Top Guide (In This Town)

Chapter 10

A/N: I feel like Crisis Core really missed a trick by not fully engaging with the setting-specific elements of saying 'we are monsters.' Because monsters that look or behave like people, but are by definition hostile and need killing, exist as a normalized concept in this society already.

(Nanaki is not humanoid, but he speaks, and as soon as he expresses a disinclination to aggro, the party accepts him at least provisionally as a 'person.' Is this a representative reaction? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Anyway, we left Tifa with her blood chilled by the silhouette of one-winged flying man in long coat.

It's him, was her first thought, and her second was her brain supplying a jumbled explanation for how that could possibly be when Sephiroth was already standing in front of her, which amounted to the other Sephiroth having come back in time at the same time she had, but for some reason (such as being dead) instead of taking over his own past body he'd hijacked someone else with enough Jenova cells to make it work.

A random SOLDIER, maybe.

This idea was perfectly plausible, which was why her third thought was filled with such overwhelming relief as the flying man sank out of alignment with the noonday sun, and she noted first the lesser length of his hair and then the darker color, and that the coat was in fact grey shading toward rose-damask pink, and not the black it had looked in silhouette.

Then, the fact that the wing was on the wrong side, though it wasn't as if she was going to assume Sephiroth was incapable of toying with the details of his manifestation. He favored his left hand for wielding his sword, though, when he had hands and a sword, so having it on the left would probably be an inconvenience.

The mystery monster man sank onto stone, between their groups so that Sephiroth was on his right and Vincent to his left, and curved his wing gracefully forward around his shoulder, spread the opposite arm gracefully around him to indicate in a single sweep everybody present, and tilted his head gracefully to one side.

Everything about the way he moved was graceful, to an absurd, measured, rehearsed extent, like Vincent's poses at least twice over, and unlike Vincent's mostly-accidental drama made her feel awkward and grubby and grossly unfeminine, which was a feeling she hated more than anything because being made ashamed of her strength made her want to break things. He looked like he might be about to break into an aria, or possibly a dance routine, which was an image she decided to preserve rather than let him start speaking.

Into the last seconds of his dramatic pause she slammed the words, "Who the hell are you?"

The man blinked at her, slow and superior. "I?" His voice was younger than the greying hair or the papery look to his skin suggested, but he could talk.

If Tifa hadn't seen the one-winged look before, or had his eyes lingered on individual faces a little less, she probably wouldn't have expected it; would have taken him for a new kind of humanoid monster. Of course, a few of those could talk, such as particularly old or clever Snows, but most of them were just hungry animals that happened to resemble people.

Reactor contamination created new monster types all the time.

"While admittedly I am not at my best," the flying man began.

"Don't bother," Fair interrupted, cheerful and snide. "She's never heard of you!" The brightness leached from his tone and he looked over to tell Tifa, "This guy's bad news. He's Shinra's Most-Wanted, now that we know he's still alive." Big deal, that had been her and Cloud's shared title for a month that the world spent ending, once. The SOLDIER's eyes narrowed. "He killed everyone in his hometown."

That was a somewhat bigger deal.

"We've all killed a lot of people," said the Most-Wanted performance artist dismissively. "But never mind the introductions I deserve. Sephiroth," he said, and much of the languid air dropped away as if it had never been, gaze intent on the General's face. The way he said the name reminded Tifa of Cloud, almost, in a disquieting way. But the tone of the following words was insinuating, loaded with obscure layered meaning in a way Cloud could never even have imitated. "You've been doing some reading."

Sephiroth looked—startled? It reminded Tifa, a little, of the look he tended to wear as he died. He turned his face away. "What of it?"

"Did you learn anything interesting?" the stranger pressed.

Now Sephiroth's head swung back around, and he glared—though Tifa thought the expression lacked something. Or had something it shouldn't. His expression was almost totally blank, but that had never stopped him from emoting before. "Genesis. What do you want?"

"Your help, of course." Maybe the word she wanted was intimate. This Genesis person spoke to Sephiroth as someone who knew him, and expected to be acknowledged in return. "As one monster…to another."

Wait. Genesis. That was—the person Sephiroth had suspected her of being an agent for, at the Manor last night. Fair had implied he was mixed up with the Jenova Project, which was at this point obviously true, but how had Fair already known that?

