A/N: Note on Shelke: This Shelke (like the FoWD one) hasn't housed Minerva in her body, so there's nothing wrong with her specifically which the Cetra need to fix.

Pieces Moving

For as much as the combat personnel were supposed to cross the bridge first, Kunzel wanted to hang around at the 'rock' for awhile. Genesis' unit didn't have specific instructions, anyway, and he was sure the rush to get off the island meant no one had done a head count to see who was where. One of the Restrictors (by his uniform) was talking with Weiss and Argento as they headed for the bridge, and Rosso had already long since gone with the Turks. Had even they they noticed who was missing since the explosions?

He'd seen two Turks missing from their number—Derin, their primary hacker, and Riona, one of their battle strategy commanders and a weapons expert. In the last four to five years, their death toll had been very low, so losing two at once should have been noticed, even with the rush to leave the island. Actually, because they were Turks, it was likely they had noticed and just weren't ready to face it yet—but in the meantime, everyone would be best to give them some space. Working on setting up the perimeter on the mainland would give them something to do while it set in.

Those weren't the only losses, he'd seen, either. In SOLDIER, Angeal's group even, he hadn't seen Luxiere or several of his and Zack's other friends who had been assigned to the Reactors to try to stop Fuhito's insane plan. A few of Percia's information network folks were missing, but Shears was still on the island, gathering them. From what he could tell, they were going to spread out through the population, so their first task was to gather and sort fruit the civilians would be able to take on the trip across, to eat while they were walking. Some notable Wutains were missing, too, even though they hadn't had a Reactor in Wutai, but a number of those had been working in Shinra lands and had also been at the Reactors.

On that note, he'd been surprised recently fifteen-year-old Shelke had been released with the combatants, because as far as he knew, she avoided fighting like the plague. Of course, when she'd been pushed into doing so, she'd truly been a force to be reckoned with, so maybe that was the reasoning? Right then, Yufi and Shelke were tucked away between a rock and tree where most people who weren't looking wouldn't see them, and was somewhat thankful they were just hugging, not liplocked. How many people had even realized what Yufi's protectiveness of Shelke had transformed into when they'd hit puberty? Oddly, though, he didn't think it was exclusive.

That aside, once civilians were being brought out, he was curious about who that would include. None of the ones he knew should have died, but that wasn't a guarantee—things happened, and people died unexpectedly, like Freyra had last year.

She'd gone out on a recon mission in the north, which had mostly gone well until a sudden attack while she'd been at the Great Glacier. When she hadn't reported in for her last day, people had gone looking, and by the traces they'd seen, it had looked like Behemoths had been the attackers, which for her was no problem. The problem had come from a Dark Dragon slamming into the cliff below the fight and bringing most of it down—including Freyra and several of the Behemoths. All of them died there, just as crushed and frozen as the Dark Dragon, which had been previously injured by something.

Shaking off those maudlin thoughts, he turned his attention back to the 'rock', and noted how the next people out were ones like Reeve and Scarlet, and a whole host of engineers. If they had family, those family members were released with them, even young children and infants. It seemed Minerva, the one releasing them, really wasn't expecting trouble, so was intending to keep families together for the most part. Oddly, as Shears' people handed out the food to them and sent them to the bridge, he thought to wonder how they'd apparently known to do that. Percia had spoken with the man before leaving with the Turks...Had she somehow known this would be the case?

Either way, it was amusing to see them trying to collect themselves, but the surprise came when both Lucrecia and Hojo were released with other Science Department personnel (and their families). That made him wonder if this Hojo actually qualified as 'sadistic' or just as somewhat lacking in some logical thought processes (drugs to dull pain are good things, even if administering them means stopping a different experiment for a moment). None of the ones there were overtly evil, with the vague possibility of Hojo himself, but by who was being released so far, anyone evil wasn't with them.

Angeal had been aware enough of the situation to set up shifts, three eight-hour ones, for all of his people who were showing people to and across the bridge, and Kunzel could appreciate his sense in that. He'd also told the ones who had just gotten off their shift (or hadn't been on it with the first group) to collect food for the ones on it and themselves as needed. That was the good thing about the nearby trees being fruit producers, but it would honestly not last, and by the time everyone had crossed, there would probably not be any left on the island.

