Cloud was up by Kadaj and we were right on his tail as we raced through the city. Yazoo and Loz were right behind us, keeping pace but not getting closer. Atlatl was easily faster than one of these motorcycles, but I decided not to push her.

Kadaj suddenly took a left onto an old highway. He ran over the sign that was meant to keep people out and Cloud had to duck under it while Atlatl jumped it. Yazoo got up next to Cloud and began to fire while Loz got next to me and took a swing at me from his bike. Cloud swerved and drove around us and to the other and to the other side of Loz between him and the divider. Loz forced Cloud into the divider and got ready to punch him when Cloud opened up the sides of Fenrir and forced Loz quickly towards me. I delivered a well aimed kick to his head and he spun and dropped behind us.

Cloud pulled out a blade from Fenrir and I grabbed my buster sword at the same time. Yazoo drove around in front of us and shot. Cloud and I blocked with our blades and Cloud charged him. The two were soon a spinning mass of metal with blades locked together. They pushed off of each other and I brought the flat side of my blade to his face as Cloud righted himself and we went for Kadaj.

Kadaj took another road and I followed but Cloud was suddenly attacked by Loz, who leapt off his own bike and slammed his fist in the ground. Cloud was now below Kadaj and I so I would have to continue on my own. The feeling of being alone really hit me hard when Cloud entered the tunnel below us. I looked at Kadaj and frowned. Now, I was facing him one on one and I had more than enough reason to kill the man. He had kidnapped me and basically tortured me. "Get him" I growled in Atlatl's ear. Her stride suddenly changed and her speed increased dramatically.

"They hurt you. I'm going to claw out his internal organs!" she hissed.

"Then he'd hope you would get to him first. That's nothing compared to what I'll do" I said. I could feel her amusement.

"Now you're talking" she said as we caught up to him.

His first move was to draw his double blade and strike at me. I easily kicked his attack away. On Atlatl's back, I clearly had the higher ground. As he swung at me more, I drew my buster sword and split it so it was a long thin blade and the regular sword. I lashed out with the thinner blade, trying more to cut his arms, but he was good. He surprised me as he suddenly swung at Atlatl. She saw it coming and caught the blade in her mouth. Quickly, he jerked it out and I saw blood fly.

'Oh no' I thought.

"Don't worry" she said. "I'm fine, focus on the fight."

He must have seen my worry because he proceeded to lash out at her legs. I was caught blocking his blade from striking her. "Bastard" I growled. "Even if you do hit her, she won't go down that easily."

"Okay" I said to her. "Let's employ a new trick." I got up and balanced myself so I was standing on her back. We dropped behind Kadaj and I tossed three knives trying to get him. While the knives distracted him I leapt forward off of Atlatl and landed on the back of his bike. He swung but I flipped over his head to the front of his bike and swung at him.

He blocked and the force of the slamming together forced me into the air. I was free flying ahead of him and Atlatl was running at a safe distance. He attacked while I was in the air, twirling his blade around, the sound of the air whistling around it filled my ears.

Somehow, I ended up upside down and I took the opportunity to curl up so I dropped back and landed backwards on Atlatl. An explosion in the tunnel below us alerted me to Cloud's position. Kadaj had noticed it too and glared at me. I flipped so I was facing the right way on Atlatl and urged her forward. Another explosion occurred underneath us, smaller this time.

We neared a ramp that went down beside the tunnel and Kadaj played a dirty trick. He had a piece of metal from somewhere, though I had no clue where. With barely a glance, he tossed it over his shoulder and sped up. Atlatl barely had time to think, much less dodge, as it came bouncing back towards us. I gasped right before it struck her right, front paw. She stumbled and threw me off. I slammed my buster sword into the ground to slow myself down and came to a stop. She skidded to a stop next to me and we looked over to see Reno and Rude by the tunnel with some type of explosive.

