"Okay, where the heck are we going now and what the hell are we doing when we get there?"
Tifa was just as bewildered as Cloud for once. He held his hands in front of him, grasping an imaginary sense of stability.
"Look lets just get back to the bar and get our bearings."
"Yeah, but what are we going to do? The Don is dead!"
"I fail to see how that's a bad thing?"
"Dude!...Um…" There were a million bad implications about this swirling around all of them, but no one could quite pinpoint them right now.
"He's still out there," reminded Aerith.
"Who?" asked Tifa, and Cloud's head slumped in his hands.
"My dog. I at least need to go to the bar and get my dog." And he rushed off toward the Seventh Heaven with the girls in tow. When they got there, Barret and Wedge ran to them.
"Apache! You're alive!" Barret threw his huge arms around him, picking him up in a big bear hug. Cloud turned a shade of blue before he put him down.
"Where were you?" asked Cloud.
"I was hangin' out with mah boy Wedge at his place! Layin low, ya kno?"
"Teh," Tifa scoffed. "More like tripping someone in front of you."
"Man, this little kid here is so cool! He's shacked up with like nine of his buddies who smoke the dankest weed this side of the Chocobo Farm! But man, I gotta know, what's up with y'all and them Gunblades?"
"Uhhh…" Wedge rubbed the back of his head. "It's kind of a gun club thing. We all met through Meetup dot com."
"Dope!"
"Red!" Cloud called. "Aw man, he probably hasn't eaten in days!"
He stormed through the bar calling his dog, but Red didn't come. Then chomping noises came from the kitchen. Cloud went all the way back to find the meat freezer door ripped in half and the back end of a big red dog sticking out. Cloud threw his hands up.
"Well, at least one of us was eating good."
A commotion outside made Cloud turn around. Someone had slammed the valet fence open and electrified it to boot. Cloud ran out back while Tifa and everyone else were already there.
Black suits strolled up through the lot, one big bull rocker of a man and one skinny red-head who looked like he'd stood out in a thunderstorm. The ginger leaned a riot baton over his shoulder, throwing his smoke away.
"This the Seventh Heaven?" he smirked like he didn't care either way.
"…No," Tifa replied.
"Figures. Who are you?"
"I'm Latifah Marianne Lockheart. Who the hell are you?"
"Special Agent Reno. Where's Cloud?"
"Whoa whoa, wait wait wait. Now you guys too?" Cloud jumped out in front with waving hands, but Reno pointed his riot baton at him.
"Cloud Strife, you're under arrest for high-treason, domestic terrorism, desertion, impersonating a SOLDIER 1st Class, and pretty much every crime we have a law for."
"What in the name of Gaia is going on here?! It's like I'm taking crazy pills or something!"
"Come quietly. You're no match for the Turks."
"Says you."
He ripped his sword off his back and everyone jumped in line with him.
Reno charged his baton and shot a glance at his partner.
"Well Rude, add resisting arrest to the charges, eh?"
Cloud and Tifa rushed in, Cloud taking the ginger and Tifa taking the strong-silent-type. Cloud knew he would need a sleeker blade to fight the quick-slitting baton. He called a slim katana to his hand from among his fusion swords. Barret armed his hand-cannon, firing a flash bomb that exploded in a sonic boom to lower the enemy's stats.
Cloud's sword thrust in from up high. The baton slapped the blade down, driving its tip to the ground. In a flash-reaction, Cloud turned the edge up and heaved so high it threw Reno back a step. He flew in at the Turk with a whisking down-slash that bashed against the electrified riot baton to throw sparks like a lightning rod. Reno flipped the baton over in his hand, and in the blink of an eye bashed in slitting swipes that sent Cloud whirling off balance.
Tifa meanwhile drew her two bokken swords and leapt in a flurry at Rude. The big man ducked and dodged her swings like a dancing geisha, surprisingly agile for such a big brute. She slashed a wide wisp and followed its line with her other sword, while he side-stepped a defensive kata out of the way.