Zack and Aeris were resting during the first eight hours, and by then, Angeal was showing signs of strain, so it was just as well that he could turn the watch over to Zack. Another of the Firsts assigned to Angeal's unit would be taking over for Zack later. For Kunzel's purposes, he spent most of that time drifting between waking and sleeping (and taking an occasional trip to the further shore for fruit from the trees no one had gotten to yet), the former generally when a new group of civilians was released.

Finally, he roused in surprise when Aeris gasped, "Nina! Jenny!" and turned to look to see a very bemused ten-year-old Nina with Alexander beside her, and a familiar bundle of baby laying gently on the ground at Nina's feet. Aeris swooped in on the two, gathering the baby—year-old Jenny—close before reaching out to pull Nina into a hug, followed closely by Zack, who wrapped all of them in a hug.

Then, it was his turn to become bemused as he saw something else entirely appear—a collection of black and white robotic cats and a robotic fox-rabbit whose fur was...Well, Shelke had decided that, if she couldn't make her purple, pink, green, blue, or yellow, she was going to make her fur reflective (1). The fox-rabbit's natural color was similar to a white color, though it probably helped that the shell on the mechanical parts was white, but if she was in a place with color, her fur took on those colors. In the current surroundings, that meant a melding of brown, gray, sandy, and green, with spots of random color from flowers or fruits.

That reflective fur had been a lot of fun in Midgar, though, because in a city of neon lights, her fur also reflected those. Then there were the rotating blue and red lights of emergency vehicles, flashing signs, and—oh, the most fun one was a disco ball in a disco bar. The first time the guys had gotten Ed to go to one after he'd been given Ria, it had taken everyone a while to figure out why there was a second disco strobe light on the floor. Reeve had been horrified to realize what Shelke had done to Ria's fur, but Ed had found the color changes bemusing at the worst, so he'd said he preferred to keep it—so here was the mechanical fox-rabbit, still with reflective fur.

"Ria?" he asked curiously, and the fox-rabbit shook her head and looked up at him with magenta eyes. There was a ribbon around her neck which was the same color as her eyes, and a gold clip which looked like a starburst was attached to the front, since the bow was in the back.

"Kunzel!" Ria cheered, running over to him on all fours, then scrambling up to his shoulder to hang on to it. "Where's Ed? Shouldn't he be here?"

"Even if he had been, he'd have been released about two and a half days ago," he told her dryly. "We need to cross to the mainland shore, not stay on this island—he should be coming to meet us soon from that side. How's your energy supply?"

"Oh, so we'll see him soon! Good!" Ria nodded. "It's fine, I think. I could run a self-diagnostic?"

"Worry about that when we're on the mainland," Kunzel told her with a smile, then looked up at Aeris, Nina, Zack, and Jenny, who had all turned to look at him in surprise (well, Jenny hadn't). "So, the plan?" he asked. "I mean, I can take Nina and Alexander on ahead if you two want to stay longer? I'm not sure about how I'd do anything for Jenny, though."

Aeris giggled. "She can eat some solid foods. I'd had some in my pockets—a couple of jars of homemade baby food. We shouldn't have long to wait, and I guess we could use the fruits here to make more—it would just be squishing it into puree. Not the best, but it would keep her fed. That's true on the other side, too. But I'll keep Jenny if you're good to take care of Nina until we catch up? And Mother Ifalna is there, too, so you'll be able to hand her over on the other side."

"Is Reeve there, too?" one of the Cait Siths asked curiously.

"He is," Aeris agreed with a grin, then looked back at Nina. "So, are you going to go with Kunzel to join Mother Ifalna and wait there for us to catch up, Budling?"

She giggled before climbing on Alexander's back to ride him. "Let's go, then!" she agreed with a grin.

He gave her an amused look, waved to Zack and Aeris, then headed away, Ria on his shoulder and Nina, Alexander, and the Cait Siths all following him. It wasn't hard to get to the bridge, so they joined the throng of people still in the process of crossing it. All-in-all, the trip across took a very leisurely four-ish hours, and he waved to Genesis along the way; the man noticed and dropped down to walk with them for a few minutes.

"So, you have Ria and the munchkin Ed calls his baby sister?" Genesis commented as he glanced over at the two.