I gave her paw a once-over before Cloud raced out of the tunnel. I hopped on her back and raced in the direction that Kadaj had gone in. We were catching up to him when the explosion suddenly went up in fireworks and threw Cloud off of the roadway above us. He landed nearly on top of Kadaj and they locked blades. The tires on the bikes squealed as they slid sideways and I looked past them to see that the road stopped and gave way to the city below.

"Stop, Atlatl" I ordered her. Cloud and Kadaj kept going and slid off the end of the road but we managed to stop at the very edge.

"Do you want me to follow?" she asked.

"I wouldn't ask you to jump that" I replied. "Let's find a safer way down." She turned around and began to walk away from the edge and I took the moment to place my buster sword back into its holder. I wasn't paying attention to what she was doing because I trusted her, so when she took off at a run it was completely unexpected. My head snapped up and my eyes widened as I saw we were headed straight towards the drop-off. "What are you doing?" I screamed as she leapt and bucked me off at the same time. She grabbed my clothes and pulled me in front of her. Her body tucked around me, muffling my senses. Just as before, time seemed to slow while we were in the air. It wasn't long, probably even shorter than it seemed, before she hit the ground with a sickening "thud." Despite her cushion, I was still jarred around and I lost sense of what was going on. I knew she was still moving, rolling or sliding, I couldn't tell, but that was all I really knew.

She suddenly came to a stop and I rolled out of her grasp and slid to a stop several feet away. I slowly moved my elbows under my body and forced myself up off the ground. My vision was blurry and took a moment to clear and my body screamed in pain. I looked around until my eyes settled upon the lump of white fur not far from me. It didn't take me long to realize that she wasn't moving.

I stood and walked over to her side. "Latl-ka?" I asked, using a nickname I hadn't used in years. She didn't respond so I fell to my knees and nudged her paw. "Atlatl" I said. She still didn't stir. "Wake up" I whimpered. Why wasn't she moving? "Wake up" I pushed hard on her arm again. Tears began to form in my eyes. The harsh reality of what had happened began to hit home. "You can't be dead" I said softly. "Atlatl" I shook my head. "Atlatl!" I screamed.

"Fayte!" her voice filled my ears.

"Atlatl?" I said as I moved next to her head.

"I'll be fine" she breathed. "Go help him. He needs you."

"But you…"

"Go!" a light growl left her throat. "I promise I'm not going anywhere."

"If you die, I'll kill you" I snapped as I turned to run.

"Silly girl" she chuckled as I ran. "I think you could do it, too."

I ran between the destroyed buildings in the direction I had seen Cloud go in. It helped that there were tire tracks that I could follow because I would have been lost without them. I felt guilty for leaving Atlatl but something told me that she would be in more trouble if I took her with me. Something big was definitely going to happen whether we tried to stop it or not.

I could run fairly fast, even in my condition, but I couldn't outrun a motorcycle. My hope was that they would have stopped somewhere to fight or something. There was a crash, about a half a mile away by the way it sounded. It was also in the same direction that the tracks were leading me. 'Good deal' I thought as I approached one of the more intact buildings. An old church was what it looked like. I was shocked when Kadaj suddenly rode out of the top and onto another path and water began to pour out of the top of the building.

Soon after Kadaj and the water, Cloud rode out of the front and nearly passed me. He skidded to a stop and rode back to me. "Where's Atlatl?" he asked.

"She's hurt" I said and I shook my head sadly.

He slid back on the seat of Fenrir. "Get on."

I involuntarily took a step back. It didn't even register to me that I had done it until he said "Hey, something wrong?"

"I just don't like those things" I said with a sigh.

"You ride a giant cat with nothing to hold you down, who goes faster than this" he stated.

"Yeah, but I trust her with my life even when she's being stupid" I said.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

"Yeah, but…"

"Get on" he demanded.

"Okay" I said as I got on in front of him. He put one arm around me and I looked down to see that it was not only his left arm but there was no geostigma. "Cloud, your geostigma…"

"It's healed. We can fix you, too" he said.

"But we have things to do" I frowned. "Let's go."

