Troubled City

Kariya had been—upset, to say the least, to realize Ed had been fully able to fly and not even told him or Doriss. They had known his muscles were strong enough for it, so they hadn't needed to help him with his wings anymore, but without being able to teach him the bird's flight mechanics, they'd thought he couldn't fly just yet. The pair, with help from Ansha, had been making plans to take him out 'bird watching' in some areas they knew had low hills with very short 'cliffs' to jump from so the fall to the ground if it didn't work wouldn't be harmful.

But somehow, he'd been able to fly just fine. In Midgar's chaotic wind systems.

A ringing sound from Doriss' PHS was something he ignored as he kept pacing agitatedly. Especially since, now they had no idea where he was or if he was safe, and they had no way to find him—!

"Okay, Kariya, stop moping. You don't own Ed and never did, and he never had any requirement to tell us he knew how to fly," Doriss cut into his mental rant dryly. He stopped and faced the shockingly calm woman who gazed at him in mild amusement, holding her PHS in one hand. "Besides, Donnel needs a hand in Sector Two—apparently the Deepground minions all went berserk for no reason and started attacking everyone. He needs some help to get the mess under control."

His shoulders sagged for a moment, then he sighed and nodded, looking around the woman's apartment for a moment before saying, "Right, let's go lend him a hand, then. There's nothing else we can do about Ed right now, anyway. And for the record, it's not that he didn't tell us so much as it's that now he can get into all sorts of trouble and we'd never know."

She propelled herself off her couch as she snorted and replied, "If you think that's only a problem now that he can fly, you've been living in a fantasy for months, Kariya. Because he makes a habit of getting out of our sight and getting into trouble." She then headed for the door, and he followed her tiredly to the elevator.

As they were stepping on, he thought he saw someone in a Deepground uniform turn the corner down the hall, but then he was in the elevator and his view was blocked. Why would someone from Deepground be on the Turks' apartment floors?

Putting that out of his mind, he returned to Doriss' words...and painfully admitted, "I guess I can't really argue his ability to slip away and get into trouble..."

"Yeah," she agreed smugly. "But I suspect he'll be fine when the trouble's over."

"Why are you so sure?" he asked in surprise.

"Because he always is, save a panic attack or two," the blond woman replied bluntly. "That's the trend, anyway. And now, he might not even have the panic attack."

Kariya snorted. "No, likely not. I would have felt better if Elicia had been with him, though. I've got to stop letting Shelke and Yufi take her with them when they go off with Reeve."

"Isn't Ed letting them do that, too?" Doriss asked with a raised brow.

With a small sigh, the man commented, "True..."

The elevator opened and let them off on the main floor, where they quickly headed out and the woman led the way in the direction of Sector Two. It only took them about five minutes to find a patrol of mixed Deepground and SOLDIER members, and to realize the SOLDIERs were fighting to kill the members of Deepground, who in turn were relentlessly attacking anyone close to them. They traded shocked, alarmed looks, then Kariya pulled out his PHS to send a message to Lady Shinra, letting her know the situation and that they were on their way to help Donnel in Sector 2, then asking for further orders.

When he finished, Doriss commented, "I think the SOLDIERs can handle this one, especially since it looks like two of the Deepground ones have turned on their fellows. Let's keep going to Donnel's location."

"Sure thing," Kariya agreed, knowing by the layout that she was right.

The pair quickly skirted that fight and made their way further into Sector 2, Doriss still leading the way as she knew from the message she'd gotten where to find Donnel. A few crossing streets later, they turned to look down one towards the sound of chaos—and blinked when they saw a large group of Deepground members with no SOLDIERs there to fight them. Then, they saw...Rosso...riding a large, brown wolf...as the pair utterly decimated the Deepground members who were still attacking civilians.

They paused to trade shocked looks, rubbed their eyes, then returned their gazes to the mess down the crossing street. Nothing had changed, and Rosso's propensity for wearing red made her stand out too much to miss. Not to mention the wolf had to be a Summon, so was equally hard to miss.

