Author's Note: Once again, the hounds of school and responsibility have claimed my time, making my update later than I wished. However, that appears to have given several people time to review, which makes me a very happy author. So, without further ado…

Shout-outs:

X-Over: Thanks for the help with the ship's structure. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find pictures of the Bebop on the Net.

Shine-Avalon: Thank you for the complement. I've been meaning to poop over and read your stuff since you reviewed, but I've been busy. See my apology above. But, never fear, I will read it soon.

hoheehum: You guessed right, it is him. He's not going to make an appearance just yet, but all will be explained soon.

metgear5: I'm glad you like the story. I figured that rude's pride as a martial artist would prompt him to want to fight Spike evenly, with as little magical help as possible.

Thanks to: Zack M. Strith

Cloud held up the elongated bullet jacket he'd picked up off the ground. Barret frowned. "Isn't that…?"

Cloud nodded. "It seems that way." Flipping the casing over, he peered at the closed end. "6 x 5.65," He read. "Vincent was here."

"Or someone who uses the same caliber bullet as him." Tifa said. "Red, would you do the honors?"

Cloud offered the brass to the lion beast, who sniffed it delicately and immediately sneezed. "Gunpowder," he apologized. "But, Vincent definitely handled it. I don't smell anyone else on it, though."

"Hm, I guess he beat us here, then. But where is he?" Cloud started peering at their surroundings, hoping for a further clue as to their missing ally's whereabouts. Red put his nose to the ground. However, after several minutes, the search ended up yielding more questions than answers.

"The tracks aren't clear. I found a bunch of cigarette butts ground out on the floor, but the stink of them made it impossible to recognize any scents. All I can tell you is that there were definitely a bunch of humans here, and one dog."

"Did they come from the ship?" Cloud asked. He'd spotted a couple partial boot prints in the dust, but nothing he could identify either.

Red shook his head in confusion. "I'm not sure. They definitely have been in and out, but I don't know if they came from the ship or somewhere else."

"Okay." Cloud nodded. The unknowns were piling up hip deep but there was nothing more to be learned here. He turned towards the ship. It was larger up close than he had thought. It was shaped roughly like a boat's keel in the front, the prow sloping down in a sharp point and topped with what could only be described as a deck. Above it was a mammoth pair of doors easily wide enough to walk the whole team into standing abreast. A third level swooped slightly forward and was mostly round viewports.

Further back, the main 'boat' of the ship was flanked by a truly massive set of engines with a pair of fins mounted on the sides. The whole ship lay in a bed of rubble, with its nose pointed vaguely at the sky and tilted over on its side at about fifteen degrees. The middle section of the ship was covered in rubble, nearly completely obscuring its engine intake ports. Even if they had wanted to, it was unlikely that the ship would be able to fly out of here under its own power.

Red pulled Cloud out of his reverie. "Come, I'll show you where they went in."

They followed Red to the rear of the ship, to where a sizeable crack appeared in the hull. It was actually on the opposite side of the ship, granting the party a better look at the underside of the massive vessel. The underside of the hull was blackened and pitted with the heat of reentry. At several locations, small, jagged holes appeared in the hull, some with slagged lumps of metal attached by nearly melted wires.

Cid whistled appreciatively. "They blew off the attitude jets. No wonder they crashed."

The rest of the group looked at him oddly. "What?"

"What's an attitude jet?" Cait asked. Cid sighed, but explained anyway.

"With a normal plane, you control it with flaps on the wings and tail that you move to change the way that air's flowing over them." hegestured with his hands, indicatingthe motion of said flaps. "They're called control surfaces. But, in space, there's no air, so the control surfaces don't do a thing. You have to find a different force than air pressure to provide a turning force on the ship. The answer is to build miniature rockets on the sides of the ship. That's what an attitude jet is."

"Sorry I asked." Barret grumbled, his disinclination towards technology already well known to the group.

"So they couldn't steer at all?" Tifa asked. Cid lit a cigarette and shook his head.

"Not all of them blew. I spotted a few intact ones on the other side. Even so, it would be like flying with a dead elephant strapped to your back."