How did she have absolutely no idea who this person was? Had he been here the first time? Had Sephiroth killed him along with Nibelheim? Was he some bizarre dream facsimile her brain had patched together to inform her she hadn't actually traveled through time but was in a coma, worrying her family?

(Relentlessly she catalogued him—under the grey which seemed to settle over him like frost or like mako-depletion on a mountain, he shared Aerith's coloring. Outfit included. He was dominating the conversation through cryptic melodrama the way the Sephiroth she knew best liked to do, and had a wing like Sephiroth had unfurled shortly before the most recent time Cloud killed him. He was giving Sephiroth pause. He was a previous Shinra's Most Wanted and she'd never heard of him.)

No. She had to keep believing this was real. There were plenty of things in the world she didn't know about. Especially anything that had become irrelevant by the time Nibelheim's ashes were cold.

"Don't go around calling other people monsters!" ordered Fair hotly—his teeth were clenched, his eyes burning, and Tifa realized he really hadn't gotten angry at her once, not yet.

"You don't know anything." The mystery man didn't even look toward the younger SOLDIER to dismiss him. "And what about you, Sephiroth? Are you still convinced of Shinra's little fairy tales? Do you still think of yourself as a human being? Or are you willing to listen to me, now?"

"It's none of your business," Sephiroth said flatly, "What I know or believe. What do you want."

The mutant heaved a pretty little sigh, and turned his head, presenting the angle of his cheekbone and a sliver of neck in an artful display of vulnerability that was really anything but that. Tifa had never seen a man use this type of presentation skill so constantly. He could not be real.

She couldn't believe she was being forced to disbelieve in the entire world a little on the basis that an escaped science project was putting too much energy into being pretty.

(Actually…he reminded her of a Jemnezmy, the way they posed when casting Fascinate. Maybe Shinra had used monster DNA in whatever they did to him, on top of the obvious Jenova. Hel, for all she knew there were Snow cells involved in Sephiroth, on top of alien and human. She wouldn't put anything past Shinra scientists.)

"Your help, as I said. To save me from my current fate in this disintegrating body. Your cells are stable," Genesis declared. "You can't make Copies."

Tifa let out a disgusted noise, which had probably been unwise. Assuming any of this was real. "Yes he can," she said, when both SOLDIERs and whatever Genesis was looked toward her. "It's a Jenova thing. Hojo's got a Theory about it he wants to prove."

She flicked her eyes toward Cloud for just a second, even though the last thing she wanted was to draw any more attention to him than she already had, because she needed to see his reaction—she'd told him about the experiments he'd been subjected to, was pretty sure she'd mentioned something about Sephiroth Copies, but she hadn't had any idea Jenova-based Copies already existed for him to have opinions on. He was looking wide-eyed and tense but not gutted; good enough. She checked on Sephiroth. Face looking particularly mask-like, wonderful.

Looked back at the clearly trouble-causing flying criminal Jenova mutant. Too late to not insert herself into the conversation; in for one gil in for a hundred. "Whatever you think he can do for you," she said, "I bet you're wrong. Adding more Jenova never helps."

"When the war of beasts brings about the war's end, the Goddess descends from the sky," the winged enigma intoned, watching her carefully now. Which…what?

Lots of people who have these cells have died already, she suddenly remembered Zack Fair saying, last night. Some of the ones with the most of them have gone crazy.

Then again, the wording was oddly familiar…ah. You couldn't spend long in Midgar without tripping over Loveless, really; the whole theater district was themed after it. Even in the slums, it came up; there were buskers who recited passages on streetcorners for spare gil, though Tifa had never gone to an actual performance.

The Goddess descends from the sky. "I hope you don't mean Jenova," she said, mouth feeling a little dry. Because that was really all they needed, an insane flying Loveless apocalypse cult that knew about Jenova and wanted her plans to come to fruition. The people who'd developed that kind of madness immediately before or in the aftermath of Meteor to try to deal emotionally with the destruction had been bad enough, and they'd generally had neither knowledge nor power.

"Of course not." His voice was dismissive. His eyes were like knives.

