There were medical assistants waiting with a stretcher as soon as the Sierra had landed. The medics aboard the air-ship had only just finished tacking down the bandages when Shin-Ra's men boarded to take the wounded man into the Healin Lodge. Kadaj's defenses flew up again immediately, and noticeably to all present, as soon as the company medics entered, but under Cloud's silent coercion he allowed them to load him on to the gurney and take him out of the air-ship.

As they made their way through the halls of the craft, Kadaj watched the overhead lights pass above him, one by one. The sound of footsteps echoed all around him, overlapping, a round of sound that he had a hard time tracking. Where was his older brother in all of it? Somewhere just behind him, he thought, most of the time. The footsteps of that stoic man in red were distinctive, but surprisingly difficult to catch. All he wanted to hear though, was Cloud. He had find that step…

Cloud walked directly behind the medic at Kadaj's head. Next to him, Tifa kept up with uneven steps, flicking glances at him still, needing to talk alone with him, knowing that it would be some time before she could get him to come away… The silver-haired youth was still such an unknown element. There was no way they could leave him alone, even under the care of Shin-Ra. He'd shown amazing resourcefulness, and even on the brink of death, Tifa didn't trust him not to try something. Actually, especially near death, Tifa thought it likely the boy would react violently if provoked. Even in the slightest.

"Cloud…" she couldn't help but try and catch his attention, if only for a moment, as they exited the ship into the light of day. Difficult to think that less than an hour ago these skies had been black and blotted with impending doom… But Cloud's gaze was fixed so steadily on the man on the gurney, it took a second evocation to finally get him to glance at her. The small nod she received was slightly reassuring, she'd get an explanation from him soon. But, in her way of seeing it, not nearly soon enough.

President Rufus Shin-Ra was already waiting to greet them as they came into the lodge through the emergency bay. He stood, straight and tall, the same confident Shin-Ra Tifa remembered meeting at the top of the Shin-Ra building two years previous. The smirk on his face as he watched Kadaj wheeled toward him was enough to remove the slight comfort she'd felt only a moment before. For a moment, she felt a strange flash of concern for the man upon the stretcher…

Catching sight of the company president, fully healed when he himself was laid low, Kadaj felt more than just a flash of concern for himself. The panic that seized his chest struck into his physical wounds as well, and he gasped aloud his pain, sneering as he caught that ghost of a smirk haunting the edges of the president's soft young mouth. "Okaeri, Kadaj… We'll take good care of you."

The rest of the party had disembarked after them and were catching up quickly. As they collected within the entrance, Tseng, who flanked the president close at his right hand, directed them toward a door off the main hall. "If you would, the waiting-room is through here…"

"I'm going with him," Cloud did not stop until Rude and Reno tried to stand in his way, the young warrior fixing them with a look that made both men draw up uncomfortably.

"Please, Cloud. This is a sterile facility, then!" Reno was doing his best to seem amiable still as he blocked the shorter man, but he'd been given an order… one he wasn't entirely certain he could carry out though, given what had happened back in Midgar. They had only arrived at the lodge moments before Cloud and his gang, so they knew that this man, this one man, had single handedly defeated Shin-Ra's greatest fighter. Could a couple TURKs really stand in his way?

Luckily, they didn't have to test it. Rufus waved them down. "Only him." Kadaj was already struggling against the medical assistants as they delayed the would-be SOLDIER. The last thing Rufus wanted was for this special creature to expire, steps away from medical help, because he refused to be parted from Cloud. Why that seemed to be a condition of Kadaj's compliance, he couldn't guess, but it wouldn't cause any harm. Not now in the beginning of things, and it was actually a welcome bit of insurance.

Tifa was not at all pleased to be separated from Cloud either though, not at all pleased to let him walk into the bowels of a Shin-Ra facility, accompanied only by company thugs and a genocidal maniac. Barret didn't seem any happier about it, less even, and Yuffie and Cid looked like they were about to give Rufus hell. But Vincent brushed past all of them, having dropped behind slightly as they arrived, and took the door Tseng had indicated, without argument.

A loner, usually, he still managed to inspire others to follow him at strange moments, something of the former TURK still a part of him. After a moment's hesitation for an exchange of cold and mistrusting glances, the rest of the party followed him inside, Rude and Reno flanking them.

