As usual disclaimers apply. You know the drill.
Xehorista Tora
Chapter 6
---- ----
"And I'm sucked up by the wonder
and I'm fucked up by the lies.
And I did a hole to lie in
And I build some wings to fly."
- Heather Nova, "Walk this World"
---- ----
Dawn over Midgar was always an interesting phenomenon, better when one had a decent view. Sephiroth had made a habit of watching it, since he was usually up at that hour anyway, doing papers or reports or trying to hammer some technique into a SOLDIER's brain.
He was up to see the dawn for different reasons today, but he felt compensated by the fact he did indeed have a decent view. A more than decent view, in fact, even if there were parts of this Midgar that were unfamiliar, and the city as a whole had an unfinished look, structures of glass and steel rising up, unfinished. Some were rusted, buildings abandoned and left to die.
There'd been buildings like that before, Sephiroth could remember them clearly; however, he couldn't remember there being so many.
Cities were supposed to grow with time, instead, Midgar looked as if it was falling apart.
They'd told him why, it was all in the files that the Doctor had dropped off with them, careful written observations and interviews, all verbatim, all recording an act that he couldn't imagine ever being responsible for.
The logic made sense, in a twisted way, in a Seph sort or way, as Zack would put it. Still though, as he'd poured over all the files left with him after waking, shocked and startled, from his dream (/memory/) of Nibelheim, he couldn't imagine doing something so pretentious, almost downright stupid, no matter how well it was constructed.
//So you're either an idiot or a tactical genius. Pick one.//
Sephiroth winced. Evidently, it was never too early for your common sense to make a nuisance of itself.
/Can't you just go away?/
//Go away? Right. Would you like the full frontal lobotomy now or later?//
/If I go, I'm taking you with me./
//Brilliant military strategy right there. Real easy to see how you got to the top of the Shinra military ladder so quickly.//
It really did sound too much like Zack, on one of those bad days during the Wutain War, when they'd both wake up in the morning, too early in the morning, when there was still mist hanging in the forests and nothing remotely resembling coffee. The resemblance couldn't be good, nor could it be good that it was out in such force today. It was really to early to start banging his head against the wall, he'd wake people up, and it wouldn't be a situation he would care to explain.
He'd always done his best to avoid situations like that, and often succeeded thanks to phenomenal self restraint, training that came from being Shinra's golden boy, training that had also given him the ability to adapt and question.
In a company like Shinra, nobody told you everything, no matter how high up the ladder you were. He hated that feeling, not knowing what he was doing, sometimes going into battles with barely more information than the men under him.
It had been too easy then, almost too easy now, to believe Hojo's whispering half-truths, that they lied to him, that they withheld information because they were afraid of him, using what he didn't know to hold him at bay, on a leash of ignorance.
There were things they were hiding from him now, in this world that was so different, so similar to his own. Loopholes in the story, things that didn't fit. The file had been fairly comprehensive, to the point where it startled him. They obviously weren't worried about him finding out the details of the situation, but Cloud's very presence had suggested that he wasn't worried about it.
And that line of thinking was bad, because it brought him back to the enigma that was this time's Cloud. Sephiroth couldn't help but think that he was staring at himself, somehow, a construct of cold walls, built high and strong. Reasonable enough of a theory, considering the amount of time he spent with Cloud when he was in the ranks. He'd doubtless have picked up something from him, just as Zack had been at the point of finally getting him to break through his shyness, to open up. It was, as he recalled, a technique that employed more than a few headlocks and mussed hairstyles.
There were pictures of Cloud in this file, but they were impersonal things that resembled mug shots. No character could be found aside from the wall that Strife had erected, something all too apparent in the stills.
The pictures were interesting, but better still was the description of events that would occur, some long and bloody trail leading off into oblivion.
The burning of Nibelheim.
Cloud and Zack's five years under Hojo's tender mercies.
Their escape, and the start of Avalanche war against Shinra.
His own 'resurrection' and subsequent death. Dying. Again.
//And I don't.I can't imagine why I would do any of it.//
/Of course not. You're still mostly sane, after all./
And, of course, the deaths.
He wasn't a pacifist, not by any means, but Sephiroth didn't take any pleasure in killing either. He did what he did because he had to, but he remembered -
//Noise and blood and screaming, please please /please/ I don't want to die//
- remembered those he'd killed, remembered their faces, their voices, even as their names faded away. So, as he'd flipped through the file, he'd kept note of the people he'd killed. Would kill. Will kill. Will have killed, and the tense issues alone were making his head hurt.
He hadn't killed Zack, but he had, because he'd sentenced him to five years in Hojo's lab, and he knew, knew now even without reading anything relating to that time that Hojo was not kind. He hadn't killed Cloud, but he had, because he'd made him fight him, made him become the cold man that stared at him from pictures. A man, a SOLDIER - and that was irony, that Cloud was finally what he'd always wanted to be and Sephiroth knew it couldn't have been worth it - with altered blood and too-bright eyes.
But the girl, he'd killed Aeris Gainsbourough in every sense of the word. He could even imagine it, from what he'd read of the file. Swooping down from on high, stabbing downward like some great and terrible bird of prey, some fallen angel; he could remember killing like that, could substitute the Wutain samurai caught apart from the main troop with a girl who didn't even fight her own death.
There were pictures of her, and he pulled them out, splaying the images across the table. Aeris photographed well, laughing and vibrant and alive in the jumble of images: her taking a stance with her staff, half in jest; leaning against the woman who'd attacked him, tired and happy; catching Cloud in a quick hug, the blond wearing an expression of shock.
He remembered pictures of her with another man, a SOLDIER with dark hair and dark eyes. Zack. Aeris was Zack's girl, and he'd killed her.
Except she was back. Her file was thicker than the others, papers detailing how she was connected to the planet, and pivotal in bringing back Zack and Sephiroth.
//Me. Bringing me back, from the dead, because I was dead and in some ways, I still am.//
A disturbing thought, a disturbing line of thinking but Sephiroth couldn't help but stray down it. Aeris had brought him back, had probably helped Cloud travel back in time to fight the thing that bore his mother's name.
Except Jenova wasn't his mother. His mother was a woman, human and mortal, a scientist. Lucrecia. The syllables were unfamiliar, strung together to form the name of a woman he had never known.
He wondered what she looked like. The file, replete with information on him as it was, included no pictures.
Flipping through the pictures with an almost rabid hunger, Sephiroth catalogued the people in them: Highwind was much the same from how he remembered him, but the others he didn't recognize at first. After reading the lineage of the Kisaragi girl, he could see her father in her, the strong line of Wutain leaders that had made a war that should have taken months last for years.
