Disappointment caused by non-fermented peaches; A grumpy not-actually-a-vampire;
The shadowy follower; Dishonesty and the game of tag; Death on the mountainside;

Denzel was warm and comfortable, cocooned inside the blankets. How nice it was to be back at Seventh Heaven, in his own bed, instead of on a narrow airship bunk or curled in a sleeping bag on the ground. He nuzzled his head against the mattress, breathing deep - and jerked awake at the musty scent. He sat up and looked around. How could he have forgotten? This was Shinra Manor.

Nobody else was in the room. Denzel got dressed in a hurry. They'd started without him! He wanted to be there when they woke Vincent up. And... he wouldn't admit it aloud, but it was kind of creepy to be alone here. He trotted down the hallway, relieved to hear voices from the far end of the hall. Entering, he found the others hard at work on gutting the mansion for any useful information. They were surrounded by piles of books, and dust clouds puffed through the air. Cloud sat on the ground, a stack of papers in his hand, and the girls were sneezing as they pulled books from shelves. Yuffie and Tifa looked up as he walked in, but Cloud seemed absorbed in the papers he was looking through.

"Good morning, sleepy head," Tifa greeted. "There's hot tea down in the kitchen, if you want any."

"Some canned peaches, too," Yuffie chipped in.

"You actually opened one of the cans?" Denzel asked. "I thought we decided not to trust those."

"Well…" Yuffie spread her grimy hands in a small shrug. "I'm sick and tired of those stupid energy bars, and those freak scientists didn't want to poison themselves, so why would the canned food be bad? I mean, sure, this place has been abandoned an' all, but it's not like they left that long ago. And even if it was starting to go bad - Look, rotten grapes turn into wine, so if the peaches went bad they'd just be some type of booze too, right? And no, before you ask, they didn't turn into alcohol; they're still fresh. I did find some wine, but Cloud and Tifa said I couldn't have any so early. You and Marlene have been a bad influence on them. They're taking this whole 'parenting' thing a little too seriously." She wrapped up the torrent of words with a pout. Tifa rolled her eyes.

"Um... right," Denzel said. "I'm… just gonna go get some breakfast. See ya." He made his escape downstairs. He was still too sleepy to deal with a hyper Yuffie. In truth, the peaches were pretty good, and it was nice to eat something different. By the time he went back to the others, they'd made a lot of progress. The stacks of papers and books had grown substantially taller.

"We're almost finished up here," Tifa informed him. "As soon as we're done, we'll wake up Vincent and start on the lower levels."

"Right. Anything I can help with?" he asked, looking around the cluttered room.

"That's our last one over there." She pointed to a tall wooden bookcase in the corner. "Look through the books, and if they seem like they're medical or scientific, put them in a stack and one of us will get to them. If they aren't, just leave them. Okay?"

"Okay." He picked his way over carefully, trying not to wreck any of the careful piles. Cloud was sitting cross-legged on the floor nearby, leafing through a thick manila folder.

"Mornin," he said, coming to a halt beside him. Cloud looked up and right through him. His serious expression didn't change, and his blue eyes were unfocused. "Cloud?" Denzel questioned.

"Hmm?" Cloud blinked. "Oh. Yeah, good morning, Denzel. Sorry, I'm just... distracted." His eyes wandered back to the papers he'd been scanning.

Weird. Well, this whole place was weird and depressing. The dark browns, reds and grays were so different from Ms. Ruvei's pastel colored library and reading room. He use to spend hours in there reading the crumbly old books, hiding from the real world. He looked up at the towering shelves in front of him. Right, he could remember those times later. These books weren't going to sort themselves. Stretching on his toes, he started on the top shelf and worked his way down. Science journal, local fauna, local fauna, medical, local flora, local legends (he set that one aside for himself), local flora of Rocket Town. When Cloud spoke next he was already on the third shelf.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Huh? Yeah, just fine."

"How was your watch?"

"Fine, though I jumped at one or two shadows," he admitted. He ducked his head, a little embarrassed.

