A/N: So I'm finally getting into the organization I wanted for this fic, starting with this chapter - from here on out each chapter will (hopefully) go in the pattern of Zack-Seph-Zack-Seph...until they eventually meet again. For those of you hoping to see Seph find Vincent, you'll have to wait a bit more! ;)

I have two separate protagonists now. (._.) Anyway, thank you so much for your reviews, and belated hello to my newest followers! :D Hope you enjoy!

Chapter Four

A light breeze wafted through the grass, adding a chill to the already brisk day. Zack shifted his position on top of the old wooden fence, looking over the dancing green fields toward the ocean. Sephiroth was across that ocean, doing Gaia-knows-what. By his estimation, the other First wouldn't have even made it to Nibelheim yet, but knowing what would happen by the end of the week was keeping him on edge. Sephiroth was there, hurtling towards a future involving insanity and bloodshed, and Zack was here. On the other side of the Planet.

"Wark?"

Surrounded by chocobos.

Zack sighed as yet another one of the fluffy birds trotted up to him, warbling softly. On its back was Cloud, his blond spikes fluffed up just as much as his steed's feathers.

"Hey there, Chocobo-Whisperer." he called to the cadet.

Cloud steadied his ride and adjusted his hold on his helmet. "Chocobo-what? What are you talking abo—Oh." Blue eyes swept over the horde prancing around behind his SOLDIER accomplice. The large fence in front of the stables was teeming with fluffy yellow birds. "Um…I didn't think they'd all listen to me…"

Zack laughed. He'd charged Cloud with catching the chocobos as a joke, noting that the Company had asked they catch a few extra and Cloud should get in touch with his estranged avian family. He took the new Chocobo Lure materia back from Cloud, stowing it in his pack.

"Congrats, you've caught no less than sixteen yellow chocobos for the benefit of Shin-Ra Inc.," Zack smiled as the boy's eyes widened considerably. The soldier grabbed a set of reigns that had been tying his own ride to the fence. "You ready to go?" he asked the bird next to him. His new feathered friend had been attempting to preen his hair for the past hour. The chocobo let out a happy trill, clearly eager to get moving. He nodded to Cloud. "Let's get going, then."

"Y-Yeah…I mean, yes sir!" Cloud straightened immediately with a salute, his own bird crying out in surprise. It ruffled its feathers, momentarily covering Cloud entirely in yellow fluff.

"Hey, relax!" Zack hopped up onto his bird and pulled it to the side of his friend. He patted down some of the other chocobo's feathers and smiled at the flustered boy. "We're buddies. You can just call me Zack, y'know."

"Okay…" Cloud pulled his helmet back on with a little difficulty. Once it was set, he nodded to the First, a small smile on his lips. "Thanks, Zack."

"Y'all heading across the marshes, then?" Chocobo Bill, the owner of the ranch, called at the two. He trudged over from his house, one hand clasping a bad hip. "I'm gonna need the names of your birds before you go."

Cloud visibly brightened. "We get to name them?"

The man shrugged. "May as well, seein' as you're the first to ride them. I need their names for stabling. By the way," he looked the chocobos over as he pulled a notepad and a pen out of his pockets. "…Yep, as I thought. They're both girls. Pretty good birds from the looks of them."

Cloud patted the neck of his steed in thought. The bird slicked down its feathers with its beak and then proceeded to stand tall and proud. She regarded the cadet with a cool gaze, accepting his affection with a wary stare.

"Well?" Zack asked.

"I think I'll name her Lightning." Cloud gave her another pat. She chirped and held her head high.

"You realize I'm going to have to mock you both for having weather names," Zack grinned. Cloud pouted at him, the red on his cheeks hidden expertly by his helmet.

"Lightning, okay," Chocobo Bill jotted the name down in his notepad. He looked up at Zack, peering at him through his round glasses. "And yours?"

Zack scratched the back of his head. "I dunno…But," he grinned suddenly. "If we're going for a weather theme, how about something epic, like Stormageddon, Destroyer of Worlds!"

The ranch owner gave him a blank look. He scribbled in his notepad. "Fifi it is."

"What?!" Zack slumped over his steed's neck as Cloud tried to stifle his laughter. Fifi warbled happily and nuzzled the soldier's head.

The birds easily outpaced the infamous Midgar Zolom in their race across the swamp. Arriving on solid ground, the pair slowed their chocobos to a light trot, leaving the imposing silhouette of the snake behind. As they approached the entrance to the Mythril Mines, Cloud's gaze was drawn upward by the sight of a gargantuan tree.