"...Do you know any wolf Summons, Dor?" Kariya asked genially as he turned to keep walking down the street they were on.

She made a face as she caught up to him, but she replied, "I'm sort of guessing here, but I'd heard there was a wolf deity out in the Nibel Mountains. I think it was called Fenrir? That might be the Summon manifestation of that wolf deity, so it's probably Ed's."

Kariya had to snort at that. "Yeah, that would be logical, especially after I caught Yufi digging though his basket of 'weapons' he never lets anyone see."

"Oh, that 'powerful arsenal' of his? He lets the munchkin play with those?" the blond woman asked in amusement.

"Nope. She does it without his say," the orange haired man replied in amusement. "And I don't think any amount of his or my scolding will make her stop, just make her more cautious about when she does it."

That time, it was Doriss' turn to snort. "Damned brat. Well, not too much further now. I hope we'll even have anything left to help Donnel with by the time we get there..."

"If Deepground's in kill mode, we'll probably still have plenty to do when we get there," Kariya sighed tiredly. "I wonder how badly all the death is affecting Ed..."

"...Sorry, what?" the woman blinked.

"When my bomb went off here, so many people died all at once that he—well, let's just say it wasn't a pleasant experience for him. Painful on several levels. I don't know if this sudden attack would be comparable or not..." he sighed.

"...I see..." Doriss sighed. "I guess we'll have to wait to find out."

FoWD

The border around the hole in Midgar always made her wary for unknown reasons, but she was wary nonetheless. When she was sent on a recon mission or patrol in the area (it had seen an increase in Mako-poisoned monsters lately), Anki always did the area around the hole first, careful of the repair equipment being used to rebuild. At that point in her patrol, she was just leaving the area of the hole, and doing just that was enough to cause her to relax marginally. Now, she just had to finish the rest of the Sector 6 Upper Plate region, starting near the border between 5 and 6. It was usually the better part of the area.

As she stepped into a wide space which ostensibly was a park on both sides of the border with a notable concrete line dividing the two halves of the park, she paused and blinked at the black haired boy who was sitting on one of the benches near the border. She recognized him as Nero, and she could see something wrong with his wings. Also, his sleeve on one arm had been mostly torn off. His expression seemed flat, blank, and glassy, and she frowned as she cautiously moved forward.

It was obvious, even without her senses screaming at her, that something was wrong.

"Nero? Are you all right?" Anki asked cautiously while she was still over a dozen feet away.

A snarl took over his features, and she was already diving to the side as his hand lifted and a black sphere—a void sphere—shot at her, obliterating the ground where she'd just been standing. He was apparently in full kill mode, even as he re-targeted on her in her new location, and she was forced to dodge again, then force herself to her feet as she ran a zig-zag pattern and drew her gun. At least his rampant destruction of the park actually did enough partial damage to the fake plants, benches, gazebos, and other features around the area to kick up dust. Under that raised dust, Nero was forced to stop shooting off void spheres until it settled, and it raised quite a racket.

It also gave her cover, both from being seen and being heard, so she was able to shoot at him from behind. Except, something not Nero shrieked and a thing like a tentacle rose from his back to block the bullet. Her eyes widened in horror, and she dodged again as the boy howled in rage and shot more void spheres off at where she'd shot from. That was also when she saw what was wrong with his wings, as they spread wide and he flew into the sky, circling above the dust he'd raised—those wings were now real, not skeletal metal frames.

She was no fool, and his new vantage point gave him a definite advantage. Her only chance was to get to better cover—but to do so, she'd be seen in the space between the dust cloud and the nearest buildings.

Suddenly, Nero snarled, dived (or maybe fell?) for a moment, then caught himself and spun to face another direction, one away from her. She raised a brow, but paused only for a moment as she took the offered opening to get to the couple of warehouses to one side of the park, one which was thankfully facing away from him. The sprint across the open space took her to one warehouse door, which she threw open, startling four workers who had been heading up the stairs, probably to check what all the noise was from the upper level.

"Is there another door out of here?" she asked them sharply, closing the door behind her.

