The next morning Marin slept in. No one came to wake her up. In the hallways looking down on the dusty town square, Val was looking out the window.
It had a good view of the mountain peaks to the east and the sun still rising behind it.
Some children were playing under the water tower, that stood in the middle of the square. The children were tussling in some sort-of mock fight.
Val kept looking out the window, even at the sound of Marin closing the door. "It takes years." she spoke to the window.
"What do you mean?" Marin asked the older woman.
"You're all so old, all four of you." Val shook her head before continuing, "I still don't see what he sees in the lot of you. But you're all too old for this sort of thing."
Now Marin was shaking her head, "We're young adults, but we still have our lives ahead of us."
"Hmph." Val said, turning her face a little to face Marin, the older woman's sharp eyes flicked to Marin's neckline then back up to her eyes.
The sliver of a scar, half an inch long, poked out from Marin's shirt.
Val went on, "A bit old to learn how to fight. But young enough to think you're immortal. Young fools, and old enough to know better. I used to think better of you."
"I got better." Marin told Val, scratching a fresh itch. "May as well be a flesh wound."
The woman laughed, but not at Marin's joke. There was no way Val had seen the same old movie Marin had taken that line from. Val laughed mockingly at Marin. Then suddenly lunged at the younger woman.
Marin flinched, bringing up her hands to block herself.
Marin's arms did not come into contact with any attack.
Val had stopped her approach as suddenly as she had started. Close enough they could reach out and touch each other, but not so close that Marin's arms came into contact.
"Young fool, escaping death by the skin of your teeth. And still acting like you have the rest of your life ahead of you."
Marin scoffed, "And you think that was the only time I've looked at my own death."
Now it was Val's turn to scoff, "Oh? It's happened before? That explains it."
"Explains what?"
"You don't think you're immortal, you know it. I feel sorry for them."
"For who?" Marin looked down at the two children, they were laughing and dusting each other off. Whatever sound they made or words spoken, the two of them could not hear it.
"Your friends. You have all kept each other alive, but now you're convinced that you're invincible. I feel sorry for them."
"What's wrong with escaping death? You talk like you don't know how it feels."
Val squared her shoulders, looking every bit scary and dangerous despite her height. She was inches shorter than Marin. And Marin was an inch or so above average.
"So you've given death the slip before, the first time is always hard. But the second time is easier, clearly." Her eyes flicked down to the little bit of scar on Marin's collarbone. "Maybe you felt mortal the first time. Yet you're still here."
"And?" Marin was trying her best not to cower before Val. Her stomach was squirming at Val. Val looked ready to attack something, intimidating even without her spears.
"And at least you back up your bravado with action." Val made another noise in her throat, something uncomplimentary. "But bravery can get other people killed. You seemed to have opted in to take one for the team." Val started to step around Marin, towards the stairs down. "But what if next time you egg on the monster and it does that," Val gestured at the scars she wore under her coat. Marin had seen them. "But when it happens to Danny, or Jamie?" Val left Marin by the window.
Marin watched the other woman leave for the lounge downstairs. The sun was fully visible from behind the mountains now.
Val didn't look back.
Marin was confused, she felt the opposite. That once again, Marin had been reminded of her own mortality. At the same time, Valkyrie might be right, in a way. Marin not only had survived, but she had access to magic that could heal everything but death.
Potions could keep people fighting when their fighting spirit wavered. As well as treat injuries, while supplemented by magic and first aid.
Marin kept her mouth shut, as much as she felt mortal. Val was right, she did feel like she could survive anything. It made her braver than she had been before. But on this planet, as much as there was magic, there were dangers to match it.
Marin was no less safe than before. And she was still having black outs.
Val was right.
Marin opened her eyes in the dark, she had been sleeping less fitfully since the rain. Her scant dreams of people and music, had been morphing into uncomfortable dreams of monsters. Monsters which were accompanied by either discordant music, or vivid boss music. She could write it out, badly, when she woke up. But she never wanted to. Wishing to forget the harsher tunes and the few words that accompanied them.
While staring at the dark ceiling, trying to forget a rock-opera song. There was a noise in the hallway in front of her door.
Someone was passing the door to her and Jamie's room. It could have been any of the other four, clomping by. Fahd didn't step that heavily in his combat boots.
That and Fahd was in the big room, with two queen beds and a private bathroom. So that left Danny or Shawn.
Whoever they were, they creaked on the top stair, instead of heading to the bathroom in the hallway.