"Hmm." And that was all. Again, he was struck with how off Cloud was. He really hoped that they could finish up quickly so they could leave this place. The large, empty manor was oppressive. Even with the windows open, curtains stirring in a slight breeze, the air felt close. Tifa had passed out tissues and eye drops, but still everybody was sneezing constantly, from all the dust they couldn't help kicking up. Denzel was relieved when they finished the room. Some of the medical and scientific books they took and set out in the hall; the rest they left behind strewn in semi-organized chaos all over the floor. He slipped the book about Nibelheim legends into his pack to look at later.

Tifa stood outside in the hall, dusting her hands, a distracted frown on her face. Cloud stood beside her, still withdrawn and thoughtful. Yuffie seemed to be the only one feeling like her normal self. "Well, let's go wake up Mister Cranky-pants," she proclaimed, entering a room they'd sorted through before Denzel got up.

The others followed her, but Denzel stood outside for a moment, confused. If they were headed to the basement, why weren't they going downstairs? He hadn't seen an extra staircase down there, but he'd been preoccupied with the monsters. He heard a grinding noise from inside the room, and went in. There was a round stone wall in the corner that he'd thought must be part of a tower, and that wall was sliding around to reveal a dark staircase. He couldn't help but hold his breath. That was cool... in a creepy sort of way. They headed down the spiral stairs, stepping cautiously in case one of the wooden slats was rotten. The flashlights flickered eerily on the walls, twisting their shadows into disturbing shapes. The place smelled, too, like what Denzel thought a tomb might smell like. Cold stone and mold, mixed with something dead, and underneath a sour earthy smell. There was maybe some rotten egg too. Was that… mako?

There was a strange, high-pitched chittering that grew louder as they got closer to the bottom of the stairs. Cloud, in the lead, whispered, "Black bats." Even that slight noise was enough to disturb the restless monsters, and they came swooping, biting and clawing at the intruders. The swordsman detached the two smallest blades from his sword, wielding them as daggers in the cramped tunnel. Yuffie, too, was affected by the close quarters, unable to throw Conformer without risk to the others. Instead she swung the five pointed shuriken in lethal arcs. Tifa didn't have to change her fighting style at all, taking out any of the black bats that came within her reach. The experienced fighters made quick work of the annoying beasts, and Denzel was able to kill least two, maybe three, of the monsters on his own. His feet slipped on the grainy floor as he dispatched the last one. The sour earth smell made sense now; it was guano.

The remains of the colony flew off somewhere; and Denzel could take stock of his surroundings. They were in a long grey stone corridor lit by fluorescent lights strung along the walls. The group walked along it, Denzel with a hand over his nose to try and muffle the smell, alert for more monsters. They stopped in front of a beaten wooden door. Denzel stood back as Tifa dropped into a low stance. She punched the door, which collapsed in a somewhat anti-climatic manner. Considering Tifa's strength, he'd been kinda hoping for it to splinter into shards, but there was only the metallic snap of its old hinges breaking. The door swayed for a moment, before falling over with a reverberating thump and dust cloud.

The small room beyond was full of old coffins and yellowing bones. Denzel stepped nervously past a skull that didn't look quite human. Tifa, Cloud, and Yuffie all gathered around the coffin in the middle of the room. He joined them and watched as Cloud crushed the rusting lock, the metal crumpling like plastic in his fist. After a glance at the others, the swordsman shoved open the lid. Inside lay Vincent, exactly like a vampire from a cheesy horror film. The man looked the same as when Denzel had first met him, during Bahamut SIN's attack on Edge. He didn't move a muscle, not a flicker of an eyelash or a twitch of a finger, until Cloud spoke his name. He opened bleary red eyes, scanned each one of the group, then shut them again.

"You woke me up."

Denzel wanted to laugh at that and couldn't hold back a small snort. What a grump. Those red eyes immediately flashed back open at him, causing him to choke on the noise. "Umm, hey, Vincent," he greeted, though it came out more of a question.

"Vincent, we thought you might like to help us kill Hojo," Cloud cut in, saving Denzel from the awkward moment.

