Sandals flopped along the asphalt as Aerith tried to keep pace with the accelerating queen. "Why are we running?" she called out, struggling to balance a rise in speed with an increased number of items to hold.

"Because-" Dagger called back without looking as she briskly jogged the way Zidane had run down "If there's one thing I know about Zidane is that if he runs off without an explanation it means that there's going to be trouble heading his way."

"Didn't he-" Aerith panted, "didn't he already do that before when we were selling flowers?" she asked, placing a hand on a convenient window so she could stop and breathe "How do you run so fast?"

"Several years practice," Dagger replied with a smidgen of pride, from practising escape routes in Alexndria castle to climbing along mountain paths, the queen was pleased with her own athletic prowess and ability to move fast in most footwear "And I'm sure that is going to be something that causes trouble anyway!" she declared, stopping with her hands on her hips to let the flower girl recover and so she could listen out for tell tale signs about where Zidane could have gotten to. Like the sound of authoritative yelling and yelps of surprised agony. "This way!"

Dagger had a firm idea of what she was going to find Zidane doing when she ran into him again and the scene that was slowly being rolled out in front of her was almost too perfect to her idea: the blonde somehow winding up in the centre of a melee of what looked to be the local equivalent of the city watch trying to subdue him. She sighed and shook her head, long hair swaying back and forth as she waited for her husband to realize that she was watching him.

It seemed that people in this world had a difficult time grasping both people and concepts, Zidane was ducking and weaving through punches and baton swings that the only people the Shinra cadets managed to hit were other Shinra cadets, "I can explain!" the blonde called out of the people pile as another fellow tried his luck with a downward swing, cracking the polymer baton at where the genome's spine had been a brief moment ago but was now occupied by someone else's leg. "Just give me a moment!" he yelled over the cry of pain.

Aerith made the last few steps to catch up to the fracas, looking increasingly panicked at the one sided fight in front of her. "Should we do something?" she asked tentatively as one of the combatants seemed to be crawling away, clutching at his helmet as he shook every few paces.

"I think he's fine." Dagger said curtly, tapping her foot as the man in charge moved over to the duo.

"Okay ladies, I'm gonna need you to take a couple of steps back, this is an official Shinra operation." Anders said, waving Dagger and Aerith off as another miss-timed punch was answered by a yell of "What the hell, Strife?" and a hastily replied "Sorry!" from another young voice. "There's nothing to see here." Sargent Anders insisted, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

The man crawling away managed to get to the sparking lamp post and back onto his feet, staggering over to the Sargent while Dagger looked on through the gaps in her fingers, her palm cradling her face from embarrassment "Re-enforcements will be here in a moment Sargent. SOLSIER will take this from there." He said, trying to pull himself straight as Anders resisted the urge to argue at how big of a hassle this was turning out to be.

Meanwhile in the big ball of violence that was now kicking up an appropriately comedic dust cloud, Zidane reached in to get the ear of one of the people trying to swing at him. These guards were barely teenagers, poorly trained and the blonde was starting to feel sorry for them. "You're Strife, right? Got any other names?" he asked, pulling him both out of the way of another swing and to get in closer.

"C-Cloud!" The young cadet replied, not 100% sure as to what was going on, after the 3rd Class Soldier had failed to land a single hit, he was feeling very insecure.

"Okay Cloud, this is getting silly so I'm gonna help you out and make you look good. Give you a free hit because otherwise everyone's going to think you messed this whole thing up for them." Zidane whispered quickly.

"What?" Cloud yelled.

"Keep it down!" Zidane hissed "Okay, when I say 'Fandango' you punch me in the face. It has to be a punch, not a stick strike, I'll go backwards and then you look like a hero, right? Got it? Good." he explained, waiting for Cloud to show that he had some idea what was going on, ducked someone else's swing and let out a quick "Fandango!"

Cloud shoved his fellow cadets out of the way with his elbow before he let out a roar and swung his fist upwards with a wild uppercut, Zidane simply smiled as he held his jaw out, smugly waiting for the blow before realizing he had made a severely poor move. The blow launched the genome off his feet, sending him first flying and then rolling backwards until his shoulders hit a lamp post, head still spinning as he tried to work out where the herd of chocobos that hit him came from. Cloud was as surprised at this turn of events as everyone else as he stood in the middle of a bunch of lightly groaning bodies with his fist raised. "Uhhh... got him Sarge?" he suggested, his body seemingly frozen to the spot.