The hallway to the waiting room was long and narrow, and curved about the rotund building, lined with pine wood doors on one wall, the occasional picture window with lavish view of wooded hills set into the other. They were being lead away from the facility's operational rooms and laboratories, into sections dedicated more to out-patient visits and doctors' personal offices. The waiting room itself was quite comfortable and moderately spacious, pleasantly decorated to reflect the earthy feel of the terrain surrounding the lodge, rather than a sterile medical fashion.

Despite the exchange of clinical aqua-greens for nature's mossy tones, none of them felt any less apprehension at being told to wait. Rather than taking up seats in the soft leather bench-chairs provided for patients' family and guardians, most of them opted to stay standing near the walls, Barret even pacing angrily, though Nanaki did curl himself up on a carpeted portion of the floor.

Rather than stand proper sentry at the door as they probably should have, the two TURKs did make themselves comfortable in the chairs, Rude with a cool sobriety, Reno sprawling helter skelter with his usual irreverent abandon. The brilliant red head tossed his gaze around the tense company curiously, having not seen many of these people in nearly two years, trying to remember names and who he might have offended, before stopping on a certain automated plush-toy. "Reeve… I will never understand why you don't have kids, if you like this kind of thing then."

The little toy cat looked up at the TURK with the most adorable sort of scowl, the cartoonish voice that issued from the fuzzy muzzle a sharp contrast to the deep power-business tones of the man behind the controls, for which Reno found it deathly hard not to break down into giggles, "Hey! Don't talk to the man behind the curtain! You'll ruin all the fun! This is Cait Sith. Cait Sith, y'know?"

"Okay, okay! However you want it, Little Guy," he buried his mouth into the collar of his shirt for a moment, still on the brink of just losing it until the Lockhart girl strode over, practically standing right over him. It was obvious she didn't think this was the time for joking and it looked like she was going to be expecting some answers from him.

"Reno. The man we brought in here…"

"Kadaj," he nodded to her.

"Kadaj…" Tifa seemed to lose herself on the name a moment, an identity given to what was, moments before, a completely unknown entity. She shook it off quickly though, focusing back in on him. "Will they really be able to save him?" Her words had an uncertain character about them, that same discomfort with the half-hope their enemy would die.

Brainless as he could often seem, Reno wasn't dull. He caught the sentiment in her intonation and sobered up respectively. "Yes. This is one of the most advanced medical facilities on the Planet, and Kadaj, though unstable, is far from weak. We've had too many encounters with him and his gang to underestimate that. If he's made it this far…"

The dark-haired girl nodded gravely, folding her arms beneath her chest in a way that Reno couldn't help but notice pushed her ample breasts up quite nicely. He did his best to keep from smirking though, so she wouldn't catch him looking. He silently lamented that the cut of her shirt wasn't more revealing…

"And what about those others?"

Yes! She wasn't noticing, just going on with her mild interrogation. Reno propped one arm over the chair-back in confident nonchalance, and while Rude answered and distracted Tifa's attention, kept on ogling. "Demolished." The finality in Rude's deep voice was tinged with a well deserved pride.

"Courtesy of the TURKs. Rude's explosives left nothing but a few scraps of twisted metal from their motorcycle." Reno continued before Tifa could interrupt with her uncertainties. "There was no way they escaped us. We'd have seen them if they retreated back into the tunnel, and even given their abilities, there is no way they made it through that blast. Yazoo and Loz. They were strong, but there's a reason Kadaj was leading them, then."

It was obvious the rest of the room didn't put as much faith in Rude's pyrotechnics as his compatriot did, but no one had a chance to call him on that count. From a far corner, amazingly unobtrusive for his ostentatious appearance in burnished gold accents and tattered crimson cape, Vincent's midnight velveteen voice swept like a shadow over the room. "Well then, Reno. Why don't you explain to us what that reason is…?"

The current TURK shot the former a highly surprised and uncomfortable glance, and the glare from Rude seemed to indicate Reno'd already flapped his lip a little more than he should have.

With a quiet snarl and a nervous tug at his rumpled shirt-front, Reno carefully chose his words…

Author's remarks: I know! I know! I haven't properly explained everything yet. But understand, I love cliff hangers. :D I'll come back around to things like Denzel and the Geostigma and all that jazz as the story progresses. Otanoshimi ni! Ne?

Translations:

Okaeri – "Welcome back." Short form of "Okaerinasai."

Demo watashi no toku ni itta koto ha mada nihongo wo shiranai hito ni fushigi toshite oiteru. :D