"They were just released, along with Jenny—you know, Zack and Aeris' firstborn?" Kunzel replied. He wasn't actually sure the man knew about that, since he knew Zack but had never met Aeris. Somehow. That puzzled him when Aeris and Ifalna lived in the same home and Zack went back there as his 'home' when he wasn't with SOLDIER. And yet, despite their close proximity, Genesis had somehow never turned up there to talk with Ifalna when either Aeris or Nina had been there, and if Aeris wasn't there, neither was Jenny.

Genesis paused for a moment, then nodded and said, "Zack's mentioned her—both 'hers', actually—before, even if I hadn't met them before. I guess Minerva wasn't in a hurry to let them out when the 'parents' were staying handy to take them whenever. Does that mean we're almost done?"

"I think so—Aeris commented that she didn't think it would be too much longer, so I'm taking Ria and Nina ahead while we wait for Ed," Kunzel explained.

With a nod, the red haired man commented, "Well, there's something like a dirt track for a wagon or car leading away to the southwest, so I'll hazard a guess and say he'll probably be coming up from there. The last time I checked, Lady Shinra had given permission for Rosso and Doriss to scout ahead, I think she said what distance they could comfortably cover in twenty-four hours? They might even bring him back with them. We hope."

Kunzel had to chuckle at that, but Nina beat him to it to say, "Yes, we hope! He'd better be there soon!"

"By the way, how's the food supply over there?" Kunzel asked suddenly.

"Weiss and Argento and some of theirs are fishing and some of mine and Sephiroth's people have decided to see if there's anything to hunt around here. The civilians are either figuring out how to build small homes or harvesting what's effectively an orchard. All told, it's not a bad deal, and we're not going hungry at this point, it's just not the fare we'd usually eat," Genesis said as he gave a nod. "Some of the women are even making food for babies or people who can't eat solid food for some reason. Everyone's bored or panicked or both, so they're finding things to do to distract them. Now, I still have patrols to maintain, so I have to get back in the air."

"Sure, I'll give you a list of who I noticed was missing later," the younger man agreed, and Genesis gave a terse nod before flying back up into the air.

"He looked really tired," Nina commented worriedly.

"He really did," Ria agreed.

"He's been in the air for a good part of the last two and a half days," he explained. "He and the General worked out six-hour shifts for the duration of the crossing."

"That's a lot of time every day," Nina blinked. "That means it's a good thing it's almost over."

"It is," Kunzel agreed, and Ria nodded vigorously. They turned their attention back to the bridge, which was showing the signs of wear—it definitely wasn't a permanent bridge, and crossing was a good idea.

FoWD-HC

Since reaching the mainland on the other side of the mini-ocean (inland sea, he supposed), the caravan had been traveling for a week, following the track laid out for them. Ed found it amusing that the Ishbalans didn't find anything strange about the track at all while the Amestrians were going along with it only because nothing had presented itself as a danger yet. In fact, the most dangerous things they'd seen had been a pack of maned wolves in the color Ed knew as Kalm Fangs (which was something like dark purple into black), and the pack had just paused to watch them for a few minutes before dismissing them and proceeding with whatever they had been doing.

That also meant they'd been passing through scattered forests and plains for most of the time they'd been traveling since crossing the sea. While some of the plants were 'outlandish', everyone had begun to relax some as they'd realized completely ordinary trees were the bulk of what grew there. Ed was riding in front of Rashad on his horse, and Al and Winry had climbed onto the wagon roofs with the other caravan children—they all wanted to see the new land, but the adults wouldn't let them 'leave the wagons' to explore. In some ways, Ed understood it completely, but in others, he found it utterly amusing, too.

Now, they were in the forest, and while it wasn't an especially dense one, it definitely had very little for actual open spaces, and the ones they saw (or stopped at) were literal meadows surrounded by trees, not plains indenting into the forest.

Suddenly, though, Rashad and the front wagon driver pulled up short as a red streak burst out of the trees at the side of the road and resolved into a young woman of about twenty years. She had long, red hair and wore a red version of the SOLDIER uniform—bright red, not the Cadet's dark—while her swallowtail blade (also mostly red) was at her back, where its magnetic holster was. Ed recognized her immediately as Rosso, and remembered how, once Deepground had been absorbed into the regular SOLDIER force, she'd decided to modify her uniform color—red had still been her thing, but she'd found the SOLDIER uniform more comfortable as she'd gotten older.

"Rosso?" he asked in surprise, and she blinked at him.