Dagger sighed as she hurried over to Zidane, pale energies glowing in her hands as she pressed the healing magic to her husband's forehead. "This is gonna be one of those 'You know I love you but' conversations, isn't it." the blonde joked with a weak smile. "Honestly, this is just a big misunderstanding that got out of hand." He tried to explain to the scowling queen, feeling worse even though the pain was already fading.

"Alright! Back up!" Sargent Anders yelled, pulling Dagger forcefully away from Zidane, much to both parties' protest. "Young missy, this man is wanted on suspicion of multiple counts of theft across several days and now about ten cases of resisting arrest. That means that unless you want to be arrested as an accessory, you Do Not Get Involved and Heal!" the man barked as the rest of the cadets rallied and pointed their weapons at the now scowling Zidane.

"Several days?" Dagger repeated, her face twisting in indignation and confusion as she was hoisted backwards "That's ridiculous! We haven't been in this city for a single night and you, sir, are saying that he is a hardened criminal with a list of offences despite only stepping foot in this locale less than eight hours ago!" The queen yelled, shaking off the initial grip. "You should be ashamed of yourselves!" She declared in her most authoritative tone with her hands on her hips, enough to make several of the cadets reflexively wince before the Sargent went to restrain her once again.

The situation was not getting better, diplomatically anyway. These guards were the old school "Only orders from a superior matter, not trivial things such as logic" types. Or at least the Sargent was, with the younger ones just trying not to get in trouble and following the same behaviour. Talking their way out was never going to be an option for the blonde and now that Dagger had gotten involved, neither was running away. The wince might have been brief, but it was visible and all Zidane needed. A background of fights in his youth, years of adventuring through different planets taking on monsters that would have made these kids flee in terror, he didn't need much to take care of this group if he was actually going to fight this time.

Cloud was the first to fall, a swift elbow to the gut doubling the cadet over allowing the Genome to use him as a human shield against the other cadets followed by a forceful boot to the base of the spine, pushing him into the crowd. "That's en- what the!?" Anders let out as he turned around to see Zidane jumping onto two of the unit's shoulders, reaching up to grab them by the helmets before falling off, driving their (thankfully protected) skulls into the ground, cracking the glass visors. One who managed to point his gun at Zidane barely got time to pull the trigger before he was nose-to-nose with his intended target and slapped in the throat, reducing him to a pile painful sounding choking noises on the floor as the blonde kicked the weapon away, Anders watching aghast.

"Okay," Zidane sighed, rolling back his right shoulder as he walked towards the Sargent "see, calling me a thief is one thing, threats I can deal with, pointing weapons at me? It's no problem," the blonde said in a relaxed tone, stepping over the writhing bodies.

"S-stay back! Anders yelled, gun in one hand, Dagger's wrist in the other as he back-pedalled away from the advancing genome.

"But what you really shouldn't have done... and what you're still doing wrong here," Zidane continued as his voice dropped to hushed tones, hand on the pommel of his weapon and the glint of metal just hinting at the fate in store.

"I'm warning you!"

"You really should not have tried to scare someone I care about." He whispered, unsheathing the short blade and rolling to the side, feeling the whiz of a bullet fly past before pouncing on the Sargent, knife ready in hand. Anders covered his eyes in terror, whatever he and his unit had stumbled on was not natural, and now he was going to die on what should have been a routine procedure, he'd avoided the front lines against Wutai but death had come screaming to meet him in Midgar. Just waiting for the feeling of his flesh being cut with a dull clang.

Wait.

Dull clang? When was that the sound getting cut made? That was more... something on metal. Chancing lowering his arms, he was greeted by a long sheet of sharpened steel in front of him, blocking the blonde's attack. "You okay back there?" Came a voice to his right, a mass of black spiky hair on top of a second class SOLDIER uniform tilted towards him "Looks like I got here just in time." The newcomer said, that was the last Sargent Anders saw before the ordeal after a long day became too much and collapsed. "Uh... maybe not just in time?"

Zidane bounced back from his lunge, skidding on the tarmac as he let up. "Oh man, they just keep coming..." he groaned, twisting the long knife back around, now there was another sword wielder here.

"You know, you can't just go around trying to hit people with a blade handle. That could have really hurt." The new swordsman said with a bright grin. "Don't worry ladies!" he called back to the once-again freed Dagger and Aerith "Zack Fair to the rescue!"

Will hopefully get through fighting soon-ish, unless people are liking that, in which case unfortunately we'll soon be done with the fighting.

Music:
Zidane vs Cadet Grunts: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Black Tar
Zack Appears: Crisis Core - Encounter