Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen

Where Night Is Blind

The bumps in the road unsettle Tifa's stomach as Corneo's SUV rides over Midgar's pothole-ridden roads deeper into the heart of Wall Market, but they aren't what truly has her insides churning.

Staring out of the window and watching the myriad of colors explode from the nightlife that lights up the city that never sleeps, all that Tifa can see is Cloud Strife's face, the disappointment and the shock, the questions in those deep blue eyes and the slowly enveloping anger that twisted his features.

Gruff laughter fills the front seats, exchanged between Corneo's two henchmen - Kotch and Scotch, she's learned - who sit there hulking in their dark suits and heavy armor. The sounds of their deep and gruff voices reverberate a chill through Tifa's bones, and instinctively, she wraps her arms around herself, feeling more exposed than ever in this flimsy, short dress that she wears.

As the cityscapes and the smog pass them by, Tifa listens to the strange rhythm that beats inside of her chest, her thoughts ping-ponging between her current predicament and the way that Cloud discovered her, their eyes meeting for just a brief moment between this tinted glass before the van pulled away from the curb.

Tifa sighs inwardly and tries to keep her wits about her. As angry as she knows that Cloud is going to be with her, she reminds herself that there is no way around the situation that she faces. She never wanted to disobey him, never wanted to make him angry, and never meant to put the tender and loving relationship they'd built together these last few weeks at risk. But the truth is, the secrets that her father and the Shinra Corporation have been hiding - secrets that Tifa has slowly but carefully been uncovering - have left her with no choice but to pursue.

She purses her lips together and wrings her hands in her lap, watching as the streets grow narrower the farther they drive. Tifa admits that while she does care about AVALANCHE's cause and the way that Shinra underhandedly billows the flames of crime in the city, her motives in getting involved in the organization's cause are not nearly as pure as Biggs' or Barret's. For Tifa, it was always about finding out the truth about her father and his business, about getting closer to finding out what happened to her mother all those years ago.

Over the last few weeks, sneaking around with Jessie and Aerith, spending time in AVALANCHE's slum headquarters when she was supposed to be in class or studying with her friends, and finding opportunities to eavesdrop on her father's phone calls and meetings with his associates, combing through documents left in his study, Tifa had begun to put together a slowly developing picture of the truth. And the truth was as ugly and complicated as it was intriguing, and she found herself steadily getting sucked in, desperate to learn more and more.

It was Biggs who made the final connection between Shinra and Corneo, discovering that Lockhart's interests were somehow caught in the middle of it all. Barret informed them all that investigating matters any further would be dangerous and chaotic, although he didn't try to dissuade them. As for Tifa, she was too close to getting answers.

Hence her present situation. She'd wanted badly to tell Cloud what was going on - he'd told her that she could trust him, that he was there to listen to her and take in her secrets, no matter how precarious they might be. But as the days wore on and matters deepened, Tifa found that she couldn't bring herself to do so. She didn't want him to worry, and she didn't want to drag him into a mess that was hers and hers alone.

And she didn't want him to judge her.

But now, she knows, it's too late for that. Cloud had been at the Honey Pot, and he'd seen her get into Corneo's henchmen's vehicle. She can only imagine why he'd been there or how he'd managed to find her, but that was neither here nor there at this point. The fact was, he knew what she was involved in, and it was only a matter of time before he came looking for her.

For a number of reasons, Tifa doesn't want to think about that.

They hit another bump in the road, and it distracts Tifa enough that she manages to push Cloud from her mind for the time being. She looks up, and through the windshield just beyond the front seat, she can see that they've pulled into a sprawling cobblestone driveway that rounds in front of a gaudy, pagoda-styled mansion, dripping with red paint and gilded exterior trimmings. Two armed thugs in black leather jackets guard the front gate, glaring in the direction of the SUV when it rolls to a stop.

"Okay, hot stuff," the goon behind the wheel, Kotch, says as he throws the gearshift forward. "Time to say hello to the Don."

"Think we'll get a chance to get a taste before the Don nabs her?" Scotch says.

"You know Corneo doesn't like anybody else playing with his food," Kotch groans with a guffaw as he steps out of the car.

Tifa's skin crawls at this, and she has to resist every urge not to lash out at this filth with her fists in response. Instead, she inhales a deep breath and waits, watching as the two lackeys step out of the car and Scotch opens the back door for her.