"Wow…" the cadet breathed. Zack looked up, curious. The bark of the tree had been blasted off recently, most likely by a lightning strike if the ominous clouds above the mountains were any indication. The tree itself reached almost as high as the mountain tops, well over thirty feet.

"Pretty big tree," Zack commented.

"Yeah, I bet only a Zolom could get up that high." Cloud smiled softly at his commanding officer before nudging Lightning to keep moving forward. Zack attempted to laugh at the concept of a Zolom stretching to the touch the top of the tree, but his voice was suddenly hollow.

The image of blood-spattered mountains and a skewered snake momentarily flooded his vision.

Zack blinked numbly. This knowledge-of-the-future thing was going to be harder to stomach than he thought. He gave Stormagedd—Fifi a light kick to get her to catch up to Cloud.

Within no time at all they reached the entrance to the Mines, and dismounted. Grabbing their gear off the backs of their chocobos, the boys instructed them to return to the ranch. Lightning dashed off, following Cloud's commands perfectly. Fifi elected to dawdle.

"Come on, girl!" Zack patted the chocobo's rump, trying to encourage her to get a move on. "Go on back!" Cloud chuckled as the bird ruffled her feathers and pawed at the ground with her talons, refusing to move. Zack ran a hand through his unruly spikes in impatience. "Geez. We can't bring a chocobo through the mines." He turned to Cloud, at a loss. "Could you give me a hand here, Spikey?"

Cloud chuckled again and approached Fifi, reaching out to pet her neck. "It's alright girl, we'll be okay now. You head on home." Fifi stared down at the cadet curiously with her large, teal eyes. She turned to Zack then, quirking her head to the side as she let out a questioning wark. Zack stared back at her. The bird tilted her head further to the side. Zack crossed his arms impatiently. Fifi continued to edge her head further over, as if turning upside-down would allow her to understand her rider's instructions. Zack failed to realize that he was tilting his head with her until Fifi's head was nearly at her shoulder, and he stumbled with a shout of surprise.

Fifi chirped. She returned her head to its upright position. Cloud tried desperately to stifle his laughter. He did not remotely succeed.

Zack stood straight and approached his bird. She was his chocobo after all; she should be listening to him! Even Cloud, having recovered from his fit of giggles, seemed confused that his orders were ignored. The soldier reached up and pulled Fifi's head close to his own.

"Fifi," he said, voice flat.

"Waaaaark?"
Zack grimaced at his chocobo. She was far too happy about their predicament. Not to mention hyperactive. Fifi made soft little peeping sounds as he stare her down, and he suddenly felt like he was on the opposite side of a familiar situation. Angeal used to stare him down in much the same way when he misbehaved. He sighed. So this was how his mentor felt about Zack's antics. Looking back up into Fifi's glittery eyes, he gave her a resigned smile.

"Please go back to the ranch for me."
Fifi flapped her wings with an affirmative "Wark wark!" and promptly trotted back the way they had come. Cloud stifled a laugh.

"So you had to say the magic words, huh?" the cadet grinned from beneath his helmet.

"Oh shush," Zack turned to him, hands on his hips. "At least now she listens! Come on, we need to make some headway." The pair walked into the entrance to the Mines, Cloud still trying to stifle his mirth.

Zack led the way through the caves, taking out any small monsters that had the guts to attack them. His materia was strong enough to wipe out most of the bravest critters. He was pleased to find that the materia he had left equipped in the past was all nearly mastered, as well. It was certainly making their trek through the mines easier.

"Hey, Zack?" Cloud spoke up as a group of Crawlers were fried under the strength of the First's thundaga.

"Yeees, Spikey?" Zack was in a significantly better mood now that they were really on their way. He might not be able to do anything for Nibelheim from here, but at least now he was doing something. Here he could at least knock some monsters silly. He felt better being active.

Cloud, on the other hand, huffed around the corner leading to the next passage with annoyance. Keeping up with a SOLDIER was proving difficult for the cadet. "Tell me again why we have to go through here? Why couldn't they just send us in a helicopter?"
Zack scoffed a bit. He'd asked Tseng the same question before they'd left. "Shortages, so they say."

"Huh…" The cadet muttered. "Um," he spoke up again, still a bit nervous to be talking to a SOLDIER so casually. "My orders…They got changed. Yours too, right?" The boy ducked under a prominent stalactite and caught up with the other. "After you asked me to go with you, Commander Grech told me my other mission got reassigned."

Zack didn't particularly like where this was going. "…Yeah. Last minute. Apparently I declined that one."

