Good morning jungle; a questionable vehicle; Home; when I meet myself; time to go

Nanaki woke slowly, listening to the dawn chorus of the Gongagan rainforest. It started with the occasional bird call, melodic or raucous, then grew noisier with the buzz and drone of insects, the whoops and shrieks of monkey troops, and the occasional bellowing from a distant grand horn. He lay curled on the pillow of the Fair's spare cot, Reeve's dark head resting on the corner of pillow, and ruminated over the differences between this jungle and the one in their own time. He knew for a fact two of the birds he heard now would be extinct in ten years, and the roar and rumble of the mutant heavy tank was absent. It seemed that Shinra's monsters were not yet well spread at this time.

The morning cacophony in all its vociferous glory soon begin to rouse the other occupants of the house. Sensing Reeve waking next to him, Nanaki began to rise, but before he could gather his paws firmly under himself, the soft surface of the feather pillow was yanked out from under him. A quick twist, and he landed crouched on the floor, blinking. It seemed Reeve had no intention of getting up just yet, as he now had the pillow clutched over his head in an attempt to keep the noise at bay.

Nanaki felt slightly bemused by Reeve's behavior. Reeve had always seemed to function on very little sleep, staying up late and rising before dawn. Was this laziness the result of his strenuous efforts yesterday? Or perhaps it was simply an effect of his physical age. Human adolescents had a well known habit of sleeping late.

"Seems like someone's not ready to get up yet." Mr. Fair echoed his thoughts swinging his legs over the edge of the nearby full-size bed. Bending down, he ruffled the fluff on top of Nanaki's head. "Mornin'.'"

Nanaki glared and shifted away. "I do not like to be pet."

"Huh? Oh, sorry." The man looked chagrined. "I didn't mean - I was just ruffling your hair. I used to do it all the time to my son. Sorry, wasn't thinking." It was of some consolation that the gesture was an ingrained habit for the man, but the unthinking patronization of the gesture still rankled Nanaki.

Mrs. Fair sat up from the other side of the bed, and pushed her husband out of the way, so she could get up. "It's barely light out, and you're already into trouble," she commented.

"Seems like it," Mr. Fair said ruefully. "Wake up, Reeve. I'll take the two of you, and we'll go find some breakfast."

They followed their host down a dirt path, the soil steaming in the warming morning air, as he explained about the town's communal chicken coop. It provided food and shelter for the local semi-feral jungle fowl, and if they were lucky they would find some eggs there. If not, they would have to scour the bushes until they found a nest. Nanaki liked the idea of the coop, but was less enthralled with the notion of traipsing around in the thick jungle, hunting for eggs. Thankfully, they found a clutch of six eggs in a nest box at the coop, then picked some ripe cherimoya as they made their way back at the Fair's small house. They were greeted by Mrs. Fair as she stepped out into the streams of morning sunlight. "Back already? Well, honey, if you'll cook breakfast, I'll be back soon."

"Where are you going?" Reeve inquired.

"For a quick run to the waterfall and back. Zack and I had a morning ritual, running to the waterfall and then home, and I haven't lost the habit since he left. Either of you up for a race?"

Reeve shook his head quickly. Nanaki was strongly tempted, but there was too much to be done. "Sadly, I must decline. We still need to procure transportation to Cosmo Canyon. It is a long walk without it."

Buying a vehicle in the small jungle town proved to be nearly an impossible task. In the end the vehicle they borrowed was the Gongagan jeep, so named because no one actually owned the derelict car. No one was willing to take financial responsibility for it, since that would entail repairing it. It had been brought to the village nine years ago by the Shinra Company, but a monster attack had left the frame warped. When the company pulled out of the village, they'd left the battered jeep behind. Vehicles being rare and expensive, the town had quickly adopted it, but after all these years of muddy roads, humid air, and exceedingly amateur maintenance, it was a wreck. It had become the town's emergency vehicle, used by whoever desperately needed a ride and had no other option. The rear bumper was missing, while the front was tied on with rope. The glass in the fold down windshield was shattered. The passenger door was stuck shut, there were no longer any mirrors, and one headlight and both tail lights were broken. The fabric top of the car had rotted away, and the rear seats had been removed. The engine and its attached hoses, belts, and fans, which had no hood to cover them, were held together with twine, rubber bands, three different kinds of tape, and a wad of elderly chewing gum. Needless to say, Nanaki was not looking forward to riding in it.