"Let's go," he demands, all of the amusement out of his tone again.

Tifa slides out of the SUV, her heels clicking against the pavement. She nearly jumps out of her skin when Corneo's lackey slams the car door behind her, and he gives her a grin at her reaction, revealing teeth that are grayed and broken.

"A bit jumpy aren't we?" he taunts. "Best get that out your system before you meet with the Don, love."

A violent shudder runs down Tifa's spine. But even as Scotch laughs, she refuses to let him intimidate her, holding her head high and staring straight ahead.

The two henchmen lead Tifa towards the mansion, passing the armed guards at the door who lead them inside. They both stare at Tifa, and she notices that everyone who works for Corneo wears the same dark leather jacket, a golden dragon emblazoned on their backs. She purposefully turns away from them, avoiding eye contact as she is led inside a dim foyer where candles burn in stripes across the walls.

"Put her in one of the side rooms," another lackey says to them when they enter what appears to be the main hall of the house. His hair is a dark, silvered grey, and he's young and handsome, far better looking than anyone Tifa has seen working for Corneo yet. "The Don will send for her when he's finished with his meetings."

The floors are polished, obsidian marble, and the walls are papered with extravagant colors of vermillion and gold. The clash of hues is quite ostentatious, Tifa thinks, betraying the tastes of a man who likes to display his wealth in as obvious a fashion as possible. And the room is cluttered, littered with boxes and packages and fine artifacts, paintings that sit on the floor, and statues and antiques that appear ready for auction.

The two goons nod at these instructions, and Tifa grimaces when her arm is roughly pulled on, leading her down a narrow staircase and then to a separate side room that is further along a carpeted red hallway. The room is mostly bare with the exception of a few very medieval-looking devices, a bed that has been stripped bare, and an empty fireplace. Kotch, who is holding her wrist, shoves her forward, releasing her before he blocks the doorway.

"You'll wait here until the Don sends for you," he instructs brusquely. "And don't touch anything. The Don knows when even a marble is out of place around here."

Tifa glares at him, not giving him the satisfaction of a reaction, even when he laughs at the cross look on her face. He turns away and closes the door, the heavy wood slamming shut and reverberating an echo across the stone walls.

Tifa puffs out a mildly frustrated breath and turns around, studying her surroundings and attempting to re-strategize now that she's made it inside Corneo's hideout. She's here to gather intelligence about the next moves of Corneo's plots, to discover Shinra's connections and motivations, and to try and figure out where and how her father's business might be involved. Once she's figured that all out, she's got to find a way out of here unscathed, even if it means using her fists to power her way through.

At that thought, Tifa balls her hands into fists and then flexes her fingers, her knuckles cracking as if already preparing for what's to come.

She decides then to explore the room they've confined her to, hoping to discover information that might be of some value before Corneo's henchmen return to fetch her. At that point, she'll be face to face with the Don, and her only recourse will be to question him herself. She's already been planning her questions and practicing the interrogation with Jessie and Biggs.

But if Tifa can find a way to get information out of this hellhole without having to confront Don Corneo, it is all the better, she knows. And if she can sneak out of here before Cloud does something valiant and stupid, she might be able to salvage the damage she is sure her impulsivity has done to their relationship.

At that thought, she shudders, and she quickly files the thought to the back of her mind as she begins to comb through the room.

The air down here is thick and holds a musty odor, and as she observes the far left wall, she realizes that she's been brought to the basement. The walls here are made of heavy blocks of sodden stone, the caulk between them caked with the first growings of mold. Shelves are stocked with strange, unlabeled bottles of elixirs and potions, and out of curiosity, Tifa lifts one erythraean-hued bottle and carefully removes the cork. A bright, sickly-sweet scent emerges, and she blinks, quickly replacing the top and placing the bottle back on the shelf. The smell is almost blinding, and Tifa wonders what is stored in these vials and what they might be used for.

She ventures further into the room, inspecting a cabinet that is filled with intricate and dangerous-looking tools. They appear to be some sorts of medical devices, tools that might be used for cutting or extracting, or holding things apart. Some are rusty and some are stained with what appears to be the dried, blackened stains of blood. Others are shiny, appearing as if they have never been touched. Her eyes widen, and all sorts of unimaginable terrors run through her mind.

Tifa has avoided horror films for as long as she can remember, but she recalls a particularly violent slasher that Jessie and Aerith had tried to make her sit through last Hallow's Eve. A chill runs down her spine as she stares at the shelves, and she quickly turns away, trying to refocus her mind on her task at hand.