Other than the revelation that the girl, the heir of Wutai, was working with Shinra, leading the Wutain allies, there were no other surprises in the file. Well, from one perspective, everything was a surprise, everything that hadn't yet happened, but would.
Or wouldn't. Sephiroth didn't want to begin to consider what would happen if - /when/ - he and Zack got home. He hoped that there was some law of time continuity or some such nonsense that Hojo would feel at home rambling about that would force Aeris to return them both to their original time.
//There's another loophole. Hojo. All this says about him now is that he's working for 'the other side.'//
Not that that was a big surprise. Hojo didn't have loyalty to anything except science, not even his own species.
He'd probably love to get his hands on the Cetra girl.
//One problem with that though.//
She was supposed to be dead.
The crux of the matter, the gaping loophole, was that if she was pivotal to bringing back the dead, how was she resurrected herself?
//Somehow, I doubt you can pick up Ancients at the local store.//
So, to the mix of aliens and clones and time travel, one could now add a mysterious and altogether inexplicable revival of a Cetra.
Groaning slightly, Sephiroth rubbed the heel of his palm into his forehead and wondered if he could convince anyone to tell him the whole truth anytime soon.
----
Cloud didn't wake up, because he hadn't slept. It's not a common practice for him, not sleeping, but seeing Sephiroth reminded him of it, of everything, and he couldn't sleep.
Seeing Zack didn't help either. Well, not /Zack/, he sees Zack all the time, but seeing a Zack that screamed of everything he'd left behind, a Zack that had never felt cold steel bit through his chest and watch the green of Sephiroth's eye's flare into madness and all of Nibelheim burn. A Zack that had never seen what Hojo could do.
Cloud stops, because he knows he's thinking too much, and that's somewhere he doesn't want to go. He sits up in bed, (even though he doesn't sleep, Cloud still lays in bed at night. It's best to keep up appearances, even if it hurts. Even if he breaks.) and he tries to forget, burying his hands in his hand, twisting hard enough to feel the pain and make his spikes contort out of shape. They'll spring back into their normal position, with a stubbornness that Zack once said had to violate some law. His hair is resilient, has always been resilient, and Cloud can't help but feel like an idiot for being jealous of his hair.
That's the real reason he doesn't sleep, sometimes. Not his hair, although his internal monologues to his own idiocy can run a bit long. Internally, Cloud knows it's because he's afraid, on some deep, dark level he can't acknowledge, that he'll got to sleep and wake up in a lab, and see the blur of a white lab coat and the reflection of light off of glasses and needles. Cloud dreams of the lab sometimes, and he can't imagine anything crueler than waking up and finding out that he wasn't dreaming at all, that he's in the lab again and it's real and the restraints are real and Hojo's here and he's real and it looks like he wants to make up for lost time.
He can tolerate the lab here because Tabitha is as unlike Hojo as possible, but that doesn't make going there easy.
He's heard that nothing worth having in life comes easy. It's an old maxim, a cliché that the officers tell the few new kids who slack in training. When he heard it the first time, it reminded him of home, somehow, because he thought of how that must be what fathers tell their sons, in the crisp air of autumn with the shadow of the mountains at their backs and the faint smell of frost in the currents of air that breeze from the mountains.
The mere concept of fair is one that Cloud's given up on a long time ago, but still he can't help but be offended by the fact that, despite having to fight through every step of life, he hasn't gotten anything at all in return. Except Zack, and to a degree Avalanche, everything come and gone, faded away, withering like flowers left without water, too long in the sun.
They called that something, in school, in biology (and even that term makes Cloud shudder, memories reaching for him, cold and hard and inevitable) the courses that Shinra made them take.
He can't remember if he did well in them or not, and he wonders if that matters. But then, Cloud can't remember a lot of things sometimes.
And sometimes, he remembers too much.
Cloud knows he's brooding, and he knows that he can't seem to stop. He usually has Zack to bring him out of these dark moods, but Zack is too busy, dealing with the troops and -
//People who shouldn't be here and it's him it's him it's him again//
- and everything else.
"Cloud?"
Vincent's quiet voice broke through his thoughts. He hadn't heard the gunman come in, not that that was any real surprise. The man was unchanged, as silent and still as he'd been during his days with Avalanche.
"You need something, Vincent?"
The red-eyed man cocked his head slightly, as if examining Cloud.
"You did not sleep last night, did you Cloud?"
Vincent was almost as good as Zack and Aeris were at reading him. The man understood where he'd been, and what it was like to need to be silent sometimes.
"Couldn't."
Vincent nodded, not approving or disapproving. "The night can often be the time of greatest disquiet, when we finally give ourselves time to think about what we would rather forget."
Vincent was often poetic like that that Cloud sometimes wondered if he spent his time not talking thinking about what he should say.
"I'll try to get some sleep later, don't worry. But my sleeping habits can't be the only reason you stopped by, I know how busy the Turks keep you."
Vincent had emerged early into the war, out of nowhere. Cloud still thinks, although he's never asked him, that the gunman came back to fight because Hojo was still alive. Valentine was too valuable to put in the ranks, so Cloud had opted that he head the Turks, still leaderless after Tseng's death.
After all, Vincent was one of the best Turks the organization had ever had.
Nobody was too happy with the idea - the Turks still hurting over Tseng, and Valentine not sure that he could really lead anyone - but after they'd adjusted to each other, they functioned very well together.
The Turks themselves had been delegated to a varied set of jobs. They trained fighters to join their ranks, and those fledgling Turks were often set up as field commanders of various divisions. The original three Turks, as well as Vincent, had a more esoteric set of jobs, that ranged from straight fighting to information gathering to material collection to reconnaissance.
Rude said it kept them from getting bored. Vincent had merely stated that they all had to do whatever was necessary. Reno had replied that everyone needed to do something interesting now and then, and promptly used that as a segue to try to get everyone to come out drinking. Elena had called him an idiot.
Vincent, whose enhanced metabolism rendered alcohol ineffective rather quickly, had avoided becoming 'properly shitfaced' for the three and a half years he'd been leader of the Turks. It was something that annoyed Reno to no end.
"We all manage, in these times." Vincent nearly smiled, although Cloud wasn't sure how much humor there was in the expression.
"We have to."
//In some ways, there's nothing left /but/ survival, all of this, this is all just to survive.//
Thoughts that bothered him sometimes, before he could push them away, into the recesses of his mind. Who was to say that when the war ended anything would be better than before?
/Zack's alive. Aeris's alive. Sephiroth's./
//Worse than dead.//
He would not think of that now. He would survive, because, as Vincent said, he /had/ to.