"Kill Hojo? You?" Vincent seemed confused and disbelieving. Denzel had sort of gotten used to it, but for other people, it was probably pretty strange to hear apparent children talk about murdering people.

"Yes."

"Why? What grudge could a child have?"

"Plenty," Cloud growled.

Vincent was silent, then shook his head. "Leave. You are nothing but children, and have no place in this nightmare." Vincent made to grab for the coffin lid, but before he could reach the edge, Cloud ripped it off its hinges, holding it one-handed in the air.

"We're going to end this nightmare." The mako in Cloud's eyes flared, leaving orange spots in Denzel's vision.

"Vincent, you care about Lucrecia and her son, right?" Tifa implored. "That's one of the reasons you stay here, to atone for your sins? You still have the chance to make them up to her by helping him. I'm- I'm not sure we can." Denzel remembered the argument back on the Sheara when they first got here, and admired Tifa's acting skills. That 'not sure we can' was probably more of a 'not sure if we even want to'.

"Lucrecia's son?" As time went on, the more focused Vincent's eyes became. "You know Sephiroth?"

"Yeah, we know a lot about him, so can you please just get up already?" Yuffie was starting to fidget again.

Finally the red-cloaked man stood up. "How? Who are you?"

Yuffie leaned over and whispered to Denzel, "Wow, he actually got up. I didn't expect that to happen." Denzel nodded in agreement.

"We'll explain while we search this place," Cloud informed him. Vincent gave him a flat stare, and he sighed and elaborated. "Two of Sephiroth's friends are dying from the experiments Shinra did on them. We're trying to find a way to save them. This... place," here he made a gesture to signify the mansion, "seemed like a good place to start gathering information." A pause. "We also plan to destroy Jenova."

Vincent mulled the information over. He backflipped out of the coffin, making them back up hurriedly to give him more room to land. "Fine."

The rest of the day and the morning of the next consisted of going through books, papers, barely legible notes, and trying to explain things to Vincent. In the end, the only way they were able to convince the ex-Turk that they'd arrived via time travel was by calling up their own Vincent and letting the two talk for hours. By the time they were finished gathering anything that might be useful, Denzel had gotten seven paper cuts, gone through twenty-seven packs of tissues because of allergies to dust, and, happily, gained a few more levels. Apparently dorky faces bred fast, because as soon as he would clear the place they would show up again. Same thing went for the bats in the basement. He decided that the Banora Underground, where all the creepy cells were, had nothing on the spookiness of this place, and he was glad when it was time to leave.

They packed everything important into bags to strap onto the chocobos or store in Fenrir later. Other papers, related to Shinra's experiments but not relevant to their quest, they piled in the basement. When that was finished, Tifa summoned Ifrit, and the demon arrived with a blast of fire and a roar. It bent almost double in the stone passageway, its horns scraping the ceiling. Denzel blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to get some moisture back in them - breathing the air radiating in hot shimmers away from the summon was like sticking his face into an open oven. Tifa sent it to run wild in the lower levels, smashing and burning everything as it went. They stood at the top of the stairs, hearing the roar of flames and the crash of toppling equipment. Only when the summon finally decided that its enemy (in this case the basement) was thoroughly destroyed did it return to Tifa. They trooped out into the courtyard, leaving Shinra Manor a lot worse off than when they arrived. Denzel's only regret was that they couldn't burn the whole place down, but that would've attracted too much attention.

"Next up, Jenova!" Yuffie declared as she struck a dramatic pose, one hand held aloft, pointing towards the peak of the mountain.

It was decided to leave the chocobos in the manor courtyard until they were done at the reactor. Cloud and Tifa led the way up the mountainside, with Denzel and Yuffie in the middle. Vincent acted as the rear guard in case of an ambush by the local wildlife, which Denzel had found out from one of the books were mostly high-leveled and mean-tempered. At first, the winding trail was wide and showed signs of human maintenance, but the further they got from the village the narrower and wilder it got. The scenery got stranger, too. The ground got harder and shinier, and slick spikes of rock protruded like thorns beside the path. The plants, hardy alpine species, got smaller and tougher, and grew less frequently the higher they climbed. After half an hour of hiking, Vincent suddenly stopped, looking at a rock spike a little further back along the trail.