The next wall provides more ghastly and unseemly things but brings her no closer to gathering intel. Sharp pegs are buried into the wall, whips and chains of leather and iron from every design imaginable hanging from them, ready to be put to good use. Spiked collars with bolts and locks sit there as well, and subconsciously, Tifa rubs at her neck, unable to imagine being in such a confine.

She glances behind her, towards the center of the room where the empty, stripped-bare bed sits. For the first time, Tifa notices the bindings that hang from the ceiling and are attached to the four posters on the bed. Slowly, the naivety in her brain begins to drain away and Tifa finds herself realizing the true purpose of this room.

She thinks of Cloud, of the quiet power in the way that he handles her, the way that he is so demanding but so loving and sweet, and somehow, the empty anxiety in this cold and barbarous room makes her miss him terribly.

Tifa turns away with a shake of her head, her disgust at Corneo and his infamous proclivities doubling. She is more determined than ever to find out his plots and to hopefully help AVALANCHE put an end to his nefarious reign in the city.

How many girls not unlike herself were made to suffer in a room like this?

As that thought blisters her with fresh anger, Tifa hears a sharp thud that is followed by what sounds like the distant roar of laughter. Turning in that direction, she faces the far opposite wall nearest to the staircase, her eyebrows quirking when she spots a large, grated vent on the wall near the floor.

Blinking, Tifa carefully and quietly approaches, crouching to her knees in front of it. The floor is sticky, she soon realizes, and she swallows back the bile that threatens the base of her throat. Instead, she leans forward and listens, straining against the hum of the airflow inside of the vent to hear.

Sure enough, Tifa can hear the distant din of voices chasing each other inside, a back-and-forth discussion that she can't quite decipher. It's simply too far away. But the voices are clearly masculine, and the laughter sounds almost maniacal, jovial yet unnervingly menacing at the same time.

Without thinking about it for longer than a second, Tifa bites her lip and grabs the grate with both hands, pulling with all of the strength in her arms until it snaps free with a creak.

She nearly falls back on her backside, but she catches herself and stills, her heart pounding as she listens with the hope that her disturbance went unnoticed. She waits, but no suspecting footsteps approach in the stairwell outside, and the voices beyond the vent continue. Carefully setting the grate to the side, Tifa inhales a steep breath and then crawls forward, sliding on her hands and knees inside of the vent.

The darkness far eclipses anything Tifa's ever experienced before, and the air is frigid in a way that sinks straight to her bones. For a moment, Tifa shudders and stills, a bleak and yellowed sense of panic pouring over her entire body like ice water. She closes her eyes and tries to ground herself, half of her mind wondering why she ever thought any of this was a good idea and the other half reminding her why it is so important.

The sound of the voices - now rising in volume just beyond - pull her out of this sense of crippling fear, bringing her back to the core of her mission. She is here to put a stop to Corneo's dangerous trafficking and gang warfare that has wreaked so much havoc in the slums, and to find out how her father might be involved. She knows that she is strong enough to do that, so she grits her teeth and begins to crawl along through the tight space of the vent.

It is impossibly dark and this doesn't make it any easier for Tifa to navigate the sudden twists and turns as the ventilation system connects deeper and deeper through the walls. Her stomach lurches when she feels the vent rise slightly in altitude, signaling she is climbing to a higher floor, and her knees scrape painfully against the cool, uneven steel. But she moves slowly and carefully, eager to not give her position away over a ceiling or hidden behind a wall by making too much noise, listening as the voices grow louder and clearer until she distinctly hears the infamous, skin-crawling cackle of Don Corneo himself.

Eventually, Tifa can see a thin ray of hazy yellow light up ahead, a welcome sight that illuminates the path in front of her. Taking another deep breath to steel her frazzled nerves, she ambles on in its direction, listening carefully as the voice become unmistakably decipherable. The knot formed in her gut earlier that night tightens when she recognizes Rufus Shinra's voice.

Tifa spies another grate on the floor just up ahead, and she realizes that she's hovering above a room where both men must be sitting. She stops again for a moment, hesitating as she stares at the grate, once again panicking about what she is doing and why she is here.