Then, she grinned and laughed as she asked, "Ed? Really? You really are little now!"

"Ed!" another—very familiar—voice cried happily as a blond, white, and black streak dropped out of the trees, seized him right out of Rashad's hands, and swung back up into the trees, getting well out of the way of the rearing horse before it had even been able to rear. The fact that it did at the sudden movement near it forced Rashad to turn his attention to getting control of it, though in the meantime, Rosso had burst out laughing.

"Doriss!" Ed protested the sudden 'kidnapping' in annoyance. As he did, she landed on a tree branch above the path and sat down with him in her lap, examining him closely. "Put me down! It would have been easier to see how I am from the ground!"

She just grinned and replied, "I can see anyway," then pointed to his face. "Your eyes are different, just to start, and your features more masculine. It's not a huge difference, and some people might not even notice, but it's there. And you look healthier, so that's good. You always were an attractive one, weren't you? Most of the others are going to have fun with your new size, though." She then began tickling the very pissed off boy's sides, making him laugh reflexively.

"Stop that!" he protested. "Geez...I forgot how much of a mother hen you were when I was an adult." He then pouted at her. "And now you're going to be worse because I'm not—in body—aren't you?"

"Mother hen or mother lion?" she replied with a smirk, and he just sighed.

"Ed? Who is that woman?" his mother called from the ground, and Ed looked down to see that Rashad, Roy, Hohenheim, Maes, and Trisha were all gathered just in front of their perch, Rosso beside them and still looking highly amused. The others were obviously confused, and Roy was readying a cast. Until Carbuncle—who had been mysteriously absent until then—landed on his head, breaking his focus as he sent a small flare of fire up Carbuncle's tail with a small curse.

That made Doriss snort in amusement as Carbuncle actually yelped and jumped over to Rashad's shoulder instead, using one paw to pat out its burning tail. "So someone managed to get a hit in on it. Finally," she commented to Ed.

"That's the first," he replied in amusement. "Probably because he'd already had a cast prepared, and that was a really bad time to interrupt his focus. That's Roy, by the way—he's like a black haired Genesis who is marginally less pompous and theatrical. And he's one of my self-appointed 'honor' guards."

"For what?" she asked in surprise.

"Minerva made a friend here, did anyone tell you?" he asked in amusement. When she shook her head, he said, "His name's Ishbala, and these people—the ones with darker skin, anyway—are Ishbalans, which are his version of the Cetra. That's Rashad and, like, most of the carters and the children, except for Al and Winry. Except, because of my odd blood, which is now part Ishbala's and part Minerva's, their Artifact of Essence shows me as an Avatar of Ishbala. And of Minerva now that she's here.

"So, the long and the short of it is that plenty of people want their hands on me, including the first of the major enemies we have to deal with locally, which means I ended up with an honor guard of people who want to keep me safe. Roy and Maes are two of the four. The other two are also with the caravan, but haven't come to join us at the front, yet. Oh, and Maes and Riza, one of my other honor guards, both showed as Turks!"

Since he'd actually indicated who Maes was when he'd first mentioned him, Doriss' sharp gaze met his—and she was impressed to find one equally as sharp looking back at her. "So what is the 'Artifact of Essence', then?" she asked slowly.

"It basically tells you what your best job is, and lets you know if there's something in particular you need to train—like a special skill. Until Ishbala and Minerva made friends, the Artifact wouldn't have shown something like the Turks as an option, but now, both Ishbala's people and the Gaians are going to be using that one until Minerva can make her own version of it. Then, the two will be interchangeable and will indicate jobs for both groups, across both groups. If a Gaian gets the indicator for a Priest, they're going to have to go to Ishbal for that, just like Turks have to come to Minerva's land," he explained. "Though, anyone from anywhere can be tested, so Ishbala said that anyone who wants to stay with his people—or Minerva's—has to be."

"That just sounds overly complicated," Rosso commented dryly from the ground, and the others all looked at her in surprise. "Especially when a lot of us are fine where we are."

"If you really are, the Artifact will leave you there," Ed informed her dryly. "If you're not, it'll tell you where you'll really be happy. Since you were never given a choice and your thing is actually exploration, it would probably allocate you as a caravan guard or item acquisition or something. Which would actually be fine by you, wouldn't it?"