"I was going with you on the other mission?" At Zack's nod, the boy asked, "Where were we supposed to go? Before Fort Condor, I mean." Cloud walked next to Zack with his rifle held in front of him. The soldier could picture the curious, mako-less eyes behind that helmet clearly.

"Nibelheim," Zack provided, trying to busy himself by looking for more monsters.

Cloud stopped walking. "Nibel—My hometown?"

Zack stopped and sighed internally. He had hoped the topic wouldn't come up. He should have known better. He turned to Cloud with another nod. "Yeah, something about mutated monsters and a faulty reactor."

"Huh…" Cloud's gaze had dropped down. Whether to his rifle or the floor, Zack couldn't quite tell. However, the kid's unease was readily apparent.

"…You okay, buddy?" Zack asked.

Cloud's head snapped back up. "What? Oh, y-yeah. It's just uh…" He took off the helmet and ran a hand through his hair. The spikes drooped slightly from being stuck down for so long. "It's kind of a relief…I don't really want to go home just yet." Cloud smiled sheepishly at the other. "I've got things I wanna do first." Zack mirrored the smile and moved on.

They traversed the winding mines in silence for a while. Zack trying to keep his thoughts off of Cloud's tiny hometown, and Cloud trying to simply keep pace with a First Class. As Zack cut down an Ark Dragon, the cadet shouldered his own weapon.

"We were…supposed to go with someone else," Cloud muttered.

Zack finished off the dragon with a blizzaga spell and turned his head. "What's that?"

Cloud stepped around the monster and frowned. "To Nibelheim. Weren't we supposed to go with another SOLDIER?" His eyes widened a bit as another thought occurred to him. "And what about the reactor? Did they send someone else?"

"It's a solo mission now," Zack sighed.

"So…who has it?" Cloud asked. Zack could see the anxiety all over the kid's face. If there was something going wrong in his hometown, his friends and family were the most at risk. Of course, knowing who was going to supposedly help them was making Zack's stomach turn.

Zack paused, his own worries hitting him full-force. "…Sephiroth."

Relief washed over the cadet's face, but then realization hit and Cloud's jaw dropped. The boy had stopped walking again, staring open-mouthed at Zack. His eyes sparkled with unabashed awe.

"The Sephiroth? We were supposed to go with Sephiroth?"

Zack flinched. Cloud was still a fanboy.

"Uh," he fumbled for words. He'd told Cloud not to join SOLDIER in another lifetime - that it was a den of monsters - but now he needed him to. Cloud had to be his backup in case Sephiroth sided with Jenova again. Could he really encourage the kid to join SOLDIER while abandoning the idea that Sephiroth was a hero? The Cloud next to him probably wouldn't even entertain the idea that Sephiroth was anything less than a glorious and noble hero.

Probably better to just go along with it for now.

"Yeah. We were."

"Have you…ever met him?" Cloud asked, his voice hushed as if speaking louder would be a dishonor to his idol.

"Uh-huh. Couple of times now." Zack commented, decidedly avoiding bringing up the sketchy past he had with the other First. Now was not the time to explain the whole Angeal-Genesis-Sephiroth dynamic and how it had all gone crazy.
"Really?!" Cloud continued to gape at him. "What is he like? Is he as strong as they say he is? Have you seen him fight?"

Zack shot him a resigned smile. For such a reserved kid he sure could ask a lot of questions. He couldn't recall ever seeing him this excited about…anything. "He's…quiet. Kind of cold sometimes, but he'll open up on occasion. And he's a lot stronger than they say." He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "He…used to train me sometimes. So I guess I've seen him fight pretty often."

"Wow…" Cloud breathed.

"Aaaanyway," Zack swung the Buster Sword to point ahead. "We really should get moving if we wanna get to Fort Condor by dark!"

Cloud was shaken out of his wonderment by this information. The boy readjusted his rifle, placed his helmet back on his head, and stepped quickly behind the other. "Right! Sorry, it's just…" he simpered. "Sephiroth is the reason I want to join SOLDIER."

Zack nodded, the action a tad more curt than he'd normally display. "You and a lot of others," he muttered. Cloud, still having unenhanced hearing, didn't catch it. Zack clambered up a nearby group of vines and onto a ledge. Outside a small tunneled out section he could see bits of daylight filtering into the cave. The light was a deep orange.

Sunset already…He turned and gave Cloud a hand up.

"Are we through yet?" the cadet asked.