Tifa squinted back. "…I'm glad to hear it," she said after a second. How much did this one know? Did he think Jenova was an Ancient? He'd called himself and Sephiroth both monsters…. She looked over at Fair. He'd known about this, obviously. "So I guess there were other subjects."

"A second team." The hoarse voice from beside her shoulder startled everyone, but especially Zack and Zeke, who startled like a rabbit. The results of the Jenova Project both narrowed their attention on Vincent, which he barely seemed to notice. "There was a competition," he said, as if suddenly making sense of a vague recollection, something he'd heard in passing. "Within the Science Department. Project G versus Project S. Hojo…was certain he could win, so long as Lucrecia…"

"Project G," Tifa repeated. Cocked her head, considering the faded man. "G for Genesis?"

Genesis frowned at Tifa, then at Vincent, then back at Tifa again, as though he thought they would resolve into something comprehensible if he stared long enough. Then he looked at Sephiroth.

"…just who are these people?"

"We're taking them into Shinra custody on suspicion of terrorism," was Sephiroth's response. There was a new edge to his voice that shredded its way across Tifa's nerves, but she didn't think it had anything to do with her. Except that he'd clearly made his decision, now, and it wasn't the one she'd been hoping for.

The pink and grey creature smiled. It wasn't a terribly pleasant smile—about as smug as Rufus Shinra's, if not quite as cold. "Well, I can hardly let that happen. Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess. If you whisk this mystery away into Shinra's keeping, how will I ever satisfy my curiosity?"

He took two graceful steps back and to the side, until he was clearly physically aligned with the duo defending the reactor steps. Well. Since he'd sunk her previous plan, at least he was providing her with a new one.

"Oh, great," said Fair. There was a whole weight of weary sarcasm to it—Tifa suspected he'd fought this guy before. It reminded her of the feeling of squaring off against the Turks yet again.

Sephiroth's face was set into harsh, unfamiliar lines. Another intentional blankness, Tifa guessed, but she was not equipped to guess what it concealed. "Is this your choice?" he asked.

Asked Tifa, for some unimaginable reason.

"My choice is not to go quietly," she said. Because that hadn't changed. "I'm not in a position to turn down help." She'd worked with Cait Sith while Reeve was still holding Marlene hostage. She'd cooperated more loosely with Rufus Shinra and his Turks, since his recovery from Geostigma. Uneasy alliances with unprincipled men weren't a new concept.

Cloud looked unhappy. Damn. Tifa glanced at Vincent, who seemed unperturbed. Sephiroth had already given the bulk of his attention back to the pink man, who was smirking back at him.

"You should head back down the trail, Zeke," Tifa said, her eyes on Fair and his commander as she closed her hands tight, wishing for a pair of gloves. "It's about to get dangerous."

Zack Fair sighed, and unshipped the sword from his back.

That sword had meant so much to Cloud. It was strange to see it in someone else's hands.

"I guess we're doing this then," he said. Searched her face for something. "Wouldn't it be easier to just explain?"

"Like that would help."

After all, Sephiroth hadn't offered to let her go if she explained, if she surrendered. Just to not hurt her. And he was too curious right now to kill her on purpose anyway. She didn't stand to gain anything from giving in. Tifa squared up. The brushed-steel surface of the steps under her feet wasn't especially secure footing, but the height advantage of being on them was not to be sacrificed.

"Did you call your girlfriend?" she called out, as Zeke retreated to the trailhead. This finally caused Sephiroth to take part of his attention away from staring Genesis down as if waiting for a signal to begin, to quirk a vaguely judgmental eyebrow, but he forbore to comment.

Fair gave her a somewhat dirty look. "I did."

"And?"

"And she says we should talk about it once I get back to Midgar."

Not discussing these things over an unsecured line provided by Shinra was smart. Or Aerith could be just stalling. Even odds. "I hope you get that chance," she said, because she knew in her other lifetime Aerith and Fair had never seen each other again. Not living.

It was nice to remember Aerith was alive. And if they were going to keep it that way, it was time to stand her ground.

She raised her fists.

Fair raised his sword.

Sephiroth's eyes were locked back on the greying mutant as the Masamune sung up, though Tifa was still within range and didn't intend to let her guard down. Genesis' left hand flared with magical light.