Marin was at the window by the time they made it outside. A dark shadow, with short black hair, was sneaking badly across the town square.
"Dammit Shawn." Marin mumbled. She tied her laces in a quick knot and closed the door to her room softly behind her. She took her Materia bracelet, just in case.
Toe first steps took her across the hall and down the stairs with barely a squeak. She felt like a bad version of Fahd, sneaking after Shawn.
Shawn had never stopped to look behind him, only ahead or side to side.
'What is it, 2am?' Marin thought. She could see stars above them. The mountains themselves were so dark.
Marin jammed the doorstop in the door, so it wouldn't lock behind her. Shawn had let it click shut. This was a small town with a small inn. There was a bell by the front desk, but there was no one awake in the building at this hour. Except her and Shawn.
'Dammit Shawn.' She thought to herself. Clinging to the shadows under the nearly-full moon. Marin made her way slowly after Shawn. She didn't crunch the dust under her feet. What sounds she did make offended her ears. She figured that only someone like Fahd would hear her coming.
'Whatever he's up to, it has to stop.' The thought made Marin angry. She was more frustrated than angry that he would sneak around in the night. The night after their big fight. She had cooled her temper, but her and Jamie had agreed to not leave Danny and Shawn alone together. Shawn thought that home was just a step away, that none of this was real. Danny had buried too many friends, brothers and sisters of arms. He was too invested in this world to toss those emotions out of hand.
'Maybe don't let them train together either. Else Danny's weapon might slip.' Marin thought better of Danny than to murder Shawn. But accidents could happen if the Shawn problem was not solved. And it had to be solved, Jamie's brother or not. At the end of the day, they only had each other. They needed each other. And someone was going to have to teach Shawn that before he got hurt.
Marin stopped in a shadow behind a house, as the gate to the ShinRa Manor rattled. Someone, obviously Shawn, was checking the lock.
Shaking his head, he started going to the left, looking for something.
The stone wall was not that tall. There were no conveniently placed trees to get over it. But it was not so tall to stop someone determined enough.
The gate's grillwork was spaced weirdly, it would be difficult to climb and possibly make a racket in doing so. Shawn didn't look that foolish. But he wasn't watching for someone following after him.
Marin stopped and listened for a few moments, she heard nothing. No one behind her. There was just her and Shawn.
Marin went a little slower and quieter on final approach. Apparently he went unarmed in the city limits. Marin wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Fahd had refused to teach any of them to really fight with their hands or feet, only have good posture and supplement the weapons they had. He said that they were too old for the conditioning they would need. They were eighteen and older. Marin wanted to cuss-out Fahd for calling her and her friends too-old.
She had kept the complaints to herself in return for everything Fahd and Val had done for them. Training the four of them in fighting, while providing food and shelter while they traveled.
Shawn was halfway up the wall when she hissed at him.
"Hisst. Shawn!"
He stumbled and looked around, he couldn't tell which shadow had spoken. "Who's there?" He asked, too loudly for Marin's comfort.
"Shawn!" She whispered again.
"Marin? Where are you?"
"Hopefully somewhere that will keep you out of trouble."
"Where- oh, there you are."
She had stepped out of the shadow, so Shawn could see her. "Be quiet!" She hissed at him. "What are you doing?"
Shawn lowered his voice enough to satisfy Marin, "You know what's in that mansion right?"
"Yeah, among other things, trouble for all of us."
"There's a whole library in there. And Vincent-"
"Did you even look for cameras?" She hissed. Looking back the way they had come. Anyone could hide in the deep shadows of the moon. She had and easily.
"Why? Do you see one?" His head whipped around, looking.
"No, but that's not the point."
Shawn made a gesture, knitting his fingers together then letting go to grab the stone wall again, "Then you can help me get over the fence."
"I will not."
"I thought you liked Vincent."
"I thought I told you about messing with the past." Whether or not the man named Vincent slept in the hidden basement at that moment. It mattered less than getting caught. "Did you tell anyone about this plan?"
Shawn scoffed, "oh yeah, Like Danny?"
"So if I leave now, this is all you." Marin asked.
"What, you didn't come to help?"
"No!" she lowered her voice again. "I came here to stop you. We're strangers here."
"Oh yeah, worried I'll stir up the 'ghosts' in the 'haunted' mansion?" He said, dripping with sarcasm.
"I'm worried you're going to piss off some locals and get us driven out of town."