"What are you afraid to hit a girl? Not like I want you to hit me or anything but jeez!"
Tifa swept in a clean swipe that knocked Rude's glasses from his face and jumped back. The guy pulled a spare from his suit pocket. Get a load of this dude. But he still wouldn't hit her.
"Come on you pansy!"
Rude dodged a down-slice, took a wind-up, and palm-slammed her back into Barret. Cloud went flying into the pile right afterward, and all three of them lay crumpled in a bruised heap with Red sniffing them on the ground. Reno strode in for the final blow, when the White Mage stepped in front of them. He coughed.
"Aerith? What the hell are you doing here?"
But Aerith just waved her finger at him.
"You've been slacking off, Reno." Then a transmutation circle formed around them, and Reno's face turned white.
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Ruuuuuun!"
The two Turks booked it like chickens on fire away from the bar. Once out of sight, the transmutation circle vanished, and Aerith ran over to everyone.
"Come on!"
They all gathered their wits and raced to the garage, where Cloud jumped on his G-Bike and threw his palm on the computer.
"WELCOME CLOUD STRIFE, SOLDIER 1ST CLASS."
"Impersonating?" Cloud furrowed his brow. "What the hell were they smoking?"
Aerith hopped on behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist, while Tifa, Wedge and Barret flew over to a gnarly chopper that looked like it used more gas than a shipping truck.
"We can't ride three-up!" Tifa panicked, but Barret jumped on and gunned the ignition.
"The Hardy-Daytona can handle it, not Cloud's crotch-rocket."
Cloud burned tire-tread out of the garage, while Barret followed and Red ran behind them.
All of Sector 7 flew by, and Sector 8 came up like a big leveled bombing campaign had blown through. They stopped their bikes on a bulldozed stretch of broken asphalt and Cloud whirled.
"What the shit? Now the Turks?"
"You know them, Cloud?"
"Yeah I know them! I've been running into my old co-workers left and right. It's like a goddamned company potluck down here!"
"What happened, man?" Barret asked. "After all this time you been a nobody, and they come huntin' you down now?"
"It's the Fal'Cie."
"The whaaa?"
"The Crystal in the reactor."
"Brah the only crystal we got's laced in my bud."
"Gyahh nevermind. It'll take too long to explain."
"Well we gotta git to a safe-house or somethin. Men in Black start comin' for ya, you usually disappear."
Wedge's phone rang. He picked up the receiver, said nothing, and hung up.
"Who was that?" Cloud asked, but Wedge shrugged.
"Telemarketer."
Everyone trained a queer look on him, then diverted their attention back to each other.
"Okay, here's the plan."
"What we gonna do, Cloud?"
"Well if you would shut up and let me talk, I might tell you."
"You don't know what we gonna do, do ya? Heck might as wellAHHH!"
A gunblade sliced across Barret's back, knocking him to the ground. He didn't move. Cloud barely managed to draw his sword before a slam-slitting saber-edge flew at him in rip-whirls. What the hell what the hell what the hell!
Cloud leapt backward as the gunblade fired at his face. Bullets grazed the side of his temple, vision blurred to a long singular tunnel that locked onto the image of Wedge Slade charging in a murderous rampage. The truth flared like a long-over sparring session.
You're holding back.
The gunblade sliced in lightning precision at Cloud's torso, stabbing in for the kill. He shattered Cloud's defense like ceramic toys, making him whirl and flurry to avoid a razor-edged defeat. Everywhere he stepped, the gunblade was there, poised to make short work of his bewildered retreat. A harrowing power-slash from Wedge sent Cloud flying back into a brick-pile, where scaffolding toppled down on him in a clamor.
With two enemies down, Wedge turned in a cold steel stride and went for the girls.