Vincent's gun was fully loaded and he'd had the hammer cocked all day, and though it wasn't aimed right at anyone just yet it could be trained on any of their opponents in an instant. His attention was mostly on Sephiroth, for now, as it should be.

And then there was Cloud, clutching his laughably inadequate rifle, looking back and forth between the two factions coming to blows. He'd promised himself to both of them. He didn't want to betray anyone. Oh, Cloud.

"You don't have to fight, Cloud," Tifa said.

"Failure to serve under fire is an act of treason under Shinra Company Guidelines," Sephiroth intoned. The Masamune drew back a little, like he was prepared to perform a battlefield execution on the spot. Shit.

"Seph!" Zack Fair yelped. "It's his best friend!" Sephiroth's eyes cut toward him only in the most sidelong half-glance, but he still flinched as if slapped and looked, for some reason, like he wanted to swallow his tongue. "That's what I mean, though," he added, almost whining. "You should get it. Have a heart."

"Zack," said Sephiroth—flatly, a reprimand.

"It's fine, sir," Cloud bit out.

Features grimly set, Cloud emptied his gun toward the pink Jenova mutant. And only him.

…fair enough.

"Hey Fair!" Tifa called. Slammed her fist into the opposite palm, like she still had perfect confidence in her ability to wreck the average SOLDIER in seconds flat. "Let's dance."

Fair laughed—a bright riptide over heavy stone. "Sorry, I'm taken!" he called, as his sword swung back over his right elbow, a preparation to engage she knew oh, so very well. "You know that!"

He charged.

Tifa waited until almost the very last moment, then jumped.

Into the air and clear over his head. It was a distinctive element of the Zangan style that was mostly only good for showing off—once your opponent was ready for it, anyone who couldn't get in a solid hit on you as you passed over them, flying through the air with minimal ability to alter your trajectory, was weak enough you had never needed a fancy move against them anyway. It was very effective against some monsters that weren't equipped to attack the space above themselves, though, or distracted human opponents. And the first time, it always worked.

She kicked Fair in the back of the neck, landed behind him, and punched him in the kidneys.

A good start to what promised to be a challenging fight.

Nearby, she was aware of Sephiroth's sword swinging and stabbing in a strangely circumscribed range—admittedly she hadn't seen him fight very much in his original body, but still. What was the use of having such an oversized weapon if you then restricted your movements that heavily?

Genesis had opened the fight with a rapid-fire trio of some kind of fireball, and bullets were flying with just enough regularity that Tifa soon did her best to get Fair between her and the non-Cloud Shinra grunt again, because he could afford to be shot by Vincent more than she could afford to be shot by a trooper. Which was sort of embarrassing to admit, even with Vincent's power relatively limited compared to how she remembered him.

Fair knew what she was doing, though, and didn't make it easy.

Zack Fair was good. He wasn't a patch on future Cloud, but since Tifa could hardly compare to future Tifa that was just as well. He relied on strength more than speed, and was willing to swing ten times for the sake of connecting once—not an advisable style for anyone less sturdy than a SOLDIER, and risky even for him if he was ever against someone faster than him who could hit just as hard, and survive as much.

Tifa was not currently that person. Her best asset was her deep familiarity with how a sword of that size moved, and her ability to recognize the moves Cloud had clearly somehow absorbed from Fair, that had formed the foundation of his style. She ducked, and wove, and slowly picked up a collection of shallow gashes along the outsides of her limbs. She didn't have any healing items or materia right now. Her resilience was low. She couldn't rely on charging straight ahead and eating damage the way their party so often had, especially after Aerith had mastered that first slum-purchased Restore.

And range was telling against her—to land a hit, she had to make it through the space Fair could easily target with his sword, successfully deal as much damage as possible, and retreat again through the danger zone. Fists against steel tended to work better when you were stronger than the person holding the weapon.

Vincent's support helped—she could time an attack so that Fair had to choose between defending against her or a bullet, if he noticed both in time—but it didn't add up to giving her the advantage.

She was…not winning.

The battle as a whole, she decided as she countered what Fair clearly considered a sneaky off-hand punch, continued mostly because Sephiroth wasn't putting forth his best effort. Neither was Genesis, judging by his lazy smirk, and Fair certainly wasn't trying to kill Tifa, who also wasn't trying to kill him, though she acknowledged she was at much less risk of doing so.

