'Let me go-ouch! I say, let me go!'

Where am I…?

'Shut up, you rascal, you don't deserve any dignity!'

Oh, really…

'Whatever, old fella! I wish you had been born in a bin!'

Whatever this place is, I don't like the sounds of it.

'Down to isolation! NOW!'

The sound of a sharp blow echoed around the place, followed by a quick grunt of pain and someone falling down. A door slammed shut and somebody wolf-whistled.

'Hey, guard, where'd the hot chick come from?'

I certainly don't want to get near whoever said that…and he better hope the same…

'Came in two days ago,' the guard said, 'Don't get any ideas about her, I heard that she was a dragon when she nearly killed President Rufus,'

I did…?

'Wow, some strong stuff there, and also strange for such a hot chick to have,'

Reis opened her eyes, blinking. She found herself lying down in a hard wooden bed, staring straight up at the concrete ceiling. Putting a hand to her throbbing neck, she found the large bruise where Rude had struck her twice with the steel rod.

That…wasn't nice…and harder than what I expected from the average person…she thought,

But then he is part of the Shinra elite or something like that, a small voice said in her head.

Standing up, she found a pile of clothes on the ground at the foot of her wooden bed. Putting on the coarse woolen skirt, she felt a sort of mixed worry and anger. What happened to Aeris and her friends? Where am I?

'Oh, so you're up…assassin-wannabe…' the guard sneered, poking his squashed face through the iron bars of the prison cell.

'Be quiet,' Reis snapped back at him, annoyed by his remark.

'Ooh, I'm so scared,' the guard said, imitating a girl's voice and walking away, pretending to have high-heels and laughing.

What on earth did I do to deserve this terrible place?

'Hey,' a prison inmate said, greeting her.

'Hello,' Reis replied. This person looks more sensible than the rest of them swine, she thought.

'So you are Reis?' the inmate asked, ruffling his spiky yellow hair. There was a strange green glow in his eyes, the sort that she saw in the innkeeper's eyes at Icicle.

Startled by his response, Reis replied, 'Yes, I am. What do you require of me?'

'Thanks for saving Aeris, that's all. I'm Cloud. I'm trying to kill Sephiroth…and also to protect Aeris,'

'Why do you need to protect her?' Reis asked, her gaze narrowing, 'I know that she wants to do the same as you,'

'It was…a vow I made,' Cloud said, his eyes blank, reminiscing, 'I told her that I would protect her if ever she was in trouble. Well, she's in permanent trouble now, that she's got Sephiroth on her tail,'

'How can you be hunting that person if he's the one trying to hunt you and Aeris?'

'Well, I'm not exactly sure. But Aeris has the Holy Materia. The one that's supposed to save us from the meteor that Sephiroth had called using the Black Materia,'

'Oh,' Reis said, sarcastic, 'That would explain everything…'

'YOU TWO! Be quiet up there!' a guard hollered.

'Catch you later,' Cloud muttered from the corner of his mouth, eyeing the guard with deepest loathing.

An alarm blared in the guard post, flashes of red light issuing in two-second phases. The guards dashed out of the room.

'We are under attack. I repeat. We are under attack! Unidentified enemy in the ocean. All soldiers and men capable of using weapons to report at the assembly area immediately!' a loudspeaker boomed, projecting its horrible message around the concrete cells.

'This is our chance,' Cloud said, 'Come on! Let's destroy the cell and get out of this place,'

Reis nodded, and threw off her clothes. Ignoring Cloud's gaping mouth and stunned expression, she transformed herself into the holy dragon that she was, and threw herself against the iron bars. Thud. The bars moved a little. Smash. The bars begin to bend and crack. Bash! The bars fly across the corridor, striking the opposite cell with incredible force.

Ignoring the other prisoners' pleas for release, the two ran towards the exit, Reis whipping asunder chairs and tables with her long, hard tail.

'It's locked,'

Bracing herself, Reis struck the door with all her might. It didn't budge.

This is a prison, Reis, a PRISON! If the prisoners escaped, the door wouldn't break if all of them tried to get through…

Breathing embers of fire, she opened her jaws, sucking air into her lungs. Releasing the superheated air, Reis blasted the steel door like a foundry bellows. A cracking sound, fault lines appearing in the door frame, and a final crash as the door fell backwards, glowing faintly as the heated metal smoked.

A pair of Shinra guards marched into the room, spraying Reis with bullets. Shaking off the metal pellets like irksome flies, she incinerated them with another burst of flames, throwing aside their charred remains with a powerful swipe of her claws. Cloud picked up a large sword beside the guard post, which he strapped on his back.

Dashing out onto the asphalt of the road, the two were greeted with an incredible sight. A vast dragon, possibly as large as an oil tanker, was swimming towards the city that they were in. Soldiers fired away rockets and bullets at the incoming fiend (though Reis felt a certain warmth for this dragon) in a futile attempt to fend off the attack; the beast merely breathed once upon the airstrip with a blast of pure energy, and the entire army was swept away, vaporized in the sheer power of the breath.

'All who resist me shall die,' a hissing voice said, ominous and threatening.

'How about if I don't resist?' Reis answered back.

'Who ARE you talking to, Reis?' Cloud said, tugging her arm, 'Come on, let's get out of here before it blasts us too!'

'You can talk to us? Oh…you're a dragon, I'll let you live. And the puny human next to you as well. Our proud race deserves better than them,'

'Ok, we can go safely,' Reis said, turning to Cloud.

'How do you know?' he said.

'Because the monster told me,' Reis answered back, 'Climb on my back, I'll take you down from here. She looked over the edge of the road, and finding an ocean down below, thought it a better escape option than running through the streets.

Reis jumped, wind whistling about her ears, bracing for a heavy impact. Overhead, she could hear panicked shouts and gunshots, rockets roaring through the air and the dragon's roaring loud and clear over the racket. Lifting her head, Reis saw the dragon again for a split second—before its head was obliterated by a beam of green light, the shards of bone raining down onto the foaming sea. The great mass of flesh stood still for a second, before toppling over into the depths of the wine-dark ocean.

After swimming back to shore, Reis simply sat down on the shadowed sands, stunned. Every time a dragon died, it meant grief for her. She had spent time with them. Ten years or so in isolation, with only other dragons to communicate with. She had appreciated their mind, bright but unable to speak with humans…or so she thought, until she herself taught one to speak.

'Come on, Reis, it might have crushed us for all we know,'

Reis followed along, her mind still in the state of shock. Treading around clumsily on the sand, being tugged along by Cloud, she looked like a drunken dragon. An hour's work later by Cloud, and they were out of the city…but where are Aeris and the others?