"Where are the Turks?"
Vincent tilted his head slightly to one side, a gesture Cloud knew meant he was thinking.
"I sent them to retrieve the past time's Sephiroth and Zack from their rooms, and them meet us by the training area. They should be heading there now, we'll have to leave to meet them."
Which meant he had to see them again, had to see /him/ again and god that was not going to be easy.
"Alright. I'm coming."
----
She always heard the planet now, a constant hum of voices that resonated in her mind, so that she sometimes caught herself wishing that she could simply get inside her mind and scratch at the itch it made.
Zack asked her why she hummed so much now, why she played the radio, despite the static that always filtered out of the speakers, some of the old Shinra communications towers still destroyed. He'd laughed and smiled and said it almost seemed as if she hated silence now.
She'd smiled back at him and said nothing. She didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, that he was right. Maybe she didn't want to admit it herself, as if saying the words aloud would give them form and substance.
"What do you think, Aeris?"
Of course, if there was one definite advantage to being close of Zack, it was that he was more than willing to fill up the gaps of silence with sound.
"Well, I don't think he's a threat, if that's what you mean."
Zack sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically. He was no more capable of subtlety now than he had been before his revival.
"Any more information? Or was that one gem all I can expect from the great Cetra?"
She turned to face him, her eyes a serious mass of sea green. "The planet works in mysterious ways, Zack. You would be wise not to question them." Her mask began to slip, and she struggled to continue.
"So, you would be wise not to question /me/, Mister General."
"Hey, I worked hard for that title. It's the kind of job that works you to death, you know."
Aeris groaned at the pun, only Zack could make light of having died.
But still, it wasn't all that funny, and unbidden the memory returned to her: grey sheets of rain long ago, the smell of decay in the slums of Midgar, gunshots and the feeling of overwhelming loss, although when pressed her mother said she hadn't heard a sound.
Some things never went away. No matter how much you ignored them, no matter how much you tried.
//And I'm trying so /hard/..//
"Aeris? I never granted you brooding privileges, you know. Besides, Spike and Vincent bought up all that stock."
"And the market's non-negotiable?"
"Extremely."
She couldn't help smiling. Zack could always make her smile, no matter what the situation was. It was one of the reasons she fallen so hard for him, even though he was from Shinra and she was so afraid of Shinra, back then.
//Besides, he was the only one nice enough to buy a flower.//
It was almost strange, except it wasn't, connected as they were, but she'd met the two men she cared most about the same way.
//"Want to buy a flower? They're only a gil."//
They were so kind, both of them, so alike and so different. Knowing them as well as she did, she could see the signs that Zack was watching her without trying to be obtrusive. In a few seconds she'd receive a brooding warning. Time to change the subject.
"You know, Zack, you're forgetting one vital piece of information. You have not eaten at all recently, and neither have I, since you've spent all your morning training recruits, and I've spent all of mine looking over our Materia stocks, so we /both/ are going to take a nice visit to the /wonderful/ Shinra cafeteria."
Swallowing noticeably, Zack backed away from her, hands held beseechingly out. "Now, now, Aeris. I /like/ my stomach and all of it's associated organs, and don't want to did them out with a spoon."
"A dull, rusty spoon."
"A dull, rusty spoon.wait a minute. How are spoons anything but dull? I never learned this secret Shinra spoon sharpening technique." Zack began to gesticulate so widely Aeris feared he'd fall over. "You.you're a spy! For the enemy!"
Finding it necessary to remind herself that she was not fond of sarcasm, Aeris shook her head. "The enemy is going to enslave us with spoons?"
"No. The Shinra cafeteria food is their main attack point. The spoons are only a backup plan."
"Ah. I see. If that's the case, you'd better condition yourself against it."
"Oh, I intend to."
Aeris allowed herself to laugh with him and smile, wishing that it could drown out the voices that were building in her head.
----
Nibelheim was burning again, and Sephiroth wondered if this was some sort of bizarre penance that he had to pay for crimes not yet committed - to dream of Nibelheim and its funeral fire night after night.
Or not even night. He'd fallen asleep in his room, and it was still early enough then. What was wrong with him, that he was that tired so early?
//I hope I'm getting some rest while I'm stuck here.//
It was difficult to wander about a burning town: pieces detached themselves from buildings and fell, causing more than one near mishap. Still, the buildings themselves weren't consumed, despite the debris. The seemed to renew themselves, a perpetuating cycle of fire and fuel.
"It'll burn down eventually. Give it time."
He was also rather tired of having people sneak up on him. Damn, but he had the reactions of a drunken trooper in his dreams.
"Who are you?"
The man was tall, garbed in the tattered remains of clothing. He stood next to the houses, unaffected by the flames and the heat, hints of light catching in dirty, matted hair.
"Everything burns down eventually. Everything falls apart. That's what she does, after all."
The man's voice was calm and collected, for all that his words had the feel of inane ramblings muttered by those who were barely even human anymore. Sephiroth remembered the wards where they put those who couldn't handle the psychological damage the SOLDIER treatments could do.
Starved shells of men, hiding in corners, muttering in the dark.
"Who are you?" Sephiroth repeated, louder and slower, enunciating the words, in case the man was deaf or dumb or both.
"Ask a stupid question."
"What?" That had certainly been a response, but not one he'd been expecting.
"I said: 'Ask a stupid question.' As in 'What a stupid question for you to ask, idiot.' There are so many better things you could have asked - like who 'she' is, or why you're dreaming this again - and I don't have time to answer stupid questions."
Cold, clipped words, and the white haired man tried to restrain the anger growing in him. Damn it, dream or no dream, he was not going to stand here and be told what and what not to do.
"I don't have to ask you anything."
The man sighed once, as if he'd known that Sephiroth was going to say that.
"You're right, you don't have to ask me anything. But you want to. If you're still saying things like that, though, you're not ready for the answers. We've still got time. Not a lot of time, but enough."
Turning around, Sephiroth could see a small quirk of a smile on the man's face. The rest of his features were obscured by his matted, dirty hair.
"They'll probably be coming to your room soon, you know. You should wake up."
----
Sephiroth awoke to a creak in his neck, legacy of dozing off in a chair, on top of a desk with the pages of the file spread over it. He could hear voices outside his door, people passing by as they hurried from one place in the Shinra building to another.
The voices paused, then grew louder as they halted by his door. A loud knock announced the intent of those outside it.
//Fucking dream just had to be right, didn't it?//
Sephiroth wondered if it was possible to get angry at your own subconscious, as the people outside the room opened the door and the Turks stepped inside.
