Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 and all that's associated with it are not mine but Squaresoft's.

CHAPTER 1

Dreams, Burglars, and Mako

Whispers in the night woke Wraith from his uneasy sleep. His blue eyes scanning the white expanse of the ceiling before he slowly sat up and motioned to pull the covers from him, only to find out he wasn't covered with blankets at all. And he was wearing his white overcoat with his black turtleneck sweater and white pants underneath. He was wearing his usual-looking clothes. He flicked his hair from his face and threw his muscular legs over to the side of the bed.

The whispers had stopped, he realized. He shook his head and another realization came to mind—he was sweating! His face was soaking wet and wondered why he hadn't felt the liquid when he touched his face as he flicked his bangs before. And strange... The sweat smelled weird.

Then he looked at his hands. The room was dark. But not dark enough to recognize the sweat was not sweat.

But blood.

He was not given time to wonder about it anymore. Pain shot up through his head and he fainted. Fainted away into the darkness that seemed to swallow up his room, leaving no traces of light.

--- --- --- --- ---

A male scream followed by a difficult breathing interrupted the stillness of the night. The figure shot up to a sitting position on his bed, immediately feeling his face for sweat. When he did felt the wetness, he looked at his hands and sighed with relief. No blood.

He shook his head and looked at his bedside clock. "4:25," he said a loud. He got up and went straight to the bathroom. When he got out thirty minutes after, he looked brand new. The once disheveled hair was now in place, his sleepy eyes were now replaced with cynical ones, his appearance that was once of a nightmare-shocked child was now of a mean-looking villain.

After dressing himself with his usual-looking clothes, he grabbed his cellular phone and ordered a limousine in front of his mansion in no more than five minutes.

He smiled sardonically and said, "Brace yourself world, Rufus Shinra is back." He took his double-barreled gun from the golden rack where he places his weapons, and headed out as his transportation veered in his compound.

--- --- --- --- ---

At 4:25 a.m. in the other side of the Planet, a boy of seven years got out from his bed after another sleepless night and went outside of his room to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for himself and his mother, who was probably still tired right now after returning home late only a few hours before. He had heard her come in his room and place a kiss on his forehead before proceeding to her own room to sleep.

Only a few minutes left until her alarm clock goes off and she'll get up again to prepare breakfast for the both of them. Rios made it a point to go to her room first and turn off her alarm clock and prepare the meals himself. His mother needs her rest.

As he headed into the kitchen, something moved from outside the house followed by a muffled but audible noise. He decided to check it out. For a seven-year-old, Rios was not afraid of monsters and the like. For the record, he made it a living of killing off monsters that inhabited Mt. Nibel to help out his mother with the bills, without Tifa's knowledge of course.

He took his two-hand sword from his hidden place under the seat of the couch and quietly unlocked and got out from the backdoor. The noise came from the front yard. Like a thief in the night, he slipped from one place to another following the peculiar noise. Peculiar, because as he went nearer to the sound, the less he thought of it as coming from a burglar or a monster. One reason was that it was not as if it was trying to break in the house. Another reason came as realization hit him, the noise came from a small form, although bigger than he was, and it was trying to pull something from somewhere. It looked as if it was stuck or something.

He decided to surprise it, just for the fun of it all.

He rose from the shadows, stepped behind the figure and bawled like Ifrit.

The figure screamed and ran without looking behind her. Of course, she was stuck so she couldn't get away. She cried loudly instead and threatened, "Come near me and you'll be sorry! My friend's a martial artist and if you kill me, you're dogfood!"

"Aunt Yuffie?" Rios asked, grinning as he recognized the voice.

"Rios!?" Yuffie exclaimed and sighed aloud. Then a pause and a shout , "You darn crazy kid!!! You could have given me a heart attack!!!"

"What's going on?" another voice joined in. It was Tifa. She was standing by the front door, with a lamp attached to her hand.

"Uh, hi mom," Rios said, still grinning. So much for the rest he wanted his mom to have, "Aunt Yuffie's here."

Yuffie turned around to face her long-time friend and cried with joy. "Tifa! Your son just killed me!"

Tifa laughed and walked over to her. She was stuck in a hole Rios was digging up earlier to plant some lemon seeds.

"Good to see you Yuffie!" Tifa said and hugged her after pulling her foot from the darn hole. Yuffie hugged her back. "Good to see you too, Teef!" She seemed to forget her face was full of dried tears.

"Uh... I hate to spoil the moment, but it's cold out here. Let's come inside, shall we?" Rios suggested.

Yuffie flashed him a killing look but smiled, "Rios, you nuts!"

"Yeah..." Rios laughed.

--- --- --- --- ---

"Sir, we've got a problem," a somewhat young man interrupted him as he was scanning the reports his secretary had given him as of yesterday and this morning. Wraith looked at him with an emotionless glare, making the poor man back away a bit before continuing, "There's a man in the lobby demanding to see you, Sir."

"And how is that a problem, Heine?" came an emotionless reply.

"He's rather angry about something, Sir. Bellowing ShinCorp and other things," then he paused as if thinking about something, "Or was that Shinra? But there are no Shinra's here, Sir."

Wraith looked at him but not really at him. It was rather through him. Shinra? He decided to check it out for himself.

