Part Four

1.

It is a law of this world that time brings change. And though its occurrence ultimately is inevitable, it also is a truth that everyone and everything in this world harbors the will to resist that change, and will actively fight to do so. If this weren't a truth, the world would exist in a state of permanent chaos. It would be such that nothing remained constant for more than a second's time.

I think that once the circumstances of a person's life get to a satisfactory point, any sort of change to them becomes a fearful, unknown adversary, even a monster of sorts to some. And it is natural to fear the unknown because with it comes the potential for danger. That is why such a resistance exists.

For that reason it was, I suppose, that during the first year after I broke my leg, my sightings of unidentified objects did not cease. I merely chose to ignore them. Sometimes I found myself tempted to investigate those incidences, but my leg always was a reminder to me.

I have had many habits throughout my life, some good, some bad, some of them, such as my fondness for watching the night sky, which have persisted through the years. More than likely the most significant of these habits to me has been my desire to visit my father in the back of the canyon. I don't visit as much these days as I used to, but he remains a very important part of my life. I suppose I visit in part to pay my respects to him for having sacrificed himself so that I might live on, but back in those times it felt like there was another reason beyond that.

One summer night following the year I broke my leg, I paid a visit to him. It was a cool night, but not so much so as to be chilly. No clouds stood in the sky. The moon was large, very large, directly above, shining ample pale yellow-white light upon Seto's Valley (a name I've given to the area). Behind it a veil of stars draped itself, twinkling delicately, in the dark blue sky.

As I arrived on the rocky ground below my father, midnight came. The entire canyon was bathed in light. No shadows anywhere. I climbed the side of the cliff leading up to his body. Within a few moments I had reached the top of the cliff and was standing silently behind him. I think my father showed me my own mortality. He showed me the delicate nature of life, how easily it could be given and taken away. He represented to me the nature of all my beliefs and philosophies. He taught me, among other things, to have patience and understanding, and that everyone deserves a second chance.

I took a step forward. He remained still. The moonlight bleached the stone of his body. I took another step, and then another, and another, until I'd walked up next to him. We stood together, neck to neck, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. I was just as big as him now. When Grandfather Bugenhagen first showed him to me, he had looked huge, but now I had grown up.

"Seto..." I almost whispered it. "Father..."

The heavens shone down on us. He was still, and silence prevailed for a moment. I couldn't find any words. Usually I didn't say much of anything while there. It just felt comforting being with him.

"I miss you. Everyday." I said nothing more.

Seto gazed intensely through his frozen eyes across the valley. I looked him in the face for the first time that night and saw his stare. Looking off into the valley, I tried to match my sight to his. He looked downward across to a point about 200 meters away where a cliffside rose up from the ground. He effectively surveyed the entire area.

I lay down next to him. I had occasionally spent the night in the valley with my father. It was so, that night. I lay there for almost an hour, my sight drifting in and out over that valley my father protected.

And then movement down below caught my eye. I ignored it at first, dismissing it as a figment of my imagination. Usually that would stop whatever I saw or heard, but this time it was different. The movement continued, and I finally glanced down.

Shock hit me as I saw what it was moving below me. I jumped to my feet and stared down into the valley. Up against the now shadowed far wall of the valley walked a large quadruped animal, exactly the same as me, but maneless. A female maybe? She had a fire on the end of her tail as well, though hers was a white flame rather than the orange color of mine. The fire seemed almost to float about through the shadows as she walked. She was very beautiful in the light of the night. The moonlight paled the color of her fur nearly the same white as that her tail fire.

Instantly I was crouched low again, almost completely out of view below the edge of the cliff with my head just high enough up to continue watching her. She continued walking, stopping every so often and lowering her head to the ground. Sniffing the air, maybe. As time passed, I lost my caution and began to rise up from my crouch.

All of my attention rested on her. Before I knew it, I had stood straight up and was leaning over the cliff's edge to try to see her closer. I suppose I could have made a repeat performance and fallen over the edge of the cliff, distracted as I was, but fortunately the ground held, and nothing of the sort occurred. As I neared the edge, several large rocks broke free of the cliff and tumbled downward, shattering the silence which had held the night. She stopped in her tracks and swiftly looked up, directly at me. I was petrified by her stare. All was still for a split-second, and then she ran.