"Aw, did we wake you? Sorry." Reno spoke, and it was apparent from his tone that he was /not/ at all sorry. Sephiroth bristled at the words lying underneath his opening statement, and at the way the female Turk - the only one of the three he didn't recognize - had her hand always hovering over he gun; however, he said nothing, opting instead to rise from the chair and stretch slightly.
It was a subtler form of posturing than say, flexing your muscles in a crowd, but the effect was exactly what he intended. He was rested enough that he felt like himself again, and he knew he could move like coiled steel if he wanted to.
Seeing the wary look in Reno's eyes, he knew that he'd reminded them of what he could do too.
//Even without Masamune, I'm still someone they should treat carefully. I won't let them push Zack and me around.//
And there was a thought: where was his sword? He'd had it when the lifestream took them up, and he thought it was in the room they arrived in, but he didn't have it now, and confused as he'd been previously, he hadn't thought to ask about it.
No time like the present, though.
"Where's my sword?"
Reno, who'd obviously elected himself group speaker, let loose a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a disbelieving snort.
"What, did you think we'd let you have it right off the bat, /General/? Your weapons and materia are in a safe place. When Strife and the boss give the okay, maybe you'll get them back. If you behave, that is."
The problem with situations like these was that every question led to more questions, and Sephiroth couldn't help but ask one Reno's last comment had brought up. The files hadn't mentioned him at all, and he couldn't help but wonder.
" 'The boss'? Why isn't Tseng with you now?
He was not expecting the reaction he received. Something hard and dark flickered over Reno's face, while Rude's left hand tightened into a fist and Elena choked back something that was likely a sob.
Collecting himself, Reno answered him.
"You know, Turks are kept out of just about all Shinra records. The only reason Valentine's in that file is that he wasn't on 'active duty' when the Meteor events occurred. Tseng, being the boss man and all, was kept out of all records. Including your wonder file over there."
Rude added his own piece to the conversation.
"It's part tradition, part other reasons. Personal."
Eyes narrowing at the runaround, the white haired man continued to press his question. "All that I knew already. It doesn't explain where he is."
Elena nearly cut him off as she spat out the answer.
"He's dead. He died during.he died with Meteor."
And he was sure he was not imagining a glimmer of repressed hatred in her eyes; but Rude changed the subject before he could get any further.
"Valentine asked us to pick up you and Zack. He's with Strife now, and we'll bring the two of you to meet them. They're going down to training, along with Reeve."
The last name rung a bell. Reeve.Reeve Brannon. Sephiroth remembered him vaguely, from the time he'd been taken from. Brannon had been pretty high up the Shinra ladder, poised to takeover Urban Planning and Development from the idiots who'd been running it. He'd also, according to the information in the file, been the Shinra plant in the Avalanche group during Meteor.
//He watched them while they looked for me.//
According to the file, he was also co-president of Shinra with Scarlet, of all people. Sephiroth could only hope the woman had matured in time, and changed from his memories of an ambitious and ruthless woman.
//Following Rufus's death. Rufus is dead.//
Sephiroth wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
//Cold, ambitious, but he had less of his father's stupidity, less of his father's blind pride.I wonder...what he became before he died?//
Refraining from shaking his head to clear it, he was unable to refrain from allowing one inevitable thought from entering his mind.
//I wonder what I became before I died?//
Pushing back the answers that rose to meet him - //crazy, twisted shell, Jenova, destroyer, hurt Zack, hurt Cloud, betrayer, betrayer, betrayer// - Sephiroth realized that the Turks hadn't moved, waiting for him with a cool calm that he remembered in Tseng.
He pulled the emotions and reactions and thousands of insane thoughts and questions down, pushed them deep inside himself where he could barely reach and allowed a small smirk to tug at the corners of his mouth.
Reno wasn't the only one who could be an asshole.
"By all means, then.."
And Sephiroth nodded, almost bowed, every movement lined with sarcasm, false deference.
//Let them know, then and here and now..//
"..lead the way."
//....that I have /no/ superiors.//
The Turks kept him in front of them, and they fingered the safeties on their guns as they followed him out.
----
The wind came from the Northern lands, and carried with it all the cold and ice, a wet lash of cold rain. The Da-chao mountains caught some of that moisture and sheltered Wutai's capital from it, but here, on the slopes past the northern face there was no shelter from the biting cold.
Bundled tight atop a golden chocobo, the slight figure was bent into the wind, watching it whip across the waves and lash at the collection of tents and people, Wutain and Shinra, living and fighting and dying together.
In this midst of a war like this, few cared anymore for distinctions of race and origin.
To someone else, it wouldn't have appeared that the lone figure was doing much, but the troops under her had long trusted Yuffie Kisaragi's ability to read the land and the wind. She was younger than many of her soldiers, but she'd grown into the responsibility and duty that the heir of Wutai carried with her.
It'd changed her, for the better, she knew, although sometimes she missed being sixteen and feeling like she could save the world.
//Been there, done that, and someone hit rewind and play again without telling anyone.//
On the other continents, Yuffie knew she wouldn't be able to read the situation this well, but she'd grown up on Wutai: scratched her arms crawling through thickets, bruised herself tumbling through bamboo, and once, on one memorable occasion, had broken her arm climbing the Da-chao face. She /knew/ Wutai; it was her home.
And Wutai did not have storms like this during this season. Monsoon season was as predictable as anything could be, these days, and this gale, which soaked her clothes and blew her braid out wildly, until it was nearly parallel to the ground, was not anything near normal for Wutai, even during these times.
Sighing, she turned her chocobo towards the camp, the bird warked happily at the thought of the meager shelter of the makeshift stables. She couldn't blame him; she wished she could rest.
Her short-range was reliable enough even in this weather. Her chocobo, Hawkeye, knew the way back to camp well enough that he didn't need her to guide him, allowing her to focus her attention on contacting Ky, her second-in-command.
"I need you to contact Cid. Tell him to get me some from of pickup in the capital. I've got to get to Midgar."
The wind and rain lashed at her back, but Yuffie couldn't help but feel that she shouldn't feel this cold.
----
Author's Notes -
- I swear, I swear, I swear, I /swear/ that there will be action next chapter. This was very much a building up chapter, introducing some characters we haven't seen yet, and enough foreshadowing to drown a capybara.
- I didn't get where I wanted to with this chapter, but I wanted the damn thing out already. Apologies to characters that should be here but aren't. *coughTifacoughNanakicough*
- With Vincent, and the Turks, and all that. It really falls under the 'why not' category. Couldn't think what else to do with him, anyway. Also, Reno gets drunk too much to be an adequate leader.