Vincent, still standing at the top of the reactor steps, occasionally sent a shot toward Sephiroth, but neither those nor the ones that struck Fair were aimed at vital points, and would only serve to wear the SOLDIERs down. Cloud continued to focus his fire on Genesis exclusively, even though it obviously wasn't very effective and he had to time his shots around openings left by Sephiroth, which weren't many.

In fact, the only person present who could be said to be fully committed to the fight was the second trooper, and even he was avoiding shooting at Vincent.

It was vaguely ludicrous, and really did remind Tifa again of some of their fights against the Turks, the later ones, as the Planet's doom wore on and Shinra's plots mattered less and less to anyone, even Shinra itself.

Just like those, the stakes were deadly serious, even if the fight itself was not.

She juked a hard right, trying to whip around inside her enemy's range of attack and nail him in the kidneys again. The blow landed, but she was a little too slow, and Fair's blade scraped along her ribs as she withdrew, spilling blood down her side. Tifa hissed, drove her elbow down into the side of the blade to force it toward the ground, and landed a kick to the outside of the knee followed by a glancing one, as she leapt back, to just below Fair's huge SOLDIER belt buckle. Not fighting to kill didn't mean she had to be nice.

"Urf!" he complained, doubling up and deflecting an opportunistic punch to the face with the hand not holding his sword, so that it only skimmed along his cheekbone. "You're vicious!"

"People get that way when you try to take their freedom!"

Tifa wasn't eighteen anymore; she knew the world was big and complicated, and that it was hard to understand from inside Shinra just how insidious it was. It promised everyone who came to it the world, and fed them torn-off shreds and scraps of it while squeezing them for all the value they could produce. Even Turks got used up and thrown away. Even executives. Every single SOLDIER. When Midgar was brought to its knees, it brought terrible suffering because so many people had lived their lives within Shinra's gut, feeling the safer for having been swallowed. Tifa had lived under Midgar, once, had been there as the people who survived the great city's fall came together to build Edge.

Zack Fair wasn't evil for being Shinra, even though it would be easier if he was. She understood.

But the wind screamed emptiness over the crags and long before she was born there had been trees upon this mountain, all the way up to near the top, there had been grass underfoot where she had only ever seen black ash, and Sephiroth was right there and she could do nothing to stop him, and everything they had built since Meteor, every bit of strength and freedom and love Tifa had ever gained for herself, all of that was gone, and there was only Shinra.

She flung herself at the SOLDIER recklessly and was batted back with the flat of the blade; hit the ground in a three-point landing and stood, frustration beating in her chest like a bird, brushing the dust from her left hand.

"Shinra is torturing the Planet," she bit out. "If you think I'm going to trust anyone within Shinra to go against their own self-interest you're delusional."

It wasn't a productive thing to say, of course, and sure enough there were his eyes widening and then going narrow again. "So you are an ecoterrorist," he said.

"Ugh." Was she, still? Probably. Or might be again. "I'm whatever I need to be," she said. "So I don't have to watch my people die anymore."

Fair faltered, for a second. Not as if he was intimidated, or guilt-stricken. It was more a look of acute empathy that flashed across his face and made the sword he was swinging toward Tifa's face slow down just enough to matter, as the force behind it slackened.

Tifa didn't hold back in response. She ducked under the hesitating blade, threw a punch into the soft place just above his belt and then another that landed on his ribs as he twisted aside. His face hardened as he gathered power for a blow that probably stood a good chance of chopping her in two if it hit perfectly. Tifa ducked back. Almost out of reach.

The flat of the Buster Sword clipped her temple, and as the world jolted she felt her blood begin to boil, bright racing bubbles like the fizz in sparkling golden wine held against the light.

Perfect.

A/N: Please note that the SOLDIER uniform pants belt ludicrously high, so much so that they are the reason Sephiroth is flaunting his pecs but not his abs, so while kicking Zack right below his belt is targeting the vulnerable lower abdomen and constitutes unsportsmanlike conduct, it's not an actual groin shot. ^^;

Seriously though! Monsters! That are also people! There's that one Snow that's an optional encounter at the Great Glacier who 1) is wearing a parka(?) and 2) yells at you. With normal words! I was so shook.