Almost simultaneously we exploded into action, she running and I chasing. I bolted down the side of the cliff from the direction I'd climbed, giving her a head start on me. By the time I'd reached the ground she'd opened up a gap of nearly 500 meters. My mind raced as I began running after her. In no time we were out of the canyon and were bounding through tall green grass in the open plains. The world, veiled in white moonlight, rushed by at a frenetic pace. The mountains rose up in the north and grew taller as we got nearer and nearer. I slowly closed in on her, cutting the distance between us in half once, and then again, before I saw her jump over something up ahead of me. I couldn't see what it was until I was almost on top of it.

It's strange... Without going into the details, I will say my tail fire helps sustain my life. If it were to be put out, I would slowly die, like a fish out of water. I can withstand rain without it being put out, I can withstand wind without it being blown out, and I can withstand combinations of the two. It seems that the only way my tail fire could ever be put out is if I were to be completely submerged in water. So naturally, I have an aversion to water.

And as I chased her, I nearly did submerge myself. I came close to running head-first into a river. Only by slamming on the breaks did I stay dry. Across the river the female ran up into the nearby mountains. I calmed, but only for a moment. At every second, she was farther from me.

In only a few seconds' time, I made the decision to cross the river. Backing up and taking a running start, I made the leap. About halfway through my jump, the thought crossed my mind for the first time that this was not a good idea, jumping over a river, and risking my life. But risking my life really is nothing new to me. I crossed safely, though just barely, landing on the edge of the opposite bank, and continued my pursuit up into the mountains.

She was far above me now. I could barely see her but for the occasional flash of light from her tail. I climbed as quickly as I could, keeping an eye on her as I went. My foot slipped once and I almost fell and lost sight of her, but my footing held otherwise.

At one point I did lose her light. She had gone over the top of the mountains. I hurried up to the top and found myself looking out over a crater in the mountain range. Far below in the crater, a lake glistened in fragments of yellow-white light. A waterfall flowed from the mountains into the water on one end of the lake, kicking up a slight mist around its surface. On its other end a river began and flowed away silently out of sight. Only the faint static sound of the waterfall was audible.

Also visible in the crater, the flame of the female's tail fire made its way along the lakeside toward the waterfall and disappeared behind it.

I made my way down into the crater after her. I was for some reason convinced that she was done running from me. But upon reaching the waterfall and looking behind it, I was surprised to see a completely empty space. The rocky ground stood empty, the mountain wall the same.

I quickly looked around the crater, hoping to catch some sight of her possibly escaping from the other side of the waterfall. Nothing. The roar of the water punching into the lake presented another direction she may have gone. I looked into the black water of the lake. Even with the moon shining down on it, the water was perfectly opaque. Had she fallen in, I would never know... And had she fallen in, she would not have survived.

The adrenaline slowed. I walked away from the waterfall, glancing at my surroundings, stopped about fifteen feet later, and looked back into the water, feeling defeated. The opaque black reflected the night sky. My reflection, palely lit, looked back up at me from the surface of the water, seeming almost to mock me, though I couldn't quite place how. The water rippled steadily upon him, that reflection, breaking him into a convulsing, laughing figure. It was a... disconcerting image.

I broke my gaze and had begun to walk away when from behind me came a loud rumbling noise, as though a large mass were being moved. For a moment it sounded, and then it was gone. I stopped, shocked for a moment, turned, and investigated the area the sound had come from. Back behind the waterfall, where the stone wall had previously stood, there now was an opening. Without any sort of cautionary thought, I walked through.

The opening led inside to a rather large cave. As I first came into the cave I was amazed. As far as the eye could see in every direction huge pyramid-like formations, like stalagmites, jutted upward from the ground 20 or 30 feet into the air. They all were made of a cerulean blue rock, almost mimicking the waves of the ocean. As those spires rolled into the distance, a black haze enveloped them, effectively shielding them from view. I stepped into a circular clearing, very flat, also made of the blue rock. It had a sheen on its surface which reflected the light in the room, as though it were polished. Directly ahead of me on the opposite side of the clearing, the source of the room's light, some sort of glowing altar, steadily radiated a diffused white light in every direction from a bright point at its center. Tall structures of some other material than the rock prevalent everywhere else jutted out of the ground directly behind the altar, wing-like structures fanned out perfectly. To get a better view of the light source, I stepped up to the altar and ducked my head in close to it. Squinting, I could make out almost indiscernibly an orb five or six inches in diameter. Some sort of raw materia, maybe. If so, it was most definitely not any kind I'd seen before. Having no interest in taking it, I backed up from the altar. Just as I did, though, the same rumbling from before started up. By the time I'd turned to look, the rumbling had stopped, and the entrance to the cave had been replaced by a blue rock wall.