Xehorista Tora
Chapter 6
---- ----
"And I'm sucked up by the wonder
and I'm fucked up by the lies.
And I did a hole to lie in
And I build some wings to fly."
- Heather Nova, "Walk this World"
---- ----
Dawn over Midgar was always an interesting phenomenon, better when one had a decent view. Sephiroth had made a habit of watching it, since he was usually up at that hour anyway, doing papers or reports or trying to hammer some technique into a SOLDIER's brain.
He was up to see the dawn for different reasons today, but he felt compensated by the fact he did indeed have a decent view. A more than decent view, in fact, even if there were parts of this Midgar that were unfamiliar, and the city as a whole had an unfinished look, structures of glass and steel rising up, unfinished. Some were rusted, buildings abandoned and left to die.
There'd been buildings like that before, Sephiroth could remember them clearly; however, he couldn't remember there being so many.
Cities were supposed to grow with time, instead, Midgar looked as if it was falling apart.
They'd told him why, it was all in the files that the Doctor had dropped off with them, careful written observations and interviews, all verbatim, all recording an act that he couldn't imagine ever being responsible for.
The logic made sense, in a twisted way, in a Seph sort or way, as Zack would put it. Still though, as he'd poured over all the files left with him after waking, shocked and startled, from his dream (/memory/) of Nibelheim, he couldn't imagine doing something so pretentious, almost downright stupid, no matter how well it was constructed.
//So you're either an idiot or a tactical genius. Pick one.//
Sephiroth winced. Evidently, it was never too early for your common sense to make a nuisance of itself.
/Can't you just go away?/
//Go away? Right. Would you like the full frontal lobotomy now or later?//
/If I go, I'm taking you with me./
//Brilliant military strategy right there. Real easy to see how you got to the top of the Shinra military ladder so quickly.//
It really did sound too much like Zack, on one of those bad days during the Wutain War, when they'd both wake up in the morning, too early in the morning, when there was still mist hanging in the forests and nothing remotely resembling coffee. The resemblance couldn't be good, nor could it be good that it was out in such force today. It was really to early to start banging his head against the wall, he'd wake people up, and it wouldn't be a situation he would care to explain.
He'd always done his best to avoid situations like that, and often succeeded thanks to phenomenal self restraint, training that came from being Shinra's golden boy, training that had also given him the ability to adapt and question.
In a company like Shinra, nobody told you everything, no matter how high up the ladder you were. He hated that feeling, not knowing what he was doing, sometimes going into battles with barely more information than the men under him.
It had been too easy then, almost too easy now, to believe Hojo's whispering half-truths, that they lied to him, that they withheld information because they were afraid of him, using what he didn't know to hold him at bay, on a leash of ignorance.
There were things they were hiding from him now, in this world that was so different, so similar to his own. Loopholes in the story, things that didn't fit. The file had been fairly comprehensive, to the point where it startled him. They obviously weren't worried about him finding out the details of the situation, but Cloud's very presence had suggested that he wasn't worried about it.
And that line of thinking was bad, because it brought him back to the enigma that was this time's Cloud. Sephiroth couldn't help but think that he was staring at himself, somehow, a construct of cold walls, built high and strong. Reasonable enough of a theory, considering the amount of time he spent with Cloud when he was in the ranks. He'd doubtless have picked up something from him, just as Zack had been at the point of finally getting him to break through his shyness, to open up. It was, as he recalled, a technique that employed more than a few headlocks and mussed hairstyles.
There were pictures of Cloud in this file, but they were impersonal things that resembled mug shots. No character could be found aside from the wall that Strife had erected, something all too apparent in the stills.
The pictures were interesting, but better still was the description of events that would occur, some long and bloody trail leading off into oblivion.
The burning of Nibelheim.
Cloud and Zack's five years under Hojo's tender mercies.
Their escape, and the start of Avalanche war against Shinra.
His own 'resurrection' and subsequent death. Dying. Again.
//And I don't.I can't imagine why I would do any of it.//
/Of course not. You're still mostly sane, after all./
And, of course, the deaths.
He wasn't a pacifist, not by any means, but Sephiroth didn't take any pleasure in killing either. He did what he did because he had to, but he remembered -
//Noise and blood and screaming, please please /please/ I don't want to die//
- remembered those he'd killed, remembered their faces, their voices, even as their names faded away. So, as he'd flipped through the file, he'd kept note of the people he'd killed. Would kill. Will kill. Will have killed, and the tense issues alone were making his head hurt.
He hadn't killed Zack, but he had, because he'd sentenced him to five years in Hojo's lab, and he knew, knew now even without reading anything relating to that time that Hojo was not kind. He hadn't killed Cloud, but he had, because he'd made him fight him, made him become the cold man that stared at him from pictures. A man, a SOLDIER - and that was irony, that Cloud was finally what he'd always wanted to be and Sephiroth knew it couldn't have been worth it - with altered blood and too-bright eyes.
But the girl, he'd killed Aeris Gainsbourough in every sense of the word. He could even imagine it, from what he'd read of the file. Swooping down from on high, stabbing downward like some great and terrible bird of prey, some fallen angel; he could remember killing like that, could substitute the Wutain samurai caught apart from the main troop with a girl who didn't even fight her own death.
There were pictures of her, and he pulled them out, splaying the images across the table. Aeris photographed well, laughing and vibrant and alive in the jumble of images: her taking a stance with her staff, half in jest; leaning against the woman who'd attacked him, tired and happy; catching Cloud in a quick hug, the blond wearing an expression of shock.
He remembered pictures of her with another man, a SOLDIER with dark hair and dark eyes. Zack. Aeris was Zack's girl, and he'd killed her.
Except she was back. Her file was thicker than the others, papers detailing how she was connected to the planet, and pivotal in bringing back Zack and Sephiroth.
//Me. Bringing me back, from the dead, because I was dead and in some ways, I still am.//
A disturbing thought, a disturbing line of thinking but Sephiroth couldn't help but stray down it. Aeris had brought him back, had probably helped Cloud travel back in time to fight the thing that bore his mother's name.
Except Jenova wasn't his mother. His mother was a woman, human and mortal, a scientist. Lucrecia. The syllables were unfamiliar, strung together to form the name of a woman he had never known.
He wondered what she looked like. The file, replete with information on him as it was, included no pictures.
Flipping through the pictures with an almost rabid hunger, Sephiroth catalogued the people in them: Highwind was much the same from how he remembered him, but the others he didn't recognize at first. After reading the lineage of the Kisaragi girl, he could see her father in her, the strong line of Wutain leaders that had made a war that should have taken months last for years.