"There should be one on the upper level, out to the emergency exit on the other side of the building," one man offered tentatively.

"Good," she snapped. "Now get out. Your boss can take it up with the Turks if he doesn't like you cutting out on your job early on my orders."

The workers all paled and bolted up the stairs, around the walkway, and out the emergency exit, even as she made her way into the room—only for someone to call from above, "Doing all right, Anki?"

Looking up, she saw that Emma had snuck in from the exit door the workers had left through. "So far," she called back. "But we can't stay here."

"Riona should be clearing out the other warehouses right now. Let's go find a better place to hide," Emma replied, so Anki ran for the stairs, and unlike the workers, stayed bent low to be below the windows as she moved as quickly as she could along the upper walkway. Emma was waiting for her, holding the door open, and when she slipped out, the younger blond woman shut the door so they could both run down the emergency escape to the ground.

"What happened?" Emma asked as she led the way down the alley, one eye on the sky.

"I saw Nero just sitting in the park. When I asked what was wrong, he went ballistic," the brown haired woman snorted derisively. "Thanks for the save, though."

Emma nodded. "That was Riona's plan, knowing my aim in particular. She was already heading for the warehouses by the time I shot, and while she gave us some space to fight in, I'd divert and meet you."

"Solid," Anki agreed, also looking up. "From here, what's the plan, or is that being done on the fly?"

"We know he's after you, so we want you hidden, hopefully where he won't find you. But, while he's distracted, we'll see if we can take him down, since he's obviously infected by an overdose of Jenova's cells," the younger woman explained.

Both of them blinked as they heard a furious snarl from the sky above them, but when they looked up, Nero was nowhere in sight. Instead, multitudes of black orbs flew overhead, and collided with buildings all across the area, making both wince slightly. At a motion from Anki, they diverted, parting ways so the older woman could find a place to hide and the younger to find her younger sister and now fellow Turk. She was pleased to know she had backup now, because she was already at a disadvantage with Nero as an opponent.

Slipping into one building, she saw that it had a hole in one upper corner, but the stacks of boxes would be good for cover, so she found a good place to hide which was as much out of the view from the hole as possible. Then, it was just waiting, even as another furious yell and more void spheres descended on the area, putting another hole in the building she was in. That made her sigh, because it would be that much harder to find a place to hide from his view with the second hole. And she was forced to move because of it.

Suddenly, there was a pained, furious howl from Nero, then a second one, and he was suddenly crash-landing in the room, showing obvious signs of bullet wounds—right in his eyes.

The problem came when he suddenly sent out a mass wave of black light from his body, and Anki knew as soon as it hit her that she was screwed. She was sure Nero didn't even know she was there due to his eyes being damaged and the noise he'd made in landing, but that wave—it hit her, pulled at her—and—

There was no more.

FoWD

Nina was playing in the gardens around their house in the Sector 5 Slums with Alexander when she heard the nice lady warn her danger was coming. She looked up as Alexander suddenly lifted his head and sniffed the air, then rose and faced the Wastes past the gardens. With the walls not finished yet, monsters could still come into the city, though ones with wings could anyway. Alexander's sudden attention to the Wastes made her feel sure the nice lady was right and something bad was coming. She rose and reached up for his mane, using it to pull herself onto his back. Nothing about his stance changed while she climbed. He really didn't like whatever was out there.

"Nina?" a familiar voice asked in confusion from behind her. "You aren't planning to go play in the Wastes, are you?"

"Nope. The nice lady said something bad's coming, and Alexander thinks so, too," she replied, knowing the speaker was safe. Oh, right, she was Big Sister Gaia.

"Then come away from—" Percia began—

Only to cut herself off with a gasp as a Dark Dragon crashed to the ground in a fury just ten feet in front of Nina and Alexander. Nina screamed—where had it even come from?—and felt a strange, slicing motion near her. Then, a moment of silence fell as she realized the Dark Dragon's head had fallen to the ground, followed more slowly by the rest of its body.

"Fuck! Get back, Nina! Now!" Big Sister Gaia suddenly snarled, jumping past her and Alexander as more monsters suddenly landed a bit past the Dark Dragon which would soon turn into pyreflies.