When he stood up, the other man balked and looked as if he was panicking. He bowed clumsily that he almost fell on his face and scampered away. Wraith smiled an evil smile. It was good to have people do that again. Or was it really? He shook his head, flicked back his hair, and strode out of his office.

'He looks familiar,' he told himself as he looked down at the 'problem' Heine had informed him about. Red hair, arrogant posture...

"Where is he, godammit?! The one who owns this place! I demand to see him at once!" the man bellowed amongst the people there, who really trying very hard not to run for their lives.

That voice. "Reno," It was not a question, rather, it was a statement, said through gritted teeth.

Reno looked up and his eyes bulged, stunned. As he stared at the blond man who was standing behind the railings of the second floor, looking down on him, he tried to say something but found out he could not utter a word at all. He just kept staring.

Wraith grinned in a manner that was not pleasant at all. "Reno. Reno... Whatever your last name is," Wraith said, "How are you? Still alive, I see."

"Shin..." Reno tried his voice, but unfortunately, he was cut off.

"Welcome to ShinCorp. I'm Wraith Shin. President of ShinCorp Group of Companies,"

Reno raised an eyebrow.

"I've been expecting you. Now, if you don't mind, follow me," Wraith ordered and started walking towards his office. Reno did what he was told, although the mean surprise was still clearly stamped on his face.

After closing the door and making sure it would not let any uninvited personnel to interrupt, Wraith motioned Reno to find a chair and sit, but not on his chair, of course. He walked over behind his desk and sat down on his expensive leather arm chair. He and Reno had a staring contest. But Reno was the first one to bulge.

"Rufus? Is that really you?" Reno said rather stupidly. He was leaning towards the table, his neck impossibly stretched out from his collar to get a better look at him.

"Yes, Reno. It's really me," Rufus replied sarcastically, enjoying the weird look on his former-employee's face.

"B-b-but..." the other man stammered, "You were dead. You practically blew up when Diamond Weapon attacked Midgar!"

"I didn't blow up. I was only battered and bruised beyond recognition, but other than that, my insides were still intact, making it possible for me to go traipsing all over the place without having to worry about I leaving my spleen behind."

Reno frowned. 'Still the same sarcastic Rufus, I see,' "But how did you end up here?"

"Long story," Wraith, or rather Rufus, replied rising from his chair and turning his back to Reno, "Don't really want to talk about it." Then he cast him with a sideways look. "The others are not with you, are they?"

"They were," Reno said, "Until a few days ago when Vincent Valentine brought us to the new headquarters, which is in now Nibelheim, by the wa..."

He was cut off by Rufus, "Vincent Valentine?"

"Yeah. One of your father's former Turks. The one experimented by Hojo. You know, whose girlfriend's womb became the dwelling place of little zygote Sephiroth?"

"Right. Go on,"

"After Sephiroth's fall, we had to stay in low profile. We hanged around Bone Village. Valentine showed up and requested us to go to Nibelheim, where we stationed in your family's old mansion. He said he had something going on there, in the mountains. Something about Mako being reproduced again and something being reborn. He suspected it to be Jenova, or may be even Sephiroth or another Sephiroth, if you know what I mean."

"Huh! Mako, Jenova, and Sephiroth. And headquarters; stationed? Are you teaming up or something with that Valentine, who was part of that group AVALANCHE to fight another psychotic delusional something? And the 'Turks' still exist?"

"Well, yeah, to all of that. Honestly, we really have nothing to do. Reeve, Rude, and I are the only ones left, since the others are very dead, as you well know. Besides that, the Turks still exist, especially now that I've found you. And you obviously did not waste any time building yourself an industrial empire!" Reno said, looking around his spacious office with big glass windows overlooking the majority of the new Junon, which is now somewhat like Midgar. All because of Rufus Shinra, Reno mused.

"What makes you think that I want to be part of all that?" Rufus asked facing him and folding his arms, giving Reno a mocking face.

After a short moment with Reno thinking about telling or not telling Rufus about Strife, he decided to go with the former.

"Well, Valentine suspects Strife is behind all that – the Mako, Jenova,... I mean he disappeared without a trace about eight years ago. And nothing was heard from him since that. And as Valentine had said, the aura of the Mt. Nibel changed from the nothingness to something unexplainable, a month after. It was strange. I felt it myself. It was different. Creeped me out."

"Strife, huh?" Rufus flicked back his hair, "Getting himself into trouble again? And if he IS the one behind the 'strangeness' in Mt. Nibel, what would be his purpose? He grated his ass on Sephiroth's Masamune just to stop him and that freaky 'mother' of is. What's up with reviving them once again?

"Uh... I never really heard much of the details, Sir. I was... Well... I was..."

"Uh-huh..." Rufus mocked him and shook his head, "Figures."

Rufus sat down on his regal chair, grabbed his cellular phone, and barked orders to the person on the other line. After the these and those to do to be done in his absence, he ordered a helicopter in fifteen minutes, no more, absolutely less.

Reno smirked.

"Alright. We get there in about thirty minutes. Get up," Rufus ordered. Rufus orders a lot of people around.

They were about to get out of the office when Rufus asked, "How'd you find me, anyway?"

Reno grinned, "I just had the intuition to check out a corporation called 'ShinCorp'. Impossible, but you're here!"

"Yeah..." came an unemotional reply.

- End of Chapter -