Cait Sith and his Moogle clambered into the back, Nanaki sat in the moldering passenger seat, and Reeve, with some trepidation, took the driver's seat. Miraculously, the engine started on the first try. They bid goodbye to the Fairs, and set off in the rattling, wheezing jeep. Within a few hours, they'd traded the greenery and soggy roads of the dense jungle for expanses of grassland with yellow and orange wildflowers blooming in the middle of the rutted road. By mid-afternoon, the grass had thinned to sparse brown patches, dessiccated by the intense summer sun and lack of rain. Nanaki began to smell the familiar scents of chaparral and sage. Resting his chin on the door, he watched the skeletons of old manzanita and mahogany trees, the spires of agave and yucca, and the last stubborn blooms of mallow, verbena and poppy passing by. In a few more hours, they would reach the red dust roads and high clay and sandstone walls of Cosmo Canyon. His home.

Being who he was, one of the only two great cats left in the world, though younger than he should be, he anticipated little difficulty getting his Grandfather and the rest of the canyon to believe and help them. The challenge would be seeing if they could reach their many deadlines, when those dates were so unclear. They needed to be ready to act in concert with the other party member's schemes, but in some cases that would only be achieved after the others had provided them with the necessary data. That could be in a week, or in three months. There was no way of knowing. Until the others made contact with them, he, Reeve and Cait Sith would have to make do with what they had.

Under a curtain of starlight, they turned down the desert wash that led to the base of the mesa topped by Cosmo Village. The midnight hulk of the stony outcrop loomed steadily larger before them, the ember-glow constellation of the village on top sliding out of view as they drove up to the base. The vehicle pulled to a shuddering stop, and he eagerly jumped out, joints sore from the jarring ride. The soft night breeze brought to him the scents and noises of small nocturnal animals, the soft shifting of sleeping birds, the rustle and tap of dry vegetation… He sat, breathing deeply, ignoring the pinging and popping of the cooling engine, the happy chatter of Cait Sith, and Reeve's groaning as he stamped and swung his arms, trying to shake out the fatigue of long travel.

Reeve come over to him at last. "Nanaki? Are you prepared to go? Have you given any thought to what you will say?"

Nanaki stared at the shadowy wooden staircase that led up to top of the mesa. "Some. I am mostly content to field the questions posed to me."

As they ascended to the top of the stairs, Nanaki was unsurprised to find that even at this late hour a guard had been posted at the dry wooden gates. The man had more than likely been watching their headlight blink in and out of the dark canyon landscape for the last hour or more.

"Halt! Who are… you?" What had begun as an authoritative command ended as a bewildered question when the man caught full sight of Nanaki.

"Tis' I, Nanaki," he announced. "Shrunken as I traveled backwards through the flow of time. My companions and I need urgently to speak with Grandfather."

It was a grim reminder of how few of his kind were left that the man so easily believed his claim. He displayed no suspicion, no doubts, only surprise at the claim of time travel. They were ushered in quickly and in minutes it seemed the whole village was awake as news of their arrival spread. Sitting beside the large ceremonial bonfire of the Cosmo Candle, Nanaki began to feel apprehensive. Of all his friends, he would be the first to meet his younger counterpart, and what would happen then? Nanaki was uncertain. Despite the general disdain he felt towards most the media produced by humanity - useless, dull, trite, or its medium actually harmful to the planet - he'd developed a certain taste for works of nonfiction that explained the working of the world, and rather more guiltily, an enjoyment for serious works of speculative fiction. Reeve had similar tastes, and the two of them had frequently lent books to each other. Sometimes, in time travel stories, it was dangerous to the time stream for two versions of a person to occupy the same point in spacetime.