Tifa's swords flew out as Aerith cast her Barrier. Her brow furrowed in shocked rage, attempting to steady her trembling hands. This person was not the Wedge they knew. His serpentine eyes stole the breath from her body as he strode toward them. But as he took a running dive-slash for her, the full Buster Sword shot in to block it. A bloodied Cloud wrestled with everything he had against a teeth-gritting Wedge, driving him away from the girls in a primordial desperate rage. He slammed Wedge back across the ground and followed him, rushing up to ride the momentum of his power-slash. A leaping down-bash dented the ground a split second too late as Wedge handspung away, unleashing a tirade of bulletspray that Cloud whirled his sword to block. He deflected the lead splatter and dive-rolled after him. A bash-flurry of lenticular war-slices crash-careened against the gunblade. Sword met saber in a dueling demonic frenzy. Cloud saw the image in his head of a gunblade lunging for Tifa, and threw everything he had into a fury-slash that bashed Wedge straight through a brick wall. The boy lay on the ground groaning. Cloud ran over and shoved his boot into Wedge's throat. The fight was over.
Barret stirred, shaking his head out. He staggered to his feet, ripped his Carhart jacket off, and shrugged out of the bulletproof vest he'd concealed underneath. Meanwhile, Cloud stood over Wedge's bloodied and battered body with the Buster Sword pointed at his face.
"A SeeD!" he cried, and Barret charged over aghast.
"YOU LITTLE NIGGER! You stupid fucking NIGGER! Thas' right, wit tha ER! Think I don't head up a gang and learn a thing or two. Errone always tryin'a knock me! You bout ta find out what we do to traitors in Avalanche!"
Cloud's brow furrowed in confusion and pain. Only one word slipped out as his bleeding eyes bore down on the kid he'd called his own student.
"Why?"
Wedge coughed up at Cloud, gasping a weak response.
"You know how you always talk about the Pride of SOLDIER? Well…that's kind of how it is for us."
A shadow fell over them, so dark and austere that it pieced the metal Plate. Cloud closed his eyes amid the burning realization, the terrible truth, and when he opened them, they were pure fire. He looked down on this bleeding boy in a silent, burning rage.
"Barret," he called, and the two grabbed Wedge by an arm, dragging him.
"Wait, Cloud?" Aerith leapt to her feet. "Wait, what are you doing?"
"Aerith, come over here with me," Tifa ushered as Cloud and Barret dragged Wedge behind a blown-out building. Barret cocked his arm-cannon, and Aerith flailed in panic.
"He's just a kid, we don't have to do this, wait!" But Tifa threw her arms around her, pulling her away. The two girls hunkered down, the White Mage collapsing in a crying heap. When a single shot rang out, she broke down in convulsing sobs.
Barret and Cloud emerged from behind the building with eyes on the ground in thought. Cloud flipped the Buster Sword onto his back while Barret flew into planning.
"I gotta get ahold of the other chapters, tell'em wassup. I can't come witchu, I gotta go now, I gotta git to em fore they do—"
"Barret, Barret! They're all dead," Cloud said, and the big man stood shocked. "There's no more Avalanche, we're the last ones. If you split off, they'll corral you too."
A solemn thought crossed both their eyes, like a confusing realization neither could quite grasp. Barret met Cloud's stare with a look of quiet bewilderment.
"Where you headed?"
And Cloud turned his face toward the harrowing Tungsten Plate above them.
"Never thought I'd be saying this but…I have to go back to work."
At that, the girls stood up with their own forlorn sense of doom.
"To Shinra?" asked Aerith.
"I have to find out what's going on. If they're coming for me now, they're going to keep coming. I know where to get my answers though. The R&D Data Room."
Cloud turned to find everyone behind him, lined out and ready to follow him into Hell.
"How are we getting there?"
"We're not doing anything. I'm going on alone."
"Like hell you are!" Tifa cursed.
"Da hell, Mo? You just talked about not splitting and now you splitting!"
"Look, this is above the Plate and we've got SeeD's after us now too. I can't put anyone in that kind of danger."
But Aerith stepped forward.
"You wouldn't let me go alone, what makes you think I'd let you?"