When Denzel noticed the man behind him had stopped, he asked "What is it? A wolf?"

The former Turk didn't say anything, only glanced at Cloud, now looking back as well, and raised an eyebrow.

Cloud made a strange face and shook his head. "Ignore him. If he's still following in a hour or so, I'll deal with him."

They resumed walking, Denzel frequently twisting to look behind them in an agony of curiosity. If the follower was a monster, or Shinra, Cloud wouldn't let it stalk them. Since they weren't fighting it, it had to be a local. It might even be the younger Cloud or Tifa! He tried to catch a glimpse of spiky blond or flowing black hair, but though he occasionally saw some falling pebbles, he couldn't ever make out an actual person back there. He looked up the trail to his adopted parents, Cloud grim-faced and Tifa somber. Based on the limited stories Tifa had told he and Marlene about her childhood in Nibelheim, Cloud was the one more likely to be wandering around outside town.

The prescribed hour was torture for him. He was so distracted that he tripped over rocks, and once wandered off the path and nearly slipped down a 15 foot drop. Yuffie's quick reactions saved him. It wasn't enough to get him focused again; his curiosity was too intense. What if their follower gave up and stopped following them? He spent the hour praying that the shadow's stubbornness and/or curiosity would hold out. They reached a disastrously rickety wood and rope bridge, and Cloud called for a halt. He turned and called down the trail, ""Fine, since you followed us this far, you might as well come out."

Holding his breath, Denzel watched as a small blonde boy cautiously stepped out from behind a boulder. Their follower really had been Cloud! That hair was unmistakable. It was even spikier than the current, thirteen-years-old-or-so Cloud's. He was smaller, too, shorter and scrawnier. His eyes were still glacial blue, but lacked the eerie mako glow.

Beside him, Yuffie squeaked in stifled amusement. "Ha! What a runt. He's so small and cute."

Just a few paces away, the older Cloud, only two or three inches taller, glared at her. Thankfully, the younger Cloud stopped too far away to hear her whisper.

"Umm, hello. My name's Cloud. Who are you?" the boy asked, half-curious, half-suspicious.

Denzel could feel himself starting to smile. Cloud and Vincent were serious, no surprise, but Tifa was smiling with what could only be called tenderness, and Yuffie was flat-out grinning with delight. "Well, hello yourself. I'm The Great Ninja Yuffie," the little girl proudly stated, "and these are my friends. What brings you up here?"

"Umm, I saw you going up the mountain trail, an' I wondered who you were." His gaze slid sideways to Cloud and Tifa, full of fascinated curiosity.

"No one, really. It's dangerous up here; you should head back." Cloud made a blatant attempt to get his younger self to leave.

"If it's so dangerous, why are you up here?" Mini Cloud shot back.

"We have things to do." A pause, then, "And you'll get in the way."

The kid frowned. "Bet I won't. I come up here all the time. Besides, you're gonna have to go back down to get your chocobos at the mansion. If you leave me, I'll just wait here, an' go down with you then."

"You were at the mansion?" Tifa interrupted, worried.

"Uh huh," he said, nodding. "But no one believed me when I said there were some chocobos there, an' Ma wasn't happy that I went near the place. Why were you there?"

Cloud frowned. "We had work to do."

"You work for Shinra?" The kid looked skeptical.

"Hey guys, this Q&A's adorable, but we've got stuff to do today," Yuffie interjected.

"Right. You, go home." Cloud turned and began to walk away.

"No." The boy folded his arms and frowned.

Cloud turned around, slowly, menacingly. "Leave."

Mini-Cloud wasn't cowed. "Make me." Denzel could practically hear his foster father's teeth grinding.