His nerves began to get the better of him. His tail flicked back and forth in agitation. Would their meeting disrupt the time distortion that had placed he and the other party members here in the first place? What if, somehow, the two of them merged into one being? What if one or the other of them ceased to exist? He stood, almost ready to leave, but the crowd around the Candle had grown so thick that even he would have difficulty eeling his way out. He saw a stir in the far side of the crowd as people made way for a short figure.

He could sense the crowd parting and one last desperate thought flit through his mind, giving him some comfort. Experiences and memories made you who you were. His young counterpart had yet to live through even half of what he had. They were similar, but certainly not the same being, not any more.

"Ho ho ho ho, isn't this a surprise! Time travelers!" Bugenhagen floated out from amongst the crowd. "It is good to see you, Nanaki, though you are rather smaller than I thought you would be."

He couldn't help but huff at that, feeling the nervousness draining away at the sight of the village leader's familiar round face. The man's circular spectacles reflected the firelight, as they had done many nights in the past, when Nanaki had sat beside the Candle as a part of the community. "Yes, grandfather," he answered, "though how I came to such a state, or even to be in this time, I could not tell you."

"Then the traveling back was not your doing?"

"No. It caught my friends and I off guard." He could make out his younger self - how strange to regard himself as the older one, when his past self was a gangly teenager and he currently seemed stuck as a fluffy cub - standing close behind Bugenhagen. There, also, sat Deneh, she and Nanaki's younger self were both looking at him with wide eyes. It was difficult to resist trailing off and staring back at them.

"Ho ho ho ho! Well, that is good news. I had worried that some grievous event had happened."

"Oh, but Grandfather, many such events did happen. Now that we are here, we plan to stop them."

The old man gave him a considering look. "And you think it wise to mess with time and alter the planet's path?"

Nanaki felt stung. His ears flattened with displeasure. "We did not mess with time; it messed with us. And the disasters I speak of nearly took all life from the planet. Would you ask us to sit back and watch it all happen again?"

That sent a ripple of murmurs through the crowd around them. The normally jovial old man was silent, his face creased with deep thought. In what seemed like an eternity before the elder spoke again, Nanaki began to doubt if coming here had been the correct choice. If the Canyon did not help them, their plan would fall apart, but worse still would be the betrayal of his home against him.

He needn't have worried. The skin around Bugenhagen's eyes crinkled like old paper as a smile swept onto his face. "It seems you have grown up, Nanaki, though your size has decreased."

Nanaki swished his tail, feeling irritated again at how small he was. "Grandfather, please."

The old man chuckled again. "Whatever help Cosmo Canyon has to offer, we will give you. This is your home."

Those simple words lifted a weight from him. He hadn't realized quite how heavy it had grown. "Thank you," he said, deeply grateful.

Bugenhagen tugged at his grey beard, smiling. "No matter when or where you go, the canyon will always be your home." He regarded Nanaki silently for a moment, then his smile diminished and he continued seriously. "Now am I correct in guessing that Shinra and its Mako extraction is something you plan to confront?"

Nanaki nodded, the beads braided into his mane rattling. "Yes. We plan to replace it with cleaner energy - like wind and solar."

Suddenly, a new voice entered the conversation. "It won't work." A small cluster of people, three men and four women, all wearing sturdy boots and khakis, jostled their way to the front of the crowd. The two youngest seemed to be in their mid-twenties, while the man who'd spoken was the oldest among them. He was short, darker-skinned than Barret, with greying hair and a rounded beard, and a matter-of-fact air. "My colleagues and I are here studying the effects Shinra's mako extraction has on the planet. We've tried talking to Shinra about the damaging effects our findings reveal, but they refuse to hear us out. You're not going to be able to get them to listen to you, and they'll crush you if you try to compete against them."