"Why do you care so much all of the sudden?"
"I have issues with Shinra too, maybe I also want answers."
Cloud brushed them all off, backing against a brick wall.
"Listen guys, it's too dangerous. It'll be way safer if you all stay here. Unless…"
He ripped his sword out, slashing into the shadow on the wall behind him. Everyone jumped to see the blade stop short of two reflecting orbs like cats eyes in the gloom.
"Are you trying to kill me?" Cloud called, and a voice like a rasp whisper answered him.
"No more than you kill yourself by storming the Shinra Headquarters Building."
From the shadows stepped a little girl, thirteen at the most, with torn up jeans and cropped jet hair just long enough to tie with a shoe-string. She wore a bandana of a rising sun, and carried a short sword on her hip. Cloud recognized the street-ninja from the Don's mansion, and his blood ran cold.
"Who the hell are you?"
She spoke in a haunting rasp voice, like an urbanite priestess.
"My father was Godo Kisaragi, the chieftan of Wutai. I am Yulan Kisaragi, Wutai's greatest warrior."
"Wutai?"
"Wait, it's okay. I know her," Aerith swept in front of Cloud's sword to address the little Wutai thief. "Yuffie, what are you doing here?"
"If you intend to take the stairs, I hope you have an army like they do. And if you plan to get there on the Express Way, I hope you have an Eidolon."
"You saying there's another way in?" Cloud peered.
"Not for stupid jerks who aim to steal the Ancient One."
"Yulan, this is Cloud. He's a friend," said Aerith.
"Another friend?"
"Yuffie! Go home!"
"No! Not without you!" And she ran into Aerith, throwing her arms around her waist like the mage was a big sister. Aerith's anger receded, and she looked up at Cloud with soft eyes. The SOLDIER glared for a good hard minute, and let his shoulders slump.
"She can come as far as Shinra and she can show us the way in, but that's it!"
Cloud stomped off back toward the bikes with everyone holding in snickers.
They followed Red through dark neighborhoods. He carried Yulan on his back like a little racing jockey. The skin-and-bones street-ninja weighed all of about 50lbs, while Red clocked in at quintuple as much as she did. When the dog stopped at a crossroads that veered like the nexus of hope and despair, the party gasped at the desolated sight of blinding poverty and sheer wanton waste that beheld them. A breeze blew newspapers across their path, rank air wisped from overflowing sewer grates, and sludge pooled in puddles by the side of the road. Abandoned buildings lay windowless and grafittied to all hell, while piles of trash taller than Cloud accumulated in back allies and street corners. No people, the place was quiet as death.
"Where are we?" Tifa asked in a near-whisper, as if the very sound of voice in this place was sacrilege. But Cloud stared straight ahead.
"I know where we are, the last place we want to be. Sector 0 Slums. Triad Stronghold."
Yulan hopped down off Red, signaling the others to dismount their bikes. Together, they walked on light feet through dark streets that smelled of blood and garbage, crunching footfalls on dirt that had once been gravel.
The silence was maddening, like a dragon's deep breath. They noted more echoes than all of their footfalls combined could produce.
"What's that?" Tifa spun around. Nothing for a long moment, until a shot rang out at her feet. Everyone jumped in a circle, back to back, swords up with Aerith casting a Barrier. From the shadows of buildings emerged laughing forms, thugs in all shapes and sizes converging on them. The Triads had come to defend their turf.
At their head, an olive-skinned woman with a battle lance strode tall and menacing. Her oriental hair frayed out like shorn silk, and her blue sari was spun from the finest cloth. Here Barret Wallace, leader of Avalanche, had the honor of meeting his biggest rival, the leader of the Triads. She leered in a powerful stance, while Aerith recognized someone at her left hand. The leather-vested creep from Sector 5 stood like a stalker, throwing a wink her way.
Upon reaching the head of her entourage, the lady-gang boss spoke in a thick accent.