"Cloud." Tifa used that tone, the one that Marlena and Denzel had learned to respect, and that she used before arguments with Cloud. Denzel didn't know which Cloud she was talking to, but the one that was used to listening to her gave in.

"Fine," he said abruptly. "Stick with Yuffie and Denzel," he gestured to them, before stalking off. Surprising Denzel, he didn't take the bridge in front of them, but a small side trail on the left that led up a steep incline. Denzel started after him, walking slowly so the new addition to their group could catch up to him.

"Um, hey, I'm Denzel. Nice to meet you," he greeted the new addition as the boy came to walk behind him, the path being too narrow for two people to walk together. He had a million burning questions, but he didn't want to let something slip accidentally, so he bit his tongue.

"Ah, nice to meet you too. Sooo… where are we goin'?" the kid asked.

"Up to the reactor, of course, silly. It's the only thing up here, after all," Yuffie commented from her spot behind both of them.

"The reactor?" Mini-Cloud twisted his head back and forth, trying to look at both of them. He really must come up here a lot; Denzel had to watch his footing and occasionally grab onto the mountainside to keep his balance, but the boy scrambled along as carelessly as a mountain goat. "Why would you go there?"

"Oh you know, the usual. Things to do, people to meet," she answered breezily.

"You meeting someone up there?" Denzel wouldn't have had room to ask any questions of his own anyway, at the rate Mini-Cloud was firing them off.

"Kinda. Anyway, you met our chocobos?" He would say that Yuffie was terrible at changing subjects, except that strange segues were pretty normal for her.

"Huh? Oh.. well sort of. They weren't near the gate so I couldn't say hello. I only found out about them when I saw some tracks I didn't recognize round the outskirts of the village, so I followed 'em."

"Really? You already know how to track?" Denzel asked. He'd only just started learning how.

"Yeah."

"I guess you wander around a lot then, don'cha'." Yuffie sounded approving. "Is that how you found us?"

"No, actually I was was kinda, well…" The boy blushed a little. "I brought some greens from home an' I was gonna try an' feed the chocobos, an' I saw you leavin'."

Hearing Cloud speak with an accent was kind of weird, Denzel decided. He must have dropped it when he moved to Midgar.

"So where are you from? I've never seen you before." Again the boy's eyes flicked up to Cloud and Tifa.

"I'm from Edg-, um, Midgar." Nice one, Denzel, he mentally scolded himself. Edge didn't exist in this timeline.

"And I'm from Wutai!" Yuffie cried, setting her hands on her hips and throwing her head up proudly. The loud declaration of her nationality echoed off the mountain slopes around them, bouncing back and forth across the stone. She stood there beaming while everyone froze, stunned by the sudden noise. Even Vincent tensed. The echoes died away, and Denzel began to breathe again, until a dragon's roar came echoing back in response.

"Good work, Yuffie," he muttered. He'd read about Nibel dragons in the wildlife book, and he fervently hoped that they wouldn't bump into one.

"Hey!" the girl spluttered. "I didn't know it was such an echo chamber out here!"

"Quiet," Cloud snapped back at her from the point position.

"Let's just keep moving," Tifa added, casting a chastising look Yuffie's way before walking on.

Denzel and the younger Cloud walked on in silence. Denzel was beginning to feel out of breath, and his legs were burning, so he was glad for the respite from talking. Yuffie was quiet too, but Denzel didn't think that would last long. To his surprise, it was Mini-Cloud, not the ninja, who broke the silence. Nothing could keep this kid's curiosity down. "Um, so, you're Wutaian? Aren't we… at war with you?"

"Huh?" She gave the kid a push up a steep bit. "Well… sorta, but not really. We're at war with Shinra, not Nibelheim. There's a difference," she asserted.

The boy still seemed uneasy. "Right… but… um, isn't the reactor Shinra's?" he pressed.

"Yeah, and?" Yuffie scrambled over a nasty rocky patch.

"Well… you're not supposed to go there, are you?"

Before Yuffie could say anything more, Cloud countered the question with a stern, "You're not supposed to be this far up the mountain."