"Oh," Tifa said in a small voice. If that was true, then the pilot had done very well to get the ship landed and in as good of shape as it was in. Cid tucked his lighter away and scooped up his spear. "Now, can we go in?"

Cait Sith looked at Cid, and then abruptly did a double take. Both his robotic mouths gaped open. Cid gave him a funny look. "Whassa matter? Never seen a man smoke before?"

Barret turned around at this and followed Cait's gaze. He visibly paled. "Uh, we need to go."

"What?" Cid turned around to see another of the rock monsters that they had faced down in the control room approaching. He grinned. "Oh, good! Payback!"

Tifa touched his arm. "No, we need to go, Cid." She pointed. Another was coming around the side of the ship, and a third was rising from the rubble off to the other side. Suddenly, the green glow of their inhuman eyes took on a very sinister hue. There was no doubt in Cid's mind that they knew that their group had killed one of their kind in the basement, and the payback handed out would not be his. As he watched, a fourth rose from the pile, the rocks seemingly coming to life to form the thing's body.

The first picked up a rock and its whole hand seemed to catch fire, green flames billowing from its fist. It hurled the missile at them, its aim fortunately off. The flaming boulder slammed into the ship, making a metallic thud and leaving a scuff and small dent in its wake. Cid, seeing the second picking up a rock, abruptly rethought his earlier enthusiasm. "Right, now's a good time to run away."

He turned to face the group, only to see Red, the last of them, disappearing into the crack. "Hey, wait for me!"

Cid sprinted for the crack, tossing his spear hilt-first into the crack and diving into the narrow entrance. He ducked and rolled, coming up short and very nearly bowling over Barret, who dodged aside at the last minute. Even so, his legs slammed painfully into the opposite bulkhead in the cramped space. He was rewarded, however, with another heavy thud as the second rock impacted the hull just to the side of the crack.

"Oh, gawd, you had to go and wake them up, didn't you? I was just about to sneak out of here, but nooooo, you had to wake them up." Cid sighed. He knew that voice.

"Hello, Yuffie," he said, "It's nice to see you too."

"So, what are you doing here, anyway, Yuffie?" Barret asked. They had moved away from the crack just in case one of the creatures decided to throw a rock small enough to actually fit inside. The room they now inhabited was a smaller tunnel like space. Heavy technology that none of them had seen before laced the walls, and a green glow emerged from a crack in some plating. It had obviously been pried open further, and what looked to be a metal bar could be seen glowing in the machine's depths. A door with a keypad stood at the other end of the room.

"I came to rescue the survivors, of course. It was a long, hard climb, but I made it. Of course, it was a wasted trip. There aren't any survivors."

"What do you mean, no survivors?" This was Cloud, his blue eyes glowing eerily in the dim light. "How do you know?"

"Well, if there were survivors, they would have opened this door by now, DUH." She said, jerking her thumb towards the closed door. "I tried knocking three times." Barret snorted in disbelief.

"So why didn't you leave?" Tifa asked, the brown glow of her own eyes peering at her.

"I had to wait for Big, Dumb, and Rocky out there to go to sleep. No way I could sneak past all five."

"Five? We only saw three." Red replied.

"Four, I spotted another as I was getting out." Cid said. Red shrugged and turned his attention back to Yuffie.

"There's another in the basement. He's the runt of the litter." She said with negligent wave of her hand.

"Well, then there's only four. Teef here took out that one when we came up." Barret indicated Tifa with a nod of his head. Yuffie's jaw dropped. "You mean you actually…" She shut it on whatever she was going to say, embarrassed to have broken her cool façade. Tifa just nodded.

Yuffie snapped back to her old poker face with a snap, blowing off Tifa's accomplishment with a careless shrug. "Whatever. What really kept me here is this." She pointed at the cracked housing. "Did you know this thing runs on Materia? I've been trying to get it out. I don't know what it does, but it's so big and such a strange shape it's got to be powerful. Saay, Cloud," she batted her eyelashes at him, "you've always been good with Materia. Can you figure out what it does?"