"I believe we may have a way around that," Nanaki offered, and nodded to Reeve, who so far had been silent. Taking the cue, the teen stepped forward. "My name is Reeve Tuesti," he said, gesturing to himself. "Currently my past self is a member of the Shinra Board, in charge of Urban Development - including the mako reactors." A murmur swept through the assembly, growing louder as Reeve continued, his posture drooping slightly, "To my shame, I was one of their principal designers." Now the murmurs were snarls and Nanaki physically intervened, moving to stand between his friend and his people. The researchers were glowering at Reeve, and even Bugenhagen's expression grew disapproving.

Reeve held up his hands disarmingly, his voice soothing and measured as he explained, "I am genuinely sorry for the part I played. I never intended to hurt anyone, and I plan to fix my mistakes now. I will contact my younger-self and persuade him to shut down the reactors." He hurriedly explained their plans for clean new energy sources, appealing to the researchers for assistance as he spoke.

Nanaki relaxed as the village did. Suspicion remained on many faces, but they seemed willing to hear Reeve out. Soon the majority of the village's population was seated around the bonfire, listening to Reeve expound about wind and solar farms, hydropower, geothermal energy and bio-fuels. The man was certainly in his element, Cait Sith at his side recording everything.

The great cat observed his younger self trying to pay attention to Reeve's speech, but obviously unable to keep his attention on the impassioned technical explanations with a time-shifted version of himself sitting only a few paces away. Nanaki stood, nodding his head at the cub to follow. Deneh stood to follow, then hesitated, and Nanaki nodded to her as well. She accompanied them over to the mesa's edge. Alone in the starlight, away from the murmuring group surrounding the Cosmo Candle, he was able to study the cub he once was - before Shinra, the labs. Hojo.

Sympathy and disgust battered at each other inside his breast as he looked at his younger self, who sat up - puffed up really - trying to look impressive. What a child he had been - was, sheltered and naive about anything that lay outside the canyon's walls. He had grown up surrounded by love and respect, although he had done little to earn it. And still he had craved more! He had wanted, so desperately, to grow up, to be perceived as a pillar of strength, a great warrior his mother would have been proud of. A strong leader unlike his cowardly father. A foolish wish that only a child could make, absorbed in the stories he'd told himself, unable to accept worldviews that clashed with his own.

Despite the springy, youthful energy of his cub body, Nanaki felt very old, very conscious of the scars that marred him. The tattoo. The missing eye. He had wanted to grow up, but he had naively wished for it in the form of a transformation, a sudden overnight change. His growth, however, had been a painful thing, a gradual process of losing trust in others and then regaining it, of breaking through the lies he had told himself, of enduring horrors and ending horrors and coping with the aftermath.

You didn't grow up overnight but by the hardships you faced. Some were so small you forget them the next day; others left scars. He wanted to impart this knowledge to his younger self, but how? Their plan was to avert the catastrophes, both personal and world-threatening - he wanted the child before him to learn the same lessons of maturity he had; he did not want him to learn them in the same bitter ways. At the least, he wanted him to know that the cornerstone of his fervently believed self-history was false. Their father was no coward.

In the time he had spent studying his young counterpart, the cubs had been studying him. Deneh was the one to break the silence.

"How did you lose your eye?"

It wasn't surprising that was the first question to be asked. His scars, reminders of everything he had been through, looked out of place on his shrunken body. Next to his younger self they were particularly startling.

"I was taken from here by Shinra and by one man in particular." The memories of his time in the labs still had the power to send tremors through him, and he mastered them sternly. One thing he was determined to make sure never happened was the capture and subsequent torture of the two children in front of him. "But I promise that I and my friends will do all that we can to make sure you two are never taken." He knew his friends would do anything necessary to help him, and if the worst did happen, they would not hesitate to infiltrate Shinra to rescue them.