Almost immediately the light from the altar disappeared, and the entire cave was plunged into darkness. I worried a bout being trapped for a split second—the darkness seemed to have sparked that thought—but quickly the light on the altar returned. It pulsed now, its light slowly and smoothly oscillating from dim to bright, then fading away into nothing, leaving the cave black for a few seconds, and beginning again in the same manner and rhythm. For a few minutes this continued, and then the light faded away and did not come back.

I quickly adjusted to the darkness and could see perfectly well again. The room was vacant and now lifeless in the dark with exception of myself. Upon inspection of darkened the cave, I saw a hole, like a doorway, in the stalagmite directly behind the altar. I could see nothing beyond it even after I'd adjusted to the darkness, but nonetheless I stepped through it.

A long hallway, cut in an arched shape out of the rock walls, wound back deep into the mountain. I walked for several minutes through the dark hall without coming to its end. And then, out of the darkness, came a set of large, metallic automatic doors. They stood motionless about ten feet tall, spanning the width of the hall. They looked to be in disuse, as they were not shut completely together. On the right-side door, about six feet up, I read a dimly visible sign:

NO TRESPASSING

PROPERTY OF SHIN-RA ELECTRIC CO.

Below I saw another sign, but in the darkness I only could make out the words 'Shin-Ra,' 'world,' and 'energy.' On the other door I read another sign, outlined in yellow and black stripes:

DANGER:

AUTOMATIC DOORS

DO NOT STAND IN DOORWAY

And just below that, a caution sign depicting a human being mutilated by closing doors.

The space in between the doors showed an expanse of nothing beyond. The space between the doors looked to be wide enough that I could squeeze through if I tried. In the same manner I'd been doing things that entire night, I impulsively edged my way through to the other side.

Just as I got through the doorway, light returned. The doors slammed shut behind me, giving me a slight start. An unpleasant thought shot through my mind like a sharp pain. I imagine I grimaced at that thought, being stuck in those doors as they slammed shut. The thought was gone the next second as I adjusted to the light and looked at my surroundings.

The room I now stood in appeared to be a laboratory. It lay sprawled out before me, as big or bigger than the cave I'd just left. The light came from fixtures high above me in the ceiling. Large machines sat around the place, creating aisles wide enough for maybe two people to walk in at a time. So overwhelmed with the size of this place was I that I felt that if she were hiding somewhere in here, I would never find her.

Nevertheless I set out looking. And it did seem to be as futile as I had thought. I looked through aisle after aisle, machine after machine, section after section of the laboratory, finding nothing. Soon I was hopelessly lost deep in the rows of machinery. Many times I thought I'd found something or heard something: shadows, footsteps, whispers that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. These senses gave me an eery feeling, like prey being watched, being hunted. Things were turning against me. After a while of wandering, I stumbled into a clearing free of machines. On the ground were several nests of fabric, blankets probably, arranged in a disorderly line seven nests long. I smelled something bad in this area. It provoked me, making the fur on my back stand up on end. In one of the nests I saw a headdress like mine, with seven feathers in it. More whispers from somewhere behind me. Moving over to the nest, I leaned over and smelled the headdress. Not the same smell. Suddenly I heard rapid footsteps approaching me from behind. Interrupted, I wheeled around to see what it was, and, by instinct, unsheathed my claws and prepared to fight. Before I had a chance to strike or even see what was rushing me, I was hit to the ground on my side by something large and powerful. Now I saw. For a split-second my sight held the twisted, contorted, angry face of a maned animal, an exact image of myself in the face and the body, but with two angry, fiery eyes, and of a much larger stature. The last thing I remember was the image of a front paw with four sharp claws swiftly moving into view toward my face and its incredible impact.

2.

Reality isn't always what we may want it to be. Not all our efforts lead to desired results. Not all things happen for the betterment of life. Not all memories are happy ones. It's unfair. Unfair that we don't live in a perfect world with perfect people, leading our own perfect lives. Parents die. Children die. Friends die. Memories are lost and memories are gained, all with no heed to emotion or justice. There truly is a harsh truth to face. You can't change the past, and it seems you can't change the future either.