Tifa wonders if she is doing the right thing. All her life, she's lived blind to the oppressive ills of the world around her, sheltered by her family's wealth. It wasn't until her mother's death did she truly begin to wonder and to take notice of how things seemed imbalanced, to see that much of the world was gray and bleak. The rose-colored glasses of her father's overprotection began to lose their luster. And when she entered university and began to learn how society truly operated, Tifa found that she couldn't help but want to know more about the inequities and the depravities that surrounded them all.

Her father's furtive business moves and the way that he refused to talk to her or involve her at all in the things that he did only made her more suspicious, and when she found herself purposefully blocked whenever she sought answers - especially about her mother - she began to question everything she knew.

The seeds had been planted long before she'd ever met AVALANCHE and learned of their cause to take back the city, Tifa knew. It was deeply personal.

She thinks apologetically of Cloud again, carefully crawling towards the grate. She didn't mean to lie to him or betray his trust. She just didn't want to drag him into a mess that was hers and hers alone to figure out, one that could get him hurt.

She banishes that thought from her mind when she hovers over the grate, peering through the steel bars as carefully and quietly as she can to the room below. Squinting slightly, she can see another rich and over-gilded room, velveteen upholstered sofas and black leather armchairs, a fireplace and a liquor cabinet in one corner of the room. Thick plumes of cigar smoke saturate the air, and Tifa wrinkles her nose against the stale scent.

"As much as I'm enjoying the brandy, I don't have much time to spend here. You can imagine the image it might give if I'm seen cavorting in the slums. I've a difficult enough time as it is fending off the paparazzi in this city."

Tifa leans in closer, steadying herself on her hands and knees. She sees Rufus Shinra, head to toe in a dazzling white and gray suit, seated across from Don Coreno in a high-backed armchair. He is flanked by three men in all black, polar opposites of his own, quite possibly the best-dressed bodyguards Tifa has ever seen. Tifa recognizes them as the men she's seen following Rufus around campus.

Corneo sits in a similar chair, but unlike Rufus who sits with an upright if not brokering posture, Corneo is slumped in a lazy fashion, one leg over the armrest with his extended belly spilling over his belt like a Caesar. Behind him, Kotch and Scotch stand near the liquor cabinet, but they have nowhere near the silent and still stoicism of Rufus' men.

Tifa has seen the caricatures of Corneo that are painted all over his front business throughout Wall Market, but they do no justice to the truly distasteful appearance of this man. He is short but rotund, bald aside from a dirty blond lick of hair in the center of his thick scalp. Rolls of fat double and plunge over his shirt collar, bumping into jowls that shake every time he laughs. Across from him, Rufus, slender with piercing blue eyes and flaxen, silky hair, looks like a deity.

Her skin nearly falls off her bones at the thought of that ogre of a man laying a finger on her.

Corneo laughs as Tifa leans in. "I have every reason to keep this short myself," he says, holding up a whiskey tumbler. "I'd like a few moments alone with the girl before I hand her over."

"So you have her in your possession, then," Rufus replies evenly.

"She literally walked in through the front door," Corneo rejoins theatrically, raising his glass so jauntily that a bit of liquor spills out. "She's waiting for me in the basement as we speak. Remember, the deal was that I get just a night's taste and the first chance to stretch her out before she's yours for good."

Rufus makes a face at this, but he doesn't deny it.

Tifa feels her heart plummet all the way to her gut, and the icy fear she felt earlier that evening is nothing in comparison to the violent terror that blitzes through her nerves at that moment. She realizes that while she thought she was infiltrating Corneo's headquarters, she had actually been lured here.

Rufus had been trying to get her attention for so long, but this was far more sinister than she could have imagined his motivations to be. What was behind this?

"Good," Rufus finally assents. "Then let's talk about her father."

Corneo laughs again and swallows back a messy gulp, and Tifa watches as he leans over to the table that sits between him and Rufus. There is a platter of salted meats there, and he picks up a heavy slab of bacon and shoves it between his fat lips. Rufus watches in stoic silence as he chews, but Tifa doesn't miss the way that his fist curls, the way that the three suits behind him shift their weights and narrow their eyes.

"Let's," Corneo finally agrees, chewing with his mouth open and speaking with his cheeks full. "With Lockhart out of the way, I'll no longer have to worry about Sector Seven, and Sectors Eight and One will be under my thumb in no time. So long as your father keeps his end of the bargain to look the other way?"

