(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi, everyone! Sory for the gap between this chapter and the last; I've been really busy with school and real life.I hope you're enjoying the story so far. Remember, if you like it or hate it, drop me a note and tell me why!)

We decided to go out one evening. Although we'd been seeing each other for almost a year, Keira and I had never gone out on an actual date. It was too risky- I wasn't exactly inconspicuous, and she was a hard woman to miss. I always thought that was the thing she found the most difficult- the lack of privacy, the frustration of going outside and people knowing your name right away.

So, we hid ourselves. I tucked my hair into a ridiculous fedora that I had borrowed from my friend Zack. Zack was the kind of guy who could wear something like that un-ironically; he said it brought the chicks running to him, but I thought it was pretty goofy. Still, my hair fit under it.

Keira had a pair of coloured contact lenses she liked to wear when going somewhere not on duty, so she'd be all right there. I was worried about myself. Mako eyes are not easy to hide. I tried on a pair of sunglasses, but combined with the hat, I looked like the main character of a bad detective novel.

She knocked on the doorframe before entering. "Hey, are you ready yet?"

"Almost."

Keira walked in, though not too far- we didn't want anyone guessing at our familiarity. She had the contacts in, which dimmed those lovely silvery eyes to a very ordinary bluish grey, and her hair was uniformly brown.

"What happened here?" I asked, picking up one silky strand and twirling it in my fingers.

Her eyes slid over to the hallway, and she swatted at my hand. "Temporary dye. As long as it doesn't rain, I'll be fine." Keira was wearing a tight-fitting black t-shirt with a very low neck, which I approved of far more than the hair. She noticed my gaze and cocked an amused eyebrow at me. "What are you doing about those eyes?"

"I have no idea." I tried the sunglasses again, which made her giggle.

"Poor Seph," she said, reaching up and removing them gently. "You really need to get some lenses made. Don't you ever get sent on undercover missions?"

I closed my hand around her upraised one, but she squirmed and inclined her head towards the open door. A pair of merry voices echoed down the corridor, and I reluctantly dropped her hand. "How could I get sent on undercover missions? Everyone in this damn city knows SOLDIER First Class."

She leaned back against the doorframe and looked at me. "I guess that's why they keep us poor, sad women around," she said, her tone wry. "No one expects boobs and SOLDIER to go together."

"I think they go together nicely."

Keira laughed. I always thought I loved her best when she smiled. She had such a stern, sad expression when in repose. "Look, I can wear the sunglasses or the hat, but not both. Take your pick."

She came around behind me and took off the hat, sending my hair tumbling down. "Can you slick back your bangs?"

"With what?"

"One second, I bet Zack has some hair gel. With that stupid haircut, he's got to have a bucketful of goo around somewhere. Be right back." With that, she left.

I sat in the desk chair and pretended to read a book about Wutaiian swordfighting methods until she returned, carrying a small jar. "I knew he'd have some. Stand up?"

She came over to me and held a rubber band out. "Put your hair in a low ponytail and tuck it in the back of your shirt," she said, and I did so to the best of my ability. I was wearing a loose, sloppy turtleneck, and with my hair tucked in, it looked like it ended where my shirt began. Keira held out the jar, and I scooped a dollop of the sticky stuff onto my hands and gummed my bangs to my head as well as I could.

"How does it look?"

"Very sleazy." Her accent always grew stronger on the r's, rolling them a bit. "That's perfect for where we're going."

I picked the sunglasses off the dresser and slid them on. Keira fell in step behind me and waited as I locked the door. "So, which one of your creepy lower Midgar haunts are we going to?"

Keira took the clasp out of her hair and shook it out, then gathered the long mass into one hand and twisted it. Pinning it against the back of her head, she said, "It's not one of mine. Tiri told me about it. Some place in Sector Seven that serves really good food."

"Dark and quiet and anonymous?" I asked as we entered the elevator and pushed "BP"- below plate.

"Just the way you like it."

I remember the evening being very warm for so late in the year. The second we had taken two steps out of the elevator, Keira turned to me and threw her arms around me, hugging me close as she pressed her face into my neck. I felt the warmth of her breath on my clavicle as she said, "I thought you were never coming back from Wutai."

My arms were clenched so hard around her, I was afraid she would snap in two. I raised her face to mine and gave her a very soft kiss. "It wasn't so bad," I murmured into her sweet lips. "We didn't lose anyone this time. Ben barely even broke that leg; it's probably just a fracture."

"I always worry."