Mini-Cloud opened his mouth, then closed it, not sure what to say. Muttering to the two he was walking with, he asked "Is he always such a jerk?"

Denzel leapt automatically to his idol's defense. "He's not a jerk!" Then he thought about it for a second, and truth compelled him to admit Cloud was being a bit of a jerk to his younger self. "Not usually, anyway. He's just stressed."

"It's been a couple rough days for him," Yuffie added.

"Oh."

They stopped for a break at the entrance of a small cave. Denzel sat down with a grateful sigh. He peered at the pebbles next to him - they reminded him of ones he'd seen in the cave in Banora, dark and greenish.

"Denzel," Cloud called over to him.

Looking up from where he'd been examining the rocks, he saw Cloud stood a little ways inside the cave. With a groan, he stood up and walked over. "What's up?"

"I wanted to show you something."

Cloud led the way into the cave. Mini-Cloud and Yuffie looked after them, but didn't follow. The place really did remind Denzel of the Banora caves; same strange rock formations, same greenish glitter to the stone. After about five minutes, they reached a place where the cave opened into a slot canyon. Despite the sunlight filtering in, the green quality to the air didn't change. Cloud pointed ahead, to something Denzel'd never seen before. A dead tree stood beside a small round spring, and green tendrils and dots of light rose from a little rock island in the center of the water. The island seemed to be imitating the shape of the tree, standing up in a curving trunk, with arching branches of stone cupping a little pool of glowing green liquid and bright crystals. "What is this place?" he asked in awe.

"It's a mako fountain," Cloud explained. "It's a good place to find natural materia, but don't get too near it."

Denzel walked carefully around the glowing pool, careful not to touch it in any way. A glimmer of purple among the tree roots caught his attention, about a foot away from the spring. "Found one!" he cried, stooping to pick up the little round stone. He closed his eyes, rolling it between his palms, tried to figure out what type of magic it held. After a few minutes, he gave up and handed it to Cloud.

"Its not the same as before," Cloud muttered as he turned it round.

"But you do know what it is, right?"

"It's a Long Range materia." Denzel had no idea what that did. Cloud, seeing his blank stare, elaborated, "Long Range extends the reach of your attacks, even if you're not using a ranged weapon. It'll catch your opponent off guard, since you can hit them even when they're beyond your apparent reach. Keep it, it'll come in handy."

Denzel took the offered materia back with care and popped it into an open slot on his sword. Long Range, huh? That was so cool. They headed out, meeting Tifa halfway along the tunnel. "Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing Cloud's eyes glowing through the verdant dark. "There you guys are. We've got to head out if we're going to get back down the mountain before the sun sets."

"Yeah," Cloud answered. "Let's get the others and go."

They picked up the rest of the party - Yuffie bouncing to her feet, young Cloud a little slower getting up, Vincent melting smoothly out of the shadows - before heading down a different branch of the tunnels. The silence of the previous passage was broken here by a hollow, whistling breeze, and as they moved farther on, by the humming of distant pipes. They exited the cave into a bowl of stone, the Nibel mountains standing up around like clawed hands. The reactor stood towering in front of them, the afternoon sun shining oddly dim on its metal catwalks and crazy arrangement of pipes. They were standing in its shadow, which was colder than it had any right to be. Denzel moved hurriedly into the sun, deciding then and there that if a building in Nibelheim had been used by Shinra, it was bound to be creepy. Even the air here felt repressed and sick.

"You three wait here," Tifa ordered, stern voiced. Strangely, though she kept her head turned away from the tower, her gaze stayed riveted to it, glaring at it out of the corners of her eyes. Vincent was as expressionless as usual, and Cloud's face was so still, he looked carved out of stone. "The three of us," she motioned to Vincent and Cloud, "will take care of the reactor. You don't need to go in there."

The ninja was dismayed and disgusted. "But why!?" she whined. "That's why I came up here! To see the creepy bitch burn!"

"Yuffie!" Denzel elbowed her in the side, glancing over at the wide-eyed boy next to him. He was pretty sure one of the reasons Cloud didn't want his younger self along was that he didn't want him to get involved. Yelling out things like that would only help get the young Cloud into trouble.