Rufus appears to be plainly irritated. "My father won't have much say in such things soon, I'm afraid. But that is neither here, nor there. I assure you that any way your businesses choose to grow throughout Midgar will be unimpeded."

"Including the whore rings?" Corneo jumps in immediately. For the first time, his tone is deathly serious. "You know that is my most lucrative industry."

One of Rufus' bodyguards, the broad-shouldered, bald-headed man with caramel skin, rolls his neck and then slides his shades further up the bridge of his nose. Rufus stares at Corneo as if his pale blue eyes might shoot stalagmites at him.

"Your businesses will be left unimpeded," he simply repeats.

Corneo nods in satisfaction, leaning back in his seat again. Behind him, Scotch and Kotch grin, elbowing one another in the side.

"So what is the plan for Lockhart?" Corneo asks eagerly, lifting his glass again.

Rufus sighs as if he is about to explain something he's explained a thousand times already. "Once Lockhart learns that his daughter is on a one-way boat to Wutai, he'll be vulnerable and ripe for the picking. I can't reveal my methods, but he'll be dead before the night is through and all of his property and assets will be seized."

"And the girl?"

For the first time, Rufus smirks as if amused. It is a look Tifa has seen him wear often when she'd run into him on campus.

"I'll decide what I choose to do with Tifa Lockhart," he answers cryptically.

"Wouldn't kill you to share," Corneo states blithely. "A woman like that, in that kind of shape, and that young and beautiful? She can withstand anything. Both our organizations could run through her and she'd still be tight enough for the ugliest Wutain warlord."

Rufus simply stares at this, seemingly unimpressed by the craven brutality. But Tifa's heart is thundering so hard and loud in her chest that she is beginning to lose track of the sounds of their voices.

These two men - so very different in appearance and stature but so alike in degeneracy - sit there and discuss her as if she were a slab of meat. She is nothing more than bait used to drag her father to his death before she herself is thrown to the wolves like scrap meat that Corneo chews on.

Panic billowing into full-blown fear, Tifa begins to slowly back away from the grate, navigating the way she came. She has got to get out of here, and fast.

"I have to ask," Corneo picks up the conversation. "It's obvious why I have the beef I do with Lockhart. But Shinra? What incentive do you have to get involved in all of this?"

Rufus looks as if he doesn't wish to answer, but then he shrugs and leans back, resting his chin on his fist. "It's my father's issue more than it is mine," he states disinterestedly. "I'm simply capitalizing off of his bad blood."

"Bad blood?" Corneo repeats, clearly intrigued.

"Some matter with Lockhart's wife that goes back years," Rufus states, his annoyance at the turn in conversation plain now. "Lockhart got in the way of something my father thought belonged to him. It ended rather nastily if what I am told is true. The woman is dead now."

"What a pity," Corneo laughs.

Rufus shrugs again. "I never understood it, and I don't care to now. When it came to women, my father thought they all belonged to him."

He says this with a bitterness that Tifa might have found surprising if she were not so horrified.

Hearing the mention of her mother has her momentarily frozen again, and she stares, trying to piece together the conversation she's just heard and make sense of it. What involvement could her mother have had with Shinra? Is the president the reason she is dead?

The reason that Tifa herself might soon be dead, along with her father?

Terror pierces her heart, and she moves swiftly to back away from the grate again.

"I do worry about some of his lieutenants," Corneo steers the discussion in a new direction. "That Rasberry, in particular. You've got a plan for him as well?"

Rufus snorts. "That's not part of the -"

In her haste to escape, her bracelet catches on one of the bars in the grate, resulting in a sharp metallic cling . The flimsy, cheap filigree that Jessie had picked out snaps in half, and the bracelet slips off her wrist and falls through the grates, dropping straight into the pile of meats on Corneo's glass table.

Rufus abruptly silences himself, and both men look up at the ceiling.

Tifa freezes, panicking even further as she tries to decide what to do. But before she can think fast enough, Corneo is at his feet, tossing his drink and moving surprisingly fast for a man of his size.

"Someone is in the ventilation system," he announces. The three men behind Rufus all take up offensive stances, and Rufus gets to his feet, wielding a shotgun as he stares up at the ceiling.

"Sir," one of his bodyguards, a thin man with long, dark hair approaches. "We need to get you out of here. This location is no longer secure."

He pulls on Rufus' shoulders, and reluctantly, he abandons Corneo's parlor with the three men at his heels, guiding him out of a back door. But Corneo takes no notice of this, instead shouting at his own two thugs and thrusting a pudgy finger up in her direction.