"What? You didn't like your turn?"
"Oh for fuck's sake Shawn." Marin kept her voice to a loud whisper. She wanted to yell at him, she wanted to walk away. She also wanted to stop or delay Shawn as long as she could. "You're making it pretty hard to be your friend."
He stopped looking for hand holds to look at her, "What? You want to be friends?"
"I want us to do better than not hate each other. For Jamie's sake. But you're making it really hard."
Shawn shrugged, "Tolerate each other while you're boinking my sister doesn't sound that hard."
"We're not fucking!" Marin clapped her hands to her mouth. That had felt like it echoed down the road to town, even if it was between a whisper and speaking volume. "That's it." she hissed. "Break your neck, see if I care." Marin stalked off down the road, back the way she had come.
Shawn clearly didn't believe Marin. "Lie all you want..."
Marin was too far down the path, slipping along the shadowed edge, to hear his whispers continue. 'We aren't like that.' It made her angry. She had hoped that Shawn would have understood her being ace better than anyone else. She walked away, full of disappointment.
She only looked back to check on Shawn once. He was halfway up the wall as she came to the curve in the road. Leaving him behind, Marin kept going down the path back to the Inn.
She could touch the back of that building when the yell broke the silence, and the crunch that followed it.
'Shawn.'
If Marin could move her ears, they would be opening wider, listening for attack and from where. The night's quiet had been broken the way she had come from.
She touched her Materia bracelet as she moved along the edge of the road, no longer keeping to the shadows.
There was a yell for quiet in the square, shutters on a window clattering open.
And heavy footprints, behind hers. Something else was coming, and they were fast.
Marin hugged the wall, to limit the directions of approach. As her heart pounded in her ears, she felt like she was moving through jello as she readied for whatever was coming.
A man, in a cape, flowed up the path. He turned to look at Marin as he slowed down. She was in Jello as he moved quickly through the air. The man, and he was just a man, moved quickly enough that she hoped she wouldn't have to fight him. Things would end quickly and badly for her.
The stranger sized Marin up just as quickly, eyes flicking to her left side, and he dismissed her.
A name struggled to float to the surface of Marin's memories. His name fell away at the sight of the real person in a large red cape.
"Ah!" Shawn cried again.
Marin and the man turned to look at Shawn flailing on the ground, cursing a blue streak.
'At least he didn't hit his head.' Marin thought.
"Isn't he one of your friends?" the man asked.
"He's not my friend." Marin told him.
Neither of them wanted to fight, and Marin was going to struggle to talk anyone out of anything. The man was in lock step with Marin up the path to an injured Shawn.
"Ow, fuck, ow. Did you see that?" Shawn asked them.
The third person looked around. He looked up, down, the way they had come. He checked the sky as well.
Marin had a feeling that anyone that could move like that, and know to look up, would be very hard to sneak up on. He was also from here, so if anyone was going to be questioned for wandering around late at night. It would be Shawn. And by association, Marin and their friends.
"See what Shawn? Oooh." Marin could see Shawn's right leg at an odd angle. Nothing she couldn't fix, with no monster's about. The hard part would be avoiding trouble with this local.
"So, you're name is Shawn, eh?" the man knelt down next to the other man. His hair was dark. Marin had expected gray. In the night everything was darker. Including the red cape that flowed behind the man. In this light it looked black.
"Yeah, oh fuck. What's yours?"
"Zangan, Are you going to be OK?" He asked Shawn.
"He will be when I'm done with him." Marin told them both.
Zangan chuckled. "I think you'd be better off if you were her friend, young man."
"I'm not young, owwww. I'm twenty-seven. Marin, do you have your materia? Please?"
"I just have one other question for the man, Marin. If you please."
"Marin?" Shawn begged. There was no blood, but he looked to be in extreme pain.
"I'd feel better if he was healed first." Marin told Zangan. "But after that." she adjusted her bracelet. "you can ask him as many questions as you want."
"Oh, thank you, Marin." Zangan told her.
"Don't thank me." She knelt by Shawn to heal him, lecturing Jamie's brother. "I never thought you would take me up on such a stupid dare." She told him. Spinning a story about the night.
"What?" Shawn asked her.
Zangan looked up at Marin. Though she could tell nothing of it in the dark. She hoped that the feeling was mutual. "I'm not going to joke about daring anyone to ring doorbells in the night anymore. Here."
"But-" Shawn started."