"You don't need to—"

"I know I don't need to worry about you, but I do. That's love."

Maybe that was love. I certainly felt it. If only there was some way I could have told her when everything went wrong, some way of saying to her—

Keira wiped Kalm Fang off her sword. "Ugh, what the hell inside of an animal is green?"

"Beats me," answered Tifa, flicking a bit of skin off her knuckles.

The two women, Cloud, and Vincent had decided to travel the long way: through Midgar Valley, past the grasslands, through the swamps and the caves, and across the other half of the continent to Junon, where they would catch the boat from there to Costa Del Sol. Vincent had called ahead to Nanaki, who had agreed to arrange a buggy to meet them and take them to Cosmo Canyon. It was safer than hiring transportation in Kalm or Midgar, but it would take them two days, and Cloud was nervous. Every time some kind of vehicle passed them, the group would have to split up and hide, then wait until things seemed safe. It was time-consuming, not to mention annoying. Monster attacks didn't help.

Keira sighed and tucked her sword into her back holster. "There are more monsters this time of year than usual."

"They're uglier than usual, too." Tifa said. Keira laughed.

"Back on the dusty trail," Cloud mumbled, then started to slog forward. He hadn't slept well the previous night. His dreams were fragmentary, furious, filled with stabbing sword and shards of ice. He had dreamt about Sephiroth, Sephiroth killing Aerith over and over and over, in different ways. It had made for a damned uncomfortable sleep.

Lost in his thoughts, Cloud walked on. It was an exceptionally pretty day for late autumn. There weren't many trees in this area, but Cloud could see the occasional small shrub turning orange and red around the edges. The muffled creak of his brown leather boots, the sound of birds…for a minute, Cloud's mind quieted, and he began to enjoy the sunlight and crisp air, despite the worry tugging at the back of his mind.

"You have to really develop a sense for what's going on behind and next to you," Tifa was saying. "I mean, it has to be really good."

"Yeah, but when you're an armed combatant, it's so much harder to rely on anything but your weapon," Keira said. "I never learned how to fight well without a sword."

"It could be done, though," Tifa argued. 'I mean, Vincent, you're really good at taking something down without even seeing it." To Keira, she said, "I once saw him shoot down a Tonadu that came from behind. No one else even saw it."

"It's not so much," Vincent said.

"Hey, be proud, man," Keira said.

"Man?"

"Fine, be proud, Mister Vincent."

Vincent didn't respond. Tifa laughed.

After listening to the older man and the brunette talk for a few minutes, Cloud sensed Keira come up behind him. "Tifa's really smart about the fighting arts, isn't she?" she asked cheerfully.

"That she is," Cloud agreed. "She trained under Master Zangan when she was a teenager."

Keira whistled. "Holy and the fucking Moon, that's a pedigree."

"You've got quite a pedigree, yourself," Cloud said lightly.

She paused for a minute.

"SOLDIER, I mean," Cloud added hurriedly.

"Yeah, you better mean that," she said, but her tone was amused.

Cloud squinted at the horizon. It was late morning already; he'd wanted to be out of the caves by nightfall. "Keira…"

"Yeah?"

"Did you ever meet Professor Hojo? When you were in SOLDIER, I mean."

"Yeah, a few times." Keira pulled an awful face. "He was a real slime. I remember when I first joined Shinra, he wanted egg and sperm samples from all the SOLDIER members. Thankfully, old man Shinra shot that down, but I wonder how many samples he got away with before the upper echelons intervened?"

"Maybe that' how he was making Sephiroth clones," Cloud mused aloud.

"Ew, thanks for that thought." She frowned. "Can get off that topic altogether, please?"

"Your speech is very interesting," Cloud said, abruptly changing the subject- he felt rather uneasy talking about Sephiroth after the dreams he'd had, anyways.

"How do you mean?" Keira asked. She had a rather perturbed look on her face. Cloud realized he was probably annoying her.

"Well, it's just that it's such a mix of elegant and foul language."

"I didn't learn much Midgair as a child," she said, a little less irritated now. "Just the standard conversational stuff in primary school. When I turned fifteen, Shinra Inc. started offering free language courses to anyone willing to come to the East Continent and work for them. I wanted to get out of that miserable place, and it seemed the best way. The cursing, I learned from the other SOLDIER trainees, and other than that…I don't know, I read a lot when I was trying to learn it." She laughed again. "So now, I talk like a dirty sailor and a book all at once."

Cloud laughed at that, too. "I've never heard North-speak before."