A moment passed when I came to before I quite realized where I was. The same place surrounded me. A mass of machinery lay in a line all around me. I myself was laid out in one of the nests I'd seen before. The nest next to me, I saw, was occupied by the female I'd been chasing. The other five nests were empty and in a state of disarray.

I froze upon seeing her and felt my heart rate increase. She slept, rather soundly it seemed, her head lightly rested across a foreleg with her hind legs tucked under her body as though she would be ready if woken to spring up to full attention instantly. I watched in amazement and disbelief, careful not to wake her, and studied her. She really had finished running.

I remember wondering to myself if I was dreaming. This whole situation felt unreal. I half-expected at any moment to wake up back in Grandfather's house alone, Cloud there to scold my thoughts, but nothing happened. The soft heaving of her chest in and out as she breathed continued on.

She was even more beautiful than she had looked in the moonlight. She was noticeably smaller than me, her body slenderly built. She looked delicate in her sleep. The angles in her face were beautifully smooth, giving her a remarkably young look. No imperfections anywhere. And her eyes were shut peacefully, relaxed. I couldn't have wished for anything better to wake up to. She was like a perfect dream sleeping before me. Looking back on it, I suppose it could have been called love at first sight.

As I looked upon her, she awoke. Her body came to life, and she lazily lifted her head to me.

"You're awake," she said pleasantly. Her voice was beautiful, perfectly pairing every other aspect of her beauty. It was soft but strong, smooth and full.

Her words floated around me for a moment before I answered. "Yes, I am awake."

She smiled dreamily and got to her feet to stretch herself out.

"How are you feeling?" she asked as she dipped into a deep stretch.

For the first time I felt the soreness in my face and in my ribs.

"Fairly well. I'm sore."

She smiled again. "My brother is very strong. He really could have hurt you."

"Your brother?" I was surprised.

"Bikhai. He's my brother."

"I don't think your brother likes me much..."

"Well, we all thought you were an intruder or a monster of some sort. He was only protecting us."

"Us? How many others are there?"

"You mean my family?"

I nodded.

"There were twelve of us, but there only are seven of us left: my grandfather, Panth, my father, Chatur, my mother, Anand, my brother, Bikhai, my other brother, Erevu, my sister, Daya, and me. I'm Malaika."

It stunned me to think that there lived so many others of my kind. And so near Cosmo Canyon. All that time... Cloud was wrong.

"It's nice to meet you, Malaika..." I finally managed to say. "My name is Nanaki."

"Nanaki... That's a nice name. It sounds... elegant."

She said my name perfectly. Not many people I'd met could say my name. There were the people of Cosmo Canyon, and that was about it. Others knew me only as Red XIII. Maybe it wasn't that it was such a difficult name to say as it was that people never felt comfortable with the name Nanaki. Red XIII was more informal in their eyes.

It was as I thought about this that I noticed on Malaika's shoulder black markings. A tattoo of the number twelve in Roman numerals. And on her back legs there also were tattoos. The same as mine. I prepared to ask her about them, but just as I opened my mouth to speak, a member of her family walked into the clearing behind me. Malaika's attention was diverted from me.

"Bikhai," she said to the stranger. "Come meet Nanaki."

Bikhai passed me on my right, brushing lightly against me, walked to his sister, and turned to face me. He had the tattoos as well. I saw an eleven on his left shoulder. They both had the same tattoos, but neither of them had the bangles I wore around my ankles.

"Nanaki, huh?" he said in a deep, unforgiving voice.

He was of a much larger stature than his sister and even me, and he seemed to attempt to use it to his advantage. He hulked over me, apparently trying to intimidate me, trying to make me feel small. His face, wrapped up in a wicked scowl, was unfamiliar to me. He was the one who had attacked me, but he bore no resemblance to me as I'd thought my attacker had. Why had I...? Bikhai ran his fiery eyes across me, scanning for any weaknesses he could find.A thick scar cut a vertical notch in his nose and ran a crooked path halfway up his muzzle, showing a blackened line of skin underneath.

Finally, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, Bikhai turned to his sister and whispered something into her ear. I wasn't quite sure what he said, but something about the way he treated me infuriated me. I swallowed my anger, though, and remained calm.