Other than the revelation that the girl, the heir of Wutai, was working with Shinra, leading the Wutain allies, there were no other surprises in the file. Well, from one perspective, everything was a surprise, everything that hadn't yet happened, but would.
Or wouldn't. Sephiroth didn't want to begin to consider what would happen if - /when/ - he and Zack got home. He hoped that there was some law of time continuity or some such nonsense that Hojo would feel at home rambling about that would force Aeris to return them both to their original time.
//There's another loophole. Hojo. All this says about him now is that he's working for 'the other side.'//
Not that that was a big surprise. Hojo didn't have loyalty to anything except science, not even his own species.
He'd probably love to get his hands on the Cetra girl.
//One problem with that though.//
She was supposed to be dead.
The crux of the matter, the gaping loophole, was that if she was pivotal to bringing back the dead, how was she resurrected herself?
//Somehow, I doubt you can pick up Ancients at the local store.//
So, to the mix of aliens and clones and time travel, one could now add a mysterious and altogether inexplicable revival of a Cetra.
Groaning slightly, Sephiroth rubbed the heel of his palm into his forehead and wondered if he could convince anyone to tell him the whole truth anytime soon.
----
Cloud didn't wake up, because he hadn't slept. It's not a common practice for him, not sleeping, but seeing Sephiroth reminded him of it, of everything, and he couldn't sleep.
Seeing Zack didn't help either. Well, not /Zack/, he sees Zack all the time, but seeing a Zack that screamed of everything he'd left behind, a Zack that had never felt cold steel bit through his chest and watch the green of Sephiroth's eye's flare into madness and all of Nibelheim burn. A Zack that had never seen what Hojo could do.
Cloud stops, because he knows he's thinking too much, and that's somewhere he doesn't want to go. He sits up in bed, (even though he doesn't sleep, Cloud still lays in bed at night. It's best to keep up appearances, even if it hurts. Even if he breaks.) and he tries to forget, burying his hands in his hand, twisting hard enough to feel the pain and make his spikes contort out of shape. They'll spring back into their normal position, with a stubbornness that Zack once said had to violate some law. His hair is resilient, has always been resilient, and Cloud can't help but feel like an idiot for being jealous of his hair.
That's the real reason he doesn't sleep, sometimes. Not his hair, although his internal monologues to his own idiocy can run a bit long. Internally, Cloud knows it's because he's afraid, on some deep, dark level he can't acknowledge, that he'll got to sleep and wake up in a lab, and see the blur of a white lab coat and the reflection of light off of glasses and needles. Cloud dreams of the lab sometimes, and he can't imagine anything crueler than waking up and finding out that he wasn't dreaming at all, that he's in the lab again and it's real and the restraints are real and Hojo's here and he's real and it looks like he wants to make up for lost time.
He can tolerate the lab here because Tabitha is as unlike Hojo as possible, but that doesn't make going there easy.
He's heard that nothing worth having in life comes easy. It's an old maxim, a cliché that the officers tell the few new kids who slack in training. When he heard it the first time, it reminded him of home, somehow, because he thought of how that must be what fathers tell their sons, in the crisp air of autumn with the shadow of the mountains at their backs and the faint smell of frost in the currents of air that breeze from the mountains.
The mere concept of fair is one that Cloud's given up on a long time ago, but still he can't help but be offended by the fact that, despite having to fight through every step of life, he hasn't gotten anything at all in return. Except Zack, and to a degree Avalanche, everything come and gone, faded away, withering like flowers left without water, too long in the sun.
They called that something, in school, in biology (and even that term makes Cloud shudder, memories reaching for him, cold and hard and inevitable) the courses that Shinra made them take.
He can't remember if he did well in them or not, and he wonders if that matters. But then, Cloud can't remember a lot of things sometimes.
And sometimes, he remembers too much.
Cloud knows he's brooding, and he knows that he can't seem to stop. He usually has Zack to bring him out of these dark moods, but Zack is too busy, dealing with the troops and -
//People who shouldn't be here and it's him it's him it's him again//
- and everything else.
"Cloud?"
Vincent's quiet voice broke through his thoughts. He hadn't heard the gunman come in, not that that was any real surprise. The man was unchanged, as silent and still as he'd been during his days with Avalanche.
"You need something, Vincent?"
The red-eyed man cocked his head slightly, as if examining Cloud.
"You did not sleep last night, did you Cloud?"
Vincent was almost as good as Zack and Aeris were at reading him. The man understood where he'd been, and what it was like to need to be silent sometimes.
"Couldn't."
Vincent nodded, not approving or disapproving. "The night can often be the time of greatest disquiet, when we finally give ourselves time to think about what we would rather forget."
Vincent was often poetic like that that Cloud sometimes wondered if he spent his time not talking thinking about what he should say.
"I'll try to get some sleep later, don't worry. But my sleeping habits can't be the only reason you stopped by, I know how busy the Turks keep you."
Vincent had emerged early into the war, out of nowhere. Cloud still thinks, although he's never asked him, that the gunman came back to fight because Hojo was still alive. Valentine was too valuable to put in the ranks, so Cloud had opted that he head the Turks, still leaderless after Tseng's death.
After all, Vincent was one of the best Turks the organization had ever had.
Nobody was too happy with the idea - the Turks still hurting over Tseng, and Valentine not sure that he could really lead anyone - but after they'd adjusted to each other, they functioned very well together.
The Turks themselves had been delegated to a varied set of jobs. They trained fighters to join their ranks, and those fledgling Turks were often set up as field commanders of various divisions. The original three Turks, as well as Vincent, had a more esoteric set of jobs, that ranged from straight fighting to information gathering to material collection to reconnaissance.
Rude said it kept them from getting bored. Vincent had merely stated that they all had to do whatever was necessary. Reno had replied that everyone needed to do something interesting now and then, and promptly used that as a segue to try to get everyone to come out drinking. Elena had called him an idiot.
Vincent, whose enhanced metabolism rendered alcohol ineffective rather quickly, had avoided becoming 'properly shitfaced' for the three and a half years he'd been leader of the Turks. It was something that annoyed Reno to no end.
"We all manage, in these times." Vincent nearly smiled, although Cloud wasn't sure how much humor there was in the expression.
"We have to."
//In some ways, there's nothing left /but/ survival, all of this, this is all just to survive.//
Thoughts that bothered him sometimes, before he could push them away, into the recesses of his mind. Who was to say that when the war ended anything would be better than before?
/Zack's alive. Aeris's alive. Sephiroth's./
//Worse than dead.//
He would not think of that now. He would survive, because, as Vincent said, he /had/ to.