"Yuffie." Tifa looked directly at them finally. Her hands were fists at her sides. "Just stay here. If there's trouble out here, we'll need an experienced fighter here to take care of it."

The smaller girl looked away, making a face, then glared back up at the brawler. "I hiked all the way up here! We could just leave 'em on the doorstep!"

"Your whining is getting us nowhere. Stay. We will return shortly." Vincent's deep baritone silenced all debate. The gunman, at least a good foot and a half taller than the rest of them, walked past them towards the foreboding structure.

"Nnnnh!" Yuffie stuck her tongue out at the retreating red caped back.

"Yuffie, I am sorry, but we really do need someone to keep an eye on things." Tifa tried again to convince the ninja.

"Humph. Fine. But you're gonna owe me."

"Thanks," Tifa replied, a bemused smile flashing onto her face, and just as quickly off again.

Denzel watched as Tifa and Cloud joined the gunman on the steps, heading into the reactor. Now all they could do was wait. He found a reasonably smooth rock to sit on, and stretched out his sore legs. Walking around Edge - he could do that all day. Hiking up a mountain with steep paths, uneven ground and thin air, not so much.

The younger Cloud hovered nervously next to him, moving from foot to foot. He crouched down, whispering. "What'd she mean, creepy, um... bitch," he stumbled and tripped over the slur, "an' why burn her?"

Denzel inwardly cursed Yuffie using words he'd heard from Barret. Damn it, he had no idea how to answer this! "Um, well, you see…."

"What Denzel's trying to say is there's a dead body in there," Yuffie answered conspiratorially, dropping down beside them. "It's infected with a really nasty virus, and some insane bastard has been using it to infect other people, so we're gonna burn the body to save people's lives and annoy the bastard."

"There's a, a dead body in there." The boy paled.

"And some people who were infected with the virus and turned into monsters," Yuffie added. Denzel didn't know how she thought that was reassuring. "We'll get rid of those too."

"Monsters! They're going to fight monsters?!" he blurted, eyes wide.

Yuffie shrugged flippantly. "Not much of a fight. They're pretty sick."

"Oh." He was quiet for minute. The air hung heavy and dead, with no noise of birdsong or breeze. The shifting of their feet against the grainy soil was the only sound, loud, almost intrusive. It was almost a relief when Mini-Cloud thought of another question. "Why are you staying at the mansion?"

"To annoy the creepy bastard."

"Really?"

"And to do some house cleaning," Yuffie beamed.

"House… cleaning?" Cloud looked really confused now.

"Yep!"

Taking pity on the kid, Denzel cut in, stopping Yuffie's chain of confusing answers. "So, Cloud, what's it like growing up in Nibelheim?" It felt a little like going behind Cloud's back, asking his younger self about his childhood, when his older self would clearly rather never talk about it again, but Denzel couldn't restrain his curiosity any longer.

"Huh?" The boy blinked at him as he tried to refocus his attention onto the new question.

"I grew up in the city, and don't know much about country life," Denzel explained.

"Ok, well, Nibelheim is small and cold." The blond shifted awkwardly, not quite sure how to answer the question. His eyes flickered to Denzel's face, checking to see whether that was the right sort of answer. "There's not much to do 'cept explore, but you can't go far from town 'cuz of all the monsters. I'm surprised we didn't see any on the way up here."

"What about hanging out with your friends? That's what I used to do," Denzel pressed. His neighborhood in Midgar had been full of kids his age to play with. Then after the plate fell, he'd had friends who made life as an orphaned scavenger bearable, even fun sometimes.

"I don't really like playing with the other kids. They're stupid," Mini-Cloud mumbled, picking up a stone and throwing it at the reactor before muttering, "An' mean."

He turned away, kicking at the gravel. Denzel chewed the inside of his mouth and stared at his scuffed shoes. He kind of regretted asking, now.

"That sucks," Yuffie pronounced. "Want to play with us instead?"