"Where did he go?" Cloud asked.

"Over that way" I said as I pointed to the old SOLDIER complex.

"Okay" he said as he turned his bike and sped off in that direction, never taking his arm away from me. It was a good thing, too, because I as clinging to that arm for dear life. He sped up unexpectedly, causing me to squeak in fear. A chuckle of amusement escaped him at that and I felt my face heat up. My face heated up more at the thought of how funny that would look. Half my face would be red and the other was covered by makeup.

'Get a hold of yourself!' I yelled in my head, but I couldn't help but realize how easily he had made me lose my constitution.

We suddenly began slowing down and I looked up to see that Kadaj was standing on a elevated and broken old chunk of the nearby complex. When Cloud stopped, I climbed off and he opened the sides of Fenrir and pulled out parts of his buster sword. I followed his lead as we stepped away from Fenrir and he glared at Kadaj.

"Brother, I'm with her at last" Kadaj said.

"So, what's going to happen now?" asked Cloud.

Kadaj smiled down at the box under his arm "Mother's going to tell me."

"I guess a remnant wouldn't really know" said Cloud.

Kadaj's smile disappeared and he looked down at the box again. "So what if I'm a puppet?" he replied. He raised his hand and blue energy surrounded it. "Once upon a time…" he said as he turned slightly away. "You were, too!" He turned back to us and launched several balls from the one in his hand. Cloud dodged out of the way and leapt at Kadaj while I brought my arm up and used my materia to block the attack. A dust cloud was thrown up around me both from Cloud's jump and Kadaj's attack. I leapt out of it to see the two men already fully engaged in battle. Neither of them could hit each other and then they managed to get some distance between them and Kadaj leapt up to higher ground.

When we got to the top, I managed to get behind him, making him block me and Cloud. We fought for a short time in a series of spinning moves before Kadaj suddenly looked up. The Sierra came in fast and stopped suddenly. It hovered up above us as we continued our fight. Cloud and I exchanged a look and then charged Kadaj. We began to rapidly change positions as we ran up to a spherical building and then onto a ledge. The ledge was small so when I ended up behind Cloud, I couldn't do much to help. Cloud was suddenly disarmed by Kadaj and he took a swing anyway, making Kadaj flee.

Cloud leapt off of where we were standing. He flew through the air and grabbed his blade before landing for a moment and then launching himself again. The two of them met in the air and ended up on another spherical building. I was racing just to stay near them. Cloud was a bigger threat than I was. With a strong swing, they separated. They glared for a moment before Kadaj ran forward and jumped high at Cloud, who put his buster sword together and spun it, causing it to take on a blue glow like before. Kadaj came down on Cloud and let out a yell as he slammed his sword down but Cloud easily deflected him and sent him over the edge of the building. Cloud began to walk to the edge of the building and signaled for me to follow. We both leapt down onto the ledge Kadaj was dangling from. By the looks of it, Kadaj was defeated. He glared up at us and I began to wonder what Cloud was going to do. Suddenly, Kadaj threw the box, distracting both of us long enough to jump and catch it as its green contents leaked out. He took whatever was in the box out and then looked to us.

"My reunion" he said with a smile. "Bet you're dying to watch."

"No," I said, I knew what that meant. Cloud and I both launched ourselves down after him. Black mist came from what Kadaj was holding. Some of the mist stained his face as we neared him. A ringing filled my ears and the ground got closer. Kadaj righted himself and almost floated to the ground and put his hands up before Cloud hit him. Cloud's impact caused a huge dent in the metal Kadaj was standing on and I landed not far away. My eyes widened in shock as Kadaj's hair got much longer and a green flame shot out, a sword as long as I was tall forming in that flame. I didn't hear what he said to Cloud but I stood still in shock and fear. He easily forced Cloud away from him and up into the sky before turning to me. I whimpered and stepped back as he approached me. The feeling of his hand on my cheek made me flinch.

I found myself staring into the green-blue eyes of Sephiroth. "Hello, Dear."