"Where are the Turks?"
Vincent tilted his head slightly to one side, a gesture Cloud knew meant he was thinking.
"I sent them to retrieve the past time's Sephiroth and Zack from their rooms, and them meet us by the training area. They should be heading there now, we'll have to leave to meet them."
Which meant he had to see them again, had to see /him/ again and god that was not going to be easy.
"Alright. I'm coming."
----
She always heard the planet now, a constant hum of voices that resonated in her mind, so that she sometimes caught herself wishing that she could simply get inside her mind and scratch at the itch it made.
Zack asked her why she hummed so much now, why she played the radio, despite the static that always filtered out of the speakers, some of the old Shinra communications towers still destroyed. He'd laughed and smiled and said it almost seemed as if she hated silence now.
She'd smiled back at him and said nothing. She didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, that he was right. Maybe she didn't want to admit it herself, as if saying the words aloud would give them form and substance.
"What do you think, Aeris?"
Of course, if there was one definite advantage to being close of Zack, it was that he was more than willing to fill up the gaps of silence with sound.
"Well, I don't think he's a threat, if that's what you mean."
Zack sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically. He was no more capable of subtlety now than he had been before his revival.
"Any more information? Or was that one gem all I can expect from the great Cetra?"
She turned to face him, her eyes a serious mass of sea green. "The planet works in mysterious ways, Zack. You would be wise not to question them." Her mask began to slip, and she struggled to continue.
"So, you would be wise not to question /me/, Mister General."
"Hey, I worked hard for that title. It's the kind of job that works you to death, you know."
Aeris groaned at the pun, only Zack could make light of having died.
But still, it wasn't all that funny, and unbidden the memory returned to her: grey sheets of rain long ago, the smell of decay in the slums of Midgar, gunshots and the feeling of overwhelming loss, although when pressed her mother said she hadn't heard a sound.
Some things never went away. No matter how much you ignored them, no matter how much you tried.
//And I'm trying so /hard/..//
"Aeris? I never granted you brooding privileges, you know. Besides, Spike and Vincent bought up all that stock."
"And the market's non-negotiable?"
"Extremely."
She couldn't help smiling. Zack could always make her smile, no matter what the situation was. It was one of the reasons she fallen so hard for him, even though he was from Shinra and she was so afraid of Shinra, back then.
//Besides, he was the only one nice enough to buy a flower.//
It was almost strange, except it wasn't, connected as they were, but she'd met the two men she cared most about the same way.
//"Want to buy a flower? They're only a gil."//
They were so kind, both of them, so alike and so different. Knowing them as well as she did, she could see the signs that Zack was watching her without trying to be obtrusive. In a few seconds she'd receive a brooding warning. Time to change the subject.
"You know, Zack, you're forgetting one vital piece of information. You have not eaten at all recently, and neither have I, since you've spent all your morning training recruits, and I've spent all of mine looking over our Materia stocks, so we /both/ are going to take a nice visit to the /wonderful/ Shinra cafeteria."
Swallowing noticeably, Zack backed away from her, hands held beseechingly out. "Now, now, Aeris. I /like/ my stomach and all of it's associated organs, and don't want to did them out with a spoon."
"A dull, rusty spoon."
"A dull, rusty spoon.wait a minute. How are spoons anything but dull? I never learned this secret Shinra spoon sharpening technique." Zack began to gesticulate so widely Aeris feared he'd fall over. "You.you're a spy! For the enemy!"
Finding it necessary to remind herself that she was not fond of sarcasm, Aeris shook her head. "The enemy is going to enslave us with spoons?"
"No. The Shinra cafeteria food is their main attack point. The spoons are only a backup plan."
"Ah. I see. If that's the case, you'd better condition yourself against it."
"Oh, I intend to."
Aeris allowed herself to laugh with him and smile, wishing that it could drown out the voices that were building in her head.
----
Nibelheim was burning again, and Sephiroth wondered if this was some sort of bizarre penance that he had to pay for crimes not yet committed - to dream of Nibelheim and its funeral fire night after night.
Or not even night. He'd fallen asleep in his room, and it was still early enough then. What was wrong with him, that he was that tired so early?
//I hope I'm getting some rest while I'm stuck here.//
It was difficult to wander about a burning town: pieces detached themselves from buildings and fell, causing more than one near mishap. Still, the buildings themselves weren't consumed, despite the debris. The seemed to renew themselves, a perpetuating cycle of fire and fuel.
"It'll burn down eventually. Give it time."
He was also rather tired of having people sneak up on him. Damn, but he had the reactions of a drunken trooper in his dreams.
"Who are you?"
The man was tall, garbed in the tattered remains of clothing. He stood next to the houses, unaffected by the flames and the heat, hints of light catching in dirty, matted hair.
"Everything burns down eventually. Everything falls apart. That's what she does, after all."
The man's voice was calm and collected, for all that his words had the feel of inane ramblings muttered by those who were barely even human anymore. Sephiroth remembered the wards where they put those who couldn't handle the psychological damage the SOLDIER treatments could do.
Starved shells of men, hiding in corners, muttering in the dark.
"Who are you?" Sephiroth repeated, louder and slower, enunciating the words, in case the man was deaf or dumb or both.
"Ask a stupid question."
"What?" That had certainly been a response, but not one he'd been expecting.
"I said: 'Ask a stupid question.' As in 'What a stupid question for you to ask, idiot.' There are so many better things you could have asked - like who 'she' is, or why you're dreaming this again - and I don't have time to answer stupid questions."
Cold, clipped words, and the white haired man tried to restrain the anger growing in him. Damn it, dream or no dream, he was not going to stand here and be told what and what not to do.
"I don't have to ask you anything."
The man sighed once, as if he'd known that Sephiroth was going to say that.
"You're right, you don't have to ask me anything. But you want to. If you're still saying things like that, though, you're not ready for the answers. We've still got time. Not a lot of time, but enough."
Turning around, Sephiroth could see a small quirk of a smile on the man's face. The rest of his features were obscured by his matted, dirty hair.
"They'll probably be coming to your room soon, you know. You should wake up."
----
Sephiroth awoke to a creak in his neck, legacy of dozing off in a chair, on top of a desk with the pages of the file spread over it. He could hear voices outside his door, people passing by as they hurried from one place in the Shinra building to another.
The voices paused, then grew louder as they halted by his door. A loud knock announced the intent of those outside it.
//Fucking dream just had to be right, didn't it?//
Sephiroth wondered if it was possible to get angry at your own subconscious, as the people outside the room opened the door and the Turks stepped inside.