"Shut up Shawn. I'm trying to concentrate."
"Did you see me fall?" He asked Marin, when his leg was put aright.
"No, but I heard it."
"The whole town heard that," Zangan told them. "Now, what's this about a dare?"
Marin's chest and belly itched as Shawn sat on something frozen from the Inn's kitchen. He could walk back with a limp thanks to Marin's healing spell, but he would need more magic soon.
Zangan was upstairs, talking with their 'leader' Fahd or Valkyrie. Shawn and Marin were in trouble, they were all in trouble now.
Marin couldn't tell if Shawn was just being dramatic. She leaned on yes when he didn't ask for more healing.
"Marin?" Shawn whispered. Shifting his chair closer to hers.
"We're not supposed to be talking." She whispered back. The ceiling above creaked under the weight of the room that now held three people in it.
"But did you see them?"
"See what?"
He looked scared this time, "the ghosts."
"What are you talking about? The ShinRa mansion isn't actually haunted."
"I'm being serious Marin. Like how this town is bigger and better than we thought. There are ghosts, in a house that we know isn't haunted. Why do you think I fell?"
"What?"
"I was pushed off that wall by ghosts."
Marin rolled her eyes. "And have you seen these 'ghosts' before?"
"No."
"Do you think Zangan saw them?"
"Well, I don't know. We could ask."
"I didn't see any ghosts Shawn, you stumbled. The only ghosts are the Gi under Cosmo Canyon."
Shawn shook his head and reached for Marin's arm. "They weren't those kinda ghosts." He told her.
She easily pulled away before Shawn touched her.
"I'm being serious Marin. What I saw were not those ghosts. Nothing I've ever seen before."
"That's a new one. Something you didn't see in the other games?"
When the stairs creaked under the weight of steps, Marin motioned Shawn to silence.
Shawn kept mouthing something with his lips. Marin only shrugged and shook her head. She couldn't interpret what he was saying anyway.
Unlucky for Shawn and Marin, Zangan had been on watch in Nibelheim that night. Lucky for Marin and Shawn, they were only in trouble for a school-age mischief. Unlucky for them, they were in Fahd's bad books now. And they would be at least until the car was fixed, or even later.
Marin found herself moving buckets of water for baths for Fahd and Val, twice a day, each. Shawn was pressed ganged into doing laundry. Somehow everything needed cleaning again. The city had piped water, it was clearly make-work for the lot of them.
Marin and Shawn were in trouble for the 'dare.' Where Danny and Jamie were in trouble for letting it happen.
Their fight practice continued, thankfully Fahd never did pair up Danny and Shawn. But the extra labor was pushing them hard.
And there would be no more sneaking out at night now, not for any of them.
The six of them were getting a reputation with the locals now. Fahd and Val had not taught them to know better, apparently. Marin bristled at the lost face to the town. At least they weren't being driven out.
Marin didn't want to think of the way things could change if they left this town same as the county fair.
"Doesn't the inn have pipes?" A bright young kid asked from atop a crate under the water tower.
Marin sighed and looked up. A boy with dark hair looked back at her. "I'm doing extra chores for my teacher." she told the child.
"Why would you want to do extra chores?"
Marin put the empty bucket under the spigot. "I don't want to. I have to."
"Why?"
"Because my teacher told me to." the whole town would know by now.
"Why?"
Marin picked up the buckets, now full of water. "Ask your mother."
The boy scrunched his face at her, "I hate it when grown ups say that."
Marin sighed and put the buckets down, "I hated when my parents told me that too, kid."
"Then why say it?"
Marin shook her head, "Because I'm tired, and I have many more buckets to fill. Now is a bad time, okay kid?"
"Why?"
Marin pinched her nose bridge and picked the buckets back up again. "Just ask me later. Okay?"
"Why?"
Marin ignored the last question and carried the buckets to the Inn. She noticed Zangan on the road to the mansion. He could see down into the whole town from there. And he had a very good view of Marin's chores.
Sighing, Marin felt disappointed in herself for losing the trust of the man. He could have been a good teacher while they were in town. Just as long as he stayed here, to teach the townsfolk he had to teach. Before one of his students, Tifa, would grow up to save this world.
Marin trudged up the rocky path. Fahd had made a deal with the town's Headman. Fahd would keep his four students out of trouble, by hiking a short ways into the mountains. Not far enough to need a guide. And they all had instructions on where not to go.
"Team building exercises." Fahd had said.