Both boys turned to stare at Yuffie.

"What? We could play tag or something," she volunteered.

"Tag?" Denzel choked. "No way. No, just… no."

"Why not?" Cloud asked, puzzled.

"Because we'd never catch her!" he exclaimed. Forget it being beneath his dignity; it was really sweet of her to offer, to cheer up little Cloud. But trust her to pick such a self-serving game.

"You've still got Haste right?" She pointed at the Escort Guard on his wrist. "Just cast it on you and Cloud. I'll even go easy on the two of you." She grinned and all hope Denzel had of letting his feet and legs rest vanished.

When the others came out of the reactor almost two hours later, they found a pile of sweaty, laughing kids.

"Don't ever play tag with her," Mini-Cloud panted.

"Hey! At least I don't cheat like some other dirty cheater I know."

"You used some of your materia too, don't deny it," Denzel defended.

During their game he'd tried out his new Long Range materia and found that he could tag Yuffie when she was still about a foot or two away from him. He didn't feel guilty; he was sure she'd used her Sneak Attack materia on them. When he looked at the three who had come out of the reactor, he suddenly didn't mind as much about having been left behind. There might even have been a quirk to Vincent's mouth that hinted at amusement. Whatever had happened in there, it had taken a toll on them - they were pale and sweaty - but at least he felt like he had accomplished something, hearing Tifa's quiet laugh and Cloud's even quieter chuckle.

"See, it wasn't that bad being stuck outside was it?" Tifa asked.

"Nah, it was cool. Spike's like a mountain goat," Yuffie proclaimed, causing the youngest to redden.

"Spike?" the little boy's hands immediately flew to his hair, squishing the proud spikes.

"Well, yeah! It's easier that way." She turned to the others. "So, ready to go?"

With an exasperated sigh and a fond shake of his head, Cloud responded. "Yeah, let's go."

The hike back down the mountain was a lot more relaxed as the whole group bantered back and forth. Even Vincent made the occasional comment. For the most part, they kept to safe topics like fun stories from their travels that Denzel and Spike (Mini-Cloud's apparent new nickname) drank in. It was probably because of the cheerful mood that neither Cloud or Vincent caught the sound of beating wings until the dragon was too close to avoid.

It barreled down from above. "Shit!" Yuffie shrieked, leaping in a twisting arc to get clear of its striking claws, tossing out Conformer in a dizzying sunset-colored sweep. Cloud quickly darted in front of Spike, blocking the young boy from a torrent of flame with a hastily cast Barrier. The swordsman separated First Tsurugi into two blades and leapt at the dragon's underbelly. Tifa raced past Denzel, heading the wrong way - or so Denzel thought. Shots rang out as Vincent entered the fight, and dragon blood sprayed through the air from the bullets and blades. Then Tifa swept past her foster son again. She'd gone back up the trail to give herself a running start; when her feet hit the edge of the sloping mountain path, she catapulted into the air, drawing back a fist. With terrific aim and a wet bone-snapping crack, she punched out a wing joint. The wing folded like wet paper, bringing the dragon crashing to the ground.

Gripping his own sword, Denzel threw himself into the battle before the dust cloud settled. The dragon roared in pain as the group of fighters descended on it. It lashed out with its tail, trying to sweep its opponents away. Denzel had enough time to see Vincent backflip over it, and Yuffie jump in and pull Spike out of the way, but not enough time to get clear himself. It caught him right in the stomach and sent him flying. He heard more than felt the crack as his body impacted with the stone of the mountain path. Falling to the ground, he heard people shouting, but they sounded so far away…. It reminded him of those times he'd passed out because of the Geostigma…. That was his last thought before he slipped away.


*Notes
A chapter solely from Denzel's point of view! If you've read even a little FF7 time travel fic, you've likely already seen a return to Nibelheim through Cloud's eyes, and Tifa's perspective would tread much the same ground. Yuffie's perspective lacks emotional impact here, so we went with Denzel, who has an emotional tie through his foster parents, a lot of curiosity, and a fresh take on the place.