The cubs' curiosity had been replaced with shock and fright as he had been speaking. Ears flat, tails slightly tucked. He had spoken in generalities, but it was clear that they were picturing horrible things. To distract them from their imaginings, he brought up the lesson he most wanted to impart. He looked the cub that shared his youth firmly in the eyes. "There is something you must learn of our father. He was no coward."

The cubs hackles began to rise, but before he could protest, Nanaki growled, "Do not interrupt, but listen! Our father Seto was a hero. He does not deserve your hate or your scorn, but your respect for the sacrifice he made for this canyon. Our home. When the Gi tribe attacked, they tried to sneak in by way of a hidden cave that comes straight up through the mesa. Our father defended this cave and pushed them back. Even as his body was turned to stone by their cursed spears, he still defended the canyon."

"But our mother-" began the cub, but Nanaki cut him off again. "Our mother knew, and ordered the cave sealed. She grieved for his death, not for his disappearance."

The cub was silent, a contemplative scowl on his face. Nanaki raised up on his hind legs and gently head-butted his counterpart. "When there is time, I will take you to him. You will see the truth in what I say."

It had been two productive weeks since they had arrived in the canyon. The researchers had allowed the new arrivals to share the hut they used as a workspace, and lent them plenty of supplies. The simple wooden furniture creaked under the weight of brainstormed doodles, sketches, schematics, blueprints, and agendas. For Cait Sith, being around so much analog technology was sort of an exciting adventure! The researchers had two ancient, bulky personal computers with simple cathode monitors, but the bulk of the work was being carried out by hand, in pen and pencil on reams of recycled paper. Cait Sith was amazed by how inventive and creative the researchers were, working with such limited resources. Reeve obviously felt the same, but still confided in him that while redesigning Midgar and its energy sources was a long held dream, he sorely missed all of the equipment he'd once had back in Urban Development, and even the salvaged and refurbished equipment they'd used for the WRO. The few computers that Morgan and his team had available for them to use were considerably out of date to the time travelers. Reeve had spent the first days simply writing code, trying to upgrade the software to the point that it was usable for the 3D modeling and number crunching that he needed.

Cait Sith helped where he could, fine tuning designs, or taking over the time-consuming task of copying designs and transposing them to other parts of the city. And it wasn't just Midgar they worked on redesigning, but Junon and all the reactors around the planet. Not in full detail, though! Remembering what was and wasn't complete at this point in history was impossible. So was remembering the exact layout of all the infrastructure that had made up the City: the sewer-lines, mako pipes, electric cables, etc. They did the best they could, leaving plenty of flexibility in the new design so that the old infrastructure could be accommodated.

The researchers had assisted too. On top Reeve's extensive knowledge and training as a civil engineer, the study team had contributed from their areas of expertise - Morgan as an environmental surveyor and engineer, Ingrid and Logan as botanists, and Mable and Sonia as geologists. The remaining two scientists, the zoologist Marcos and the specialist Joni (who studied clinology, gerontology, and neonatology; all studies of the aging process from birth until death), contributed less, but still made some excellent suggestions about urban habitats, accessibility, and senior care.

Now the plans were as completed as they were gonna get, so it was Cait Sith's job to travel to Sector Zero, try to contact Aerith, and start putting their hard work to use.

Notes:

Firstly, apologies for the gap. This and the last chapter were tough to write. The fight scenes last time, agh! This party is all casters, and writing variant after variant on "wizard chucks fireball, opponent takes damage" gets boring. And Reeve and Nanaki, (and Angeal, later) are all smart, thoughtful, polite, erudite, internalizing sorts, and are tougher to get a voice going for than the snarkers, the swearers, and the angst-buckets. Cait Sith has his own voice, too, and we haven't really got a good hold on him yet. Oh, well, every bit of practice helps.

Secondly, a note on the alleged vehicle from Banora: chewing gum works surprising well in holding an engine together. Our family once went about a thousand miles on and off roading through the Utah desert with an engine held together by medical tape, duct tape and chewing gum.