"No, not now Bikhai," Malaika said, answering his whisper.

"Why?" I heard Bikhai ask back privately. It was like I was not there. "Well, when?"

"I don't know. Later." She spoke in an irritated manner.

Bikhai shot a glare at me. "Alright. Later, then," he said flatly, and turned and walked away. At the far edge of the clearing he stopped and said over his shoulder in a faintly mocking tone "Sorry about last night. I hope I didn't hurt you..." He followed that up, muttering something else under his breath that I couldn't make out, and having said it, was gone.

"I really don't think your brother likes me," I said.

"Don't worry. He's nicer once you get to know him..."

I doubted it. I could already tell we were destined not to get along.

"...But he really can be a baby sometimes." We both laughed, though I did so a bit tentatively. "Do you know what he wanted? A walk!"

"A walk?"

She proceeded to answer a question I hadn't asked. "A year ago my grandmother died. Of course she was also Bikhai's grandmother. Our family was hit hard by her death; it hit my grandfather, me, and Bikhai especially hard. I don't think my grandfather has ever fully recovered from it. Her death changed him permanently. Bikhai became very solemn and cynical back then, rarely speaking to anyone except to reproach them for some individual fault he saw. He'd never been like that before... He really looked up to our grandmother. In a way, she was his idol. I was saddened more than anything. But whereas Bikhai closed up, shielded himself from the world, and hid his emotions, I was very open about my sadness. I spent night after night away from everyone, missing her. Once I cried out to her out by the lake outside, hoping she would hear me through my howls. One night Bikhai found me. We had never been very close before, but...we connected then and comforted each other. Neither of us felt alone with the other near. I think we helped each other recover from our loss. We spent a lot of time together in those months following Grandmother's passing. We walked together at dusk, slept next to each other every night, and we walked and talked with each other in the daytime. In that time we really came close. Walking has just become a custom between us."

It was during her story that I realized it was she I'd heard a year earlier on top of the canyon. And maybe that wasn't all. Cloud was more wrong than I'd initially thought.

She seemed uncomfortable telling me this story. The pain apparently hadn't yet completely passed. "So Nanaki, I've told you something about myself. What about you?" She seemed for the first time to notice the scar over my right eye. "What happened?"

I really didn't want to talk about it. But... it seemed I'd opened up an old wound, and it was only right that she do the same. "The GI War. A warrior slashed out my eye."

"Do you have trouble seeing? I mean, looking through one eye it's hard to judge distances and stuff." She closed one of her eyes and looked around as she spoke, trying to mimic my sight. "Do have problems like that?" She looked me in the face, both of her eyes again open.

"No, not anymore. It used to be completely debilitating... But you get used to it after a while. I've found alternate means to judge distances and to cope with the other problems related to my sight. These days it's not so much of an impairment as it is just a different way of seeing."

She nodded empathetically. "I heard about the war from here when I was young."

"How long have you lived here?"

"As long as I can remember—my entire life, really. One of my first memories is of my grandmother telling me about the GI War. She told me that bad people were killing our families and friends. She didn't ever say why, other than we had done something to upset them."

Families, she said... Families. I didn't have much memory from before the war. I'd never known any families other than my own.

"Both of my parents were killed in the war." In my mind I saw the arrows protruding from my mother's back. I saw her dying in front of me. "I was lucky," I continued. "I ended up a casualty, not a part of the body count. I was left for dead, but I survived."

"My grandmother told me that the humans had brought us to this lab because they thought we would be the last of our kind after the war. Were you the only one who survived?"

I said nothing.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean... If I'd known..." She seemed to have stumbled into the conversation farther than she wanted.

Nothing was said for a moment. I felt embarrassed, though I didn't know why.

"So you're thirteen?" She eyed my tattoo. "I'm twelve. The scientists gave my family tattoos like this when they brought us to the lab. My grandfather is number one, my father is four, my mother five, my sister eight, my brother, Erevu, nine, and Bikhai is eleven. How did you get your tattoos?

Hojo. "After the war, after I'd recovered from my wounds, I was captured, probably by the same people who took you and your family, and taken to a city where I was forced to take part in experiments involving a recovery program for our species. Needless to say, me being alone, it didn't work."

"And so you've lived alone all this time?"