"The ceiling!" he barks, "Shoot them down!"

Tifa panics and tries to back up the way she can, ignoring the way the metallic grating tears at her shins. But it is no use as bullets begin to pierce the ceiling, tearing through the plaster and the paneling. Tifa hears them ding against the steel siding of the vent as she tries to get away, bending dents just below her body.

It's so hard to move backward, but there's no room for her to turn around so that she can properly navigate through the maze. Tears spring to the corners of her eyes when she realizes that she's managed to trap herself up here. She's regretting every decision that brought her to this point, listening to the shouts and gunfire below her when she feels the vent buckle, the plaster splintering until the ceiling gives way and the vent slips forward.

Tifa screams and covers her head as she finds herself in freefall. The vent collapses and she slides down towards the broken edge, her skin chafing along the way. With a rough tumble, she falls to the ground, her reflexes kicking in at the very last second and helping her to land on her hands and knees so that she doesn't break her ankles on impact.

Luckily the drop was a short one, but it doesn't stop the fact that she is now alone in the room with two armed goons and a very, very angry criminal kingpin. As soon as Don Corneo lays eyes on Tifa, they widen, and she watches as his face grows hungry. His hands drop to his belly as he roars with laughter.

"Well, well, well! Looks as if I've got a special delivery!" he chortles. "Eager to get the fun started, aren't we, love? Perhaps the Vice President was a bit hasty to make his exit, hmm? No matter. I'm happy to have you all to myself tonight."

Tifa carefully gets to her feet, trying with all her might to ignore the burning pain in her limbs and the way blood runs down her knees. She wipes at her mouth, slowly backing a step away. Her feet ache in these stilettos, but there is nothing she can do about that.

If she has to fight like this, she will.

"Stay away from me," she warns.

Corneo laughs dismissively, waving his hands at Scotch and Kotch behind him. They are both sneering with laughter, and arrogantly, they shoulder their weapons and approach Tifa with their bare hands outstretched.

"I think we outta take you back downstairs and tie you down for Papa!" Scotch hollers.

"Time to learn a lesson, little miss," Kotch echoes.

Tifa doesn't wait for another moment to react. In one smooth move, she lifts her leg in a swift roundhouse kick, sweeping the sharp heel of her stiletto across both men's jaws in rapid succession. Their heads snap back and they stumble against each other in surprise, colliding and crouching to hold their faces in pain.

"Fuck!"

"Minerva's bitch !"

Corneo looks disgruntled, but not discouraged. He eyes Tifa, then pounces forward in her direction. His eyes are glazed over and she can smell the pungent odor of booze wafting in her direction, making her aware that he is quite drunk.

"Now that wasn't very nice," he taunts. "I can see your Daddy didn't take much time to teach you any manners."

Tifa is about to send her foot into his groin and his fist through his jaw when the front door to Corneo's parlor is kicked open. She whirls around in surprise at the sound, but nothing can outmatch her shock when she realizes who is standing in the threshold.

Cloud Strife.

Cloud is standing there, his sword in hand, the gleaming silver blade streaked with blood. He is sweating and out of breath, and there is a look of pure hate and unbridled anger pulling the lines of his face. His cerulean eyes are wild, piercing like bright blue daggers as they sweep across the room, over the Corneo and his goons, and finally to Tifa.

"Cloud?" she can't help but gasp.

He stares at her, and a hundred different emotions seem to pass through his gaze. But he doesn't let himself lose focus, and he advances into the room, holding his weapon at the ready.

"Corneo," he warns in a venomous voice. "You are going to let Tifa go, or you are going to end up like the last six and a half of your lackeys I just dispatched."

"Six and a half -" Corneo wonders out loud before laughing grotesquely. "Speaking of lackeys, you must be Lockhart's pageboy I've heard so much about."

Tifa realizes that she has underestimated Cloud's fury, because he springs into action with a speed and a rage that her eyes almost have difficulty believing. He rushes at Corneo blade-first, and Corneo reacts swiftly, suddenly brandishing a pistol she hadn't seen before.

Everything happens in a quick blur from there. Scotch and Kotch enter the fray again, and Tifa finds herself warding them off with a flurry of kicks and punches, deploying everything that Zangan has taught her these last several years. She sends Scotch flying onto the coffee table and Kotch slamming up against the wall, dragging a fine oil painting down with him when he lands.