Deep into the peaks was a reactor. This was not news to Marin. Nor did she talked about it with Shawn. And Marin was too frustrated with Shawn to go over it.
'The reactor where it will happen.' She thought. Marin would have been more melancholic about the future if the hike wasn't so hard.
On foot, the six trudged far enough from the town so that their fight practice would be away from the town. But close enough that they could run back to town if they ran into trouble.
Of which, the trouble was not that bad.
"I told you." Shawn mumbled to Marin, "the leak that makes these monsters a problem hasn't happened yet."
"Shush, I'm trying to concentrate on not tripping." Marin looked ahead a little, to Fahd picking his way, quietly and carefully, with one real hand and a hiking stick clasped in his prosthetic hand. Val and Jamie leapt ahead like gazelles on the rocks. Jamie learned fast from Val, older favoring the younger.
Danny seemed already set on his path to be like a soldier, mundane that was with guns supplemented by materia. Materia that was on loan from Val and Fahd for their training.
Shawn focused on sharpening his casting, scant though it was at this point. He only used weapons out of necessity. He liked Val's spears, though he wielded them more like 'stay-away-from-me' clubs than proper weapons.
Fahd had them all training on all the weapons they had anyway, if only to force them to struggle with or against weapons they didn't like. Of which, Marin had become the best at being the worst. She couldn't shoot with as much accuracy as Danny. She could not swing a spear as quickly as Jamie. And even Shawn had figured out how to identify Materia faster than Marin, now that he could spend his mana faster than Marin. But Marin's other skills were better than Shawn's.
What Marin had going for her was that her weakest efforts were better than everyone else's weakest. Though her best was not as good as the best. Val criticized Marin selling herself short.
Marin would say "I'm mediocre at everything." And the older woman shot it down every time. Marin's skills were the best overall, even if everyone had one thing they could do better than her by now.
Then Jamie's other skills made an impression on Fahd.
Marin's hands were almost as fast as Jamie's. But if it was a wallet or a spear, Jamie was faster than everyone else.
Jamie had finally dared to try at one of Fahd's pockets on this particular hike, when he struggled with one particular lip of rock. Marin had wanted a chance to try, out of boredom. But Jamie beat her to it.
Jamie was right behind to help him from slipping, as he tried to climb with one good hand.
Fahd made his request upon getting over the lip, huffing and puffing. He put out his one hand, making a 'give it' motion to Jamie.
"What?" she had an innocent face on. The one she had practiced on stage with that magician. Jamie had mastered the innocent and vapid smile.
"Hand over whatever you helped 'fall' out of that pocket." his face was stone, unreadable as usual.
"I don't know what you're talking about." She folded her arms across her chest.
'Don't get caught.' Echoed the advice of that magician Jamie had been working with. 'And if you get caught, deny it. Never let the audience know that they guessed right, then get on with the show.'
Fahd's face hardened. "Deny all you want. But not to me."
Jamie handed over the wallet, stuffed with paper Gil. "You did ask."
As he put his wallet away, Marin thought she saw a crinkling at the corners of his eyes.
"I did ask you all to think about what you could do beyond fighting. True." Standing in the way of anyone proceeding, he stabbed his hiking stick into the rocky ground and put his hand on his hip. "Though next time, and this goes for all of you. Use your words, I don't have the patience for another 'demonstration' like that."
"Huh." Was all Marin said.
Fahd had that unreadable mask on again.
Marin could swear that there was respect or admiration in those eyes for a moment. Though she couldn't point to where on Fahd's face she could tell. She thought she was bad at reading people, but the mask was peeking. Either that or she had been staring at it for over a week, trying to get to know his tics.
"This area looks flat enough." Val told Fahd, as she was the last to the rise.
They could look down the slops and see the town below them. Running to town would be dangerous, more so in the dark. But they could all see the way from that spot, guide or no guide.
"No practicing guns up here." Fahd told them all. "I don't want the echoes to disturb the town any more than we already have." the last words were punctuated by a stare at Shawn.
Marin was surprised that Fahd threw in a glare for her as well.
He continued, "The noise could attract trouble anyway, so only use them in self defense." Fahd pointed out where to set the tents. "And double watches."
Marin bit back a groan, even if the reactor was not leaking and it was not empowering the local monsters. Double watches reminded them how dangerous even Fahd thought this area was.
"I hope it doesn't rain." Jamie mumbled.
Everyone agreed to that, even Fahd and Val.
