option was to assassinate Roman Shinra, install Rufus in his stead, and hope their delicate pas de deux would continue unabated.
It was unlikely.
Once Rufus was publicly installed as the new president, he was just as likely to turn on them. If Tseng had a Turk kill the current president, then Rufus would be able to use his father's death as a way to gain sympathy for his position, and as an excuse to eliminate all the Turks current members – whether in Midgar or in hiding.
No. Tseng decided. A Turk couldn't kill the president. Instead, he needed a plausible scapegoat, someone who could be blamed for Roman Shinra's death.
It really was too bad Avalanche had failed in their many attempts. However, the president had been protected by the Turks, so failure was to be expected.
Perhaps, Tseng thought, they could encourage this new Avalanche to take out President Shinra along with a mako reactor? If he could get their leader to commit to a date, then he could arrange to have the president in the danger zone at the proper time.
Reno and Rude were impressively hard to kill, so they would be security. They would fight valiantly, but but unable to save the president from the explosion, the terrorists, or a collapsing walkway.
Sector 1 reactor was the oldest in Midgar, and in the worst repair. Blueprints for it should be easy to obtain. He would hand them over to Wallace sometime this week.
AN: I thought of calling this chapter 'Portents and Whispers' because the Remake isn't the only one who can be unsubtle. heh