Zack smiled and with a nod, strode out into the light. Far across the fields he could see the fort at the top of a small hill overlooking the ocean. Atop that fort was the famous (or infamous, in Shin-Ra's case) condor, huddled protectively in its nest. Though the condor looked larger than when AVALANCHE had visited. Maybe the stress of all the fights made it lose weight, Zack thought. Or…Wait, what? Zack squinted and held a hand over his eyes to block the glare of the sun. It wasn't that the condor was larger.

There were two of them.

Zack stared at the birds, confused. There was supposed to be only one of them, right? Thinking back he realized that the briefing he'd gotten at headquarters had only said 'condor-nest.' "Huh."

Cloud looked at the other in question. "What's up?"

"I thought there was only one condor. This might be more difficult…" He sighed. Leave it to Shin-Ra to not tell him everything he needed for the mission. Although, he realized, either Tseng or Sephiroth had been in charge of organizing this mission. He suddenly didn't feel like complaining to the mission handler anymore.

Zack attached his sword to the magnet on his back. "Alright, let's move."

Zack and Cloud stared up the wall. Supposedly, there was an entrance into the fort from this small cave. However, there was no way to scale the wall to get in. Zack frowned in impatience.

"Hey! Anybody home?" he called. The sun had long since set, and right now he just wanted to get to bed. They could deal with negotiations and inspections in the morning. That is, if they could get into the fort in the first place.

"Who's there?" a gruff voice answered him from above his head. Zack searched the dark top of the cave, but he couldn't locate the speaker.

"Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class. There a way into the fort here?"

"SOLDIER, you say…" the voice sounded displeased.

"You might as well let them in. I told you they were coming," a younger voice commented. Zack's eyes widened. He knew that voice.

"Kunsel?"

A rope suddenly appeared out of the darkness, landing at the pair's feet. Zack looked to Cloud, who shrugged, and began climbing. When he had reached the top, he found himself in a small cave. Pipes broke through the rock on one side and continued to another unseen area. An elderly man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and dusty clothes was standing next to a rope ladder nearby. He didn't look especially pleased to have company. Next to the man, as Zack had guessed, was Kunsel. The other soldier waved amiably.

"Nice to see you finally made it."

"What are you doing here?" Zack asked, making room for Cloud to scramble up to join them.

"I told you last week that I was assigned to Fort Condor. I got here yesterday." Kunsel crossed his arms, feigned hurt entering his voice. "You really don't read my emails, do you?"

"Wha-Yes I do! I just…uh," Zack floundered.

"You two mind finishing your conversation later?" the man grumbled. "Bad enough Shin-Ra sent SOLDIERs. Why they think they need a First out here…" He turned away and climbed up the rope ladder.

"Not very friendly, huh?" Cloud looked up at Zack. The other answered with a confused shrug of his own.

"None of them are," Kunsel explained. "They want to protect the birds on top of the reactor."

"Well yeah, but we're just here to negotiate!" Zack placed his hands on his hips irritably. "There's no reason to act so uptight. But, man," he eyed Kunsel curiously. "What are you doing here? If you were coming to Fort Condor why didn't you just come with us?"

Kunsel's familiar knowing smile appeared. "I've got a different mission. My team and I are inspecting the reactor here at the fort."

Why didn't they tell me that… Zack was miffed. This whole mission was getting on his nerves. He was a First Class. He outranked Kunsel, and probably the entirety of the other team. He didn't have nearly enough information for what he was supposed to do, not to mention the fact that the company had sent another team at all bugged him. It seemed pointless for him to be here.

Especially when he could be stopping Sephiroth from going crazy.

"Well, you two will probably want to get some rest." Kunsel gestured to the rope ladder behind him. "Come on, I'll show you where you're staying."

Cloud gave Zack a concerned glance before following the Second up the ladder. Zack watched them go, eyes narrowing. This mission was starting to irk him, and not just because it was annoying. Too much of it was questionable. The fact that the locals already harbored animosity toward Shin-Ra and SOLDIER probably wouldn't make it go any smoother either. He ran a hand through his hair with a heavy sigh.

He'd just have to deal with it. Shin-Ra was a mess after all. It could easily just be some clerical error that there were two teams here. Zack finally began to climb his way up the ladder, figuring his luck might change tomorrow. The occupants of the fort might listen to reason and avoid conflict all together. Or, he almost smiled, maybe there had been a mistake and the mission handler would reassign Zack to somewhere else.

His smile grew a bit more as Kunsel led them to another cavern with plush, comfortable-looking beds. He supposed things would go better after a good night's rest. As he detached his heavy armor and plopped onto the bed, he anticipated a better tomorrow. He drifted off to pleasant imaginings of amiable civilians, smooth negotiations, and Sephiroth staying away from the Shin-Ra mansion.