At his pointed question, she became thoughtful, but said only, "Perhaps."

"Has it ever been wrong?" Doriss asked curiously.

"Not that I know of," he shrugged. "Now can we please go back to the ground so you can actually meet my family? Oh, and how far are we from Lady Shinra and the others?"

"Still maybe three quarters of a day of travel on foot or—whatever those animals are," Doriss answered with a shrug. "We just got here a lot faster because—well, you know Rosso's speed and my grappling hooks. Forests are fantastic places for mine to work, so it only took us a few hours to get here." She looked skyward thoughtfully and said, "I think you'll all make the next meadow where you could set up camp by dark, though, so you should keep moving and we'll have the intros later."

She then swung ahead into the trees, still carrying Ed with her, but Rosso stayed with the group—and everyone heard the boy protesting in annoyance, "Doriss, stop that!"

"Sorry, no can do, Kitten," she replied in an almost sing-song voice—and from quite a distance ahead of the group.

"Well, we should follow them," Rosso commented to the group by her. "It'll be dark soon, so making the meadow will be a good thing. Ed and Doriss should be there waiting for us, and there are fruit trees there you'll be able to pick from."

With put-upon sighs, the others started to get moving, but Maes faced Rosso and asked, "So, that woman was a Turk?"

"She's one of the best and longest-running ones. Turk life expectancy is shockingly short, but Lady Shinra manages to keep more alive than dead," Rosso replied. "And usually, Doriss wouldn't be quite so...obstinate, but—two of their number died before we were taken into the Omega and arrived here. They're trying desperately to avoid that loss just now."

He blinked, then nodded. "Are there any branches off this path?"

"None we found," she replied.

"Then we'll be good if you need to go ahead?" he asked.

The red haired woman gave a dismissing wave and replied, "No, I have nothing else to do at this point, so I'll just walk alongside you."

He raised a brow, but gave a nod and returned to the caravan, levering himself into his assigned wagon while it was in motion, an action which cause Rosso to grin.

FoWD-HC

It took about half an hour for Doriss to reach the place she was going to and stop, and Ed saw that it was probably the meadow she'd mentioned to the others by the wagon track running alongside it. There weren't just fruit trees there, but an actual spring ran along the far side of the clearing, heading in the direction of the middle of the land mass. By its angle, it would actually probably cross the wagon track not too far from where Doriss and Rosso had found them. It was on a rock in the clearing that Doriss set him down, and her gaze had turned sad.

"So...What's wrong?" he asked her slowly, realizing something was wrong.

"We realized it as we were crossing the bridge from the island to the mainland—two of our number were dead," she began, and Ed's eyes widened in alarm. "Derin and Riona. The best we can guess is that they were too close to ground zero of the Reactor explosions, so they were already dead when the rest of us were taken, but..."

Those two had been good friends of Doriss'—not as close as Donnel had been before his death (at least he'd been able to take down his father and close that door of his life before going)—but still more than close enough for it to hurt. A lot. While Ed hadn't been especially close to Derin, the man had still been someone he'd been on friendly terms with, and the real blow to him was Riona—Elena had nearly always ended up as a friend if she'd been made a Turk before things went bad. This time was no exception, and she'd barely had four years of service as a Turk!

He reached up to wrap his arms around Doriss as both of them just sat there and cried for those losses, and Ed wondered how many others had also died. Doriss only knew the Turk deaths, and that was bad enough—was one of them going to be Kunzel, who only had a fifty-fifty survival rate at each major incident he was part of? What about ones like Ria, Shelke, or Nina? All he could do was hope the losses wouldn't be any worse, and at least he knew no other Turks, like Yufi, Cloud, or Tseng, had died.

But still, the current losses hurt.

Notes:

(1) For the record, arctic foxes have fur like this (yes, literally reflective), but not to the same extreme because it's a natural material. That's why they can look blue—they're reflecting the sky. In the case of Ria's fur, Shelke used a reflective synthetic material, so it has the same 'bling' factor as tinsel and the reflective ability to assimilate and reflect any color—Shelke's way of giving her 'purple, pink, green, blue, or yellow' fur without directly doing so. That also means this was a dimension where she helped make Ria, like how she was a major participant in making Libby in the FoW/SH paths. With Elicia, she helped, but not overly much, and most of the work on her was Reeve's with hints from Carbuncle.