Cloud shrugged. It couldn't hurt to try, so he walked over to the damaged component and peered inside. Concentrating, he peered into its depths, sending his mind deeply into it. Normally, there was a pathway, a way into the Materia, that the user would follow to the core of the Materia where the power was found and released. This time, though, he couldn't find it. "I'm not sure this is actually Materia, Yuffie. It seems like something else."

"Pleease try?" She begged. Cloud sighed, but he knew that she would be hell on earth unless he at least made a show of effort, so he turned back to the item and tried to send his consciousness into it, not looking for a path this time but simply barging through to where the core should be. He found power, all right, but this was no normal magic. This power writhed and flowed, expanding and bursting at the seams to be let out. It dragged at the edges of his mind, trying to pull him apart and trying to become part of him at the same time, eroding the outer layers of his mental defenses like paper and heading for his inner self. Panicking, he tried to pull away, only to discover he was stuck there, like a fly in honey. The power was gnawing at the middle layers of shielding. After this, only one fragile protective layer of his mind lay between him and the power trying to sunder his being. He pulled again, and felt the tiniest give.

He pulled harder, straining with all of his might to break away, to save his inner self. The power's grip gave slowly, very slowly, wanting to consume him and everything around him. He strained against it, tapping reserves of mental strength he didn't know he had. It struggled with him, vying strength for strength, but he had the advantage. He knew that it could be beaten, and so he ripped the clinging tendrils of the hostile energy away from his psyche, and finally broke free with an almost audible snap.

Cloud came back to himself, breathing hard. "Are you okay, man?" Yuffie peered worriedly at him. "You don't look so good."

Cloud reached out and closed the housing as much as possible. "That's definitely not Materia, Yuffie." He was secretly proud that his voice didn't falter. Licking his lips to bring moisture to a mouth suddenly dry, he said, "I don't know what that is, but it's more dangerous than Materia, and mostly to the wielder. We should leave."

Turning, he looked to Cid. "You're the electronics genius, can you open that door?"

"I'm a pilot, not an electrician," Cid grumbled, but he moved to the keypad anyway. He frowned, peering at the unfamiliar technology, muttering to himself around his cigarette for several minutes. "Here goes nothin'," he said, raising one hand to the keypad. Cloud noted that the fingers of his other hand were crossed. Cid's finger stabbed the green button on the top row, and the door hissed open.

Cid turned around, a smirk on his lips. "The mighty ninja master couldn't do that?" He asked.

"Shaddup." Yuffie brushed past him, slipping into the ship proper. She fell into a crouch and looked for enemies, instinctively blending with the shadows. Finding nothing and no one, she gestured for the rest of the team to proceed. Whatever her boasts and kleptomanic tendancies towards Materia, Yuffie was undeniably a good scout.

AVALANCHE moved through an odd ring device that appeared to go up and around the ship and into a kitchen. Slipping past the two-burner stove and the row of woks of assorted sizes, they entered the obvious main living area. A further search yielded four bedrooms, one obviously female by the underwear lying in a heap in the corner, and up the stairs lay a training area and the ship's bridge, lit only by a dim red glow.

However, it was the last area that they explored that was of the greatest interest. A non-descript door that they had earlier taken for a janitorial closet lead instead into the biggest part of the ship, a hangar that was nearly as long as the rest of the ship. At one end lay the massive double doors that they had spotted on their way in. At the other end lay three ships. One was shaped like a T and painted construction yellow. The cockpit was shaped like a bubble, and appeared to open vertically. The second was painted an even gunmetal grey and appeared new. Large, weapon like protrusions extended in four pincers around the cockpit, also bubble shaped, though this one was entered from the side.

It was the last one that made Cid stop and whistle. It was painted red and immaculately clean, though obviously not new. It was a fighter type, with a long nose and wings that folded over the cockpit when not in use. A long weapon was slung underneath the nose, and an incredibly large engine spoke of more than enough power to suck the eyeballs out of a pilot's head. It's every line spoke of speed, power, and grace.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just found our ticket out of here." Cid declared, staring in awe at the craft before him.