"You're all either really dumb or really brave to waltz into my hometown with those tats."
"Did she say tits? Hey, fuck you!" Tifa spat.
"Avalanche has been infiltrated by SeeDs," Cloud declared. "We're the last ones. If the Triads don't want to be next, they'd best let us pass."
"Bullshit. How do we know you're not casing us?" accused Aerith's stalker. At that, Cloud threw Wedge's gunblade on the ground in front of them.
A stillness ensued. Everyone froze at once. No one breathed, no one moved, not even the tail of the big red dog. In a flash, the lady-boss lashed her lance out left, spearing Aerith's stalker straight through the torso. A mottled shock crossed his face as he fell, and his gunblade clamored from his belt. The Triads strip-searched him, and found a school ID from Trebia Garden in his wallet. They all looked up at Cloud's motley crew, who held their breaths in subliminal icy fear.
"You're welcome, Mercenary." The lady-boss threw him a smirk. "You're not the first SOLDIER I've escorted through lowcity on the run. Follow me."
She lead them through the burned out sludgehole that was Sector 0—a third world hellspot directly below Shinra's shining Headquarters Building, Midgar City's dirty little secret. Problem was that it wasn't exactly a secret. Journalism students from the University topside came down here all the time for their thesis projects, and the area never got any better. If anyone topside gave a damn about lowcity, they sure had a subtle way of showing it.
"So the Don is dead, huh?" remarked the lady-boss. "Who killed him?"
"I did," Yulan cut Cloud off as everyone turned to her, "to end the skin trade in the Slums."
"Teh. Gunna need a lot more than one dead mob boss to end that. Someone will take his place, and until then, the entire underside of the Plate is headed for outright war. Thanks for that'un, SOLDIER. Now where do I have the pleasure of dropping you off?"
"The old rocket factory," Yulan continued. "There's a pipeline that runs up to the Plate. It will take us straight to Shinra Headquarters."
At which the boss shot one last queer look Cloud's way.
"I was right. You are really dumb."
The rocket factory had been non-operational since before any of them had been born. Rusting launch-pads loomed with terraforming shuttles still prepped and awaiting a ghost-launch, mementos from a glowing age of enlightened technology long gone. The whole station had been fueled through a central pipeline leading up to a mainframe above the Plate. Service ladder rungs welded to the outter frame spanned all the way up to the top.
The entire party stood wide-eyed with gaping mouths, kinking their necks up at the ascending pipeline.
"It's a long climb up," said the gang boss. "Need me to hold anything for you?"
Cloud shook his head as he approached the pipe ladder. "No thank you. We'll be fine."
"You sure about that?"
Cloud followed the line of her eyes down to a red dog wagging his tail at her side.
"Aw shit." He saw Red's tail flapping in giddy anticipation. Where we goin'? After a long moment of tense consideration, he met the boss' eyes. "I'll be back down for him, or I'll send for him with some payment. Take care of him?"
"Teh. No prob. I'll take good care of this little champ." She patted his muzzle, and Red stopped smiling. As Cloud turned for the pipeline, a long, sad howl echoed throughout the Slums. A memory flashed back to him from when he'd blown up the reactor, when he'd first met the thing he'd come to regard as his dog.
…Hey, you gonna fight'im?...
Cloud stopped in front of the pipeline as Red's wailing cries reverberated in his heart. Here he was, leaving his huge dog in the hands of rival gang members who were now the pinnacle of the criminal underworld. He had to do it. He had to go on. Somehow. His hands shook before the service ladder, this was so fucked! He cried inside like his dog cried outside, mustering everything that he was to abandon his best buddy. He'd killed his student, and now he was ditching his dog.
After a long moment of this internal dilly-dallying, Barret threw his hands high and yelled to the Plate.
"Ahh dammit Mo! I'll carry the mutt."
"Wait but—"
"Shutchyo freakin hole! Both of yas whiners!"
And he went back to grab the stupid dog.
.
[Received Yoshiyuki Katana]