Haste

Vincent leveled his gun at me. I grinned and hurled my shuriken, taking advantage of my distraction to leap nimbly to the barrel of the shotgun and balance there. Vincent growls lightly and sweeps his claw at me from the side. I sprang away with a laugh, throwing up my arm to catch my shuriken and twisting out of the path of a shot.

I signal to Cloud and he joins the fray, Buster Sword swinging down to hit the shotgun with jarring force. I ducked beneath both weapons to come up behind Cloud as he slides his sword down the barrel of the gun.

I stood with my shuriken at Cloud's neck, Vincent's gun aimed at my heart, Cloud's sword resting lightly against Vincent's chest. Reno clapped.

"Man, I love our guys training sessions." He stepped forward and shook his head. "Impressive."

I laughed as we relaxed our fighting stances. "Reno," I greeted warmly. "What brings you back?"

Reno's face changed from laughingly relaxed to deadly serious in a matter of moments. "We have a problem."

"Where?" Vincent asked.

"...Wutai."

I snorted. "And not one of us can go there. Why are you here, Reno? Really."

The redhead relaxed again. "Uh...bit of a vacation, really. 'Lena's been in a bad mood for a bit."

At the questioning looks he received, he admitted, "She's, uh, pregnant. Tseng's. Actually, Tseng asked that the rest of us make ourselves scarce for a bit."

"And you came here," Cloud stated. He raised an eyebrow. "Why here? And where is Rude?"

"Rude's staying with his sister in Nibelheim. I haven't got anywhere else to stay."

"Well," I said wryly, "we can certainly understand that. Come to join the homeless cave-dwellers, have you, Reno?"

"Only until the baby comes!" he defended himself, before mumbling, "And possibly through the terrible twos."

"What was that?" I asked him.

"So, you three train terribly hard, huh?" he replied brightly.

Vincent let off a hail of bullets towards me. They passed through my suddenly insubstantial form towards Cloud, who deflected every single one of them back at Vincent with the flat of his blade. Vincent's wings snapped out and he wrapped them around himself, all the bullets clattering harmlessly off them. Reno stared.

"That was training hard," I told him smugly. "Before, that was just a warm-up."

Reno actually winced slightly. "Suddenly, I have the impression I should have gone with Rude..."

"Why didn't you?" I asked, waving him into the cave after us. He did a double take at the reasonably nice wooden furniture and the working TV set. "We have video games, too," I informed him cheerfully. He gaped.

'How did you-"

Cloud shook his head. "Don't ask. It won't make sense."

Reno seemed to take his word for it. "Can't stay with Rude's sister, she refuses to let me anywhere near her children. I can't imagine why she wouldn't allow a perfect specimen of manliness to stay with her, when she has no problem putting up Rude."

That earned him three identical sounds of disbelief.

"Rude is polite," Vincent informed him.

"And quiet," Cloud added.

"And not hitting on every straight woman in a twelve-mile radius," I concluded.

Reno scoffed and turned away. "So where're the beds?"

"Beds...?" Cloud echoed.

-------------------------------------

Later that night, I was perched on a shelf of one of our surrounding mountains. I stared across the lake. Moonlight hit the water, reflecting and mirroring the sky to give the illusion of endless night. I wondered if I could leap into the lake and fall from the heavens to try again. I reached out with one hand, clenching and unclenching it, watching as it turned form solid to translucent and back again.

Another hand closed around mine and I looked up into Reno's face, not smiling as it usually was but dark and serious instead. He released my hand and sat down next to me, bringing his kness up to his chest.

"Mind if I smoke?"

"I don't care if you burn." I smiled sadly to myself. The words tumbled, hollow, to the lake below. Reno lit up his cigarette.

"The guys showed me your body, you know."

I winced and held out my hand again. This time it went completely transparent. "They did, huh."

"Yeah." He took a long drag on his cigarette. "I wondered why you three never seemed to split up anymore."

I let my hand drop. "Safety in small numbers."

We stayed like that a long time, watching the night sky and the occasional shooting star.

They say when a star falls, a warrior has taken its place...