"Not exactly. There have always been humans in Cosmo Canyon. I've befriended many over the years. But, yes, I do suppose there has always been... a wall, I guess, between them and me. ...It's good to see you. It's good to see your family. It's a good feeling."

I lied to myself and to Malaika. I always had felt alone, completely so. Sometimes my solitude scared me, as though the reality of my existence were going to overwhelm and envelop me, and I would be lost. Sometimes it saddened me to know that there was no one else, that I had no one to be with or to rely on. And sometimes it angered me to think of the short-sidedness of the world, killing my family, my friends, and my species, and leaving me behind to deal with it, to suffer the consequences of its actions alone.

Even Malaika and her family had not suffered through the war as I had, but had been carted off to safety in the mountains. But I felt different about her and her family. I felt that they could and would empathize with me as no one else could. I felt that they could understand me and, even though they were not with me at the time, understand the suffering I'd gone through. That day when I met her, all my true feelings of loneliness and anguish ended.

3.

Throughout the day Malaika introduced me to her family. I met her sister, Daya, her older brother, Erevu, who was reading a book on the technology and energy sources of the past, and I met her mother, Anand.

Anand had an aura about her. The air around her seemed soothingly warm. She had a very caring, perpetually happy and accepting attitude. She greeted me as I met her as a new member of her family. One the few details of her appearance I can vividly recall today was her odd and beautiful eye color. That is to say I can picture her eye color, but I find it very difficult to describe. It was a whitish color, almost a pure white, rimmed in a cerulean blue with radial streaks of the same color circling around her pupil and just a faint tinge of yellow all around. The image has been etched into my mind. I'll never forget it.

Malaika's father, Chatur, lay asleep when Malaika brought me to see him. We left his location quietly and went to find her grandfather, Panth.

"You seem like the silent type. Like you spend a lot of your time with thought," she said as we searched. "You'll like my grandfather, I think. He spends a lot of his time thinking too. He's always a good person to go to for advice. He can always provide different perspectives on situations."

We could not find Panth inside the lab, so we walked outside to search. Back through the two metal doors we went, into the long stone hallway, and out into the cave with the strange glowing materia on the winged altar. Daylight, turned a fluctuating blue hue by the flowing waterfall outside, shone in from the entrance. Once outside we saw him. He was talking with someone I recognized as Bikhai across the lake from us. Bikhai seemed unhappy. He spoke to Panth loudly so that, even though Malaika and I were a good twenty to thirty yards away with the rush of the waterfall in our ears, I could hear him clearly.

"-ink it's a bad idea. Things have been this way too long. Who knows what he-" Bikhai turned his head and spotted us. His talking stopped, mid-word.

Panth said something in response to his statements, but I could not hear it. Bikhai's head turned back to his grandfather and nodded unwillingly. Malaika and I approached the two just as Bikhai turned to walk away.

Malaika said to me "I'll give you some time with Grandfather," and then ran to Bikhai's side and said to him "How about that walk?"

Together, the two of them walked away.

In front of me now stood Panth. He was as large as or larger than Bikhai, making me feel once again rather small and insignificant. His body showed the signs of age; scars cut his face and body in many places. His skin was loose, and his fur had lost quite a bit of its color, turned a darkened, grayed-over shade of maroon. His face was sleepy, as though he had not had rest in a long time.

"Nanaki?" he asked. Even his voice had a hint of sleepiness in it.

"Yes."

"It is good to meet you."

I smiled. "Likewise."

"You live in Cosmo Canyon?"

I nodded.

"We thought all of the Rufus were killed in the GI War."

"Rufus?" All I could think of in association with that name was Shin-Ra.

"That is the name they gave our species—the scientists who held us in this laboratory, I mean. They took us from the canyon and brought us here. They feared something like the GI War was about to erupt in which a total extermination of our species was a great possibility, so, nearly a year before the war began, they abducted twelve individuals from the canyon, myself included, and brought them here."

He, too, was answering a question which, although I was interested, I hadn't asked.