There were lots of monsters. Most of them had wings, or could fly in other ways, and they were all from the north, the Great Glacier, the Northern Crater, and the Northern Cave. They were all big, and strong, and dangerous...And why were they even there? She saw Dark Dragons and Dragon Zombies and Movers and Shadow Monks and others—and she still had no idea where they had come from.

"Nina!" Big Flower Sister called in alarm as Big Sister Gaia jumped at the first wave of monsters.

"Let's go to the house, Alexander!" Nina suddenly called to her puppy, and he turned to bolt for the house, carrying Nina with him. As they went, they passed Aeris, who threw healing forward to Percia. Soon, Mother Ifalna was at the door, pulling Nina off Alexander's back and pushing the girl into Papa Gast's arms. The door closed with Aeris and Alexander and Ifalna outside to face the monsters, even as Odin (her other puppy) charged past to join Big Sister Gaia—that was the last thing she saw before the door closed.

A look around inside showed her Mother Elmyra standing with Papa Gast, both looking worried, but she wiggled down from Gast's arms as she said in fear, "Alexander's still out there!"

"Alexander can fight, Budling," Elmyra said quietly.

"But I can heal!" Nina insisted emphatically. "Let me out so I can heal them!"

"Nina—" Gast began to say.

"Could you heal through a window?" Elmyra asked the little girl, pointing at one of the ones near the door.

Nina paused and blinked, then frowned and said, "I don't know!" She then ran to the window and stood on her toes to see over the ledge properly. Focusing on her healing, she sent it out to the women and the two puppies outside—and it worked. That was good enough, so she quickly pulled a chair over to the window and climbed onto it so she could see better. From that new vantage point, she could still heal them, so she did it every time she noticed someone was hurt, not seeing the relieved expressions on Gast's and Elmyra's faces.

But, there were still so many monsters! Where were they all coming from?

Suddenly, she blinked and stared above the monsters as Odin—the Summon—cut through them all, and there was a red-blond haired woman riding behind him. Lots of the monsters fell when the Summon hit them, but several were still there, too. But then, strong magic hit the rest, and she thought the spell was a Comet type—Big Brother Magic had talked about those spells. There was a pause in the fighting as she saw a colorful unicorn land by the Odin Summon, and Little Big Brother was riding on it, making her smile—he was still strong!

But then, a new wave of monsters charged at them from the Wastes, and not all of those could fly. Actually, most of them couldn't. They were Behemoths and Behemoth Kings and Lature Danos and Jabberwocks (1) and many others, causing the group to turn to face them.

She prepared to heal again as she once more asked herself where they were all coming from.

Then, she happened to look past the dozens of monsters to see a Shadow Monk carrying a strange, very dark purple, glowing gem. :What's that thing?: she asked the nice lady, focusing on it. :Another Jenova Crystal?: It looked a lot like the ones Big Brother Reaper and Big Brother Magic had been destroying...

:It is,: the nice lady agreed. :I will tell my Ancient Sentinel to find and destroy them. Thank you for your sharp eyes, Budling.:

Somehow, she knew the 'Ancient Sentinel' was Little Big Brother, so she wasn't at all surprised when he and the colorful unicorn suddenly stopped fighting to find those bad crystals. She knew the others would need more healing, so turned back to them to cast more of it, keeping her mind on that—at least now she knew they were the rest of the monster groups who had been hiding the bad crystals around the Planet. And she liked the Planet, so she didn't want it to be hurt or worse, so those bad crystals had to go, now, not later.

Even though she didn't want to fight herself, she loved watching people like Big Sister Gaia fight, but what shocked her was the red-blond woman she didn't know. That woman needed a cane to stand, but she also threw a round blade, and it did a lot of harm to the monsters, and if one got too close to her, she could hit it with her cane.