Keira looked at him, her glowing eyes focused and furious, her mouth set in an expression of deadly severity. She opened her mouth, and out came a harsh, guttural mass of ugly noises.

Cloud jumped. "Goddamn…I mean, hunh."

She continued to glower at him for a moment, then burst into laughter. "Just fuckin' with you, man," she chortled.

"Oh, VERY funny."

Keira chuckled, and responded with something loose and musical, heavy on the consonants and unevenly inflected. "That's the real one, I promise," she said, still laughing.

Cloud had to smile. "What did you say?"

"'I am a tomato," she responded.

"Is that a traditional Northern phrase?"

"Only in the really classy social circles," she told him, her eyes teasing.

By the time Yuffie had arrived, gasping, in Wutai, the fuss was over. Although she could see several of the locals standing around and looking upset, no one appeared to be hurt. She didn't see fire or anything else to indicate an accident, but the troubled faces of the townspeople convinced her that she hadn't imagined the strange light she had seen.

One of the kimono-clad old ladies saw Yuffie and waved impatiently at her. "Lady Yuffie! Your father has been looking for you everywhere! Go see him immediately!"

"Don't tell me what to do, you old bat," Yuffie muttered under her breath, but her confusion and worry took precedence over her irritation. She pushed through the crowd, scanning every face for her father's. When she finally spotted Lord Godo arguing with some of the workers of Turtle's Paradise, she quickened her steps and walked up behind him. She waited a few minutes, glaring down the workmen her father was talking to until they slunk away.

Godo turned around. His initial expression of relief was quickly replaced by a disapproving scowl. "And just where have you been, young lady?" he bellowed.

"Come off it, old man, I was training!" Yuffie sniped back. "Gawd, Godo, just tell me what the hell happened here!"

He was still frowning, but his voice was calmer when he said, "I can't understand it. Everything was normal, when all of a sudden, there was an explosion in the river."

"The river!"

"Yes, daughter." Godo put his hand on her elbow and guided her until she faced the small, trickling creek that ran beyond Turtle's Paradise. Yuffie silently appraised the round little hollow that had appeared in the formerly shallow crick. "There was a rumble from beneath the earth," he exclaimed. 'We thought it was an earth tremor, but the river shot straight up in the air and came down again so hard, it made a pond."

"Da-Chao…"

"Perhaps."

"Come with me," Yuffie ordered. A sneaking suspicion was growing in her heart; this was not the first time she had seen rebellious waterways act against the people who lived near them. "I want to look at the place the water exploded."

Godo walked her over to the spot. After a few choice words with eager bystanders, Yuffie managed to clear them out and stood, leaning over the little pool. It was no more than a meter across on either side, but its perfect symmetry worried her. "Was anyone hurt?"

The Lord of Wutai shook his head. "A few old grandmothers claim they've been injured, but I imagine a healthy glass of warm sake would cure them quite quickly."

"Typical." Yuffie stared at her reflection, tucking a few strands of black hair behind her ears. She was sweaty and red-faced after her panicked dash into the village.

As Yuffie gazed into the pool, she became acutely aware of her heartbeat thrumming in her ears. It was so shallow, but she still felt an illusion of depth, of endlessness….her heartbeat grew stronger. Dimly, she recalled the sensation of her fist view of the Lifestream, at Mideel…

Yuffie shook her head violently, then backed hurriedly away from the pool. "The sacred name of Da-Chao…Godo!"

"Daughter?"

She turned and grabbed her father by the collar. "Please tell me no one fell in! Please!"

"Yuffie, Yuffie!" Her father clutched her hands and forced them down from his neck. Please, control yourself—"

"Dad, promise me!"

The desperate note in her voice stopped him. "Yuffie, no one fell in," he said. "I don't understand why you're acting like this."

"Dad, get the people who got splashed into the hot springs as quickly as you can, she ordered, her heart pounding so hard she could practically taste it. "Then rope this area off!"

"Good gods, what's wrong!"

"Does the phrase 'Mako poisoning' mean anything to you?" she asked, knowing full well that it did. In the war between Wutai and Midgar, many a native Wutaiian had been permanently disfigured or driven insane by the harmful effects of Mako. When her father's frown deepened, she hastily added, "Dad, I've seen the Lifestream break through the ground in places. It's horribly dangerous. Get everyone out of here!" She turned and began dashing towards her apartment.

"Where the hell are you going?" Godo said, in a strangled whisper.

Yuffie didn't even face him as she replied, "I gotta call Cloud! He needs to know about this stuff!" She hurried off, fear holding court in her heart.