"They held us in this hidden laboratory against our will and performed tests to help 'ensure the future of our species,' as they put it. News of the war's beginning made it to us within a year of our abduction, and also with that came some doubts as to the future of the species recovery program we were involved in. It seemed it was in danger of being shut down even so soon after it had begun. The scientists said someone new had joined the higher ranks of Shin-Ra, the company sponsoring the program. They said this person had control over their branch of the company and that this person was not likely to provide the funds needed to continue the program. The war continued, and we were informed of it by the scientists occasionally. I think I speak for nearly everyone of us in this family when I say I would have, given the chance, returned to Cosmo Canyon to fight and protect it, but... the chance never came. We hated the laboratory for a time, we hated the people in it, and we hated the tests we were forced to endure, but it all became less and less foreign and inhospitable the longer we stayed. By the time the war ended, this place was like a second home to us. The war ended, they said, as a total loss. We were told that we represented the last hope for our species, that our kind had been wiped out in the outside world. Soon after that, the recovery program was shut down. It happened overnight. We woke up one day to an empty lab. The machines remained, but the inhabitants had gone. We were free to leave, but we felt the outside might still be dangerous, so we remained here.

"It's safe now," I explained.

"Yes, I suppose it is..." And he left it at that.

In the quiet that followed I spied the tattoo on Panth's shoulder. A one, just as Malaika had said.

"You are number one?"

Panth looked confused for a second.

"I'm thirteen," I said, and showed him my tattoo.

He caught on. "Oh, yes. I am Red I. Both this name and tattoo were given to me upon my first arrival to the laboratory. Identification, I assumed. Every one of the other eleven was given the tattoos as well. Numerals from two to twelve were given to them in descending order from ages oldest to youngest as far as I could tell. But how did you get your tattoo?"

I told him about my experience with Shin-Ra and with Hojo.

"That is interesting. It poses to me a question. This Hojo gave you the number thirteen. That would suggest he knew about the recovery program. But why, if he knew of it, did he not come back to this laboratory and start it up again?"

We both thought for a moment about this. It did seem strange. Hojo was, in my mind, a fool, but he was an intelligent fool nonetheless. He really hadn't cared about our species when conducting the experiments I'd been involved in. It was the Cetra he had aimed to revive. Even if he had known about the recovery program, he may not have cared enough about us to restart it. But still, I thought, if he'd known he had an entire second laboratory at his disposal, he wouldn't have hesitated to take full advantage of it.

"He must have known only of the project and not where it was run from," I concluded. I tried unsuccessfully to make sense of it. "Like you said, there was a power change in Shin-Ra that shut the program down. Records of the program may have been lost, leaving only rumors behind." It seemed unresolved. I remembered a detail of what Panth had said before. "You said that, including yourself, there were twelve individuals brought to the laboratory. What did you mean by 'individuals?' Aren't you all a part of the same family?"

"No, we are not related to each other. Our family is not one of relatives but one of closely knit friends. We have bonded over the years and come closer together. At first we did it to help each other through our captivity, but it evolved into something more, our companionship did, after the war. Learning that our species had been all but wiped out was devastating. Being together helped us cope with this fact. It helped quell the feelings of solitude and loneliness that engulfed us."

I remember thinking to myself that he didn't know what solitude truly felt like. He never was truly alone. I resented his use of that word.

We walked together back into the cave behind the waterfall. Erevu, who earlier had been reading the book on technology, stood now in front of the altar. He appeared to be inspecting it. The sound of our approach broke his head away from it toward us. His two dark eyes inspected Panth and me momentarily. Unconcerned, he turned back to his inspection. I saw him lean in closer to the altar for a moment and then lean back away, and as he did so, the doorway to the outside rumbled shut, cutting off all light but the glowing altar and our tail fires. Erevu's silhouette could be seen on the altar, his shadow stretching out behind him. On the wall behind the altar a nine winged shadow stretched out toward the darkness in the distance of the cavern.

The light began pulsing as it had the night before, silently coming and going. After a moment the light dimmed out and did not come back. The whole sequence happened exactly as I remembered.

Through the darkness I heard Panth say to me "You look interested Nanaki. If you would like to learn about what has just happened, why don't you stay here and talk to my grandson?" He did not give me a chance to answer before leaving my side and entering the darkened doorway behind the altar.

I stood in the darkness, letting myself adjust to the available light.

From the direction of the altar came another voice. "This is an interesting little device, huh?"

"Yes," I answered. As I answered, the light from the altar returned, and the door to the waterfall outside opened again. The entrance Panth had gone through had disappeared.

Erevu turned to me, smiling, as though he himself were amused and amazed by what had just occurred. "This entire pedestal is some sort of energy conduit. The laboratory supplies the power."

