Chapter Three: Gemini - Nibelheim Beginnings

Something was not right. The twins could feel it as soon as they saw the small town in the distance. Training and Evaluation missions were common and they had forgotten how many they had completed, but never here, never in Nibelheim. So why did the town felt so familiar to the generals? They, to their knowledge, had never been at Nibelheim before, so this feeling should be illogical and to be ignored

Also it was rather strange that they both had been dispatched to Nibelheim at the same time. Normally one of them would remain in Midgar as ShinRa's grorified guard dog and to keep an eye at the SOLDIER academy.

***

Fresh recruited boys often needed a strict hand and several times they had guided bullied boys to older, experienced members of SOLDIER, for them to be protected and to learn.

The last one, a shy and small blonde, had been personaly taken under Alexander's wing, the young general having been the first person in SOLDIER the boy was able to trust. It had been a painfull first month, before the blonde opened up to Zack, Sephiroth's best friend and then Sephiroth himself. It had ended with the generals taking the boy in, inofficially adopting him as their younger brother and it also ended with three recruits from the boy's hometown being send to jail for rape.

The boys were lucky that the generals didn't get to them first, for if there was something the twins despised, then it was rape. It was dishonourable, bad for the morale of the troups and it also reminded them too much of some of the things that had been done to them, when they had been younger.

The boy was now slowly opening up to others, having become friends with Zack, a Turk candiate by the name of Reno and, due to a chain of rather bizzare happenings, had managed to befriend Dark Nation, Rufus ShinRa's normally absolute loyal pet.

Actually, the men had theorized, from the way Dark Nation was behaving, it appeared that she thought of Cloud Strife as her cub... a cub that, in her eyes, definetly needed to eat more.

It was rather hard for the generals not to burst into laughter, when Rufus ShinRa started ranting about whatever food Dark Nation had managed to steal from him now. The Vicepresident of ShinRa was not used to his pets new behaviour and the fact that she regularly disappeared and taking rather large chunks of his gourmet food with her, was disturbing to him. If someone had bothered to ask Sephiroth or Alexander about that phenomen, they would have been able to tell them that Dark Nation would bring her stolen goods to a young, blonde recruit and then would sit down in front of him, looking at him with her big round eyes until he'd eaten everything. Those that knew him better had started to call the young blonde 'Nations Cub'. He let them, it was funny and the truth in a way. But who bothered asking the generals? No one and so the secret remained safe.

***

And right now Cloud Strife was more or less bouncing through the streets of Nibelheim, their unofficial tourguide thought his hometown.

A town that was getting more and more familar for the twins. And they had no idea why. It was rather irritating. Something was buzzing in the back of their brains, just like an annoying mosquito that they couldn't catch.

But then, as they walked past a bakery in the middle of the town, the twins both had a flash of memory. They saw a friendly laughing male face, heard the laughter of young children and could taste shadows of mint and chocolate on their tounges. This store, that face... this was the shop Professor Gast had taken them to, so long ago!

The twins looked at each other. From some discrete hacking they knew, that they hadn't been moved from their birthing place until after Gast died, and if Professor Gast had taken them outside here, then it would mean that this was the town of the birth, their hometown!

But why had it been kept secret from them? Why had they never been told? And why were they here now? Both of them, here, at the same time, it had to mean something! And most likely nothing good.

Someone was playing tricks with them and if there was something Sephiroth and Alexander hated, then it was dishonesty.

Unfortunately, while they had managed to find some answeres, they weren't closer to solving the puzzle than before.

The generals looked at each other and sighed, as they decided to let the mystery rest for a while. They had other things to do right know. A place had to be secured for their men and they had choosen the old ShinRa mansion as the perfect place. It only had to be cleaned of a few monsters and a lot of dust and cobwebs.

Both shared the thought that the place was most likely their birthing place, but they decided not to act on the information now. The needs of their troups were more important. They would follow the leads later... much later, after they had managed to secure their base of operation.

And tomorrow they would go uo the mountain, taking Cloud and another, hired civilian, as guides, to hunt for the dangerous Nibelwolves and maybe, if they were "lucky" they would find a dragon or two. It was time to teach the kids, just how sirious and how dangerous the life of a SOLDIER could be.

***

Where she went, animals and monsters fled and plants whilted. Before the experiments she had been a healer and had been able to grow plants everywhere. But now her abilities had been reversed, the healerhad become a destroyer. And destroy she would. Every single human inhabiting the face of the planet was doomed to die at her hands. Everyone.

***

The Planet was in pain. ShinRa had weakend its immunesystem and then Jenova had started to stir. The had been bad enough. But then SHE had appeared. The one that was but was not. She who was the antithesis of everything Cetra.

The Planet screamed in pain. But no one was left to listen.

Tbc

I like Dark Nation, so I gave the cat a bigger part than it had in the game. I think it was never said if Dark Nation was male or female, for my fic, she is a female.