She hears a clatter and realizes that a precisely aimed gunshot from Corneo's gun has knocked Cloud's sword from his hand, and it skids across the floor out of his reach. Cloud snarls, but Corneo quickly has his gun trained on Tifa's skull.

"Take another step and the girl gets it," he threatens.

Cloud is shaking with rage, and Tifa can see the way that his mind darts behind his eyes as he weighs his options, trying to decide what to do. For her part, she is sure that her heart has stopped beating. She feels as if she is sinking below a heavy weight that is pushing her into the ground, simultaneously paralyzing and burying her.

Corneo laughs at their predicament with such hubris that Tifa feels like vomiting. She is calculating her options for dislodging the gun from his grip with a well-timed kick when she spies the silver-hair lackey she'd noticed upon her first arrival carefully slip inside the room from the back door that Rufus had disappeared through, Corneo's back to him. He shakes his head at Tifa and Cloud as if to urge them to silence, and in one swift moment, he has a gun to Corneo's temple.

"Go!" he shouts at them.

Tifa tries to process what is happening, watching the disbelief and anger unfold across Corneo's face. But Cloud acts much more quickly than her brain can think, and before she knows it, her hand is in his and he is pulling her out of the room and through the back door, down a dark and narrow hallway.

Her heart pounds and her breath is so ragged that her lungs burn, sharp pains racing up the balls of her feet as she runs down the hallway. But she doesn't dare relent, matching Cloud's pace with every ounce of energy and willpower left in her body.

She flinches when she hears a single gunshot ring out behind them.

Cloud pulls her along until they pass through another door, this time leading outside. He turns back to check on her, nods, and then picks up running, his grip on her hand forcing her along. She realizes that they are crossing an abandoned lot behind Corneo's mansion, the farthest gate that closes in Wall Market just shy ahead in the distance. Narrow roadways on either side lead out of Wall Market towards the freeways near Sector Five, or back in the other direction, returning to the slum neighborhood.

"Come on," Cloud huffs as they run. "My car is right ar-"

A succession of gunshots, accompanied by vexed shouts, cuts him off. Tifa turns and realizes that another group of Corneo's thugs have spilled out into the lot, hot in pursuit and firing at them. Cloud narrows his eyes and pulls Tifa behind him, blocking her body with his and holding his sword up in front of him.

"Run, Tifa!" he demands. "To the front of the lot. I'll hold them off!"

Tifa doesn't dare disobey. She keeps running, her heels beating against the broken concrete. The wind whips at her hair and bites her skin, but she can't feel anything. She can only keep running, turning back just once to see that Cloud is still following her but stopping every so often to deflect a barrage of bullets with his sword or to cut down one of Corneo's goons who get too close. Tifa had never known that Cloud was so adept with a sword, had no idea that he could be so brutally efficient with cutting down an enemy.

As much as it frightens her, she is so, so , very glad.

She spots Cloud's sedan just up ahead, and relief washes over her. She turns to see that Cloud has taken out the last of their enemies, and he is only a few feet behind her. He raises his arm and unlocks his car with a click of his key fob, nodding as he closes the distance between them.

"Get in the car!" he shouts.

Tifa doesn't hesitate. Secure in knowing he is right behind her, she turns and races for his vehicle. They just need to get in and get out of this slum before anything else goes down tonight.

She can deal with the Shinras and her father later.

She races around the passenger side, reaching for the handle. She is pulling the door open when she hears another shout.

"This is for Leslie, bitch !"

Tifa looks up to see another Corneo thug in a leather jacket standing ten or so feet away, his chest wounded and leaking with blood. Her eyes widen when she realizes he is aiming a gun at her. She barely has time to pull the door fully open or duck inside of the car when he pulls the trigger, the gunshot sounding as if a bomb has just gone off in front of her.

The impact throttles Tifa's body like an anvil has been dropped, the force of it slamming her into the side of Cloud's vehicle. A sharp pain blooms inside of her chest like a rapidly blossoming rose, searing her brain and leaving white spots behind her eyes. The glass of the door's window shatters and falls on her like rain, and she scrambles, her hands seeking purchase on anything they can find before she sinks to her knees.

" Tifa !" Cloud cries.

His voice is the last sound that Tifa hears before everything grows dark, warmth overcoming her, quickly overcast by the cold.