"What does it do?"

"Well..." He seemed not to be quite sure. "I've been studying just that for many years now. Do you see that?" He motioned toward the orb at the center of the altar. "That is some sort of materia. From what I've been able to find out, it is a type of identification materia."

"Identification materia?" I had heard of many different kinds of materia that had no good use or any use at all, but identification materia was a new one to me.

"It has no practical use other than to identify its user. That in itself doesn't seem very useful, huh?"

I agreed.

"A long time ago I saw some scientists working on a computer near my holding cell. They talked about this materia while using that computer, talking about things like 'reformatting the materia.' After the humans left the lab I looked on their computer. Somehow or another they managed to rig the materia to act as a verification system of sorts. If the person identified by the materia belonged to a certain group of people, the passage to the lab opened. Otherwise the lab would remain hidden."

"Interesting," I said.

"Through research I've discovered that this materia passes an image of its user through some sort of wiring below ground into the lab where it is processed to see if it is a valid user, allowing the lab's entrance to open or stay shut. I've managed to get into the computer system and change things around to where only members of our species can gain entry to the lab. I thought that meant only my family could enter, but I guess you proved otherwise."

I smiled but felt awkward doing so. There was something I wanted to ask, but I didn't quite know what it was.

"It's good to meet you, Nanaki. You seem like a good person. I hope I'll get to know you better. I'll see you later." Erevu leaned in toward the materia for a moment. The cavern disappeared, and the fire on his tail began to move for the dark hallway.

"Wait," I said to the fire. It stopped. "The lab powers this conduit, right?"

"Yes, why?"

"Where does the lab get its power from?"

Erevu was silent for a moment. "...Good question. I don't know." He seemed content to leave it at that and continued walking back to the lab, disappearing into the dark hallway.

A moment later the light returned.

4.

I stayed with Malaika's family for the next few days, and I won't lie—despite the accepting front they put up, I felt like an outsider. While I was happy no longer to be alone, I still felt I didn't quite belong. I felt most comfortable around Malaika. She seemed to put up no guards against me, not reserving anything from me. We talked freely with each other, which I think is the quality that separated her from the others. I connected with her very quickly. Bikhai pestered me, and he seemed to derive a certain pleasure in doing so. He annoyed me and even angered me on a few occasions, and were it not for my diplomatic intentions, making a good impression with his family, we would have had a few fights. And Panth told me many times not to mind his grandson's behavior, that it merely would take time to get used to my presence. Panth was the worst out of all of them. I never did feel truly comfortable around him. It seemed like he had set some sort of expectation for me to live up to. Maybe it was that when he spoke to me he seemed distant and closed up, wrapped up in another mindset or thought than that of which he spoke. He seemed sad at times, and he seemed almost to be tormented at other times. Maybe that's why it was so uncomfortable.

Whatever the case, on the third day of my stay I decided to return to Cosmo Canyon. I'd likely worried the canyon's residents, disappearing for so long without a trace, and though living with Malaika's family was comparable to living a dream, I felt I needed to return to reality, at least for a time.

It was very early morning, well before sunrise, as I said my goodbyes, that Malaika approached me with a request.

"You're going back home?"

"Yes. I figure it's time to return to my responsibilities."

She looked disappointed. "But... you'll return, right?"

"Without a doubt." I got an idea. "Hey, why don't you come back to Cosmo Canyon with me? I can introduce you to the villagers. You could come live there and leave this laboratory behind."

She looked confused, as though she had never before thought of doing what I'd asked her. I suddenly felt foolish.

"...No... I can't..." She looked hurt now. "I've lived here so long... because of the war."

"It's not dangerous anymore," I explained.

"I know that, but... Even though I was born in the canyon and lived the beginning of my life within its borders... it isn't my home any longer. This laboratory is. My family has lived here out of the world's eye for more than 200 years. It's been peaceful, and it has been comfortable, living here. I don't want any of that to change. Maybe I'm just afraid, but... I don't want that peace to be lost."

It now was I who was disappointed. "I understand. I'll return then in a few days. Goodbye." It came out differently than I'd hoped it would. I did understand what she said, and I respected it too, but I came off sounding childish, like she had upset me.

"Nanaki?"

I stopped.

"Please don't tell anyone about us. Okay?"

"Sure," I said. "I'll see you soon."

I had reached the canyon by daybreak.