Then, as she watched in surprise, one of the big cats Big Flower Sister had called a Cuahl, except that it was white and spotted, got hit over the head with that cane—and laid down at the red-blond woman's feet, head bowed. The woman paused to look down at it, then knelt and rested her hand firmly on its head. When she lifted her hand a minute later, the cat rose, and the woman also stood up again to face the other monsters. And when she attacked a Jabberwock with her round blade, the white Cuahl jumped for the same Jabberwock's throat.

"Wow! She's super-awesome!" Nina gasped out loud in amazement, only barely remembering to keep healing everyone.

"Who?" Elmyra asked as the nice lady chuckled into her mind and Gast joined her at the window.

Then, Papa Gast's eyes widened in shock and alarm as he said, "That's Lady Shinra! Why is she here fighting?"

"She came with Little Big Brother and the Odin and the pretty unicorn!" Nina replied cheerfully, casting another heal as something or other with long legs tried to stab Big Sister Gaia.

"What's a unicorn?" Elmyra and Gast both asked in confusion.

"It's a horsie with one horn on its forehead!" the little girl replied, looking at the two in surprise. How could they not know that? They were adults! They knew everything!

"...What's a horsie?" Mother Elmyra asked, looking even more confused.

In response, Nina looked out the window again, and pointed up at where Little Big Brother had cornered a Triple Mover which had another of the Jenova Crystals. "Little Big Brother is riding a unicorn. They're supposed to be white and maybe gold and silver, but that one's like a rainbow, and it's really pretty. I like it better than normal unicorns."

Both adults were quiet for a moment before Gast said, "That's a Summon."

"And Lady Shinra tamed a Cuahl in the middle of the battle," Elmyra pointed out.

"That's why I said she's super-awesome!" Nina announced, and sent out another round of healing. It looked like over half the monsters were dead, too.

Then, there was a sudden burst of light, a huge one, and those circles Little Big Brother liked so much appeared all over the place. When the light went back to normal, there were no monsters left, and everyone had to stop and stare in surprise. They all waited silently for a few minutes, then breathed sighs of relief, as Little Big Brother and the unicorn landed near Lady Shinra. Seeing that it was safe, Nina quickly jumped down from the chair and bolted for the door, quickly unlocking it and pulling it open as she ran outside.

"Little Big Brother!" she shrieked happily, running right past the oddly shy Cuahl to jump into his arms.

"Hello there, Nina," he answered fondly. "Thanks for the healing, by the way."

"You're welcome!" she chirped, then turned while still hugging him so she could peer curiously at Lady Shinra.

"Lady Shinra, meet Nina," Ed said wryly at the look. "Nina, that's Lady Janelle Shinra, current Vice President of Shinra Company. I take it you made a new friend, too, Lady Shinra?" He sounded amused as he said the last.

Nina nodded eagerly as she looked at the big cat, asking, "What's its name? Can I pet it?"

"It's nice to finally meet you, Nina," the woman told the girl in amusement. "As for this lady—I don't think she's ready to have humans other than me touch her, but that may come later. As for her name...I rarely see white Cuahls, so I suppose something like Alba would suit." The Cuahl looked up at her and gave a questioning, chirp-like sound, so the woman knelt again to face the cat and ask, "Do you like the name Alba?" The cat tipped its head to the side for a minute, then gave a small, rumbling noise and leaned forward to rub her head on the woman's knee.

"I guess that's a yes," Aeris commented with a giggle.

"So it would seem," Lady Shinra agreed. "And now I desperately need a rest. Between Rosso and these monsters, I've been decidedly active today."

Nina let go of her Little Big Brother and ran over to grab the woman's wrist, pulling her up as she said cheerfully, "Then come sit at the little table we put near the house! We can have a snack there! Or a tea party!" The little girl led a startled Lady Shinra to the table in question as the others watched in amusement.

Nina only just heard Big Sister Gaia say, "I guess that means Lady Shinra's a good woman?"

Nina called back, "Of course she is! The nice lady likes her!" The reason why everyone started laughing or giggling at that was completely lost on her, making her give an annoyed huff.

Notes:

(1) All of these monsters were sent out by Jenova around the time Nero and Rosso were leaving Deepground, it just took time for them to get to the city from wherever they were at the time.