"Aw, did we wake you? Sorry." Reno spoke, and it was apparent from his tone that he was /not/ at all sorry. Sephiroth bristled at the words lying underneath his opening statement, and at the way the female Turk - the only one of the three he didn't recognize - had her hand always hovering over he gun; however, he said nothing, opting instead to rise from the chair and stretch slightly.
It was a subtler form of posturing than say, flexing your muscles in a crowd, but the effect was exactly what he intended. He was rested enough that he felt like himself again, and he knew he could move like coiled steel if he wanted to.
Seeing the wary look in Reno's eyes, he knew that he'd reminded them of what he could do too.
//Even without Masamune, I'm still someone they should treat carefully. I won't let them push Zack and me around.//
And there was a thought: where was his sword? He'd had it when the lifestream took them up, and he thought it was in the room they arrived in, but he didn't have it now, and confused as he'd been previously, he hadn't thought to ask about it.
No time like the present, though.
"Where's my sword?"
Reno, who'd obviously elected himself group speaker, let loose a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a disbelieving snort.
"What, did you think we'd let you have it right off the bat, /General/? Your weapons and materia are in a safe place. When Strife and the boss give the okay, maybe you'll get them back. If you behave, that is."
The problem with situations like these was that every question led to more questions, and Sephiroth couldn't help but ask one Reno's last comment had brought up. The files hadn't mentioned him at all, and he couldn't help but wonder.
" 'The boss'? Why isn't Tseng with you now?
He was not expecting the reaction he received. Something hard and dark flickered over Reno's face, while Rude's left hand tightened into a fist and Elena choked back something that was likely a sob.
Collecting himself, Reno answered him.
"You know, Turks are kept out of just about all Shinra records. The only reason Valentine's in that file is that he wasn't on 'active duty' when the Meteor events occurred. Tseng, being the boss man and all, was kept out of all records. Including your wonder file over there."
Rude added his own piece to the conversation.
"It's part tradition, part other reasons. Personal."
Eyes narrowing at the runaround, the white haired man continued to press his question. "All that I knew already. It doesn't explain where he is."
Elena nearly cut him off as she spat out the answer.
"He's dead. He died during.he died with Meteor."
And he was sure he was not imagining a glimmer of repressed hatred in her eyes; but Rude changed the subject before he could get any further.
"Valentine asked us to pick up you and Zack. He's with Strife now, and we'll bring the two of you to meet them. They're going down to training, along with Reeve."
The last name rung a bell. Reeve.Reeve Brannon. Sephiroth remembered him vaguely, from the time he'd been taken from. Brannon had been pretty high up the Shinra ladder, poised to takeover Urban Planning and Development from the idiots who'd been running it. He'd also, according to the information in the file, been the Shinra plant in the Avalanche group during Meteor.
//He watched them while they looked for me.//
According to the file, he was also co-president of Shinra with Scarlet, of all people. Sephiroth could only hope the woman had matured in time, and changed from his memories of an ambitious and ruthless woman.
//Following Rufus's death. Rufus is dead.//
Sephiroth wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
//Cold, ambitious, but he had less of his father's stupidity, less of his father's blind pride.I wonder...what he became before he died?//
Refraining from shaking his head to clear it, he was unable to refrain from allowing one inevitable thought from entering his mind.
//I wonder what I became before I died?//
Pushing back the answers that rose to meet him - //crazy, twisted shell, Jenova, destroyer, hurt Zack, hurt Cloud, betrayer, betrayer, betrayer// - Sephiroth realized that the Turks hadn't moved, waiting for him with a cool calm that he remembered in Tseng.
He pulled the emotions and reactions and thousands of insane thoughts and questions down, pushed them deep inside himself where he could barely reach and allowed a small smirk to tug at the corners of his mouth.
Reno wasn't the only one who could be an asshole.
"By all means, then.."
And Sephiroth nodded, almost bowed, every movement lined with sarcasm, false deference.
//Let them know, then and here and now..//
"..lead the way."
//....that I have /no/ superiors.//
The Turks kept him in front of them, and they fingered the safeties on their guns as they followed him out.
----
The wind came from the Northern lands, and carried with it all the cold and ice, a wet lash of cold rain. The Da-chao mountains caught some of that moisture and sheltered Wutai's capital from it, but here, on the slopes past the northern face there was no shelter from the biting cold.
Bundled tight atop a golden chocobo, the slight figure was bent into the wind, watching it whip across the waves and lash at the collection of tents and people, Wutain and Shinra, living and fighting and dying together.
In this midst of a war like this, few cared anymore for distinctions of race and origin.
To someone else, it wouldn't have appeared that the lone figure was doing much, but the troops under her had long trusted Yuffie Kisaragi's ability to read the land and the wind. She was younger than many of her soldiers, but she'd grown into the responsibility and duty that the heir of Wutai carried with her.
It'd changed her, for the better, she knew, although sometimes she missed being sixteen and feeling like she could save the world.
//Been there, done that, and someone hit rewind and play again without telling anyone.//
On the other continents, Yuffie knew she wouldn't be able to read the situation this well, but she'd grown up on Wutai: scratched her arms crawling through thickets, bruised herself tumbling through bamboo, and once, on one memorable occasion, had broken her arm climbing the Da-chao face. She /knew/ Wutai; it was her home.
And Wutai did not have storms like this during this season. Monsoon season was as predictable as anything could be, these days, and this gale, which soaked her clothes and blew her braid out wildly, until it was nearly parallel to the ground, was not anything near normal for Wutai, even during these times.
Sighing, she turned her chocobo towards the camp, the bird warked happily at the thought of the meager shelter of the makeshift stables. She couldn't blame him; she wished she could rest.
Her short-range was reliable enough even in this weather. Her chocobo, Hawkeye, knew the way back to camp well enough that he didn't need her to guide him, allowing her to focus her attention on contacting Ky, her second-in-command.
"I need you to contact Cid. Tell him to get me some from of pickup in the capital. I've got to get to Midgar."
The wind and rain lashed at her back, but Yuffie couldn't help but feel that she shouldn't feel this cold.
----
Author's Notes -
- I swear, I swear, I swear, I /swear/ that there will be action next chapter. This was very much a building up chapter, introducing some characters we haven't seen yet, and enough foreshadowing to drown a capybara.
- I didn't get where I wanted to with this chapter, but I wanted the damn thing out already. Apologies to characters that should be here but aren't. *coughTifacoughNanakicough*
- With Vincent, and the Turks, and all that. It really falls under the 'why not' category. Couldn't think what else to do with him, anyway. Also, Reno gets drunk too much to be an adequate leader.